It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and (...) the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr.. (shrink)

Following the publication of the Contributions to Philosophy, Mindfulness and the History of Being, the question of the significance of Heidegger’s later work has been widely discussed. However, th...

The name Charles Sanders Peirce is associated with the science of signs called semiotics, which studies the sign as the carrier of meaning that is placed in the center of his work. Peirce developed a system of concepts that describe how the sign as such is understood by the mind. For the conditions of its interpretations Peirce established various so-called interpretants for the explanation of signs associated with the utterer and interpreter and a shared process that enables the communication between (...) communicators. Further to the renovation of the theory of rhetoric and communication, we show that medium and communication must be understood within the framework of his theory in association to the sign and the object. Throughout his manuscripts the triads of his concepts are realized in the text in rhetorical tricola as terms of his philosophy. In comparison to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which employed the sign as a means for reasoning, we will show how Peirce developed techniques of reasoning based on Aristotle’s work and his model of mental understanding of the sign while foreshadowing a theory of communication that aims at describing the exchange of information in a model. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, (...) despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life. (shrink)

The literature on agentive or practical knowledge tends to be focused on knowing what one is doing or what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. In fact, achievements are often taken to be beyond the ken of practical knowledge. I argue that this is a mistake. The intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge depends on the possibility of knowing one's achievements in the same manner. For (...) if it is to be intelligible as knowledge of the actuality of one's action in the material world, knowing what one is doing has to include knowledge of what one has done so far. (shrink)

Volume 22, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 95-97.

Although the recent push toward sustainability is certainly generally a positive development in business and society, we can see many problems in the execution of the theory of sustainability. Where the triple bottom line calls on companies to weigh effects on stakeholders and the environment alongside profit, in practice in many cases, sustainability has been perverted to represent sustainable profits. In these cases, environmental impact and effects on people are only important insofar as they positively contribute to a firm‘s future (...) profits. It is not only practitioners who have often espoused this misappropriated view of sustainability but also academics have lent credibility to this view. In this work, we start by criticizing the often espoused current view of sustainability and remind academics of their responsibility to adapt a more critical view of this narrow focus. We provide examples that show how the current system of capitalism has resulted in outcomes for people and the environment that are patently unacceptable. Reasons are given as to why there is much hesitation to change the status quo. We then call on academics to reexamine what the role of businesses should be within society, what obligations business and corporations should have in society, and how we can encourage meaningful change that results in a better world for future generations. (shrink)

This paper provides examples of how a teacher and a principal construct their ‘ethical selves’. In doing so we demonstrate how Foucault's four-part ethical framework can be a scaffold with which to actively connect emotions to a personal ethical position. We argue that ethical work is and should be an ongoing and dynamic life long process rather than a more rigid adherence to a ‘code of ethics’ that may not meaningfully engage its adherents. We use Foucault's four-part framework of ethical (...) practice as a framework through which an ‘ethical self’ can be purposely constructed. This is important work, as those who have authority over others must know how to monitor themselves against the misuse of the power of their positions. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to a certain way of thinking of the action of another. The posture of mind is characteristically expressed by a specific use of what G. E. M. Anscombe calls stopping modals. On this use, the sentence, “You can’t do that; it is mine,” registers the necessity of justice. My question is: what is the relation between the status of a person, a bearer of rights, the recognition of others as persons, and the practice of addressing the (...) demands of justice to one another? According to a certain strand in the tradition, the answer is: in the sphere of justice, a special union arises among language, mind, and world such that there is a sense in which addressing, recognizing, and being a person are one reality. The paper articulates the relevant sense of ‘one reality’ and offers an argument in support of the formula. In the course of the argument I suggest that this issue is central to understanding the philosophical significance of the second person and appreciating that it marks an irreducible and fundamental form of thought. (shrink)

The Objective Threshold/Strategic Model proposes that strong, qualitative inferences of unconscious perception can be made if the relationship between perceptual sensitivity and stimulus visibility is nonlinear and nonmonotonic. The model proposes a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold . These predictions were tested with masked semantic priming and repetition priming of a lexical decision task. The visibility of the prime stimuli was systematically varied above and below the objective identification threshold. The obtained relationship between prime visibility and (...) priming facilitation was nonlinear, but the results failed to confirm a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold. We conclude that the objective identification threshold does not necessarily indicate the point where presumably unconscious priming effects might be inhibited by conscious cognitive processes. (shrink)

The concept of Galilean Idealization is based on a pragmatically grounded relation between universes of so-called real and idealized entities. The concept was developed in the course of a critical discussion of different explications of the concept of idealization (e.g. by W. F. Barr, C. G. Hempel and L. Nowak), these being attempts to specify sufficient syntactic and semantic criterions for idealization. But this line of argument shall not be followed here. Instead, first the concept of Pragmatic Idealization, and as (...) its special case the Galilean one, is presented (1.) and certain aspects of the application of an idealized theory are discussed (2.). Then, working within the Strucuralist View of theories, definitions of the idealized variants of the diachronic theory-element and theory-net are presented (3.). (shrink)

The ability to design technological solutions that address sustainability is considered pivotal to the future of the planet and its people. As technology professionals engineers are expected to play an important role in sustaining society. The present article aims at exploring sustainability concepts of newly enrolled engineering students in Denmark. Their understandings of sustainability and the role they ascribe to sustainability in their future professional practice is investigated by means of a critical discourse analysis including metaphor analysis and semiotic analysis. (...) The sustainability construal is considered to delimit possible ways of dealing with the concept in practice along the engineering education pathway and in professional problem solving. Five different metaphors used by the engineering students to illustrate sustainability are identified, and their different connotative and interpretive implications are discussed. It is found that sustainability represents a dilemma to the engineering students that situates them in a tension between their technology fascination and the blame they find that technological progress bears. Their sustainability descriptions are collected as part of a survey containing among other questions one open-ended, qualitative question on sustainability. The survey covers an entire year group of Danish engineering students in the first month of their degree study. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger's thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche's has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and the Western philosophical tradition developed. With his new reading, Heidegger delineates three Nietzschean modes of history, which should be understood as grounded in the (...) structure of temporality or historicity and also offers a metaphysical determination of life and the essence of humankind. Ullrich Hasse and Mark Sinclair offer a clear and accessible translation despite the fragmentary and disjointed quality of the original lecture notes that comprise this text. (shrink)

John Hyman’s Action, Knowledge, and Will achieves what is increasingly rare in academic philosophy. It is both ambitious and controlled, wide-ranging and pointe.

Der Gegenstand des Interviews mit Robert Brandom ist die Entwicklung seiner Theorie begrifflichen Gehalts ausgehend von „Expressive Vernunft“ bis zu den kürzlich gehaltenen Locke-Lectures und dem sich in Arbeit befindenden Buch über Hegel. Im Zentrum stehen folgende Fragen: Kann eine Bedeutungstheorie, wie sie Brandom vorschlägt, ohne den Begriff der Wahrheit auskommen und sich auf modale und normative Begriffe beschränken? Wie erfolgreich ist Brandoms Versuch, mithilfe des Begriffs der pragmatischen Meta-Sprache die in „Expressive Vernunft“ bestehende Spannung zwischen der Artikulation logischer Begriffe (...) auf der einen Seite und der nicht-zirkulären Erklärung begrifflicher Normativität auf der anderen Seite aufzulösen? Welche Konsequenzen hat es für unseren Begriff der Bedeutung, wenn wir mit Brandom begriffliche Bestimmtheit als historischen Prozess fortwährender Bestimmung auffassen? (shrink)

A growing body of academic and business specialists are paying attention to ethical issues in business and economics, drawing on a wide range of different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. This volume presents important new insights from scholars in economics, philosophy, business ethics and management studies. In addition to providing specific perspectives on particular topics, it presents strategic perspectives on the development of the field. Readers can inform themselves on developments in particular areas, such as social accountability or stakeholder governance; they (...) will also find substantial contributions related to the interfaces of ethics and economics, economics and philosophy, business ethics and political science, and business ethics and management. The collection is a thought-provoking contribution to the development of business and economic ethics as an increasingly important field of academic study. (shrink)

BackgroundDisorders in different levels of body representation are present in hemiplegic cerebral palsy. However, it remains unclear whether the body image develops from aspects of body schema and body structural description, and how this occurs in children with HCP.Objective and methodsIn a cross-sectional study, we investigated 53 children with HCP and 204 typically developing control children to qualitatively evaluate whether and how body schema and body structural description affect the development of children’s body image and whether this development is delayed (...) through HCP. Graph analysis was used to create a lexical-semantic map of body representation from data of a semantic word fluency task.ResultsResults indicated a similar qualitative pattern of influences of sensorimotor and visuospatial experiences on lexical-semantic knowledge of body parts, with a delayed developmental course in children with HCP compared to TD children.ConclusionThese findings suggest that children’s body image seemed to be influenced by body schema and body structural descriptions as indicated by poorer lexical-semantic knowledge of body parts in children with HCP due to missing physical experiences of the affected body parts. This might imply that “body talk” may beneficially complement physical therapy for children with HCP to promote body image development. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration (PR) in light of two cases of technologically-mediated cognition: sensory substitution and perceptual modification. We hold that PR is a very useful concept - perhaps necessary - for explaining the adaptive capacity that natural perceptive systems display as they respond to functional demands from the environment. We also survey critically related issues, such as the role of learning, training, and nervous system plasticity in the recalibrating process. Attention is given to the interaction (...) between technology and cognition, and the case of epistemic prostheses is presented as an illustration. Finally, we address the following theoretical issues: (1) the dynamic character of spatial perception; (2) the role of functional demands in perception; (3) the nature and interaction of sensory modalities. We aim to show that these issues may be addressed empirically and conceptually - hence, the usefulness of sensory-substitution and perceptual-modification studies in the analysis of perception, technologically-mediated cognition, and cognition in general. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration in light of two cases of technologically-mediated cognition: sensory substitution and perceptual modification. We hold that PR is a very useful concept — perhaps necessary — for explaining the adaptive capacity that natural perceptive systems display as they respond to functional demands from the environment. We also survey critically related issues, such as the role of learning, training, and nervous system plasticity in the recalibrating process. Attention is given to the interaction between (...) technology and cognition, and the case of epistemic prostheses is presented as an illustration. Finally, we address the following theoretical issues: the dynamic character of spatial perception; the role of functional demands in perception; the nature and interaction of sensory modalities. We aim to show that these issues may be addressed empirically and conceptually — hence, the usefulness of sensory-substitution and perceptual-modification studies in the analysis of perception, technologically-mediated cognition, and cognition in general. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the process of perceptual recalibration in light of two cases of technologically-mediated cognition: sensory substitution and perceptual modification. We hold that PR is a very useful concept — perhaps necessary — for explaining the adaptive capacity that natural perceptive systems display as they respond to functional demands from the environment. We also survey critically related issues, such as the role of learning, training, and nervous system plasticity in the recalibrating process. Attention is given to the interaction between (...) technology and cognition, and the case of epistemic prostheses is presented as an illustration. Finally, we address the following theoretical issues: the dynamic character of spatial perception; the role of functional demands in perception; the nature and interaction of sensory modalities. We aim to show that these issues may be addressed empirically and conceptually — hence, the usefulness of sensory-substitution and perceptual-modification studies in the analysis of perception, technologically-mediated cognition, and cognition in general. (shrink)

This is an anthology of writings about art, art history, esthetics, and art theory from the 18th to 20th century.

Theme of this article is the ancient Roman tradition of criticism based of the standard ">institutio oratoria« of the late Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilianus and the reception of rhetorical and critical theory among German 18th century philologists. Just like Immanuel Kant's terminology of 'Kritik' the Latin terms critica and ars critica became in the 18th century basic terms for the research in the history of philology and the social importance of this scientific work. The researchers' documentations in the 18th (...) century demonstrate the ancient tradition between criticism and the liberal arts of the trivium which are studies in rethoric, dialectic and grammar. (shrink)

A Reader of Philosophy from its Ancient Beginnings to the 20th Century.