Purpose - The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward as complementary, but distinct, forms of leadership on facets of organizational identification via the perception of innovation and goal organizational values. Design/methodology/approach – Three studies were carried out implementing either a measurement of mediation or experimental-causal-chain design to test for the hypothesized effects. Findings - The measurement of mediation study showed that transformational leadership had a positive direct and indirect effect, via (...) innovation value orientation, on cognitive identification, whereas transactional contingent reward was more strongly related to affective, rather than cognitive, identification, and goal orientation was a mediator of their link. The findings of the two experimental-causal-chain studies further supported the hypothesized effects. Transformational leadership was found to lead subordinates to perceive the culture as more innovative compared to transactional contingent reward, whereas transactional contingent reward led employees to perceive the culture as more goal, than innovation, oriented. Finally, innovation, compared to goal, value orientation increased cognitive identification, while goal orientation facilitated affective, rather than cognitive, identification. Implications - The practical implications involve the development of strategies organizations can apply, such as leadership training programs, to strengthen their ties with their employees, which, in turn, may have a positive impact on in-role, as well as extra-role, behaviors. Originality/Value – The originality of this research concerns the identification of distinct mechanisms explaining the effect of transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward on cognitive and affective identification applying an organizational culture perspective and a combination of measurement and causal mediation designs. (shrink)

Different sort of people are interested in personal identity. Philosophers frequently ask what it takes to remain oneself. Caregivers imagine their patients’ experience. But both philosophers and caregivers think from the armchair: they can only make assumptions about what it would be like to wake up with massive bodily changes. Patients with a locked-in syndrome (LIS) suffer a full body paralysis without cognitive impairment. They can tell us what it is like. Forty-four chronic LIS patients and 20 age-matched healthy medical (...) professionals answered a 15-items questionnaire targeting: (A) global evaluation of identity, (B) body representation and (C) experienced meaning in life. In patients, selfreported identity was correlated with B and C. Patients differed with controls in C. These results suggest that the paralyzed body remains a strong component of patients’ experienced identity, that patients can adjust to objectives changes perceived as meaningful and that caregivers fail in predicting patients’ experience. (shrink)

This book is a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Utrecht. It was prepared under the supervision of Prof. Dr. H. Schultink. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his criticisms of earlier versions which led to many improvements, in particular with respect to the exposition of the argument. To my co-referent Dirk van Dalen, reader in the Department of Philo sophy (,Centrale Interfaculteit') of the University of Utrecht, I am greatly indebted (...) for his valuable and fruitful suggestions about problems relevant to both linguistics and logic. Several ideas developed in this study owe their present concrete form to our many discussions. This thesis originates in syntactic research into the Aspects carried out in 1967 under the supervision of Albert Kraak, professor at the University of Nijmegen, who ever since gave much attention to my work in progress. I am very grateful to him for his careful and stimulating criticism as well as for the continuous support he gave me during these years. The present study closely relates to the work of my colleague Wim Klooster with regard to both its theoretical framework and its subject matter. Our joint work on the measurement of duration in Dutch is an integral part of the argument. I have greatly profited from the numerous discussions we have had. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play a crucial role (...) concerning religion and society. (shrink)

With robots being introduced into caregiving, particularly for older persons, various ethical concerns are raised. Among them is the fear of replacing human caregiving. While ethical concepts like well-being, autonomy, and capabilities are often used to discuss these concerns, this paper brings forth the concept of social dignity to further develop guidelines concerning the use of robots in caregiving. By social dignity, we mean that a person’s perceived dignity changes in response to certain interactions and experiences with other persons. In (...) this paper, we will first present the concept of social dignity, and then identify a niche where robots can be used in caregiving in an ethical manner. Specifically, we will argue that, because some activities of daily living are performed in solitude to maintain dignity, a care recipient will usually prefer robotic assistance instead of human assistance for these activities. Secondly, we will describe how other philosophical concepts, which have been commonly used to judge robotic assistance in caregiving for the elderly so far, such as well-being, autonomy, and capabilities, are less useful in determining whether robotic assistance in caregiving is ethically problematic or not. To conclude, we will argue that social dignity offers an advantage to the other concepts, as it allows to ask the most pressing questions in caregiving. (shrink)

This paper analyses the technoscientific objective of building a synthetic cell from a Jungian perspective. After decades of fragmentation and specialisation, the synthetic cell symbolises a turn towards restored wholeness, both at the object pole and at the subject pole. From a Jungian perspective, it is no coincidence that visual representations of synthetic cells often reflect an archetypal, mandala-like structure. As a symbol of restored unity, the synthetic cell mandala compensates for technoscientific fragmentation via active imagination, providing a visual aid (...) for the technoscientific turn towards reintegration. Although the biotechnological desire to reconstruct life in vitro has been compared to alchemy before, a Jungian analysis allows us to make this comparison more specific and precise. The problem of archetypal images, however, is that alluring prospects of reintegration may underestimate and obfuscate the deficiencies and tensions at work in the current situation. As a projection of a future wholeness, it fosters optimism, but may also function as a misleading façade, covering up collisions and complexities. This can be averted by the conscious employment of the mandala as a symbolic scaffold fostering processes of individuation and working through. (shrink)

English title: "The early literary education of the young José Gaos in Valencia (1915-1919)"Resumen: Nuestra intención en este texto es investigar acerca de los primeros años de formación del pensamiento de José Gaos (1900-1969); así pues, no parece ser demasiado erróneo pensar que aquél, hacia 1915 no era, aún, puramente “filosófico”: la Filosofía representaba parte de su formación, cumpliendo el mismo papel —eso sí: básico y fundamental— que desempeñó la Literatura. El primer auténtico encuentro con la Filosofía se daría antes (...) de su llegada a Valencia, en ese mismo año de 1915; pero ese también es el año en que Gaos recibirá una sólida formación estético-literaria a través de prensa y revistas filosóficas, especialmente en el grupo que conformó junto con Max Aub, José Medina Echeverría y su hermano Carlos Gaos. Abstract: This paper investigates in detail about the early years of José Gaos (1900-1969) and his education in philosophy and literature. Therefore, we know that their studies (academic or not) were not purely “philosophical” in 1915. Literature and philosophy played in Gaos an equally important role. The first real encounter with philosophy happens before he comes to Valencia in 1915; but in this year Gaos also receives a strong education, in aesthetic and literary, through press and philosophical journals, and especially within the group formed with Max Aub, José Medina Echeverría and his brother Carlos Gaos. Palabras clave: José Gaos, literatura, juventud, formación, Valencia. Keywords: José Gaos, literature, youth, education, Valencia. (shrink)

Walter Reese-Schäfer, Karl-Otto Apel, Zur Einführung (with an Afterword by Jürgen Habermas), Junis Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 1990, 176pp. DM 17.80 -/- The author, presently a freelance writer published in the newspaper “Die Zeit” and the magazine “Stern,” pro­vides in this small book a clear and concise introduction to sources, themes and conclusions in the philosophy of Karl-Otto Apel. Apel, Emeritus Pro­fessor at Frank­furt, and close colleague of Habermas, characterizes his viewpoint as a “transcen­dental pragmatism” in which a Kantian concern for (...) question regarding “the conditions for the possi­bility of some­thing,” (p.10) mixes with deontological discourse-ethics, semeiotic themes from Peirce, an ap­proach to fallibilism, the demand for “final justifica­tions” (Letzt­begründung) and German her­meneutics. In view of the “den­sity and concentration” of Apel’s texts, which often have a “deterrent effect” upon those not already at home with “the phil­osophical language game,” it is the announced aim of this book to provide a work of translation and clarification of Apel’s special­ized efforts --in effect an orientation to Apel’s work. The book divides into an Introduction, 8 chapters and a summary conclusion --with Habermas’ appreciation, “A Master Builder with Hermeneutic Feeling --The Way of Philosopher Karl-Otto Apel,” bringing up the rear. There is also a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a short table outlining highlights of Apel’s career. The “Introduction” provides a good overview of the aims of the book and gets one started on central themes. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper argues that the influence of language on science, philosophy and other field is mediated by communicative practices. Where communications is more restrictive, established linguistic structures exercise a tighter control over innovations and scientifically motivated reforms of language. The viewpoint here centers on the thesis that argumentation is crucial in the understanding and evaluation of proposed reforms and that social practices which limit argumentation serve to erode scientific objectivity. Thus, a plea is made for a sociology of scientific belief (...) designed to understand and insure social‐institutional conditions of the possibility of knowledge and its growth. A chief argument draws on work of Axelrod concerning the evolution of cooperation. (shrink)

Recent studies show that the current punitive approach to bullying, in the form of zero-tolerance policies, is ineffective in reducing bullying and school violence. Despite this significant finding, anti-bullying legislation is increasing. The authors argue that these policies are not only ineffective but that they are also unjust, harmful, and stigmatizing. They advocate a broader integrative approach to bullying programs that includes both victims and bullies.

ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

Background: A bean is the seed of one of several genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes throughout the world. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, also called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. (...) In a form improved from naturally occurring types, Beans were an important source of protein throughout old and new world history, and still are today. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper, the design of the proposed Expert System was produced to help farmers and those interested in agriculture in diagnosing many of the Bean diseases such as Fusarium wilt, Charcoal rot or ashy stem blight, Bacterial leaf spot and blight, Mung bean yellow mosaic virus, Cercospora leaf spot. The proposed expert system presents an overview of Bean diseases are given, the cause of diseases outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Bean diseases diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Agricultural experts and some friends interested in agriculture and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The proposed expert system is very useful for Farmers and those interested in agriculture. (shrink)

This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is filled out (...) with the translator's critical Introduction, "The esoteric Quine?" a bibliography based on Quine's sources, and an Index for the volume. (shrink)

Jordan agreed to extensive liberalization undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) that would open some sectors that were previously closed or restricted to foreign suppliers and investors. It undertook horizontal commitments in cross-border movement of individuals and commercial presence covering all types of services.

Signing Ceremony of MOU on Professional Legal Diploma, Government of Dubai 2020.

This paper aims at showing that the generative-semantic framework is not essential to the proposal in H.J. Verkuyl On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects Reidel:Dordrecht 1972. Compositionality can be shown to be neutral as to the then-difference between generative-semantic and the interpretive-semantic branch of transformational grammar.

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarded as too simple on the grounds that there are adverse conditions, such as (...) massive confusion, in which desires are irrationally possessed or acquired, thereby failing to provide reasons for action.2. (shrink)

Can a man be a feminist? If so, what would it mean? I want to participate in a dialogue between women and men on how to accommodate women’s moral concerns. I propose that the fundamental values of justice embodied in the South African constitutional democracy require men to be feminist. These values provide the best safeguard of the important interests and values of both women and men. Men who accept these values can support the main concerns of feminism. The implications (...) of the argument in this article range from public issues to the most private aspects of marriage. (shrink)

This new critical edition is an examination of William James’s Essays in Radical Empiricism in light of the scientific naturalism prominent in James’s Principles of Psychology and the subsequent development of Darwinian, functional psychology and functionalism in psychology, the philosophy psychology and the philosophy of mind. This is sure to be a controversial look at James's late philosophy of "radical empiricism" and "pure experience." The critical perspective of the edition evokes realism of cognitive relations, contemporary empiricism and recent developments in (...) cognitive science and contemporary philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi's and Rawls' that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent's behind the veil are averse to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity---which is both (...) the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity---however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity. (shrink)

I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that (...) we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives. Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them which would, on the preferentist account, make them better off. And that, on the preferentist account, is the basis for a radical critique of unjust institutions that limit people's options and prevent them from getting what they want. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.

Abstract: Rice is one of the most important staple crops in the world and serves as a staple food for more than half of the global population. It is a critical source of nutrition, providing carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals to millions of people, particularly in Asia and Africa. This paper presents a study on using deep learning for the classification of different types of rice. The study focuses on five specific types of rice: Arborio, Basmati, Ipsala, Jasmine, and Karacadag. A (...) dataset of 75,000 images was collected and annotated, consisting of 15,000 images for each of the five types of rice. The deep learning system uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to classify images of rice grains based on their physical characteristics. The performance of the deep learning system was evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The results show that the proposed deep learning system was able to achieve high accuracy in classifying the different types of rice, outperforming traditional image processing techniques. This study provides valuable insights into the potential of deep learning for classifying different types of rice and can be useful for applications such as quality control in rice processing industries and research in crop science. The large size of the dataset, 15,000 images for each type of rice, helped the deep learning system to learn the features of each type of rice, and increase the performance of the classifier. The attained overall accuracy of the proposed model (99.96%), Precision (99.96%), Recall (99.96%) and F1-score (99.96%). Thus, the proposed model proved that it leaned the five categories of rice and it can generalize these categories and it is effective. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

The biological sciences study (bio)complex living systems. Research directed at the mechanistic explanation of the "live" state truly requires a pluralist research program, i.e. BioComplexity research. The program should apply multiple intra-level and inter-level theories and methodologies. We substantiate this thesis with analysis of BioComplexity: metabolic and modular control analysis of metabolic pathways, emergence of oscillations, and the analysis of the functioning of glycolysis.

Abstract: This study aims to identify the level of creativity in the University of Palestine from the point of view of the employees, as the researchers used the descriptive and analytical method, through a questionnaire distributed to a sample of employees at the University of Palestine, where the size of the study population is (234) employees, and the size of the sample (117) employees, of which (90) employees responded. The study reached a set of results, the most important of which (...) are: A high degree of creativity from the employees 'point of view, and the study confirmed that there were no differences in the level of creativity at the University of Palestine from the Employees point of view, according to demographic variables. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: The need for universities to enhance creativity. (shrink)

Rowe has recently argued that pure risk of harm cannot itself be a harm. I respond to Rowe and argue that given an appropriate understanding of objective probabilities, pure objective risk of harm can itself be a harm.

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual. The implications of this principle are much more far-reaching than is evident at first, and reflection upon them may lead many to withdraw the assent which they might otherwise be very ready to accord to this view of responsibility. (...) But if the difficulties do appear to be insurmountable, and that, very certainly, does not seem to me to be the case, then the proper procedure will be, not to revert to the barbarous notion of collective or group responsibility, but to give up altogether the view that we are accountable in any distinctively moral sense. (shrink)

Awareness of, and respect for differences of gender, race, religion, language, and culture have liberated many oppressed groups from the hegemony of white, Western males. However, respect for previously denigrated collective identities should not be allowed to confine individuals to identities constructed around one main component used for political mobilisation, or to identities that depend on a priority of properties that are not optional, like race, gender, and language. In this article I want to sketch an approach for accommodating different (...) kinds of identity within a multicultural constitutional democracy. From a vantage point provided by a definition and explanation of personal identity, I want to show how people define, construct and change their personal identities to make themselves into unique individuals. Next I show how democratic political institutions and the personal identities of individuals reciprocally influence one another. In the final section I sketch ways in which diverse personal identities ought to be accommodated in multicultural constitutional democracies. The conclusion is that a society which gives its members the liberty, space, and opportunity to freely construct their own identities might avoid the formation of closed groups committed exclusively to their own sectional interests. (shrink)

A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy) by John Kennedy Toole portrays an interplay between competing definitions of humanism. The one school of humanism—called by some the Modernist Paradigm—saw the Italian Renaissance as the origin of nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernist views that celebrated science, technology, and individual human freedom. The other school, led by Paul Oskar Kristeller, sought to historicize humanism by establishing that Renaissance writers and thinkers were generally conservative and preserved the philosophical ideas of the medieval era. Kristeller was the (...) President of the Renaissance Society of America and was at the height of his influence at Columbia University during the late 1950s, when Toole studied for his Master’s degree there. The main character in Confederacy, Ignatius J. Reilly, presents a parody of Kristeller’s position, which he uses to critique modern society. Ignatius also plays the part of a child of the planetary god Saturn, both by acting out the ancient astrological tradition of associating Saturn with misfortune and disorder and by being a parody of the Renaissance concept of the Genius as a Child of Saturn begun by the Renaissance philosopher whom Kristeller studied most, Marsilio Ficino. Ignatius’s worldview is an antithesis of the Modernist Paradigm. Confederacy is critical of both Modernist humanism with its attendant materialism and its antithesis—Ignatius’s dysfunctional version of Kristeller’s Renaissance philosophy. When the community expels Ignatius as a scapegoat, Toole appears to gesture toward a dialectical synthesis of the two concepts of humanism in the novel’s happy ending. (shrink)

A moderately risk averse person may turn down a 50/50 gamble that either results in her winning $200 or losing $100. Such behaviour seems rational if, for instance, the pain of losing $100 is felt more strongly than the joy of winning $200. The aim of this paper is to examine an influential argument that some have interpreted as showing that such moderate risk aversion is irrational. After presenting an axiomatic argument that I take to be the strongest case for (...) the claim that moderate risk aversion is irrational, I show that it essentially depends on an assumption that those who think that risk aversion can be rational should be skeptical of. Hence, I conclude that risk aversion need not be irrational. (shrink)

I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

Catastrophic risk raises questions that are not only of practical importance, but also of great philosophical interest, such as how to define catastrophe and what distinguishes catastrophic outcomes from non-catastrophic ones. Catastrophic risk also raises questions about how to rationally respond to such risks. How to rationally respond arguably partly depends on the severity of the uncertainty, for instance, whether quantitative probabilistic information is available, or whether only comparative likelihood information is available, or neither type of information. Finally, catastrophic risk (...) raises important ethical questions about what to do when catastrophe avoidance conflicts with equity promotion. (shrink)

The relationship between “Towards a Critique of Violence” (1921) and the work of Franz Kafka has been well established by several critical studies devoted to Walter Benjamin. However, it is striking that Benjamin himself, already well acquainted with the work of the Czech writer in 1921, never made any comment to Kafka’s work in this essay, and, more broadly, in any of the related texts that make up the project on the ‘Critique of Violence’. In this article, we analyze a (...) set of notions (Entstellung, Entsühnung, Zurechstellen) that allow us to establish a mediated relationship between this essay and the articles and letters that Benjamin devoted to Kafka in the 1930s. This relationship takes us back to the only piece in which Benjamin carries out an autonomous treatment of the “category of justice” (1916) in which he identifies -as it will happen eighteen years later, in the essay on Kafka (1934)- the locus of justice in the “non-violence”, thus untying the knot that binds in a perhaps indiscernible way in the Jewish tradition the notions of “messianism” and “violence”. (shrink)

The Precautionary Principle (PP) is an influential principle of risk management. It has been widely introduced into environmental legislation, and it plays an important role in most international environmental agreements. Yet, there is little consensus on precisely how to understand and formulate the principle. In this paper I prove some impossibility results for two plausible formulations of the PP as a decision-rule. These results illustrate the difficulty in making the PP consistent with the acceptance of any trade-offs between catastrophic risks (...) and more ordinary goods. (shrink)

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ (...) is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. (shrink)

Neoclassical economists use expected utility theory to explain, predict, and prescribe choices under risk, that is, choices where the decision-maker knows---or at least deems suitable to act as if she knew---the relevant probabilities. Expected utility theory has been subject to both empirical and conceptual criticism. This chapter reviews expected utility theory and the main criticism it has faced. It ends with a brief discussion of subjective expected utility theory, which is the theory neoclassical economists use to explain, predict, and prescribe (...) choices under uncertainty, that is, choices where the decision-maker cannot act on the basis of objective probabilities but must instead consult her own subjective probabilities. (shrink)

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H reviews Dr Andrew R. Gallimore's book, Alien Information Theory. -/- This was published on PsyPressUK on 13 June 2019.

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather (...) to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

I anledning af Judith Butlers forelæsning om klimasorg på KU er jeg blevet bedt om at besvare spørgsmålet om, hvad man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til i dag og om den stadig er aktuel. Min første tanke var at besvare spørgsmålet med svaret: Man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til ALT! Men for at fokusere mit svar, har jeg besluttet mig for at gennemgå Butlers tænkning i forhold til spørgsmålet om prekære liv og vold og ikke-vold, og hvordan disse emner udspringer (...) af Butlers tænkning om køn i 1990’erne. /// In connection with Judith Butler's lecture on climate grief at KU, I have been asked to answer the question of how Butler's thinking could be used today and whether it is still relevant. My first thought was to answer the question with the answer: You can use Butler's thinking for EVERYTHING! However, to focus my answer, I have decided to review Butler's thinking in relation to the issues of precarious lives and violence and non-violence and how these issues stem from Butler's thinking on gender in the 1990s. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn’t (...) ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind phenomena’. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the \emph{phenomenological map}, that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the schema has (...) some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding ``abduction'' in the literature and its relation with ``analogy''. (shrink)

There are many advantages and disadvantages to central locations. These have shown themselves in the long course of European history. In times of peace, there are important economic and cultural advantages (to illustrate: the present area of the Czech Republic was the richest country in Europe between the two World Wars). There are cross-currents of trade and culture in central Europe of great advantage. For, cultural cross-currents represent a potential benefit in comprehension and cultural growth. But under threat of large-scale (...) conflict, these locations have proved extremely dangerous. Historically, Germany and Austria may be regarded as having had two chief models of their relationships to Europe. In the Holy Roman Empire, Germany was at the center of an aspiring “universalistic” European cosmopolitanism. (In some ways similar to the present situation of the European Union.) Austria maintained a great multi¬cultural empire, until it was destroyed in the First Word War. Generally, middle-European powers have promoted the integration of European diversity, when peace and stability have been plausible objectives. But when European diversity has declined toward ethnic or national conflict, Germany has drawn away from Europe and into itself, seeking inner unity and distinctness to protect it against possible combinations of enemies. This is true of central Europe generally, in degree, but interest often centers on Germany. Generally, central Europe is a cultural pressure cooker. (shrink)