Hvad der sker i vores sovende hjerner, kan være et mareridt at tyde for en drømmeforsker. Og vi er desværre elendige til at huske det, når vi vågner. Heldigvis kan teknologien hjælpe med at løfte sløret for, hvad der foregår, mens vi ligger og trækker torsk i land. Nogle drømme er dybt bizarre. Andre fører til Nobelpriser. Og så er der dem, som bare er pinlige. De sidste vil vi nødig sende i en hjernescanner. Ifølge Melanie Gillespie Rosen, lysvågen filosof (...) ved Aarhus Universitet, handler de fleste drømme om noget så søvndyssende som arbejde. (shrink)

Nabigyan ng pagpapahalaga ang komprehensibong pagdalumat sa relasyong Tsino at Pilipino sa buhay at kamatayan sa isang aklat na pinamagatang Himlayan, Pantiyon, Kampo Santo, Sementeryo: Exploring Philippine Cemeteries (2016) na pinamamatnugutan ni Dr. Grace Barretto-Tesoro ng Programa sa Araling Arkeolohiya ng Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Ito ay binubuo ng isang daan at apatnapu’t dalawang (242) pahina at limang (5) kabanata-- [1] Angels on Earth: Investigating Infant and Children Burials in Manila Cemeteries ni Grace Barreto-Tesoro (pah. 1-39); [2] Angels and Dragons in (...) the Manila Chinese Cemetery nina Donna Mae N. Arriola at Eleanor Marie S. Lim (pah. 41-80); [3] Ang Mamatay ng Dahil sa iyo: Patriots’ Graves at Manila Cemeteries and Neighboring Provinces ni Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio (pah. 81-153); [4] Death, Grief, and Memorial: A Review of the Boy Scouts Tragedy of 1963 nina Kathleen D.C. Tantuico at Omar K. Choa (pah. 155-168); at [5] Colonial Period Cemeteries as Filipino Heritage ni Michelle S. Eusebio (pah. 169-197). Sa limang kabanatang ito, mas higit na binigyan ng pansin at lapatan ng anotasyon ang ikalawa dahil tahasan tumatalakay ang artikulong ito sa mayaman at makakultural na ugnayan ng Pilipinas at Tsina bilang mga Asyanong bansa pagdating sa konseptwalisasyon ng kamatayan. (shrink)

Este libro, es el segundo de la serie La Cultura en el Uruguay: una mirada desde las Ciencias Económicas. Tal como señaló en el primer volumen, los estudiantes de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración de la Universidad de la República realizan como trabajo final de carrera, una investigación o ensayo monográfico en un área de su interés, tutorados por un docente universitario o un investigador de reconocida trayectoria. Un gran número de estos trabajos monográficos han hecho un (...) aporte valioso al conocimiento pero, lamentablemente, la poca difusión de éstos hace que el conocimiento adquirido termine olvidado en los fondos de la biblioteca de dicha Facultad, entre cientos de producciones monográficas. Al igual que en el volumen anterior, se pretende en éste, continuar mostrando los aportes que se han generado en el área tanto de Economía de la Cultura como de Gestión de Organizaciones Culturales, en una línea de investigación que me enorgullece coordinar, y en la que vuelco cotidianamente mis mayores esfuerzos. Cabe señalar, que el primer libro trató sobre diversos temas vinculados a la Cultura, atendiendo a una clasificación clásica en la disciplina que divide -o solía dividir- el objeto de estudio en Patrimonio, Artes Escénicas e Industria Cultural, y por ende, abarcó temáticas diversas. En esta segunda entrega, y ante la imposibilidad de recoger la totalidad de los trabajos monográficos producidos en el lapso comprendido entre la edición del primer y segundo volumen, se optó por efectuar una selección temática en vez de cronológica, por lo que se muestran en este libro solamente los trabajos que atañen a la Gestión y Economía de los Museos, y a un tema estrechamente vinculado, por la injerencia que tiene uno en el otro, que es el análisis económico del mercado de arte, en este caso, por medio de subastas. Todos los trabajos aquí presentados fueron tutorados por mí, aunque no en exclusividad. Primando la excelencia académica, y entendiendo que varios de los temas tratados tenían una especificidad considerable, recurrí, tal como es usual en el ámbito académico, -que valora la discusión entre pares y la consideración de opiniones de especialistas- a la ayuda de diversos colegas para que estas monografías pudieran concretarse con el mejor nivel académico posible. La primera investigación que se presenta fue realizada por las Contadoras Ana Macias y Ma. Fernanda Rimoldi, titulada Museos, una visión desde la Gestión de Calidad. Dicha investigación, tutorada conjuntamente con la especialista en calidad Cra Sara Gerpe, buscó determinar si es aplicable el Modelo Iberoamericano de Gestión de Calidad en Museos, para lo que se consideró una muestra de 14 museos montevideanos. Dicho trabajo propició un premio de un concurso organizado por el Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, denominado Tu Tesis en Cultura, y por ende, no necesita más presentación. La Cultura en Uruguay: una mirada desde las Ciencias Económicas El segundo trabajo, titulado Sistema de Museos: Planificación Estratégica. Un diagnóstico previo, de las Cras Andrea de Armas, Cecilia Moreira y Valeria Palacios, trata sobre un caso de estudio de gran importancia para el atractivo turístico y patrimonial, como es el Sistema de Museos de Colonia de Sacramento, y realiza un diagnóstico enmarcado en la gestión estratégica de las organizaciones museísticas. Las conclusiones no son generalizables a otros museos que los que integran el Sistema de Museos de Colonia, sin embargo, la metodología empleada es fácilmente extrapolable a otros museos, tanto uruguayos como del exterior, que busquen comenzar el camino de la planificación estratégica. En tercer lugar, se expone la monografía de los Contadores Yamila Hernández, Sebastián Maidán y Ana Laura Mascheroni, que trata un tema crucial en los albores del siglo XXI como es la Responsabilidad SocialCorporativa. Este trabajo también se basa en un estudio de caso, y la organización bajo análisis es el Museo del Carnaval, museo que tiene una conducta innovadora que posibilita vincular el museo con programas pioneros en responsabilidad social en Uruguay. El trabajo se denomina Balance Social Museo del Carnaval y fue tutorado en forma conjunta con un referente en Responsabilidad Social Empresaria como es el Cr. Walter Rossi. El cuarto trabajo fue una producción de los Licenciados en Economía Tatiana Cóppola y Fernando González y se titula Museos en el Uruguay: Una visión económica. La investigación buscó la relación entre la variable visitante de una institución museística, y otras variables explicativas, como son la valoración del acervo, costos operativos, apertura horaria, entre otras, logrando probar que la variable relacionada a la captación de visitantes, para la muestra analizada, es la variable Difusión. Esta monografía la tutoré en forma compartida con el Dr. Gustavo Bouquet y el Lic. Raúl Ramírez, en una situación absolutamente atípica en el que el número de tutores supera el de estudiantes. Pero bien valió la pena la excepción en vista de los excelentes logros alcanzados. Para finalizar, se presenta la monografía titulada Formación de Precios de Pintura Nacional en Subasta: un Modelo y su Aplicación con la que accedieron al título de Licenciados en Economía Javier Chiossi y Matías De Vecchi. Se incluyó dicho trabajo en este volumen, que trata básicamente sobre museos, porque entiendo que el Mercado de Arte está indudablemente vinculado a la política de compras de los museos, en especial los contemporáneos. Cabe destacar que este trabajo contó con el apoyo de la Dra. Celina Gutiérrez, quien accedió a compartir la tutoría de un tema que escapaba mis posibilidades, logrando un excelente resultado. Merece señalar que cada trabajo original supera el centenar de páginas, y que por ende, no es posible publicarlos completamente, por lo que para este libro se hicieron resúmenes de las investigaciones realizadas, intentando adecuar la terminología y quitándoles el formato estrictamente científico -poco amigable para un no especialista-, de forma tal que su lectura sea accesible al público en general. También quiero señalar, que el prólogo del primer volumen, lo finalicé con la frase: “Espero que este libro sea el primero de una larga lista. Las áreas de Economía de la Cultura y Gestión de Organizaciones Culturales son disciplinas jóvenes que necesitan seguir creciendo. La investigación realizada por trabajos monográficos de fin de carrera en estas áreas, será siempre bienvenida” La Facultad ha comenzado un nuevo plan de estudio, en el que se eliminó la obligatoriedad de presentar una tesina o monografía como condición necesaria para obtener el título. No obstante, aún contamos con una decena de monografías que no han sido publicadas y que espero se concreten en el o los siguientes volúmenes de esta serie. (shrink)

Andrea Cesalpino is an important figure in the history of science. He demonstrated that blood circulates into heart from veins and from the heart to arteries, paving the way to Harvey’s complete description of blood circulation. Moreover, he was the founder of botany as a systematic discipline, which he based, rather than on the observation of accidental similarities of plants, on the discovery of their vegetative-generative principle. In philosophy, he attempted to conciliate the immortality of the soul (i.e., the (...) form of the body) with the existence of a unique immaterial intellect, which is individuated and multiplied in the singular souls that participate to it. (shrink)

El kitsch no es solo una categoría que ha definido una de las posibles gramáticas estéticas de la modernidad, sino también una dimensión antropológica que ha tenido diferentes configuraciones en el curso de los procesos históricos. El ensayo ofrece una mirada histórico-crítica sobre las transformaciones que condujeron desde el kitsch de principios del siglo XX hasta el neokitsch contemporáneo: desde la génesis del kitsch hasta su afirmación como una de las manifestaciones más tangibles de la cultura de masas. Integrándose con (...) la estética posmoderna, el kitsch se transforma en neokitsch, una estética que utiliza el kitsch como su propia sintaxis en el complejo escenario de la estética contemporánea. /// -/- Kitsch is not just a category that has defined one of the possible aesthetic grammars of modernity, but also an anthropological dimension that has had different configurations in the course of historical processes. The essay offers a historical-critical look at the transformations that led from the early twentieth century kitsch to the contemporary neokitsch: from the genesis of kitsch to its affirmation as one of the most tangible manifestations of mass culture. Integrating with postmodern aesthetics, kitsch turns into neokitsch, an aesthetic that deliberately uses kitsch as its own syntax in the complex scenario of contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

It is often assumed that we are only blameworthy for that over which we have control. In recent years, however, several philosophers have argued that we can be blameworthy for occurrences that appear to be outside our control, such as attitudes, beliefs and omissions. This has prompted the question of why control should be a condition on blameworthiness. This paper aims at defending the control condition by developing a new conception of blameworthiness: To be blameworthy, I argue, is most fundamentally (...) to deserve to feel guilty. Being blamed by someone else is not necessarily harmful to the wrongdoer. The blame might not be expressed, or the wrongdoer might not care. But to blame oneself necessarily involves suffering. This conception of blameworthiness explains why the control condition should obtain: We are morally blameworthy for A only if A was under our control because to be blameworthy is to deserve to feel guilty, to feel guilty is to suffer, and one deserves to suffer for A only if A was under one’s control. (shrink)

Research on the ethics of algorithms has grown substantially over the past decade. Alongside the exponential development and application of machine learning algorithms, new ethical problems and solutions relating to their ubiquitous use in society have been proposed. This article builds on a review of the ethics of algorithms published in 2016, 2016). The goals are to contribute to the debate on the identification and analysis of the ethical implications of algorithms, to provide an updated analysis of epistemic and normative (...) concerns, and to offer actionable guidance for the governance of the design, development and deployment of algorithms. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that certain sentences of natural language fail to express truth conditional contents. Standard examples include e.g. Tipper is ready and Steel is strong enough. In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of truth conditional meaning using the notion of a question under discussion. This account explains why these types of sentences are not, in fact, semantically underdetermined, provides a principled analysis of the process by which natural language sentences can come to have enriched meanings in (...) context, and shows why various alternative views, e.g. so-called Radical Contextualism, Moderate Contextualism, and Semantic Minimalism, are partially right in their respective analyses of the problem, but also all ultimately wrong. Our analysis achieves this result using a standard truth conditional and compositional semantics and without making any assumptions about enriched logical forms, i.e. logical forms containing phonologically null expressions. (shrink)

Introspection presents our phenomenal states in a manner otherwise than physical. This observation is often thought to amount to an argument against physicalism: if introspection presents phenomenal states as they essentially are, then phenomenal states cannot be physical states, for we are not introspectively aware of phenomenal states as physical states. In this article, I examine whether this argument threatens a posteriori physicalism. I argue that as along as proponents of a posteriori physicalism maintain that phenomenal concepts present the nature (...) of their referents in a partial and incomplete manner, a posteriori physicalism is safe. (shrink)

As Peter Niebyl has documented, one of the issues in which the Wittenberg-based physician and philosopher Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) departed from Paracelsus and his followers was the concept of disease. Paracelsus and some of his followers regarded diseases as real beings—so-called “disease-entities” (entia morbis) that can enter into the body of a living being and thereafter possess a clearly defined location in the affected organism. 1 For Sennert, such a view is a dangerous confusion between disease and its causes. According (...) to him, causes of disease can be present in an organism without actually causing a disease (Sennert 1629, p. 253). Moreover, he shares the traditional Christian doctrine .. (shrink)

Do non-human animals have an interest in sociopolitical freedom? Cochrane has recently taken up this important yet largely neglected quest ion. He argues that animal freedom is not a relevant moral concern in itself, because animals have a merely instrumental but not an intrinsic interest in freedom (Cochrane 2009a, 2012). This paper will argue that even if animals have a merely instrumental interest in freedom, animal freedom should nonetheless be an important goal for our relationships with animals. Drawing on recent (...) work on the value of freedom, it will be argued that freedom is non-specifically instrumentally valuable. Accordingly, freedom is a means to other goods, but often it is not possible to identify those goods in advance or aim for them directly. Some of the reasons that make freedom non-specifically valuable for human relationships, it will be argued, also apply to relationships between humans and animals. Amongst other implications, it will be shown how this argument provides a response to those who fear that stricter animal protection policies might undermine people’s freedom: A concern for freedom actually requires stricter protection policies rather than speak against them. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a regularity theory of causation. The theory aims to be reductive and to align with our pre‐theoretic understanding of the causal relation. We show that our theory can account for a wide range of causal scenarios, including isomorphic scenarios, omissions, and scenarios which suggest that causation is not transitive.

We define a formal semantics of conditionals based on _normatively ideal worlds_. Such worlds are described informally by Armgardt (Gabbay D, Magnani L, Park W, Pietarinen A-V (eds) Natural arguments: a tribute to john woods, College Publications, London, pp 699–708, 2018) to address well-known problems of the counterfactual approach to causation. Drawing on Armgardt’s proposal, we use iterated conditionals in order to analyse causal relations in scenarios of multi-agent interaction. This results in a refined counterfactual approach to causal responsibility in (...) legal contexts, which solves overdetermination problems in an intuitively accessible manner. (shrink)

The present article concentrates on understanding the limits of language from the realm of meaning theory as portrayed by Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s picture theory provides a glimpse of reality by indicating that a picture could be true or false from the perspective of reality. He talks about an internal limitation of language rather than an external limitation of language. In Wittgenstein’s later works like Philosophical Investigations, the concept of picture theory has faded away, and he deeply becomes more (...) interested in the ‘use theory of meaning’ and ‘language game.’ My other attempt in this paper is to show Husserl’s theory of meaning and try to find out its compatibility with Wittgenstein’s thoughts. Husserl thinks that as a part of phenomenological experience, ‘meaning’ should be an act character that Wittgenstein rejected as an appeal of inner experience. Like Mohanty, I also attempt to show the Husserlian idea of meaning as an essence that is related to the meaning rather than linguistics. Both the giants are talking about description of language from different levels. My effort would be to illustrate how these two giant thinkers proclaim their meaning theories in such a way that leads to a well-known internalism versus externalism debate in the philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

By presenting and synthesizing findings on the character of boredom, the article advances a theoretical account of the function of the state of boredom. The article argues that the state of boredom should be understood as a functional emotion that is both informative and regulatory of one's behavior. Boredom informs one of the presence of an unsatisfactory situation and, at the same time, it motivates one to pursue a new goal when the current goal ceases to be satisfactory, attractive or (...) meaningful. Boredom ultimately promotes both movement and the restoration of the perception that one's activities are meaningful and congruent with one's overall projects. (shrink)

I argue that the state of boredom (i.e., the transitory and non-pathological experience of boredom) should be understood to be a regulatory psychological state that has the capacity to promote our well-being by contributing to personal growth and to the construction (or reconstruction) of a meaningful life.

Around 1970, both Keith Donnellan and Saul Kripke produced powerful arguments against description theories of proper names. They also offered sketches of positive accounts of proper name reference, highlighting the crucial role played by historical facts that might be unknown to the speaker. Building on these sketches, in the following years Michael Devitt elaborated his well-known causal theory of proper names. As I have argued elsewhere, however, contrary to what is commonly assumed, Donnellan’s and Kripke’s sketches point in two rather (...) different directions, by appealing to historical or causal facts of different sorts. In this paper, I shall discuss and criticize Devitt’s causal theory, which confuses things, I shall argue, by mixing, so to speak, Donnellan’s and Kripke’s sketches. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an analysis of an anonymous text which appeared at Sondershausen and Mühlhausen in 1687: Initiatio philosophi sive Dubitatio Cartesiana, ad indubiam philosophiam viam monstrans, iuxta mentem Renati des Cartes, Nobilis Galli, utraque methodo explicata, titled after Johannes Clauberg’s homonymous 1655 treatise. It consisted of (1) an abridgement of his Paraphrasis in Renati Des Cartes Meditationes (1658), and (2) a demonstration more geometrico of the necessity of methodical doubt as the beginning of philosophy, partially based on (...) Clauberg’s own 1655 Initiatio. I place the publication of the 1687 text in the context of the attacks on Cartesianism taking place in German areas especially after 1677 and the appearance of Spinoza’s texts, focusing on the ways in which Clauberg’s philosophy was adapted to the rebuking of such attacks and to the re-establishment of a Cartesian presence in Germany. (shrink)

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. However, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central for Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter on “recognition”, but constitute a central aim of his whole theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates Walzer’s criticism of Rawls’s that we need to (...) distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

While contemporary accounts understand esteem and self-esteem as essentially competitive phenomena, early modern natural law theorists developed a conception of justified esteem and self-esteem based on naturally good character traits. This article explores how such a normative conception of esteem and self-esteem is developed in the work of Christian Wolff. Two features make Wolff’s approach distinctive: He uses the analysis of common notions that are expressed in everyday language to provide a foundation for the aspects of natural law on which (...) his conception of natural duties of esteem depends. He develops a non-competitive conception of esteem and self-esteem into a cooperative conception, according to which enhancing the esteem in which others are held is seen as a tool for promoting self-perfection. Wolff’s ideas offer a solution to the well-known problems connected with competitive life-styles, and at the same time assign a central role in moral motivation to the desire of being esteemed and of having high self-esteem. Moreover, due to his emphasis on presenting a philosophical analysis based on common notions, he offers a solution that is meant to be persuasive from the perspective of everyday morality. (shrink)

This paper considers the argument according to which, because we should regard it as a priori very unlikely that we are among the most important people who will ever exist, we should increase our confidence that the human species will not persist beyond the current historical era, which seems to represent a crucial juncture in human history and perhaps even the history of life on earth. The argument is a descendant of the Carter-Leslie Doomsday Argument, but I show that it (...) does not inherit the crucial flaw in its immediate ancestor. Nonetheless, we are not forced to follow the argument where it leads if we instead significantly decrease our confidence that we can affect the long-run future of humanity. GPI Working Paper No. 1-2019. (shrink)

In `Essence and Modality', Kit Fine proposes that for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all objects whatsoever. Call this view Fine's Thesis. This paper is a study of Fine's Thesis in the context of Fine's logic of essence (LE). Fine himself has offered his most elaborate defense of the thesis in the context of LE. His defense rests on the widely shared assumption that metaphysical necessity obeys the (...) laws of the modal logic S5. In order to get S5 for metaphysical necessity, he assumes a controversial principle about the nature of all objects. I will show that the addition of this principle to his original system E5 leads to inconsistency with an independently plausible principle about essence. In response, I develop a theory that avoids this inconsistency while allowing us to maintain S5 for meta- physical necessity. However, I conclude that our investigation of Fine's Thesis in the context of LE motivates the revisionary conclusion that metaphysical necessity obeys the principles of the modal logic S4, but not those of S5. I argue that this constitutes a distinctively essentialist challenge to the received view that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to provide Quantum Field Theory with conceptually clear and mathematically rigorous foundations; remarkable examples are the Bohmian and the algebraic perspectives respectively. In this essay we introduce the dissipative approach to QFT, a new alternative formulation of the theory explaining the phenomena of particle creation and annihilation starting from nonequilibrium thermodynamics. It is shown that DQFT presents a rigorous mathematical structure, and a clear particle ontology, taking the best from the mentioned perspectives. Finally, after the (...) discussion of its principal implications and consequences, we compare it with the main Bohmian QFTs implementing a particle ontology. (shrink)

What is the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence? This paper defends the view that the relation is one of identity: metaphysical necessity is a special case of essence. My argument consists in showing that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which metaphysical necessity is just a special case of essence. The argument is made against the backdrop of a novel, higher-order logic of essence, whose core features are introduced in the first part of (...) the paper. The second part investigates the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence in the context of HLE. Reductive hypotheses are among the most natural hypotheses to be explored in the context of HLE. But they also have to be weighed against their non-reductive rivals. I investigate three different reductive hypotheses and argue that two of them fare better than their non-reductive rivals: they are simpler, more natural, and more systematic. Specifically, I argue that one candidate reduction, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all propositions, is superior to the others, including one proposed by Kit Fine, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all objects. The paper concludes by offering some reasons to think that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which the logic of metaphysical necessity includes S4, but not S5. (shrink)

I argue that moral philosophers have either misunderstood the problem of moral demandingness or at least failed to recognize important dimensions of the problem that undermine many standard assumptions. It has been assumed that utilitarianism concretely directs us to maximize welfare within a generation by transferring resources to people currently living in extreme poverty. In fact, utilitarianism seems to imply that any obligation to help people who are currently badly off is trumped by obligations to undertake actions targeted at improving (...) the value of the long-term future. Reflecting on the demands of beneficence in respect of the value of the far future forces us to view key aspects of the problem of moral demandingness in a very different light. GPI Working Paper No. 1-2020. (shrink)

I argue that many of the priority rankings that have been proposed by effective altruists seem to be in tension with apparently reasonable assumptions about the rational pursuit of our aims in the face of uncertainty. The particular issue on which I focus arises from recognition of the overwhelming importance and inscrutability of the indirect effects of our actions, conjoined with the plausibility of a permissive decision principle governing cases of deep uncertainty, known as the maximality rule. I conclude that (...) we lack a compelling decision theory that is consistent with a long-termist perspective and does not downplay the depth of our uncertainty while supporting orthodox effective altruist conclusions about cause prioritization. GPI Working Paper No. 2-2019. (shrink)

Andreas Follesdal,Victor Muñiz Fraticelli | : A Principle of Subsidiarity regulates the allocation and/or use of authority within a political order where authority is dispersed between a centre and various sub-units. Section 1 sketches the role of such principle of subsidiarity in the EU, and some of its significance in Canada. Section 2 presents some conceptions of subsidiarity that indicate the range of alternatives. Section 3 considers some areas where such conceptions might add value to constitutional and political deliberations in (...) Canada. Section 4 concludes with some reminders of crucial contested issues not fully resolved by appeals to subsidiarity alone, exemplified by the protection of human rights. | : Un principe de subsidiarité réglemente la répartition et/ou l’usage de l’autorité au sein d’un ordre politique où l’autorité est dispersée entre un centre et des sous-unités variées. La section 1 de cet article montre le rôle d’un tel principe de subsidiarité dans l’Union européenne, et certaines de ses implications au Canada. La section 2 présente des conceptions de la subsidiarité qui indiquent un éventail d’alternatives. La section 3 considère certains domaines où de telles conceptions pourraient ajouter de la valeur aux délibérations constitutionnelles et politiques au Canada. La section 4 conclut en rappelant certains problèmes cruciaux contestés, non entièrement résolus par les seuls appels à la subsidiarité, exemplifiés par la protection des droits humains. (shrink)

Despite great progress in our theoretical and empirical investigations of boredom, a basic issue regarding boredom remains unresolved: it is still unclear whether the construct of boredom is a unitary one or not. By surveying the relevant literature on boredom and arousal, the paper makes a case for the unity of the construct of boredom. It argues, first, that extant empirical findings do not support the heterogeneity of boredom, and, second, that a theoretically motivated and empirically grounded model of boredom (...) (the functional account) supports the view that the construct of boredom is a unitary one. (shrink)

The role that the desire for self‐worth plays in international relations has become a prominent topic in contemporary political theory. Contemporary accounts are based on the notion of national self‐worth as a function of status; therefore, the desire for national self‐worth is seen as a source of anxiety and conflict over status. By contrast, according to Christian Wolff, there exists a duty to take care that both one's own and other political communities deserve to be esteemed. In his view, this (...) duty is grounded in the duty of self‐perfection because the qualities for which communities deserve to be esteemed are those that promote the self‐perfection of individuals. From this perspective, he argues that duties of esteem toward political communities should not be seen as an outcome of power relations but rather as an outcome of the fulfillment of functions of the law of peoples. Wolff's line of argument draws attention to the possibility that anger over a violation of the desire for honor could be mistaken for an expression of specific culture‐specific sensitivities, while what really may be expressed is a diverging interpretation of the implications of dependence in international relations. (shrink)

An influential tradition holds that thoughts are public: different thinkers share many of their thoughts, and the same applies to a single subject at different times. This ‘publicity principle’ has recently come under attack. Arguments by Mark Crimmins, Richard Heck and Brian Loar seem to show that publicity is inconsistent with the widely accepted principle that someone who is ignorant or mistaken about certain identity facts will have distinct thoughts about the relevant object—for instance, the astronomer who does not know (...) that Hesperus is Phosphorus will have two distinct thoughts Hesperus is bright and Phosphorus is bright. In this paper, I argue that publicity can be defended if we adopt a relational account on which thoughts are individuated by their mutual relations. I then go on to develop a specific relational theory—the ‘linking account’—and contrast it with other relational views. (shrink)

While COVID-19 vaccines provide light at the end of the tunnel in a difficult time, they also bring forth the complex ethical issue of global vaccine distribution. The current unequal global distribution of vaccines is unjust towards the vulnerable living in low-income countries. A vaccine tax should be introduced to remedy this. Under such a scheme, a small fraction of the money spent by a country on vaccines for its own population would go into a fund, such as COVAX, dedicated (...) to buying vaccines and distributing them to the world’s poorest. A vaccine tax would provide a much-needed injection of funds to remedy the unequal distribution of vaccines. The tax allows for a distribution that, to a lesser degree, reflects the ability to pay and is superior to a donation-based model because it minimises the opportunity for free-riding. (shrink)

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson became an international celebrity, profoundly influencing contemporary intellectual and artistic currents. While Bergsonism was fashionable, L. Susan Stebbing, Bertrand Russell, Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap launched different critical attacks against some of Bergson’s views. This book examines this series of critical responses to Bergsonism early in the history of analytic philosophy. Analytic criticisms of Bergsonism were influenced by William James, who saw Bergson as an ‘anti-intellectualist’ ally of (...) American Pragmatism, and Max Scheler, who saw him as a prophet of Lebensphilosophie. Some of the main analytic objections to Bergson are answered in the work of Karin Costelloe-Stephen. Analytic anti-Bergsonism accompanied the earlier refutations of idealism by Russell and Moore, and later influenced the Vienna Circle’s critique of metaphysics. It eventually contributed to the formation of the view that ‘analytic’ philosophy is divided from its ‘continental’ counterpart. (shrink)

Everything and every word about spirituality have already been said but the practical utility of spiritual wisdom in day to day life to achieve success and live a blissful life is lacking. Spiritual wisdom not only shows us the path of salvation and freedom but also helps us to figure out the solutions for every problem in all walks of human life and civilization. Spirituality is a well-defined, scientific way to get any goal in life whether it is for justified (...) worldly desires or to fulfil the urge of salvation with a blissful route. The book is an important read for the present generation, i.e. our youth as well as the persons those who want to touch the divinity within. Due to the universal nature of Spiritual Wisdom, it is bound to be on the shelves of the coming generation as spiritual science is not something that can be restricted to any one generation. The book itself contains the aura of mysticism and a touch of the great teaching taken from the scriptures. The book will teach how spiritual wisdom may change a person’s life. (shrink)

In the intriguing article The puzzle of the changing past, Barlassina and Del Prete argue that, if one grants a platitude about truth and accepts a simple story that they tell, one is forced to conclude that the past has changed. I will suggest that there is a coherent way to resist that conclusion. The platitude about truth is in fact a platitude, but the story is not exactly as they tell it.

According to luck egalitarianism, it is unjust if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The most common criticism of luck egalitarianism is the ‘harshness objection’, which states that luck egalitarianism allows for too harsh consequences, as it fails to provide justification for why those responsible for their bad fate can be entitled to society's assistance. It has largely gone unnoticed that the harshness objection is open to a number of very different interpretations. (...) We present four different interpretations of the harshness objection in which the problem pertains to counterintuitive implications, badness of outcome, disproportionality, or inconsistency, respectively. We analyse and discuss appropriate luck egalitarian replies. Disentangling these different versions clarifies what is at the heart of this dispute and reveals the point of the harshness objection. We conclude that only the inconsistency version involves a durable problem for luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Some believe that the current era is uniquely important with respect to how well the rest of human history goes. Following Parfit, call this the Hinge of History Hypothesis. Recently, MacAskill has argued that our era is actually very unlikely to be especially influential in the way asserted by the Hinge of History Hypothesis. I respond to MacAskill, pointing to important unresolved ambiguities in his proposed definition of what it means for a time to be influential and criticizing the two (...) arguments used to cast doubt on the claim that the current era is a uniquely important moment in human history. GPI Working Paper No. 9 - 2022. (shrink)

Chapter 14. Andrea Timár engages with literary representations of the experience of perpetrators of dehumanization. Her chapter focuses on perpetrators of dehumanization who do not violate laws of their society (i.e., they are not criminals) but exemplify what Simona Forti, inspired by Hannah Arendt, calls “the normality of evil.” Through the parallel examples of Dezső Kosztolányi’s Anna Édes (1926) and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Timár first explores a possible clash between criminals and perpetrators of dehumanization, showing (...) literature’s exceptional ability to reveal the gap between ethics and law. Second, she examines novels focalized through perpetrators and the difficult narrative empathy they provoke, arguing that only the critical reading of these novels can make one engage with the potential perpetrator in oneself. As case studies, Timár examines Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), which may potentially turn its reader into an accomplice in the process of dehumanization, and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), which puts on critical display the dehumanizing potentials of both aesthetic representation and sympathy as imaginative violence. Third, she reads Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones [Les Bienveillantes, 2006], which can make the reader question, through the polyphony of the voice of its protagonist, the notions of narrative voice and readerly empathy, only to reveal that the difficulty involved in empathizing with perpetrator characters lies not so much in the characters’ being perpetrators, but rather in their being literary characters. Eventually, Timár briefly touches upon the problem of the aesthetic and the comic via Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) to ask whether one can avoid some necessarily dehumanizing aspects of humor. (shrink)

Hassoun argues that the poor in the world have a right to health and that the Global Health Impact Index provides consumers in well-off countries with the opportunity to ensure that more people have access to essential medicines. Because of this, these consumers would be ethically obliged to purchase Global Health Impact Index-labeled products in the face of existing global inequalities. In presenting her argument, Hassoun rejects the so-called democratic account of ethical consumption in favor of the positive change account. (...) Two versions of the democratic change account are relevant. One underscores the importance of democratic procedures and institutions, while the other stresses our fundamental moral equality. While at least one prominent institutionalist account has problems, revised versions would be less vulnerable to Hassoun’s counterexamples. Furthermore, institutionalist accounts come with the epistemological gains from democratic procedures and deliberations, which may be especially important under uncertainty. Finally, and perhaps more challenging for the Global Health Impact index project, this measure may place the burden unfairly on those who need to buy medicines. This is a pivotal insight from the non-institutionalist version of the democratic account of ethical consumption. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse actual causation in terms of production. The latter concept is made precise by a strengthened Ramsey Test semantics of conditionals: \ iff, after suspending judgement about A and C, C is believed in the course of assuming A. This test allows us to verify or falsify that an event brings about another event. Complementing the concept of production by a weak condition of difference-making gives rise to a full-fledged analysis of causation.

This paper explores an idea of Stoic descent that is largely neglected nowadays, the idea that an argument is valid when the conditional formed by the conjunction of its premises as antecedent and its conclusion as consequent is true. As it will be argued, once some basic features of our naıve understanding of validity are properly spelled out, and a suitable account of conditionals is adopted, the equivalence between valid arguments and true conditionals makes perfect sense. The account of validity (...) outlined here, which displays one coherent way to articulate the Stoic intuition, accords with standard formal treatments of deductive validity and encompasses an independently grounded characterization of inductive validity. (shrink)

The paper suggests that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s arguments against sympathy after the French Revolution, Walter Benjamin’s claims against empathy following the traumatic shock of Modernity and the First World War, and Hannah Arendt’s critical take on compassion. after the Holocaust are similar responses to singular historical crises. Reconsidering Arendt’s On Revolution (1963) and its evocation of Hermann Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1891), I show first that the novella bears the traces of an essay by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Appeal to (...) Law” (1809). Then, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s writings on trauma in Illuminations (1968, edited by Arendt), I discuss the political importance Arendt attaches to the proper way of telling a story, at a time when “the communicability of experience is decreasing” (Benjamin, Illuminations, 86). Through the analysis of Benjamin’s “The Storyteller” and Arendt’s “heartless” report on the Eichmann trial (1963), I equally show that, according to Arendt, testimonies must be narrated, or rather performed, in a dispassionate, dry, and compact manner so that they can be historically and politically relevant. (shrink)

The aim of this editorial introduction is twofold. First, Sects. 1–8 offer a critical introduction to the metaphysical character of physicalism. In those sections, I present and evaluate different ways in which proponents of physicalism have made explicit the metaphysical dependence that is said to hold between the non-physical and the physical. Some of these accounts are found to be problematic; others are shown to be somewhat more promising. In the end, some important lessons are drawn and different options for (...) physicalists are presented. Second, in Sect.9, the six papers that comprise the special issue are introduced and summarized. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche was among the figures from the history of nineteenth century philosophy that, perhaps surprisingly, some of the Vienna Circle’s members had presented as one of their predecessors. While, primarily for political reasons, most Anglophone figures in the history of analytic philosophy had taken a dim view of Nietzsche, the Vienna Circle’s leader Moritz Schlick admired and praised Nietzsche, rejecting what he saw as a misinterpretation of Nietzsche as a militarist or proto-fascist. Schlick, Frank, Neurath, and Carnap were in (...) different ways committed to the view that Nietzsche made a significant contribution to the overcoming of metaphysics. Some of these philosophers praised the intimate connection Nietzsche drew between his philosophical outlook and empirical studies in psychology and physiology. In his 1912 lectures on Nietzsche, Schlick maintained that Nietzsche overcame an initial Schopenhauerian metaphysical-artistic phase in his thinking, and subsequently remained a positivist until his last writings. Frank and Neurath made the weaker claim that Nietzsche contributed to the development of a positivistic or scientific conception of the world. Schlick and Frank took a further step in seeing the mature Nietzsche as an Enlightenment thinker. (shrink)

Despite the impressive progress that has been made on both the empirical and conceptual fronts of boredom research, there is one facet of boredom that has received remarkably little attention. This is boredom's relationship to morality. The aim of this article is to explore the moral dimensions of boredom and to argue that boredom is a morally relevant personality trait. The presence of trait boredom hinders our capacity to flourish and in doing so hurts our prospects for a moral life. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Should priority in the allocation of organs be given to those who have previously donated or declared their willingness to do so? This article examines the Israeli priority rule in light of two prominent critiques of priority rules, pertaining to failure to reciprocate and unfairness. The scope and content of these critiques are interpreted from the perspective of equality of opportunity. Because the Israeli priority rule may be reasonably criticized for unfairness and failing to reward certain behaviors, the article develops (...) an adjusted priority rule, which removes and adjust the elements in the Israeli priority rule deemed problematic. However, such a priority rule is complex to the extent that it may fail to increase donation rates and furthermore introduce new concerns of fairness, as the better off may be better able to navigate the complex adjusted priority rule. (shrink)