According to the perceptual view of language comprehension, listeners typically recover high-level linguistic properties such as utterance meaning without inferential work. The perceptual view is subject to the Objection from Context: since utterance meaning is massively context-sensitive, and context-sensitivity requires cognitive inference, the perceptual view is false. In recent work, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging reply to this objection. She argues that in language comprehension context-sensitivity is typically exercised not through inferences, but rather through top-down perceptual modulations or perceptual learning. (...) This paper provides a complete formulation of the Objection from Context and evaluates Brogaards reply to it. Drawing on conceptual considerations and empirical examples, we argue that the exercise of context-sensitivity in language comprehension does, in fact, typically involve inference. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) aspirations by companies have been identified as a motivating factor for active employee participation in CSR implementation. However, a failure to practise what one preaches can backfire and lead to attribution of hypocrisy. Drawing on a qualitative study of an award-winning sustainability pioneer in the cosmetics sector, we explore the role of moral judgement in how and when employees interpret word–deed misalignment in CSR implementation as hypocritical. First, our case reveals that high CSR aspirations by companies (...) raise employees’ moral expectations. Second, we develop a framework that explains variations in employees’ hypocrisy interpretations based on consequentialist and deontological forms of moral judgement. Our research advances a contextual view of hypocrisy, not as an objective characteristic of an organisation, but as an outcome of interpretative processes of perceived motives and results in CSR implementation. Our framework thereby explains why even highly committed organisations may face accusations of hypocrisy. (shrink)

Rips et al. claim that the principles underlying the structure of natural numbers cannot be inferred from interactions with the physical world. However, in their target article they failed to consider an important source of interaction: finger counting. Here, we show that finger counting satisfies all the conditions required for allowing the concept of numbers to emerge from sensorimotor experience through a bottom-up process.

Ever since it was first unleashed in 1818 the story of Victor Frankenstein and his reanimated, stitched-together corpse has inspired intense debate. Can organic life be reanimated using electricity or genetic manipulation? If so, could Frankenstein’s monster really teach itself to read and speak as Mary Shelley imagined? Do monsters have rights, or responsibilities to those who would as soon kill them? What is it about music that so affects Frankenstein’s monster, or any of us? What does Mel Brook’s Frau (...) Blucher say to contemporary eco-feminism? Why are some Frankenstein’s flops and others historic successes? Is there a true Frankenstein? Why are children, but not adults, drawn to Shelley’s monster? And what is a “monster,” anyway? Frankenstein and Philosophy calls 25 philosophers to stitch together these and other questions as they apply to history’s greatest horror franchise. Some chapters treat the Frankenstein films, others the original novel, and yet others the many comic books, novels, and modern adaptations. Together they pay tribute to perhaps the most enduring pop culture icon and the fundamental fears, hopes, and puzzles it raises. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the extent to which young children can be influenced by the perceived blessed status of an actor in their evaluations of behavior as a lie or mistake. Children aged 4 and 5 years attending Catholic schools in an urban center in Northern Italy were provided with a situation in which two girls in church were blessed with holy water or shook the priest's hand. The girls were then placed in a setting in which each told (...) a third girl that contaminated juice was good to drink: one deliberately lied and the other had no knowledge of the contaminant and made a mistake. Significantly more children judged both girls to have made a mistake in the blessed condition than in the not blessed condition. Their accuracy in distinguishing mistakes from lies in the not blessed condition resembled that reported in previous research in which traits such as blessedness were not assigned to the perpetrators. Thus children often perceived lying as uncharacteristic of the blessed whereas they applied the definition of lying as involving intentional falsehood for the not blessed. The results are discussed in terms of an early cultural cognition that involves beliefs about processes of purification and positive contagion. (shrink)

Collaborative remembering is essential to enabling teams to build shared understanding of projects and their progress. This article presents an analysis of collaborative remembering sequences in a corpus of interactions collected in a workplace where a team of designers developed a video television commercial. On the basis of coding and analysing linguistic and bodily behaviors in 158 such sequences, extracted from over 45 hours of video recordings, recurrent patterns of collaborative remembering processes were identified, relating to the interplay of work (...) roles. This article shows that collaborative remembering in the design studio is structured by behavioural, interactive and social factors. (shrink)

The essays collected here have been written in honor of Francesca Menegoni, professor of moral philosophy at the University of Padua and internationally renowned scholar of German classical philosophy. Beyond the plurality of the themes they deal with, what they have in common is the conviction that the systematic analysis of the problematic nodes that go through German classical philosophy allows us to take up the fundamental challenges of our contemporaneity.

Affect-based theorists and life satisfaction theorists disagree about the nature of happiness, but agree about this methodological principle: a philosophical theory of happiness should be in line with the folk concept HAPPINESS. In this article, we present two empirical studies indicating that it is affect-based theories that get the folk concept HAPPINESS right: competent speakers judge a person to be happy if and only if that person is described as feeling pleasure/good most of the time. Our studies also show that (...) the judgement that a person is feeling pleasure/good most of the time reliably brings about the judgement that they are satisfied with their life, even if that person is described as not satisfied. We suggest that this direct causal relation between the concepts POSITIVE AFFECT and LIFE SATISFACTION might explain why many philosophers have been attracted to life satisfaction theories. (shrink)

This seriously playful book provides comic relief in an age of neoliberalism and argues that parody can be used to creatively benefit our practices of self-narration and quests for knowledge. It demonstrates how parody utilizes humor, play, and self-reflection to allow for a helpful, alternative relationship to mistakes and our multifaceted-self. The book works to delineate specific ways of viewing, studying, creating, and performing a particular form of humorous parody, and through pedagogical application, it balances practical hands on examples via (...) digital video creation with examples and exercises such as interrogating our creative histories and parodying them--either as a classroom exercise or in individual self-reflection. The core readership for this book is rhetoric and composition scholars researching continental philosophy, humor, and narrative theory, and it lends itself to classroom implementation for professors, as it brings together (often for the first time) major academic conversations on humor throughout philosophy, literary and cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies. Therefore, this book will be essential reading for undergraduate/graduate courses that feature humor, alternative forms of communication in the public sphere, alternative rhetorical strategies, and courses that focus on the importance of creativity and play in our daily lives and scholarship. (shrink)

The views of Redhead ([2004]) are defended against the argument by Panu Raatikainen ([2005]). The importance of informal rigour is canvassed, and the argument for the a priori nature of induction is explained. The significance of Gödel's theorem is again rehearsed.

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a “Great Separation” between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology—leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. (...) Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided—although they may be reconciled. (shrink)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a “Great Separation” between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology—leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. (...) Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided—although they may be reconciled. (shrink)

In this article, the authors examine the role of dedicated online biotechnology news providers in disseminating and shaping stories of technological promise within the bioeconomy. In this field, communication of future-orientated claims is closely linked to a firm’s ability to attract speculative investment and so dedicated biotech news services play an important role in facilitating this interaction between technology producers and investors. Using the emerging field of regenerative medicine as a case study, the authors illustrate how coverage of RM biotechnologies (...) and firms by these online news services acts to increase the intensity of promissory communication and how interaction between news providers can create dominant framings of particular events in which some aspects are emphasized while others are marginalized. Considered cumulatively, the authors show how these accounts ultimately present a highly linear account of technological innovation which renders the actions of multiple technoscientific actors meaningful to investors but at a cost to addressing the local contingencies of scientific research. (shrink)

(2008). Genetic Engineering and the Speciation of Superions from Humans. World Futures: Vol. 64, Postformal Thought and Hierarchical Complexity, pp. 436-443.

Using ideas from evolution and postformal stages of hierarchical complexity, a hypothetical scenario, premised on genetic engineering advances, portrays the development of a new humanoid species, Superions. How would Superions impact and treat current humans? If the Superion scenario came to pass, it would be the ultimate genocidal terrorism of eliminating an entire species, Homo Sapiens. We speculate about defenses Homo Sapiens might mount. The tasks to relate two species (systems) constitutes a postformal, Metasystematic task. Developing a system of discourse (...) to prevent destruction requires postformal Paradigmatic-stage tasks. Implications are twofold: species survival and sufficient evolution to survive. (shrink)

The concept of recognition, and its relationship to the way we theorise identity and justice, has emerged as part of an important debate in contemporary political and social theory. With contributions from Nancy Fraser and international commentators, this new collection examines key theoretical and practical problems of 'recognition' in politics. Beyond important normative issues in social theory, such as how cultural claims to difference may be justly accommodated in liberal polities, it addresses a range of practical problems in which a (...) politics of recognition approach casts new light on old conflicts and tensions, examining these problems within the context of processes of globalisation and increasing cultural diversity. Organised into three sections, Recognition in Politics: Theory, Policy and Practice analyses new theoretical directions, the challenges of managing multicultural societies, and social policy case studies. Featuring a recent paper by Professor Nancy Fraser based on her 2004 Spinoza Lecture, this collection examines core issues in contemporary debates over recognition, extending these debates in new and significant ways. The contributors extend the literature on recognition by applying the theory to practical, contemporary political problems. These papers reveal the capacity of the recognition paradigm to generate new insights into political problems, but also the limitations of the concept's theoretical purview. Together, these commentaries offer an invaluable road map to the most recent scholarship on recognition. (shrink)

We have found that moral considerations interact with belief ascription in determining intentionality judgment. We attribute this finding to a differential availability of plausible counterfactual alternatives that undo the negative side-effect of an action. We conclude that Knobe's thesis does not account for processes by which counterfactuals are generated and how these processes affect moral evaluations.

Objectives To explore how factors relating to grades and grading affect the correctness of choices that grant-review panels make among submitted proposals. To identify interventions in panel design that may be expected to increase the correctness of choices. -/- Method Experimentation with an empirically-calibrated computer simulation model of panel review. Model parameters are set in accordance with procedures at a national science funding agency. Correctness of choices among research proposals is operationalized as agreement with the choices of an elite panel. (...) -/- Conclusions The simulation model generates several hypotheses to guide further research. Increasing the number of grades used by panel members increases the correctness of simulated choices among submitted proposals. Collective decision procedures giving panels a greater capacity for discriminating among proposals also increase correctness. Surprisingly, differences in grading standards among panel members do not appreciably decrease correctness. (shrink)

Affect-based theorists and life satisfaction theorists disagree about the nature of happiness, but agree about this methodological principle: a philosophical theory of happiness should be in line with the folk concept HAPPINESS. In this article, we present two empirical studies indicating that it is affect-based theories that get the folk concept HAPPINESS right: competent speakers judge a person to be happy if and only if that person is described as feeling pleasure/good most of the time. Our studies also show that (...) the judgement that a person is feeling pleasure/good most of the time reliably brings about the judgement that they are satisfied with their life, even if that person is described as not satisfied. We suggest that this direct causal relation between the concepts POSITIVE AFFECT and LIFE SATISFACTION might explain why many philosophers have been attracted to life satisfaction theories. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Background: Seeking consent for genetic and genomic research can be challenging, particularly in populations with low literacy levels, and in emergency situations. All of these factors were relevant to the MalariaGEN study of genetic factors influencing immune responses to malaria in northern rural Ghana. This study sought to identify issues arising in practice during the enrolment of paediatric cases with severe malaria and matched healthy controls into the MalariaGEN study. Methods: The study used a rapid assessment incorporating multiple qualitative methods (...) including in depth interviews, focus group discussions and observations of consent processes. Differences between verbal information provided during community engagement processes, and consent processes during the enrolment of cases and controls were identified, as well as the factors influencing the tailoring of such information. Results: MalariaGEN participants and field staff seeking consent were generally satisfied with their understanding of the project and were familiar with aspects of the study relating to malaria. Some genetic aspects of the study were also well understood. Participants and staff seeking consent were less aware of the methodologies employed during genomic research and their implications, such as the breadth of data generated and the potential for future secondary research.Moreover, trust in and previous experience with the Navrongo Health Research Centre which was conducting the research influenced beliefs about the benefits of participating in the MalariaGEN study and subsequent decision-making about research participation. Conclusions: It is important to recognise that some aspects of complex genomic research may be of less interest to and less well understood by research participants and that such gaps in understanding may not be entirely addressed by best practice in the design and conduct of consent processes. In such circumstances consideration needs to be given to additional protections for participants that may need to be implemented in such research, and how best to provide such protections.Capacity building for research ethics committees with limited familiarity with genetic and genomic research, and appropriate engagement with communities to elicit opinions of the ethical issues arising and acceptability of downstream uses of genome wide association data are likely to be important. (shrink)

Objectives:Social isolation is increasing in aging societies and several studies have shown a relation with worse cognition in old age. However, less is known about the association in the oldest-old (85+); the group that is at highest risk for both social isolation and dementia. Methods:Analyses were based on follow-up 5 to 9 of the longitudinal German study on aging, cognition, and dementia in primary care patients (AgeCoDe) and the study on needs, health service use, costs, and health-related quality of life (...) in a large sample of oldest-old primary care patients (AgeQualiDe), a multi-center population-based prospective cohort study. Measurements included the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6), with a score below 12 indicating social isolation, as well as the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) as an indicator of cognitive function. Results:Dementia-free study participants (n = 942) were M = 86.4 (SD = 3.0) years old at observation onset, 68.2% were women. One third (32.3%) of them were socially isolated. Adjusted linear hybrid mixed effects models revealed significantly lower cognitive function in individuals with smaller social networks (β = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3-0.7, p <.001). Moreover, changes in an individual's social network size were significantly associated with cognitive changes over time (β = 0.2, 95% CI = 0.1-0.4, p =.003), indicating worse cognitive function with shrinking social networks. Conclusion:Social isolation is highly prevalent among oldest-old individuals, being a risk factor for decreases in cognitive function. Consequently, it is important to maintain a socially active lifestyle into very old age. Likewise, this calls for effective ways to prevent social isolation. (shrink)

The Jubilee Centre’s new report, Virtuous Character for the Practice of Law, sets about trying to examine the place of character and values in the legal profession in Britain. The report draws its findings from a UK focused survey of 966 lawyers and aspiring lawyers at varying stages of their careers. It is one of the largest pieces of research carried out in Britain focusing on issues of character and virtue within a specific industry sector.

Emergency departments are challenging research settings, where truly informed consent can be difficult to obtain. A deeper understanding of emergency medical patients’ opinions about research is needed. We conducted a systematic review and meta-summary of quantitative and qualitative studies on which values, attitudes, or beliefs of emergent medical research participants influence research participation. We included studies of adults that investigated opinions toward emergency medicine research participation. We excluded studies focused on the association between demographics or consent document features and participation (...) and those focused on non-emergency research. In August 2011, we searched the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Scirus, PsycINFO, AgeLine and Global Health. Titles, abstracts and then full manuscripts were independently evaluated by two reviewers. Disagreements were resolved by consensus and adjudicated by a third author. Studies were evaluated for bias using standardised scores. We report themes associated with participation or refusal. Our initial search produced over 1800 articles. A total of 44 articles were extracted for full-manuscript analysis, and 14 were retained based on our eligibility criteria. Among factors favouring participation, altruism and personal health benefit had the highest frequency. Mistrust of researchers, feeling like a ‘guinea pig’ and risk were leading factors favouring refusal. Many studies noted limitations of informed consent processes in emergent conditions. We conclude that highlighting the benefits to the participant and society, mitigating risk and increasing public trust may increase research participation in emergency medical research. New methods for conducting informed consent in such studies are needed. (shrink)

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of education, (...) intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

With his massive redeployment hypothesis (MRH), Anderson claims that novel cognitive functions are likely to rely on pre-existing circuits already possessing suitable resources. Here, we put forward recent findings from studies in numerical cognition in order to show that the role of sensorimotor experience in the ontogenetical development of a new function has been largely underestimated in Anderson's proposal.

As part of a European Erasmus Plus project entitled Death Education for Palliative Psychology, this study assessed the ways in which Master’s Degree students in psychology and the creative arts therapies self-rated their confidence and interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care. In five countries (Austria, Israel, Italy, Poland, Romania), 344 students completed an online questionnaire, and 37 students were interviewed to better understand their views, interest, and confidence. The results revealed some significant differences between countries, and showed (...) that older respondents with previous experience as formal caregivers for end-of-life clients showed greater interest in obtaining practical clinical competence in these fields. A mediation analysis indicated that students’ previous care experiences and past loss experiences were related to students’ current interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care through the mediation of their sense of confidence in this field. The qualitative findings identified five shared themes: life and death, learning about death, the psychological burden, personal experience and robust training, and four key training needs. Overall, students’ interest in studying and working with terminal illness and death are rooted in internal resources, a preliminary sense of confidence, but also external requirements. (shrink)

Widowhood is common in old age, can be accompanied by serious health consequences and is often linked to substantial changes in social network. Little is known about the impact of social isolation on the development of depressive symptoms over time taking widowhood into account. We provide results from the follow-up 5 to follow-up 9 from the longitudinal study AgeCoDe and its follow-up study AgeQualiDe. Depression was measured with GDS-15 and social isolation was assessed using the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6). (...) The group was aligned of married and widowed people in old age and education through entropy balancing. Linear mixed models were used to examine the frequency of occurrence of depressive symptoms for widowed and married elderly people depending on the risk of social isolation. Our study shows that widowhood alone does not lead to an increased occurrence of depressive symptoms. However, "widowed oldest old", who are also at risk of social isolation, have significantly more depressive symptoms than those without risk. In the group of "married oldest old", women have significantly more depressive symptoms than men, but isolated and non-isolated do not differ. Especially for people who have lost a spouse, the social network changes significantly and increases the risk for social isolation. This represents a risk factor for the occurrence of depressive symptoms. (shrink)

I review recent work on Phenomenal Conservatism, the position introduced by Michael Huemer according to which if it seems that P to a subject S, in the absence of defeaters S has thereby some degree of justification for believing P.

In this paper, I discuss whether there are genuinely *diachronic* constraints of practical rationality, that is, pressures on combinations of practical attitudes over time, which are not reducible to mere synchronic rational pressures. Michael Bratman has recently argued that there is at least one such diachronic rational constraint that governs the stability of intentions over time. *Pace* Bratman, I argue that there are no genuinely diachronic constraints on intentions that meet the stringent desiderata set by him. But I show (...) that there are at least two synchronic rational constraints with distinctive and important, although only indirect, diachronic dimensions. Neither of them, however, supports the practical conservatism in the face of normative underdetermination that, according to Bratman, is part and parcel of the diachronic rationality of intention stability. (shrink)

This paper criticizes phenomenal conservatism––the influential view according to which a subject S’s seeming that P provides S with defeasible justification for believing P. I argue that phenomenal conservatism, if true at all, has a significant limitation: seeming-based justification is elusive because S can easily lose it by just reflecting on her seemings and speculating about their causes––I call this the problem of reflective awareness. Because of this limitation, phenomenal conservatism doesn’t have all the epistemic merits attributed to it by (...) its advocates. If true, phenomenal conservatism would constitute a unified theory of epistemic justification capable of giving everyday epistemic practices a rationale, but it wouldn’t afford us the means of an effective response to the sceptic. Furthermore, phenomenal conservatism couldn’t form the general basis for foundationalism. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism (PC) is the internalist view that non-inferential justification rests on appearances. PC’s advocates have recently argued that seemings are also required to explain inferential justification. The most general and developed view to this effect is Huemer (2016)’s theory of inferential seemings (ToIS). Moretti (2018) has shown that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness, which makes PC open to sceptical challenges. In this paper I argue that ToIS is afflicted by a version of the same problem (...) and it is thus hostage to inferential scepticism. I also suggest a possible response on behalf of ToIS’s advocates. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Michael Huemer’s phenomenal conservatism—the internalist view according to which our beliefs are prima facie justified if based on how things seems or appears to us to be—doesn’t fall afoul of Michael Bergmann’s dilemma for epistemological internalism. We start by showing that the thought experiment that Bergmann adduces to conclude that is vulnerable to his dilemma misses its target. After that, we distinguish between two ways in which a mental state can contribute to (...) the justification of a belief: the direct way and the indirect way. We identify a straightforward reason for claiming that the justification contributed indirectly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. Then we show that the same reason doesn’t extend to the claim that the justification contributed directly is subject to Bergmann’s dilemma. As is the view that seemings or appearances contribute justification directly, we infer that Bergmann’s contention that his dilemma applies to is unmotivated. In the final part, we suggest that our line of response to Bergmann can be used to shield other types of internalist justification from Bergmann’s objection. We also propose that seeming-grounded justification can be combined with justification of one of these types to form the basis of a promising version of internalist foundationalism. (shrink)

In this chapter I introduce and analyse the tenets of phenomenal conservatism, and discuss the problem of the nature of appearances. After that, I review the asserted epistemic merits phenomenal conservatism and the principal arguments adduced in support of it. Finally, I survey objections to phenomenal conservatism and responses by its advocates. Some of these objections will be scrutinised and appraised in the next chapters.

In the last decades Robert Fludd’s philosophy has received increasing attention. On the other hand, his life, network, and acquaintances have been investigated in much less detail. As William Huffman rightly put it, “[o]ne of the main problems confronting someone interested in Robert Fludd is the lack of information about his formative years, as well as about his later associations”. Ron Heisler already observed that regrettably Huffman’s own account is not always accurate or complete. Scholars such as Johannes Rösche have (...) recently added more details. The aim of this article is to give scope for further research; it collects contributions by previous scholars and adds details, corrects inaccuracies, identifies hitherto nameless people with whom Fludd came into contact, and places he visited. It also takes into account current research coming from tangential fields, for instance studies on Fludd’s publisher or on philosophers such as Michael Maier, with whom he is thought to have been closely associated. (shrink)