Future population growth is uncertain and matters for climate policy: higher growth entails more emissions and means more people will be vulnerable to climate-related impacts. We show that how future population is valued importantly determines mitigation decisions. Using the Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, we explore two approaches to valuing population: a discounted version of total utilitarianism (TU), which considers total wellbeing and is standard in social cost of carbon dioxide (SCC) models, and of average utilitarianism (AU), which ignores population size (...) and sums only each time period’s discounted average wellbeing. Under both approaches, as population increases the SCC increases, but optimal peak temperature decreases. The effect is larger under TU, because it responds to the fact that a larger population means climate change hurts more people: for example, in 2025, assuming the United Nations (UN)-high rather than UN-low population scenario entails an increase in the SCC of 85% under TU vs. 5% under AU. The difference in the SCC between the two population scenarios under TU is comparable to commonly debated decisions regarding time discounting. Additionally, we estimate the avoided mitigation costs implied by plausible reductions in population growth, finding that large near-term savings ($billions annually) occur under TU; savings under AU emerge in the more distant future. These savings are larger than spending shortfalls for human development policies that may lower fertility. Finally, we show that whether lowering population growth entails overall improvements in wellbeing—rather than merely cost savings—again depends on the ethical approach to valuing population. (shrink)

How much should the present generations sacrifice to reduce emissions today, in order to reduce the future harms of climate change? Within climate economics, debate on this question has been focused on so-called “ethical parameters” of social time preference and inequality aversion. We show that optimal climate policy similarly importantly depends on the future of the developing world. In particular, although global poverty is falling and the economic lives of the poor are improving worldwide, leading models of climate economics may (...) be too optimistic about two central predictions: future population growth in poor countries, and future convergence in total factor productivity (TFP). We report results of small modifications to a standard model: under plausible scenarios for high future population growth (especially in sub-Saharan Africa) and for low future TFP convergence, we find that optimal near-term carbon taxes could be substantially larger. (shrink)

Thick concepts, namely those concepts that describe and evaluate simultaneously, present a challenge to science. Since science does not have a monopoly on value judgments, what is responsible research involving such concepts? Using measurement of wellbeing as an example, we first present the options open to researchers wishing to study phenomena denoted by such concepts. We argue that while it is possible to treat these concepts as technical terms, or to make the relevant value judgment in-house, the responsible thing to (...) do, especially in the context of public policy, is to make this value judgment through a legitimate political process that includes all the stakeholders of this research. We then develop a participatory model of measurement based on the ideal of co-production. To show that this model is feasible and realistic, we illustrate it with a case study of co-production of a concept of thriving conducted by the authors in collaboration with a UK anti-poverty charity Turn2us. (shrink)

Both daily demands as well as training and competition characteristics in sports can result in a psychobiological state of mental fatigue leading to feelings of tiredness, lack of energy, an increased perception of effort, and performance decrements. Moreover, optimal performance will only be achievable if the balance between recovery and stress states is re-established. Consequently, recovery strategies are needed aiming at mental aspects of recovery. The aim of the study was to examine acute effects of potential mental recovery strategies on (...) subjective-psychological and on cognitive performance outcomes after a mentally fatiguing task. A laboratory-based randomized cross-over study with twenty-four students was applied. Participants were run through a powernap intervention, a systematic breathing intervention, a systematic breathing plus mental imagery intervention, and a control condition with one trial a week over four consecutive weeks. Mental fatigue was induced by completion of the 60-min version of the AX-continuous performance test. The Short Recovery and Stress Scale and Visual Analog Scales were assessed to measure effects on perceptual outcomes. Cognitive performance was measured with a reaction time test of the Vienna Test System. During all three recovery interventions and CC portable polysomnography was applied. Results showed a significant increase from pre-AX-CPT to pre-MR on fatigue states and recovery-stress states indicating that the induction of mental fatigue was effective. Moreover, results underlined that analysis yielded no significant differences between recovery interventions and the control condition but they revealed significant time effects for VAS, SRSS items, and cognitive performance. However, it could be derived that the application of a rest break with 20 min of mental recovery strategies appears to enhance recovery on a mainly mental and emotional level and to reduce perceived mental fatigue. (shrink)

The health co-benefits of CO2 mitigation can provide a strong incentive for climate policy through reductions in air pollutant emissions that occur when targeting shared sources. However, reducing air pollutant emissions may also have an important co-harm, as the aerosols they form produce net cooling overall. Nevertheless, aerosol impacts have not been fully incorporated into cost-benefit modeling that estimates how much the world should optimally mitigate. Here we find that when both co-benefits and co-harms are taken fully into account, optimal (...) climate policy results in immediate net benefits globally, overturning previous findings from cost-benefit models that omit these effects. The global health benefits from climate policy could reach trillions of dollars annually, but will importantly depend on the air quality policies that nations adopt independently of climate change. Depending on how society values better health, economically optimal levels of mitigation may be consistent with a target of 2 °C or lower. (shrink)

Each annual Ontology Summit initiative makes a statement appropriate to each Summit’s theme as part of our general advocacy designed to bring ontology science and engineering into the mainstream. The theme this year is "Towards an Open Ontology Repository". This communiqué represents the joint position of those who were engaged in the year's summit discourse on an Open Ontology Repository (OOR) and of those who endorse below. In this discussion, we have agreed that an "ontology repository is a facility where (...) ontologies and related information artifacts can be stored, retrieved and managed." -/- We believe in the promise of semantic technologies based on logic, databases and the Semantic Web, a Web of exposed data and of interpretations of that data (i.e., of semantics), using common standards. Such technologies enable distinguishable, computable, reusable, and sharable meaning of Web and other artifacts, including data, documents, and services. We also believe that making that vision a reality requires additional supporting resources and these resources should be open, extensible, and provide common services over the ontologies. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo prospectively study the cingulate cortex for the localization and role of the grasping action in humans during electrical stimulation of depth electrodes.MethodsAll the patients with intractable focal epilepsy and a depth electrode stereotactically placed in the cingulate cortex, as part of their pre-surgical epilepsy evaluation from 2015 to 2017, were included. Cortical stimulation was performed and examined for grasping actions. Post-implantation volumetric T1 MRIs were co-registered to determine the exact electrode position.ResultsFive patients exhibited contralateral grasping actions during electrical stimulation. (...) All patients had electrodes implanted in the ventral bank of the right cingulate sulcus adjacent to the vertical anterior commissure line. Stimulation of other electrodes in adjacent regions did not elicit grasping.ConclusionGrasping action elicited from a localized region in the mid-cingulate cortex directly supports the concept of the cingulate cortex being crucially involved in the grasping network. This opens an opportunity to explore this region with deep brain stimulation as a motor neuromodulation target for treatment in specific movement disorders or neurorehabilitation. (shrink)

Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing any moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, (...) conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose any moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace. (shrink)

O artigo aborda historicamente a imigração internacional no sentido dos países do Sul aos países do Norte, apresentando indicativos recentes sobre o tema, a partir da perspectiva da atual globalização econômica, na fase da divisão sociotécnica do trabalho marcada pela difusão da tecnologia digital ou Indústria 4.0. São considerados dados da EUROSTAT (2020), e relatórios da International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2020) e da World Migration Report (2019). Os referenciais teóricos remetem ao materialismo histórico-dialético, centrando-se na relação entre expropriação e (...) exploração do trabalho contemporâneo e considerando o trabalho imigrante, em particular com maiores níveis de formação escolar e qualificação especialmente nos países do Norte, como mais um elemento econômico, ideológico e político, no âmbito das políticas públicas dos governos, para o controle do trabalho pelo capital. Ao fim, algumas questões metodologias são retomadas e indicativos políticos que atualmente se configuram são brevemente apresentados. Para a burguesia e governos neoliberais a imigração é uma estratégia política que, quando concernente à trabalhadores/as de baixa formação e qualificação se traduz em um “problema”, mas, se tratando daqueles melhores formados e qualificados, tem sido estimulada. Palavras-chave: Trabalho; Migração; Trabalhadores/as; Educação; Qualificação Profissional; Globalização. Education and professional qualification in the context of south-north migrant work Abstract: The article historically addresses international immigration, presenting recent indications on the topic, from the perspective of the current economic globalization, in the phase of the socio-technical division of labor marked by the diffusion of digital technology or Industry 4.0. Data from EUROSTAT (2020), and reports from the International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2020) and from the World Migration Report (2019) are considered. Theoretical references refer to historical dialectic materialism, focusing on the relationship between expropriation and exploitation of contemporary work and considering immigrant work, with higher levels of school education and qualification, especially in Northern countries, as another economic element, ideological and political, within the scope of public policies of governments, for the control of labor by capital. At the end, some methodological issues are taken up and political indications that are currently configured are briefly presented. For the bourgeoisie and neoliberal governments, immigration is a political strategy that, when it comes to low-educated and qualified workers, translates into a “problem”, but, in the case of those better trained and qualified, it has been stimulated. Keyword: Work; Migration; Workers; Education; Professional qualification; Globalization. Educación y Cualificación Profesional en el Contexto del Trabajo Migratorio Sur-Norte Resumen: El artículo aborda históricamente la inmigración internacional de los países del Sur a los países del Norte, presentando indicios recientes sobre el tema, en la perspectiva de la actual globalización económica, en la fase de la división sociotécnica del trabajo marcada por la difusión de la tecnología digital o Industria 4.0. Se consideran datos de EUROSTAT (2020) e informes de la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM, 2020) y el Informe sobre las Migraciones en el Mundo (2019). Las referencias teóricas se refieren al materialismo histórico-dialéctico, centrándose en la relación entre expropiación y explotación del trabajo contemporáneo y considerando el trabajo de inmigrantes, en particular con mayores niveles de educación y calificación, especialmente en los países del Norte, como un elemento económico, ideológico y político más. en el ámbito de las políticas públicas de los gobiernos, para el control del trabajo por parte del capital. Al final, se retoman algunos temas metodológicos y se presentan brevemente los indicadores políticos que están configurados actualmente. Para los gobiernos burgueses y neoliberales, la inmigración es una estrategia política que, cuando se trata de trabajadores con baja formación y calificación, se traduce en un “problema”, pero, cuando se trata de los que están mejor educados y calificados, ha sido estimulada. Palabras llave: Trabajo; Migración; trabajadores; Educación; Calificación profesional; Globalización. Data de registro: 03/04/2022 Data de aceite: 26/10/2022. (shrink)

Climate change and sustainability science have become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to growing expectations that scientific knowledge directly informs collective action and transformation. In this article, we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface to examine the social processes and geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We argue that sociotechnical imaginaries of transdisciplinary research, deployed in parallel to “universal” regimes of evidence-based decision-making from the global North, conceal how international collaborations of scientists and societal (...) actors actually experience knowledge mobilization, its systemic barriers, and its paths to policy action. Through ethnographic study of a transdisciplinary research program in the Americas, coupled with in-depth analysis of Colombia, we reveal divergences in how participants envision and experience knowledge mobilization and identify persistent disparities that diminish the capacity of researchers to influence decision-making and fit climate knowledge within broader neoliberal development paradigms. Results of the study point to a plurality of science–policy interface, each shaped by national sociotechnical imaginaries, development priorities, and local social orders. We conclude that a geopolitical approach to transdisciplinary science is necessary to understand how climate and sustainability knowledge circulates unevenly in a world marked by persistent inequality and dominance. (shrink)

Since 1986 Darwin College, Cambridge has organised a series of annual public lectures built around a single theme approached in a multi-disciplinary way. These essays were developed from the 2008 lectures, which explored the idea of serendipity – the relationship between good fortune and the preparation of the mind to spot and exploit it. Serendipity is an appealing concept, and one which has been surprisingly influential in a great number of areas of human discovery. The essays collected in this volume (...) provide insightful and entertaining accounts of the relationship between serendipity and knowledge, in the human and natural sciences. Written by some of the most eminent thinkers of this generation, Serendipity explores a variety of subjects, including disease, politics, scientific invention and the art of writing. This collection will fascinate and inspire a wide range of readers, highlighting the multifaceted nature of the popular, but elusive, concept of serendipity. -/- Contents: Introduction. Fortune and the prepared mind Iain Morley and Mark de Rond; 1. The stratigraphy of serendipity Susan E. Alcock; 2. Understanding humans - serendipity and anthropology Richard Leakey; 3. HIV and the naked ape Robin Weiss; 4. Cosmological serendipity Simon Singh; 5. Serendipity in astronomy Andrew C. Fabian; 6. Serendipity in physics Richard Friend; 7. Liberalism and uncertainty Oliver Letwin; 8. The unanticipated pleasures of the writing life Simon Winchester. (shrink)

There remains a strange gap between Shaw's biographers who assert the importance of Marxism for Shaw during the 1880s and intellectual historians who deny the importance of Marxism for Shaw during the 1880s. My intention is to close this gap by placing Shaw's early beliefs in the context of contemporary Marxism, thereby showing that Shaw was a Marxist and even that his version of Fabianism retained features of his earlier Marxism. Further, I hope thereby to contribute to the debate on (...) why there was no Marxism in Great Britain or, more accurately, why the Marxism there was did not give rise to a mass Marxist party. The intellectual development of Shaw provides an example of the way in which British Marxism became embroiled in a broader socialist, radical and working-class movement. The example of Shaw reminds us that Marxism is an intellectual tradition, not a political party, and that this tradition played an important part in both the socialist revival and the emergence of the Labour Party. (shrink)

Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911) offers an excellent case study of the use of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism as both a philosophical and a rhetorical strategy. In Remington, Wells creates a protagonist who follows Machiavellian rules of behaviour and denounces those who do likewise. The novel is structured to show Remington's progress from an idealist refutation of Machiavellism, through a recognition of its necessity, to the formulation of a private and political method for the necessary pursuit of Machiavellian principles under the disguise (...) of anti-Machiavellism, including trenchant criticisms of Fabians as anti-Machiavellian Machiavellians. These stages, culminating in complete personal and public failure, are reflected in Remington's party allegiances, and broadened by Wells into an account of British party ideologies around the turn of the twentieth century. Wells's rhetorical design for mapping and assessing anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is paralleled by an exploration of that technique in himself, attested by the predominance of autobiographical elements in The New Machiavelli, and by similarities between Remington's and Wells's own deception of others and themselves. Far from incidental, anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is the motif that unites the shifting party allegiances, political conceits and moral hypocrisies, and private and public failures of Wells, Remington, and of the period of British politics that they intend to encapsulate. (shrink)

Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911) offers an excellent case study of the use of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism as both a philosophical and a rhetorical strategy. In Remington, Wells creates a protagonist who follows Machiavellian rules of behaviour and denounces those who do likewise. The novel is structured to show Remington's progress from an idealist refutation of Machiavellism, through a recognition of its necessity, to the formulation of a private and political method for the necessary pursuit of Machiavellian principles under the disguise (...) of anti-Machiavellism, including trenchant criticisms of Fabians as anti-Machiavellian Machiavellians. These stages, culminating in complete personal and public failure, are reflected in Remington's party allegiances, and broadened by Wells into an account of British party ideologies around the turn of the twentieth century. Wells's rhetorical design for mapping and assessing anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is paralleled by an exploration of that technique in himself, attested by the predominance of autobiographical elements in The New Machiavelli, and by similarities between Remington's and Wells's own deception of others and themselves. Far from incidental, anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is the motif that unites the shifting party allegiances, political conceits and moral hypocrisies, and private and public failures of Wells, Remington, and of the period of British politics that they intend to encapsulate. (shrink)

One central fact about hallucinations is that they may be subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions. Indeed, it has been argued that the hallucinatory experiences concerned cannot— and need not—be characterized in any more positive general terms. This epistemic conception of hallucinations has been advocated as the best choice for proponents of experiential (or “naive realist”) disjunctivism—the view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their introspectible subjective characters. In this chapter, I aim to formulate and defend an intentional alternative to experiential (...) disjunctivism called experiential intentionalism. This view not only enjoys some advantages over its rival but is also compatible with the epistemic conception of hallucinations, as well as with the disjunctivist view that perceptions and hallucinations differ essentially in their third-personal structures (e.g., their causal, informational, or reason-providing links to reality). It also maintains that there are actually two aspects to the subjective indistinguishability of mental episodes: (i) we cannot distinguish their first-personal characters in introspective awareness; and (ii) we cannot distinguish their third-personal structures in experiential awareness—that is, in how they are given to consciousness. While experiential disjunctivism makes the mistake of ignoring (ii) and reducing subjective indiscriminability to (i), experiential intentionalism correctly identifies (ii) as the primary source of the subjective indistinguishability of perception-like hallucinations. Accordingly, the intentional error involved in such hallucinations is due to the fact that we consciously experience them as possessing a relational structure. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a surge in research addressing the question which properties predictive algorithms ought to satisfy in order to be considered fair. Three of the most widely discussed criteria of fairness are the criteria called equalized odds, predictive parity, and counterfactual fairness. In this paper, I will present a new impossibility result involving these three criteria of algorithmic fairness. In particular, I will argue that there are realistic circumstances under which any predictive algorithm that satisfies counterfactual (...) fairness will violate both other fairness criteria, that is, equalized odds and predictive parity. As will be shown, this impossibility result forces us to give up one of four intuitively plausible assumptions about algorithmic fairness. I will explain and motivate each of the four assumptions and discuss which of them can plausibly be given up in order to circumvent the impossibility. (shrink)

A libertarian theory of justice holds that persons are self-owners and have the Hohfeldian moral power to justly acquire property rights in initially unowned external resources. Different variants of libertarianism can be distinguished according to their stance on the famous Lockean proviso. The proviso requires, in Locke’s words, to leave ‘enough and as good’ for others, and thus specifies limits on the acquisition of property. Left-libertarians accept an egalitarian interpretation of the proviso, ‘right-libertarians’ either reject any kind of proviso or (...) accept rather weak versions of it. In be-tween there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation: a ‘sufficiency proviso.’ The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism.’ In this article I make a case for moderate libertarianism, so understood. I argue that moderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place. (shrink)

What is the scope of our conscious mental agency, and how do we acquire self-knowledge of it? Both questions are addressed through an investigation of what best explains our inability to form judgemental thoughts in direct response to practical reasons. Contrary to what Williams and others have argued, it cannot be their subjection to a truth norm, given that our failure to adhere to such a norm need not undermine their status as judgemental. Instead, it is argued that we cannot (...) form judgements at will because we subjectively experience them as responses to epistemic reasons, and because this is incompatible with our experiential awareness of direct mental actions, such as instances of imagining. However, this latter awareness does not extend to indirect agency, which relies on epistemic or causal processes as means. Judging may therefore still count as an indirect action - just like, say, breaking a window by throwing a stone. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to link empirical findings concerning environmental inequalities with different normative yard-sticks for assessing whether these inequalities should be deemed unjust, or not. We argue that such an inquiry must necessarily take into account some caveats regarding both empirical research and normative theory. We suggest that empirical results must be contextualised by establishing geographies of risk. As a normative yard-stick we propose a moderately demanding social-egalitarian account of justice and democratic citizenship, which we take to (...) be best suited to identify unjust as well as legitimate instances of socio-environmental inequality. (shrink)

Der Fokus dieser theologischen Analyse der ethischen Argumentationen und Positionen der deutschen Ärzteschaft seit 1945 liegt auf den Grenzen des Lebens und den entsprechenden Richtlinien und Stellungnahmen der Bundesärztekammer (BÄK). Welche Positionen und Begründungsmuster haben sich gewandelt - welche nicht? Was waren aktuelle Auslöser - welche Tendenzen zeichnen sich für das ärztliche Ethos ab? Welche Parallelen und Differenzen zu anderen Institutionen ergeben sich? Im Zentrum stehen zwei methodische Herangehensweisen: Eine detaillierte Analyse der historischen...

En el parágrafo §7 de Ser y Tiempo Heidegger distingue entre «vulgar», «formal» y «fenomenológico» a propósito del concepto de «fenómeno». El objetivo del presente artículo es mostrar, en primer lugar, que esta diferencia puede entenderse únicamente desde una previa aclaración de los motivos metodológicos del término. Se sostendrá, en segundo lugar, que todo tratamiento temático es al mismo tiempo un tratamiento metodológico, esto es, que la fenomenología hermenéutica de la existencia humana desarrolla y oculta un particular discurso del método.

In her book “Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders?” (2022), Anneli Jefferson proposes that brain processes that always realize mental dysfunctions are brain dysfunctions. This paper explores possible interpretations of two underdeveloped aspects of this thesis. First, it argues that “realization” should be interpreted as partial rather than full realization. Second, it argues that the “always” should only quantify over biologically normal situations. Taken together, these changes can account for the fact that some psychological dysfunctions are partially realized by functional mechanisms, (...) for the existence of psychological dysfunctions due to mismatches rather than brain dysfunctions, and for the fact that brain dysfunctions do not cease to be brain dysfunctions just because they can be compensated. (shrink)

This book offers an original account of a distinctly republican theory of social and global justice. The book starts by exploring the nature and value of Hegelian recognition theory. It shows the importance of that theory for grounding a normative account of free and autonomous agency. It is this normative account of free agency which provides the groundwork for a republican conception of social and global justice, based on the core-ideas of freedom as non-domination and autonomy as non-alienation. As the (...) author argues, republicans should endorse a sufficientarian account of social justice, which focuses on the nature of social relationships and their effects on people's ability to act freely and realize their fundamental interests. On the global level, the book argues for the cosmopolitan extension of the republican principles of non-domination and non-alienation within a multi-level democratic system. In so doing, the book addresses a major gap in the existing literature, presenting an original theory of justice, which combines Hegelian recognition theory and republican ideas of freedom, and applying this hybrid theory to the global domain. Fabian Schuppert creates a grand synthesis uniting neo-republican insights on freedom with Hegelian recognition theory. The result is an account of agency that arises from the idea of non-domination whose aim it is to safeguard individual freedom. When combined with Hegelian recognition theory a social focus also emerges. This amalgam comments on many of the major disputes concerning global justice from a cosmopolitan perspective. Because of the broad scope and the many contemporary discussions engaged this book will be of keen interest to scholars as well as a welcome addition to the classroom. (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently argued that proper functions are proximal activities of traits selected by phylogenetic or ontogenetic selection processes, and that traits are dysfunctional only if they cannot perform their proper functions for constitutional reasons. We partially agree with Garson, but reject the view that functions are proximal activities, as well as his account of dysfunctions. Instead, we propose our own theory that biological functions are selected dispositions and that a trait is dysfunctional in virtue of not having the (...) dispositions for which it was selected. This account can explain both defects (or dysfunctions in Garson’s sense) and dysfunctions due to environmental factors. Moreover, it offers a neat way to explain the graduality of dysfunction. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 2, Page 166-190, Spring 2023.

The literature on Adorno and anti‐Semitism presents a somewhat curious state of affairs. On the one hand, concern with anti‐Semitism is presented as pivotal to his views and major works, at least post‐1940. On the other hand, the account of anti‐Semitism offered by Adorno – and Horkheimer – faces trenchant criticisms for failing to do justice to the complex phenomena at issue. In this Chapter, I re‐examine and re‐evaluate this account. In particular, I argue that they navigate well two central (...) dilemmas intrinsic to any endeavor of making sense of anti‐Semitism and the events for which the name “Auschwitz” stands. (shrink)

Martin Heideggers Abendgespräch in einem russischen Kriegsgefangenenlager zwischen einem Jüngeren und einem Älteren ist datiert auf den 8. Mai 1945, den Tag, an dem der Nationalsozialismus besiegt wurde. Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Textes ist ein Zitat aus dem klassischen daoistischen Buch Zhuangzi. Warum wendet sich Heidegger an diesem Tag der chinesischen Philosophie zu? Für den Philosophen und Sinologen Fabian Heubel birgt das Abendgespräch die einzigartige Gelegenheit, Heideggers Öffnung für östliches Denken kritisch zu erörtern. Zugleich zeigt sich die Kommunikationsverweigerung (...) zwischen Heidegger und Adorno in neuem Licht, indem das Buch beide mit Hilfe daoistischen paradoxen Denkens ins Gespräch kommen lässt. Im Kommunizieren dieser drei Momente tritt eine transkulturelle Kritik hervor, die durch geschichtliches Bewusstsein von Nöten gezeichnet ist. Heideggers Kehre nach Osten ist gescheitert. Andererseits gibt es keinen philosophischen Weg nach China, der an seinem Denken vorbeiführt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der (...) Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten. (shrink)

Begründet und entfaltet wird ein Begriff des Spiels, der sich um Lockungen und Drohungen des Unerwarteten dreht. Das Autorenduo ordnet seine Theorie der ludischen Aktion in klassische Konzepte des Spiels ein sowie in den aktuellen Diskurs der Game Studies. Die phänomenale Mannigfaltigkeit des Spiels wird in historischer Perspektive skizziert und in systematischer Weise gegliedert. Die Autoren erläutern medientechnische und kommunikative Voraussetzungen des Booms der Computerspiele und reflektieren die Diskussion über Eskalationen ludischer Gewalt. Kritisch ausgeleuchtet werden Instrumentalisierungen des Spiels, die sich (...) unter dem Stichwort Gamification wachsender Beliebtheit erfreuen. Die auffällige Inflation der Spielmetapher wird in Zusammenhang gebracht mit ludischen Anmutungen in den sozialen Strukturen der modernen und digitalen Gesellschaft. Fabian Arlt, M. A., hat Medienmanagement studiert und promoviert im Studiengang Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskommunikation der Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Arlt ist Sozialwissenschaftler und Publizist, er lehrt am Institut für Theorie und Praxis der Kommunikation der Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. (shrink)

Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

This commentary challenges Michael Scliefczyk’s proposal for a realistically utopian welfare state (RUWS). As it stands, RUWS says too little about the concrete measures it will offer to avoid political domination and harmful inequalities. Moreover, RUWS follows Rawlsian Property-Owning Democracy (POD) by being silent on crucial issues such as banking regulation, the governance of investments and the issue of actual control over capital. Ultimately, it therefore seems that RUWS does not present an attractive alternative to POD since it suffers from (...) very similar problems and shortcomings as POD. (shrink)

The uncertainty associated with paradigmatic families has been shown to correlate with their phonetic characteristics in speech, suggesting that representations of complex sublexical relations between words are part of speaker knowledge. To better understand this, recent studies have used two-layer neural network models to examine the way paradigmatic uncertainty emerges in learning. However, to date this work has largely ignored the way choices about the representation of inflectional and grammatical functions in models strongly influence what they subsequently learn. To explore (...) the consequences of this, we investigate how representations of IFS in the input-output structures of learning models affect the capacity of uncertainty estimates derived from them to account for phonetic variability in speech. Specifically, we examine whether IFS are best represented as outputs to neural networks or as inputs by building models that embody both choices and examining their capacity to account for uncertainty effects in the formant trajectories of word final [ɐ], which in German discriminates around sixty different IFS. Overall, we find that formants are enhanced as the uncertainty associated with IFS decreases. This result dovetails with a growing number of studies of morphological and inflectional families that have shown that enhancement is associated with lower uncertainty in context. Importantly, we also find that in models where IFS serve as inputs—as our theoretical analysis suggests they ought to—its uncertainty measures provide better fits to the empirical variance observed in [ɐ] formants than models where IFS serve as outputs. This supports our suggestion that IFS serve as cognitive cues during speech production, and should be treated as such in modeling. It is also consistent with the idea that when IFS serve as inputs to a learning network. This maintains the distinction between those parts of the network that represent message and those that represent signal. We conclude by describing how maintaining a “signal-message-uncertainty distinction” can allow us to reconcile a range of apparently contradictory findings about the relationship between articulation and uncertainty in context. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence in cognitive psychology and neuroscience suggests a deep interconnection between sensory-motor and language systems in the brain. Based on recent neurophysiological findings on the anatomo-functional organization of the fronto-parietal network, we present a computational model showing that language processing may have reused or co-developed organizing principles, functionality, and learning mechanisms typical of premotor circuit. The proposed model combines principles of Hebbian topological self-organization and prediction learning. Trained on sequences of either motor or linguistic units, the (...) network develops independent neuronal chains, formed by dedicated nodes encoding only context-specific stimuli. Moreover, neurons responding to the same stimulus or class of stimuli tend to cluster together to form topologically connected areas similar to those observed in the brain cortex. Simulations support a unitary explanatory framework reconciling neurophysiological motor data with established behavioral evidence on lexical acquisition, access, and recall. (shrink)

The problem of algorithmic fairness is typically framed as the problem of finding a unique formal criterion that guarantees that a given algorithmic decision-making procedure is morally permissible. In this paper, I argue that this is conceptually misguided and that we should replace the problem with two sub-problems. If we examine how most state-of-the-art machine learning systems work, we notice that there are two distinct stages in the decision-making process. First, a prediction of a relevant property is made. Secondly, a (...) decision is taken based (at least partly) on this prediction. These two stages have different aims: the prediction is aimed at accuracy, while the decision is aimed at allocating a given good in a way that maximizes some context-relative utility measure. Correspondingly, two different fairness issues can arise. First, predictions could be biased in discriminatory ways. This means that the predictions contain systematic errors for a specific group of individuals. Secondly, the system’s decisions could result in an allocation of goods that is in tension with the principles of distributive justice. These two fairness issues are distinct problems that require different types of solutions. I here provide a formal framework to address both issues and argue that this way of conceptualizing them resolves some of the paradoxes present in the discussion of algorithmic fairness. (shrink)

According to Karen Neander’s causal-informational teleosemantics, the contents of perceptual states depend on the etiological response functions of sensory-perceptual systems. In this paper, I argue that this theory is, despite its virtues, unable to explain how humans and other animals are capable of perceiving properties with which no sensory-perceptual system has ever been confronted. After rejecting Neander’s own proposal in terms of second-order similarity and a proposal inspired by Ruth Millikan in terms of simplicity, I offer a solution which equates (...) functions with manifestations of dispositions that made a difference to evolutionary success. My suggestion is able to generate determinate and plausible contents for new perceptual states while still preserving the idea that etiological functions explain evolutionary success. (shrink)

The measure of what can be considered “new” is what is already known. What is “new” – be it a (technical) invention, a new method, or a newly discovered natural phenomenon – must distinguish itself...

This comment suggests that coordination and cooperation are very different things, as the former simply is a device for problem-solving, while the latter relies on the existence of some shared intentionality. Similarly there exist different origins for the normative expectations an agent might form. Hence the comment argues that Schmid's taxonomy of action types, though helpful, needs to be extended and revised.