This study aims to further understand children’s capacity to identify and reason about pretend emotions by analyzing which sources of information they take into account when interpreting emotions simulated in pretend play contexts. A total of 79 children aged 3 to 8 participated in the final sample of the study. They were divided into the young group and the older group. The children were administered a facial emotion recognition task, a pretend emotions task, and a non-verbal cognitive ability test. In (...) the pretend emotions task, the children were asked whether the protagonist of silent videos, who was displaying pretend emotions, was displaying a real or a pretend emotion, and to justify their answer. The results show significant differences in the children’s capacity to identify and justify pretend emotions according to age and type of emotion. The data suggest that young children recognize pretend sadness, but have more difficulty detecting pretend anger. In addition, children seem to find facial information more useful for the detection of pretend sadness than pretend anger, and they more often interpret the emotional expression of the characters in terms of pretend play. The present research presents new data about the recognition of negative emotional expressions of sadness and anger and the type of information children take into account to justify their interpretation of pretend emotions, which consists not only in emotional expression but also contextual information. (shrink)

Do the new sciences of well-being provide knowledge that respects the nature of well-being? This book written from the perspective of philosophy of science articulates how this field can speak to well-being proper and can do so in a way that respects the demands of objectivity and measurement.

Well–being, health and freedom are some of the many phenomena of interest to science whose definitions rely on a normative standard. Empirical generalizations about them thus present a special case of value-ladenness. I propose the notion of a ‘mixed claim’ to denote such generalizations. Against the prevailing wisdom, I argue that we should not seek to eliminate them from science. Rather, we need to develop principles for their legitimate use. Philosophers of science have already reconciled values with objectivity in several (...) ways, but none of the existing proposals are suitable for mixed claims. Using the example of the science of well-being, I articulate a conception of objectivity for this science and for mixed claims in general. _1_ Introduction _2_ What Are Mixed Claims? _3_ Mixed Claims Are Different _3.1_ Values as reasons to pursue science _3.2_ Values as agenda-setters _3.3_ Values as ethical constraints on research protocols _3.4_ Values as arbiters between underdetermined theories _3.5_ Values as determinants of standards of confirmation _3.6_ Values as sources of wishful thinking and fraud _4_ Mixed Claims Should Stay _4.1_ Against Nagel _5_ The Dangers of Mixed Claims _6_ The Existing Accounts of Objectivity _6.1_ The perils of impartiality _7_ Objectivity for Mixed Claims _8_ Three Rules _8.1_ Unearth the value presuppositions in methods and measures _8.2_ Check if value presuppositions are invariant to disagreements _8.3_ Consult the relevant parties _9_ Conclusion. (shrink)

It is commonly held that our intuitive judgements about imaginary problem cases are justified a priori, if and when they are justified at all. In this paper I defend this view — ‘rationalism’ — against a recent objection by Timothy Williamson. I argue that his objection fails on multiple grounds, but the reasons why it fails are instructive. Williamson argues from a claim about the semantics of intuitive judgements, to a claim about their psychological underpinnings, to the denial of rationalism. (...) I argue that the psychological claim — that a capacity for mental simulation explains our intuitive judgements — does not, even if true, provide reasons to reject rationalism. (More generally, a simulation hypothesis, about any category of judgements, is very limited in its epistemological implications: it is pitched at a level of explanation that is insensitive to central epistemic distinctions.) I also argue that Williamson’s semantic claim — that intuitive judgements are judgements of counterfactuals — is mistaken; rather, I propose, they are a certain kind of metaphysical possibility judgement. Several other competing proposals are also examined and criticized. (shrink)

The treatise attempts to approach and deal with some of the most fundamental problems facing anyone who wishes to uphold some version of the so-called theory of tropes. Three assumptions serve as a basis for the investigation: tropes exist, only tropes exist, and a one-category trope-theory along these lines should be developed so that the tropes it postulates are able to serve as truth-makers for all kinds of atomic propositions. Provided that these assumptions are accepted, it is found that the (...) trope-theorist will have to deal with two important problems. First, some atomic propositions seem to require universal truth-makers. Second, some atomic propositions seem to require concrete truth-makers. As tropes are abstract particulars, it follows that the trope-theorist, in order to fulfil assumption, must provide an account of exactly how he or she could construct universality and concreteness from his or her basic stock of tropes. In the treatise such constructions are attempted and some basic problems with such constructions are revealed. Although these problems are serious enough it is argued that it is nevertheless possible to deal with these basic issues while staying squarely within the boundaries of a one-category trope-ontology. (shrink)

Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm frozen before starting (...) hormone treatment, specifically so that she would retain the chance of becoming a parent after her gender reassignment. Ellie had considered what might happen to the sperm if she died and was adamant that her children should be brought into the world. She made her mother promise to ensure that this would happen. But according to UK law, Ellie’s mother has no legal right to retain her sperm, or to use it to fulfil Ellie’s wishes. In this paper, we raise several key ethical questions on this case, namely: does a refusal to bring Ellie’s children into the world wrong her posthumously? Is Ellie’s mother morally entitled to use her daughter’s sperm as Ellie wished? Should the fact that Ellie was a minor at the time of her death or the fact that she was transgendered undermine her wish to have children? Can Ellie become a parent posthumously? We consider how these complex ethical questions could be approached. (shrink)

Intuitively, we often see absences. For example, if someone steals your laptop at a café, you may see its absence from your table. However, absence perception presents a paradox. On prevailing models of perception, we see only present objects and scenes (Marr, Gibson, Dretske). So, we cannot literally see something that is not present. This suggests that we never literally perceive absences; instead, we come to believe that something is absent cognitively on the basis of what we perceive. But this (...) cognitive explanation does not do justice to the phenomenology. Many experiences of absence possess immediate, perceptual qualities. One may further argue that the ability to detect certain absences confers strong adaptive advantage and therefore must be as primitive and fundamental to humans as seeing positive things. I argue that we can literally see absences; in addition to representing objects, perception represents absences of objects. I present a model of seeing absence based on visual expectations and a visual matching process. The phenomenon of seeing absence can thus serve as an adequacy-test for a theory of perceptual content. If experiences of absence are possible, then we have another reason (following Siegel) to reject the view that perceptual content is restricted to colors and shapes. Furthermore, if the proposed account is correct, then we have grounds for dissociating seeing absence from other imagery-based phenomena termed “perceptual presence-in-absence” (Noë, Macpherson). (shrink)

What makes a measure of well-being valid? The dominant approach today, construct validation, uses psychometrics to ensure that questionnaires behave in accordance with background knowledge. Our first claim is interpretive—construct validation obeys a coherentist logic that seeks to balance diverse sources of evidence about the construct in question. Our second claim is critical—while in theory this logic is defensible, in practice it does not secure valid measures. We argue that the practice of construct validation in well-being research is theory avoidant, (...) favoring a narrow focus on statistical tests while largely ignoring relevant philosophical considerations. (shrink)

Richard Bradley and others endorse Reverse Bayesianism as the way to model awareness growth. I raise a problem for Reverse Bayesianism—at least for the general version that Bradley endorses—and argue that there is no plausible way to restrict the principle that will give us the right results. To get the right results, we need to pay attention to the attitudes that agents have towards propositions of which they are unaware. This raises more general questions about how awareness growth should be (...) modelled. (shrink)

This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account of how it is (...) the outcome of large-scale injustice. This book not only provides a novel theoretical framework that supports such a claim, but it also develops the theoretical tools to find just compromises between the entitlements of intraspecies and intra-human global distributive justice to ecological space for the purpose of working towards a vision of just conservation. -/- Content: 1. Introducing Ecological Justice 2. Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism 3. The Community of Justice 4. The Currency of Distributive Justice 5. The Principles of Distributive Justice 6. Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach 7. Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice? 8. Who Owns the Earth? 9. Visions of Just Conservation 10. Outlook for Implementation . (shrink)

One of David Rosenthal’s many important contributions to the philosophy of mind was his clear and unshirking account of introspection. Here we argue that while there is a kind of introspection (we call it “reflective introspection”) that Rosenthal’s account may be structurally fit to accommodate, there is also a second kind (“primitive introspection”) that his account cannot recover. We introduce Rosenthal’s account of introspection in §1, present the case for the psychological reality of primitive introspection in §2, and argue that (...) Rosenthal’s account lacks the resources to accommodate it in §3. (shrink)

In Valuing Health, Dan Hausman argues that well-being is not measurable, at least not in the way that science and policy would require. His argument depends on a demanding conception of well-being and on a pessimistic verdict upon the existing measures of subjective well-being. Neither of these reasons, I argue, warrant as much skepticism as Hausman professes.

Recent decades have seen the facilitation of unconventional or even extraordinary reproductive endeavours. Sperm has been harvested from dying or deceased men at the request of their wives; reproductive tissue has been surgically removed from children at the request of their parents; deceased adults’ frozen embryos have been claimed by their parents, in order to create grandchildren; wombs have been transplanted from mothers to their daughters. What is needed for requests to be honoured by healthcare staff is that they align (...) with widely shared expectations about what people’s reproductive potential ought to be, what marital relationships ought to result in, and which kinds of ties are desirable between parents and children. Costly and invasive technologies are not considered excessive when they are used to support the building of appropriate families. However, deviations from dominant reproductive norms, even if technologically simple and convenient to the participants, are unlikely to receive support. In this paper, we offer examples of such deviations and explore their implications. If reproduction is important as a way of creating genetic relationships, should reproductive material in storage be offered to genetic relatives other than the people from whom it originated? And if parents are allowed to have reproductive material collected from their offspring, or even to use it to create babies, should offspring likewise be allowed to use their parents’ reproductive material? We tackle these questions and suggest ways in which interests in genetic ties could be operationalised in a more coherent and less-invasive manner than they currently are. (shrink)

The question of work–family practices commonly arises in both theory and daily practice as a matter of responsibility in today’s organisations. More information is needed about them for socially responsible human resource management. In this article our interest is in how work–family practices, serve as an important element of SR-HRM, constructed as helpful for employees’ work–family integration, are realised in organisational life. We investigate the discursive ways in which members of two different organisations working at different organisational levels construct the (...) issue in the Finnish context. Three discourses were interpreted: a discourse of compliance with external pressure, a discourse of negotiation and a discourse of individual flexibility. Discursive constructions of work–family practices make visible the complex interconnectedness of individuals and organisations with the environment in which they operate. Many organisational efforts to create positive work–family practices can, in fact, lead to failure to make these practices either available or usable, and they may result in the unjust treatment of organisation members. Creating sustainable work–family practices is a complex challenge for which SR-HRM must work out a solution. (shrink)

Clinical ethics training programs are responsible for preparing their trainees to be competent ethics consultants worthy of the trust of patients, families, surrogates, and healthcare professionals. While the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) offers a certification examination for healthcare ethics consultants, no tools exist for the formal evaluation of ethics trainees to assess their progress toward competency. Medical specialties accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) use milestones to report trainees’ progress along a continuum of (...) professional development as a means of “operationalizing and implementing” medical competencies. Utilizing the Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation and the ACGME and American Board of Pediatrics’ (ABP) Pediatric Milestones Project, we developed milestones for 17 subcompetencies in clinical ethics consultation and academic bioethics. As the field of clinical ethics becomes more standardized, such tools will be needed to promote the development of robust training programs and to certify that their graduates are competent practitioners. (shrink)

Ways of Scope Taking is concerned with syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of scope. Its starting point is the well-known but often neglected fact that different types of quantifiers interact differently with each other and other operators. The theoretical examination of significant bodies of data, both old and novel, leads to two central claims. (1) Scope is a by-product of a set of distinct Logical Form processes; each quantifier participates in those that suit its particular features. (2) Scope interaction is (...) further constrained by the semantics of the interacting operators. The arguments are developed using Minimalist syntax, Generalized Quantify theory, Discourse Representation Theory, and algebraic semantics. The contributors (Beghelli, Ben-Shalom, Doetjes, Farkas, Gutiérrez Rexach, Honcoop, Stabler, Stowell, Szabolcsi and Zwarts) make tightly related theoretical assumptions and focus on related empirical phenomena, which include the direct and inverse scope of quantifiers, distributivity, negation, modal and intensional contexts, weak islands, event-related readings, interrogatives, wh/quantifier interactions, and Hungarian syntax. An introduction to the formal semantics background is provided. Audience: Linguists, philosophers, computational and psycholinguists; advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

‘The Union of Cause and Effect in Aristotle : Physics III 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 32, pp. 205-232, May 2007.: I argue that Aristotle introduced a unique realist account of causation, which has not hitherto been appreciated in the history of philosophy: causal realism without a causal relation. In his account, cause and effect are unified by the ectopic actualization of the agent’s potentiality in the patient. His solution consists in the introduction of a property that belongs to (...) one subject but is realized in another subject on whose state this realization depends. I identify and analyze the multiple ontological dependencies between the causal state of the agent and that of the patient during their causal activity. (shrink)

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

Observational studies have suggested that some nonhuman primates’ cooperative behavior may rely on their capacity to share goals and understand the role of their partners. Experimental studies have tried to find evidence for this under controlled conditions, investigating aspects like the degree of organization in different primate species and the individuals’ capacity to recognize and choose good partners, switch roles with them, and care about their outcomes. Often, the results have been mixed. Partly, this is because of the methodological difficulties (...) inherent to empirical research. In this paper, I offer a critical, methodological review of the experimental studies done in the last years on nonhuman primates’ cooperation, I discuss their findings, and suggest possible solutions to some of the procedural problems. Hopefully, this will contribute to improve the design of future studies and therefore our knowledge about the evolutionary history of cooperation. (shrink)

The Reflection Principle can be defended with a Diachronic Dutch Book Argument (DBA), but it is also defeated by numerous compelling counter-examples. It seems then that Diachronic DBAs can lead us astray. Should we reject them en masse—including Lewis’s Diachronic DBA for Conditionalization? Rachael Briggs’s “suppositional test” is supposed to differentiate between Diachronic DBAs that we can safely ignore (including the DBA for Reflection) and Diachronic DBAs that we should find compelling (including the DBA for Conditionalization). I argue that Brigg’s (...) suppositional test is wrong: it sets the bar for coherence too high and places certain cases of self-doubt on the wrong side of the divide. Given that the suppositional test is unsatisfactory, we are left without any justification for discriminating between Diachronic DBAs and ought to reject them all—including the DBA for Conditionalization. (shrink)

The extremely extensive philosophical legacy of Roman Witold Ingarden, a student of Edmund Husserl, including papers in the fields of ontology, epistemology, and aesthetics, has been consistently arousing the interest of researchers from around the world for several decades. The year 2020 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ingarden’s death. The present book constitutes a unique contribution honoring the philosopher’s memory and academic legacy. An ambitious project that brings together the thoughts of many intellectuals, the book includes research problems, contemporary interpretations (...) of Ingarden’s thought, and comparative studies, placing his philosophy in a broader historical and cultural context. This approach perfectly reflects the relevance, refinement, and depth of Ingarden’s theories. Although the essays presented in the book undoubtedly constitute a due tribute to an important figure in contemporary philosophy, this collection is not exclusively retrospective, but also shows the present and future development of philosophical thought inspired by Ingarden’s works. Including a substantial introduction by the editors, the book contains eight chapters from some of the most significant scholars in the field, covering the historical and comparative approach to Ingarden’s thought, as well as from young, ambitious scholars developing new interpretations of selected aspects of Ingarden’s theories. Specifically, the reader will find chapters on existential ontology (Peter Simons, Jan Woleński), Ingarden’s theory of questions (Giuditta Corbella), music ontology (Edward Świderski), empathy and aesthetic experience (Jeff Mitscherling), the aesthetics of computer games (Matthew Gladden), aesthetic attention (Harri Mäcklin), and Ingarden’s theory and aesthetics of time (Charlene Elsby). (shrink)

Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk has a place among the early Kantians in Halle as both a theologian and a philosophical thinker. After situating Tieftrunk within this intellectual history and determining his theological and philosophical position, this paper provides a chronological account of the concept of hope—which lies at the basis of Kant’s moral philosophy—in Tieftrunk’s writings on philosophy of religion. In particular, the discussion centers on the relationship between the foundation of hope in the moral law and the exclusion of a (...) legalistic fulfilment of hope. The “love of the law,” which emerges especially in Tieftrunk’s work, takes a prominent position in the interpretation. The investigation is accompanied by an evaluation of Tieftrunk’s role in the early reception of Kant. (shrink)

This study belongs to the ethnomethodological tradition of identifying the everyday practices accounting for the oiled machinery of social organization and applies this approach to understanding direction light usage. We observe a set of episodes videorecorded in North-East Italy in the urban traffic. We first unpack the meaning of direction light usage from a pragmatic perspective and then test our interpretation against the cases in our collection that seem to deviate from it. We argue that direction lights’ usage works as (...) an announcement to some road users and a request to a subset of them; in both cases, direction lights convey contextualized (indexical) coordinates about the vehicle’s prospective trajectory. We then explain the cases in which signaling is omitted and draw some implications for traffic coordination and safety. (shrink)

Representing two generations of counselor education and practice, Megan Anna Neff and Mark McMinn provide practitioners with a fresh look at integration in a postmodern world. Modeling how to engage hard questions, they consider how different theological views, gendered perspectives, and cultures integrate with psychology and counseling.

In this paper I argue that the infinite regress of resemblance is vicious in the guise it is given by Russell but that it is virtuous if generated in a (contemporary) trope theoretical framework. To explain why this is so I investigate the infinite regress argument. I find that there is but one interesting and substantial way in which the distinction between vicious and virtuous regresses can be understood: The Dependence Understanding. I argue, furthermore, that to be able to decide (...) whether an infinite regress exhibits a dependence pattern of a vicious or a virtuous kind, facts about the theoretical context in which it is generated become essential. It is precisely because of differences in context that he Russellian resemblance regress is vicious whereas its trope theoretical counterpart is not. (shrink)

Courtroom talk in child custody interrogations recurrently features contrasting event descriptions about ‘what happened’, as well as contrasting person descriptions. This case study – from a large set of audio-recorded courtroom examinations – documents how social workers’ contrasting narrative versions about alleged domestic violence are related to divergent problem formulations. Blame-account sequences feature descriptions of a particular event as violent or nonviolent and descriptions of a new partner as ‘non-adult’ or merely as ‘impulsive’ but ‘concerned’. Other contrasting person descriptions feature (...) a target child either as ‘normal’ or as someone who ‘has a diagnosis’. This involves categorizations of the particular child either as a victim or as someone ‘with a diagnosis’, two contrasting accounts that provide divergent explanatory formulations of what the overall problem is. Ultimately, divergent testimonies also reflect how social accounts in court reflect both mitigated/aggravated descriptions of violence and divergent accounts of parents’ and children’s agency and accountability. (shrink)

I examine a range of popular solutions to the puzzle of imaginative resistance. According to each solution in this range, imaginative resistance occurs only when we are asked to imagine something that conflicts with what we believe. I show that imaginative resistance can occur without this sort of conflict, and so that every solution in the range under consideration fails. I end by suggesting a new explanation for imaginative resistance—the Import Solution—which succeeds where the other solutions considered fail.

In his article “Research Priorities and the Future of Pregnancy” in this issue of CQ, Timothy Murphy evaluates some of the arguments I advanced in an earlier publication, “The Moral Imperative for Ectogenesis.

Recent research has demonstrated an asymmetry between the origins and endpoints of motion events, with preferential attention given to endpoints rather than beginnings of motion in both language and memory. Two experiments explore this asymmetry further and test its implications for language production and comprehension. Experiment 1 shows that both adults and 4-year-old children detect fewer within-category changes in source than goal objects when tested for memory of motion events; furthermore, these groups produce fewer references to source than goal objects (...) when describing the same motion events. Experiment 2 asks whether the specificity of encoding source/goal relations differs in both spatial memory and the comprehension of novel spatial vocabulary. Results show that endpoint configuration changes are detected more accurately than source configuration changes by both adults and young children. Furthermore, when interpreting novel motion verbs, both age groups expect more fine-grained lexical distinctions in the domain of endpoint configurations compared to that of source configurations. These studies demonstrate that a cognitive-attentional bias in spatial representation and memory affects both the detail of linguistic encoding during the use of spatial language and the specificity of hypotheses about spatial referents that learners build during the acquisition of the spatial lexicon. (shrink)

Students’ cheating is a serious problem: It undermines the chance to adequately promote, support, and evaluate them. To explain cheating behavior, research seldom focuses on perceived teachers’ characteristics. Thus, we investigate the relationship between students’ cheating behavior and an important teacher characteristic, individual reference norm orientation. We examined cheating on written exams, on homework, and in oral exams among N = 601 students in N = 31 language classes. Results from doubly manifest multi-level analyses showed that, on the classroom level, (...) cheating on written exams and on homework occurred less frequently the more the classroom of students perceived their teachers as having an IRNO. We found no further evidence for other cheating factors or student characteristics. This supports the idea that teacher characteristics are associated with some forms of students’ cheating behavior. (shrink)

Kistler, Sebastian/Puzio, Anna/Riedl, Anna-Maria/Veith (Hrsg.) Digitale Transformationen der Gesellschaft Sozialethische Perspektiven auf den technologischen Wandel -/- Die Digitalisierung bewirkt Transformationsprozesse, die die Formen unseres Zusammenlebens grundlegend verändern. Dies betrifft nicht nur die Art, wie wir leben, Partner suchen, arbeiten, wohnen, konsumieren oder uns selbst präsentieren – auch die gesellschaftlichen Lebensbereiche wie Politik, Bildung, Wirtschaft und Gesundheit befinden sich in einem digitalen Wandel. Mit diesen Veränderungsprozessen sind nicht nur Hoffnungen, sondern auch Ängste verbunden, die die Ambivalenzen der Digitalisierung zum (...) Ausdruck bringen. Die Komplexität und die Wirkungstiefe digitaler Transformationsprozesse werfen Fragen nach deren Steuerbarkeit, nach ihren Zwecken bzw. nach möglichen Orientierungen auf: • Welche technologischen Entwicklungen müssen reguliert werden? • Wie kann eine entsprechende Legitimation erfolgen? • Wer übernimmt Verantwortung? • Wie und nach welchen Kriterien sind ethische Bewertungen vorzunehmen? • Und nicht zuletzt: Gibt es Grenzen für diese Entwicklungen oder haben die Möglichkeiten des Machbaren die ethischen Fragen längst überholt und erledigt? -/- Die Texte des Sammelbandes nähern sich den digitalen Transformationen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven. Anhand unterschiedlicher Zugänge werden die Themenfelder „Digitalisierung und Gesellschaft“, „Körper und Technologie“ sowie „Digitalisierung und Demokratie“ entfaltet. Darüber hinaus werden die Konsequenzen für die Pflegearbeit und für den Umgang mit modernen Waffentechnologien als anwendungsbezogene Konkretionen diskutiert. (shrink)

This article is a mutual introduction of the science of well-being to philosophy of science and an explanation of how the two disciplines can benefit each other. In the process, I argue that the science of well-being is not helpfully viewed as a social or a natural, but rather as a mixed, science. Hence, its methodology will have to attend to its specific features. I discuss two of its methodological problems: justifying the role of values, and validating measures. I suggest (...) that tackling them calls for developing mid-level rather than high theories of well-being. (shrink)

Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) present profound challenges for law. These challenges stem from law’s anthropocentrism, which is often left unspoken. This essay examines both the epistemic and normative dimensions of anthropocentrism within German Law, with a focus on Private Law. It defends the proposition that law’s anthropocentrism does not inherently oppose the idea of granting AI some form of legal capacity. Rather, so the essay argues, it is essentially a question of regulatory prudence to determine (...) the conditions and criteria under which the law should grant a legal status, legal capacity, or partial legal capacity to AI entities. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge that the core principles of private law as well as questions of liability for fault and negligence are rooted in human agency and cannot be directly applied to AI. It will be argued that the legal discourse on the recognition of AI is to be understood as a fundamentally political discourse. The political dimension of that discourse will be analyzed through the lens of the political theories of Hannah Arendt and Jaques Rancière, among others. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Catherine Malabou’s reading of Heidegger’s forgotten triad of change; indeed, in connection to her own notion of the ‘plasticity of meaning’. The paper focuses on the emergence of meaning, on its figuration, and on the moment during which a new image of meaning comes to be seen. In light of this pursuit, the paper will attest to change and to the plasticity of meaning through different images; the first being the plasticity of reading; the second, (...) the plasticity of metaphysics; and third, the plasticity of the ‘motor scheme’ – and especially that of writing. All these cases will be tied together through the notion of the fantastic; namely, through that which instantiates the figuration of meaning, its formation into an image and its visibility. After considering these plastic instances – and revealing some unimagined aspects of the fantastic, like the process of material-metaphoricity, I will relate the plasticity of meaning to the notion of childhood and to the ways through which this notion can be reconfigured. (shrink)

The Stoic theory of knowledge was founded by Zeno on a perceptual and crudely materialistic base, but subsequently developed into an elaborate theory involving λεκτ which has proved difficult to reconstruct. The evolution of the school, influenced not only by internal differences but also by interaction with the Platonic Academy, certainly contributed to this development. Hence any adequate reconstruction of the Stoic theory of knowledge must take account of the differences among the positions of the different representatives of the school (...) with respect to the criticism put foward by the Academics. I propose here to clarify Zeno's position, showing how Arcesilaus' criticism helped to expose certain lacunae and thus to bring about changes in doctrine on the part both of Zeno himself and of his immediate successors. (shrink)

A series of five experiments investigated the extent of subliminal processing of negation. Participants were presented with a subliminal instruction to either pick or not pick an accompanying noun, followed by a choice of two nouns. By employing subjective measures to determine individual thresholds of subliminal priming, the results of these studies indicated that participants were able to identify the correct noun of the pair – even when the correct noun was specified by negation. Furthermore, using a grey-scale contrast method (...) of masking, Experiment 5 confirmed that these priming effects were evidenced in the absence of partial awareness, and without the effect being attributed to the retrieval of stimulus–response links established during conscious rehearsal. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discern the crux of SME sector social responsibility in developing countries. An attempt is made to identify, empirically, the ethical standards subscribed to by small firms in Poland and to compare them with the standards of small firms in the UK. The methodology of empirical analysis of the ethical standards of Polish entrepreneurs running small businesses was modelled on Laura Spence’s research on the priorities, practices and ethics of small firms in the UK. (...) This analysis has revealed certain similarities and significant differences in the way CSR is perceived by Polish and British entrepreneurs. British entrepreneurs manifest a higher degree of awareness with regard to the issue of social responsibility and are more strongly motivated by their external environment to take up social responsibility issues than Polish ones. (shrink)

Background: Ethics and dignity in prehospital emergency care are important due to vulnerability and suffering. Patients can lose control of their body and encounter unfamiliar faces in an emergency situation. Objective: To describe what specialist ambulance nurse students experienced as preserved and humiliated dignity in prehospital emergency care. Research design: The study had a qualitative approach. Method: Data were collected by Flanagan’s critical incident technique. The participants were 26 specialist ambulance nurse students who described two critical incidents of preserved and (...) humiliated dignity, from prehospital emergency care. Data consist of 52 critical incidents and were analyzed with interpretive content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study followed the ethical principles in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings: The result showed how human dignity in prehospital emergency care can be preserved by the ambulance nurse being there for the patient. The ambulance nurses meet the patient in the patient’s world and make professional decisions. The ambulance nurse respects the patient’s will and protects the patient’s body from the gaze of others. Humiliated dignity was described through the ambulance nurse abandoning the patient and by healthcare professionals failing, disrespecting, and ignoring the patient. Discussion: It is a unique situation when a nurse meets a patient face to face in a critical life or death moment. The discussion describes courage and the ethical vision to see another human. Conclusion: Dignity was preserved when the ambulance nurse showed respect and protected the patient in prehospital emergency care. The ambulance nurse students’ ethical obligation results in the courage to see when a patient’s dignity is in jeopardy of being humiliated. Humiliated dignity occurs when patients are ignored and left unprotected. This ethical dilemma affects the ambulance nurse students badly due to the fact that the morals and attitudes of ambulance nurses are reflected in their actions toward the patient. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)