Although anonymity is a central feature of liberal democracies—not only in the secret ballot, but also in campaign funding, publishing political texts, masked protests, and graffiti—it has so far not been conceptually grounded in democratic theory. Rather, it is treated as a self-explanatory concept related to privacy. To overcome this omission, this article develops a complex understanding of anonymity in the context of democratic theory. Drawing upon the diverse literature on anonymity in political participation, it explains anonymity as a highly (...) context-dependent identity performance expressing private sentiments in the public sphere. The contradictory character of its core elements—identity negation and identity creation—results in three sets of contradictory freedoms. Anonymity affords (a) inclusion and exclusion, (b) subversion and submission, and (c) honesty and deception. This contradictory character of anonymity's affordances illustrates the ambiguous role of anonymity in democracy. (shrink)

When agents know a protocol, this leads them to have expectations about future observations. Agents can update their knowledge by matching their actual observations with the expected ones. They eliminate states where they do not match. In this paper, we study how agents perceive protocols that are not commonly known, and propose a semantics-driven logical framework to reason about knowledge in such scenarios. In particular, we introduce the notion of epistemic expectation models and a propositional dynamic logic-style epistemic logic for (...) reasoning about knowledge via matching agentsÊ expectations to their observations. It is shown how epistemic expectation models can be obtained from epistemic protocols. Furthermore, a characterization is presented of the effective equivalence of epistemic protocols. We introduce a new logic that incorporates updates of protocols and that can model reasoning about knowledge and observations. Finally, the framework is extended to incorporate fact-changing actions, and a worked-out example is given. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. (shrink)

Sören Halldén’s logic of nonsense is one of the most well-known many-valued logics available in the literature. In this paper, we discuss Peter Woodruff’s as yet rather unexplored attempt to advance a version of such a logic built on the top of a constructive logical basis. We start by recalling the basics of Woodruff’s system and by bringing to light some of its notable features. We then go on to elaborate on some of the difficulties attached to it; on our (...) way to offer a possible solution to such difficulties, we discuss the relation between Woodruff’s system and two-dimensional semantics for many-valued logics, as developed by Hans Herzberger. (shrink)

Layunin ng pag-aaral na mailahad at matukoy ang kahalagahan ng sikolohiya, implikasyon, at mga danas at lakbayin ng “Sunod” sa pangkat ng Biga at mga karatig tribo nito sa Tabuk City, Kalinga. Ang nasabing pananaliksik ay sumailalim sa Kuwalitatibo at Deskriptibong pag-aaral na nilapatan ng Sikolohiyang pagdulog, Sosyolohiya, at Etnograpiya, tinalakay ang mga kulturang kinagisnan ng isang pangkat. Mga piling “Pangat” o pinuno at matatanda sa pangkat Biga ang mga kalahok sa pananaliksik na nagbigay ng kani-kanilang mga karunungan, karanasan at (...) lakbayin sa pagdalumat ng “Sunod” sa buhay. Ang resulta ng pag-aaral sa mga Ibiga at mga karatig tribo ay may maayos na ugnayan at mapayapang pamumuhay. Malakas ang tungkulin ng pamilya sa pagbibigay ng disiplina at pagtutulungan sa bawat miyebro. Lumitaw rin na hindi kailangang magkadugo ang maituturing na “sunod” kundi lahat ng katribo at mga karatig tribo. Dahil dito ay naiiwasan ang mga di-kanais- nais na kaganapan o mga kaguluhan sa pagitan ng bawat isa. Matatag na kanilang sinusunod ang kahalagahan ng relasyong “sunod” sa bawat araw ng kanilang pakikibaka sa buhay. Napatunayan din na malakas ang kapangyarihan ng mg “Pangat” o “Tribal elders” at ibang matatanda sa pagpapanatili ng kaayusan. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to briefly present the philosophy of Hans Wagner (1917-2000) as belonging to the last phase of the development of the German transcendental philosophy. Hans Wagner’s philosophy is presented as an attempt to synthesize earlier positions developed on the basis of this tradition, namely the synthesis of (a) neo-Kantianism with post-neo-Kantianism, (b) Kant's philosophy with Hegel's philosophy, (c) neo-Kantian transcendentalism with Husserl's transcendentalism, (d) the philosophy of transcendental subject (Kant, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology) with the philosophy of (...) empirical subject (Hönigswald, Heidegger, Sartre). The main theoretical figure of Hans Wagner’s philosophy is the problem of two aspects of human thinking: its absoluteness and finiteness. According to Wagner development of the philosophical reflection, which we can observe on the example of the evolution of - originating from Kant - transcendental philosophy, leads to an explanation of the possibility to reconcile these two aspects of human thinking, and thus to answer the very question: how is it possible that our thinking can be both absolute and finished, and what are the consequences of this fact for the status of all cultural products of human thinking, such as science, morality or law. (shrink)

Comentario 3° en el marco de la tesis “Un Estudio en Metodología Intertextual y Exegética en Salmo 91” cuanto a mi trato, en aquel entonces, de las fuentes primarias (del testimonio documental) utilizadas asociadas a la referencia salmo 91:12 en favor de la fraseología מוט + רגל. Presentación del fragmento 5 del plato 1032 (b-366315) como siendo la confirmación de la existencia de testimonio documental para la variante conjetural propuesta por mí en la tesis (en el capítulo 4) referente a (...) la tradición observada en salmo 91:12. . . Autor: Anderson Rodrigues de Paula (RG brasileiro MG-15.713.736 y DNI argentino: 95.036.821). Fecha y lugar de la primera aparición del presente comentario: 3/1/2023, en el perfil de Academiaedu del propio autor del comentario (rosario . academia. edu/AndersonRodriguesdePaula). Aunque desde el 31/12/2022, a causa de lo que expongo a continuación, instituciones y revisores han tenido contacto privado con los hallazgos que exhibo en el presente comentario. . . Observación: lo que posibilitó el presente análisis fue la generosidad de Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) en permitirme tener acceso a imágenes de determinados manuscritos en condiciones no disponibles en The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. En este preciso momento mientras escribo el presente comentario me encuentro ya en el proceso de trámite para obtener el permiso de uso de imágenes y así poder insertarlas en un artículo el cual ya está listo el cual pretendo publicar en el cual expongo con más detalles y gráficamente (mediante las imágenes de los manuscritos) todo el análisis que describo a continuación. (shrink)

Christian B. Miller has noted a “realism challenge” for virtue ethicists to provide an account of how the character gap between virtuous agents and non-virtuous agents can be bridged. This is precisely one of Han Feizi’s key criticisms against Confucian virtue ethics, as Eric L. Hutton argues, which also cuts across the Aristotelian one: appealing to virtuous agents as ethical models provides the wrong kind of guidance for the development of virtues. Hutton, however, without going into detail, notes that the (...) notion of rituals in the Confucian tradition may be able to sidestep Han Feizi’s criticism. In this essay, I wish to explore not only how the notion of rituals, alongside its corollaries in Xunzi’s Confucian program for ethical cultivation, indeed addresses Han Feizi’s criticism, but also observe that Aristotle’s tragic poetry plays functionally equivalent roles in his own understanding of ethical upbringing. I will begin by considering Han Feizi’s critique of ethical cultivation in virtue ethics as such and how it poses a specific problem for the acquisition of the ‘constitutive reasoning’ shared by Aristotle and Xunzi. I will then briefly note that this problem trades on the synthetic structure of human nature found in both Aristotle and Xunzi (the rational/irrational parts of the soul and the heartmind/five faculties), which grounds the way they understand ethical action and agency. Finally, I will suggest how both Aristotle and Xunzi understand the role of the arts in their extensive programme of ethical cultivation, allowing them to respond to Han Feizi’s attack as too narrow a construal of their respective ethical projects. It is hoped that, through this, we may gain a better sense of how more recent virtue ethicists may similarly draw on aesthetic resources for ethical development. (shrink)

With his distinction between the "context of discovery" and the "context of justification", Hans Reichenbach gave the traditional difference between genesis and validity a modern standard formulation. Reichenbach's distinction is one of the well-known ways in which the expression "context" is used in the theory of science. My argument is that Reichenbach's concept is unsuitable and leads to contradictions in the semantic fields of genesis and validity. I would like to demonstrate this by examining the different meanings of Reichenbach's context (...) distinction. My investigation also shows how the difference between genesis and validity precedes Reichenbach's context distinction and indicates approaches for meaningful applications of the concept of context to the phenomena designated by Reichenbach. I will begin by reconstructing the way in which Reichenbach introduces the distinction between discovery and justification as a difference of contexts (I). Drawing on the numerous meanings of the term "context", I will then emphasize some chief characteristics and review, through exemplification, the usage of this term. First of all, I turn to the context of discovery as the nonrational part of all scientific knowledge and show that this meaning cannot be defined consistently (la). For the context of justification, one can distinguish two main cases: the context of justification is either contrasted with the context of discovery, or it forms a unit there with. In the first case, the use of the context term becomes paradoxical, insofar as justification separated from scientific practice does not represent a field of reference which could be specifically contrasted with another field of reference (I b). In the second case, the unifying definitions contradict the contextual meaning of discovery and justification (1 c). In the last section, I point to a useful application of the concept of context which can be found in Reichenbach's argumentation and which refers to the practical conditions of justification(2). (shrink)

I sitt berömda bevis för tidens overklighet påstod McTaggart att det sätt händelser tycks skifta position i tiden från framtid till nutid och till förfluten tid, innebär en motsägelse. Vad McTaggart egentligen menade har varit föremål för en livlig debatt ända sedan beviset först publicerades 1908. Beviset består av två delar. I den första argumenterar McTaggart för att ingenting kan förändras förutom genom att övergå från framtid till förfluten tid. I den andra argumenterar han för att en sådan övergång innebär (...) en motsägelse och att det därför inte kan finnas någon förändring överhuvudtaget, vilket i sin tur innebär att det heller inte finns någon tid. De flesta filosofer är i dag eniga om att McTaggart har fel, men oeniga om på vilket sätt han har fel. Olika filosofer förkastar olika delar av beviset, beroende på om de har vad som kallas en A- eller B-uppfattning av tiden. De som har en A-uppfattning förnekar att tid förstådd som övergång från framtid till förfluten tid är motsägelsefull. De som har en B-uppfattning förnekar att en övergång från framtid till förfluten tid är nödvändig för förändring, men håller med om att sådan övergång är motsägelsefull. Det är min uppfattning att denna oenighet beror på att McTaggarts argument från första början blivit missuppfattat, av både A- och B-teoretiker. Av någon anledning har det alltid betraktats som ett självständigt argument, ett som är oberoende av det ontologiska system McTaggart förespråkade. Jag föreslår ett nytt sätt att förstå hur han menade att tiden är motsägelsefull. Ett sätt som tar hans ontologiska system som utgångspunkt. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

In the first part of his magnum opus Hans Urs von Balthasarpresents his project of theological aesthetics where the experience of art becomes an entrance to a religious act and an ennobling way leading to the contemplation of God. Defining the essence of being human as a spiritual being directed towards God bears a deep ethical meaning in this consideration. H.U. von Balthasar’s reflection over the religious dimension of the essence of art is shaped within theology but at the same (...) time in the opposition to aesthetic theology which is de-scribed as ‘aesthetisation’ of the Mystery of Revelation. The art of music occupies a particular place in this reflection. For this reason Mass in B Minor BWV 232 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which is an emblematic example of the revelation of the glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit), will be analysed not only from the perspective of philosophical or musicological aesthetics, but also theological aesthetics. This article outlines characteristic features of theological aesthetics specifically developed from traditional philosophical aesthetics whose range was extended by the human being’s relation to God. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

BAIXE O PDF COMPLETO COM 58 FIGURAS E 50 PÁGINAS!!! -/- INTRODUÇÃO Conhecer a anatomia de um aparelho representa a base para seu estudo amplo e profundo, além de facilitar a compreensão de seu funcionamento. Por isso é importante o conhecimento da anatomia funcional do aparelho reprodutor, já que sua análise permite fixar sólidas bases para o estudo do fenômeno pelo qual se perpetuam as espécies: a reprodução. Nos subtemas compreendidos referentes ao macho e a fêmea, descreve-se cada um dos (...) órgãos que formam o aparelho reprodutor e as suas diferenças entre espécies, assinalando-se em cada um deles a sua função. Obviamente, a parte que trata do funcionamento não é abordada de uma forma muito ampla. Para facilitar o estudo do aparelho reprodutor do macho, seus órgãos podem ser classificados de acordo com sua localização anatômica, em órgãos genitais internos (que compreendem os ductos deferentes, as glândulas acessórias e a uretra pélvica) e órgãos genitais externos (testículos com seu epidídimo). O testículo também foi considerado como órgão sexual primário, enquanto os ductos excretores, glândulas acessórias, pênis e prepúcio são considerados órgãos sexuais secundários. O aparelho reprodutor da fêmea é dividido em ovários e órgãos tubulares (útero, oviduto, cérvix, vagina e vulva). 2.2 APARELHO REPRODUTOR DO MACHO Para avaliar a capacidade reprodutiva dos machos, é primordial conhecer a anatomia e a fisiologia do aparelho reprodutor. Os órgãos genitais incluem testículos, epidídimos, canais deferentes, ampolas deferentes, uretra, glândulas acessórias (próstata, glândulas seminais e glândulas bulbouretrais), pênis e prepúcio, que apresentam diferenças entre as espécies domésticas (tabela 1). Sabe-se que o sistema genital masculino compreende os órgãos envolvidos no desenvolvimento, no amadurecimento, no transporte e no armazenamento dos gametas masculinos (espermatozoides). Ele consiste em um par de testículos, o ducto contorcido do epidídimo, o ducto deferente, a uretra e as glândulas genitais acessórias. Os testículos produzem esperma e hormônios. O epidídimo armazena espermatozoides durante seu amadurecimento antes de passarem para o ducto deferente e pela uretra. As glândulas acessórias também liberam suas secreções na uretra e contribuem para o volume do sêmen. A parte distal da uretra forma o caminho combinado para a passagem tanto da urina como do sêmen. O pênis é o órgão copulador masculino e deposita sêmen no trato reprodutor feminino. As figuras 1-5 apresentam as diferenciações quanto ao sistema genital das espécies domésticas. Conhecer a anatomia dos órgãos reprodutivos é essencial para poder identificar as patologias que possam afetar a capacidade reprodutiva, bem como para entender as diferenças de manejo ao empregar algumas biotecnologias reprodutivas aplicadas aos animais domésticos. Ao longo do texto, a espécie bovina será utilizada como modelo e serão feitas as observações correspondentes às diferenças com as outras espécies. Os órgãos genitais da fêmea incluem os órgãos genitais internos (ovários, ovidutos, útero, cérvix, vestíbulo e vagina) e os órgãos genitais externos (lábios vulvares e clitóris) (tabela 3). Os ovários produzem tanto gametas femininos quanto hormônios. As tubas uterinas pares capturam os oócitos liberados pelos ovários e os transportam para o útero, onde o ovo fertilizado é mantido. A vagina serve como órgão copulatório e, juntamente com sua continuação, o vestíbulo, como canal de parto e passagem para excreção urinária. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS BOETA, M. et al. Fisiología reproductiva de los animales domésticos. México: FMVZ – UNAM, 2018. DERIVAUX, Jules; BARNABÉ, Renato Campanarut. Reprodução dos animais domésticos. Zaragoza: Acribia, 1980. DUKES, Henry Hugh; SWENSON, Melvin J.; REECE, William O. Dukes fisiologia dos animais domésticos. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Guanabara Koogan, 1996. DYCE, Keith M.; WENSING, Cornelius JG; SACK, Wolfganf O. Tratado de anatomia veterinária. Elsevier Brasil, 2004. HAFEZ, Elsayed Saad Eldin; HAFEZ, B. Reprodução animal. São Paulo: Manole, 2004. HOLY, Lubos; MARTÍNEZ JÚSTIZ, G. Colab. Biología de la reproducción bovina. Havana: Revolucionária, 1975. KÖNIG, Horst Erich; LIEBICH, Hans-Georg. Anatomia dos Animais Domésticos-: Texto e Atlas Colorido. Porto Alegre: Artmed Editora, 2016. MIES FILHO, Antonio. Reprodução dos animais. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 1987. (shrink)

El presente artículo se encarga de ampliar la afirmación kantiana según la cual la unidad analítica presupone la unidad sintética (Kant, KrV, B 133) a una discusión en torno a la conciencia de dicha unidad sintética. Sostendré que muchas posiciones han incomprendido la naturaleza de esta forma de conciencia, debido a una concepción errónea de la relación entre la unidad de la experiencia y sus partes. Veremos como cualquier consideración que propone describir o delimitar un objeto u evento supone la (...) comprensión de su unidad, la cual rebasa siempre la pretendida delimitación inicial. (shrink)

Áp lựс lên сơ sở tài nguyên thiên nhiên ngày сàng giа tăng. Nguồn nướс bình quân đầu người liên tụс giảm và сhất lượng nướс suy giảm đаng trở thành những vấn đề сấp báсh hơn bао giờ hết. Nhu сầu về gỗ, сhăn thả giа súс và đất nông nghiệp đаng gây áp lựс lên rừng. Những tháсh thứс này сàng trở nên trầm trọng hơn dо sự mất аn tоàn về quyền sử dụng và sự thiếu rõ (...) ràng trоng quyền sử dụng, сả hаi đều không khuyến khíсh việс bảо tồn tài nguyên và đầu tư để bảо vệ năng suất сủа сơ sở tài nguyên thiên nhiên. (shrink)

El autor del artículo edita y estudia tres inscripciones funerarias inéditas de época helenística encontradas en la necrópolis occidental de Aptera (Creta) por la arqueóloga griega V. Ninioú-Kindelí. El texto de las inscripciones dice así: Inscr. 1, A) Ἰ̣ κ̣ ̣αρ̣[- -] | Κοσίλ[λω], in L. 1 quizás Ι̣κ̣α̣ρ̣[ος]. B) Νέων | Κοσίλ[λω]; Inscr. 2, Νικ̣α[- - -] | Διογ[νήτω ?]; Inscr. 3, [- - -] | [- - -]δα. La primera inscripción presenta los nombres de dos difuntos, dos hermanos (...) hijos de Cosilo. El nombre Κόσιλλος aparece en Creta, aparte de esta inscripción, en Eliro en Creta Occidental en el s. II a.C. Fuera de Creta este nombre no ha sido atestiguado en ninguna otra parte. En la tercera inscripción se han conservado las dos letras finales del nombre del padre en la segunda línea. Se trata probablemente de un antropónimo con un sufijo en -δας, cuyo empleo es usual en cretense. (shrink)

Nuestro recorrido será el siguiente. En el capítulo primero examinamos la noción de unión del cuerpo y el alma que Descartes formula desde el inicio de Las pasiones del alma (§2), noción anticipada por otros textos (Principia II §2) pero muy original, y que recusa todo dualismo, en tanto concibe una unión no substancial, en la que el alma está unida, de modo más o menos estrecho, a todos los cuerpos que la afectan, como "corps de dehors", de manera tal (...) que todos los sentimientos, internos o externos, en tanto referidos al cuerpo, pueden ser ubicados en una misma exterioridad respecto al alma (sección §1). Esta noción de unión: a) coincide plenamente con la experiencia del poder o capacidad del alma para actuar sobre el cuerpo, o recibir la acción del cuerpo, de manera tal de excluir definitivamente toda referencia a la substancia espiritual, corporal o compuesta; b) establece una diferencia meramente cuantitativa entre mi cuerpo y los cuerpos del mundo, porque la unión al cuerpo es más o menos estrecha, según sea más o menos inmediata la acción del cuerpo sobre el alma. La primera consecuencia de lo anterior es la siguiente: Las pasiones del alma no establece distinción alguna entre sentimientos interiores y exteriores, porque el lugar del agente (las partes de nuestro cuerpo, los cuerpos del mundo) no sirven ya más como criterio para la distinción entre los modos de la sensibilidad (sección §2). Es precisamente en este punto fundamental que la investigación cartesiana sobre las pasiones se distingue definitivamente del análisis de la sensibilidad realizado en la cuarta parte de Los Principios de la Filosofía, en donde la pasión era considerada como un sentimiento interior, junto con los apetitos naturales (IV §190), por oposición a los cinco sentidos exteriores (IV §§ 191-195). Luego del examen de la definición de pasión, en el próximo capítulo, podremos preguntar: dadas, por un lado, la interioridad de la pasión al alma, y por otro, el emplazamiento de todos los cuerpos en el mismo afuera, «dehors», respecto del alma, ¿cabe buscar, en la pasión, el sentimiento de un corps de dedans? Anticipemos que la reforma conceptual de la unión del cuerpo y el alma exige y a la vez resulta de una reforma lexical especialmente interesante porque, al excluir toda referencia a las substancias o a la substancialidad de la unión, a) identifica esta última con la capacidad o potencia del alma de afectar o ser afectada por el cuerpo (sección §3); b) debe describir la unión como un «estar (del alma) junto (al cuerpo), ( être jointe)», que califica la estrechez de la unión por la inmediatez de la acción (sección §4). Finalmente, esta conjunción del alma y del cuerpo anticipa de manera coherente la doctrina cartesiana del amor, el cual se define por la capacidad del alma de unirse (« se joindre ») a los objetos que la afectan en la apariencia de bondad. El capítulo segundo se dedicará a la definición de pasión (Pasiones §§21-28), el único sentimiento interior al alma misma porque el único que es tal como aparece, en una evidencia que no puede ser entendida mas que en relación, todavía indeterminada, con la evidencia primera ego sum, ego existo, en la Meditación Segunda, y especialmente con su última formulación, en la certeza del « creo ver » («videre videor»). El carácter inaugural de esta definición reside en los puntos siguientes: a) la relación con el alma convierte a la pasión en el único sentimiento que es tal como se siente, pero al mismo tiempo, b) inaugura una nueva forma de error posible, todavía indeterminado, pero de otro orden que aquél al que nos somete la naturaleza extrínseca del resto de las percepciones (sección §1). Ahora bien, la pasión es tal como se siente porque no es un « ver », videre, y por lo tanto no le corresponde revelar el ego sum (« ego sum qui sentio » VII, 29, 11), a través de un « creo ver », videre videor (sección §3). Quisimos probar que esto es perfectamente coherente con la doble enumeración de los modos del pensamiento, en la Segunda y Tercera Meditación, (VII, 28 y 35, respectivamente) y con la clasificación de los pensamientos (ideas, juicios, voluntades, afecciones), establecida en la Meditación Tercera (VII, 38) (sección §2). Pero la pasión, a la vez que inaugura una interioridad, se recibe en el alma, como algo que no proviene de ella (Pasiones §17). Es aquí, donde se da a conocer el carácter inaugural y a la vez paradójico de la pasión: en ella, la interioridad del alma a sí se conoce, por primera vez, en una modalidad particular de la recepción sensible. Examinamos esa doble condición, interioridad y recepción, en la sección §7, la última de este segundo capítulo. Dos consecuencias. La primera: a partir de la definición de pasión, la investigación sobre la cualidad sensible se independiza del examen de la realidad objetiva (sección §4). La pasión puede por lo tanto inaugurar una verdad y un modo de error que se separa definitivamente del objeto representado como cosa o privación de cosa. No seremos los primeros en decir que la pasión, el saber afectivo en general, sólo puede dirigirse a un no-objeto (F. Alquié). Pero hay que agregar que la definición de pasión, al recuperar su evidencia primera, abre a la meditación el campo de una realidad inobjetivable, o, mejor, de una modalidad de la objetividad definitivamente irreal, que ya ha sido descubierta por J-L. Marion, por lo menos para el caso particular de la admiración, y que sólo podrá ser de ser descripta en el momento de definir las pasiones particulares. La segunda consecuencia reside en la relegación definitiva de toda explicación de la pasión por la causa eficiente (sección §6). En efecto, Descartes deja de lado las funciones del cuerpo como criterio de clasificación de los modos de la sensibilidad, y la relega a la segunda parte de la segunda parte de su definición, de manera tal que la causa de la pasión no explica nada y por el contrario, es ella la que debe ser explicada. Si se admite una doble constitución de la metafísica cartesiana, nuestro esfuerzo conduce a mostrar que la noción de pasión, y la investigación que ella abre, pertenece a una metafísica presidida por su primera figura, cogitatio, antes que por la segunda, causa. La investigación sobre los efectos de la pasión, que comprende los artículos §§40 a 48 de Las pasiones del alma, y a la que dedicamos nuestro capítulo III, debe ser leída en continuidad al texto de la Meditación Sexta, en tanto viene a responder a la pregunta siguiente: ¿cuál es el modo de la pasividad que caracteriza a la pasión y la distingue de otros modos del sentimiento como de otros modos de constricción a la voluntad? Si la pasión, se recibe en el alma, ¿cómo se siente esa proveniencia, si por definición queda excluida toda relación al cuerpo como causa o como objeto? En primer lugar, aquello que caracteriza a la pasión es que ella tiene como efecto una disposición a querer. Pero, dado que la voluntad es esencialmente libre, la disposición a querer en el alma tiene a su vez un efecto igualmente necesario, este es, una respuesta del alma a la disposición a querer que es en ella, respuesta que Descartes llama (no) consentimiento a los efectos de la pasión (§46; §80). A partir del artículo §40, la investigación sobre las pasiones se introduce resueltamente en el ámbito de una moral, como una ciencia de los efectos (sección §1). En segundo lugar, y por lo anterior, la pasión, puede ser, en su interioridad y proximidad al alma, directamente contraria a la voluntad (365, 12-13), justamente, porque ella es el único sentimiento que tiene como efecto necesario en el alma una disposición a querer (§40). Lejos de presentar un mero obstáculo a una determinación del alma, la pasión se recibe como una invitación, a la cual el alma debe imperativamente responder. El punto a destacar (sección §2) es el siguiente: Descartes describe aquí una verdadera autoafección indirecta, por la cual el alma puede excitar en sí una pasión voluntaria (362, 28 ; 363, 2; 486, 6-9), autoafección de la cual es absolutamente incapaz en el caso del resto de los sentimientos, tal como quedaba establecido desde la Meditación Sexta. Así, el cuerpo que actúa inmediatamente sobre el alma, al cual ella está más estrechamente unida, abandona su condición de mero intermediario entre los cuerpos y el alma y pasa a ser, en una autoafección voluntaria, el intermediario entre una acción del alma y una pasión en el alma. En la sección §3 se agrega esto: la pasión, a diferencia de todos los sentimientos, no se siente en el instante. Por el contrario, en ella, el sentir se despliega en el tiempo y se hace por lo tanto independiente de la acción de los cuerpos sobre los sentidos internos o externos. Esto se debe a lo siguiente: primero, en la pasión, el cuerpo actúa como una totalidad indivisible. Segundo: el cuerpo actúa sobre sí. En la pasión, tercero, el cuerpo actúa de manera tal que su acción se presenta siempre como una exigencia al ejercicio efectivo de la libertad. Finalmente, en la pasión, la totalidad de las funciones del cuerpo se someten definitivamente a la voluntad, de manera que el alma puede afectarse a sí en una pasión voluntaria. Quisiéramos proponer (sección §3) que la experiencia del cuerpo en la pasión merece ser nombrada como la experiencia de un cuerpo de dedans, que se presenta en la repugnancia o el consentimiento y cuya acción no se siente en un lugar (en una internidad que no establece ninguna distinción con la exterioridad de los cuerpos del mundo), sino en el alma misma, en una interioridad que hace imposible la reducción del cuerpo sentido a la categoría común de objeto o causa. Ahora bien, la investigación sobre la pasión puede introducirse en el ámbito de la moral con una condición: que la pasión permita el acceso del ego a un alter ego, o según la fórmula tradicional utilizada por Descartes, a un «otro sí mismo», alter ipse. Es el problema que abordamos en el capítulo IV. Queda claro que las Meditaciones Metafísicas impiden, o mejor, ocluyen de modo parentemente definitivo, ese acceso. Pero, en Las pasiones del alma, Descartes, introduce un género muy particular de objeto , «otros objetos, que consideramos causas libres, capaces de hacer el bien y el mal » (§55, 374, 5-7). Más aún, la libertad del agente se erige en criterio de clasificación de segundo orden para todas las pasiones simples, con excepción del deseo. El punto a notar aquí (sección §1) es el siguiente: el ego no se ve afectado por la causa libre porque infiera que ella, a diferencia de otras, actúa moralmente sobre él, con independencia de toda determinación mecánica. Es al revés: el ego siente la acción de una causa libre porque se ve afectado por la libertad del agente; es esa afección la que otorga a los actos del otro el carácter moral de buenos o malos. Esto se prueba en el respeto o la veneración (§162): aquello que nos afecta no es la supuesta bondad o la maldad de los actos, sino inmediatamente aquello que los hace tales, esto es, la « capacidad » de hacer el bien o el mal. De aquí que el hijo, cuyos actos evidentemente no son morales, pueda nombrarse, entre los objetos de amor, como un « otro(s) sí mismo» (§82, 389, 15). A fin de precisar el sentido y los alcances de esta alteridad, debemos detenernos en la definición cartesiana del amor (secciones §§2-3). Esa definición debe, en primer lugar, distinguirse claramente de aquella que Descartes había ensayado dos años antes, en la carta a Chanut del 1 de febrero de 1647. El problema que preocupa a Descartes no es ya más la definición de un amor intelectual, sino la de un amor puro, que Descartes distingue precisamente de las pasiones que « participan del amor » (§82, título), mezcla de deseo y « otras pasiones particulares » (§82 389, 9-10). El amor puro es una pasión que no tiene relación alguna al cuerpo, porque se siente sin placer y es la primera de las pasiones « que pertenecen al alma », según la distinción establecida en los títulos de §137 y §139. Esta distinción se establece estrictamente dentro del ámbito del amor pasión porque no considera en ningún momento el alma en tanto separada del cuerpo, condición del amor intelectual (IV, 602, 4-8), sino como « nuestra mejor parte » (§139, 432, 5). El único que merece sin reparos el título de « amor puro » es el amor paterno, el único en el que se cumple la tríada, pureza, posesión perfecta, alteridad. En la sección §4 nos detenemos en los modos del engaño propio de las pasiones, en general, y del amor en particular, para entender el último rasgo que Descartes le otorga al amor puro, este es, el de ser un amor verdadero, que elude todas las formas de engaño a las que las pasiones pueden someternos, y puede por lo tanto ocupar el lugar del verdadero conocimiento. La teoría cartesiana del amor permite así dos conclusiones. Primera: la alteridad sirve para distinguir definitivamente el amor del deseo, el amor puro de las pasiones que participan de él, los grados de perfección del amor, amor paterno, amistad honesta, y, finalmente, la formas del amor, afección, amistad y devoción. Segundo, antes de toda reflexión sobre el deseo, es decir, antes de considerar la perfectibilidad del ego por la posesión de bienes que dependan exclusivamente de nuestra voluntad, Descartes escribe que el alma se perfecciona en el amor, por la unión al bien verdadero, mientras que se envilece y rebaja en su unión con un bien excesivamente estimado (§139, 432, 12-20 ; §142, 435, 18 –22). En la sección §5 examinamos el efecto del amor, la benevolencia, que Descartes, haciendo caso omiso de la tradición, define como una verdadera beneficencia, como un acto de donación, que no necesita de ningún deseo para hacerse efectivo. El punto a destacar aquí es que Descartes considera que el otro al que el alma se une es la « mejor parte » del todo que resulta de la unión (§82, 389, 16-17). Por este exceso, el generoso, sobre la estrechez de la unión al cuerpo, decide por la estrechez de la unión a otra alma, y privilegia el objeto de amor sobre el amor a la vida. Brevemente: la amistad cartesiana tiende a la devoción y rompe con toda noción de amistad fundada en la igualdad. Esto nos permite, en la sección §6 hacer notar cómo la teoría del amor resignifica un léxico que Descartes recibe de Aristóteles y Santo Tomás. La comparación, al menos inicial, con esos autores está dirigida a incluir a Descartes en una historia del amor. El quinto capítulo traza el largo itinerario de la noción de virtud, a través de la Correspondencia, y se detiene especialmente en las cartas mencionadas más arriba, ( a Elisabeth, 15 septiembre 1645; a Chanut, 1 febrero 1648) en las que Descartes ensaya y abandona una primera forma de moral definitiva, especialmente problemática, en tanto aspira, por primera vez, a deducir el amor a Dios de la idea de Dios, y se dirige a pensar al ego como parte de totalidades (familia, vecindad, Estado) que han sido, ellas también, creadas por Dios. Esta reflexión sobre el amor a Dios es todavía independiente de la reflexión sobre las pasiones, que recién comienza. Intentamos aquí despejar la intención cartesiana que puede resumirse así: de la misma manera que Dios, creador de toda verdad, es fundamento de toda ciencia y toda verdad se halla ya contenida en Su idea, es Dios, creador de totalidades físicas, sociales o políticas, el fundamento de todo amor, aunque no se lo conozca, o sólo confusamente, como tal; de modo que en todo acto de renuncia por la totalidad, amamos a Dios, en un amor sensible, aunque nada en Él sea imaginable. Sin embargo, una vez adquirida, en Las pasiones del alma, la definición de pasión e incluida la noción de consentimiento en la definición definitiva del amor, aquella vía de análisis, que parte de un ego ya incluido en las totalidades de las que forma parte como persona, agota definitivamente sus posibilidades y debe ser abandonada. Debemos preguntar, entonces: qué queda de esta ardua reflexión sobre el amor a Dios en Las pasiones del alma? Principalmente, Descartes recupera de aquellas cartas la reflexión sobre la Providencia divina, en los artículos §§146-147. Pero entre las cartas de 1645-1647 y el texto de Las pasiones del alma, hay una diferencia capital. La reflexión sobre la Providencia divina, en 1649, no hace mención alguna al amor, parece abandonar toda aspiración a fundar, en el amor a Dios, el amor a otros hombres y se dirige exclusivamente a establecer la regla del deseo, intermediario privilegiado entre pasión y acción (§143, 435, 26-29). Ahora bien, una moral que no tuviera otra regla que la del deseo presentaría dos características distintivas. Primero, la indagación sobre el bien verdadero se agota en la determinación del bien verdaderamente posible; son pues igualmente buenos todos los bienes igualmente estimables e igualmente posibles. De aquí, en segundo lugar, que la noción de virtud no pueda otorgar a la voluntad otro bien que su mero ejercicio, vacío de todo contenido. Ha sido pues posible interpretar que, la moral cartesiana, en el momento de alcanzar su fundamento, se independiza de ella, como otra potencia igualmente arbitraria, que no puede someterse a otro fin que el de imitar a Dios por la inmutabilidad de la decisión. En el capítulo sexto, dedicado a la definición de generosidad, nosotros propondremos, al contrario, que el texto de Las pasiones del alma, cuya teoría del amor aquella interpretación debe desconocer, permite otra lectura de la moral cartesiana. Sucede que Descartes cambia radicalmente el punto de partida de su reflexión : en las cartas de 1645-1647, la omnipotencia divina exigía considerar el ego como parte de distintas totalidades, a las que se haya ligado de hecho. En 1649, la unión no describe una situación existencial, impuesta por nacimiento, vecindad o juramento, porque no accede a una situación de hecho más que por el consentimiento libre y lúcido del ego a la unión efectiva con el bien amado. De aquí, proponemos, se siguen dos consecuencias. La primera (sección §2): una reformulación del problema del amor a Dios. La omnipotencia divina no se conoce como aquí como Providencia, es decir, en el decreto universal que determina la fatalidad de todas las cosas, sino en el acto singular de una donación personal y desmedida, la libre disposición de nuestras voluntades, por la cual la criatura se reconoce semejante a su Creador (§152). El generoso reconoce que el libre albedrío, el único bien por el cual puede estimarse a sí mismo, es, tal como quedaba establecido desde la Meditación Cuarta, un don divino y el reconocimiento por un don recibido es una pasión, la gratitud, la cual, a diferencia de la admiración, la esperanza o la seguridad, es una especie del amor, siempre virtuosa (§§193-194). En efecto, la reflexión sobre la Providencia, es apenas uno de los modos de reglar el deseo, el segundo, porque el primero es, justamente, la generosidad, que se define con total prescindencia del conocimiento de la fatalidad de todas las cosas (§145, 437, 27-438, 3). Investigamos aquí los tres rasgos del don divino: infinitud formal, pertenencia verdadera, distribución perfecta. La segunda consecuencia, que confirma la primera (secciones §§3-4), es la reformulación del amor a otros hombres. En efecto, no arriesgaremos demasiado al proponer que la definición de generosidad, lejos de agotarse en los artículos §§152-153, comprende los artículos §154 y §155 y culmina, finalmente, en el §156. Así entendida, la generosidad es una autoafección que, como tal, determina, prioritaria y precisamente, el modo en que el generoso es afectado por los otros hombres, en tanto causas libres, semejantes al ego, y por lo tanto semejantes a Dios. La generosidad se define pues en el horizonte de la alteridad porque el generoso no sería tal si no estimara a todos y cada uno de los hombres como generosos posibles (§154) y si no redescubriera su capacidad de hacer el mal por comparación al mal efectivamente realizado por ellos (§155). De aquí, finalmente, la regla definitiva de la moral cartesiana (§156), regla que, al definir la mejor acción posible, otorga un contenido definitivo a la firme resolución de hacer el bien, esta es: imitar la donación original, haciendo el bien a todos los hombres. Luego, la ausencia de una reflexión sobre el amor a Dios, en Las pasiones del alma, no es, todavía, una desaparición, ya que el acto de donación divina condiciona definitivamente la regla moral como una imitación, que se concibe como una repetición, igualmente gratuita, de aquella donación original. La relación entre ambos puntos se prueba en lo siguiente: Descartes afirma que el efecto necesario de la benevolencia generosa, la gratitud es uno de las principales vínculos de la sociedad entre los hombres (§194, 474, 13-15), la cual se funda pues en el mismo vínculo que une al hombre generoso con Dios: gratitud por la gratuidad de la donación (sección §6). La afirmación cartesiana es de un laconismo insalvable, pero recupera un texto hasta aquí descuidado, la Carta a Voetius de 1643, la primera reflexión cartesiana sobre el amor y la única dedicada a examinar las leyes que de él se deducen, como una jus caritatis (sección §7). Examinamos en la seccción §8 la problemática relación, o ausencia de relación, entre esas leyes de amistad y la ley civil, jus civile, basada en la autoridad del Príncipe. Finalmente, en la Conclusión, podemos detenernos en un problema ya dos veces pospuesto, este es, el que resulta de la equivalencia que Descartes establece entre amistad honesta y caridad cristiana. (IV, 309, 2-4; IV , 612, 14), equivalencia que la noción de generosidad está lejos de contradecir y que recupera la «gran afinidad» (VIII-2, 112, 24-25) entre las leyes de la amistad y las leyes de caridad, que Descartes había desarrollado en aquel capítulo séptimo de la Carta a Voetius. El carácter problemático de esta equivalencia es evidente: si el amor natural, por exceso, aspira a la caridad, es a riesgo que la caridad, por defecto, deje de ser cristiana. Esa afinidad no ha merecido mayor atención por parte de la metafísica y de sus historiadores. Pero, ha merecido la mayor atención por parte de la destitución de la metafísica que lleva a cabo Blaise Pascal quien descubre y acusa, en esa afinidad, el último esfuerzo de la filosofía cartesiana, dirigida a otorgarle al ego su última y más controversial primacía, la del acceso a Dios por el amor. -/- . (shrink)

Reedition of papers in English spanning from 1986 to 2009 /// Historical background -- An imposed legacy -- Twentieth century contemporaneity -- Appendix: The philosophy of teaching legal philosophy in Hungary /// HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- PHILOSOPHY OF LAW IN CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: A SKETCH OF HISTORY [1999] 11–21 // PHILOSOPHISING ON LAW IN THE TURMOIL OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER IN HUNGARY (TWO PORTRAITS, INTERWAR AND POSTWAR: JULIUS MOÓR & ISTVÁN LOSONCZY) [2001–2002] 23–39: Julius Moór 23 / István Losonczy 29 // (...) ON THE SURVIVAL OF ILMAR TAMMELO’S LETTER AND MANUSCRIPT ADDRESSED TO PROFESSOR MOÓR [2009] 41–44 // PROFESSIONAL DISTRESS AND SCARCITY: ALEXANDER HORVÁTH AND THE LEGACY OF NATURAL LAW IN HUNGARY [2005] 45–50 // HUNGARIAN LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY [2011] 51–72: I. The Pre-war Period [1. Bódog (Felix) Somló (1871–1920) 52] / II. The Inter-war Period [2. Gyula (Julius) Moór (1888–1950) 54 / 3. Barna Horváth (1896–1973) 55 / 4. József Szabó (1909–1992) 57 / 5. István Bibó (1911–1979) 58 / 6. Tibor Vas (1911–1983) 59 / 7. István Losonczy (1918–1980) 60] III. The Post-war Period (Communism) 61 [8. Imre Szabó (1912–1991) 62 / 9. Vilmos Peschka (1929–2006) 63 / 10. Kálmán Kulcsár (1928–2010) 65] IV. Contemporary Trends and Perspectives 66 [11. Csaba Varga (b. 1941) 66 / 12. András Sajó (b. 1949) 69 / 13. Béla Pokol (b. 1950) 70] V. Our Understanding of the Law Today 71 --- AN IMPOSED LEGACY -- LOOKING BACK [1999] 75–94: 1. On Ideologies and Marxism in general 75 / 2. Life of an Intellectual in Communism 79 / 3. On Marxism and its Socialist Cultivation in Particular 82 / 4. Legal Philosophising [4.1. Approaches to Law 87 / 4.2. Arriving at a Legal Ontology 91] 5. Conclusion 94 // LEGAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE MARXISM OF SOCIALISM: HUNGARIAN OVERVIEW IN AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE [2003] 95–151: I. Development and Balance of Marxist Philosophising on Law in Hungary [1. Preliminaries (until 1948) 96 / 2. Stalinism (from the Soviet Occupation on) {a) Liquidation of the »Residues« 98 / b) Soviet-type Uniformisation [Gleichschaltung] 99 / c) Denial of the Past, with a Dual Effect 99 / d) »Socialist Legality«, Drawn from the Progressive Past of Western Europe 103 / e) Search for the Germs of Scholarly Evolution 103} 3. Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation (from the 1960s) [a) Epigonism Becoming the Scholarly Ideal 104 / b) Stalinism in a Critical Self-perspective 105 / c) Disciples Diversified Launching their own Trends 107 / d) Comparatism 110 / e) (Re)discovery of the Western Legal Philosophy as a Competitor 112 / f) A Leading Mediatory Role within the »Socialist World Order« 114} 4. Disintegration (in the 1980s) {a) Attempt at Laying New Foundations for Marxism with Epigonism Exhausted 115 / b) Competitive Trends Becoming Exclusive 115 / c) Western Legal Philosophy Acknowledged as a Fellow-traveller within the Socialist Orbit Proper 116 / d) Hungarian Legal Theory Transforming into a National Corpus 118 / e) The Practical Promotion of Some Balance 119} 5. End-game for a Substitute State Religion (in the 1990s) 120] II. Marxist Legal Philosophising in an International Perspective [Ad 1: To the Preliminaries 122 / Ad 2: To Stalinism 124 / Ad 3: To Institutionalisation Accompanied by Relaxation {a) Late Separation from Vishinskiy’s Theory 125 / b) From Ideological Self-closure to an Apparently Scholarly Openness 127 / c) From Political Ideology to Genuine Scholarship 130 / d) International Recognition of Socialist Jurisprudence as an Independent Trend 135 / e) Together with Western Trends 137} Ad 4: To Disintegration {a) Loss of Attraction as Mere Epigonism 139 / b) Exclusivity of Competing Trends 139 / c) Fellowship with »Bourgeois« Trends 140 / d) An own Trend, Internationally Recognised 141 / e) A yet Progressive Role 142} Ad 5: To the Present state 143] III. A Temporary Balance 145 // AUTONOMY AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF LAW IN A SUPERSTRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE [1986] 151–175: 1. The Strange Fate of Concepts 151 / I. A Relational Category 2. Basis and Superstructure: The Genuine Meaning 154 / 3. Exerting Social Influence as a Conceptual Minimum 156 / 4. Relationships within the Prevailing Totality 158 / 5. Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary 159 / 6. The Lukácsian Stand 162 / 7. Lukács’s Recognitions 168 / 8. Some Criticism 169 / II. The Law’s Understanding 171 / 9. Law Interpreted as Superstructure 171 / 10. Conclusions Drawn for the Law’s Understanding 173 // LEGAL THEORY IN TRANSITION (A PREFACE FROM HUNGARY) [2000] 177–186 // DEVELOPMENT OF THEORETICAL LEGAL THOUGHT IN HUNGARY AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM [2006] 187–215: 1. International Environment 188 / 2. The Situation in Hungary 190 / 3. Outlook I: The Historical-comparative Study of Legal Cultures and of the Lawyerly Way of Thinking 203 / 4. Outlook II: The Paradigmatic Enigma of the Transition to Rule of Law 207 / 5. Incongruity in Practice 213 / 6. Perspectives 214 --- TWENTIETH CENTURY CONTEMPORANEITY -- CHANGE OF PARADIGMS IN LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION: CARL SCHMITT AND THE TEMPTATION TO FINALLY REACH A SYNTHESIS [2002] 219–234: 1. Dangers of Intellectualism 219 / 2. Schmitt in Facts 221 / 3. Schmitt and Kelsen 222 / 4. On Bordering Conditions 226 / 5. With Kelsen in Transubstantiation 230 / 6. Polarisation as the Path of Theoretical Development 232 // KELSENIAN DOCUMENTS IN HUNGARY: CHAPTERS ON CONTACTS, INCLUDING THE GENESIS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY [2006] 235–243: 1. Preludes 235 / 2. The Search for Moór’s Bequeath 235 / 3. Moór’s Collegiality 238 / 4. Bibó as a Disciple Translating 241 // THE »HART-PHENOMENON« [2002] 245–267: I. The Hart-miracle 246 [1. The Scene of Britain at the Time 247 / 2. The Personal Career 250 / 3. The Opus’ Career 252 / 4. Verbal Sociologism 255 / 5. Growing into the British Pattern 259] II. The Hart-phenomenon 260 [6. Origination of a Strange Orthodoxy 261 / 7. Mastering Periods of the 20th Century 263 / 8. Raising the Issue of Reception in Hungary 365] // LITERATURE? A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL PHILOSOPHY? [2007] 269–287: 1. The Enigma of Law and its Study 269 / 2. “Law and Literature” 271 / 3. Varieties of “Law and Literature” 274 / 4. The German Study of Artistic Representations 280 / 5. Some Literary Reconsiderations 285 / 6. Conclusion 287 --- APPENDIX -- THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING LEGAL PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARY [2007] 291–320: I. Why and How to Philosophise in Law? 291 / II. The State of Teaching Legal Philosophy 294 / III. The Philosophy of Teaching Legal Philosophy 296 / IV. Programme at the Catholic University of Hungary 300 [1. Graduate Studies 300 {a) Basic Subjects 301 / b) Facultative Seminars 305 / c) Closing Subjects 309 / d) Written Memoranda and the Thesis 312} 2. Postgraduate Studies 313 / 3. Conclusion 317] V. Perspectives 318 /// Index of Subjects 321 / Index of Normative Materials 328 / Index of Names 329 . (shrink)

Hans Kelsen's thorough critique of Eric Voegelin's "New Science of Politcs" is - in my oppinion - the best commentary on Voegelin that has been written so far.

First published in 1949 expressly to introduce logical positivism to English speakers. Reichenbach, with Rudolph Carnap, founded logical positivism, a form of epistemofogy that privileged scientific over metaphysical truths.

Radical democratic thinking is becoming intrigued by the material situatedness of its political agents and by the role of nonhuman participants in political interaction. At stake here is the displacement of narrow anthropocentrism that currently guides democratic theory and practice, and its repositioning into what we call ‘the nonhuman condition’. This Critical Exchange explores the nonhuman condition. It asks: What are the implications of decentering the human subject via a new materialist reading of radical democracy? Does this reading dilute political (...) agency? Or should this be seen, on the contrary, as an invitation for new voices and demands to enter into democratic assemblages? How might engagement with the more-than-human disrupt or extend theories of radical democracy? Hans Asenbaum and Amanda Machin discuss the human democratic subject both through radical democratic and new materialist lenses. They suggest that a new materialist decentred subject does not lose agency but further gains political responsibility in radical democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon highlights the possibility of becoming through loss. In losing our anthropocentric arrogance—our understanding of being other and better than animal—we become more connected and discover our place in human-nonhuman assemblages. Melissa Orlie agrees that something can be gained through renouncing dominant human fantasies and presents a ‘radical democratic naturalism’. By renouncing land violence and acknowledging nature’s subjectivity, we can further nonexploitative radical democratic politics. This is where the notion of ‘tidalectic’ processes introduced by James L. Smith is helpful. Focusing on water and the Indigenous knowledges around rivers, he considers how democracy and community can be reimagined as plural, cyclical and attentive to the nonhuman with which the human is inevitably entangled. Diana Leong offers a different approach. Considering the nonhuman from the perspective of Black Studies demands an awareness to how blackness has long been constituted as non- or partially human. (shrink)

In this paper, I examined whether evidence from the neuroscience of morality supports the standard models of phronesis, i.e., Jubilee and Aretai Centre Models. The standard models explain phronesis as a multifaceted construct based on interaction and coordination among functional components. I reviewed recent neuroscience studies focusing on brain networks associated with morality and their connectivity to examine the validity of the models. Simultaneously, I discussed whether the evidence helps the models address challenges, particularly those from the phronesis eliminativism. Neuroscientific (...) evidence supported the importance of brain networks, i.e., the default mode, salience, and central executive functioning networks, in moral functioning in general. The findings favorably supported the multifaceted and integrative nature of phronesis proposed by the standard models. Finally, I considered how the two models could explain the mechanisms of phronesis more integratively based on neuroscientific findings. At the end of this paper, with the evidence, I proposed several practical ideas to promote the cultivation of phronesis, e.g., the consideration of coordination among components for moral functioning and the use of moral exemplars. (shrink)

The present study aimed to examine how to improve the effectiveness of moral exemplar-applied interventions based on the pillars of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) framework, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Past research has mainly focused on the relatedness and attainability of moral exemplars for predicting motivation outcomes. The data for this study consisted of synthesized data sets from previous studies examining the motivational impacts of distinct moral exemplars and intervention methods. The main syntheses for these data sets used Multilevel Modeling (MLM) (...) focusing on relatability, attainability, and intervention methods, corresponding to relatedness, competence, and autonomy in the SDT, respectively, as predictors. In general, there was a significant interaction effect between the attainability or relatability, and the intervention method. Autonomous instruction methods, which support autonomy, were demonstrated to boost motivational outcomes. Implications from this study support the employment of SDT to examine the use of moral exemplars in moral education and were consistent with previous exemplar studies. (shrink)

I explored the association between components constituting the basis for moral and optimal human functioning, i.e., moral reasoning, moral identity, empathy, and purpose, via network analysis. I employed factor scores instead of composite scores that most previous studies used for better accuracy in score estimation in this study. Then, I estimated the network structure among collected variables and centrality indicators. For additional information, the structure and indicators were compared between two groups, participants who engaged in civic activities highly versus lowly. (...) The results demonstrated significant intra- and inter-scale associations in the network. The network structure was invariant across the two groups. Despite the network invariance, I found that the global connectivity between and centrality indicators of examined factors were higher among the high civic engagement group in general. I discussed the implications of the findings in research on moral functioning based on moral psychology and virtue ethics. (shrink)

Herman Philipse considers “religious beliefs, faith and religion [to be] incompatible with science or reason”; he defines religion scientifically and specifically rejects religious doctrine. He describes reason “… as the whole of methods of empirical scientific research and critical discursive thinking as they have evolved in the scientific tradition and will continue to develop in the future” and he defines “… the phenomenon of conscience as a mental organ that can be scientifically explained and that makes the religious explanation superfluous (...) …”. Herman Philipse classifies science as the highest in rank, discards religion and sees philosophy, a rational view of the world, as based solely on the sciences. For his subject, Hans Achterhuis “… primarily cites biologists, ethologists and evolutionary psychologists with a philosophical interest” because “they presently have more to offer [him] than do his immediate colleagues”. Furthermore, “… it will be clear that ethologists and sociobiologists are of the opinion that the violent behaviour of human beings must be understood in part from the point of view of the evolutionary history of the sort ….. most philosophers and anthropologists are not aware of this. Their considerations suggest that violence only entered our world together with humankind”. Achterhuis’s choice is a “historic concept of violence”. (shrink)

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein_ presents a concise, comprehensive, and systematic treatment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's thought from his early work, _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,_ to the posthumous publication of _On Certainty_, notes written just prior to his death. A substantial scholarly addition to our understanding of one of the most original and influential thinkers of the twentieth century, by renowned Wittgenstein scholar, Hans Sluga Proposes an original new interpretation of Wittgenstein's work Written to also be accessible to readers unfamiliar with Wittgenstein's thought Includes discussion of the (...) social and political background and contemporary relevance of Wittgenstein's thoughts. (shrink)

Numerous philosophers have tried to define modesty, but none of them succeeds in articulating the necessary and sufficient conditions for this virtue. Moreover, all existing accounts ignore the striking self-other asymmetry that is at the heart of modesty. Drawing on the analogy with the practice of giving presents, I clarify and further investigate this self-other asymmetry. In the process, I show why Bernard Williams is right in pointing out the notorious truth that a modest person does not act under the (...) title of modesty and why Alan Bennett is wrong in supposing that all modesty is false modesty. (shrink)

Some stories of moral exemplars motivate us to emulate their admirable attitudes and behaviors, but why do some exemplars motivate us more than others? We systematically studied how motivation to emulate is influenced by the similarity between a reader and an exemplar in social or cultural background (Relatability) and how personally costly or demanding the exemplar’s actions are (Attainability). Study 1 found that university students reported more inspiration and related feelings after reading true stories about the good deeds of a (...) recent fellow alum, compared to a famous moral exemplar from decades past. Study 2A developed a battery of short moral exemplar stories that more systematically varied Relatability and Attainability, along with a set of non-moral exemplar stories for comparison. Studies 2B and 2C examined the path from the story type to relatively low stakes altruism (donating to charity and intentions to volunteer) through perceived attainability and relatability, as well as elevation and pleasantness. Together, our studies suggest that it is primarily the relatability of the moral exemplars, not the attainability of their actions, that inspires more prosocial motivation, at least regarding acts that help others at a relatively low cost to oneself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza and the Theory of Organism HANS JONAS I CARTESIANDUALISMlanded speculation on the nature of life in an impasse: intelligible as, on principles of mechanics, the correlation of structure and function became within the res extensa, that of structure-plus-function with feeling or experience (modes of the res cogitans) was lost in the bifurcation, and thereby the fact of life itself became unintelligible at the same time that the explanation (...) of its bodily performance seemed to be assured. The impasse became manifest in Occasionalism : its tour de force of an extraneous, divine "synchronization" of the outer and the inner world (the latter denied to animals) not only suffered from its extreme artificiality, the common failing of such ad hoc constructions, but even at so high a cost failed to accomplish its theoretical purpose by its own terms. For the animal machine, like any machine, raises beyond the question of the "how" that of the "what for" of its functioning---of the purpose for which it had thus been constructed by its maker.1 Its performance, however devoid of immanent teleology, must serve an end, and that end must be someone's end. This end may (directly) be itself, as indeed Descartes had implied when declaring self-preservation to be the effect of the functioning of the organic automaton. In that case the existence as such of the machine would be its end--either terminally, or in turn to benefit something else. In the former case, the machine would have to be more than a machine, for a mere machine cannot enioy its existence. But since, by the rigorous conception of the res extensa, it cannot be more than a machine, its function and/or existence must serve something other than itself. Automata in Descartes ' time were mainly for entertainment (rather than work). But the raison d'etre of the living kingdom could not well be seen in God's indulging his mechanical abilities or in the amusement of celestial spectators--especially since mere complexity of arrangement does not create new quality and thus add something to the unrelieved sameness of the simple substratum that might enrich the spectrum of being. For quality, beyond the primitive determinations of the extended per se, is the subjective creature of sensation, the confused representation of quantity in a mind; and thus organisms cannot harbor it because as mere machines they lack mentality, and pure spirits cannot because they lack sensuality, or the privilege of confusion and thereby of illusion with its possible enjoyment. And as to their intellectual enjoyment, even that, deprived of the thrill of discovery by the same token, would pale in the contemplation of what to sufficiently large The concept of "machine," adopted for its strict confinementto efficientcause, is still a finalisticconcept,even thoughthe final cause is no longer internal to the entity, as a mode of its own operation,but external to it as antecedent design. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intellects is nothing but the ever-repeated exemplification of the same few, elementary (and ultimately trivial) truths. There remained, then, the time-honored--Stoic as well as Christian--idea that plants and animals are for the benefit of Man. Indeed, since the existence of a living world is the necessary condition for the existence of any of its members, the self-justifying nature of at least one such member (= species) would justify the existence of the whole. In Stoicism, Man provided this end by his possession of reason, which makes him the culmination of a terrestrial scale of being that is also self-justifying throughout all its grades (the end as the best of many that are good in degrees) ; in Christianity, by his possession of an immortal soul, which makes him the sole imago Dei in creation (the end as the sole issue at stake) ; and Cartesian dualism radicalized this latter position by making man even the sole possessor of inwardness or "soul" of any kind, thus the only one of whom "end" can meaningfully be predicated as he alone can entertain ends. All other life then, the product of physical necessity, can be considered his means. However, this traditional idea, in its anthropocentric vanity never a... (shrink)

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the (...) subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change. (shrink)

The present study aimed to develop effective moral educational interventions based on social psychology by using stories of moral exemplars. We tested whether motivation to engage in voluntary service as a form of moral behavior was better promoted by attainable and relevant exemplars or by unattainable and irrelevant exemplars. First, experiment 1, conducted in a lab, showed that stories of attainable exemplars more effectively promoted voluntary service activity engagement among undergraduate students compared with stories of unattainable exemplars and non-moral stories. (...) Second, experiment 2, a middle school classroom-level experiment with a quasi-experimental design, demonstrated that peer exemplars, who are perceived to be attainable and relevant to students, better promoted service engagement compared with historic figures in moral education classes. (shrink)

Though there is a wide and varied literature on ethical supererogation, there has been almost nothing written about its epistemic counterpart, despite an intuitive analogy between the two fields. This paper seeks to change this state of affairs. I will begin by showing that there are examples which intuitively feature epistemically supererogatory doxastic states. Next, I will present a positive theory of epistemic supererogation that can vindicate our intuitions in these examples, in an explanation that parallels a popular theory of (...) ethical supererogation. Roughly, I will argue that a specific type of epistemic virtue—the ability to creatively think up plausible hypotheses given a body of evidence—is not required of epistemic agents. Thus, certain exercises of this virtue can result in supererogatory doxastic states. In presenting this theory, I will also show how thinking about epistemic supererogation can provide us a new way forward in the debate about the uniqueness thesis for epistemic rationality. (shrink)

Plakias has recently argued that there is nothing wrong with publishing defences of philosophical claims which we don't believe and also nothing wrong with concealing our lack of belief, because an author's lack of belief is irrelevant to the merit of a published work. Fleisher has refined this account by limiting the permissibility of publishing without belief to what he calls ‘advocacy role cases’. I argue that such lack of belief is irrelevant only if it is the result of an (...) inexplicable incredulity or the result of a metaphilosophical or epistemic stance that is unrelated to the specific claim. However, in many real-life cases, including Fleisher's advocacy role cases, our doubts regarding the claims we defend arise from reasons that have something to do with the insufficiency of the philosophical evidence supporting the claim, and publishing an unconditional defence of a claim without revealing our doubts is impermissible as it involves withholding philosophically relevant reasons. Plakias has also argued that discouraging philosophers from publishing claims they don't believe would be unfair to junior philosophers with unsettled views. I propose that we should change our academic practices that pressure philosophers to publish articles that pretend to be defences of settled views. (shrink)

This essay develops a new conceptual framework of science and engineering ethics education based on virtue ethics and positive psychology. Virtue ethicists and positive psychologists have argued that current rule-based moral philosophy, psychology, and education cannot effectively promote students’ moral motivation for actual moral behavior and may even lead to negative outcomes, such as moral schizophrenia. They have suggested that their own theoretical framework of virtue ethics and positive psychology can contribute to the effective promotion of motivation for self-improvement by (...) connecting the notion of morality and eudaimonic happiness. Thus this essay attempts to apply virtue ethics and positive psychology to science and engineering ethics education and to develop a new conceptual framework for more effective education. In addition to the conceptual-level work, this essay suggests two possible educational methods: moral modeling and involvement in actual moral activity in science and engineering ethics classes, based on the conceptual framework. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine why moral exemplars are useful and even necessary in moral education despite several critiques from researchers and educators. To support my point, I review recent AI research demonstrating that exemplar-based learning is superior to rule-based learning in model performance in training neural networks, such as large language models. I particularly focus on why education aiming at promoting the development of multifaceted moral functioning can be done effectively by using exemplars, which is similar to exemplar-based learning (...) in AI model training. Furthermore, I discuss the potential limitations and issues related to exemplar-applied moral education with findings from recent studies in AI research raising concerns about model biases and toxic outcomes. I attempt to propose ways to address the concerns regarding employing moral exemplars as well. As remedies, I suggest that autonomy-supporting deliberative and reflective learning processes should be utilized. Furthermore, based on the discussion, I examine how macroscopic socio-cultural aspects influence the effectiveness of exemplar-applied moral education. Suggestions for moral educators and future directions for research in moral education are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Do we love for reasons? It can seem as if we do, since most cases of non‐familial love seem *selective*: coming to love a non‐family‐member often begins with our being drawn to them for what they are like. I argue, however, that we can vindicate love's selectivity, even if we maintain that there are no reasons for love; indeed, that gives us a simpler, and hence better, explanation of love's selectivity. We don't, in short, come to love *for* reasons. That (...) which seemed like evidence for thinking that there are reasons for love, then, turns out to militate against that view: how can these purported reasons be reasons for love, if they don't engender (in virtue of rationalizing) it? (shrink)

We explored the relationship between 24 character strengths measured by the Global Assessment of Character Strengths (GACS), which was revised from the original VIA instrument, and moral functioning comprising postconventional moral reasoning, empathic traits and moral identity. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was employed to explore the best models, which were more parsimonious than full regression models estimated through frequentist regression, predicting moral functioning indicators with the 24 candidate character strength predictors. Our exploration was conducted with a dataset collected from 666 (...) college students at a public university in the Southern United States. Results showed that character strengths as measured by GACS partially predicted relevant moral functioning indicators. Performance evaluation results demonstrated that the best models identified by BMA performed significantly better than the full models estimated by frequentist regression in terms of AIC, BIC, and cross-validation accuracy. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the findings for future studies addressing character strengths and moral functioning. (shrink)

The Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology reflects the conviction that the history of metaphysics and current work in metaphysics and ontology can each throw valuable light on the other. Thus it is designed to serve both äs a means of making more widely accessible the results of recent scholarship in the history of philosophy, and also äs a unique work of reference in reladon to the metaphysical themes at the centre of much current debate in analyüc philosophy. The work contains (...) more man 450 shorter articies on specific themes and methods in metaphysics and ontology, together with biographical essays summarizing the thinking of the most important philosophers within the traditions dealt with. In addition, it contains about 20 longer survey arücles mapping out both historically and systemadcally the main areas of metaphysics and ontology. AU contributions have been speciaüy commissioned for this project from leading authorities in their respective fields. A special feature of the work is the pardcular attention that is paid to topics and issues of relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The work includes also a series of arücles on the logical and mathematical tools of metaphysics and on the applications of metaphysical ideas within linguisdcs, psychology, cognitive science, and mathemadcs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the present study, we examined how the perceived attainability and relatability of moral exemplars predicted moral elevation and pleasantness among both adult and college student participants. Data collected from two experiments were analyzed with Bayesian multilevel modeling to explore which factors significantly predicted outcome variables at the story level. The analysis results demonstrated that the main effect of perceived relatability and the interaction effect between attainability and relatability shall be included in the best prediction model, and thus, were (...) deemed to predict the outcome variables significantly. The main effect of relatability as well as its interaction with attainability positively predicted elevation and pleasantness. We discussed educational implications of the findings in terms of how relatability may be the first point of emphasis for moral educators to focus on and attainability can then bolster the effectiveness. These relatable and attainable moral exemplars can be sources for moral elevation and pleasantness, which promote motivation to emulate moral behavior presented by the exemplars. (shrink)

The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over and (...) above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

Although some previous studies have investigated the relationship between moral foundations and moral judgment development, the methods used have not been able to fully explore the relationship. In the present study, we used Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) in order to address the limitations in traditional regression methods that have been used previously. Results showed consistency with previous findings that binding foundations are negatively correlated with post-conventional moral reasoning and positively correlated with maintaining norms and personal interest schemas. In addition to (...) previous studies, our results showed a positive correlation for individualizing foundations and post-conventional moral reasoning. Implications are discussed as well as a detailed explanation of the novel BMA method in order to allow others in the field of moral education to be able to use it in their own studies. (shrink)

Rationality is intrapersonally permissive just in case there are multiple doxastic states that one agent may be rational in holding at a given time, given some body of evidence. One way for intrapersonal permissivism to be true is if there are epistemic supererogatory beliefs—beliefs that go beyond the call of epistemic duty. Despite this, there has been almost no discussion of epistemic supererogation in the permissivism literature. This paper shows that this is a mistake. It does this by arguing that (...) the most popular ways of responding to one of the major obstacles to any intrapersonally permissive all fall prey to the same problem. This problem is most naturally solved by positing a category of epistemically supererogatory belief. So intrapersonal epistemic permissivists should embrace epistemic supererogation. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that there is a particular kind of bullshit that is not dealt with in Harry Frankfurt’s and G.A. Cohen’s critiques of bullshit. We also point out the evaluative complexity of bullshit. Frankfurt and Cohen both stress its negative and possibly destructive aspects, but one might wonder whether bullshit need always and necessarily be reprehensible. We will argue that there are positive or at least neutral aspects to some kinds of bullshit.

This paper looks at the critical reception of two central claims of Peter Auriol’s theory of cognition: the claim that the objects of cognition have an apparent or objective being that resists reduction to the real being of objects, and the claim that there may be natural intuitive cognitions of nonexistent objects. These claims earned Auriol the criticism of his fellow Franciscans, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham. According to them, the theory of apparent being was what had led Auriol to (...) allow for intuitive cognitions of nonexistents, but the intuitive cognition of nonexistents, at its turn, led to scepticism. Modern commentators have offered similar readings of Auriol, but this paper argues, first, that the apparent being provides no special reason to think there could be intuitions of nonexistent objects, and second, that despite his idiosyncratic account of intuition, Auriol was no more vulnerable to scepticism than his critics. (shrink)

It is standard to think that in Spinoza’s system, all things are necessary and in no sense contingent. However, in his classic book, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, published in 1969, Edwin Curley argues based on the proposition 28 of the first part of the Ethics that Spinoza endorses necessitarianism of only a modest kind, according to which when it comes to finite modes, there is a sense in which they are contingent. In this paper, I revisit Curley’s argument. Commentators have responded to (...) Curley’s argument, showing that Spinoza’s remarks on infinite modes entail that finite modes can in no sense be contingent. But this alone falls short of dispelling Curley’s misgivings about the standard interpretation, for it remains unexplained why Curley is wrong in thinking that the proposition 28 supports his moderate necessitarian interpretation. In defense of the standard interpretation, I bolster the usual response to Curley in greater detail than has been done in the literature and explain why, pace Curley, the proposition 28 plays no evidential role in support of Curley’s interpretation. (shrink)

The thesis of quantifier variance is consistent and cannot be refuted via a collapse argument.

ABSTRACT In the present study, I explore the relationship between purpose, which was measured by the Claremont Purpose Scale, and moral psychological indicators, moral reasoning, moral identity, and empathy. Purpose was quantified in terms of three subcomponents: meaning, goal, and beyond-the-self motivation. Moral reasoning was assessed in terms of utilization of postconventional moral reasoning. Moral identity was examined with two subscales: moral internalization, and symbolization. Among diverse subscales of empathy, I focused on empathic concern and perspective taking, which have been (...) reported to be strongly related to morality. To explore the best prediction models using the data, I employed Bayesian Model Selection and Bayesian regression analysis. In general, purpose was significantly predicted by most surveyed moral psychological indicators but not by moral symbolization. The best prediction model for beyond-the-self motivation included the most moral psychological indicator predictors including moral reasoning, which did not significantly predict other dependent variables. (shrink)

This study compares the neural substrate of moral decision making processes between Korean and American participants. By comparison with Americans, Korean participants showed increased activity in the right putamen associated with socio-intuitive processes and right superior frontal gyrus associated with cognitive control processes under a moral-personal condition, and in the right postcentral sulcus associated with mental calculation in familiar contexts under a moral-impersonal condition. On the other hand, American participants showed a significantly higher degree of activity in the bilateral anterior (...) cingulate cortex (ACC) associated with conflict resolution under the moral-personal condition, and in the right medial frontal gyrus (MFG) associated with simple cognitive branching in non-familiar contexts under the moral-impersonal condition when a more lenient threshold was applied, than Korean participants. These findings support the ideas of the interactions between the cultural background, education, and brain development, proposed in the field of cultural psychology and educational psychology. The study introduces educational implications relevant to moral psychologists and educators. (shrink)

The project of grounding necessity in essence often goes together with the model of essence that assimilates the constitutive essence of an object to the definition of it. The paper argues that if the grounding project is to succeed, the definitional model must be questioned. Like any object whatever, a concrete individual is necessarily identical to that individual. It is argued that this necessity can have an essential ground only if the primitive identity property of it or its thisness is (...) essential to it, and the thisness is in its constitutive essence while not in the definition of it. A concrete individual is in essence partly definable but not fully explainable, for the definition of it forms a crucial part of its constitutive essence, but the constitutive essence includes something fundamental beyond definition or explanation. The definitional model must give way to a model of essence that accommodates this. (shrink)