It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in the context of recent psychological research. Is there a widespread consensus about the conceptual content of free will? We compared English “free will” with its lexical equivalents in Lithuanian, Hindi, Chinese and Mongolian languages and found that unlike Lithuanian, Chinese, Hindi and Mongolian lexical expressions of “free will” do (...) not refer to the same concept free will. What kind people have been studied so far? A review of papers indicate that, overall, 91% of participants in studies on belief in free will were WEIRD. Thus, given that free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content and that most of the reviewed studies were based on WEIRD samples, belief in free will is not a psychological universal. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the Incel movement-and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole.

The AGM paradigm for belief revision provides a very elegant and powerful framework for reasoning about idealized agents. The paradigm assumes that the modeled agent is a perfect reasoner with infinite memory. In this paper we propose a framework to reason about non-ideal agents that generalizes the AGM paradigm. We first introduce a structure to represent an agent's belief states that distinguishes different status of beliefs according to whether or not they are explicitly represented, whether they are currently active and (...) whether they are fully accepted or provisional. Then we define a set of basic operations that change the status of beliefs and show how these operations can be used to model agents with different capacities. We also show how different operations of belief change described in the literature can be seen as special cases of our theory. (shrink)

We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from 'therapy culture', the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties. On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety (...) on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac , drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today. (shrink)

Nichols and Bruno claim that the folk judge that psychological continuity is necessary for personal identity. In this article, we evaluate this claim. First, we argue that it is likely that in thinking about hypothetical cases of transformations, the folk do not use a unitary concept of personal identity, but instead rely on different concepts of ‘person’, ‘identity’, and ‘individual’. Identity can be ascribed even when post-transformation individuals are no longer categorized as persons. Second, we provide new empirical evidence suggesting (...) that the folk do not consider psychological continuity to be necessary for an individual to be categorized as a person or for ascribing identity over time and through transformations. In this, we assume, along with Nichols and Bruno, that folk judgments about identity can be read off the use of proper names. Furthermore, we raise some doubts about the ability of current experimental designs to adequately distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity jud.. (shrink)

In this paper we report a study conducted in Mongolia on the scope of morality, that is, the extent to which people moralize different social domains. Following Turiel’s moral-conventional task, we characterized moral transgressions (in contrast to conventional transgressions) in terms of two dimensions: authority independence and generality of scope. Different moral domains are then defined by grouping such moral transgressions in terms of their content (following Haidt’s classification of morally relevant domains). There are four main results of the study. (...) First, since all five Haidtian domains were moralized by the Mongolian participants, the study provides evidence in favour of pluralism about moral domains. However, the study also suggests that the domain of harm can be reduced to the fairness domain. Furthermore, although the strong claim about reduction of all moral domains to the domain of fairness does not seem to hold a significant number of participants did indicate considerations of fairness across domains. Finally, a significant amount of participants moralized conventional transgressions a la Turiel, but it did not reach a statistical significance. (shrink)

O presente artigo procura avaliar a política de terror como estratégia de controle social a partir da constituição de uma natureza feminina e de propostas para sua remodelagem. Para tanto, foram analisadas mensagens eletrônicas (hoaxes) que circulam na internet. Tais mensagens acabam por propor a segregação social de grupos minoritários. A temática base de tal remodelagem é garantida pela difusão do terror, que serve a estratégias de controle social.

The article presents the issue of anti-Semitism outlined by Grynberg in his prose and poetry. In the first part of the work I show roots of hatred for the Jews noticed by the contemporary writer. In the second part I discuss the signs of anti-Semitism and I reinforce them with the concrete examples from Grynberg’s works. Subsequently, I show the reader that hostility to the Jews accompanied the Poles immediately after the war and many years later. I present the circumstances (...) in which the writer left Poland and emigrated to the USA where he has lived to the present day. Next, I endeavour to convince the reader that Grynberg present a varied and true picture of anti-Semitism. In his works there is a lot of subjectivity but there is also a belief that evil does not appear as typical of the Poles. I conclude my work with the suggestion that Grynberg is a writer who aims for revealing the truth and improvement between the Poles and the Jews. That is why it is his words that should be reflected in our thoughts and deeds. (shrink)

The Classical art of memory is analyzed as a form of mental writing. The ancient authors of works on the art of memory often likened their art to a sort of writing, and a careful analysis of the methods of formation of _agent images_ — the signs of the art of memory — shows that it very closely parallels the methods of sign formation in logophonetic writing systems. Thus the Classical art of memory can be viewed as an immaterial writing (...) system. (shrink)

Luca Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation. The Logic and History of the Self- Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. XX+394. Hardback, ISBN 9780521896313. -/- L. Castagnoli in his book Ancient Self-Refutation rightly observes that self-refutation is not falsification; it overturns the act of assertion but does not prove that the content of the act is false. He argues against the widely spread belief that Sextus Empiricus accepted the self-refutation of his own expressions. Castagnoli also claims that (...) Sextus was effective in answering to the self-refutation charge. The achievement of the book is discovery that in passages where Sextus seems to embrace the self-refutation of his expressions (PH 1.14-15), he does not use the term peritropé , technical for self-refutation, but term perigrafé , which means self-bracketing. Self-bracketing is weakening one’s own thesis but not overturning it. Castagnoli claims that Sextus embraces the self-bracketing of his expressions but never accepts their self-refutation. However, Castagnoli is not right that self-refutation is shameful mistake for everybody. The mature skeptic cannot even think that self-refutation is wrong, because it would be a dogmatic view. Sextus seems accept the self-refutation at the end of Against Logicians where he presents the argument against proof and the metaphor of the ladder (M 8.480-1). Regardless of Sextus declarations, we have reasons to think that he does not avoid self-refutation in pragmatic sense. Self-bracketing of his position is not a consistent dialectical strategy, as Castagnoli writes, but the end of rational discussion. Sextus avoids absolute self-refutation (we cannot falsify what he suggests) but he is unable to avoid pragmatic self-refutation (there is no way to assert his position without contradiction). It is the case, even if Sextus refuses asserting his position. (shrink)

Choice explores how late capitalism_s shrill exhortations to _be oneself_ can be a tyranny which only leads to ever-greater disquiet.Drawing on diverse examples ...

The AGM theory of belief revision provides a formal framework to represent the dynamics of epistemic states. In this framework, the beliefs of the agent are usually represented as logical formulas while the change operations are constrained by rationality postulates. In the original proposal, the logic underlying the reasoning was supposed to be supraclassical, among other properties. In this paper, we present some of the existing work in adapting the AGM theory for non-classical logics and discuss their interconnections and what (...) is still missing for each approach. (shrink)

I argue against the exclusive female/male divide, referring to the phenomenon of epistemic injustice in the cases of people with nonbinary gender identities and people with intersex traits. Such people have traits that are counterexamples to the binary female/male model. I have separated female and male traits into nine basic layers, five of which belong to sex and four to gender. In every layer, I have found traits that are neither female nor male, and the application of the model to (...) individuals provides examples of clusters of traits for which one layer is male and another female. Such traits and clusters of traits create the category of the nonbinary. Table 1 provides a sketch of a nonbinary model. The nonbinary category takes its name from the existing category of nonbinary gender identity; however, in the current model, it is a third category of traits, not of people. Under the nonbinary model, the basic gender concepts do not disappear. S is a woman if S is a human being with enough female traits, and the trait of having self-determined female gender identity is sufficient but not necessary. (shrink)

The core of this special issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education emerged from the Broken Narratives and the Lived Body conference held in 2016. The ‘Broken Narrative’ essays included in this issue open up a critical space for understanding and theorising illness narratives that defy a conventional cognitive ordering of the self as a bounded spatial and temporal entity. Here, we discuss how narratives might be ‘broken’ by discourse, trauma, ‘ill’ lived bodies and experiences that exceed linguistic representation. (...) We trouble distinctions between coherent and incoherent narratives, attending to what gaps, silences and ‘nonsenses’ can convey about embodied illness experiences. Ultimately, we suggest that ‘breaks’ are in fact a continuation of embodied narration. This is shown in the ‘Art and Trauma’ forum of essays, which reveal how narrative silences can ‘infect’ other embodied subjects and be transformed, achieving musical or visual representation that allow us to apprehend the ‘constitutive outside’ of narratives of illness or trauma. (shrink)

Understanding the contributions and the implications of law and emotion scholarship requires an acknowledgement of the different approaches within it. A significant part of law and emotion scholarship is focused on arguing for the relevance of emotion and on identifying emotion in legal processes and actors. Other parts of it venture further to ask how law can affect the expression and content of emotions themselves. This scholarship challenges legal positivist foundations, as well as some other established divisions in thinking, both (...) in law, and more generally in the history of ideas. The other important factor, which this article explores, is the methodology employed by law and emotion scholarship. (shrink)

The rise of nationalist, racist and anti-feminist ideologies is one of the most frightening repercussions of the collapse of socialism. Using psychoanalytic theories of fantasy to investigate why such extremist ideologies have taken hold, Renata Salecl argues that the major social and political changes in post-communist Eastern Europe require a radical re-evaluation of notions of liberal theories of democracy. In doing so she offers a new approach to human rights and feminism grounded in her own active partipation in the (...) struggles, first against communism and now against nationalism and anti-feminism. (shrink)

Gadamer pretende realizar uma defesa da tradição, reabilitando-a no cenário filosófico como elemento fundamental do conhecimento em geral. Para tanto, o filósofo procura refutar a tese de que os sentidos herdados constituem uma determinação acrítica de nossas compreensões. Como mostraremos, a resposta gadameriana a tal problema deve ser extraída da sua análise da linguagem, que podemos encontrar, de maneira especial, na terceira parte de Verdade e Método . Assim, esta análise condicionaria a verdadeira reabilitação da tradição, uma vez que o (...) estudo do fenômeno da compreensão levaria Gadamer a considerar linguagem e compreensão como essencialmente relacionados. (shrink)

Artykuł konfrontuje stanowisko Stanisława Judyckiego na temat prawdy ze zjawiskiem post-prawdy. Stanisław Judycki broni koncepcji prawdy radykalnie obiektywnej, lokalizując nośniki prawdziwości w boskim umyśle. Słabą stroną takiego stanowiska jest między innymi brak wyjaśnienia zjawiska post-prawdy. Autorka twierdzi, że trzeba odróżnić prawdę idealną i prawdę społeczną, ponieważ post-prawda jest generowana na poziomie prawdy społecznej i żywi się brakiem rozróżnienia tych dwu warstw. Zjawisko post-prawdy wyjaśnia się na gruncie konsensualnej teorii prawdy (Bufacchi 2021) jako konstruowanie alternatywnego konsensusu, które odbywa się w atmosferze (...) podważania znaczenia prawdy (i jest czymś innym niż kłamstwo lub ignorancja). Autorka uważa, że lepsze w tym kontekście jest pojęcie społecznego konstruktu niż pojęcie konsensusu. Podziela jednak opinię Bufacchiego, że lekarstwem na post-prawdę jest odrzucenie binarnego podziału na prawdę i post-prawdę (prawdy uznawane przez ludzi są też społecznymi konstruktami) oraz zastępowanie w miarę możliwości słowa „prawda” terminami odnoszącymi się do ludzkich ocen i czynności poznawczych. (shrink)

The face serves as a fascinating focal point for exploring different perspectives and attitudes on human nature, including their identity, boundaries, culture, roles, the function of looks, beauty, religion, imagination, memory and more. In this paper, I will explore the analysis of facial beauty in the framework of contemporary interdisciplinary research, particularly the realms of contemporary cognitive science, neuropsychology, and evolutionary biology. Why do we prefer some faces and not others? What mechanisms underlie the evaluation of some faces as more (...) attractive than others? What is the role of evolution in our perception of facial beauty? (shrink)

In the current study, we examine the changes in disclosure practices on compliance and the fight against corruption at Siemens AG, a large German multinational corporation, over the period 2000–2011 during which a major corruption scandal was revealed. More specifically, we conduct a content analysis of the company’s annual reports and sustainability reports during that period to investigate the changes of Siemens’ corruption and compliance disclosure using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Through the lens of legitimacy theory, stakeholder analysis, and (...) organizational façades, we find evidence that Siemens changed its compliance and corruption disclosure practices to repair its legitimacy in the wake of the 2006 corruption scandal. We analyze these strategies more closely by using the rational, progressive, and reputation façades framework. Our primary findings suggest that the annual reports show peaks of disclosure amounts on corruption and compliance disclosures earlier than sustainability reports, which can be partly explained by analyzing the disclosures made about—and to—the different stakeholder groups. We find that the annual report focuses more on internal stakeholders such as employees, while the sustainability report focuses more on external stakeholders such as suppliers. We also find that the company uses the façades differently depending on which report is being analyzed. (shrink)

Skepticism described by Sextus Empiricus faces the persistent charge that it is an inconsistent, self-refuting view. However, recently its consistency hasbeen defended in three important ways: it is a thesis with weak assertion, it is a practice without any assertion, and it is a process developing over time.The first option is not well supported by Sextus’ texts, where even a weak assertion is not allowed. The second option cannot explain the rationality of skeptical arguments. The third option reveals two levels (...) of Sextan skepticism; however, the developing skeptic has to accept the self-refutation charge, and the mature skeptic takes flight from the charge without any rational answer. I claim that Sextus embraces the self-refutation charge. The mature skeptic’s speech acts are pragmatically inconsistent: their content cannot be asserted without contradiction. As a result, the charge of inconsistency is not answered. (shrink)

People across cultures consider everyday choices in the context of perceived various external life-determining forces: such as fate and gods (two teleological forces) and such notions as luck and chance (two non-teleological forces). There is little cross-cultural evidence (except for a belief in gods) showing how people relate these salient notions of life-determining forces to prosociality and a sense of well-being. The current paper provides preliminary cross-cultural data to address this gap. Results indicate that choice is the most important life-determining (...) factor. Regression analyses indicate that choice and belief in gods and fate emerged as significant predictors of prosociality towards strangers. Moreover, luck was a significant predictor of decreased prosociality. A relation between life-determining forces and life satisfaction followed the same pattern: choice, gods, and fate emerged as significant predictors of greater life satisfaction, whereas luck was associated with decreased life satisfaction. The overall pattern of results indicates that participants across different cultures might sense being bounded to share or not to care depending on the perceived intentional agency and meaning in the external forces. (shrink)

In late 2019, an infectious disease with a high rate of human-to-human transmission was identified in Wuhan, China, which was called Covid-19. In a short time, this disease affected several regions of the world and became a pandemic, with huge impacts on people's lives and the environment. This article aims to investigate the existing relationships between health and the environment, at the moment of confronting Covid-19 in Brazil, focusing on the socioenvironmental issues of sanitation and agglomeration and its consequences/limits for (...) prevention/care in Public Health. For the development of the research, a systematic review was carried out between May and June 2020. The article brings aspects about the industrial revolution and its relationship with life forms; the issue of sanitation, agglomeration as a reflection of geographical inequalities and their impact on combating Covid-19. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand the various health measures that dialogue with environmental, social and political actions that need to be built, in the various dimensions, in order to fight socio-environmental inequalities. (shrink)

Undoubtedly Romantic love has come to saturate our culture and is often considered to be a, or even the, major existential goal of our lives, capable of providing us with both our sense of worth and way of being in the world. The Radicalism of Romantic Love interrogates the purported radicalism of Romantic love from philosophical, cultural and psychoanalytic perspectives, exploring whether it is a subversive force capable of breaking down entrenched social, political and cultural norms and structures, or whether, (...) in spite of its role in the fight against certain barriers, it is in fact a highly conservative impulse. Exploring both the grounds for the central place of Romantic love in contemporary lives and the meaning, extent and nature of its supposed radicalism, this volume considers love from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with attention to matters of gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity. With authors examining a range of questions, including the role of love in the same-sex marriage debate, polyamory and the notion of love as a political force, The Radicalism of Romantic Love illuminates a fundamental but perplexing aspect of our contemporary lives and will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in the emotions and love as a social and political phenomenon. (shrink)

Les réseaux personnels sont des ensembles de relations interpersonnelles dans lesquelles les personnes sont engagées. Toutes les études sur ces réseaux montrent l’existence de variations dans leur taille et leur composition selon les indicateurs de hiérarchie sociale, le niveau d’études, la profession ou le revenu. Ces variations peuvent être interprétées comme des « inégalités relationnelles » dans la mesure où les relations sont des ressources essentielles pour de nombreux aspects de la vie sociale. Ces ressources jouent un rôle particulièrement important (...) pour les personnes âgées lorsqu’elles sont confrontées aux diverses difficultés liées au vieillissement. À partir d’une étude sur les parcours et les réseaux de 342 personnes de soixante ans et plus, cet article évalue l’évolution de ces inégalités relationnelles selon différents types de contenus relationnels associés aux questions sur les relations. Au-delà de ces variations, les inégalités tendent à s’accroître avec l’âge, notamment entre les personnes les moins diplômées et les autres, ce qui fait apparaître des temporalités différentes du « vieillissement relationnel ». (shrink)

The books of the Old Testament contain elements of oral communication as well as the characteristic features of written elaboration. S. Niditch attempts to determine the probable oral-literate processes leading to the formation of the biblical message but does not answer the question concerning the history of the creation of any of the books. Biblical scholars examine the process of the shaping of the books as redaction criticism. This shaping, however, progressed according to different standards as evidenced by the literary (...) characteristics of the text and literary “deficiencies” as well explicit elements of oral communication. The use of the term “editing” in relation to the process evokes inadequate ideas drawn from contemporary literary culture.Attempts to discover the essential elements of the processes shaping the biblical books, based on the, to some extent, recreated history of The Gilgamesh Epic, leads us to a new concept of what such a book is. The discovered specificity of the biblical books can consequently propose a new, more adequate perspective of interpretation—the interpretation which has the characteristics of a discourse. (shrink)

BURLAS, Ladislav - KOPČÁKOVÁ, Slávka : Ladislav Burlas a slovenská hudobná kultúra. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej univerzity v Prešove. ISBN 978-80-555-1780-3. 238 s.

At the beginning of my article I present the themes, symbols and quotations which refer to the Bible and I discuss their functions. Afterwards, I show the image of God embodied in Różewicz’s poetry. First, this God is helpless and submissive to history and poeple. Then, he is the almighty Creator who supports a man. Subsequently, I present Różewicz as a poet who converted from atheism to faith. Early on, the author was demonstrating his departure from God caused by his (...) war experiences. He felt that God had died and in this connection all the values precious for a man had died too. In spite of this, the faith remained in the local point of Różewicz’s autlook on life. The author often looked back on his childhood when he had been close to the Lord. He became aware of lack of spiritual prime in his liľe. He also knew that life without God turns into merely a phisical existence. Finally, he found the real faith and wrote pieces which we can consider as his declaration. (shrink)

No Brasil, tem-se a regulação e limitação da livre iniciativa em diversos campos. Nesse contexto, o presente trabalho visa discutir a (des)necessidade de regulação econômica no setor de transporte privado, tendo por pano de fundo o caso específico da empresa UBER. Para tanto, a metodologia utilizada tem caráter bibliográfico e qualitativo, com o objetivo de investigar quais as justificativas que têm sido apresentadas pelos que entendem como necessária a existência de regulação no setor. Do estudo concluiu-se que a conquista da (...) iniciativa privada pela regulamentação de empresa de transporte ‘público’ individual, tradicionalmente representativa de um serviço de concessão do Estado, representou uma grande evolução para o país. (shrink)

Apesar de terem estado entre os primeiros imigrantes europeus que chegaram, há pouco mais de 150 anos, à Serra dos Tapes, devido a sua origem étnica e condição camponesa os pomeranos foram, por muito tempo, estigmatizados. Contudo, processo de sentido contrário tem sido observado nos últimos anos, com a criação de políticas locais de valorização do patrimônio cultural pomerano. O estudo evidencia que várias dessas iniciativas são pautadasna tentativa de resgate de formas tradicionais do “ser pomerano”, processo em que o (...) modo de vida do grupo —e em particular seus saberes e práticas alimentares— tem sido convertido em atrativo turístico, oferecido ao consumo. Palavras chave:patrimônio cultural pomerano, turismo rural, alimentação, imigração, campesinato, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil Despite being among the first European immigrants who arrived, a little over 150 years ago, at Serra dos Tapes, because of their ethnic origin and peasant condition, Pomeranians have been stigmatized for a long time. However, a reverse process has been observed in the last few years, with the establishment of local policies to safeguard and enhance the Pomeranian cultural heritage. The survey shows that many of these initiatives are grounded in the attempt to rescue traditional ways of “being Pomeranian”, a process in which the group’s way of life —and particularly their cookery knowledge and practices— has been converted into a tourism attraction focused on consumption. Key words: cultural heritage, Pomerians, rural tourism, eating, immigration, peasantry, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. (shrink)