Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some of the biological views on death, if applied in the context of bedside decisions, might imply unacceptable consequences. I argue the moral concept of death—one similar to that of Robert Veatch—overcomes such difficulties. The moral view (...) identifies death with the irreversible cessation of a patient’s moral status, that is, a state when she can no longer be harmed or wronged. The death of a patient takes place when she is no longer capable of regaining her consciousness. In this regard, the proposal elaborated herein resembles that of Veatch yet differs from Veatch’s original project since it is universal. In essence, it is applicable in the case of other living beings such as animals and plants, provided that they have some moral status. (shrink)

The article analyses the history of the Einfühlung concept. Theories of ‘feeling into’ Nature, works of art or feelings and behaviours of other persons by German philosophers of the second half of the nineteenth century Robert and Friedrich Vischer and Theodor Lipps are evoked, as well as similar theory of understanding (Verstehen) by Wilhelm Dilthey and Friedrich Schleiermacher, to which Dilthey refers. The meaning of the term Einfühlung within Edith Stein’s thought is also analysed. Both Einfühlung and Verstehen were (...) criticized as non-objective and naive methods consisting only in the identification of the subject with the object or the projection of feelings onto the object. The article refers to criticism by Georg Gadamer and Bertolt Brecht and proposes ways to restitute the concept of Einfühlung after this criticism, recalling the theory of empathy by Dominick Lacapra, in terms of its advantages for the historical enquiry, or the myth of Narcissus analyzed in the spirit of psychoanalysis by Julia Kristeva. The article proposes a reformulation of the concept of mimesis, connected to the Einfühlung, understood as the identification, analogy, imitation of feelings (as it was described by Lipss and Vischer). Mimesis does not necessarily mean a passive repetition and reconstruction of the feelings of the object, but serves only as a starting point for the interest of the subject for the outside world or for experiences of historical protagonists. Then there is no identification or projection of feelings, but the creative, active and critical reformulation of knowledge. It is stated that empathy is not a passive, uncritical process, but that it deals with the critical choice of the object of empathy and with an active approach to the perceived feelings and appearances. In addition to this cognitive aspect, empathy may also contribute to the analytical and valuable introspection. Furthermore empathy allows us to connect the analysis of the facts with a personal narrative and understanding of individual identity in historical knowledge. (shrink)

Contents: Leszek NOWAK, Marcin PAPRZYCKI: Introduction. ON THE NATURE OF SOCIAL SYSTEM. Ulrich K. PREUSS: Political Order and Democracy. Carl Schmitt and his Influence. Katarzyna PAPRZYCKA: A Paradox in Hobbes' Philosophy of Law. Stephen L. ESQUITH: Democratic Political Dialogue. Edward JELINSKI: Democracy in Polish Reformist Socialist Thought. Katarzyna PAPRZYCKA: The Master and Slave Configuration in Hegel's System. Maurice GODELIER: Lévi-Strauss, Marx and After. A reappraisal of structuralist and Marxist tools for analyzing social logics. Krzysztof NIEDZWIADEK: On the Structure of (...) Social System. Waldemar CZAJKOWSKI: Social Being and Its Reproduction. ON RATIONALITY AND CAPTIVITY. Marek ZIO??L??KOWSKI: Power and Knowledge. Leszek NOWAK: Two Inter-Human Limits to the Rationality of Man. Marcin PAPRZYCKI: The non-Christian Model of Man. An Attempt at a Psychoanalytic Explanation. Robert EGIERT: Toward the Sophisticated Rationalistic Model of Man. ON SOCIAL REVOLUTION. Leszek NOWAK: Revolution is an Opaque Progress but a Progress Nonetheless. Katarzyna PAPRZYCKA, Marcin PAPRZYCKI: How Do Enslaved People Make Revolutions? Grzegorz TOMCZAK: Is It Worth Winning a Revolution? Krzysztof BRZECHCZYN: Civil Loop and the Absorption of Elites. Richard C. MCCLEARY: What Makes Marxist Historical Materialism Objective? Grzegorz KOTLARSKI: Classes and Masses in Social Philosophy of Rosa Luxemburg. ON REAL SOCIALISM. Ernest GELLNER: The Civil and the Sacred. Witold MARCISZEWSKI: Economics and the Idea of Information. Why socialism must have collapsed? Leszek NOWAK, Katarzyna PAPRZYCKA, Marcin PAPRZYCKI: On Multilinearity of Socialism. Achim SIEGEL: The Overrepression Cycle in the Soviet Union. An Operationalization of a Theoretical Model. Krzysztof BRZECHCZYN: The State of the Teutonic Order as a Socialist Society. DISCUSSIONS. Richard MCCLEARLY: Socioanalysis and Philosophy. W??l??odzimierz HELLER: The Public and the Private in Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy. Methodological Remarks. Krzysztof BRZECHCZYN: Unsuccessful Conquest and Successful Subordination. A contribution to the theory of intersocial relations. (shrink)

The present paper constitutes an introduction to a special issue of Diametros devoted to Setting Health-Care Priorities. What Ethical Theories Tell Us by Torbjörn Tännsjö. The book in question states that there are three moral theories which have valid implications in the field of the distribution of medical resources in a healthcare system: utilitarianism, the maximin/leximin view, and egalitarianism. A number of authors have contributed to this special issue with papers which challenge this thesis. Robert E. Goodin argues that, (...) besides general moral theories, some local principles of justice might be valid. Quinn Hiroshi Gibson states that Tännsjö should have considered the Rawlsian view on justice in its contractualist reading. Jay A. Zameska argues that his “revised lexical sufficientarianism” constitutes a more reliable moral view than prioritarianism. Finally, Lasse Nielsen points out that there is more to say about distributive justice than consequentialist theories can grasp. Moreover, he puts forward an argument in defense of prioritarianism. The final article in this issue constitutes Tännsjö’s replies to his critics. (shrink)

How does affectivity contribute to moral judgment making? -- Normative dissonance vs. the order of argumentation -- Facing otherness as an ethical experiment -- The concepts of respect revisited -- What is universal? Between subjectivity and intersubjectivity -- Experimenting with values in legal contexts : Hegel and Radbruch -- Democracy begins in the mind. Developing democratic personality.

Do technologies advance our self-identities, as they do our bodies or cognitive skills? Are doomed to disintegration and an episodic self? This book examines how technologies affect our selves from the perspective of health humanities (e.g., transplantology, bionics, disability studies), phenomenology, philosophy of mind and posthumanism.

In 2017, Michael Nair-Collins formulated his Transitivity Argument which claimed that brain-dead patients are alive according to a concept that defines death in terms of the loss of moral status. This article challenges Nair-Collins’ view in three steps. First, I elaborate on the concept of moral status, claiming that to understand this notion appropriately, one must grasp the distinction between direct and indirect duties. Second, I argue that his understanding of moral status implicit in the Transitivity Argument is faulty since (...) it is not based on a distinction between direct and indirect duties. Third, I show how this flaw in Nair-Collins’ argument is grounded in the more general problems between preference utilitarianism and desire fulfillment theory. Finally, I present the constructivist theory of moral status and the associated moral concept of death and explain how this concept challenges the Transitivity Argument. According to my view, brain death constitutes a valid criterion of death since brain death is incompatible with the preserved capacity to have affective attitudes and to value anything. (shrink)

"Der vorliegende Band geht auf logikbezogene Spurensuche und vereinigt durchdachte, hochintelligente und zahlreiche neue Einsichten versprechende Texte. Wer sich ernsthaft mit Musik beschäftigt, sollte sich diesen Band nicht entgehen lassen." (bs, Musica sacra 4/2015) Texte zur Praxis, Theorie und Ästhetik der Musik beanspruchen den Begriff ›musikalische Logik‹, wobei die Vorstellungen über Geltung, Inhalt und Umfang dieses Begriffes weit divergieren. Im vorliegenden Buch wird eine problemgeschichtliche Klärung unternommen. Musikalische Logik erweist sich als Inbegriff der Bedingungen, unter welchen Musik als in sich (...) selbst begründeter Prozess erscheinen kann. Sie besteht in einem musikalischen Denken, dessen Zusammenhang generiert wird durch Differenzierung von Klangrelationen und Zeitmaßen, durch Bildung von Verknüpfungsweisen und Verlaufsformen, durch den variativen Gebrauch der resultierenden Modelle sowie durch Aufhebung und Neubildung der Konstituenten; als produktives Denken lässt sich das musikalische Denken die Wege nicht festlegen, die sich für seine Ausdrucks- und Kommunikationsweise bewährt haben. Musikalische Logik kann sich in voraushörbarer Konsequenz zeigen, aber auch und besonders in der Art, wie sich ein nicht zu antizipierender Prozess als in sich begründet erweist. Die Vielfalt der Möglichkeiten spricht nicht gegen die Erwartung von Logik in der Musik, sondern erfüllt die Eigenart des Logischen im Bereich des Schaffens gegenüber dem Logischen im Bereich des Erkennens. Die historische Darstellung führt von der Spätantike bis in die Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Texts on the practice, theory and aesthetics of music make use of the term ‘musical logic’, although conceptions of the application, content and scope of the term differ greatly. This book attempts to solve this historical problem. Musical logic proves to be the embodiment of the conditions under which music can appear as a process founded in itself. It consists of musical thinking with ist context generated by the differentiation of relationships between sounds and of tempi, by the creation of forms of connection and progression, by the variational use of the resulting models and the suspension and re-creation of the constituent parts; as a form of productive thinking, music cannot define proven means for ist own expression and communication. Musical logic can manifest itself in consequences that can be aurally predicted, but also, and especially, in the ways in which a process that cannot be anticipated proves to be founded in itself. The range of possibilities does not contradict the expectation of logic in music but conforms to the peculiarity of logic in the sphere of creation as opposed to logic in the sphere of cognition. The historical presentation ranges from late antiquity to the mid 20th century. (shrink)

t. 1. Dialektyka.--t. 2. Ontologia i epistemologia.

The abstract structure of inquiry - the process of acquiring and changing beliefs about the world - is the focus of this book which takes the position that the "pragmatic" rather than the "linguistic" approach better solves the philosophical problems about the nature of mental representation, and better accounts for the phenomena of thought and speech. It discusses propositions and propositional attitudes (the cluster of activities that constitute inquiry) in general and takes up the way beliefs change in response to (...) potential new information, suggesting that conditional propositions should be understood as projections of epistemic policies onto the world.Robert C. Stalnaker is a professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Robert B. Brandom is one of the most original philosophers of our day, whose book Making It Explicit covered and extended a vast range of topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language--the very core of analytic philosophy. This new work provides an approachable introduction to the complex system that Making It Explicit mapped out. A tour of the earlier book's large ideas and relevant details, Articulating Reasons offers an easy entry into two of the main themes of Brandom's (...) work: the idea that the semantic content of a sentence is determined by the norms governing inferences to and from it, and the idea that the distinctive function of logical vocabulary is to let us make our tacit inferential commitments explicit. Brandom's work, making the move from representationalism to inferentialism, constitutes a near-Copernican shift in the philosophy of language--and the most important single development in the field in recent decades. Articulating Reasons puts this accomplishment within reach of nonphilosophers who want to understand the state of the foundations of semantics. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism 2. Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning 3. Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism 4. What Are Singular Terms, and Why Are There Any? 5. A Social Route from Reasoning to Representing 6. Objectivity and the Normative Fine Structure of Rationality Notes Index Displaying a sovereign command of the intricate discussion in the analytic philosophy of language, Brandom manages successfully to carry out a program within the philosophy of language that has already been sketched by others, without losing sight of the vision inspiring the enterprise in the important details of his investigation ' Using the tools of a complex theory of language, Brandom succeeds in describing convincingly the practices in which the reason and autonomy of subjects capable of speech and action are expressed. --J'rgen Habermas. (shrink)

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize With a new preface by the author In his most powerful and important book, renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton presents a brilliant analysis of the crucial role that German doctors played in the Nazi genocide. Now updated with a new preface, The Nazi Doctors remains the definitive work on the Nazi medical atrocities, a chilling exposé of the banality of evil at its epitome, and a sobering reminder of the darkest side (...) of human nature. (shrink)

In a new retelling of the romantic rationalist adventure of ideas that is Hegel's classic The Phenomenology of Spirit, Robert Brandom argues that when our self-conscious recognitive attitudes take Hegel's radical form of magnanimity and trust, we can overcome a troubled modernity and enter a new age of spirit.

This paper revisits some foundational questions concerning the abstract representation of a discourse context. The context of a conversation is represented by a body of information that is presumed to be shared by the participants in the conversation – the information that the speaker presupposes a point at which a speech act is interpreted. This notion is designed to represent both the information on which context-dependent speech acts depend, and the situation that speech acts are designed to affect, and so (...) to be a representation of context that is appropriate for explaining the interaction of context and the contents expressed in them. After reviewing the motivating ideas and the outlines of the apparatus, the paper responds to a criticism of the framework, and considers the way it can help to clarify some phenomena concerning pronouns with indefinite antecedents. (shrink)

This collection of papers (including three completely new ones) by one of the foremost philosophers in epistemology transcends two of the most widely misunderstood positions in philosophy--foundationalism and coherentism. Audi proposes a distinctively moderate, internalist foundationalism that incorporates some of the virtues of both coherentism and reliabilism. He develops important distinctions between positive and negative epistemic dependence, substantively and conceptually naturalistic theories, dispositional beliefs and dispositions to believe, episodically and structurally inferential beliefs, first and second order internalism, and rebutting as (...) opposed to refuting skepticism. These contrasts are applied not only to rational belief, but to rational action and the rationality of desires and intentions. The overall position is a pluralist, moderately rationalistic, internalist theory of justification and a partly externalist conception of knowledge. However, by virtue of offering a theory of rationality as well as an account of knowledge and justified belief, it will interest philosophers of ethics, science, and the social sciences and teachers and students of epistemology. (shrink)

The paper begins with a proposal for a reconstruction of three major statements of the traditional Marxian version of historical materialism. The general concept of an adaptive mechanism is introduced to explain how, in the Marxian sense, several parts of the superstructure are to be thought of as determined by the economic base. The paper proceeds by asking whether the classical type of economic determination is valid not only for precapitalist and capitalist societies, but for socialist societies as well. An (...) answer in the negative is given. The author tries to outline a type of historical materialism which takes into account the autonomous role of political institutions and social relations as determinants in socialist societies. (shrink)

Robert John Ackermann deals decisively with the problem of relativism that has plagued post-empiricist philosophy of science. Recognizing that theory and data are mediated by data domains (bordered data sets produced by scientific instruments), he argues that the use of instruments breaks the dependency of observation on theory and thus creates a reasoned basis for scientific objectivity. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished (...) backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

What kind of mental state is episodic memory? I defend the claim that it is, in key part, imagining the past, where the imagining in question is experiential imagining. To remember a past episode is to experientially imagine how things were, in a way controlled by one’s past experience of that episode. Call this the Inclusion View. I motive this view by appeal both to patterns of compatibilities and incompatibilities between various states, and to phenomenology. The bulk of the paper (...) defends the account against four objections. Imagining and remembering seem to differ in whether they are active or passive, in the forms of singular content they involve, in their relations to observation and in their relations to belief. I argue that these differences can be accommodated, and some even explained, once we flesh out what else is involved in episodic memory, in addition to imagining the past. (shrink)

The second edition of Doing Ethics in Media continues its mission of providing an accessible but comprehensive introduction to media ethics, with a theoretical grounding in moral philosophy, to help students think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment. Each chapter highlights specific considerations, cases, and practical applications for the fields of journalism, advertising, digital media, entertainment, public relations, and social media. Six fundamental decision-making questions - the "5Ws and H" around which the book is organized (...) - provide a path for students to articulate the issues; understand applicable law and ethics codes; consider the needs of stakeholders; work through conflicting values; integrate philosophic principles; and pose a "test of publicity." Students are challenged to be active ethical thinkers through the authors' reader-friendly style and use of critical early-career examples. While most people will change careers several times during their lives, all of us are life-long media consumers, and Doing Ethics in Media prepares readers for that task. Doing Ethics in Media is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies. It also serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, communication studies, and interdisciplinary social sciences. The book's companion website-doingethicsin.media, or www.doingmediaethics.com-provides continuously updated real-world media ethics examples and collections of essays from experts and students. The site also hosts ancillary materials for students and for instructors, including a test bank and instructor's manual. (shrink)

_A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy__ “Spare, elegant and poignant.... If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, _New Statesman_ “It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous _The Tragic Mind_ is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will_ Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has (...) learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In _The Tragic Mind_, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time. (shrink)

Today in Europe we are witnessing a populist turn, we could even speak of a “populist moment” that signals the crisis of neoliberal democracy. According to Chantal Mouffe, “the populist moment” is the expression of a set of heterogeneous demands, which cannot be formulated in traditional right/left frontier. The battles of our time will be between right-wing and left-wing populism. Although the current state of liberal societies appears to favor the development of a Right project, Mouffe proves that just a (...) left-wing one can uphold any kind of radicalisation of democracy. The aim of this paper is to examine the reasons for the increasing success of populist parties in European countries and to consider whether the way the present crisis is manifesting is conducive to the growth of a populist narrative, especially in its right-wing variant. (shrink)

It is almost unanimously accepted that Kant denies resultant moral luck—that is, he denies that the lucky consequence of a person’s action can affect how much praise or blame she deserves. Philosophers often point to the famous good will passage at the beginning of the Groundwork to justify this claim. I argue, however, that this passage does not support Kant’s denial of resultant moral luck. Subsequently, I argue that Kant allows agents to be morally responsible for certain kinds of lucky (...) consequences. Even so, I argue that it is unclear whether Kant ultimately endorses resultant moral luck. The reason is that Kant does not write enough on moral responsibility for consequences to determine definitively whether he thinks that the lucky consequence for which an agent is morally responsible can add to her degree of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness. The clear upshot, however, is that Kant does not deny resultant moral luck. (shrink)

Our primary focus is on analysis of the concept of voluntariness, with a secondary focus on the implications of our analysis for the concept and the requirements of voluntary informed consent. We propose that two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must be satisfied for an action to be voluntary: intentionality, and substantial freedom from controlling influences. We reject authenticity as a necessary condition of voluntary action, and we note that constraining situations may or may not undermine voluntariness, depending on the (...) circumstances and the psychological capacities of agents. We compare and evaluate several accounts of voluntariness and argue that our view, unlike other treatments in bioethics, is not a value-laden theory. We also discuss the empirical assessment of individuals? perceptions of the degrees of noncontrol and self-control. We propose use of a particular Decision Making Control Instrument. Empirical research using this instrument can provide data that will help establish appropriate policies and procedures for obtaining voluntary consent to research. (shrink)

ICD-10 and DSM-5 do not provide clear diagnosing guidelines for DID, making it difficult to distinguish ‘genuine’ DID from imitated or false-positive cases. This study explores meaning which patients with false-positive or imitated DID attributed to their diagnosis. 85 people who reported elevated levels of dissociative symptoms in SDQ-20 participated in clinical assessment using the Trauma and Dissociation Symptoms Interview, followed by a psychiatric interview. The recordings of six women, whose earlier DID diagnosis was disconfirmed, were transcribed and subjected to (...) interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five main themes were identified: endorsement and identification with the diagnosis. The notion of dissociative parts justifies identity confusion and conflicting ego-states. Gaining knowledge about DID affects the clinical presentation. Fragmented personality becomes an important discussion topic with others. Ruling out DID leads to disappointment or anger. To avoid misdiagnoses, clinicians should receive more systematic training in the assessment of dissociative disorders, enabling them to better understand subtle differences in the quality of symptoms and how dissociative and non-dissociative patients report them. This would lead to a better understanding of how patients with and without a dissociative disorder report core dissociative symptoms. Some guidelines for a differential diagnosis are provided. (shrink)