In the Summer 2014 JSE issue (Volume 28:2), we published two long reports, by Michael Nahm and myself, on the investigation of physical medium Kai Mügge and the Felix Circle. Those papers were revised versions of papers, ready to be published earlier, but scuttled when evidence of fraud was uncovered in the case. Nahm and I reached different conclusions about Kai’s mediumship as a whole. He felt that the majority of Kai’s phenomena were probably fraudulent. I was not ready to (...) go that far. In any case, whatever our intuitions might have been about the extent of Kai’s cheating, we both agreed that some of his phenomena were still very difficult to explain away—and indeed had not been adequately explained away. I believe it’s fair to say that however large or small that residue of legitimacy may be, Nahm and I agree that it at least includes table levitations. Since that JSE issue was published, there have been further developments in the case. Some of these, from an investigation I supervised in October of this year, I hope to present at length in a future issue of the JSE. The rest concern some incidents that occurred relatively soon after the appearance of our original reports, and which should be mentioned now without further ado. The item of greatest interest, no doubt, will be the testimony—quoted below—describing how at least one instance of Kai’s cheating was uncovered. (shrink)

This book, first published in 2002, is a systematic critical overview of German aesthetics from 1750 to the present. It begins with the work of Baumgarten and covers all the major writers on German aesthetics that follow, including Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer and Adorno. The book offers a clear and non-technical exposition of ideas, placing these in a wider philosophical context where necessary. Such is the importance of German aesthetics that the market for this book will extend (...) far beyond the domain of philosophy to such fields as literary studies, fine art and music. (shrink)

Ernst Fraenkel, geboren 1898, prägte die deutsche Politikwissenschaft der jungen Bundesrepublik. Er gab ihr eine interdisziplinäre Ausrichtung und gilt als Vater der Pluralismustheorie in Deutschland. Das Buch schildert sein bewegtes Leben, das mit der deutschen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts eng verknüpft ist.

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to judicial decision-making has already begun in many jurisdictions around the world. While AI seems to promise greater fairness, access to justice, and legal certainty, issues of discrimination and transparency have emerged and put liberal democratic principles under pressure, most notably in the context of bail decisions. Despite this, there has been no systematic analysis of the risks to liberal democratic values from implementing AI into judicial decision-making. This article sets out to fill this (...) void by identifying and engaging with challenges arising from artificial judicial decision-making, focusing on three pillars of liberal democracy, namely equal treatment of citizens, transparency, and judicial independence. Methodologically, the work takes a comparative perspective between human and artificial decision-making, using the former as a normative benchmark to evaluate the latter. -/- The chapter first argues that AI that would improve on equal treatment of citizens has already been developed, but not yet adopted. Second, while the lack of transparency in AI decision-making poses severe risks which ought to be addressed, AI can also increase the transparency of options and trade-offs that policy makers face when considering the consequences of artificial judicial decision-making. Such transparency of options offers tremendous benefits from a democratic perspective. Third, the overall shift of power from human intuition to advanced AI may threaten judicial independence, and with it the separation of powers. While improvements regarding discrimination and transparency are available or on the horizon, it remains unclear how judicial independence can be protected, especially with the potential development of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). Working out the political and legal infrastructure to reap the fruits of artificial judicial intelligence in a safe and stable manner should become a priority of future research in this area. (shrink)

The sense of agency is a basic feature of our subjective experience. Experimental studies usually focus on either its attributional aspects or on its motoric aspects. Here, we combine both aspects and focus on the subjective experience of the time between action and effect. Previous studies [Haggard, P., Aschersleben, G., Gehrke, J., & Prinz, W.. Action, binding and awareness. In W. Prinz, & B. Hommel, Common mechanisms in perception and action: Attention and performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press] have shown a (...) temporal attraction in the perceived times of actions and effects, but did directly not study the relation between them. In three experiments, time estimates of an interval between an action and its subsequent sensory effect were obtained. The actions were either voluntary key press actions performed by the participant or kinematically identical movements applied passively to the finger. The effects were either auditory or visual events or a passive movement induced to another finger. The results first indicated a shortening of the interval between one’s own voluntary action and a subsequent effect, relative to passive movement conditions. Second, intervals initiated by observed movements, either of another person or of an inanimate object, were always perceived like those involving passive movements of one’s own body, and never like those involving active movements. Third, this binding effect was comparable for auditory, somatic and visual effects of action. Our results provide the first direct evidence that agency involves a generalisable relation between actions and their consequences, and is triggered by efferent motor commands. (shrink)

It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exemplified in the 17th century by Descartes, and in the 20th century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Darwin’s Descent of Man, according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, not in kind. Thoroughgoing naturalistic explanation of these capacities is (...) made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind, toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Philosophical Gaze into the Writings of the Zodiac Killer Who is the Zodiac Killer? Peek‐A‐Boo: You Are Doomed! This is the Zodiac Speaking Conclusion.

This chapter presents a brief background of curriculum knowledge in England. The idea of ‘relations’ being ‘between’ things pushes one into a ‘this’ and ‘that’ (and maybe ‘and the other’) thinking space. In Jacques Derrida's famous words: ‘Deconstruction is justice’. The responsibility of deconstruction is to disrupt those taken‐for‐granted meanings of curriculum discourses by opening them up and releasing them from their metaphysical assumptions to see what or who may have been overlooked, marginalised and omitted in the process of curriculum‐making. (...) The new model of knowledge formulated in The Schools White Paper for the General Certificate in Secondary Education examinations (GCSE6) is located within a challenging curriculum framework in which grade boundaries are raised, end‐of‐module examinations are replaced with end‐of‐course examinations and opportunities to re‐sit examinations through the course of the programme of study are removed. (shrink)

English summary: The study of the philosophy of history is currently divided into two largely irreconcilable approaches. The methodological and scientific analysis of historical practice stands opposed to an approach based on the reflection on the historicity of human identity. Previous attempts to overcome this discrepancy have been prevented from seeking recourse in Hegel's historical thought, since it is still seen as representing a substantialist and tangible philosophy of history and therefore as being theoretically obsolete. Max Winter shows that (...) Hegel not only possesses a theoretically sophisticated and formal philosophy of history, but one that is also able to bridge gaps within philosophy of history today, in that it combines an epistemology of historical knowledge with a theory of historical identity. German description: Die gegenwartige Geschichtsphilosophie in ist in zwei relativ unvermittelte Ansatze geschieden: Der methodologisch-wissenschaftstheoretischen Analyse geschichtswissenschaftlicher Praxis steht die Reflexion auf die Geschichtlichkeit menschlicher Identitat gegenuber. Bisherigen Versuchen zur Uberwindung dieser Diskrepanz scheint der Ruckgriff auf Hegels Geschichtsdenken versperrt, da dieses weiterhin als Beispiel einer substantialistischen, materialen Geschichtsphilosophie und mithin als theoretisch uberholt gilt. Max Winter zeigt, dass Hegel nicht nur uber eine theoretisch anspruchsvolle, formale Geschichtsphilosophie verfugt, sondern dass diese daruber hinaus auch geeignet ist, Graben innerhalb der gegenwartigen Geschichtsphilosophie zu uberbrucken, indem sie eine Epistemologie historischen Wissens mit einer Theorie geschichtlicher Identitat verbindet. (shrink)

Explains the ethical principles of the ancient Greek philosophy known as Stoicism and shows how it can change our understanding of contemporary issues such as environmental sustainability, social justice, and global capitalism.

The positivists defined analyticity as truth in virtue of meaning alone and advocated the view that the notion of analyticity so defined is co-extensive with both the notion of an a priori truth an...

John Rawls’s recommendation that political philosophy should be kept free of metaphysics has recently come under attack by Jean Hampton. According to her philosophy as a Socratic quest has to orient itself by radical probing and that unavoidingly involves us in metaphysical commitment. Non-Socratic philosophy in the later Rawls, she claims, reduces itself to a mere ‘modus vivendi’. In defending Rawls the article makes clear how Hampton underrates the method of reflective equilibrium. Rawls makes a rationally reconstructed use of the (...) Socratic ideal, that can be turned not only against Hampton’s critique of Rawls, but also against its relativist appropriation by Richard Rorty. (shrink)

This is an examination of some Left critiques of Rawls. Stress is put, not on his underlying moral methodology, including his contractarianism, though surely there is need for such a critique as well, but on an examination of his principles of justice, particularly his equal liberty principle and his difference principle. This is often thought to be the heart of his theory. It is argued that Rawls’ asociological and ahistorical approach and his ignoring of questions of power and of ideology (...) and his lack of an adequate conceptualization of liberty lead to major distortions in his account. Both principles are shown to be problematic and the equal liberty principle is shown to be in conflict with the difference principle. (shrink)

It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exempli fi ed in the seventeenth century by René Descartes and in the twentieth century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism, we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man , according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, and not in kind. Thoroughgoing (...) naturalistic explanation of these capacities is made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind , toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness . (shrink)

本书抓住了中国思想史上最初的核心概念——德礼思想的产生和演变,从语文学、政治制度学、社会史学、宗教学、文化学、道德系谱学等多方面的视角,对上古时代的思想的产生和发展作了探讨,从而揭示了上古时代中国思想 的特质,及其对我国轴心时期即先秦诸子时代思想的决定性影响。.

Many find the prospect of death distressing at least partly because they believe that death deprives its subject of life’s benefits. Properly qualified, the belief is surely true. But should its truth lead us to conclude that there is something dreadful or awful about death, something that merits distress?

Drawing on insights of thinkers in the natural rights tradition, Draper analyzes numerous hypothetical cases including those involving a runaway trolley, then seeks to determine if killing civilians in war is ever justified. In his consideration of this issue he avoids appealing to the principle of double effect. Having considered hypothetical cases at length, he leaves it to others to decide if any option to go to war is justifiable. In this regard he himself is sceptical.

African ethics is primarily concerned with community and harmonious communal relationships. The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that African society does not objectify and exploit nature and natural existents, unlike Western moral attitudes and practices. This book investigates whether this claim is correct by examining religious and philosophical thought, as well as traditional cultural practices in Africa. Through exploration of what kind of status is reserved for other-than-human animals in African ethics, Horsthemke argues (...) that moral perceptions and attitudes on the African continent remain resolutely anthropocentric, or human-centred. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) and ukama (relationality) have been expanded to include nonhuman nature, animals have no rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively 'indirect'. Animals and African Ethics concludes by asking whether those who, following their own liberation, continue to exploit and oppress other creatures, are not thereby contributing to their own dehumanization. (shrink)