Markets sit in places and knowledge produced in these places also constitute the very foundation of markets’ viability and market actors’ performative competitive edge. However, not all markets are created equal primarily in the context of their importance in the global economy. Thus conceived, we imagine a world economy or markets populated by people in front of wide computer screens making sense of financial algorithms and derivatives. In a way, here, we see a market that is run by codified knowledge, (...) or scientific knowledge that transcends boundaries. But what about a conception of market that recognizes the production of knowledge in the periphery, and this instance, fish markets, where place-based knowledge marks the contours of engagement of fishmongers to their wider world and yet, concomitantly, also underscores their attachment to place? In this article, in an ethnographic study of four fish markets in a small coastal town in southern Philippine, fishmongers engage with market processes via their production and deployment of vernacular knowledge which is performed in the form of public specialized knowledge, tacit knowledge and network knowledge. In these forms of vernacular knowledge, we become cognizant of the complexities of market processes even in places that are relegated to the margins, where knowledge plays a crucial role in sensing the world and making it lived and real. (shrink)

Considerable recent research in neurosciences has dealt with the topic of consciousness, even though there is still disagreement about how to identify and classify conscious states. Recent behavioral work on the topic also exists. We survey recent behavioral and neuroscientific literature with the aims of commenting on strengths and weaknesses of the literature and mapping new directions and recommendations for experimental psychologists. We reconcile this literature with a view of human information processing (Cowan, 1988; Cowan et al., 2024) in which (...) a capacity-limited focus of attention is embedded within the activated portion of long-term memory, with dual bottom-up and top-down control of the focus of attention. None of the many extant theories fully captures what we propose as the organization of conscious thought at cognitive and neural levels. It seems clear that information from various cognitive functions, based on signals from various brain areas, is integrated into a conscious whole. In our new proposal, the integration involves funneling information to a hub or focus of attention neurally centered in the parietal lobes and functionally connected to areas representing the currently attended information. This funneling process (bringing information from diverse sensory and frontal sources to contact a small parietal area where attended information is coordinated and combined) may be the converse of global broadcasting, from other proposals (Baars et al., 2021; Baars & Franklin, 2003; Dehaene & Changeux, 2011). The proposed system incorporates many principles from previous research and theorization and strives toward a resolution of the relation between consciousness and attention. Keywords: consciousness, attention, embedded processes model, experimental psychology, neuroscience. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how building human potentialities in education can enhance learning competencies in students for the development of the self and the society. Human potential refers to a possibility human beings are capable of achieving. Montessori believes that the traditional system of education directs students to learn through memorization and recitation techniques and does not lay much emphasis on helping students to bring out their maximum potential. What goal can we attribute to education today? Our focus shall be (...) to answer the questions, what are the favorable conditions under which education can help to build human potentialities? Is Montessori’s view essential in enhancing creativity and building the necessary competencies of the learners in our society today? Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual. It is not what the teacher gives and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. Montessori opts that education should help the learners develop confidence in their emerging abilities and offer them the opportunity to gain independence in daily tasks. The pedagogic significance of this work serves as a guide for the educational system in Africa and Cameroon in particular. It serves as a guide for curriculum developers and policy makers to bring out programs that will enhance the building of individual competencies for eventual development. Thus Montessori’s idea of education to build human potentialities is indispensible to our educational system today. (shrink)

This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

Nicole Hassoun’s sufficientarian theory is based on a particular conception of caring, which she calls ‘care, simpliciter’. However, ‘care, simpliciter’ is not described in any detail. This essay tries to offer a critical revision of Hassoun’s concept of care in a way that would put the MGL theory on its strongest footing. To that end, I will contrast her view with a taxonomy of care that supplements the accounts of care provided by Stephen Darwall and Lori Gruen. I then put (...) forward a form of empathy that is best suited to the MGL theory, which fits the description of ‘care, simpliciter’. **Unpublished manuscript: feel free to cite.**. (shrink)

Early Confucians viewed their world in an anthropocentric way – man was an embodiment of the cosmos and embodied the virtues of benevolence and righteousness. By the early medieval period (220–589), though, Confucian tales of virtuous animals flourished, betraying that Confucian attitudes towards animals had changed: the moral boundaries between animals and humans were fluid and beasts could serve as exemplars for humans. One of the few early medieval Confucian thinkers who spoke at length about animals was He Chengtian 何承天 (...) (370–447), a famed historian, astronomer, classical scholar, musicologist, and numerologist. His view of what separates humans from animals emerges from letters and essays he wrote attacking Buddhism. To refute the idea that humans and animals are both sentient beings, he espoused the old belief that people had a privileged place in the universe because of their moral excellence. Moreover, even though there was a gap between sages and ordinary humans, the latter were still ethically superior to beasts. In addition, for him, meateating was both a natural and sacred activity. Ironically, man’s benevolence and righteousness are most visible in the humane ways that Confucians wanted people to hunt and fish. He Chengtian’s opposition to Buddhism thus seems to have pushed him to a more extreme view of animals than his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his attempt to refute the idea of karmic retribution through an example taken from the animal kingdom betrays that he saw humans and non-human animals on a more equal footing than he cared to admit. (shrink)

• Aggregates of previously isolated cells of Hydra are capable, under suitable solvant conditions, of regeneration forming complete animals. In a first stage, ecto- and endodermal cells sort out, producing the bilayered hollow structure characteristic of Hydra tissue; thereafter, heads are formed (even if the original cell preparation contained no head cells), eventually leading to the separation of normal animals with head, body column and foot. Hydra appears to be the highest type of organism that allows for regeneration of the (...) entire structure from random cell aggregates. The system is particularly useful for studying cell interactions, tissue polarity, pattern formation, and cell differentiation. (shrink)

Besides the better-known Nelson logic and paraconsistent Nelson logic, in 1959 David Nelson introduced, with motivations of realizability and constructibility, a logic called $\mathcal{S}$. The logic $\mathcal{S}$ was originally presented by means of a calculus with infinitely many rule schemata and no semantics. We look here at the propositional fragment of $\mathcal{S}$, showing that it is algebraizable, in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi, with respect to a variety of three-potent involutive residuated lattices. We thus introduce the (...) first known algebraic semantics for $\mathcal{S}$ as well as a finite Hilbert-style calculus equivalent to Nelson’s presentation; this also allows us to clarify the relation between $\mathcal{S}$ and the other two Nelson logics $\mathcal{N}3$ and $\mathcal{N}4$. (shrink)

A review of the Czech translation of Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art. I emphasize Goodman's move away from the issue of the definition of art, and the fruitfulness of the autographic/allographic distinction.

n ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe argues that the moral ‘ought’ should be abandoned as the senseless survivor from a defunct conceptual scheme. I argue 1) That even if the moral ‘ought’ derives its meaning from a Divine Law conception of ethics it does not follow that it cannot sensibly survive the Death of God. 2) That anyway Anscombe is mistaken since ancestors of the emphatic moral ‘ought’ predate the system of Christian Divine Law from which the moral ‘ought’ supposedly derives (...) its meaning (Cicero in particular subscribed to something like the modern conception of a duty which seems to be a generalization of the duties attendant on particular roles). 3) That if the moral ‘ought’ derived its meaning from embodying Gods’ commands then the two should have been equated in the minds of true believers. This was not the case. 4) That Anscombe is absurdly wrong in supposing that Protestant moralists had abandoned a Divine Law conception of ethics. 5) That the virtue-based ought-free Aristotelian alternative suggested by Anscombe is unworkable since the basic idea is that it pays in terms of human flourishing to be good (which means inter alia being just). Since it is pretty obvious that there are plenty of good people who don’t flourish and flourishing people who are not good, the neo-Aristotelian program has gradually undergone a degenerating problem-shift: either the pay-off is deferred to the hereafter or being good is incorporated into the pay-off. 6) That there is a certain amount of sophistry in selling the neo-Aristotelian virtues. Since the unjust person is simply somebody who is NOT systematically just, you cannot prove that it pays to be just by arguing that it is a mistake to be systematically UNjust. So too for many of the other virtues. (shrink)

Hume thought that if you believed in powers, you believed in necessary connections in nature. He was then able to argue that there were none such because anything could follow anything else. But Hume wrong-footed his opponents. A power does not necessitate its manifestations: rather, it disposes towards them in a way that is less than necessary but more than purely contingent. -/- In this paper a dispositional theory of causation is offered. Causes dispose towards their effects and often produce (...) them. But a set of causes, even though they may succeed in producing an effect, cannot necessitate it since the effect could have been counteracted by some additional power. This would require a separation of our concepts of causal production and causal necessitation. The most conspicuous cases of causation are those where powers accumulate and pass a requisite threshold for an effect to occur. -/- We develop a model for representing powers as constituent vectors within an n-dimensional quality space, where composition of causes appears as vector addition. Even our resultant vector, however, has to be understood as having dispositional force only. This model throws new light on causal modality and cases of prevention, causation by absence and probabilistic causation. (shrink)

O exame ultrassonográfico é uma ferramenta diagnóstica de grande relevância na rotina veterinária, uma vez que, apresenta ampla difusão entre os atendimentos de animais e permite a avaliação de órgãos e estruturas de forma não invasiva, segura e rápida, auxiliando na determinação de diversas afecções, levando ao tratamento adequado e contribuindo de forma positiva no prognóstico do paciente. Atualmente, em muitos casos, a avaliação testicular não faz parte da rotina ultrassonográfica em exames de ênfase abdominal, devido à sua localização anatômica (...) no escroto, podendo assim levar ao diagnóstico limitado e ao tratamento inadequado do paciente quando na ausência da avaliação dos testículos, posto que diversas são as afecções testiculares que podem acometer cães e que apresentam características ultrassonográficas de fácil detecção. Dentre as principais alterações observadas por meio da ultrassonografia, os casos de orquite, criptorquidismo, torção e também neoformações neoplásicas testiculares correspondem à maior casuística, sendo o método ultrassonográfico um exame com 98% a 100% de sensibilidade e acurácia para diagnóstico destas. Dessa forma, o objetivo deste artigo de revisão bibliográfica é elucidar a importância da avaliação testicular em exames ultrassonográficos de rotina, discorrendo inicialmente sobre os aspectos anatômicos e ultrassonográficos, e posteriormente acerca das afecções mais comumente diagnosticadas na rotina veterinária, apresentando ainda as alterações ultrassonográficas causadas no parênquima testicular. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Cães. Diagnóstico. Neoplasias testiculares. Ultrassonografia. -/- THE IMPORTANCE OF INCLUDING TESTICULAR ASSESSMENT IN THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL ABDOMINAL ULTRASOUND ROUTINE IN DOGS FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF TESTICULAR DISEASES ABSTRACT: The ultrasound examination is a diagnostic tool of great relevance in the veterinary routine, as it is widespread in the current reality and allows the assessment of organs and structures in a non-invasive, safe and fast way, helping in the diagnosis of various conditions, leading to adequate treatment and positively contributing to the patient’s prognosis. Currently, in many cases, testicular evaluation is not part of the ultrasound evaluation in exams with abdominal emphasis, due to its anatomical location in the scrotum, which can lead to limited diagnosis and inadequate treatment of the patient in the absence of ultrasound evaluation of the testicles, since there are several testicular affections that can affect dogs and that present ultrasonographic characteristics that are easily detected. Among the main alterations observed during ultrasonographic exams, cases of orchitis, cryptorchidism, torsion and also testicular neoplastic neoformations correspond to the largest sample, with the ultrasonographic method being an exam with 98% to 100% sensitivity and accuracy for their diagnosis. Thus, the aim of this literature review article is to elucidate the importance of testicular evaluation in routine ultrasound examinations, initially discussing the anatomical and ultrasound aspects, and later on the most commonly diagnosed conditions in the veterinary routine, also presenting the ultrasound changes caused in the testicular parenchyma. KEYWORDS: Dogs. Diagnosis. Testicular neoplasm. Ultrasound. -/- REFERÊNCIAS AMANN, R.P. Functional Anatomy of the Adult Male. In: MCKINNON, A. O.; SQUIRES, E.L.; WENDY, E.V.; VARNER, D.D. Equine Reproduction. 2nd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Cap. 95, p. 867 – 880 ARGENTA, F.F.; PEREIRA, P.R.; CAPRIOLI, R.A.; VIELMO, A.; SONNE, F.; PAVARANI, S.P.; DRIEMEIER, D. Neoplasmas testiculares em cães no Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Acta Scientiae Veterinariae, v.44, n.1413, p.1-6, 2016. DA SILVA, E.I.C. Anatomia e Fisiologia do Sistema Reprodutivo dos Animais Domésticos. Instituto Federal de Pernambuco. Departamento de Reprodução Animal. 2020. DAVIDSON, A. P; BAKER, T. W. Reproductive ultrasound of the dog and tom. Topics in companion animal medicine, v.24, n.2, p.64-70, 2009. DOMINGOS, T. C. S.; SALOMÃO, M. C. Meios de diagnóstico das principais afecções testiculares em cães: revisão de literatura. Revista Brasileira de Reprodução Animal, Belo Horizonte, v.35, n.4, p.393-399, out./dez. 2011. FELDMAN, E. C.; NELSON, R. W. Disorders of the Testes and Epidymides. In FELDMAN, E. C.; NELSON, R. W. (Eds.), Canine and Feline Endocrinology and Reproduction. 3 ed., St. Louis Missouri: WB Saunders Co. 2004. p. 961 – 977. FONSECA, C.V.C.V. Prevalência e tipos de alterações testiculares em canídeos. Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária. Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária. Lisboa, 2009. HECHT, S. Trato Reprodutivo Masculino. In: PENNICK, D.; D’ANJOU, M.A. Atlas de Ultrassonografia de pequenos animais. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Koogan, 2011. p.415-438. (shrink)

The paper presents some historical (Plato, Aristotle, Plotin, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas) and main contemporary topics about different accounts of goodness of God understood as ontological goodness, perfection and as ethical goodness - impeccability and benevolence. The arguments for goodness of God are presented, mainly from stance of Thomas Aquinas classical theism as well as arguments against compatibility of essential goodness and omnipotence (N. Pike) and being an moral agent. The article draws perspective of different philosophical issues connected with goodness of (...) God, like a problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, divine command ethics and divine motivation theory. (shrink)

One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus we (...) are more and more reluctant to say that this is a human being and must be treated as such. No doubt this is the deepest source of our dilemma, but it is not the only one. For we are also confused about the general question of what we may and may not do where the interests of human beings conflict. We have strong intuitions about certain cases; saying, for instance, that it is all right to raise the level of education in our country, though statistics allow us to predict that a rise in the suicide rate will follow, while it is not all right to kill the feeble-minded to aid cancer research. It is not easy, however, to see the principles involved, and one way of throwing light on the abortion issue will be by setting up parallels involving adults or children once born. So we will be able to isolate the “equal rights” issue and should be able to make some advance... (shrink)

Discusses the question of the objectivity or subjectivity of moral judgments, hoping to illuminate it by contrasting moral and aesthetic judgments. In her critical assessment of the nature of moral judgments, Foot concludes that some such judgments (as e.g. that Nazism was evil) are definitely objective. The concept of morality here supplies criteria independent of local standards, which function as fixed starting points in arguments across local boundaries, whereas, by contrast, aesthetic truths can ultimately depend on locally determined criteria. More (...) problematic is the apparently different relation of moral and of aesthetic judgments to rational choice. Individuals may have no reason to choose what is beautiful, but we think that they must always have reason to choose what is morally right, which raises one of the most difficult problems in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper excavates the practice-oriented background and therapeutic significance of emptiness in the Madhyamaka philosophy attributed to Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao. Buddhist emptiness unravels experiential and linguistic reification through meditation and argumentation. The historical contexts and uses of the word indicate that it is primarily a practical diagnostic and therapeutic concept. Emptiness does not lead to further views or truths but, akin to yet distinct from Ajñāna and Pyrrhonian skepticism, the suspension of assertion. This sense of emptiness as a practice can (...) be traced in the intercultural transmission of Madhyamaka from Nāgārjuna, its paradigmatic philosopher, to Sengzhao 僧肇, its first pivotal indigenous Chinese representative. (shrink)

The hermeneutical dimensions of Chinese philosophy from the Changes of Zhou through its Confucian, Daoist, and contemporary developments have been a creative inspirational source and guiding intellectual thread in the thought of Chung-ying Cheng. Cheng's extensive engagement with the Classic of Changes, its role in the formation of the Chinese philosophical tradition and its comparative interconnections with occidental philosophies, has disclosed its deep hermeneutical orientation. The Yijing encompasses processes of empirical observation, empathetic feeling, and self-reflection in the generation of “images,” (...) or prototypical models that are “form-objects” or “process-events,” which performatively enact a comprehensive ontological and situationally appropriate understanding of nature, society, and one self. I examine three issues in outline arising from Cheng's works in this situation: to what extent Chinese philosophy is hermeneutical with respect to modern European understandings of hermeneutics, and the possibility of the distinctive “onto-generative hermeneutics” that has been articulated for over forty years in the context of Chinese and Western thought in Cheng's prolific works concerning the Yijing. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is prudentially wise to defer to groups about how they are essentially constituted and defined. After a few words situating the paper in my greater research project (§1), I articulate the kind of deference I have in mind (§2). Then I offer two conditional arguments on why it is epistemically desirable to let other people tell you how they ought to be identified (§3). The first argument is that people are owed lexical sovereignty because denying (...) it is absurd; the second is that modest skeptics ought to agree with it on the basis of some relatively anodyne and plausible epistemic considerations. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material (...) others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

Psychiatry has witnessed a new wave of approaches to clinical phenotyping and the study of psychopathology, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria, clinical staging, network approaches, the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, and the general psychopathology factor, as well as a revival of interest in phenomenological psychopathology. The question naturally emerges as to what the relationship between these new approaches is – are they mutually exclusive, competing approaches, or can they be integrated in some way and used (...) to enrich each other? In this opinion piece, we propose a possible integration between clinical staging and phenomenological psychopathology. Domains identified in phenomenological psychopathology, such as selfhood, embodiment, affectivity, etc., can be overlaid on clinical stages in order to enrich and deepen the phenotypes captured in clinical staging (‘high resolution’ clinical phenotypes). This approach may be useful both ideographically and nomothetically, in that it could complement diagnosis, enrich clinical formulation, and inform treatment of individual patients, as well as help guide aetiological, prediction, and treatment research. The overlaying of phenomenological domains on clinical stages may require that these domains are reformulated in dimensional rather than categorial terms. This integrative project requires assessment tools, some of which are already available, that are sensitive and thorough enough to pick up on the range of relevant psychopathology. The proposed approach offers opportunities for mutual enrichment: clinical staging may be enriched by introducing greater depth to phenotypes; phenomenological psychopathology may be enriched by introducing stages of severity and disorder progression to phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

While it is philosophically contested whether nonlinguistic animals can have conceptual capabilities, it is also philosophically contested whether one can even empirically test for such capabilities. I draw from Sellars’ work on psychological nominalism to develop an empirically tractable means of distinguishing between tasks that require conceptual capabilities and those that do not. Tasks that require conceptual capabilities are those that require awareness of abstract relations, whereas tasks that can be solved merely through Sellarsian picturing do not. I argue that (...) relational matching-to-sample tasks cannot be solved through picturing and therefore require awareness of the abstract relations of same and different. Crows and amazons have both been able to succeed at relational matching-to-sample tasks; therefore, there are at least some nonlinguistic animals that have conceptual capabilities. Finally, I consider the objection that one cannot attribute conceptual capabilities without also attributing knowledge, and Sellarsian conditions for knowledge are beyond the capabilities of any nonlinguistic animal. In response, I argue that Sellarsian conditions for knowledge only require an implicit grasp of the is/looks distinction and empirical work with chimpanzees on their understanding of the appearance/reality distinction demonstrates that they can meet this standard. Therefore, language is not necessary for meeting Sellarsian conditions for knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that a Kantian inspired investigation into animal morality is both a plausible and coherent research program. To show that such an investigation is possible, I argue that philosophers, such as Korsgaard, who argue that reason demarcates nonhuman animals from the domain of moral beings are equivocating in their use of the term ‘rationality’. Kant certainly regards rationality as necessary for moral responsibility from a practical standpoint, but his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal means that he can only (...) establish it as a marker for morality from a theoretical standpoint. This means that when it comes to evaluating the moral capabilities of others, rationality can be neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, leaving open the possibility of other empirical markers for moral responsibility. I argue that the higher faculties, character, implicit knowledge of universality, and antecedent practical pleasures (which provide a way to distinguish between morally motivated behaviour and other types of socially motivated behaviour) can all serve as empirical markers for morality. There is empirical evidence that at least some animals have conceptual capabilities and therefore the empirical marker of the higher faculties. In addition, there is suggestive evidence that merits further investigation for the other three markers. While this will not provide a definitive answer on whether animals are capable of acting morally, it will provide a Kantian outlook that can be used to evaluate empirical and philosophical work on animal morality. (shrink)

Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative constraints, too. I show that, despite its ingenuity, Denyer’s argument does not succeed. (...) The defense of absolutism must move to other grounds. (shrink)

In paradigmatic Confucian (Ruist) discourses, emotion (qing) has been depicted as co-arising with human nature (xing) and an irreducible constitutive source of human practices and their interpretation. The affects are concurrently naturally arising and alterable through how individuals react and respond to them and how they are or are not cultivated. That is, emotions are relationally mediated realities given in and transformed through how they are felt, understood, interpreted, and acted upon. Confucian discourses have elucidated the ethical character of the (...) emotions and sought to understand and cultivate emotional life as a hermeneutical and ethical task in establishing expectable patterns of human flourishing that orient virtues, roles, and relations. In this chapter, I explore the extent to which classical Ruist and Neo-Confucian discourses offer hermeneutical models for interpreting the complex interconnections between moral psychology and their mediations in the ethical life world. By examining a range of Confucian sources, the author argues that Confucian “moral psychologies” clarify affective dimensions of human existence within the interpersonal nexus of ethical life and indicate ways of cultivating affective awareness for relationally understanding and interpreting others, one’s world, and oneself. (shrink)

The very idea of promulgation has been given little to no treatment in the philosophy of law. In this exploratory essay, I introduce three possible theories of promulgation: the ‘no-theory theory’ (which treats promulgation as a matter of particular contexts), the ‘conveyance theory’ (which treats promulgation as a function of intellectual good faith interpreters), and ‘agonistic theory’ (which treats promulgation as indistinguishable from propaganda). I suggest that (at least) three kinds of models are consistent with the theories, and can potentially (...) help us understand when law is successfully promulgated in particular legal contexts: the spread model, the chain model, and the memetic model. I end the paper by comparing the two theories with respect to a case study. Throughout I will show that the conveyance and agonistic theories have a serious advantage over the no-theory theory, in that they allow us to comparatively examine the epistemic weaknesses of diverse theories about the grounding of law on the basis of their contents. (shrink)

There at least three ways of thinking about rationality: instrumental, substantive, and intentional. By far, the instrumental account is most influential. This essay proposes that intentional rationality can provide substantive accounts with room to breathe, and in a way that is facially distinct from instrumental accounts. I suggest that the intentionality of a judgment is made up of what it is about and the orientation through which it is judged, while irrationality is the subversion of a strict supporting connection between (...) the judgment and its corresponding set of coordinated attitudes (reasons). It follows that irrational intentionality is made up of episodic states where a judgment is subverted because of a misalignment between what it is about and the way the judge is oriented towards its contents. Four examples of irrational intentionality are considered: passivity towards ends, constitutive ignorance towards facts, delirious paranoia towards objects, and a disjunctive orientation towards categorizations. (shrink)

Many philosophers have wrongly assumed that there is an asymmetry between the problem of induction and the logocentric predicament (the justification of deductive inferences). This paper will show that the demand for justification, for the very inferences that are required for justification, is deeply problematic. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, I will argue that justification has an internal relation with deductive and inductive inferences. For Wittgenstein, two concepts are internally related if my understanding of one is predicated on my understanding of (...) the other. Separating the two concepts so that one can be applied to the other is then a misunderstanding of role that these concepts play. (shrink)

While there has been significant philosophical debate on whether nonlinguistic animals can possess conceptual capabilities, less time has been devoted to considering 'talking' animals, such as parrots. When they are discussed, their capabilities are often downplayed as mere mimicry. The most explicit philosophical example of this can be seen in Brandom's frequent comparisons of parrots and thermostats. Brandom argues that because parrots (like thermostats) cannot grasp the implicit inferential connections between concepts, their vocal articulations do not actually have any conceptual (...) content. In contrast, I argue that Pepperberg's work with Alex (and other African grey parrots) provides evidence that the vocal articulations of at least some parrots have conceptual content. Using Frege's insight that numbers assert something about a concept, I argue that Alex's ability to answer the question "How many?" depended upon a prior grasp of conceptual content. Developing this claim, I argue that Alex's arithmetical abilities show that he was capable of using numbers as both concepts and objects. Frege's theoretical insight and Pepperberg's empirical work provide reason to reconsider the capabilities of parrots, as well as what sorts of tasks provide evidence for conceptual content. (shrink)

One critique of the early Daoist texts associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi is that they neglect the human and lack a proper sense of ethical personhood in maintaining the primacy of an impersonal dehumanizing “way.” This article offers a reconsideration of the appropriateness of such negative evaluations by exploring whether and to what extent the ethical sensibility unfolded in the Zhuangzi is aporetic, naturalistic, and/or religious. As an ethos of cultivating life and free and easy wandering by performatively enacting openness (...) and responsiveness to things in an immanent this-worldly context, the Zhuangzi is oriented toward the relational attunement of disposition and practice rather than toward metaphysics or religion in a transcendent sense. It consequently suggests an immanent anarchic ethics without principles while neither forgetting nor reifying the sacred and the mundane in its playful illumination of the biospiritual dynamics of cultivating life. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

I shall argue that you can substantially refute the most persuasive variety of solipsism by taking its most plausible version seriously, and then showing that it is not rational to hold, once one understands the nature of actualist metaphysical commitments.1 In the first section, I argue that the only viable form of solipsism involves de dicto self-reference. In the second, I argue that this position involves a claim of contingent identity, for which some actual worlds are those where solipsism is (...) not the case. The argument turns on a conception of metaphysics that involves the study of the universal features of actually possible worlds (i.e., realistic necessity). _*Draft. Acknowledgements welcome, but please do not cite.*_. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that textualism is far less attractive as a theory of written law than some of its modern proponents think. For it is not usually sensible to expect the grammatical meaning of a provision to determine its appropriate legal meaning. Factors that are unrelated to grammar in the identification of law (e.g., legal theory, context) do too much of the work. **Draft -- acknowledgments welcome, but please do not cite.**.

What follows is an attempt to do some conceptual housekeeping around the notion of secret law as provided by Christopher Kutz (2013). First I consider low-salience (or merely obscure) law, suggesting that it fails to capture the legal and moral facts that are at stake in the case which Kutz used to motivate it. Then I outline a theoretical contrast between mere obscurity and secrecy, in contrast to the 'neutral' account of secrecy provided by Sissela Bok (1989). The upshot of (...) the two sections is that low-salience law is neither secret law nor necessarily problematic, though it closely resembles a kind of law that is both secret and problematic: namely, those legal obscurities that subvert manifest interests related to the informational needs of citizens. The ensuing argument undermines the fiction of constructive presence found in Austin and Blackstone. (shrink)

I consider the intertextuality between Chinese and Western thought by exploring how images, metaphors, and ideas from the texts associated with Zhuangzi and Laozi were appropriated in early twentieth-century German philosophy. This interest in “Lao-Zhuang Daoism” encompasses a diverse range of thinkers including Buber and Heidegger. I examine how the problematization of utility, usefulness, and “purposiveness” in Zhuangzi and Laozi becomes a key point for their German philosophical reception; how it is the poetic character of the Zhuangzi that hints at (...) an appropriate response to the crisis and loss of meaning that characterizes technological modernity and its instrumental technological rationality; that is, how the “poetic” and “spiritual” world perceived in Lao-Zhuang thought became part of Buber's and Heidegger's critical encounter and confrontation with technological modernity; and how their concern with Zhuangzi does not signify a return to a dogmatic religiosity or otherworldly mysticism; it anticipates a this-worldly spiritual or poetic way of dwelling immanently within the world. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz, werde ich die Frage des Naturalismus in Plessners Philosophie des organischen Lebens und seiner amerikanischen Rezeption, in besonders die philosophischen-biologischen Schriften von Marjorie Grene, untersuchen. Die amerikanische Philosophin Grene war die Hauptvertreterin Plessners im Englischen Sprachraum in 20sten Jahrhundert, die Plessners anthropologischen Argumentation in ihren Schriften zur Philosophie der Biologie aufgenommen und verwendet hat. Grene kritisierte in ihren frühen Schriften Heidegger, Sartre, und die Existenzphilosophie, die das menschliche Dasein von der Natur radikal absondert und die negative Affekte (...) wie Angst hervorhebt, in Vergleich mit Plessners weiterem Blick der Leibhaften, Sinnlichen, Tierischen Entwicklung des menschlichen Lebens. Die menschliche Existenz kann nicht dualistisch, wo „keine Brücke über den Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier führt,“ sondern nur biologisch-lebensphilosophisch oder ökologisch verstanden werden. Plessner und Grene setzen sich mit dem Reduktionismus des modernen Naturalismus auseinander und zeigen, wie das Natürliche weiter und ergänzt gedacht werden muss, weil der Naturalismus keine ausreichenden Begriffe für die Auslegung der Erscheinungen und Ausdrucksformen des organischen Lebens besitzt. Die Unterscheidung zwischen der "zentrischen Positionalität" des Tiers und der "exzentrischen Positionalität" des menschlichen Tiers ermöglicht eine holistisch aber differenzierte Beschreibung der Natur und Kultur, insbesondere die natürlichen Künstlichkeit, die der Kultur und das des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Diese sind Grundlage für die geschichtliche und soziale Bildung, Aufbau, und Strukturierung der natürlichen Spontaneität, Produktivität, und Expressivität des Lebens und ermöglichen die dezentrierte, utopische, und persönliche Individuation der einzelnen Menschen im Lebenszusammenhang, was wichtige soziologische und auch ethische und politische Konsequenzen für Plessner und Grene hat: Der Mensch ist ein natürliches biologisches Individuum, das durchaus fähig ist, eine verantwortliche Person zu werden , und zwar durch die umfassende Beteiligung an (oder als ein einzigartiger Ausdruck) einer Kultur. (shrink)

Early Daoism, as articulated in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, indirectly addresses environmental issues by intimating a non-reductive naturalistic ethics calling on humans to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong. "Dao" is not a substantial immanent or transcendent entity but the lived enactment of the intrinsic worth of the "myriad things" and the natural world occurring through how humans address and are addressed by them. Early Daoism potentially corrects (...) both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in environmental ethics by disclosing the things themselves in the context of the selfcultivation of life. Given increasing environmental devastation and the dominance of views, practices, and institutions reducing nature to a background and/or raw material for human activity, this "ethics of encounter" discloses the life of things as inexhaustibly more than human projects and constructs, extending ethical recognition and responsibility beyond social relations and the social self. (shrink)

Early Confucian “moral psychology” developed in the context of undoing reactive emotions in order to promote relationships of reciprocal recognition. Early Confucian texts diagnose the pervasiveness of reactive emotions under specific social conditions and respond with the ethical-psychological mandate to counter them in self-cultivation. Undoing negative affects is a basic element of becoming ethically noble, while the ignoble person is fixated on limited self-interested concerns and feelings of being unrecognized. Western ethical theory typically accepts equality and symmetry as conditions of (...) disentangling resentment; yet this task requires the asymmetrical recognition of others. Confucian ethics integrates a nuanced and realistic moral psychology with the normatively oriented project of self-cultivation necessary for dismantling complex negative emotions in promoting a condition of humane benevolence that is oriented toward others and achieved through self-cultivation. (shrink)