I elaborated the concept of humanistic base texts when I was translating lndian and Chinese classical texts into Estonian. At present, I would classify as such the following works: "Bhagavadgītā", a part of Buddhist text's, "Lunyu" by Confucius and the Gospels according to Luke, Matthew and Mark, to mention only a few. This article gives a general survey of the concept, to be specified in the papers to follow.

In this provocative monograph, Bertram Malle describes behavior explanations as having a dual nature -- as being both cognitive and social acts -- and proposes...

Robot ethics encompasses ethical questions about how humans should design, deploy, and treat robots; machine morality encompasses questions about what moral capacities a robot should have and how these capacities could be computationally implemented. Publications on both of these topics have doubled twice in the past 10 years but have often remained separate from one another. In an attempt to better integrate the two, I offer a framework for what a morally competent robot would look like and discuss a number (...) of ethical questions about the design, use, and treatment of such moral robots in society. Instead of searching for a fixed set of criteria of a robot’s moral competence I identify the multiple elements that make up human moral competence and probe the possibility of designing robots that have one or more of these human elements, which include: moral vocabulary; a system of norms; moral cognition and affect; moral decision making and action; moral communication. Juxtaposing empirical research, philosophical debates, and computational challenges, this article adopts an optimistic perspective: if robotic design truly commits to building morally competent robots, then those robots could be trustworthy and productive partners, caretakers, educators, and members of the human community. Moral competence does not resolve all ethical concerns over robots in society, but it may be a prerequisite to resolve at least some of them. (shrink)

This article explores several entanglements between human judgments of intentionality and morality (blame and praise). After proposing a model of people’s folk concept of intentionality I discuss three topics. First, considerations of a behavior’s intentionality a ff ect people’s praise and blame of that behavior, but one study suggests that there may be an asymmetry such that blame is more affected than praise. Second, the concept of intentionality is constitutive of many legal judgments (e.g., of murder vs. manslaughter), and one (...) study illustrates people’s subtle considerations of intentionality in making those judgments. Third, controversial recent studies suggest that moral considerations can affect judgments of intentionality, and an asymmetry may exist such that blame a ff ects those judgments more than praise. I report two new studies that may shed light on these recent findings, and I discuss several theoretical models that might account for the impact of moral considerations on intentionality judgments and for the relationship between the two more generally. (shrink)

Highlights the roles of intention and intentionality in social cognition.

Considering the close relation between language and theory of mind in development and their tight connection in social behavior, it is no big leap to claim that the two capacities have been related in evolution as well. But what is the exact relation between them? This paper attempts to clear a path toward an answer. I consider several possible relations between the two faculties, bring conceptual arguments and empirical evidence to bear on them, and end up arguing for a version (...) of co-evolution. To model this co-evolution, we must distinguish between different stages or levels of language and theory of mind, which fueled each other’s evolution in a protracted escalation process. (shrink)

People’s folk theory of consciousness encompasses three prototypes of conscious mental functioning: monitoring (awareness), choice, and subjective experience. All three are embedded in a broader folk theory of mind and thus closely linked to the concept of intentionality, action explanation, and a conception of free will. At least some of the prototypes of consciousness play a critical role in the assignment of personhood and responsibility. Recent discussions question the viability of folk conceptions of consciousness in light of work on the (...) unconscious and neuroscience. Thus far this work appears to complement folk conceptions without contradicting them. (shrink)

A long series of studies in social psychology have shown that the explanations people give for their own behaviors are fundamentally different from the explanations they give for the behaviors of others. Still, a great deal of uncertainty remains about precisely what sorts of differences one finds here. We offer a new approach to addressing the problem. Specifically, we distinguish between two levels of representation ─ the level of linguistic structure (which consists of the actual series of words used in (...) the explanation) and the level of conceptual structure (which consists of the concepts these words are used to express). We then formulate and test hypotheses both about self-other differences in conceptual structure and about self-other differences in the mapping from conceptual structure to linguistic structure. (shrink)

Attribution theory has played a major role in social-psychological research. Unfortunately, the term attribution is ambiguous. According to one meaning, forming an attribution is making a dispositional (trait) inference from behavior; according to another meaning, forming an attribution is giving an explanation (especially of behavior). The focus of this paper is on the latter phenomenon of behavior explanations. In particular, I discuss a new theory of explanation that provides an alternative to classic attribution theory as it dominates the textbooks and (...) handbooks—which is typically as a version of Kelley’s (1967) model of attribution as covariation detection. I begin with a brief critique of this theory and, out of this critique, develop a list of requirements that an improved theory has to meet. I then introduce the new theory, report empirical data in its support, and apply it to a number of psychological phenomena. I finally conclude with an assessment of how much progress we have made in understanding behavior explanations and what has yet to be learned. (shrink)

Even though morally competent artificial agents have yet to emerge in society, we need insights from empirical science into how people will respond to such agents and how these responses should inform agent design. Three survey studies presented participants with an artificial intelligence agent, an autonomous drone, or a human drone pilot facing a moral dilemma in a military context: to either launch a missile strike on a terrorist compound but risk the life of a child, or to cancel the (...) strike to protect the child but risk a terrorist attack. Seventy-two percent of respondents were comfortable making moral judgments about the AI in this scenario and fifty-one percent were comfortable making moral judgments about the autonomous drone. These participants applied the same norms to the two artificial agents and the human drone pilot. However, people ascribed different patterns of blame to humans and machines as a function of the agent’s decision of how to solve the dilemma. These differences in blame seem to stem from different assumptions about the agents’ embeddedness in social structures and the moral justifications those structures afford. Specifically, people less readily see artificial agents as embedded in social structures and, as a result, they explained and justified their actions differently. As artificial agents will perform many actions with moral significance, we must heed such differences in justifications and blame and probe how they affect our interactions with those agents. (shrink)

People’s concept of free will is often assumed to be incompatible with the deterministic, scientific model of the universe. Indeed, many scholars treat the folk concept of free will as assuming a special form of nondeterministic causation, possibly the notion of uncaused causes. However, little work to date has directly probed individuals’ beliefs about what it means to have free will. The present studies sought to reconstruct this folk concept of free will by asking people to define the concept (Study (...) 1) and by confronting them with a neuroscientific claim that free will is an illusion (Study 2), which invited them to either reconcile or contrast free will with determinism. The results suggest that the core of people’s concept of free will is a choice that fulfills one’s desires and is free from internal or external constraints. No evidence was found for metaphysical assumptions about dualism or indeterminism. (shrink)

Angeregt durch Pierre Hadots bahnbrechendes Buch Philosophie als Lebensform ist in den letzten Jahren das griechische und romische Denken als eine Art philosophische Praxis in den Blick gekommen. Philosophie sei nicht nur eine Schule des Denkens, sondern auch eine Schule des Lebens. Philosophie eroffne die Moglichkeit einer Bekehrung des Menschen, die das ganze Leben verandert und das Wesen desjenigen verwandelt, der sie vollzieht. Im Zusammenspiel von vita contemplativa und vita activa vermag ein Mensch eine Lebenseinstellung zu kultivieren, die auch dann (...) tragt, wenn Schicksalsschlage oder Erfahrungen von Leid und Enttauschung ihn die Fluchtigkeit bzw. Abgrundigkeit seiner Existenz erkennen lassen. Dazu bedarf es allerdings einer meditativ-reflexiven Transformation durch geistige Ubungen, wie sie die Schulen der Epikureer, Stoiker und Skeptiker im Sinne einer Therapeia entwickelt haben. Verwandte Ideen und Ansatze finden sich spater bei Philosophen wie David Hume, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein oder Karl Jaspers, aber auch in der chinesischen und in der indischen Tradition lassen sich bei Buddha, im Lotos-Sutra, bei Nagarjuna, Sri Aurobindo oder Zhuangzi Grundgedanken einer therapeutischen Wirkung von Philosophie ausmachen. Ram Adhar Mall und Damian Peikert bringen diese Traditionslinien in einen Dialog, der nicht nur fur die interkulturelle Philosophie eine Bereicherung bedeutet. (shrink)

INTRODUCTORY The twin concepts of "experience" and "reason" are the most deceitful in the long history of philosophy and there are theories based on them which represent extreme forms of empiricism and rationalism. The rationalism is generally contrasted with empiricism and this contrast depends on the opposition btween experience and reason. These problems are as old as the life of philospohy and philosophers have always struggled hard to overcome the traditional opposition between these two concepts...The present work thematizes this age-old (...) problem from anew and hopes to overcome the opposition by a critical but sympathetic exposition, interpretation and analysis of the phenomenology of Husserl. (shrink)

Der fünfte Band der Reihe trägt den Titel Ethik und Politik aus interkultureller Sicht. Neben einer begrifflichen, methodischen und inhaltlichen Klärung, was aus interkultureller Sicht bedeutet, werden in den verschiedenen Beiträgen ethische und politische Ansätze im heutigen Weltkontext der Philosophie erörtert. Interkulturell orientiertes philosophisches Denken weist alle Zentrismen zurück, ohne jedoch die jeweilige kulturelle Sedimentiertheit in Frage zu stellen. Folgerichtig wird so auch ein jeder Monismus abgelehnt. Das heutige Angesprochensein der Kulturen verlangt von uns, von den beiden Fiktionen einer totalen (...) Identität und völligen Differenz unter den ethischen und politischen Modellen Abschied zu nehmen. Die These von der Überlappung zielt auf das Wahrnehmen von grundsätzlichen Ähnlichkeiten und erhellenden Differenzen in den Ansätzen. Wer einen Pluralismus bejaht, muß auch bereit sein, im Geiste der Toleranz die unterschiedlichen Ansätze zur Ethik und Politik ernst zu nehmen. Wer den Konsens zu sehr betont, liebäugelt mit irgendeinem Identitätsmodell, vernachlässigt den Kompromiß. Tatsache ist jedoch, daß gerade Kompromisse zur Konfliktlösung beitragen. So sind die Beiträge dieses Bandes dem Ziel gewidmet, sowohl eine theoretische Begründung als auch eine praktische Bewältigung der interkulturellen Verständigung in Ethik und Politik zu leisten. (shrink)

Mall, Sangeeta The most popular Indian street food is the pani puri. The snack is a combination of solid and liquid, a watery bomb of sweet, sour and tangy flavours, a complete sensory delight, much like Indian society, though 'delight' might not be the right descriptor at times. Freedom of expression, individual rights, civil liberties, equality before law, all the cornerstones of a democracy, have been given to the Indian people by the founding fathers in the form of a robust (...) Constitution. And yet, most disconcertingly, more often than not, these principles are threatened by the same entity appointed to protect them, the Indian state. So how does one manage this paradox? How does one survive in a context where one is free but also bound, where one's freedoms are guaranteed by the Constitution yet threatened on a daily basis, where the Constitution is secular but the attitude distinctly parochial? (shrink)

Can an event’s blameworthiness distort whether people see it as intentional? In controversial recent studies, people judged a behavior’s negative side effect intentional even though the agent allegedly had no desire for it to occur. Such a judgment contradicts the standard assumption that desire is a necessary condition of intentionality, and it raises concerns about assessments of intentionality in legal settings. Six studies examined whether blameworthy events distort intentionality judgments. Studies 1 through 4 show that, counter to recent claims, intentionality (...) judgments are systematically guided by variations in the agent’s desire, for moral and nonmoral actions alike. Studies 5 and 6 show that a behavior’s negative side effects are rarely seen as intentional once people are allowed to choose from multiple descriptions of the behavior. Specifically, people distinguish between “knowingly” and “intentionally” bringing about a side effect, even for immoral actions. These studies suggest that intentionality judgments are unaffected by a behavior’s blameworthiness. (shrink)

Dans ses volumineux Salons rédigés pour la Correspondance littéraire de Grimm, Diderot, un des pionniers de la critique d’art, décrit et juge les peintures exposées au Salon carré du Louvre sous l’égide de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Lorsqu’est en jeu la peinture à sujet religieux, encore abondante à son époque, le salonnier adopte différentes positions, de la neutralité à la satire. Les figures religieuses dans certains tableaux (dévots, saints, personnages divins) suscitent cependant l’adoption occasionnelle d’une stratégie critique (...) plus originale et déconcertante. Le philosophe athée feint de déplorer l’absence de ce qu’il ne peut ni ne veut y trouver : la suggestion manifeste du divin. Produisant le manque constitutif de son sujet, le discours diderotien dans son im-pertinence fait éclater l’évidence d’une absence de sens au cœur de la peinture religieuse de l’époque. (shrink)

The human ability to represent, conceptualize, and reason about mind and behavior is one of the greatest achievements of human evolution and is made possible by a “folk theory of mind” — a sophisticated conceptual framework that relates different mental states to each other and connects them to behavior. This chapter examines the nature and elements of this framework and its central functions for social cognition. As a conceptual framework, the folk theory of mind operates prior to any particular conscious (...) or unconscious cognition and provides the “framing” or interpretation of that cognition. Central to this framing is the concept of intentionality, which distinguishes intentional action (caused by the agent’s intention and decision) from unintentional behavior (caused by internal or external events without the intervention of the agent’s decision). A second important distinction separates publicly observable from publicly unobservable (i.e., mental) events. Together, the two distinctions define the kinds of events in social interaction that people attend to, wonder about, and try to explain. A special focus of this chapter is the powerful tool of behavior explanation, which relies on the folk theory of mind but is also intimately tied to social demands and to the perceiver’s social goals. A full understanding of social cognition must consider the folk theory of mind as the conceptual underpinning of all (conscious and unconscious) perception and thinking about the social world. (shrink)

Leading scholars from psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy present theories and findings on understanding how individuals infer such complex mental states ...

Dans son immense Tableau de Paris (1781-1788), Mercier accorde une place inhabituelle au travail des femmes, surtout des femmes du peuple. Or ce ne sont pas les conditions de travail en soi ou la production des travailleuses mais leur corps sexué, leur moralité et leur identité sociale qu’il situe au premier plan. Ses esquisses et descriptions sont fortement érotisées: le travail est envisagé comme mise à l’épreuve physique et morale du (beau) sexe. C’est au travail que peuvent se tisser des (...) liens inquiétants et un peu trop visibles entre l’érotisme et l’argent ; c’est le travail, en particulier le travail sexuel ou prostitution, qui révèle le plus puissamment, peut-être, les inégalités sociales entre les femmes ; c’est encore à partir du travail que se renouvelle l’anxiété sur le rôle des femmes dans la famille et la vie privée. La tension demeure intacte tout au long du texte entre un discours normatif sur la féminité (séduction et dépendance) et une réalité sociale qui le contient mais surtout le déborde de toutes parts. (shrink)

Moral psychology—broadly speaking, the study of how people reason and act morally—has a long and productive history. Initially a subfield of philosophy, it posed groundbreaking questions about the nature of values and virtues, the balance of reason and emotion, and the gap between “is” and “ought.” In the twentieth century, the rise of psychology expanded the a priori philosophical enterprise into an empirical science. In psychology, perspectives of development, social interaction, cognition, and neuroscience brought new understanding and new questions. Over (...) the past few decades, moral psychology has emerged as one of the most vital fields in the human sciences. The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology offers a state-of-the-art guide to this rapidly expanding field. It introduces central questions and recent insights, traces continuing puzzles and debates, and integrates empirical and theoretical perspectives. The interdisciplinary character of the volume reflects the fact that contemporary research in moral psychology is deeply informed by many disciplines and traditions, from its philosophical roots to its latest scientific discoveries in psychology, anthropology, sociology, behavioral economics, and more. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson famously argued that reactive attitudes and ordinary moral practices justify moral assessments of blame, praise, and punishment. Here we consider whether Strawson's approach can illuminate the concept of desert. After reviewing standard attempts to analyze this concept and finding them lacking, we suggest that to deserve something is to justifiably receive a moral assessment in light of certain criteria – in particular, eligibility criteria (a subject's properties that make the subject principally eligible for moral assessments) and assignment criteria (...) (particulars about the subject, act, and circumstances that justify assessments such as blame in a particular case). Strawson's analysis of the ordinary attitudes and practices of moral assessment hints at these criteria but does not unequivocally ground a notion of desert. Following Strawson's general naturalistic approach, we show that recent psychological research on folk concepts and practices regarding freedom, moral responsibility, and blame illuminates how people actually arrive at moral assessments, thus revealing the very eligibility criteria and assignment criteria we suggest ground a concept of desert. By pushing the Strawsonian line even further than Strawson did, by empirically investigating actual moral practice and folk understandings, we can illuminate desert and lend credence to Strawson's general anti-metaphysical position. (shrink)

The work deals with Husserl's phenomenology of religion. The God of phenomenology in comparative contrast to that of philosophy and theology has to be a noematic correlate of a noetically lived experience. To this extend the idea of God is phenomenologically meaningful. Still the chasm between the God of phenomenology and that of theology remains unbridged. Husserl might have reconciled the two in his own person. Still there is some evidence that Husserl lived through the tension between his being a (...) radical phenomenologist and his being a believing Christian. (shrink)