Parenting our biological children is a centrally important matter, but how, if it all, can it be justified? According to a contemporary influential line of thinking, the acquisition by parents of a moral right to parent their biological children should be grounded by appeal to the value of the intimate emotional relationship that gestation facilitates between a newborn and a gestational procreator. I evaluate two arguments in defence of this proposal and argue that both are unconvincing.

While the objects of olfaction are intuitively individuated by reference to the ordinary objects from which they arise, this intuition does not accurately capture the complex nature of smells. Smells are neither ordinary three-dimensional objects, nor Platonic vapors, nor odors. Rather, smells are the molecular structures of chemical compounds within odor plumes. Molecular Structure Theory is offered as an account of smells, which can explain the nature of the external object of olfactory perception, what we experience as olfactory objects, and (...) what determines the olfactory quality of smells by which we can demarcate the spatiotemporal boundaries of smells. (shrink)

People loved for their beauty and cheerfulness are not loved as irreplaceable, yet people loved for “what their souls are made of” are. Or so literary romance implies; leading philosophical accounts, however, deny the distinction, holding that reasons for love either do not exist or do not include the beloved’s distinguishing features. In this, I argue, they deny an essential species of love. To account for it while preserving the beloved’s irreplaceability, I defend a model of agency on which people (...) can love each other for identities still being created, through a kind of mutual improvisation. (shrink)

Qualitative-consciousness arises at the sensory level of olfactory processing and pervades our experience of smells to the extent that qualitative character is maintained whenever we are aware of undergoing an olfactory experience. Building upon the distinction between Access and Phenomenal Consciousness the paper offers a nuanced distinction between Awareness and Qualitative-consciousness that is applicable to olfaction in a manner that is conceptual precise and empirically viable. Mounting empirical research is offered substantiating the applicability of the distinction to olfaction and showing (...) that olfactory qualitative-consciousness can occur without awareness, but any olfactory state that we are aware of being in is always qualitative. Evidence that olfactory sensory states have a qualitatively character in the absence of awareness derives from research on mate selection, the selection of social preference for social interaction and acquaintances, as well as the role of olfactory deficits in causing affective disorders. Furthermore, the conservation of secondary processing measures of olfactory valence during olfactory imagery experiments provides verification that olfactory awareness is always qualitatively conscious—all olfactory consciousness smells phenomenal. (shrink)

Mental Imagery, whereby we experience aspect of a perceptual scene or perceptual object in the absence of direct sensory stimulation is ubiquitous. Often the existence of mental imagery is demonstrated by asking one’s reader to volitionally generate a visual object, such as closing ones eyes and imagining an apple. However, mental imagery also arises in auditory, tactile, interoceptive, and olfactory cases. A number of influential philosophical theories have attempted to explain mental imagery in terms of belief-based forms of representation using (...) the Dependence Thesis, dependence upon means of access, such as enactivism, or in terms of the similarity of content with perceptual processing. The focus of this paper concerns the later approach and in particular assessing if Nanay’s promissory note that his theory is applicable to modalities other than vision, such as smell, seems likely to be of theoretical tender. The thesis argued for in this paper is that olfactory imagery exists and is best accounted for by considering it as a type of perceptual processing with a unique representational format relative to the olfactory perceptual modality. The paper concludes by summarizing the applicability of Nanay’s theory of mental imagery for olfaction and suggests some further issues that arise when transitioning to multi-modal mental imagery. (shrink)

While many theories of well-being are able to capture some of our central intuitions about well-being, e.g. avoiding alienation worries, they typically do so at the cost of not being able to capture others, e.g. explaining deprivation. However, both of these intuitions are important and any comprehensive theory of well-being ought to attempt to strike the best balance in responding to both concerns. In light of this, I develop and defend a theory of well-being which holds that our well-being depends, (...) in part, on the nature of our well-being qua person, a class whose members are defined by their possessing certain cognitive and volitional capacities including those capacities constitutive of autonomy. I argue that this theory of well-being is able to address concerns about alienation and deprivation, along with capturing the importance of autonomy to well-being, better than many popular subjective and objective theories of well-being. (shrink)

According to the Balancing View of Ought, we ought to perform an action if and only if performing the action is most strongly supported by the balance of our reasons. The Balancing View faces the objection from exclusionary reasons, which are second-order reasons not to act for certain other reasons. According to Joseph Raz, the existence of exclusionary reasons undermines the Balancing View: a reason might tip the balance in favour of performing an act but at the same time be (...) excluded by an undefeated second-order reason, in which case one ought not conform to the balance of reasons. I argue that the Balancing View can be defended against this objection and that the existence of exclusionary reasons is compatible with the Balancing View. (shrink)

The olfactory system processes smells in a structural manner that is unlike the composition of thoughts or language, suggesting that some of the content of our olfactory experiences are represented in a format that does not involve concepts. Consequently, formative non-conceptual content is offered as an alternative theory of non-conceptual content according to which the difference between conceptual and non-conceptual states is simply a matter of the format of their structural parts and relations within a system of representations. Aside from (...) the theoretical merits of rethinking the quagmire of a debate regarding non-conceptual content as a format issue, studying olfaction shows that formative non-conceptual content is empirically plausible. (shrink)

The unusually loyal supporters of Donald Trump are often described as a cult. How can we understand this extreme phenomenon in U.S. politics? We develop theoretical expectations and use the Big Five personality dimensions to investigate whether Trump's most loyal supporters share personality characteristics that might make them inclined to cult-like support. We find that (1) Trump's supporters share high levels of Conscientiousness; (2) this is substantively and statistically distinguishable from the commonly identified association between Conscientiousness and Conservatism; and (3) (...) the association is highly robust to a range of sensitivity tests. Our main findings are robust across two surveys. Study 1 is an online survey conducted in 2021 designed specifically for this project. Study 2 is the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES). (shrink)

“Sophisticated” theories of welfare face two potentially devastating criticisms. They are based upon two claims: that theories of welfare should be tested for what they imply about newborn infants and that even if a theory of welfare is intended to apply only to adults, we might still have sufficient reason to reject it because it implies an implausible divergence between adult and neonatal welfare. It has been argued we ought reject sophisticated theories of welfare because they have significantly counterintuitive implications (...) about neonatal welfare and because they imply an implausible divergence between the welfare of adults and that of newborns. I argue against both claims. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A broad set of public policy debates concern the limits of humanity’s control over nature. Attitudes towards such topics are not well explained by the standard 2-dimensional political model favored by political scientists of i) a left/right economic spectrum and ii) a liberal/authoritarian social spectrum. I pose a new, orthogonal, political spectrum to fill the void. It is a spectrum of value held for, on the one hand, nature, and on the other, technological progress. This harks back to the 18th (...) Century Enlightenment and Romanticism, but manifests again and again, including in recent debates about human enhancement biotechnology. (shrink)

In this paper we motivate the ‘principles of trust’, chance-credence principles that are strictly stronger than the New Principle yet strictly weaker than the Principal Principle, and argue, by proving some limitative results, that the principles of trust conflict with Humean Supervenience.

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim‐blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susceptible to such criticisms. In this form, character education is (...) education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing. (shrink)

Digital duplicates reduce the scarcity of individuals and thus may impact their instrumental and intrinsic value. I here expand upon this idea by introducing the notion of collective scarcity, which pertains to the limitations faced by social groups in maintaining their size, cohesion, and function.

This paper makes explicit the way in which many theorists of the epistemology of uncertainty, or formal epistemologists, are committed to a version of noncognitivism—one about thoughts that something is likely. It does so by drawing an analogy with metaethical noncognitivism. I explore the degree to which the motivations for both views are similar and how both views have to grapple with the Frege‐Geach Problem about complex thoughts. The major upshot of recognizing this noncognitivism is that it presents challenges and (...) opportunities not only in the philosophy of mind and language but also in epistemology itself. I present some examples where attention to the implicit noncognitivism in formal epistemology has affected or should affect epistemological theory. And I suggest that it is likely that further examples of this sort will arise. (shrink)

This paper reveals the original teaching from Sinai that Rosenzweig claims to have discovered while translating Exodus 3 with Martin Buber, and why he viewed this discovery as vindicating their decision to translate the Tetragrammaton in the way they did. A report of this discovery is to be found, I show, in the exchange between Buber and Rosenzweig during their translation of Exodus, as recorded in the Working Papers (Arbeitspapiere). The significance of Rosenzweig’s account of the divine name only becomes (...) fully clear, however, when viewed against the background of the revelation of the divine name in The Star of Redemption. (shrink)

Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where transactors’ consent to a transaction is morally valid, it is (...) also morally transformative and overrides distributive unfairness’s pro tanto wrong. Thus, wrongful exploitation requires morally invalid consent. (shrink)

This essay presents a systematic reconstruction of the problem of divine providence in Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery. I argue that reading Thoughts and Sentiments in this frame allows interpreters to take Cugoano at his word without compromising on the religious and political sophistication of his argument. Cugoano, I show, develops an innovative account of providence’s relationship to slavery by engaging both contemporary apologies for slavery and abolitionist arguments for divine retribution. His theory of (...) providence accounts for slavery as a social inequality as well as the difficulty of making restitution for modern slavery. (shrink)

In this paper, I will critique Paul Draper’s recent model of God’s motivational structure, according to which God can make hard choices. I will argue that this model illegitimately treats value in a purely teleological way, as something to be promoted. Following T.M. Scanlon’s work on value theory, when we consider the fact that value is to be respected rather than merely promoted, this realization will significantly foreclose on the possible cases in which hard choices can conceivably be made by (...) God. Most importantly, I challenge the idea that God can face hard choices between aesthetic and moral value in the way Draper suggests. (shrink)

Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) discuss the ethical concerns associated with employing what they term conversational artificial intelligence as therapist substitutes. Given their apprehensions, they...

Recently, extremist ‘populist’ parties have succeeded in obtaining large enough democratic electoral mandates both to legally make substantive changes to the law and constitution and to legally eliminate avenues to challenge their control over the government. Extremists place committed liberal democrats in an awkward position as they work to legally revolutionize their constitutions and turn them into ‘illiberal democracies’. This article analyses political responses to this problem. It argues that the twin phenomena of legal revolution and illiberal democracy reveal a (...) latent tension between the constitutional commitments to democracy and liberalism, that is, the equal chance to have one’s political goals enacted into law and individual basic rights. Political extremists make the latent tension real when they use the procedures of democratic legal change to abrogate constitutional commitments to liberalism, among other things. Although the two commitments normally coexist side by side, exceptional times raise an existential dilemma for liberal democracies: is it constitutional to democratically amend liberalism out of the constitution? After analysing the moral legitimacy of both the democratic and liberal arguments, this article concludes that liberal constitutionalism is constitutive of genuine democracy. In other words, it is unconstitutional to abrogate basic liberal commitments and it is legitimate to adopt constitutional mechanisms to guarantee liberalism – even if it means constraining democracy to do so. This article then situates ‘constrained democracy’ within the liberal current as a way to conceive of and respond to this pressing problem. It concludes by discussing four constitutional mechanisms – inspired by the German Grundgesetz – to guarantee liberalism: unambiguous lexically prior commitment to liberalism, limits on negative majorities, the eternity clause and party bans. It concludes that constrained democracy is an important constitutional guarantee of liberal democracy and that the four mechanisms, among others, are essential to enact constrained democracy. (shrink)

This chapter assesses theories of the nature of personal love in Anglophone philosophy from the last two decades, sketching a case for pluralism. After rejecting arationalist views as failing to accommodate cases in which love is irrational, and contemporary quality views as giving love the wrong kind of reason, it argues that other theories only account for different subsets of what a complete theory of love should explain. It therefore concludes that while love always consists in valuing someone as a (...) particular individual, there are multiple ways of doing this, corresponding to multiple kinds of love. (shrink)

This article seeks to understand the origins of the Soviet concept of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’, a diagnostic category that was used to imprison political dissidents in the post-WWII era. It focuses on the 1920s and 1930s, a period when Soviet psychiatrists attempted to find ways to diagnose schizophrenia at its earliest stages. The new Soviet state supported these efforts, funding new institutions where clinicians encountered types of patients they had not previously studied. Conceptual disagreements arose about what symptoms could be used (...) to diagnose schizophrenia, and how it could be differentiated from other ‘borderline’ mental disorders such as neurosis and psychopathy. Several research groups used their findings to propose new clinical concepts, including ‘mild schizophrenia’ and sluggish schizophrenia. By the early 1930s Soviet psychiatrists no longer shared a basic consensus about schizophrenia. At the same time, the priorities of the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin ceased to support preventative psychiatry. The result was a 1936 ‘discussion’ at which the concept of mild schizophrenia was criticized and sluggish schizophrenia was held up as a model for how the discipline should develop in the future. (shrink)

Benjamin Barber is one of America's preeminent political theorists. He has been a significant voice in the continuing debate about the nature and role of democracy in the contemporary world. A Passion for Democracy collects twenty of his most important writings on American democracy. Together they refine his distinctive position in democratic theory. Barber's conception of "strong democracy" contrasts with traditional concepts of "liberal democracy," especially in its emphasis on citizen participation in central issues of public debate. These essays (...) critique the "thin representation" of liberal democracy and buttress the arguments presented in Barber's twelve books, most recently in his well-received Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Re-shaping the World. In these pieces, Barber argues for participatory democracy without dependence on abstract metaphysical foundations, and he stresses the relationship among democracy and civil society, civic education, and culture. A Passion for Democracy is divided into four sections. In the first, "American Theory: Democracy, Liberalism, and Rights," Barber addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second section, "American Practice: Leadership, Citizenship, and Censorship" provide a "strong democracy" critique of American democratic practice. "Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship" applies Barber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay "America Skips School." The final section, "Democracy and Technology: Endless Frontier or End of Democracy?" provides glimpses into a future that technology alone cannot secure for democracy. In his preface, Barber writes: "In these essays... I have been hard on my country. Like most ardent democrats, I want more for it than it has achieved, despite the fact that it has achieved more than most people have dared to want." This wide-ranging collection displays not only his passion for democracy, but also his unique perspective on issues of abiding importance for the democratic process. (shrink)

“I can smell you”—spoken as a factive statement, it is jarring and if uttered to a stranger it seems transgressive. Telling someone you see them generates a sense of affirming their identity, but your smell is private. Perhaps smell isn’t the lead sense, but what I hope to make clear throughout this chapter is that our sense of smell allows us to perceive aspects of our own and other’s identity. The chapter aims to show that our unconscious perception of the (...) smell of ourselves and others partially constitutes the foundations for our sense of self. We are immersed within an invisible sea of odourous chemical currents, some derived from our environment with its everyday flux of objects while other odourous plumes derive from the humanity encompassing us. People have a rich bouquet of smells generated from the volatile chemical compounds emanating from them, including their bodily odours (BO), their adorned perfumes, and associated environmental smells from their abode hitchhiking on their person. As individuals we have a smell that is composed from these ranges of odours that allows us to recognize ourselves as an olfactory entity distinct from someone else’s BO bouquet. However, if forced to introspectively report our own smell we would be befuddled. We aren’t often aware of smelling ourselves (unless we are worried about stinking), and we have trouble recollecting the last time we volitionally engaged in exploratorily sniffing someone else. Thus, establishing a weak constitution relation between smelling and our sense of self is challenging. What will need to be revealed is something that escapes our daily awareness and introspective access, that is, that we are continually perceiving our own and other people’s smells. Moreover, these qualitative states occur outside of conscious awareness and yet generate an underlying aspect of our sense of self. Aside from jostling our intuitions about the foundations of our sense of self the evidence surveyed might also require reconceptualizing the conscious versus unconscious distinction in accommodating the nature of our olfactory self and other smelling. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized the importance of liberty in Milton's early prose, but they tend to center their analysis on republicanism. Although he would go on to express republicanism, Milton's early tracts tie liberty to English political and legal traditions rather than classical ones. Milton, in his early tracts, utilizes the language of the ancient constitution and the common law as he centers liberty on the property and bodies of English citizens, thus framing liberty in distinctly English terms. Additionally, Milton's (...) early prose accepts the power of the monarch, revealing Milton's initial commitment to the existing political structure. (shrink)

This unique Handbook provides a sophisticated, scholarly overview of the most advanced thought regarding the idea of life after death. Its comprehensive coverage encompasses historical, religious, philosophical and scientific thinking. Starting with an overview of ancient thought on the topic, The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife examines in detail the philosophical coherence of the main traditional notions of the nature of the afterlife including heaven, hell, purgatory and rebirth. In addition (and breaking with traditional conceptions) it also explores the most (...) recent exciting advance – digital models. Later sections include analysis of various possible metaphysical accounts that might make sense of the afterlife (including substance dualism, emergent dualism and materialism) and the science of near death experiences as well as the links between human psychology and our attitude to the afterlife. Key features: • Grounded in the most advanced philosophical, theological and scientific thinking • Contributions by eminent scholars from the world’s top universities • Balanced treatment of fundamental issues that are relevant to everyone • Diverse approaches ranging from the religious to the scientific, from the optimistic to the pessimistic • A major section on the meaning of the afterlife which includes chapters on fear, purpose, evil, and issues regarding identity The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife is essential reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students researching attitudes to and effects of beliefs about death and life after death from philosophical, historical, religious, psychological and scientific perspectives. (shrink)

Why should you inquire for yourself as a novice in a domain of inquiry when, for most questions within most domains, there are established experts to consult instead? In the face of this question, recent discussants of “autonomous-yet-novice” inquiry have sought to defend its epistemic value for the inquirer. Here I argue that autonomous-yet-novice inquiry can also be epistemically beneficial for agents other than the inquirer herself. Paradigm cases are those in which one agent improves her zetetic skills or virtues (...) through an encounter or interaction with a more skillful or virtuous autonomous-yet-novice inquirer. (shrink)

This article compares two versions of a story about a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Sgra tshad pa Rin chen rnam rgyal, who engages in sexual intercourse with a laywoman. The authors of these two narratives, dating from the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, each provide a different rationale for the monk’s behavior. In the earlier telling, Rin chen rnam rgyal is said to have “eased the suffering” of a “lust-crazed” woman, conducting himself virtuously, as a bodhisattva. In the later telling, the monk (...) is forcibly seduced by his patron and he adheres to a provision found in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, which specifies that the usual punishment intended for a Vinaya transgression of sexual intercourse—loss of communion from the order—may be commuted if the act has not been concealed from others. This article focuses on the transformation of the story and proposes that its changes contribute to the author’s wider commentary on strict Vinaya observance as an element of Buddhist monastic exemplarity. (shrink)

For many Christian ethicists the language of individualism serves as a philosophical short-hand for an atomistic and anti-social existence which refuses the invitation of a common life with others. Is this negative description deserved? This article undertakes a close reading of the categories of the individual and the person in order to formulate a theologically affirmative account of certain liberal strands of social and political individualism. In an effort to ground this project, dialogue is initiated with the Quaker theological tradition. (...) Through a close engagement with early Quaker accounts of community, selfhood and conversion, the discussion retrieves a social and teleological model of individuality which challenges key suppositions of individualism’s contemporary critics. This article concludes by considering ways in which Quaker formations of the individual can assist the Church in the task of faithfully engaging with liberal societies. (shrink)

Throughout his theological career Stanley Hauerwas has struggled to maintain a demarcation between liberal and Christian ethics. Is such a separation theologically defensible? In an effort to deconstruct Hauerwas’s hostility to liberalism through Hauerwasian categories, the following article examines areas of resemblance between liberal and Hauerwasian ethics. Through a comparative reading of the liberalisms of J. S. Mill (1806–1873) and E. M. Forster (1879–1970), the following argument retrieves a neglected form of liberal politics which in many respects conforms to the (...) structure of Hauerwas’s radical description of Christian discipleship. Instead of understanding the Church as an isolated colony embattled against non-Christian culture, Mill and Forster challenge Hauerwas to consider the liberal polity as both the child and responsibility of the Church. (shrink)

Cathryn Vasseleu _Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty_ London: Routledge, 1997 ISBN 041514233 (hbk) 0415142741 (pbk) 157 pp.

Thinking in Public examines the ambivalence that public political life and the figure of the intellectual provoked in the generation of European Jewish thinkers born around 1900. By comparing Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Leo Strauss, Wurgaft offers a new perspective on the relationship between philosophers and politics.

Summary The study used group discussions and a documentary method to investigate which micro-processes at the nexus of family, peer group, and school encouraged and discouraged seventh-grade girls' involvement in club sports, and what collective orientations accompanied these processes. Based on reconstructed micro-processes and orientations, two selected groups of girls in intermediate and upper secondary school were compared to determine how involvement in club sports differed by school type. One result was that the upper secondary school students were part of (...) several social reference groups with a sports orientation simultaneously, whereas the intermediate secondary school students were part of fewer social reference groups overall, and the groups they were part of tended to have other orientations than sports. The upper secondary students benefited during their childhood and preteen years from interactions among social reference groups that were conducive to club sports involvement, whereas intermediate secondary students were exposed to interactions that inhibited their involvement in sports. This inhibiting effect results from a lack of family influences, negative sports experiences in school, and in particular the high significance of peer groups that pursue other interests having little to do with club sports. (shrink)

At least two distinct modeling frameworks contribute to the view that mind and brain are Bayesian: Bayesian Rational Analysis (BRA) and Hierarchical Predictive Coding (HPC). What is the relative contribution of each, and how exactly do they relate? In order to answer this question, we compare the way in which these two modeling frameworks address different levels of analysis within Marr’s tripartite conception of explanation in cognitive science. Whereas BRA answers questions at the computational level only, many HPC-theorists answer questions (...) at the computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels simultaneously. Given that all three levels of analysis need to be addressed in order to explain a behavioral or cognitive phenomenon, HPC seems to deliver more complete explanations. Nevertheless, BRA is well-suited for providing a solution to the dark room problem, a major theoretical obstacle for HPC. A combination of the two approaches also combines the benefits of an embodied-externalistic approach to resolving the dark room problem with the idea of a persisting evidentiary border beyond which matters are out of cognitive reach. For this reason, the development of explanations spanning all three Marrian levels within the general Bayesian approach may require combining the BRA and HPC modeling frameworks. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich Argumente für zwei Thesen vorbringen. Erstens möchte ich darlegen, dass der Ausschluss vom Wahlrecht durch eine Altersgrenze rechtfertigungsbedürftig ist. Zweitens werde ich argumentieren, dass es keine hinreichende Rechtfertigung für diesen Ausschluss gibt. Wenn beide Behauptungen richtig sind, dann folgt, dass wir die Altersgrenze beim Wahlrecht abschaffen sollten. Meiner Auffassung nach reicht es also nicht, dass wir das Wahlalter von 18 auf ein geringeres Alter wie 16 oder 14 herabsetzen, wie häufig gefordert wird. Vielmehr sollte jeder (...) Mensch unabhängig von seinem Alter die Möglichkeit bekommen, sich selbstständig als Erstwähler zu registrieren und dann auch wählen zu gehen. (shrink)

The chapter provides an overview of the structure and content of the textbook to help situate the reader. It begins by introducing this unique collaborative project, including a general introduction to the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience. It then segues into explaining the structural features of each chapter that provide uniformity across the textbook. The chapter concludes with an overview of the content provided in the textbook. Through a survey of the major themes and their interconnections the reader (...) will be better able to appreciate the rich interplay between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience in each of the topical chapters. (shrink)