Advocates of moral enhancement through pharmacological, genetic, or other direct interventions sometimes explicitly argue, or assume without argument, that traditional moral education and development is insufficient to bring about moral enhancement. Traditional moral education grounded in a Kohlbergian theory of moral development is indeed unsuitable for that task; however, the psychology of moral development and education has come a long way since then. Recent studies support the view that moral cognition is a higher-order process, unified at a functional level, and (...) that a specific moral faculty does not exist. It is more likely that moral cognition involves a number of different mechanisms, each connected to other cognitive and affective processes. Taking this evidence into account, we propose a novel, empirically informed approach to moral development and education, in children and adults, which is based on a cognitive-affective approach to moral dispositions. This is an interpretative approach that derives from the cognitive-affective personality system (Mischel and Shoda, 1995). This conception individuates moral dispositions by reference to the cognitive and affective processes that realise them. Conceived of in this way, moral dispositions influence an agent's behaviour when they interact with situational factors, such as mood or social context. Understanding moral dispositions in this way lays the groundwork for proposing a range of indirect methods of moral enhancement, techniques that promise similar results as direct interventions whilst posing fewer risks. (shrink)

Depression is associated with increased maintenance of negative affect (NA) and reduced – blunted and short-lived – maintenance of positive affect (PA). Studies have focused on factors associated with the maintenance of NA, specifically, the emotion regulation strategy of brooding and the capacity to hold negative affective experiences in working memory (WM). Despite its theoretical importance, less attention has been given to factors associated with the maintenance of PA in depression. This study aims to synthesise factors playing a role in (...) the maintenance of both NA and PA. Specifically, we used self-reported assessment of PA and NA regulation and performance-based measures of NA and PA processing in WM to predict depressive symptoms severity. Participants (N = 219) completed the Affective Maintenance Task (AMT, Mikels et al., Citation2008), which provided performance-based measures of PA and NA maintenance, and filled out questionnaires assessing brooding, positive rumination and depressive severity. Brooding, positive rumination and AMT-based measures of positive (but not negative) affective information processing were independently associated with depressive symptoms. We highlight the unique contributions of PA processing, as well as of self-reported emotion regulation strategies in understanding depression maintenance. (shrink)

It is a consequence of the theory of imprecise credences that there exist situations in which rational agents inevitably become less opinionated toward some propositions as they gather more evidence. The fact that an agent's imprecise credal state can dilate in this way is often treated as a strike against the imprecise approach to inductive inference. Here, we show that dilation is not a mere artifact of this approach by demonstrating that opinion loss is countenanced as rational by a substantially (...) broader class of normative theories than has been previously recognised. Specifically, we show that dilation-like phenomena arise even when one abandons the basic assumption that agents have (precise or imprecise) credences of any kind, and follows directly from bedrock norms for rational comparative confidence judgements of the form `I am at least as confident in p as I am in q'. We then use the comparative confidence framework to develop a novel understanding of what exactly gives rise to dilation-like phenomena. By considering opinion loss in this more general setting, we are able to provide a novel assessment of the prospects for an account of inductive inference that is not saddled with the inevitability of rational opinion loss. (shrink)

Schupbach and Sprenger introduce a novel probabilistic approach to measuring the explanatory power that a given explanans exerts over a corresponding explanandum. Though we are sympathetic to their general approach, we argue that it does not adequately capture the way in which the causal explanatory power that c exerts on e varies with background knowledge. We then amend their approach so that it does capture this variance. Though our account of explanatory power is less ambitious than Schupbach and Sprenger’s in (...) the sense that it is limited to causal explanatory power, it is also more ambitious because we do not limit its domain to cases where c genuinely explains e. Instead, we claim that c causally explains e if and only if our account says that c explains e with some positive amount of causal explanatory power. 1Introduction 2The Logic of Explanatory Power 3Subjective and Nomic Distributions 3.1Actual degrees of belief 3.2The causal distribution 4Background Knowledge 4.1Conditionalization and colliders 4.2A helpful intervention 5Causal Explanatory Power 5.1The applicability of explanatory power 5.2Statistical relevance ≠ causal explanatory power 5.3Interventionist explanatory power 5.4E illustrated 6Conclusion. (shrink)

The paper deals with the position of a scholar in the society, as articulated in the philosophy of J. G. Fichte. It also offers a brief outline of the philosophies of education of the 18th and 19th centuries and their differences. It shows different interpretations of the concept of Bildung in German philosophy, which in that time became almost a “fashion”. The spirit of that time is reflected also in the idealist views of J. G. Fichte, especially those concerning education, (...) upbringing and personality development. (shrink)

The paper tries to explain the nature and meaning of education, as well as its role in human life. Education appears to be taken for granted. Nevertheless, we need to understand its nature and ontological background. Thus the paper aims at giving at least a partial answer to the question: What is education?

The word 'bisexuality', unknown to the ancients, is used here in two senses to indicate an individual with male and female sex organs or who copulates with people of both sexes. The phenomenon of bisexuality is then analysed with reference to the Greek myth of Hermaphrodite, a 'bisexual' being, born of a nymph's love for a young man of divine descent: in the guise of a fable, the myth recounts the birth of a 'monster', who raises a question-mark over the (...) fundamental rule of the division between the sexes. As regards behaviour, the paper then shows that in both Greece and Rome bisexual behaviour was the rule for men. The concept of 'homosexuality', in contrast to heterosexuality, was not introduced till the Christian era, and then not without difficulty. Condemnation of the practice as 'against nature' began with the emperor Justinian in the 6th century. (shrink)

This title is playful, of course. It is designed merely to attract curiosity and attention … It dates back to a childhood game of which I have forgotten both rules and stakes. An imaginary sovereign was roused from his indifference and responded with an approximate repetition of Marie-Antoinette's suggestion that if the people were hungry, food should be thrown to them. I took such caricatures of kings as anti-models, replacing bread with symbols. Now we are all too disturbed, individually and (...) collectively, by the economic discomfort which is a generalized hunger and, in too many parts of the world and - not only in the third world - by actual famines, not to be aware, on a daily basis, of the responsibility it is to cultivate and transmit to others substance which is purely symbolic. Certain statistics, which now form part of our daily life, are capable of discrediting definitively the ivory tower which our universities are accused of representing, or of having represented in the past. In my own country, Canada, one child in five lives in poverty. The economic worth of the poorest forty-eight countries in the world is equal to the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals. There were twenty million refugees in 1997. One billion two hundred million human beings are short of fresh water this year, etc. This type of figure is, sadly, all too familiar. And it is a case of preaching to the converted to assert the extent to which culture, education and all their constituent disciplines are nourishment of a different order to physical food, because intellectual work is genuine work, providing a living for those who work at it professionally, and above all also those who benefit from its immediate and continuing fruits - i.e. ideally, the whole of society, and in all countries. In this respect - and this is implicit, but through depending habitually on what is implicit nothing is ever sufficiently explicit - it is generally acknowledged (thanks to UNESCO in particular) to what extent the development of economic resources is linked with the advancement and communication of knowledge, on a scale which is regional as well as national, within cities, rural communities, families. (shrink)

Illuminates childrens experiences of embodiment, inter-subjectivity, place, thing, time, and language through a dialogue between developmental research and ...

Revision of the author's thesis--Frankfurt am Main, 2009.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 143-156 [Access article in PDF] The Vicious Habits of Entirely Fictitious People: Hume on the Moral Evaluation of Art Eva M. Dadlez DAVID HUME'S ESSAY, "Of the Standard of Taste," identifies aesthetic merits and defects of narrative works of art. 1 There is a passage toward the end of this essay that has aroused considerable interest among philosophers. In it, Hume writes of cases (...) in which "vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation" ("ST," p. 246). He maintains that works which include such descriptions are aesthetically flawed, adding that we neither can nor should enter into their writers' sentiments or "bear an affection to characters, which we plainly discover to be blameable" ("ST," p. 246).There is no reason to ascribe to Hume a Platonic moralism that condemns art's disinhibition of emotion. Neither does Hume advocate some extravagant form of political correctness that evaluates art by looking to the propriety of its subject matter. As later examples in the quoted essay make clear, Hume is speaking of cases in which fiction not only depicts vicious manners, but endorses them. I will argue that such endorsements are stigmatized neither because a low estimation of depicted behavior infects the estimation of a work's merit nor because we take the endorsement to be mistaken or unwarranted. Fictional endorsements of conduct otherwise regarded as vicious constitute defects because they curtail the aesthetic experience. Hume's claim, then, is as much about human psychology as it is about morality. We cannot divorce morality from narrative art because, for Hume, morality finds its basis in the very sentiments such art is intended to arouse. The content of the works under fire is objectionable because it prompts the [End Page 143] imaginative disengagement of the reader or viewer just when engagement and emotional participation are necessary for full appreciation. As Noël Carroll maintains in his objection to autonomism, a moral defect "will count as an aesthetic defect when it actually deters a response to which a work aspires." 2 This is a view for which I will endeavor to offer an explanation based on Hume's philosophy, and that I will attempt to defend against typical objections. I It would be a mistake to associate the position ventured above with some of those appearing in the recent critical literature. There, a work is sometimes taken to endorse any character's behavior which is not explicitly condemned or which is accompanied by some depiction of positive traits. Thus Nabokov's Lolita is suspected of subtle endorsement of Humbert's behavior mainly because Humbert is described as urbane and intelligent. There is a clear mistake here about what it is that can be taken to constitute an endorsement on the part of a work of fiction. To suggest that Lolita endorses child molesting because we are occasionally allowed to glimpse a sympathetic side of the molester is on a par with claiming that Shakespeare's Macbeth endorses killing for personal gain because we are allowed to glimpse a sympathetic side of the title character. Our reactions to complex characters can be, and usually are, correspondingly complex. We can admire one trait and deplore another without being forced into the kind of all-or-nothing evaluation that writers of serious fiction seldom want to elicit. In any case, it seems clear that the endorsement of a character in toto would probably involve a good deal more than the depiction of a few attractive traits. The grim undoing of the two characters under consideration, coupled with their misery and hopelessness, hardly suggests endorsement. Similarly, an aesthetically pleasing depiction of an event we consider tragic should not be taken as an endorsement of that event. Aesthetic and distressed responses are not mutually exclusive. They can constitute distinct responses to distinct aspects of the same state of affairs. The graceful arrangement of the bodies of Romeo and Juliet is surely not an endorsement of their tragic death or their suicide... (shrink)

Contrasting two standard models of corporate responsibility—the so-called “collectivist” and “individualist” model—this essay proposes a third option, namely, a discursive conception of responsibility and examines whether and how this conception can be applied to the corporate level. It does so by taking a careful look at one of the preconditions of individual discursive responsibility, i.e. discursive practical reason, and discussing how corporate agents can meet this precondition. Building on this new concept, the essay also offers a novel approach to justifying (...) corporate responsibility by referring to an argument advanced by Rainer Forst stating that a fundamental human right to justification is the normative core of any kind of responsibility and combining it, in a second step, with an argument recently proposed by Philip Pettit and Christian List showing the impossibility of forming consistent group attitudes and beliefs as a function of the attitudes and beliefs of individual group members. Finally, this essay outlines certain preliminary conclusions about the incorporation of responsibility in a corporate context. (shrink)

Anonymous resume screening, as assumed, does not dissuade age discriminatory effects. Building on job market signaling theory, this study investigated whether older applicants may benefit from concealing explicitly mentioned age signals on their resumes (date of birth) or whether more implicit/subtle age cues on resumes (older-sounding names/old-fashioned extracurricular activities) may lower older applicants’ hirability ratings. An experimental study among 610 HR professionals using a mixed factorial design showed hiring discrimination of older applicants based on implicit age cues in resumes. This (...) effect was more pronounced for older raters. Concealing one’s date of birth led to overall lower ratings. Study findings add to the limited knowledge on the effects of implicit age cues on hiring discrimination in resume screening and the usefulness of anonymous resume screening in the context of age. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Heyes argues that human metacognitive strategies evolved through cultural rather than genetic evolution. Although we agree that increased plasticity is the hallmark of human metacognition, we suggest cognitive malleability required the genetic accommodation of gadget-specific processes that enhanced the overall cognitive flexibility of humans.

The easiest and most tempting solution of these problems is to dissolve them by pointing out the artificiality of the issues leading to these "third things." Though tempted, I am not convinced that Kant's philosophy can be treated thus as an exercise in a complicated solution of pseudo-problems. Also, I would thereby deprive myself of the uncomfortable and nagging sense of obscure importance which assails me—and many Kant students share this feeling—whenever I consider these points. I am prepared to admit (...) that the problems may be represented as artificial. But I want to maintain, with special emphasis on the Kantian schema, that a serious reconsideration repays the effort, even if it should force us to reconsider critically also some of Kant's systematic assumptions. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics is an area in which many strands of contemporary philosophical thinking meet. The contributors to this volume are aware of the wider logical, epistemological, moral and metaphysical implications raised by conceptual problems specific to aesthetics. Three themes recur and are taken up from different angles in several of the papers: pleasure – its nature and role in the experience of art and beauty; preference – figuring prominently in aesthetic appraising, appreciating and judging; and value – aesthetic value in (...) particular, and the status of value in general. As these themes interweave, the complexities of aesthetics bring into focus some of the central issues in the philosophy of mind. The authors argue their cases with professional expertise and perceptive understanding of the arts, making significant and original contributions. This book should be of interest not only to philosophers but also to the readers who know, care and theorise about the arts. All the essays were commissioned for this volume, which is part of an informal series of books emerging from meetings sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s understanding of moral progress, especially in his Religion where he argues that religion and, more importantly, the foundation of an ethical community are necessary to promote moral progress. However, it is less the identification of any factual moral progress but rather the idea of moral progress as an action guiding principle that Kant identifies as central. The conclusion shows how Kant’s insights are in accordance with the argument that we should not look for comprehensive moral progress (...) in history but adhere to the idea of possible future moral progress. (shrink)

Post- and decolonial theory have contested the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, hegemonic, or neocolonialist misconception. Does this imply that we should give up any idea of moral progress? This paper critically examines Allen Buchanan’s and Russell Powell’s book The Evolution of Moral Progress and their claim that there is still a need for a theory of moral progress. For Buchanan and Powell, such theory should allow and guide a better understanding of what moral progress consists of. Even (...) though they do not claim to already provide us with such a comprehensive theory of moral progress they aim to work out whether and how certain types of moral progress are possible and assess their limits. In doing so they mainly focus on improvements in terms of social participation as an uncontroversial type of moral progress. In the following, I will first discuss the characteristics of the authors’ notion of progress and then raise some critical concerns about the example they have chosen of the history of human rights as a history of progress and, particularly, about the history of the rights of people with disabilities. (shrink)

Infants who suffer severe neglect fail to thrive emotionally as well as bodily. The absence of early coexistential structures that provide well-being leads to a narrowing of the child's perceptual and social developmental horizon. What is the nature of these early structures? In this essay, an ontology of well-being or housedness is elaborated through phenomenological reflections on breast-feeding and infant perception. Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh makes a contribution to the ontology of well-being: it gives us a conceptual and evocative (...) language to describe human existence in its pre-verbal, syncretic, and non-dualistic manifestations. It also allows for a re-evaluation and re-interpretation of the results of current research in infant perception. Through the structures of infant perception we perceive the coexistential fit between infants, other human beings, and the world of things. An infant's fundamental housedness in the flesh is taken up and cultivated or destroyed by the child's social and cultural environment. (shrink)

Eva Simantoni-Bournia Un masque humain à Hyria de Naxos, nouveau témoignage de contacts chypriotes p. 119-132 Neuf tessons d'un masque en terre cuite représentant une figure masculine barbue presque grandeur nature, datés de la fin du VIIIe - début du VIIe siècle av. J.-C., ont été découverts en 1994 dans le sanctuaire d'Hyria à Naxos. Ce masque naxien doit son importance à la rareté de ce type d'objets, surtout à haute époque. Les masques en terre cuite du sanctuaire d'Orthia à (...) Sparte, les plus connus et les plus étonnants du monde grec, sont presque tous plus récents et la plupart relève d'une tradition stylistique différente. Les masques en terre cuite du Chypro-Géométrique I mis au jour dans les sanctuaires de Kition et de Salamine à Chypre constituent les parallèles les plus proches de l'exemplaire d'Hyria. Cet article propose que le masque barbu idéalisé d'Hyria était porté, lors d'une sorte de représentation (δρώμενον), par celui qui jouait le rôle de l'époux de la déesse de la fécondité vénérée avec Dionysos dans le grand sanctuaire naxien et identifiée à Ariane. La représentation — fréquente dans le culte de Dionysos — d'une sorte d'union rituelle dans les pratiques cultuelles d'Hyria est vraisemblable. Les contacts chypriotes, confirmés par notre masque, étayent le rapprochement de l'Ariane naxienne avec la grande déesse chypro-orientale, que nous avons proposé jadis sur la base des trouvailles du sanctuaire et à partir des témoignages littéraires. (shrink)

In this chapter, I clarify the notions of mental content and of concept. I present competing views on these notions and indicate my own position. I introduce content in terms of correctness conditions and distinguish several kinds of propositions, as well as non-propositional scenario content, with which perceptual content might be identified. I relate this discussion to a wide-spread commitment in philosophy of perception to respect the subject’s perceptual perspective in ascriptions of perceptual content. Then I compare views of concepts (...) as Fregean senses, as mental representations, and as cognitive abilities and investigate how they relate to the central idea that concepts are possessed by subjects. I suggest that our talk of concept possession and exercise is anchored in subjects’ abilities for re-identification and for general thought and in their inferential abilities. I clarify how possession and exercise of these three conceptual abilities relate. (shrink)

Goethe belongs to the phenomenological tradition for a number of reasons: He shared Husserl's deep mistrust of the mathematization of the natural world and the ensuing loss of the qualitative dimension of human existence; he understood that the phenomenological observer must free him/herself from sedimented cultural prejudices, a process which Husserl called the epoche; he experienced and articulated the new and surprising fullness of the world as it reveals itself to the patient and participatory phenomenological observer. Goethe's phenomenological sensibilities and (...) insights become more apparent when his work is brought into dialogue with Husserl's thinking. In turn Goethe challenges Husserlian phenomenology to a more careful investigation of the natural world and human participation within its order. Both Goethe and Husserl are searching for a science of the qualitative dimension of being. (shrink)

Although the concept of “AI governance” is frequently used in the debate, it is still rather undertheorized. Often it seems to refer to the mechanisms and structures needed to avoid “bad” outcomes and achieve “good” outcomes with regard to the ethical problems artificial intelligence is thought to actualize. In this article we argue that, although this outcome-focused view captures one important aspect of “good governance,” its emphasis on effects runs the risk of overlooking important procedural aspects of good AI governance. (...) One of the most important properties of good AI governance is political legitimacy. Starting out from the assumptions that AI governance should be seen as global in scope and that political legitimacy requires at least a democratic minimum, this article has a twofold aim: to develop a theoretical framework for theorizing the political legitimacy of global AI governance, and to demonstrate how it can be used as a compass for critially assessing the legitimacy of actual instances of global AI governance. Elaborating on a distinction between “governance by AI” and “governance of AI” in relation to different kinds of authority and different kinds of decision-making leads us to the conclusions that much of the existing global AI governance lacks important properties necessary for political legitimacy, and that political legitimacy would be negatively impacted if we handed over certain forms of decision-making to artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)

zur fundierenden Rolle des Gefühls bei den Leistungen der Vernunft Eva-Maria Engelen. Eva-Maria Engelen Erkenntnis und Liebe Zur fundierenden Rolle des Gefühls bei den Leistungen der Vernunft Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Eva-Maria ...

Nach Erläuterung der wesentlichen Begriffe wie „Emotion“ und „Gefühl“ stellt Eva-Maria Engelen die wichtigsten theoretischen Ansätze vor. Dabei spielen sowohl Theorien aus der Philosophie, der Psychologie als auch aus den Neurowissenschaften eine wichtige Rolle. Geklärt wird in weiteren Kapiteln das Verhältnis von Gefühlen und Emotionen zum Verstand, zum Bewusstsein und zu Werten.

Alloparenting, wherein people provide care to children who are not their biological offspring, is a key aspect of human child-rearing. In the Pacific, many children are adopted or fostered by custodial alloparents even when both biological parents are still alive. From a behavioral ecology perspective, such behaviors are puzzling: why parent someone else’s child at your expense? Furthermore, little is known about how these arrangements are made in Pacific Islander societies today, who provides care, and what kinds of outcomes fostered (...) children experience. A better understanding of these proximate factors may help reveal the ultimate drivers behind custodial alloparenting. Here, we report findings from a survey carried out with the caregivers of 282 children in rural areas of Vanuatu, an island nation in Melanesia. Most fostered and adopted children lived with relatives such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents (87.5%) rather than unrelated caregivers, with a strong preference for maternal kin. The most common reasons for these arrangements were that the parents had separated (16.7%), were engaging in labor migration (27.1%), or a combination of both (27.1%). Results for investment in children’s education and their educational outcomes were mixed, although children removed from crisis situations did more poorly than children removed for aspirational reasons. Our findings suggest that custodial alloparenting helps families adapt to socioeconomic transitions and changing marriage practices. Outcomes may depend on a range of factors, such as the reason children were transferred out of the natal home to begin with. (shrink)

This is an English translation of one of Plato’s great dialogues of Socrates talking about death, dying, and the soul due to his impending execution. Included is an introduction and glossary of key terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato’s immediate audience.

It is important to understand the processes behind how and why individuals emerge as leaders, so that the best and most capable individuals may occupy leadership positions. So far, most literature in this area has focused on individual characteristics, such as personality or cognitive ability. While interactions between individuals and context do get research attention, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how the social context at work may help individuals to emerge as leaders. Such knowledge could make an important (...) contribution toward getting the most capable, rather than the most dominant or narcissistic individuals, into leadership positions. In the present work, we contribute toward closing this gap by testing a mediation chain linking a leader's leader self-awareness to a follower's leadership emergence with two time-lagged studies (nstudy1 = 449, nstudy2 = 355). We found that the leader's leader self-awareness was positively related to (a) the follower's leadership emergence and (b) the follower's nomination for promotion and that both relationships were serially mediated by the follower's self-leadership and the follower's leader self-efficacy. We critically discuss our findings and provide ideas for future research. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to investigate how patterns of collaboration and scholarly independence are related to early stage researchers’ development in two multidisciplinary learning environments at a Swedish university. Based on interviews with leaders, supervisors, doctoral students, and post docs, results show how early stage researchers’ development is conditioned by their relative positions in time and space. Through the theoretical notions of ‘epistemic living space’ and ‘developmental networks’, four ways of experiencing the multidisciplinary learning environment were distinguished. Overall, (...) the environments provided a world of opportunities, where the epistemic living space entailed many possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and development of scholarly independence among peers. However, depending on the members’ relative positions in time and space, this world became an alien world for the post docs who had been forced to become “over-independent” and find collaborators elsewhere. Moreover, it became an avoided world for absent mono-disciplinary supervisors and students who embodied “non-collective independence”, away from the environments’ community. By contrast, a joint world emerged for doctoral students located in the environment, which promoted their “independent positioning” and collaborative ambitions. Thus, early stage researchers’ collaboration and development of scholarly independence were optimised in a converged learning space, where the temporal and spatial conditions were integrated and equally conducive for learning. Based on these results, the authors provide suggestions for how to improve the integration of scholars who tend to develop away from the community because of their temporal and spatial positions. (shrink)

Ableist microaggressions are common experiences in the daily lives of people with disabilities. Research in this area enables us to deepen our understanding of ableism as a system of oppression towards those whose embodied differences do not follow corporeal standards and productivity demands. Previous inquiries into these phenomena have categorized the most frequently experienced microaggressions: “minimization” being the most common. This article shows the results obtained in the Survey on Ableist Microaggressions involving the minimization of specific needs, disability, or the (...) severity of discrimination. It confirms minimization as the most reported microaggression and suggests that the frequency with which they are experienced entails variables such as having more than one disability, the visibility of the disability, and the degree of disability. (shrink)