This study builds on the work of contemporary civic republicans, supplying a detailed analysis of the concept of domination absent in the familiar accounts of political freedom as non-domination.

This article aims to offer a refined way of understanding what we mean by the concepts of meaningfulness and meaning in life. The first step is to separate worthwhileness, as the broadest evaluation of life taking all types of values into account, from meaningfulness, which is seen as one type of intrinsic value along with, for example, well-being, moral praiseworthiness, and authenticity, which I argue are also separate types of intrinsic value. After discussing why we should not settle with the (...) currently popular fitting attitudes analysis of meaningfulness, I argue that the meaningfulness of a life should be seen to be about the positive contribution beyond itself that this particular life is able to make. I show how this analysis is different from previous similar accounts and how it is able to avoid a number of challenges that have troubled these previous accounts, such as the pleasure machine challenge, the results machine challenge, and the doing good unintentionally challenge. I also demonstrate how it is able to account for prototypical examples of meaningful and meaningless lives and how it is compatible with subjectivism, supernaturalism, and objective naturalism, which is seen as a merit. Finally, I conclude with some notes about what could make life meaningful, given the current analysis of meaningfulness itself. (shrink)

We investigate the problem of how nonnatural entities are represented by examining university students’ concepts of God, both professed theological beliefs and concepts used in comprehension of narratives. In three story processing tasks, subjects often used an anthropomorphic God concept that is inconsistent with stated theological beliefs; and drastically distorted the narratives without any awareness of doing so. By heightening subjects’ awareness of their theological beliefs, we were able to manipulate the degree of anthropomorphization. This tendency to anthropomorphize may be (...) generalizable to other agents. God (and possibly other agents) is unintentionally anthropomorphized in some contexts, perhaps as a means of representing poorly understood.. (shrink)

It is very natural to think that if two people, x and y, are qualitatively identical and have committed qualitatively identical actions, then it cannot be the case that one has committed something wrong whereas the other did not. That is to say, if x and y differ in their moral status, then it must be because x and y are qualitatively different, and not simply because x is identical to x and not identical to y. In this fictional dialogue (...) between Socrates and Cantor involving infinitely many qualitatively identical agents, this assumption is challenged. (shrink)

Lectures delivered as the Mary Flexner Lectures, Bryn Mawr College, fall 1965, under the title: The long perspectives.

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in Finland (n = 594, employees (...) of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)

This book makes explicit the ecological implications of Martin Heidegger. It examines how the trajectory of Heidegger's thinking harbors an "ecological turn," which comes to the forefront in his attempt to anticipate the impending crisis precipitated by modern technology. Schalow's emphasis on such key motifs as stewardship, dwelling, and 'letting be' serves to coalesce the problem of freedom in a new and innovative way, in order to expand the interpretive or hermeneutic horizon for re-examining Heidegger's philosophy. By prioritizing a response (...) to today's environmental crisis and the possible impact upon future generations, the author traverses a divide within Heidegger scholarship by developing a deeper, critical outlook on his philosophy--without either reiterating standard interpretations or rejecting it wholesale. He develops a trans-human approach to ethics, which, by prioritizing the welfare of the earth, nature, and animals, counters the anthropocentric bias and destructive premise of modern technology. Heidegger's Ecological Turn will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and researchers working in phenomenology, hermeneutics, continental philosophy, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Scientific and technological policy issues are not and should not be exempt from the norms of democratic governance. This article examines two major theories of democracy, analyzes their commonalities and differences, and derives criteria for evaluating various forms of public participation in policymaking. The author argues for a new category of participation, participatory analysis, that includes forms of participation that satisfy democratic criteria and emphasizes the importance of learning among participants. Different types of participatory analysis may be best suited to (...) different kinds of policy problems. (shrink)

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows (...) how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Badiou’s oeuvre from the vantage point of the last volume of his Being and Event trilogy. It determines the perspective and task of The Immanence of Truths and demonstrates in what way an “absolute ontology” is the result of an act of forcing that serves as the measure for a truth’s truthness. This allows to argue that Badiou’s is and always was a philosophy of freedom.

Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne: The future of mind.--Marquis de Condorcet: The taming of the future.--Comte de Saint-Simon: The pear is ripe.--Children of Saint-Simon: The triumph of love.--Charles Fourier: The burgeoning of instinct.--Auguste Comte: Embodiment in the great being.

Algorithmic decision-making increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by scholars and policymakers requires considering people's fairness perceptions when designing and implementing algorithmic decision-making. We provide a comprehensive, systematic literature review synthesizing the existing empirical insights on perceptions of algorithmic fairness from 58 empirical studies spanning multiple domains and scientific disciplines. Through thorough coding, we systemize the current empirical literature along (...) four dimensions: (1) algorithmic predictors, (2) human predictors, (3) comparative effects (human decision-making vs. algorithmic decision-making), and (4) consequences of algorithmic decision-making. While we identify much heterogeneity around the theoretical concepts and empirical measurements of algorithmic fairness, the insights come almost exclusively from Western-democratic contexts. By advocating for more interdisciplinary research adopting a society-in-the-loop framework, we hope our work will contribute to fairer and more responsible algorithmic decision-making. (shrink)

Strong reciprocity is an effective way to promote cooperation. This is especially true when one not only cooperates with cooperators and defects on defectors (second-party punishment) but even punishes those who defect on others (third-party, “altruistic” punishment). Some suggest we humans have a taste for such altruistic punishment and that this was important in the evolution of human cooperation. To assess this we need to look across a wide range of cultures. As part of a cross-cultural project, I played three (...) experimental economics games with the Hadza, who are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The Hadza frequently engaged in second-party punishment but they rarely engaged in third-party punishment. Other small-scale societies engaged in less third-party punishment as well. I suggest third-party punishment only became more important in large, complex societies to solve more pressing collective-action problems. (shrink)

Stand-up specials seem to resemble news reporting and documentary film in that they appear prima facie to be mere documentation of an event designed to give viewers the sense of what happened at a place at a time. Closer examination, however, throws doubt upon this transparency claim and it is argued that filmic realism is not the proper lens through which to understand stand-up specials, that they represent a more artistic medium in which the director of the special needs to (...) be seen as an artist along with the comedian. (shrink)

Though the geographic dimensions of philosophical history were always, in principle at least, the whole globe, for the last two thousand years the ...

In contrast to educational policies in the U.S., which assume an individualistic path of success and promote the assimilation of students, this essay argues for pedagogies where teachers focus upon facilitating the development of strong relationships en route to creating exciting educational environments and fertile contexts for social justice movements. Powerful teachers model the process whereby a commitment to appreciating the perspectives of individual students is combined with the orchestration of a dynamic intersubjective context, because such contexts call out the (...) strongest performances of individuals. Viewing educational events in terms of the patterns and rhythms that transpire in a particular social fields allows educators ways to create powerful educational environments even in neocolonial contexts that pit students and teachers against one another. Viewing educational events as social fields also allows us to understand how the common classroom, which focuses each student on the material in front of them, creates impotent individuals who dissociate themselves from others. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qu'un 'philosophe', au regard de l'histoire et singulièrement du XXIe siècle? Frank Pierobon, en s'appuyant sur son propre parcours et aussi sur ses dix années d'engagement dans la riche aventure des Matins-Philo à Bruxelles, tente d'apporter une réponse située à la question. Loin des imageries populaires, il fait du philosophe un homme de métier et de savoir-être dont toute l'existence oscillerait entre la création de concepts et, en même temps, une quête incessante du désir de sens. Un texte (...) court et fulgurant qui redit que nul n'est dispensé de philosopher. (shrink)

Avatar, le film de James Cameron (2009), aura ete un succes commercial d'une ampleur exceptionnelle, a considerer davantage comme le symptome d'une certaine societe en crise spirituelle, que comme l'expression personnelle d'un createur, fut-il exceptionnel. Sur cette base, Frank Pierobon, au terme d'une deconstruction tres poussee, en extrait l'embleme de notre postmodernite finissante: un Deus ex Fantasma, soit une derisoire redemption par le reve, faute de tout autre salut.

This research looks what happens to human reproduction when human genetic information is digitized. By employing speculative design as a transdisciplinary strategy to construct such an alternative future to open up public dialogues, it aims to stimulate audiences in an artistic way to deliberate two key questions: (1) how will biotechnology recondition and recontextualize the natural processes of genetic information (i.e. expression, replication, transmission and mutation) and our physiological processes (e.g. reproduction)? And (2) what might be the ethical, legal and (...) social implications (ELSI) for using such biotechnology? To this end, this practice-based research introduces the ‘e-gamete Digital Procreation Service’ (2019) – a speculative design project that has been developed as an approach to invite audiences to a future scenario of network-transmitted genetic information and computer-simulated human procreation. The carefully designed future service (an ironic practice of commercialization) allows human reproduction to take place outside of the human body. Audiences are encouraged to contemplate what novel situations might occur within their own futures and to consider broader questions like how family, parenthood, marriage, etc. are redefined and what new social relationships might emerge. By employing speculative design as an artistic research tool/tactic to step outside the technical limitations and craft the future service, the project asks vital question about the future in a provocative and quasi-realistic manner. Thus, the research forms a unique entanglement of sensitive topics by dealing with future biotechnology and human reproduction. (shrink)

This article presents results from a multidisciplinary research project on the integration and transfer of language knowledge into robots as an empirical paradigm for the study of language development in both humans and humanoid robots. Within the framework of human linguistic and cognitive development, we focus on how three central types of learning interact and co-develop: individual learning about one's own embodiment and the environment, social learning (learning from others), and learning of linguistic capability. Our primary concern is how these (...) capabilities can scaffold each other's development in a continuous feedback cycle as their interactions yield increasingly sophisticated competencies in the agent's capacity to interact with others and manipulate its world. Experimental results are summarized in relation to milestones in human linguistic and cognitive development and show that the mutual scaffolding of social learning, individual learning, and linguistic capabilities creates the context, conditions, and requisites for learning in each domain. Challenges and insights identified as a result of this research program are discussed with regard to possible and actual contributions to cognitive science and language ontogeny. In conclusion, directions for future work are suggested that continue to develop this approach toward an integrated framework for understanding these mutually scaffolding processes as a basis for language development in humans and robots. (shrink)

The Pentecostal understandings of baptism in the Holy Spirit hold potential for a more substantively pneumatological understanding of spiritual formation, but there are conceptual barriers to overcome before this potential can be realized. Specifically, the emphasis of revivalism on crisis experience and individualistic piety must be set within a larger framework that is more expansively ecclesiological and eschatological. A more expansively eschatological view of Spirit baptism can provide this framework, opening breathing room for prioritizing a pneumatological vision of spiritual formation (...) in the life and mission of the church. Spirit baptism can still refer to new breakthroughs in the life of the Spirit but those experiences would be couched within a larger vision of spiritual formation. (shrink)

The topic of homonymy, especially the variety of homonymy that has gone under the title, “focal meaning,” is of fundamental importance to large portions of Aristotle’s work—not to mention its central place in the ongoing controversies between Aristotle and Plato. It is quite astonishing, therefore, that the topic should have gone so long without a book-length treatment. And it is all the more gratifying that the new book on homonymy by Christopher Shields should be so comprehensive, and of such uniformly (...) high quality. Everyone who cares about Aristotle will be in his debt. (shrink)

Several studies demonstrate that an intuitive link between agents and order emerges within the first year of life. This appreciation seems importantly related to similar forms of inference, such as the Argument from Design. We suggest, however, that infants and young children may be more accurate in their tendencies to infer agents from order than older children and adults, who often infer intentional agents when there are none. Thus, the earliest inferences about intentional agents based on order may be quite (...) accurate and resistant to non-intentional foils, but with further cognitive development and overgeneralization, links between order and agents may emerge that, with the right socio-cultural prompts, can lead to the Argument from Design. (shrink)

Objective The President's Council on Bioethics in 2008 reaffirmed the necessity of the dead donor rule and the legitimacy of the current criteria for diagnosing both neurological and cardiac death. In spite of this report, many have continued to express concerns about the ethics of donation after circulatory death, the validity of determining death using neurological criteria and the necessity for maintaining the dead donor rule for organ donation. I analysed the dead donor rule for its effect on the virtuous (...) practice of medicine by physicians caring for potential organ donors.Results The dead donor rule consistently impedes physicians in fulfilling their primary duty to act for the good of their prospective donor patients. This compromises the virtue of fidelity. It also weakens many other virtues necessary for physicians to provide excellent end-of-life care.Conclusions The dead donor rule, while ethically powerful in theory, loses its force during translation to the bedside. This is so because the rule mandates simultaneous life and death within the same body for organ donation, a biological status that is inherently contradictory. The rule should be rejected as an ethical norm governing vital organ transplantation at the end of life. Its elimination will strengthen the doctor–patient relationship and foster trustworthiness in organ procurement. (shrink)

This article examines a contemporary proposal of how to conceive of materialism, more specifically of a materialist dialectics. This proposal was formulated by Alain Badiou and it is of huge interest for the contemporary discussion as it inscribes the very historical coordinates in which it was articulated into its own proposal. The article develops this by arguing that Badiou's materialist dialectic historically situates itself after idealist options seem to have become impossible. However, the very dialectical kernel of this materialism leads (...) Badiou to claim that after the perpetuated struggle between materialism and idealism is declared to have been overcome, the very split separating the two returns in an inverted form inside materialism, splitting it again into two. Thereby the immanent split in materialism leads to two options: either one defends a materialism devoid of any idealist reference or a materialism which seeks to rescue something of idealism. The article concludes by suggesting that only from a detailed reconstruction of the functioning of philosophy in Badiou's system does it become possible to conceive of the threats that any materialism today faces and to delineate the proposed option of how to avoid them consistently. The article demonstrates how, today, materialism can only be properly materialist by resurrecting something of idealism, which is why it deserves the name of what I call an “idealism without idealism.”. (shrink)

Many modes of religious expression and experience have a markedly aesthetic component, even though aesthetic delight itself often appears to be free of moral or religious interests. In this ground-breaking work, Frank Burch Brown shows how aesthetics, no less than ethics, can play a central role in the study of religion and in the practice of theology.

The question of what is truly just in the matter of a country's currently established human-rights interpretations appears not to be the same as the question of what it is morally right to do by way of coercively effectuating a given set of such interpretations. There are grounds for contending that acts of support for a coercive political regime can be justified morally on the condition that the regime's prevailing human-rights interpretations are made continuously available to effective, democratic critical re-examination. (...) However, it is not possible ever finally to know whether that condition is satisfied. (shrink)

The term “judicial restraint,” applied to courts engaged in judicial constitutional review, may refer to any one or more of three possible postures of such courts, which we here will distinguish as “quiescent,” “tolerant,” and “weak-form.” A quiescent court deploys its powers sparingly, strictly limiting the agenda of social disputes on which it will pronounce in the constitution’s name. A tolerant court confirms as valid laws whose constitutional compatibility it finds to be reasonable sustainable, even though it independently would conclude (...) to the contrary. A weak-form court acts on the understanding that its pronouncements on matters constitutional will be duly open to considered rejection by other political agencies. Theory commonly tends to treat the question of judicial restraint as turning on a bedrock political value of democracy. We may also, however, understand debates over judicial restraint in the light of a different bedrock value, that of political legitimacy. Where democracy is the focal concern, debaters may tend toward conflating into one measure the three dimensions of judicial restraint. A focus on legitimacy rather tends toward a dis-bundling of the three dimensions, thus complicating the choices while also clarifying the stakes. The political philosophy of John Rawls helps us to see how and why this occurs. (shrink)

Stand-up specials are not identical to the sets they contain. Nor are they of a kind with either fiction films or documentaries. I argue here that the properties of specials that make them ontologically distinct also demand that we treat them as distinct for the purpose of their evaluation. I then offer some evaluative criteria for specials as well as suggestions for becoming better critics of specials.