Does the establishment of a permanent InternationalWar Crimes Tribunal (International Criminal Court - ICC) constitute a challenge to national sovereignty? According to previous US governments and several American observers, the answer is yes. Establishing a world court that acts independently of the states that gave birth to it renders the idea of sovereignty meaningless. This article analyzes the American objections to the ICC and the conception of sovereignty and international law underlying these objections. It first considers the structure and intent (...) behind the criminal court and attempts to unveil the logic hiding behind the idea of ‘America’s historical uniqueness.’ It touches on the diverging US and European conceptions of sovereignty and ends up arguing that governments that stick to traditional conceptions of sovereignty and international law in the employment of their foreign policy may lose the moral legitimacy that has proven increasingly important for winning the sympathy of allies and regaining world leadership. Keywords: The ICC; US opposition to the court; sovereignty; international law; exceptionalism (Published: 19 May 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009, pp. 83-108. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i2.1973. (shrink)

This article analyzes the legal-philosophical situation of Artificial Intelligence and the intelligent robot on being a subject of Law to be considered a creative person or author. The contradiction involved in allowing an object to present the legal duality of being protected as an object that it is and at the same time being considered a subject by the resulting work is analyzed, an impairment or vulgarization for the subject of Law as a moral subject when proposing the fictio legis (...) de a moral object, which is not conceivable. Instead, an alternative to such an aporia is proposed, more fictitious than real. (shrink)

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of the uncertainty (...) of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

In this paper we will demonstrate that a computational system can meet the criteria for autonomy laid down by classical enactivism. The two criteria that we will focus on are operational closure and structural determinism, and we will show that both can be applied to a basic example of a physically instantiated Turing machine. We will also address the question of precariousness, and briefly suggest that a precarious Turing machine could be designed. Our aim in this paper is to challenge (...) the assumption that computational systems are necessarily heteronomous systems, to try and motivate in enactivism a more nuanced and less rigid conception of computational systems, and to demonstrate to computational theorists that they might find some interesting material within the enactivist tradition, despite its historical hostility towards computationalism. (shrink)

Rosemary Hennessy confronts some of the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking `woman' as a discursively constructed subject. She argues for a theory of discourse as ideology taking into account the work of Kristeva, Foucault and Laclau.

Childhood obesity has become a public health epidemic, and currently a battle exists over how to frame and address this problem. This paper explores how public policy approaches can be employed to address obesity. We present the argument that obesity should be viewed as the consequence of a “toxic environment” rather than the result of the population failing to take enough “personal responsibility.” In order to make progress in decreasing the prevalence of obesity, we must shift our view of obesity (...) away from the medical model to a public health model . At the same time, we must be sensitive to the problem of weight bias.Potential obstacles to taking a public policy approach are identified, as well as suggestions on how to overcome them. (shrink)

Beginnings : a Russian émigré's first interviews (1932-1949) -- Russian girl jeers at U.S. for depression complaint, Oakland Tribune, 1932 -- True picture of Russian girls' love life tragic, Boston Post, 1936 -- The woman of tomorrow, WJZ radio, 1949 -- On campus : Ayn Rand talks with future intellectuals (1962-1966) -- Objectivism versus conservatism -- The campaign against extremism -- The robber-barons -- Myths of capitalism -- The political structure of a free society -- The American Constitution -- Objective (...) law -- The role of a Free Press -- Education -- Romantic literature -- Romanticism versus naturalism -- The visual arts -- Cyrano de Bergerac -- Favorites in art -- The nature of humor -- The foundations of morality -- Altruism -- Individual rights -- The ethics of objectivism -- On television and radio : Ayn Rand in America's living rooms (1959-1981) -- The Mike Wallace interview, ABC-TV, 1959 -- For the intellectual, University of Michigan television, with Professor James McConnell, 1961 -- The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, NBC-TV, August 1967 -- The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, NBC-TV, October 1967 -- Speaking freely with Edwin Newman, NBC-TV, 1972 -- Day and Night, a television program hosted by James Day, 1974 -- Focus on youth, a radio show hosted by Garth R. Ancier, 1976 -- The Raymond Newman Journal, a radio show, 1980 -- Louis Rukeyser's Business Journal, 1981. (shrink)

After years of near total neglect, the problem of childhood obesity is now in the limelight. Terms like “epidemic,” “crisis,” and “emergency” are used frequently when describing the trend. Progress is defined with strong language and fueled by statistics such as the observation that this generation of children will be the first to live shorter lives than their parents. Multi-disciplinary journals such as the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics have dedicated symposiums to the issue, and conferences have been convened (...) not only by health professionals but by government agencies, the food industry, and even professionals who market to children. The seriousness of childhood obesity is no longer in doubt, and finally attention has turned to the more complex question – what must be done? (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory posits feminism as a way of conceptualizing from the vantage point of women's lives. However, in current work on feminist standpoint the material links between lives and knowledges are often not explained. This essay argues that the radical marxist tradition standpoint theory draws on-specifically theories of ideology post-Althusser-offers a systemic mode of reading that can redress this problem and provide the resources to elaborate further feminism's oppositional practice and collective subject.

Feminist standpoint theory posits feminism as a way of conceptualizing from the vantage point of women's lives. However, in current work on feminist standpoint the material links between lives and knowledges are often not explained. This essay argues that the radical marxist tradition standpoint theory draws on-specifically theories of ideology post-Althusser-offers a systemic mode of reading that can redress this problem and provide the resources to elaborate further feminism's oppositional practice and collective subject.

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a natural kind, the autopoietic theory (...) understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science. (shrink)

How veridical is perception? Rather than representing objects as they actually exist in the world, might perception instead represent objects only in terms of the utility they offer to an observer? Previous work employed evolutionary modeling to show that under certain assumptions, natural selection favors such “strict‐interface” perceptual systems. This view has fueled considerable debate, but we think that discussions so far have failed to consider the implications of two critical aspects of perception. First, while existing models have explored single (...) utility functions, perception will often serve multiple largely independent goals. (Sometimes when looking at a stick you want to know how appropriate it would be as kindling for a campfire, and other times you want to know how appropriate it would be as a weapon for self‐defense.) Second, perception often operates in an inflexible, automatic manner—proving “impenetrable” to shifting higher‐level goals. (When your goal shifts from “burning” to “fighting,” your visual experience does not dramatically transform.) These two points have important implications for the veridicality of perception. In particular, as the need for flexible goals increases, inflexible perceptual systems must become more veridical. We support this position by providing evidence from evolutionary simulations that as the number of independent utility functions increases, the distinction between “interface” and “veridical” perceptual systems dissolves. Although natural selection evaluates perceptual systems only on their fitness, the most fit perceptual systems may nevertheless represent the world as it is. (shrink)

This study conducted life story interviews with 40 members of the PRSA College of Fellows to examine the influence of crucibles (i.e. trials, challenges or growth opportunities) in the moral development and psychology of public relations exemplars. The outcomes were the development of an illustration of their moral and leader development journey drawing on Rest’s four-component model of ethical decision making, and a moral psychology profile of the key characteristics of public relations exemplars. The profile that emerged is that of (...) leaders who exemplify moral courage, resilience, generosity, genuine care about others and are willing to listen and learn. When they faced trials, they emerged stronger and stayed true to their values and character. (shrink)

In recent years, calls for philosophy to interact more with the public have grown louder in the German-speaking world as well as elsewhere. Public philosophy, as it were, has a long-standing tradition, reaching back to Enlightenment-era German “Popularphilosophie” and of course to Socrates and the Sophists. This section presents four short articles on some current aspects of the public-philosophy debate: on the overall conditions for transferring content from academic philosophy to the public in Germany; on the relations between philosophers’ mediatic (...) presence and their disciplinary expertise; on 18th-century guidelines for accessible philosophical writing; and on public philosophy as a social practice that is more than mere unidirectional knowledge transfer. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between people's mental imagery for their experiences of paths and roads and the metaphorical use of path and road in discourse. We report the results of two studies, one a survey examining people's mental imagery about their embodied experiences with paths and roads, with the second providing a corpus analysis of the ways path and road are metaphorically used in discourse. Our hypothesis is that both people's mental imagery for path and road, and speakers' use (...) of these words in metaphorical contexts are strongly guided by their embodied understandings of real-world events related to travel on paths and roads. The results of these studies demonstrate how bodily experiences with artifacts partly constrains not only how specific conceptual metaphors emerge, but how different metaphorical understandings are applied in talk about abstract entities and events. (shrink)

‘Culturology’ is an integral, often compulsory, part of Russian university courses; the discipline has largely replaced chairs in Marxist-Leninism and dialectical materialism, and bookshops are full of texts on the subject. This article is based on analysis of more than ten university textbooks recommended to first-year students. Marlène Laruelle examines why culturology has become so important, the place claimed for it within the human sciences, and what it means for changing Russian ideas of identity and nation.

La presente investigación surge como parte del análisis para la creación de políticas de ecoeficiencia en las empresas y tiene como finalidad el conocer las buenas prácticas ambientales aplicadas por las empresas del sector servicios en la ciudad de Girardot. Se presenta como un estudio descriptivo-analítico con enfoque cualitativo, utilizando como instrumento la ficha de observación aplicada a una muestra de 30 empresas del sector de servicios. Dentro de los resultados obtenidos se encuentra la calificación de acuerdo con un puntaje (...) entre 0.0 y 1.0 y el análisis del resultado total con ponderación de 0% a 100% a 11 criterios evaluados. (shrink)

Upshot: In our target article we claimed that, at least since Weber and Varela, enactivism has incorporated a theoretical commitment to one important aspect of Jonas’s philosophical biology, namely its anthropomorphism, which is at odds with the methodological commitments of modern science. In this general reply we want to clarify what we mean by anthropomorphism, and explain why we think it is incompatible with science. We do this by spelling out what we call the “Jonasian inference,” i.e., the idea that (...) we are entitled, based on our first-person experience of teleology, to take the appearance of teleology in other living beings at face value. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the enactive approach to ethics could benefit from engaging a dialogue with the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who has given ethics a decisive role in the understanding of our social life. Taking the enactive approach of Colombetti and Torrance as a starting point, we show how Levinas’ philosophy, with the key notions of face, otherness, and responsibility among others can complement and enrich the enactive view of ethics. Specifically, we argue that Levinas can provide, (...) on the one hand, a phenomenological characterisation of ethics itself, of its nature and fundamental meaning, and on the other, an account of how sociality, affectivity and embodiment, as presented in Colombetti and Torrance’s work, combine to bring about the ethical experience. However, we also point out that introducing Levinas to the enactive approach could be challenging. It is not obvious how sense-making and value-making, as centred on the precariousness and potential death of the subject, would account for the ethical experience as grounded on the precariousness and potential death of the other. (shrink)

Ce texte avance une hypothèse sur ce qui fait la spécificité de l’herméneutique, et sur la façon dont elle peut être située dans le paysage de pensée contemporain. Les deux auteurs convoqués sont Gadamer et Derrida. Partant d’une certaine position de Derrida relativement à la question de l’interprétation, on s’efforce d’en évaluer la pertinence à la lumière de Gadamer. Les perspectives de pensée ouvertes par Gadamer se laissent-elles ranger dans le cadre dessiné par Derrida, ou peuvent-elles servir d’instruments pour ébranler (...) ce cadre ?This text puts forward a hypothesis regarding what constitutes the specificity of hermeneutics, and on how it can be situated in the landscape of contemporary thought. The two authors dealt with are Gadamer and Derrida. We will start from a position held by Derrida concerning the question of interpretation, and examine this position in the light of Gadamer’s writings. Do the perspectives offered by Gadamer simply fall into the framework drawn out by Derrida, or can they serve as means to destabilize this very framework ? (shrink)

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases (...) to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood. (shrink)

Recently, Michael Wheeler has argued that despite its sometimes revolutionary rhetoric, the so called 4E cognitive movement, even in the guise of ‘radical’ enactivism, cannot achieve a full revolution in cognitive science. A full revolution would require the rejection of two essential tenets of traditional cognitive science, namely internalism and representationalism. Whilst REC might secure antirepresentationalism, it cannot do the same, so Wheeler argues, with externalism. In this paper, expanding on Wheeler’s analysis, we argue that what compromises REC’s externalism is (...) the persistence of cognitively relevant asymmetries between its purported cognitive systems and the environment. Complementarily, we argue that an antirepresentationalist ancestor of enactivism, the autopoietic theory of cognition, is able to deliver and secure externalism, thus offering the explosive combination that Wheeler claims us needed for a revolution in cognitive science. (shrink)

Dit boek bevat de uitgebreide, geannoteerde en geïllustreerde versie van de 48ste Huizinga-lezing die Marlene Dumas vrijdagavond 6 december 2019 heeft uitgesproken in de Pieterskerk in Leiden. Dumas spreekt onder meer over het onderscheid tussen de kunstenaar en diens werk, het nadeel van een titel en de naaktheid van mannen in de kunst. 0Het boek bevat tevens een interview met Marlene Dumas, een schets van het leven en werk van Johan Huizinga, de naamgever van de lezing, en een (...) korte geschiedenis van de Huizinga-lezing, die al sinds 1972 bestaat. (shrink)

Traditionally, ontology, or at least western ontology, bas been an anthropocentric enterprise, that takes only human experiences into account. In this paper I argue that a prolific biocentric ontology can be based on UexkülI's Umwelt theory. UexkülI offers the basis of an ontology according to which the study of experiences is a much wider field than it is as depicted by classical ontology and contemporary philosophy of consciousness. Based on the thoughts of the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel I claim that (...) there might very well be Iifeforms that are totally unimaginable to us. I argue that this view is compatible with the Umwelt theory, and that it should be adopted by biosemioticians. Furthermore, I argue that a biosemiotic possibilism should be implemented. Followingly, one should not claim to know which characteristics of living beings are universally and necessarily valid, but restrict oneself to statements about life as we know it. (shrink)

Scholars have long asserted that public relations (PR) professionals should play the role of organizational conscience, but little research has focused on why and how they play this role effectively. We found that PR professionals who played the role of organizational conscience had broadened conceptions of their roles and responsibilities, including a fervent duty to the public interest. This often put them in the position of providing criticism to powerful organizational players. Rather than raising their ethical concerns as persuasive orators, (...) they used subtle, resourceful, and experiential approaches to persuasion. Playing the role of organizational conscience typically necessitated gaining access to informal coalitions since access to dominant power coalitions often was limited or late. Organizations with participative cultures supported the role of organizational conscience. (shrink)

The extent to which visual information on the contralateral, unattended side influences the performance of patients with hemispatial neglect was studied in a visuomotor reaching task. We replicated the well-established finding that, relative to target-alone trials, normal subjects are slower to reach to targets in the presence of visual distractors which appear either ipsilateral or contralateral to the target, with greater interference in the former condition. Six patients with hemispatial neglect showed even greater interference than did the normal subjects when (...) the distractor appeared ipsilaterally but showed no significant interference from contralateral distractors. This pattern of performance was qualitatively similar for patients with lesions restricted to posterior regions and for patients with more extensive lesions involving both posterior and anterior brain regions. These findings suggest that, in the visuomotor domain, information on the contralateral side is processed minimally, if at all, in patients with hemispatial neglect. (shrink)