W artykule poruszono problem stosunku znanego współczesnego poety, autora Fugi śmierci do tradycji judaistycznej. Celan - Paul Ancel - wywodzi się z kręgów kultury żydowskiej Bukowiny. Jest to dla jego twórczości fakt o fundamentalnym znaczeniu. Poeta przejmuje od Chasydów centralną kategorię, jaką jest "samotność". Wokół tego pojęcia rozwija się jego poetyka.

In his 1968 poetry collection „Fadensonnen“, Paul Celan offers a hermetic blend of existentialism and mysticism, which is unusual in two respects. Firstly, the European philosophy of existence, especially with its proponents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, had gone to great lengths to criticize and delegitimize the Abrahametic religions, for the concept of god seemed to be an obstacle to humanity in pursuit of its own humanization. Secondly, in the aftermath of the holocaust, the idea (...) of man wanting to merge with a god that had not prevented this cruelty from happening had lost much of its plausibility. Despite these two objections, Celan's poems address the struggle of togetherness in a world that negates the mere possibility of otherness, trying to salvage the unique identity and dignity of the other. With this in mind, the modus operandi of his poems is that of a butcher: Whatever has previously been alive – before the Shoah – now has to be stripped bare of its layers of individual and collective history, has to become less than body and flesh. In this way, the poems' inherent pain and misery transform the reader into a nobody, for only a nobody has got the prerequisites to encounter other people unbiasedly in their unique wholeness. Within this space of encounter, only the reminiscence of body and sexuality exists, commemorating the other, so that radical corporeality seems to be the prerequisite for togetherness. In this ahistorical sphere there is no room for a god that permitted the holocaust, redefining mysticism as the connection between men instead of one between man and god. Celan's poems act as a catalyst, for they exclude god from the spheres of man, making poetry a memorial site to the dead and the ones living in pain. This way, the poems are trying to save Eros (in the sense of creaturely love) from being mutilated by the crimes of European history while at the same time aiming at rehabilitating mankind in a post-holocaust world. (shrink)

Por todos es sabido la relación que el filósofo Martin Heidegger tuvo con el nacionalsocialismo en los años treinta, cuando comenzó el auge de lo que se denominó Tercer Reich. También es sabido que tras la derrota de Alemania en la II Guerra Mundial, Heidegger guardó silencio sobre el Holocausto. Paul Celan, poeta judío que sufrió en los campos de concentración nazis, tuvo una serie de encuentros y desencuentros con el pensador de Friburgo. Celan esperaba que Heidegger (...) emitiera una palabra de perdón, palabra que aunaría la grandeza filosófica de Heidegger con la grandeza "humanitaria". Pero Heidegger, como decíamos, guardo silencio. La cuestión que queremos tomar al hilo de estos encuentro y desencuentros entre Heidegger y Celan es si es posible pensar Auschwitz después de Auschwitz, si es una tarea necesaria o si el horror del campo de concentración ha dejarse a la voz del poeta, ya que es posible que la poesía expresé mejor lo que sucedió. O, si por el contrario, tras Auschwitz sólo debe quedar el silencio, silencio como aquel en el que Heidegger permaneció. Auschwitz supone el culmen de la Modernidad, una Modernidad tecnificada, donde no hay sitio para la poesía. Pero tras Auschwitz hay poesía, como la poesía de Celan, por lo que cabría preguntarnos si estamos ante una nueva Modernidad o estamos en otro tiempo, en el tiempo del silencio tras Auschwitz. ---- For all we know Heidegger had relationship with National-Socialism in the thirties, when the boom began what was called Third Reich. It´s also know that after the defeat of Germany in the II World War, Heidegger remained silent about the Holocaust. Paul Celan, jewish poet who suffered in Nazi concentration camps, had a series of meetings and disagreements with the thinker of Freiburg. Celan hope thar Heidegger give a word of forgiveness, a word that would combine Heidegger's philosophical greatness with "humanitarian" greatness. But Heidegger, as mentioned, remained silent. The question we want take the thread of these meetings and disagreements between Heidegger and Celan is whether it's possible think Auschwitz, if it's a necesary task or the horror of the concentratión camp is to be left to the voice of the poet, because it´s possible that the poetry expresses better what happened. Or, if instead, after Auschwitz shoul only be silence, silence as one in which Heidegger remained. Auschwitz represents the culmination of Modernity, a tech modernity, where there isn't place for poetry. But after Auschwitz there is poetry, as Celan poetry, so we would ask ourselves whether we have a new modernity or we are in other time, the time of silence after Auschwitz. (shrink)

Resumen: Siguiendo el hilo conductor de la pregunta sobre cómo se nos puede conceder un acceso a la poesía de Paul Celan, el artículo discute dos enfoques diferentes: por un lado, el de la experiencia hermenéutica de Hans-Georg Gadamer; por otro, el de la experiencia diseminal de Jacques Derrida. La intención de la confrontación de las posiciones opuestas respecto a la poesía de Celan no es ni examinar los supuestos y preposiciones de ambas posiciones ni impugnar la (...) legitimidad de una de ellas desde el punto de vista de la otra, sino establecer y evocar el sentido de la disensión, la significación del discernimiento entre ellas y, así, abrir un campo de posibilidad para ambas, para una hermenéutica y para una deconstrucción hoy; y a través de ello también, y sobre todo, un lugar y un tiempo para el poema de Celan, la posibilidad de escucharlo y oírlo, de convertirse en destinatario de su voz inter-(a)pelativa. Palabras clave “Du liegst”; Lenguaje hermético; Comprensión; H.G. Gadamer; J. Derrida // The Secret of the Encounter. Paul Celan’s Poetry between Hermeneutics and DeconstructionAbstract Following the guiding line of the question how an access to Paul Celan’s po-etry can be granted to us, the article discusses two different approaches: on the one hand, the hermeneutic experience of Hans-Georg Gadamer; on the other hand, the disseminating experience of Jacques Derrida. The intention of the confrontation of the opposing positions regarding Celan’s poetry is nei-ther to examine the suppositions and prepositions of both positions nor to contest the legitimacy of either of them from the viewpoint of the other, but rather to establish and evoke the sense of the dissention, the signification of the discernment between them and, thus, open up the field of possibility for both, for a hermeneutics and for a deconstruction today, and through it also, above all, a place and a time for Celan’s poem, the possibility to listen to it and to hear it, to become the addressee of its inter-(a)pellative voice. Keywords “Du liegst”; Hermetic language; Understanding; H.G. Gadamer; J. Derrida. -/- Este artículo fue traducido al español por Facundo Bey. (shrink)

Artykuł jest próbą interpretacji dwóch znanych wierszy Paula Celana - Es war Erde in ihnen z tomu Niemandsrose (1963) oraz Du liegst z tomu Schneepart (1971) za pomocą metody fenomenologicznej.

The essay examines Alain Badiou's concept of ‘anabasis’ and its disclosure in the poetry of Paul Celan. As a conceptualisation of the process of subject formation, anabasis is read as a rejoinder to that of ‘homecoming’, found in Martin Heidegger's appropriation of Friedrich Hölderlin's poems. Following an excursus on the philosophical and the ethical stakes at the heart of these movements, the essay close-reads two of Celan's poems in order to reveal poetry's own attempts to think through (...) trajectories of emergent subjectivities in the wake of twentieth-century violence, as well as the as yet understated centrality of Celan's poetry to Badiou's wider philosophical project. (shrink)

For Hans-Georg Gadamer and philosophical hermeneutics, Paul Celan’s poetry and prose have always been decisive in thinking through the possibilities and limitations of language and interpretation. Recently, important hermeneutic research has begun to point to an unavoidable liminal encounter between the body and language in Celan’s texts, which approaches an often-neglected theme in hermeneutic thought: the body and embodied experience. Yet in order for hermeneutics to engage Celan on matters concerning the body, language, and interpretation, it (...) is necessary to understand the profound role that the body and embodied experience plays in Celan’s works. In this essay, I offer three prominent instances of embodiment in Celan’s texts that contribute to such an account. I turn first to his preliminary notes from his 1960 Meridian speech in which he discusses the poem as ‘pneumatic.’ Second, I read Celan’s letter to Hans Bender in 1960 in which poetry is both a tactile Handwerk and a handshake. Third, I engage Celan’s reading notes from two physiology textbooks from 1967 and his poem, “Seelenblind.” While the first two instances affirm the possibility of an embodied encounter with the singularity of the poet, the third instance considers the body as a site of interpretive breakdown. (shrink)

This chapter explores the cognitive and moral significance of the kind of imaginative experience poetry offers. It identifies two forms of imaginative experience that are especially important to poetry: ‘experiencing-as’ and ‘experience-taking’. Experiencing-as is ‘inherently first-personal, embodied, and phenomenologically characterized’ while in experience-taking one ‘takes the perspective of another, simulating some aspect or aspects of his psychology as if they were his own’. Through a sensitive and probing reading of Paul Celan’s Psalm, the chapter shows the role these (...) two forms of experience play in producing the unique form of ethical and epistemic value poetry can bear. The chapter’s argument for this has important implications for our understanding of the poetic imagination and nature of our experience of meaning in poetic contexts. (shrink)

Nei dintorni di Paul Celan e Ingeborg Bachmann.

Po-etiche che ci accompagnano. La parola, il linguaggio, l'orrore, la speranza e lo stupore: Paul Celan e Ingeborg Bachmann. La voce, il silenzio, la libertà e il linguaggio: dall'arbitrio originario a Emily Dickinson e oltre. Percorsi etici e poetici: da Spinoza a Kafka, passando per P. Ricoeur e fino a Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Margherita Guidacci, Nadine Gordimer e Bianca Maria Frabotta .

Sentieri etici e poetici tra Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka e altri ancora.

The following article takes up a dialogue that was initiated in the first issue of Design Ecologies, evolving in relation to questions of design within a context of concepts of complexity. As the first part of the article shows, this process of taking up a dialogue – through reading and writing – can be considered a question of design. This is elaborated alongside de Certeau’s concepts of ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies’. Further, in relation to questions emerging from the previous issue of (...) the Design Ecologies journal, the article addresses the notion of complexity through the conceptual lens of poiesis. It leads complexity to the borders of language. (shrink)

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) as likely (...) future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research. (shrink)

Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments involve unusual cases. We present empirical reasons to doubt the reliability of intuitive judgments and conclusions about such cases. Inferences and intuitions prompted by verbal case descriptions are influenced by routine comprehension processes which invoke stereotypes. We build on psycholinguistic findings to determine conditions under which the stereotype associated with the most salient sense of a word predictably supports inappropriate inferences from descriptions of unusual (stereotype-divergent) cases. We conduct an experiment that combines plausibility ratings (...) with pupillometry to document this “salience bias.” We find that under certain conditions, competent speakers automatically make stereotypical inferences they know to be inappropriate. (shrink)

This paper provides new tools for philosophical argument analysis and fresh empirical foundations for ‘critical’ ordinary language philosophy. Language comprehension routinely involves stereotypical inferences with contextual defeaters. J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia first mooted the idea that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from verbal case-descriptions drive some philosophical paradoxes; these engender philosophical problems that can be resolved by exposing the underlying fallacies. We build on psycholinguistic research on salience effects to explain when and why even perfectly competent speakers cannot help making (...) stereotypical inferences which are contextually inappropriate. We analyse a classical paradox about perception, suggest it relies on contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance-verbs, and show that the conditions we identified as leading to contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are met in formulations of the paradox. Three experiments use a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to document the predicted inappropriate inferences, in English, German, and Japanese. The cross-linguistic study allows us to assess the wider relevance of the proposed analysis. Our findings open up new perspectives for ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss three probabilistic arguments for the existence of multiple universes. First, we provide an analysis of total evidence and use that analysis to defend Roger White's "this universe" objection to a standard fine-tuning argument for multiple universes. Second, we explain why Rodney Holder's recent cosmological argument for multiple universes is unconvincing. Third, we develop a "Cartesian argument" for multiple universes. While this argument is not open to the objections previously noted, we show that, given certain highly (...) plausible assumptions about evidence and epistemic probability, the proposition which it treats as evidence cannot coherently be regarded as evidence for anything. This raises the question of whether to reject the assumptions or accept that such a proposition cannot be evidence. (shrink)

A characterization result of dilation in terms of positive and negative association admits an extremal counterexample, which we present together with a minor repair of the result. Dilation may be asymmetric whereas covariation itself is symmetric. Dilation is still characterized in terms of positive and negative covariation, however, once the event to be dilated has been specified.

Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. We demonstrate how plausibility (...) ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness. (shrink)

Pragmatism’s heartening recent revival (spearheaded by Richard Rorty’s bold intervention into analytic philosophy Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) has coalesced into a distinctive philosophical movement frequently referred to as ‘neopragmatism’. This movement interprets the very meaning of pragmatism as rejection of metaphysical commitments: our words do not primarily serve to represent non-linguistic entities, but are tools to achieve a range of human purposes. A particularly thorough and consistent version of this position is Huw Price’s global expressivism. We here critically (...) appraise Price’s understanding of a commitment to pragmatism as a rejection of metaphysics, and argue that such rejection is not as easy or desirable as Price claims. First we argue that Price’s global expressivism itself draws on significant metaphysical assumptions (a ‘word-world’ dualism, and a nominalism concerning the meaning of general terms). Then we seek to resolve neopragmatist anxieties about metaphysics by arguing that metaphysics is indispensable for pragmatist philosophizing insofar as it seeks ways for human beings to realise themselves through practices of understanding reality and their place in it. If, as we argue, metaphysics consists in a maximally general inquiry into the nature and structure of reality, to try to block it seems a puzzling exercise in epistemic self-harm. (shrink)

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which (...) other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time. (shrink)

Kant begins his Lectures on Pedagogy by stating, “[t]he human being is the only creature that must be educated” (Kant, 2007, 9:441), and he argues that it is through education that we can transform our initial “animal nature into human nature” (ibid. 2007, 9:441). Kant understands education as involving an ordered process of care, discipline, instruction and formation through enculturating, civilizing and moralizing (Formosa 2011). Further, Kant envisages that we should pursue as a species the “moral perfection” that is the (...) “final destiny of the human race” through education (Collins, 1997, 27:470; see Dean, 2014). However, to engage in this pursuit Kant believes that, through education and social change, we have to regulate our “animal nature” and counter the moral corruption of our species, which he calls the “radical innate evil in human nature (not any the less brought upon us by ourselves)” (Kant, 1998, 6:32). If humanity is to pursue its final destiny of moral perfection, then education will need to respond responsibly to the propensity to evil that is deeply rooted in us as finite and imperfect rational beings living in imperfect and at times even in morally corrupted social conditions. This paper outlines some of the relevant issues. (shrink)

There is a close systematic relationship between panentheism, as a metaphysical theory about the relation between God and the world, and transhumanism, the ethical demand to use the means of the applied sciences to enhance both human nature and the environment. This relationship between panentheism and transhumanism provides a ‘cosmic’ solution to the problem of evil: on panentheistic premises, the history of the world is the one infinite life of God, and we are part of the one infinite divine being. (...) We ourselves are therefore responsible for the future development of the life of the divine being. We should therefore use the means provided by the natural sciences to develop the history of the world in such a way that the existence of evil shall be overcome and shall no longer be part of the divine being in whom we move and live and have our being. The metaphysics of panentheism leads to the ethics of transhumanism. (shrink)

It is still a live question in epistemology and philosophy of science as to what exactly evidence is. In my view, evidence consists in experiences called “seemings.” This view is a version of the phenomenal conception of evidence, the position that evidence consists in nonfactive mental states with propositional content. This conception is opposed by sense-data theorists, disjunctivists, and those who think evidence consists in physical objects or publicly observable states of affairs—call it the courtroom conception of evidence. Thomas Kelly (...) has recently argued that the phenomenal conception cannot play all the roles evidence plays and is thus inadequate. Having first explained the nature of seemings, in this essay I utilize Kelly’s own understanding of the four major roles of evidence and argue that the phenomenal conception can play each one. Experience is a good candidate for evidence. (shrink)

The basing demand on doxastic justification is a widely held and highly intuitive dogma of contemporary epistemology. In Silva [2015, AJP], I argued that the dialectical significance of this dogma is severely limited by our lack of independent grounds for endorsing it. Oliveira [2015, AJP] sought to defend the basing demand on doxastic justification. Here I explain why Oliveira’s attempted defense of the basing demand misses its mark. I also briefly suggest that there is an alternative way of defending the (...) basing demand. The alternative way is reconciliatory: it shows that most epistemologists may have been right to insist on such a demand, but perhaps still wrong to treat it as a dialectically powerful tool in the assessment of certain substantive epistemological theories. (shrink)

Can trust evolve on the Internet between virtual strangers? Recently, Pettit answered this question in the negative. Focusing on trust in the sense of ‘dynamic, interactive, and trusting’ reliance on other people, he distinguishes between two forms of trust: primary trust rests on the belief that the other is trustworthy, while the more subtle secondary kind of trust is premised on the belief that the other cherishes one’s esteem, and will, therefore, reply to an act of trust in kind (‘trust-responsiveness’). (...) Based on this theory Pettit argues that trust between virtual strangers is impossible: they lack all evidence about one another, which prevents the imputation of trustworthiness and renders the reliance on trust-responsiveness ridiculous. I argue that this argument is flawed, both empirically and theoretically. In several virtual communities amazing acts of trust between pure virtuals have been observed. I propose that these can be explained as follows. On the one hand, social cues, reputation, reliance on third parties, and participation in (quasi-) institutions allow imputing trustworthiness to varying degrees. On the other, precisely trust-responsiveness is also relied upon, as a necessary supplement to primary trust. In virtual markets, esteem as a fair trader is coveted while it contributes to building up one’s reputation. In task groups, a hyperactive style of action may be adopted which amounts to assuming (not: inferring) trust. Trustors expect that their virtual co-workers will reply in kind while such an approach is to be considered the most appropriate in cyberspace. In non-task groups, finally, members often display intimacies while they are confident someone else ‘out there’ will return them. This is facilitated by the one-to-many, asynchronous mode of communication within mailing lists. (shrink)

Van Inwagen proposes that besides simples only living organisms exist as composite objects. This paper suggests expanding van Inwagen’s ontology by also accepting composite objects in the case that physical bonding occurs (plus some extra conditions). Such objects are not living organ-isms but rather physical bodies. They include (approximately) the complete realm of inanimate ordinary objects, like rocks and tables, as well as inanimate scientific objects, like atoms and mol-ecules, the latter filling the ontological gap between simples and organisms in (...) van Inwagen’s origi-nal picture. We thus propose a compositional pluralism claiming that composition arises if and on-ly if bonding or life occurs. (shrink)

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

In this article, I propose to integrate indigenous knowledges in the Philosophy for/with Children theory and practice. I make the claim that it is possible to treat indigenous knowledges, not only as topics for philosophical dialogues with children but as presuppositions of the philosophical activity itself within the Community of Inquiry. Such integration is important for at least three (3) reasons: First, recognizing indigenous ways of thinking and seeing the world informs us of other non-dominant forms of knowledges, methods to (...) produce knowledge and criteria to determine knowledge. Second, the dominance of western standards of producing and determining knowledge, especially in non-western societies, needs to be reduced, balanced and informed by local knowledges and experiences. And third, indigenous knowledges reinforce a culturally responsive P4wC that responds to the challenges arising in multicultural and ethnically diverse classrooms. There are two (2) possible intersections where such integration may take place, namely: a) Epistemology, where I claim that the integration of a “presentational epistemology” immanent in indigenous patterns of thinking provides a counterweight to Lipman’s strong adherence to analytic-representational epistemology, and b) Pedagogy, which takes shape in an “indigenized” Community of Inquiry that highlights the values of interconnectedness, situatedness and relationality. (shrink)

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept in climate change economics. This chapter explains the SCC and investigates it philosophically. As is widely acknowledged, any SCC calculation requires the analyst to make choices about the infamous topic of discount rates. But to understand the nature and role of discounting, one must understand how that concept—and indeed the SCC concept itself—is yoked to the concept of a value function, whose job is to take ways the world could be (...) across indefinite timespans and to rank them from better to worse. A great deal, therefore, turns on the details of the value function and on just what is meant by “better” and “worse.” This chapter seeks to explicate these and related issues, and then to situate them within the evolving landscape of federal climate policy in the United States. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of pedagogical authority as exercised in the Community of Inquiry, the method for facilitating Philosophy for Children (P4C). It argues that the teachers’ pedagogical authority in a Community of Inquiry is not predicated on their intellectual superiority or status. Rather it finds its legitimacy in their role as instigators of students’ thinking skills, which are assumed to be already possessed by the learners. This thesis is discussed in relation to Rancière’s concept of the dissociation of (...) the will and the intellect, which is treated here as conceptual complement to the existing interpretation of pedagogical authority as understood and practiced by scholars in the field of P4C. (shrink)

Sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests has been a persistent and widespread problem in the Church. Although more than 80 percent of victims have been boys, prior studies have rejected the idea that the abuse is related to homosexuality among priests. Available data show, however, that the proportion of homosexual men in the priesthood is correlated almost perfectly with the percentage of male victims and with the overall incidence of abuse. Data also show that while the incidence of abuse (...) is lower today than it was three decades ago, it has not declined as much as is commonly believed, and has recently begun to rise amid signs of episcopal complacency about procedures for the protection of children. (shrink)

I argue, contra Mohan Matthen, that at least some aesthetic pleasures arising from the appreciation of aesthetic features of artworks are what he calls ‘r-pleasures’ as opposed to ‘f-pleasures’—and moreover, that the paradigm aesthetic pleasure appears to be an r-pleasure on Matthen's terms. I then argue that talk of r- and f-pleasures does not distinguish different kinds, but two different features of pleasure; so this supposed distinction cannot be used to characterize a sui generis aesthetic pleasure.

This essay offers a reconstruction of Aristotle’s account of the voluntary in the Nicomachean Ethics, arguing that the voluntary grounds one notion of responsibility with two levels, and therefore both rational and non-rational animals are responsible for voluntary actions. Aristotle makes no distinction between causal and moral responsibility in the NE; rather, voluntariness and prohairesis form different bases for responsibility and make possible different levels of responsibility, but both levels of responsibility fall within the ethical sphere and are aptly appraised. (...) Important differences between the two levels remain. Animals and children are aptly appraised for direct voluntary actions. Conversely, only adults capable of prohairesis or rational choice are appraised for indirect voluntary actions—psychologically compelled actions that stem from character. Furthermore, while children and animals are responsible for actions, only adults casually contribute to the formation of their characters and thus are aptly appraised for character traits. (shrink)

In this essay, I describe my journey to Catholicism and explain one of the many reasons I became Catholic--namely, an argument from the canon of Scripture.

It is now widely accepted that a scientifically credible conception of human nature must reject the folkbiological idea of a fixed, inner essence that makes us human. We argue here that to understand human nature is to understand the plastic process of human development and the diversity it produces. Drawing on the framework of developmental systems theory and the idea of developmental niche construction we argue that human nature is not embodied in only one input to development, such as the (...) genome, and that it should not be confined to universal or typical human characteristics. Both similarities and certain classes of differences are explained by a human developmental system that reaches well out into the 'environment'. We point to a significant overlap between our account and the ‘Life History Trait Cluster’ account of Grant Ramsey, and defend the developmental systems account against the accusation that trying to encompass developmental plasticity and human diversity leads to an unmanageably complex account of human nature. (shrink)

There is a general presumption that epistemology does not have anything to do with wellbeing. In this paper I challenge these assumption, by examining the aftermath of the Gettier examples, the debate between internalism and externalism and the rise of virtue epistemology. In focusing on the epistemic agent as the locus of normativity, virtue epistemology allows one to ask questions about epistemic goods and their relationship to other kinds of good, including the good of the agent. Specifically it is argued (...) that emotion has a positive role to play in epistemology, an example from Aquinas is used to illustrate this and to illustrate the different kinds of good involved in cognition. (shrink)

We describe an approach to measuring biological information where ‘information’ is understood in the sense found in Francis Crick’s foundational contributions to molecular biology. Genes contain information in this sense, but so do epigenetic factors, as many biologists have recognized. The term ‘epigenetic’ is ambiguous, and we introduce a distinction between epigenetic and exogenetic inheritance to clarify one aspect of this ambiguity. These three heredity systems play complementary roles in supplying information for development. -/- We then consider the evolutionary significance (...) of the three inheritance systems. Whilst the genetic inheritance system was the key innovation in the evolution of heredity, in modern organisms the three systems each play important and complementary roles in heredity and evolution. -/- Our focus in the earlier part of the paper is on ‘proximate biology’, where information is a substantial causal factor that causes organisms to develop and causes offspring to resemble their parents. But much philosophical work has focused on information in ‘ultimate biology’. Ultimate information is a way of talking about the evolutionary design of the mechanisms of development and inheritance. We conclude by clarifying the relationship between the two. Ultimate information is not a causal factor that acts in development or heredity, but it can help to explain the evolution of proximate information, which is. (shrink)

This special issue of Games and Culture focuses on the intersection between video games and ethics. This introduction briefly sets out the key research questions in the research field and identifies trends in the articles included in this special issue.

In this article, I intend to underscore the importance of critical thinking in rendering invaluable positive contributions and impact within professional organizations in the developing world. I argue that critical thinking treated as a normative principle and balanced with a pragmatic orientation provides a rational framework for resolving conflicts that oftentimes ensue from the incoherence between Western-based organizational theories and the actual circumstances of a developing country. In order to optimize the benefits of critical thinking, I also argue that it (...) should not be expected only among leaders and managers, but also and more importantly, among organizational members and associates. It is for this reason that I introduce Matthew Lipman’s Community of Inquiry as a model for cultivating critical thinking within professional environments. (shrink)

Commonsense reasoning about the physical world, as exemplified by "Iron sinks in water" or "If a ball is dropped it gains speed," will be indispensable in future programs. We argue that to make such predictions (namely, envisioning), programs should use abstract entities (such as the gravitational field), principles (such as the principle of superposition), and laws (such as the conservation of energy) of physics for representation and reasoning. These arguments are in accord with a recent study in physics instruction where (...) expert problem solving is related to the construction of physical representations that contain fictitious, imagined entities such as forces and momenta (Larkin 1983). We give several examples showing the power of physical representations. (shrink)

A brief introduction to the life and work of William Paley, including a discussion of the structure of his famous design argument.

A brief introduction to the life and key work of Rudolf Carnap with special attention to his work on inductive logic.

This paper investigates whether practical interests affect knowledge attributions in cases of testimony. It is argued that stakes impact testimonial knowledge attributions by increasing or decreasing the requirements for hearers to trust speakers and thereby gain the epistemic right to acquire knowledge via testimony. Standard, i.e. invariantist, reductionism and non-reductionism fail to provide a plausible account of testimony that is stakes sensitive, while non- invariantist versions of both traditional accounts can remedy this deficiency. Support for this conceptual analysis of stakes (...) is found through a review of the experimental philosophy literature on stakes effects on knowledge attribution. Finally, a diagnosis is offered for what is needed to provide a more robust defense of the paper’s primary claims in terms of future experimental study. (shrink)

Our computational metaphysics group describes its use of automated reasoning tools to study Leibniz’s theory of concepts. We start with a reconstruction of Leibniz’s theory within the theory of abstract objects (henceforth ‘object theory’). Leibniz’s theory of concepts, under this reconstruction, has a non-modal algebra of concepts, a concept-containment theory of truth, and a modal metaphysics of complete individual concepts. We show how the object-theoretic reconstruction of these components of Leibniz’s theory can be represented for investigation by means of automated (...) theorem provers and finite model builders. The fundamental theorem of Leibniz’s theory is derived using these tools. (shrink)

Adopting a materialist approach to the mind has far reaching implications for many presuppositions regarding the properties of the brain, including those that have traditionally been consigned to “the mental” aspect of human being. One such presupposition is the conception of the disembodied self. In this article we aim to account for the self as a material entity, in that it is wholly the result of the physiological functioning of the embodied brain. Furthermore, we attempt to account for the structure (...) of the self by invoking the logic of the narrative. While our conception of narrative selfhood incorporates the work of both Freud and Dennett, we offer a critique of these two theorists and then proceed to amend their theories by means of complexity theory. We argue that the self can be characterised as a complex system, which allows us to account for the structure of the wholly material self. (shrink)

What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and then look back to the writings or Søren Kierkegaard to provide a solution to the debate. In this project I investigate the claims of semi-compatibilism and argue that while its proponents have identified a fundamental question concerning free will and moral responsibility—namely, that the agential properties necessary for (...) moral responsibility ascriptions are found in scenarios where the agent acts on her own as opposed to her action resulting from freedom undermining external causes such as manipulation, phobias, etc.—they have failed to show that the freedom-relevant agential properties identified in those actual-sequence scenarios are compatible with causal determinism. My argument is that only a voluntarist-libertarian theory can adequately account for the kinds of cases that the semicompatibilist identify. I argue that there are three freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person: a hierarchical understanding of human desires [specifically and mental states generally], an incompatibilist (non-deterministic) understanding of human action, and a historical understanding of character development. The ability to reflect critically about one’s own desires and emotions, and thus to have a kind of self-knowledge and understanding with regard to the springs of one’s own actions, is required to make it possible for the agent to be the “source” of her own actions and character. The non-deterministic understanding of human action is needed for a similar reason: if determinism is true, then every action a person performs can be ultimately traced to and exhaustively explained in terms of factors outside the agent’s control, thus making the agent’s responsibility for his actions an illusion. And finally,human nature must be such that, over time, one’s choices leave a dispositional residue self-understanding and motivation in the person’s self, out of which, in mature understanding and motivation, the person acts as a fully responsible agent. (shrink)

Most of us intuitively take discrimination based on gender or ethnicity to be impermissible because we have a right to be treated on the basis of merit and capacity rather than e.g. ethnicity or gender. I call this suggestion the Impermissibility Account. I argue that, despite how the Impermissibility Account seems intuitive to most of us with a humanist outlook, it is indefensible. I show that well-informed discrimination can sometimes be permissible, and even morally required, meaning we cannot have a (...) strict right not to be discriminated against. I then propose an alternative and more plausible account which I call the Fairness and Externalities Account, arguing that acts of discrimination are wrong partly because they are unfair and partly because they create harmful externalities which—analogously to pollution—there is a collective responsibility to minimize. Both of these factors are however defeasible, meaning that if the Fairness and Externalities Account is correct, then discrimination is sometimes permissible. These results are counterintuitive, and suggest that the ethics of discrimination requires further attention. (shrink)