The objective of the present research was two-fold: to provide a new definition of ethical competence, and to clarify the influence of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality on ethical competence. The present research provides a comprehensive overview about recent approaches and empirically explores the interconnections of these constructs. 366 German undergraduate students were examined in a cross-sectional study that investigated the relationship of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality with moral judgment competence and (...) counterproductive work behavior as indicators of moral judgment and behavior. We found self-transcendence values to be related to both, high levels of empathy and ethical competence, in contrast to self-enhancement values. Multiple mediation analysis revealed unique effects of empathy on ethical competence through values as mediators. Affective empathy transmitted its effect on ethical competence through benevolence, conformity, tradition, power, and hedonism. Most importantly, perspective taking lost its predictive power when investigated alongside affective empathy dimensions. These results converge to an important role of affective empathy, in particular empathic concern, with regard to personal values and ethical competence. Furthermore, the five-factor model of personality explained variance in measures of ethical competence. Our research suggests that organizational decision makers should consider the role of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model in their human resource management in order to select employees with high ethical competence. (shrink)

Il libro scava nel profondo dell' umanitā per mostrare la pericolositā della paura, i notevoli rischi e le sofferenze che la paura individuale e la paura collettiva comportano, senza dimenticare il rapporto fra potere e paura.

This paper aims to elucidate the emphatic demand of the Listening Pastoral inside the Catholic Church. The Supreme Pontiff, Pope Francis, dreams with a clergy with a greater capacity to handle the Christian community in its most relevant urgencies, such as youth accompaniment, specially an active listening made with attentive ears. From this base the article proposes a new method for accompaniment: a pastoral of listening according to the Humanistic Integrative Counseling model. However, the Listening Pastoral doesn’t have agents with (...) the required formation, therefore, beyond the technique, it is important the attitudes of the professional, who welcomes the marginalized and weakened. At the end of the article a list of attitudes will be presented having in mind a pastoral accompaniment. (shrink)

I raise some questions about differentiations between methods, checking methods, and appropriate methods in terms of their modal profiles. Melchior argues that there can be sensitive checking methods which are not safe. I try to show that such methods are epistemically deficient. I introduce restricted sensitivity (RS) and investigate its checking profile. RS with respect to a proposition _p_ requires that we consider more non-p worlds (not just the closest ones) but not those which are irrelevant (outside a sphere of (...) seriously possible worlds). Restrictedly sensitive methods (vacuously sensitive and strongly safe) based on the appropriate type of Bayesian reasoning might be sufficient for some kind of “modest” checking. Melchior defends a uniform account of checking based on insensitivity even in the case of necessary true propositions and he introduces the apparatus of impossible worlds. I argue that an unsatisfactory method for checking a necessary true proposition is a way of reaching a belief in the target proposition (different from the original one) which might easily not have delivered a true one. I also indicate some limitations of the idea that checking (and knowing) is essentially modal in character. (shrink)

This book is a highly original and provocative contribution to democratic theory.

In gegenwärtigem sozialen Protest lässt sich, mit Eva von Redecker, eine „Revolution für das Leben“ ausmachen: eine neue Protestform, die sich durch einen Bezug auf bedrohtes Leben auszeichnet und die Vulnerabilität politisiert. Im vorliegenden Beitrag möchte ich mit John Dewey ein Verständnis von Politisierung durch sozialen Protest entwickeln und dieses in Bezug auf die „Revolution für das Leben“ erläutern. Dazu schlage ich vor, Politisierung als Problematisierung auf drei Ebenen zu begreifen. Sozialer Protest artikuliert, erstens, ausgehend von Erfahrungen, Sachverhalte als Probleme (...) von öffentlicher Bedeutung, die einer Lösung bzw. Bearbeitung bedürfen. Zweitens thematisiert er diese zugleich als Probleme zweiter Ordnung, d.i. als Probleme sozialer Institutionen und gesellschaftlicher (Selbst-) Gestaltung. Und schließlich stellt sozialer Protest die Grenzen politischer Gemeinschaft zur Disposition, indem er zugleich Probleme dritter Ordnung, d.i. politischer Teilhabe adressiert. In diesem Sinne ist auch die „Revolution für das Leben“ zu verstehen: sie artikuliert Vulnerabilität nicht nur als sachliches Problem des Schutzes von akut bedrohten Leben, sondern auch als soziales Problem gestaltbarer Praktiken der Sorge um verletzliche Leben sowie als politisches Problem des Ausschlusses aus der Gemeinschaft derjenigen, deren Leben als der Sorge und des Schutzes wert und würdig anerkannt werden. (shrink)

Nietzsche est mort et c'est à nous à le faire vivre. Cet usage du texte n'est pas un retour à ce que Deleuze professait superbement : pour ce dernier, faire un enfant dans le dos (de Kant, de Bergson, voire de Nietzsche, même si Deleuze affirmait qu'avec ce dernier c'était l'inverse), c'était à la fois utiliser l'auteur pour lui faire dire ce qu'il n'avait explicitement pas dit, mais qui pouvait présenter un intérêt spéculatif, et, en même temps, dissimuler cet écart. (...) De fait, Deleuze disait "nous" ou "on", amalgamant ainsi sous le même pronom le commenté et le commentateur. Danilo Bilate, au contraire, revendique l'écart et le souligne tout au long de sa démonstration, rappelant ainsi sans cesse au lecteur que, s'il veut faire un enfant à Nietzsche, et si l'on nous permet de filer scabreusement la métaphore, c'est par-devant! Du même coup, là où Deleuze méprisait ouvertement toute philologie (jusqu'à ne pas même préciser les traductions utilisées), Danilo Bilate accorde à la terminologie nietzschéenne la plus grande attention. On interroge les textes pour ce qu'ils disent – car ils disent tout de même quelque chose par eux-mêmes si on veut bien les écouter. L'enfant qu'il s'agit de faire à Nietzsche en les écoutant est une éthique. Bertrand Binoche. (shrink)

Bayesian epistemologists support the norms of probabilism and conditionalization using Dutch book and accuracy arguments. These arguments assume that rationality requires agents to maximize practical or epistemic value in every doxastic state, which is evaluated from a subjective point of view (e.g., the agent’s expectancy of value). The accuracy arguments also presuppose that agents are opinionated. The goal of this paper is to discuss the assumptions of these arguments, including the measure of epistemic value. I have designed AI agents based (...) on the Bayesian model and a nonmonotonic framework and tested how they achieve practical and epistemic value in conditions in which an alternative set of assumptions holds. In one of the tested conditions, the nonmonotonic agent, which is not opinionated and fulfills neither probabilism nor conditionalization, outperforms the Bayesian in the measure of epistemic value that I argue for in the paper (α-value). I discuss the consequences of these results for the epistemology of rationality. (shrink)

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, (...) where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as inputand returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function α may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation isthat the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function α also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection. (shrink)

What kind of causality does the Aristotelian Prime Mover exert on the heaven? Who “loves” the Prime Mover? Renaissance peripatetic philosopher, Francesco Vimercato, a “royal” teacher of “Greek and Latin philosophy” in Paris during the forties and the fifties of the 16th century tried to resolve these traditional puzzles that resulted from the exegesis of the Metaphysics XII, 6–7. His solution appears to be innovative, if compared to the ancient and the medieval ones. It seems partially to prefigure the last (...) two decades’ interpretations of Aristotelian “theology”. (shrink)

Two issues in synapsid brain evolution are discussed: the presumed structure and function of the brain of the Synapsida/Diapsida common ancestral, and the enlargement of dorsal telencephalon. Ecological niches possibly occupied by some Carboniferous tetrapods are considered in order to speculate about evolution of major telencephalic sectors. An alternative interpretation of isocortical origins, based on differences in Pax-6 expression, is suggested for discussion.

Background: Research suggests that humans have the tendency to increase the valence of events when these are imagined to happen in the future, but to decrease the valence when the same events are imagined to happen in the past. This line of research, however, has mostly been conducted by asking participants to value imagined, yet probable, events. Our aim was to re-examine this time-valence asymmetry using real-life data: a Reuter’s news and a Facebook status updates corpus. Method: We organized the (...) Reuter news (120,000,000 words) and the Facebook status updates data (41,056,346 words) into contexts grouped in chronological order (i.e., past, present, and future) using verbs and years as time markers. These contexts were used to estimate the valence of each article and status update, respectively, in relation to the time markers using natural language processing tools (i.e., the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm). Results: Our results using verbs, in both text corpus, showed that valence for the future was significantly higher compared to the past (future > past). Similarly, in the Reuter year condition, valence increased approximately linear from 1994 to 1999 for texts written 1996-7. In the Facebook year condition, the valence of the future was also significantly higher than past valence. Conclusion: Generally, the analyses of the Reuters data indicated that the past is devaluated relative to both the present and the future, while the analyses of the Facebook data indicated that both the past and the present are devaluated against the future. On this basis, we suggest that people strive to communicate the promotion of a bright future and the prevention of a dark future, which in turn leads to a temporal-valence asymmetrical phenomenon (valence = pastshrink)

Nuestra tradición filosófica ha funcionando como un mito de la racionalidady no como un desarrollo de la racionalidad misma. Esta tradición muestratodas las características típicas de los sistemas mítico–mágicos. Sólo uncambio de condiciones sociales podría permitir el surgimiento de unaracionalidad genuina. De manera inversa, sólo el surgimiento de unaracionalidad genuina, podría producir el surgimiento de las condicionessociales apropiadas en las que la racionalidad pueda prosperar. No puedehaber un desarrollo filosófico genuino al margen de las condiciones socialesapropiadas. Se intenta aquí hacer (...) un bosquejo de esta situación. (shrink)

Al hablar sobre los actos de habla lo que Austin hacía o debía estar haciendo era tratando de articular una teoría de la eficacia de los actos de habla: ¿Cómo es que, por ejemplo, cuando digo a alguien en las circunstancias socialmente apropiadas ‘Lo nombro...’ la persona a quien me refiero queda nombrada? Esto es pura magia. Mis palabras funcionan como un hechizo. Constituyen un hechizo. Mis palabras son lo que son por el efecto social que producen. Oficiando como un (...) mago de su propia tribu filosófica, él es incapaz de romper el hechizo que lo mantiene cautivo. Su teoría de los actos de habla se encuentra condicionada por fuerzas sociales que él desconoce. Como resultado sus actos de habla sobre los actos de habla resultan fallidos. Este escrito es un intento de articular una perspectiva desde la que la situación social en la que Austin se encuentra, y la manera como ésta incide en la producción de su teoría pueda ser valorada. (shrink)

Com o objetivo de responder à questão sobre quais são as condições para que aconteça um filosófico ensino de filosofia, busca-se o diálogo com a obra _O ensino de filosofia como problema filosófico_, de Alejandro Cerletti. Critica-se o que ele denomina “pergunta filosófica” e valoriza-se sua proposta de ensino de filosofia como ensino da repetição criativa. Para construir esta proposta de um filosófico ensino de filosofia faz-se também a apropriação do conceito camusiano de embarcamento, utilizado por Albert Camus para descrever (...) o compromisso do artista com sua criação. É a partir do embarcamento que se pensa o compromisso docente com seu filosofar e com o filosofar de seus alunos. Enfim, defende-se que o filosofar deve ser compreendido como repetição criativa, como uma crítica à tradição filosófica, e, desse modo, o ensino de filosofia, acima de desafios pedagógicos ou uma questão de método, deve ser compreendido como uma problemática que deve ser tratada filosoficamente a partir do diálogo crítico e criativo com a história do pensamento filosófico, ou seja, a partir da noção de repetição criativa. (shrink)

God's character remains one of the big mysteries in Supernatural. We certainly see God's impact on the world, and occasionally, we're told he has miraculously interceded on behalf of the Winchesters or Castiel. Spinoza said, ”The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge.“ But after concluding that God exists, Spinoza concludes that evil does not. Ironically, while many thought of Spinoza as the Devil, he denied the Devil's existence. As Supernatural illustrates, loving relationships don't need to be mutually beneficial; one (...) person may even risk his life to save another person he loves. Often philosophical, the ending scene may hold the key to understanding God in Supernatural. The Philosopher John Locke argued that the idea of redemption could be arrived at in principle by the same sort of reasoning that arrives at the idea of God. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a comparison between Natorp, Husserl, and Sellars that has a twofold aim. First, I ask to what extent Sellars’s perspective can be considered to be Neo-Kantian. Second, I demonstrate that the point of divergence among these three thinkers does not have to do with the role they ascribe to givenness in knowledge, but with the way they conceive the activity of thinking. Focusing on Husserl’s reading of Natorp’s theses concerning the subjective and objective ground of (...) knowledge, I show that both Natorp and Husserl agree with Sellars on the limits of a positivistic and empiricist perspective that relies on what is given in perception for the justification of one’s epistemic beliefs. On the other hand, the differences between the three thinkers emerge as soon as we consider how they attempt to integrate the spontaneity of thinking into the sphere of intuition from a renewed Kantian perspective. (shrink)

Este artigo objetiva pensar como o ensino da filosofia pode produzir processos de transformação nos modos de vida ocasionando experiências de pensamento que ultrapassam o bom senso e o senso comum e problematizam o próprio pensamento no sentido de abri-lo à criação de outros modos de pensar e de agir. A partir da experiência do pensamento deflagrada pelo encontro da filosofia com a educação se desprende um movimento do pensar que afeta a vida de seus ensinantes e aprendentes abrindo-lhes possibilidades (...) de mudanças em seus modos habituais de compreender e se relacionar com a diversidade do mundo, tornando a filosofia um vetor de mutação e uma prática de resistência não apenas dentro, mas também fora da escola. (shrink)

Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. This points to the general (...) problem—the context of appreciation is not robust enough to ground modal intuitions about objective entities. In general, when epistemology dictates ontology there is always a threat of anti-realism, scepticism and relativism. Davies also appeals to the modality principle—an entity’s essential properties are all and only its constitutive properties. Davies understands essentiality in a traditional way: a property P is an essential property of an object o iff o could not exist and lack P. Kit Fine has recently made a convincing case for the view that the notion of essence is not to be understood in modal terms. I explore some of the implications of this view for Davies’ modal argument for the performance theory. (shrink)

Since Aristotle there are two main approaches in the explanation of begging the question (petitio): a dialectical mistake (an improper move in an argumentative dialogue) and an epistemic mistake. According to the latter begging the question is committed when the premises of an argument cannot be known independently of knowing the conclusion of the argument. Dialectical approaches use the notion of a commitment (acceptance, standpoint) and rules of dialogue as their basis. I propose a hybrid model, inspired by Jackson: the (...) rationale for introducing commitments and rules is epistemic. (shrink)

Philosophy is not all about parroting Western ideas and categorizations. There are esoteric philosophies, normally labelled as grassroot or indigenous, that are gaining recognition within formal academic circles. The Ilokano philosophy is alive at the margin, nonetheless implicit because its philosophical underpinnings are embedded in the way of life or cultural life of the Ilokanos. But through Maiyannatup a Panagripirip, the tacit Ilokano philosophy becomes outspoken and proves itself to be a rich source of humanistic principles. Dynamically translated as “Appropriate (...) Philosophizing” or “Philosophizing Cultural Life with Prudence”, Maiyannatup A Panagripirip is a methodological paradigm that employs suitable approaches and analyses to generate the Ilokano ontology, epistemology and ethics. It is this paradigm that ushers the Ilokanos to become wisdom-bearers and creators of value rather than mere passive consumers of culture. It unwraps as well the character of the Ilokano language and the discursive potentials of Ilokano philosophy at the arena of cultural pluralism. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to explore and expand the communicative potential of silence from non-Western cultural spaces, of Asian-indigenous worldviews as hermeneutical key to critical and cosmic consciousness. Specifically, it speaks of the llokano cosmic Nakem (cosmic self or cosmic sense of being). At the core of the llokano Nakem is a cosmic impulse that situates this indigenous culture's resilience within the dissipating ecological integrity. Just like in other Asian classical texts, e.g., Taoism where it speaks of a heavenly Dao which (...) is the origin and the law that sustains everything in the world, the Ilokano cosmic self lays at core of cultural belief-an ontology that is deeply founded on the tradition of silence. By seeking out a decisive break from dominant frameworks, this paper argues for the possibility of articulating alternative cultural and linguistic experiences as a political imperative towards a democratized world. (shrink)

Critical Social Theory's search for a normative ground of its engagement in the critique of contemporary societies is essentially founded on a reflexive way of thinking. Arguably, this can be traced back from modernity - specifically to Kant, Hegel, and Marx. This paper will demonstrate how the Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian practices of self-reflection inform the concept of social critique. By an adequate understanding of self-reflection, we secure the methodological foundation of critical social theory.

This paper is an attempt to explicate Jürgen Habermas’s discourse on education vis-à-vis his political project of a democratized society. Arguably, Habermas sees in the structures and processes inherent in the universities an ideal place for self-reflection and communicative action. Thus, his idea of a university is tied up with the potentials of establishing an emancipated, enlightened society. The agencies of selfreflection hinge with democratic practices and processes, and the facility of communicative action even in a differentiated and specialized learning (...) practices and processes in a bundled lifeworld in the universities boost the prospect of a democratized society. Together with other institutions that promote, enhance, and safeguard avenues of discourses free from domination, university education contributes to the realization of the democratization project. (shrink)

It has been one decade since the affirmative actions were implemented in Brazil, and the State University of Southwestern Bahia has been promoting them since 2009. Over these first 10 years, dozens of indigenous persons entered and graduated from this institution. Our goal is to reflect on such context based on institutional data by establishing comparisons with other segments that also access the university, as well as data from other higher education institutions. Despite the policy and good academic performance, the (...) number of indigenous persons who benefit from it still remains below the offer and is particularly concentrated in some courses in the health field. (shrink)

This paper aims to show the centrality of the Ilokano indigenous term Nakem (will) as a hermeneutical key to ontological and ethnoreligious musing. It probes the echoes of the sacred in indigenous belief systems and practices as appropriating Christian religiosity. It attempts to rediscover the inherent echoes of the transcendent Nakem (Divine Will) in day-to-day Ilokano life as its epiphany. This paper focuses on the Christian religion but is mindful of the other indigenous expressions of believing in a transcendent God. (...) It interprets the binding force that keeps the phrase “thy will be done” (matungpal koma ti nakemmo) as a fitting description of faith in Ilokano contemporary life. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore how, and to what extent, Italian thought – by its focalization on pre-modern theoretical issues and its distance from classical modern topics, such as the philosophy of conscience or the transcendence of language – can offer a different insight on contemporary social theory and critical theory, after the dissolution of the idea of totality as a foundational concept of modernity. In the last decades, a frame named ‘Italian theory’ has started to circulate (...) in international theoretical debates, often with the aim of replacing the exhausted paradigms of poststructuralism, postmodernism and deconstructionism. Indeed, ‘Italian thought’ seems to offer new insights, thinking about the ‘post-totality’ era in a different way. In the article we present a synthetic cartography of Italian thought and we analyse the way in which it can contribute to design new horizons for social theory. (shrink)

This paper proposes a rewriting of modernity departing form the argument that Western modernity has never been a unique tradition but rather a tension between at least two large slopes that have never ceased to be weighed and compared: an Anglo-Saxon and a Latin slope. Without neglecting the contribution of other traditions, and departing from the analysis of modernity today, the article makes the hypothesis that putting at the center analytically this Anglo-Saxon and Latin division, that is, undertaking the study (...) of the differential effects of geography on the history of modernity, makes it possible to propose a geo-modern rewriting of the contemporary situation. To interpret Western modernity from its origins as an intra-Western cleavage rather than as a unit, invites to read the past anew, but, moreover, it allows to shed new light to the historical present of modernity. (shrink)