Telepsychiatry has long been discussed as a supplement to or substitute for face-to-face therapeutic consultations. The current pandemic crisis has fueled the development in an unprecedented way. More and more psychiatric consultations are now carried out online as video-based consultations. Treatment results appear to be comparable with those of face-to-face care in terms of clinical outcome, acceptance, adherence and patient satisfaction. However, evidence on videoconferencing in a variety of different fields indicates that there are extensive changes in the communication behaviour (...) in online conversations. We hypothesise that this might impact ethically relevant aspects of the therapeutic relationship, which plays a prominent role in psychiatry. In this paper, we review effects of video-based consultations on communication between therapists and patients in psychiatry. Based on a common understanding of video-based consultations as changing the lived experience of communication, we categorise these effects according to sensory, spatial and technical aspects. Departing from a power-based model of therapeutic relationships, we then discuss the ethical significance of this changed communication situation, based on dimensions of respect for autonomy, lucidity, fidelity, justice and humanity. We conclude that there is evidence for ethically relevant changes of the therapeutic relationship in video-based telepsychiatric consultations. These changes need to be more carefully considered in psychiatric practice and future studies. (shrink)

This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p. I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an (...) epistemic reason to suspend, which is not provided by evidence. I argue that this incoherence fact is a reason for the subject to take a step back and reassess her evidence for her conflicting attitudes, and thus a reason to suspend all of them. Suspending judgment enables the subject to revise attitudes where appropriate and thus (typically) to arrive at a set of coherent and well-supported attitudes. I then address a dilemma for my proposal and, in conclusion, briefly suggest a picture of epistemic reasons on which they are to be understood against the background of the subject’s virtuous intellectual conduct. (shrink)

Veit suggests that the challenge of coordinating movement in multicellular organisms led to the evolution of a prioritizing value system, which rendered organisms complex enough to be sentient and drove the Cambrian explosion, while the absence of this evaluation system led to the demise of Ediacaran animals. In this commentary we criticize Veit’s terminology and evolutionary proposals, arguing that his terminology and evolutionary scenarios are problematic, and put forward alternative proposals. We suggest that sentience is a system property, and that (...) the evolution of sentience was the outcome of the evolution of open-ended associative learning, which included the coevolution of sensory, motor, memory, and value subsystems. We suggest that these coevolutionary system dynamics were a factor in the Cambrian explosion and contributed to the extinction of the Ediacaran biota. (shrink)

The author defends nonconceptualism, the claim that perceptual experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. Continuing the heated and complex debate surrounding this topic over the past two decades, she offers a sustained defense of a novel version of the view, Modest Nonconceptualism, and provides a systematic overview of some of the central controversies in the debate. -/- An explication of the notion of nonconceptual content and a distinction between nonconceptualist views of different strengths starts off the volume, then the (...) author goes on to defend participants in the debate over nonconceptual content against the allegation that their failure to distinguish between a state view and a content view of (non)conceptualism leads to fatal problems for their views. Next, she makes a case for nonconceptualism by refining some of the central arguments for the view, such as the arguments from fineness of grain, from contradictory contents, from animal and infant perception, and from concept acquisition. Then, two central objections against nonconceptualism are rebutted in a novel way: the epistemological objection and the objection from objectivity. -/- Modest Nonconceptualism allows for perceptual experiences to involve some conceptual elements. It emphasizes the relevance of concept employment for an understanding of conceptual and nonconceptual mental states and identifies the nonconceptual content of experience with scenario content. It insists on the possibility of genuine content-bearing perceptual experience without concept possession and is thus in line with the Autonomy Thesis. Finally, it includes an account of perceptual justification that relies on the external contents of experience and belief, yet is compatible with epistemological internalism. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I explicate pragmatic encroachment by appealing to pragmatic considerations attenuating, or weakening, epistemic reasons to believe. I call this the ‘Attenuators View’. I will show that this proposal is better than spelling out pragmatic encroachment in terms of reasons against believing – what I call the ‘Reasons View’. While both views do equally well when it comes to providing a plausible mechanism of how pragmatic encroachment works, the Attenuators View does a better job distinguishing practical and epistemic (...) reasons to believe. First, this view does not appeal to the costs of believing falsely as reasons against believing; second, because of this, it does not run the risk of tearing down the wall between practical and epistemic reasons bearing on belief. I underpin the Attenuators View with a virtue-theoretic account of how pragmatic encroachment attenuates epistemic reasons and close my discussion by considering some objections against such a view. (shrink)

This is an expanded version of an interview with Nigel Laurie, based on his contribution to the 11th Annual Australasian Business Ethics Network (ABEN) Conference, held on 8 December 2021. The conference theme Calculative silences and the agency of business ethics scholars is the focus of this interview. After studying philosophy at Glasgow and Guelph in Canada and a career in IBM, Nigel Laurie established his own management consultancy and went on to found the Philosophy of Management journal in 2001. (...) He edited it for its first 8 years and led the early international Philosophy of Management conferences at St Anne’s College, Oxford. In this interview Nigel reflects on his experiences as a consultant in government, the public, private and third sectors across the world and as a visiting academic and offers insights on leadership, agency, analogies, silences and voices for ethics education and practice. (shrink)

According to a mainstream position in contemporary cognitive science and philosophy, the use of abstract compositional concepts is amongst the most characteristic indicators of meaningful deliberative thought in an organism or agent. In this article, we show how the ability to develop and utilise abstract conceptual structures can be achieved by a particular kind of learning agent. More specifically, we provide and motivate a concrete operational definition of what it means for these agents to be in possession of abstract concepts, (...) before presenting an explicit example of a minimal architecture that supports this capability. We then proceed to demonstrate how the existence of abstract conceptual structures can be operationally useful in the process of employing previously acquired knowledge in the face of new experiences, thereby vindicating the natural conjecture that the cognitive functions of abstraction and generalisation are closely related. (shrink)

This excellent article (Nelson et al. 2023) clarifies the difficulties of incorporating diverse voices and those who speak of their own experience, into bioethics, a field that aspires to be object...

In this article, I argue against Kearns and Star’s reasons-as-evidence view, which identifies normative reasons to ɸ with evidence that one ought to ɸ. I provide a new counterexample to their view, the student case, which involves an inference to the best explanation from means to end or, more generally, from a derivative to a more foundational “ought” proposition. It shows that evidence that one ought to act a certain way is not in all cases a reason so to act. (...) I present a diagnosis of the problem that is brought out by the counterexample. (shrink)

The problem of fiction and emotion is the problem of how we can be moved by the contemplation of fi ctional events and the plight of fictional characters when we know that the former have not occurred and the latter do not exist. I will give a general sketch of the philosophical treatment of the issue in the present day, and then turn to the eighteenth century for a solution as effective as the best that are presently on offer. The (...) solution is to be found in the account of ideal presence given by Henry Home, Lord Kames. (shrink)

The problem of fiction and emotion is the problem of how we can be moved by the contemplation of fi ctional events and the plight of fictional characters when we know that the former have not occurred and the latter do not exist. I will give a general sketch of the philosophical treatment of the issue in the present day, and then turn to the eighteenth century for a solution as effective as the best that are presently on offer. The (...) solution is to be found in the account of ideal presence given by Henry Home, Lord Kames. (shrink)

In diesem Buch wird vor Augen geführt, auf welche Weise Platon bildhafte und vorgeformte Sprachmittel wie Metaphern, Vergleiche verschiedenster Ausprägung, Sprichwörter, Redensarten und Zitate einsetzt und welche Wirkungen er damit erzielt. Dabei handelt es sich um Aspekte in der Gesprächsführung seiner Dialogfiguren, die zur Aussage und Deutung der platonischen Dialoge nicht nur Wesentliches beitragen, sondern aufgrund ihrer Thematik auch die Philosophie Platons und deren Abgrenzung erhellen. Erstmals wird die prinzipielle Zusammengehörigkeit der genannten sprachlichen Erscheinungen in Betracht gezogen und mittels einer (...) Terminologie, die altgriechische Kategorien in Begriffen aus der modernen Metaphorologie und Parömiologie erfasst, systematisch untersucht. Auf der Basis von 15 vollständig ausgewerteten platonischen Dialogen, von denen vier detailliert analysiert werden, kristallisieren sich Ergebnisse heraus, die als exemplarisch gelten können. This book demonstrates how Plato employs figurative and pre-formed linguistic devices such as metaphors, a wide variety of comparisons, proverbs, idioms and quotations, and the intended effects of these. The focus is on aspects of the language used by the speakers in his dialogues, and not only forms a significant contribution to the conclusions and interpretation of the platonic dialogues, but also shed new light on Plato’s philosophy and its limits. For the first time the principal relationships between the linguistic phenomena described are given consideration and systematically studied using a terminology that maps Ancient Greek categories onto the concepts of modern metaphorology and paremiology. On the basis of 15 fully evaluated platonic dialogues, four of which are analysed in detail, findings emerge which can be seen as exemplary. (shrink)

Rhythm should be regarded as a perceptional category rather than as a property of the work of art. Rhythm might be classified according to three principles, serial rhythm, sequential rhythm and dynamic rhythm, three basic sets of gestalt qualities that lay the foundation for versification systems.Two schemas decide the rhythm of a poem: direction and balance. ‘Direction’ refers to rising and falling movements in the line. ‘Balance’ refers to repetitions in a play between symmetry and asymmetry as well as a (...) moment of rest.Rhythms produce meaning, probably due to the fact that rhythms activate internalized bodily experiences as well as conventional meaning patterns. This is demonstrated on the basis of a poem by Sylvia Plath. (shrink)

One of Kant’s famous questions about being human asks, “What may I hope?” This question places individual life within an encompassing horizon of human history and speculates on the possibility of perspectives beyond death. In our time mortality is generally repressed, though the development of personal consciousness is closely linked to realization of one’s finitude. This raises especially urgent questions for children, and they are left to deal with them alone. From the time awareness begins, knowledge that death can occur (...) at any moment is one of the a priori determinants of being alive; that is, life is structured in advance by its future pastness. . According to Max Scheler, death reveals itself as a necessary and manifest constituent of all possible inner experiences in the life process. The cultural and individual interpretations of death’s meaning and consequences derived from this insight opened up an ample space for imagined possibilities of “continued existence,” which affected approaches to life. In our research project “Inochi – The Concept of Life after Death in Children’s Construction of the World. A German-Japanese Comparison,” carried out with German and Japanese research support, we examine concepts developed within the community of inquiry concerning “the individual’s afterlife” as soul, angel, animal, star, etc. In this we want to examine whether a globalized media environment leads to a cultural convergence in children’s ideas, and whether there are differences between views of girls and boys. Relevance of ideas about death is seen in the example of Japanese children who, believing in reincarnation chose “killing oneself” with relative frequency as a problem-solving strategy. Our contribution will present children’s imaginings using the drawings they created within this framework, since these can be interpreted as expressions of “narrative philosophizing,” especially for the Japanese children. Here we follow Mark Johnson who says” Human beings are imaginative synthesizing animals” . These imaginations make up a large part of our understanding, not just our beliefs, but rather our socially constructed way of being in and inhabiting a world. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which ultrasound screening influences the temporal dimensions of prevention in the obstetrical management of pregnancy. Drawing on praxeographic perspectives and empirically based on participant observation of ultrasound examinations in obstetricians’ offices, it asks how ultrasound scanning facilitates anticipatory modes of pregnancy management, and investigates the entanglement of different notions of time and temporality in the highly risk-oriented modes of prenatal care in Germany. Arguing that the paradoxical temporality of prevention—acting now in the name of (...) the future—is intensified by ultrasound screening, I show how the attribution of risk regarding foetal growth in prenatal check-ups is based on the fragmentation of procreative time and ask how time standards come into play, how pregnancy is located in calendrical time, and how notions of foetal time and the everyday life times of pregnant women clash during negotiations between obstetricians and pregnant women about the determination of the due date. By analysing temporality as a practical accomplishment via technological devices such as ultrasound, the paper contributes to debates in feminist STS studies on the role of time in reproduction technologies and the management of pregnancy and birth in contemporary societies. (shrink)

This study aimed to find out whether differences in the reported colour of dreams can be attributed to the influence of black and white media or to methodological issues. Two age groups, with different media experience, were compared on questionnaire and diary measures of dream colour. Analysis revealed that people who had access to black and white media before colour media experienced more greyscale dreams than people with no such exposure, and there were no differences between diary and questionnaire measures (...) of dream colour. Moreover, there were inter-group differences in the recall quality of colour and black and white dreams that point to the possibility that true greyscale dreams occur only in people with black and white media experience. (shrink)

In der Öffentlichkeit häufig als Auswanderungsland wahrgenommen, unternahm China in den letzten Jahren verstärkt Bemühungen, qualifizierte Fachkräfte aus dem Ausland für den chinesischen Arbeitsmarkt zu gewinnen. Die Einführung eines Fachkräfteeinwanderungssystem mit abgestuften Rechten für Arbeitsmigrant:innen sollte diese Entwicklung fördern. Die vorliegende Analyse zeigt, dass diese Reform des Einwanderungssystems die Gerichtspraxis nicht verändert hat. Abseits der politischen Diskurse um die Anwerbung von internationalen Talenten und der Propagierung Chinas als Wissenssupermacht, bleibt China aufgrund der existierenden Probleme im bestehenden Rechtssystems für Arbeitsmigrant:innen unattraktiv.

This paper analyzes agency in Pettit’s republican conception of freedom. By understanding freedom intersubjectively in terms of agency, Pettit makes an important contribution to the contemporary debate on negative liberty. At the same time, some of the presumptions about agency are problematic. The paper defends the thesis that Pettit is not able to provide the sufficient conditions for freedom as non-domination that he sets out to do. In order to show why this is the case and how we can address (...) this shortcoming, a distinction is introduced between a thick and a thin intersubjective account of agency. It is argued that while Pettit’s freedom presupposes a thin account, he would need a thick account in order to elaborate not only the necessary but also the sufficient conditions of freedom as non-domination. (shrink)

This study describes the theoretical assumptions and the application for health‐promoting conversations, as a communication tool for nurses when talking to patients and their families. The conversations can be used on a promotional, preventive and healing level when working with family‐focused nursing. They are based on a multiverse, salutogenetic, relational and reflecting approach, and acknowledge each person's experience as equally valid, and focus on families’ resources, and the relationship between the family and its environment. By posing reflective questions, reflection is (...) made possible for both the family and the nurses. Family members are invited to tell their story, and they can listen to and learn from each other. Nurses are challenged to build a co‐creating partnership with families in order to acknowledge them as experts on how to lead their lives and to use their own expert knowledge in order to facilitate new meanings to surface. In this way, family health can be enhanced. (shrink)

In these replies, I react to comments on my paper “Facts about Incoherence as Non-Evidential Epistemic Reasons”, provided by Aleks Knoks, Sebastian Schmidt, Keshav Singh, and Conor McHugh. I discuss potential counterexamples to my claim that the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason for her to suspend; whether such incoherence-based reasons bear on individual attitudes or only on combinations of attitudes; the prospects of restricting evidentialism about epistemic reasons to reasons to believe; whether incoherence-based (...) reasons are truly epistemic; the alleged normative and motivational expendability of incoherence-based reasons; the possibility of incoherence-based reasons to suspend without actual belief in the incoherent propositions; the relationship between suspension, inquiry, and incoherence; and the nature of suspension of judgment. (shrink)

Topos quantum theory represents a whole new approach to the formalization of non-relativistic quantum theory. It is well known that TQT replaces the orthomodular quantum logic of the traditional Hilbert space formalism with a new intuitionistic logic that arises naturally from the topos theoretic structure of the theory. However, it is less well known that TQT also has a dual logical structure that is paraconsistent. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between these two logical structures and study the implications (...) of this relationship for the definition of modal operators in TQT. (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)

Verträgt sich Religion mit Aufklärung? Was für eine Rolle spielt die Theologie dabei? Kants Der Streit der Fakultäten kommt zu dem Schluss, dass der unendliche Streit um die Religion nicht zwangsläufig zum Problem für die Aufklärung werden muss, sondern seine Institutionalisierung die beste Hoffnung für Freiheit ist: Ohne Kritik kein Fortschritt, ohne Streit bloß Irrglaube. F.W.J. Schellings, Jacques Derridas und Judith Butlers Auseinandersetzung mit Kants Werk zeigen jedoch auch, dass dabei auch die Regeln des Streites strittig werden müssen: Wer legt (...) die Regeln fest? So wird die Kritik an Religion selbst zwangsläufig mit Kritik konfrontiert: Wer hat die Macht über den vernünftigen Diskurs? Eine antagonismustheoretische Perspektive auf dieses Problem zeigt: Aus Feinden können Gegner werden und aus Krieg Streit. Doch ob sich Fortschritt und Freiheit aus braven Debatten und Reformen oder als harter Kampf einstellt - oder eben überhaupt nicht - ist eine offene Frage. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band bietet die erste Gesamtbibliographie aller deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen zu Sren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855); darüber hinaus werden sämtliche deutschsprachigen Übersetzungen von Kierkegaards veröffentlichten und unveröffentlichten Schriften sowie von seinen Journalen und Aufzeichnungen erfasst. Der Band ist damit ein unverzichtbares Hilfsmittel zur Erforschung der Übersetzungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte Kierkegaards im deutschen Sprachraum.

The Right to Justification : Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice.

In this paper I argue for a theory of punishment I call Multilateral Retributivism. Typically retributive notions of justice are unilateral: focused on one person’s desert. I argue that our notions of desert are multilateral: multiple people are owed when a moral crime is committed. I argue that the purpose of punishment is communication with the end-goal of reconciling the offender to society. This leads me to conclude that the death penalty and life without parole are unjustified because they necessarily (...) cut communication short. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel setzt sich mit einem in jüngster Zeit vermehrt zu beobachtenden Narrativ auseinander: der Erzählung von der Herkunft aus einem deklassierten Milieu. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei autosoziobiografische Texte und Filme, die aus der Perspektive einer erworbenen sozialen Distanz den Anspruch verfolgen, individuelle Erfahrungen des Klassenwechsels mit einer Analyse aktueller gesellschaftlicher Problemlagen zu verbinden. Diese Darstellungen werden zum einen hinsichtlich ihrer hybriden Gattungszugehörigkeit und ihres kommunikativen Anspruchs befragt. Zum anderen werden ihre dominierenden Erzählweisen untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass genealogisch-kollektivierende Konstellationen (...) eine wichtige Rolle spielen: Erstens werden Klassenverhältnisse als Generationenverhältnisse narrativiert; zweitens wird ein die einzelne Autosoziobiografie sprengendes Erzählverfahren verwendet, durch das sich ein intertextueller Zusammenhang von aufeinander verweisenden Geschichten des Klassenwechsels konstituiert.The article deals with a narrative that has received increasing attention in recent years: the story of one’s social origin in a disadvantaged milieu. The focus is on autosociobiographical texts and films which, from the perspective of acquired social distance, aim at linking individual experiences of a change of social class with an analysis of current social problems. These representations are analyzed regarding their hybrid genre and their communicative ambitions. Furthermore, dominant narrative styles are examined. It turns out that configurations, which are both genealogical and collectivizing in kind, are of particular importance: First, relationships of class are narrated as generational relationships; Second, a narrative method is employed that transgresses the individual autosociobiography as it establishes intertextual connections among different stories of class change that refer to one another. (shrink)