This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways – theoretically or empirically; locally or (...) globally; or as encouraging or impeding the existence of other research traditions. The authors discuss the idea that for progress to make any sense there must be an accumulation of knowledge built up over time rather than the replacement of ideas by each successive generation. Accordingly, they are not concerned with estimating the price of progress, reminiscing in the past, or assessing what has been lost. Instead they apply the complex mechanisms and machinery of the discipline to sub-fields such as normative economics, monetary economics, trade and location theory, Austrian economics and classical economics to critically assess whether progress has been made in these areas of research. -/- Bringing together authoritative and wide-ranging contributions by leading scholars, this book will challenge and engage those interested in philosophy, economic methodology and the history of economic thought. It will also appeal to economists in general who are interested in the advancement of their profession. (shrink)

Taking seriously the task of sustaining the democratic project requires debunking pessimism, thinking critically about what constitutes the distinctive character of democracy, and taking a future-oriented perspective on democratic transformations.

Mature spermatozoa are permeable to foreign DNA and RNA molecules. Here I propose a model, whereby extrachromosomal genetic information, mostly encoded in the form of RNA in somatic cells, can cross the Weismann barrier and reach epididymal spermatozoa. LINE‐1 retrotransposon‐derived reverse transcriptase (RT) can play key roles in the process by expanding the RNA‐encoded information. Retrotransposon‐encoded RT is stored in mature gametes, is highly expressed in early embryos and undifferentiated cells, and becomes downregulated in differentiated cells. In turn, RT plays (...) a role in developmental control, as its inhibition arrests developmental progression of early embryos with globally altered transcriptomic profiles. Thus, sperm cells act as recipients, and transgenerational vectors of somatically derived genetic information which they pass to the next generation with the potential to modify the fate of the developing embryos. (shrink)

In this article I examine three examples of philosophical theories of scientific representation with the aim of assessing which of these is a good candidate for a philosophical theory of scientific representation in science learning. The three candidate theories are Giere's intentional approach, Suárez's inferential approach and Lynch and Woolgar's sociological approach. In order to assess which theory is more promising, I will compare the three candidate theories to two aspects of scientific representation in science learning that emerge from empirical (...) research on science learning. I label these aspects as the intentional and normative character of scientific representation in science learning. As I argue, whereas the other competing accounts of scientific representation can only capture one of the two aspects highlighted in this article, the inferential conception has the capacity to capture them both in a coherent way. Thus, I conclude that the inferential conception seems to be a fruitful philosophical theory of scientific representation in science learning. (shrink)

In the present article we discuss the relevance of the mirror mechanism for our sense of self and our sense of others. We argue that, by providing us with an understanding from the inside of actions, the mirror mechanism radically challenges the traditional view of the self and of the others. Indeed, this mechanism not only reveals the common ground on the basis of which we become aware of ourselves as selves distinct from other selves, but also sheds new light (...) on the content of our self and other experience, showing that we primarily experience ourselves and the others in terms of our own and of their motor possibilities respectively. -/- . (shrink)

Motor representations live a kind of double life. Although paradigmatically involved in performing actions, they also occur when merely observing others act and sometimes influence thoughts about the goals of observed actions. Further, these influences are content-respecting: what you think about an action sometimes depends in part on how that action is represented motorically in you. The existence of such content-respecting influences is puzzling. After all, motor representations do not feature alongside beliefs or intentions in reasoning about action; indeed, thoughts (...) are inferentially isolated from motor representations. So how could motor representations have content-respecting influences on thoughts? Our aim is to solve this puzzle. In so doing, we shall provide the basis for an account of how experience links the motoric with thought. Such an account matters for understanding how humans think about action: in some cases, we have reasons for thoughts about actions that we would not have if we were unable to represent those actions motorically. (shrink)

In the present article we discuss the relevance of the mirror mechanism for our sense of self and our sense of others. We argue that, by providing us with an understanding from the inside of actions, the mirror mechanism radically challenges the traditional view of the self and of the others. Indeed, this mechanism not only reveals the common ground on the basis of which we become aware of ourselves as selves distinct from other selves, but also sheds new light (...) on the content of our self and other experience, showing that we primarily experience ourselves and the others in terms of our own and of their motor possibilities respectively. (shrink)

People walk, build, paint and otherwise act together with a purpose in myriad ways. What is the relation between the actions people perform in acting together with a purpose and the outcome, or outcomes, to which their actions are directed? We argue that fully characterising this relation will require appeal not only to intention, knowledge and other familiar philosophical paraphernalia but also to another kind of representation involved in preparing and executing actions, namely motor representation. If we are right, motor (...) representation plays a central role in the story of acting together. (shrink)

Despite the impressive body of evidence supporting the existence of a mirror neuron (MN) system for action, the original claim regarding its crucial role in action understanding remains controversial. Emma Borg has recently launched a sharp attack on this claim, with the aim of demonstrating that neither the original version nor the subsequent revisions of the MN hypothesis tell us very much about how intentional attribution actually works. In this article I take up the challenge she issues in the title (...) of her paper (If Mirror Neurons are the Answer, What was the Question?) and argue that what MNs offer is not as Borg claims 'an extremely limited' picture of action understanding but rather an enriched picture that brings to light aspects of social cognition hitherto ignored in the mind-reading literature, showing how intentional motor components of action can shape social cognition prior to and apart from any forms of deliberate mentalizing. (shrink)

In three experiments, we investigated the priming effects induced by an image change on a successive animate/inanimate decision task. We studied both perceptual and conceptual priming effects, under correct change detection and change blindness . Under correct change detection, we found larger positive priming effects on congruent trials for probes representing animate entities than for probes representing artifactual objects. Under CB, we found performance impairment relative to a “no-change” baseline condition. This inhibition effect induced by CB was modulated by the (...) semantic congruency between the changed item and the probe in the case of probe images, but not for probe words. We discuss our results in the context of the literature on the negative priming effect. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers frequently assume that Kant never seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism --certainly not before the break of Der Pantheismusstreit, or within the Critique of Pure Reason. Offering an alternative reading of key pre-critical texts and to some of the Critique's most central chapters, Omri Boehm challenges this common assumption. He argues that Kant not only is committed to Spinozism in early essays such as "The One Possible Basis" and "New Elucidation," but also takes up Spinozist metaphysics as Transcendental (...) Realism's most consistent form in the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

Central to the still-nascent normative literature on counterspeech is the widespread belief that citizens should engage discursively with haters and the effects of hate speech. It is also increasingly clear that discursive engagement with intolerant members of society should be understood as a continuous and extended series of different and connected actions. Much less has been said about the ways that attempts in persuasion and direct responses to hate speech relate to one another and about when specific counterspeech actions should (...) happen. This essay advances a more expansive and refined account of counterspeech, which is understood as a combination of continuous discursive engagement with intolerant members of society and acts of distancing from haters. After reconsidering discursive agency distribution around public hate speech, I show that continuous discursive engagement with intolerant members of society should be interrupted by visible acts of distancing when haters make hateful representative claims. (shrink)

In this paper I take it for granted that legal institutions are artifacts. In general, this can very well be considered a trivial thesis in legal philosophy. As trivial as this thesis may be, however, to my knowledge no legal philosopher has attempted an analysis of the peculiar reality of legal phenomena in terms of the reality of artifacts, and this is particularly striking because there has been much discussion about artifacts in general philosophy (specifically analytic metaphysics) over the last (...) twenty years. In particular, the concepts of intention, function, plan of action, and history are in competition to explain the ontology of artifacts, and a similar competition can be found at the core of legal theory. Such a striking parallelism between the domain of artifacts and that of legal institutions is a clue for legal ontology that deserves further attention: I will offer my own interpretation of this parallelism in the first part of this paper (Sections 2 and 3). In providing a theory of legal institutions as artifacts, one could be led to the conclusion that law is essentially an artificial phenomenon, something which does not bear any significant relationship to the natural domain. However, I think that such a conclusion would be mistaken. In fact, this is the second thesis I want to explore in this paper: not only that legal institutions are artifacts, but also that they can be artifacts which in some sense "mirror," or imitate, some descriptions of the natural, pre-social reality we live in. What I would like to show is not that legal institutions are "natural" in the sense that they have some feature which is not human-dependent, as some natural law theorists would say, but rather that their conceptual content can depend on our conceptualization of the natural domain despite being entirely artifactual. This is what I will call the "institutional mimesis" behind several important instances of legal artifacts, and I will deal with it in the second part of this paper (Sections 4 and 5). (shrink)

Repetition priming of object identification refers to the phenomenon whereby experience with an object induces systematic changes in subsequent processing of that same object. This data-driven form of priming is distinct from conceptually-driven priming. To date, considerable controversy exists about whether data-driven priming reflects facilitation in perceptual processing or mediation by preexisting object representations. The present study concerned priming of recognizing familiar and unfamiliar faces and how this priming is influenced by face inversion, which interferes with perceptual face processing. Perceptual (...) and representation-based loci conjointly contributed to priming; the perceptual locus was operative similarly for familiar and unfamiliar faces, whereas the representation-based locus was only invoked for familiar faces and resulted in a response-time reduction triple the magnitude of that from the perceptual locus. The results constrain theoretical accounts of data-driven priming by indicating that improved identification can result from the combination of perceptual and representation-based facilitation. (shrink)

This paper is a fragment of the book “Kaja od Radosława, czyli historia Hubalowego Krzyża”, which was published by Warszawskie Wydawnictwo Literackie Muza in 2006. It will be published by the American publisher The Military History Press under the title “Kaia Savior of the Hubal Cross”. Covering a century of Polish history, it is full of tragic and compelling events. Such historic events as Polish life in Siberia, Warsaw before the war, the German occupation, the Warsaw Uprising, life in Ostaszków, (...) and the rebuilding of Warsaw are included.The hero Kaia is a woman, christened Cesaria, whose father was expelled to Siberia in 1905 for conspiring against the tsar. Kaia spent her early childhood there, and the family lived near the mountain Altaj. A chapter shows how the Polish community lived there, organized their daily lives, etc. In 1922, the family returned to free Poland, the train trip back taking almost a year. This ordeal is highlighted as a series of stops sometimes lasting for weeks because of heavy snow accumulation, the men shoveling a pathway for the train to pass through, many deaths occurring from the frigid cold with the “caboose” used as a mortuary for Poles to be returned to their homeland for burial. Kaia entered the school system, was eventually educated as an architect, and then World War II started. She lived under the German occupation for the first few years, and later became a conspirator by helping the underground movement. She joined the Armia Krajowa in 1942. At considerable risk, her apartment became a meeting place for the conspirators.After Hubal’s death, one of his couriers gave Kaia the Hubal Cross Virtuti Militari. The cross was with her for the ensuing 50 years. During the Warsaw Uprising, in which she was a courier, she carried the cross around her neck. Many times, she had to travel via the Warsaw underground sewer system. Twice, she was wounded. After the Warsaw Uprising collapsed, she went to the east territory to look for her mother. She was captured by the Russian NKVD in Białystok and sent to Ostaszków. An interesting scene describes one of many interrogations: the Russian interrogator asks if she knows about the cross. Her reply causes a puzzled look on his face. The cross was never discovered (she had hidden it in a specially made shoe). Protection of the Virtuti Militari Cross, which at first had been a challenge to Kaia to survive the Uprising and Russian imprisonment, later became a symbol of courage and determination of the Polish people. In 1946, Kaia returned to Poland very ill and weighing only 38 kg (83.6 pounds). Eventually recovering her health, she worked as an architect involved in the rebuilding of Warsaw totally decimated by the Germans.In the Warsaw Uprising chapter, Kaia’s diary is included, and the book relates the scenes and events that she described. One such experience is most moving. It was a quiet moment, i.e. the shooting had subsided. On a warm beautiful August night, she was sitting, enjoying the quiet alone when, a young man sat down next to her. He was a colleague from architectural school. Together, a few months earlier, they had attended a university ball, and Kaia remembered him as always being funny and amusing. Then, she noticed he was missing one eye and part of his chin. He returned her gaze and jokingly said, “I still have one eye left”. And then, he quietly sang a popular song that they had danced the waltz to… “Not to be in love on such a beautiful night is a sin”… Kaia had to be in the same mood as he was and smiled. A few days later, half of his body was covered in ruins…he could not be helped. His death lasted several days, and he is buried in Powązki Cemetery, like many soldiers of the Uprising. (shrink)

an der Universität Göttingen gehaltenen Vcwlesung über Hauptstücke aus der Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis,l ist annähernd voll­ ständig erhalten; die Blätter des V cwlesungsmanuskripts zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins liegen verstreut in den Konvoluten F I 6 und 2 F I 8 des Husserl-Archivs zu Löwen. Allerdings fußt der Erste Teil des Erstdrucks, dessen Bezeichnung als Die Vorlesungen über das innere Zeit­ bewußtsein aus dem Jahre 1905 gleichwohl auch in vcwliegender Neuausgabe beibehalten wurde, nur zum Teil noch, und auch (...) in diesem Teil mit be­ trächtlichen Abweichungen, auf dem Text des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs­ manuskripts des Jahres I905; und umgekehrt hat nur ein Teil des Textes des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs-Manuskripts - mit den erwähnten Abwand­ lungen - Eingang in den Ersten Teil des Erstdrucks gefunden. Wo der Text dieses Ersten Teils des Erstdrucks dem des ursprünglichen Vcwlesungs­ manuskripts entspricht, wurde er er mit diesem verglichen, und ollensicht­ liche Irrtümer im Erstdruck wurden berichtigt; in den Textkritischen Anmer­ kungen ist dann mit dem Vermerk nach dem Ms. verbessert die Text­ fassung des Erstdrucks wiedergegeben. Ferner wurde in den Textkritischen Anmerkungen vcwliegender Neuausgabe überall der ursprüngliche und voll­ ständige· Text des Vorlesungsmanuskripts von I905 wiedergegeben, auf dessen Zusammenhang die entsprechenden Teile des Erstdrucks zurückgehen, wo dieser von ienem abweicht. Einige zum V cwlesungsmanuskript gehörige Blätter, deren Text sich iedoch nicht zusammenhängend dem übrigen einfügt, wurden im vcwliegenden Band unter B (S. 135-382) mit abgedruckt. Die 1 Vgl. oben die "Einleitung des Herausgebers", S. XIV-XVII. (shrink)

While most of the literature has attempted to justify harsh and soft containment given some fundamental commitments of political liberalism, I focus on how justified forms of containment can in themselves be deemed effective. This article shows that a reading of Rawls allows for a comparison of different containment practices based on their capacity to protect the stability of liberal democracies under serious threat. And, in making it possible to compare harsh and soft containment, I evaluate immediate stability gains against (...) citizens’ judgements about their liberal democratic institutions. (shrink)

Darwin's inner voice -- Living the virtuous life -- Of altruism and free riders -- Knowing our immediate predecessors -- Resurrecting some venerable ancestors -- A natural Garden of Eden -- The positive side of social selection -- Learning morals across the generations -- Work of the moral majority -- Pleistocene ups, downs, and crashes -- Testing the selection-by-reputation hypothesis -- The evolution of morals -- Epilogue: humanity's moral future.

Questo articolo descrive una investigazione condotta su un campione non probabilistico di alunni di scuola primaria della provincia di Siracusa (Italia), durante la quale è stato sperimentato un metodo didattico elaborato sulla scorta di alcuni modelli di musicoterapia e dalle riflessioni su alcune esperienze realizzate a scuola. L’analisi testuale comparativa ha consentito di rilevare che il metodo didattico proposto, se adottato con criteri ben definiti (procedure e musiche classiche selezionate), potrebbe aiutare gli insegnanti a strutturare ambienti didattici inclusivi e funzionali (...) per potenziare lo sviluppo delle competenze della comprensione del testo degli alunni. (shrink)

Le rejet de End of Track de Mou Tunfei (fin années 60), film “invisible”, jamais distribué, prouve à quel point les thématiques abordées (homosexualité, différence de classes, nihilisme) étaient taboues pour toute une génération. Banana Paradise (années 80) évoque la façon dont deux frères d’armes survivent en usurpant l’identité de camarades décédés, et finissent par s’épanouir dans une société en exil taraudée par la mémoire du continent. Enfin, Gf/Bf (années 2000) développe des thématiques jadis censurées (homosexualité, démocratisation) et qui refont (...) surface via le prisme du triangle amoureux. Malgré leur hétérogénéité, ces films permettent de constituer une histoire de ce rapport fraternel dans des contextes ambigus et dissonants ; à travers trois films d’époques différentes, je retrace l’évolution dans le temps de la représentation de l’amitié entre hommes, une évolution qui révèle un « changement de paradigme » au sein même de la société taiwanaise. (shrink)

Le rejet de End of Track de Mou Tunfei (fin années 60), film “invisible”, jamais distribué, prouve à quel point les thématiques abordées (homosexualité, différence de classes, nihilisme) étaient taboues pour toute une génération. Banana Paradise (années 80) évoque la façon dont deux frères d’armes survivent en usurpant l’identité de camarades décédés, et finissent par s’épanouir dans une société en exil taraudée par la mémoire du continent. Enfin, Gf/Bf (années 2000) développe des thématiques jadis censurées (homosexualité, démocratisation) et qui refont (...) surface via le prisme du triangle amoureux. Malgré leur hétérogénéité, ces films permettent de constituer une histoire de ce rapport fraternel dans des contextes ambigus et dissonants ; à travers trois films d’époques différentes, je retrace l’évolution dans le temps de la représentation de l’amitié entre hommes, une évolution qui révèle un « changement de paradigme » au sein même de la société taiwanaise. (shrink)

abstract The so‐called ‘morning‐after pill’ is a drug that prevents pregnancy if taken no later than 72 hours after presumably fertile sexual intercourse. This article argues against a right of conscientious objection for pharmacists with regard to dispensing this drug. Some arguments that might be advanced in support of this right will be considered and rejected. Section 2 argues that from a philosophical point of view, the most relevant question is not whether the morning‐after pill prevents implantation nor is it (...) whether preventing implantation is tantamount to abortion. Section 3 suggests a more general philosophical question as most pertinent, namely whether and to what extent a pharmacist can justifiably be exempted from dispensing the morning‐after pill when to do so would entail participating in something that goes against his or her deepest moral or religious convictions. Section 4 explains why, within liberal institutions, pharmacists should not have the right to conscientious objection to dispensing the morning‐after pill. (shrink)

In the Introduction to the Treatise Hume very enthusiastically announces his project to provide a secure and solid foundation for the sciences by grounding them on his science of man. And Hume indicates in the Abstract that he carries out this project in the Treatise. But most interpreters do not believe that Hume's project comes to fruition. In this paper, I offer a general reading of what I call Hume's ‘foundational project’ in the Treatise, but I focus especially on Book (...) 1. I argue that in Book 1 much of Hume's logic is put in the service of the other sciences, in particular, mathematics and natural philosophy. I concentrate on Hume's negative thesis that many of the ideas central to the sciences are ideas that we cannot form. For Hume, this negative thesis has implications for the sciences, as many of the texts I discuss make evident. I consider and criticize different proposals for understanding these implications: the Criterion of Meaning and the ‘Inconceivability Principle’. I introduce what I call Hume's ‘No Reason to Believe’ Principle, which I argue captures more adequately the link Hume envisions between his logic, in particular his examination of ideas, and the other sciences. (shrink)

With an interest in origins, it is proposed that conflict within the group can be taken as a natural focus for exploring the evolutionary development of human moral communities. Morality today involves social control but also the management of conflicts within the group. It is hypothesized that early manifestations of morality involved the identification and collective suppression of behaviours likely to cause such conflict. By triangulation the mutual ancestor of humans and the two Pan species lived in pronounced social dominance (...) hierarchies, and made largely individualized efforts to damp conflict within the group, exhibiting consolation, reconciliation, and active pacifying intervention behaviour. It is particularly the active interventions that can be linked with social control as we know it. It is proposed that when this process became collectivized, and when language permitted the definition and tracking of proscribed behaviour, full-blown morality was on its way. Because early humans lived in egalitarian bands, a likely candidate for the first behaviour to be labelled as morally deviant is not the incest taboo but bullying behaviour, of the type that egalitarian humans today universally proscribe and suppress. (shrink)

Simulation theories of social cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear what simulation means and how it works. The discovery of mirror neurons, responding both to action execution and observation, suggested an embodied approach to mental simulation. Over the last years this approach has been hotly debated and alternative accounts have been proposed. We discuss these accounts and argue that they fail to capture the uniqueness of embodied simulation (ES). ES theory provides a unitary account of basic (...) social cognition, demonstrating that people e their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. (shrink)

Several authors have recently pointed out the hyper-mentalism of the standard mindreading models, arguing for the need of an embodied and enactive approach to social cognition. Various attempts to provide an account of the primary ways of interacting with others, however, have fallen short of allowing for both what kind of intentional engagement is crucial in the basic forms of social navigation and also what neural mechanisms can be thought to underpin them. The aimof the paper is to counter this (...) fault by showing that most of the primary ways of making sense of others are motor in nature and rooted in a specific brain mechanism: the mirror mechanism. I shall argue that the mirror-based making sense of others not only can be construed within the enactive approach to social cognition, but also allows us to refine it, supplying a plausible and unitary account of the early forms of social interaction. (shrink)

The paper addresses two difficulties that arise in Treatise 1.2.5. First, Hume appears to be inconsistent when he denies that we have an idea of a vacuum or empty space yet allows for the idea of an “invisible and intangible distance.” My solution to this difficulty is to develop the overlooked possibility that Hume does not take the invisible and intangible distance to be a distance at all. Second, although Hume denies that we have an idea of a vacuum, some (...) texts in Treatise 1.2.5 are taken by interpreters to suggest that Hume nonetheless believes that there are vacuums in nature. I discuss the relevant texts and defend the view that Hume does not in fact countenance belief in vacuums. I conclude by outlining an interpretation of Hume’s intention in the Treatise that allows us to understand his discussion of ideas as having implications for the sciences. (shrink)

In this article, I provide an argument against the idea that public hate-speech events are harmful because they cause a discrete, traceable and harmful change in one’s propositional attitudes. To do so, I identify the essential conceptual architecture of public hate-speech situations, I assess existing arguments for the direct and indirect harm of public hate speech and I propose a novel way to approach public hate-speech situations: a maieutic approach. On this perspective, public hate-speech events do not cause changes in (...) propositional attitudes, but rather, if successful, either such events bring a person’s latent propositional attitudes into clear consciousness, or they play with propositional attitudes speakers and their audience had prior to the public hate-speech situation. (shrink)

The author intends to show how the criticism of Maurizio Ferraris to the correspon-dence of ontology and epistemology, which developed in the modern age, does not consider that the Thought of the transcendentalism is not the thought of the everyday language but rather a limiting concept. Therefore, the fair criticism to the pragmatism and to the post-modernism in the name of the “reality principle” cannot involve the ideas of the so-called idealists (Kant, Hegel, Gentile, Croce): to conceive the reality as (...) history, as the idealists do, has important ethical implications. (shrink)