_ Source: _Volume 24, Issue 2, pp 300 - 317 This article examines R. Zvi Yehudah Kook’s reading of two earlier thinkers who were influential in the formulation of his thought—the Maharal of Prague and R. Avraham Azulai. I argue that his creative and unique reading of these texts exemplifies a fascinating dialogue he held with earlier sources, which he interpreted and infused with his own theological postulates. Here I explore his theory of the unique nature of the Jewish soul, (...) in both its collective and individual manifestations. The connection between R. Zvi Yehudah’s approach to interpreting earlier Jewish theological texts and that of his father, R. Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook, will also be discussed. (shrink)

When people lose capacity to make a medical decision, the standard is to assess what their preferences would have been and try to honor their wishes. Dementia raises a special case in such situations, given its long, progressive trajectory during which others must make substituted judgments. The question of how to help surrogates make better‐informed decisions has led to the development of dementia‐specific advance directives, in which people are given tools to help them communicate what their preferences are while they (...) are still able. Such directives allow the perspective of the person to play a clearer role in guiding decisions about their care. Dementia directives can never serve as rigid algorithms. Rather, they can be used to help inform conversations, to help surrogates make decisions that are better aligned with the preferences the person would have had. This essay lays out the proposed utility of dementia‐specific directives and addresses some of the criticisms raised about them. (shrink)

Taking steps to build a more dementia‐friendly society is essential for addressing the needs of people experiencing dementia. Initiatives that improve the quality of life for those living with dementia are needed to lessen controllable factors that can negatively influence how people envision a future trajectory of dementia for themselves. Programs that provide better funding and better coordination for care support would lessen caregiver burden and make it more possible to imagine more people being able to live what they might (...) consider a “good life” with dementia. Specific proposals, such as payment for dementia care managers and new systems to support high‐quality, symptom‐based palliative care beyond the hospice benefit of only six months, would improve and reframe how many people in the United States experience a dementia illness. Such changes should be incorporated into discussions about improving and respecting preferences in the later stages of dementia. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a particular conception of impossible worlds. Possible worlds, as traditionally understood, can be used in the analysis of propositions, the content of belief, the truth of counterfactuals, and so on. Yet possible worlds are not capable of differentiating propositions that are necessarily equivalent, making sense of the beliefs of agents who are not ideally rational, or giving truth values to counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The addition of impossible worlds addresses these issues. The kinds (...) of impossible worlds capable of performing this task are not mysterious sui generis entities, but sets of structured propositions that are themselves constructed out of possible worlds and relations. I also respond to a worry that these impossible worlds are unable to represent claims about the shape of modal space itself. (shrink)

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The problem of counterpossibles is easiest to state within the "nearest possible world" framework for counterfactuals: on this approach, a counterfactual is true (roughly) when the consequent is true in the "nearest" possible world where the antecedent is true. Since counterpossibles have necessarily false antecedents, there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. On the approach favored by Lewis, Stalnaker, Williamson, and others, counterpossibles are all trivially true. I introduce several arguments (...) against the trivial approach. First, it is counter-intuitive to think that all counterpossibles are true. Second, if all counterpossibles were true, then we could not make sense of their use in logical, philosophical, or mathematical arguments. Making sense of the role of sentences like these requires that they not have vacuous truth conditions. The account of counterpossibles I ultimately favor is an extension of the "nearest possible world" semantics discussed above. The Lewis/Stalnaker account is supplemented with the addition of impossible worlds, and the nearness metric is extended to range over these impossible worlds as well as possible worlds. Thus, a counterfactual is true when its consequent is true in the nearest world where the antecedent is true; if the counterfactual's antecedent is impossible, then the nearest world in question will be an impossible world. Once the framework of impossible worlds and similarity is in place, we can put it to use in the analysis of other philosophical phenomena. I examine one proposal that makes use of a theory of counterpossibles to develop an analysis of the notion of metaphysical dependence. (shrink)

Introducing non-Darwinian mind as a nonaptation I argue that Darwinian mind evolved from non-Darwinian mind through the evolution of desire and aversion. The subject position within Darwinian mind is Darwinian self and is inherently selfish. However the cathexis whereby the subject prioritises motivations of desire and aversion is not an inherent property of mind. Instead it is proposed to be an adaptation, a predisposition to respond to pleasant/unpleasant sensations with desire/aversion. This explains why self-sacrifice and disengagement from desire/aversion are the (...) sine qua non of serious commitment to the spiritual path, i.e. Darwinian self and desire/aversion are two sides of the same coin and erosion of one is erosion of the other. Thus, through self- renunciation and suspension of desire/aversion the seeker passes from adaptive selfish Darwinian mind towards nonaptive selfless non-Darwinian mind. But Darwinian mind automatically resists this transcendence by intensifying motivations of desire/aversion thereby explaining the extreme difficulties of the spiritual path. A theoretical distinction is made between evolved Darwinian 'morality' , 'Darwinian' morality and amoral non-Darwinian kenosis . These distinctions make it easy to disentangle scientific and religious jurisdictions on morality with important implications for both religious ethics and science's view of spirituality. All in all, the nonaptive theory of spiritual mind offers a unified solution to age-old problems which have been uncomfortably shifting this way and that in the interstices between biology, psychology, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

This Article explores several meanings of a regulatory preference for government inaction. It explains the rise to dominance of this inaction preference in the United States and its distorting influence on the perception and understanding of regulation. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how basic terms in regulation, such as “government failure,” “regulatory capture,” and “deregulation,” acquired misleading connotations suggesting that government inaction is always superior to government action. The Article further explains how, through government inaction, the U.S. legal system accommodates rent (...) extraction - the profitable exploitation of market imperfections and favorable laws. Several developments in recent decades have considerably improved the capacity of very small groups in society to collect rents, namely, use talent and positional advantages to gain increasing levels of earnings. The Article argues that the parallel rise of the inaction preference has contributed to this trend, primarily because the availability of rent extraction opportunities draws talent that utilizes them with growing effectiveness. The purpose of the Article is to clarify several aspects of the relationships between regulation and rent extraction or, more precisely, to emphasize that government inaction may entail undesirable income effects. (shrink)

Die Buchreihe Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft gibt Aufschluss über Prinzipien, Probleme und Verfahrensweisen philologischer Forschung im weitesten Sinne und dient einer Bestimmung des Standorts der Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft. Die Reihe übergreift Einzelsprachen und Einzelliteraturen. Sie stellt sich in den Dienst der Reflexion und Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Die Bände sind zum Teil informierende Einführungen, zum Teil wissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge.

While Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) have improved the health and well-being of the people they serve, most healthcare institutions will only invest in an MLP if they are convinced that doing so will improve its balance sheet. This article offers a detailed estimation of the cost savings that an MLP targeted toward the most acute legal needs would accrue to an academic medical center (AMC) in North Carolina.

Einleitung: Da Costa und das Marranenproblem. Die Gründung der Sephardischen Gemeinde in Amsterdam. Die Spaltung des Bewusstseins. Das Schicksal da Costas. Da Costa und Spinoza.--Propostas contra a tradição. Thesen gegen die Tradition.--Sobre a mortalidade da alma. Über die Sterblichkeit der Seele.--Exemplar humanae vitae. Ein Beispiel menschlichen Lebens.--Regesten.--Anmerkungen.

Mientras que desde una perspectiva islámica los musulmanes debían ofrecer lealtad primordial a Dios y a Su mensaje, los lazos de parentesco podían poner en tela de juicio ese compromiso. Los ideales islámicos, articulados a través de diversos géneros literarios, reflejan esta tensión, presentando una priorización de la comunidad religiosa sobre la familia. Al mismo tiempo, sin embargo, los sentimientos de parentesco se utilizaban a menudo para inculcar ideales religiosos e identidad entre los miembros de la comunidad. La percepción islámica (...) primitiva y medieval de la autoridad materna ilustra bien este punto, ya que las madres musulmanas desempeñan un papel crucial en la formación de la identidad islámica de sus hijos. Sin embargo, en circunstancias opuestas, cuando la autoridad materna no musulmana estaba presente en entornos familiares dominados por el islam, se hacía necesaria una adaptación de las normas y reglamentos. En este ensayo, examino una serie de posturas islámicas relativas a los casos en que las madres, tanto musulmanas como no musulmanas, podían influir en las inclinaciones religiosas de sus hijos durante conflictos o diferencias interreligiosas. Estas posturas arrojan luz sobre una faceta adicional de los esfuerzos islámicos por preservar la integridad religiosa de los creyentes musulmanes, en particular de los niños musulmanes pequeños, dentro de un contexto religioso socialmente diverso. Aparecen en diversos géneros literarios con programas normativos, como el Corán, la exégesis coránica, las tradiciones proféticas, los compendios jurídicos, las biografías de los primeros musulmanes (ṣaḥāba), y literatura sobre etiqueta social (adab), que abarca desde el siglo I/VII al VII/XIII. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar una reconstrucción teórica sobre la figura de Abraham como categoría central en la constitución de la subjetividad en el pensamiento judío y mostrar cómo se convierte en referente filosófico en la obra levinasiana. Para ello, se indagan las raíces judías de Levinas y de su obra, en la que la figura de Abraham aparece como principio de subjetivación ética en el proceso de constitución del pueblo de la alianza, en contraste con la figura griega (...) de Ulises. Entre los hallazgos de este estudio se encuentra a Abraham como la presencia de un yo que se abre al llamado del Otro, no para absorberlo en su mismidad, sino para constituirse como un ser-para-el-Otro y reconocer el obligatorio cumplimiento de las responsabilidades ineludibles con su existencia. Se describe, además, la metáfora como apertura y salida de sí que lleva al ser humano más allá de sí mismo. El artículo llega a la conclusión de que el pensamiento filosófico de Levinas, centrado principalmente en la ética, ha contribuido significativamente a nuestra comprensión del ser humano como un Otro esencial en las relaciones intersubjetivas. Esta concepción encuentra su fundamento directamente en la tradición judía, en contraposición a la tradición griega que ha estado en la base de gran parte de los desarrollos de la filosofía occidental. (shrink)

Waging war for money has been frowned upon since the Peace of Westphalia and the rise of the modern nation-state. The stigma associated with private warfare translates, in legal terms, into a prohibition on mercenary activity and denying mercenaries the protection afforded to regular combatants . Noting the apparent similarities between mercenaries and private military contractors, some have sought to extend to the latter the restrictive regime applicable to the former. But the resemblance between these two types of actors should (...) not imply that private warfare, in its modern form, is condemnable outright. This Article argues that an inclusive approach to military outsourcing—drawing upon historical, legal and moral perspectives—is necessary to contend with the challenges raised by the growth of the private military industry. I examine the connection between history , morality , and law , to show that private warfare deserves a more nuanced and pragmatic treatment under international law. (shrink)

El presente artículo discute los conceptos de «autoconservación» y «trabajo» en Lo que aprendemos de los lirios del campo y las aves del cielo. El análisis del discurso edificante escrito por Kierkegaard en 1847 permite definir la perspectiva que el danés asume ante el proyecto filosófico de la Modernidad. A partir de una crítica a las concepciones estéticas y éticas de la vida, el autor edificante propone un modelo de existencia religiosa que combina la autoconservación y la dependencia.

El presente artículo discute la obra pseudónima de Kierkegaard “El reflejo de lo trágico antiguo en lo trágico moderno”. El joven esteta A traza una distinción entre la “culpa antigua” y la “culpa moderna”. A utiliza esta distinción para formular una potente crítica a la ética moderna. No obstante, dicha polémica contra los conceptos éticos de la Modernidad no implican un retorno a la moralidad trágica antigua.

En el actual contexto en reorganización por la influencia del ciberespacio cruzado, entre otras, por las contradicciones entre control y comunicación y por el impacto de las inteligencias artificiales damos cuenta del curso dirigido por Jesús Zamora Bonilla y titulado Filosofía del Futuro y el Futuro de la Filosofía (enero de 2023). En el mismo se ha dibujado el campo de los estudios del futuro y se ha reflexionado sobre el papel que en ellos pudiera jugar la filosofía. También se (...) ha vuelto a plantear el problema de sus condiciones de supervivencia. (shrink)

Uriel Weinreich was of the innovative and creative thinkers in the field of semantics in the twentieth century. This volume contains all of Weinreich's writings on semantics, including a number of papers that were not published in his lifetime. It includes the first paper on the universals of semantic theory, an analysis of the fundamental concepts of semantics and semiotics, and a critique of lexicography.

Law, Economics, and Morality examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. However, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis is normatively objectionable. Moderate deontology prioritizes such values as autonomy, basic liberties, truth-telling, and promise-keeping over the promotion of good outcomes. It (...) holds that there are constraints on promoting the good. Such constraints may be overridden only if enough good is at stake. While moderate deontology conforms to prevailing moral intuitions and legal doctrines, it is arguably lacking in methodological rigor and precision. Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina argue that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. They discuss various substantive and methodological choices involved in modeling deontological constraints. Zamir and Medina propose to determine the permissibility of any act or rule infringing a deontological constraint by means of mathematical threshold functions. Law, Economics, and Morality presents the general structure of threshold functions, analyzes their elements and addresses possible objections to this proposal. It then illustrates the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, antidiscrimination law, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism. (shrink)

This article explores an issue of some ongoing controversy in Ovidian scholarship: the identity of the anonymous person addressed in the epilogue of the “Tristia”’s third book. The exploration combines an analysis of the text with an examination of salient aspects of Hellenistic and Roman literary culture. These in turn inform a systematic prosopographical reassessment of four hypotheses. Evidence converges in the conclusion that the addressee was likely a high-level library administrator, most probably C. Iulius Hyginus.

At the beginning ofTristia2, a single long apologetic elegy, Ovid struggles with making sense of his continued occupation with poetry, despite the disaster it has brought upon him. In lines 7–8 he broods over Augustus’ displeasure, roused by theArs Amatoria, which led to his reproach. The passage is also sometimes adduced as a reference to the removal of theArsfrom Rome's public libraries.1.

According to the tuning-for-criticality theory, the essential role of sleep is to protect the brain from super-critical behaviour. Here we argue that this protective role determines the content of dreams and any apparent relationship to the art of memory is secondary to this.

The American and some other constitutions entrench property rights by requiring super majoritarian voting as a condition for amending or revoking their own provisions. Following Buchanan and Tullock [The Calculus of Consent, Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor), 1962], this paper analyzes individuals' interests behind a veil of ignorance, and shows that under some standard assumptions, a (simple) majoritarian rule should be adopted. This result changes if one assumes that preferences are consistent with the behavioral (...) phenomenon known as the endowment effect. It then follows that (at least some) property rights are best defended by super majoritarian protection. The paper then shows that its theoretical results are consistent with a number of doctrines underlying American Constitutional Law. (shrink)

Christians and Others in the Umayyad State. Edited by Antoine Borrut and Fred M. Donner. Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East, vol. 1. Chicago: riental Institute, University of Chicago, 2016. Pp. ix + 213. $24.95.

Standing at the edge of life's abyss, we seek meaningful order. We commonly find this 'symbolic immortality' in religion, civilization, state and nation. What happens, however, when the nation itself appears mortal? The Mortality and Morality of Nations seeks to answer this question, theoretically and empirically. It argues that mortality makes morality, and right makes might; the nation's sense of a looming abyss informs its quest for a higher moral ground, which, if reached, can bolster its vitality. The book investigates (...) nationalism's promise of moral immortality and its limitations via three case studies: French Canadians, Israeli Jews, and Afrikaners. All three have been insecure about the validity of their identity or the viability of their polity, or both. They have sought partial redress in existential self-legitimation: by the nation, of the nation and for the nation's very existence. (shrink)

Modern political thought arrived on the heels of two revolutionary realizations: We are not at the center of the universe (Copernicus), which was not created for us (Darwin). How might political theory respond to a third revolutionary realization, that we are not alone, that other creatures, sentient and highly intelligent, share our vast universe? We explore answers through a dialogue between two political theorists, a human and an alien. Rather than superimposing astropolitics upon anthropolitics, we use the encounter to ask (...) new questions, e.g., should PT foster bridges between humans and aliens, or harden the boundaries? Pitting Dark Forest Theory against the Campfire Theory, we outline the coming existential and existentialist turns in political theory, complementing Earth politics with exopolitics. (shrink)

The goal of the current study was to examine novice researchers’ views about online ethics education and to identify the instructional design components that may foster ethical practice. Applying the mixed methods approach, data were collected via a survey and semi-structured interviews among M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in science and engineering. The findings point to the need for rethinking the way conventional online ethics courses are developed and delivered; encouraging students to build confidence in learning from distance, engaging them in (...) online active and interactive experiences, and providing them with personalized support and adaptive guidance. The novice researchers identified the synergistic integration of collaborative, case-based, and contextual learning, as the instructional design components that may foster not only ethical knowledge but also ethical practice in a fully online course. (shrink)

The growing trend of shifting from classroom to distance learning in ethics education programs raises the need to examine ways for adapting best instructional practices to online modes. To address this need, the current study was set to apply a social constructivist approach to an online course in research ethics and to examine its effect on the learning outcomes of science and engineering graduate students. The study applied a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental research design within a framework of a mixed-methods approach. (...) The study compared the learning outcomes of students who participated in a social constructivist online course with those who studied in a conventional online course. The data were collected via questionnaires and interviews. The findings indicated that both the conventional and the social constructivist online learners gained knowledge of facts and regulations. Yet, the social constructivist learners were more successful in demonstrating knowledge of practices that are used to establish research ethics, and in understanding the importance of conducting research in a responsible manner. The social constructivist online learners were also more successful in demonstrating awareness of ethical dilemmas, by identifying ethical dilemmas and providing solutions to ethical problems. (shrink)

This essay focuses on proportionality stricto sensu as a consequential test of balancing. The basic balancing rule establishes a general criterion for deciding between the marginal benefit to the public good and the marginal limit to human rights. Based on the Israeli constitutional jurisprudence, this essay supports the adoption of a principled balancing approach that translates the basic balancing rule into a series of principled balancing tests, taking into account the importance of the rights and the type of restriction. This (...) approach provides better guidance to the balancer , restricts wide discretion in balancing, and makes the act of balancing more transparent, more structured, and more foreseeable. The advantages of proportionality stricto sensu with its three levels of abstraction are several. It stresses the need to always look for a justification of a limit on human rights; it structures the mind of the balancer; it is transparent; it creates a proper dialog between the political brunches and the judiciary, and it adds to the objectivity of judicial discretion. Proportionality stricto sensu however has it critics: some claim that it attempts to balance incommensurable items; others that balancing is irrational. The answer to the critics is that it is a common base for comparison, namely the social marginal importance and that the balancing rules—basic, principled, concrete—supply a rational basis for balancing. A democracy must entrust the judiciary—the unelected independent judiciary—to be the final decision-maker—subject to constitutional amendments—about proper ends that cannot be achieved because they are not proportionality stricto sensu. (shrink)

This article analyses and interprets the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) as a source of inspiration for environmental ethics and offers an extended model of the Ecological Self based on an interpretation of his works. Hundertwasser was a prominent Jewish-Austrian artist and environmental activist, yet despite his commitment to environmental issues, he has not received the attention he deserves from the environmental ethics community. His works and writings suggest a critique and reformulation of the well-known concept of the Ecological Self. (...) This concept implies that humans are essentially embedded in the natural world - that the Self is porous and open rather than disengaged and atomistic. This article suggests an alternative, holistic and extended version of this concept. It assesses and incorporates additional layers found between humans and nature - clothing, architecture, urban environments, and social and political environments. (shrink)

Cities are traditionally characterized as a sub-unit of the state that functions as a socioeconomic node. However, global trends in recent decades indicate that cities are gradually acquiring a semi-independent political role, challenging and contesting the nation state`s authority. Into the twenty-first century, cities` actions in global politics (e.g., supranational city-based networks) and within the state (e.g., sanctuary cities) indicate that they aspire to attain or even directly claim more political autonomy. However, achieving these localist goals sometimes warrants regional cooperation (...) with neighboring municipal jurisdictions, thereby engendering ad-hoc and bottom-up regionalisms. Addressing this phenomenon theoretically, this Article analyzes three empirically and conceptually distinct types of the localist-regionalist nexus, demonstrating different rationales: (1) regional cooperation supporting localist innovation independent of state intervention; (2) regional cooperation supporting localist contestation of state policies; and (3) regional solidarity in the face of national tensions. Based on recent examples from Israel, it analyzes these three types along with their political and normative implications. Despite various discrepancies and possible tensions between localism and regionalism, the main conclusion emerging from this Article is that these two principles are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, although there are legal, institutional, political, and ideological tensions between them, the analysis suggests a third way between localism or regionalism. Likewise, some types of regionalization may act as a mechanism or tactic to support and deepen localist agendas. (shrink)