Praise, unlike blame, is generally considered well intended and beneficial, and therefore in less need of scrutiny. In line with recent developments, we argue that praise merits more thorough philosophical analysis. We show that, just like blame, praise can be problematic by expressing a failure to respect a person’s equal value or worth as a person. Such patronizing praise, however, is often more insidious, because praise tends to be regarded as well intended and beneficial, which renders it harder to recognize (...) and object to. Among other things, a philosophical analysis of patronizing praise helps people on the receiving end articulate why they feel uncomfortable or offended by it, shows patronizing praisers how their praise is problematic, and provides input for further philosophical analysis of blame.In the first section of the paper, we discuss how hypocritical praise, just like hypocritical blame, can fail to respect the equality of persons by expressing that the praiser applies more demanding moral standards to the praisee than to themself. We further discuss obstructionist praise, which loosely corresponds to complicit blame, and can similarly express that certain moral standards apply to others but not to the praiser. In the second part of the paper, we discuss another variety of patronizing praise. Praise can be an inaccurate appraisal of a person based on irrelevant considerations – like race, gender, or class – and thereby constitute a failure to recognize their equal worth as a person. We identify three ways in which such praise can manifest. (shrink)

Solar radiation management (SRM) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that SRM may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about SRM may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale preregistered, money-incentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N = 2284). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate change charities and clicks on climate change petition (...) links) as well as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive information about SRM with two control groups (a salience control that includes information about climate change generally and a content control that includes information about a different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned real-money endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of receiving information about SRM and, based on equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of a meaningfully large effect. Our results thus provide evidence for the claim that there is no detectable moral hazard with respect to SRM. [Open access]. (shrink)

Mental health-care clinicians report that they hold patients responsible for morally objectionable behaviour but at the same time consider blaming attitudes to be inappropriate. These practices present a conundrum for all Strawsonian theories of responsibility. In response to this conundrum, Pickard has proposed severing the Strawsonian connection between being responsible and being an appropriate target of blaming attitudes. In this article I will argue that her solution fails to explain the practices at stake and provide an alternative solution that uncovers (...) an under-theorized stance we take towards those whose abilities are underdeveloped or compromised. (shrink)

Des premiers rites baptismaux à la confession moderne, les références au christianisme sont constantes dans l'œuvre de Michel Foucault. Cette constance s'inscrit dans un questionnement philosophique plus large sur notre actualité : comprendre le rapport que nous avons aujourd'hui à nous-mêmes demande de s'interroger sur les actes de vérité que l'Occident a instaurés depuis les premiers siècles chrétiens. Que faut-il dire et manifester de soi pour être transformé dans son être, pardonné, sauvé, jugé ou guéri)? Ce livre propose une étude (...) critique de l'ensemble des lectures chrétiennes de Foucault, avec une attention particulière portée au cours Du gouvernement des vivants. Ni chronologique ni thématique, le parcours suivi espère retrouver la logique d'un travail à la fois philosophique et historique : quand et comment le christianisme a-t-il été constitué par Foucault en objet de recherche, avec quelles pratiques de lecture et quelles conséquences sur l'interprétation)? (shrink)

Quelle politique peut-on faire quand on est un idiot? Loin d'être saugrenue, c'est bien la question qu'on est conduit à se poser inévitablement en lisant l'oeuvre de Gilles Deleuze. L'"idiot" joue, en effet, un rôle incontournable et essentiel dans la philosophie de Deleuze. Il est le personnage conceptuel qui fait tenir cette philosophie dans sa consistance propre. Il se situe à la charnière de l'image de la pensée que le philosophe invoque et suppose plus ou moins implicitement et de la (...) création de concepts qu'il produit explicitement. Aussi, faire de la philosophie, tout comme agir et penser politiquement, c'est toujours une manière de faire l'idiot. Les conséquences de cette approche sont capitales, du fait des questions posées à la réflexion politique classique centrée sur le Droit et l'Etat, du fait aussi des problématiques qui se voient invalidées dans ce champ. La place qui revient au contrôle et au bio-pouvoir, aux zones d'indétermination et aux espaces lisses, permet de prendre une saine distance vis-à-vis de la politique "majoritaire" et de faire apparaître, comme déjà de vieux clichés, bon nombre de thèmes et de concepts revendiqués par les organisations alternatives, mondialistes et subversives récentes. C'est une tout autre idée de la politique, centrée sur les devenirs, que nous invite à méditer la politique deleuzienne de l'idiot. Elle nous ouvre à d'autres espérances, nouvelles, en lien avec un "peuple absent" qui naîtrait avec chaque devenir. (shrink)

Communication and cultivation accounts of responsibility argue that blaming has an important communicative and agency-cultivating function when addressed at someone we consider to be deserving of blame. On these accounts, responsible agents are agents who can understand negative reactive attitudes and are sensitive to their moral-agency cultivating function. In this paper I examine our reproachful engagements with agents whose moral agency is underdeveloped or compromised. I discuss how these engagements compare to blaming on CC accounts and argue reproachful engagements can (...) have an important communicative and agency-cultivating pointe. I then go on to propose an addition to CC-accounts that explains how underdeveloped and compromised agents can be held responsible. I will show how this addition resolves ambiguities in accounts from McKenna, Vargas and McGeer. I conclude the paper by anticipating an objection CC accounts could raise: that reproach and blame are co-extensive. (shrink)

Animal research suggests that central serotonergic neurons are involved in behavioral suppression, particularly anxiety-related inhibition. The hypothesis linking decreased serotonin transmission to reduced anxiety as the mechanism in the anxiolytic activity of benzodiazepines conflicts with most clinical observations. Serotonin antagonists show no marked capacity to alleviate anxiety. On the other hand, clinical signs of reduced serotonergic transmission (low 5-HIAA levels in the cerebrospinal fluid) are frequently associated with aggressiveness, suicide attempts, and increased anxiety. The target article attempts to reconcile such (...) human and animal findings by investigating whether anxiety reduction or increased impulsivity is more Likely to account for animal behavioral changes associated with decreased serotonergic transmission. The effects of manipulating central serotonin in experimental anxiety paradigms in animals (punishment, extinction, novelty) are reviewed and compared with the effects of antianxiety drugs. Anxiety seems neither necessary nor sufficient to induce control by serotonergic neurons on behavior. Further evidence suggests that behavioral effects of anxiolytics thought to be mediated by decreases in anxiety are not caused by the ability of these drugs to reduce serotonin transmission. Blockade of serotonin transmission, especially at the level of the substantia nigra, results in a shift of behavior toward facilitation of responding. This behavioral shift is particularly marked when there is competition between acting and restraining response tendencies and when obstacles prevent the immediate attainment of an anticipated reward. It is proposed that serotonergic neurons are involved not only in behavioral arousal but also in enabling the organism to arrange or tolerate delay before acting. Decreases in serotonin transmission seem to be associated with the increased performance of behaviors that are usually suppressed, though not necessarily because of the alleviation of anxiety, which might contribute to the suppression. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, we explore what are ethical forms of holding service users responsible in mental health care contexts. Hanna Pickard has provided an account of how service users should be held responsible for morally wrong or seriously harmful conduct within contexts of mental health care, called the clinical stance. From a clinical stance one holds a person responsible for harm, but refrains from emotionally blaming the person and only considers the person responsible for this conduct in a detached (...) sense. Her account is based on what are considered best practices in the treatment of people with borderline personality disorder and addiction. We ask if this account generalizes across different diagnostic criteria and different clinical contexts. To begin to answer this question, we compare the clinical stance to an account of what are considered best practices in the treatment of service users at a specialized clinic for people with autism spectrum disorder in the Netherlands. We refer to this alternative account as the nurturing stance and highlight relevant similarities and differences between the clinical stance and the nurturing stance. We conclude with suggestions for further research and theorizing. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I The Extended Auction II Working in the Peep Show, Flirting in the Square III Insurance Behind a Veil of Ignorance IV Dworkin's Hybrid Scheme V Four Objections to Dworkin VI Ackerman Generalized VII Not Enough Redistribution? VIII Too Much Redistribution? Acknowledgement.

The conception of social justice presented and defended in Philippe Van Parijs, "Real Freedom for All" entails, among other implication, the justification of an unconditional basic income. It was the subject of seven critical comments that forms issue 22 and part of 23 of ANALYSE & KRITIK. In this article, Van Parijs offers a comprehensive reply.

One of the key criticisms of the ethical review process is the time taken to decision, and associated resource use. A key source of delay is that most submissions are required to respond to at leas...

An introduction to semantics for the general reader. How things mean, from animal communication to music.

Dans La Volonté de savoir, Foucault écrit : "Là où il y a pouvoir, il y a résistance".

We want to highlight the strong link between learning systems such as deep learning neural networks and neutrosophy. The latter is above all a representation considering a neutral state which is at the heart of many phenomena of reality as well as mathematical and information theories. Here, we start from the recent understanding of neural networks, which considers their internal functioning and the learning that characterizes them as based on adapted representations (both of the information to be processed and of (...) the task to be performed) that are in fact optimal compressions. Compression means discriminating the similar and the different between cases by identifying representative characteristics through focusing on the most significant and rejecting of the rest. These three operations of neural processing, learning and compression owe their existence to non-linear treatments which essentially amount to distinguishing a neutral zone between two filtered zones, corresponding to the neutrosophical approach. (shrink)

This article evaluates communicative approaches to responsibility within the Strawsonian tradition. These approaches consider reactive attitudes to be forms of moral address and consider responsiveness to moral address a condition on responsible agency. The article consists of a critical and a positive part. In the first part, I identify a risk for these theories. They often provide an overly narrow account of how we can communicate with others about perceived moral disregard. I argue that, when read this way, a conversational (...) approach has implausible implications and falls prey to a familiar objection to Strawsonian theory: it would incorporate social injustices inherent to our responsibility practices. In particular, it would affirm ableist attitudes towards autistic individuals, by exempting them as moral agents on the basis of irrelevant criteria. In the second part, I propose an inclusive reading of the communicative approach. This inclusive account steers clear of ableism towards autistic individuals and accommodates diversity. Although it is also derived from our practices and psychologies, it does not incorporate the biases and injustices that are part of those practices, and instead it provides us with a means to criticize them. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a forward-looking account of the difference between the responsibility of children and the responsibility of adults. I do so by means of criticizing agency-cultivation accounts of responsibility. According to these accounts, the justification for holding a person to a norm is the cultivation of their moral agency, and children are, just like adults, considered responsible to the extent that they can have their moral agency cultivated in this manner. Like many forward-looking accounts, these accounts claim (...) that the purpose of holding adults to norms is similar to the purpose of holding children to norms. I argue that the justifications for holding adults to norms are different because of the particular ways in which adults can be in moral disagreement with one another, and the consequences that this has. Moral disagreement is relevant to consequentialist accounts because it impacts on whether and how we can secure beneficial outcomes via holding someone to a norm. One of the upshots of this analysis is that the forward-looking justification for holding adults to norms is qualitatively different from how and why we should hold children to norms. (shrink)

A paradox of self-reference in beliefs in games is identified, which yields a game-theoretic impossibility theorem akin to Russell’s Paradox. An informal version of the paradox is that the following configuration of beliefs is impossible:Ann believes that Bob assumes that.

Peut-on définir un "sens" musical? Quelle est la part d'intuition, de spontanéité, et celle de la technique, des règles, des systèmes dans la création? Pionnier de la musique électroacoustique en temps réel, Philippe Manoury nous fait entrer au coeur du processus de composition, montrant par exemple comment faire interagir les techniques numériques et les instruments acoustiques (y compris la voix) pour créer de nouvelles formes musicales et interroger sans cesse la matière sonore elle-même."--Page 4 of cover.

Die vorliegende Studie ist die erste umfassende Darstellung, die Kierkegaards Verfahren einer indirekten Mitteilung als hermeneutischen Schl ssel zu seinem Gesamtwerk entfaltet. Erkenntnisleitend ist das philosophische Interesse, die indirekte Mitteilung als Kierkegaards denkerische Methode und als das bestimmende Strukturprinzip seiner Existenzphilosophie zu begreifen. Indirekte Mitteilung meint nicht blo eine u erliche Form maieutischer und existenzieller Kommunikation, sie ist vielmehr zugleich eine Theorie ber die Grenze von Sprache und Begriff. Zudem ist die perspektivisch gebrochene, experimentalphilosophische Methode ein Gegenentwurf zur geschlossenen Form (...) des Systems. Hierin zeigt sich Kierkegaards geschichtliche Zwischenstellung in der Umbruchskonstellation von Idealismus und Moderne: Er st t sich im Ganzen vom Systemdenken Schellings und Hegels ab und weist voraus auf die Experimentalphilosophie Nietzsches und das Differenzdenken Derridas. Die Studie ist in dreierlei Hinsicht strukturiert: Systematisch wird die indirekte Methode als ein gegen sich selbst arbeitendes, prinzipiell unabgeschlossenes Verfahren bestimmt; geschichtlich wird sie vor dem Hintergrund der Tradition der Ironie und weiterer paradoxaler Begriffskonstellationen entfaltet; werkgeschichtlich-exegetisch werden Kierkegaards weit verzweigte Reflexionen ber den Begriff der indirekten Methode rekonstruiert, ihre Praxis und Durchf hrung anhand ausgew hlter Werke exemplarisch herausgearbeitet. (shrink)

This is the outline : I - Quelques étapes aux avancées significatives II - La pensée chrétienne et le hasard d’ignorance III - De quelques difficultés de raisonner sur le probable IV - Téléologie et évolutionnisme V - Où est l’« étage » qui permette de parler d’indépendance ? VI. Qu’y a-t-il à la base de nos concepts d’ordre ? VII - Quelle place pour le hasard ? VIII. Le hasard appréhendé de dos ?

In this paper I ask what implicit attitudes tell us about our freedom. I analyze the relation between the literature on implicit attitudes and an important subcategory of theories of free will—self-disclosure accounts. If one is committed to such a theory, I suggest one may have to move to a more social conceptualization of the capacity for freedom. I will work out this argument in five sections. In the first section, I discuss the specific theories of free will that are (...) central to this paper. In the second section, I will show that implicit-bias research raises questions about people’s capacities to exercise free will. In the third section, I will consider how an individual may overcome these failures and argue that the individual ability for self-regulation is significantly limited. One could stop here and conclude that free will is a limited capacity. But I argue that this conclusion would be too hastily drawn. I will instead continue to ask what would be required for free will. By discussing how failures of free will are due to social structures and may be therefore repaired by changing social structures in section 4, I will arrive at an alternative conclusion about the capacity for free will in section 5. (shrink)

In a famous manuscript addition of the Exemplaire de Bordeaux des Essaisand while he has abandoned all public ambition, Montaigne declares without appeal, "I am not a philosopher." At the same time, however, he presents himself as a new philosopher, even as a dissident in the history of philosophy: "New figure: a philosopher unpremeditated and fortuitous! Who can believe between these two Montaigne? This hesitation is symptomatic of a tormented philosophical posterity. Sometimes regarded as a full-fledged philosopher - the forerunner (...) of modernity - and sometimes as a disorganized or even incoherent thinker, Montaigne enjoyed a reception that was far from being a long calm river. This volume is specifically intended to trace the "philosophical uses" of Montaigne throughout the centuries--Translation of page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) à travers son itinéraire semé d'embûches, a dû affronter l'arrivée au pouvoir des nazis. Amené à sillonner l'Europe il développe une activité de critique littéraire et une philosophie de l'histoire, notamment dans ses ultimes « thèses » de 1940. Ce testament philosophique est influencé par le messianisme juif et le marxisme. Décrit comme sentinelle messianique, l'œuvre de Walter Benjamin se déploie aux confins de la sociologie, de l'esthétique et de la théologie. Sa philosophie de l'histoire contraste avec (...) celle de Nietzsche, mais le rapproche de Simone Weil. Analyste privilégié des tourments de l'Europe, il participera indirectement à l'Ecole de Francfort. (shrink)

Wat dacht Nietzsche, die niet bepaald positief stond ten opzichte van het christendom, eigenlijk over Jezus? Er wordt immers wel beweerd dat je, wat je verder ook van het christendom denkt, onmogelijk tegen Jezus kunt zijn. In zijn vroege werk noemt Nietzsche hem inderdaad 'de edelste mens'. Maar later heeft hij het over 'een grote egoïst' en in 'Der Antichrist' zegt hij zelfs dat Jezus 'een idioot' was. Wat betekent dat allemaal precies binnen het denken van een filosoof die vaak (...) niet rechtstreeks zegt wat hij eigenlijk bedoelt? Kunnen deze gedachten voor ons vandaag nog iets betekenen? Lepers heeft het volledige oeuvre van Nietzsche onderzocht op uitspraken en beschouwingen over en rond de figuur van Jezus. Dat voert hem tot genuanceerde, soms (schijnbaar?) tegenstrijdige, maar altijd uitdagende antwoorden op de vraag wie en wat Jezus in Nietzsches ogen was en wat hij vanuit dat perspectief voor ons zou kunnen zijn. (shrink)

"Si la souffrance semble être l'existential majeur qui domine l'oeuvre de Bernanos, c'est parce qu'elle permet la révélation d'une expérience fondamentale : l'homme habite le monde parce qu'il y tombe. Dans cette chaotisation de l'espace et du temps qu'est la chute se dit en effet la constitution même de l'être comme corps. Ainsi l'écrivain ne nous donne-t-il à voir l'écroulement que pour nous conduire aussi à le vivre comme dimension de l'être-là de ce que nous sommes - non pas en (...) luttant contre lui, mais en nous laissant rouler en lui comme en une vague. Nul n'a son corps. Nul n'est son corps. C'est à se tenir à la frontière, ou à accepter de tomber sans trop immédiatement se relever, que la philosophie pourra donc sans doute repenser le sens de l'inhabitation du corps, voire de l'inhabitation de l'homme même par Dieu."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)