This paper aims at explaining and defending some of Cora Diamond's thinking about the role of a kind of guides to thinking about ethics. Aids to thinking of this type can take a very general form but can also be applied in context‐sensitive ways. Maria Balaska has raised the question whether Diamond manages to avoid relativism. Oskari Kuusela also criticises Diamond, focussing on whether talk of human equality can be said to correspond to reality. I will consider these objections in (...) turn and try to show that Diamond is not committed either intentionally or otherwise to relativism. (shrink)

Applying the sensemaking perspective in the field of corporate social responsibility is a recent but promising development. Using an in-depth exploratory case study, we analyze and discuss the CSR character of British American Tobacco Switzerland. Our findings indicate that BAT Switzerland does not follow traditional patters of building CSR. BAT Switzerland can be classified as a “legitimacy seeker,” characterized mainly by a relational identity orientation and legitimation strategies that might provide pragmatic and/or cognitive legitimacy. We conclude that understanding the cognitive (...) processes underlying the CSR decision-making process is of fundamental value when analyzing and changing the CSR approach of a firm. We discuss boundary conditions of the CSR character framework and expand it by differentiating between process and product legitimacy, as both perspectives have important but possibly different implications for the firm. (shrink)

Multiple arousal theory suggests that there is more than one arousal system and that the activity of the multiple arousal systems can be observed using electrodermal measures at various body sites. The ideas expressed by multiple arousal theory are interesting but they do not constitute a theory. The absence of a specific definition of arousal and the lack of testable predictions prevent multiple arousal theory from constituting a useful theoretical framework for focussed empirical research.

The Journal of Didactics of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to research on the teaching and learning of philosophy. It is published online twice a year. The access to all articles is free. Articles may be about any level of education, however the main focus is on high school philosophy. We welcome work with a philosophical or normative approach as well as reports of results from empirical qualitative and quantitative research. The journal also publishes reviews of books, textbooks (...) and other educational material of international interest as well as country reports. These reports present information about ways of teaching philosophy, its institutions and activities in different countries. It is an aim of the journal to promote the dialogue among researchers and practicing teachers across the world. (shrink)

Although Walter Benjamin's writings are considered to be among the most powerful theoretical enterprises of the twentieth century, his ideas are resistant to cooptation by the doctrines of various critical programs. These essays engage this resistance by examining the ghostly in Benjamin's work. The contributors show that the haunting truths Benjamin offers point towards new forms of responsibility. These truths reside in a figurative elsewhere, a ghostly space that his texts delimit but never fully inhabit, and these essays seek to (...) do justice to the ghosts of Benjamin. Issues explored include: the status of the image in Benjamin's literary reflections and in his meditations on cinema and visual culture; abiding Benjaminian notions of messianism, aura, reproducibility, semblance, and melancholy; Benjamin's relation to Freud; his innovative rethinking of history, virtuality, and translation; and his reflections on tragedy and prophecy, the geometrical dimensions of writing, and the relation between eros and language. (shrink)

There are intriguing hints in the works of Stanley Cavell and Stephen Mulhall of a possible connection between ethics and Wittgenstein’s remarks on private language, which are concerned with expressions of Empfindungen: feelings or sensations. The point of this paper is to make the case explicitly for seeing such a connection. What the point of that is I will address at the end of the paper. If Mulhall and Cavell both know their Wittgenstein and choose their words carefully, which I (...) will take as given, then the (to me) irresistible inference is that they see a connection between Wittgenstein’s thoughts on ethics and his thoughts on private language. Yet this connection has not, as far as I know, been made explicit. Can it be? Should it be? These are my questions. Even if no one ever intended a connection between the “Lecture on Ethics” and the remarks on private language, those remarks do at least touch on issues raised in the lecture, and it is worth thinking about what the author of those remarks would say about the lecture. So in this paper I summarize the “Lecture on Ethics” (in part I), look at the private language remarks themselves (in part II), and then apply some ideas from these remarks to the “Lecture on Ethics” in part III. My conclusion will be that Wittgenstein’s later remarks are largely consistent with his earlier ones, the main difference being that some of what he first called nonsense he later called secondary meaning. One result of this change is that attempts to express the feelings that Wittgenstein regards as fundamental to ethics, aesthetics, and religion are first treated as doomed to result in nonsense but later as risky. Like cries of pain, they might or might not find a sympathetic audience. (shrink)

Em seu livro Mente e Mundo John McDowell pretende superar a oscilação entre duas abordagens que pretendem mediar à relação entre as mentes e o mundo, de um lado temos o mito do dado dizendo que os pensamentos precisam de uma coerção a partir do mundo exterior, e do outro lado temos o coerentismo que apresenta a ideia de que apenas uma crença pode justificar outra crença. Para defender sua abordagem e naturalizar as capacidades conceituais, situando a espontaneidade na natureza (...) sem reduzi-la no interior do reino da lei. A natureza humana seria então uma segunda natureza que não é só formada a partir das capacidades adquiridas no nascimento, mas que são formadas também a partir da Bildung. Ao lançar mão dessas noções, McDowell traz a discussão das ideias de Han-Georg Gadamer sobre a experiência de abertura para o mundo através da linguagem. Deste modo, a intenção do presente artigo é de discutir sobre as implicações das noções de Bildung e segunda natureza na obra de McDowell buscando um maior esclarecimento a partir da influência e das interpretações de Gadamer. (shrink)

One of the most important social cognitive skills in humans is the ability to “put oneself in someone else’s shoes,” that is, to take another person’s perspective. In socially situated communication, perspective taking enables the listener to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of what is said and what is meant by the speaker. To successfully decode the speaker’s meaning, the listener has to take into account which information he/she and the speaker share in their common ground. We here further investigated (...) competing accounts about when and how CG information affects language comprehension by means of reaction time measures, accuracy data, event-related potentials, and eye-tracking. Early integration accounts would predict that CG information is considered immediately and would hence not expect to find costs of CG integration. Late integration accounts would predict a rather late and effortful integration of CG information during the parsing process that might be reflected in integration or updating costs. Other accounts predict the simultaneous integration of privileged ground and CG perspectives. We used a computerized version of the referential communication game with object triplets of different sizes presented visually in CG or PG. In critical trials, CG information had to be integrated while privileged information had to be suppressed. Listeners mastered the integration of CG. Yet, slower RTs, and enhanced late positivities in the ERPs showed that CG integration had its costs. Moreover, eye-tracking data indicated an early anticipation of referents in CG but an inability to suppress looks to the privileged competitor, resulting in later and longer looks to targets in those trials, in which CG information had to be considered. Our data therefore support accounts that foresee an early anticipation of referents to be in CG but a rather late and effortful integration if conflicting information has to be processed. We show that both perspectives, PG and CG, contribute to socially situated language processing and discuss the data with reference to theoretical accounts and recent findings on the use of CG information for reference resolution. (shrink)

Upshot: Massumi innovatively interlinks poststructuralist theory with ideas from cognitive psychology and Luhmann’s systems theory to deconstruct rational choice as the founding myth of the liberal economy. His politically charged constructivism explores socio-economic reproduction as a process of constant re-stabilization between the openness of affective response and the closure of rationality. Defying social determination, Massumi shows how affect can constitute a source of potential change when modulated trans-individually in response to political events.

Gegen das Streben der Moderne nach Widerspruchsfreiheit, Ordnung und Einheit aktiviert die Postmoderne die Begriffe Differenz, Widerstreit und Ambivalenz. Dieser Wandel lat auch die Bildungsphilosophie nicht unberuhrt. In diesem Buch wird untersucht, welche Auswirkungen postmoderne Ideen auf Bildungsphilosophie und -praxis haben konnen. Im Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung steht die Kritik an der modernen Identitats- und Subjektkategorie und der Versuch, diese aus postmoderner Sicht neu zu bestimmen und gewinnbringend auf die Erwachsenenbildung zu beziehen.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 67 Heft: 2 Seiten: 211-231.

Die gängigen Prognosen, nach denen die Religionen im Kontext der Moderne oder im Zuge der Globalisierung an Bedeutung verlieren würden, haben sich nicht bestätigt. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall: Jenseits von nihilistischen Entwürfen und virtuellen Konstruktionen öffneten sich auch und gerade in der Literatur Räume für die Belebung religiöser Weltsicht. Ausgehend von Heinrich Böll und seiner Anfang der 1960er Jahre eingeleiteten Distanzierung von der Institution Kirche, wird am Beispiel von Botho Strauß und Peter Handke, die seit den 1970er und 1980er (...) Jahren eine ins Metaphysische zielende Subjektivität repräsentieren, eine Renaissance des Religiösen konstatiert, die sich in den Werken des jüngeren Autors Ralf Rothmann seit den 1990er Jahren mit selbstbewusster Deutlichkeit fortschreibt. Anhand der geistesgeschichtlichen Trias Gnostizismus, Philosophie und Mystik nimmt die Verfasserin eine Fokussierung vor, die die ästhetischen Konzeptionen der Autoren deutlich werden lässt und sie zueinander in Beziehung setzt. (shrink)