This special issue of Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics deals with the largely underexplored connections between public domain and democracy in the digital age and features articles highlighting various aspects of this broader theme.

This paper explores the contribution by the contemporary legal realist Hanoch Dagan. Dagan’s brand of realism defines law on the basis of its institutions or social practices, not of its norms or rules. The paper first provides a critical overview of this realist theory of law: It is not synonymous with the predictive theory of law, with Leiter’s theory of judges, or Frank’s “breakfast theory”. By focusing on the role of judges and the methodology of legal reasoning, we discover that (...) the core difference between realism and positivism lies in the claim that law is affected by a strong form of indeterminacy, stemming from the plurality of legal sources, not from the open texture of legal language as expressed in rules; and we are also able to distinguish this form of realism from contemporary movements in legal theory, such as critical legal studies and law & economics. The normative dimension of realism is also addressed: This theory of law develops a specific concept of justice, on the ground of a cognitivist theory of value. (shrink)

The article considers what arbitrary law-making is and what may count as arbitrary law-making in the field of migration policy. It contributes to the discussion of arbitrary law-making in relation to migration policy in two ways. First, it offers an analysis of arbitrariness, pointing out that rhetorical definitions abound – perhaps not surprisingly, given that migration is a highly-contested policy area – and argues for why transposing a conception developed in ethical theory to the law has high theoretical costs. An (...) alternative conception is described and found to be better equipped to deal with arbitrary law-making in migration policy. It is argued that if we want to understand how arbitrariness plays out in the field of migration law – which is necessary to find ways to hinder its spread by the adoption of specific law-making practices – we first need to distinguish arbitrariness from legitimate choices of legislators. Secondly, a typology of forms of arbitrariness is fleshed out in relation to contemporary migration policy. The policy area is here broadly construed to include not only naturalisation processes, but also migration, asylum and refugee policies and more generally border control. The examples are taken from a broad selection of countries. They have been chosen for illustrative purposes only. Keywords: arbitrariness, discretion, arbitrary power, forms of arbitrary power, borders, migration policy, citizenship policy. (shrink)

The special issue covers both fronts by presenting a conceptual analysis of arbitrary law-making that sets out to typify its various meanings, along an empirical account of its actual functioning in legal and political practice. As arbitrariness becomes a pressing concern for lawyers, politicians and scholars attempting to grasp the discretionary powers of judicial and administrative authorities vis-a-vis legal subjects, its social impact as well as its political consequences must be taken into consideration in order to fully comprehend how central (...) arbitrariness has become for a philosophical and a sociological account of law-making. Migration policy is precisely where arbitrariness vividly shows its face, and where its various forms unleash their most revealing implications. It is in this field that we must dig further if we want to know how this hitherto peripheral and surrogated dimension of legal decision-making stretches the leeway of legal officials to the very margin of legality, disclosing the social tension and the power struggle between their agency and the structures that condition and enable it. (shrink)

Reason and emotion are often cast as opposites. Yet emotion comes in a wide array of manifestations and has a variety of relations with its supposed opposite. Understanding emotion better is key to grasping how jurisprudence casts the relation between psychology and judicial decision making. Jurisprudents disagree on whether and when (lack of) emotion is a problem for decision makers in the justice system. The aim of this paper is to shed light on unarticulated assumptions in mainstream legal theory concerning (...) this disagreement. The paper plots the different positions jurisprudents hold concerning the role of emotion in judicial decision making, regardless of where they stand on matters such the nature of law. The paper substantiates the claim that legal theorists often take an irrationalist approach to emotion but occasionally develop an alternative account that is closer to a cognitivist approach, the prime example of which is the claim that equity requires practical reasoning. Emotions are then cast as skills to be appreciated. The paper concludes that jurisprudence adopts a simplistic view of emotion. The study of the role of emotion has been hampered by the tendency to view emotions reductively. My classificatory effort warrants the conclusion that lack of emotion – understood as a skill in cognitivist terms – constitutes a problem for justice. (shrink)

Some companions journey with us; others await our return home. The Cambridge Companion to Legal Positivism1 is, at 800 pages, one of the latter. It is a companion worth returning to, however, as it...

Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Defining the Inter-institutional System -- The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System -- Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics -- The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities -- The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics -- Implications for Future Research.

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues (...) for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

In Frege's Conception of Logic Patricia A. Blanchette explores the relationship between Gottlob Frege's understanding of conceptual analysis and his understanding of logic.

This is a unique book. It is excellently written, crammed with information, wise and a pleasure to read.' ---Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University.

Progress in the neurosciences is profoundly changing our conception of ourselves. Contrary to time-honored intuition, the mind turns out to be a complex of brain functions. And contrary to the wishful thinking of some philosophers, there is no stemming the revolutionary impact that brain research will have on our understanding of how the mind works. Brain-Wise is the sequel to Patricia Smith Churchland's Neurophilosophy, the book that launched a subfield. In a clear, conversational manner, this book examines old questions (...) about the nature of the mind within the new framework of the brain sciences. What, it asks, is the neurobiological basis of consciousness, the self, and free choice? How does the brain learn about the external world and about its own introspective world? What can neurophilosophy tell us about the basis and significance of religious and moral experiences? Drawing on results from research at the neuronal, neurochemical, system, and whole-brain levels, the book gives an up-to-date perspective on the state of neurophilosophy—what we know, what we do not know, and where things may go from here. (shrink)

What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, (...) and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality. Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals--the caring for offspring. The evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain incline humans to strive not only for self-preservation but for the well-being of allied selves--first offspring, then mates, kin, and so on, in wider and wider "caring" circles. Separation and exclusion cause pain, and the company of loved ones causes pleasure; responding to feelings of social pain and pleasure, brains adjust their circuitry to local customs. In this way, caring is apportioned, conscience molded, and moral intuitions instilled. A key part of the story is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality. A major new account of what really makes us moral, Braintrust challenges us to reconsider the origins of some of our most cherished values. (shrink)

Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. He rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers and held that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry, and she offers a more coherent account of his influence on later philosophers._ _The Legacy of Parmenides_ examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection (...) to earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists, the Atomists, the later Eleatics, and the later Presocratics. She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's _Theory of Forms._ _The Legacy of Parmenides_ challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides. "_The Legacy of Parmenides_ represents a milestone... of Parmenides' interpretation. It is full of ideas and tells a coherent story about Parmenides and early Greek thought." --_ Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University___ "Professor Curd offers a genuinely original and possibly correct interpretation of the core thesis of the poem of Parmenides in a field so well worked over that saying something both new and true is profoundly difficult, this is a notable achievement." --_ Thomas M. Robinson, University of Toronto___ "This will be a substantial book in the story of early Greek philosophy, and future writers on the tradition from Thales through Plato will not be able to ignore it without missing an important interpretive alternative. It will be of value to students of Presocratic philosophy or the Greek tradition, as well as to students of the scientific revolution, cosmology, the origins of logic, or comparative mysticism." --_ Scott W. Austin, Texas A&M University___ PATRICIA CURD_ is professor at Purdue University where she works primarily in Ancient Philosophy. She is a co-editor of _Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy_, and is the editor of _A Presocratics Reader._. (shrink)

Vaesen infers unique properties of mind from the appearance of specific cultural innovation – a correlation without causal direction. Shifts in habitat, population density, and group dynamics are the only independently verifiable incentives for changes in cultural practices. The transition from Acheulean to Late Stone Age technologies requires that we consider how population and social dynamics affect cultural innovation and mental function.

(NB Published in translation as“Hobbes’ theorie der Zivilreligion”, in Dirk Bantl, Rolf Geiger, Stephan Herzberg, eds, Philosophie, Politik und Religion: Klassische Modelle von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. The Hague: de Gruyter, 2013, pp. 117-132. ABSTRACT: Hobbes's Epicureanism was a house of many mansions. Under the banners of antiquity he could flag modern positions on religion that if openly presented as such would have made him liable to charges of heresy or blasphemy, given the censorship of the modern state. But (...) Hobbes's Epicureanism was also serious and there are important continuities, doctrinal and political, between ancient and modern Epicureanism. (shrink)

The ways in which knowledge relates to power have been much discussed in radical education theory. New emphasis on the role of gender and the growing debate about subjectivity have deepened the discussion, while making it more complex. In Getting Smart , Patti Lather makes use of her unique integration of feminism and postmodernism into critical education theory to address some of the most vital questions facing education researchers and teachers.

Anydomainofscientificresearchhasitssustainingorthodoxy. Thatis, research on a problem, whether in astronomy, physics, or biology, is con- ducted against a backdrop of broadly shared assumptions. It is these as- sumptionsthatguideinquiryandprovidethecanonofwhatisreasonable-- of what "makes sense." And it is these shared assumptions that constitute a framework for the interpretation of research results. Research on the problem of how we see is likewise sustained by broadly shared assump- tions, where the current orthodoxy embraces the very general idea that the business of the visual system is to (...) create a detailed replica of the visual world, and that it accomplishes its business via hierarchical organization and by operatingessentiallyindependently of other sensorymodalitiesas well as independently of previous learning, goals, motor planning, and motor execution. (shrink)

In The Classrooms All Young Children Need, Patricia M. Cooper takes a synoptic view of Paley’s many books and articles, charting the evolution of Paley’s ...

We propose that people typically reason about realistic situations using neither content-free syntactic inference rules nor representations of specific experiences. Rather, people reason using knowledge structures that we term pragmatic reasoning schemas, which are generalized sets of rules defined in relation to classes of goals. Three experiments examined the impact of a “permission schema” on deductive reasoning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that by evoking the permission schema it is possible to facilitate performance in Wason's selection paradigm for subjects who have had (...) no experience with the specific content of the problems. Experiment 2 showed that a selection problem worded in terms of an abstract permission elicited better performance than one worded in terms of a concrete but arbitrary situation, providing evidence for an abstract permission schema that is free of domain-specific content. Experiment 3 provided evidence that evocation of a permission schema affects not only tasks requiring procedural knowledge, but also a linguistic rephrasing task requiring declarative knowledge. In particular, statements in the form if p then q were rephrased into the form p only if q with greater frequency for permission than for arbitrary statements, and rephrasings of permission statements produced a pattern of introduction of modals totally unlike that observed for arbitrary conditional statements. Other pragmatic schemas, such as “causal” and “evidence” schemas can account for both linguistic and reasoning phenomena that alternative hypotheses fail to explain. (shrink)

In this innovative study Patricia Kitcher argues that we can only understand the deduction of the categories in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in terms of his attempt to fathom the psychological prerequisites of thought. Thus a consideration of his conception of psychology is essential to an understanding of his philosophy. Kitcher specifically considers Kant's claims about the unity of the thinking self; the spatial forms of human perceptions; the relations among mental states necessary for them to have content; (...) the relations between perceptions and judgment; and the limits of philosophical insight into psychological processes. (shrink)

In the early years of the twentieth century, Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert, two titans of mathematical logic, engaged in a controversy regarding the correct understanding of the role of axioms in mathematical theories, and the correct way to demonstrate consistency and independence results for such axioms. The controversy touches on a number of difficult questions in logic and the philosophy of logic, and marks an important turning-point in the development of modern logic. This entry gives an overview of that (...) controversy and of its philosophical underpinnings. (shrink)