Religious coping and spiritual struggles were qualitatively analyzed in 15 semi-structured interviews with Norwegian Hodgkin’s disease survivors. We asked, How is religious coping expressed in 15 Norwegian Hodgkin’s disease survivors? The analyses were theory-driven, using religious coping and spiritual struggles theories as explorative tools. Especially we focused on coping processes, coping dynamics, coping styles, and coping activities. The analyses show that religiousness functioned as a positive factor in coping with cancer in 14 of the 15 participants, equally distributed as conservational (...) and transformational coping. The combination of the belief in a good, present God, eventually positive divine power, accessible through prayer, and religious support from people around the participants, were the most prominent activities in the religious coping processes. The religious coping had a character of being collaborative for almost all of the participants. Many participants had severe spiritual struggles. For many of the participants, it was difficult not only to be sick, but also to be a survivor. Theories on religious coping and spiritual struggles were useful and adaptable to a Norwegian sample regarding the main dynamics in the religious coping and spiritual struggles processes. The analyses detected a few different religious coping activities in this Norwegian sample compared to those identified in American samples, with the importance of meeting God in nature as the most significant difference. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 2, pp 139 - 164 The aim of the present study is to explore the significance of religiousness for patients suffering from first-episode psychosis. Our study is a thematic analysis. The study illustrates how the patients understood their hallucinations as mystical experiences. Even so, many of the patients describe their religiousness to be helpful in coping with their disorder, giving meaning to life as well as a relationship to a sacred figure. However, their religiousness often (...) contained religious omnipotent delusions, and built on hallucinations, displayed an unsecure relationship to the sacred figure. From a psychiatric point of view, the misinterpretation of hallucinations as mystical experiences may reinforce their delusional system and cause an obstacle to recovery. This misinterpretation may also cause problems for patients’ religious coping. Our findings underline the importance of taking patients’ religiousness into account in psychotherapy. (shrink)

Organization in a tangled world -- Process views of organization -- Alfred North Whitehead on process -- Bruno Latour on relativizing the social, and the becoming of networks -- Niklas Luhmann on autopoiesis and recursiveness in social systems -- James March on decision processes and organization : a logic of streams -- Karl Weick on organizing and sensemaking -- A scheme for process based organizational analysis -- Some implications for organizational analysis.

As John Casti wrote, "Finally, a book that really does explain consciousness." This groundbreaking work by Denmark's leading science writer draws on psychology, evolutionary biology, information theory, and other disciplines to argue its revolutionary point: that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to process information. Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In fact, most of what (...) we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable part of ourselves, the "Me" that the "I" draws on for most of our actions--fluent speech, riding a bicycle, anything involving expertise. No wonder that, in this age of information, so many of us feel empty and dissatisfied. As engaging as it is insightful, this important book encourages us to rely more on what our instincts and our senses tell us so that we can better appreciate the richness of human life. (shrink)

Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories (...) are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain–emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 24, Issue 2, pp 279 - 299 This article provides the first overview of research on the kabbalistic sources of Benedictus de Spinoza. While this topic has not been a major focus in Spinoza research, this article argues that it has both biographical and philosophical relevance for the investigation of Spinoza and the context in which he first conceived of his hallmark ideas. Revisiting the extant historical sources, this article refines the present understanding of the connection between (...) Spinoza and the seventeenth-century kabbalistic circle of Amsterdam and the kabbalistic literature of that time. (shrink)

The Russian Cards Problem has been extensively studied as an example of a problem of an unconditionally secure protocol where the sender and receiver are able to transmit secret information safely over a public non-secure channel without the secret being learned by a third party with access to the channel. Epistemic logic in general and public announcement logic in particular have been very useful in this study, as it involves careful analysis of subtle properties of nested knowledge. A long standing (...) open problem is whether or not there exist protocols of length strictly greater than two for the original problem. In this paper we finally settle this problem, answering the question in the affirmative, by presenting a new solution to the original Russian Cards Problem that involves more than two steps. It starts with an initial announcement with so-called crossing hands, after which it is not common knowledge that the protocol can terminate in one more step. (shrink)

Semantic justifications of the classical rules of logical inference typically make use of a notion of bivalent truth, understood as a property guaranteed to attach to a sentence or its negation regardless of the prospects for speakers to determine it as so doing. For want of a convincing alternative account of classical logic, some philosophers suspicious of such recognition-transcending bivalence have seen no choice but to declare classical deduction unwarranted and settle for a weaker system; intuitionistic logic in particular, buttressed (...) by assertion-conditional semantics, is often considered to enjoy a degree of meaning-theoretical respectability unattainable by classical logic.The decision to forgo the classical inference rules is not always made lightly. Thus, Dummett: " In the resolution of the conflict between [the view that generally accepted classical modes of inference ought to be theoretically accommodated, and the demand that any such accommodation be achieved without recourse to bivalence] lies, as I see it, one of the most fundamental and intractable problems in the theory of meaning; indeed, in all philosophy. "The present article ventures to suggest that the conflict need not be irresoluble. Helping ourselves only to such conceptual resources as are standardly invoked by proponents of intuitionistic logic, we shall formulate a rudimentary meaning theory for a selection of logical constants, define a relation of valid inferability, and prove that the latter includes all of classical first-order logic. The result is essentially that reported in Sandqvist as Theorem 2.20.2. TheoryWe will be considering a standard-syntax first-order language with ⊃, ⊥ and ∀ as its only primitive logical constants. We assume countable supplies of individual constants, individual functors , and predicates , as well as a denumerably infinite set of individual variables. By a basic 1 formula we will mean one that …[Full Text of this Article]. (shrink)

Intuitionistic sentential logic is shown to be sound and complete with respect to a semantics centered around extensions of atomic bases (i.e. sets of inference rules for atomic sentences). The result is made possible through a non-standard interpretation of disjunction, whereby, roughly speaking, a disjunction is taken to hold just in case every atomic sentence that follows from each of the disjuncts separately holds; it is argued that this interpretation makes good sense provided that rules in atomic bases are conceived (...) of as being accepted hypothetically rather than categorically. (shrink)

This fascinating and timely volume explores current thinking on vital topics in moral psychology, spanning the diverse disciplines that contribute to the field. Academics from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, anthropology, philosophy, and political science address ongoing and emerging questions aimed at understanding the thought processes and behaviors that underlie our moral codes-and our transgressions. Cross-cutting themes speak to individual, interpersonal, and collective morality in such areas as the development of ethical behavior, responses to violations of rules, moral judgments in the (...) larger discourse, and universal versus specific norms. This wide-angle perspective also highlights the implications of moral psychology research for policy and justice, with cogent viewpoints from: Philosophy: empiricism and normative questions, moral relativism. Evolutionary biology: theories of how altruism and moral behavior evolved. Anthropology: common moral values seen in ethnographies from different countries. Cognitive and neural sciences: computational models of moral systems and decision-making. Political science: politics, governance, and moral values in the public sphere. Advice on moral psychology research-and thoughts about its future-from prominent scholars. With the goal of providing a truly multidisciplinary forum for moral psychology, this volume is sure to spark conversations across disciplines and advance the field as a whole. Sampling the breadth and depth of an equally expansive and transformative field, Moral Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Guide will find an engaged audience among psychologists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, lawyers, and policymakers, as well as a more general audience interested better understanding the complexity of moral psychology research. (shrink)

Part 1. Some problems of organization theory and the potential of process organization theory -- Why assumptions in organization theory do not work for explaining organizing in a world on the move -- Assumptions for organizing in a world on the move -- Part 2. Toward a process theory of organization -- Temporality and process -- Organization, meaning structures, and time -- Articulatory models and agency -- Part 3. Process theory and selected aspects of organization management -- Process theory, organizational (...) continuity, and change -- Managing and leading in time -- Organizational culture, identity, and institutions -- Some thoughts on studying process -- A plea for mystery. (shrink)

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.

Spinoza and Education offers a comprehensive investigation into the educational implications of Spinoza’s moral theory. Taking Spinoza’s naturalism as its point of departure, it constructs a considered account of education, taking special care to investigate the educational implications of Spinoza’s psychological egoism. What emerges is a counterintuitive form of education grounded in the egoistic striving of the teacher to persevere and to flourish in existence while still catering to the ethical demands of the students and the greater community. -/- In (...) providing an educational reading of Spinoza’s moral theory, this book sets up a critical dialogue between educational theory and recent studies which highlight the centrality of ethics in Spinoza’s overall philosophy. By placing his work in a contemporary educational context, chapters explore a counterintuitive conception of education as an ethical project, aimed at overcoming the desire to seek short-term satisfaction and troubling the influential concept of the student as consumer. This book also considers how education, from a Spinozistic point of view, may be approached in terms of a kind of cognitive therapy serving to further a more scientifically adequate understanding of the world and aimed at combating prejudices and superstition. -/- Spinoza and Education demonstrates that Spinoza’s moral theory can further an educational ideal, where notions of freedom and self-preservation provide the conceptual core of a coherent philosophy of education. As such, it will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, theory of education, critical thinking, philosophy, ethics, and Spinoza studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical CommentaryTor Phern Chern, Associate ConsultantThe case scenario describes a difficult clinical and ethical challenge of a psychiatric patient refusing treatment in the context of a treatment-resistant condition that may be affecting her capacity to refuse treatment.The patient described in the case scenario displayed partial treatment refusal as evidenced by her refusal of ECT and adherence with medication and her voluntary hospital admission. Partial treatment refusal is generally more (...) common than absolute treatment refusal1 and can be sporadic, time-limited, periodic or continuous. It is important for the medical team to clarify which category of treatment refusal this patient’s refusal falls under. These broad categories include the doctor-patient relationship, religion, secondary gain, treatment- or illness-based refusals.2 The proper identification of category of treatment refusal will guide subsequent management.Refusal of treatments may be in response to reality-based transference issues like fear, distrust or pressure from the patient’s family. In this particular case, there is little data about her relationship with her treating psychiatrist, but the lack of a trusting doctor-patient relationship could be a factor for treatment refusal. The treating psychiatrist at the inpatient setting could be different from the patient’s routine outpatient psychiatrist and this could result in the lack of a trusting doctor-patient relationship. The remedy for this would be to develop a trusting relationship between her treating psychiatrist and the patient via understanding the patient’s needs and concerns. A useful adjunct would be to identify someone with whom the patient has a trusting relationship and recruit that person to help develop trust in the doctor-patient relationship. On this point, it is interesting to note that the patient’s family was noted to be highly supportive and influential in previous treatment decisions, agreed [End Page 235] with the treating psychiatrist’s treatment recommendation and yet both the treating psychiatrist and the patient’s family were unable to convince her to accept ECT. One possibility is that the patient may see her family’s support of the treating psychiatrist’s recommendation as one reason to refuse treatment. This possibility warrants deeper explorations of her premorbid underlying cultural and religious beliefs and attitudes towards her family and her perceived role in her community.Religion-based refusals of treatment (e.g. blood transfusions for Jehovah’s Witnesses) are less prominent in psychiatry than in general medicine but may manifest in treatment refusal due to advice from religious leaders on the need for spiritual solutions to the patient’s challenges. Religion-based refusals need to be distinguished from an illness-based refusal but if truly present will require the support of appropriate religious leaders to allow the patient more management options other than spiritual support for her psychiatric disorder. There is no specific information about the patient’s religion and religion-based refusals of ECT are not particularly common so this is unlikely to be a major reason for treatment refusal in this case.Treatment-based refusals of care are related to the specific treatment modality being offered and are often motivated by concerns about the side effects of treatment or past traumas that the treatment elicits. In this particular case, the patient has demonstrated some degree of treatment resistance as evidenced by the relapse of her bipolar disorder despite adherence to medication, and a change in management is certainly warranted. However, a change in medication management may be possible before proceeding to ECT in view of the patient’s acceptance of medication and no clear evidence of violent or disturbed behaviour in the ward. The occasional refusal of food and water is worrying, but if the patient can be coaxed to continue oral nutrition, there is no absolute indication to have ECT for rapid treatment response. Other options that may be acceptable to the patient are to optimise the dosage of current medications, switch medications or add augmenting pharmacological agents before proceeding to ECT. A change in pharmacotherapy must take into account her past treatment response and side effects to individual medications. Psychotherapy may also be considered to augment treatment response before ECT is considered.3Illness-based refusals are the most challenging category and... (shrink)

In this dialogue Thomas A and Jeito intuitively discuss the difference between a miracle and a fact. They conclude that the doings of God aren’t miracles.

Education and Free Will critically assesses and makes use of Spinoza’s insights on human freedom to construe an account of education that is compatible with causal determinism without sacrificing the educational goal of increasing students’ autonomy and self-determination. Offering a thorough investigation into the philosophical position of causal determinism, Dahlbeck discusses Spinoza’s view of self-determination and presents his own suggestions for an education for autonomy from a causal determinist point of view. -/- The book begins by outlining the free will (...) problem in education, before expanding on a philosophical understanding of autonomy and how it is seen as an educational ideal. It considers Spinoza’s determinism and discusses his denial of moral responsibility. Later chapters consider the relationship between causal determinism and autonomy, the educational implications of understanding free will and how free will can be utilised as a valuable fiction in education. -/- This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, especially those with an interest in moral education and philosophy of education. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy and psychology and specifically those focusing on the free will problem, on Spinoza studies, and on the relation between moral psychology and external influence. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical enquiry into the educational consequences of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza’s political theory is of particular interest for educational thought as it brings together the normative aims of his ethical theory with his realistic depiction of human psychology and the ramifications of this for successful political governance. As such, this book aims to introduce the reader to Spinoza’s original vision of civic education, as a project that ultimately aims at the ethical flourishing of individuals, while being (...) carefully tailored and adjusted to the natural limitations of human reason. -/- Readers will benefit from a succinct introduction to Spinoza’s political philosophy and from an account of civic education that is based on careful exegetical work. It draws conclusions only hinted at in Spinoza’s own writings. (shrink)

Fictionalism confronts the dual epistemological nature of education. In this book, Johan Dahlbeck argues that all education, at bottom, concerns a striving for truth initiated through fictions. This foundational aporia is then interrogated and made sense of via Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if’ and Spinoza’s peculiar form of exemplarism. Using a variety of fictional examples, Dahlbeck investigates the different dimensions of educational fictionalism, from teacher exemplarism to the basic educational fictions necessary for getting started in education in the (...) first place. Fictionalism will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of education. (shrink)

In this dialogue Zhuangzi and Jacob discuss nothing and something and their relation with God.

The purpose of this article is to add to the debate on the normative status and legitimacy of indoctrination in education by drawing on the political philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677). More specifically, I will argue that Spinoza’s relational approach to knowledge formation and autonomy, in light of his understanding of the natural limitations of human cognition, provides us with valuable hints for staking out a more productive path ahead for the debate on indoctrination. This article combines an investigation into (...) the early modern history of political ideas with a philosophical inquiry into a persistent conceptual problem residing at the heart of education. As such, the aim of the article is ultimately to offer an account of indoctrination less fraught with the dangers of epistemological and political idealism that often haunt rival conceptions. (shrink)

This book develops a view of logic as a theory of information-driven agency and intelligent interaction between many agents - with conversation, argumentation and games as guiding examples. It provides one uniform account of dynamic logics for acts of inference, observation, questions and communication, that can handle both update of knowledge and revision of beliefs. It then extends the dynamic style of analysis to include changing preferences and goals, temporal processes, group action and strategic interaction in games. Throughout, the book (...) develops a mathematical theory unifying all these systems, and positioning them at the interface of logic, philosophy, computer science and game theory. A series of further chapters explores repercussions of the 'dynamic stance' for these areas, as well as cognitive science. (shrink)

The article is authored by the Dean of Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria, celebrating the Faculty’s centenary in 2017. The exposition of the argument is unfolded on the basis of Ricoeur’s threefold mimesis of prefiguration, configuration and reconfiguration. The earliest decisive statement with regard to the nature of the Faculty, and which is eagerly pursued, was made by the Rev. M.J. Goddefroy in 1888, epitomising theological training as of academic deference, that is as a Faculty at a (...) university and not a seminary. This has been the fibre of Theology at the University of Pretoria and intellectual inquiry is an uncompromised value. The article is a critical reflection on the past century and an orientation towards the next hundred years, identifying the essence of what a real Pretoria Model could and should be and looking ahead to the next century. ‘History is not a destination, but an orientation’, sounds like a refrain in the article. The enterprise is contextual with regard to time and space. The assessment is subsequently done in terms of this continent and this century, that is Africa and the 21st century. The conclusion of the article is that the Pretoria Model fills a unique niche in theological inquiry at public universities competing for a position among the top 500 on the ranking of world universities. (shrink)

Enacting an AI system typically requires three iterative phases where AI engineers are in command: selection and preparation of the data, selection and configuration of algorithmic tools, and fine-tuning of the different parameters on the basis of intermediate results. Our main hypothesis is that these phases involve practices with ethical questions. This paper maps these ethical questions and proposes a way to address them in light of a neo-republican understanding of freedom, defined as absence of domination. We thereby identify different (...) types of responsibility held by AI engineers and link them to concrete suggestions on how to improve professional practices. This paper contributes to the literature on AI and ethics by focusing on the work necessary to configure AI systems, thereby offering an input to better practices and an input for societal debates. (shrink)

It seems plausible, even truistic, that when an agent is faced with the choice of giving up one belief or another, the decision should be based on the relative strengths of these beliefs along some dimension of doxastic merit. This said, however, two non-trivial questions arise: (1) Which dimension? (2) How should the contraction outcome be affected by the distribution of beliefs along this dimension?

This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of ingenium in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration–emulation model of Linda Zabzebski’s influential exemplarist moral theory. I will start by introducing the problem of the admiration-emulation model by way of a fictional example. I will then briefly outline the concept of ingenium such as it appears in a Renaissance context, looking particularly at the pedagogical writings of Juan Luis Vives. This will set the stage for the next part, looking (...) at how early modern philosopher Benedict Spinoza adopts a Vivesian notion of ingenium, adjusting it so as to fit into the setting of his political theory. Next, I will turn to Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium in relation to his portrayal of exemplary persons, offering a pedagogical model of moral exemplarism that can counter some of the perceived problems of the admiration–emulation model as it highlights the necessary fallibility of efficient exemplars as well as acknowledges the socio-political dimension of emotions. Finally, I will lay out some preliminary consequences for educational theory, hoping to offer a way of reconciling moral exemplarism with a more realistic pedagogical and psychological framework. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical enquiry into the educational consequences of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza’s political theory is of particular interest for educational thought as it brings together the normative aims of his ethical theory with his realistic depiction of human psychology and the ramifications of this for successful political governance. As such, the book aims to introduce the reader to Spinoza’s original vision of civic education, as a project that ultimately aims at the ethical flourishing of individuals, while being (...) carefully tailored and adjusted to the natural limitations of human reason. This author-meets-critics includes scholars in philosophy, education and Spinoza studies. (shrink)

A variety of logical frameworks have been developed to study rational agents interacting over time. This paper takes a closer look at one particular interface, between two systems that both address the dynamics of knowledge and information flow. The first is Epistemic Temporal Logic (ETL) which uses linear or branching time models with added epistemic structure induced by agents’ different capabilities for observing events. The second framework is Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) that describes interactive processes in terms of epistemic event (...) models which may occur inside modalities of the language. This paper systematically and rigorously relates the DEL framework with the ETL framework. The precise relationship between DEL and ETL is explored via a new representation theorem characterizing the largest class of ETL models corresponding to DEL protocols in terms of notions of Perfect Recall, No Miracles, and Bisimulation Invariance. We then focus on new issues of completeness. One contribution is an axiomatization for the dynamic logic of public announcements constrained by protocols, which has been an open problem for some years, as it does not fit the usual ‘reduction axiom’ format of DEL. Finally, we provide a number of examples that show how DEL suggests an interesting fine-structure inside ETL. (shrink)

Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to B, you (...) pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. The Element also defends money-pump arguments from the standard objections to this kind of approach. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile Spinoza stipulates an ideal moral person in the propositions on the ‘free man’ in Ethics IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of political relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza’s political works seem more relevant. Interestingly, when we approach Spinoza’s political theory with moral exemplarism in mind, we find that instead of constructing his (...) exemplar on the idea of a supremely moral person, he emphasizes the concept of ingenium to chisel out an imperfect model of human behavior. We argue that the purpose of this is to avoid a utopian and inefficient political theory and to work out a moral practice that is capable of assisting people and communities in ethical self-transformation. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that we need not choose between seeing so-called Presocratic thinkers as rational philosophers or as religious sages. In particular, it rethinks fundamentally the emergence of systematic epistemology and reflection on speculative inquiry in Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Shaul Tor argues that different forms of reasoning, and different models of divine disclosure, play equally integral, harmonious and mutually illuminating roles in early Greek epistemology. Throughout, the book relates these thinkers to their religious, literary and historical surroundings. It is (...) thus also, and inseparably, a study of poetic inspiration, divination, mystery initiation, metempsychosis and other early Greek attitudes to the relations and interactions between mortal and divine. The engagements of early philosophers with such religious attitudes present us with complex combinations of criticisms and creative appropriations. Indeed, the early milestones of philosophical epistemology studied here themselves reflect an essentially theological enterprise and, as such, one aspect of Greek religion. (shrink)

Well-being can be promoted in two ways. Firstly, by affecting the quantity, quality and allocation of bundles of consumption (the Resource Approach), and secondly, by influencing how people benefit from their goods (the Taste Approach). Whereas the former is considered an ingredient of economic analysis, the latter has conventionally not been included in that field. By identifying the gain the Taste Approach might yield, the article questions whether this asymmetry is justified. If successfully exercised, the Taste Approach might not only (...) enable people to raise their wellbeing, but also provide solutions to a number of issues such as sustainable development and global justice. The author argues that recently developed accounts such as Happiness Economics (HE) and Libertarian Paternalism (LP) both can be considered specifications of the Taste Approach. Furthermore a third specification is identified: Inexpensive Preference Formation (IPF). Whereas LP suggests that choice architecture should be exercised when rationality fails, IPF holds that governance in certain instances should improve choices also in absence of no such failure. (shrink)

Bayesian models are often criticized for postulating computations that are computationally intractable (e.g., NP-hard) and therefore implausibly performed by our resource-bounded minds/brains. Our letter is motivated by the observation that Bayesian modelers have been claiming that they can counter this charge of “intractability” by proposing that Bayesian computations can be tractably approximated. We would like to make the cognitive science community aware of the problematic nature of such claims. We cite mathematical proofs from the computer science literature that show intractable (...) Bayesian computations, such as postulated in existing Bayesian models, cannot be tractably approximated. This does not mean that human brains do not (or cannot) implement the type of algorithms that Bayesian modelers are advancing, but it does mean that proposing that they do by itself does nothing to parry the charge of intractability, because the postulated algorithms are as intractable (i.e., require exponential time) as the computations they try to approximate. Besides our negative message for the community, our letter also makes a positive contribution by referring to a methodology that Bayesian modelers can use to try and parry the charge of intractability in a mathematically sound way. (shrink)

According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential Longtermism holds for a person (...) if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)

Immigration is often associated with a situation in which would-be migrants and their countries of origin are put at the mercy of others’ decisions. The main objective of this article is to theorize this ‘being at the mercy’ in light of a republican definition of what freedom is about: the absence of domination. Immigration policy represents instances of domination on a wide spectrum of individuals and political communities. This article focuses on the procedural discretion claimed by states of destination in (...) their relations with would-be migrants. On the basis of a definition of the concept of ‘jurisdiction’, the article distinguishes 4 paradigmatic situations of immigration, which all display situations of domination. In each situation, the state of destination arbitrarily interferes with important interests of individuals and political communities. In light of this argument, existing mechanisms in national, transnational and international settings can be identified and justified as anti-domination measures. The argument offers a blueprint on how to further develop them in preventing domination in immigration. (shrink)

Immigration is often associated with a situation in which would-be migrants and their countries of origin are put at the mercy of others’ decisions. The main objective of this article is to theorize this ‘being at the mercy’ in light of a republican definition of what freedom is about: the absence of domination. Immigration policy represents instances of domination on a wide spectrum of individuals and political communities. This article focuses on the procedural discretion claimed by states of destination in (...) their relations with would-be migrants. On the basis of a definition of the concept of ‘jurisdiction’, the article distinguishes 4 paradigmatic situations of immigration, which all display situations of domination. In each situation, the state of destination arbitrarily interferes with important interests of individuals and political communities. In light of this argument, existing mechanisms in national, transnational and international settings can be identified and justified as anti-domination measures. The argument offers a blueprint on how to further develop them in preventing domination in immigration. (shrink)

Spinoza’s claim that self-preservation is the foundation of virtue makes for the point of departure of this philosophical investigation into what a Spinozistic model of moral education might look like. It is argued that Spinoza’s metaphysics places constraints on moral education insofar as an educational account would be affected by Spinoza’s denial of the objectivity of moral knowledge, his denial of the existence of free will, and of moral responsibility. This article discusses these challenges in some detail, seeking to construe (...) a credible account of moral education based on the insight that self-preservation is not at odds with benevolence, but that the self-preservation of the teacher is instead conditioned by the intellectual deliberation of the students. However, it is also concluded that while benevolence retains an important place in Spinoza’s ethics, his causal determinism poses a severe threat to a convincing account of moral education insofar as moral education is commonly understood to involve an effort to influence the actions of students relative to some desirable goal. (shrink)

In participatory activities in the workplace, employees are invited to raise problems and suggest improvements to the management. Although it is widely acknowledged that employees rarely control decisions in these settings, little is known about the interactional resources that employees and managers draw upon when negotiating consensus about which initiatives to pursue in the future. We analyse interactions from participatory meetings in an industrial setting in relation to the topic of work shoes, showing how the participants orient to both their (...) relative deontic rights and epistemic rights. The analysis suggests that besides their low deontic status, employees’ fragile epistemic status constitutes an important but overlooked challenge to achieving improved working conditions through the participatory activities. (shrink)

It is natural to assume that every value bearer must be good, bad, or neutral. This paper argues that this assumption is false if value incomparability is possible. More precisely, if value incommensurability is possible, then there is a fourth category of absolute value, in addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral.