This contribution discusses the central thesis in Michael Otsuka’s book that collective pensions can be organized on a voluntary basis from the recent experience with pension reform in the Netherlands. Despite a long tradition of collective-funded pensions organized in a decentralized way by social partners, basis reform was necessary as population ageing made it increasingly harder to maintain the intergenerational solidarity implicit in these pensions. Although it is well-established that risk sharing between generations can be beneficial and welfare improving to (...) all, it is far from certain that new generations will enter existing pension arrangements on a voluntary basis. First, there is a considerable ‘discontinuity risk’ if deficits in pension funding – caused by bad shocks – deter younger generations from entering the scheme. Second, even if it is to their own interest most people do not voluntarily engage in pension schemes due to several kinds of behavioural and psychological barriers. (shrink)

Casper Hendrik Rautenbach: 'Deeds, more than ideas, make life meaningful'Professor Casper Hendrik Rautenbach was born on 6th of March 1902 in Zeerust in the Western Transvaal, RSA, where he matriculated at the Zeerust Public School at the end of 1918. In June 1923 he was awarded the MA degree in Philosophy and at the end of the same year the BD degree in Theology. In 1932 he completed his thesis, titled 'Sedelike Keuring '. After serving as clergyman in (...) the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika, and as lecturer in Philosophy and Christian Ethics, he was promoted to Rector of the University of Pretoria, an office which he held from the 9th of April 1948 until the 30th of June 1970. Professor Rautenbach is respected as an outstanding academic and leading churchman. He achieved outstanding results in the educational field especially by playing an active role in the formulation of the Education Policy Act. (shrink)

Bespreking van: Joost De Bloois (2016) In naam van het Maagdenhuis. Amsterdam: Leesmagazijn, 120 pp. & Casper Thomas (2015) Competente rebellen: Hoe de universiteit in opstand kwam tegen het marktdenken. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 192 pp.

Since the 1980s the concept of ANT has remained unsettled. ANT has continuously been critiqued and hailed, ridiculed and praised. It is still an open question whether ANT should be considered a theory or a method or whether ANT is better understood as entailing the dissolution of such modern ‘‘genres’’. In this paper the authors engage with some important reflections by John Law and Bruno Latour in order to analyze what it means to ‘‘do ANT,’’ and, doing so after ‘‘doing (...) ANT on ANT.’’ In particular the authors examine two post-ANT case studies by Annemarie Mol and Marilyn Strathern and outline the notions of complexity, multiplicity, and fractality. The purpose is to illustrate the analytical consequences of thinking with post-ANT. The analysis offers insights into how it is possible to ‘‘go beyond ANT,’’ without leaving it entirely behind. (shrink)

Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten is popular as an introduction into his philosophy and into fundamental ethics in general. Its third chapter is, nevertheless, a notoriously difficult text. According to many interpreters, it raises questions rather than answering them. This article tries to answer some questions which often remain unclear even in the secondary literature: how is the logical structure of the chapter; what exactly is the synthetic character of the categorical imperative; how does freedom function as the third, (...) connecting term in this synthesis; what is the relationship between questions concerning the possibility and the validity of the categorical imperative? In his own words, Kant wants to give here 'a deduction of the principle of morality' but also of the concept of freedom. The double use of the term 'deduction' needs an accurate interpretation. One thesis of the article is that the deduction of freedom must not be identified with the problematic deduction of the categorical imperative. The deduction of the concept of freedom has a more modest function within the proof of the possibility of the categorical imperative. This means that the question concerning the proof of its validity is still open; but the very idea that such a proof is neither possible nor necessary evokes already the notion of the factum der Vernunft. (shrink)

ON BROUWER, like other titles in the Wadsworth Philosopher's Series, offers a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to this philosopher's most important ideas. Presenting the most important insights of well over a hundred seminal philosophers in both the Eastern and Western traditions, the Wadsworth Philosophers Series contains volumes written by scholars noted for their excellence in teaching and for their well-versed comprehension of each featured philosopher's major works and contributions. These titles have proven valuable in a number of ways. Serving as (...) standalone texts when tackling a philosophers' original sources or as helpful resources for focusing philosophy students' engagements with these philosopher's often conceptually daunting works, these titles have also gained extraordinary popularity with a lay readership and quite often serve as "refreshers" for philosophy instructors. (shrink)

An intellectual history of the philosophers who grappled with the problem of evil, and the case for why pessimism still holds moral value for us today In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers engaged in heated debates on the question of how God could have allowed evil and suffering in a creation that is supposedly good. Dark Matters traces how the competing philosophical traditions of optimism and pessimism arose from early modern debates about the problem of evil, and makes a (...) compelling case for the rediscovery of pessimism as a source for compassion, consolation, and perhaps even hope. Bringing to life one of the most vibrant eras in the history of philosophy, Mara van der Lugt discusses legendary figures such as Leibniz, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Schopenhauer. She also introduces readers to less familiar names, such as Bayle, King, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis. Van der Lugt describes not only how the earliest optimists and pessimists were deeply concerned with finding an answer to the question of the value of existence that does justice to the reality of human suffering, but also how they were fundamentally divided over what such an answer should look like. A breathtaking work of intellectual history by one of today's leading scholars, Dark Matters reveals how the crucial moral aim of pessimism is to find a way of speaking about suffering that offers consolation and does justice to the fragility of life. (shrink)

This volume tackles Gödel's two-stage project of first using Husserl's transcendental phenomenology to reconstruct and develop Leibniz' monadology, and then founding classical mathematics on the metaphysics thus obtained. The author analyses the historical and systematic aspects of that project, and then evaluates it, with an emphasis on the second stage.

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, (...) didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome. (shrink)

We discuss games of both perfect and imperfect information at two levels of structural detail: players’ local actions, and their global powers for determining outcomes of the game. We propose matching logical languages for both. In particular, at the ‘action level’, imperfect information games naturally model a combined ‘dynamic-epistemic language’ – and we find correspondences between special axioms and particular modes of playing games with their information dynamics. At the ‘outcome level’, we present suitable notions of game equivalence, plus some (...) simple representation results. (shrink)

Logic is not just about single-agent notions like reasoning, or zero-agent notions like truth, but also about communication between two or more people. What we tell and ask each other can be just as 'logical' as what we infer in Olympic solitude. We show how such interactive phenomena can be studied systematically by merging epistemic and dynamic logic.

On Bicchieri's view, social norms most centrally involve a pattern of preferences among the members of a relevant population; according to Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin, and Southwood, social norms most centrally involve patterns of normative attitudes among the members of a given group. This paper argues, first, that social norms can require attitudes as well as behaviour, and, second, that the existence of such attitudinal social norms speaks in favour of the preference-based view and against the normative attitudes-based view.

This is a fully revised and updated version of Hans van der Doel"s Democracy and Welfare Economics.

Intractability is a growing concern across the cognitive sciences: while many models of cognition can describe and predict human behavior in the lab, it remains unclear how these models can scale to situations of real-world complexity. Cognition and Intractability is the first book to provide an accessible introduction to computational complexity analysis and its application to questions of intractability in cognitive science. Covering both classical and parameterized complexity analysis, it introduces the mathematical concepts and proof techniques that can be used (...) to test one's intuition of tractability. It also describes how these tools can be applied to cognitive modeling to deal with intractability, and its ramifications, in a systematic way. Aimed at students and researchers in philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics who want to build a firm understanding of intractability and its implications in their modeling work, it is an ideal resource for teaching or self-study. (shrink)

Digital farming technologies promise to help farmers make well-informed decisions that improve the quality and quantity of their production, with less labour and less impact on the environment. This future, however, can only become a reality if farmers are willing to share their data with agribusinesses that develop digital technologies. To foster trust in data sharing, in Europe the EU Code of Conduct for agricultural data sharing by contractual agreement was launched in 2018 which encourages transparency about data use. This (...) article looks at the EU Code through the lens of literature on trust and contract agreements. We agree with the makers of the EU Code that a contract can make an important contribution to trust relationships as it is needed to mitigate the detrimental effects of power relationships between experts and non-experts. Building on Onora O’Neills perspective to trust, however, we argued that a contract can only be successful in fostering trust when information is comprehended by the more vulnerable party in this relationship who has to sign the contract, the more powerful partner takes responsibility to provide that information, and information is tailored to the information needs of the party signing the contract, even when data are re-used over a longer period. In addition, we think that differences between trust relationships and relationships of accountability, give reason to add to informed consent other more substantive ethical components in a more encompassing code of conduct. (shrink)

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

In Het kapitaal beschreef Karl Marx in uiterst schrille kleuren de voorgeschiedenis van de kapitalistische productiewijze. Het was een langdurig proces dat zich over eeuwen uitstrekte en waarbij kleine boeren op gewelddadige wijze van hun primaire productiemiddel, de grond, werden gescheiden en aldus in 'vrije' loonarbeiders veranderd. De kern van dit proces was de privatisering van de meent of commons, de traditioneel voor gemeenschappelijk gebruik bestemde grond.

Twenty-five years ago, robotics guru Joseph Engelberger had a mission to motivate research teams all over the world to design the ‘Elderly Care Giver’, a multitasking personal robot assistant for everyday care needs in old age. In this article, we discuss how this vision of omnipotent care robots has influenced the design strategies of care robotics, the development of R&D initiatives and ethics research on use of care robots. Despite the expectations of robots revolutionizing care of older people, the role (...) of robots in human care has remained marginal. The value of world trade in service robots, including care robots, is rather small. We argue that the implementation of robots in care is not primarily due to negative user attitudes or ethical problems, but to problems in R&D and manufacturing. The care robots currently available on the market are capable of simple, repetitive tasks or colloquial interaction. Thus far, also research on care robots is mostly conducted using imaginary scenarios or small-scale tests built up for research purposes. To develop useful and affordable robot solutions that are ethically, socially and ecologically sustainable, we suggest that robot initiatives should be evaluated within the framework of care ecosystems. This implies that attention has to be paid to the social, emotional and practical contexts in which care is given and received. Also, the political, economic and ecological realities of organizing care and producing technological commodities have to be acknowledged. It is time to openly discuss the drivers behind care robot initiatives to outline the bigger picture of organizing care under conditions of limited resources. (shrink)

Le culte grandiose de Kali, la Mère, son incomparable symbolisme, ses litanies et ses chants, embrasse l'âme de l'univers qu'il glorifie comme aucune conception religieuse ne le fit jamais. La terrifiante déesse sème la peste et les pires ravages sur ses pas, tout en accordant sa grâce et sa clémence à ses enfants assez hardis pour soulever l'horrible masque derrière lequel elle se cache la figure. Ceux-là retrouveront les traits radieux qui ont enchanté leur enfance. La sublime conception de Kali, (...) la Mère, découle d'une philosophie moniste qui s'écarte pourtant sensiblement de la philosophie Védanta de Shankara. Tous deux partent, il est vrai, de la même idée. Ils admettent l'un et l'autre une substance une, indivisible et éternelle, que les Védantins appellent Brahma et les adorateurs de Kali, la Mère, Siva. Mais il y a divergence quant aux manifestations. Pour Shankara il n'y a qu'illusion. Il tranche le lien qui rattache le phénomène à l'absolu. Il se demande qui a pu susciter l'apparence. Mais, l'absolu étant la vérité même, il n'a pu engendrer l'apparence pas plus que la lumière n'aurait pu engendrer l'obscurité. Qu'y avait-il donc de commun entre les Brahmas et Maya? A première vue il semble qu'il n'y a aucun rapport. Pour Shankara il n'était besoin d'aucune relation, puisque Maya n'existe pas en réalité et que le monde n'est que mirage. Le monde n'existe que pour l'esprit qui est lui-même sujet aux hallucinations. Adorer la Mère, c'est accepter l'univers dans ses aspects les plus terrifiants. Cette philosophie est diamétralement opposée au christianisme dans son culte du Dieu d'amour, du Père plein de miséricorde. Le christianisme enseigne que tout se fait pour notre bien, tandis que pour les adorateurs de Kali, l'univers est féroce et hostile à l'homme, qui avant tout doit se montrer supérieur aux événements. Mais Kali n'est pas seulement la destructrice. Si elle démolit inexorablement toutes les formes vitales qui ont fait leur temps et qui se détériorent, elle en crée au fur et à mesure des nouvelles. C'est dans cette conception de la Mère qu'il faut chercher tout d'abord le mystère de l'esprit indien. Dans son essence la plus intime la mère du monde est l'absolu, est Siva même. Comme telle elle représente la connaissance, l'entité et la joie absolues. Pour les adorateurs de Kali les mots Mantram Saham (je suis elle) renferment la clef de la vie et dissipent crainte et tristesse. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 188-201, April 2021.

Stuart Kauffman has, in recent writings, developed a thought-provoking and influential argument for strong emergence. The outcome is his Theory of the Adjacent Possible (TAP). According to TAP, the biosphere constitutes a non-physical domain qualitatively distinct from the physical domain. The biosphere exhibits strongly emergent properties such as agency, meaning, value and creativity that cannot, in principle, be reduced to the physical. In this paper, I argue that TAP includes various (explicit or implicit) metaphysical commitments: commitments to (1) scientific realism, (...) (2) downward causation and teleology, and (3) modal realism. If TAP is to hang together as the kind of robust philosophical thesis it evidently aspires to be, it needs an account – an account that is currently absent – of its metaphysical commitments. It is however unclear how such an account can be developed since various dilemmas present themselves when one explores how subscribers to TAP might do so. (shrink)

According to the standards of public law, municipal polls have only a local scope : the election of a common council. Do politicians make deductions concerning the formal political power-constellation on national level either from the approach of municipal elections or from their results? Can these elections lead to changes in or of the government and eventually to anticipated legislative elections?After the first world-war, the electorate was called eight times to vote for new common councillors. Half of these elections had (...) no influence on the national power-constellation :they hardly stirred the national political life. In 1958 any possible influence of the municipal elections was even a priori ruled out. A remarkable point is that all municipal elections which took place undergovernments of national union, were only of local importance.Since the first world-war not a single municipal election has led to changes within the government : there was never a redistribution of ministerial portfolios amongst the coalitionpartners, nor did any electioncause the dismissal of an individual minister.It is traditional in Belgian politics that the national opposition, when the results of municipal elections are in its favour and prejudicial to the party in office, tries to call in question the legitimacy of the government in the opinion of the public by the way of motions or interpellations in parliament, claiming dismissal of the government or anticipated legislative elections. At these occasions it appeared unimportant whether the parliamental majority were confortable or not. But never did the governments give in to these attempts.The elections of 1857, 1884 and 1932 constitute an element of power - although of subsidiary importance - in the discharge of the then governments. The governmental crisis of 1884 however can only be explained if the constitutional position of Leopold II is taken into account. With all other factors alike, such a crisis wouldn't arise any more in the context of to-day. The municipal elections of 1932 have moreover led to anticipated legislative elections whose date was an element of power in the election-process. At that time, these elections played the part of an indicator of the electorial condition, comparable to that of the by elections in Great-Britain. And an unreliable indicator too, in view of the difference between national and local electionstatures. (shrink)

This paper deals with Dooyeweerd's radical thesis, i.e., his thesis that reason necessarily has a 'religious root' (radix = root). This thesis was Dooyeweerd's main justification for his own religious philosophy. First I argue that the arguments Dooyeweerd puts forward do not warrant his radical thesis. Secondly, I argue that Dooyeweerd's thesis itself is ambivalent between the theses (i) that religious commitments form the transcendental conditions for philosophical thinking and (ii) that religious commitments are constitutive for philosophy and (iii) that (...) religious commitments are regulative for philosophy. Each of these interpretations, I argue, is exposed to serious objections and leads to what Vincent Brummer has called 'the dilemma of a Christian philosophy'. I argue that Brummers solution for this dilemma is untenable. Since Dooyeweerd's radical thesis is untenable as it stands, so is his justification of his project of a 'Christian philosophy' ; and since Brummers solution to the dilemma is untenable as well, so is his justification of that project. In the last section of this paper I offer an alternative justification for such a project. The central concept therein is 'properly functioning noetic faculties'. (shrink)

Studie over het politieke denken in de na-oorlogse Franse filosofie, met name de invloed van de Russische filosoof Kojève daarop.

China communicates strategic narratives about artificial intelligence in digital media productions to create a shared meaning about its actions and its image in the global race to develop AI. Building upon the literature in emotions and strategic narratives, this study seeks to clarify which emotions are discursively used in China’s international AI narratives, and their function and significance. Specifically, the study investigates emotion discourses in AI-focused videos disseminated on China’s international broadcasting. The analysis reveals that pride, hope and fear discourses (...) have multiple functions in China’s international AI narratives on CGTN. Hope is used to represent China as a key competitor in the global AI race, who is catching up to the US. China uses pride to showcase its advances in AI applications, to highlight its transformation of traditional industries, and to identity itself as equal to the US. Fear is used to frame US’s perception of China’s AI developments, to suggest their crisis of confidence, but also to refute the “China threat”. Additionally, the fear discourse is used to deliberate anticipated risks, particularly on job loss and data privacy. These emotion discourses forge China’s identity as a future global AI power. The paper then discusses how these findings contribute to key debates about Chinese discourse and media strategy. (shrink)

We study classical modal logics with pooling modalities, i.e. unary modal operators that allow one to express properties of sets obtained by the pointwise intersection of neighbourhoods. We discuss salient properties of these modalities, situate the logics in the broader area of modal logics, establish key properties concerning their expressive power, discuss dynamic extensions of these logics and provide reduction axioms for the latter.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created a crisis of suffering. We conceptualize suffering as a deeply existential issue that fundamentally changes people indelible ways and for which there are no easy solutions. To better understand its effects and how people can flourish in the midst of this crisis, we formally introduce and elaborate on an Existential Positive Psychology Model of Suffering (EPPMS) and apply that to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Our model has three core propositions: (a) suffering reveals existential concerns, (...) (b) existential anxiety impairs one's ability to find meaning, and (c) cultivating meaning is the primary way to address suffering and allay existential anxiety, eventually leading to flourishing (and potentially growth). We apply this model to the COVID-19 pandemic, including how to build meaning, and discuss clinical implications. (shrink)

Dutch, like other Germanic languages, disposes of two strategies to express past tense: the strong inflection (e.g., rijden – reed ‘drive – drove’) and the weak inflection (spelen – speelde ‘play – played’). This distinction is for the most part lexically determined in that each verb occurs in one of the two inflections. Diachronically the system is in flux though, with the resilience of some verbs being mainly driven by frequency. Synchronically this might result in variable verbs (e.g., schuilen – (...) schuilde/school ‘hide – hid’ or raden – raadde/ried ‘guess – guessed’). This diachronic (1300–2000) corpus study shows that this variation is not haphazard, but that semantic factors are at play. We see two such effects. First of all, synchronically, the variation is exapted in an iconic manner to express aspect: durative meanings tend to be expressed by longer verb forms and punctual meanings tend to be expressed by shorter verb forms. Secondly, we see that metaphorical meanings come to be associated within obsolescent inflectional forms, as predicted by Kuryłowicz’s “fourth law of analogy”. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.