This study argues that contemporary theology needs a reconceptualised form of metaphysical theology to readdress this question of universality. In order to develop such a new metaphysical theology, de Jong turns to the work of Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx. Presenting a new perspective on their theological methods, he demonstrates that these theologians employ a dialectical interplay of hermeneutical and metaphysical arguments yielding a modest theological metaphysics. Crucially, these thinkers recognise that acknowledging hermeneutical conditions does not need to end (...) in particularism. Instead, Rahner and Schillebeeckx argue that the infinite variety of particular human experiences can act as potential encounters with the universally self-revealing God. Retrieving these modest forms of theological metaphysics reminds contemporary theology that it is possible to think about universality from within particularity. Balancing the intelligible and mysterious nature of God, Rahner and Schillebeeckx show how a modest theological metaphysics contains its own self-critical hermeneutical disciplining. This renewed understanding about the earlier use of metaphysics opens up new avenues of thought for fundamental theologians that do not want to shy away from the difficult question of the universality of God. (shrink)

The Movement of Showing investigates the idea, shared by Derrida, Hegel and Heidegger, that the value of their thought is not found in its results or conclusions, but in its "movement." All three describe the heart of their work in terms of a pathway, development, or movement rather than in terms of its propositions or conclusions. This seems to deprive their thought of a solid ground, and indeed deconstruction in particular is often criticized in this way. Johan de Jong (...) argues that this is a structural vulnerability that is both its weakness and the source of its value, tracing Derrida's indirect method from his early to later works, and considering his engagements with Hegel and Heidegger. His analysis locates an affinity among Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida in a shared distrust of externality and, against the grain of some Levinasian commentaries, argues that Derrida's indirectness results in an ethics of complicity. The Movement of Showing answers a central question that many polemics about continental philosophy and postmodernism revolve around concerning how, methodologically, one can philosophize responsibly. It shows the difference between critique and polemics, and why simply taking up a position for or against is insufficient in order to think responsibly. (shrink)

Inleiding in de moderne logica - met name de syllogistiek - bedoeld voor zelfstudie en inleidende academische cursussen.

One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation on the meaning of the present. Integral to this attempt is his critique of the understanding of the bein...

Prenatal screening for foetal abnormalities such as Down's syndrome differs from other forms of population screening in that the usual aim of achieving health gains through treatment or prevention does not seem to apply. This type of screening leads to no other options but the choice between continuing or terminating the pregnancy and can only be morally justified if its aim is to provide meaningful options for reproductive choice to pregnant women and their partners. However, this aim should not be (...) understood as maximizing reproductive choice per se. Only if understood as allowing prospective parents to avoid suffering related to living with (a child with) serious disorders and handicaps can prenatal screening be a publicly or collectively funded programme. The alternative of moving prenatal testing outside the healthcare system into the private sector is problematic, as it makes these tests accessible only to those who can afford to pay for it. New developments in prenatal screening will have to be assessed in terms of whether and to what extent they either contribute to or undermine the stated aim of providing meaningful options for reproductive choice. In the light of this criterion, this article discusses the introduction of the new non‐invasive prenatal test (NIPT), the tendency to widen the scope of follow‐up testing, as well as the possible future scenarios of genome‐wide screening and ‘prenatal personalised medicine’. The article ends with recommendations for further debate, research and analysis. (shrink)

In this series of papers, I attempt to provide an answer to the question how the Babylonian scholars arrived at their mathematical theory of planetary motion. Paper I (de Jong in Arch Hist Exact Sci 73:1–37, 2019) was devoted to a study of system A theory of the outer planets. In this second paper, I will study system A theory of the planet Venus. All presently known ephemerides of Venus appear to have been written after 200 BC so that (...) the development of system A theory of Venus may have been a late development. On the other hand, there are several earlier texts in which the motion of Venus, going from one synodic phenomenon to the next one, is parametrized in quite some detail. At least six computational systems of Venus are known of which only two, systems A0 and A3, are genuine type-A systems. Both are based on the hypothesis that in exactly 1151 years Venus experiences 720 synodic phenomena of the same kind and that after this period of 1151 years Venus returns to exactly the same position in the sky. This period relation was probably derived from the observational fact that after 8 years Venus returns to a position in the zodiac that falls on average 2.5° short of its previous position. The study of the Babylonian planetary theory of Venus presented here will be primarily based on the system A3 theory of Venus because it is the most complete of the two systems. The parameters of the four step functions characterizing the system A3 model of the first and last appearances of Venus are known from previous studies of tablet BM 32599 (ACT 1050). Based on a database of synthetic observations of the first and last appearances (morning first, morning last, evening first and evening last) and the two stationary points (morning station and evening station) of Venus between 315 BC and 50 BC, I first discuss the observational material from the point of view of a Babylonian astronomer. This involves deriving synodic time intervals and synodic arcs from the observed dates and longitudes of Venus. Both vary with the position of Venus in the zodiac. This variation shows up most purely in the synodic arcs and synodic time intervals of Venus at its stations. The variation pattern of the synodic arcs and of the synodic time intervals at the first and last appearances of Venus differ considerably because they are strongly affected by atmospheric extinction and by the ecliptic latitude of Venus. A comparison of predictions of the first and last appearances of Venus computed according to system A3 with observations in the synthetic database shows that the models provide fairly accurate fits to the observations of evening last and morning first with typical standard deviations of about 2° but rather poor fits to the observations of morning last and evening first with typical standard deviations of about 7° and 4°. Quite surprisingly, it turns out that the morning first A3 model fits the observed longitudes of Venus at its stations almost perfectly, with standard deviations of about 1°. This suggests that observations of the stations of Venus must have been available to the Babylonian astronomer(s) who constructed the system A3 model of Venus and who computed the longitudes of Venus at its first and last appearances preserved in tablet BM 32599. This is quite puzzling because observations of the stations of Venus were definitely not part of the standard observing program of the Babylonian astronomers as we know it from the Astronomical Diaries. To resolve this problem, I propose that observations could have been made by some individual astronomer for his own use but that these observations never became part of the tradition of what was regularly observed and recorded in the Astronomical Diaries. It turns out that 25 years of observations of Venus (here illustrated for the years 203 BC to 178 BC) is sufficient for the construction of a system A model that perfectly fits the variation of the synodic arcs of Venus at its stations. By combining observed time intervals and known velocities of Venus, observations over this limited timespan can also be used to construct longitudes of Venus at its first and last appearances from previous known positions of Venus based on Normal Stars passages or from known positions at its stations. This is the only way in which positions of Venus at its first and last appearances can be determined because at its first and last appearances the sky is too bright for Normal Stars to be visible. I propose that the Babylonian system A3 models of Venus were based on longitudes constructed in this way. I finally suggest that the tablet, of which BM 32599 is the remainder, was filled line by line starting with a set of initial values in the bottom left-hand corner of the tablet and that the choice of these initial values was based on an observation of Venus at its evening station when it was exceptionally close to the Normal Star η Piscium in February 179 BC. Based on this choice of initial conditions, the tablet covers the years 403 BC to 170 BC and it may have been composed around 170 BC. It was probably computed with the purpose of creating a raster of longitudes with mazes of about 2.5° that could be used to predict future positions of Venus at its first or last appearance once a position at a previous first or last appearance was available. (shrink)

In this series of papers I attempt to provide an answer to the question how the Babylonian scholars arrived at their mathematical theory of planetary motion. Papers I and II were devoted to system A theory of the outer planets and of the planet Venus. In this third and last paper I will study system A theory of the planet Mercury. Our knowledge of the Babylonian theory of Mercury is at present based on twelveEphemeridesand sevenProcedure Texts. Three computational systems of (...) Mercury are known, all of system A. System A1is represented by nineEphemeridescovering the years 190 BC to 100 BC and system A2by twoEphemeridescovering the years 310 to 290 BC. System A3is known from aProcedure Textand from Text M, anEphemerisof the last evening visibility of Mercury for the years 424 to 403 BC. From an analysis of the Babylonian observations of Mercury preserved in theAstronomical DiariesandPlanetary Textswe find: (1) that dates on which Mercury reaches its stationary points are not recorded, (2) that Normal Star observations on or near dates of first and last appearance of Mercury are rare (about once every twenty observations), and (3) that about one out of every seven pairs of first and last appearances is recorded as “omitted” when Mercury remains invisible due to a combination of the low inclination of its orbit to the horizon and the attenuation by atmospheric extinction. To be able to study the way in which the Babylonian scholars constructed their system A models of Mercury from the available observational material I have created a database of synthetic observations by computing the dates and zodiacal longitudes of all first and last appearances and of all stationary points of Mercury in Babylon between 450 and 50 BC. Of the data required for the construction of an ephemeris synodic time intervals Δt can be directly derived from observed dates but zodiacal longitudes and synodic arcs Δλ must be determined in some other way. Because for Mercury positions with respect to Normal Stars can only rarely be determined at its first or last appearance I propose that the Babylonian scholars used the relation Δλ = Δt −3;39,40, which follows from the period relations, to compute synodic arcs of Mercury from the observed synodic time intervals. An additional difficulty in the construction of System A step functions is that most amplitudes are larger than the associated zone lengths so that in the computation of the longitudes of the synodic phases of Mercury quite often two zone boundaries are crossed. This complication makes it difficult to understand how the Babylonian scholars managed to construct System A models for Mercury that fitted the observations so well because it requires an excessive amount of computational effort to find the best possible step function in a complicated trial and error fitting process with four or five free parameters. To circumvent this difficulty I propose that the Babylonian scholars used an alternative more direct method to fit System A-type models to the observational data of Mercury. This alternative method is based on the fact that after three synodic intervals Mercury returns to a position in the sky which is on average only 17.4° less in longitude. Using reduced amplitudes of about 14°–25° but keeping the same zone boundaries, the computation of what I will call 3-synarc system A models of Mercury is significantly simplified. A full ephemeris of a synodic phase of Mercury can then be composed by combining three columns of longitudes computed with 3-synarc step functions, each column starting with a longitude of Mercury one synodic event apart. Confirmation that this method was indeed used by the Babylonian astronomers comes from Text M (BM 36551+), a very early ephemeris of the last appearances in the evening of Mercury from 424 to 403 BC, computed in three columns according to System A3. Based on an analysis of Text M I suggest that around 400 BC the initial approach in system A modelling of Mercury may have been directed towards choosing “nice” sexagesimal numbers for the amplitudes of the system A step functions while in the later final models, dating from around 300 BC onwards, more emphasis was put on selecting numerical values for the amplitudes such that they were related by simple ratios. The fact that different ephemeris periods were used for each of the four synodic phases of Mercury in the later models may be related to the selection of a best fitting set of System A step function amplitudes for each synodic phase. (shrink)

The need for urgent, structural transformations to dominant food systems is increasingly recognized in research and policy. The direction these transformations take is in great part influenced by how the problem is framed and what future pathways become seen as plausible and desirable. Scientific knowledge and the organizations producing it hold considerable authority in suggesting what alternatives are or are not worth pursuing, ultimately shaping frames and in turn being shaped by them. This paper examines Brazil’s federal Agricultural Research Corporation (...) (Embrapa), a major contributor to technological advances that made Brazil into an agricultural powerhouse. We examine the ways in which Embrapa’s leadership has framed sustainable agriculture in its public communication and the wider implications for food systems transformation. Drawing from Embrapa news articles in the period 2015–2020, we identify four interrelated frames forming Embrapa’s prevalent position on sustainability. Our results show that while Embrapa promotes practices based on alternative approaches such as agroecology, its deeper framing often reflects the core assumptions driving dominant industrial food systems. This framing reinforces underlying logics of control, efficiency, and competition aligned with the productivist paradigm and excludes divergent perspectives that exist within the organization. (shrink)

With his doctrine of the “complete irresponsibility of man,” Nietzsche in different ways complicates the opposition between responsibility and irresponsibility. This article traces the different and conflicting senses of irresponsibility throughout Nietzsche’s development. First, the doctrine is shown to build on Nietzsche’s early study of Heraclitus (section I), whom Nietzsche admired for expounding and embodying a radical “innocence” that was both responsible and irresponsible in different senses. When presented as “philosophical conviction” in Human, All too Human, Nietzsche paradoxically speculates about (...) the doctrine’s incorporation out of a sense of responsibility for the future of mankind (section II). Section III shows how Nietzsche’s later writings evince an increasing awareness of this paradox by explicitly positing complete irresponsibility as his own redemptive doctrine in Twilight of the Idols. After 1881, he has come to affirm a new notion of responsibility and criticizes a weak sense of irresponsibility as the abdication of one’s task. I end by discussing the relation of these different senses of irresponsibility, and argue that the fact that Nietzsche’s texts often deliberately complicate rather than clarify such distinctions is an important reflection of how he textually takes responsibility for “complete irresponsibility” (section IV). (shrink)

Paternalism has attracted new defenders in recent years. Such defenders typically either downplay the normative significance of autonomy or deny that we are sufficiently rational for paternalistic interventions to be objectionable.1 Both of these argumentative strategies constitute challenges to John Stuart Mill’s influential anti-paternalistic ‘harm principle’, which states that coercive interference with the liberty of competent adults is justifiable only if such interference prevents harm to non-consenting third parties (Mill, p. 23).2 In this journal, Wilkinson has provided a novel, provocative (...) defence of paternalism in the medical context—one that (provisionally) accepts rather than challenges Mill’s harm principle.3 Wilkinson’s argument is complex. But he begins with Parfit’s influential account of personal identity.4 According to Parfit, Alice at T1 can be the same person as Alice at T2, but the extent to which Alice at T1 and Alice at T2 are similar depends on the extent to which there are ‘chains’ of strong psychological connections between Alice at T1 and Alice at T2. Strong psychological connections, in turn, are mental states such as intentions or beliefs, or psychological traits. For example, if Alice at T2 remembers very little about herself the day before, and the day before that, all the way to Alice at T1, Alice at T2 has completely different psychological traits than Alice at T1—for example, Alice at T1 was courageous, whereas Alice at T2 is cowardly—then Alice at T1 and Alice at T2 are distinct persons. If the harm principle is correct and Alice is autonomous, it is permissible to interfere with Alice’s liberty only if it prevents harm to some non-consenting third party. But if we accept Parfit’s view on personal identity, then a novel defence of paternalistic intervention emerges: Alice at T2 may well be a distinct person from Alice at T1. So, …. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ethics of deconstruction by considering it as a form of “resultless” thinking in the sense Hannah Arendt gave to that term: as the destabilization rather than the production of rules, norms, and criteria. In section II, I distinguish deconstruction’s specific resultlessness from Arendtian “self-destruction,” skeptical suspension, and Socratic irony, for whom resultlessness issues from the symmetrical cancelling out of equal counter-arguments. To the foremost objection to the resultlessness of thinking (the Arendtian “danger” that thinking is unable (...) to respond to the urgent demand for results), deconstruction opposes a reconceptualization of the very notions of “urgency” and “danger.” But such reconceptualization still does not amount to a justification for a deconstructive ethics: I argue in section III that deconstruction always performatively relates to a threefold danger that constitutes its “anxiety.” At the core of this anxiety is the resistance to reassurance and “good conscience.” I conclude, in section IV, by asking whether the ethics of deconstruction can perhaps be qualified – if not through its results or principles – as a “fundamental attunement” [Grundstimmung], by comparing deconstruction’s anxiety to Kierkegaard’s resistance to righteousness and good conscience, in the latter’s revaluation of wonder as the fundamental attunement of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper analyses the relationship between Hobbes's theory of language and his theory of science and method. It is shown that Hobbes, at least in his Computatio sive Logica (1655), deviates in some measure from the traditional (Aristotelian) model of language. In this model speech is considered to be a fairly unproblematic expression of thought, which itself is independent of language. Basing himself on a nominalist account of universals, Hobbes states that the demonstration or assertion of universal propositions presupposes speech (...) (more especially, the use of names as marks). This insight turns out to be essential for Hobbes's (rationalist) view of scientific method. (shrink)

Prenatal screening pathways, as nowadays offered in most Western countries consist of similar tests. First, a risk‐assessment test for major aneuploides is offered to pregnant women. In case of an increased risk, invasive diagnostic tests, entailing a miscarriage risk, are offered. For decades, only conventional karyotyping was used for final diagnosis. Moreover, several foetal ultrasound scans are offered to detect major congenital anomalies, but the same scans also provide relevant information for optimal support of the pregnancy and the delivery.Recent developments (...) in prenatal screening include the application of microarrays that allow for identifying a much broader range of abnomalities than karyotyping, and non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) that enables reducing the number of invasive tests for aneuploidies considerably. In the future, broad NIPT may become possible and affordable.This article will briefly address the ethical issues raised by these technological developments. First, a safe NIPT may lead to routinisation and as such challenge the central issue of informed consent and the aim of prenatal screening: to offer opportunity for autonomous reproductive choice. Widening the scope of prenatal screening also raises the question to what extent ‘reproductive autonomy’ is meant to expand. Finally, if the same test is used for two different aims, namely detection of foetal anomalies and pregnancy‐related problems, non‐directive counselling can no longer be taken as a standard. Our broad outline of the ethical issues is meant as an introduction into the more detailed ethical discussions about prenatal screening in the other articles of this special issue. (shrink)

What happens to representative democracy when populism comes to power? How does populism in power transform or disfigure the procedures and institutions of representative democracy? These are the c...

The _Matter of the Mind_ addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, (...) and social cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss Babylonian observations of a “massing of the planets” reported in two Astronomical Diaries, BM 32562 and BM 46051. This extremely rare astronomical phenomenon was observed in Babylon between 20 and 30 March 185 BC shortly before sunrise when all five planets were simultaneously visible for about 10 to 15 min close to the horizon in the eastern morning sky. These two observational texts are not only interesting as records of an extremely rare planetary configuration, but (...) also because the observers appear to be confused by the presence of all planets simultaneously and mix them up in their reports, and the two reports of the same observations are so different that we are forced to conclude that they were carried out by two different observers. There is an additional astronomical event which makes this planetary configuration even more unique: the exact conjunction of the planets Mars and Jupiter in the afternoon of 25 March 185 BC. An exact conjunction, where two planets are so close together that they appear as one object in the sky, is also extremely rare. Although this exact conjunction between Mars and Jupiter occurred during the day so that it was not observable, it was correctly predicted by the Babylonian scholars: a remarkable achievement and a nice illustration of their astronomical craftsmanship. Finally, our study clearly exposes one of the limitations of Babylonian naked-eye astronomy. When first appearances of the planets Mercury, Mars and Saturn are expected around the same date, it is nearly impossible to correctly identify them because their expected positions are only approximately known while they have about the same visual magnitude so that they become visible at about the same altitude above the horizon. (shrink)

Die Buddhistische Briefliteratur Indiens. Siglinde Dietz. Nach dem tibetischen Tanjur herausgegeben, übersetzt und erläutert. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1984. XV + 590 pp. DM 220.

Gestures and speech are clearly synchronized in many ways. However, previous studies have shown that the semantic similarity between gestures and speech breaks down as people approach transitions in understanding. Explanations for these gesture–speech mismatches, which focus on gestures and speech expressing different cognitive strategies, have been criticized for disregarding gestures’ and speech's integration and synchronization. In the current study, we applied three different perspectives to investigate gesture–speech synchronization in an easy and a difficult task: temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and (...) complexity matching. Participants engaged in a simple cognitive task and were assigned to either an easy or a difficult condition. We automatically measured pointing gestures, and we coded participant's speech, to determine the temporal alignment and semantic similarity between gestures and speech. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis was used to determine the extent of complexity matching between gestures and speech. We found that task difficulty indeed influenced gesture–speech synchronization in all three domains. We thereby extended the phenomenon of gesture–speech mismatches to difficult tasks in general. Furthermore, we investigated how temporal alignment, semantic similarity, and complexity matching were related in each condition, and how they predicted participants’ task performance. Our study illustrates how combining multiple perspectives, originating from different research areas (i.e., coordination dynamics, complexity science, cognitive psychology), provides novel understanding about cognitive concepts in general and about gesture–speech synchronization and task difficulty in particular. (shrink)

This article explores witchcraft-related violence against elderly women in the AmaZizi chiefdom of kwaZangashe in Eastern Cape, South Africa. The potential causes that have promoted such violence form the central subject of the study. The study includes a research design that combines questionnaires, focus groups and follow-on interviews. The findings have revealed a prevalence of witchcraft beliefs in the region and have pointed to elderly women as the likely victims of witchcraft violence. This has resulted in AmaZizi’s elderly women being (...) socially isolated, verbally abused and at risk of physical violence and even murder. This study concludes with several interventions organised to combat future witchcraft-related violence and to support the elderly women in the chiefdom.Contribution: By giving voice to the lives and stories of a community of people rendered invisible in the wider public sphere, this article introduces accounts on witchcraft and healthcare that might otherwise have gone unarticulated. (shrink)

Throughout more than two millennia philosophers adhered massively to ideal standards of scientific rationality going back ultimately to Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora . These standards got progressively shaped by and adapted to new scientific needs and tendencies. Nevertheless, a core of conditions capturing the fundamentals of what a proper science should look like remained remarkably constant all along. Call this cluster of conditions the Classical Model of Science . In this paper we will do two things. First of all, we will (...) propose a general and systematized account of the Classical Model of Science. Secondly, we will offer an analysis of the philosophical significance of this model at different historical junctures by giving an overview of the connections it has had with a number of important topics. The latter include the analytic-synthetic distinction, the axiomatic method, the hierarchical order of sciences and the status of logic as a science. Our claim is that particularly fruitful insights are gained by seeing themes such as these against the background of the Classical Model of Science. In an appendix we deal with the historiographical background of this model by considering the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science offered by Heinrich Scholz, and in his footsteps by Evert W. Beth. (shrink)

In this article, we will first give a historic overview of the concept of benefit sharing and its appearance in official agreements, particularly with respect to crop genetic resources. It will become clear that, at present, benefit sharing is primarily considered as an instrument of compensation or exchange, and thus refers to commutative justice. However, we believe that such a narrow interpretation of benefit sharing disregards, and even undermines, much of its (historical) content and potency, especially where crop genetic resources (...) are concerned. We argue that benefit sharing should not be based merely on commutative justice but rather on a broader model that is also grounded in the concept of distributive justice. This has repercussions for the application of benefit sharing, which we try to clarify by distinguishing between downstream and upstream benefit sharing. Upstream benefit sharing is not so much inspired by compensation for actions done, or the distribution downstream of benefits developed, but by the idea of shared decision‐making on the research and development of resources fundamental to human welfare. Going upstream in the research process of crop genetic resources, and determining research agendas and improving crops according to the needs of the poor, benefit sharing may well be a tool to contribute to world food security and global justice. We concretize our ideas on upstream benefit sharing by introducing a set of criteria that determine the success of consultations on agricultural research agenda setting. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on some aspects of the history of the analytic-synthetic distinction from Kant to Bolzano and Frege. This history evinces considerable continuity but also some important discontinuities. The analytic-synthetic distinction has to be seen in the first place in relation to a science, i.e. an ordered system of cognition. Looking especially to the place and role of logic it will be argued that Kant, Bolzano and Frege each developed the analytic-synthetic distinction within the same conception of scientific rationality, (...) that is, within the Classical Model of Science: scientific knowledge as cognitio ex principiis . But as we will see, the way the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or propositions functions within this model turns out to differ considerably between them. (shrink)

Modal Meinongianism provides the semantics of sentences involving intentional verbs Priest. To that end, Modal Meinongianism employs a pointed non-normal quantified modal logic model. Like earlier Meinongian views Modal Meinongianism has a characterisation principle, that claims that any condition whatsoever is satisfied by some object in some world. Recently, Everett has proposed an argument against QCP that, if successful, gives rise to problems identical to those Russell raised for Naïve Meinongianism, namely that it allows for true contradictions, and allows us (...) to define anything into existence. Everett claims that the ordinary meanings of “actual” license an inference pattern, such that if an object satisfies Actual A at some world, then that object satisfies A in the actual world. Given that actual world is the designated point of evaluation for truth simpliciter, QCP would fall prey to Russell’s criticisms. As opposed to Everett, I argue that, even if we grant Everett the assumption that “actual” is a modal indexical that rigidly refers to the actual world, it does not conform to the inference pattern above. This is because when an object satisfies Actual A at some world, this alters the assertoric force of “actual”, because “actual” is interpreted in the scope of some modal or intentional operator. I also explain that Everett’s proposed example carries existential commitment because the problematic noun-phrase occurs outside the scope of a modal or intentional operator. (shrink)

Automated technologies and robots make decisions that cannot always be fully controlled or predicted. In addition to that, they cannot respond to punishment and blame in the ways humans do. Therefore, when automated cars harm or kill people, for example, this gives rise to concerns about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps. According to Sven Nyholm, however, automated cars do not pose a challenge on human responsibility, as long as humans can control them and update them. He argues that the agency exercised in (...) automated cars should be understood in terms of human–robot collaborations. This brief note focuses on the problem that arises when there are multiple people involved, but there is no obvious shared collaboration among them. Building on John Danaher’s discussion of command responsibility, it is argued that, although Nyholm might be right that autonomous cars cannot be regarded as acting on their own, independently of any human beings, worries about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps are still justified, because it often remains unclear how to allocate or distribute responsibility satisfactorily among the key humans involved after they have been successfully identified. (shrink)

In psychological contract research, the side of the supervisor is strongly underexposed. However, supervisors are responsible for maintaining relationships with both their subordinates and senior management and are likely to be influenced by events unfolding in these relationships. In this study, we state that supervisor well-being may be affected by subordinates who fail to meet their obligations. This study adds to psychological contract research by developing an understanding of how and when subordinate psychological contract breach (PCB) is associated with supervisor (...) emotional exhaustion. Through a weekly diary survey among 56 Dutch supervisors, we test hypotheses about the relationships between subordinate PCB and the emotional exhaustion of the supervisor, the mediating role of perceptions of performance pressure by the supervisor in this relationship, and the moderating role of i-deals between the supervisor and senior management. Multilevel analyses support the first two hypotheses, but contradictory to our expectations show that the positive association between subordinate PCB and the emotional exhaustion of the supervisor is strengthened when the supervisor has high levels of i-deals with senior management. We discuss the findings in relation to their contribution to psychological contract theory. (shrink)

Antisemitism is an increasingly prevalent aspect of public life in the West, both as a consequence of the growth of the far right across the board and through its mobilisation against Palestinian liberation and Palestine solidarity activism. While synagogues are targeted and far-right politicians revive ideas of Jewish global power, it is the left, Muslims, and Palestinians that are continuously constructed as the source of the current rise in hatred and violence against Jews. If historically the Marxist tradition engaged actively (...) with the so-called Jewish question, in recent decades the subject has receded from focus. This shift took place as other forms of racism – directed at Muslims, Black populations, or migrants – became the basis for reactionary politics in the West. This article argues that while some of the assumptions that underwrote classical Marxist texts on the issue have been found wanting – perhaps most notably the inevitable (or desirable) character of the trend towards assimilation – they remain important starting points for making sense of our present, both by their method and their political commitment to liberation. (shrink)

“Fair and equitable benefit-sharing” is one of the objectives of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. In essence, benefit-sharing holds that countries, farmers, and indigenous communities that grant access to their plant genetic resources and/or traditional knowledge should share in the benefits that users derive from these resources. But what exactly is understood by “fair” and “equitable” in this context? Neither term is defined in the international treaties. (...) A complicating factor, furthermore, is that different motivations and perspectives exist with respect to the notion of benefit-sharing itself. This paper looks at six different approaches to benefit-sharing that can be extracted from the current debates on “Access and Benefit-Sharing.” These approaches form the basis of a philosophical reflection in which the different connotations of “fair and equitable” are considered, by analyzing the main principles of justice involved. Finally, the various principles are brought together in order to draw some conclusions as to how a fair and equitable benefit-sharing mechanism might best be realized. This results in several recommendations for policymakers. (shrink)