"This collection provides an excellent introduction to three of the most important names in twentieth-century Spanish philosophy: Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), and José Ferrater Mora (1912-1991). The thought-provoking work of these great contemporary philosophers offers a rich and penetrating insight into human existence. Originally written by Ferrater Mora in the middle of the last century, his interpretations of Unamuno and Ortega are considered classics, and the chapter on his own thought reflects his mature thinking about (...) being and death. Each essay is introduced by noted Ferrater Mora scholar J. M. Terricabras and contains updated biographical and bibliographic information." - Back cover. (shrink)

The centenary of the birth of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provided an opportunity for recovering some of the great Wittgensteinian subjects, for re-examining them and for discussing their implications and relevance. This volume is the result of the interchange that took place in Girona (Spain) among well-known scholars of Wittgenstein's work in different countries. The eleven contributions are organized into three main subjects: on Wittgenstein's method (B. McGuinness, E. Tugendhat and J.M. Terricabras), on knowledge and meaning (G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Bambrough, (...) N. Malcolm, and P.T. Geach), on language and use (D. Pears, E.v. Savigny, J. Bouveresse and J. Ferrater Mora). This volume is not only the result of the different and mature reflexions of its authors, but in two cases (Malcolm and Ferrater Mora) it has also unfortunately become their last contribution to the subject. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno's (...) major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J.M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals. Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining (...) what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience. (shrink)

This case study details how and why integrating storytelling, empathy, and inclusive practice shifted QSuper, a large Australian finance organisation, from minimal awareness to moral awareness then moral capability in the delivery of services to Indigenous customers. During the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry, QSuper were recognised for their exemplary service with Indigenous customers (Hayne, Interim report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, (...) 2018; _Transcript of Proceedings, 13 August_, Commonwealth of Australia, 2018). This position was in stark contrast to the inaccessible service offerings of other financial organisations where some used predatory practices to sell unethical financial products to Indigenous Australians (Hayne, Interim report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2018; Hayne, Final report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2019a). Storytelling garned from visiting customers in remote communities and other meaningful activities involving inclusive practice to facilitate ethical decision-making in finance is different to standard functionalist finance approaches (Schinckus, Int Rev Financ Anal 40:103–106, 2015). Two empathetic questions asked within QSuper complementing the storytelling, were: “What is the right thing to do by the customer?” and “How would I feel if this were my mother?” Exploration into the lived reality of moral capacity is important based on the Commission finding many of the 490,000 finance staff do not know how to provide ethical services to vulnerable customers, in particular remote Indigenous customers (Australian Bureau of Statistics. Labour force, Australia, detailed. ABS. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-australia-detailed /latest-release, 2021; Hayne, Final report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2019a). Furthermore, there is minimal literature on the role of Indigenous storytelling to heighten moral awareness in the finance industry which was found to lead to better ethical outcomes. (shrink)

In his concept of an anthropological physiology, F.J.J. Buytendijk has tried to lay down the theoretical and scientific foundations for an anthropologically-oriented medicine. The aim of anthropological physiology is to demonstrate, empirically, what being specifically human is in the most elementary physiological functions. This article contains a sketch of Buytendijk''s life and work, an overview of his philosophical-anthropological presuppositions, an outline of his idea of an anthropological physiology and medicine, and a discussion of some episternological and methodological problems. It is (...) demonstrated that Buytendijk''s design of an anthropological physiology is fragmentary and programmatic and that his methodology offers few points of contact for specific anthropological experimental research.Notwithstanding, it is argued that Buytendijk''s description of the subjective, animated body forms a pre-eminent point of reference for all research in physiology and psychology in which the specific human aspect is not ignored beforehand. (shrink)

At the start of the 21st century, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) seems to have great potential for innovating business practices with a positive impact on People, Planet and Profit. In this article the differences between the management systems approach of the nineties, and Corporate Social Responsibility are analysed.An analysis is structured around three business principles that are relevant for CSR and management systems: (1) doing things right the first time, (2) doing the right things, and (3) continuous improvement and innovation. (...) Basically CSR is focussing on the second principle, and management systems focus on the first. However, CSR is very likely to build on the management systems as well.From a CSR point of view, the existing generation of management systems with their focus on rational control (= doing things right) can only be of limited use in the development of CSR. However, the preventive rationalities of management systems are important. Values and the principle doing the right things is extremely relevant for CSR. This goes far beyond the present generation of ISO type management systems; opportunities stem from building on TQM approaches like the EFQM Business Excellence model. Continuous improvement and innovation is a permanent challenge underlying the two other business principles, and requires both individual and organisational learning processes. In the present generation of management systems, continuous improvement mainly addresses rational prevention, barely the value aspects of business.For the further development and implementation of CSR, each of the three business management principles are vital. There is a need for a new generation of management systems that addresses the values at stake in strategic decision-making, both at company level and in the behaviour of individuals, while the rationalities of prevention and anticipation are still relevant. In both directions more emphasis for continuous learning and innovation will be needed.CSR is likely to trigger the development of management systems in the directions mentioned. This will support companies to be credible and transparent in improving the performance with respect to people, planet and profit. (shrink)

Spatial relations are central to geometrical thinking. With respect to the classical elementary geometry of Euclid’s Elements, a distinction between co-exact, or qualitative, and exact, or metric, spatial relations has recently been advanced as fundamental. We tested the universality of intuitions of these relations in a group of Senegalese and Dutch participants. Participants performed an odd-one-out task with stimuli that in all but one case display a particular spatial relation between geometric objects. As the exact/co-exact distinction is closely related to (...) Kosslyn’s categorical/coordinate distinction, a set of stimuli for testing all four types was used. Results suggest that intuitions of all spatial relations tested are universal. Yet, culture has an important effect on performance: Dutch participants outperformed Senegalese participants and stimulus layouts affect the categorical and coordinate processing in different ways for the two groups. Differences in level of education within the Senegalese participants did not affect performance. (shrink)

This 2002 volume brings together major works by German thinkers, writing just prior to and after Kant, who were enormously influential in this crucial period of aesthetics. These texts include the first translation into English of Schiller's Kallias Letters and Moritz's On the Artistic Imitation of the Beautiful, together with translations of some of Hölderlin's most important theoretical writings and works by Hamann, Lessing, Novalis and Schlegel. In a philosophical introduction J. M. Bernstein traces the development of aesthetics from its (...) still rationalist and mimetic construction in Lessing, through the optimistic construal of art and/or beauty as the appearance of human freedom in the work of Schiller, to Hölderlin's darker vision of art as the memory of a lost unity, and the variations of that theme - of an impossible striving after the lost ideal - which are found in the work of Schlegel and Novalis. (shrink)

International legal scholars tend to think of their work as the interpretation of rules: the application of a law 'out there' to concrete situations. This book takes a different approach to that scholarship: it views doctrine as a socio-linguistic practice. In other words, this book views legal scholars not as law-appliers, but as constructing knowledge within a particular academic discipline. By means of three close-ups of the discourse on cyberwar and international law, this book shows how international legal knowledge is (...) constructed in ways usually overlooked: by means of footnotes, for example, or conference presentations. In so doing, this book aims to present a new way of seeing international legal scholarship: one that pays attention to the mundane parts of international legal texts and provides a different understanding of how international law as we know it comes about. (shrink)

While executive functions and self-regulated learning strategy use have been found to be related in several populations, this relationship has not been studied in adult online distance education. This is surprising as self-regulation, and thus using such strategies, is very important here. In this setting, we studied the relation between basic executive functions and reported SRL-strategy use within a correlational design with 889 adult online distance students. In this study, we performed regression analyses and took age and processing speed into (...) consideration, as processing speed and EFs decrease with age, whereas self-regulation is reported to increase with age. Cognitively measured working memory was not related to reported SRL-strategy use in adult ODE students. Thus, even though the SRL-components within the strategies seem to elicit working memory, reported SRL-strategy use is not related to the functioning of this basic EF. This means that if SRL-strategy use needs to be increased in adult ODE students, training of working memory might not be an effective manner for achieving that goal. Better shifting and processing speed were related to less reported SRL-strategy use, which might suggest that SRL-strategies might be used to compensate for lower shifting and lower processing speed. With increasing age, the number of contacts with peers or teachers decreases. This latter finding might be of relevance during the pandemic since contacts with others is importance during lockdown. (shrink)

Feigning symptoms distorts diagnostic evaluations. Therefore, dedicated tools known as symptom validity tests have been developed to help clinicians differentiate feigned from genuine symptom presentations. While a deviant SVT score is an indicator of a feigned symptom presentation, a non-deviant score provides support for the hypothesis that the symptom presentation is valid. Ideally, non-deviant SVT scores should temper suspicion of feigning even in cases where the patient fits the DSM’s stereotypical yet faulty profile of the “antisocial” feigner. Across three studies, (...) we tested whether non-deviant SVT scores, indeed, have this corrective effect. We gave psychology students and clinical experts a case alluding to the DSM profile of feigning. In successive steps, they received information about the case, among which non-deviant SVT outcomes. After each step, participants rated how strongly they suspected feigning and how confident they were about their judgment. Both students and experts showed suspicion rates around the midpoint of the scale and did not respond to non-deviant SVT outcomes with lowered suspicion rates. In Study 4, we educated participants about the shortcomings of the DSM’s antisocial typology of feigning and the importance of the negative predictive power of SVTs, after which they processed the case information. Judgments remained roughly similar to those in Studies 1–3. Taken together, our findings suggest that students and experts alike have difficulties understanding that non-deviant scores on SVTs reduce the probability of feigning as a correct differential diagnosis. (shrink)

Research has shown that it requires less time to process information that is part of an objective causal relation describing states of affairs in the world (She was out of breath because she was running), than information that is part of a subjective relation (She must have been in a hurry because she was running) expressing a claim or conclusion and a supporting argument. Representing subjectivity seems to require extra cognitive operations. In Mental Spaces Theory (MST; Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994. Mental (...) spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: MIT Press) the difference between these two relation types can be described in terms of an extra mental space in the discourse representation of subjective relations: representing the Subject of Consciousness (SoC). In processing terms, this might imply that the processing difference is not present if this SoC has already been established in the discourse. We tested this prediction in two eye tracking experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that signaling the subjectivity of the relation by introducing a subject of consciousness beforehand did not diminish the processing asymmetry compared to a neutral context. However, the relative complexity of subjective relations was diminished in the context of Free Indirect Speech (No! He was absolutely sure. There was no doubt about it. She was running so she was in hurry; Experiment 2). In terms of MST and the representation of subjectivity in general, this implies that not only creating a representation of a thinking subject, but also assigning a claim to this thinking subject requires extra processing effort. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive edition and study so far of a minor pre-Socratic. Besides a collection of testimonia and fragments more complete than Diels/kranz, Reale’s study includes a thorough commentary on all the Ancient texts and an extended introduction as well as five useful indices. The superb commentary dealing with textual and linguistic questions must be read in close connection with the introduction that discusses all the important philosophical problems. The monograph-like introduction contains numerous new interpretations and has (...) important observations on Eleatic philosophy. (shrink)

What is the correct logical analysis of "S did A with the intention I"? The answer and central thesis of Aune’s Reason and Action, begins: "We do A with the intention i just when we do A and the fact that we do A is psychologically explainable by the fact that we have the intention i." The book can be seen as an elaboration of and commentary on this notion of psychological explanation. Briefly, psychological explanation is causal explanation; the intention (...) causally explains S’s doing A, but it explains psychologically, in the required sense, only if it is connected to his doing A through his practical reasoning. (shrink)

The Internet has become a resource for everyone for everything. It is accordingly now also a source of sermons and much more for pastors of churches in the USA. In consequence, the Internet shapes and alters how pastors and parishioners practice their religion. Because “the medium is the message,” as Marshall McLuhan observed, Internet sermons necessarily reflect and convey something of their Internet source. So, too, the nature and content religious life changes and takes on the characteristics of its new (...) source of inspiration, the Internet. As the dominant expression of technology today, the Internet reveals technology ultimately and in the words of Jacques Ellul as “the real religion of our time.”. (shrink)

Our reception and perception, our experience of music, has been profoundly determined by our technological devices and media. Whatever music we happen to like and listen to, we can hardly experience it today apart from its production and reproduction in and through technology. The effects of technology on making and hearing music require critical analysis. Because of the pervasive role of technology, music today is almost entirely mediated and mediate, almost never unmediated and immediate, almost always “Memorex,” almost never “live.” (...) Music has been severely altered, reduced, even hollowed out. In this respect, music loses something of its reality. (shrink)

L'exégèse de E. Schweizer dans Jesus : The Parable of God est construite sur un a priori protestant qui rappelle les positions théologiques de K. Barth et de R. Bultmann. La suggestion de substituer «parabole» à «sacrement» comme catégorie fondamentale pour une compréhension de Jésus conduit à considérer les positions catholique et protestante au sujet de l'analogie et de la liberté. Le contraste révèle en fait beaucoup de ressemblances quant à la structure fondamentale de la pensée, et la divergence d'accentuation (...) peut être dépassée par une philosophie et une théologie qui se préoccupe d'abord de la liberté et seulement ensuite des natures. Certaines considérations sont offertes ici en vue d'un progrès oecuménique. (shrink)

It is often argued that clinical research should not violate the Kantian principle that people must not be used merely as a means for the purposes of others. At first sight, the practice of clinical research itself, however, seems to violate precisely this principle: clinical research is often beneficial to future people rather than to participants; even if participants benefit, all things considered, they are exposed to discomforts which are absent both in regular care for their diseases and in other (...) areas of daily life. Therefore, in this paper we will consider whether people are used merely as a means by being enrolled in clinical research. On the basis of recent studies of Kantian scholars we will argue that clinical research is compatible with the Kantian principle if the conditions of possible consent and end-sharing have been met. Participants are not used merely as a means if they have sufficient reasons to consent to being enrolled in clinical research and can share the ends of the researchers who use them. Moreover, we will claim that even if people are used merely as a means by participating in clinical research, it may not always be morally wrong to use them in this way. (shrink)

A bold and visionary book that reveals the false and catastrophically damaging images at the root of the oppression of women and the rape of Earth's resources, ...

This (by no means exhaustive) survey of Postman’s work reflects on his penetrating analyses of contemporary technology. He focused attention on the ways technology today, especially the television and the computer, inevitably change us. The essential questions he asks us to ask (and answer) are, How does technology affect us? Is it for good or ill? and Must we accept all technological advances? Postman recognized the current dominance and autonomy of technology as well as the concomitant dangers and consequently made (...) the case and the plea for the reassertion of human over technological values. (shrink)