In the article ‘How to be absolutely fair, Part I: the Fairness formula’, we presented the first theory of comparative and absolute fairness. Here, we relate the implications of our Fairness formula to economic theories of fair division. Our analysis makes contributions to both philosophy and economics: to the philosophical literature, we add an axiomatic discussion of proportionality and fairness. To the economic literature, we add an appealing normative theory of absolute and comparative fairness that can be used to evaluate (...) axioms and division rules. Also, we provide a novel definition and characterization of the absolute priority rule. (shrink)

Integrating the study of human diversity into the human evolutionary sciences requires substantial revision of traditional conceptions of a shared human nature. This process may be made more difficult by entrenched, 'folkbiological' modes of thought. Earlier work by the authors suggests that biologically naive subjects hold an implicit theory according to which some traits are expressions of an animal's inner nature while others are imposed by its environment. In this paper, we report further studies that extend and refine our account (...) of this aspect of folkbiology. We examine biologically naive subjects' judgments about whether traits of an animal are 'innate', 'in its DNA' or 'part of its nature'. Subjects do not understand these three descriptions to be equivalent. Both innate and in its DNA have the connotation that the trait is species-typical. This poses an obstacle to the assimilation of the biology of polymorphic and plastic traits by biologically naive audiences. Researchers themselves may not be immune to the continuing pull of folkbiological modes of thought. (shrink)

Was Marxism a variety of German Idealist self-actualization in economic form? A deeply flawed blueprint for social engineering? A catechism for post-colonial insurgencies? the intellectual foundations of modern social democracy? In this wide ranging summation, Sullivan tackles the multi-tentacled reach of Marx's legacy, and explores both the limits and the lasting significance of his ideas. Structured around three obstacles to freedom - poverty, corruption and banality - the work engages both Marx and his critics in addressing unresolved issues of the (...) current social and political order. As such, the work, after two introductory chapters, leaves behind Marxology and its familiar cast of characters (Bernstein, Kautsky, Adorno, Lukacs, Fanon, Horkheimer, Marcuse, etc.) to address both neo-Marxist and non-Marxist interpretations of these obstacles. These include growth-led poverty alleviation, human capital theory, current debates on rent-seeking and public choice theory, weaknesses in Frankfurt School approaches to mass culture, and emerging trends in cyberspace and leisure consumption. Marx for a Post-Communist Era is credited as a foundational theoretical source in a wide range of contemporary studies. Some examples include a government-sponsored anti-corruption report in Peru, a study of neoliberalism and education reform in the UK, and an urban planning essay on museum spaces and the public good. (shrink)

I propose to show that any direct moral bioenhancement procedures that could be realized within a relatively short period of time are not realistic options. This does not have to worry us; however; because alternative options for promoting morality are available. Consequently; moral bioenhancement is not an option for dealing successfully with the increased potential destructiveness of contemporary technologies within a short-term framework; i.e. within this century. In what follows; I will explain why this is the case; and why; contrary (...) to Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu; I think this need not worry us too much. In section 1.; I will critically analyze moral bioenhancement by means of citalopram; aimed at reducing the tendency to harm others directly. I give this prominence because it could be a practical option for altering human emotions and dispositions – to my mind; it seems the most promising practical option in this field. In later sections; I will consider other means of realizing moral bioenhancement; since the first option does not do the job it is supposed to; and because Persson and Savulescu are concerned with alternative approaches. (shrink)

As false information may spread rapidly on social media, a profound understanding of how it can be debunked is required. This study offers empirical insights into the development of rumors after they are debunked, the various user groups who are involved in the process, and their network structures. As crisis situations are highly sensitive to the spread of rumors, Twitter posts from during the 2017 G20 summit are examined. Tweets regarding five rumors that were debunked during this event were manually (...) coded into the following categories: rumor, debunking message, uncertainty about rumor, uncertainty about debunking message, and others. Our findings show that rumors which are debunked early and vehemently by official sources are the most likely to be stopped. When individuals participate in the process, they typically do so by sharing uncommented media content, as opposed to contributing user-generated content. Depending on the conditions in which a rumor arises, different network structures can be found. Since some rumors are easier for individuals to verify than others, our results have implications for the priorities of journalists and official sources. (shrink)

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that (...) the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency. (shrink)

Topic of the paper is Q-logic – a logic of agency in its temporal and modal context. Q-logic may be considered as a basal logic of agency since the most important stit-operators discussed in the literature can be defined or axiomatized easily within its semantical and syntactical framework. Its basic agent dependent operator, the Q-operator (also known as Δ- or cstit-operator), which has been discussed independently by F. v. Kutschera and B. F. Chellas, is investigated here in respect of its (...) relation to other temporal and modal operators. The main result of the paper, then, is a completeness result for a calculus of Q-logic with respect to a semantics defined on the tree-approach to agency as introduced and developed by, among others, F. v. Kutschera and N. D. Belnap. (shrink)

This essay develops a new interpretation of Moses Mendelssohn’s ontological argument in the Morning Hours: Lectures on God’s Existence. At the beginning, Immanuel Kant’s famous criticism of the ontological proof of God’s existence in the Critique of Pure Reason is presented. Then I offer an in-depth analysis of Mendelssohn’s original ontological argument in the Morning Hours. It is shown that with Mendelssohn’s new proof of God, Kant’s objections are answered. Finally, it is explained why Mendelssohn does not succeed in completely (...) refuting Kant’s objections. (shrink)

There is no consensus as to whether a Liar sentence is meaningful or not. Still, a widespread conviction with respect to Liar sentences (and other ungrounded sentences) is that, whether or not they are meaningful, they are useless . The philosophical contribution of this paper is to put this conviction into question. Using the framework of assertoric semantics , which is a semantic valuation method for languages of self-referential truth that has been developed by the author, we show that certain (...) computational problems, called query structures , can be solved more efficiently by an agent who has self-referential resources (amongst which are Liar sentences) than by an agent who has only classical resources; we establish the computational power of self-referential truth . The paper concludes with some thoughts on the implications of the established result for deflationary accounts of truth. (shrink)

Research on patients with damage to ventromedial frontal cortices suggests a key role for emotions in practical decision making. This field of investigation is often associated with Antonio Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis—a putative account of the mechanism through which autonomic tags guide decision making in typical individuals. Here we discuss two questionable assumptions—or ‘myths’—surrounding the direction and interpretation of this research. First, it is often assumed that there is a single somatic marker hypothesis. As others have noted, however, Damasio’s ‘hypothesis’ (...) admits of multiple interpretations (Dunn et al. [2006]; Colombetti [2008]). Our analysis builds upon this point by characterizing decision making as a multi-stage process and identifying the various potential roles for somatic markers. The second myth is that the available evidence suggests a role for somatic markers in the core stages of decision making, that is, during the generation, deliberation, or evaluation of candidate options. On the contrary, we suggest that somatic markers most likely have a peripheral role, in the recognition of decision points, or in the motivation of action. This conclusion is based on an examination of the past twenty-five years of research conducted by Damasio and colleagues, focusing in particular on some early experiments that have been largely neglected by the critical literature. 1 Introduction2 What is the Somatic Marker Model?3 Multiple Somatic Marker Hypotheses3.1 Are somatic markers necessary for practical decision making?3.2 Speed, accuracy, or both?3.3 At which of the five stages of decision making are somatic markers engaged?4 Anecdotal Evidence Suggests a Peripheral Role for Somatic Markers4.1 Chronic indecisiveness4.2 Extreme impulsiveness4.3 Enhanced decision making in the lab4.4 Lack of motivation. 5 Early Experiments Suggest that VMF Damage Leaves Core Processes Intact5.1 The evocative images study5.2 Five problem solving tasks6 Recent Experiments Fail to Discriminate among Alternate Versions of SMH7 Conclusion. (shrink)

Can concepts be acquired by testing hypotheses about these concepts? Fodor famously argued that this is not possible. Testing the correct hypothesis would require already possessing the concept. I argue that this does not generally hold for mathematical concepts. I discuss specific, empirically motivated, hypotheses for number concepts that can be tested without needing to possess the relevant number concepts. I also argue that one can test hypotheses about the identity conditions of other mathematical concepts, and then fix the application (...) conditions based on those hypotheses—under the assumption that the neo‐logicist view on abstraction principles is correct. (shrink)

In this article I seek to explain Hegel’s significance to contemporary meta-ethics, in particular to Kantian constructivism. I argue that in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel shows that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity arise at the same time. This point, I argue, shows that there is no problem with taking other people’s reasons to motivate us since reflection on our aims is necessarily also reflection on the needs of those around us. I further explore Hegel’s contribution to the (...) debate about internal and external reasons. I end by arguing that we should understand reasons as historically constructed in the sense that who counts as an intrinsic bearer of value changes over time. I thus argue that the struggle for recognition is in fact the beginning of the long march toward the idea of recognition and the Kantian kingdom of ends. This march, however, is driven by the need to overcome injustice as it is instantiated at the beginning of history by the master’s absolute domination of the slave. (shrink)

According to recent scientific reports, certain climatic tipping points can be understood as “points of no return,” in which, for instance, anthropogenic interference changes global temperatures irreversibly. Such an outcome presents a situation unlike any considered before by risk theorists, for it introduces an element of radical uncertainty into the very value (considered ethically, culturally, and politically) of taking action on climate change. In the following I argue that ethical bases for action that rely on traditional concepts of risk (such (...) as the dominant precautionary principle) are vastly ill equipped to make sense of the catastrophes of the scale predicted by most climatologists today. Instead we need to understand the possibilities of political action beyond thresholds assumed by tipping-point calculations. This in turn means investigating action as a form of risktaking and as operating against the conservative connotations of environmental precaution. It also implies acting against the calculative assumption that one’s actions are meaningless “unless this happens by this time,” a sentiment propelled, perhaps, by the repetition in mainstream media of reference to the finality of points of no return. (shrink)

Scientific collaboration between Northern and Southern researchers and development programs for research capacity-building have received new attention of practitioners and scholars during the last decades. This essay review takes four recent publications on North-South research cooperation and development politics as a starting point to ask for possible links between macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of social analysis that has found renewed interest in the sociology of science literature. The approach has the advantage to heuristically systematize the anthropological, sociological and policy-driven approaches (...) chosen by the editors and authors of the books under review. Moreover, the focus on links between the three levels adds to the conceptual interaction of sociology of science and the science policy fields to estimate the effects of science governance in international and especially in asymmetrical relations with different access to resources. (shrink)

This volume offers a comprehensive presentation of European insolvency law and considers questions relating to the cross-border insolvency proceeding. Due to the European Insolvency Regulation, the issues arising from the cross-border insolvency proceeding are no longer purely academic matters but are now present in the European area and have become problematic for professionals dealing with the application and interpretation of Community insolvency law.

Being a postmodernist means mixing the high brow and the low brow, cultivating multiple selves, rejecting the idea of personal authenticity, and maintaining that truth and knowledge are somehow human creations and relative to human purposes/different cultures. Further, it consists in incredulity toward the idea of progress and lack of belief in reason, plus taking generally a skeptical stance, not least toward political ideologies.1 Indeed, the arch-postmodernist Jean-François Lyotard famously defined postmodernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives”2. The pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty (...) fitted the postmodern bill by and large.. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to hear parents say in discussions they have with their children ‘Look at it this way’. And called upon for their advice, counsellors too say something to adults with the significance of ‘Try to see it like this’. The change of someone's perspective in the context of child rearing is the focus of this paper. Our interest in this lies not so much in giving an answer to the practical problems that are at stake, but at (...) disentangling the issues on a conceptual level. Within the so‐called second part of his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein deals with shared practices and with concepts such as ‘seeing’ and ‘seeing as’. What he says there is in terms of content linked with his earlier Tractatus position concerning ethics, a matter which will first be dealt with. After that, the relevant sections of his later work are discussed. Following Cavell, it is concluded that to try to get someone to see what one sees, necessarily presupposes giving it out of one's hands. The passivity this points at highlights what Erziehung in the end comes down to. (shrink)

Lawton’s contingency thesis states that there are no useful generalizations at the level of ecological communities because these systems are especially prone to contingent historical events. I argue that this influential thesis has been grounded on the wrong kind of evidence. CT is best understood in Woodward’s terms as a claim about the instability of certain causal dependencies across different background conditions. A recent distinction between evolution and ecology reveals what an adequate test of Lawton’s thesis would look like. To (...) date, CT remains untested. But developments in genome and molecular ecology point in a promising direction. (shrink)

Mathematical cognition has become an interesting case study for wider theories of cognition. Menary :1–20, 2015) argues that arithmetical cognition not only shows that internalist theories of cognition are wrong, but that it also shows that the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition is right. I examine this argument in more detail, to see if arithmetical cognition can support such conclusions. Specifically, I look at how the use of numerals extends our arithmetical abilities from quantity-related innate systems to systems that can deal (...) with exact numbers of arbitrary size. I then argue that the system underlying our grasp of small numbers is an unhelpful case study for Menary; it doesn’t support an argument for externalism over internalism. The system for large numbers, on the other hand, clearly displays important interactions between public numeral systems and our cognitive processes. I argue that the large number system supports an argument against internalist theories of arithmetical cognition, but that one cannot conclude that the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition is correct. In other words, the large number case doesn’t decide between the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition and the Hypothesis of EMbedded Cognition. (shrink)

Linsky and Zalta try to explain how we can refer to mathematical objects by saying that this happens through definite descriptions which may appeal to mathematical theories. I present two issues for their account. First, there is a problem of finding appropriate pre-conditions to reference, which are currently difficult to satisfy. Second, there is a problem of ensuring the stability of the resulting reference. Slight changes in the properties ascribed to a mathematical object can result in a shift of reference (...) and this leads to various problems, e.g., it makes inferring knowledge much harder than it is. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Oftmals wird Fairness mit einer ethischen Haltung in Verbindung gebracht. Demnach ist ein Sportler fair, wenn er aufgrund bestimmter moralischer Einsichten handelt. Diese Vorstellung ist kaum empirisch nachprüfbar. Andere, nichtethische Motive können stattdessen für die Individuen handlungsleitend sein. Nimmt man als Extremfall rein egoistische Handlungsmotive der Individuen an, lässt sich dann noch faires Verhalten beobachten? Dieser Frage wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz nachgegangen. Aufbauend auf einer Kritik deontologischer Konzeptionen von Fairness, wird ein utilitaristischer Ansatz entwickelt, der faires Verhalten als wechselseitige (...) Kooperation versteht. Auf Grundlage dieses Ansatzes werden Bedingungen herausgearbeitet, unter denen faires Handeln im Sport erwartbar wird. Zugleich zeigt sich, dass sich aus einer Fairnesskonzeption als wechselseitige Kooperation deutlich mehr Maßnahmen zur Förderung von Fair Play im Sport ableiten lassen. (shrink)