Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes exposed in the Apology. These include the relation of philosophy to democracy, rhetoric, politics, or society in general, and the overarching question of what comprises the philosophic life.

In Plato’s Apology of Socrates we see a philosopher in collision with his society—a society he nonetheless claims to have benefited through his philosophic activity. It has often been asked why democratic Athens condemned a philosopher of Socrates' character to death. This anthology examines the contribution made by Plato’s Apology of Socrates to our understanding of the character of Socrates as well as of the conception of philosophy Plato attributes to him. The 11 chapters offer complementary readings of the Apology, (...) which through their different approaches demonstrate the richness of this Platonic work as well as the various layers that can be discerned in its presentation of Socrates. -/- While the contributions display variety in both topics and angles, they also share common features: An awareness of the importance of the literary aspects of Plato’s courtroom drama, as well as a readiness to take into consideration the historical context of the work. Thereby they provide contributions to a manifold understanding of the aims and impact of the work, without losing sight of the philosophical questions that are raised by Socrates’ confrontational and unrepentant defense speech. Allowing the character of Socrates to take center stage, the chapters of this volume examine the philosopher in relation to ethics, and to politics and democracy, as well as to the ideology, religion, and virtue shared by the Athenians. -/- Readers will also find reflections on classical Platonic subjects such as the nature of Socratic philosophical inquiry and of philosophy itself, as well as on the notoriously ambiguous relationships between philosophy, sophistry and rhetoric, and their several relationships to truth and justice. The anthology emphasizes and explores the equivocal and sometimes problematic aspects of Socrates as Plato presents him in the Apology, illuminating why the Athenians let the verdict fall as they did, while drawing out problematic features of Athenian society and its reaction to Socrates’ philosophic activity, thereby encouraging reflection on the role philosophy can play in our modern societies. (shrink)

Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes in the Apology. These include the relation of philosophy to democracy, rhetoric, politics, or society in general, and the overarching question of what comprises the philosophic life.

Contributors to this volume focus on the character of Socrates as the embodiment of philosophy, employing this as a starting point for exploring various themes exposed in the Apology. These include the relation of philosophy to democracy, rhetoric, politics, or society in general, and the overarching question of what comprises the philosophic life.

In Plato’s Apology of Socrates we see a philosopher in collision with his society—a society he nonetheless claims to have benefited through his philosophic activity. It has often been asked why democratic Athens condemned a philosopher of Socrates' character to death. This anthology examines the contribution made by Plato’s Apology of Socrates to our understanding of the character of Socrates as well as of the conception of philosophy Plato attributes to him. The 11 chapters offer complementary readings of the Apology, (...) which through their different approaches demonstrate the richness of this Platonic work as well as the various layers that can be discerned in its presentation of Socrates. -/- While the contributions display variety in both topics and angles, they also share common features: An awareness of the importance of the literary aspects of Plato’s courtroom drama, as well as a readiness to take into consideration the historical context of the work. Thereby they provide contributions to a manifold understanding of the aims and impact of the work, without losing sight of the philosophical questions that are raised by Socrates’ confrontational and unrepentant defense speech. Allowing the character of Socrates to take center stage, the chapters of this volume examine the philosopher in relation to ethics, and to politics and democracy, as well as to the ideology, religion, and virtue shared by the Athenians. -/- Readers will also find reflections on classical Platonic subjects such as the nature of Socratic philosophical inquiry and of philosophy itself, as well as on the notoriously ambiguous relationships between philosophy, sophistry and rhetoric, and their several relationships to truth and justice. The anthology emphasizes and explores the equivocal and sometimes problematic aspects of Socrates as Plato presents him in the Apology, illuminating why the Athenians let the verdict fall as they did, while drawing out problematic features of Athenian society and its reaction to Socrates’ philosophic activity, thereby encouraging reflection on the role philosophy can play in our modern societies. (shrink)

Gaze following occurs automatically in social interactions, but the degree to which gaze is followed depends on whether an agent is perceived to have a mind, making its behavior socially more relevant for the interaction. Mind perception also modulates the attitudes we have towards others, and deter-mines the degree of empathy, prosociality and morality invested in social interactions. Seeing mind in others is not exclusive to human agents, but mind can also be ascribed to nonhuman agents like robots, as long (...) as their appearance and/or behavior allows them to be perceived as intentional beings. Previous studies have shown that human appearance and reliable behavior induce mind perception to robot agents, and positively affect attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. What has not been investigated so far is whether different triggers of mind perception have an independent or interactive effect on attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. We examine this question by manipulating agent appearance (human vs. robot) and behavior (reliable vs. random) within the same paradigm and examine how congruent (human/reliable vs. robot/random) versus incongruent (human/random vs. robot/reliable) combinations of these triggers affect performance (i.e., gaze fol-lowing) and attitudes (i.e., agent ratings) in human-robot interaction. The results show that both ap-pearance and behavior affect human-robot interaction but that the two triggers seem to operate in iso-lation, with appearance more strongly impacting attitudes, and behavior more strongly affecting per-formance. The implications of these findings for human-robot interaction are discussed. (shrink)

The goal of this short chapter, aimed at philosophers, is to provide an overview and brief explanation of some central concepts involved in predictive processing (PP). Even those who consider themselves experts on the topic may find it helpful to see how the central terms are used in this collection. To keep things simple, we will first informally define a set of features important to predictive processing, supplemented by some short explanations and an alphabetic glossary. -/- The features described here (...) are not shared in all PP accounts. Some may not be necessary for an individual model; others may be contested. Indeed, not even all authors of this collection will accept all of them. To make this transparent, we have encouraged contributors to indicate briefly which of the features are necessary to support the arguments they provide, and which (if any) are incompatible with their account. For the sake of clarity, we provide the complete list here, very roughly ordered by how central we take them to be for “Vanilla PP” (i.e., a formulation of predictive processing that will probably be accepted by most researchers working on this topic). More detailed explanations will be given below. Note that these features do not specify individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the application of the concept of “predictive processing”. All we currently have is a semantic cluster, with perhaps some overlapping sets of jointly sufficient criteria. The framework is still developing, and it is difficult, maybe impossible, to provide theory-neutral explanations of all PP ideas without already introducing strong background assumptions. (shrink)

This essay addresses Cartesian duality and how its implicit dialectic might be repaired using physics and information theory. Our agenda is to describe a key distinction in the physical sciences that may provide a foundation for the distinction between mind and matter, and between sentient and intentional systems. From this perspective, it becomes tenable to talk about the physics of sentience and ‘forces’ that underwrite our beliefs (in the sense of probability distributions represented by our internal states), which may ground (...) our mental states and consciousness. We will refer to this view as Markovian monism, which entails two claims: (1) fundamentally, there is only one type of thing and only one type of irreducible property (hence monism). (2) All systems possessing a Markov blanket have properties that are relevant for understanding the mind and consciousness: if such systems have mental properties, then they have them partly by virtue of possessing a Markov blanket (hence Markovian). Markovian monism rests upon the information geometry of random dynamic systems. In brief, the information geometry induced in any system—whose internal states can be distinguished from external states—must acquire a dual aspect. This dual aspect concerns the (intrinsic) information geometry of the probabilistic evolution of internal states and a separate (extrinsic) information geometry of probabilistic beliefs about external states that are parameterised by internal states. We call these intrinsic (i.e., mechanical, or state-based) and extrinsic (i.e., Markovian, or belief-based) information geometries, respectively. Although these mathematical notions may sound complicated, they are fairly straightforward to handle, and may offer a means through which to frame the origins of consciousness. (shrink)

According to active inference, action is enabled by a top-down modulation of sensory signals. Computational models of this mechanism complement ideomotor theories of action representation. Such theories postulate common neural representations for action and perception, without specifying how action is enabled by such representations. In active inference, motor commands are replaced by proprioceptive predictions. In order to initiate action through such predictions, sensory prediction errors have to be attenuated. This paper argues that such top-down modulation involves systematic misrepresentations. More specifically, (...) the paper first argues for the following conditional claim. If active inference provides an accurate computational description of how action is enabled in the brain, then action is enabled by systematic misrepresentations. Furthermore, it is argued that an inference to the best explanation provides reason for believing the antecedent is true: Firstly, active inference provides a crucial extension to ideomotor theories. Secondly, active inference explains otherwise puzzling phenomena related to sensory attenuation, e.g. in force-matching or self-tickling paradigms. Taken together, these reasons support the claim that action is indeed enabled by systematic misrepresentations. The claim casts doubt on the assumption that representations are systematically beneficial to the extent that they are true: if the argument in this paper is sound, systematically beneficial misrepresentations may lie at the heart of our neural architecture. (shrink)

Sengzhao (c.374–414) was a Chinese Neo-Daoist who converted to Mahāyāna Buddhism, and few people doubt his influence on Chinese Buddhist philosophy. In this article, provided his Neo-Daoism (xuanxue) and Madhyamaka Buddhism, I will present how Sengzhao featured a symbolic meaning of ‘void’ (śūnya) as rooted originally in Daoism. The Daoist contradictions, in particular between ‘being’ (you) and ‘nothing [non-being]’ (wu), are essential to the development of his doctrine of ‘no ultimate void’ (不真空論, Buzhenkonglun). To understand what Sengzhao meant by ‘void’, (...) which is in denial about the ultimate reality, I broach a notion of nihil (‘nothing’ but also ‘no value’) that bears on his discursive practice. In this light, I formulate a Daoist argument for contradictions and ECN (ex contradictione nihil—nothing follows from contradictions) from Laozi’s Daodejing. Furthermore, I elaborate on Sengzhao’s defence of ECN in his Buzhenkonglun. Reconstructing his negative approach to contradictions within the scope of the four-valued expressions (catuṣkoṭi) in the Madhyamaka tradition from Nāgārjuna, I consider a likely objection that a fifth value such as the ineffable may be inferred as void. Instead of subsuming the ineffable value under his discourse, I finally endorse Sengzhao’s purpose of linguistic and conventional approximation to the ultimate reality as silence. As such, I conclude the significance of void in Sengzhao’s denials via contradictions (ECN), i.e. an early philosophical peak of Chinese Buddhism from Daoism. (shrink)

Kairos has been a key concept in medicine for millennia and is frequently understood as “the right time” in relation to treatment. In this study we scrutinize kairos in the context of diagnostics. This has become highly topical as technological developments have caused diagnostics to be performed ever earlier in the disease development. Detecting risk factors, precursors, and predictors of disease (in biomarkers, pre-disease, and pre-pre-disease) has resulted in too early diagnoses, i.e., overdiagnoses. Nonetheless, despite vast advances in science and (...) technology, diagnoses also come too late. Accordingly, timing diagnostics right is crucial. In this article we start with giving a brief overview of the etymology and general use of the concepts of kairos and diagnosis. Then we delimit kairos in diagnostics by analysing “too early” and “too late” diagnosis and by scrutinizing various phases of diagnostics. This leads us to define kairos of diagnostics as the time when there is potential for sufficient information for making a diagnosis that is most helpful for the person. It allows us to conclude that kairos is as important in diagnostics as in therapeutics. (shrink)

This chapter explores to what extent some core ideas of predictive processing can be applied to the phenomenology of time consciousness. The focus is on the experienced continuity of consciously perceived, temporally extended phenomena (such as enduring processes and successions of events). The main claim is that the hierarchy of representations posited by hierarchical predictive processing models can contribute to a deepened understanding of the continuity of consciousness. Computationally, such models show that sequences of events can be represented as states (...) of a hierarchy of dynamical systems. Phenomenologically, they suggest a more fine-grained analysis of the perceptual contents of the specious present, in terms of a hierarchy of temporal wholes. Visual perception of static scenes not only contains perceived objects and regions but also spatial gist; similarly, auditory perception of temporal sequences, such as melodies, involves not only perceiving individual notes but also slightly more abstract features (temporal gist), which have longer temporal durations (e.g., emotional character or rhythm). Further investigations into these elusive contents of conscious perception may be facilitated by findings regarding its neural underpinnings. Predictive processing models suggest that sensorimotor areas may influence these contents. (shrink)

This paper is about two controversial inference-patterns involving counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals. Given a plausible assumption about the truth-conditions of counterfactuals, it is shown that one can't go wrong in applying hypothetical syllogism (i.e., transitivity) so long as the set of worlds relevant for the conclusion is a subset of the sets of worlds relevant for the premises. It is also shown that one can't go wrong in applying antecedent strengthening so long as the set of worlds relevant for the (...) conclusion is a subset of that for the premise. These results are then adapted to Lewis's theory of counterfactuals. (shrink)

The article tries to defend three theses: First the opinion that in fact philosophical and empirical aesthetics can be clearly distinguished and as well juxtaposed, but the term experimental aesthetics should not only be reserved for aesthetics, which can be found outside of philosophy. Because notably phenomenological aesthetics, so the second thesis, are in a certain way experimental aesthetics – namely if and only if the method of Eidetic Variation is used and insofar this method can be understood as a (...) form of a mental self-experiment. Since this method is not only used in phenomenological philosophy, thirdly the opinion should be defended that there is a long tradition of experimental aesthetics in philosophy taken as a whole and e.g. Kant’s transcendental aesthetic is an epitome of such kind, because it bases its claim for knowledge neither inductively nor deductively, but using the experiment of an Eidetic Variation. (shrink)

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.1 Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being (...) in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload. (shrink)

Los criterios de excelencia e innovación a la hora de valorar las tecnologías de la comunicación se ven afectados por un gran número de factores, pero al final hay uno que prima sobre todos los demás: la calidad de la imágenes utilizadas, como sucede con National Geographic y Walt Disney, dos empresas de comunicación que han sido determinantes a la hora de fijar los criterios estándar de excelencia e innovación. En este contexto se reconstruye el debate contemporáneo entre Wiesing, Levinson, (...) Crowther y Seel acerca de los criterios de excelencia e innovación usados a la hora de valorar la calidad de las imágenes virtuales mediáticas por parte de las tecnologías de la comunicación, teniendo en cuenta su cuádruple dimensión genético-retroductiva, simbólica, contextual y estrictamente escénica. (shrink)

Pāṇinīyavyākaraṇodāharaṇakośaḥ; La grammaire paninéenne par ses exemples; Paninian Grammar through Its Examples, vol. I: Udāharaṇasamāhāraḥ; L’ensemble des exemples; The Collection of Examples; saṁśodhitaprakāśanam, édition révisée, revised edition. Two parts. By F. Grimal, V. Venkataraja Sarma, S. Lakshminarasimham, K. V. Ramakrishnamacharyulu, and Jagadeesh Bhat. Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha Series, vols. 309, 310; Collection indologie 93.1.1, 2. Tirupati: Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha; Pondichéry: École française d’Extrème-Orient; Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2018. Pp. xiii + 757 + 481. Rs. 680, 450.

In A Philosophy of Luxury Lambert Wiesing offre una trattazione originale del concetto di lusso in una prospettiva meramente estetica. Avendo escluso ogni relazione con concetti sociali, quali prestigio, ostentazione, status, Wiesing dichiara che per lusso si deve intendere un’esperienza estetica di tipo particolare. Poiché solo l’uomo indulge nel lusso, ciò che va analizzato è la relazione che intercorre tra un soggetto e un dato oggetto, prescindendo dalle qualità estetiche proprie di quest...

På mange måter er dette en bok som blir utgitt alt for sent. Det er den første antologien av sitt slag, og retter fokus på kvinnelige metafysikere som virket i den tidlige moderne perioden (16. og tidlig 17. århundre). Redaktør Emily Thomas skriver i introduksjonen at til tross for at flere antologier om moderne metafysikk allerede finnes, er kvinnelige filosofer fortsatt underrepresentert og den filosofiske kanon mannsdominert. De ni filosofene som blir omtalt i totalt 13 kapitler var alle originale og (...) velkjente tenkere i sin samtid, men har blitt glemt i filosofihistoriens løp. (shrink)

Now available in English for the first time, The Visibility of the Image explores the development of an influential aesthetic tradition through the work of six figures. Analysing their contribution to the progress of formal aesthetics, from its origins in Germany in the 1880s to semiotic interpretations in America a century later, the six chapters cover: Robert Zimmermann (1824-1898), the first to separate aesthetics and metaphysics and approach aesthetics along the lines of formal logic, providing a purely syntactic way of (...) using signs, regardless of objective content; Alois Riegl (1858-1905), who went on to further develop aesthetics on the model of formal logic, creating a theory of style in response to Zimmermann's call for an aesthetics oriented toward formal logic; Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), who represents a step toward an understanding of consciousness by using pictures as cognitive tools; Konrad Fiedler (1841-1895), the Saxon philosopher who considered the possibility that some kinds of images are made and viewed not for what they show, but for their visibility's sake alone; Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), responsible for taking up the connections between the problems of reducing the range of potential meanings and contexts of a given image down to just the picture surface; Charles William Morris (1901-1979), who set out to establish whether a picture with no objective reference, such as an abstract painting, still counts as a sign, and if so, in what sense. Bringing these thinkers together and interlinking their ideas, Lambert Wiesing presents an engaging history of formal aesthetics, while reconstructing the philosophical foundations for the appearance of new image forms in the 20th century, including the video-clip, abstract collage, digital simulation and virtual reality. Using this original approach, The Visibility of the Image introduces the rise of modern image theory and provides a valuable account of our engagement with pictures in the 21st century. (shrink)

Philosophische Mythen und Modelle. Unzufriedenheit auf höchstem Niveau ; Der Mythenvorwurf in der Philosophie ; Modellierende Philosophie : eine contradictio in adjecto ; Der Mythos des Gegebenen ; Vom Mythos desGegebenen zum Mythos des Mittelbaren ; Interpretationismus und Wahrnehmungsphilosophie ; Transzendentaler Interpretationismus ; Die Verbindung des Mythos des Gegebenen mit dem Mythos des Mittelbaren : Repräsentationalismus ; Das Paradigma des Zugangs -- Phänomenologie : die Philosophie ohne Modell. Phänomenale Gewißheit ; Vom cartesischen Cartesianismus zum phänomenologischen Cartesianimus ; Intentionalität : das (...) fundamentum inconcussum relationalis ; Zu den Sachen und zurück zur Sprache ; Phänomenologische Protreptik ; Eidetische Variation -- Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Von den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit zu den Folgen der Wirklichkeit ; Vom Primat des Wahrnehmenden zum Primat der Wahrnehmung ; Vom Ich zum Mich der Wahrnehmung ; Die Zumutung dauernder Anwesenheit ; Die Beschreibung der Anwesenheitszumutung : der Gehalt der Wahrnehmung ; Die Qualität der Wahrenmung und der Auffassungssinn ; Sich sicher sein, daß etwas der Fall ist : Wissen und Gewißheit ; Die unmögliche Epoché ; Vom Eindruck zum Ausdruck zur Teilhabe ; Transzendentale Ästhetik und die Unterstellung von Anschauungsformen ; Die Leiblichkeit des Wahrnehmenden : eine folge der Wahrnehmung ; Die Kontinuität des Wahrgenommenen ; Das Wahrgenommene und die Ursache der Wahrnehmung ; Die Zumutung der Öffentlichkeit ; Die Identität des Mich -- Die Partizipationspause. Pause versus Unterbrechung ; Die drei Paradigmen der Bildwahrnehmungstheorie ; Das besondre Objekt der Bildwahrnehmung ; Die besonderen Folgen der Bildwahrnehmung ; Zum Zuschauen gezwungen ; Die optische Entindividualisierung des Mich ; Zur Teilnahme entschieden. (shrink)

Nobody claims to be a proponent of white feminism, but according to the critique presented in this article, many in fact are. I argue that feminism that does not take multiple axes of oppression into account is bad in three ways: it strategically undermines solidarity between women; it risks inconsistency by advocating justice and equality for some women but not all; and it impedes the ultimate function of feminism function by employing epistemological “master’s tools” that stand in antithesis to feminist (...) emancipatory work. In investigating ethnocentrism in feminism, I develop the idea of latent ethnocentrism, which occupies the space between meaning that is generated from reference to the self and overt racism. I identify an epistemological prong in the ethnocentrism charge against feminism, where I draw on bell hooks’ interlocking axes-model of oppression to answer why the ethnocentrism problem is important for feminism and what its underlying epistemological causes are. I draw on Uma Narayan’s destabilization of cultural dualisms to argue that they do not serve emancipatory agendas. There is a mutually constitutive relation between language that informs our understanding, on the one hand, and the political agendas that produce this language to sustain the male and the western norm as center, on the other hand. I call this circular and reciprocally reinforcing mechanism the episteme-politic. I conclude that the ethnocentrism problem is not merely an issue of strategy or feminist consistency but of shooting oneself in the foot by uncritically accepting patriarchal concepts for feminist politics. (shrink)

Leibniz seeks to establish the tenability of faith and reason in his moral philosophy through a tripod of thought, consisting of 1) fundamental human goodness; 2) human error in judgment; and 3) that God is just. A difficulty arises concerning how God can justly punish human beings if they always will what is Good. By considering akrasia, which occurs when error is committed despite its clear nonconformity with the Good, and examining the Leibnizian concept of “judgment,” Leibniz’s tripod can be (...) upheld. (shrink)

Robustness is a fundamental property of biological systems, observed ubiquitously across species and at different levels of organization from gene regulation to ecosystem. The theory of biological robustness argues that robustness fosters evolv-ability and that together they entail various tradeoffs as well as characteristic architectures and mechanisms. We argue that classes of biological systems have evolved to enhance their robustness by extending their system boundary through a series of symbioses with foreign biological entities . A series of major biological innovations (...) has been achieved by events consistent with this framework: horizontal gene transfer, serial endosymbiosis, oocytes-mediated vertical infection, and host-symbiont mutualism for bacterial flora. Self-extending symbiosis contributes to robustness because symbiotic foreign biological entities can enhance the adaptative capacity of the system against environmental perturbations as well as contribute novel functions. In addition, evolutionary history indicates that the degree of symbiosis achieved has substantially changed from tight integration into the genome to loose integration as bacterial flora . The most dramatic example can be seen in the symbiosis of host immune system and bacterial flora in which substantial function of host defense depends on the proper maintenance of bacterial flora and its adaptive capability. Biological systems following this type of evolutionary path might have attained high levels of functionality, robustness, and evolvability. Thus, robustness, evolution, and self-extending symbiosis may form essential system principles for biology. (shrink)

This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, ...

Whilst the topic of representations is one of the key topics in philosophy of mind, it has only occasionally been noted that representations and representational features may be gradual. Apart from vague allusions, little has been said on what representational gradation amounts to and why it could be explanatorily useful. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel take on gradation of representational features within the neuroscientific framework of predictive processing. More specifically, we provide a gradual account of (...) two features of structural representations: structural similarity and decoupling. We argue that structural similarity can be analysed in terms of two dimensions: number of preserved relations and state space granularity. Both dimensions can take on different values and hence render structural similarity gradual. We further argue that decoupling is gradual in two ways. First, we show that different brain areas are involved in decoupled cognitive processes to a greater or lesser degree depending on the cause (internal or external) of their activity. Second, and more importantly, we show that the degree of decoupling can be further regulated in some brain areas through precision weighting of prediction error. We lastly argue that gradation of decoupling (via precision weighting) and gradation of structural similarity (via state space granularity) are conducive to behavioural success. (shrink)

The World Medical Association has announced that a new revision process of the Declaration of Helsinki has been started. This article will identify the criticisms that have been made in the bioethics literature, particularly since the last revision. In addition, criticisms are discussed that were made in the literature even before the last revision and have not fallen silent. The plausibility of the recommendation for a change in the Declaration of Helsinki is examined.

Across two studies the hypotheses were tested that stressful situations affect both leadership ethical acting and leaders' recognition of ethical dilemmas. In the studies, decision makers recruited from 3 sites of a Swedish multinational civil engineering company provided personal data on stressful situations, made ethical decisions, and answered to stress-outcome questions. Stressful situations were observed to have a greater impact on ethical acting than on the recognition of ethical dilemmas. This was particularly true for situations involving punishment and lack of (...) rewards. The results are important for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of an organization, especially with regard to the analysis of the Stressors influencing managerial work and its implications for ethical behavior. (shrink)

As kendo continues to gain in international popularity, there are hopes for its adoption in the Olympic Games as an international competitive event, even while moves to further this aim have not necessarily occurred in Japan or elsewhere. One reason for the efforts to achieve a form of globalization of kendo different from Judo is the attempt to adhere to and preserve the unique concepts kendo, the sport embodies by remaining true to the forms of traditional Japanese culture. This is (...) epitomized by the importance given to zanshin (the combination of posture and fighting spirit after striking), one of the key concepts that constitute yuko-datotsu in kendo. Our purpose in this study is to discuss the intersubjective nature of the decisions regarding the conditions for point-scoring in competitive sports. In particular, we will focus on the aesthetics required for zanshin in kendo, focusing on the theory behind yuko-datotsu (point score), which will also considerably influence its international dissemination. Kendo is characterized from the perspective of western rationalism as an appreciation of form and rules of behavior referred to as formalism and, in this respect, it has unique characteristics differing from those of modern sports that are disseminated internationally. In martial arts, besides refinement and proficiency in the rules of behavior by rigidly adhering to form and rules of behavior and repetition, the aim is to transcend said form and the rules of behavior and embody the spiritual nature dwelling in the background. Kendo should remain traditional path and keep zanshin in the value of point (yuko-datotsu) for its virtue. Kendo has not yet developed into an international competitive sport, but it is in the process of traversing that Geido path as a Do for the purpose of character building through it. Throughout life, one should try to devote oneself to kendo with thought for the value of transcending form and the rules of behaviour, and embodying the spiritual nature of the sport that inheres in its background. That is why one may perceive an evident hesitation or indeed negativity regarding the possible internationalization or development as an Olympic event. (shrink)

大学の文科系、理科系を問わずすべての学生を対象にした、教養教育のための生物学のテキストである。本書の目的のひとつは、学習を通して「生命」という概念について主体的に問いかけ考えられるようになることである 。生物学が発展してきた経緯と基本概念となる科学的生命観について科学史や科学論から説き明かす。そしてDNAの構造と機能からみた生物のしくみ、進化のプロセス、ダーウィンの進化論からドーキンスの利己的遺伝子 までを現代生物学の知見をもとに解説する。近年、注目を浴びているiPS細胞に至る研究の歴史と意義についての興味深い解説、さらに生物と環境のあり方について学際的視点にたって論じるなど、新しい時代の生物学を 概観している。.