What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the (...) needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't? How would their parents' risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she's responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why. From the Hardcover edition. (shrink)

The conception of disinterested pleasure is not only central to Kant’s theory of beauty but also highly influential in contemporary philosophical discourse about beauty. However, it remains unclear, what exactly disinterested pleasure is and what role it plays in experiences of beauty. This volume sheds new light on the conception of disinterested pleasure from the perspectives of both Kant scholarship and contemporary aesthetics. In the first part, the focus is on Kant’s theory of beauty as grounded on the conception of (...) disinterested pleasure. In the second part, disinterested pleasure is investigated in the light of contemporary debates on beauty. The third part is dedicated to the relation of theories of disinterested pleasure to the meta-aesthetical debate between realism and anti-realism. The volume clarifies the meaning, role, and implications of one of the most influential conceptions in traditional as well as contemporary approaches to beauty. (shrink)

Ein Einstiegs- und Nachschlagwerk für das Philosophiestudium: Die Einträge liefern Definitionen und Kurzanalysen zu Kants Schriften, Grundbegriffen und Positionen. Sie können unabhängig voneinander gelesen werden, ergeben zusammengenommen aber auch eine vollständige Einführung. Das Kleine Kant-Lexikon beginnt mit einem Überblick zu Kants Leben und Werk sowie den zentralen Positionen seiner Philosophie. Auf diese Einführung folgen als erster Hauptteil detailliertere Analysen der wichtigsten Werke und Schriften Kants, als zweiter Hauptteil die Grundbegriffe seiner Philosophie zum Nachschlagen. Die Beiträge wurden von renommierten Expertinnen und (...) Experten der Kantforschung verfasst, sind dabei aber knapp und leicht verständlich. Das Lexikon erleichtert so die Lektüre von Kants Werken, Literaturhinweise helfen bei Referaten und Hausarbeiten. (shrink)

This paper reads Antigone from the perspective of the Chorus. Whereas most interpreters read Antigone from the perspective of Creon and Antigone’s respective laws, I maintain that the protagonists represent laws that are distinctly apolitical. Alternatively, I argue that the Chorus make the polis—past, present, and future—the center of their thought and action and are therefore uniquely political. Through close attention to the Chorus’s composition as a body that is both one and many at the same time, and by tracing (...) their evolving position throughout the action of the drama and in their choral odes, I argue that they model a reflective and political orientation to judgment rooted in plurality, tradition, and innovation. (shrink)

Decades of feminist research has revealed the dismal labor conditions for women in global supply chains. Given this reality, why does Walmart use women in its supply chain as icons of female empowerment? Combining the Marxist notion of a “spatial fix” with a feminist analysis of symbolic resources, we develop the concept of a “gender fix” to understand a growing field of corporate programs that use women as symbolic resources to restore the image of firms as ethical actors. The gender (...) fix encompasses a wide range of corporate empowerment strategies to capture a broad pattern of action. A second term is necessary to situate Walmart’s particular empowerment strategy within its corporate positioning as leader of a vast supply chain network. We identify Walmart’s particular empowerment strategy as “outsourcing feminism.” Walmart’s use of the outsourcing feminism strategy stems from its commanding position in supply chains, which allows it to extract a symbolic surplus from women business owners from whom it sources products. When Walmart argues that it uplifts these women, its strategy targets the consumer end of the supply chain, emphasizing sourcing practices that promote a racially diverse, selfless, and middle-class femininity. In so doing, Walmart deflects attention from the treatment of women in other segments of its supply chain (e.g., its stores and factories). (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur, em “O si-mesmo como outro” define sua perspectiva ética como “o desejo de viver bem com e para os outros em instituições justas”. Tal concepção possui uma tríplice estrutura, a saber: a ipseidade, a alteridade e a igualdade. Sendo apresentadas como a “estima de si”, a “solicitude” e a “justiça”, momentos determinantes para que se possa responder à pergunta sobre a identidade ética, norteadora de sua filosofia moral – “ quem é o sujeito capaz de imputação moral?”. Por (...) isso, cumpre ao presente artigo analisar cada um de seus elementos constitutivos a fim de compreender sua lógica interna, bem como ressaltar o viés aristotélico-teleológico da filosofia ricoeuriana. (shrink)

O objetivo central deste artigo é desenvolver a ideia sobre a utilidade ética da pecuária industrial com ênfase nas doenças zoonóticas a partir do referencial teórico de Peter Singer. Com o aumento da demanda em âmbito global por proteína animal, foram empreendidos novos métodos de manejo que submetem os animais a situações opostas ao bem-estar. Além do mais, essas mudanças são responsáveis pela ascensão das doenças zoonóticas. Desse modo, o presente trabalho trata-se da revisão bibliográfica dos livros Ética Prática e (...) Libertação Animal do Peter Singer e artigos buscados nas plataformas: Scielo, Elsevier e Google Acadêmico. Assim, conclui-se que a pecuária industrial possui uma utilidade duvidosa dentro dos limites da pesquisa porque gera maior desprazer do que prazer. (shrink)

When animals share decisions with others, they pool personal information, offset individual errors and, thereby, increase decision accuracy. This is termed ‘swarm intelligence.’ But what if those decisions involve conflicts of interest between individual decision-makers? Should animals share decisions with individuals whose goals are different from, and partially in conflict with, their own? A group decision model developed by Larissa Conradt and colleagues finds that, contrary to intuition, conflicting goals often increase both decision accuracy and the individual gains derived (...) from shared decisions. Thus, conflicts of interest, far from hampering effective decision making, can actually improve decision outcomes for all stakeholders, as long as they also have some goals in common. By contrast, conflict-free decisions shared by animals which all have the same goals are often surprisingly poor. (shrink)

As social, locative, and mobile media render the intimate public and the public intimate, this volume interrogates how this phenomenon impacts art practice and politics. Contributors bring together the worlds of art and media culture to rethink their intersections in light of participatory social media. By focusing upon the Asia-Pacific region, they seek to examine how regionalism and locality affect global circuits of culture. The book also offers a set of theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms for thinking about contemporary art (...) practice more generally. (shrink)

The paper deals with the general peculiarities of numerals. Cases where the sense of numeral cannot simply be explained by the idea of counting, of number, or of order are considered. Special types of texts folklore on the one band, propaganda on the other hand - are analyzed. For the latter the examples from two Soviet central official newspapers - Pravda and lzvestija of May 1986 have been chosen. These texts partially reflect common stylistic features of Soviet propagandistic discourse of (...) the "period of stagnation"; their specificity is caused by the special situation, which obtained in the country in those days - the catastrophe in the atomic power station in Chemobyl. It is claimed that all the considered examples reflect several aspects of meaning of numerals contained in their general semantics. Thus, the development of the evaluative meaning is explained by the semantics of degree contained in the numerals. These data contribute to Frege's idea of relativity of number, but from another, purely linguistic, point of view. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 169-196.

Der Ansatz der Prozessethik impliziert ein praxisorientiertes Beratungsmodell, das praktisch bereits erprobt ist und in den vielfaltigsten Kontexten eingesetzt werden kann.

Research indicates that consumers are particularly concerned about the safety of meat. More highly processed meat is perceived as more unsafe than fresh or natural meats, i.e., consumers trust processed meat less. This paper studies the relationship between perceived trust and day-to-day purchase behavior for meat, giving special attention to the degree of meat processing. Controlling for trust in food chain actors and demographic and socio-economic variables, actual meat purchases of Canadian households are linked to answers from a commissioned food (...) attitudes survey completed by the same households. Expenditures for processed and total meat (but not for fresh meat) are significantly different by three levels of trust in the food industry. Consumer with the lowest trust levels consume less (especially of processed meat) compared to those with higher trust levels. However, in a multivariate setting, trust shows no effect on fresh or processed meat purchases with or without demographic and socio-economic control variables, suggesting that the impact of trust on meat purchases is only small. However, the low trusting consumer segment could potentially be a target for marketing strategies focused on reputation and quality to increase sales in this particular group. (shrink)

This study investigates the nexus between giving, belonging and Jewishness in South Africa. Charitable interactions are as much manifestations of inequalities as an expression of the giving individual’s desire to alleviate them. Structuring aspects like class, race, economics, and post-apartheid politics are at the basis of this study. At the same time, though, it is individual agency reproducing inequalities and making sense of the ambiguity of the charitable interaction. In the context of the Jewish community in South Africa this analysis (...) shows how the community’s organisations, practices and concepts are connected to charitable giving. The author carved out three dimensions, which are entangled, reinforced, or at times contradict each other: Belonging, diaspora and charitable giving. Along with shared values and practices it relates to, volunteering or charitable giving connects one individual to a group, while possibly excluding another from it. Expressing belonging to the Jewish collective as a diaspora community, relates individuals or collectives to the triadic relationship between local diaspora group, host society and homeland and other local communities of the same diaspora. (shrink)

Naturwissenschaftliche Fachdidaktik, aufgezeigt am Beispiel der Physikdidaktik, ist ein interdisziplinares Feld, dessen Schwerpunkte Didaktik und Sprache mit Hilfe des Informationsbegriffs fur Offene Systeme (-pragmatische Information- - v.Weizsacker) behandelt und aufeinander bezogen werden. Ausgerichtet auf den Horizont von Wahrnehmung werden Aspekte der Sprachtheorie, Systemtheorie, Entwicklungs- psychologie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Physik im Kontext von Unterricht und Lernen verknupft, so dass Bedingungen fur -humanoptimales- (nicht bloss -effizientes-!) Lernen angegeben werden konnen. Begriffsbildung, Vorstellungsvermogen im naturwissenschaftlichen Bereich, Einsicht in Grunde des Handlungserfolgs, optimale Zugange zur Naturwissenschaft, (...) schopferisches Lernen u.a.m. sind Themen des Buches.". (shrink)

Morin envisions the adaptive landscape of graphic codes as an unfertile valley where writing rises as an isolated peak that humans managed to reach only on four occasions throughout all of history. By exploring the different paths to cultural convergence, we suggest an alternative landscape occupied by a mountain range of visual art systems. We conclude that graphic communication through visual art worked well enough to render writing contingent but not necessary in most cases.

Theories of cognitive development must address both the issue of how children bring their knowledge to bear on behavior in‐the‐moment, and how knowledge changes over time. We argue that seeking answers to these questions requires an appreciation of the dynamic nature of the developing system in its full, reciprocal complexity. We illustrate this dynamic complexity with results from two lines of research on early word learning. The first demonstrates how the child's active engagement with objects and people supports referent selection (...) via memories for what objects were previously seen in a cued location. The second set of results highlights changes in the role of novelty and attentional processes in referent selection and retention as children's knowledge of words and objects grows. Together this work suggests that understanding systems for perception, action, attention, and memory, and their complex interaction, is critical to understand word learning. We review recent literature that highlights the complex interactions between these processes in cognitive development and point to critical issues for future work. (shrink)

This is a persona] account of an Aboriginal woman who went through the education system in Australia to obtain finally her law degree. Aboriginal people experience many hurdles in the education system. Many Aboriginal children feel alienated within the legal system which until recently focused on a colonial history of Australia, ignoring the experiences, indeed the presence, of indigenous people in Australia. The Australian government had a policy of not educating Aboriginal people past the age of 14. The author was (...) one of the first generation that could go straight from high school to university. She speaks of the debt she feels towards the generations of her people that fought for her right to access to higher education. The author went on to become the first Aboriginal person to be accepted into Harvard Law School which brought different personal challenges and allowed for reflection on comparisons of the sensitivity towards race in both education systems. When the author returned to Australia, she took a position teaching at the University of New South Wales. She had to come to terms with working within a system that she had felt alienated within as a student. Her position at the front of the class has created a sense of empowerment that she can pass on to her Aboriginal and female students. (shrink)

The identification of facial expressions is critical for social interaction. The ability to recognize facial emotional expressions declines with age. These age effects have been associated with differential age-related looking patterns. The present research project set out to systematically test the role of specific facial areas for emotion recognition across the adult lifespan. Study 1 investigated the impact of displaying only separate facial areas versus the full face on emotion recognition in 62 younger and 65 middle-aged adults. Study 2 examined (...) if wearing face masks differentially compromises younger versus middle-aged to older adults’ ability to identify different emotional expressions. Results of Study 1 suggested no general decrease in emotion recognition across the lifespan; instead, age-related performance seems to depend on the specific emotion and presented face area. Similarly, Study 2 observed only deficits in the identification of angry, fearful, and neutral expressions in older adults, but no age-related differences with regards to happy, sad, and disgusted expressions. Overall, face masks reduced participants’ emotion recognition; however, there were no differential age effects. Results are discussed in light of current models of age-related changes in emotion recognition. (shrink)

The concept of substance is considered fundamental in order to understand chemistry and other related concepts, but many problems have been reported about its learning process. Considering the importance of textbooks in the training of chemistry teachers, this study aimed to identify the concepts of substance in general chemistry textbook glossaries. In addition, the study assessed the concepts of substance in relation to other chemical concepts and, when available, compared them with the concepts established by the IUPAC. The methodology employed (...) was content analysis and the results showed that concepts and statements related to the term ‘substance’ are different in the general chemistry textbooks analyzed. They also differ from those stated by IUPAC. Furthermore, it was found that many concepts are dependent on the concept of substance. It is concluded that there must be a greater effort from the community of chemists and the teaching of chemistry in the search for conceptual uniformity to reduce the problems of conceptual understanding. (shrink)

Theories of cognitive development must address both the issue of how children bring their knowledge to bear on behavior in-the-moment, and how knowledge changes over time. We argue that seeking answers to these questions requires an appreciation of the dynamic nature of the developing system in its full, reciprocal complexity. We illustrate this dynamic complexity with results from two lines of research on early word learning. The first demonstrates how the child's active engagement with objects and people supports referent selection (...) via memories for what objects were previously seen in a cued location. The second set of results highlights changes in the role of novelty and attentional processes in referent selection and retention as children's knowledge of words and objects grows. Together this work suggests that understanding systems for perception, action, attention, and memory, and their complex interaction, is critical to understand word learning. We review recent literature that highlights the complex interactions between these processes in cognitive development and point to critical issues for future work. (shrink)

In his theory of beauty, Kant introduces the free and harmonious play of the faculties as a kind of judging. This judging should precede the pleasure in the beautiful. But being the determining ground of the judgement of taste, the pleasure should precede the judgement. Regarding this problem, two opposing models have been proposed: Paul Guyer's ‘two-acts model’ and Hannah Ginsborg's ‘one-act model’. I propose a third model that, I argue, resolves the difficulty and does not fall prey to the (...) problems of the other two resolutions: the ‘subsumption model’, according to which the pleasure is followed by a subsumption under the concept ‘beautiful’. (shrink)

The article is concerned with the everyday activities of sociology, focusing on ethnography. It argues that empirical study of the ethnomethods of ethnography allows for a deeper insight into the dynamics and procedures of this research practice. Based on empirical data from two ethnographic studies, I suggest to observe how such an investigation is conducted in various situations: in the field, on the ethnographer’s desk, in data sessions, in conferences and in written papers. This serves to gather and produce empirical (...) traces from the field. These are de- and re-contextualized while they are taken into the sociological field. This process can be analyzed drawing on Goffman’s notion of Frame Analysis, particularly drawing on his notion of keyings. Ethnography can thus be described as a trans-situational practice that systematically couples situations and communications in order to understand and reconstruct other social practices for sociological reasons. (shrink)

Causal reductionism is the widespread assumption that there is no room for additional causes once we have accounted for all elementary mechanisms within a system. Due to its intuitive appeal, causal reductionism is prevalent in neuroscience: once all neurons have been caused to fire or not to fire, it seems that causally there is nothing left to be accounted for. Here, we argue that these reductionist intuitions are based on an implicit, unexamined notion of causation that conflates causation with prediction. (...) By means of a simple model organism, we demonstrate that causal reductionism cannot provide a complete and coherent account of ‘what caused what’. To that end, we outline an explicit, operational approach to analyzing causal structures. (shrink)

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of (...) empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate translation of axioms into postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system's irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience. (shrink)

Em diversos momentos de sua trajetória filosófica Deleuze recorre à Leibniz. Num primeiro momento para pensar a síntese ideal da diferença em Diferença e Repetição, não sem antes ter tecido duras críticas ao infinito leibniziano. Neste artigo nos consagraremos a este momento. Buscaremos demonstrar a importância do conceito de causa imanente de Espinosa, assim como do princípio de razão suficiente e de suas funções no pensamento leibniziano. Apresentaremos a crítica deleuziana do conceito de identidade em Leibniz e a interpretação do (...) cálculo diferencial que serve de base para a construção do processo de determinação conceitual, ou seja, para a síntese ideal da diferença, tema do capítulo IV de Diferença e repetição. A relevância deste artigo está na tentativa de demonstrar que a tese da univocidade do ser não pode ser compreendida sem sua contrapartida, a equivocidade dos sentidos através dos quais o ser se diz e em explorar consequências desta tese para a reconstrução deleuziana da relação empírico-transcendental. Procuraremos demonstrar que Deleuze precisa recorrer a Leibniz para pensar a diferença ilimitada. (shrink)

Resumo: A partir de uma apresentação do contexto político e social no interior do qual a obra de Guattari se insere, buscamos definir o debate político francês da década de 60, no campo do marxismo, sobretudo do materialismo histórico em torno da questão do sujeito da história. O objetivo deste artigo é explicitar as razões que levam Guattari a romper com o estruturalismo, representado na psicanálise por Lacan e no marxismo por Althusser. A relevância deste texto está na apresentação do (...) conceito de máquina, que se define em oposição ao conceito de estrutura e que, unindo história e inconsciente, visa a traçar o espaço de emergência de um sujeito da história, de um sujeito político.: From a presentation of the political and social context within which Guattari’s work fits in, we seek to define the French political debate of the 1960s in the field of Marxism - especially historical materialism - on the question of the subject of history. The purpose of this article is to explain the reasons that lead Guattari to break with structuralism, represented in psychoanalysis by Lacan and Marxism by Althusser. The relevance of this article lies in the presentation of the concept of machine, which is defined in opposition to the concept of structure and that, joining history and unconscious, aims to trace the emergence space of a subject of history, of a political subject. (shrink)