Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to (...) participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: in the allocation of platform resources, in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding. (shrink)

Abraham J. Malherbe was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past half century. He is especially known for his use of Hellenistic moral philosophy in the interpretation of New Testament texts, especially Pauline literature. Whilst the comparative study of New Testament and Greco-Roman material remains a contentious approach in scholarship, Malherbe’s work provides important pointers in how to make such comparisons in a meaningful and reasoned manner, by paying due respect to the integrity of the texts (...) being compared and to the function textual elements have within their own contexts. I discussed the salient features of Malherbe’s approach, focusing in particular on his study of topoi. One of the most significant findings was Malherbe’s emphasis on the dialectical combination of common and individual elements in such topoi, which enabled ancient authors to embed their own texts within the cultural discourse of their time. His approach opens the way to further research of the New Testament within its philosophical context without requiring proof of a genealogical relationship between the texts or authors concerned. (shrink)

Diversity from the beginning: A comparison of Mack and Crossan’s constructs of earliest Christianities (ca 30-70 CE) According to recent propositions by Burton Mack and Dominic Crossan, earliest Christianity was a diverse phenomenon right from its inception. In this article their constructs of this early phase of 'church ’ history (ca 30-70 CE) are compared, so as to identify similarities and differences, advantages and shortcomings. The essay concludes with a proposal on methodological procedure to be followed in the search for (...) earliest forms of Christianities (ca 30-70 CE), as well as some remarks on the meaning of the comparative analysis undertaken by Mack and Crossan. (shrink)

Hoewel in de laatste jaren sterk de nadruk is gelegd op de “autonomie” van het geschrevene ten opzichte van de schrijver en diens belevingswereld, wil deze auteur graag beginnen met een persoonlijke betuiging van erkentelijkheid. Een mens is toch wel zodanig verbonden met een geesteskind dat hij lang bij zich gedragen heeft, dat hij de aandacht en de grondigheid die uit de hiervoor geplaatste reacties spreekt, alleen maar in hoge mate kan waarderen. Hij heeft ze ervaren als toonbeelden van “ontmoeting”. (...) De verschillen tussen de drie reacties laten nog eens zien dat ontmoeting verre van monotoon is. Juist ook die verschillen vond ik leerzaam. Bij de opzet van mijn repliek wil ik aan de diversiteit zo goed mogelijk recht doen door de reacties stuk voor stuk te bespreken. Af en toe zal een “intertekstuele” opmerking wenselijk of onvermijdelijk zijn. Overigens vrees ik dat binnen het bestek van deze repliek niet voldoende ingegaan kan worden op alle vragen en tegenwerpingen. (shrink)

Enacting an AI system typically requires three iterative phases where AI engineers are in command: selection and preparation of the data, selection and configuration of algorithmic tools, and fine-tuning of the different parameters on the basis of intermediate results. Our main hypothesis is that these phases involve practices with ethical questions. This paper maps these ethical questions and proposes a way to address them in light of a neo-republican understanding of freedom, defined as absence of domination. We thereby identify different (...) types of responsibility held by AI engineers and link them to concrete suggestions on how to improve professional practices. This paper contributes to the literature on AI and ethics by focusing on the work necessary to configure AI systems, thereby offering an input to better practices and an input for societal debates. (shrink)

A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition this, problem generalizes to other approaches that avoid intertheoretic comparisons of value, such as My (...) Favourite Option, the Borda Rule, Variance Normalization, and the Principle of Maximizing Expected Normalized Moral Value. (shrink)

Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to B, you (...) pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. The Element also defends money-pump arguments from the standard objections to this kind of approach. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Immigration is often associated with a situation in which would-be migrants and their countries of origin are put at the mercy of others’ decisions. The main objective of this article is to theorize this ‘being at the mercy’ in light of a republican definition of what freedom is about: the absence of domination. Immigration policy represents instances of domination on a wide spectrum of individuals and political communities. This article focuses on the procedural discretion claimed by states of destination in (...) their relations with would-be migrants. On the basis of a definition of the concept of ‘jurisdiction’, the article distinguishes 4 paradigmatic situations of immigration, which all display situations of domination. In each situation, the state of destination arbitrarily interferes with important interests of individuals and political communities. In light of this argument, existing mechanisms in national, transnational and international settings can be identified and justified as anti-domination measures. The argument offers a blueprint on how to further develop them in preventing domination in immigration. (shrink)

Immigration is often associated with a situation in which would-be migrants and their countries of origin are put at the mercy of others’ decisions. The main objective of this article is to theorize this ‘being at the mercy’ in light of a republican definition of what freedom is about: the absence of domination. Immigration policy represents instances of domination on a wide spectrum of individuals and political communities. This article focuses on the procedural discretion claimed by states of destination in (...) their relations with would-be migrants. On the basis of a definition of the concept of ‘jurisdiction’, the article distinguishes 4 paradigmatic situations of immigration, which all display situations of domination. In each situation, the state of destination arbitrarily interferes with important interests of individuals and political communities. In light of this argument, existing mechanisms in national, transnational and international settings can be identified and justified as anti-domination measures. The argument offers a blueprint on how to further develop them in preventing domination in immigration. (shrink)

One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not apply to (...) BI-terminating decision problems, where at each choice node backward induction prescribes a move that terminates further action. For BI-terminating decision problems, it is enough to assume that rationality and trust in rationality are retained at choice nodes reachable by rational moves. The old money pump with foresight was not BI-terminating. In this paper, we present a new money pump with foresight, one that is both BI-terminating and considerably simpler. (shrink)

Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

Is an outcome where many people are saved and one person dies better than an outcome where the one is saved and the many die? According to the standard utilitarian justification, the former is better because it has a greater sum total of well-being. This justification involves a controversial form of moral aggregation, because it is based on a comparison between aggregates of different people's well-being. Still, an alternative justification—the Argument for Best Outcomes—does not involve moral aggregation. I extend the (...) Argument for Best Outcomes to show that any utilitarian evaluation can be justified without moral aggregation. (shrink)

What does evaluation mean? This article examines the evaluative process as a practical judgment that links a situation to a set of values in order to decide upon a course of action. It starts by discussing A. Sen’s “relational” and “comparative” account of evaluation, built in critical dialogue with J. Rawls’ deductive theory. Comparison, incompleteness, reality, and deliberation are the key principles of Sen’s approach, which, in some respects, echoes that of J. Dewey. The second part shows the relevance of (...) completing Sen’s approach with Dewey’s pragmatism, since Dewey’s emphasis on practical judgment is a useful counterbalance to Sen’s focus on evaluation as a cognitive process. Dewey introduces a shift from values to valuation and draws a distinction between prizing and appraising, which makes the logic of inquiry and the search for consistency between means and ends in a given situation the fulcrum of evaluation. The third part of this paper addresses the relationship between values and norms in evaluative processes. Neither Sen nor Dewey deals with this question in a systematic way, although norms, which are both similar and different from values, contribute to frame evaluations in different ways: as horizons, resources, or constrains. Bringing norms into the picture means completing the pragmatist account with an institutionalist perspective, as we suggest through the example of the evaluation of work. (shrink)

Ontology and theology cannot be combined if ontology excludes non physical causes. This paper examines some possibilities for ontology to be combined with theology in so far as non physical causes are permitted. The paper builds on metaphysical findings that shows that separate ontological domains can interact causally indirectly via interfaces. As interfaces are not universes a first universe is allowed to be caused by an interface without violating the principle of causal closure of any universe. Formal theology can therefore (...) be based on the assumption that the (first) universe is caused by God if God is defined as the first cause. Given this, formal theology and science can have the same ontological base. (shrink)

Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. This is made (...) possible by a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality. (shrink)

This article develops a new measure of freedom of choice based on the proposal that a set offers more freedom of choice than another if, and only if, the expected degree of dissimilarity between a random alternative from the set of possible alternatives and the most similar offered alternative in the set is smaller. Furthermore, a version of this measure is developed, which is able to take into account the values of the possible options.

The genetically manipulated organism crisis demonstrated that technological development based solely on the law of the marketplace and State protection against serious risks to health and safety is no longer a warrant of ethical acceptability. In the first part of our paper, we critique the implicitly individualist social-acceptance model for State regulation of technology and recommend an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive analysis of the impacts and ethical acceptability of technologies. In the second part, we present a framework for the analysis (...) of impacts and acceptability, devised—with the goal of supporting the development of specific nanotechnological applications—by a team of researchers from various disciplines. At the conceptual level, this analytic framework is intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk. On a practical level, we present a reflective tool that makes it possible to take into account all the dimensions involved and understand the reasons invoked in determining impacts, assessing them, and arriving at a judgement about acceptability. (shrink)

Due to several recent scandals, Business Ethics is now firmly embraced. Whereas in the 1980s and early 1990s there were serious doubts expressed about combining ethics and business, the link now seems to have become self-evident. Fundamental questions about the tensions between business and ethics however continue to receive little attention. In this paper, based upon a debate concerning the Fair Trade company, the strains between business and ethics are analyzed. The article shows how several great thinkers have already considered (...) this tension. Three ways to conceptualize the tension between business and ethics have been distinguished, and these are outlined in the paper. In one approach, ethical entrepreneurship, value tensions are perceived as a source for entrepreneurship. However, this approach presupposes pluralistic ethics. Thinking only in terms of black and white is seen as blocking the ability to adequately handle the tension between business and ethics. Opting for ‘‘ethical entrepreneurship’’, as by Fair Trade, has fundamental and important consequences for the company’s communication policy. (shrink)

Bayesian models are often criticized for postulating computations that are computationally intractable (e.g., NP-hard) and therefore implausibly performed by our resource-bounded minds/brains. Our letter is motivated by the observation that Bayesian modelers have been claiming that they can counter this charge of “intractability” by proposing that Bayesian computations can be tractably approximated. We would like to make the cognitive science community aware of the problematic nature of such claims. We cite mathematical proofs from the computer science literature that show intractable (...) Bayesian computations, such as postulated in existing Bayesian models, cannot be tractably approximated. This does not mean that human brains do not (or cannot) implement the type of algorithms that Bayesian modelers are advancing, but it does mean that proposing that they do by itself does nothing to parry the charge of intractability, because the postulated algorithms are as intractable (i.e., require exponential time) as the computations they try to approximate. Besides our negative message for the community, our letter also makes a positive contribution by referring to a methodology that Bayesian modelers can use to try and parry the charge of intractability in a mathematically sound way. (shrink)

This book makes the powerful argument that Latin America needs to be a more central part of the discourse on emerging globalities and in the pursuit of an inter-civilizational focus to avoid West-centric perspectives. It deploys a cultural political economy approach that sees the global political economy as inescapably cultural and allows us to avoid the hyper-rational analysis of economics. It explores various aspects of contemporary Latin America from the revival of dependency theory, the ‘pink tide’ governments since 2000 and, (...) in particular, the potential of the Andean Buen Vivir political philosophy, to offer a distinctive paradigm for sustainable global development. The book provides a de-colonial frame and shows how many recent and new social science perspectives emerging globally are connected with Latin American scholars and Latin American social experiments: namely, dependency, decolonial and post-colonial epistemologies, post-neoliberalism, and the notion ofPluriverse. The book focuses on the cultural, the ethical, the economic and the political, and environmental dimensions of this transformation, which represents a reaction and alternative to the Western cultural, including ethical, economic, political, environmental crises. The readership for this book includes all who are fascinated by the globalization lens on the one hand, and the experience and lessons of Latin America on the other hand. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ La problématique de l’écriture et la vie sera abordée dans le présent article, où je soulignerai que, dès ses débuts, la position d’Hélène Cixous suppose une distanciation de l’auteure par rapport à l’écriture autobiographique. En centrant mon analyse sur une scène de Si près, je constate que l’expérience de la narratrice faite chez les écrivains publics à Oran démontre cette même position: c’est l’écrivain qui est l’inventeur de l’écriture et la fiction ne reproduit pas le réel. J’établis une comparaison (...) entre Cixous et Cervantes: dans Don Quichotte I, chapitre 9, il y a une scène métafictive qui, d’une manière semblable, nous incite à réfléchir sur « la vérité » de la fiction et sur le rôle de l’écrivain. Puisant l’énergie créatrice au rêve et à l’inconscient, Hélène Cixous crée à partir des traces autobiographiques qui parcourent son œuvre un « miracle littéraire ». Les fragments personnels, tirés de notre histoire commune, prennent une valeur universelle. (shrink)

Within child and childhood research, contextual approaches are foregrounded, thus emphasizing children as active agents who take part in the social world and who thereby challenge and reproduce everyday social practices. However, child researchers seem to differ when it comes to understanding and exploring the social engagement of children and adults as either separated or interwoven. When understanding the engagement of children and adults as two separate things, adults are positioned as potentially disturbing the children, who are in turn doing (...) what they themselves choose to. Accordingly, adults are to distance themselves from adult perceptions of children. From the position of an adult researcher, this would suggest a position of ‘least adult’. As an alternative, this article proposes that adults and children are involved in a common social practice and that, in consequence, their arrangements are interwoven and interdependent. The researcher is also involved in this common social practice and thereby becomes entangled in conflicts within this practice. Finally, this article calls for further investigations into how conflicts in professional practice also become conflicts in research practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Microscope of Experience: Christian Garve’s Translation of Cicero’s De Officiis (1783)Johan van der ZandeDuring the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Teschen of 1779, ending the phony War of Bavarian Succession, Frederick II and his court stayed in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. There, in conversation with Christian Garve, the city’s most famous son, the king strongly recommended a new German translation of Cicero’s On Moral Duties (...) (De Officiis), one of the classical texts of humanist philosophy and his favorite book. Frederick’s faithful subject dutifully obliged his sovereign. Four years later, in the subservient language of a dedication to a royal patron, Garve offered in due obedience to Frederick a result that, “perhaps flawed,” was “vindicated by the efforts directed toward the execution of the command.” 1Yet Garve’s interest in Cicero differed markedly from that of Frederick. After all, as Garve wrote in the preface to the philosophical commentary on his translation, Cicero’s book was written for “persons of the higher classes who participated in the affairs of state” and for whom “moral prescription often transformed into political instruction.” Clearly that was not the world in which Garve lived. The son of an artisan, Garve, after a brief stint as a professor of philosophy in Leipzig in the early 1770s, was forced by his illness to spend the rest of his life as a reclusive private scholar in his hometown. He admitted that Cicero sometimes “condescended to deal with those classes who occupy themselves as educators and scholars.” The producing classes, however, “this vast, indispensable, and valuable part of humankind,” could only find prescriptions [End Page 75] for the virtuous life in Cicero’s work insofar as they were human beings, not in relation to their station in life. In general terms Garve thought that Cicero had neglected to deal sufficiently with domestic duties, a reproach which he also leveled against another intellectual pedigree, Adam Ferguson. This did not mean, however, that Garve reduced the citizen’s actions to the private sphere, where they could be productive economically and concerned only with their own Bildung. On the contrary, for Garve useful citizens were those who committed themselves to sociability and to political engagement. Moral actions were not only to be judged according to their motivation (as Kant asserted) but also on their effects on society at large.This different emphasis, I suggest, was typical of the German popular philosophers, who in the time span between Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant formulated a philosophy of life and among whom Garve emerged as the foremost representative. As a group they constituted a philosophical movement in their own right and were not merely, as they are usually described, the popularizers of Wolff’s philosophy. Rather, popular philosophy was a characteristic compound of Wolffian rationalism and British empiricism. Some popular philosophers, mostly the older generation, were more inclined to the rationalist and others, among them Garve, to the empirical end of this spectrum. Little concerned with epistemological problems or with the irrational cult of life as were the life philosophies of the nineteenth century, the popular philosophers were primarily interested in the virtuous life, in a philosophical theory of moral and aesthetic action. Theirs was a “science of man,” that is, a combination of practical philosophy and literary skills with the goal of morally educating a literate but non-specialized public to be useful citizens of the absolute state. They wanted to speak with propriety on all themes of human existence rather than pursue those philosophical questions not directly related to human life. 2 I entirely agree with a recent commentator who describes Garve’s concerns as non-bourgeois, or better, pre-bourgeois and deeply rooted in humanist values. 3This approach shows in Garve’s Cicero translation and commentary. In Leipzig he had attended the lectures of the classical philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Reiz, who trained his students in precise, critical scholarship. When Garve became a professor himself, he and Reiz anonymously published a Latin edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Later, Garve wrote that his own philosophy was indebted to Reiz who had pointed out to him the close relationship between linguistic and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Microscope of Experience: Christian Garve’s Translation of Cicero’s De Officiis (1783)Johan van der ZandeDuring the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Teschen of 1779, ending the phony War of Bavarian Succession, Frederick II and his court stayed in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. There, in conversation with Christian Garve, the city’s most famous son, the king strongly recommended a new German translation of Cicero’s On Moral Duties (...) (De Officiis), one of the classical texts of humanist philosophy and his favorite book. Frederick’s faithful subject dutifully obliged his sovereign. Four years later, in the subservient language of a dedication to a royal patron, Garve offered in due obedience to Frederick a result that, “perhaps flawed,” was “vindicated by the efforts directed toward the execution of the command.” 1Yet Garve’s interest in Cicero differed markedly from that of Frederick. After all, as Garve wrote in the preface to the philosophical commentary on his translation, Cicero’s book was written for “persons of the higher classes who participated in the affairs of state” and for whom “moral prescription often transformed into political instruction.” Clearly that was not the world in which Garve lived. The son of an artisan, Garve, after a brief stint as a professor of philosophy in Leipzig in the early 1770s, was forced by his illness to spend the rest of his life as a reclusive private scholar in his hometown. He admitted that Cicero sometimes “condescended to deal with those classes who occupy themselves as educators and scholars.” The producing classes, however, “this vast, indispensable, and valuable part of humankind,” could only find prescriptions [End Page 75] for the virtuous life in Cicero’s work insofar as they were human beings, not in relation to their station in life. In general terms Garve thought that Cicero had neglected to deal sufficiently with domestic duties, a reproach which he also leveled against another intellectual pedigree, Adam Ferguson. This did not mean, however, that Garve reduced the citizen’s actions to the private sphere, where they could be productive economically and concerned only with their own Bildung. On the contrary, for Garve useful citizens were those who committed themselves to sociability and to political engagement. Moral actions were not only to be judged according to their motivation (as Kant asserted) but also on their effects on society at large.This different emphasis, I suggest, was typical of the German popular philosophers, who in the time span between Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant formulated a philosophy of life and among whom Garve emerged as the foremost representative. As a group they constituted a philosophical movement in their own right and were not merely, as they are usually described, the popularizers of Wolff’s philosophy. Rather, popular philosophy was a characteristic compound of Wolffian rationalism and British empiricism. Some popular philosophers, mostly the older generation, were more inclined to the rationalist and others, among them Garve, to the empirical end of this spectrum. Little concerned with epistemological problems or with the irrational cult of life as were the life philosophies of the nineteenth century, the popular philosophers were primarily interested in the virtuous life, in a philosophical theory of moral and aesthetic action. Theirs was a “science of man,” that is, a combination of practical philosophy and literary skills with the goal of morally educating a literate but non-specialized public to be useful citizens of the absolute state. They wanted to speak with propriety on all themes of human existence rather than pursue those philosophical questions not directly related to human life. 2 I entirely agree with a recent commentator who describes Garve’s concerns as non-bourgeois, or better, pre-bourgeois and deeply rooted in humanist values. 3This approach shows in Garve’s Cicero translation and commentary. In Leipzig he had attended the lectures of the classical philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Reiz, who trained his students in precise, critical scholarship. When Garve became a professor himself, he and Reiz anonymously published a Latin edition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Later, Garve wrote that his own philosophy was indebted to Reiz who had pointed out to him the close relationship between linguistic and... (shrink)

Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y, then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z. Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assumptions for a variant of (...) Independence (called Independence for Constant Prospects), which shows that Allais and Ellsberg Preferences are irrational. Hence this influential objection (that is, the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences) can be rebutted. I also put forward a number of sequential dominance arguments that various versions of Independence are requirements of rationality. One of these arguments is based on very minimal assumptions, but the arguments for the versions of Independence which are strong enough to serve in the standard axiomatization of Expected Utility Theory need notably stronger assumptions. (shrink)

One of the principles on how to act under moral uncertainty, My Favourite Theory, says roughly that a morally conscientious agent chooses an option that is permitted by the most credible moral theory. In defence of this principle, we argue that it prescribes consistent choices over time, without relying on intertheoretic comparisons of value, while its main rivals are either plagued by moral analogues of money pumps or in need of a method for making non-arbitrary intertheoretic comparisons. We rebut the (...) arguments that have been levelled against My Favourite Theory and offer some arguments against intertheoretic comparisons of value. (shrink)

A dialogue, in three parts, on utilitarian vulnerability to exploitation.

ABSTRACT This article aspires to make two original contributions to the vast literature on Hobbes’s account of the nature and person of the commonwealth: (1) I provide the first systematic analysis of his changing conception of ‘person’; and (2) use it to show that those who claim that the Hobbesian commonwealth is created by personation by fiction misconstrue his theory of the state. Whereas Elements/de Cive advance a metaphysics-based distinction between individuals (‘natural persons’) and corporations (‘civil persons’), from Leviathan onwards (...) Hobbes contrasts individuals acting in their own name (‘natural persons’) with representatives (‘artificial persons’). These changes notwithstanding, Hobbes retains the same corporate conception of the state throughout. On the prevailing ‘fictionalist’ interpretation, the sovereign brings the commonwealth into existence by representing it. I argue, rather, that as an incorporation of natural persons, the commonwealth becomes one person through the authorized (i.e. non-fictitious) representation of each constituent member singly by one common representative (‘the sovereign’). (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis research examines how fake identities on social media create and sustain antagonistic and racist discourses. It does so by analysing 11 Danish Facebook pages, disguised as Muslim extremists living in Denmark, conspiring to kill and rape Danish citizens. It explores how anonymous content producers utilise Facebook’s socio-technical characteristics to construct, what we propose to term as, platformed antagonism. This term refers to socio-technical and discursive practices that produce new modes of antagonistic relations on social media platforms. Through a discourse-theoretical (...) analysis of posts, images, ‘about’ sections and user comments on the studied Facebook pages, the article highlights how antagonism between ethno-cultural identities is produced on social media through fictitious social media accounts, prompting thousands of user reactions. These findings enhance our current understanding of how antagonism and racism are constructed and amplified within social media environments. (shrink)