Theories of recognition have largely neglected the question of whether “struggles for recognition” might permissibly use violent means. In this article I explore the question of whether and how it is possible to show proper respect for the victim of one’s violence. Focusing on self-defense as the paradigmatic case of justified violence, two questions arise: (1) What renders an agent liable to violent action? (2) If she is liable, what is the appropriate, i.e., proportionate, degree of defensive violence that still (...) expresses respect for her? I claim that – in order to answer these questions – three dimensions of what is defended must be distinguished: goods, rights and one’s moral status. Clarifying their relationship allows me to argue that persons become liable to defensive violence if they directly pose (or intentionally and significantly contribute to) an unjustified threat to important goods protected by the rights of another person, even if they, as “attackers “or “threats “are innocent, i.e., do not display disrespect. I argue that those accounts which claim a moral symmetry between innocent attackers or threats on the one hand and innocent bystanders on the other hand, misunderstand the role of (dis) respect in a theory of justified violence. Moreover, when it comes to considerations of proportionality the dimension of (dis) respect has to be taken much more seriously than is usually the case. Here, instead of focusing mainly on the importance of goods we should pay more attention to (especially political) relationships of intersubjective (dis) respect. (shrink)

Although Habermas has never worked out a conception of virtue and indeed criticizes this notion whenever he uses it, his theory crucially depends on the virtuous attitude of participants in discourse — be it in the realm of democracy and law or that of morality. In this paper, in which I deal only with the ethical foundations of morality, I argue first that the norms of discourse which are gained from a presuppositional analysis of speech as such have to be (...) complemented by the sensitive perception on the side of the recipients. Only when the claims are understood in their full significance for the speaker does the discourse live up to the ideal which is already anticipated in every speech act. This presuppositional analysis shows secondly that it is mainly the virtuous attitude that is morally relevant and not those capacities for acting morally that the agent already possesses. However, the virtuous attitude genuinely entails the obligation to strive to perfect all those capacities that enable us to sensitively understand the other's claim. A discussion of the capacities that have to be promoted leads to the singling out of sensitivity as contrasted to immediate empathy. It is the reflexive transcendence of the agent's evaluative patterns that allows this emotion to sit well with a post-conventional morality. Finally, I discuss a possible caveat of Wellmer and Habermas who might claim that the proposed conception of virtue would only be valid for participants in discourse, but not for agents acting in the life-world. However, because the discursive virtue is of wide latitude, it does not fall under this objection. (shrink)

According to the prevailing paradigm in social-cognitive neuroscience, the mental states of individuals become shared when they adapt to each other in the pursuit of a shared goal. We challenge this view by proposing an alternative approach to the cognitive foundations of social interactions. The central claim of this paper is that social cognition concerns the graded and dynamic process of alignment of individual minds, even in the absence of a shared goal. When individuals reciprocally exchange information about each other's (...) minds processes of alignment unfold over time and across space, creating a social interaction. Not all cases of joint action involve such reciprocal exchange of information. To understand the nature of social interactions, then, we propose that attention should be focused on the manner in which people align words and thoughts, bodily postures and movements, in order to take one another into account and to make full use of socially relevant information. (shrink)

Knowledge of eukaryotic life cycles and associated genome dynamics stems largely from research on animals, plants, and a small number of “model” (i.e., easily cultivable) lineages. This skewed sampling results in an underappreciation of the variability among the many microeukaryotic lineages, which represent the bulk of eukaryotic biodiversity. The range of complex nuclear transformations that exists within lineages of microbial eukaryotes challenges the textbook understanding of genome and nuclear cycles. Here, we look in‐depth at Foraminifera, an ancient (∼600 million‐year‐old) lineage (...) widely studied as proxies in paleoceanography and environmental biomonitoring. We demonstrate that Foraminifera challenge the “rules” of life cycles developed largely from studies of plants and animals. To this end, we synthesize data on foraminiferal life cycles, focusing on extensive endoreplication within individuals (i.e., single cells), the unusual nuclear process calledZerfall, and the separation of germline and somatic function into distinct nuclei (i.e., heterokaryosis). These processes highlight complexities within lineages and expand our understanding of the dynamics of eukaryotic genomes. (shrink)

This content analysis examines the ways that genocide is included in the high school world history content standards of eleven states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education, as well as if the content standards in those states differ from those of states without mandated genocide education. The null curriculum theorizes that the content that is not taught may be as important as what is taught; this lens allows for a nuanced analysis of the ways that genocide is included and excluded (...) in state standards. The findings suggest that states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education do not necessarily have high school world history content standards that require genocide education. The content standards in states with legislative mandates often omit acts of genocide, refrain from using the term “genocide,” and frame genocides as less important than the Holocaust, perpetuating the null curriculum of genocides. (shrink)

This article undertakes a deconstructive reading of astrobiology’s search for extraterrestrial life. Taking its lead from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’, it explores ‘metaphor in the text of astrobiology’—and includes within the astrobiological ‘text’ not only scientific publications and work on astrobiology in the philosophy of science, but also ‘life detection technologies’. I situate astrobiology in the tradition of a metaphysical analogy that goes back through the enlightenment and early modern astronomy to the ancient Atomists’ notion of the ‘plurality of worlds’. This (...) analogy, which constitutes an identification of life with being and therefore serves as the conceptual basis for the notion that life must exist on other worlds, experiences a mutation in the middle of the twentieth century when molecular biology refigures life in terms of a scriptural metaphor as text. The result is an aporia whose logic Derrida formalised in ‘White Mythology’. (shrink)

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, the book challenges longstanding teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests. The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts (...) and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures, namely the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Staël. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hölderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others. This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic. (shrink)

This article responds to Dimitris Vardoulakis’s claim that Heidegger’s mistaken reading of phronēsis’s relation to the hou heneka, or that-for-the-sake-of-which, in Nicomachean Ethics VI at 1139a32–33, leads to an evacuation of ends from action. I argue that Heidegger is not wrong in his reading of Aristotle on phronēsis’s relation to the end. I offer a reading of the passage on which Vardoulakis focuses, which I believe is consistent with Heidegger’s, to show how Aristotle’s view of phronēsis’s role in action can (...) enable such judgment. I agree with Vardoulakis that on Heidegger’s reading, Aristotle does not view phronēsis as instrumental, but I show that this reading is borne out by the Nicomachean Ethics as a whole. I argue that the absence of instrumentality does not mean that phronēsis leaves action without an end; rather, the end of action is in the action itself. I argue in agreement with Heidegger [1997: 29, 34] and contra Vardoulakis that technē as a model of instrumentality does not capture the work of phronēsis in Aristotle (neither is it what is under critique when Heidegger criticizes modern technologizing). I argue in conclusion that Aristotle’s conception of phronēsis and the action to which it leads does allow for judgment: what can be judged is the person or the community as it shows itself in the action. (shrink)

Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same stimulus set, where these three features were orthogonalized. (...) Therefore, only the relevant feature provided consistent evidence for decisions in each task. This allowed us to determine how well humans discriminate each feature dimension and what evidence they relied on to do so. We introduce a novel computational approach that fits both feature precision and feature use. We found that the most relevant feature for each decision is extracted and relied on, with minor contributions from competing features. These results suggest that multiple feature dimensions are separately represented for each attended ensemble of many items and that cognition is efficient at selecting the appropriate evidence for a decision. (shrink)

In this introduction to part 3 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” the journal's editor argues that, apart from sortition, the best guarantees of safety in a democracy are, first, to augment judicial oversight of all political processes and, second, to exclude politicians from the process of selecting judges. “There can never be too much judicial interference,” he writes, “in what politicians regard as their domain.” The author reached this conclusion during attempts by the newly elected Israeli government, in the (...) spring of 2023, to make itself absolute by eliminating checks on its conduct that the Supreme Court had been developing and applying since the 1950s. Traditional Jewry and Judaism being notoriously hypernomian, the resistance to legality on the part of the ruling coalition has conveyed an aura of antinomian heresy. The choice in Israel appears to be between antipolitics and antinomianism, rather than between Left and Right politically—and the antipolitical model in Israel of a superintendent judiciary and an autonomous attorney general is arguably superior to the American prototype, even from the perspective (“all men are created equal..., endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”) that we have come to regard as quintessentially American. (shrink)

Aim: Understanding the effects of psychotherapy is a crucial concern for both research and clinical practice, especially when outcome tends to be negative. Yet, while outcome is predominantly evaluated by means of quantitative pre-post outcome questionnaires, it remains unclear what this actually means for patients in their daily lives. To explore this meaning, it is imperative to combine treatment evaluation with quantitative and qualitative outcome measures. This study investigates the phenomenon of non-improvement in psychotherapy, by complementing quantitative pre-post outcome scores (...) that indicate no reliable change in depression symptoms with a qualitative inquiry of patients’ perspectives. Methods: The study took place in the context of a Randomized Controlled Trial evaluating time-limited psychodynamic and cognitive behavioural therapy for major depression. A mixed methods study was conducted including patients’ pre-post outcome scores on the BDI-II-NL and post treatment Client Change Interviews. Nineteen patients whose data showed no reliable change in depression symptoms were selected. A grounded theory analysis was conducted on the transcripts of patients’ interviews. Findings: From the patients’ perspective, non-improvement can be understood as being stuck between knowing versus doing, resulting in a stalemate. Positive changes (mental stability, personal strength and insight) were stimulated by therapy offering moments of self-reflection and guidance, the benevolent therapist approach and the context as important motivations. Remaining issues (ambition to change but inability to do so) were attributed to the therapy hitting its limits, patients’ resistance and impossibility and the context as a source of distress. “No change” in outcome scores therefore seems to involve a “partial change” when considering the patients’ perspectives. Conclusion: The study shows the value of integrating qualitative first-person analyses into standard quantitative outcome evaluation and particularly for understanding the phenomenon of non-improvement. It argues for more multi-method and multi-perspective research to gain a better understanding of (negative) outcome and treatment effects. Implications for both research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that Derrida’s writing on the impossibility of justice has the potential for fruitful dialogue with Ruth Chang’s contemporary account of practical rationality. For Derrida, making a just decision must always come with a moment of undecidability, a “leap” into the unknown with an experience of doubt and anxiety that continues to “haunt” the decision-maker. By contrast, in her work on rationality, Chang proposes that hard decisions are difficult to make because the alternatives are “on a (...) par,” such that there are no rational differences between the alternatives that would contribute to choosing one over the other. Hard decisions are made by expressing one’s own rational agency, generating will-based reasons to commit to or “drift” into one of the alternatives. Derrida writes of anxiety, doubt, and impossibility, yet Chang writes of commitment, agency, and rationality. Despite these differences, there are important comparisons and connections between the two accounts that are worth exploring. I suggest that the moment of the decision which Derrida describes as heterogeneous to knowledge can be understood as a moment of parity in which there is a lack of given reasons, as explained by Chang. Chang’s account of rational agency provides an interpretation of how decision-making is possible despite the undecidability as described by Derrida. This notion of commitment and agency as explained by Chang is not incompatible with Derrida’s insistence that the responsible decision is haunted by anxiety and doubt. Instead, I suggest that Derrida’s writing highlights uncertainty as central to understanding the nature of hard choices and how to navigate the demands of justice. (shrink)

Two kinds of claims of responsibility arise in regard to health and medical care. Claims of one kind are obligation-limiting claims about individuals’ responsibility for coming to need health care. It may be argued, for example, that individuals have no claim to state-sponsored care for injuries they suffer as a result of risky activities such as mountain climbing, sky diving, or smoking. The claim is that because they are responsible for what has happened to them, others are not obligated to (...) pay for their care. In a different context, it is claimed that because patients are, or should be, responsible for the kind of treatment they receive. They therefore need to be informed about the treatment options available to them so that they can decide which of these treatments, if any, they will undergo. The lecture provides an account of responsibility that fits claims of both of these kinds and explains how they are related. (shrink)

Multi-Task Learning tries to improve the learning process of different tasks by solving them simultaneously. A popular Multi-Task Learning formulation for SVM is to combine common and task-specific parts. Other approaches rely on using a Graph Laplacian regularizer. Here we propose a combination of these two approaches that can be applied to L1, L2 and LS-SVMs. We also propose an algorithm to iteratively learn the graph adjacency matrix used in the Laplacian regularization. We test our proposal with synthetic and real (...) problems, both in regression and classification settings. When the task structure is present, we show that our model is able to detect it, which leads to better results, and we also show it to be competitive even when this structure is not present. (shrink)

Two kinds of claims of responsibility arise in regard to health and medical care. Claims of one kind are obligation-limiting claims about individuals’ responsibility for coming to need health care. It may be argued, for example, that individuals have no claim to state-sponsored care for injuries they suffer as a result of risky activities such as mountain climbing, sky diving, or smoking. The claim is that because these individuals are responsible for what has happened to them, others are not obligated (...) to pay for their care. In a different context, it is claimed that because patients are, or should be, responsible for the kind of treatment they receive. They therefore need to be informed about the treatment options available to them so that they can decide which of these treatments, if any, they will undergo. The lecture provides an account of responsibility that explains claims of both of these kinds and explains how they are related. There follows a response to comments by Peter Chau, dealing in particular with “libertarian paternalism” and with the adequacy of my value of choice account of responsibility. (shrink)

The alienation of labour is both classical and contemporary. In its classical form, it speaks to the potential dehumanisation of workers in capitalist societies. In its contemporary form, it manifests itself in the disenfranchisement of the individual because of changes in organised global workplaces. Over the years, Africa’s labour transition from traditional spirituality to contemporary organised global workplaces has fuelled new forms of public labour alienation. Civil servants, in some African countries, experience labour alienation reminiscent of work under capitalism. This (...) is in contradiction to the pre-colonial and traditional view of work as a vocation. Zimbabwe is undergoing negative economic, social, and political growth that has resulted in the alienation of civil servants. The government reneges on its public role of providing space for individual growth and well-being in preference for ‘public capitalism’ and cultural alienation. The potential for an effective public service lies in changing the work culture. Contribution: This article interrogates the impacts of the work culture within the public service in Zimbabwe in an attempt to proffer a return to the African traditional spirituality of work that was founded on the principles of ubuntu. It recognises the traditional symbiotic relationship between being and doing among the indigenous African communities as the panacea for the continent’s human capital development. (shrink)

The ineffectiveness of some elders and deacons of Maranatha Reformed Church of Christ to implement their functions and duties contributed to the deterioration of the spiritual and material sustainability of the church. To counteract this corrosion, the church established a training team that instituted an informal programme as a means of revitalising elders and deacons. After running a pilot project to test the training programme, the team presented its report to the General Church Assembly. A selective interpretation of informal education (...) can contribute to a misguided and limited perception of informal knowledge and acquisition as uncivilised and unsustainable. In this article, the researcher seeks to articulate the formal and informal dynamics of informal education. He employed an exploratory concurrent design of mixed methods research within an indigenous paradigm to analyse the report on training of elders and deacons. The researcher used a convenience sampling strategy to select the authors of the report, namely four trainers and four trainees, with whom he conducted a focus group discussion. Although strategically formulated, the learning activities and resources were continuously innovated in the informal programme for elders and deacons. The conclusion reached is that the learning process in informal education is flexible and mutually edifying for educators and trainees.Contribution: Education for the proclamation of the gospel and church governance is not intended exclusively for ministers or theologians. Despite their diversity, elders and deacons need to be educated on the proclamation of the gospel according to the teachings of their church, using their respective contexts. Informal education, which comprises formal and informal dynamics, can contribute towards addressing the problem of untrained elders and deacons. (shrink)

Human social interaction is varied, complex and always changing. How we perceive each other and ourselves, how individuals interact within groups, and how groups are structured--all these are the domain of social psychology. Many have doubted, however, that a full-fledged social psychology textbook can successfully be written from a Christian perspective. Inevitably, some say, when attempting to integrate theology and social psychology, one discipline must suffer at the expense of the other. Angela Sabates counters that thinking by demonstrating how these (...) two disciplines can indeed be brought together in a fruitful way. She crisply covers key topics in social psychology, utilizing research that is well grounded in the empirical and theoretical literature, while demonstrating how a distinctively Christian approach can offer fresh ideas and understandings. Why doesn t our behavior always match what we say we believe? How and when are we most likely to be persuaded? What is the social psychology of violence? How reliable are eyewitness testimonies? Are racism and prejudice on the decline or are we just better at hiding them? Sabates draws out the implications of a Christian view of human persons on these and other central subjects within the well-established framework of social psychological study. This volume is for those looking for a core text that makes use of a Christian theological perspective to explore what the science of psychology suggests to us about the nature of human social interaction. (shrink)

The following essay considers Luis de Losada’s thinking with respect to the scholastic dispute between univocity and analogy. Noteworthy is the fact that the conclusions he reaches are at odds with those of Francisco Suarez, whom the younger Jesuit otherwise regards with unmitigated filial devotion. Though Losada differs from his master regarding analogy, the position he puts forth capitalizes upon a distinction between a logico-semantic perspective and a metaphysical perspective. The result is an irenic balance among all the schools (Thomistic, (...) Scotist, and Jesuit) regarding univocity and analogy. Nevertheless, Losada goes beyond the discussions dividing proponents of analogy and those of univocity when he inquires whether any kind of analogical community obtains between real being and beings of reason. Remarkably, he answers that there is a univocal community, thereby embracing the scholastic notion of supertranscendentality. (shrink)

This book establishes the connection between the evolutionary scientific ideas of The Human Phenomenon and the Christian spirituality and theology of The Divine Milieu.