Between Command and Market: Economic Thought and Practice in Early China. Edited by Elisa Levi Sabattini and Christian Schwermann. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xi + 407. $150.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a (...) practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri’s social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

How to integrate artificial intelligence technologies in the functioning and structures of our society has become a concern of contemporary politics and public debates. In this paper, we investigate national AI strategies as a peculiar form of co-shaping this development, a hybrid of policy and discourse that offers imaginaries, allocates resources, and sets rules. Conceptually, the paper is informed by sociotechnical imaginaries, the sociology of expectations, myths, and the sublime. Empirically we analyze AI policy documents of four key players in (...) the field, namely China, the United States, France, and Germany. The results show that the narrative construction of AI strategies is strikingly similar: they all establish AI as an inevitable and massively disrupting technological development by building on rhetorical devices such as a grand legacy and international competition. Having established this inevitable, yet uncertain, AI future, national leaders proclaim leadership intervention and articulate opportunities and distinct national pathways. While this narrative construction is quite uniform, the respective AI imaginaries are remarkably different, reflecting the vast cultural, political, and economic differences of the countries under study. As governments endow these imaginary pathways with massive resources and investments, they contribute to coproducing the installment of these futures and, thus, yield a performative lock-in function. (shrink)

This paper defends the persistence of the subjective or selfintimating dimension of experience in non-ordinary and pathological states of consciousness such as non-dual awareness, full absorption, drug-induced ego dissolution, and the minimal conscious state. In considering whether non-ordinary and pathological conscious states display any subjective features, we confront a dilemma. Either they do, in which case there needs to be some way of accounting for these features in phenomenal terms, or they do not, in which case there is nothing it (...) is like to be in them. But the dilemma only arises if we assume that opacity rather than phenomenality is a pervasive feature of these non-ordinary states. However, non-ordinary conscious states are deemed phenomenally opaque only by overly restrictive standards of conceivability that: (i) fail to account for the variety of nonordinary and pathological experience in non-arbitrary ways; (ii) sidestep the problem of the attribution and location of mental content (given intelligibility requirements for experience) or relegate them to illusory constructs; (iii) assume an unproblematic appeal to testimonial evidence. I discuss some cases from contemplative traditions and psychopathology and offer some plausible alternative explanations. (shrink)

Predictive processing, an increasingly popular paradigm in cognitive sciences, has focused primarily on giving accounts of perception, motor control and a host of psychological phenomena, including consciousness. But higher cognitive processes, like conceptual thought, language, and logic, have received only limited attention to date and PP still stands disconnected from a huge body of research in those areas. In this thesis, I aim to address this gap and I attempt to go some way towards developing and defending a cognitive-computational approach (...) to higher cognition within the predictive processing paradigm. To test its explanatory potential, I apply it to a range of linguistic and conceptual phenomena. I proceed in three steps. First, I lay out an account of concepts and suggest how concepts are represented, how they can be context-sensitively processed, and how the apparent diversity of formats arise. Secondly, I propose how paradigmatic higher cognitive competencies, like language and logical reasoning, could fit into the PP picture. Thirdly, I apply the PP account of concepts and language to a range of linguistic-conceptual phenomena as test cases, namely: metaphor, the semantic paradox (specifically the Liar Paradox) and copredication. Finally, I discuss some challenges and objections to the PP framework as applied to higher cognition and in general. (shrink)

I demonstrate that Bell's theorem is based on circular reasoning and thus a fundamentally flawed argument. It unjustifiably assumes the additivity of expectation values for dispersion-free states of contextual hidden variable theories for non-commuting observables involved in Bell-test experiments, which is tautologous to assuming the bounds of ±2 on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values. Its premises thus assume in a different guise the bounds of ±2 it sets out to prove. Once this oversight is ameliorated from Bell's argument by (...) identifying the impediment that leads to it and local realism is implemented correctly, the bounds on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2, thereby mitigating the conclusion of Bell's theorem. Consequently, what is ruled out by any of the Bell-test experiments is not local realism but the linear additivity of expectation values, which does not hold for non-commuting observables in any hidden variable theories to begin with. (shrink)

When someone is poised to fail to fulfil a moral duty, we can respond in a variety of ways. We might remind them of their duty, or seek to persuade them through argument. Or we might intervene forcibly to ensure that they act in accordance with their duty. Some duties appear to be such that the duty-bearer can be liable to forcible interference when this is necessary to ensure that they comply with them. We’ll call duties that carry such liabilities (...) enforcement-apt. Not all duties seem to be enforcement-apt. Some, for example, accept that a person in a monogamous marriage has a moral duty to refrain from infidelity, but deny that a spouse can be compelled to comply with their duty to be faithful without transgressing her rights. More controversially, some think that our duties to assist others in severe need are not enforcement-apt. What could explain the contrast between duties that are enforcement-apt while and those that are not? We’ll call this the puzzle of enforceability and our paper considers three broad strategies for responding to it. The first strategy takes the form of identifying some substantive feature or features that are necessary and/or sufficient for a duty to possess some enforcement status. We consider a range of candidate explanations of this sort but find that none are plausible. The second strategy rejects the idea that there are genuinely enforcement-inapt duties and instead seeks to explain why there can nonetheless be marked differences amongst duties concerning how they can be enforced and who can enforce them. We find that this strategy too is largely unsuccessful. The third strategy offered seeks an explanation of differences in enforcement status by appeal to the broader social costs of enforcing certain kinds of duties. We find that this approach holds some promise but note that it requires adopting a controversial set of moral commitments. We conclude by considering our options in the absence of a solution to our puzzle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Configured to Christ: On Spiritual Direction and Clergy Formation by James KeatingChristian Raab O.S.B.Configured to Christ: On Spiritual Direction and Clergy Formation by James Keating (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2021), xxix + 312 pp.Deacon James Keating has served the Church by forming her clergy for thirty years. While he has been a seminary professor and a director of deacon formation at the diocesan level, his prolific scholarship as (...) well as his time as director of theological formation for the Institute for Priestly Formation in Creighton, NE, made him a national figure. Configured to Christ is a collection of Keating's most important essays.While this book is a retrospective, it couldn't be more timely. In 2016 (on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8), the Congregation for Catholic Education issued The Gift of the Priestly Vocation—Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, a text which provides guidelines for the whole Church concerning priestly formation. In the fall of 2021, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops completed their revision of the sixth edition of the Program of Priestly Formation (PPF), which translates the principles of the Ratio for the American context. With these two documents in place, it now falls upon seminaries to examine their programs in light of the vision provided by the magisterium. The next five to ten years promise to be a time of reform and renewal in seminary formation. Institutions will be looking for fresh and orienting ideas. Keating's book can be recommended as among the best resources for the venture that awaits.One reason Keating's book is so valuable is its focus on the "perichoresis" of the various aspects of formation (107). This emphasis is consonant with the terminological change found in the new PPF from the language of formational "pillars" to the language of formational "dimensions" (see the USCCB's 5th edition of the PPF, §28). The thinking behind this change seems to have been that it was too easy to imagine "pillars" as separate from [End Page 1110] one another. The human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral dimensions of formation are in fact interwoven, interdependent, and interpenetrating. While they can be distinguished, they cannot be divided. Growth in one fosters growth in the other. Keating has long understood this, as his various essays show.The book is divided into three parts and eighteen chapters. Part 1 is entitled "The Interior Life of the Cleric." Here, readers are introduced to the integral relationship between the spiritual and intellectual formational dimensions. For example, Keating provides, in chapter 1, a sustained theoretical reflection on the relationship between academic theology and spirituality, and, in chapter 2, he examines John Henry Newman's writings as a concretized test case for the right relationship of prayer, study, and thought. Authors such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jean Leclercq have investigated this relationship in classic works, but Keating's presentation is notable for its accessibility, coherence, and concision. The remaining chapters of part 1 address the topics of silence and spiritual direction. Emerging from these analyses are the insights that interiority expands through discovery of Christ within. We participate in Christ as we behold, wonder, think, theologize, and pray. Keating's plea that we introduce ministerial candidates to the romance of silence is most welcome.The second part of the book is entitled "The Formation of the Cleric." It brings together nine essays which explicitly explore the art of formation. The key to this section, and maybe to the whole book, is chapter 7, "Christ is the Sure Foundation: Priestly Human Formation Completed in and by Spiritual Formation." This chapter makes the case not only for the perichoresis of formational dimensions but also for a much stronger emphasis on spiritual formation than is often the case. Of special note is Keating's observation that spiritual formation can truly support human formation. This is an important insight. In his 1992 apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (on the formation of priests), John Paul II had articulated that human formation was "the basis of all priestly formation" (§43).Unfortunately, this line could be (and has been) interpreted problematically to mean human formation... (shrink)

Standard Kripke-Putnam semantics is widely taken to entail that theoretical identifications like ‘Brontosauruses are Apatosauruses’ or ‘Gold is 79Au’ are necessary, if true. I offer a new diagnosis as to why this modal consequence ensues. Central to my diagnosis is the concept of a paradigm term. I argue that modal and epistemic peculiarities that are commonly considered as distinctive of natural kind expressions are in fact traits that are shared by paradigm terms in general. Philosophical semantics should broaden its focus (...) from natural kind expressions to paradigm terms. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit Leibniz's early views on physical causation, more specifically, his relation to physical occasionalism focusing on the period from 1668 to 1676. An in-depth analysis of the Confession of Nature against the Atheists taken together with the Catholic Demonstrations, Leibniz's correspondence with Jakob Thomasius from 1668/69, and the Pacidius Philalethi (1676) serve as evidence that his position leads to physical occasionalism. This receives further confirmation by taking into account Leibniz's familiarity with Weigel's occasionalism in contrast to (...) Leibniz's later encounter of French occasionalism à la Cordemoy, La Forge, or Malebranche. Leibniz's exposure to Weigel's occasionalism, in turn, helps us better understand Leibniz's later critical reaction to occasionalism and how occasionalism helped him develop his own distinct views on causation as expressed in his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction to business ethics : approach and subject matter -- Ethical theory and its application to business contexts -- Conceptions of the economy and business : ethical aspects -- Organizational ethics : ethics of corporations, companies, and other business organizations -- Individuals in the world of business : ethical aspects of specific roles and professions -- Global business ethics -- Economic and ethical challenges of the 21st century : sustainability -- Conclusion--Index.

This article provides an overview of the main concepts needed today to locate the discourse on economic growth within the Anthropocene. Economic growth is built into the economic system that currently dominates. It obeys an outdated, radical imaginary: that of human progress as the triumphant denial of the limits of the biosphere. This imaginary needs to be replaced by a new one. The main task for social science in this day and age is to reflect on and design viable, thriving, (...) non-growing economies. (shrink)

Que savent les juristes? Que choisissent-ils d'ignorer? Travaillant avec le droit, ou sur lui, ils se dotent de connaissances qu'ils "vérifient" en tentant de se prémunir contre le risque d'erreur : quelles sont leurs sources d'information? Des théories sont accueillies avec enthousiasme ou avec réserve ; d'autres sont rejetées. Tels sont les phénomènes étudiés en épistémologie juridique. Le savoir des juristes, avocats, avoués, universitaires et autres enseignants du droit, greffiers, conseil d'entreprises... a ses lois et ses tendances, ses mouvements, ses (...) crises. (shrink)

Erkenntnistheoretisch gesehen ist es fraglich, ob mentale Zustände, also Qualia, materialisiert und quantifiziert werden können. Dennoch machen sich vor allem die Naturwissenschaften mit Feuereifer an die Quantifizierung von Qualia, an die Vermessung der Seele sozusagen. In diesem Band werden - aus historischer wie aktueller Perspektive - natur- und geisteswissenschaftliche Zugänge vorgestellt, interdisziplinär miteinander in Relation gesetzt und einer gründlichen epistemologischen Reflexion unterzogen.

Wissenschaft setzt, folgt man dem Theologen Heinrich Schmidinger, als Minimalqualifikationen rationale Nachvollziehbarkeit und Überprüfbarkeit voraus. Damit ist sie an Methoden gebunden, die jenseits des subjektiven Überzeugtseins operieren und ihre Glaubwürdigkeit darin zum Ausdruck bringen, dass sie verallgemeinerbar sind. Intuition, ein höchst persönlicher und im Grunde irrationaler Erkenntnismodus, hält diesen wissenschaftlichen Kriterien nicht stand. Und dennoch stößt man sowohl in den Geistes- als auch in den Naturwissenschaften immer wieder auf Formen intuitiven Erkennens.0Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler unterschiedlichster fachlicher Herkunft? von der Wissenschafts- und (...) Ideengeschichte sowie der Philosophie und Epistemologie über die Rechts-, Musik und Literaturwissenschaften bis zur Medizin und Naturwissenschaft? gehen im vorliegenden Band dem spannungsreichen Verhältnis von Intuition und Wissenschaft nach. Drei Fragestellungen stehen dabei im Zentrum der Beiträge:01) Welche Rolle spielt Intuition im Entwicklungsgang der einzelnen Wissenschaften, was kann aus wissenschaftshistorischer und epistemologischer, also externer Perspektive zur Intuition in den Wissenschaften gesagt werden? 02) Was positionieren sich einzelne Wissensfelder und Wissenschaftsdisziplinen zur Intuition? Welche Definitionen bieten sie an? Wie sieht die interne Perspektive aus, gibt es eine 'angewandte Intuition' in den Wissenschaften?03) Kann Intuition eine Rolle als Bindeglied zwischen wissenschaftlichen und außerwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisformen und Vorstellungswelten spielen? (shrink)

Recent findings about the capabilities of smart animals such as corvids or octopi and novel types of artificial intelligence, from social robots to cognitive assistants, are provoking the demand for new answers for meaningful comparison with other kinds of intelligence. This book fills this need by proposing a universal theory of intelligence which is based on causal learning as the central theme of intelligence. The goal is not just to describe, but mainly to explain queries like why one kind of (...) intelligence is more intelligent than another, whatsoever the intelligence. Shiny terms like "strong AI," "superintelligence," "singularity" or "artificial general intelligence" that have been coined by a Babylonian confusion of tongues are clarified on the way. (shrink)

We introduce a game for Gödel logic where the players’ interaction stepwise reduces claims about the relative order of truth degrees of complex formulas to atomic truth comparison claims. Using the concept of disjunctive game states this semantic game is lifted to a provability game, where winning strategies correspond to proofs in a sequents-of-relations calculus.

We treat the problem of reasoning with ambiguous propositions. Even though ambiguity is obviously problematic for reasoning, it is no less obvious that ambiguous propositions entail other propositions, and are entailed by other propositions. This article gives a formal analysis of the underlying mechanisms, both from an algebraic and a logical point of view. The main result can be summarized as follows: sound reasoning with ambiguity requires a distinction between equivalence on the one and congruence on the other side: the (...) fact that \ entails \ does not imply \ can be substituted for \ in all contexts preserving truth. Without this distinction, we will always run into paradoxical results. We present the sequent calculus \, which we conjecture implements sound and complete propositional reasoning with ambiguity, and provide it with a language-theoretic semantics, where letters represent unambiguous meanings and concatenation represents ambiguity. (shrink)

Technologies of “artificial intelligence” and machine learning are increasingly presented as solutions to key problems of our societies. Companies are developing, investing in, and deploying machine learning applications at scale in order to filter and organize content, mediate transactions, and make sense of massive sets of data. At the same time, social and legal expectations are ambiguous, and the technical challenges are substantial. This is the introductory article to a special theme that addresses this turn to AI as a technical, (...) discursive and political phenomena. The opening article contextualizes this theme by unfolding this multi-layered nature of the turn to AI. It argues that, whereas public and economic discourses position the widespread deployment of AI and automation in the governance of digital communication as a technical turn with a narrative of revolutionary breakthrough-moments and of technological progress, this development is at least similarly dependent on a parallel discursive and political turn to AI. The article positions the current turn to AI in the longstanding motif of the “technological fix” in the relationship between technology and society, and identifies a discursive turn to responsibility in platform governance as a key driver for AI and automation. In addition, a political turn to more demanding liability rules for platforms further incentivizes platforms to automatically screen their content for possibly infringing or violating content, and position AI as a solution to complex social problems. (shrink)

The article sets the tone for the rest of this journal by raising some fundamental question of the relevance of the margins for theology of the local church. It explores a possible theology for the local church in the margins of our society. Purusing the theme of Jubilee as ‘presence’ rather than as activism, the author explores five themes for constructing a missiology for the local church’s in the margins. The article defines the local church in the margins of our (...) society as a disruptive prophetic presence. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Heidelberg, 1977.

Offering a new intellectual history of ideas about reforming capitalism from within, this book traces the emergence of different value systems in the American context, offering a fresh perspective on debates about capitalism in the late 19th century and 20th century.

Reducing disparities in health for racial and ethnic minorities has been a focus for US public health since the Heckler Report. Yet, a majority of racial and ethnic minorities in the US continue to have lower life expectancies and are more susceptible to poorer health outcomes compared to their white counterparts. Improvements in public health have been thwarted by ideological differences and structural restraints that necessitate an alternative method aimed at reorienting ethical discourse and guiding the public health as an (...) institution. Informed by a neo-Aristotelian concept of justice and the good life explicated through the Catholic social tradition, a new framework will enable public health to more wholly achieve its aim in the service of the populations that continue to be marginalized. (shrink)

Prudentius’s hymn on St. Eulalia suffers from an interpolated stanza : the carnifices’s flight caused by the dove, i.e. the soul, leaving the mouth of the dying saint is an exaggeration not found anywhere else in the ancient acts and legends of the Christian martyrs. It disturbs the poem’s composition and violates the tenderness of its poetical invention. The spurious lines, though patched up with material borrowed from the author, show some weakness in expression and offer the problem of (...) differentiating between satelles and lictor, a differentiation that was never made by the poet himself. The forged stanza was made up and included by an interpolator who wished to complete the poem’s storyline specifying a motive which had only been alluded to in the authentic poem. (shrink)

This book looks closely at discourses of creativity in the lifelong learning sector from the perspective of a teacher educator. It reworks the idea of creativity for lifelong learning using an analysis of the cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni as a basis. The book argues that ethics and creativity are indissociable and that more relevant practices in teaching, learning and research can be developed from and with them. To do this, the book examines Deleuze's notion of counter-actualization as a form of (...) creative practice and establishes ethical and practical consequences for this diverse sector. (shrink)

Across various fields it is argued that the self in part consists of an autobiographical self-narrative and that the self-narrative has an impact on agential behavior. Similarly, within action theory, it is claimed that the intentional structure of coherent long-term action is divided into a hierarchy of distal, proximal, and motor intentions. However, the concrete mechanisms for how narratives and distal intentions are generated and impact action is rarely fleshed out concretely. We here demonstrate how narratives and distal intentions can (...) be generated within cognitive agents and how they can impact agential behavior over long time scales. We integrate narratives and distal intentions into the LIDA model,and demonstrate how they can guide agential action in a manner that is consistent with the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness. This paper serves both as an addition to the LIDA cognitive architecture and an elucidation of how narratives and distal intention emerge and play their role in cognition and action. (shrink)

Professeur à Iéna, berceau historique de l'idéalisme allemand, Fries (1773-1843) y incarne une autre postérité du kantisme. Il tient la voie dans laquelle la philosophie s'est engagée après Kant pour un néodogmatisme et entreprend une critique psychologique - ou anthropologique - de la raison.

Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts ist reichhaltiger und differenzierter in ihren Standpunkten als lange vermutet. Die Autoren zeigen das anhand der nur teilweise erforschten Interaktion zwischen den Wissenschaftsphilosophen des deutschen und französischen Sprachraums. Das Buch liefert neue Erkenntnisse zur Rolle der Philosophiekongresse in Prag 1934 und Paris 1937 sowie zur Bedeutung einzelner Akteure wie Marcel Boll, der die Rezeption des Logischen Empirismus in Frankreich beförderte. Die Spuren, die Ernst Mach, aber auch der weniger bekannte deutsche Physiologe und Hirnforscher Ewald (...) Hering in der französischen Wissenschaftsphilosophie hinterliessen, verfolgen die Autoren bis hin zu den Ideen Jean Piagets. Im Mittelpunkt des Buchs stehen Philosophen aus Frankreich, Deutschland und Österreich und ihre Leistung, die Wissenschaften nicht nur erkenntnistheoretisch und logisch durchleuchtet, sondern auch erkannt zu haben, dass ihre theoretische Struktur nur dann vollständig erfasst werden kann, wenn ihre praktische Dimension mit einbezogen wird. Dafür steht Henri Poincaré, der die tragende Rolle der Konventionen für die Theoriebildung in der Mathematik herausstellte. Sichtbar wird der Bezug zur Praxis auch in Moritz Schlicks Überlegungen zu einer auf Empirie basierenden Ethik oder in der Arbeit Otto Neuraths, der eine aus den modernen Wissenschaften gewonnene Konzeption menschlichen Erkennens für das Projekt der gesellschaftlichen Aufklärung fruchtbar machen wollte. (shrink)