To what extent do aesthetic taste and our interest in the arts constitute who we are? In this paper, we present a series of empirical findings that suggest anAesthetic Self Effectsupporting the claim that our aesthetic engagements are a central component of our identity. Counterfactual changes in aesthetic preferences, for example, moving from liking classical music to liking pop, are perceived as altering us as a person. The Aesthetic Self Effect is as strong as the impact of moral changes, such (...) as altering political partisanship or religious orientation, and significantly stronger than for other categories of taste, such as food preferences (Study 1). Using a multidimensional scaling technique to map perceived aesthetic similarities among musical genres, we determined that aesthetic distances between genres correlate highly with the perceived difference in identity (Study 2). Further studies generalize the Aesthetic Self Effect beyond the musical domain: general changes in visual art preferences, for example from more traditional to abstract art, also elicited a strong Self Effect (Study 3). Exploring the breadth of this effect we also found anAnaesthetic Self Effect.That is, hypothetical changes from aesthetic indifference to caring about music, art, or beauty are judged to have a significant impact on identity. This effect on identity is stronger for aesthetic fields compared to leisure activities, such as hiking or playing video games (Study 4). Across our studies, the Anaesthetic Self Effect turns out to be stronger than the Aesthetic Self Effect. Taken together, we found evidence for a link between aesthetics and identity: we are aesthetic selves. When our tastes in music and the arts or our aesthetic interests change we take these to be transformative changes. (shrink)

We define aesthetic emotions as emotions that underlie the evaluative assessment of artworks. They are separated from the wider class of art-elicited emotions. Aesthetic emotions historically have been characterized as calm, as lacking specific patterns of embodiment, and as being a sui generis kind of pleasure. We reject those views and argue that there is a plurality of aesthetic emotions contributing to praise. After presenting a general account of the nature of emotions, we analyze twelve positive aesthetic emotions in four (...) different categories: emotions of pleasure, contemplation, amazement, and respect. The emotions that we identify in each category, including feelings of fluency, intrigue, wonder, and adoration, have been widely neglected both within aesthetics and in emotion research more broadly. (shrink)

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, (...) I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind. (shrink)

Transsexuality has been subject to careful reflections in many disciplines outside philosophy. I first contextualize my philosophical approach by relating to the existing scholarship on transsexuality. Focusing on matters of sexual identity, I then propose a characterization of what might be considered the philosophical dimension of transsexual identity. Paying particular attention to the propositional consciousness of transsexuals, I develop the main thesis that transsexuality helps philosophers of sex to forcefully establish the contingency of sexual identity in terms of the underlying (...) biology of the sexed human body. I eventually argue that sexual identity is a cluster concept, which is constituted by sex, gender, sexual practice and desire. In this sense the following argument against "foundationalism" in philosophy of sex emerges: none of the four aspects of sexual identity can function as basic, prior to any normative commitments regarding the nature of human sexuality. (shrink)

Drei Argumente scheinen insgesamt zur Bewältigung des akuten medizinethischen Problems der fremdnützigen Forschung an Nichteinwilligungsfähigen im Umlauf zu sein: Das Autonomieargument und das Innovationsforschungsfreiheitsargument , mit denen eine Berechtigung herbeizuführen versucht wird, als auch das Menschenwürdeargument , das dem Verbot dienen soll. AA hat nach wie vor den größten Einfluss in der Debatte um PfFN. Nach einer knappen Skizze des Ausmaßes von dem angemeldeten Bedarf an fremdnütziger Forschung mit Nichteinwilligungsfähigen, wird deswegen AA zunächst in verschiedenen Versionen diskutiert, um zu zeigen, (...) dass es ebenso wenig überzeugen kann wie letztendlich MA und IF. Mit der Diskussion von MA zeigt sich jedoch, dass eine Limitierung der zur Disposition stehenden Forschungspraxis geboten scheint, nämlich die unhintergehbare Wahrung der Selbstzwecklichkeit der Person, die sich jenseits enthobener Spekulation im Rekurs auf den Art. 1 Abs. 1 GG konkret ausbuchstabieren lässt. Die Diskussion von IF indiziert dagegen eindringlich die unleugbare Berechtigung fremdnütziger Forschung an Nichteinwilligungsfähigen. Eine befriedigende medizinethische Lösung, so wird abschließend angezeigt, lässt sich in dem skizzierten Argumentationsrahmen wohl nur erreichen, wenn das Verhältnis von Gemeinwohl- und Individualwohl geklärt ist. (shrink)

Two kinds of membrane contacts in the vertebrate lens are described. Fiber gap junctions are domains where small molecules can pass between lens cells. Membrane structures of ball‐and‐socket type interlock adjacent lens fibers and thus contribute to the structural integrity of the lens. Both of these membrane contacts appear crucial for the maintenance of lens transparency.

"I cannot recommend this book highly enough!" Is this statement true or have I succeeded in lavishing enough praise on this book by writing this statement, making this statement in fact false? This is one way in which Adamson and Ganeri explain the view of the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna that everything is empty. Nāgārjuna has to defend himself against the objection that if everything is "empty" then this surely also applies to his own view. He famously argues that he does (...) not have a thesis and provides the "silence" analogy, which I want to illustrate using my own example: if there is too much off-topic... (shrink)

This paper makes a contribution to debates in recognition theory by expanding the taxonomy of (mis-)recognition in the economic sphere. We argue that doing justice to the variety of ways in which recognition is engaged in economic relationships requires: (1) to take into consideration not just the recognition principle of esteem, but also (various aspects of) need and respect; (2) to distinguish a productive from a consumptive dimension with regards to each principle of recognition (need, esteem and respect); (3) and (...) to identify the specific economic relationship at stake (e.g. between consumers and producers, or between employers and employees). In this way, we can account for the diversity of demands for recognition made in the economic sphere, explain what underpins them, and bring structure into these diverse phenomena. What is more, our expanded taxonomy is a useful tool for social pathology theorists. They have to appreciate the full range of variants of misrecognition when diagnosing pathologies of misrecognition in the economic sphere. (shrink)

Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics introduces the reader to new perspectives on Indian philosophy based on philological research within the last twenty years. Concentrating on topics such as perception, inference, skepticism, consciousness, self, mind, and universals, some of the most notable scholars working in classical Indian philosophy today examine core epistemological and metaphysical issues. Philosophical theories and arguments from a comprehensive range of Indian philosophical traditions (including the Nyaya, Mimamsa, Saiva, Vedanta, Samkhya, Jain, Buddhist, materialist and skeptical traditions, as well as (...) some 20th century thought) are covered. The contributors to this volume approach the topics from both a philosophical and a philological perspective. They demonstrate the importance of the subject matter for an understanding of Indian thought in general and they highlight its wider philosophical significance. By developing an appreciation of classical Indian philosophy in its own terms, set against the background of its unique assumptions and historical and cultural development, Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics is an invaluable guide to the current state of scholarship on Indian philosophy. It is a timely and much-needed reference resource, the first of its kind. (shrink)

An important part of friendships are the so-called special obligations generated by them. Friends owe things to each other that they do not owe to strangers. While such special obligations are an important part of our everyday practice, they raise several philosophical questions. These questions include the status of special obligations (are such obligations sui generis or is it possible to reduce them to general moral principles?), the source of such special obligations (what grounds special obligations of friendship?), and the (...) content of special obligations (what is the content of special obligations of friendship?). This chapter gives an overview of some of the most important positions in the literature with regard to these questions. (shrink)

This paper introduces pictures more generally into the discussion of cognition and mind. I will argue that pictures play a decisive role in shaping our mental lives because they have changed (and constantly keep changing) the ways we access the world. Focusing on pictures will therefore also shed new light on various claims within the field of embodied cognition. In the first half of this paper I address the question of whether, and in what possible ways, pictures might be considered (...) to be part of our extended mind. We will see however, that the explanatory means contingent upon the extended mind thesis – i.e. the claim that the vehicles of cognition are not confined to the boundaries of the individual organism – can only take us so far. Beyond such claims it will be pivotal to understand in what specific ways pictures might be regarded as being at the basis of certain perceptions of and interactions with the world. I will therefore address, in the second half of this paper, in what ways enactive and affective elements should inform our theory of the pictorial mind. In the course of this discussion it will become apparent that pictures are strange objects because they differ profoundly from other objects surrounding us. And it will also turn out that pictures – beyond the fact that they can be considered to be tools for our mind (in the sense that they facilitate our access to the world) – are rather strange or stubborn tools in that something in them resists full integration into our cognitive routines. (shrink)

According to an editor of The Economist, the world produced, in the years since World War II, seven times more goods than throughout all history. This is well appreciated by lay people, but has hardly affected social scientists. They do not have the conceptual apparatus for understanding accelerated material-technical change and its meaning for people's personal lives, for their ways of relating to them-selves and to the outside world. Of course, a great deal of speculation about emerging life forms in (...) industrialised societies exists and social scientists with a futuristic bend have projected their diverse visions upon public debates, ranging from thc Efficient Hedonism of "post-industrialist' society a la Daniel Bell to the “Responsible Convivialism” of 'post-materialist" critics such as Fritz Schumacher. Competing images of the coming "services society" or "self-service society" share a central concern: the ongoing relation between tile spheres of large organisations and personal lifestyles, between salaried work arid private consumption. They also share a eel-tau' implausibility: few people recognize themselves in either projection. And they sham ubiquitous reference to "technology", without accounting for it in real terms. A good diagnostic of what is actually happening seems to me to be Jonathan Gershuny, who sees a drift toward a particular type of self-service economy: a quite radical shift in the mode of provision of social services, as he calls it, based on new kinds of consumer technologies. Industrialization used to be partial, but is becoming total fast. This process obviously has many facets, the one I am interested in here is the intrusion of modern technology into spheres of life which in the past have been relatively little dependent on it. (shrink)

The paper attempts to devise a typology of a hitherto unrecognized type of English medieval literature, the Middle English Arthurian verse romance, by proposing a heuristic model comprising the following four major categories: internal and external form; authorship and presentation; content and meaning; and authorial intent and reception.

En este trabajo sobre los pensadores novohispanos Alonso de la Veracruz y Tomás de Mercado se seguirá la argumentación de un tema escasamente explorado: el papel fundacional de la ley natural y su interpretabilidad a través de la ley humana. Se mostrará que ambos autores, basados en las tradiciones salamantinas del siglo XVI, introducen un método que afirmaría la validez de la ley natural y, al mismo tiempo, permitir aplicaciones diversas de los parámetros normativos de la ley humana. Esto es (...) posible, como lo sostiene Veracruz en su crítica al diezmo para los pueblos indígenas, cuando la ley natural tenga que reinterpretarse a partir de hechos sociales concretos o cuando, como en el caso de Mercado, la ley humana sea congruente con la ley natural y, no obstante, tenga que desacatarse para evitar perjuicios personales o públicos en el plano comercial. (shrink)

The non‐self theory is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist philosophy. This chapter examines this theory and discusses some of the issues it raises for Western philosophy of mind, in particular for the problem of free will. In the first part, it traces the non‐self theory through several formulations, focusing on different Buddhist texts. In the second part, it analyzes some of the similarities and dissimilarities of the non‐self theory with discussions of the mind‐body problem and the free will problem (...) in Western philosophy. (shrink)

The Colombian-born photographer and artist Guadalupe Ruiz has undertaken a project to document the social and economic inequity in her native city of Bogotá. She explores six houses from the city's six different taxation classes whose residents range from extremely affluent to impoverished. By taking photographs of apartments and streetscapes, whole interiors and single pieces of furniture, Ruiz creates a cohesive and multilayered portrait of the city as a whole. She also examines personal and decorative objects, such as family portraits (...) and Catholic icons found in both slums and luxurious villas, and highlights the differences and some surprising cultural parallels between socioeconomic classes. Guadalupe Ruiz— Bogotá D. C. is a subtle, thought-provoking examination of urban life and includes over a hundred stunning images arranged by neighborhood. A map of the neighborhoods and a complementary essay are included to provide context for Ruiz's impressive photographs. Text in English, French, Spanish, and German. (shrink)

Europe's economic constitution is obviously affected in a very fundamental way. There is every reason to depart from an historical reconstruction of the origins of the economic constitution in the early 1920s, to consider its remarkable renaissance in postwar Germany, and to explore against this background its emigration to the European level of governance as well as its development and metamorphosis in the integration process. This chapter focuses on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which, once hailed as the crowning (...) achievement of Europe's market building and the precursor of a more truly political Union, has become the epicenter of the present crisis. Ordoliberalism and the social‐market economy managed to coexist peacefully and dominated public opinion. The chapter also discusses the practices of Europe's crisis management and the specifics of the governance modes that they are generating. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: A Christian Perspective in a Buddhist-Christian DialogueJoerg RiegerThere is common agreement that we find ourselves in a world of economic inequality. More precisely, we are living in a world where economic inequality continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Income inequality in the United States is greater than it has ever been, greater than that of most other wealthy (...) countries,1 and it is even greater than the income inequality known in the Roman Empire. In Ancient Rome, the top 1 percent controlled 16 percent of society’s wealth, compared to 40 percent in the contemporary United States.2 Nevertheless, although there is broad agreement on the existence of economic inequality, there are different perspectives on what it all means.While many lament the existence of economic inequality, others welcome it. Christians who follow the teachings of the so-called gospel of prosperity, for instance, are rarely bothered by economic inequality because they see economic success as a result of faithfulness to God, while stagnation or even poverty is the result of lack of faith. Among economists, one of the dominant perspectives on economic inequality is that it is necessary and beneficial. More specifically, one current economic theory that is widely agreed upon holds that cutting taxes for the wealthy and providing subsidies for large corporations is the only way to maintain economic growth as well as job growth. This theory is maintained despite mounting empirical evidence to the contrary. As a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes, “there is little evidence over the past 65 years that tax cuts for the highest earners are associated with savings, investment or productivity growth.”3Other prominent perspectives on economic inequality take more critical approaches, although some of the most common stereotypes also fail the reality test. One common assumption, for instance, is that the wealth gap is a matter of the so-called First World versus the so-called Third World. In the Americas, for instance, many believe that wealth resides north of the US-Mexico border, and that poverty resides to the south of it. Nevertheless, the world’s wealthiest individual is currently a Mexican citizen, business magnate Carlos Slim Helú. The case of Slim is, of course, [End Page 153] only the tip of the iceberg, as a tremendous amount of wealth resides in many places “south of the border.” Whenever I take seminary students on immersion trips into countries of the so-called Third World, I make it a point to take them not only into the poor neighborhoods but also into the wealthy ones.Observing wealth in Third World contexts never fails to create substantial cognitive dissonance, as most US residents do not expect to see so many expensive cars and expansive villas in São Paulo, Brazil; Lima, Peru; or Harare, Zimbabwe. By the same token, even most US residents do not expect to see so much dire poverty in the United States, although it often resides only a few miles from where they live. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 21 percent of all children in the United States live in families with incomes below the poverty level.4 Without ignoring the economic differences between North and South, substantial economic inequality exists in both so-called Third World and First World settings.Whose Wealth?One crucial insight emerges from our reflections so far: when we talk about an ethics of wealth in a world of economic inequality, we need to ask whose wealth we are discussing. When we are talking about wealth in many Christian communities, we tend to talk about ourselves and about the perceived wealth of the so-called middle class. What we are rarely discussing, however, is the tremendous wealth that is amassed at the upper levels of society, with the proverbial 1 percent or the 0.1 percent. I have observed similar discourses for many years, all around the world. There are several problems with this discourse.One problem is that by talking about members of the middle class as representatives of wealth, we fail to investigate the full scale of economic... (shrink)

We experience our encounters with the world and others in different degrees of intensity – the presence of things and others is gradual. I introduce this kind of presence as a ubiquitous feature of every phenomenally conscious experience, as well as a key ingredient of our ‘feeling of being alive’, and distinguish explanatory agendas that might be relevant with regard to this phenomenon (1 – 3). My focus will be the role of the body-brain nexus in realizing these experiences and (...) its treatment in recent accounts of the bodily constitution of experience. Specifically, I compare a sensorimotor approach to perceptual presence that focuses on properties of the moving body (O’Regan 2011; Noë 2012) with a more general enactivism that focuses on properties of the living body (Thompson 2007). First, I develop and discuss a theory of access derived from sensorimotor theory that might be suited to explain the phenomenon of gradual presence. This is a theory that sees the mastery of sensorimotor, bodily engagements with the world as key elements in setting up a phenomenal experience space. I object that in current versions of sensorimotor theory the correlation posited between presence and changes in the subject’s physical relation to the environment is too rigid. Nevertheless I defend the claim that gradual presence is constituted by our temporally extended engagement with the environment (4 – 7). Second, I consider some objections stemming from enactivism with regard to self-regulatory properties of the living body and the phenomenological claim that the organism’s value-laden relations with its environment have to be included in the theory. I will show that the latter is a necessary amendment to sensorimotor theory and its concept of gradual presence (8-10). (shrink)

Using the lens of positive organizational ethics, we theorized that empathy affects decisions in ethical dilemmas that concern the well-being of not only the organization but also other stakeholders. We hypothesized and found that empathetic managers were less likely to comply with requests by an authority figure to cut the wages of their employees than were non-empathetic managers. However, when an authority figure requested to hold wages constant, empathy did not affect wage cut decisions. These findings imply that empathy can (...) serve as a safeguard for ethical decision making in organizations during trying times without generally undermining organizational effectiveness. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research. (shrink)

Immigrants now compose approximately 12 of the population of the United States and a sizable proportion of the workforce. Yet in contrast to research on other traditionally under-represented groups (e.g., women, African Americans), there are relatively few studies on issues related to being an immigrant in the U.S. workforce. This study examined English-only workplace policies, focusing on reactions to business justifications – explanations that justify managerial decisions as business necessities – for these policies. We contrasted the reactions of individuals coming (...) from immigrant families, where at least one parent was an immigrant to the U.S., with those of persons from non-immigrant families. Results of an experiment indicated that business justifications were successful in influencing the attitudes of non-immigrants toward the English-only policies, but did not influence the attitudes of individuals from immigrant families. Probing the reasons for this effect, a thought-listing protocol suggested that non-immigrants mentioned more of the business benefits of the English-only policy than did individuals from immigrant families. Further, business justifications for the English-only policy led individuals from immigrant families, but not those from non-immigrant families, to view the organization as being less ethical and less concerned with the welfare of its workers. The implications of messages from management being understood differently by different demographic groups are discussed. (shrink)

Across the globe, conditions of labour are worsening, providing both challenges and opportunities. As labour is one of the places where the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class is always at work, new models of resistance are created here as well. Deep solidarity describes what happens when the 99% who have to work for a living realise what they have in common, in order to employ their differences productively in the struggle. In this article, a theologian and a (...) labour and community organiser work together showing how the Abrahamic religious traditions and developments in the world of labour help us to shape deeper forms of solidarity. (shrink)