Reports of not feeling understood are frequent in testimonies of psychological trauma. I argue that these feelings are not a matter of a cognitive failure but rather an expression of the absence of a more pervasive background feeling of belonging. Contemporary accounts of we-intentionality promise but ultimately fall short in explaining this sense of belonging. Gerda Walther offers an alternative account of communal experiences. Her notion of “habitual unification” can explain the background feelings of belonging that are woven through the (...) individual’s everyday experience of being in a shared world. Having unified with another person, the world feels different. It is now experienced in light of a “we.” This is not only the case in actual, singular person-to-person encounters. Unification with others becomes habitual: it retreats into the background of the individual’s awareness, colouring their experience of the world. Thus sedimented, it forms a background sense of belonging to a shared world. Unification is enabled by experiencing others as being similar in a significant way, such as having the same experiences, values, or basic attitude: in Walther’s words, as being a “human, who also....” This, I shall argue, is impacted through traumatizing experiences. Trauma survivors struggle to experience others as “humans, who also...,” resulting in a failure of unification and thus impeding feelings of belonging. Trauma testimonies also suggest that actively seeking out recognition of similarities and shared aspects of experience may once again enable experiencing others as “humans, who also...,” thus enabling unification and re-establishing a sense of belonging. (shrink)

Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.

It is a striking fact from reverse mathematics that almost all theorems of countable and countably representable mathematics are equivalent to just five subsystems of second order arithmetic. The standard view is that the significance of these equivalences lies in the set existence principles that are necessary and sufficient to prove those theorems. In this article I analyse the role of set existence principles in reverse mathematics, and argue that they are best understood as closure conditions on the powerset of (...) the natural numbers. (shrink)

Violence turns hope and expectation into guilt and shame. This publication discusses the outcome of a philosophical and artistic investigation into complex patterns of behaviour. Negative connotations and positive aspects of guilt and shame are connected convincingly to the artistic process which is used by the artist to produce new work. As a consequence, a different light is shed on the concepts of guilt and shame. The author shows in an intriguing way how adapting an artistic attitude can help us (...) think in a more peaceful and independent manner. Over Schuld en Schaamte (On Guilt and Shame) thus offers a new surprising insight how violence can be transformed into hope and more rewarding practices. (shrink)

Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the übersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity of (...) reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage. The book is distributed by Ideabooks Amsterdam, Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6. Remodel[l]ing Reality is included in Special Collections, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam. (shrink)

Reverse mathematics studies which subsystems of second order arithmetic are equivalent to key theorems of ordinary, non-set-theoretic mathematics. The main philosophical application of reverse mathematics proposed thus far is foundational analysis, which explores the limits of different foundations for mathematics in a formally precise manner. This paper gives a detailed account of the motivations and methodology of foundational analysis, which have heretofore been largely left implicit in the practice. It then shows how this account can be fruitfully applied in the (...) evaluation of major foundational approaches by a careful examination of two case studies: a partial realization of Hilbert’s program due to Simpson [1988], and predicativism in the extended form due to Feferman and Schütte. -/- Shore [2010, 2013] proposes that equivalences in reverse mathematics be proved in the same way as inequivalences, namely by considering only omega-models of the systems in question. Shore refers to this approach as computational reverse mathematics. This paper shows that despite some attractive features, computational reverse mathematics is inappropriate for foundational analysis, for two major reasons. Firstly, the computable entailment relation employed in computational reverse mathematics does not preserve justification for the foundational programs above. Secondly, computable entailment is a Pi-1-1 complete relation, and hence employing it commits one to theoretical resources which outstrip those available within any foundational approach that is proof-theoretically weaker than Pi-1-1-CA0. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski was one of the greatest logicians of the twentieth century. His influence comes not merely through his own work but from the legion of students who pursued his projects, both in Poland and Berkeley. This chapter focuses on three key areas of Tarski's research, beginning with his groundbreaking studies of the concept of truth. Tarski's work led to the creation of the area of mathematical logic known as model theory and prefigured semantic approaches in the philosophy of language (...) and philosophical logic, such as Kripke's possible worlds semantics for modal logic. We also examine the paradoxical decomposition of the sphere known as the Banach–Tarski paradox. Finally we examine Tarski's work on decidable and undecidable theories, which he carried out in collaboration with students such as Mostowski, Presburger, Robinson and others. (shrink)

Traumatic experiences do not merely impact on the individual’s body and psyche, they alter the way we experience others, our interpersonal relationships, and how we make sense of the world. In my dissertation, I integrate work in phenomenology, psychopathology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and trauma studies, and draw on trauma testimonies ob- tained in an online questionnaire. I engage analytically with the question of what constitutes a trauma, whether psychological trauma is necessarily pathological, and what the causal and (...) im- plicatory relations between traumatising and post-traumatic experiences are. Informed by these preliminary elaborations, I focus on the intersubjective dimension of trauma, drawing on a qualitative study I conducted in 2020. I show that empathic abilities may be altered but are not necessarily diminished through traumatising experiences; I suggest a framework for under- standing feelings of alienation in the aftermath of trauma; and I demonstrate how feelings of belonging may be re-established. My dissertation is exemplary of how phenomenological frameworks can contribute to a better understanding of psychological trauma and that engaging with trauma can, in turn, inform and enrich philosophical thinking. (shrink)

It is often assumed that trolling is an intentional action. The aim of the paper is to argue for a form of unintentional trolling. Firstly, we outline minimal conditions for intentional actions. Secondly, an unintentional trolling example is introduced. Thirdly, we will show that in some cases, an utterance can be expressive, while it is perceived as descriptive. On the basis of the justification-suppression model, we argue that the introduced trolling example is such a case. In order to bypass social (...) sanctions for expressing prejudices, agents unintentionally express their prejudices through stories that appear to be descriptive. Thereby, the characterized behavior does not fulfill the minimal conditions for intentional action. Fourthly, we give criteria that can be used to identify unintentional trolls. Finally, after unintentional trolling is analyzed, the trolls’ behavioral goals are considered. In conclusion, an analysis of unintentional trolling is given, which has explanatory benefits in contrast to the classic intentional trolling concepts. (shrink)

Review of John Stillwell, Reverse Mathematics: Proofs from the Inside Out. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018, pp. 200. ISBN 978-0-69-117717-5 (hbk), 978-0-69-119641-1 (pbk), 978-1-40-088903-7 (e-book).

The present volume is an introduction to the use of tools from computability theory and reverse mathematics to study combinatorial principles, in particular Ramsey's theorem and special cases such as Ramsey's theorem for pairs. It would serve as an excellent textbook for graduate students who have completed a course on computability theory.

Een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen filosofie en installatiekunst met betrekking tot de vraag naar betekenis.

Das Konzept der Abwägung wird in der praktischen Philosophie ebenso ubiquitär verwendet wie in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften und im Recht. Es ist jedoch voraussetzungsvoller und umstrittener als zumeist angenommen. „Abwägung“ bezeichnet einen Vorgang praktischen Überlegens, in den mehrere Aspekte in vergleichender Weise eingehen. Die Skepsis gegen das Konzept gründet darin, dass sich die Metapher nicht auf beliebige Gegenstände anwenden lässt. Insbesondere müssen die Wertzuschreibungen, die das Gewicht der Gegenstände bestimmen, in ihren normativen Grundlagen widerspruchsfrei sein und sie müssen ähnlich wie die (...) Gewichtskräfte, mit denen Körper auf die Schalen einer Balkenwaage einwirken, eine gewisse Kontextinvarianz aufweisen. Das setzt Unabhängigkeitsannahmen voraus, deren Gültigkeit im Falle normativer Bewertungen nicht trivial ist. Der Band dient dem Zweck, diese Zusammenhänge durchsichtiger zu machen. Er entstand auf der Basis einer mehrjährigen Zusammenarbeit von Autor:innen aus den Fächern Philosophie, Jurisprudenz und Ökonomie. (shrink)

How do the pictures Wittgenstein and his relatives took during his life relate to his philosophical work? The exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2021 demonstrated a complex network of resemblances, overlaps, and cross-references between Wittgenstein’s way of working and the pictures he collected. In this essay, the network is used as an example to argue that a combination of philosophy and artistic sensibility might be a fruitful enrichment for a philosophical practise.

Mental health among students is one of the major concerns amidst the pandemic. Employing a correlational design, this study investigates the relationship between emotional intelligence and mental health among 152 senior high school students. Based on the statistical analysis, the r coefficient of 0.82 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between emotional intelligence and mental health (...) among senior high school. Implications were discussed in the study. (shrink)

How does a coloured bird end up on a TUGboat? This is the story of an artist who studied philosophy and combined her skills in a PhD at the University of Amsterdam (NL). In order to write her dissertation, she had to learn the LaTeX typesetting programme. Many years later, she still makes art and still writes down her thoughts in LaTeX, with the Memoir class and XeLaTeX as first choice. Always trying to stretch the limits of the programme to (...) her convenience. -/- This essay is not a technical article written by a developer conjuring up ingenious innovations to the LaTeX programme. By contrast, it discusses the relationship between LaTeX, art (photography) and the concept of 'measurability' from the perspective of a philosophising artist. (shrink)

Phenomenological psychology has emphasized that experience as it is immediately "given" to the experiencing individual is an appropriate subject matter for psychological investigation. Consideration of the methodological implications of this stance suggests that certain text analytic and cluster analytic methods could be used to discern the identifying properties of different types of experience. We present results of a study in which textual analysis was used to identify recurrent properties of participants' verbal accounts of their experience, cluster analysis was used to (...) classify participants' accounts according to the similarity of their profiles of properties, and the resulting clusters were examined for their more or less characteristic prpoerties. Using these methods, three distinct types of experience of a Renaissance painting were identified and described. This demonstration of numerically aided phenomenological methods indicates the compatibility of rigorous and sensitive descriptions of experiential accounts. (shrink)

What do we mean by ‘reality’? Merging philosophical insights with contemporary art, Tine Wilde lets us consider and contemplate who and what we ‘really’ are. Working on artists’ book Zero Point, the article presents a brief overview of her thoughts, relating a spatial-geometrical perspective to the quest for self-knowledge, and subsequently extrapolating the findings to the notion of unknown knowledge.

In this paper I first discuss the colour-octahedron and the position of this model as an idealized system with respect to the remarks on colour-concepts in Remarks on Colour (RC). The next part examines the notion of aspect seeing in the light of the colour-octahedron and RC. From there a connection is made with On Certainty (OC). By linking the remarks on colour, seeing aspects and certainty, it may become clear that the investigations of Wittgenstein concerning colour and certainty direct (...) us towards a reflective dynamics and an anthropological interpretation of his ideas. (shrink)

The point of Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour concerns, not so much colours as such, as well as our ability to see [that implies both seeing ánd thinking] and our capacity to imagine something. This can be seen from the fact that Wittgenstein relates the notion of ‘seeing aspects’ on the one hand to the colour octahedron in PB, and on the other hand to the colour puzzles as discussed in ROC. This connection between Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour, on seeing aspects (...) and on certainty makes clear that these investigations of Wittgenstein direct us towards a reflective dynamics of his ideas. (shrink)

We are living in an increasingly complex world. How are we able to cope with this complexity and the difficulties that arise from it? Can philosophy and art, classified as the two utmost useless and pointless disciplines, have any (positive) influence on the urgent and pressing problems at hand? And, related to this, if the two have more than just their uselessness in common, how, then, are philosophy and art related? In this article, I will argue that although ‘useless’ disciplines (...) such as philosophy and art have no direct influence on our complex world, they are nonetheless the most important ones, because those working within them practice their insights in an indirect way. Indirect influence may take a little longer, but the impact is much stronger, affecting our thinking and our attitudes from within, as it were. This indirect approach has everything to do with the sort of questions philosophers and artists occupy themselves with. I will show how both address, albeit each in their own way, fundamental questions, and thereby make use of thought experiments. Intuition and imagination play a decisive part in the creative processes that are involved in thought experiments and thinking. It is argued that we all are able to learn a ‘delayed unconscious thinking’ that leads to an artistic attitude; one that will activate an artistic turn. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the notion of aspect seeing is a substantial tool to shed light on the question whether rule-following is something necessary individual or social and on how this issue is connected to novelty. Bloor's (1997) insights will be used as representative of the social primacy of rule-following and Luntley (2003) will be taken up in order to examine an example of the individual stance. Weighing pros and cons and taking the notion of aspect seeing into (...) account, these insights will lead us to the conclusion not only that the individual and the social are merely constructs, created by us for practical purposes, but also that we tend to overlook our most basic ties with the world, exactly because of these constructs and conventions. If we adopt an artistic meta-view and make use of the philosopher’s reflection, Wittgenstein's emphasis on the importance of ‘everyday life’, also in philosophy, takes on a new meaning. (shrink)

When many people think of bioethics, they think of gripping issues in clinical medicine such as end-of-life decision-making, controversies in biomedical research such as that over work with stem cells, or issues in allocating scarce health-care resources such as organs or money. The term “bioethics” may evoke images of moral controversies being discussed on news programs and talk shows. But this “controversy of the day” focus often treats ethical issues in medicine superficially, for it addresses them as if they could (...) be examined and discussed in isolation from the context in which they are situated. Such a focus on the latest controversies fails to take into account that medicine is a social institution and that the controversies in bioethics often reflect deeper social and moral issues that transcend the boundaries of medicine and ethics. If one moves beyond the issue-of-the-day approach to bioethics, one can see that the field must address these deeper issues. (shrink)

This is a review of Urlich Bröckling's book (2017) "Gute Hirten führen sanft. Über Menschenregierungskünste." (which can be roughly translated as: "Good shepherds lead gently. On the arts of governing humans") Bröckling's book collects new essays, as well as already elsewhere published works, which have been revised for this book. On 422 pages the author presents his sociology of governing humans through gouvernementality, which is a worth reading contribution to the governmentality studies. The book is divided into three main sections: (...) Approaches, Dispositives and Critique. In the first part, Bröckling presents his theoretical-methodological approach to topics such as "pastoral power", "governmentality", "anthropology" and the tasks of a "sociology of human gouvernementality-arts". In the second section, Bröckling presents eleven individual analyses on the topics of prevention, resilience, mediation, nudging, feedback, contract pedagogy, competition, burnout, planning, human capital and battlefield research, each of which can be read individually and do not build on oneanother. Finally, Bröckling explores the relationship between sociology and critique. His book can be read as a collection of follow-up studies on the neoliberal form of socialization which he dubbed the 'entrepreneurial self' (Bröckling 2007). He not only continues research in the field of governmentality studies, but also develops exciting theses about their limits and on governing through affects. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely (...) intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.---------------Questions addressed include: In what way is nature valuable and is interference compatible with that value? Is interference a requirement of justice? What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? What types of intervention are promising?---------------Expertly moving the debate about human relations with wild animals beyond its traditional confines, Wild Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy and political theory studying animal ethics, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers documented the first wild animal seen using a plant with known medicinal properties to heal a wound.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the thoughtful commentaries contained in the 'Wild Animal Ethics' book symposium.

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard (...) characterizations, and that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism. (shrink)

In this paper, I maintain—contrary to those commentators who regard him as a principled republican—that at the core of Spinoza’s political theory is an instrumental, rather than an intrinsic, defense of democratic procedures. Specifically, Spinoza embraces democratic decision procedures primarily because they tend to result in better decisions, defined relative to a procedure-independent standard of correctness or goodness. In contemporary terms, Spinoza embraces an epistemic defense of democracy. I examine Spinoza’s defense of collective governance, showing not only how it differs (...) from other accounts of his time but also how it might contribute to current debates about the epistemic standing of popular governing bodies. In the opening section I defend the thesis that has been contested in recent years that Spinoza was, in fact, a consistent democrat. The second section focuses on procedural (i.e., intrinsic) defenses of democracy, paying particular attention to the republican version of proceduralism that was prominent in Spinoza’s time. And in the final section I present my case for reading Spinoza as an epistemic democrat, comparing his epistemic defense with contemporary versions. What we find are not only striking anticipations of contemporary arguments, but also largely neglected lines of argumentation that reveal both the potential epistemic advantages and disadvantages of democracy. (shrink)

Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist is shown to foreshadow some key concepts of poststructuralist interpretive theory - such as the necessary interplay of blindness and insight in criticism (Lacan, Paul de Man), or the retroactive effect of interpretation in the construction of the work. More specifically, Wilde's reading of the riddle of the Sphinx in a passage of this work both theorizes and dramatizes the paradoxical relationship between blindness and insight, in the shape of an ironic prophecy which can (...) be read as Wilde's announcement of his own tragic downfall - in which there is an element of compulsive acting out that has been noted by a number of previous critics. That is, Wilde's Sphinx is used as the vehicle of a riddle about Wilde himself, and is an emblem of his own ambivalent attitude toward the public revelation of his homosexuality. (Note: Downloadable file is in Spanish). (shrink)

Kant typically is not identified with the tradition of virtue epistemology. Although he may not be a virtue epistemologist in a strict sense, I suggest that intellectual virtues and vices play a key role in his epistemology. Specifically, Kant identifies a serious intellectual vice that threatens to undermine reason, namely enthusiasm (Schwärmerei). Enthusiasts become so enamored with their own thinking that they refuse to subject reason to self-critique. The particular danger of enthusiasm is that reason colludes in its own destruction: (...) enthusiasm occurs when self-conceit and reason’s desire to transcend its boundaries mutually reinforce each other. I conclude by sketching an account of Kantian intellectual virtue that is consistent with Kantian moral virtue. (shrink)

This paper is a summary of my book 'Wild Animal Ethics'.

This article revisits, analyzes and critiques Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 bestseller, The Songlines,1 more than three decades after its publication. In Songlines, the book primarily responsible for his posthumous celebrity, Chatwin set out to explore the essence of Central and Western Desert Aboriginal Australians’ philosophical beliefs. For many readers globally, Songlines is regarded as a—if not the—definitive entry into the epistemological basis, religion, cosmology and lifeways of classical Western and Central Desert Aboriginal people. It is argued that Chatwin’s fuzzy, ill-defined use (...) of the word-concept “songlines”2 has had the effect of generating more heat than light. Chatwin’s failure to recognize the economic imperative underpinning Australian desert people’s walking praxis is problematic: his own treks through foreign lands were underpropped by socioeconomic privilege. Chatwin’s ethnocentric idée fixe regarding the primacy of “walking” and “nomadism,” central to his Songlines thématique, well and truly preceded his visits to Central Australia. Walking, proclaimed Chatwin, is an elemental part of “Man’s” innate nature. It is argued that this unwavering, preconceived, essentialist belief was a self-serving construal justifying Chatwin’s own “nomadic” adventures of identity. Is it thus reasonable to regard Chatwin as a “rogue author,” an unreliable narrator? And if so, does this matter? Of greatest concern is the book’s continuing majority acceptance as a measured, accurate account of Aboriginal belief systems. With respect to Aboriginal desert people and the barely disguised individuals depicted in Songlines, is Chatwin’s book a “rogue text,” constituting an act of epistemic violence, consistent with Spivak’s usage of that term? (shrink)

Significant disagreement remains in ethics about the duties we have towards wild animals. This paper aims to mediate those disagreements by exploring how they are supported by, or diverge from, the common-sense ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice popular in medical ethics. We argue that these principles do not clearly justify traditional conservation or a ‘hands-off ’ approach to wild-animal welfare; instead, they support natural negative duties to reduce the harms that we cause as well as (...) natural positive duties to promote the welfare of wild animals. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the sixth century ’Rule of St. Benedict’, and argue that the authority structure of Benedictine communities as described in that document satisfies well-known principles of authority defended by Joseph Raz. This should lead us to doubt the common assumption that premodern models of authority violate the modern ideal of the autonomy of the self. I suggest that what distinguishes modern liberal authority from Benedictine authority is not the principles that justify it, but rather the (...) first-order beliefs for the sake of which authority is sought by the individual, and the degree of trust between the authority and the subject. (shrink)

Even with the very best intentions , Western culture’s approach to wilderness and wildness, the otherness of nature, tends to be one of imperialistic domination and appropriation. Nevertheless, in spite of Western culture’s attempt to gain total control over nature by imprisoning wildness in wilderness areas, which are meant to be merely controlled “simulations” of wildness, a real wildness, a real otherness, can still be found in wilderness reserves . This wildness can serve as the literal ground for the subversion (...) of the imperium, and consequently as the basis for the practical establishment of and residence in what WendeII Berry has called the “landscape of harmony.” Here all land becomes wild sacred space that humans consciously come to reinhabit. In this subversive potential lies the most fundamental justification for the legal establishment of wilderness reserves. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to a collection I guest-edited called Positive Duties to Wild Animals. The collection contains single-authored contributions from Catia Faria, Josh Milburn, Eze Paez, and Jeff Sebo; and co-authored contributions from Mara-Daria Cojocaru and Alasdair Cochrane, and Oscar Horta and Dayrón Terán. It was published as a special issue of Ethics, Policy and Environment.

The conditions of hunting and gathering through which one line of primates evolved into humans form the basis of what I term the wild self, a self marked by developmental needs of prolonged human neoteny and by deep attunement to the profusion of communicative signs of instinctive intelligence in which relatively “unmatured” hominids found themselves immersed. The passionate attunement to, and inquiry into, earth-drama, in tracking, hunting, foraging, rhythming, singing, and other arts/sciences, provided the trail to becoming human, and (...) provide external grammatical structures that became the basis of human language and animate mind. I outline my new philosophy of history as a progress in precision, counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. The progress associated with history since the beginning of agriculturally-based civilizations can be considered as a regressive contraction from animate mind of our hunter-gatherer evolutionary past, to anthropocentric mind, and finally to the ghost in the machine world-view of mechanico-centric mind. Contemporary consumption culture represents an inversion of the original conditions of the human self, and indeed, targets aspects of developmental neoteny to condition conformity to its rational-mechanical system imperatives. (shrink)

Given that one-million species are currently threatened with extinction and that humans are undermining the entire natural infrastructure on which our modern world depends (IPBES, 2019), this dissertation will show that there is a need to provide an alternative approach to wildlife conservation, one that avoids anthropocentrism and wildlife valuation on an instrumental basis to provide meaningful and tangible success for both wildlife conservation and human well-being in an inclusive way. In this sense, The Value of Being Wild will (...) showcase the concept of eco-phenomenology as an important non-anthropocentric alternative to the current approach to wildlife conservation, namely sustainable development. The problem with this dominant paradigm, as Chapter Two will reveal, is that sustainable development has not only failed to provide humans and future generations of humans with their own needs but, as per the latest IPBES report, failed in arresting the freefall decline of wild species. The situation currently requires a radical overhaul of the current system. As emerged from the later work of French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), eco-phenomenology is particularly well-suited as a practical alternative to sustainable development. The core reason is that eco-phenomenology moves away from a human-centred framework toward a far more inclusive approach that embraces the conservation of wild animals as well the wild environment they dwell in, beyond any human needs (although humans are embraced within the approach too). Merleau-Ponty helps us to move away from anthropocentrism to a more inclusive approach in conserving wildlife, since his phenomenology does not consider the human animal’s relationship in the world as exclusive (to use and exploit wild animals solely for their benefit), but inclusive (as an interconnected biological component in a broad ecological system). The strength of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of phenomenology is that it facilitates an understanding of all living and even non-living entities, such as air, water and soil, as interconnected and interrelated within a broad biosphere. While Merleau-Ponty did not address the concept of wild animals or the biosphere directly, his later work points to the fact that human animals cannot exist outside a world that provides life-giving force to all living beings. Phenomenology, as developed by Merleau-Ponty, is a concept that recognises the axiological qualities of the natural world are inherent and ineliminable from the discipline of traditional phenomenology, hence the term ‘eco-phenomenology’, developed in one reception of his thinking. Eco-phenomenology offers a return to a world that humans have tried hard to alienate themselves from, in that it approaches the natural environment and wild animals, not as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather as they are experienced and lived from within by the attentive animal who is entirely a part of the world that he or she experiences. Merleau-Pontian eco-phenomenology thus emphasises a holistic dialogue within a more-than-human world (Abram, 1996: 65). Eco-phenomenology is a concept that points toward an applied strategy but so far this has not been attempted in earnest. This is specifically true when it comes to wildlife conservation. The Value of Being Wild, therefore, sets out to employ the concept of eco-phenomenology in order to provide a new practical wildlife conservation approach that challenges, and potentially replaces, the current prevailing policies as employed by global governmental and inter-governmental agencies. In particular, this alternative frame is posed as a replacement for the failing anthropocentric conservation practices currently in place in South Africa. This dissertation will therefore conclude by exploring strategies where conservation of wildlife is not taken as instrumentally-valued, or even intrinsically-valued, but rather as wild-valued in that the existence of wild animals as wild is conserved within a broader, more inclusive overall ecology that supports the survival and flourishing of all living beings that include plants, wild animals and human beings. (shrink)

In “The Meaning of Rights,” Norman Wilde offers an original account of rights, still of interest. Rights, he contends, are possessed by an individual by virtue of the social function she fulfills. It is because individuals belong to a common social order, in which each has her part to play, that they are “entitled to the conditions necessary for playing it” [288]. This approach allows for a nuanced view, according to which rights are neither absolutely inherent to the individual nor (...) entirely dependent on social conventions. But is such a function-based justification of rights plausible? (shrink)

I argue that most wild animals live bad lives, and that we should intervene in nature to improve their wellbeing.

Whether we are said to be living in the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, or are witnessing the start of the Chthulucene, as feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway (2016) would describe the current post-anthropocentric era, there is a demonstratable need for affective, entangled, transversal forms of thinking-doing today. Writing this editorial almost a year after the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and that as inhabitants of Belgium and South Africa—countries with complex ongoing capitalist-colonial legacies, socio-political presents, and heavily but also differently hit (...) by said pandemic—we more than ever feel that these are times of entwined crisis, chaos, and hardship, overflowing with cravings for pedagogical-philosophical responses that are affirmative, productive, and future-oriented. Reactions that are moreover part theory, part praxis, counter the nihilistic, and are future-focused while still grounded in the present, as to not defer responsibilities to future times (see Geerts & Carstens, 2019). (shrink)

Are institutional principles of justice subject to a minimal realism constraint to the effect that, in order to be valid, they must not make wildly unrealistic demands? Most of us say “yes.” David Estlund says, “no.” However, while Estlund holds that 1) institutional principles of justice are not subject to a minimal realism constraint, he accepts that 2) institutional principles of justice are subject to an *attainability constraint* to the effect that, in order to be valid, they must not make (...) demands we are unable to meet; and 3) what he calls “institutional proposals” are subject to a minimal realism constraint. I argue that these three theses do not represent a plausible combination, at least given Estlund’s account of the principle/proposal distinction. Given this account, Estlund is either wrong to reject a minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice, or wrong to accept an attainability constraint on institutional principles of justice and/or a minimal realism constraint on institutional proposals. Either way, this has significant implications for the plausibility of his overall case against the minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific (...) and a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

Verbal irony constitutes a rough class of indirect intentional communication involving a complex interaction of language-specific and communication-general phenomena. Conversationalists use verbal irony in conjunction with paralinguistic signals such as speech prosody. Researchers examining acoustic features of speech communication usually focus on how prosodic information relates to the surface structure of utterances, and often ignore prosodic phenomena associated with implied meaning. In the case of verbal irony, there exists some debate concerning how these prosodic features manifest themselves in conversation. A (...) form-function approach can provide a valuable tool for understanding speakers' varied vocal strategies in this domain. Here I describe several ways conversationalists employ prosodic contrasts, laughter, and other speech characteristics in their attempts to communicate effectively and efficiently. The presented examples, culled from spontaneous conversation recordings, reveal just a small sample of the enormous variation in delivery styles speakers adopt when communicating with ironic language. (shrink)

This paper discusses a nowadays completely forgotten 18th century attempt of constructing an artificial universal language in a Kantian framework. I give a brief sketch of this language and then address the continuing philosophical significance of the project, focusing in particular on the notions of predication and the copula and on the problem of psychologism.