This article develops an account of the nature and limits of the state’s legislative authority that closely attends to the challenge of harmonizing Kant’s ethical and juridical theories. It clarifies some key Kantian concepts and terms, then explains the way in which the state’s three interlocking authorities – legislative, executive, and judicial – are metaphysically distinct and mutually dependent. It describes the emergence of the Kantian state and identifies the preconditions of its authority. Then it offers a metaphysical model of (...) the Kantian state and uses it to argue that the activity of juridical lawgiving is an act of the omnilateral will itself. Legislative authority is limited in the sense that it does not include the capacity to create juridical laws that are conceptually incompatible with the idea of universal external freedom. I argue that my proposed account of the legislative authority is wholly consistent with that authority’s exclusive lawgiving capacity and does not threaten the possibility of ‘distributive justice’ – the legal finality that is the sine qua non of a civil condition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThere are two distinct types of legal wrongdoing: civil and criminal. This article demonstrates in three ways that Immanuel Kant's Universal Principle of Right, properly interpreted, offers a plausible and resilient account of this important distinction. First, Kant's principle correctly identifies attempted crimes as crimes themselves even when they do not violate the rights of any individual. Second, it justifies our treatment of reckless endangerment as a crime by distinguishing it from ordinary negligence, traditionally thought to be only civilly wrong. (...) Third, it explains and justifies differences between the features of traditional criminal punishments and the features of civil remedies. Moreover, the Universal Principle of Right yields a Kantian standard for criminal wrongdoing that is compelling enough to inform future philosophical inquiries into the nature and limits of the state's criminal lawmaking authority. (shrink)

Aberrations of self-experience are considered a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). While prominent aetiological accounts of BPD, such as the mentalization-based approach, appeal to the developmental constitution of self in early infant–caregiver environments, they often rely on a conception of self that is not explicitly articulated. Moreover, self-experience in BPD is often theorized at the level of narrative identity, thus minimizing the role of embodied experience. In this article, we present the hypothesis that disordered self and interpersonal functioning (...) in BPD result, in part, from impairments in 'embodied mentalization' that manifest foundationally as alterations in minimal embodied selfhood, i.e. the first-person experience of being an individuated embodied subject. This account of BPD, which engages early intersubjective experiences, has symptomatic findings in BPD, and is consistent with contemporary theories of brain function. (shrink)

The study ascertained (1) whether an observer's scope of justice with reference to either the moral agent or the target person of a moral act, would affect his/her judgements of the ethicality of the act, and (2) whether observer judgements of ethicality parallel the moral agent's decision processes in systematically evaluating the intensity of the moral issue. A scenario approach was used. Results affirmed both research questions. Discussions covered the implications of the findings for the underlying cognitive processes of moral (...) judgements, for the link between judgements of fairness and ethicality, as well as for the debate of ethical absolutism versus relativism. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have recently debated the ethical questions raised by disenhancing animals to improve their welfare. Here, we focus on the particular case of breeding hens for commercial egg-laying systems to become blind, in order to benefit their welfare. Many people find breeding blind hens intuitively repellent, yet ‘welfare-only’ positions appear to be committed to endorsing this possibility if it produces welfare gains. We call this the ‘Blind Hens’ Challenge’. In this paper, we argue that there are both empirical and (...) theoretical reasons why even those adopting ‘welfare-only’ views should be concerned about breeding blind hens. But we also argue that alternative views, which (for example) claim that it is important to respect the telos or rights of an animal, do not offer a more convincing solution to questions raised by the possibility of disenhancing animals for their own benefit. (shrink)

In 2001, Le Bars proved that there exists an existential monadic second-order sentence such that the probability that it is true on [Formula: see text] does not converge and conjectured that, for EMSO sentences with two first-order variables, the zero–one law holds. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture fails for [Formula: see text], and give new examples of sentences with fewer variables without convergence.

Technology has advanced significantly over the past decades. Significant changes have occurred in the field of translation with the development of programs such as Google.translate and Yandex.translator. The presented applications are already being actively implemented in translation agencies to optimize translation activities, where written translations of documents, articles, annotations, etc. must be provided to customers as quick as possible. While working with popular science text, online programs help translators gain time, but this requires to edit the text. The artistic style (...) requires more concentration and dedication, because. the means of expression presented in it require taking into account the context and nuances of the use of certain units of language. Machine translation has the potential to become an indispensable assistant in the hands of a translator. This article discusses machine translation of expressive means, namely metaphors. The study is illustrated with examples and a comparative analysis of the translation of metaphorical units is carried out, the classification of metaphors is identified and an analysis is carried out with which means of expression the translator is able to cope with. The difficulties of translating metaphors are analyzed. (shrink)

Ontological and methodological constraints on a theory of cognition that would generalize across species are identified. Within these constraints, ecological arguments for animal-environment mutuality and reciprocity and the necessary specificity of structured energy distributions to environmental facts are developed as counterpoints to the classical doctrines of animal-environment dualism and intractable nonspecificity. Implications of and for a cognitive theory consistent with Gibson's programme of ecological psychology are identified and contrasted with contemporary cognitivism.

Dubbed “Nietzsche without his hammer” by literary critic James Wood, the Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran is known as much for his profound pessimism and fatalistic approach as for the lyrical, raging prose with which he communicates them. Unlike many of his other works, such as On the Heights of Despair and Tears and Saints, The New Gods eschews his usual aphoristic approach in favor of more extensive and analytic essays. Returning to many of Cioran’s favorite themes, The New Gods (...) explores humanity’s attachment to gods, death, fear, and infirmity, in essays that vary widely in form and approach. In “Paleontology” Cioran describes a visit to a museum, finding the relatively pedestrian destination rife with decay, death, and human weakness. In another chapter, Cioran explores suicide in shorter, impressionistic bursts, while “The Demiurge” is a shambolic exploration of man’s relationship with good, evil, and God. All the while, The New Gods reaffirms Cioran’s belief in “lucid despair,” and his own signature mixture of pessimism and skepticism in language that never fails to be a pleasure. Perhaps his prose itself is an argument against Cioran’s near-nihilism: there is beauty in his books. (shrink)

Some theorists, worried about liberalism’s potential as a foundation for public health ethics, suggest that republicanism provides a better background of justification for public health policies, interventions, etc. In this article, this suggestion is put to the test, and it is argued that (i) contemporary (civic) republicanism and liberalism are not nearly as opposed as it is sometimes suggested, and that (ii) the kind of republicanism which one leading scholar in the field, Bruce Jennings, as an alternative to liberalism, does (...) not reflect the contemporary understanding of republicanism as held by, e.g. Phillip Pettit et al. (shrink)

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science (...) tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric--psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on--are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind. (shrink)

Сборник издан к 60-летию доктора филологических наук, профессора Тверского государственного университета Михаила Викторовича Строганова. Авторы и составители построили его как праздничное торжество: здесь есть и серьезные научные чтения.

Le Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice est un séminaire international et pluridisciplinaire qui se tient depuis 2012 à Yaoundé. Il réunit des professeurs et des doctorants africains et non africains ainsi que des professionnels et des représentants de la société civile autour de questions de justice sociale et de politique publique. À l'initiative de doctorants africains et non africains, il a été mis en place conjointement par la Chaire Hoover de l'Université catholique de Louvain et par le Centre d’études et (...) de recherches sur la justice sociale et politique de l’Université catholique d’Afrique centrale dans le but de bâtir une véritable solidarité entre le Nord et le Sud dans le domaine de la formation académique et de la recherche. The Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice is an international and multidisciplinary seminar which is held since 2012 in Yaoundé. It brings together teachers and African and non-African doctoral students as well as professionals and representatives of civil society around issues of social justice and public policy. At the initiative of African and non-African students, it has been implemented jointly by the Hoover Chair of the Catholic University of Louvain and the Centre of studies and research on social justice and political of the Catholic University of Central Africa in order to build a genuine solidarity between the North and the South in the field of academic training and research. (shrink)

Recordings of neuronal activity in the monkey superior colliculus (SC) suggest that the two apparently independent effects of a visual distractor on both temporal (latency) and spatial (metrics) saccade parameters may be the result of lateral interactions between subpopulations of saccade-related neurons located at different sites on the motor map of the superior colliculus. One subpopulation is activated during the planing and initiation of a saccade; the other is activated by the appearance of a distractor. The inhibitory or facilitative nature (...) of this interaction depends on the distance between the distractor and the target and is consistent with the complex pattern of intrinsic and commissural collicular connections. (shrink)