Mobile health (mHealth) technologies for self-monitoring health-relevant parameters such as heart frequency, sleeping patterns or exercise regimes aim at fostering healthy behavior change and increasing the individual users to promote and maintain their health. We argue that this aspect of mHealth supports healthism, the increasing shift from institutional responsibility for public health toward individual engagement in maintaining health as well as mitigating health risks. Moreover, this healthist paradigm leads to a shift from understanding health as the absence of illness to (...) regarding health as the performance of certain rituals in order to project healthiness. By drawing from the analogy between healthiness and traditional virtues, we evaluate the promises made by proponents of mHealth technologies for self-monitoring. We argue that the implementation and use of mHealth risk entrenching existing inequalities and, more particularly, tend to exclude populations situated at the losing end of those inequalities from participating in the quasi-virtue of healthiness. Consequently, the implementation and use of mHealth technologies not only present challenges for social justice but also undermine their primary societal goal—to promote public health. Finally, we offer several suggestions on how to realize the potential benefit of mHealth. (shrink)

Mobile health (mHealth) apps for self-monitoring increasingly gain relevance for public health. As a mobile technology, they promote individual participation in health monitoring with the aim of disease prevention and the mitigation of health risks. In this paper, I argue that users of mHealth apps must engage in value trade-offs concerning their fundamental dimensions of well-being when using mobile health apps for the self-monitoring of health parameters. I particularly focus on trade-offs regarding the user’s self-determination as well as their capacity (...) to form personal attachments. Depending on the user’s level of advantage or disadvantage, value trade-offs can pose a threat to the users’ sufficient fulfillment of the dimensions of well-being. As such, value trade-offs can entrench existing structural injustices and prevent disadvantaged users to benefit from this technology. I argue that value trade-offs are, to some, a type of injustice that can drive disadvantaged users away from a sufficiency threshold of well-being, risk users to fall below the threshold, or have an accumulative effect on different dimensions of the user’s well-being. (shrink)

This study constructs a measurement scale for Socially Responsible Consumption in the particular context of Colombia. It uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodological approach, beginning with four focus groups and ending with a quantitative validation exercise employing Exploratory Factor Analysis. The result is a Socially Responsible Consumption measurement scale consisting of four dimensions that reflect paradigms found in the existing literature. These are, however, expressed differently in Colombia. In particular, Socially Responsible Consumption involves consumer behavior that favors corporate social (...) responsibility practices and the rational consumption of resources and products while recognizing the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle through healthcare. (shrink)

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonize over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such (...) a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies. (shrink)

Interpersonal sensitivity, particularly threat of potential exclusion, is a critical condition in borderline personality disorder (BPD) which impairs patients’ social adjustment. Current evidence-based treatments include group components, such as mentalization-based group therapy (MBT-G), in order to improve interpersonal functioning. These treatments additionally focus on the therapeutic alliance since it was discovered to be a robust predictor of treatment outcome. However, alliance is a multidimensional factor of group therapy, which includes the fellow patients, and may thus be negatively affected by the (...) exclusion-proneness of BPD patients. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the predictive value of threat of social exclusion for the therapeutic alliance in MBT-G. In the first part of the study, social exclusion was experimentally induced in 23 BPD inpatients and 28 healthy subjects using the Cyberball paradigm, a virtual ball tossing game. The evoked level of threat was measured with the Need-Threat Scale (NTS) which captures four dimensions of fundamental human needs, i. e. the need for belongingness, for self-esteem, for control, and for a meaningful existence. In the second part of the study, therapeutic alliance was measured on three dimensions, the therapists, the fellow patients and the group as a whole, using the Group-Questionnaire (GQ-D). BPD patients scored higher in their level of threat according to the NTS in both, the inclusion and the exclusion condition. The level of threat after exclusion predicted impairments of the therapeutic alliance in MBT-G. It was associated with more negative relationships, lower positive bonding and a lower positive working alliance with the fellow patients and lower positive bonding to the group as a whole whilst no negative prediction of the alliance to the therapists was found. Consequently, our translational study design has shown that Cyberball is an appropriate tool to use as an approach for clinical questions. We further conclude that exclusion-proneness in BPD is a critical feature with respect to alliance in group treatments. In order to neutralize BPD patients’ exclusion bias, therapists may be advised to provide an “inclusive stance”, especially in initial sessions. It is also recommendable to strengthen patient to patient relations. (shrink)

The present essay approaches two different conceptions of Enlightenment and modernity. The first part considers Michel Foucault’s understanding of modernity as an “attitude” or “critical ethos” belonging to that age, that necessarily questions that which we have come to be in various contingent processes ; the second part considers Jürgen Habermas’s proposal, which invites us to understand modernity as an “unfinished project”, as a certain potential or rational ideal that is still to be carried out. Towards the end of the (...) essay both stances are confronted, whereby an attempt is made to engage elements retrieved from each in a productive dialogue, and to raise some criticisms and observations regarding the sociohistorical conceptions of each author. (shrink)

Our think tank tasked by the Dutch Health Council, consisting of Radboud University Nijmegen Honours Academy students with various backgrounds, investigated the implications of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric patients. During this investigation, a number of methodological, ethical and societal difficulties were identified. We consider these difficulties to be a reflection of a still fragmented field of research that can be overcome with improved organization and communication. To this effect, we suggest that it would be useful to found a centralized (...) DBS organization. Such an organization makes it possible to 1) set up and maintain a repository, 2) facilitate DBS studies with a larger sample size, 3) improve communication amongst researchers, clinicians and ethical committees, and 4) improve communication between DBS experts and the public at large. (shrink)

Socially responsible consumption reflects a consumer's political and ethical act. Its measurement is dependent on the socio-economic and cultural context. Consequently, measurement instruments reflecting various behaviour profiles of global consumers have been developed. This study employs a Latin-American-specific measurement instrument to compare socially responsible consumption behaviours in Colombia, Mexico and Peru, countries with the same cultural cluster, that is they reflect a set of values shaped by religion, family, a sense of authority and a nationalist bias in their cultural pattern. (...) The empirical test included confirmatory factorial analysis exercise, factorial invariance analysis and a contrast analysis of variance. The results for the three Latin American countries show the following. (i) The Mexican consumer, compared to the Peruvian and Colombian one, exhibits a stronger tendency to evaluate external practices of corporate social responsibility as a criterion of consumption. (ii) The rationality of the Mexican consumer is better in terms of consumption volume of products, resources and services. Finally, (iii) Peruvian and Mexican consumers (vs. Colombian consumers) exhibit a tendency to assess the responsible practices of companies in labour matters more as a consumption criterion. This study provides empirical evidence of the context-dependent nature of measuring socially responsible consumption. For practitioners, identifying consumer profiles based on the market context enables them to customise goods and services. Moreover, policymakers should implement a sustainable consumption agenda with public policy guidelines tailored to the specific context. (shrink)

Our think tank tasked by the Dutch Health Council, consisting of Radboud University Nijmegen Honours Academy students with various backgrounds, investigated the implications of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric patients. During this investigation, a number of methodological, ethical and societal difficulties were identified. We consider these difficulties to be a reflection of a still fragmented field of research that can be overcome with improved organization and communication. To this effect, we suggest that it would be useful to found a centralized (...) DBS organization. Such an organization makes it possible to 1) set up and maintain a repository, 2) facilitate DBS studies with a larger sample size, 3) improve communication amongst researchers, clinicians and ethical committees, and 4) improve communication between DBS experts and the public at large. (shrink)

Evoked potentials in the amplitude-time spectrum of the electroencephalogram are commonly used to assess the extent of brain responses to stimulation with noxious contact heat. The magnitude of the N- and P-waves are used as a semi-objective measure of the response to the painful stimulus: the higher the magnitude, the more painful the stimulus has been perceived. The strength of the N-P-wave response is also largely dependent on the chosen reference electrode site. The goal of this study was to examine (...) which reference technique excels both in practical and theoretical terms when analyzing noxious contact heat evoked potentials in the amplitude-time spectrum. We recruited 21 subjects. We applied seven noxious contact heat stimuli using two temperatures, 51°C, and 54°C, to each subject. During EEG analysis, we aimed to identify the referencing technique which produces the highest N-wave and P-wave amplitudes with as little artifactual influence as possible. For this purpose, we applied the following six referencing techniques: mathematically linked A1/A2, average reference, REST, AFz, Pz, and mathematically linked PO7/PO8. We evaluated how these techniques impact the N-P amplitudes of CHEPS based on our data from healthy subjects. Considering all factors, we found that mathematically linked earlobes to be the ideal referencing site to use when displaying and evaluating CHEPS in the amplitude-time spectrum. (shrink)

'Gemeinwohl" (Common Good) galt über lange Zeit als eine Schlüsselkategorie christlicher Sozialethik. Diese Selbstverständlichkeit ist einem selbstkritischen Sozialkatholizismus sowohl in der Theorie als auch im politisch-ethischen Praxisbezug abhandengekommen. Ist der Appell an die Gemeinwohlverpflichtung mehr als ein diffuses und hilfloses Postulat? Lässt sich, zumal unter den Bedingungen globaler Verflechtungen und Abhängigkeiten, mit dieser Kategorie sozial-ethische Relevanz erzeugen? Wie verhält sich die Vorstellung einer sozialen Ganzheit zu der Pluralität von Vorstellungen des guten Lebens und zu der Vielheit von Interessen? Was legitimiert (...) und welche Akteure tragen eine soziale Ordnung? Wie verhält sich eine Theorie des Gemeinwohls zu Theorien öffentlicher Güter (Commons),,angesichts internationaler Herausforderungen wie Migration, Klimapolitik, Welthandel oder Finanzmarktregulierung'' Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen zurück auf die Jahrestagung 2019 der,,Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christliche Sozialethik'', die der Frage nach dem,,globalen Gemeinwohl" gewidmet war."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Las investigaciones sobre Luis de León se han centrado, sobre todo, en su mística, narrativa y teoría literaria. En este trabajo, el autor intenta desarrollar los principales aspectos de su teoría jurídica. Al igual que otros grandes teólogos de la Escuela de Salamanca, también León ha estudiado el problema de la naturaleza de la ley humana y su vinculación con el derecho natural. Éste es, justamente, el tema del siguiente trabajo. The studies about Luis de León has focused mainly in (...) his mystical, narrative and literary theory. In this paper, the author attempts to develop the principal aspects of his legal doctrine. Like other great theologians of The Salamanca School, also Leon has studied the issue of the nature of human law and its relationship with the natural law. This is precisely the thematic of the next article. (shrink)

Review of: Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, Walter Benjamin, Peter Fenves (ed.) and Julia Ng (ed.) (2021) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 368 pp., ISBN 978-0-80474-952-7, h/bk, $25.00.

Short description: Part A : Philosophy, Literature, and Knowledge – Chapter I : Idealism and the Absolute – A. J. B. Hampton: “Herzen schlagen und doch bleibet die Rede zurück?” Philosophy, poetry, and Hölderlin’s development of language suffi cient to the Absolute – P. Sabot: L’absolu au miroir de la littérature. Versions de l’Hégélianisme’ chez Villiers de l’Isle Adam et chez Mallarmé – P. Gordon: Nietzsche’s Critique of the Kantian Absolute – Chapter II: Philosophy and Style – J.-P. Larthomas: Le (...) cas Kierkegaard (1813-1855) ou l’écriture comme dialectique de l’écoute – S. Hüsch: Style et signifi cation. Intériorité et communication indirecte chez Søren Kierkegaard – A. Milon: La question du style en philosophie: la grammaire non-style – C. Van Lerberghe: La question du style dans la phénoménologie asubjective de Jan Patocka – Chapter III: Poetry and Philosophy – J.-B. Dussert: Martin Heidegger en ses poèmes – C. de Roche: The poem and the monad: On the reception of Leibniz‘ monadology in Paul Celan’s poetics – M. de Jesus Cabral: Entre théâtre et philosophie : notes sur la poétique de Maurice Maeterlinck – Chapter IV : Literature, Philosophy, and (new) Mythology – A. Martinengo: La raison hors de soi. Herméneutique et mythe chez Paul Ricoeur – G. Boggio Marzet Tremoloso: Démythologisation comme acte mythopoïétique: le cas de Jason de Elisabeth Porquerol. – G. Coulter: Jean Baudrillard: The Literary / Poetic Philosopher – Chapter V : Literature and Ethics – J. Azoulai: L’Éthique de Spinoza dans Bouvard et Pécuchet: un vertige philosophique et littéraire – I. Vendrell: Can Literature be Moral Philosophy? A sceptical view on the Ethics of Literary Empathy – F. Picon: Envisager Todorov: Poétique, éthique et humanisme contemporain – Chapter VI : Philosophy and Textuality – E. Lecler: La littérature : la mort de la philosophie – J. A. Gosetti- Ferencei: Writing in Philosophy and the Literature and Philosophy of Writing (Plato, Mann, Blanchot) –W. Cristaudo: Bringing Back Character and Grammar: Freeing Literature from Excessive Reliance on Philosophy and Theory – C. Alfano: Parenthesising Cracks into the Ground of Philosophy: The Textuality of Stanley Cavell’s Philosophical Writing – Part B: Perspectives of a Dialogue between Philosophy and Literature: Philosophical Refl ections in Literary Creation – Chapter VII : Philosophical Dialogue and Literature – A. Baillot: Tieck et Solger, un dialogue philosophicolittéraire – V. Altachina: Le dialogue philosophique chez Diderot et chez Dostoïevski – Chapter XIII : Bergsonien Infl uences in Literature – C. Dewas: Bergson et Katzantzakis. Les limites du langage comme condition d’une métaphysique de la littérature – E. Pesenti Rossi: La philosophie à l’épreuve de la poésie : Bergson et Ungaretti – Chapter IX : Wittgenstein and Literature – G. Valdemarca: La revanche du sens commun : Wittgenstein, Musil et la chute de la certitude – A. Leaker: From the ‘numinous glow’ to ‘gut squalor’: Transcendence and the Ordinary in Wittgenstein and Don DeLillo’s Underworld – A. den Dulk: Wallace and Wittgenstein: Literature as Dialogue Concerning the Real World – Chapter X: Borges and Semprun: Writers and Philosophers – J.-F. Mattéi: Borges et la philosophie – T. Capmartin: Voyage au bout de la représentation dans Fictions: Quelques remarques ménardiennes sur Borges et le stoïcisme – V. Capdevielle- Hounieu: Jorge Semprún et l’hybridation du littéraire et du philosophique : pour une ‘fi ction essayistique’ – Chapter XI : Literary (Mis-) Readings of Philosophy – P. Lasarte: Misreadings of Arthur Schopenhauer in Sin Rumbo by Eugenio Cambaceres – S. Roldan: Qu’est-ce qui est fort comme la mort selon Maupassant? La détermination ultime d’Olivier Vertin vue sous l’angle de Schopenhauer – B. Nickel: L’infl uence de Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) sur la poésie concrète – Chapter XII: The Impact of Philosophy on 20th Century Literature and Poetry – B. Ertugrul: Walter Benjamin et Ingeborg Bachmann entre littérature et philosophie – J. Leclercq / M. Watthee-Delmotte: Michel Henry : pour un langage de la subjectivité. La pensée du roman Le Fils du roi – J. Hobus: “The happiness of the concentration camps”: Reading Imre Kertész’ Novel Fatelessness with Albert Camus’ Concept of the Absurd – S. Frogel: Man without God: Nietzsche, Kafka and Camus Der Herausgeber Sébastian Hüsch, Studium der Philosophie, Geschichte,. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Eine Untersuchung der diplomatischen Kontakte zwischen östlichem und westlichem Kaisertum im 10. Jahrhundert kann praktisch nur auf zwei umfangreichere Quellen zurückgreifen: den Legationsbericht des Liudprand von Cremona und die Briefe des byzantinischen Metropoliten und Synkellos Leon von seiner Westreise 996/998. Beide Texte sind keine offiziellen Dokumente, wie sie für das 9. Jahrhundert noch in beachtlicher Dichte vorliegen, aber sie geben daher nicht nur den Ereignissen, sondern auch Haltungen, Motivationen und individuellen Wahrnehmungen breiteren Raum, so daß sich ein in (...) Teilen lebendigeres Bild dieser Diplomatie eruieren läßt. Dagegen treten theoretische Prämissen deutlich zurück. Selbst bei Liudprand, im Umgang mit dessen Legatio starke quellenkritische Vorbehalte nicht unberücksichtigt bleiben dürfen, wird die „Zweikaiserfrage“ nur an wenigen Stellen Gegenstand, und Leon vermeidet offenbar jede Äußerung dazu. Dabei wäre eine Auseinandersetzung mit „unverschämten“ Ansprüchen des Westens auf die Basileia ein rhetorisch für ihn sicher ebenso angemessener Stoff gewesen wie die Verdammung des Philagathos. Im Vergleich beider Autoren ergeben sich zudem interessante Parallelen: beide haben ein ambivalentes Rom-Bild, beide können persönliche Feindbilder wirkmächtig stilisieren und mit politischen Argumenten vernetzen, vor allem aber entwickeln beide wirkungsvolle Mechanismen zur Verdrängung einer faktischen Zwangssituation und erwecken die Illusion, unabhängig handeln zu können oder mindestens rhetorische Überlegenheit gezeigt zu haben. Das hat in der Literatur nicht selten zu einer Überbewertung ihrer tatsächlichen politischen Rolle geführt. So dürfte Leon von Synada bei der Erhebung seines persönlichen Feindes Johannes Philagathos zum Gegenpapst 997 in Rom kaum mehr als eine legitimatorische Funktion zugekommen sein, obgleich er für sich in Anspruch nimmt, das ganze Geschehen initiiert und (zunächst) erfolgreich zum Ergebnis geführt zu haben. Stattdessen lassen sich durchaus Gründe für ein Zerwürfnis zwischen Otto III. und Johannes Philagathos im Vorfeld von dessen Rebellion benennen, insbesondere der Entzug der Abtei Nonantola durch den Kaiser, der eben nicht eine Reaktion auf das neue Gegenpapsttum darstellt, sondern ein Motiv zum endgültigen Bruch des Philagathos mit seinem kaiserlichen Schüler. Das eigentlich überraschende Faktum ist aber, daß die in ihrer Herrschaftsauffassung sehr anspruchsvolle Gestalt Ottos III. offenbar keine ideologische Konfrontation mit dem nicht minder selbstbewußten Basileios II. provozierte. Auch dies rechtfertigt es, die Bedeutung des Zweikaiserproblems gegenüber den zahlreichen politischen, territorialen und kirchenadministrativen Faktoren des Gegensatzes beider Seiten, welche beispielsweise in der Spätphase der Herrschaft Ottos I. und von 981-983 bei Otto II. unverkennbar hervortreten, zu relativieren. Daß das westliche Kaisertum also überhaupt in einem signifikanten Maße Gegenstand byzantinischer „Außenpolitik“ geworden ist, das verdankt es zweifellos primär der territorialen Bindung an Italien. (shrink)

En este trabajo se intenta presentar la doctrina que tiene fray Luis de León sobre la determinación del derecho natural. Se propone que León no sólo debe ser considerado como uno de los principales representantes de la literatura española, sino como uno de los grandes juristas de la Neoescolástica del siglo XVI.

This article is a contribution to the history of the Geiger-Müller counter, based on the replication method. Along with a historical analysis of the Geiger-Müller counter I present and discuss my experience with replicas of early counters from 1928. The explicit and tacit knowledge that was gained during my construction und the experimentation process allows a different view of the development process in 1928. Against this background, I discuss Walter Müller’s role in the development and the significance of experimental (...) work in Geiger’s laboratory by illustrating the status of data gained from indirect electrical measurements in the field of early radioactivity research. All things considered it was not the instrument itself, but Geiger’s influence and status that affected its establishment in the scientific community in an authoritative way. (shrink)

A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin's writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most (...) versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungNaturalistische Religionstheorien basieren auf der grundlegenden Annahme, dass sich Religionen aus den evolutionären und biologischen Merkmalen des Menschen entwickelt haben und somit zur ‚Natur‘ des Menschen gehören. In den letzten Jahren wurden solche Theorien durch den Einfluss der Kognitionswissenschaften weiterentwickelt und stellen mittlerweile ein neues Paradigma in der Religionsforschung dar. Demgegenüber steht das Verständnis einer kulturwissenschaftlich ausgerichteten Religionswissenschaft, die davon ausgeht, dass Religionen soziale Konstrukte beziehungsweise kulturelle Symbolsysteme sind. Der Beitrag stellt neben der klassischen Religionstheorie von Walter Burkert auch (...) neuere Theorien vor und diskutiert, inwiefern solche naturalistischen Ansätze mit einem kulturwissenschaftlichen Verständnis von Religion kompatibel sind und worin deren Mehrwert für die Religionswissenschaft liegen kann. (shrink)

A comienzos de la década de los 80, el filósofo Gilles Deleuze aplicó la teoría de la imagen de Bergson expuesta en Materia y Memoria (1896) a la imagen cinematográfica con la intención de desarrollar nuevas herramientas conceptuales que, a través de un análisis de la historia del cine, permitieran poder delinear mejor tanto la relación cognoscitiva más allá de los presupuestos de sujeto-objeto, como una teoría de la comunicación pre-verbal no estructuralizada fonéticamente que superara definitivamente la concepción lacaniana del (...) lenguaje. Si bien dichos análisis pueden ser vistos también como el establecimiento de unos principios alternativos a las teorías del montaje tanto de Vertov como de Eizenshtéin, el interés primario de nuestro paper se centrará en la redefinición de las categorías espacio-temporales que conlleva esta nueva teoría del cine esgrimida por Deleuze. Concretamente analizaremos cómo la nueva tecnología cinematográfica, especialmente en su desarrollo europeo de la segunda postguerra (Godard, Fellini, Syberberg, Tarkovski) supone una comprensión temporal por completo ajena a cualquier comprensión de causalidad lineal, teleológica o no, de corte cronológico. En su lugar, el cine en tanto que medio de comunicación propio del mundo metropolitano contemporáneo emplea unas categorías temporales más cercanas a conceptos como “acontecimiento” o “haecceitas”, que en algunos puntos lo acercan a la concepción del tiempo desarrollada por Walter Benjamin, pero que por otro lo relacionan directamente con formas aiónicas del mismo ya estudiadas por Deleuze en la década de los 60, y aplicadas al estudio del dadaísmo en la de los 70. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 400-407.

We are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new ...

On a widely held characterization, triadic joint attention is the capacity to perceptually attend to an object or event together with another subject. In the last four decades, research in developmental psychology has provided increasing evidence of the crucial role that this capacity plays in socio-cognitive development, early language acquisition, and the development of perspective-taking. Yet, there is a striking discrepancy between the general agreement that joint attention is critical in various domains, and the lack of theoretical consensus on how (...) to account for it. This paper pursues three interrelated aims: (i) it examines the contrast between reductive and non-reductive views of (triadic) joint attention, by bringing into focus the notion of recursive mindreading; (ii) it assembles, advances, and discusses a number of arguments against reductive views; (iii) finally, in dialogue with some prominent non-reductive views, it outlines the case for a non-reductive view that gives pride of place to the idea that co-attenders relate to one another as a ‘you’. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in (...) virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study (n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions (...) and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these ‘gendered’ effects are discussed in relation to the ‘political authenticity’, which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status. (shrink)

'Everyone knows what attention is’ according to William James. Much work on attention in psychology and neuroscience cites this famous phrase only to quickly dismiss it. But James is right about this: ‘attention’ was not introduced into psychology and neuroscience as a theoretical concept. I argue that we should therefore study attention with broadly the same methodology that David Marr has applied to the study of perception. By focusing more on Marr's Computational Level of analysis, we arrive at a unified (...) answer to the question of what attention is, what role it plays in the mind, and why organisms like us have that capacity. I propose a methodology for studying attention at Marr's Computational Level that optimizes in a three-dimensional space: it should capture core aspects of our first-person experience of attention, be explanatorily powerful in psychology and neuroscience, and fertile in an interdisciplinary context. I show how this methodology leads to what I call the priority structure account of attention. Attention is what organizes current information to make it more useful for the organism. We can identify it by four features. Attention, in this way, helps a cognitive system to integrate its informational state with its current motivational state. I describe how this account improves on alternatives and shows why attention is a useful concept in many disciplines and for connecting them. -/- This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Psychological Capacities Psychology > Attention Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science. (shrink)

According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is opposed to what may (...) be called, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional philosophy’ (TP), the view that philosophical problems can be solved by discovering non-linguistic facts. In the following, OLP, ILP, and TP are taken to be methodologies, that is, frameworks in which to interpret and evaluate different philosophical methods (i.e., argumentative strategies). The two linguistic methodologies are discussed separately with TP as a foil, and then used to interpret the status of different philosophical methods. While each of the methods discussed here finds a plausible interpretation in each methodology, there are other arguments for and against linguistic philosophy in general, and for and against ILP and OLP in particular. As none of these arguments is decisive, I conclude with a superficial moral about peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

Bislang wurde Walter Benjamins Werk nicht auf Staatlichkeit hin gelesen, weist es doch weder eine Staatstheorie noch deren explizite Kritik auf. Der Staat als genuin politische Kategorie wird zwar kaum direkt, dafur aber uber andere Begriffe adressiert, wie Souveranitat und Gewalt, Produktionsverhaltnisse und Warenform oder soziale Kollektive wie Klasse und 'Volk'. Mit Problemen moderner Staatlichkeit beschaftigte sich Benjamin zeitlebens uber die kulturelle Sphare, und sein politisches Denken motivierte sich wesentlich aus Beobachtungen an Alltagsdingen und Konsumgutern sowie der Auseinandersetzung mit (...) neuen kunstlerischen Verfahren und Technologien. Der Band stellt diesen mittelbaren Zugriff heraus und versucht aufzuzeigen, welche Problemfelder von Benjamins politischem Denken je schon auf die Phanomene Staat und Staatlichkeit verweisen, ohne dass diese direkt angesprochen und ausgefuhrt wurden. Mit Beitragen von: Nils Baratella, Christine Blattler, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Wolfram Ette, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Sebastian Jahn, Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Esther Leslie, Daniel Loick, Gerard Raulet, Sven Rucker, Gerhard Scheit, Falko Schmieder, Uwe Steiner, Martin Vialon, Christian Voller, Jannis Wagner. (shrink)

Die gegenwärtige Auseinandersetzung dokumentieren zwei von den Herausgebern in Jena (2002) und Düsseldorf (2003) veranstaltete Tagungen, die unter dem Titel "Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi und die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie" erstmals die ...