1. Die wissenschaftstheoretische Problemstellung seines ersten Systementwurfs -- 2. Der Übergang von Atomismus zu einem mechanistischen Aristotelismus -- 3. Eine Wissenschaft für ein aufgeklärtes Europa.

Joint attention is an early-emerging and uniquely human capacity that lies at the foundation of many other capacities of humans, such as language and the understanding of other minds. In this article, I summarize what developmentalists and philosophers have come to find out about joint attention, and I end by stating that two problems or questions of joint attention require additional research: 1) the relation between joint attention and the skills for dyadic sharing or affect exchange in young infants, and (...) 2) the evolution of joint attention. (shrink)

Nudge is a popular public policy tool that harnesses well-known biases in human judgement to subtly guide people’s decisions, often to improve their choices or to achieve some socially desirable outcome. Thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) methods new possibilities emerge of how and when our decisions can be nudged. On the one hand, algorithmically personalized nudges have the potential to vastly improve human daily lives. On the other hand, blindly outsourcing the development and implementation of nudges to (...) “black box” AI systems means that the ultimate reasons for why such nudges work, that is, the underlying human cognitive processes that they harness, will often be unknown. In this paper, we unpack this concern by considering a series of examples and case studies that demonstrate how AI systems can learn to harness biases in human judgment to reach a specified goal. Drawing on an analogy in a philosophical debate concerning the methodology of economics, we call for the need of an interdisciplinary oversight of AI systems that are tasked and deployed to nudge human behaviours. (shrink)

A partir de los Analectas, el texto más próximo al pensamiento originario de Confucio, y empleando los otros tres libros del canon clásico del confucianismo, el presente trabajo buscar analizar cuál es la importancia que los rituales, como fórmula paradigmática de las pautas sociales, tienen en la filosofía de Confucio, en relación con su sistema ético, político y cosmológico. Después, establece una semblanza de la estructura que tenían los rituales en la China confuciana. Finalmente, se contrapone la relación de la (...) Escuela confuciana con los rituales con la secularización de la democracia actual. (shrink)

Roland Barthes remains one of the most influential cultural theorists of the postwar period and Image-Music-Text is his most widely taught work. Ed White provides students with a clear guide to this essential but difficult text. As students are increasingly expected to write across a range of media, Barthes' work can be understood as an early mapping of what we now call interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study. The book's detailed section-by-section readings makes Barthes' most important writings accessible to undergraduate readers. This (...) book is a perfect companion for teaching and learning Barthes ideas in cultural studies and literary theory. (shrink)

Current debates on collective intentionality focus on the cognitive capacities, attitudes, and mental states that enable individuals to take part in joint actions. It is typically assumed that collective intentionality is a capacity which is added to other, pre-existing, capacities of an individual and is exercised in cooperative activities like carrying a table or painting a house together. We call this the additive account because it portrays collective intentionality as a capacity that an individual possesses in addition to her capacity (...) for individual intentionality. We offer an alternative view according to which the primary entity to which collective intentionality has to be ascribed is not the human individual, but a “form of life.” As a feature of a form of life, collective intentionality is something more than the specific capacity exercised by an individual when she cooperates with others. Collective intentionality transforms all the capacities of the bearers of this specific form of life. We thus call our proposal the transformative account of collective intentionality. (shrink)

This essay discusses Cecilia Heyes’ groundbreaking new book Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. Heyes’ point of departure is the claim that current theories of cultural evolution fail adequately to make a place for the mind. Heyes articulates a cognitive psychology of cultural evolution by explaining how eponymous “cognitive gadgets,” such as imitation, mindreading and language, mental technologies, are “tuned” and “assembled” through social interaction and cultural learning. After recapitulating her explanations for the cultural and psychological origins of these (...) gadgets, we turn to criticisms. Among those, we find Heyes’ use of evolutionary theory confusing on several points of importance; alternative theories of cultural evolution, especially those of the Tomasello group and of Boyd, Richerson and Henrich, are misrepresented; the book neglects joint attention and other forms of intersubjectivity in its explanation of the origins of cognitive gadgets; and, whereas Heyes accuses other theories of being “mindblind,” we find her theory ironically other-blind and autistic in character. (shrink)

At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, (...) and witches."--Back cover. (shrink)

The article deals with the impact of the recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the German labour law practice. After a brief introduction of the general importance of the jurisprudence of the ECHR for the German labour law (I.), the authors illustrate the German and the ECHR’s jurisprudence on the duty of loyalty towards the ecclesiastic employer (II.) and whistle blowing (III.). Analysing this jurisprudence, the authors come to the conclusion that the ECHR approved the (...) principles of the German jurisprudence in these cases. Therefore, its impact on the practice will be rather marginal as it does not obtain such a far-reaching significance that a change in the jurisprudence regarding dismissals is to be expected. The judgements merely raised the awareness for the set of problems in the context of ecclesiastic employers and whistle blowing. In this regard, the article will try to provide the reader with basic directions on how to deal with this jurisprudence. Finally, the authors argue that concerns, the ECHR could evolve into a further instance reviewing all German judgements not only regarding the question if there is a violation of the Convention or not but regarding the correctness of the findings are unfounded. On the other side, the article addresses the problem that – apparently – applications have been declared admissible by the ECHR despite Art. 35 para. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the final decision on the national level – dismissing the complaint as inadmissible – did not reveal the reason why the application did not succeed. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that exploring institutional racism also needs to examine interactions and communications between patients and providers. Exchange between bioethicists, social scientists, and life scientists should emphasize the biological effects—made evident through health disparities—of racism. I discuss this through examples of patient–provider communication in fertility clinics in South Africa and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to emphasize the issue of mistrust between patients and medical institutions. Health disparities and medical mistrust are interrelated problems of racism in healthcare provision.

This study examined 4-year-olds’ problem-solving under different social conditions. Children had to use water in order to extract a buoyant object from a narrow tube. When faced with the problem ‘cold’ without cues, nearly all children were unsuccessful. But when a solution-suggesting video was pedagogically delivered prior to the task, most children succeeded. Showing children the same video in a non-pedagogical manner did not lift their performance above baseline and was less effective than framing it pedagogically. The findings support ideas (...) central to natural pedagogy, 148–153, 2009). They also challenge the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis, according to which only humans’ social, but not their physical, cognition differs qualitatively from that of great apes. A more radical, transformative variant of the Cultural Intelligence hypothesis is suggested according to which humans’ physical cognition is shaped by their social nature and must therefore be recognized as equally distinctive as their social cognition. (shrink)

Two paradigms have guided emotion research over the past decades. The dual-system view embraces the long-held Western belief, espoused most prominently by decision-making and social cognition researchers, that emotion and reason are often at odds. The integrative view, which asserts that emotion and cognition work synergistically, has been less explored experimentally. However, the integrative view (a) may help explain several findings that are not easily accounted for by the dual-system approach, and (b) is better supported by a growing body of (...) evidence from human neuroanatomy that has often been overlooked by experimental neuroscience. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of case studies worldwide, including 'profit with purpose' businesses such as co-operatives, this short guide reveals how to make a success of values. By unpacking what we mean by values and ethics, and setting out a series of practical approaches, Ed Mayo presents how values can become a natural part of commercial life. This book identifies both the pitfalls and the potential of bringing values into the heart of an organization, from a bank that responds to (...) an ethical crisis to a fast-growing worker co-operative founded on the values of equality. The values that guide your business are not necessarily the ones that are written down, or that you would expect. There is no right or wrong set of values, but there is power and potential in making the most of the values that are right for the business you are in. By reading Values: How to Bring Values to Life in Your Business, you will find out more about the business that you are, and the business that you could be." -- Back cover. (shrink)

In this article, we postulate that belief understanding unfolds in two steps over ontogenetic time. We propose that belief understanding begins in interactive scenarios in which infants and toddlers respond directly and second-personally to the actions of a misinformed agent. This early understanding of beliefs is practical and grounded in the capacity for perspective-taking. Practical belief understanding guarantees effective interaction and communication with others who are acting on false assumptions. In a second step, children, at preschool age, acquire the capacity (...) to reflect on and arrive at third-personal judgments about a misinformed agent’s perspective. This capacity is theoretical and grounded in the ability to “confront” perspectives. It allows children to understand that beliefs can misrepresent the state of the world and to predict what (past, future, or hypothetical) actions follow from these beliefs. We conclude with ideas on how practical perspective-taking develops into theoretical perspective-confronting in early ontogeny. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud argue that cumulative technological culture is made possible by a “non-social cognitive structure” and they offer an account that aims “to escape from the social dimension” of human cognition. We challenge their position by arguing that human technical rationality is unintelligible outside of our species' uniquely social form of life, which is defined by shared intentionality :319–37; Tomasello 2019a, Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press).

Within the perception-action framework, the underlying mechanisms of empathy and its related processes of moral behavior need to be investigated. fMRI studies have shown different frontal cortex activation patterns during automatic processing and judgment tasks when stimuli have moral content. Clinical neuropsychological studies reveal different patterns of empathic alterations after dorsolateral versus orbital frontal cortex damage, related to deficient cognitive and emotional processing. These processing streams represent different neural levels and mechanisms underlying empathy.

Explains how individuals are in charge of their own lives and can change the way they feel about choices and actions in their experience.

This essay explores Axel Honneth‘s 1980 essay ―Work and Instrumental Action‖ with a view to revitalising its argument about the value of a critical conception of work activity. In his early essay, Honneth sought to reconstruct this critical conception of work, inspired by the philosophy of Marx, in an effort to generate a critique of Habermas‘s communicative social theory. Honneth doubted whether Habermas‘s core epistemological category of instrumental rationality could capture the normative significance of individual work activity. This generates uncertainty (...) over whether a critical theory with a communicative framework can locate the contribution of individual work activity in the process of social emancipation. After the publication of ―Work and Instrumental Action‖, Honneth‘s philosophy itself retreated from the critical conception of work in favour of the recognition-theoretic social theory that culminated in his influential 1992 work The Struggle for Recognition. My essay draws on evidence of the benefits of individual worker autonomy to argue that Honneth‘s theory of recognition itself could be enhanced through a reassessment of the critical conception of work activity that he proposed in his early essay. (shrink)