When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

Nineteen newly-transliterated letters between Ferdinand Christian Baur and his friend Ludwig Friedrich Heyd are presented. Seventeen of them were written by Baur, and two by Heyd in the period between 10th February 1836 and 16th January 1842. A further sixteen earlier letters were already published by Carl Egbert Hester in 1993. The correspondence between the two close friends cover a broad range of subjects, predominantly historical, as well as family, scientific, political themes and particularly university politics. The key personal topic (...) is the death of Baur’s wife in 1839 and the consequences of this for their children. The scientific themes concern firstly Baur’s efforts to assist Heyd in his research into the history of Württemberg, and to promote these works to publishers. Secondly, the letters document the reaction of the two to David Friedrich Strauß’s work “Das Leben Jesu”, and how their views changed during this correspondence. The central political themes of the letters relate primarily to appointments within Tübingen University, and in particular to previously unknown attacks on Baur’s own position there. Further discussions concern two politically arranged festivals; the Buchhändlerfest of 1840, and the 25th coronation anniversary of King Wilhelm I. of Württemberg in 1841, at which Baur gave a courageous speech on the political situation in Württemberg. Of particular interest in the letters previously transliterated by Hester are two topics, firstly the “Polish Petition” regarding the political situation in Poland in the 1830s, and secondly regarding the constitution of Tübingen University. To better understand the significance of these private letters and their openness, a short biography of Heyd is included. (shrink)

Ursula Coope presents a ground-breaking study of the philosophy of the Neoplatonists. She explores their understanding of freedom and responsibility: an entity is free to the extent that it is wholly in control of itself, self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing - which only a non-bodily thing can be.

Abstract In this paper, I ask why Aristotle thinks that ethical virtue (rather than mere self-control) is required for practical wisdom. I argue that a satisfactory answer will need to explain why being prone to bad appetites implies a failing of the rational part of the soul. I go on to claim that the self-controlled person does suffer from such a rational failing: a failure to take a specifically rational kind of pleasure in fine action. However, this still leaves a (...) problem: could there not be someone who (unlike the self-controlled person) took the right kind of pleasure in fine action, but who failed to be virtuous on account of bad appetites? If so, would such a person be practically wise but not virtuous? I end with some suggestions about how Aristotle might answer this. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to discuss theoretical arguments concerning the idea that emotional mimicry is an intrinsic part of our social being and thus can be considered a social act. For this, we will first present the theoretical assumptions underlying the Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulator view. We then provide a brief overview of recent developments in emotional mimicry research and specifically discuss new developments regarding the role of emotional mimicry in actual interactions and relationships, and individual differences (...) in emotional mimicry. We conclude with open questions for future research. (shrink)

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age--the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity--point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This eloquent volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for reverence (...) and continuity. Looking at topics such as evolution, emotions, sexuality, and death, Goodenough writes with rich, uncluttered detail about the workings of nature in general and of living creatures in particular. Her luminous clarity makes it possible for even non-scientists to appreciate that the origins of life and the universe are no less meaningful because of our increasingly scientific understanding of them. At the end of each chapter, Goodenough's spiritual reflections respond to the complexity of nature with vibrant emotional intensity and a sense of reverent wonder. A beautifully written celebration of molecular biology with meditations on the spiritual and religious meaning that can be found at the heart of science, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing dialog between science and religion. This book will engage anyone who was ever mesmerized--or terrified--by the mysteries of existence. (shrink)

What is the relation between time and change? Does time depend on the mind? Is the present always the same or is it always different? Aristotle tackles these questions in the Physics. In the first book in English exclusively devoted to this discussion, Ursula Coope argues that Aristotle sees time as a universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables her to explain two striking Aristotelian claims: that the now is like a moving (...) thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind. (shrink)

When I raise my arm, what makes it the case that my arm's going up is an instance of my raising my arm? In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's answer to this question. His view, I argue, is that my arm's going up counts as my raising my arm just in case it is an exercise of a certain kind of causal power of mine. I show that this view differs in an interesting way both from the Davidsonian ‘standard causal (...) account’ of action and from accounts put forward by recent critics of Davidson, such as Hornsby, Alvarez and Hyman. (shrink)

Summary From summer 1792 until spring 1797, Alexander von Humboldt was a mining official in the Franconian parts of Prussia. He visited mines, inspected smelting works, calculated budgets, wrote official reports, founded a mining school, performed technological experiments, and invented a miners’ lamp and respirator. At the same time he also participated in the Republic of Letters, corresponded with savants in all Europe, and was a member of the Leopoldine Carolinian Academy and the Berlin Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde. He collected minerals, (...) made geognostic observations, performed chemical and physiological experiments, read the newest scientific journals, and prepared and published texts on mineralogy, geognosy, chemistry, botany and physiology. Humboldt did his scientific investigations alongside his administrative and technical work. This raises the question of whether there were fruitful interactions between Humboldt's technical-administrative work and (parts of) his natural inquiry. I argue that the mining official Humboldt was a late eighteenth-century figure of hybrid savant-technician. Mines and smelting works provided numerous opportunities for studies of nature. Humboldt systematically used inspection tours for mineralogical and geognostic observations. He transformed mines into chemical laboratories, and he transferred knowledge and material items from his natural inquiries in mines to academic institutions. The main objective of this paper is to illuminate the persona of savant-technician (or scientific-technological expert) along with Humboldt's mixed technological and scientific work during his term as mining official. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its neural correlates during sleep. However, the precise differences between lucid and non-lucid dreams remain poorly understood. The construction of the Lucidity and Consciousness in (...) Dreams scale was based on theoretical considerations and empirical observations. Exploratory factor analysis of the data from the first survey identified eight factors that were validated in a second survey using confirmatory factor analysis: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors are involved in dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differentiate between lucid and non-lucid dreams, suggesting that lucid insight is separable from both bizarreness in dreams and a change in the subjectively experienced realism of the dream. (shrink)

Contributors use a variety of theoretical frameworks to analyze distinct areas of Craven’s work, including ecology, auteurism, philosophy, queer studies, and trauma. Scholars of cinema studies, horror, and ecology will find this book of particular interest.

This paper introduces the Eight Dimensional Methodology for Innovative Thinking (the Eight Dimensional Methodology), for innovative problem solving, as a unified approach to case analysis that builds on comprehensive problem solving knowledge from industry, business, marketing, math, science, engineering, technology, arts, and daily life. It is designed to stimulate innovation by quickly generating unique “out of the box” unexpected and high quality solutions. It gives new insights and thinking strategies to solve everyday problems faced in the workplace, by helping decision (...) makers to see otherwise obscure alternatives and solutions. Daniel Raviv, the engineer who developed the Eight Dimensional Methodology, and paper co-author, technology ethicist Rosalyn Berne, suggest that this tool can be especially useful in identifying solutions and alternatives for particular problems of engineering, and for the ethical challenges which arise with them. First, the Eight Dimensional Methodology helps to elucidate how what may appear to be a basic engineering problem also has ethical dimensions. In addition, it offers to the engineer a methodology for penetrating and seeing new dimensions of those problems. (shrink)

What is the relation between time and change? Does time depend on the mind? Is the present always the same or is it always different? Aristotle tackles these questions in the Physics. In the first book in English exclusively devoted to this discussion, Ursula Coope argues that Aristotle sees time as a universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables her to explain two striking Aristotelian claims: that the now is like a moving (...) thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind. (shrink)

The ArgumentMost historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in this paper is that modern chemisty started with the concept of the chemicl compound, which emerged at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, without any signifivant influence of the corpuscular theory. Rather the historical reconstruction of the emergence of this concept shows that it resulted from the reflection (...) on the chemical operations in the sixteenth-century metallurgy and seventeenth-century pharmacy. I argue that the reversibility of these operations and their understanding as crafts (metallurgy) or chemical arts (pharmacy) were decisive factors for the emergence of the first ideas about chemical compounds in the seventeenth-century pharmaceutical works written by pharmaceutically trained authors, influenced by the Paracelsian image of nature. There is a direct line of descent from these authors to E.F.Geoffroy (1675–1742), who integrated the first scattered ideas of chemical compound into a general concept comprising chemical artefacts as well as natural bodies. (shrink)

This article examines how some of Simone de Beauvoir's ethical notions about the Self-Other relation explored in her theoretical philosophy of the 1940s were developed in her subsequent autobiography. It argues that Beauvoir represents reciprocal alterity in these autobiographical texts through a testimonial engagement with autobiography conceptualized as an act of bearing witness for the Other, through the privileging of various interlocutors and privileged others with whom "the real" is experienced and through a negotiation with the reader. The article also (...) explores the wider question of how Beauvoir's engagement with autobiography might constitute a mode of ethical engagement with the Other. (shrink)

This article revisits materialist second-wave feminist debates about domestic labour in the context of digitalisation. Using a differentiated typology of labour, it looks at how the tasks involved in housework have undergone dramatic changes through commodification, decommodification and recommodification without fundamentally altering the gender division of labour in social reproduction, drawing on recent research on the use of online platforms to deliver social reproductive labour via the market in a context in which reproductive labour sits at the centre of an (...) intense time squeeze. It reflects on the implications of the commodification of domestic labour for feminist strategy. The author points to the inadequacy in this context of traditional feminist strategies—for the socialisation of domestic labour through public services, wages for housework or labour-saving through technological solutions—concluding that new strategies are needed that address the underlying social relations that perpetuate unequal divisions of labour in contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

High profile (and controversial) events and installations, like the Helter-Skelter in Norwich and the Crazy Golf Bridges in Rochester, have drawn attention to innovation and public engagement within Anglican cathedrals. The present study contextualised these innovations both empirically and conceptually. The empirical framework draws on cathedral websites to chronicle the wide and diverse range of events and installations hosted by Anglican cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man between 2018 and 2022. The conceptual framework draws on Edward Bailey’s theory (...) of implicit religion to classify and to explore these events and installations. Two insights from the theory of implicit religion emerged as of particular significance. First, the notion of implicit religion softens the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. This was exemplified by eight categories of events: scientific exhibitions, festivals, musical events, art exhibitions, theatre, markets, community events and installations. Second, the notion of implicit religion draws attention to the themes and activities that generate meaning and purpose. This was exemplified by seven themes: social justice and social conscience, violence and reconciliation, remembrance, migration and sanctuary, COVID-19 and lockdowns, personal well-being and nature and environment.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this article identifies the range of innovative events and installations hosted by Anglican Cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man and assesses the significance of these events and installations through Edward Bailey’s lens of implicit religion, discussing first the softening of boundaries between the sacred and the secular and then the generation of meaning and purpose through the core themes raised by these events and installations. (shrink)

In Physics, Aristotle starts his positive account of the infinite by raising a problem: “[I]f one supposes it not to exist, many impossible things result, and equally if one supposes it to exist.” His views on time, extended magnitudes, and number imply that there must be some sense in which the infinite exists, for he holds that time has no beginning or end, magnitudes are infinitely divisible, and there is no highest number. In Aristotle's view, a plurality cannot escape having (...) bounds if all of its members exist at once. Two interesting, and contrasting, interpretations of Aristotle's account can be found in the work of Jaako Hintikka and of Jonathan Lear. Hintikka tries to explain the sense in which the infinite is actually, and the sense in which its being is like the being of a day or a contest. Lear focuses on the sense in which the infinite is only potential, and emphasizes that an infinite, unlike a day or a contest, is always incomplete. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Account of Change in Physics III.1–3 Some Problems for This Account of Change Notes Bibliography.

Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream reports of congenitally deaf-mute and congenitally paraplegic individuals with those of non-handicapped controls. Continuity theory would predict that either the deficit itself or compensatory (...) experiences would surface in the dream narrative. We found that dream form and content of sensorially limited persons was indifferent from those of non-handicapped controls. Surprisingly, perceptual representations, even of modalities not experienced during waking, were quite common in the dream reports of our handicapped subjects. Results are discussed with respect to feedforward mechanisms and protoconsciousness theory of dreaming. (shrink)

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age--the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity-- point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This eloquent volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for (...) reverence and continuity. Looking at topics such as evolution, emotions, sexuality, and death, Goodenough writes with rich, uncluttered detail about the workings of nature in general and of living creatures in particular. Her luminous clarity makes it possible for even non-scientists to appreciate that the origins of life and the universe are no less meaningful because of our increasingly scientific understanding of them. At the end of each chapter, Goodenough's spiritual reflections respond to the complexity of nature with vibrant emotional intensity and a sense of reverent wonder. A beautifully written celebration of molecular biology with meditations on the spiritual and religious meaning that can be found at the heart of science, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing dialog between science and religion. This book will engage anyone who was ever mesmerized--or terrified--by the mysteries of existence. (shrink)

We proposed and tested the notion of a bidirectional influence of emotion expressions and context. In two studies, we found that the expressions shown by supporters and opponents...

Aesthetic emotions are elicited by different sensory impressions generated by music, visual arts, literature, theater, film, or nature scenes. Recently, the AESTHEMOS scale has been developed to facilitate the empirical assessment of such emotions. In this article we report a semantic profile analysis of aesthetic emotion terms that had been used for the development of this scale, using the GRID approach. This method consists of obtaining ratings of emotion terms on a set of meaning facets which represent five components of (...) the emotion process. The aims here were to determine the dimensionality of the GRID features when applied to aesthetic emotions and compare it to published results for emotion terms in general, and to examine the internal organization of the domain of aesthetic emotion terms in order to identify salient clusters of these items based on the similarity of their feature profiles on the GRID. Exploratory Principal Component Analyses suggest a four-dimensional structure of the semantic space consisting of valence, power, arousal, and novelty, converging with earlier GRID studies on large sets of standard emotion terms. Using cluster analyses, 15 clusters of aesthetic emotion terms with similar GRID feature profiles were identified, revealing the internal organization of the aesthetic emotion terms domain and meaningful subgroups of aesthetic emotions. While replication for further languages is required, these findings provide a solid basis for further research and methodological development in the realm of aesthetic emotions. (shrink)

People generally agree that there is something valuable about thinking for oneself rather than simply accepting beliefs on authority, but it is not at all obvious why this is valuable. This paper discusses two ancient responses, both inspired by the example of Socrates. Cicero claims that thinking for yourself gives you freedom. Olympiodorus argues that thinking for yourself makes it possible to achieve understanding, and that understanding is valuable because it gives you a certain kind of independence. The paper asks (...) how insights from these thinkers might bear on a question about the role of experts in a democracy. As citizens, we make judgements about many matters that fall within the domain of some expertise. Should thinking for oneself play an important role in such cases, or must the responsible citizen simply defer to expert authority? -/- . (shrink)

This comment on Smith and van Dijk’s discussion of the antecedents and consequences of schadenfreude and gluckschmerz considers these emotions in an appraisal framework and discusses the usefulness of naming emotions that do not come with ready-made labels in many languages.

: This article examines how some of Simone de Beauvoir's ethical notions about the Self-Other relation explored in her theoretical philosophy of the 1940s were developed in her subsequent autobiography. It argues that Beauvoir represents reciprocal alter-ity in these autobiographical texts through a testimonial engagement with autobiography conceptualized as an act of bearing witness for the Other, through the privileging of various interlocutors and privileged others with whom "the real" is experienced and through a negotiation with the reader. The article (...) also explores the wider question of how Beauvoir's engagement with autobiography might constitute a mode of ethical engagement with the Other. (shrink)

Voluntarily or not, women are moved in great numbers from Manila to Nigeria, from Burma to Thailand, and from post-socialist countries to Western Europe: female geobodies in the flow of global capitalism. The recently released 53-minute video essay Remote Sensing by the Swiss artist and video director Ursula Biemann traces the routes and reasons of women who migrate into the global sex industry. Taking a geographical approach to trafficking, the video develops a particular visual language generated by new media (...) and satellite technologies, which traces the migration of women in the age of digital images. All stills are taken from the video that was shot in the Philippines, Thailand, California, and the German–Czech border. (shrink)

Voluntarily or not, women are moved in great numbers from Manila to Nigeria, from Burma to Thailand, and from post-socialist countries to Western Europe: female geobodies in the flow of global capitalism. The recently released 53-minute video essay Remote Sensing by the Swiss artist and video director Ursula Biemann traces the routes and reasons of women who migrate into the global sex industry. Taking a geographical approach to trafficking, the video develops a particular visual language generated by new media (...) and satellite technologies, which traces the migration of women in the age of digital images. All stills are taken from the video that was shot in the Philippines, Thailand, California, and the German—Czech border. (shrink)

Social animals are provisioned with pro-social orientations that transcend self-interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate pro-social capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions.