ABSTRACT Agents in Frankfurt-style counterexamples only appear to be responsible insofar as they act willingly in the actual sequence, but would need to be manipulated against their will into forming the relevant intention in the alternative sequence. This difference appears ineliminable and unavoidably morally significant. ‘Neo-Frankfurtians’ concede that the sequences must be physically differentiated, but deny their moral differentiation. In contrast, I explore whether the alternatives could be physically undifferentiated, despite their moral difference. The reason there is an ineliminable moral (...) difference is because there is an ineliminable causal one: The agent’s choice must be caused by his own inclinations in one sequence, but by Black’s manipulation in the other. Whether this causal difference entails a physical one depends on whether we suppose causal relations conform to Humean supervenience. The denial of the latter requires us to either reject any broadly Humean view of causation, or else to suppose that we can individuate events or their qualities independently of the physical facts. If these are coherent possibilities, such examples may show that physically differentiated alternatives are not required for moral responsibility. This could support compatibilism, but only if such examples adequately parallel determinism, and I remain sceptical on this point. (shrink)

Our world culture is founded on the belief that consciousness is derived from matter, giving rise to the materialistic assumption that informs almost every aspect of our lives as is the root cause of the suffering within individuals, the conflicts between communities and nations, and the degradation of our environment. The Nature of Consciousness exposes the fallacy of this belief and suggests that the recognition of the presence, the primacy and the nature of consciousness is the prerequisite for any new (...) paradigm that is to address these issues at their core."--Back cover. (shrink)

Aus einer philosophisch-phanomenologischen und literaturwissenschaftlichen Perspektive heraus gewinnt Nadine Benz nahere Erkenntnisse uber das temporale Phanomen des Wartens. Zunachst wird die historische Entwicklung der Zeitvorstellung aus philosophisch-phanomenologischer Sicht thematisiert, spezifisch im Hinblick auf die Fragen nach Messbarkeit, Vermitteltheit und nach objektiven und subjektiven Komponenten von Zeiterfahrung in ihrer Aporetik. Im Anschluss wird vom Konzept der Lebenswelt zur Literatur ubergeleitet: Die vorliegende Studie bindet die Aporien der Zeit zunachst theoretisch in eine Narratologie von Zeiterfahrung ein, die vor allem den Faktor (...) des Fiktiven produktiv berucksichtigt. Schliesslich werden die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse und Instrumente fur eine Analyse von Erzahltexten des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts fruchtbar gemacht. Hier erlangen die literarischen Konfigurationen von Wartezeit als Semantiken des Wartens fur die Subjekte der fiktiven Zeiterfahrung einen konstitutiven Status. (shrink)

This book is an examination of personal identity, exploring both who we think we are, and how we construct the sense of ourselves through art. It proposes that the notion of personal identity is a psycho-social construction that has evolved over many centuries. While this idea has been widely discussed in recent years, Andrew Spira approaches it from a completely new point of view. Rather than relying on the thinking subject's attempts to identify itself consciously and verbally, it focuses (...) on the traces that the self-sense has unconsciously left in the fabric of its environment in the form of non-verbal cultural conventions. Covering a millennium of western European cultural history, it amounts to an 'anthropology of personal identity in the West'. Following a broadly chronological path, Spira traces the self-sense from its emergence from the collectivity of the medieval Church to its consummation in the individualistic concept of artistic genius in the nineteenth century. In doing so, it aims to bridge a gap that exists between cultural history and philosophy. Regarding cultural history (especially art history), it elicits significances from its material that have been thoroughly overlooked. Regarding philosophy, it highlights the crucial role that material culture plays in the formation of philosophical ideas. It argues that the sense of personal self is as much revealed by cultural conventions - and as a cultural convention - as it is observable to the mind as an object of philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

This article theorises the relationship between 1970s US Third World queer and feminist movements and Latin American anti-imperialist revolutions of the late twentieth century. I focus upon the historically occluded relationships between Third World feminists and queers in Chile and the United States throughout the transition to neoliberalism. My archive includes June Jordan’s little-known writings on Chile, the writings of Audre Lorde, and, primarily, a 1973 Third World feminist poetry reading staged in San Francisco shortly after the Pinochet coup. By (...) assembling this unconventional archive, I intervene into the domestication of US anti-racist queer, black and feminist of colour politics. I argue for the profoundly internationalist foundation of these formations. I work to re-animate a moment when the affective economies of anti-colonial ‘global revolution’ opened up space for the imagination of joint struggle – allowing a visceral sense of struggle’s urgency and vitality in ways that have since been partially eclipsed. (shrink)

La philosophie de Baudrillard est inédite puisqu'il possède une façon originale de voir le monde, ses yeux étant ceux d'un philosophe-critique, d'un sociologue, d'un journaliste et d'un pataphysicien. Ce faisant, il possède une manière fort intéressante de nommer les faits. D'où toute la série de termes qu'il revisite ou invente surtout ceux formés par le préfixe hyper comme hyperconsommation, hypermarché, hyperréel, hypercorps, hyperespace et bien d'autres. Malgré sa quête du sens et du réel, Baudrillard débouche sur le non-sens et proclame (...) moyennement l'absence du réel. C'est comme si tout l'objectif de sa quête était uniquement la description du réel disparu et non la recherche et l'instauration du réel voire d'un nouveau réel. La recherche conduite ici s'attaque à la pensée hyperréelle de Jean Baudrillard tout en présentant l'originalité de cette pensée singulière et controversée. (shrink)

Our self, aware presence, knows no resistance to any appearance and, as such, is happiness itself; like the empty space of a room, it cannot be disturbed and is, therefore, peace itself; like this page, it is intimately one with whatever appears on it and is thus love itself; and like water that is not affected by the shape of a wave, it is pure freedom. Causeless joy, imperturbable peace, love that knows no opposite, and freedom at the heart of (...) all experience...this is our ever-present nature under all circumstances. (shrink)

Values and virtues play an important role in military organizations. In particular, armies can be understood as institutions that are guided by values and virtues, endeavoring to promote them. A common understanding within the military organization relating the relevant values and virtues is therefore essential. In many armed forces, there are lists of relevant values and virtues that have mostly grown historically. In the context of this volume, special emphasis has been devoted to the value and virtue culture and its (...) importance within a military organization. Specifically, the dimensional structure of values and virtues was analyzed. Through a systematic survey of the military target groups and a factor analytical assessment within the Swiss Armed Forces, the core values and virtues were categorized and defined. These values and virtues describe the current culture of the Swiss Armed Forces and contribute to a more binding support of the objectives of military education. (shrink)

Susser and Cabrera (2024) assess the role of bespoke neuro-privacy regulations including the creation of a novel right to mental privacy. They argue that focusing on what distinguishes mental priva...

Abstract‘Relativists' and ‘absolutists' about truth often see their own camp as promoting virtues, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility, and see the opposing camp as fostering vices, like closed-mindedness and arrogance. Relativism is accused of fostering these vices because it entails that each person’s beliefs are automatically right for the person who holds them. How can we be humble or open-minded if we cannot concede that we might be wrong? Absolutism is accused of fostering these vices because the view is (...) seen as entailing certainty. This also seems to preclude us from conceding that we could be wrong. However, no relativist defends the Protagorean version of relativism that entails infallibilism. And no absolutist posits infallible certainty. Fallibilism really is a precondition of various virtues, but both camps take themselves to be defending fallibilist positions against opponents who they take to be committed to infallibilism. Philosophers may inadvertently end up promoting precisely the sort of infallibilism they oppose by creating a false dichotomy and caricaturing the opposing camp. This underscores the importance of interpretive charity in both academic and public debate. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the German discourse particle denn that captures the meaning contribution of this particle in polar questions, wh-questions, and certain conditional antecedents in a unified way. It is shown that the behavior of denn exhibits an asymmetry between polar and wh-interrogatives, which can be captured by treating the particle as sensitive to the property highlighted by its containing clause, in the sense of Roelofsen and Farkas :359–414, 2015). In addition, the paper argues that highlighting-sensitivity should (...) be incorporated in the account of another discourse particle, German überhaupt, and discusses how the proposed account of discourse particle denn may be extended to also cover the use of denn as a causal conjunction. (shrink)

Background The worldwide increase in older persons demands technological solutions to combat the shortage of caregiving and to enable aging in place. Smart home health technologies (SHHTs) are promoted and implemented as a possible solution from an economic and practical perspective. However, ethical considerations are equally important and need to be investigated. Methods We conducted a systematic review according to the PRISMA guidelines to investigate if and how ethical questions are discussed in the field of SHHTs in caregiving for older (...) persons. Results 156 peer-reviewed articles published in English, German and French were retrieved and analyzed across 10 electronic databases. Using narrative analysis, 7 ethical categories were mapped: privacy, autonomy, responsibility, human vs. artificial interactions, trust, ageism and stigma, and other concerns. Conclusion The findings of our systematic review show the (lack of) ethical consideration when it comes to the development and implementation of SHHTs for older persons. Our analysis is useful to promote careful ethical consideration when carrying out technology development, research and deployment to care for older persons. Registration We registered our systematic review in the PROSPERO network under CRD42021248543. (shrink)

This book project intends to serve as a course adoption book unpacking theories of biopolitical life-making and death-making, with chapters dedicated to specific objects that ostensibly affirm life (and argue for life's inextricable links to capital), but that ultimately reify a politics of death and erasure. Specific objects, such as the pink Kommen Foundation-branded handgun, the 'super user' of health care resources, and fat cells allow the authors to discuss the political junctures at which determinations of healthy and unhealthy, life (...) and death, are made. (shrink)

Resident Evil is a multidimensional, multimedia universe. The essays written for this volume will focus on this particular zombie manifestation and its significance in popular culture, cover a wide range, and discuss numerous issues. Among them are game theory, the idea of silence as well as memory, the connection to iconic stories, posthumanism and much more.

Der Philanthrop Joachim Heinrich Campe publizierte gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts zwei Ratgeber für bürgerliche Mädchen und Jungen. Damit wollte er sie besser auf ihre zukünftigen geschlechtsspezifischen Pflichten vorbereiten. Sein Mädchenratgeber Väterlicher Rath für meine Tochter erhält in der modernen Geschlechterforschung.

With robots being introduced into caregiving, particularly for older persons, various ethical concerns are raised. Among them is the fear of replacing human caregiving. While ethical concepts like well-being, autonomy, and capabilities are often used to discuss these concerns, this paper brings forth the concept of social dignity to further develop guidelines concerning the use of robots in caregiving. By social dignity, we mean that a person’s perceived dignity changes in response to certain interactions and experiences with other persons. In (...) this paper, we will first present the concept of social dignity, and then identify a niche where robots can be used in caregiving in an ethical manner. Specifically, we will argue that, because some activities of daily living are performed in solitude to maintain dignity, a care recipient will usually prefer robotic assistance instead of human assistance for these activities. Secondly, we will describe how other philosophical concepts, which have been commonly used to judge robotic assistance in caregiving for the elderly so far, such as well-being, autonomy, and capabilities, are less useful in determining whether robotic assistance in caregiving is ethically problematic or not. To conclude, we will argue that social dignity offers an advantage to the other concepts, as it allows to ask the most pressing questions in caregiving. (shrink)

Fake news is a scourge within modern society, brought about by foreign powers amplifying messages throughout the recently constructed echo chambers of social media and exacerbated by the lack of co...

The Druze movement originated at the beginning of the eleventh century and developed out of the Ismā'īlī faction of Shī'ī Islām. Founded by the Ismā'īlī Ḥamza ibn 'Alī, the Tawḥīd is a philosophical and spiritual path that incorporates the fundamentals of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism referred to in the Qur'ān, together with the ancient philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and others. It is a synthesis and a unification of the most contradictory thoughts, a synthesis that leads to the real (...) Tawḥīd or "third course".The specificity of the Tawḥīd consists in establishing a bridge between monotheism and non-dualism. To say that God is One does not merely mean... (shrink)

Supervenient libertarianism maintains that indeterminism may exist at a supervening agency level, consistent with determinism at a subvening physical level. It seems as if this approach has the potential to break the longstanding deadlock in the free will debate, since it concedes to the traditional incompatibilist that agents can only do otherwise if they can do so in their actual circumstances, holding the past and the laws constant, while nonetheless arguing that this ability is compatible with physical determinism. However, we (...) argue that supervenient libertarianism faces some serious problems, and that it fails to break us free from this deadlock within the free will debate. (shrink)

In January 2022 the new Dutch Civic Integration programme was launched together with promises of improvements it would bring in facilitating the ‘integration’ of newcomers to the Netherlands. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts intended for municipalities to take on their new coordinating role in this programme. The analysis aims to understand the discourse in the texts, which actors are mobilized by them, and the role these texts and these actors play in processes of governmental racialization. The (...) analysis demonstrates shifting complex assemblages are brought into cascades of governance in which all actors are disciplined to accept the problem of integration as a problem of cultural difference and distance, and then furthermore disciplined to adopt new practices deemed necessary to identify and even ‘objectively’ measure the inherent traits contributing to this problematic. Lastly, the analysis displays that all actors are disciplined to accept the solution of ‘spontaneous compliance’; a series of practices and knowledges, which move the civic integration programme beyond an aim of responsibilization, into a programme of internalization, wherein newcomers are expected to own and address their problematic ‘nature’, making ‘modern’ values their own. (shrink)

Proponents of modern Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples generally accept that we cannot construct successful FSCs in which there are no alternative possibilities present. But they maintain that we can construct successful FSCs in which there are no morally significant alternatives present and that such examples succeed in breaking any conceptual link between alternative possibilities and free will. I argue that it is not possible to construct an FSC that succeeds even in this weaker sense. In cases where any alternatives are clearly insignificant, (...) it does not appear at all obvious that the agent can be held responsible. Present popular FSCs include alternatives that are ambiguous in their significance, and when the examples are sharpened to remove this ambiguity, they lose their force. Moreover, the proponent of such examples faces a problem: We can easily construct scenarios in which any alternatives are obviously insignificant, and in such scenarios, we are not intuitively inclined to suppose the agent is responsible. The proponent of new FSCs must therefore distinguish any alternatives she includes from the sorts included in these scenarios. The difference must now be such that this helps to make it seem intuitively likely that the agent is responsible where the agent otherwise would not appear responsible, and these alternatives are irrelevant to any judgment about whether the agent is responsible. I maintain that it is impossible to achieve both of these goals at once. (shrink)

Fox and Spector use multiple instances of the exhaustivity operator EXH to derive the correct meaning of utterances that include pitch-focus marked disjunction in downward-entailing environments. They argue that the \ operator evaluates alternatives to be used by EXH. Though the method is sound and gets the right result, we argue that the way in which EXH would need to interact with other instances of EXH, as well as other focus-sensitive elements, is at odds with how EXH is used to (...) explain other phenomena. Specifically, the analysis in Fox and Spector predicts intervention effects for cases where EXH interacts with other focus-sensitive elements. This is problematic for many cases in which EXH is used to derive the desired inferences. We propose a different way of focus association for EXH that would work for the approach introduced in Fox and Spector as well as elsewhere. In addition, our account does not require a covert element to be focused. (shrink)

Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings: Inspiring People, Places and Practices examines what it means to be a leader, manager and administrator across the early childhood education field. The first section of the book introduces readers to core concepts, including self-understanding through professional reflection and consideration of people's beliefs and values. These chapters explore the challenges of working within various early childhood settings and the importance of connecting and communicating with families and the broader community. The second section considers four (...) key roles that early childhood professionals undertake – team stakeholder, policy designer, pedagogy creator and rights advocate. This book challenges readers to make links across research, theories and everyday practices by thinking, reflecting, sharing with others and writing stories. The storytelling approach guides readers through the chapters and explores the themes of embodiment and sustainability. Leading and Managing Early Childhood Settings is an invaluable resource for pre- and in-service educators alike. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 383-386.

Objective: The establishment of patient-centered measures capable of empirically determining meaningful cognitive change after surgery can significantly improve the medical care of epilepsy patients. Thus, this study aimed to develop reliable change indices (RCIs) and standardized regression-based (SRB) change norms for a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery in the German language. Methods: Forty-seven consecutive patients with temporal lobe epilepsy underwent neuropsychological assessments, both before and 12 months after surgery. Practice-effect-adjusted RCIs and SRB change norms for each test score were computed. To (...) assess their usefulness, the presented methods were applied to a clinical sample, and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to model the odds of achieving improvement in quality of life (QOL) after surgery. Results: The determined RCIs at 90% confidence intervals, and the SRB equations for each test score included in the test battery are provided. Cohen’s kappa analyses revealed a moderate mean agreement between the two measures, varying from slight to almost perfect agreement across test scores. Using these measures, a negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery was detected. Significance: To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to provide RCIs and SRB change norms necessary for the objective determination of neuropsychological change in a comprehensive test battery in the German language, facilitating the individual monitoring of improvement and decline in each patients’ cognitive functioning and psychosocial situations after epilepsy surgery. The application of the described measures revealed a strong negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery. (shrink)

The Code of Best Practice produced by the Cadbury Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance may be viewed as an ethical code in that it prescribes standards of board behaviour. The Code’s specific recommendations with regard to audit committees appear to offer a practical mechanism for the promotion of ethical behaviour through the inhibition of potentially unethical influences exerted by executive directors over external auditors. The rationale for these recommendations centres on the independence of audit committee members, implying (...) that independence is a prerequisite for ethical behaviour. This paper questions the assumptions regarding the role of independence through an exploration of conceptions of independence held by individuals involved in the activities of audit committees in major UK public limited companies. It suggests that audit committees may have an unarticulated role in providing an arena for the display of independence by the participants. This display forms a part of the ceremonial performance which builds confidence in corporate governance mechanisms. (shrink)

Pereboom has formulated a Frankfurt-style counterexample in which an agent is alleged to be responsible despite the fact that there are only non-robust alternatives present (Pereboom, Moral responsibility and alternative possibilities: essays on the importance of alternative possibilities, 2003; Phil Explor 12(2):109–118, 2009). I support Widerker’s objection to Pereboom’s Tax Evasion 2 example (Widerker, J Phil 103(4):163–187, 2006) (which rests on the worry that the agent in this example is derivatively culpable as opposed to directly responsible) against Pereboom’s recent counterarguments (...) to this objection (Pereboom 2009). Building on work by Moya (J Phil 104:475–486, 2007; Critica 43(128):3–26, 2011) and Widerker (Widerker 2006), I argue that there is good reason to measure the robustness of alternatives in terms of comparative, rather than non-comparative likelihood of exemption, where the important factor for blame is whether the agent is “doing her reasonable best” to avoid blameworthy behaviour. I maintain that an agent only ever appears responsible when alternatives are robust in this sense. In Pereboom’s examples, both Tax Evasion 2, and his more recent version, Tax Evasion 3 (Pereboom 2009), I maintain the robustness of the alternatives, so understood, is unclear. We can clear up any ambiguity by sharpening the examples, and the result is that the agent appears responsible when the alternatives are made clearly robust, and does not appear responsible when alternatives appear clearly non-robust. The comparative nature of our judgements about blame, I maintain helps to explain the continuing appeal of the “leeway-incompatibilist” viewpoint. (shrink)

Older adults often have long-term relationships, and many of their goals are intertwined with their respective partners. Joint goals can help or hinder goal progress. Little is known about how accurately older adults assess if a goal is joint, the role of over-reporting in these perceptions, and how joint goals and over-reporting may relate to older partners' relationship satisfaction and physical health. Two-hundred-thirty-six older adults from 118 couples listed their three most important goals and whether they thought of them as (...) goals they had in common with and wanted to achieve together with their partner. Two independent raters classified goals as “joint” if both partners independently listed open-ended goals of the same content. Goal progress and relationship satisfaction were assessed 1 week later. Allostatic load was calculated using nine different biomarkers. Results show that 85% self-reported at least one goal as joint. Over-reporting– the perception that a goal was joint when in fact it was not mentioned among the three most salient goals of the spouse – occurred in one-third of all goals. Multilevel models indicate that the number of externally-rated joint goals was related to greater goal progress and lower allostatic load, but only for adults with little over-reporting. More joint goals and higher over-reporting were each linked with more relationship satisfaction. In conclusion, joint goals are associated with goal progress, relationship satisfaction, and health, but the association is dependent on the domain of functioning. (shrink)

Graphical models are a powerful tool for causal model specification. Besides allowing for a hierarchical representation of variable interactions, they do not require any a priori specification of the functional dependence between variables. The construction of such graphs hence often relies on the mere testing of whether or not model variables are marginally or conditionally independent. The identification of causal relationships then solely requires some general assumptions on the relation between stochastic and causal independence, such as the Causal Markov Condition (...) and the Faithfulness Condition (Spirtes et al. 2000; Pearl 2000). However, a procedure would require further assumptions to hold. Namely those the independence tests themselves are based on. In continuous settings, Spirtes et al. (2000) suggest causal inference based on a very restrictive formulation of independence, that is, vanishing partial correlations. Such a measure does, however, limit the applicability of causal inference to linear systems. This constitutes a serious drawback especially for the social sciences where an a priori specification of the functional form proves difficult or at odds with linearity. In short: graphical models theoretically reduce specification uncertainty regarding functional dependence, but their implementation in practice deprives them of this virtue. In this paper we investigate how causal structures in continuous settings can be identified when both functional forms and probability distributions of the variables remain unspecified. We focus on tests exploiting the fact that if X and Y are conditionally independent given a set of variables Z, the two conditional densities f (X|Y, Z) and f (X|Z) must coincide. We start by estimating the conditional densities f(X|Y, Z) and f(X|Z) via nonparametric techniques (kernel methods). We proceed by testing if some metric expressing the distance between these very conditional densities is sufficiently close to zero. Out of several metrics available in the literature to express such distance we choose two, the Euclidean, and the Hellinger distance. We investigate in a Monte Carlo study how different tests involving either measure are able to detect statistical independence, conditioned on a small set of variables. One limitation may result from nonparametric density estimation being subject to the curse of dimensionality. As the number of variables increases, the estimated empirical density converges at a slower rate to its population value. To compensate this drawback we use a local bootstrap procedure which consists of resampling the data for each test. While local bootstrap strongly increases the computational time of the test, it succeeds in counterbalancing the curse of dimensionality. (shrink)

A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...) justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them. (shrink)