The issue of the biological origin of consciousness is linked to that of its function. One source of evidence in this regard is the contrast between the types of information that are and are not included within its compass. Consciousness presents us with a stable arena for our actions—the world—but excludes awareness of the multiple sensory and sensorimotor transformations through which the image of that world is extracted from the confounding influence of self-produced motion of multiple receptor arrays mounted on (...) multijointed and swivelling body parts. Likewise excluded are the complex orchestrations of thousands of muscle movements routinely involved in the pursuit of our goals. This suggests that consciousness arose as a solution to problems in the logistics of decision making in mobile animals with centralized brains, and has correspondingly ancient roots. (shrink)

Dopamine is critically important in the neural manifestation of motivated behavior, and alterations in the human dopaminergic system have been implicated in the etiology of motivation-related psychiatric disorders, most prominently addiction. Patients with chronic addiction exhibit reduced dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) availability in the striatum, and the DRD2 TaqIA (rs1800497) and C957T (rs6277) genetic polymorphisms have previously been linked to individual differences in striatal dopamine metabolism and clinical risk for alcohol and nicotine dependence. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that the (...) variants of these polymorphisms would show increased reward-related memory formation, which has previously been shown to jointly engage the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and the hippocampus, as a potential intermediate phenotype for addiction memory. To this end, we performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 62 young, healthy individuals genotyped for DRD2 TaqIA and C957T variants. Participants performed an incentive delay task, followed by a recognition memory task 24 h later. We observed effects of both genotypes on the overall recognition performance with carriers of low-expressing variants, namely TaqIA A1 carriers and C957T C homozygotes, showing better performance than the other genotype groups. In addition to the better memory performance, C957T C homozygotes also exhibited a response bias for cues predicting monetary reward. At the neural level, the C957T polymorphism was associated with a genotype-related modulation of right hippocampal and striatal fMRI responses predictive of subsequent recognition confidence for reward-predicting items. Our results indicate that genetic variations associated with DRD2 expression affect explicit memory, specifically for rewarded stimuli. We suggest that the relatively better memory for rewarded stimuli in carriers of low-expressing DRD2 variants may reflect an intermediate phenotype of addiction memory. (shrink)

According to the class of de minimis decision principles, risks can be ignored (or at least treated very differently from other risks) if the risk is sufficiently small. In this article, we argue that a de minimis threshold has no place in a normative theory of decision making, because the application of the principle will either recommend ignoring risks that should not be ignored (e.g., the sure death of a person) or it cannot be used by ordinary bounded and information-constrained (...) agents. (shrink)

The de minimis principle states that some risks are so trivial that they can be ignored or treated categorically differently from non-trivial risks. Lundgren and Stefánsson criticize the de minimis principle, arguing that it either has to be applied locally or globally and that problems arise whichever application is chosen. Aven and Seif respond to Lundgren and Stefánsson’s argument and defend the de minimis principle as a “meaningful and useful perspective for handling risk in practice.” The response highlights some aspects (...) of the argument in Lundgren and Stefánsson that needs clarification, which is what we do in this note. (shrink)

A veritable tidal shift in Herder scholarship has taken place over the last quarter century, primarily but not exclusively in German. This review essay seeks to evoke the richness and vitality of this revival with the hope of persuading American academics that some ill-founded opinions still circulating concerning Herder's "irrationalism" and chauvinistic, even racist nationalism, and his philosophical naivety and literary effrontery, might at last be put to rest. The recent revival has brough sharply to the fore two crucial aspects (...) of Herder. First, there is the contribution of Herder's thought to the emergent cultural and social sciences. Second, for Herder the "science of man" was also a natural science: the division between the humanities and the natural sciences that has been such a hallmark of the age from Kant until very recently did not exist for Herder. (shrink)

Recently, Martin Smith defended a view he called the “normic de minimis expected utility theory”. The basic idea is to integrate a ‘normic’ version of the de minimis principle into an expected utility-based decision theoretical framework. According to the de minimis principle some risks are so small (falling below a threshold) that they can be ignored. While this threshold standardly is defined in terms of some probability, the normic conception of de minimis defines this threshold in terms of abnormality. In (...) this article, we present three independent arguments against the normic de minimis expected utility theory, focusing on its reliance on the de minimis principle. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have recently debated the ethical questions raised by disenhancing animals to improve their welfare. Here, we focus on the particular case of breeding hens for commercial egg-laying systems to become blind, in order to benefit their welfare. Many people find breeding blind hens intuitively repellent, yet ‘welfare-only’ positions appear to be committed to endorsing this possibility if it produces welfare gains. We call this the ‘Blind Hens’ Challenge’. In this paper, we argue that there are both empirical and (...) theoretical reasons why even those adopting ‘welfare-only’ views should be concerned about breeding blind hens. But we also argue that alternative views, which (for example) claim that it is important to respect the telos or rights of an animal, do not offer a more convincing solution to questions raised by the possibility of disenhancing animals for their own benefit. (shrink)

The present study examines the prevalence, localization, frequency, and intensity of playing-related pain in a sample of high-performing young musicians. We also address coping behavior and communication about PRP between young musicians, teachers, parents, and other people, such as friends. The aim is to provide information on PRP among high-performing musicians in childhood and adolescence, which can serve as a basis for music education, practice, and prevention in the context of instrumental teaching and musicians’ health. The study is part of (...) a large-scale study with highly musically gifted participants at the national level of the “Jugend musiziert” contest. For data analyses, we used descriptive statistics, correlations, Chi2-tests, principal component analysis, Kruskal–WallisHtests, and multivariate regression. About three-quarters of the surveyed participants stated that they had experienced pain during or after playing their instrument. Female musicians were significantly more frequently affected than male musicians. With increasing age, the prevalence of PRP rises from 71 percent to 85 percent. Regarding localization of pain, results are in line with many other studies with musculoskeletal problems the most common. Furthermore, data show a clear relationship between the duration of practice and the prevalence of PRP. Our study found averages of 7:18 h/week, whereas mean values of the duration of practice vary considerably between different instruments. The variance in practice duration is very large within the different instruments. Thus, when researching PRP, it is necessary to consider both the differences between different groups of instruments in the average duration of practice as well as the very large inter-individual variation in the duration of practice within a given instrument group. While just over half of the young musicians felt they had been taken seriously, 32 percent felt that their complaints were not completely taken seriously, and 12 percent did not feel taken seriously at all. Therefore, it is necessary to improve communication and information about PRP to prevent PRP and counteract existing complaints. (shrink)

Bjorn T. Ramberg’s book focuses on Davidson’s work in the philosophy of language, published between 1984 and the appearance of the book. Recent papers provide the focus for an overview of Davidson’s philosophy of language and its relations to broader debates and influences. Still, the reader is warned: the author “cannot claim” that the book “is in every detail a faithful representation or development of Davidson’s own current theory.” Instead, what we have is a “reconstruction” of Davidson on language (...) and meaning, an account “Davidsonian in spirit and in all its fundamental features.”1 The result is a projection of Davidson’s views, or important aspects of them, in a particular direction: Davidson and in- terpretation in process. The following critical discussion of main issues in Ramberg’s book should not dis- tract potential readers from this useful and thoughtful overview of Davidson on interpretation and meaning. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

The book is about logical analysis of natural language. Since we humans communicate by means of natural language, we need a tool that helps us to understand in a precise manner how the logical and formal mechanisms of natural language work. Moreover, in the age of computers, we need to communicate both with and through computers as well. Transparent Intensional Logic is a tool that is helpful in making our communication and reasoning smooth and precise. It deals with all kinds (...) of linguistic context in a fully compositional and anti-contextual way. (shrink)

Introduction: Platonic dramatology -- The political and philosophical problems. Using pre-Socratic philosophy to support political reform: the Athenian stranger ; Plato's Parmenides: Parmenides' critique of Socrates and Plato's critique of Parmenides ; Becoming Socrates ; Socrates interrogates his contemporaries about the noble and good -- Paradigms of philosophy. Socrates' positive teaching ; Timaeus-Critias: completing or challenging Socratic political philosophy? ; Socratic practice -- The trial and death of Socrates. The limits of human intelligence ; The Eleatic challenge ; The trial (...) and death of Socrates -- Conclusion: Why Plato made Socrates his hero. (shrink)

This study investigates the interrelation of outer appearance and spatial configuration of modern Chinese court buildings with the party-state’s strategy of building regime legitimacy. The spatial element of this relation is explored in four different court buildings in Kunming, Chongqing, Shanghai and Xi’an. It is argued that court buildings contribute to the empowerment of individuals who appear as parties in trials. Courthouses also facilitate the courts’ function of exercising social control and the application of an instrumentalist approach to the principle (...) of public trials. Both the grounding of court buildings in the past and their compliance with international models of a modern independent judiciary are aspects of consolidating regime legitimacy. (shrink)

A broad range of evidence regarding the functional organization of the vertebrate brain – spanning from comparative neurology to experimental psychology and neurophysiology to clinical data – is reviewed for its bearing on conceptions of the neural organization of consciousness. A novel principle relating target selection, action selection, and motivation to one another, as a means to optimize integration for action in real time, is introduced. With its help, the principal macrosystems of the vertebrate brain can be seen to form (...) a centralized functional design in which an upper brain stem system organized for conscious function performs a penultimate step in action control. This upper brain stem system retained a key role throughout the evolutionary process by which an expanding forebrain – culminating in the cerebral cortex of mammals – came to serve as a medium for the elaboration of conscious contents. This highly conserved upper brainstem system, which extends from the roof of the midbrain to the basal diencephalon, integrates the massively parallel and distributed information capacity of the cerebral hemispheres into the limited-capacity, sequential mode of operation required for coherent behavior. It maintains special connective relations with cortical territories implicated in attentional and conscious functions, but is not rendered nonfunctional in the absence of cortical input. This helps explain the purposive, goal-directed behavior exhibited by mammals after experimental decortication, as well as the evidence that children born without a cortex are conscious. Taken together these circumstances suggest that brainstem mechanisms are integral to the constitution of the conscious state, and that an adequate account of neural mechanisms of conscious function cannot be confined to the thalamocortical complex alone. (Published Online May 1 2007) Key Words: action selection; anencephaly; central decision making; consciousness; control architectures; hydranencephaly; macrosystems; motivation; target selection; zona incerta. (shrink)

This article proposes a way to zoom in on the concept of the social license to operate from the broader normative perspective of contractarianism. An SLO can be defined as a contractarian basis for the legitimacy of a company’s specific activity or project. “SLO”, as a fashionable expression, has its origins in business practice. From a normative viewpoint, the concept is closely related to social contract theory, and, as such, it has a political dimension. After outlining the contractarian normative background (...) to the SLO, we will show how academic concepts such as legitimacy and stakeholder management have a tendency to provide the intellectual underpinning for the business case for securing an SLO. While business case perspectives on the SLO may well be in line with the use of the term in business practice, we will highlight certain difficulties and ambiguities related to the instrumental use of the expression. In the final section, we briefly introduce the articles of this Special Issue to the reader and explain how they relate to the topic. (shrink)

It is often said that the claims of man and citizen are irreconcilable in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This view, most famously articulated by Judith Shklar, holds that the making of a man and the making of a citizen are to be understood as rival enterprises or competing alternatives. This reading has recently been challenged by Frederick Neuhouser. He argues that one can make a man and a citizen, but only if the education of each is performed in the (...) absence of the other. In his view, Emile is raised to be a man first before his subsequent instruction in citizenship. This paper challenges both views. I argue that the making of man and citizen are, in principle, neither rival enterprises nor competing alternatives, and that although Neuhouser is indeed correct to argue for a successive system of education, the making of a citizen is not completed in Emile, but extends into the Social Contract. His account diminishes the crucial role the Lawgiver plays in the fashioning of citizens capable of discerning the general will. I show that although raising individuals under a system of private instruction does not preclude their transformation into citizens but makes such a transformation possible, it is on its own incapable of making citizens. (shrink)

Giulio Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) proposes explaining consciousness by directly identifying it with integrated information. We examine the construct validity of IIT's measure of consciousness,phi(Φ), by analyzing its formal properties, its relation to key aspects of consciousness, and its co-variation with relevant empirical circumstances. Our analysis shows that IIT's identification of consciousness with the causal efficacy with which differentiated networks accomplish global information transfer (which is what Φ in fact measures) is mistaken. This misidentification has the consequence of requiring (...) the attribution of consciousness to a range of natural systems and artifacts that include, but are not limited to, large-scale electrical power grids, gene-regulation networks, some electronic circuit boards, and social networks. Instead of treating this consequence of the theory as a disconfirmation, IIT embraces it. By regarding these systems as bearers of consciousnessex hypothesi, IIT is led toward the orbit of panpsychist ideation. This departure from science as we know it can be avoided by recognizing the functional misattribution at the heart of IIT's identity claim. We show, for example, what function is actually performed, at least in the human case, by the cortical combination of differentiation with integration that IIT identifies with consciousness. Finally, we examine what lessons may be drawn from IIT's failure to provide a credible account of consciousness for progress in the very active field of research concerned with exploring the phenomenon from formal and neural points of view. (shrink)

The assertion “he could have done otherwise” represents a notorious problem in the science of penal law and in moral philosophy. Some philosophers have assumed that this statement is to be analysed as “he would have done otherwise if he had so chosen” (analysis view), thus believing to have found an interpretation which is compatible with determinism. It has been argued, however, that these two statements are not equivalent. The following article attempts to show that this objection is not far-reaching (...) enough. At the same time the analysis view is considered to be of little help, as it presupposes the solution of the problems it claims to solve. (shrink)

By means of a close reading of a single prayer on the Passion of Christ from the 14th century ‘Engelberg Prayerbook,’ this article analyzes three characteristic effects of reading medieval written prayers: first, the devotee assumes the role of the I constructed by the text. Secondly, this leads to an effect of immersion into a literarily constructed, imagined environment. Finally, these effects of reading aim at being surpassed by an immediacy of a divine answer that transcends the aesthetic and semantic (...) effects of the literary medium. (shrink)

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 30-32.

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 258-281, April 2022.

The ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ (Principles) that provide guidance for the implementation of the United Nations’ ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework (Framework) will probably succeed in making human rights matters more customary in corporate management procedures. They are likely to contribute to higher levels of accountability and awareness within corporations in respect of the negative impact of business activities on human rights. However, we identify tensions between the idea that the respect of human rights is a perfect (...) moral duty for corporations and the Principle’s ‘human rights due diligence’ requirement. We argue that the effectiveness of the ‘human rights due diligence’ is in many respects dependent upon the moral commitment of corporations. The Principles leave room for an instrumental or strategic implementation of due diligence, which in some cases could result in a depreciation of the fundamental norms they seek to promote. We reveal some limits of pragmatic approaches to coping with business-related human rights abuses. As these limits become more apparent, not only does the case for further progress in international and extraterritorial human rights law become more compelling, but so too does the argument for a more forceful discussion on the moral foundations of human rights duties for corporations. (shrink)

Ethnic slur terms and other group-based slurs must be differentiated from general pejoratives and pure expressives. As these terms pejoratively refer to certain groups of people, they are a typical feature of hate speech contexts where they serve xenophobic speakers in expressing their hatred for an entire group of people. However, slur terms are actually far more frequently used in other contexts and are more often exchanged among friends than between enemies. Hate speech can be identified as the most central, (...) albeit not the most frequent, mode of use. I broadly distinguish between hate speech, other pejorative uses, parasitic uses, neutral mentioning, and unaware uses. In this paper, authentic examples of use and frequency estimates from empirical research will help provide accurate definitions and insight into these different modes that purely theoretical approaches cannot achieve. (shrink)