We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from 'therapy culture', the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties. On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety (...) on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac , drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today. (shrink)

In the current study, we examine the changes in disclosure practices on compliance and the fight against corruption at Siemens AG, a large German multinational corporation, over the period 2000–2011 during which a major corruption scandal was revealed. More specifically, we conduct a content analysis of the company’s annual reports and sustainability reports during that period to investigate the changes of Siemens’ corruption and compliance disclosure using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Through the lens of legitimacy theory, stakeholder analysis, and (...) organizational façades, we find evidence that Siemens changed its compliance and corruption disclosure practices to repair its legitimacy in the wake of the 2006 corruption scandal. We analyze these strategies more closely by using the rational, progressive, and reputation façades framework. Our primary findings suggest that the annual reports show peaks of disclosure amounts on corruption and compliance disclosures earlier than sustainability reports, which can be partly explained by analyzing the disclosures made about—and to—the different stakeholder groups. We find that the annual report focuses more on internal stakeholders such as employees, while the sustainability report focuses more on external stakeholders such as suppliers. We also find that the company uses the façades differently depending on which report is being analyzed. (shrink)

The AGM paradigm for belief revision provides a very elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about idealized agents. The paradigm assumes that the modeled agent is a perfect reasoner with infinite memory. In this paper we propose a framework to reason about non-ideal agents that generalizes the AGM paradigm. We first introduce a structure to represent an agent's belief states that distinguishes different status of beliefs according to whether or not they are explicitly represented, whether they are currently active and (...) whether they are fully accepted or provisional. Then we define a set of basic operations that change the status of beliefs and show how these operations can be used to model agents with different capacities. We also show how different operations of belief change described in the literature can be seen as special cases of our theory. (shrink)

Understanding the contributions and the implications of law and emotion scholarship requires an acknowledgement of the different approaches within it. A significant part of law and emotion scholarship is focused on arguing for the relevance of emotion and on identifying emotion in legal processes and actors. Other parts of it venture further to ask how law can affect the expression and content of emotions themselves. This scholarship challenges legal positivist foundations, as well as some other established divisions in thinking, both (...) in law, and more generally in the history of ideas. The other important factor, which this article explores, is the methodology employed by law and emotion scholarship. (shrink)

The AGM theory of belief revision provides a formal framework to represent the dynamics of epistemic states. In this framework, the beliefs of the agent are usually represented as logical formulas while the change operations are constrained by rationality postulates. In the original proposal, the logic underlying the reasoning was supposed to be supraclassical, among other properties. In this paper, we present some of the existing work in adapting the AGM theory for non-classical logics and discuss their interconnections and what (...) is still missing for each approach. (shrink)

The core of this special issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education emerged from the Broken Narratives and the Lived Body conference held in 2016. The ‘Broken Narrative’ essays included in this issue open up a critical space for understanding and theorising illness narratives that defy a conventional cognitive ordering of the self as a bounded spatial and temporal entity. Here, we discuss how narratives might be ‘broken’ by discourse, trauma, ‘ill’ lived bodies and experiences that exceed linguistic representation. (...) We trouble distinctions between coherent and incoherent narratives, attending to what gaps, silences and ‘nonsenses’ can convey about embodied illness experiences. Ultimately, we suggest that ‘breaks’ are in fact a continuation of embodied narration. This is shown in the ‘Art and Trauma’ forum of essays, which reveal how narrative silences can ‘infect’ other embodied subjects and be transformed, achieving musical or visual representation that allow us to apprehend the ‘constitutive outside’ of narratives of illness or trauma. (shrink)

We discuss the relation between string theory/supergravity and the observational data in cosmology, as well as at LHC, past and future. We pay particular attention to the possibility of the future detection of primordial gravitational waves and how this might affect our understanding of fundamental physics.

Choice explores how late capitalism_s shrill exhortations to _be oneself_ can be a tyranny which only leads to ever-greater disquiet.Drawing on diverse examples ...

The standard theory of belief revision was developed to describe how a rational agent should change his beliefs in the presence of new information. Many interesting tools were created, but the concept of rationality was usually assumed to be related to classical logics. In this paper, we explore the fact that the logical tools used can be extended to other sorts of logics, as proved in (Hansson and Wassermann, 2002), to describe models that are closer to the rationality of a (...) real agent. (shrink)

The standard theory of belief revision was developed to describe how a rational agent should change his beliefs in the presence of new information. Many interesting tools were created, but the concept of rationality was usually assumed to be related to classical logics. In this paper, we explore the fact that the logical tools used can be extended to other sorts of logics, as proved in, to describe models that are closer to the rationality of a real agent.

In _The Moral of the Story,_ Peter and Renata Singer draw on some of the best works of fiction, playwriting, and poetry in order to shed light on the perennial questions of ethics. A vivid montage of literature that touches on a broad range of ethical subjects and themes Offers a unique contribution to the study of moral philosophy and literature Demonstrates how literary sources can add richness to discussions of real-life moral questions and dilemmas Brings together selections and (...) excerpts from the world’s most celebrated short stories, novels, plays, and poetry Features substantive section introductions by Peter and Renata Singer Peter Singer is a leading moral philosopher, widely credited with triggering the modern animal-rights movement. His collection of essays, _Unsanctifying Human Life,_ edited by Helga Kuhse, was published by Blackwell Publishing in 2001. (shrink)

Skepticism described by Sextus Empiricus faces the persistent charge that it is an inconsistent, self-refuting view. However, recently its consistency hasbeen defended in three important ways: it is a thesis with weak assertion, it is a practice without any assertion, and it is a process developing over time.The first option is not well supported by Sextus’ texts, where even a weak assertion is not allowed. The second option cannot explain the rationality of skeptical arguments. The third option reveals two levels (...) of Sextan skepticism; however, the developing skeptic has to accept the self-refutation charge, and the mature skeptic takes flight from the charge without any rational answer. I claim that Sextus embraces the self-refutation charge. The mature skeptic’s speech acts are pragmatically inconsistent: their content cannot be asserted without contradiction. As a result, the charge of inconsistency is not answered. (shrink)

In the area known as model-based diagnosis, a system is described by-means of a set of formulas together with assumptions that all the components are functioning correctly. When we observe a behavior of the system which is inconsistent with the system description, we must relax some of the assumptions. In previous work, we have presented operations of belief change which only affect the relevant part of a belief base. In this paper, we propose the application of the same strategy to (...) the problem of model-based diagnosis. We Erst isolate the subset of the system description which is relevant for a given observation. By doing this, we reduce the size of the problem and then solve the diagnosis problem for the relevant subset. (shrink)

This contribution takes the notion of herbal landscape (a mental field associated with plants used to cure or prevent diseases and established within specific cultural and climatic zones) as a starting point. The authors argue that the features by which a person recognises the plant in the natural growing environment is of crucial importance for the classification and the use of plants within the folk tradition. The process of perception of the plant can be divided into analytical categories according to (...) the sign concept of Charles Sanders Peirce. Whereas the plant can be seen as the object, the feature(s) the plant is recognised by is (are) the representamen(s), and the image of the plant within the herbal landscape can be understood as the interpretant. Different methods of perception of the signs within the herbal landscape are demonstrated comparing the herbal knowledge acquired from the herbals with the method of plant recognition learned in the traditional way. The first can be looked at with the terms of Tim Ingold as transportation, using plant features to go across, leaving all other signs present in the landscape unnoticed. The wayfarer, guided by signs learned within the context of surroundings, walks along and perceives the plant as a part of the herbal landscape. Although the examples analysed come from Estonian ethnobotany, the method of analysis can be applied in ethnobotanical research worldwide. (shrink)

We reconsider the nonlocal aspects of quantum mechanics with special reference to the EPR argument. We first confine our considerations to the correlations between the outcomes of measurements on spatially distant constituents, without worrying about the measurement problem. We pay particular attention to the relativistic aspects of the problem. Our first conclusion is that, when developed along the lines we follow, the EPR inference that quantum correlations and locality together imply incompleteness, is appropriate. We then investigate whether the other common (...) conclusion from the EPR argument, i.e. that standard quantum theory implies a spooky action at a distance, is correct. We emphasize the crucial role played by the locality assumption and we discuss the use of counterfactuals in the ‘relativistic’ reformulation of the EPR argument. We show that the above conclusion is false if understood as saying that standard quantum theory exhibits, at least with reference to possessed elements of physical reality, some sort of parameter dependence. Thus, in a sense, the coexistence of quantum mechanics with relativity is even more peaceful than commonly thought. We then go through a similar analysis by taking explicitly into account the measurement process. We point out the difficulties which one meets when confronting reduction mechanisms with relativistic requirements. This leads us to recognize the necessity of reconsidering the criteria for attributing objective properties to individual physical systems. Our final conclusion is that, in principle, it is perfectly possible to build up theories leading to the objectification of macroscopic properties which do not imply any spooky action at a distance. (shrink)

An agent can usually hold a very large number of beliefs. However, only a small part of these beliefs is used at a time. Efficient operations for belief change should affect the beliefs of the agent locally, that is, the changes should be performed only in the relevant part of the belief state. In this paper we define a local consequence operator that only considers the relevant part of a belief base. This operator is used to define local versions of (...) the operations for belief change. Representation theorems are given for the local operators. (shrink)

An agent can usually hold a very large number of beliefs. However, only a small part of these beliefs is used at a time. Efficient operations for belief change should affect the beliefs of the agent locally, that is, the changes should be performed only in the relevant part of the belief state. In this paper we define a local consequence operator that only considers the relevant part of a belief base. This operator is used to define local versions of (...) the operations for belief change. Representation theorems are given for the local operators. (shrink)

In this project, we worked in partnership with school teachers who are frequent users of experimental kits available for loan to schools using the historical-investigative approach. The original kits bring a traditional approach to experimentation, without the presence of the history of science. We developed and implemented new guides to the kits, without changing their materials and instruments. Design-based research supports the development methodology; the school science topics covered in this paper are Joseph Black’s studies on latent and specific heat. (...) Although some of the challenges faced in the implementation of historical-investigative approach are known and well-documented, the present article addresses teachers’ perspectives and some of the problems they faced in the implementation process, most of them related to school and teacher working conditions. Even though this is a case study with a small number of schools and teachers, it is possible to say that there is a huge gap to overcome before the historical-investigative approach can be implemented in large scale. (shrink)

Reasoning and change over inconsistent knowledge bases is of utmost relevance in areas like medicine and law. Argumentation may bring the possibility to cope with both problems. Firstly, by constructing an argumentation framework from the inconsistent KB, we can decide whether to accept or reject a certain claim through the interplay among arguments and counterarguments. Secondly, by handling dynamics of arguments of the AF, we might deal with the dynamics of knowledge of the underlying inconsistent KB. Dynamics of arguments has (...) recently attracted attention and although some approaches have been proposed, a full axiomatization within the theory of belief revision was still missing. A revision arises when we want the argumentation semantics to accept an argument. Argument Theory Change encloses the revision operators that modify the AF by analyzing dialectical trees—arguments as nodes and attacks as edges—as the adopted argumentation semantics. In this article, we present a simple approach to ATC based on propositional KBs. This allows to manage change of inconsistent KBs by relying upon classical belief revision, although contrary to it, consistency restoration of the KB is avoided. Subsequently, a set of rationality postulates adapted to argumentation is given, and finally, the proposed model of change is related to the postulates through the corresponding representation theorem. Though we focus on propositional logic, the results can be easily extended to more expressive formalisms such as first-order logic and description logics, to handle evolution of ontologies. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Byt i sens. Księga Pamiątkowa VII Polskiego Zjazdu Filozoficznego w Szczecinie, 14–18 września 2004 roku, edited by Renata Ziemińska and Ireneusz Ziemiński.

The rise of nationalist, racist and anti-feminist ideologies is one of the most frightening repercussions of the collapse of socialism. Using psychoanalytic theories of fantasy to investigate why such extremist ideologies have taken hold, Renata Salecl argues that the major social and political changes in post-communist Eastern Europe require a radical re-evaluation of notions of liberal theories of democracy. In doing so she offers a new approach to human rights and feminism grounded in her own active partipation in the (...) struggles, first against communism and now against nationalism and anti-feminism. (shrink)

In this study, we develop a theoretical model of monetary intelligence (MI), explore the extent to which individuals’ meaning of money is related to the pursuit of materialistic purposes, and test our model using the whole sample and across college major and gender. We select the 15-item love of money (LOM) construct—Factors Good, Evil (Affective), Budget (Behavioral), Achievement, and Power (Cognitive)—from the Money Ethic Scale and Factors Success and Centrality and two indicators—from the Materialism Scale. Based on our data collected (...) from 330 university students in Czech Republic, we provide the following findings. First, our formative models are superior to our reflective models. Second, for the reflective model, money represents Power, Good, Achievement, and not Evil, in the context of materialism. Our formative model suggests that those who pursuit materialism cherish Achievement (vanity) but Budget their money poorly. Third, multi-group analyses illustrate that humanities students (62.4 % female) consider money as Evil and Budget their money poorly, while those in natural sciences (37.6 % female) do not. Further, men are obsessed with Achievement, whereas women do not Budget their money properly, suggesting reflective temptation for males and impulsive temptation for females. Our novel discoveries shed new lights on the relationships between LOM and materialism and offer practical implications to the field of consumer behavior and business ethics. (shrink)

Tradução do artigo originalmente publicado em The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XLV, 2007, pp. 565-582, intitulado Schopenhauer on the Values of Aesthetic Experience.

Le statut juridique des femmes et de leurs biens introduit des différences par rapport à celui des hommes, différences qui sont tantôt défendues tantôt dénoncées par les femmes elles-mêmes, selon qu’elles visent à mettre leurs biens à l’abri des prétentions des créanciers ou, au contraire, qu’elles manifestent leur volonté de tester le plus librement possible. Mais, en préalable à la différence entre hommes et femmes, se trouve le problème de la définition du droit de propriété en tant que tel. De (...) nombreux témoignages montrent en effet que celui-ci est souvent déduit d’un état de fait, plutôt que de la production d’un titre légitime. Et, à la différence de la propriété, la possession ne se décline pas selon le genre. (shrink)

A educação, segundo Kant, divide-se em física e prática. A educação física tem em vista os cuidados com o infante, a educação prática diz respeito à formação do sujeito . A formação ou educação prática, por sua vez, se divide, essencialmente, em dois momentos, disciplina e instrução. Pretendemos aqui investigar o papel da Disciplina no projeto filosófico da Educação Prática de Kant. Verificamos o constrangimento ao falar da questão da disciplina no âmbito pedagógico , desse modo, pretendemos elucidar o pensamento (...) pedagógico kantiano, uma tentativa de, ademais, revelar possíveis contribuições da modernidade às discussões contemporâneas. Para o filósofo a disciplina desempenha um papel vital na educação prática – a educação do homem livre. Procurando expor e justificar essa posição, iremos analisar alguns momentos do conjunto de preleções “Sobre a pedagogia”, porém, sem perder os vínculos com o todo do pensamento prático e teórico de Kant. L'éducation, selon Kant, est divisé en physique et pratique. L'éducation physiquevise à prendre soin de l'enfant, l'éducation pratique concernant la formation du sujet . La formation pratique, à son tour, est divisé essentiellement en deux moments, la discipline et l'instruction. Nous avons l'intention ici d’examiner le rolê de la discipline dans le projet philosophique de la éducation pratique chez Kant. Nous vérifions la contrainte pour discuter de la question de la discipline dans l'éducation , donc nous avons l'intention d'élucider la pensée pédagogique de Kant, une tentative, par ailleurs, révéler d'éventuelles contributions de la modernité aux débats contemporains. Pour lê philosophe la discipline joue un rôle vital dans la l'éducation pratique – l'éducation d’être libre. Vous cherchez à exposer et justifier cette position, nous allons examiner quelques instants de la série de conférences «Sur la pédagogie» sans perdre les liens avec toute la réflexion théorique et pratique de Kant. (shrink)

Uma das motivações para as pesquisas realizadas pelos membros do Círculo de Viena a respeito dos fundamentos da linguagem científica se encontra na obra de Wittgenstein “Tractatus Logico-Philophicus”.Embora haja divergências sobre a legitimidade dessa influência, o livro foi, com efeito, tomado como motivação teórica para a estruturação da linguagem científica, desenvolvida pelos empiristas lógicos. Este artigo apresenta as teorias desenvolvidas pelos membros do Círculo de Viena ressaltando os elementos presentes no Tractatusque foram tomados, em grande parte, como influência sobre o (...) “critério de significado” de uma proposição filosófica adotado pelos empiristas lógicos na tentativa de se estabelecer uma fundamentação para o conhecimento. (shrink)

One of the motivations for the researches leaded by the members of Vienna Circle with regard to the foundations of scientific language is found on Wittgenstein’s “ Tractatus Logico-Philophicus ”. Even though there are divergences about the legitimacy of this influence, thebook was, in effect, taken as a theoretical motivation for the structuring of scientific language, developed by logical empiricists. This paper will present the theories developed by members of Vienna Circle emphasizing the elements presents in Tractatus that were taken, (...) largely, as influence over the “criterion of meaning” of a philosophical proposition adopted by logical empiricists in an attempt to set a foundation for knowledge. (shrink)

Na obra Educação e Emancipação, ao propor um novo imperativo categórico, “que Auschwitz não se repita”, Theodor W. Adorno incita a reflexão sobre a cumplicidade entre Auschwitz e os processos históricos que o tornaram possível, e revela as contradições contidas nas promessas da modernidade. Adorno apresenta a vinculação do esclarecimento com o princípio de dominação, expondo o quanto está entrelaçado com progresso e regressão, o que resulta na constituição patológica da sociedade e dos indivíduos que acolhem as condições para que (...) barbáries e catástrofes continuem sendo reproduzidas, e permite que sociedades com o desenvolvimento tecnológico em níveis avançados permaneçam tuteladas em termos culturais. No presente artigo, temos como objetivo refletir sobre os processos formativos premidos por uma racionalidade instrumental, e apresentar quais as possibilidades de crítica educativa a partir da tese da dialética do esclarecimento de Theodor Adorno e Max Horkheimer. Para isso, propomos realizar uma crítica aos limites da razão e a reflexão sobre as implicações filosófico educacionais, proposta por esses autores, a fim de refletir sobre a problemática educativa. A crítica da razão realizada pelos autores críticos incide diretamente sobre o tema da formação e sobre as possíveis implicações nas relações pedagógicas atuais. O horizonte que pretendemos apontar, por fim, é que a tarefa vital que se coloca para a educação é dotar os indivíduos da capacidade crítica para enfrentar a aparência do mundo administrado, que permita a reflexão crítica sobre as condições objetivas, a consciência de que as condições que tornaram Auschwitz possível ainda permanecem. Trata-se de um estudo bibliográfico. Palavras-chave : Dialética do esclarecimento. Razão instrumental. Educação e emancipação. (shrink)

Musical idioms may appear side by side in a wide variety of historical, group-based or individual compositional styles used in the postmodern compositions. The reception interpretation of musical works is based on the idioms of musical speech as meaningful and expressive constants. Not only do the reveal the positive or negative ties of current musical language to the musical poetics from previous periods, they also update their meanings. The idiomatic musical structures naturally grow into the social system of music and (...) thus become part of the deeper levels of European compositional tradition. Musical meanings are becoming typical for the particular sectors of European musical culture, and may even become their emblem. It is even likely that the idioms cease to be seen as a complex musical structure in the process of reception and they become a plain composition material, singular units of musical language. Using the postmodern composition Apolloopera by Marek Piaček, we illustrate the in-depth reference platform of musical idioms and examine the role of idiomatic units in the structure of a postmodern piece. (shrink)

With the expression soul to the outside it is tried to explain the relation between individual and the universal. This expression has tooken by Croce from the idealist-romantic tradition. It distances him of the modern conceptions, of cartesian origin, that talk about an identical reason and is ..