This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

How should scarce healthcare resources be distributed? This is a contentious issue that became especially pressing during the pandemic. It is often emphasised that studies exploring public views about this question provide valuable input to the issue of healthcare priority setting. While there has been a vast number of such studies it is rarely articulated, more specifically, what the results from these studies would mean for the justification of principles for priority setting. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable that (...) public values would straightforwardly decide the ethical question of how resources should be distributed. On the other hand, in a democratic society, it seems equally unreasonable that they would be considered irrelevant for this question. In this paper we draw on the notion of reflective equilibrium and discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for justification in priority setting ethics. We develop a framework for analysing how different kinds of empirical results may have different kinds of implications for justification. (shrink)

Cognitive models propose that both, negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations and ruminative thoughts about social events contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety disorder. It has further been postulated that ruminative thoughts fuel biased negative interpretations, however, evidence is rare. The present study used a multi-method approach to assess ruminative processing following a social interaction and negative interpretation bias in a student sample screened for high and low social anxiety. Results support the hypothesis that group differences in negative interpretations (...) of ambiguous social situations in HSAs vs. LSAs are mediated by higher levels of post-event processing assessed in the questionnaire. Exploratory analyses highlight the potential role of comorbid depressive symptoms. The current findings help to advance the understanding of the association between two cognitive processes involved in social anxiety and stress the importance of ruminative post-event processing. (shrink)

systematicity is. Until systematicity is adequately systematicity. Most contributors to these debates have clarified, we cannot know whether classical paid little or no attention to the alleged empirical.

Great hope has been placed on biobank research as a strategy to improve diagnostics, therapeutics and prevention. It seems to be a common opinion that these goals cannot be reached without the participation of commercial actors. However, commercial use of biobanks is considered morally problematic and the commercialisation of human biological materials is regulated internationally by policy documents, conventions and laws. For instance, the Council of Europe recommends that: “Biological materials should not, as such, give rise to financial gain”. Similarly, (...) Norwegian legislation reads: “Commercial exploitation of research participants, human biological material and personal health data in general is prohibited”. Both articles represent kinds of common moral intuitions. A problem, however, is that legislative documents are too vague and provide room for ample speculation. Through the use of focus group interviews with Norwegian biobank donors, we have tried to identify lay intuitions and morals regarding the commercial use of biobanks. Our findings indicate that the act of donation and the subsequent uses of the samples belong to two different spheres. While concerns around dignity and commodification were present in the first, injustice and unfairness were our informants’ major moral concerns in the latter. Although some opposition towards commercial actors was voiced, these intuitions show that it is possible to render commercial use of biobanks ethically acceptable based on frameworks and regulations which hinder commodification of the human body and promote communal benefit sharing. (shrink)

This paper provides an existential analysis of humour as a social virtue in invasion games at the elite sport level. The main argument is that humour in this particular context can be valuable both in the competitive social training environment and in game performance. This is investigated through philosophical and psychological conceptualisations of humour that are used to reveal and analyse the appearance and possible value of a humorous approach in various social situations experienced during invasion games and the associated (...) training situations. It is concluded that humour can help balance and structure the social training environment as well as facilitate creative game performance. On this basis it is suggested that the existential perspectives on humour presented could make a fruitful contribution to talent development in the domain of invasion games. (shrink)

In this empirical study, we investigate the variation in firms’ response to institutional pressure for gender-balanced boards, focusing specifically on the preservation of prevailing practices of director selection and its impact on the representation of women on the board of directors. Using 8 years of data from publicly listed Nordic corporations, we show societal pressure to be one of the determinants of female directorship. Moreover, in some corporations, the director selection process may work to maintain “a traditional type of board”. (...) In such boards, demographic diversity among male members appears to be associated with a lower share of female directors, although we cannot establish wether this reflects discrimination or a desire to maintain critical competencies. With this paper we add to the theoretical understanding of the factors underlying female board appointments by adopting an institutional theory lens to study female board representation. Viewing the demands for gender-balanced boards in terms of societal pressure for the de-institutionalization of the prevailing norms and practices, we highlight preferences for maintaining established practices as a potentially important barrier to institutional change. On these grounds, we conjecture on the relationship between the gender diversity of boards and other diversity dimensions. We suggest that a board room gender quota is supplemented by policies to ensure the transparency of board changes, in order to prevent the crowding out of other diversity dimensions. (shrink)

Refugee migration to Europe reached peak levels in 2015. During this time, more than 260,000 children applied for asylum in Germany; over 40,000 of whom arrived without parents or other legal guardians. This article takes a broadly descriptive legal approach to focus on the resulting legal and ethical problems in Germany, and to highlight a variety of ethically relevant issues within the legal system. In particular, refugee children below the legal age of 18, have special needs with regard to health (...) care, guardianship and appropriate custody, but the legal framework produces questionable inequalities that require further research. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze what effects indicators of a shared situation have on a speaker’s persuasiveness by investigating how a robot’s advice is received when it indicates that it is sharing the situational context with its user. In our experiment, 80 participants interacted with a robot that referred to aspects of the shared context: Face tracking indicated that the robot saw the participant, incremental feedback suggested that the robot was following their actions, and comments about, and gestures towards, the (...) shared physical situation and linguistic references to the dialog history indicated to participants that the robot had learned from the interaction and perceived its surroundings. The results show that especially the linguistic and gestural references to the shared context have a significant influence on participants’ compliance with the robot’s suggestions. Thus, indicating that it is ‘in the same boat’ with the user, i.e. that it is sharing the situational context, increases a robot’s persuasiveness during advice giving. (shrink)

Kant, I. Hvad er oplysning?--Hartnack, J. Oplysning og fornuft.--Løgstrup, K.E. Videnskab og oplysning.--Favrholdt, D. Frihed og indotrinering.--Sløk, J. Fordummelsens tid.--Palle Hansen, F. Uvidenskabeligt efterskrift.

The essays deal with the aesthetic and aesthetics; Bourdieu's critique of aesthetics form and content in the arts, musical formalism, the nature and value of literature, Heidegger's philosophy of art, postmodernism and history, Lyotard and the sublime, and the challenge of evolutionary psychology to the humanities.

By comparing alternative evolutionary models, the International Sexuality Description Project marks the transition of evolutionary psychology to the next level of scientific maturation. The lack of final conclusions might partly be a result of the composition of the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory and the sampled populations. Our own data suggest that correcting for both gives further support to the strategic pluralism model.

In einer Zeit, in der die Menschheit in einem bisher ungekannten Ausmaß nutzend wie zerstörend in die sie umgebende und tragende Natur eingreift, erhält die Frage nach der Stellung des Menschen zu ihr und damit auch nach der menschlichen Natur neue Aktualität. Anlässlich des achtzigsten Geburtstags von Friedrich Tomberg haben sich Vertreter und Vertreterinnen verschiedener Fachdisziplinen im Rahmen eines Kolloquiums zusammengefunden, um sowohl über die gegenwärtigen Gefährdungen zu diskutieren als auch sich der kreativen Potenzen zu besinnen, die den Menschen von (...) Natur aus gegeben sind und die sie zu konstruktiven Antworten auf die epochalen Herausforderungen befähigen könnten. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge bieten aus unterschiedlichen, ja gegensätzlichen Sichtweisen heraus Anregungen, die Problematik gegenwärtiger conditio humana deutlicher und differenzierter ins Bewusstsein zu heben. (shrink)

With cutting-edge insights from leading European and North American scholars, this authoritative book addresses the fundamental problems of business in an age of crisis whilst presenting radical, but practical, solutions. The contributors explore three main value shifts: from inequality to equality, from the technical-materialistic to the ecological-spiritual, and from compliance and enforcement to autonomy and responsibility. A number of striking issues are addressed including the doctrine of self-interest, the purpose of business, codes of conduct, personal responsibility, existential perspectives on business (...) ethics and the development of ethical competence. This book will be an essential point of reference for academic researchers and postgraduate students in business ethics and corporate social responsibility, as well as practitioners interested in the relevance of business ethics to leadership, management, strategy and finance. (shrink)

The brain networks underlying human multiple-cue judgment, the judgment of a continuous criterion based on multiple cues, have been examined in a few recent studies, and the ventral precuneus has been found to be a key region. Specifically, activation differences in ventral precuneus (as measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) has been linked to an exemplar-based judgment process, where judgments are based on memory for previous similar cases. What aspects of exemplar-based judgment ventral precuneus supports is however poorly understood. (...) Ventral precuneus is a brain region important for various episodic memory processes, where increased engagement of this region together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the medial temporal lobes (MTL) during learning have been linked to retrieval success. Several alternatives are plausible, for example that reduced brain activity in ventral precuneus during learning to make exemplar-based judgments could reflect reduced needs for visuo-spatial attention as a function of learning to master the task. The present study used fMRI during a multiple-cue judgment task to gain novel neurocognitive evidence informative for the link between learning-related activity changes in ventral precuneus and exemplar-based judgment. Participants (N = 27) spontaneously learned to make judgments during fMRI, in a multiple-cue judgment task specifically designed to induce exemplar-based processing. Contrasting brain activity during late learning to early learning indeed revealed higher activity in ventral precuneus, the bilateral MTL and the vmPFC. Activity in the ventral precuneus and the vmPFC was found to parametrically increase between each judgment event, and activity levels in the ventral precuneus predicted performance after learning. These results are interpreted such that the ventral precuneus supports the aspects of exemplar-based processes that are related to episodic memory, tentatively by building and retrieving memory representations for judgment. (shrink)

This collection illuminates the concept of Bildung in the works of Fichte, Schiller, Humboldt, and Nietzsche. Besides seeking to work out the theoretical contour of aesthetic education in the 18th and 19th centuries, the contributions attempt to make reason known to itself in the interdisciplinary study of Bildung, a concept important in fields as diverse as pedagogy, philosophy, and art. Moreover, a detailed examination of the concept of aesthetic education opens new perspectives on education debates in the present. ".

Apart from a passing reference to Kant, Grice never explains in his writings how he came to discover his conversational maxims. He simply proclaims them without justification. Yet regardless of how his ingenious invention really came about, one might wonder how the conversational maxims can be detected and distinguished from other sorts of maxims. We argue that the conversational maxims can be identified by the use of a transcendental argument in the spirit of Kant. To this end, we introduce Grice’s (...) account of conversational maxims and categories and compare it briefly with Kant’s thoughts on categories. Subsequently, we pursue a thought experiment concerning what would happen if speakers constantly broke one or another of the maxims. It seems that it would not be possible for children to recognize a significant number of lexical meanings under such circumstances. Hence, the conversational maxims are rules whose occasional application is a necessary condition of language and conversation. (shrink)

We are living in a world which is severely crisis-ridden and faces some major challenges. The fact that we are currently facing a genuine global pandemic brings about even more uncertainty. The social and political institutions, which emerged and consolidated during the 20th century, and which created stability, have become fragile. The young generation born in the 1990s and onwards have experienced 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’, the financial crisis of 2008, changes to climate, environmental degradation, and most recently (...) the COVID-19 pandemic. The generation born between 1960 and 1990 have had the same experiences along with severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s and the Cold War. Some of these challenges are in different ways intertwined with capitalism and its crises, while others are linked to the rapid development of new technologies, in particular innovations within communication and information technologies. This introduction lists the most important grand challenges facing the world as they have emerged more recently. The five articles following this introduction address some of these challenges, with particular attention to the problems of capitalism and democracy and the relation between these two areas. Most authors agree that climate change and the destruction of the environment are the biggest and most pertinent problems to address, but it is their stance that we can only meet these challenges if democracy is functioning well. (shrink)

Introduction -- The history of written codes of ethics -- Contemporary codes -- Media councils in the Western Hemisphere -- Journalists' responsibility for the destiny of peace -- Towards an international code of ethics -- Journalistic ethics in Latin America -- The international ethics of journalists.

In On Certainty, the emphasis is on the solitary individual as subject of knowledge. The importance of our dependence on others, however, is brought out in Wittgenstein's remarks about trust. In this paper, the role and nature of trust are discussed, the grammar of trust being contrasted with that of reliance. It is shown that to speak of trust is to speak of a fundamental attitude of one person towards others, an attitude which, unlike reliance, is not to be explained, (...) or assessed, by an appeal to reasons. It is, rather, because we have such a fundamental readiness to accept what we are taught by others that we can come to develop an understanding of reasons. The idea that believing something without evidence is always a weakness is shown to be a philosophical prejudice. Trust is always for something we can rightfully demand from others: misplaced trust, accordingly, is not a shortcoming on the part of the trustful person, but of the person in whom the trust was placed. The destruction of trust is a tragedy of life; in Culture and Value, Wittgenstein suggests a connection between distrust and madness. (shrink)

This article reports from the first studies on voluntary childlessness in Sweden and addresses a so far neglected issue – the embodied experiences of childfree women. These childfree women reject and resist pronatalist understandings that conflate being a woman with being a mother. However, instead of explaining their childlessness by external factors, mentioned in previous research, the interviewed women created a positive feminine identity separated from motherhood with reference to their ‘silent bodies’, i.e. bodies without a biological urge to reproduce. (...) Reducing voluntary childlessness to a mere result of biological determinism, the article argues, establishes a legitimate, natural position, less provocative and stigmatized in a pronatalist society. Nevertheless, paradoxically, drawing on biological determinism both challenges and reinstates pronatalism as it builds on the simultaneous acceptance of, and detachment from, the biological reproductive urge. The study hence highlights how persistent the social and cultural link between motherhood and womanhood is, but also how this relationship can be challenged. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Judith Butler (*1956) ist in Deutschland vor allem durch ihre Publikationen im Bereich der Queertheorie bekannt. Doch ist sie seit mehr als zehn Jahren auch auf dem Feld der politischen Philosophie aktiv und hat in diesem Gebiet zahlreiche Veroffentlichungen vorgelegt. Die Themen reichen von der Auseinandersetzung mit der US-amerikanischen Auaenpolitik, uber Erwagungen zur Kriegsphotographie bis hin zum israelisch-palastinensischen Konflikt. Butlers diesbezugliche Veroffentlichungen der letzten Jahre wurden zwar intensiv in den Feuilletons diskutiert, von der wissenschaftlichen Rezeption allerdings nur zogernd aufgenommen, weshalb (...) es bis heute keine systematische Auseinandersetzung mit ihrer politischen Philosophie gibt. Das Anliegen des Sammelbandes ist es, diese Lucke zu schlieaen und Butlers Beitrage zur politischen Philosophie aus verschiedenen Perspektiven auszuleuchten. (shrink)

If it is asked: “How do sentences manage to represent?” – the answer might be: “Don’t you know? You certainly see it, when you use them.” For nothing is concealed. How do sentences do it? – Don’t you know? For nothing is hidden. But given this answer: “But you know how sentences do it, for nothing is concealed” one would like to retort “Yes, but it all goes by so quick, and I should like to see it as it were (...) laid open to view.”. (shrink)