Moving away from simple data sharing within the science community towards cross-organizational collaboration scenarios significantly increased challenges related to security and privacy. They need to be addressed in order to make cross-organizational applications such as collaborative working environments a business proposition within communities such as eHealth, construction or manufacturing. Increasingly distributed scenarios where many different types of services need to be combined in order to implement semantically enriched business processes demand new approaches to security within such dynamic Virtual Organizations. The (...) allocation of access rights need to be possible in an easy and controlled way in order to allow inexperienced users to maintain the information and ensure compliance e.g. with legal and privacy related regulations. In this paper the focus is how security concepts originating from the Grid domain have been applied for collaborative working environments. The chosen scenarios are a Virtual Laboratory for Infectious Diseases (ViroLab) and different collaborative environments from the engineering domain as defined within the CoSpaces project. The requirements from these scenarios are analyzed and a security model enabling such dynamic, secure and trustworthy collaborations is presented. (shrink)

Consciousness is scientifically challenging to study because of its subjective aspect. This leads researchers to rely on report-based experimental paradigms in order to discover neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs). I argue that the reliance on reports has biased the search for NCCs, thus creating what I call 'methodological artefacts'. This paper has three main goals: first, describe the measurement problem in consciousness science and argue that this problem led to the emergence of methodological artefacts. Second, provide a critical assessment of (...) the NCCs put forward by the global neuronal workspace theory. Third, provide the means of dissociating genuine NCCs from methodological artefacts. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

This paper argues that the MBA, probably the most successful academic program of the last 50 years, negatively affects the theory and practice of management with regard to ethics through its pedagogy, structure, and its underlying epistemic assumptions. In particular I seek to demonstrate how the syllabus, the pedagogy and the epistemological assumptions of MBA programs together make managers/leaders unable and unwilling to deal with ethics. I also argue that while the what and the how play a very important role, (...) it was only the emergence of a radical philosophical underpinning that has put management education on a negative trajectory. The paper thus examines MBA education from a meta-level perspective, connecting the pedagogical model with epistemological beliefs. (shrink)

According to infinitism, all justification comes from an infinite series of reasons. Peter Klein defends infinitism as the correct solution to the regress problem by rejecting two alternative solutions: foundationalism and coherentism. I focus on Klein's argument against foundationalism, which relies on the premise that there is no justification without meta-justification. This premise is incompatible with dogmatic foundationalism as defended by Michael Huemer and Time Pryor. It does not, however, conflict with non-dogmatic foundationalism. Whereas dogmatic foundationalism rejects the need for (...) any form of meta-justification, non-dogmatic foundationalism merely rejects Laurence BonJour's claim that meta-justification must come from beliefs. Unlike its dogmatic counterpart, non-dogmatic foundationalism can allow for basic beliefs to receive meta-justification from non-doxastic sources such as experiences and memories. Construed thus, non-dogmatic foundationalism is compatible with Klein's principle that there is no justification without meta-justification. I conclude that Klein's rejection of foundationalism. fails. Nevertheless, I agree with Klein that when in response to a skeptical challenge we engage in the activity of defending our beliefs, the number of reasons we can give is at least in principle infinite. I argue that this type of infinity is benign because, when we continue to give reasons, we will eventually merely repeat previously stated reasons. Consequently, I reject Klein's claim that the more reasons we give the more we increase the justification of our beliefs. (shrink)

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)

In the article ‘Represent Me: Please! Towards an Ethics of Digital Twins in Medicine’, I analysed and tried to better understand the main ethical challenges associated with Digital Twins. For those who are just entering the debate with this article: DT is a metaphor for a bundle of artificial intelligence driven simulation technologies that constantly, in real time and ad personam simulate single or multiple parts of the body and make predictions about future health states based on these simulations. My (...) argument addresses the need to look at the breadth of challenges through a perspective of representation. From such a take, key consequences can be drawn for the further development of such technologies, the required means of control and not least the way to think about the interaction between humans and ‘their’ simulations. I am very grateful for the subsequent suggestions, criticisms and further arguments, which have helped me to elaborate my arguments more clearly and have led to a substantial advancement of the debate and the discussion about ethical questions in dealing with DT. Jenny Blumenthal-Barby,1 Deborah Lupton,2 Jenny Krutzinna,3 Janina Loh,4 Brent Mittelstadt,5 Sven Nyholm,6 Daniel Tigard7 and Max Tretter8 have made excellent points, which, in the following, I will not be able to reply to individually and in detail. In this response, I will try to bundle the open points and questions along the comments and considerations mentioned above and attempt to outline their significance for an ethics of DT. Four challenges seem to be central. A first point addresses anthropological issues. It is concerned …. (shrink)

"Hermann Cohen war ein herausragender deutscher Philosoph und jüdischer Denker. In nahezu allen Bereichen seiner verzweigten Tätigkeit beeinflusste er das akademische, politische und religiöse Leben seiner Zeit. Aus Anlass des hundertsten Todestages Cohens am 4. April 2018 widmet sich der vorliegende Band Kontexten und Netzwerken, in die Cohen zeit seines Lebens eingebunden war"--.

A supplementary volume in the series Research in social movements, conflicts and change, containing contributions on the Green movement. Topics covered include: the west European environmental movement; the Green movement in the USSR and Eastern Europe; and the failure of the US Greens.

For several decades, intercultural philosophers have produced an extensive body of scholarly work aimed at mutual intercultural understanding. They have focused on the ideal of intercultural dialogue that is supported by dialogue principles and virtuous attitudes. However, this ideal is challenged by decolonial scholarship as neglecting power inequalities. Decolonial scholars have emphasized the differences between cultures and worldviews, shifting the focus to colonial history and radical alterity. In return, intercultural philosophers have worried about the very possibility of dialogue and mutual (...) understanding in frameworks that use coloniality as their singular pole of analysis. In this paper, we explore the complex relations between decolonial and intercultural philosophies. While we diagnose tensions between both intellectual discourses, we argue that these tensions turn out to be productive: for intercultural philosophers, decolonial challenges provide an opportunity to critically rethink ideals of equitable dialogue in the light of colonial inequity and its deep entrenchment in global philosophical encounters. For decolonial scholars, intercultural philosophies provide an opportunity to sharpen positive proposals of equitable encounters beyond the critique of current forms of colonial domination. Rather than developing a compromise, we propose to embrace the productive tensions between them through a broad methodological toolbox. Decolonial and intercultural motifs serve different functions in the articulation of a critical global philosophy and can sharpen each other without integrating into a middle ground that is “a little bit intercultural” and “a little bit decolonial”. (shrink)

The core feature that distinguishes moods from emotions is that moods, in contrast to emotions, are diffuse and global. This article outlines a dispositional theory of moods (DTM) that accounts for this and other features of mood experience. DTM holds that moods are temporary dispositions to have or to generate particular kinds of emotion-relevant appraisals. Furthermore, DTM assumes that the cognitions and appraisals one is disposed to have in a given mood partly constitute the experience of mood. This article outlines (...) a number of implications of DTM (e.g., regarding the noncognitive causation and rationality of moods) and summarizes empirical results supporting the theory. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and up-to-date account of the landscape of contemporary epistemology. It presupposes only a minimum of prior philosophical knowledge, and includes an account of the logical and conceptual tools needed for philosophical analysis. Focuses on the writings and ideas of W. Alston, R. Audi, L. BonJour, R. Chisholm, A. Goldman. H. Kornboith, K. Lehrer. A. Plantinga, W. V. Quine, E. Sosa, and B Stroud, among others; links particular theories and arguments to their chief proponents and critics.

Opponents to consciousness in fish argue that fish do not feel pain because they do not have a neocortex, which is a necessary condition for feeling pain. A common counter-argument appeals to the multiple realizability of pain: while a neocortex might be necessary for feeling pain in humans, pain might be realized differently in fish. This paper argues, first, that it is impossible to find a criterion allowing us to demarcate between plausible and implausible cases of multiple realization of pain (...) without running into a circular argument. Second, opponents to consciousness in fish cannot be provided with reasons to believe in the multiple realizability of pain. I conclude that the debate on the existence of pain in fish is impossible to settle by relying on the multiple realization argument. (shrink)

Rational drug design is a method for developing new pharmaceuticals that typically involves the elucidation of fundamental physiological mechanisms. It thus combines the quest for a scientific understanding of natural phenomena with the design of useful technology and hence integrates epistemic and practical aims of research and development. Case studies of the rational design of the cardiovascular drugs propranolol, captopril and losartan provide insights into characteristics and conditions of this integration. Rational drug design became possible in the 1950s when theoretical (...) knowledge of drug-target interaction and experimental drug testing could interlock in cycles of mutual advancement. The integration does not, however, diminish the importance of basic research for pharmaceutical development. Rather, it can be shown that still in the 1990s, linear processes of innovation and the close combination of practical and epistemic work were interdependent. (shrink)

With this introduction we aim to illuminate Western Europe's place on the map of Cold War science and, specifically, to draw attention to the differences in and the diversity of Western European Cold War science in comparison to the United States. By discussing narratives of Cold War science in small states and asking how they fit into the European condition, we suggest that the fact of being a small state affects the conditions for and the scope of Cold War science. (...) As a whole, this special issue also emphasizes the importance of the spatial dimension; that is, the significant dependence of Cold War science on geographical relations and geopolitical interests. (shrink)

According to William Alston, we lack voluntary control over our propositional attitudes because we cannot believe intentionally, and we cannot believe intentionally because our will is not causally connected to belief formation. Against Alston, I argue that we can believe intentionally because our will is causally connected to belief formation. My defense of this claim is based on examples in which agents have reasons for and against believing p, deliberate on what attitude to take towards p, and subsequently acquire an (...) attitude A towards p because they have decided to take attitude A. From the possibility of intentional belief, two conclusions follow. First, the kind of control we have over our propositional attitudes is direct; it is possible for us to believe at will. Second, the question of whether what we believe is under our control ultimately depends on whether our will itself is under our control. It is, therefore, a question of the metaphysics of free will. (shrink)

The paper expands on Goshal’s criticism of what management as a scientific discipline teaches and the effects on managerial and societal ethics. The main argument put forward is that the economisation of management has a detrimental effect on the practice of management and on society in large. The ideology of economism is described and analysed from an epistemological perspective. The paper argues that the economisation of management not only introduces the problems of economics (three are identified and discussed) but destroys (...) the very essence of management because economics is focused on efficiency and management should be focused on effectiveness. What is more, the basic axioms of mainstream economics stand in stark contrast to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and therefore endanger the foundations of Western societies. Management theory (via corporate governance) is the Trojan horse carrying economism into society. (shrink)

Humans are creatures of articulation: an essential part of our form of life is the expression of what appears to us significant in what we experience and how we behave. The aim of this volume is to proceed from this realisation to an integrative anthropology that not only takes into account the uniqueness of our form of life, but also our evolutionary context. This has important consequences for our understanding of our corporeality, actions, language, consciousness and morals.

While scientific realism generally assumes that successful scientific explanations yield information about reality, realists also have to admit that not all information acquired in this way is equally well warranted. Some versions of scientific realism do this by saying that explanatory posits with which we have established some kind of causal contact are better warranted than those that merely appear in theoretical hypotheses. I first explicate this distinction by considering some general criteria that permit us to distinguish causal warrant from (...) theoretical warrant. I then apply these criteria to a specific case from particle physics, claiming that scientific realism has to incorporate the distinction between causal and theoretical warrant if it is to be an adequate stance in the philosophy of particle physics. (shrink)

Was macht das Besondere der menschlichen Lebensform aus? Wie können wir es verstehen, dass unsere Art wie alle anderen natürlich evolviert ist und dennoch als einzige Art die Fähigkeit entwickelt hat, unter dem Anspruch der Freiheit und in reflexiver Distanz zu handeln, damit aber die Umwelt auf eine Welt hin zu transzendieren? Jung argumentiert, dass sich diese Fragen nur beantworten lassen, wenn man philosophische, evolutionstheoretische und kognitionswissenschaftliche Ansätze aufeinander bezieht. Der Schlüssel hierfür ist der Begriff der Bedeutung. Alle Lebewesen erfassen (...) ihre Umwelt im praktischen Umgang mit ihr als bedeutsam. Auch der Geist des Menschen ist essentiell verkörpert und basiert auf erlebten Bedeutsamkeiten. Die Fähigkeit zur symbolischen Artikulation und kulturellen Weiterentwicklung solcher Lebensbedeutungen erlaubt es ihm aber auch, die lokale Umwelt zu transzendieren und dabei Werte, Normen und objektive Geltungsansprüche zu entwickeln. Eine zeitgemäße Anthropologie muss in der Lage sein, diese qualitativen Besonderheiten des menschlichen Geistes als Resultate von Naturprozessen verständlich zu machen. Sie verbindet methodischen Naturalismus mit Offenheit für die Transzendenz des Geistes über die Umwelt. Damit leistet der Autor einen wichtigen Beitrag zu einem nichtreduktionistischen Verständnis des Menschen, das Leib und Geist nicht dualistisch trennt, sondern ihre spannungsvolle Einheit sichtbar macht. (shrink)

This comprehensive volume gives a panorama of the best current work in this lively field, through twenty specially written essays by the leading figures in the field. All essays deal with foundational issues, from the nature of mathematical knowledge and mathematical existence to logical consequence, abstraction, and the notions of set and natural number. The contributors also represent and criticize a variety of prominent approaches to the philosophy of mathematics, including platonism, realism, nomalism, constructivism, and formalism.

Is perceptual processing in dedicated sensory areas sufficient for conscious perception? Localists say ‘Yes—given some background conditions.’ Prefrontalists say ‘No: conscious perceptual experience requires the involvement of prefrontal structures.’ I review the evidence for prefrontalism. I start by presenting correlational evidence. In doing so, I answer the ‘report argument’, according to which the apparent involvement of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness stems from the requirement for reports. I then review causal evidence for prefrontalism and answer the ‘lesion argument’, which purports (...) to show that prefrontalism is wrong because lesions to the prefrontal cortex do not abolish consciousness. I conclude that multiple sources of evidence converge toward the view that the prefrontal cortex plays a significant role in consciousness. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is in crisis because of repeated failures to discover new drugs for mental disorders. Lack of measurement validity could partly account for these failures. If researchers do not actually measure the effects of drugs on the disorders they aim to investigate, one should expect suboptimal treatment outcomes. I argue that this is the case, focusing on depression, and fear & anxiety disorders. In doing so, I show how psychiatric research illustrates a more general phenomenon that I call “validity (...) drift.” A validity drift occurs when, in the course of developing new measurement procedures, researchers end up studying something different from what they originally aimed to study. I analyze the different ways in which scientists attempt to validate procedures for measuring mental disorders for the purpose of testing drugs in animal models. I show how those validation efforts might fail, thereby leading to validity drifts. Overall, this analysis highlights the complex interplay between the development of new measurement procedures, their calibration, and scientific theories of the target phenomena. (shrink)

“Erotism and Censorship“ offers an introduction to the history of picture postcards and explores the German censorship until 1930. The specificity of the medium to react to the desires of the clients (mostly male) and to shape them simultaneously is explained in interpretations of examples. A documentary part presents a selection of texts about reproduction technologies. These texts were originally published in journals for collectors of postcards.

In quantum logics, the notions of strong and full order determination and unitality for states on orthomodular posets are well known. These notions are defined for hypergraphs and their state spaces in a consistent manner and the relations between them and to the notions defined for orthomodular posets are discussed. The state space of a hypergraph is a polytope. This polytope is a simplex if and only if every superposition of pure states is a mixture of these same pure states. (...) Isomorphic hypergraphs have convexly isomorphic state spaces. A class of hypergraphs is given whose group of automorphisms is group-isomorphic to the group of convex automorphisms of their state spaces. (shrink)

In this paper an alternative Skolemization method is introduced that, for a large class of formulas, is sound and complete with respect to intuitionistic logic. This class extends the class of formulas for which standard Skolemization is sound and complete and includes all formulas in which all strong quantifiers are existential. The method makes use of an existence predicate first introduced by Dana Scott.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

One of the most common arguments in favour of the state's authority is that without the coordinating hand of political institutions, we could not achieve important moral benefits. I argue that if we understand authority correctly, then coordination cannot even in principle establish that coordinators have political authority.

The main claim of this paper is that notions of implementation based on an isomorphic correspondence between physical and computational states are not tenable. Rather, ``implementation'' has to be based on the notion of ``bisimulation'' in order to be able to block unwanted implementation results and incorporate intuitions from computational practice. A formal definition of implementation is suggested, which satisfies theoretical and practical requirements and may also be used to make the functionalist notion of ``physical realization'' precise. The upshot of (...) this new definition of implementation is that implementation cannot distinguish isomorphic bisimilar from non-isomporphic bisimilar systems anymore, thus driving a wedge between the notions of causal and computational complexity. While computationalism does not seem to be affected by this result, the consequences for functionalism are not clear and need further investigations. (shrink)

For several decades, Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The book series is international in orientation and reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The series is led by an international team of editors.

Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

Die Religionsphilosophie von Heinrich Scholz (1921/22; Neudruck 1974) gilt als eines der eigentümlichsten und merkwürdigsten Bücher, die im Gebiete der philosophischen Erhellung der theologischen Aufgabe geschrieben wurde. Die vorliegenden Studien zeigen, wie die Religionsphilosophie im Sinne Scholzens sich als wissenschaftliche Disziplin eigenständig begründet und von theologischer Apologetik ebenso unterscheidet wie von den allgemeinen Religionswissenschaften. Sie fragen nach dem Ursprung des religionsphilosophischen Denkens im philosophischen Selbstbewusstsein, um von hier aus den Zusammenhang zu entfalten, der es Scholz ermöglicht, Religion als ein genuin (...) philosophisches Problem wahrzunehmen, indem er die Philosophie vor die Frage nach der Wahrheit der Religion stellt. (shrink)

Using an analytical and historical approach, this article indicates that democracy, as understood today, is more closely linked with human rights than many authors assume. The first section attempts to justify the approach selected, which connects distinctions revealed by linguistic analysis of various word usages with an historical investigation of the evolving meaning of certain concepts. Section two contains several systematic considerations which firstly, appeal for retention of the now commonly assumed equivalence between democracy in the classical sense and constitutional (...) democracy as it exists today and which secondly, require delimiting human rights as a special class of individual rights. It then becomes clear that much of the criticism in the literature claiming that human rights are anti-democratic, if not indeed of egoistical character, are unjustified. The third section contains an historical sketch of the relevant concepts. This sketch represents an effort to counteract commonly held beliefs that human rights originated in the group interests of the privileged class, since often conjectures about their origin are used to show that human rights are inherently undemocratic and amoral. It appears likely that canonists of the twelfth century developed the concepts of individual rights and human rights. They assumed both that individuals and groups had certain legal rights, but also that every human being had an innate right to the minimum vital necessities and a certain amount of freedom. These concepts regarding rights became absorbed into modern discourse via Ockham's political writings and Gerson's works. Under the influence of Reformation theory, scientific thought and the Enlightenment, they developed into a demand for the right to freedom for all. Der Aufsatz enthält analytische Überlegungen und historische Hinweise, die zeigen sollen, daß Demokratie, wie sie heute verstanden wird, und Menschenrechte enger miteinander verknüpft sind, als dies von vielen Autoren angenommen wird. Im ersten Abschnitt wird versucht, die hier benutzte Verknüpfung von sprachanalytischer Unterscheidung verschiedener Wortverwendungsweisen und begriffsgeschichtlicher Untersuchung zu rechtfertigen. Teil zwei enthält einige systematische Erwägungen, die erstens dafür plädieren, die im Alltagsdiskurs üblich gewordene Verknüpfung von Demokratie und demokratischem Verfassungsstaat beizubehalten. Zweitens sollte man Menschenrechte als besondere Klasse subjektiver Rechte ausgrenzen. Dann wird deutlich, daß die in der Literatur nicht seltenen Vorwürfe über ihren angeblich antidemokratischen, wenn nicht gar egoistischen Charakter unberechtigt sind. Im dritten Abschnitt dient eine begriffsgeschichtliche Skizze dazu, gegenüber historisch argumentierenden Kritikern den verbreiteten Überzeugungen über den Ursprung der Menschenrechte aus Gruppeninteressen von Privilegierten entgegenzutreten, da aus den angeblichen Anfängen nicht selten ein den Menschenrechten immanentes Monument des Undemokratischen und Amoralischen gefolgert wird. Vermutlich entwickelten sich subjektive Rechte und Menschenrechte als eigenständige Begriffe bei Kirchenrechtlern des zwölften Jahrhunderts, die sowohl besondere Rechtsansprüche von Einzelpersonen und Gruppierungen, aber auch ein jedem Menschen als solchem zukommendes Recht auf das Lebensnotwendige und auf ein gewisses Mass an Freiheit annahmen. Über Ockhams politische Schriften und über Gerson gelangten diese Rechtskonzepte in die neuzeitliche Diskussion, wo sie sich unter dem Einfluß reformatorischer Theorie, von naturwissenschaftlichem Denken und Aufklärung zur politischen Forderung nach Freiheitsrechten für alle entwickelten. (shrink)

In discussions of early-modern notions of passion and virtue, the humanist movement has played only a minor role. However, it has its own characteristics and approaches to the problem of passion and virtue. The moral philosophy of the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano is a case in point. Pontano pronounces himself against the Stoic doctrine of the eradication of the passions. Although his moral psychology follows traditional conceptions of the passions as subjected to the rule of reason, it rather illustrates the (...) complex structures into which reason and virtue have to be implemented. The notion of arduousness is helpful to illuminate these structures. Falling back on Aquinas' distinction between a 'concupiscible' and an 'irascible' appetite, Pontano puts a special emphasis on the latter, necessary to deal with the difficulties and hardships that are typical of any process of learning. As he argues, the way to human perfection is full of hardship, and the higher the perfection aims, the greater the hardship will be. This concept implies the need for passionate responses to overcome hardship.Moreover, it suggests the picture of a ruler unimpressed by difficulties and obstacles, vehement and forceful. (shrink)