This paper introduces a new solution concept for games with incomplete preferences. The concept is based on rationalizability and it is more general than the existing ones based on Nash equilibrium. In rationalizable strategies, we assume that the players choose nondominated strategies given their beliefs of what strategies the other players may choose. Our solution concept can also be used, e.g., in ordinal games where the standard notion of rationalizability cannot be applied. We show that the sets of rationalizable strategies (...) are the maximal mutually nondominated sets. We also show that no new rationalizable strategies appear when the preferences are refined, i.e., when the information gets more precise. Moreover, noncooperative multicriteria games are suitable applications of incomplete preferences. We apply our framework to such games, where the outcomes are evaluated according to several criteria and the payoffs are vector valued. We use the sets of feasible weights to represent the relative importance of the criteria. We demonstrate the applicability of the new solution concept with an ordinal game and a bicriteria Cournot game. (shrink)

This book takes stock of the wide range of practices of deliberative mini-publics. More concretely, it takes an informed look at preconditions, processes, and outcomes. Furthermore, it provides a critical assessment of the experience with mini-publics, in particular policy-impact. The book brings together leading scholars in the field, most notably James S. Fishkin and Mark E. Warren. It speaks to students and scholars with an interest in democracy and democratic innovations. This is the first comprehensive account of the booming practice (...) of deliberative mini-publics. Not only does it provide the reader with a systematic review of the variety of mini-publics, it also discusses their weaknesses and makes recommendations on how to make mini-publics a viable component of democracy. (shrink)

This paper defends a reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics in the Lectures on the Foundation of Mathematics as a radical conventionalist one, whereby our agreement about the particular case is constitutive of our mathematical practice and ‘the logical necessity of any statement is a direct expression of a convention’ (Dummett 1959, p. 329). -/- On this view, mathematical truths are conceptual truths and our practices determine directly for each mathematical proposition individually whether it is true or false. Mathematical truths (...) are thus not consequences of a prior adoption of a convention or rules as orthodox conventionalism has it. -/- The goal of the paper is not merely exegetical, however, and argues that radical conventionalism can withstand some of the most difficult objections that have been brought forward against it, including those of Dummett himself, and thus that radical conventionalism has been prematurely excluded from consideration by philosophers of mathematics. (shrink)

This timely book offers revealing insights into the changing role of China in world governance as exemplified by the Silk Road Initiative, the People's Republic's first published major initiative for external affairs. Focusing on various aspects of the Silk Road Initiative, particularly those that are largely neglected in current discussions, including culture and philosophy, finance and investment, environmental protection and social responsibility, judiciary and lawyers, the authors explore a wide range of contexts in which China's role as an emerging power (...) in international relations and international law is examined. In the current era of ever-increasing populism, protectionism and challenges to globalization, the authors explore the Chinese philosophy underpinning Chinese norms of regional and international development. Bearing in mind the political and economic uncertainties hampering the establishment of such norms, the authors offer crucial insights into how the Silk Road Initiative could or should be developed and regulated. Given its depth of coverage, the book is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the Initiative and its social-legal implications. (shrink)

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate, such as a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in (...) the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. Results supported emotional selection operating in all three phases of cultural transmission. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in North America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways. (shrink)

Cultural variants may spread by being more appealing, more memorable, or less offensive than other cultural variants. Empirical studies suggest that such “emotional selection” is a force to be reckoned with in cultural evolution. We present a research paradigm that is suitable for the study of emotional selection. It guides empirical research by directing attention to the circumstances under which emotions influence the likelihood that an individual will influence another individual to acquire a cultural variant. We present a modeling framework (...) to translate such knowledge into specific and testable predictions of population-level change. A set of already analyzed basic cases can serve as a toolbox. (shrink)

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements. Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content among Americans but not among Indians. Four (...) subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors, the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news. We discuss various possible explanations and implications. (shrink)

Even a morally good practical agent does not act solely from the recog- nition of the abstract demands of moral duty. Often, she acts to satisfy desires for particular ends that are not intrinsically moral. But if freedom, as Kant claims, consists in acting from universal principles one adopts from respect for the moral law, how can agents freely act to satisfy desires for particular ends? The standard answer to this question, the so-called Incorporation Thesis, is, I argue, unsatisfactory both (...) as an interpretation of Kant and on philosophical grounds. I propose instead that, for Kant, the capacity to act freely for the sake of a particular, non-intrinsically moral end is not exhausted by the ability to step back, reflect and decide whether a desire is or can provide a reason to act. Rather, Kant shows, the place for the pursuit of particular ends is determined by practically rational agents’ spontaneous constitution of their moral character, whereby they subordi- nate the pursuit of material, particular ends to the pursuit of formal, moral ones or vice versa. (shrink)

Although much research has found girls to be less interested in mathematics than boys are, there are many countries in which the opposite holds. I hypothesize that variation in gender differences in interest are driven by a complex process in which national culture promoting high math achievement drives down interest in math schoolwork, with the effect being amplified among girls due to their higher conformity to peer influence. Predictions from this theory were tested in a study of data on more (...) than 500,000 grade 8 students in 50 countries from the 2011 and 2015 waves of TIMSS. Consistent with predictions, national achievement levels were strongly negatively correlated with national levels of math schoolwork interest and this variation was larger among girls: girls in low-achievement, high-interest countries had especially high interest in math schoolwork, whereas girls in high-achievement, low-interest countries had especially low interest in math schoolwork. Gender differences in math schoolwork interest were also found to be related to gender differences in math achievement, emphasizing the importance of understanding them better. (shrink)

Opponents of abortion sometimes hold that it is impermissible because fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. But miscarriage, which ends up to 89 % of pregnancies, is much deadlier than abortion. That means that if opponents of abortion are right, then miscarriage is the biggest public-health crisis of our time. Yet they pay hardly any attention to miscarriage, especially very early miscarriage. Attempts to resolve this inconsistency by adverting to the distinction between killing and letting die or to (...) the difficulty of preventing miscarriage fail, leaving a dilemma. Opponents of abortion should either advocate a substantial shift in our political and medical priorities or else give up the view that fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. (shrink)

This volume offers a critical re-assessment of the thought of Ernst Bloch, best-known for his groundbreaking study The Principle of Hope and one of the most significant European thinkers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. It explores Bloch's life, work and reception; his debt to Marx and Hegel; his central concepts of hope and utopia; his affinities with philosophers such as Gramsci and Zizek; and his radical reframing of our understanding of history, society and culture. Above all, this volume (...) examines the relevance of Bloch's ideas today, in a world still shot through with economic inequality and social injustice. Contributors are: Agata Bielik-Robson, Ivan Boldyrev, Henk de Berg, Sam Dolbear, Vincent Geoghegan, Holger Glinka, Loren Goldman, Douglas Kellner, Cat Moir, Jan Rehmann, Nina Rismal, Johan Siebers, and Peter Thompson. (shrink)

At the outset of _Marx for Cats_, Leigh Claire La Berge declares that “all history is the history of cat struggle.” Revising the medieval bestiary form to meet Marxist critique, La Berge follows feline footprints through Western economic history to reveal an animality at the heart of Marxism. She draws on a twelve-hundred-year arc spanning capitalism’s feudal prehistory, its colonialist and imperialist ages, the bourgeois revolutions that supported capitalism, and the communist revolutions that opposed it to outline how cats have (...) long been understood as creatures of economic critique and liberatory possibility. By attending to the repeated archival appearance of lions, tigers, wildcats, and “sabo-tabbies,” La Berge argues that felines are central to how Marxists have imagined the economy, and by asking what humans and animals owe each other in a moment of ecological crisis, La Berge joins current debates about the need for and possibility of eco-socialism. In this playful and generously illustrated radical bestiary, La Berge demonstrates that class struggle is ultimately an interspecies collaboration. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Einleitung, mittelhochdeutscher Text -- Bd. 2. Lateinische Quellen.

What drives us to do good things, and to avoid doing bad? This book offers an integrative examination of the role of motivation in shaping moral cognition, judgement, and behavior.

Originally known for his groundbreaking work in literary studies, the Bulgarian-born French scholar Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017) was one of the world's foremost cultural theorists. His interventions cover an astounding range of topics, from narratology to ethics, from painting to politics, and from the Enlightenment to current affairs. Written by an international team of experts, this volume - the first-ever comprehensive examination of Todorov as a cultural critic - discusses the crucial elements of his work as well as his place in (...) European thought. (shrink)

Alongside his work as a practising architect, Sigurd Frosterus (1876–1956) was one of Finland’s leading architectural critics during the first decades of the 20th century. In his early life, Frosterus was a strict rationalist who wanted to develop architecture towards scientific ideals instead of historical, archaeological, or mythological approaches. According to him, an architect had to analyse his tasks of construction in order to be able to logically justify his solutions, and he must take advantage of the possibilities of the (...) latest technology. The particular challenge of his time was reinforced concrete. Frosterus considered that the buildings of a modern metropolis should be constructivist in expressing their purpose and technology honestly. The impulses of two famous European architects – Otto Wagner and Henry van de Velde – had a life-long influence on his work. Urban architecture with long street perspectives and houses with austere façades and unified eaves lines was the stylistic ideal that he shared with the Austrian architect Wagner. An open and enlightened urban experience was Frosterus’s future vision, not National Romantic capriciousness or intimacy drawing from the Middle Ages. According to Frosterus, the Belgian van de Velde was the master interior architect of the epoch, the interior of the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar being an excellent example of his work. However, already in the 1910s Frosterus’s rationalism developed towards a broader understanding of the functions of the façades of business edifices. In his brilliant analyses of the business palaces by the Finnish architects Armas Lindgren and Lars Sonck, he considered the symbolic and artistic values of the façades to be even more important than technological honesty. Moreover, references to the history of architecture had a crucial role in the 1920s and 1930s when he wrote about his main work– the Stockmann department store in the centre of Helsinki.  . (shrink)

The first book that presents key original texts from the modern German philosophical tradition to English-language students and scholars of German, with introductions, commentaries, and annotations that make them accessible.

I. Pragmatismus und Neukantianismus Marc Rölli: Die Durchquerung des Absoluten. Zur Hegel-Rezeption John Deweys Wolfgang Bonsiepen: Hegel und der Neukantianismus Matthias Wunsch: Phänomenologie des Symbolischen? Die Hegelrezeption Ernst Cassirers II. Phänomenologie - Ontologie - Lebensphilosophie Annette Sell: Das Geheimnis des Anfangs. Die Aufnahme des Hegelschen Anfangsbegriffs in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers Hans-Ulrich Lessing: Hegel und Helmuth Plessner: Die verpaßte Rezeption Walter Jaeschke: Der Geist und sein Sein. Nicolai Hartmann auf Hegelschen Wegen Holger Glinka: Aus Phänomenologie mach Dialektik. Jean-Paul Sartres Anverwandlung (...) Hegels III. Marxistische Tradition und kritische Theorie Andreas Arndt: Lenin liest Hegel Daniel Althof: Das "Geklapper der Triplizität" - Adornos Hegelrezeption Christoph J. Bauer: Mit Hegel gegen den 'Positivismus' - mit Hegel zum 'Wesen des Menschen'. Herbert Marcuses Interpretation der Hegelschen Urteilslehre IV. Postmoderne und Gegenwart Karin de Boer: Differenz: zwischen Hegel und Derrida Robert B. Pippin: Brandoms Hegel. (shrink)

Mary Wollstonecraft argues that women must be independent citizens, but that they cannot be that unless they fulfill certain duties as mothers. This is problematic in a number of ways, as argued by Laura Brace in a 2000 article. However, I argue that if we understand Wollstonecraft's concept of independence in a republican, rather than a liberal context, and at the same time pay close attention to her discussion of motherhood, a feminist reading of Wollstonecraft is not only possible but (...) enriching. I will attempt to show, in particular, that the seeds of a feminist argument for co-parenting are to be found in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (shrink)

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.

Jerry Fodor and Ernie LePore argue against inferential role semantics on the grounds that either it relies on an analytic/synthetic distinction vulnerable to Quinean objections, or else it leads to a variety of meaning holism frought with absurd consequences. However, the slide from semantic atomism to meaning holism might be prevented by distinctions not affected by Quine's arguments against analyticity; and the absurd consequences Fodor and LePore attribute to meaning holism obtain only on an implausible construal of inferential roles.

Cross-cultural comparisons often investigate values that are assumed to have long-lasting influence on human conduct and thought. To capture and compare cultural values across cultures, Geert Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory has offered an influential framework. Hofstede also provided a survey instrument, the Values Survey Module (VSM), for measuring cultural values as outlined in his Cultural Dimensions Theory. The VSM has since been subject to a series of revisions. Yet, data on countries have been derived from the original VSM — and (...) not on one of the revised versions of VSM. We tested three scales (indulgence, power distance, and individualism) from the latest version, the VSM 2013, as part of a larger survey across 57 countries. Two main findings emerged. For one thing, country scores based on the VSM 2013 scales correlated only weakly with country scores of the same cultural dimensions obtained in a large previous study. Thus, the validity of the VSM 2013 is in doubt. For another thing, the internal consistency of the VSM 2013 scales was overall poor, indicating that the scales did not reliably measure well-defined constructs. We discuss implications for cross-cultural research. (shrink)

People often justify their moral opinions by referring to larger moral concerns. Is there a general agreement about what concerns apply to different moral opinions? We used surveys in the United States and the United Kingdom to measure the perceived applicability of eight concerns to a wide range of moral opinions. Within countries, argument applicability scores were largely similar whether they were calculated among women or men, among young or old, among liberals or conservatives, or among people with or without (...) higher education. Thus, the applicability of a given moral concern to a specific opinion can be viewed as an objective quality of the opinion, largely independent of the population in which it is measured. Finally, we used similar surveys in Israel and Brazil to establish that this independence of populations also extended to populations in different countries. However, the extent to which this holds across cultures beyond those included in the current study is still an open question. (shrink)

The number of books at home is commonly used as a proxy for socioeconomic status in educational studies. While both parents’ and students’ reports of the number of books at home are relatively strong predictors of student achievement, they often disagree with each other. When interpreting findings of analyses that measure socioeconomic status using books at home, it is important to understand how findings may be biased by the imperfect reliability of the data. For example, it was recently suggested that (...) especially low-achieving students tend to underestimate the number of books at home, so that use of such data would lead researchers to overestimate the association between books at home and achievement. Here we take a closer look at how students’ and parents’ reports of the number of books at home relate to literacy among fourth grade students, by analyzing data from more than 250,000 students in 47 countries participating in 2011 PIRLS. Contrary to prior claims, we find more downward bias in estimates of books at home among high-achieving students than among low-achieving students, but unsystematic errors appear to be larger among low-achieving students. This holds within almost every country. It also holds between countries, that is, errors in estimates of books at home are larger in low-achieving countries. This has implications for studies of the association between books at home and achievement: the strength of the association will generally be underestimated, and this problem is exacerbated in low-achieving countries and among low-achieving students. (shrink)

Discussions of political issues may influence people's opinions. Is there any systematic difference in opinions between those who discuss frequently and those who do not? We measured the association between self-reported discussion frequency and the probability of holding the more liberal opinion on moral issues, using data from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies. This association looked different among liberals and among conservatives. Having more frequent discussions is associated with a higher probability of holding more liberal (...) opinions among liberals, while there is little association between discussion frequency and opinions among conservatives. These findings can be explained by the moral argument theory, which is an account of the long-term liberalization of public opinion on moral issues as an outcome of repeated discussions. The key assumption of this theory is that opinions that are justified by the kinds of arguments that only conservatives accept have a disadvantage compared to opinions that are justified by the kinds of arguments that everyone accepts. Consistent with this theory, we find that the effect of discussion frequency is stronger for moral opinions that have a bigger argument advantage. (shrink)

Dr André Berge : médecin et psychanalyste, est directeur médical du Centre psycho-pédagogique Claude Bernard. Les données traditionnelles, toutes les valeurs, tous les principes sont discutés et sans cesse remis en cause. Et pourtant, personne ne saurait échapper à la nécessité d’adopter dans l’existence une ligne de conduite — c’est-à-dire une morale — sous peine de sombrer dans l’incohérence. Mais l’homme, s’il a besoin d’une morale, n’en est pas moins enclin à l’utiliser pour s’écraser lui-même et tend parfois à transformer (...) cet instrument en une arme qu’il lui arrive de retourner contre sa propre personne. C’est cela qu’il s’agit d’empêcher. Ce que veut établir cet ouvrage, ce sont les bases d’une morale psychologique tendant à remédier au désarroi des esprits et à contribuer à l’avènement d’un nouvel humanisme. (shrink)

The book investigates childbearing ambivalence and the philosophical resources available to overcome it by analyzing the nuances of the contemporary anxiety about having children while focusing on the moral and intellectual shifts that have occurred in how we think of the value and goodness of human life. Peeling back the layers of resistance, What Are Children For? argues that when we make the individual decision whether or not to have children we confront a profound philosophical question, that of the goodness (...) of our form life itself. How can we justify perpetuating human life given the catastrophic harm and suffering of which we are always at once both victims and perpetrators? If we wish to meet this challenge without succumbing to naivete about our predicament, we must, it argues, uncover a capacity to grasp the fundamental goodness of human life—not only theoretically but practically in the actual lives we lead today. (shrink)

Was wusste Wittgenstein von Hegels Philosophie und wie verhält sich sein Denken zu demjenigen Hegels? Antwort auf diese Fragen sucht die vorliegende Studie in einer aufmerksamen Rekonstruktion der verschiedenen Bemerkungen Wittgensteins zu Hegel.In einer späten Bemerkung bringt Wittgenstein das Verhältnis seiner eigenen Philosophie zu derjenigen Hegels auf den Punkt:?Mir scheint, Hegel will immer sagen, daß Dinge, die verschieden aussehen, in Wirklichkeit gleich sind, während es mir um den Nachweis geht, daß Dinge, die gleich aussehen, in Wirklichkeit verschieden sind.? Um besser (...) verstehen zu können, was er dabei im Sinn hatte, werden die verschiedenen Bemerkungen Wittgensteins zu Hegel in den Kontext der Entwicklung seines philosophischen Denkens gestellt, und es wird? auch ganz in Wittgensteins Sinne? weitergefragt, was dieses Denken mit der philosophischen Tradition verbindet. (shrink)