The brain is an ever‐changing organ that encodes memories and directs behavior. Neuroanatomical studies have revealed structural plasticity of neural architecture, and advances in gene expression technology and epigenetics have demonstrated new mechanisms underlying the brain's dynamic nature. Stressful experiences challenge the plasticity of the brain, and prolonged exposure to environmental stress redefines the normative transcriptional profile of both neurons and glia, and can lead to the onset of mental illness. A more thorough understanding of normal and abnormal gene expression (...) is needed to define the diseased brain and improve current treatments for psychiatric disorders. The efforts to describe gene expression networks have been bolstered by microarray and RNA‐sequencing technologies. The heterogeneity of neural cell populations and their unique microenvironments, coupled with broad ranging interconnectivity, makes resolving this complexity exceedingly challenging and requires the combined efforts of single cell and systems level expression profiling to identify targets for therapeutic intervention. (shrink)

This paper examines the theoretical background and actual behavior in a gaming tournament with endogenous timing where a person has more incentive, structure, and time to form a strategy. The baseline treatment suggests that subgame perfection is a reasonable predictor of behavior –- subjects made 170 of 208 theoretically predicted choices of best actions, with the majority of mistakes made in timing choices by the players who did not survive the cut to the second round. Four sensitivity treatments established that (...) the design feature that lead to more predictable behavior was time to think –- 745 of 960 correctly predicted decisions with more time versus 595 of 960 with less time. A random effects Probit model suggests that the key design feature that closed the gap between predicted and observed behavior was not necessarily the non-linear payoffs created by the tournament design, but rather that the key was providing people with more time to think about their strategy. (shrink)

What are the non-monetary dimensions of selling sex? This article offers a cultural approach to the question of sexual labors, drawing on field observations and interviews in a community of gay men in Dakar, Senegal. Removing the notion of sexual labors from the stigmatized zone of “survival sex,” I explore the affective, extramonetary dimensions of sexual labors. The men in this study labor not simply to make money. Instead, I argue that against a highly gendered cultural backdrop, one where male (...) admiration is often written synonymously with money and gift giving, gay men experience a validation of their self-worth and homoerotic attraction through sexual labors. The extent to which they derive recognition from sexual labors not only subverts the gendered heteronormative paradigm, but also is paradoxically conditioned by it. Beyond sexual labors, however, this article also engages a broader question—how do gay men forge a positive sense of self amidst a variety of oppressive forces? The answer is not only through sexual labors, but also through initiation into a gay identity and community, an ethos of generosity and solidarity, kinship ties, and an ethic of sexual discovery, each taking shape alongside these labors. (shrink)

This paper examines the theoretical background and actual behavior in a gaming tournament with endogenous timing where a person has more incentive, structure, and time to form a strategy. The baseline treatment suggests that subgame perfection is a reasonable predictor of behavior –- subjects made 170 of 208 theoretically predicted choices of best actions, with the majority of mistakes made in timing choices by the players who did not survive the cut to the second round. Four sensitivity treatments established that (...) the design feature that lead to more predictable behavior was time to think –- 745 of 960 correctly predicted decisions with more time versus 595 of 960 with less time. A random effects Probit model suggests that the key design feature that closed the gap between predicted and observed behavior was not necessarily the non-linear payoffs created by the tournament design, but rather that the key was providing people with more time to think about their strategy. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies 1 (...) (n= 386) and 2 (n = 296), principal factor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-factor model – owning one's intellectual limitations, appropriate discomfort with intellectual limitations, and love of learning. Study 3 (n = 322) demonstrated strong test-retest reliability of the measure over 5 months, while Study 4 (n = 612) revealed limitations-owning IH correlated negatively with dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and hubristic pride and positively with openness, assertiveness, authentic pride. It also predicted openness and closed-mindedness over and above education, social desirability, and other measures of IH. The limitations-owning understanding of IH and scale allow for a more nuanced, spectrum interpretation and measurement of the virtue, which directs future study inside and outside of psychology. (shrink)

Daniel Steel argues that a causal theory of explanation can account for Ferguson's anthropological theory of Yanomami warfare but that a unification theory of explanation cannot. I argue that a unification theory can explain such an account, in a manner similar to Hempel's view of explanation in history. I go on to argue that the unification theory allows for different explanations of specific and general social circumstances.

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia made libertarianism a major theory in political philosophy. However, the book is often misread as making impractical, question‐begging arguments on the basis of a libertarian self‐ownership principle. This essay explains how academic philosophical libertarianism since Robert Nozick has returned to its humanistic, classical liberal roots. Contemporary libertarians largely work within the PPE (politics, philosophy, and economics) tradition and do what Michael Huemer calls “non‐ideal, non‐theory.” They more or less embrace rather than reject ideals of (...) social justice, and they accept that positive liberty is important. The difference between them and Left‐liberals is not so much a dispute over fundamental values, but empirical disagreements about the extent of market versus government failure. In contemporary political philosophy, libertarianism remains a significant but influential minority position.1 Nevertheless, many philosophers have little sense of how libertarian and classical liberal thought has developed and changed after Robert Nozick's seminal Anarchy, State, and Utopia, published in 1974. This essay provides a short guide. The terms “libertarianism” and “classical liberalism” refer to a body of related views about politics, philosophy, and economics. As a body of related ideas, classical liberalism has the unity of a neighborhood more than a house. That said, libertarians and classical liberals generally tend to argue for following two sets of claims: As a matter of justice, each individual has an extensive set of negative civil and economic rights, which cannot easily be overridden in the name of utility, stability, or desirable cultural goals. Granting everyone a wide scope of personal and economic liberty tends to generate good consequences, while restrictions on liberty tend to produce bad consequences. Classical liberals accept that markets and civil society can fail, but they argue government agents generally lack both the competence and the motivation to intervene in ways that fix rather than exacerbate the problems (Mueller, 2003). The first set of arguments is deontological; the second is consequentialist. Early classical liberal thinkers, such as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and David Hume, did not quite recognize this distinction. They made both arguments without any apparent worry that these were different kinds of argument. But Robert Nozick, the most famous libertarian philosopher of the Twentieth Century, seemed to focus almost entirely on rebutting deontological arguments against libertarianism with providing deontological arguments of his own. This tendency, along with the radical contrarianism of certain other mid‐Twentieth Century libertarians, seems to cause the perception that libertarians are impractical and inhumane (Barry, 1975; Sachs, 2012). In contrast to Nozick, contemporary classical liberal thought is largely pre‐occupied with social justice issues and with assessing the expected consequences of adopting various institutions and policies. In a sense, this a return to Adam Smith and origins of classical liberal thought: Contemporary classical liberals are not so much synthesizing left‐liberalism and classical liberalism as they are instead clarifying the basic concerns that have driven mainline classical liberal thought all along.2. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: -/- 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the (...) wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. -/- These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons". (shrink)

Jason Stanley presents a startling and provocative claim about knowledge: that whether or not someone knows a proposition at a given time is in part determined by his or her practical interests, i.e. by how much is at stake for that person at that time. In defending this thesis, Stanley introduces readers to a number of strategies for resolving philosophical paradox, making the book essential not just for specialists in epistemology but for all philosophers interested in philosophical methodology. Since (...) a number of his strategies appeal to linguistic evidence, it will be of great interest to linguists as well. (shrink)

Northern researchers and service providers espousing modernist theories of development in order to understand and aid countries and peoples of the South ignore their own non-universal starting points of knowledge and their own vested interests. Universal ethics are rejected in favor of situated ethics, while a modified empowerment development model for aiding women in the South based on poststructuralism requires building a bridge identity politics to promote participatory democracy and challenge Northern power knowledges.

This book is the first systematic treatment of 'responsibilist' or character-based virtue epistemology, an approach to epistemology that focuses on intellectual ...

The aim of this essay is to rethink classic issues of freedom and moral responsibility in the context of feminist and antiracist theories of male and white domination. If personal identities are socially constructed by gender, race and ethnicity, class and sexual orientation, how are social change and moral responsibility possible? An aspects theory of selfhood and three reinterpretations of identity politics show how individuals are morally responsible and nonessentialist ways to resist social oppression.

This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the division of cognitive labor, identifying the errors that led (...) to their conclusions. Furthermore, we generalize the epistemic landscape model, showing that one should be skeptical about the benefits of social learning in epistemically complex environments. (shrink)

Background: According to the Declaration of Helsinki, patients who take part in a clinical trial must be adequately informed about the trial's aims, methods, expected benefits, and potential risks. The declaration does not, however, elaborate on what “adequately informed” might amount to, in practice. Medical researchers and Local Research Ethics Committees attempt to ensure that the information which potential participants are given is pitched at an appropriate level, but few studies have considered whether the patients who take part in such (...) trials feel they have been given adequate information, or whether they feel able to understand that information.Objectives: To explore trial participants' views on the amount of information provided, and of their own understanding of that information.Design: Structured interviews of patients participating in clinical trials for the treatment of chronic medical condition.Findings: Patients generally felt they were given an appropriate amount of information, and that they were able to understand all or most of it. They felt they were given adequate time to ask questions before agreeing to take part. In comparison with treatment given outwith the research setting, patients generally felt they received more information when participating in a clinical trial.Conclusions: Researchers sometimes complain that patients are given too much information during clinical trials, and have limited understanding of that information. The present study shows that this perception is not necessarily shared by patients. More research is needed in this area, particularly to gauge whether patient understanding is indeed accurate. (shrink)

Inspired by Peter van Inwagen’s “simulacra model” of the resurrection, I investigate whether it could be reasonable to adopt an analogous approach to the problem of evil. Empirically Skeptical Theism, as I call it, is the hypothesis that God shields our lives from irredeemable evils surreptitiously (just as van Inwagen proposes that God shields our bodies from destruction surreptitiously). I argue that EST compares favorably with traditional skeptical theism and with eschatological theodicies, and that EST does not have the negative (...) moral consequences we might suppose. (shrink)

Leading versions of hedonism generate implausible results about the welfare value of very intense or unwanted pleasures, while recent versions of desire satisfactionism overvalue the fulfillment of desires associated with compulsions and addictions. Consequently, both these theories fail to satisfy a plausible condition of adequacy for theories of well-being proposed by L.W. Sumner: they do not make one’s well-being depend on one’s own cares or concerns. But Sumner’s own life-satisfaction theory cannot easily be extended to explain welfare over time, and (...) it makes mistaken (autonomous, informed) self-assessment impossible. A new account of well-being based on the stable realization of personal values enjoys the advantages claimed for these subjective theories while avoiding these problems. (shrink)

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how (...) does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)

Is evil a distinct moral concept? Or are evil actions just very wrong actions? Some philosophers have argued that evil is a distinct moral concept. These philosophers argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. Other philosophers have suggested that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. On this view, evil is just very wrong. In this paper I argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. The first part of the paper is critical. I argue that (...) Luke Russell’s attempt to show that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing fails. Russell’s argument fails because it is based on an implausible criterion for determining whether two concepts are qualitatively distinct. I offer a more plausible criterion and argue that based on this criterion evil and wrongdoing are qualitatively distinct. To help make my case, I sketch a theory of evil which makes a genuinely qualitative distinction between evil and wrongdoing. I argue that we cannot characterize evil as just very wrong on plausible conceptions of evil and wrongdoing. I focus on act-consequentialist, Kantian, and contractarian conceptions of wrongdoing. (shrink)

After a brief overview of what intellectual virtues are, I offer three arguments for the claim that education should aim at fostering ‘intellectual character virtues’ like curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual honesty. I then go on to discuss several pedagogical and related strategies for achieving this aim.

A critical evaluation of Rawlsian and Habermasian paradigms of political philosophy that offers an interpretation and defense of Habermas's theory of law and ...

The problem of `conscious inessentialism' is examined in the literature, and an argument is presented that the presence of consciousness is indeed marked by a behavioural difference, but that this should be looked for at the cultural level of speech communities.

This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the idea that happiness in the (...) personal attribute sense can serve as a ‘‘proxy’’ for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well- being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models. (shrink)

With its focus on intellectual virtues and their role in the acquisition and transmission of knowledge and related epistemic goods, virtue epistemology provides a rich set of tools for educational theory and practice. In particular, characteristics under the rubric of "responsibilist" virtue epistemology, like curiosity, open-mindedness, attentiveness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity, can help educators and students define and attain certain worthy but nebulous educational goals like a love of learning, lifelong learning, and critical thinking. This volume is devoted to (...) exploring the intersection between virtue epistemology and education. It assembles leading virtue epistemologists and philosophers of education to address such questions as: Which virtues are most essential to education? How exactly should these virtues be understood? How is the goal of intellectual character growth related to other educational goals, for example, to critical thinking and knowledge-acquisition? What are the "best practices" for achieving this goal? Can growth in intellectual virtues be measured? The chapters are a prime example of "applied epistemology" and promise to be a seminal contribution to an area of research that is rapidly gaining attention within epistemology and beyond. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

When a patient lacks decision-making capacity, then according to standard clinical ethics practice in the United States, the health care team should seek guidance from a surrogate decision-maker, either previously selected by the patient or appointed by the courts. If there are no surrogates willing or able to exercise substituted judgment, then the team is to choose interventions that promote a patient’s best interests. We argue that, even when there is input from a surrogate, patient preferences should be an additional (...) source of guidance for decisions about patients who lack decision-making capacity. (shrink)

This paper argues that conceptualizing unity as "interconnection" (rather than reduction) provides a more fruitful and versatile framework for the philosophical study of scientific unification. Building on the work of Darden and Maull, Kitcher, and Kincaid, I treat unity as a relationship between fields: two fields become more integrated as the number and/or significance of interfield connections grow. Even when reduction fails, two theories or fields can be unified (integrated) in significant ways. I highlight two largely independent dimensions of unification. (...) Fields are theoretically unified to the extent that we understand how the ontologies, concepts, and generalizations of these fields are connected. (Reductionism is one form of theoretical unity, but not the only form). Fields are practically unified through heuristic connections (e.g., using the heuristics of one field to generate hypotheses in another field) and by the development of methods for integrating the qualitatively distinct bodies of data generated by the two fields. I discuss the relationship between paleontological and neontological systematics to illustrate the utility of conceptualizing unity as interconnection. (shrink)

Amodel for inventing newsignals is introduced in the context of sender–receiver games with reinforcement learning. If the invention parameter is set to zero, it reduces to basic Roth–Erev learning applied to acts rather than strategies, as in Argiento et al. (Stoch. Process. Appl. 119:373–390, 2009). If every act is uniformly reinforced in every state it reduces to the Chinese Restaurant Process—also known as the Hoppe–Pólya urn—applied to each act. The dynamics can move players from one signaling game to another during (...) the learning process. Invention helps agents avoid pooling and partial pooling equilibria. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of data manipulation in scientific experiments. It will be shown that in many cases raw, unprocessed data is not produced, but rather a form of processed data that will be referred to as a data model. The language of data models will be used to provide a framework within which to understand a recent debate about the status of data and data manipulation. It will be seen that a description in terms of data models allows (...) one to understand cases in which data acquisition and data manipulation cannot be separated into two independent activities. (shrink)

Перевод статьи: Davies T., Chandler R. Online deliberation design: Choices, criteria, and evidence // Democracy in motion: Evaluating the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement / Nabatchi T., Weiksner M., Gastil J., Leighninger M. (eds.). -- Oxford: Oxford univ. press, 2013. -- P. 103-131. А. Кулик. -/- Вниманию читателей предлагается обзор эмпирических исследований в области дизайна онлайн-форумов, предназначенных для вовлечения граждан в делиберацию. Размерности дизайна определены для различных характеристик делиберации: назначения, целевой аудитории, разобщенности участников в пространстве и во времени, (...) среды коммуникации и организации делиберативного процесса. После краткого обзора критериев оценки вариантов дизайна рассматриваются эмпирические данные, соотносящиеся с каждым из вариантов. Эффективность онлайн-делиберации зависит от того, насколько условия коммуникации соотносятся с заданиями делиберации. Компромиссы, как, например, между анонимным или идентифицируемым участием, предполагают различные дизайны в зависимости от цели делиберации и состава участников. Выводы исследования получены на материале существующих технологий и могут измениться по мере коэволюции технологий и пользователей. (shrink)

The values-based approach to welfare holds that it is good for one to realize goals, activities, and relationships with which one strongly (and stably) identifies. This approach preserves the subjectivity of welfare while affirming that a life well lived must be active, engaged, and subjectively meaningful. As opposed to more objective theories, it is unified, naturalistic, and ontologically parsimonious. However, it faces objections concerning the possibility of self-sacrifice, disinterested and paradoxical values, and values that are out of sync with physical (...) and emotional needs. This paper revises the values-based approach, emphasizing the important—but limited—role consciously held values play in human agency. The additional components of human agency in turn explain why it is important for one’s values to cohere with one’s fixed drives, hard-wired emotional responses, and nonvolitionally guided cognitive pro- cesses. This affords promising responses to the objections above. (shrink)

While life in general can be explained by the mechanisms of physics, chemistry and biology, to many scientists and philosophers it appears that when it comes to explaining consciousness, there is what the philosopher Joseph Levine called an “explanatory gap” between the physical brain and subjective experiences. Here we deduce the living and neural features behind primary consciousness within a naturalistic biological framework, identify which animal taxa have these features (the vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod molluscs), then reconstruct when consciousness first (...) evolved and consider its adaptive value. We theorize that consciousness is based on all the complex system features of life, plus the even more complex features of elaborate brains. We argue that the main reason why the explanatory gap between the brain and experience has been so refractory to scientific explanation is that it arises from both life and from varied and diverse brains and brain regions, so bridging the gap requires a complex, multifactorial account that includes the great diversity of consciousness, its personal nature that stems from embodied life, and the special neural features that make consciousness unique in nature. (shrink)

This paper argues that even the most virtuous people living in affluent Western countries share responsibility for injustices suffered by poor people living in developing countries. The argument of the paper draws on a moral principle that underlies the law of restitution: the principle of unjust enrichment. The paper argues that denizens of affluent Western countries have benefited unjustly from injustices suffered by poor people living in developing countries and that they have a moral responsibility to pay back their unjust (...) gains. (shrink)

Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion shows how motivation relates to biological, social, and cognitive issues. A wide range of topics concerning motivation and emotion are considered, including hunger and thirst, circadian and other biological rhythms, fear and anxiety, anger and aggression, achievement, attachment, and love. Goals and incentives are discussed in their application to work, child rearing, and personality. This book reviews an unusual breadth of research and provides the reader with the scientific basis for (...) understanding motivation as a major variable in human and animal life. It also offers insights that can be applied to immediate and practical problems. Various areas are examined in depth, such as the relationships between reward, incentives, and motivation. The discussion of biological rhythms shows that humans and animals are more alert at certain times than others, and these rhythms also affect performance. The topics in the book span the ways in which motivation connects with many aspects of contemporary psychology. Basic issues of design and methodology, details of research procedures, and important aspects of definition and measurement, are discussed throughout the book.Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion examines the way motivation functions and how it interacts with other important variables: physiological processes; learning, attention, and memory; rewards and stressors; the role of culture as well as species characteristics. The presentation makes clear in what important ways motivation, as a construct, contributes to the scientific understanding of behavior. The book offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students a broad overview of motivation. It also is of value for the professional psychologist who seeks an integrated overview of the classical and contemporary literature in the field of motivation. The book provides information on a broad range of issues and thus can be used also as supplementary reading for courses on cognition and biological as well as social psychology. (shrink)

The last two decades have witnessed a modest revival of scholarly interest in the writings of Max Stirner, a contemporary of Marx and probably the most radical of the Young Hegelians. Not unpredictably, there are many different interpretations of Stirner’s ideas being offered; this diversity may, as Lawrence Stepelevich notes, “be provoked by any number of real or imagined connections with whatever or whomever is of current concern.” There are, in fact, many voices speaking out of the pages of The (...) Ego and Its Own and many subtle twistings in the complex line of inquiry that Stirner follows, so it is not altogether surprising that commentators differ on its meaning and significance. However, much of the secondary literature on Stirner has given a jaundiced view of his ideas, has been one-sided and partial, because it has failed to ask the right questions with regard to his central argument. Stirner takes his readers on a rigorous intellectual journey toward a confrontation with the most basic questions of ontology and axiology; in answer to them he offers a process theory of the self and a radically contingent view of moral choice, which have certain implications for political practice. A reconsideration of Stirner’s ideas is worthwhile in order to sort through the different voices and reconstruct the vision of the self and values that lie at the heart of his argument. (shrink)

This article explores the synthesis between the theories and practice of Humanistic Management and Self-Determination Theory of Motivation (SDT). Moving from Economistic to Humanistic Management involves considering human action as uniting internal and external dimensions, having ethics as a guide for a good life, viewing society as a community of people, and being open to beauty and transcendence. The recently elucidated 50-year legacy of SDT describes it as a truly human science of motivation that takes into consideration our attributes as (...) persons, including our capacities for awareness and self-regulation. It also focuses on one’s capacity for autonomy as it applies to individual functioning, interpersonal relationships, and societal interactions. SDT posits a continuum of motivational regulation ranging from amotivation through controlled to autonomous motivation. The current empirical study of Millennials' motivation to support local and global hunger charities based on social media communication employs the complete SDT continuum. Digitalization and globalization have fundamentally changed the nature of human communication. Millennials are central to the humanistic functioning of today’s society. The study findings of the dominance of integrated personal value autonomy demonstrates the necessity of assessing the complete set of SDT motivations in various contexts and situations. Given that SDT and Humanistic Management investigations have mainly involved corporations, one must also be open to investigating the humanistic management of non-profit social and governmental organizations. The non-greenwashed triple sustainability values of corporate, social and environmental good are pertinent targets for Humanistic Management research and Practices. (shrink)

This paper uses Paul Ricœur’s analyses of ideology to argue for the mitigation of the possibility of political evil within the political paradox. In explicating the paradox, Ricœur seeks to hold in tension two basic aspects of politics: its benefits and its propensity to evil. This tension, however, should not be viewed as representative of a dualism. The evil of politics notwithstanding, Ricœur encourages us to view the political order as a deeply important part of our shared existence. By thinking (...) past the distorting function of ideology to the legitimating and integrating functions that Ricœur calls more basic than distortion, a mode of thought that is often at the heart of political evil, ideology can be used to mitigate that very evil. Keywords: Ri cœur, “The Political Paradox,” Ideology, Political Violence, Justice. Résumé Cet article s’appuie sur les analyses ricœuriennes de l’idéologie dans le but de montrer que l’idéologie est susceptible de contribuer à une atténuation du mal politique inhérent au paradoxe politique. Dans son explicitation de ce paradoxe, Ricœur cherche à mettre en relation tensionnelle deux aspects fondamentaux de la politique: ses avantages et ses maux. Cependant, cette tension ne devrait pas être interprétée comme l’expression d’un dualisme. En dépit du mal inhérent au politique, Ricœur nous encourage à voir l’ordre politique comme une partie profondément importante de notre existence partagée. Si l’on régresse en-deçà de la fonction de distorsion de l’idéologie vers ses fonctions légitimantes et integratrices, c’est-à-dire vers ses fonctions les plus fondamentales, il apparaît en effet que l’idéologie, tout en étant souvent au cœur du mal politique, peut néanmoins être utilisée pour atténuer ce mal. Mots-clés: Ricœur, paradoxe politique, ideologie, violence politique, justice. (shrink)

Representationalists have routinely expressed skepticism about the idea that inflexible responses to stimuli are to be explained in representational terms. Representations are supposed to be more than just causal mediators in the chain of events stretching from stimulus to response, and it is difficult to see how the sensory states driving reflexes are doing more than playing the role of causal intermediaries. One popular strategy for distinguishing representations from mere causal mediators is to require that representations are decoupled from specific (...) stimulus conditions. I believe this requirement on representation is mistaken and at odds with explanatory practices in sensory ecology. Even when sensory states have the job of coordinating a specific output with a specific input, we can still find them doing the work of representations, carrying information needed for organisms to respond successfully to environmental conditions. We can uncover information at work by intervening specifically on the information conveyed by sensory states, leaving their causal role undisturbed. (shrink)

Open-mindedness enjoys widespread recognition as an intellectual virtue. This is evident, among other ways, in its appearance on nearly every list of intellectual virtues in the virtue epistemology literature.1 Despite its popularity, however, it is far from clear what exactly open-mindedness amounts to: that is, what sort of intellectual orientation or activity is essential to it. In fact, there are ways of thinking about open-mindedness that cast serious doubt on its status as an intellectual virtue. Consider the following description, from (...) Robert Roberts and Jay Wood (2007), of a ‘bright college freshman, taking an introductory course in philosophy.’ Given this student’s ‘taste for ideas,’ she .. (shrink)