Conceptualizing intelligence in its biological context, as the expression of manifold adaptations, compels a rethinking of measuring this characteristic in humans, relying also on animal studies of analogous skills. Mental manipulation, as an extension of object manipulation, provides a continuous, biologically based concept for studying G as it pertains to individual differences in humans and other species.

In a book that asks, 'Is there an ethics of memory?' Avishai Margalit addresses a separate, perhaps more pressing, set of concerns.

When is political compromise acceptable--and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may? What if a rotten compromise is politically necessary? Compromise is a great political virtue, especially for the sake of peace. But, as Avishai Margalit argues, there are moral limits to acceptable compromise even for peace. But just what are those limits? At what point does peace secured with compromise become unjust? Focusing attention on vitally important questions that have received surprisingly little (...) attention, Margalit argues that we should be concerned not only with what makes a just war, but also with what kind of compromise allows for a just peace. Examining a wide range of examples, including the Munich Agreement, the Yalta Conference, and Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, Margalit provides a searching examination of the nature of political compromise in its various forms. Combining philosophy, politics, and history, and written in a vivid and accessible style, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises is full of surprising new insights about war, peace, justice, and sectarianism. (shrink)

Sociological studies of women's experiences with conservative religions are typically framed by a paradox that ponders women's complicity. The prevailing view associates agency with strategic subjects who use religion to further extra-religious ends and pays little attention to the cultural and institutional contexts that shape “compliance.” This paper suggests an alternative framing. Rather than asking why women comply, I examine agency as religious conduct and religiosity as a constructed status. Drawing on a study that examined how orthodox Jewish Israeli women (...) observe, negotiate, and make sense of regulations of marital sexuality, this paper explains religious women's agency as religious conduct, or the “doing” of religion. I demonstrate that doing religion is associated with a search for authentic religious subjecthood and that religiosity is shaped in accordance with the logics of one's religion, and in the context of controlling messages about threatened symbolic boundaries and cultural Others. (shrink)

‘Hoe dat ook moge zijn, één ding is duidelijk: welke kenmerken van de Europese cultuur worden benadrukt, hangt af van datgene waarmee Europa wordt gecontrasteerd. Dus mijn eerste punt is: probeer niet Europa te definiëren met behulp van positieve begrippen, maar met behulp van cultuurvijandige begrippen, door het te contrasteren met de vijand.Ik heb weinig toe te voegen ter verduidelijking van het begrip ‘‘cultuur’’, maar ik zou wel iets willen toevoegen dat ontbreekt in de gangbare beschrijvingen van cultuurkenmerken, een kenmerk (...) dat ik uiterst relevant acht voor de omschrijving van de Europese cultuur. In de Europese cultuur hebben gemeenschappelijke herinneringen, met name aan de twee wereldoorlogen, een grote rol gespeeld in de totstandkoming van de cultuur. Ik zou zelfs willen beweren dat Europa als culturele eenheid meer blijk geeft van collectieve herinneringen dan van collectieve normen en waarden.’. (shrink)

Het woord occidentalisme staat voor een beeld van het Westen gezien door de ogen van zijn vijanden. Oriëntalisme zoals Edward Said het ziet is een negatieve voorstelling die gegeven wordt van Arabieren en andere mensen in de Oriënt. Een element in het occidentalisme is de afkeer van de corrupte, verderfelijke steden van het Westen. Een ander element is de religieuze afkeer van afgoderij in het Westen, een element dat verband houdt met de politieke islam. Volgens ideologen van de politieke islam (...) wordt in de VS de ware God vervangen door de afgod materialisme. Dit zet medestanders aan tot actie. 'Wat deze mensen zich hebben voorgenomen, is niet alleen de islam uit te breiden naar het Westen maar ook de islamitische wereld te bevrijden van het afgodische Westen'. Osama bin Laden werkte door actie aan een revolutie voor de onderworpenen. Een werkzaam propagandistisch element dat door Bin Laden wordt verspreid, is occidentalistisch. In revolutionaire situaties binnen islamitische landen kan een vorm van politieke islam met een krachtig occidentalistisch beeld een belangrijke rol spelen. (shrink)

‘The Russian Revolution and the National Socialist ascendancy in Germany are the two most important sources of evidence of moral philosophy in our time, as the French Revolution was for Hegel and Marx, and later to Tocqueville and for Mill. Although both revolutions produced, both in intention and in effect, a triumph on a gigantic scale, there are often remarked differences between the evil effects planned and achieved.’ This is an observation made by Stuart Hampshire, a keen philosophical connoisseur of (...) the 20th century. (shrink)

__Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging Schools_ brings together the collective wisdom of more than thirty experts from a variety of fields to show how school leaders can create communities that support the social, emotional, and academic needs of all students._ It offers an essential guide for making sense of the myriad evidence‐based frameworks, resources, and tools available to create a continuous improvement system. Chapters illustrate how leaders can leverage the power of school-based teams to assess the needs of students in their (...) school and select appropriate interventions across a wide variety of domains, including social and emotional learning, trauma, restorative practices, cultural responsiveness, and student and family engagement. Filled with recommendations gleaned from research and ongoing work in every US state and territory, _Creating Safe, Equitable, Engaging Schools_ is a critical resource for understanding and adopting evidence-based practices and making programmatic decisions to ensure the ideal conditions for learning, growth, and development. (shrink)

Door de ultieme vernedering van hun slachtoffers voor zij geliquideerd werden wilden de nazi's afstand creëren, om geen medelijden met de slachtoffers te laten opkomen. De combinatie van vernedering en industrële vernietiging heeft er wezenlijk toe bijgedragen dat het debat rond de holocaust nog steeds voortduurt.

De drie historische godsdiensten jodendom, christendom en islam putten hun traditie uit normatieve teksten, die het herinneren hoog in het vaandel hebben staan. De herinnering moet het vergeten onmogelijk maken, maar dat bergt het gevaar in zich dat er ook geen vergeving mogelijk is.

El autor defiende una versión moderada de la teología política y moral. En su opinión, la autoridad y la soberanía tienen un contenido independiente del marco religioso teológico, aunque estos conceptos encajen en una imagen teológica del mundo. Encajar en una imagen es confundir un modelo de realidad con la propia realidad, sin ser consciente de ello. Por tanto, lo que se plantea hacer el autor es analizar una idea de la autoridad como si estuviera representada por una imagen religiosa. (...) Se trata ciertamente de una imagen, no de la imagen. Es la imagen de Dios como el ser supremo que toma decisiones sin que Él sea el deliberador. El autor la denomina una imagen decisionista de Dios. Es la genealogía de la autoridad la que capta su interés. Avanza su genealogía sobre la idea de la autoridad en tres fases. Primero, trata de la autoridad de Dios. Segundo, de la autoridad de los mensajeros de la palabra de Dios. Finalmente, en tercer lugar, trata de la autoridad de la palabra de Dios, concretamente de la autoridad de las Escrituras. (shrink)

Abstract: Social justice concerns us on two counts: One, what is social justice? Two, given that we know the answer to one, then the question is: how can social justice be implemented? Answering the first question requires hitting the right balance between two values: liberty and equality. My concern here, however, is with the second question, the question of implementation rather than with what social justice consists of. I assume that the right balance between liberty and equality is somehow a (...) given. To implement the structural changes that a just society requires calls for a historical agent that can bring about such changes. The working class was a good candidate to be such a historical agent. The working class was suitable for this historical task because it was the class that had the most to gain from a just society and it was a very large class of people. The working class was singled out for this task not for being a particularly virtuous class but by being the class that had the most to gain from a change in the status quo. But the working class is rapidly disappearing; in the developed countries, it has shrunk considerably. Thus, the implementation of social justice is now left without an effective historical agent to carry it through. (shrink)

Causal independence of the simultaneous positions and momenta of two distinguishable particles in nonrelativistic physics and causal independence of events in two relatively spacelike regions of space-time in relativity are analyzed and discussed. This review paper formulates causal independence in a general and operational way and summarizes the inferences drawn from it in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, classical relativistic point mechanics, quantum field theory, and classical field theory. Special attention is given to the open question of the relationship between local independence (...) and commutativity in quantum field theory. (shrink)

a single life-span. Philosophers, then, do not see more or know more, and they do not see less or know less. They aim to see less detail and more of the abstract. Their details, if you like, are abstractions. Walking on God’s earth as a pedestrian, as a farmer working his fields or as a passer-by, one’s picture of one’s surroundings is every bit as intelligent as that of the pilot riding the sky. The views of the field are radically (...) different, however. One sees only a specific field and in all lively detail: the exact pattern of the land, or even the exact outline of a given leaf, grasshopper, grain of sand even. Acquaintance with minute detail is not without its price: details may stand in the way of conjuring the big picture. It may be difficult to compare whichever field one happens to be in with far off fields, with respect to their size or shape or any other quality. One may wish to inquire if far off fields were already planted, harvested, or even if they exist. A pedestrian may find it hard or even impossible to do so. The pedestrian view contains fine points that the pilot’s map never would, but it does not necessarily contain more information, for it lacks the general context. After all, there are only so many items that one can observe and account for at a single glance, a single map, a single book, a single life-span. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the question of whether an individual has a moral obligation to sign a protest petition which has been initiated on moral grounds. It is argued that there is such an obligation when the petition represents a viewpoint with which one broadly agrees. This is a general dury which may lapse with changed circumstances or which may be redeemed by some alternative action. It is argued that the duty to initiate a protest petition is, on (...) the other hand, supererogatory as far as an individual is concerned, but may be a duty for a community or group. Finally it is argued that protest petitions are essentially protests, not against evil deeds as such, but against evil deeds done in one's own name, and are therefore a vital aspect of democracy. (shrink)