Evolutionary adaptation has been suggested as the hallmark of life that best accounts for life’s creativity. However, current evolutionary approaches still fail to give an adequate account of it, even if they are able to explain both the origin of novelties and the proliferation of certain traits in a population. Although modern-synthesis Darwinism is today usually appraised as too narrow a position to cope with all the complexities of developmental and structural biology—not to say biosemiotic phenomena—, Darwinism need not be (...) if we separate metaphor from reality in natural selection in order to show the axiological complexity of this concept. This can shed light on the relationship between biosemiotics and biological evolution. (shrink)

One of the central limitations of sensory substitution devices (SSDs) is their inability to reproduce the non-sensory feelings that are normally associated with visual experiences, especially hedonic and aesthetic responses. This limitation is sometimes reported to cause SSD users frustration. To make matters worse, it is unclear that improvements in acuity, bandwidth, or training will resolve the issue. Yet, if SSDs are to actually reproduce visual experience in its fullness, it seems that the reproduction of non-sensory feelings will be of (...) some importance. We offer a novel solution. Researchers can produce hedonic and aesthetic responses by eliciting these feelings artificially, pairing distal objects that should be pleasurable to pleasurable stimulus outputs from the SSD. We outline two strategies for accomplishing this: first, by means of a prefixed, hardwired, association of pleasant distal objects to pleasant stimulus outputs from the SSD; second, by means of a flexible, feedback-based association which creates associations based on a subject-directed matching of distal objects to patterns of stimuli from the SSD which the subject takes to have the corresponding hedonic properties. We evaluate some problems with both strategies, and we argue that the feedback-based strategy is more promising. Researchers can use this strategy to help the blind, allowing them to take pleasure in the objects they perceive using SSDs. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: How does sensory substitution interact with the brain’s architecture?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013. This portion of the report explores the question: Does sensory substitution generate perceptual or cognitive states?

This report highlights and explores five questions that arose from the workshop on sensory substitution and augmentation at the British Academy, March 26th through 28th, 2013.

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

Brentano’s introduction of the concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy was indebted to scholastic sources. Among these, Suárez has not been sufficiently addressed, even though his idea of transcendental relation is relied upon by Brentano to describe the intentional relation. In addition, in his examination of being as truth in Suárez, Brentano manifests his assumption of the principle of immanence. Finally, this article argues that, even in his reist period, Brentano continued to understand knowledge as a relation.

This article intends to examine the problematic question of the ontological status of “physical premotion,” that is, the divine motion of created free will. This idea was developed by the Dominican Báñez and was strongly criticised by the Jesuit Suárez. Suárez’s description of physical premotion shows that he gradually conditioned the debate in a way which compelled to see the premotion as an entity different from the creator and the free agent. Several texts of Suárez are also reviewed in discussion (...) with a recent study of Matava. Finally, the article concludes that Báñez follows the main lines of the thought of Aristotle and Aquinas; consequently, he does not believe that the divine motion has any other effect in the world than that of the free action of the created agent. (shrink)

On several occasions, Báñez considered Suárez the main supporter of the Molinist doctrine along with Molina himself. According to Báñez, the main mistake of Molinism is its misunderstanding of freedom. This led him to refine his personal Thomistic theory of freedom. Free will is radically in the intellect and formally in the will. Intellect is the root of freedom because the most important indifference is found in the object, whose connection with the end is understood as not necessary. The intellect (...) aware of this indifference causes a formally free volition that is not incompatible with the effective divine motion. (shrink)

Brentano claims to have taken his idea of intentionality from scholastic thought. However, in St. Thomas Aquinas, intentionality is not just the mark of knowledge, although some scholastics have interpreted it this way, even during Brentano’s lifetime. Moreover, to elaborate his idea of intentional presence, the German philosopher was not only inspired by him, but also by Francisco Suárez. In an unpublished manuscript from his legacy, Brentano understands Suarez’s objective concept as a representation of the thing in the psyche. (...) Thus, even before writing his definitive doctoral thesis, Brentano maintained that the object of thought is not the external thing but its mental copy. In short, modern philosophy seems to have been more decisive than scholasticism in shaping the substance of his theory of intentionality. (shrink)

Throughout the history of Thomism, interpretations of the ontology of God’s physical premotion of human free will have been divided mainly into two main groups. Most authors have thought that physical premotion constitutes a certain “entity” infused by God in the creature, although not all of them accept the account of Cabrera, who affirmed that premotion was a “quality”. On the other hand, there are some authors who understand premotion as a direct intervention of God in the vital act of (...) the creature which does not originates any entity prior to the created deliberate action itself. Báñez himself never spoke of any such entity, although some of his disciples soon adopted this view. One of his disciples, Pedro de Ledesma, is the author who best developed this minimalist approach in his treatise published on the occasion of the Controversy De auxiliis. This paper studies the main reasons used by Ledesma in his book to defend such an interpretation. (shrink)

In the years that saw the transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, a controversy arose in Spain over the problem of the harmony between created freedom and divine omnipotence. This dispute arose in Salamanca, but it would have important consequences for the conception of man in Europe from then on. In my proposal, I pay attention to Domingo Báñez, an important member of the School of Salamanca, which point of view has been somewhat blurred due to the heat (...) of the polemic. In particular, I would like to emphasise his way of pointing to human dignity as the basis of the relationship between divine and human freedom. Such dignity does not lie in a misunderstood autonomy but in its dependence on God. Thus, according to Báñez, human freedom is an image of divine freedom, so that its dignity is not so much reflected in its independence from the power of God—which only occurs, to a certain extent, in sin—but in the concord between the two freedoms. (shrink)

This book lists the manuscripts related to the 'De Auxiliis' Controversy that are preserved in Rome. This dispute is one of the episodes in Spanish intellectual history with the greatest international resonance, if we take into account the commotion caused in Rome and the secular repercussions it will have within the Catholic and even Protestant sphere. This theological controversy also involves highly topical concepts that attract the interest of contemporary philosophers. This book contains a complete list of the manuscripts preserved (...) in Rome, trying to relate them to each other and to point out which are the most reliable and valuable sources. This involves the description of a considerable number of manuscripts that had not been described in any catalogue until now, and the identification of some unknown works. In addition, several unpublished letters by Domingo Báñez and Luis de Molina are transcribed here. (shrink)

In this article I present the most important works by Domingo Báñez on the so-called De auxiliis controversy, on divine predestination, divine will and divine grace, and human freedom. It is a polemic against Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez, mainly. I review the works published by Báñez and his unpublished manuscripts, providing new historical data on them.

A book with all the abstracts of the talks held in the conference "La Escuela de Salamanca y su proyección iberoamericana": University San Dámaso (Madrid), 13th-15th October 2021.

John Rawls shows a deep influence of David Hume’s thought, mainly at his Theory of Justice, though also at the rest of his works. This influence is well-known in the field of political philosophy, much less in the field of moral philosophy. Rawls reads Hume’s thought with a sceptic and naturalistic key, attributing him what he calls a “nature fideism”. Besides this, attributes to Hume an ethical and political position linked with the classical utilitarianism. Nevertheless, his skeptical epistemology will (...) move away, paradoxically, to Hume from the utilitarian positions. Hume’s ethics and politics will finish, according to Rawls, showing a purely descriptive character and a lack of normative purposes. Hume does not have in the strict sense a theory of practical reason. This article examines and puts in question this interpretation of Hume proposed by John Rawls. The philosophy of Hume is not aporetically skeptical, articulates the moral roles of reason and the passions; and finally, is not only connected with utilitarianism; his defense of the role of utility frees to his theory of some of the main contradictions of classical utilitarianism. Besides this, the theory of the “judicious spectator” can be considered a form of a theory of practical rationality. (shrink)

It has often been noticed that conciliatory views of disagreement are "self-undermining" in a certain way: advocates of such views cannot consistently maintain them when other philosophers disagree. This leads to apparent problems of instability and even inconsistency. Does self-undermining, then, show conciliationism untenable? If so, the untenablity would extend not only to almost all views of disagreement, but to a wide range of other views supporting what one might call epistemic modesty: roughly, the idea that getting evidence that one (...) has made an epistemic error in arriving at one’s opinion may require adjusting that opinion. This paper argues that the phenomenon of self-undermining does not disclose any defect in views mandating epistemic modesty. Instead, it highlights an uncomfortable but natural consequence of reflecting on one's own possible epistemic imperfections, a sort of reflection that tends to cause epistemic ideals to conflict. (shrink)

I discuss Gheaus's (2013) argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice -- puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called "feasibility requirement"; costly because it it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus's attempt to recover (...) this normative force presupposes an epistemic dimension to the feasibility requirement that most proponents of that requirement would reject. (shrink)

Interest in idealism has increased substantially since the publication of Sprigge’s Vindication of Absolute Idealism in 1984,1 and again with more vigor over the last decade in the context of the mind-body problem and panpsychism. This will probably not come as a surprise to objective idealists, among which Vittorio Hosle has proposed that philosophy cycles through stages with some form of idealism as end point of each cycle.2 More recently, David Chalmers mused about a corresponding development in the worldview (...) of single individuals from materialism over dualism and panpsychism to idealism.3 Traditional accounts of idealism include for instance those of Plato, Plotinus, Leibniz, Berkeley, or Hegel. An overview of contemporary approaches is given in the article by Chalmers, where he mentions amongst others a recent collection of essays on idealism,4 but also for instance the (recently extended5) works of Philip Goff on Russellian monism.6 A more classically oriented collection of works on idealism was edited by Hosle and Suarez Muller.7 In his article ‘Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem’, David Chalmers presents a classification of possible versions of idealism with the goal of assessing the prospects of idealism in the context of the mind-body problem without having to pay too much attention to its ‘historical baggage’. This goal seems to me highly laudable and the resulting classification an important contribution to the contemporay discussion. In addition, the conclusions drawn from the subsequent analysis seem very plausible from the viewpoints of dualistic, panpsychistic and similar thinking. I nevertheless believe that the presented classification is not really adequate to capture the core of traditional idealistic thinking, which in turn leads to somewhat distorted conclusions about the opportunities for idealism to play a role for understanding the mind-body problem: First, the distinction between micro- macro- and cosmic idealism ist not fitting well into the idealistic venture. Instead, idealism is artificially reduced to a bad alternative to panpsychism. Secondly, the initially mentioned, but afterwards not discussed again difference between subjectinvolving and non-subject-involving idealism needs to be further extended, to account for the special role of subjects in traditional accounts of objective idealism. To elaborate on this, I will first give a short summary of Chalmers classification and some of the mentioned problems with idealism. Afterwards I will come back to my two objections in more detail. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

I argue that Meno’s Paradox targets the type of knowledge that Socrates has been looking for earlier in the dialogue: knowledge grounded in explanatory definitions. Socrates places strict requirements on definitions and thinks we need these definitions to acquire knowledge. Meno’s challenge uses Socrates’ constraints to argue that we can neither propose definitions nor recognize them. To understand Socrates’ response to the challenge, we need to view Meno’s challenge and Socrates’ response as part of a larger disagreement about the value (...) of inquiry. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Many epistemologists hold that an agent can come to justifiably believe that p is true by seeing that it appears that p is true, without having any antecedent reason to believe that visual impressions are generally reliable. Certain reliabilists think this, at least if the agent’s vision is generally reliable. And it is a central tenet of dogmatism (as described by James Pryor) that this is possible. Against these positions it has been argued (e.g. by Stewart Cohen and Roger White) (...) that this violates some principles from probabilistic learning theory. To see the problem, let’s note what the dogmatist thinks we can learn by paying attention to how things appear. (The reliabilist says the same things, but we’ll focus on the dogmatist.). (shrink)

The Simple Question (SQ) asks: “What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions any x must satisfy in order for it to be true that x is a simple?” The main motivation for asking SQ stems from the hope that it could teach us important lessons for material-object ontology. It is universally accepted that a proper answer to it has to be finite, complete and devoid of mereological expressions. This paper argues that we should stop treating SQ as the central (...) question to be asked about simples; there are a plethora of questions about simples that may even be addressed without answering the original question. The paper closes with some tentative remarks on how this lesson could be extended to van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question. (shrink)

Cartesian arguments for global skepticism about the external world start from the premise that we cannot know that we are not in a Cartesian scenario such as an evil-demon scenario, and infer that because most of our empirical beliefs are false in such a scenario, these beliefs do not constitute knowledge. Veridicalist responses to global skepticism respond that arguments fail because in Cartesian scenarios, many or most of our empirical beliefs are true. Some veridicalist responses have been motivated using verificationism, (...) externalism, and coherentism. I argue that a more powerful veridicalist response to global skepticism can be motivated by structuralism, on which physical entities are understood as those that play a certain structural role. I develop the structuralist response and address objections. (shrink)

A spirited reading of Derrida’s view of ethics as transcendental and performative.

Traditionally, the investigation of truth has been anchored in a priori reasoning. Cognitive science deviates from this tradition by adding empirical data on how people understand and use concepts. Building on psychophysics and machine learning methods, we introduce conceptual scaling, an approach to map people's understanding of abstract concepts. This approach, allows computing participant-specific conceptual maps from obtained ordinal comparison data, thereby quantifying perceived similarities among abstract concepts. Using this approach, we investigated individual's alignment with philosophical theories on truth and (...) the predictive capacity of conceptual maps. The obtained results indicated that, while people's understanding of truth is multifaceted and encapsulates notions of coherence and authenticity, alignment is best for the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, conceptual maps allowed predicting individual outcomes with an accuracy of roughly 70%. This research demonstrates that conceptual scaling offers accurate descriptions of individual's understanding of abstract concepts, behavioral predictions, and quantification of alignment with theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

An introduction to Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge for a textbook.

What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it (...) takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined. (shrink)

This is a collective study of the epistemic significance of disagreement: twelve contributors explore rival responses to the problems that it raises for philosophy. They develop our understanding of epistemic phenomena that are central to any thoughtful engagement with others' beliefs.

Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal (...) in this paper is to determine what causes persistence judgments. Across four studies, we pit normative considerations against teleological considerations. And using causal modeling procedures, we find a consistent, robust pattern with teleological and not normative considerations directly causing persistence judgments. Our findings put teleology in the driver’s seat, while at the same time shedding further light on our folk notion of an object. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing to explore the limits (...) of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing _per se_ does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we present the outlines of a history of university collections in Germany. On the other hand, we discuss this history as a case study of the changing attitudes of the sciences towards their material heritage. Based on data from 1094 German university collections, we distinguish three periods that are by no means homogeneous but offer a helpful starting point for a discussion of the entangled institutional and epistemic factors in (...) the history of university collections. In the 19th century, university collections were institutionalized and widely recognized as indispensable in research and teaching. During the 20th century, university collection became increasingly marginalized both on an institutional and theoretical level. Towards the end of the 20th century, the situation of university collections improved partly because of their reconsideration as material heritage. (shrink)

In the pure powers ontology (PPO), basic physical properties have wholly dispositional essences. PPO has clear advantages over categoricalist ontologies, which suffer from familiar epistemological and metaphysical problems. However, opponents argue that because it contains no qualitative properties, PPO lacks the resources to individuate powers, and generates a regress. The challenge for those who take such arguments seriously is to introduce qualitative properties without reintroducing the problems that PPO was meant to solve. In this paper, I distinguish the core claim (...) of PPO: (i) basic physical properties have dispositional essences, from a hitherto unnoticed assumption: (ii) the dispositional essences of basic physical properties exclusively involve type-causal relations to other basic physical properties. I reject (ii), making room for a structuralist ontology in which all basic physical properties are pure powers, individuated by their places in a causal structure that includes not only other powers, but also physically realized qualitative properties such as shapes, patterns and structures. Such qualities individuate pure powers in the way that non-mental input and output properties individuate realized mental properties in functionalist theories of mind, except that here it is basic physical powers that are individuated by relations to realized non-powers. I distinguish one Platonic and two Aristotelian version of this theory, and argue that the Aristotelian versions require that grounding is not always a relative fundamentality relation, because the powers ground the qualities that individuate them. By considering ontic structural realism, I argue that symmetric grounding is the best way to make sense of relational individuation in structuralist ontologies, and is therefore no additional commitment of the one proposed here. (shrink)

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments (...) used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments. (shrink)

Comment on Robin Tapley's paper on whether or not the sexual aspect of sexual harms adds anything to the harm done. I argue it does not based on the grounds Tapley provides.

A curious and comparatively neglected element of death penalty jurisprudence in America is my target in this paper. That element concerns the circumstances under which severely mentally disabled persons, incarcerated on death row, may have their sentences carried out. Those circumstances are expressed in a part of the law which turns out to be indefensible. This legal doctrine—competence-for-execution —holds that a condemned, death-row inmate may not be killed if, at the time of his scheduled execution, he lacks an awareness of (...) his impending death or the reasons for it. I argue that the law of CFE should be abandoned, along with the notion that it is permissible to kill the deeply disturbed just so long as they meet some narrow test of readiness to die. By adopting CFE, the courts have been forced to give independent conceptual and moral significance to a standard for competence that simply cannot bear the weight placed upon it. To be executable, CFE requires that a condemned prisoner meet a standard demonstrating an awareness of certain facts about his death. Yet this standard both leads to confusing and counter-intuitive results and is unsupported either by the reasons advanced by the courts on its behalf or by any of the standard theoretical justifications of criminal punishment. If executing the profoundly psychotic or delusional is wrong the law needs a better account of the wrong done when prisoners like Ford are killed. I suggest wherein that wrong might be located. (shrink)

The formal and empirical-generative perspectives of computation are demonstrated to be inadequate to secure the goals of simulation in the social sciences. Simulation does not resemble formal demonstrations or generative mechanisms that deductively explain how certain models are sufficient to generate emergent macrostructures of interest. The description of scientific practice implies additional epistemic conceptions of scientific knowledge. Three kinds of knowledge that account for a comprehensive description of the discipline were identified: formal, empirical and intentional knowledge. The use of formal (...) conceptions of computation for describing simulation is refuted; the roles of programming languages according to intentional accounts of computation are identified; and the roles of iconographic programming languages and aesthetic machines in simulation are characterized. The roles that simulation and intentional decision making may be able to play in a participative information society are also discussed. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends a novel hybrid account of well-being. We will call our view a Robust Hybrid. We call it robust because it grants a broad and not subservient role to both objective and subjective values. In this paper we assume, we think plausibly but without argument, that there is a significant objective component to well-being. Here we clarify what it takes for an account of well-being to have a subjective component. Roughly, we argue, it must allow that (...) favoring attitudes that are not warranted by the lights of objective values can ground benefits. Given this understanding, we show that there is an important and unrecognized expansion in the resources available to fully objectivist views: namely that such views can help themselves to the value of warranted love of objective goods. Such a move by the objectivist can help them respond to concerns that, on their view, a person’s well-being can be too alien to them. We next argue that, nonetheless, such objectivist views are still unconvincing due to their lack of a subjective component. This motivates a move from fully objective accounts to hybrid accounts. We show that many prominent hybrid theories in the literature are inadequate because they implausibly minimize the subjective component. This motivates a move to a robust hybrid view that has an expanded subjectivist component. We conclude with some remarks about the interrelation between the subjective and objective components in the hybrid account that we favor and a role for resonance in a theory of well-being other than serving as a hard constraint on any benefit. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the Ganser syndrome and gives a brief account on its clinical features. A significant number of clinicians in Europe continued accepting Ganser's basic postulates that the patients showed significant memory disorder and 'answers towards the question' within the framework of traumatic or reactive hysteria. In elderly patients, Ganser type symptoms may be indicative of the onset of dementia. Ganser syndrome raises the question of the interaction between concepts, ideology and clinical observation. The clinician must be aware that (...) a misdiagnosed case of Ganser-type hysteria may result in lawsuits, unnecessary surgical interventions, inappropriate use of minor and major tranquillizers, and social consequences that may be destabilizing for the patient and family. Positive results in the organic investigation should lead to a firm diagnosis and disconfirmation of Ganser syndrome. Persistent negative results and dramatic improvement should tend to confirm the diagnosis. (shrink)

Wir sorgen uns um die Wahrheit und unsere Sorge bedarf einer vorsichtigen Erörterung. Schnell sind Argumente gefunden, die belegen, dass wir ohne Wahrheit nicht auskommen. Wahre Meinungen sind von überragendem instrumentellem Nutzen, in allen Lebensbereichen ist Erfolg von der Wahrheit unserer Überzeugungen abhängig. Dennoch kann die Sorge um die Wahrheit nicht mit einem einfachen Verweis auf ihren Nutzen erklärt werden. In diesem Aufsatz verfolge ich zwei Ziele. Zum einen möchte ich verständlich machen, warum instrumentelle Erklärungen der Sorge um die Wahrheit (...) zu kurz greifen. Sie sind defi zitär, da unsere Sorge um die Wahrheit erst dann zu einem philosophischen Problem wird, wenn sie uns so viel abverlangt, dass instrumentelle Überlegungen eine Abkehr von der Wahrheitssuche nahe legen. Wird in solchen Konfl iktsituationen dennoch am Wahrheitsziel festgehalten, so wird die Wahrheit um ihrer selbst willen gesucht. Es entsteht daher die Frage, was es bedeutet, nach der Wahrheit um der Wahrheit willen zu suchen. Eine Erörterung dieser Frage ist das zweite Ziel des Aufsatzes. (shrink)