Taste sensitivity and liking drive food choices and ingestive behaviors from childhood to adulthood, yet their longitudinal association with dietary intake and BMI is largely understudied. Here, we examined the longitudinal relationship between sugar and fat sensitivity, sugar and fat liking, habitual dietary intake, and BMI percentiles in a sample of 105 healthy-weight adolescents over a 4-year period. Taste sensitivity was assessed via a triangle fat and sweet taste discrimination test. Taste liking were rated on a visual analog scale for (...) four milkshakes that varied in sugar and fat contents, low-fat/high-sugar, high-fat/low-sugar, low-fat/low-sugar milkshakes). A modified version of the reduced Block Food Frequency Questionnaire was used to assess dietary intake. All measurements were repeated annually. Repeated measures correlations and linear mixed effects models were used to model the associations between the variables. Sugar sensitivity was negatively associated with liking for the LF/HS milkshake over the 4-year period. Low sugar sensitivity at baseline predicted increases in BMI percentile over time, but this association didn’t survive a correction for multiple comparisons. Percent daily intake from fat was positively associated with liking for the HF/HS milkshake and negatively associated with liking for the LF/LS milkshake over 4 years. Together, these results demonstrate that lower sensitivity to sweet taste is linked to increased hedonic response to high-sugar foods and increased energy intake from fat seems to condition adolescents to show increased liking for high-fat/high-sugar foods. (shrink)

Welfare science has built its foundations on veterinary medicine and thus measures of health. Since bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) tend to mask symptoms of poor health, management in captivity would benefit from advanced understanding on the links between health and behavioural parameters, and few studies exist on the topic. In this study, four representative behavioural and health measures were chosen: health status (as qualified by veterinarians), percentage of daily food eaten, occurrences of new rake marks (proxy measure of social activity), (...) and willingness to participate (WtP) in Positive Reinforcement Training sessions as qualitatively measured by their caretakers. These data were collected multiple times a day, every day over the course of a year from a multi-facility, large sample size (ndolphins= 51), allowing powerful analyses of the relationships between measures. First, it was found that dolphins with a higher WtP score also had a significantly better health status, ate a higher percentage of their daily food, and a lower occurrence of new rake marks. In addition, the WtP score was significantly lower up to 3 days before the weekly veterinary diagnosis of a decrease in health state; the percentage of daily food eaten and new rake mark measures did not show any significant change before such a diagnosis. These results suggest that WtP in training sessions is a potential behavioural measure of dolphin welfare, and an indicator of early changes in the dolphins’ health state. We therefore suggest measurement of WtP as a more practical and non-invasive tool to support veterinary care and general management. More work needs to be conducted to elucidate the influence of social behaviour on health, and to identify other potential welfare indicators, but this long-term study has shown that qualitative measures can be both practical and valid when assessing dolphin welfare. (shrink)

The intuitive notion of a binary relation on information-bearers, comparingthem with respect to their closeness to the available information, is oftenconstrued in terms of comparing their symmetric difference with, orcompositional similarity to, the available information. This happens forinstance in some treatments of verisimilitude. We expound an abstractmathematical rendering of the relevant data-dependent relation in theframework of Boolean algebras. For every element t of a Boolean algebra B we construct the t-modulated Boolean algebra Btin which the order relation represents `is at (...) most as compatible with t as' or `is at best as similar to t as'. In the case of Lindenbaum-Tarskialgebras, t expresses the available information, and the compatibilityrelation turns out to be an entwinement of inferential and conjecturalrelations. It is just classical entailment when no information is available(i.e., when t is logically true) and becomes more boldly abductive themore information is available. The rich algebraic structures of a Boolean algebra –- including its Boolean group structures –- play a significant role in this combination of deduction and abduction and also induce cautious anddaring variants of the compatibility relation. Links with the literature onverisimilitude, abduction, and related topics are indicated. (shrink)

Recent developments in advanced industrial societies have increased the prominence of kinds of social inequality not adequately accomodated in traditional theories of class and social stratification. It is argued that the source of this failure is not, as has been claimed, the vertical imagery informing these theories, but rather their one-dimensionality, i.e., their assumption of a single unitary distributive mechanism as the essential generator of comprehensive social inequality. The weakness of a one-dimensional approach is illustrated through an analysis of Beck’s (...) criticism of a class-hierarchy model and his notion of ‘individualized’ inequality. The analytic superiority of a three-dimensional view of social stratification is advocated, and its systematic foundations in Weber’s statements on classes, estates, and political domination are explicated and elaborated. The shortcomings of Weber’s views on social status are diagnosed, some elements of a theory of status inequality compatible with Weber’s analytical schema are presented, and the multidimensionality of status inequality is underscored. (shrink)

The intuitive notion of a binary relation on information-bearers, comparingthem with respect to their closeness to the available information, is oftenconstrued in terms of comparing their symmetric difference with, orcompositional similarity to, the available information. This happens forinstance in some treatments of verisimilitude. We expound an abstractmathematical rendering of the relevant data-dependent relation in theframework of Boolean algebras. For every element t of a Boolean algebra B we construct the t-modulated Boolean algebra Btin which the order relation represents `is at (...) most as compatible with t as'' or `is at best as similar to t as''. In the case of Lindenbaum-Tarskialgebras, t expresses the available information, and the compatibilityrelation turns out to be an entwinement of inferential and conjecturalrelations. It is just classical entailment when no information is available(i.e., when t is logically true) and becomes more boldly abductive themore information is available. The rich algebraic structures of a Boolean algebra –- including its Boolean group structures –- play a significant role in this combination of deduction and abduction and also induce cautious anddaring variants of the compatibility relation. Links with the literature onverisimilitude, abduction, and related topics are indicated. (shrink)

Worker well-being is a hot topic in organizations, consultancy and academia. However, too often, the buzz about worker well-being, enthusiasm for new programs to promote it and interest to research it, have not been accompanied by universal enthusiasm for scientific measurement. Aim to bridge this gap, we address three questions. To address the question ‘What is worker well-being?’, we explain that worker well-being is a multi-facetted concept and that it can be operationalized in a variety of constructs. We propose a (...) four-dimensional taxonomy of worker well-being constructs to illustrate the concept’s complexity and classify ten constructs within this taxonomy. To answer the question ‘How can worker well-being constructs be measured?’, we present two aspects of measures: measure obtrusiveness (i.e., the extent to which obtaining a measure interferes with workers’ experiences) and measure type (i.e., closed question survey, word, behavioral and physiological). We illustrate the diversity of measures across our taxonomy and uncover some hitherto under-appreciated avenues for measuring worker well-being. Finally, we address the question ‘How should a worker well-being measure be selected?’ by discussing conceptual, methodological, practical and ethical considerations when selecting a measure. We summarize these considerations in a short checklist. It is our hope that with this study researchers – working in organizations, in academia or both – will feel more competent to find effective strategies for the measurement worker well-being and eventually make policies and choices with a better understanding of what drives worker well-being. (shrink)

A widely accepted view in epistemology is that we do not have direct control over our beliefs. And we surely do not have as much control over our beliefs as we have over simple actions. For instance, you can, if offered $500, immediately throw your steak in the trash, but a meat-eater cannot, at will, start believing that eating animals is wrong to secure a $500 reward. Yet, even though we have more control over our behavior than we have over (...) our beliefs, some of our behavior, especially moral behavior, is heavily influenced by our beliefs. Meat-eating is one example. So, if we do not have direct control over our beliefs and our beliefs influence our moral behavior, it’s no wonder meat-eaters aren’t immediately boycotting Burger King and lining up for the Beyond Burger after hearing about the mistreatment of farmed animals. So, how, or can we, inspire meat-eaters to change their beliefs regarding the moral significance of meat-eating and, consequently, their animal-eating behavior? I propose an answer to this difficult question. (shrink)

When David Souter was nominated by President Bush to the Supreme Court, he cited John Marshall Harlan as his model. It was an interesting choice. Admired by conservatives and deeply respected by his liberal brethren, Harlan was a man, as Justice William Brennan lamented, whose "massive scholarship" has never been fully recognized. In addition, he was the second Harlan to sit on the Court, following his grandfather--also named John Marshall Harlan. But while his grandfather was an outspoken supporter of reconstruction (...) on a conservative court, the younger Harlan emerged as a critic of the Warren Court's liberal expansion of civil liberties. Now, in the first biography of this important but neglected jurist, Tinsley Yarbrough provides a detailed account of Harlan's life, from his privileged childhood to his retirement and death. Yarbrough examines the forces and events which shaped the Justice's jurisprudence--his early life and often complex family relationships, education at Princeton and Oxford, his work as a prosecutor during Prohibition, Republican Party activities, wartime service in the Army Air Force, and years as one of the nation's preeminent corporate lawyers. The book focuses, however, on Harlan's years on the high bench. Yarbrough weaves together discussions of the Justice's relations with his brethren, clerks, and staff, an examination of Harlan's role in the decision-making process on the Court, and an analysis of his jurisprudence. The Justice's approach to constitutional interpretation exalted precedent, deference to governmental power, and narrow decisions closely tied to case facts; but he also accepted an evolving, creative model of constitutional construction which permitted expansive readings of constitutional rights. Yarbrough's details Harlan's close relationship with Justice Frankfurter, showing how--despite their friendship and alliance--Harlan strongly marked out his own position, both personally and judicially, on the Warren and Burger courts. And he examines the substance and significance of his dissents in such famous cases as Miranda and the Pentagon Papers. Intensively researched, smoothly written, and incisively argued, Yarbrough's biography offers an absorbing account of the life and career of a great dissenter, hailed by admirers as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a "judge's judge." Coming at a time when the high court has begun to adopt many of Harlan's principles, this account provides an essential perspective on the Court, civil liberties, and a pivotal figure in the history of both. (shrink)

Are we the Citizens of just one empirical world? Have all reminiscences to the transcendental become atavistic in the political domain? This article defends the lasting relevance of the kantian doctrine of analogy for the significance of both religion and politics in post-modern times. The symbolic representation of the indemonstrable concept of practical reason itself functions as well in politics as in religion in the manner of a typology of the law and a legislation, which must be understood as the (...) always indirect representation of the absolute good will. Only this idea avoids the empirical illusions of an imaginary self-sufficient political or religious authority. All authority based on the concept of God as legislator as far as a promulgator of the moral law, with its intrinsic character of obligation, is conceived as unavoidable for the finite reason. Therefore the execution of the king during the French revolution as a legal act in itself is inconceivable as far as it intended the abrogation of the representation of the instance of executive obligation as such. All political doctrines that would claim the installation of the moral kingdom of God on earth are equally chimerical. Since Kant only claims the idea of legislation of practical reason and the guarantee of the viability of morals in the empirical world when evoking God in practical philosophy and calling upon the historical Christian religion, his theological political doctrine goes beyond the ideological political and religious setting of his time and it remains on the contrary a valuable warning for actual political and religious terrorism. (shrink)

Em "Teoria da vanguarda", de Peter Bürger, o choque é compreendido como o artifício intencional dos movimentos de vanguarda contra a autonomia do esteticismo modernista, a fim de devolver a arte à práxis vital. Adotando uma perspectiva distinta, o choque, para Adorno, expõe antes a crise da experiência da formalização do tempo decorrente da incongruência entre as forças produtivas e as relações de produção na sociedade industrial, sendo que dois caminhos artísticos distintos derivam da inflexão histórica da crise da experiência. (...) Em Schoenberg, na esteira do que Bürger classificaria como esteticismo, o choque seria amortizado pela expansão da linguagem musical, mediante seu registro. Em Stravinsky, o procedimento mecânico de golpes rítmicos e de montagem, em consonância com a profusão de vivências do choque, surge como elemento regressivo. Os choques não seriam dispositivos críticos, mas sismogramas de reações às mudanças da consciência subjetiva do tempo na modernidade. O artigo procura enfatizar as premissas conflitantes entre Bürger e Adorno quanto à posição do conceito de choque, assim como as críticas de Bürger ao modernismo adorniano. In Peter Bürger's "Theory of the avant-garde", the concept of shock is rendered as an intentional avant-garde procedure against the institutionalization of art, i.e., against the autonomous criteria of modernist aestheticism, with the purpose of bringing art back to everyday life and vital praxis. From a quite different materialistic perspective, the concept of shock, in Adorno's musical writings, exposes the crisis of experience (Erfahrung) of the dissociation of time within two major streams of modern music, namely Schoenberg's school and Stravinsky's. This paper aims to point out the conflicting assumptions and consequences between Adorno and Bürger regarding their respective theoretical grasps on the concept of shock, as well as the critique to Adorno's musical modernism that Bürger addresses in this book. (shrink)

Wir leben in der Bundesrepublik begrifflich über unsere Verhältnisse. Wir stützen uns auf eine politische Selbstinterpretation, die sich schon als Theorie nicht halten lässt – das ist der Verdacht, der dieses Buch antreibt. Um ihn zu prüfen, untersucht der Philosoph Rüdiger Bittner fünf Begriffe, die für dies Selbstverständnis grundlegend sind, nämlich Freiheit, Menschenwürde, Menschenrechte, Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie. Dabei erweist sich der Verdacht als berechtigt: Unsere politische Existenz in der Bundesrepublik lässt sich unter diese Begriffe gar nicht oder nur unter radikal (...) zurückgeschnittene Versionen von ihnen fassen. Die Kritik zielt nicht darauf, dass die politische Praxis anders aussieht als die Theorie. Die Kritik ist, dass die Theorie, die sich auf die genannten Begriffe stützt, selbst nicht trägt. Demgemäß entwickelt das Buch nun in Grundzügen ein neues Selbstverständnis des politischen Lebens in diesem Staat, ein Selbstverständnis ohne die frommen Legenden der herrschenden politischen Philosophie. Beide, Kritik und neues Verständnis, wenden sich an alle, die sich über ihre politische Existenz in diesem Staat Rechenschaft geben wollen. (shrink)

Liberdade e eticidade: o diagnóstico crítico da modernidade política em Hegel Resumo: Após uma sucinta caracterização do processo de diferenciação e separação histórico-conceitual entre sociedade civil e Estado, respectivamente, entre o indivíduo burguês e o cidadão como traço principal da modernidade política, empreende-se uma análise concisa dos três registros da “apresentação” do conceito de liberdade, que, no âmbito do espírito objetivo, culmina no desenvolvimento do conceito de eticidade. Em seguida, explicita-se os três momentos lógicos, isto é, os três elementos constitutivos (...) e processuais do conceito de liberdade, que, em sua efetivação no âmbito do espírito subjetivo, assume três figuras, a da vontade natural, a da vontade do arbítrio e a da vontade livre que quer a efetivação universal da liberdade como seu “conteúdo, objeto e fim”. Hegel é por excelência o filósofo da modernidade política e, ao mesmo tempo, o seu crítico, na medida em que aprofunda a ruptura com a fundamentação teológica e jusnaturalista que o contratualismo moderno introduz no pensamento ético-político ao fundar a família, a sociedade e o poder político na vontade livre autônoma, ao mesmo tempo em que critica o caráter atomista e negativo da liberdade individual que o paradigma contratualista põe como sua base. Por fim, examina-se mais detidamente os dois pilares fundamentais que fundam a estrutura normativa de uma eticidade moderna e reflexiva : a pessoa como sujeito de direitos e a liberdade subjetiva da consciência moral moderna. Palavras-chave: Liberdade. Modernidade política. Diferença entre sociedade e Estado. Eticidade. Pessoa. Consciência moral. Freiheit und Sittlichkeit: die kritische Diagnose der politischen Modernität bei Hegel Zusammenfassung: Nach einer kurzen Darlegung des historisch-begrifflichen Differenzierungs- und Trennungsprozesses von burgerlicher Gesellschaft und Staat, beziehunsweise, zwischen dem „bourgeois“ und dem staatlichen Bürger, als den auszeichnenden Hauptzug der politischen Modernität, wird eine gedrängte Analyse der drei Ebenen der Darstellung des Freiheitsbegriffs, dessen Verwirklichung im Bereich des objektiven Geistes in der Entwicklung des Sittlichkeitbegriffs seinen Höhepunkt hat. Danach werden die drei logischen Momente, das heisst, die drei prozessualen Bestantandsteile des abstrakten Freiheitsbegriffs ausgelegt, die in ihrer Verwirklichung im subjektiven Geist die entresprechenden drei Gestalten des natürlichen Willens, des Willens als Willkür und desjenigen freien Willens, der die allgemeine Verwirklichung der Freiheit als „Inhalt, Gegenstand und Zweck“ hat. Hegel erweist sich als der profilierte und zugleich kritische Philosoph der politischen Modernität, insofern er den vom Kontraktualismus eingeführten Bruch mit der theologischen und naturrechtlichen Fundierung der Familie, der Gesellschat und der politischen Macht weiter vertieft und zugleich die negative und atomistische Dimension der individuellen Freiheit kritisiert, die der Kontraktualismus zu seiner Voraussetzung hat. Endlich, werden die zwei Grundpfeiler auseinandergelegt, welche die normative Struktur einer reflexiven und modernen Sittlichkeit begründen : die Person als Rechtssubjekt und die subjektive Freiheit als moralisches Gewissen. Schlüsselbegriffe: Freiheit. Politische Modernität. Differenz zwischen bürgerlicher Gesellschat und Staat. Sittlichkeit. Person. Gewissen. Freedom and ethical life: Hegel’s critical diagnosis of political modernity: Departing from a brief characterization of the historical-conceptual process by which civil society and the state, respectively, the bourgeois and the citizen, differed and separated from one another – a fundamental trait of political modernity –, I have undertaken a concise analysis of the three moments of the exposition of freedom’s concept, which, within the scope of objective spirit, culminates in the development of the concept of ethical life. Thereupon, I have elucidated the three logical moments, that is, the three constitutive and procedural elements of freedom’s concept, namely, universality, particularity and singularity, which, in their effectivation within the scope of subjective spirit, assume three figures: that of natural will, arbitrary will and the free will which wants the universal effectivation of freedom as its “content, object and aim”. Hegel is thus the philosopher of political modernity par excellence and, simultaneously, its severe critic, inasmuch as he, on the one hand, deepens the rift which modern contractualism introduced in ethical-political thought when it founded family, society and political power upon autonomous free will, and on the other, inasmuch as he, at the same time, tears down the atomist and negative character of individual freedom set forth by the contractualist paradigm as its basis. Finally, I examined in detail the two fundamental columns upon which a normative structure of a modern and reflexive ethical life are based: the person as subject of rights and the modern moral consciousness’ as subjective freedom. Keywords: Freedom. Political modernity. Difference between society and state. Ethical life. Person. Moral consciousness. Data de registro: 30/07/2020 Data de aceite: 21/10/2020. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é relacionar o ready-made de Duchamp – uma obra de arte que é idêntica a um objeto comum – com a história da arte que o precedeu e entender de que modo sua ruptura radical já estava dentro dessa história. Inicio com uma introdução ao e interpretação do ready-made. Em seguida, me respaldando em Gombrich, Greenberg e outros, examino os três tipos de arte na história propostos por Peter Bürger, focando na questão da realidade/irrealidade da obra, (...) aos poucos me aproximando da relação da obra com seu caráter de objeto. Meu ponto principal é que a bidimensionalidade do quadro reforça a existência da tela e assim também a relação de sua experiência com o mundo concreto em que o quadro se encontra, em contraposição a ilusão dramática do quadro tridimensional. A seguir, examino os impressionistas, onde se inicia um movimento de encontro à realidade da tela, que se radicaliza depois em variadas vertentes do modernismo, onde se encontra Duchamp. Tendo feito este percurso, examino o conceito de vanguarda de Bürger e sua relação com o que ele chama de práxis vital, o mundo fora do quadro ilusionista, que explico através da ideia de distração de Walter Benjamin. Aqui, sugiro pensar o ready-made como uma proposta de transposição da arte e sua teoria ao mundo "não-artístico" das coisas comuns. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 149-155. The world is teeming. Anything can happen. John Cage, “Silence” 1 Autonomy means that although something is part of something else, or related to it in some way, it has its own “law” or “tendency” (Greek, nomos ). In their book on life sciences, Medawar and Medawar state, “Organs and tissues…are composed of cells which…have a high measure of autonomy.”2 Autonomy also has ethical and political valences. De Grazia writes, “In Kant's enormously influential moral philosophy, autonomy (...) , or freedom from the causal determinism of nature, became prominent in justifying the human use of animals.”3 One of the oldest uses of autonomy in English is a description of the French civil war from the late sixteenth century: “Others of the…rebellion entred in counsell, whether they ought to admit the King vpon reasonable conditions, specially hauing their autonomy.”4 Life, and in particular human life, and in particular human politics, is well served by the usages of autonomy . What about the rest of reality, however? Should it be thought of, if it's even considered real and mind-independent, as pure stuff for the manipulation or decorative tastes of truly autonomous beings? We tend to think of things such as paperweights and iPhones as mere tools of human design and human use. To use them is to cause them to exist as fully and properly as they can. But according to Martin Heidegger, when a tool such as a paperweight is used, it disappears, or withdraws ( Entzug ). We are preoccupied with copying the page that the paperweight is holding down. We are concerned with an essay deadline, and the paperweight simply disappears into this general project. If the paperweight slips, or if the iPhone freezes, we might notice it. All of a sudden it becomes vorhanden (present-at-hand) rather than zuhanden (ready-to-hand).5 Yet Heidegger is unable to draw a meaningful distinction between what happens to a paperweight when it slips from the book I'm copying from and what happens to the paperweight when it presses on the still resilient pages of the thick paperback itself. Further still and related to this point, even when I am using the paperweight as part of some general task, I am not using the entirety of the paperweight as such. My project itself selects a thin slice of paperweight-being for the purposes of holding down a book. Even when it is zuhanden the paperweight is withdrawn. Graham Harman is the architect of this way of thinking.6 Harman discovered a gigantic coral reef of withdrawn entities beneath the Heideggerian submarine of Da-sein, which itself is operating at an ontological depth way below the choppy surface of philosophy, beset by the winds of epistemology, and infested with the sharks of materialism, idealism, empiricism and most of the other isms that have defined what is and what isn't for the last several hundred years. At a moment when the term ontology was left alone like a piece of well chewed old chewing gum that no one wants to have anything to do with, object-oriented ontology (OOO) has put it back on the table. The coral reef isn't going anywhere and once you have discovered it, you can't un-discover it. And it seems to be teeming with strange facts. The first fact is that the entities in the reef—we call them “objects” somewhat provocatively—constitute all there is: from doughnuts to dogfish to the Dog Star to Dobermans to Snoop Dogg. People, plastic clothes pegs, piranhas and particles are all objects. And they are all pretty much the same, at this depth. There is not much of a distinction between life and non-life (as there isn't in contemporary life science). And there is not much of a distinction between intelligence and non-intelligence (as there is in contemporary artificial intelligence theory). A lot of these distinctions are made by humans, for humans (anthropocentrism). And the concept autonomy has come into play in policing such distinctions. In this essay I shall to try to liberate autonomy for the sake of nonhumans. I shall do so by parsing carefully the title, which is taken from Hakim Bey's work The Temporary Autonomous Zone .8 First we shall explore the term autonomous . Then we shall explore what the full meaning of zone is. Finally, we shall investigate what temporary means. Each of these terms is of great value. An object withdraws from access. This means that its very own parts can't access it. Since an object's parts can't fully express the object, the object is not reducible to its parts. OOO is anti-reductionist. But OOO is also anti-holist. An object can't be reduced to its “whole” either, “reduced upwards” as it were. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. So we have a strange irreductionist situation in which an object is reducible neither to its parts nor to its whole. A coral reef is made of coral, fish, seaweed, plankton and so on. But one of these things on its own doesn't embody part of a reef. Yet the reef just is an assemblage of these particular parts. You can't find a coral reef in a parking lot. In this way, the vibrant realness of a reef is kept safe both from its parts and from its whole. Moreover, the reef is safe from being mistaken for a parking lot. Objects can't be reduced to tiny Lego bricks such as atoms that can be reused in other things. Nor can be reduced upwards into instantiations of a global process. A coral reef is an expression of the biosphere or of evolution, yes; but so is this sentence, and we ought to be able to distinguish between coral reefs and sentences in English. The preceding facts go under the heading of undermining . Any attempt to undermine an object—in thought, or with a gun, or with heat, or with the ravages of time or global warming—will not get at the withdrawn essence of the object. By essence is meant something very different from essentialism . This is because essentialism depends upon some aspect of an object that OOO holds to be a mere appearance of that object, an appearance-for some object. This reduction to appearance holds even if that object for which the appearance occurs is the object itself! Even a coral reef can't grasp its essential coral reefness. In essentialism, a superficial appearance is taken for the essence of a thing, or of things in general. In thinking essentialism we may be able to discern another way of avoiding OOO. This is what Harman has christened overmining .? The overminer decides that some things are more real than others: say for example human perception. Then the overminer decides that other things are only granted realness status by somehow coming into the purview of the more real entity. When I measure a photon, when I see a coral reef, it becomes what it is. But when I measure a photon, I never measure the actual photon. Indeed, since at the quantum scale to measure means “to hit with a photon or an electron beam” (or whatever), measurement, perception ( aisthesis ), and doing become the same. What I “see” are deflections, tracks in a diffusion cloud chamber or interference patterns. Far from underwriting a world of pure illusion where the mind is king, quantum theory is one of the very first truly rigorous realisms, thinking its objects as irreducibly resistant to full comprehension, by anything.9 So far we have made objects safe from being swallowed up by larger objects and broken down into smaller objects—undermining. And so far we have made objects safe from being mere projections or reflections of some supervenient entity—overmining. That's quite a degree of autonomy. Everything in the coral reef, from the fish to a single coral lifeform to a tiny plankton, is autonomous. But so is the coral reef itself. So are the heads of the coral, a community of tiny polyps. So is each individual head. Each object is like one of Leibniz's monads, in that each one contains a potentially infinite regress of other objects; and around each object, there is a potentially infinite progress of objects, as numerous multiverse theories are now also arguing. But the infinity, the uncountability, is more radical than Leibniz, since there is nothing stopping a group of objects from being an object, just as a coral reef is something like a society of corals. Each object is “a little world made cunningly” (John Donne).10 We are indeed approaching something like the political valance of autonomy . The existence of an object is irreducibly a matter of coexistence. Objects contain other objects, and are contained “in” other objects. Let us, however, explore further the ramifications of the autonomy of objects. We will see that this mereological approach (based on the study of parts) only gets at part of the astonishing autonomy of things. Yet there are some more things to be said about mereology before we move on. Consider the fact that since objects can't be undermined or overmined, it means that there is strictly no bottom object . There is no object to which all other objects can be reduced, so that we can say everything we want to say about them, hypothetically at least, based on the behavior of the bottom object. The idea that we could is roughly E.O Wilson's theory of consilience .11 Likewise, there is no object from which all things can be produced, no top object . Objects are not emanations from some primordial One or from a prime mover. There might be a god, or gods. Suppose there were. In an OOO universe even a god would not know the essential ins and outs of a piece of coral. Unlike even some forms of atheism, the existence of god (or nonexistence) doesn't matter very much for OOO. If you really want to be an atheist, you might consider giving OOO a spin. If there is no top object and no bottom object, neither is there a middle object . That is, there is no such thing as a space, or time, “in” which objects float. There is no environment distinct from objects. There is no Nature (I capitalize the word to reinforce a sense of its deceptive artificiality). There is no world, if by world we mean a kind of “rope” that connects things together.12 All such connections must be emergent properties of objects themselves. And this of course is well in line with post-Einsteinian physics, in which spacetime just is the product of objects, and which may even be an emergent property of a certain scale of object larger than 10?¹?cm).13 Objects don't sit in a box of space or time. It's the other way around: space and time emanate from objects. How does this happen? OOO tries to produce an explanation from objects themselves. Indeed, the ideal situation would be to rely on just one single object. Otherwise we are stuck with a reality in which objects require other entities to function, which would result in some kind of undermining or overmining. We shall see that we have all the fuel we need “inside” one object to have time and space, and even causality. We shall discover that rather than being some kind of machinery or operating system that underlies objects, causality itself is a phenomenon that floats ontologically “in front of” them. In so doing, we will move from the notion of autonomy and begin approaching a full exploration of the notion of zone , which was promised at the outset of this essay. Since an object is withdrawn, even “from itself,” it is a self-contradictory being. It is itself and not-itself, or in a slightly more expanded version, there is a rift between essence and appearance within an object (as well as “between” them). This rift can't be the same as the clichéd split between substance and accidents , which is the default ontology. On this view, things are like somewhat boring cupcakes with somewhat less boring sugar sprinkles on them of different colors and shapes. But on the OOO view, what is called substance is just another limited slice of an object, a way of apprehending something that is ontologically fathoms deeper. What is called substance and what is called accidence are just on the side of what this essay calls appearance. The rift (Greek, chorismos ) between essence and appearance means that an object presents us with something like what in logic is known as the Liar: some version of the sentence “This sentence is false.” The sentence is true, which means that it is a lie, which means that it is false. Or the sentence is false, which means that it is telling the truth, which means that it is true. Now logic since Aristotle has tried desperately to quarantine such beasts in small backwaters and side streets so that they don't act too provocatively.14 But if OOO holds, then at least one very significant thing in the universe is both itself and not-itself: the object. An object is p ? ¬p. To cope with this fact, we shall need some kind of paraconsistent or even fully dialetheic logic, one that is not allergic to dialetheias (double-truthed things). Yet if we accept that objects are dialetheic, p ? ¬p, we can derive all kinds of things easily from objects. Consider the fact of motion. If objects only occupy one location “in” space at any “one” time, then Zeno's paradoxes will apply to trying to think how an object moves. Yet motion seems like a basic, simple fact of our world. Either everything is just an illusion and nothing really moves at all (Parmenides). Or objects are here and not-here “at the same time.”15 This latter possibility provides the basic setup for all the motion we could wish for. Objects are not “in” time and space. Rather, they “time” (a verb) and “space.” They produce time and space. It would be better to think these verbs as intransitive rather than transitive, in the manner of dance or revolt . They emanate from objects, yet they are not the object. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (Yeats).16 The point being, that for there to be a question, there must be a distinction—or there must not be (p ? ¬p).17 It becomes impossible to tell: “What constitutes pretense is that, in the end, you don't know whether it's pretense or not.”18 In this notion of the emergence of time and space from an object we can begin to understand the term zone . Zone can mean belt , something that winds around something else. We talk of temperate zones and war zones. A zone is a place where a certain action is taking place: the zone winds around, it radiates heat, bullets fly, armies are defeated. To speak of an autonomous zone is to speak of a place that a certain political act has carved out of some other entity. Cynically, Tibet is called TAR, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, for this very reason. In this phrase, Region tries to emulate zone : it sounds as if the place has its own rules, but of course, it is very much under the control of China. What action is taking place? “[N]ot something that just is what it is, here and now, without mystery, but something like a quest…a tone on its way calling forth echoes and responses…water seeking its liquidity in the sunlight rippling across the cypresses in the back of the garden.”19 If as suggested earlier there is no functional difference between substance and accidence; if there is no difference between perceiving and doing; if there is no real difference between sentience and non-sentience—then causality itself is a strange, ultimately nonlocal aesthetic phenomenon. A phenomenon, moreover, that emanates from objects themselves, wavering in front of them like the astonishingly beautiful real illusion conjured in this quotation of Alphonso Lingis. Lingis's sentence does what it says, casting a compelling, mysterious spell, the spell of causality, like a demonic force field. A real illusion: if we knew it was an illusion, if it were just an illusion, it would cease to waver. It would not be an illusion at all. We would be in the real of noncontradiction. Since it is like an illusion, we can never be sure: “What constitutes pretense…” A zone is what Lingis calls a level . A zone is not entirely a matter of “free will”: this concept has already beaten down most objects into abject submission. Objects are far more threateningly autonomous, and sensually autonomous, than the Kantian version of autonomy cited in the first paragraph of this essay. A zone is not studiously decided upon by an earnest committee before it goes into action. One of its predominant features is that it is already happening . We find ourselves in it, all of a sudden, in the late afternoon as the shadows lengthen around a city square, giving rise to an uncanny sensation of having been here before. Objects emit zones. Wherever I find myself a zone is already happening, an autonomous zone. It is the nonautonomous zones that are impositions on what is already the case. Or rather, these zones are autonomous zones that exclude and police. They are brittle. Every object is autonomous, but some objects try to maintain themselves through rigidity and brittleness, like (and such as) a police state. Paradoxically, the more rigidly one tries to exclude contradiction, the more virulent become the dialetheias that are possible. I can get around “This sentence is false” by imagining that there are metalanguages that explain what counts as a sentence. Then I can decide that this isn't a real sentence. This is basically Alfred Tarski's strategy, since he invented the notion of metalanguage specifically to cope with dialetheias.20 For example we might claim that sentences such as “This sentence is false” are neither true nor false. But then you can imagine a strengthened version of the Liar such as: “This sentence is not true”; or “This sentence is neither true nor false.” And we can go on adding to the strengthened Liar if the counter-attack tries to build immunity by specifying some fourth thing that a sentence can be besides true, false, and neither true nor false: “This sentence is false, or neither true nor false, or the fourth thing.” And so on.21 It seems as if language becomes more brittle the more it tries to police the Liars of this world. Why? I believe that this increasing brittleness is a symptom of a deep fact about reality. What is this deep fact? Simply that there are objects, that these objects are withdrawn, and that they are walking contradictions. This means indeed that (as Lacan put it) “there is no metalanguage,” since a metalanguage would function as a “middle object” that gave coherency and evenness to the others.22 Since there is no metalanguage, there is no rising above the disturbing illusory play of causality. This may even have political implications: no global critique is therefore possible, and attempts to smooth out or totalize are doomed to fail. To think the zone is to think the notion of temporary , which we shall now begin to discuss in greater detail. The zone is not in time: rather it “times.” But because a zone is an emanation of an object, it is based on a wavering fragility, since objects are p ? ¬p. When an object is born, that means that it has broken free of some other object. An object can be born because it and other objects are fragile. If not, no movement would be possible. Objects contain the seeds of their own destruction, a dialetheic sentence that says something like “This sentence cannot be proved.” Kurt Gödel argues that every true system of propositions contains at least one sentence that the system cannot prove. In order to be true, the system must have a minimum incoherence. To be real, it has to be fragile. Imagine a record player. Now imagine a record called I Cannot Be Played on This Record Player . When you play it on this record player, it produces sympathetic vibrations that cause the record player to shudder apart. No matter how many defense mechanisms you build in, there will always be the possibility of at least one record that destroys the record player.23 That is what being physical is. An object is inherently fragile because it is both itself and not-itself. When the rift between appearance and essence collapses, that is called destruction, ending, death. When an object breaks, several new objects are born. An opera singer sings a loud note in tune with the resonant frequency of a wine glass. (See the movie included below.) The singing is a zone, an autonomous level of intensity, opening a rift between appearance and essence. The glass ripples—for a moment it is nakedly a glass and a not-glass—almost as if it were having an orgasm, a little death. It is caught in the rift of the singing. Then its structure can't handle the coherence of the sound waves, and it breaks. It is incoherence and inconsistency that is the mark of existence, not consistency and noncontradiction. When things break or die, they become coherent. Essence disappears into appearance. I become the memories of friends. A glass becomes a dancing wave. Instantly, there are glass fragments, new temporary autonomous zones. The fragments have broken free from the glass. They are no longer its parts, but emanate their own time and space, becoming perhaps accidental weapons as they bury themselves in my flesh. Thus Hakim Bey's instructions on creating temporary autonomous zones oscillate disturbingly between performance art and politics, circus clowning and revolution. To play with the aesthetic is to play with causality, to rip from the sensual ether emanating from things new regions, new zones. Anarchist politics is the creation of fresh objects in a reality without a top or a bottom object, or for that matter a middle object: Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard. … There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin—your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.24 Bey imagines that this is because chaos is a primordial “undifferentiated oneness-of-being.” A Parmenides or a Spinoza or a Laruelle would read this a certain way. Individual objects, or decisions to talk about this rather than that, are just maggot-like things crawling around on the surface of the giant cheese of oneness.25 Yet he also describes chaos as “Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology.” This image is of an inconsistent object, not of an undifferentiated field. An object, indeed, that can be distinguished from other things. If not, then the first part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , subtitled “The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism,” is a kind of onto-theology. Onto-theology proclaims that some things are more real than others. Bey, however, is writing poetically, and thus ambiguously. We are at liberty to read “undifferentiated oneness-of-being” as something like the irreducibility of a thing to its parts and so forth (undermining and overmining). This certainly seems closer to the language in the following paragraph: “There is no becoming … already you're the monarch of your own skin.”26 On this view, there is no difference between art and politics: “When ugliness, poor design & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate.” Since Romanticism this has been the war cry of the vanguard artist.27 To say to is to fall prey to the tired axioms of the avant-garde, and we think we know how the game goes. But OOO is not simply a way to advocate “new and improved” versions of this shock-the-bourgeoisie boredom. Bey's text is certainly full enough of that. Rather, since causality as such is aesthetic, and since nonhumans are not that different from humans, the new approach would be to form aesthetic–causal alliances with nonhumans. These alliances would have to resist becoming brittle, whether that brittleness is right wing (authoritarianism) or left wing (the endless maze of critique). No “ism,” especially not the ultimate forms, nihilism and cynicism, is in any sense effective at this point. All forms of brittleness are based on the mistaken assumption that there is a metalanguage and that therefore “Anything you can do, I can do meta.” I will not be listing any approaches here, as Bey does. Such lists and manifestos belong to the vanguardism that no longer works. Why? Not because of some marvelous revolution in human consciousness, but because nonhumans have so successfully impinged upon human social, psychic and aesthetic space. It is the time after the end of the world. That happened in 1945, when a thin layer of radioactive materials was deposited in Earth's crust. Geology now calls it this era the Anthropocene . Ironically, this period, named after humans, is the moment at which even the most thick headed of us make decisive contact with nonhumans, from mercury in our blood to manta rays to magnesium. Richard Dawkins, Pat Robertson and Lady Gaga all have to deal with global warming and mass extinction, somehow. We now live in an Age of Asymmetry marked by a skewed, spiraling relationship between vast knowledge and vast nonhuman things—both become vaster and vaster because of one another and for the same reasons.28 This means that coming up with the perfect attitude or the perfect aesthetic prescription just won't work any more. Even the most hardened anthropocentrist now has to pay through the nose for basic food supplies, and has to use more sunscreen. Whether he knows it or acknowledges it, he is already acting with regard towards nonhumans. There is nothing special to think, no special critique that will get rid of the stains of coexistence. The problem won't fit into the well-established modern boxes, which is why the “mystical,” “spiritual” quality of Bey's prose is welcome. Of course, when I put it this way, you may immediately close off and decide that I am talking about perfect attitudes after all, or something outside of politics, or other ways that the radical left marshals to police its thinking of the nonhuman. Because that is what is really at stake in all this: the nonhuman in its coexistence with the human—bosons, gods, clouds, spirits, lifeforms, experiences, the sunlight rippling across the cypresses. Bey begins to get at this in a Latour litany in the second part of The Temporary Autonomous Zone , “The Assassins”: Pomegranate, mulberry, persimmon, the erotic melancholy of cypresses, membrane-pink shirazi roses, braziers of meccan aloes & benzoin, stiff shafts of ottoman tulips, carpets spread like make-believe gardens on actual lawns—a pavilion set with a mosaic of calligrammes—a willow, a stream with watercress—a fountain crystalled underneath with geometry— the metaphysical scandal of bathing odalisques, of wet brown cupbearers hide-&-seeking in the foliage—“water, greenery, beautiful faces.”29 This will be conveniently dismissed as orientalism. If we're never allowed to escape the crumbling prison of modernity for fear of imperialism there is truly no hope. In a similar way, the fear of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism is very often staged from a place that just is anthropocentrism .30 Critique turns into ressentiment . An object radiates a zone that is aesthetic and therefore causal. Because objects “time” they are temporary. Not because they exist “in” time that eventually gets the better of them. Their very existence implies the possibility of their non-existence. Since objects are not consistent, they can cease to exist. But nothing, no one, will ever be able to insert a blade between appearance and existence, even thought there is a rift there. Now that's what I call autonomy. NOTES 1. John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 96. 2. P. B. Medawar and J. S. Medawar, The Life Science: Current Ideas in Biology (London: Wildwood House, 1977), 8. 3. David DeGrazia, Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 5. 4. Antony Colynet, A True History of the Civil Warres in France (London, 1591), 480. 5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time , tr. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996) 62–71. 6. Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Peru, IL: Open Court, 2002). 7. Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991). 8. Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object (Ripley: Zero Books, 2011), 7–18. 9. This is not the place to get into an argument about quantum theory, but I have argued that quanta also do not endorse a world that I can't speak about because it is only real when measured. This world is that of the reigning Standard Model proposed by Niels Bohr and challenged by De Broglie and Bohm (and now the cosmologist Valentini, among others). See Timothy Morton, “Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology,” Qui Parle 19.2 (Spring–Summer, 2011), 163–190. 10. John Donne, Holy Sonnets 15, in The Major Works: Including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons , ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 11. Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998). 12. Martin Heidegger, What Is a Thing? (Washington: Regnery, 1968), 243. 13. Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (London: Penguin, 2006); Petr Horava, “Quantum Gravity at a Lifshitz Point,” arXiv:0901.3775v2 [hep-th]. 14. Graham Priest, In Contradiction (Oxford University Press, 2006), passim: the most notable recent quarantine officers have been Tarski, Russell, and Frege. 15. Priest, In Contradiction , 172–181. 16. William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children,” Collected Poems , ed. Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1996). 17. Paul de Man, “Semiology and Rhetoric,” Diacritics 3.3 (Autumn, 1973), 27–33 (30). 18. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire, Livre III: Les psychoses (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1981), 48. See Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 206. 19. Alphonso Lingis, The Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 29. 20. Priest, In Contradiction , 9–27. 21. See Graham Priest and Francesco Berto, “ Dialetheism ,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. 22. Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection , tr. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977), 311. 23. The analogy can be found at length in Douglas Hofstadter, “Contracrostipunctus,” Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 75–81. 24. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 25. This is closest to the language of François Laruelle in Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2011) 179. 26. Bey, “ Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 27. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 28. For further discussion see Timothy Morton, “From Modernity to the Anthropocene: Ecology and Art in the Age of Asymmetry,” The International Social Science Journal 209 (forthcoming). 29. Bey, “ The Assassins ,” Temporary Autonomous Zone . 30. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 75–76. (shrink)

Etwa zwei Jahrzehnte ist Meister Eckhart im Erfurter Dominikanerkonvent gewesen, zunächst als Prior und dann als erster Provinzial der Ordensprovinz Saxonia. Obgleich die große Bedeutung der Erfurter Zeit Meister Eckharts zwischen seinen Aufenthalten in Paris, zunächst als Student und Bakkalar und sodann zweimal als Magister, in den letzten Jahren zunehmend deutlicher hervorgetreten ist, so stehen die Erfurter Jahre in der Eckhart-Forschung bislang in aller Regel hinter seiner Pariser, Straßburger und Kölner Zeit zurück. Die wissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung der Erfurter Zeit Eckharts ist (...) somit ein Desiderat, dem sich der vorliegende Band widmet. Die 27 Beiträge greifen die wichtigsten Impulse der neueren Eckhart-Forschung auf und fragen nach den Konsequenzen für das Eckhartbild. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werde ich die Wege untersuchen, auf denen Moraltheoretiker philosophischen Sinn in der These entdecken könnten, daß das Gesetz die moralische Schlechtigkeit von Personen dadurch tolerieren sollte, daß es den Bürgern Rechte zuerkennt, moralisch Falsches zu tun. Dabei vernachlässige ich Fälle, in denen diese Toleranz deshalb angemessen erscheint, weil die Moralität des in Rede stehenden Verhaltens ungewiss oder jedenfalls unter gleichermaßen vernünftigen Personen hinreichend umstritten ist, so daß die Gewährung von Freiheit auch für den Staat als das angemessene (...) Mittel erscheint, die Problematik zu lösen. Stattdessen werde ich mich auf Fälle konzentrieren, in denen der Gesetzgeber davon überzeugt ist, daß das betreffende Verhalten tadelnswert ist, so daß weder Zweifel noch Uneinigkeit über die Bewertung des Verhaltens als ausreichende Gründe dafür genannt werden können, daß der Staat sich der Sache nicht annimmt.Wie ich im 1. Teil zeige, kann sowohl von konsequentialistischen als auch von deontologischen Moraltheorien angenommen werden, daß sie unmoralisches Verhalten erlauben, das keine Verletzung von konsequentialistischen bzw. deontologischen Pflichten darstellt. Regel-Konsequentialisten verlangen Toleranz für akt-konsequentialistisch betrachtete Verstöße, sofern sie im Rahmen ihrer Regeln erfolgen; und Deontologen fordern Toleranz für kategorisch erlaubte Taten, die sub-optimale Konsequenzen haben. Im Hinblick darauf, daß wir eine Tugenpflicht haben könnten, uns zu Personen zu entwickeln, die deontologische Erlaubnisse nicht mißbrauchen, untersuche ich eine Reihe von Gründen, die es nahe legen, daß diejenigen, die sich einer Moraltheorie der Tugendpflichten verbunden fühlen, die die Besorgnis um Handlungen durch eine Besorgnis um den Charakter der Person ersetzt, gleichwohl gute Gründe dafür hat, die Kultivierung eines guten Charakters außerhalb der Reichweite des Staates zu belassen.Die Problematik wird schwieriger, wenn wir von den unmoralischen Handlungen, die keine Pflichten verletzen , zu den unmoralischen Handlungen übergehen, die solche Pflichten verletzen. Kann ein Konsequentialist sich damit einverstanden erklären, daß der Staat Personen die Freiheit zugesteht, etwas zu tun, was konsequentialistisch verboten ist? Kann ein Deontologe nicht nur die Freiheit, Erlaubnisse zu missbrauchen, verteidigen, sondern auch die Freiheit, kategorische Verbote zu verletzen? Im 2. Teil des vorliegenden Beitrages vertrete ich die These, daß es durchaus einleuchtende Gründe dafür geben mag, daß Freiheit entweder intrinsisch oder instrumentell gut ist, um andere intrinsisch gute Dinge zu bewirken, in welchem Fall Konsequentialisten gute Gründe dafür haben, daß der Staat grundsätzlich moralische Schlechtigkeit tolerieren sollte, oder sie zumindest dann tolerieren sollte, wenn dies der Preis dafür ist, größeres Gutes zu befördern. Im 3. Teil behaupte ich, daß selbst unsere beste deontologische Theorie Maximen in sich aufnehmen kann, die es dem Gesetzgeber kategorisch verbieten, den Bürgern die Verletzung kategorischer Maximen zu verbieten. So kann es dem Gesetzgeber z.B. verboten sein, in die Privatsphäre der Bürger einzugreifen, um das Fehlverhalten von Bürgern zu ermitteln. Oder es kann dem Gesetzgeber auferlegt sein, nicht etwas zu verbieten, wenn er dieses Verbot nicht gegenüber allen Bürgern durchsetzen kann.Das Ergebnis meiner Analyse ist, daß die Theorie liberaler Toleranz nicht von der Behauptung vernünftigen Zweifels und der Uneinigkeit zwischen Gesetzgeber und Bürgern abhängt, wie es unter liberalen Politikwissenschaftlern oftmals voraus-gesetzt wird. Selbst dann, wenn vernünftige Personen sich darüber einig sind, daß eine bestimmte Art von Verhalten unmoralisch ist, und selbst dann, wenn bei dem Gesetzgeber kaum Zweifel an der Unmoralität des Verhaltens vorhanden sind, gibt es doch schwerwiegende moralische Gründe dafür, weshalb der Gesetzgeber moralisch verpflichtet sein kann, die Begehung unmoralischer Handlungen zu tolerieren. In this article I explore the ways in which moral theorists might make philosophical sense of the claim that the law ought to tolerate moral wickedness by according citizens legal rights to do moral wrongs. I set aside cases in which tolerance is proper because the morality of the conduct in question is uncertain or sufficiently contested by equally reasonable persons so as to make liberty the appropriate default solution for the state. Instead, I confine my inquiry to cases in which lawmakers are confident that the conduct in question is blameworthy, so that doubt and disagreement cannot be said to be sufficient reasons for staying the hand of the state. As I argue in Part I, both consequentialist and deontological moral theories can be thought to permit immoralities that are not violations of consequentialist or deontological obligations. Rule-consequentialists require tolerance of act-consequential wrongs that are done in the name of their rules; and deontologists require tolerance of consequentially sub-optimal deeds that are categorically permitted. While we may have aretaic obligations to become the kinds of persons who do not abuse deontological permissions, I explore a series of reasons to think that those who subscribe to an aretaic moral theory that substitutes concerns for character for concerns for actions will nevertheless have good grounds to place the cultivation of good character beyond the scope of the state. The question is harder when we move from immoralities that do not violate obligations to immoralities that do violate such obligations. Can consequentialists make sense of the state according persons liberty to do what is consequentially prohibited? Can deontologists defend not just the liberty to misuse permissions but the liberty to violate categorical prohibitions? I argue in Part II that there may be sound arguments for why liberty is either intrinsically good or instrumentally good for the achievement of other intrinsically good things, in which case, consequentialists have sounds reasons for supposing that the state ought to tolerate wickedness, tu cour , or tolerate it when it is a price that purchases greater goods. And I argue in Part III that our best deontological theory may contain within it maxims that categorically prohibit legislators from prohibiting violations of categorical maxims on the part of citizens. For example, they may be enjoined from invading citizens' privacy in the ways required to detect citizens' wrongdoing; or they may be enjoined not to prohibit what they cannot equally enforce against all. The upshot of my analysis is that a theory of liberal tolerance does not depend upon claims of reasonable doubt and disagreement amongst lawmakers and citizens, as is so often supposed amongst liberal political theorists. Even if reasonable persons agree that a kind of conduct is immoral, and even if lawmakers are in little doubt about its immorality, there are powerful moral reasons why lawmakers might be morally obligated to tolerate its persistence. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Philosophie und Politik" gibt der praktischen Politik Impulse aus der politischen Philosophie. Führende Politikerinnen und Politiker der deutschen Sozialdemokratie antworten auf die Anstöße aus philosophischer Sicht. Thomas M. Scanlon diskutiert in dem Band die Bedingungen, unter denen Gleichheit politisch relevant und ethisch begründet ist. Scanlon ist einer der profiliertesten zeitgenössischen Philosophen im Bereich der Ethik und der politischen Theorie. Er zählt zu den so genannten New Contractarians, also den Theoretikern, die mit und gegen John Rawls Gerechtigkeitstheorie zur Renaissance (...) des Vertragsargumentes in der politischen Philosophie beigetragen haben. Damit wurde eine Denkfigur wiederbelebt, die am Beginn der modernen europäischen Demokratie steht, die die Begründung politischer Ordnungen an individuelle Rationalität bindet und alle Bürger als gleiche und freie einbezieht. (shrink)

Im Zentrum der politischen Theorie des Liberalismus steht die Aufgabe, die Institutionen gesellschaftlicher Kooperation und staatlicher Rechtsordnung durch vernünftige Gründe zu legitimieren. Erst die Möglichkeit einer vernünftigen Zustimmung aller Betroffenen zeigt, dass die Vorstellung einer „gerechten und stabilen und darum wohlgeordneten Gesellschaft unter den Bedingungen moderner pluralistischer Demokratien [...] mehr als eine bloße Fiktion“ ist. Dies setzt voraus, dass die Bürger*innen einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft, unabhängig von ihren jeweiligen partikularen Überzeugungen, die Legitimität ihres gemeinsamen politischen Handelns akzeptieren können.

Growing concern has been expressed that we have entered a “post-truth” era in which each of us willfully believes whatever we choose, aided and abetted by alternative and social media that spin alternative realities for boutique consumption. A prime example of the belief in alternative realities is said to be acceptance of “conspiracy theories”—a term that is often used as a pejorative to indict claims of conspiracy that are so obviously absurd that only the unhinged could believe them. The epistemological (...) standard often involved in this indictment, however—the standard of “obvious” falsity—invites subjectivity in its application, because what is obviously false to one person can be common sense to another. This is not just a truism; considerable research suggests that people’s political beliefs, in general, and their acceptance or rejection of conspiracy theories in particular, tends in large part to be determined by partisan, ideological, and other priors. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century the category of the aesthetic sought to bridge the gap between the prevalent dualities of Cartesian thought: art and science, history and science, prejudice and truth. This special issue of _boundary 2_ addresses current debates about the status of art in the context of global modernity. The range of arguments represented here cover a broad historical scope—from Cartesianism to present-day global modernity—of cultural discourse on the aesthetic to bring a focus to contemporary discussions of the corollary (...) concepts of beauty, virtue, taste, and truth. These essays present a rich and provocative account of the place of the aesthetic in late-twentieth-century culture. Included in this volume are considerations of the relation between theories of art and the avant-garde; art’s relation to cognition; the aesthetic as history; the aesthetic as a unique access to modernity; and its impact on problems of identity formation, ideology, and resistances to the institutional powers inherent in dominant social formations. _Contributors. _Charles Altieri, Peter Burger, David Carroll, Anthony J. Cascardi, Howard Caygill, Allen Dunn, Eric Gans, Agnes Heller, Ronald A. T. Judy, Marie-Rose Logan, Daniel T. O’Hara, Donald E. Pease, Alan Singer. (shrink)

The political problem John Locke inherited from Thomas Hobbes was to produce a theory of natural rights that would not preclude the possibility of entering peacefully into civil association. If political existence is grounded on an unmediated theory of natural right, where every individual has a natural right to whatever he or she conceives to be useful in assuring his or her preservation, and where there are no moral limits to what one's rights will justify, civil association cannot come about (...) without invoking the coercive power of absolute sovereign authority. The problem with that, Locke insisted, is that absolute political authority transforms citizens into slaves.To avoid the necessity for invoking Hobbesian absolutism, Locke needed philosophical evidence that, in the natural situation, man is limited by natural duties. Locke produces an idea of natural duty which relocates the source of man's identity as a person bearing rights in what might be called the labor of consciousness. For Locke, it is the labor of consciousness itself - i.e. the act of self-imputation and self-ownership implicit in self-consciousness - that connects self-interest with an assumption of responsibility, and that transforms natural right into a natural principle of morality which does not need the mediating authority of sovereign power or the legitimating authority of God. The result is, we do not need to draw on theological foundations or call upon natural law doctrines as moral substitutes for the Hobbesian sovereign in order to legitimate Locke's political philosophy. Unvarnished natural duty is, for Locke, enough to ground civil association. The result is a natural morality that enables humans to enter into conditions of community and mutual trust without enlisting the intervening authority of sovereign power. Das staatsphilosophische Problem, das Locke von Hobbes geerbt hatte, war das Problem, eine Theorie natürlicher Rechte zu formulieren, die dem friedlichen Übertritt in eine bürgerliche Gesellschaft nicht entgegensteht. Wenn die Existenz des Staates mit der unkritisiert bleibenden Vorstellung verbunden wird, jedem Individuum komme ein natürliches Recht auf alles zu, was es als für seine Selbsterhaltung nützlich erachtet, und außerdem die moralischen Grenzen, denen ein derartig umfassendes Recht unterliegt, ebenfalls nicht reflektiert werden, dann läßt sich eine bürgerliche Gesellschaft nicht ohne die zwingende Gewalt einer absolut souveränen Macht begründen. Das Problem eines solchen Konzepts, so betont Locke nachdrücklich, besteht darin, daß unter einer absoluten politischen Autorität Bürger zu Sklaven werden.Um einen Absolutismus Hobbes'scher Prägung zu vermeiden, mußte Locke den Beweis dafür führen, daß der Mensch im Naturzustand durch natürliche Pflichten gebunden ist. Dazu schuf er die Vorstellung von einer natürlichen Verpflichtung, die den Ursprung der Identität des Menschen als einer Person, die Rechte hat, auf etwas zurückführt, was als "Tätigkeit des Bewußtseins" bezeichnet werden könnte. Für Locke ist es die Tätigkeit des Bewußtseins, d.i. der im Selbstbewußtsein gegründete Akt, sich die eigenen Handlungen selbst zuzuschreiben, überhaupt der Akt der Inbesitznahme des eigenen Selbst, der das Eigeninteresse mit der Annahme von Verantwortlichkeit verknüpft und das natürliche Recht in ein natürliches Prinzip der Moralität verwandelt, das der regulierenden Autorität einer souveränen Gewalt oder der legitimierenden Autorität Gottes nicht mehr bedarf. Um Lockes politische Philosophie zu rechtfertigen, sind daher weder theologische Begründungen nötig noch Naturrechtsdoktrinen als moralischer Ersatz für den Hobbes'schen Souverän. Locke betrachtet die bloße natürliche Verpflichtung als hinreichend für die Begründung einer bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Das Resultat ist eine natürliche Moralität, die Menschen erlaubt, sich ohne die Intervention einer souveränen Gewalt in einen Zustand der Gemeinschaft und des gegenseitigen Vertrauens zu begeben. (shrink)

Wir haben uns bei unseren Handlungen und Entscheidungen nie vollständig an Fakten orientiert und die westliche Kultur existierte bereits vor der Erfindung des Faktenbegriffs. Aufzeichnungen zeigen, dass der Begriff der Tatsache von der Rechtswissenschaft erfunden wurde, um Zufälligkeiten von abstrakten Regeln zu unterscheiden. Von der Rechtswissenschaft wanderte der Begriff der Tatsache in die Naturwissenschaften, wo sich die Bedeutung von Taten auf die Existenz materieller Dinge verlagerte. Der naturwissenschaftliche Begriff des Faktischen durchdringt seit der Aufklärung die gesamte Kultur, wurde aber in (...) der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wegen seiner sozialen Konstruktion kritisiert. Diese nützliche Kritik zog Populisten mit destruktiven Motiven an und infolgedessen hat sich ein Element der Missachtung von Fakten in den zivilgesellschaftlichen Diskurs eingeschlichen, einschließlich bei Umweltfragen. Ohne die Möglichkeit, Argumente auf wissenschaftliche Fakten zu stützen, muss das Recht anerkennen, dass große Teile der Öffentlichkeit ihre Entscheidungen auf der Grundlage von Werten und nicht von wissenschaftlichen Fakten treffen. Die öffentlichen Reaktionen auf den Klimawandel und COVID-19 sind Beispiele für dieses Phänomen. Die Staaten haben es in den letzten dreißig Jahren versäumt, sinnvolle rechtliche Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung des Klimawandels zu ergreifen, obwohl die wissenschaftlichen Fakten immer zahlreicher wurden. In der Pandemie weigern sich Bürger, Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um die Verbreitung von COVID-19 unter ihren Mitbürgern zu verhindern, und berufen sich dabei auf ein gewisses Maß an persönlichen Freiheiten. Wie kann man Werte schaffen, ohne sie durch Fakten zu stützen? Welche Rolle kann das Umweltrecht bei der Festlegung dieser Werte jenseits faktenbasierter Systeme von Rechten und Pflichten spielen? In der vorfaktischen Kultur Griechenlands wurden in den Gerichten Ethos und Pathos gleichberechtigt neben dem Logos empfohlen. Es gibt jedoch keine Aufzeichnungen über eine vorfaktische Berufung auf das Pathos im Namen von nicht-menschlichen oder abstrakten Gebilden wie,,der Umwelt“. Die postfaktische Welt der empathischen Überzeugung ist also zum großen Teil Neuland. (shrink)

Zu keiner Zeit hat Potsdam auf die europäische Kultur einen größeren Einfluss ausgeübt als im 18. Jahrhundert, als Friedrich der Große, der Philosophenkönig, den Absolutismus und die Aufklärung miteinander in Einklang zu bringen versuchte. Seit dem Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts setzte der Aufstieg des Bürgertums in Verbindung mit den neuen Ideen der Aufklärung das höfische Monopol immer stärker unter Druck. Friedrich der Große nahm die Herausforderung an und wollte als König und Bürger der Leserepublik, als Herrscher und Intellektueller, Macht und (...) Geist zueinander führen. Der Hof in Potsdam, die Residenz am Rande der Metropole, wurde zum Ort dieses komplexen und spannungsreichen Rollenspiels, in dem die alte Welt der ererbten Herren und die neue Welt der kritischen Bürger ihre Grenzen auslotete. Das geschah unter den Augen Europas. Denn Friedrich der Große hatte dem Experiment Potsdam von Anfang an einen europäischen Rahmen gegeben. In Potsdam traf sich und auf Potsdam blickte die aufgeklärte Intelligenz aus ganz Europa. Die deutschen Aufklärer betrachteten das Rollenspiel vor den Toren Berlins dagegen skeptischer, weil sie der kulturellen Konstellation misstrauten und der europäische Hof quer lag zum großen Ziel einer deutschen Nationalkultur, für die der Philosoph von Sans-Souci so wenig Sinn zeigte. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Mitglieder der neuplatonischen Akademie von Athen übten bis in die Spätantike hinein die paganen Kulte aktiv aus. Mitunter gehen Gelehrte davon aus, dass auch die übrige Stadt Athen, zumindest partiell, die Praktiken der neuplatonischen Lehrer und ihrer Schüler teilte. Doch die Akademie bestand nur aus wenigen Mitgliedern. In welchem Maße waren die Praktiken der Akademiemitglieder für das religiöse Leben Athens in der Spätantike repräsentativ? Der vorliegende Aufsatz behauptet, dass die Quellen, nämlich die literarischen Texte, die von den Akademiemitgliedern (...) selbst stammen, zusammen mit den archäologischen Daten auf ein vollkommenes Desinteresse der Bürger Athens an der Praktizierung des kultischen Heidentums hindeuten, ja nicht einmal an dem Erhalt der Götterstatuen in ihrer Stadt. Der Aufsatz untersucht diese Frage. Das erste Beispiel stellt die Episode von Nestorios dar. Eine neue Auslegung der Passage wird vorgeschlagen: Nestorius zielt darauf ab, den heidnischen Kult wiederherzustellen, indem er auf der Akropolis den Kult des Achilles einführte. Die Mitbürger zeigten sich desinteressiert und ablehnend. Das zweite Beispiel untersucht die Einführung des Kultes der Athene, den Proklos in seinem eigenen Haus der Göttin widmete. Dazu wurde die These aufgestellt, dieser Bericht spiegele sich in einer Statuensammlungen wider, die in zwei Häusern Athens aufgefunden wurden. Die Sammlung von Statuen aus unterschiedlichen verlassenen Orten um Athen herum bezeugen auch hier, dass die Stadt kein Interesse hatte: weder an einem paganen Kult noch an der Erhaltung der Statuen. Das letzte Beispiel beschäftigt sich mit Hegias, der private Heiligtümer im Hinterland von Athen wieder errichtete und sie für den paganen Kult nutzte. Die Initiative des Philosophen stieß auf Kritik bei seinen Verwandten. Alles deutet darauf hin, dass die Ausübung paganer Rituale und des Kultes kaum auf Interesse seitens der Mitbürger stieß, aber in keinem Fall auf Gewalt. Die Bemühungen der letzten Heiden zielten darauf ab, die heiligen Bilder zu erhalten; sie blieben auch unter den Philosophen bedeutsam, weil ihre Philosophie den praktischen Kult nicht aufgeben wollte. (shrink)

It is shown that the admissible solutions of the continuity and Bernoulli or Burgers' equations of a perfect one-dimensional liquid are conditioned by a relation established in 1949–1950 by Pauli, Morette, and Van Hove, apparently, overlooked so far, which, in our case, stipulates that the mass density is proportional to the second derivative of the velocity potential. Positivity of the density implies convexity of the potential, i.e., smooth solutions, no shock. Non-elementary and symmetric solutions of the above equations are given (...) in analytical and numerical form. Analytically, these solutions are derived from the original Ansatz proposed in Ref. 1 and from the ensuing operations which show that they represent a particular case of the general implicit solutions of Burgers' equation. Numerically and with the help of an ad hoc computer program, these solutions are simulated for a variety of initial conditions called “compatible” if they satisfy the Morette–Van Hove formula and “anti-compatible” if the sign of the initial velocity field is reversed. In the latter case, singular behaviour is observed. Part of the theoretical development presented here is rephrased in the context of the Hopf–Lax formula whose domain of applicability for the solution of the Cauchy problem of the homogeneous Hamilton–Jacobi equation has recently been enlarged. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob ein Grundeinkommen für jede Bürgerin und jeden Bürger eine gerechte Institution ist, wird unter Philosophen seit gut 20 Jahren verstärkt diskutiert. Zur Begründung der Institution des Grundeinkommens wird von vielen Denkern eine Überlegung geltend gemacht, die von links-libertären Philosophen entwickelt wurde. Sie beruht auf der Annahme, dass von Natur aus gegebene Dinge und Ressourcen ursprünglich das gemeinsame Eigentum aller Menschen sind und dass private Aneigner derartiger Dinge und Ressourcen deshalb aus Gerechtigkeitsgründen gegenüber den anderen Menschen zur Zahlung (...) einer Entschädigung verpflichtet sind, deren Höhe dem ökonomischen Wert der von ihnen angeeigneten Güter entspricht. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird gezeigt, dass diese Begründung des Grundeinkommens auch dann nicht überzeugen kann, wenn man die eigentumstheoretischen Grundannahmen des Links-Libertarismus akzeptiert. Hierfür sind werttheoretische Defizite verantwortlich, die es fraglich erscheinen lassen, ob sich die Größe des ökonomischen Werts der von Natur aus gegebenen Dinge und Ressourcen im Rahmen der links-libertären Philosophie überhaupt überzeugend bestimmen lässt. For a good twenty years now, philosophers have been increasingly discussing whether or not a basic income for every citizen is a just institution. Some of these thinkers ground the institution of basic income on a notion that was developed by left-libertarian philosophers. This notion is based on the claims that things and resources that are naturally given are originally the common possession of all of mankind and that, out of reasons of justice, whoever privately appropriates such things or resources is therefore liable to paying compensation of an amount corresponding to the economic value of the appropriated items. The aim of the present study is to show that even if one accepts the basic assumptions made by left-libertarians about property rights, the above justification of basic income does not hold. This is due to deficits in the theory of value, which render it questionable whether the magnitude of the economic worth of things and resources given in nature can ever be convincingly determined within the framework of left-libertarianism. (shrink)

The title of this paper reflects the fact truthmaking is quite frequently considered to be expressive of realism. What this means, exactly, will become clearer in the course of our discussion, but since we are interested in Armstrong’s work on truthmaking in particular, it is natural to start from a brief discussion of how truthmaking and realism appear to be associated in his work. In this paper, special attention is given to the supposed link between truthmaking and realism, but it (...) is argued that this link should not be taken too seriously, as truthmaking turns out to be, to a large extent, ontologically neutral. Some consequences of this are studied. (shrink)

It is now possible to have a child without sexual intercourse. The history of this apparently new statement has been breefly synthetised.The new perspectives open ethical problems for the scientific community and a new social context for single women.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the logics of evidence and truth $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ together with sound, complete, and decidable six-valued deterministic semantics for them. These logics extend the logics $$LET_{K}$$ and $$LET_{F}^-$$ with rules of propagation of classicality, which are inferences that express how the classicality operator $${\circ }$$ is transmitted from less complex to more complex sentences, and vice-versa. The six-valued semantics here proposed extends the 4 values of Belnap-Dunn logic with 2 more values (...) that intend to represent (positive and negative) reliable information. A six-valued non-deterministic semantics for $$LET_{K}$$ is obtained by means of Nmatrices based on swap structures, and the six-valued semantics for $$LET_{K}^+$$ is then obtained by imposing restrictions on the semantics of $$LET_{K}$$. These restrictions correspond exactly to the rules of propagation of classicality that extend $$LET_{K}$$. The logic $$LET_{F}^+$$ is obtained as the implication-free fragment of $$LET_{K}^+$$. We also show that the 6 values of $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ define a lattice structure that extends the lattice L4 defined by the Belnap-Dunn four-valued logic with the 2 additional values mentioned above, intuitively interpreted as positive and negative reliable information. Finally, we also show that $$LET_{K}^+$$ is Blok-Pigozzi algebraizable and that its implication-free fragment $$LET_{F}^+$$ coincides with the degree-preserving logic of the involutive Stone algebras. (shrink)

Argues that there can be interaction without breaking physical laws: e.g. by basic psychic forces, or by varying physical constants, or especially by arranging fractal trees of physical causation leading to behavior.