What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the (...) needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't? How would their parents' risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she's responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why. From the Hardcover edition. (shrink)

When animals share decisions with others, they pool personal information, offset individual errors and, thereby, increase decision accuracy. This is termed ‘swarm intelligence.’ But what if those decisions involve conflicts of interest between individual decision-makers? Should animals share decisions with individuals whose goals are different from, and partially in conflict with, their own? A group decision model developed by Larissa Conradt and colleagues finds that, contrary to intuition, conflicting goals often increase both decision accuracy and the individual gains derived (...) from shared decisions. Thus, conflicts of interest, far from hampering effective decision making, can actually improve decision outcomes for all stakeholders, as long as they also have some goals in common. By contrast, conflict-free decisions shared by animals which all have the same goals are often surprisingly poor. (shrink)

This paper reads Antigone from the perspective of the Chorus. Whereas most interpreters read Antigone from the perspective of Creon and Antigone’s respective laws, I maintain that the protagonists represent laws that are distinctly apolitical. Alternatively, I argue that the Chorus make the polis—past, present, and future—the center of their thought and action and are therefore uniquely political. Through close attention to the Chorus’s composition as a body that is both one and many at the same time, and by tracing (...) their evolving position throughout the action of the drama and in their choral odes, I argue that they model a reflective and political orientation to judgment rooted in plurality, tradition, and innovation. (shrink)

Ein Einstiegs- und Nachschlagwerk für das Philosophiestudium: Die Einträge liefern Definitionen und Kurzanalysen zu Kants Schriften, Grundbegriffen und Positionen. Sie können unabhängig voneinander gelesen werden, ergeben zusammengenommen aber auch eine vollständige Einführung. Das Kleine Kant-Lexikon beginnt mit einem Überblick zu Kants Leben und Werk sowie den zentralen Positionen seiner Philosophie. Auf diese Einführung folgen als erster Hauptteil detailliertere Analysen der wichtigsten Werke und Schriften Kants, als zweiter Hauptteil die Grundbegriffe seiner Philosophie zum Nachschlagen. Die Beiträge wurden von renommierten Expertinnen und (...) Experten der Kantforschung verfasst, sind dabei aber knapp und leicht verständlich. Das Lexikon erleichtert so die Lektüre von Kants Werken, Literaturhinweise helfen bei Referaten und Hausarbeiten. (shrink)

As social, locative, and mobile media render the intimate public and the public intimate, this volume interrogates how this phenomenon impacts art practice and politics. Contributors bring together the worlds of art and media culture to rethink their intersections in light of participatory social media. By focusing upon the Asia-Pacific region, they seek to examine how regionalism and locality affect global circuits of culture. The book also offers a set of theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms for thinking about contemporary art (...) practice more generally. (shrink)

The paper deals with the general peculiarities of numerals. Cases where the sense of numeral cannot simply be explained by the idea of counting, of number, or of order are considered. Special types of texts folklore on the one band, propaganda on the other hand - are analyzed. For the latter the examples from two Soviet central official newspapers - Pravda and lzvestija of May 1986 have been chosen. These texts partially reflect common stylistic features of Soviet propagandistic discourse of (...) the "period of stagnation"; their specificity is caused by the special situation, which obtained in the country in those days - the catastrophe in the atomic power station in Chemobyl. It is claimed that all the considered examples reflect several aspects of meaning of numerals contained in their general semantics. Thus, the development of the evaluative meaning is explained by the semantics of degree contained in the numerals. These data contribute to Frege's idea of relativity of number, but from another, purely linguistic, point of view. (shrink)

Causal reductionism is the widespread assumption that there is no room for additional causes once we have accounted for all elementary mechanisms within a system. Due to its intuitive appeal, causal reductionism is prevalent in neuroscience: once all neurons have been caused to fire or not to fire, it seems that causally there is nothing left to be accounted for. Here, we argue that these reductionist intuitions are based on an implicit, unexamined notion of causation that conflates causation with prediction. (...) By means of a simple model organism, we demonstrate that causal reductionism cannot provide a complete and coherent account of ‘what caused what’. To that end, we outline an explicit, operational approach to analyzing causal structures. (shrink)

Theories of cognitive development must address both the issue of how children bring their knowledge to bear on behavior in-the-moment, and how knowledge changes over time. We argue that seeking answers to these questions requires an appreciation of the dynamic nature of the developing system in its full, reciprocal complexity. We illustrate this dynamic complexity with results from two lines of research on early word learning. The first demonstrates how the child's active engagement with objects and people supports referent selection (...) via memories for what objects were previously seen in a cued location. The second set of results highlights changes in the role of novelty and attentional processes in referent selection and retention as children's knowledge of words and objects grows. Together this work suggests that understanding systems for perception, action, attention, and memory, and their complex interaction, is critical to understand word learning. We review recent literature that highlights the complex interactions between these processes in cognitive development and point to critical issues for future work. (shrink)

This article investigates the notion of sensus communis as being introduced in the Critique of Judgment. I argue that, within the framework of Kant's philo- sophy, the general notion of a sensus communis, that is, a faculty that leads to sensuous and universal results, is paradoxical. An analysis of the theoretical sensus communis, understood as an awareness of the faculties' accord in cases of cognition, reveals that it is unclear why this faculty should amount to a sense. The aesthetic sensus (...) communis is the best candidate for a sensuous and communal faculty. However, I show that the communality of its results, that is, the community of the pleasure in the beautiful as being felt on the occasion of a given object, is insufficiently developed. (shrink)

This study investigates the nexus between giving, belonging and Jewishness in South Africa. Charitable interactions are as much manifestations of inequalities as an expression of the giving individual’s desire to alleviate them. Structuring aspects like class, race, economics, and post-apartheid politics are at the basis of this study. At the same time, though, it is individual agency reproducing inequalities and making sense of the ambiguity of the charitable interaction. In the context of the Jewish community in South Africa this analysis (...) shows how the community’s organisations, practices and concepts are connected to charitable giving. The author carved out three dimensions, which are entangled, reinforced, or at times contradict each other: Belonging, diaspora and charitable giving. Along with shared values and practices it relates to, volunteering or charitable giving connects one individual to a group, while possibly excluding another from it. Expressing belonging to the Jewish collective as a diaspora community, relates individuals or collectives to the triadic relationship between local diaspora group, host society and homeland and other local communities of the same diaspora. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur, em “O si-mesmo como outro” define sua perspectiva ética como “o desejo de viver bem com e para os outros em instituições justas”. Tal concepção possui uma tríplice estrutura, a saber: a ipseidade, a alteridade e a igualdade. Sendo apresentadas como a “estima de si”, a “solicitude” e a “justiça”, momentos determinantes para que se possa responder à pergunta sobre a identidade ética, norteadora de sua filosofia moral – “ quem é o sujeito capaz de imputação moral?”. Por (...) isso, cumpre ao presente artigo analisar cada um de seus elementos constitutivos a fim de compreender sua lógica interna, bem como ressaltar o viés aristotélico-teleológico da filosofia ricoeuriana. (shrink)

O objetivo central deste artigo é desenvolver a ideia sobre a utilidade ética da pecuária industrial com ênfase nas doenças zoonóticas a partir do referencial teórico de Peter Singer. Com o aumento da demanda em âmbito global por proteína animal, foram empreendidos novos métodos de manejo que submetem os animais a situações opostas ao bem-estar. Além do mais, essas mudanças são responsáveis pela ascensão das doenças zoonóticas. Desse modo, o presente trabalho trata-se da revisão bibliográfica dos livros Ética Prática e (...) Libertação Animal do Peter Singer e artigos buscados nas plataformas: Scielo, Elsevier e Google Acadêmico. Assim, conclui-se que a pecuária industrial possui uma utilidade duvidosa dentro dos limites da pesquisa porque gera maior desprazer do que prazer. (shrink)

Im Zuge des Unterfangens, die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Erfahrung aufzudecken, entwickeln Immanuel Kant und Edmund Husserl je eine facettenreiche, dynamische Philosophie der Zeit. Für beide Denker entspringt die Zeitvorstellung einem Spannungsfeld von passiven und aktiven Strukturen des Erkenntnissubjekts. -/- Die Zentralgestalt der Aufklärung, Immanuel Kant, und den Begründer der Phänomenologie, Edmund Husserl, eint das Motiv, die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Erkenntnis zu ergründen, um Wissen zu legitimieren. Sie entwickeln dabei eine Philosophie der Zeit, die den Ursprung der Zeitvorstellung und (...) die Genese ihrer vielfältigen Aspekte auf das Zusammenwirken unterschiedlicher subjektiver Verhaltensformen und Strukturen zurückführt. Diese lassen sich mit den Begriffspaaren Rezeptivität und Spontaneität bei Kant und Passivität und Aktivität bei Husserl beschreiben. Beide Denker geben nicht nur eine Antwort darauf, wie Erfahrung von Zeitlichem möglich ist, sondern sind auch der Frage nach dem Wesen und dem Ursprung der Zeit selbst auf der Spur. (shrink)

This Article argues that ownership is a form of authority that is constitutionally basic in liberal societies. At the same time, I argue, neither the particular benefits nor burdens that accede to the position of ownership are. By distinguishing between a principle of sovereignty, which I argue constitutes the core authority of owners, and a principle of accession, which I argue regulates the distribution of benefits attached to the position, we can see how this is so. Taxation, regulation, expropriation, by (...) means of which benefits are withheld or burdens imposed, are not then attacks on property that undermine the position of ownership itself. Attacks on the office of ownership as such would be, rather, acts by the state that deny the basic sovereign authority of owners to set the agenda that regulates private activity with respect to a thing, e.g., by subordinating owners to the private choices of others. (shrink)

Der Ansatz der Prozessethik impliziert ein praxisorientiertes Beratungsmodell, das praktisch bereits erprobt ist und in den vielfaltigsten Kontexten eingesetzt werden kann.

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of (...) empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate translation of axioms into postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system's irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience. (shrink)

This is a persona] account of an Aboriginal woman who went through the education system in Australia to obtain finally her law degree. Aboriginal people experience many hurdles in the education system. Many Aboriginal children feel alienated within the legal system which until recently focused on a colonial history of Australia, ignoring the experiences, indeed the presence, of indigenous people in Australia. The Australian government had a policy of not educating Aboriginal people past the age of 14. The author was (...) one of the first generation that could go straight from high school to university. She speaks of the debt she feels towards the generations of her people that fought for her right to access to higher education. The author went on to become the first Aboriginal person to be accepted into Harvard Law School which brought different personal challenges and allowed for reflection on comparisons of the sensitivity towards race in both education systems. When the author returned to Australia, she took a position teaching at the University of New South Wales. She had to come to terms with working within a system that she had felt alienated within as a student. Her position at the front of the class has created a sense of empowerment that she can pass on to her Aboriginal and female students. (shrink)

Background: The therapeutic itinerary is not limited to the identification and availability of health services offered, but relates to the different individual searches and sociocultural and economic possibilities of each patient. In this study, we discuss the therapeutic itinerary of transsexual people seeking healthcare, from the user’s perspective. Objective: The aim of this study was to discuss the therapeutic itinerary of transsexual people seeking healthcare, from the user’s perspective. Design and participants: Individual interviews were performed with 10 transsexuals at the (...) Trans Space of a University Hospital of Pernambuco, using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the theoretical reference and the Bardin’s thematic content analysis as the reference methodological framework. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the Federal University of Pernambuco under protocol no. 91284218.5.0000.5208. Findings: The comprehensive care for transsexual people was evidenced through four categories analyzed: low demand of transsexuals in health services; use of social name in health services; care permeated by prejudiced and discriminatory attitudes; and health system and professionals who are not able to meet transgender health issues. Discussion: Transsexual people are stigmatized and experience prejudice in their daily health, in a way they do not enjoy fundamental rights, as if they had fewer rights, or infringe the principle of universality of access to health. Thus, for effective and comprehensive care, the health team must keep up to date on the public policies existing in the healthcare of transsexual people and reconstruct what they understand by gender. Conclusion: Knowledge about the therapeutic itinerary of transgender people may support evaluation processes of health service networks to ensure the access to and reorganization of these services. Understanding this dynamic allows fostering discussions about the structure of health services at all care levels for the care of this population. (shrink)

In A Liberal Theory of Property, Dagan combines a realist’s appreciation of the promise and perils of property with an analytical philosopher’s ambition to provide a systematic account of property...

Decades of feminist research has revealed the dismal labor conditions for women in global supply chains. Given this reality, why does Walmart use women in its supply chain as icons of female empowerment? Combining the Marxist notion of a “spatial fix” with a feminist analysis of symbolic resources, we develop the concept of a “gender fix” to understand a growing field of corporate programs that use women as symbolic resources to restore the image of firms as ethical actors. The gender (...) fix encompasses a wide range of corporate empowerment strategies to capture a broad pattern of action. A second term is necessary to situate Walmart’s particular empowerment strategy within its corporate positioning as leader of a vast supply chain network. We identify Walmart’s particular empowerment strategy as “outsourcing feminism.” Walmart’s use of the outsourcing feminism strategy stems from its commanding position in supply chains, which allows it to extract a symbolic surplus from women business owners from whom it sources products. When Walmart argues that it uplifts these women, its strategy targets the consumer end of the supply chain, emphasizing sourcing practices that promote a racially diverse, selfless, and middle-class femininity. In so doing, Walmart deflects attention from the treatment of women in other segments of its supply chain (e.g., its stores and factories). (shrink)

Morin envisions the adaptive landscape of graphic codes as an unfertile valley where writing rises as an isolated peak that humans managed to reach only on four occasions throughout all of history. By exploring the different paths to cultural convergence, we suggest an alternative landscape occupied by a mountain range of visual art systems. We conclude that graphic communication through visual art worked well enough to render writing contingent but not necessary in most cases.

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 169-196.

Las generaciones que hemos vivido los últimos años del siglo XX y los comienzos de esta nueva centuria solemos pensar que cuando este mundo sea realmente perfecto, entonces nadie tendrá que trabajar, pues es común creer que el trabajo es una de las múltiples imperfecciones de esta existencia. Ahora bien, como se sabe el hombre se encuentra arrojado al trabajo, y al ser éste un quehacer de desdicha y cansancio para él, se toman entonces dos posturas ante su “reivindicación”: la (...) primera apunta a la obtención en mayor grado de beneficios externos y riquezas y, la segunda se encamina por la trasmutación del hombre a la máquina. De manera que, la búsqueda de la retribución y la abolición del esfuerzo marcan las pautas del entendimiento sobre el trabajo en este principio del siglo XXI. La retribución es el fin del trabajo y para generar la mayor posible, no se ve como necesario el sudor de la frente. (shrink)

Para comprender la visión peirceana acerca de la subjetividad semiótica es necesario establecer antes tres referentes. Cada uno de estos referentes tiene un constructo teórico efectuado por otra serie de nociones, que en este momento no me detendré a explicar, sin embargo, será necesario más adelante acudir a varias de estas nociones para intentar exponer mi tema de investigación. La filosofía peirceana es un sistema amplio y complejo, va madurando en el tiempo. Peirce va definiendo y redefiniendo sus conceptos, hasta (...) cierto punto lo realiza de una manera imbricada, este es su método. Se presenta la dificultad de que la construcción teórica peirceana depende de conceptos que se explican entre sí, lo que hace la labor de investigación y exposición difícil, pues para fin de exponer una idea se requiere acceder a diferentes referentes conceptuales simultáneamente hasta llegar a una noción central. (shrink)

Se analiza la apertura del hombre a partir de su naturaleza legalizada. Ante el conflicto entre ley, physis y libertad, nos preguntamos: ¿por qué se considera la naturaleza incompatible con la libertad?, ¿por qué la legalidad parece contradecir a la apertura?, ¿ser libre significa estar lejos de cualquier atadura a la ley y a la naturaleza? El texto inicia con una exposición de las nociones de naturaleza y legalidad y de su relación con la libertad, ofrece una definición de la (...) persona basada en su comprensión yoica y su dignidad y una explicación del sentido de la apertura en la dimensión social del ser humano. (shrink)

In his theory of beauty, Kant introduces the free and harmonious play of the faculties as a kind of judging. This judging should precede the pleasure in the beautiful. But being the determining ground of the judgement of taste, the pleasure should precede the judgement. Regarding this problem, two opposing models have been proposed: Paul Guyer's ‘two-acts model’ and Hannah Ginsborg's ‘one-act model’. I propose a third model that, I argue, resolves the difficulty and does not fall prey to the (...) problems of the other two resolutions: the ‘subsumption model’, according to which the pleasure is followed by a subsumption under the concept ‘beautiful’. (shrink)

Desde ines del siglo XX, el Desarrollo Humano (DH) ha planteado la necesidad de un cambio de paradigma que centre su atención en la mejora de la condición de vida de las personas —no únicamente desde la perspectiva de un aumento de ingreso— sino en torno al desarrollo de las capacidades fundamentales o esenciales pertenecientes al ser humano. Esta postura parte de la crítica al utilitarismo y sostiene que el DH tiene que partir de una comprensión profunda del ser humano. (...) Hasta entonces, la pregunta central del desarrollo había sido sobre la capacidad de producción de una nación. Pero, el nuevo planteamiento se preocupa por el estatus de las personas no en cuanto a la felicidad entendida como el poder de generar bienestar en función de obtener placer y evitar el dolor, sino cómo está la gente en sí misma. Entonces, el DH se reiere a un proceso y a un in en sí mismo, mediante el cual la gente accede a oportunidades para ampliar sus capacidades y funcionamientos, puesto que el sujeto de éstas es el hombre mismo. El DH como paradigma tiene que desarrollar un cuerpo teórico de carácter interdisciplinar y, en este punto, la incorporación de la ilosofía se hace urgente. Es necesario incorporar la metafísica del hombre dentro de la antropología social (AS) a la metodología de investigación del DH, a in de responder ¿Cuáles son las capacidades esenciales que le competen a los seres humanos? (shrink)

Una idea casi universalmente aceptada es que es que la filosofía y la ciencia por naturaleza buscan la verdad. No obstante, para que alcancen la Verdad requieren a fortiori de la fe. A partir de estas ideas, nuestra reflexión está organizada en tres apartados: en el primero abordamos la necesidad de la metafísica como disciplina que encuentra los principios en la naturaleza. Así como, la ciencia gracias a la metafísica encuentra las leyes de esta, pero sólo con ayuda de la (...) fe; en la segunda idea nos centramos en explicar el método de la ciencia y nos preguntamos sí sus formas y metodologías van de acuerdo con la fe. La última idea, trata la dimensión de las ciencias sociales cara al Desarrollo Humano (DH). El argumento que se desarrolla en este apartado sostiene que, el motivo por el cual el hombre, con su razón, busca la verdad; es para dar sentido a su existencia. No obstante, hay que reflexionar sobre el devenir de las Ciencias Sociales puesto que ante el establecimiento de linderos, la inflexión de métodos y metodologías se ha desdibujado e incomprendido de los hechos presentes en la realidad y no se ha tendido a la búsqueda de la verdad. Finalmente, se presentan nuestras conclusiones que ahondan en la propuesta del DH y la bibliografía utilizada para elaborar este trabajo. (shrink)

This article explores an overlooked motif in the Critique of Pure Reason: the Damsel in Distress. Kant uses the trope to motivate his first Critique on a narrative level. Reason is depicted as a high-born female subject in a hopeless predicament, unable to free herself. A hero rescues her, not by liberation, but by discipline, mirroring the myth where the rescued female is appropriated through marriage. The paper examines the parallels between this popular trope and the narrative of the first (...) Critique, arguing that Kant’s choice of this motif is due to cultural and political biases. While this narrative aligns with Kant’s goal of establishing philosophy as a strict science, it marginalizes the also present, progressive potential of Kant’s concept of the highest faculty as a hermeneutical, world-making, and orienting capacity as means for universal cum critical thinking. The discussion proceeds from (1) argumentatively relevant methodological considerations, to showing that Kant (2) does use the damsel in distress in the Critique of Pure Reason. Subsequently, (3) with regard to the reasons for the choice of the narrative, it is argued that it is based on the convictions about the nature of women that Kant advocates in the Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime and in his Anthropology. (4) Insofar as narratives and metaphors shape convictions and delineate the realm of the conceivable, Kant’s narrative choice undermines his own conception of reason, according to which the highest faculty is to be understood positively as an active, hermeneutic and orienting ability as well as a selfreflective basis for critical thinking. The discussion ends (5) with a conclusion. (shrink)

Research indicates that consumers are particularly concerned about the safety of meat. More highly processed meat is perceived as more unsafe than fresh or natural meats, i.e., consumers trust processed meat less. This paper studies the relationship between perceived trust and day-to-day purchase behavior for meat, giving special attention to the degree of meat processing. Controlling for trust in food chain actors and demographic and socio-economic variables, actual meat purchases of Canadian households are linked to answers from a commissioned food (...) attitudes survey completed by the same households. Expenditures for processed and total meat (but not for fresh meat) are significantly different by three levels of trust in the food industry. Consumer with the lowest trust levels consume less (especially of processed meat) compared to those with higher trust levels. However, in a multivariate setting, trust shows no effect on fresh or processed meat purchases with or without demographic and socio-economic control variables, suggesting that the impact of trust on meat purchases is only small. However, the low trusting consumer segment could potentially be a target for marketing strategies focused on reputation and quality to increase sales in this particular group. (shrink)

The concept of substance is considered fundamental in order to understand chemistry and other related concepts, but many problems have been reported about its learning process. Considering the importance of textbooks in the training of chemistry teachers, this study aimed to identify the concepts of substance in general chemistry textbook glossaries. In addition, the study assessed the concepts of substance in relation to other chemical concepts and, when available, compared them with the concepts established by the IUPAC. The methodology employed (...) was content analysis and the results showed that concepts and statements related to the term ‘substance’ are different in the general chemistry textbooks analyzed. They also differ from those stated by IUPAC. Furthermore, it was found that many concepts are dependent on the concept of substance. It is concluded that there must be a greater effort from the community of chemists and the teaching of chemistry in the search for conceptual uniformity to reduce the problems of conceptual understanding. (shrink)