Objectivity has fruitfully been explored in last two decades, manifested by the many studies on ‘objectivity’ in various scientific disciplines. Due to the variety of contexts studied, the focus on...

In this paper, I would like to introduce a complexity in the debate on the meaning of religion today. This complexity relates to the tension between an internal and an external perspective on religion. I will try to show how the disagreement between some protagonists in the debate and also the difficulties these protagonists face can be clarified by taking into account the difference between both perspectives. In the first part I discuss Marcel Gauchet’s view on the meaning of (...) religion today. In the second part I confront Gauchet with an ambiguity in his definition of religion. This ambiguity can also be found in Gauchet’s discussion with Luc Ferry, although neither Gauchet nor Ferry are capable of adequately dealing with the problem. This is because both authors are bound to an external perspective on religion, which doesn’t allow them to distinguish its specific content from other forms of meaningfulness. This is why we will concentrate in the third part on Taylor’s internal approach to religion. However, in the fourth part, we will demonstrate how such an approach is in tension with the normative ambitions Taylor seems to cherish. (shrink)

Inleiding tot het gedachtegoed van de Griekse filosoof die het vermijden van lichamelijke pijn en geestelijke onrust als het hoogste goed beschouwde..

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate actors who (...) have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance. (shrink)

Despite the importance of commitment in moral and political philosophy, there has hitherto been little extended analysis of it. Marcel Lieberman examines the conditions under which commitment is possible, and offers at the same time an indirect argument for moral realism. He argues that realist evaluative beliefs are functionally required for commitment - especially regarding its role in self-understanding - and since it is only within a realist framework that such beliefs make sense, realism about values is a condition (...) for the possibility of commitment itself. His ambitious study addresses questions that are of great interest to analytic philosophers but also makes many connections with continental philosophy and with folk psychology, sociology and cognitive science, and will be seen as a distinctive intervention in the debate about moral realism. (shrink)

Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This paper is (...) concerned with the attempt of confronting the challenge coming from the Causal Parity Thesis by offering principles of causal selection that are spelled out in terms of an explicit philosophical account of causation, namely an interventionist account. I show that two such accounts that have been developed, although they contain important insights about causation in biology, nonetheless fail to provide an adequate reply to the Causal Parity challenge: Ken Waters's account of actual-difference making and Jim Woodward's account of causal specificity. A combination of the two also doesn't do the trick, nor does Laura Franklin-Hall's account of explanation (in this volume). We need additional conceptual resources. I argue that the resources we need consist in a special class of counterfactual conditionals, namely counterfactuals the antecedents of which describe biologically normal interventions. (shrink)

1. Philosophie anthropologique--2. Philosophie du savoir scientifique.

The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of foreign language learning among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from the positive psychology perspective. The methods are based on a literature review of available sources found on the research topic in two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not limited by any time period since there are not many studies on this topic. Altogether seven original studies were (...) detected. The findings of this review study thus reveal that foreign language learning (FLL) has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, the FLL courses seem to offer new opportunities for healthy seniors in the area of socializing and integration into society, which consequently may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, the research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed. Cognitive aspects of older age are to be further investigated, including the importance of learning a foreign language, as basically all research conducted proves at least some maintenance or even improvement of cognitive functions of older people when starting intensive language training. (shrink)

During the 1840s, physicians from the Habsburg Empire played a decisive role in the reform of medical structures in the Ottoman Empire. This paper discusses different aspects of this scientific and cultural encounter. It emphasizes the importance of Austrian health care structures as a model for the work of these physicians in the Ottoman Empire and studies the role of the medical school ran by the Austrians as a means of representing, on the one hand, the reformatory efforts of the (...) Ottoman Empire and, on the other hand, the motivations of the Habsburg monarchy for an involvement in Ottoman health care affairs, strongly bound up with its own quarantine politics towards the Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

Many nursing homes have an influenza vaccination policy in which it is assumed that express (proxy) consent is not necessary. Tacit consent procedures are more efficient if one aims at high vaccination rates. In this paper I focus on incompetent residents and proxy consent. Tacit proxy consent for vaccination implies a deviance of standard proxy consent requirements. I analyse several arguments that may possibly support such a deviance. The primary reason to offer influenza vaccination is that vaccinated persons have a (...) significantly reduced risk of getting the flu. This reason however cannot support the assumption that each nursing home resident is ‘better off ’ if she is vaccinated. Neither can it support tacit proxy consent policies. More promising are arguments that take the collective nature of infectious diseases into account. A potentially strong, but ultimately insufficient, argument for non‐express consent is that vaccination contributes to prevention of harm to others. Other arguments emphasise the importance of group protection: herd immunity. I discuss three collective reasons for aiming at herd immunity: solidarity, a common interest in reducing the risk of illness, and a common interest in the prevention of an influenza outbreak. The latter argument appears to be most important. An outbreak is not just detrimental to the health of residents; it is detrimental to their everyday social life as well. Outbreaks can be seen as a collective evil. My analysis shows that there are valid (though not necessarily sufficient) moral arguments for a tacit proxy consent policy. (shrink)

When a group of agents attempts to reach an agreement on certain issues, it is usually desirable that the resulting consensus be as close as possible to the original judgments of the individuals. However, when these judgments are logically connected to further beliefs, the notion of closeness should also take into account to what extent the individuals would have to revise their entire belief set to reach an agreement. In this work, we present a model for generation of agreement with (...) respect to a given agenda which allows individual epistemic entrenchment to influence the value of the consensus. While the postulates for the transformation function and their construction resemble those of AGM belief revision, the notion of an agenda is adapted from the theory of judgment aggregation. This allows our model to connect both frameworks. (shrink)

Glenn Harrison [Journal of Economic Methodology, 2013, 20, 103–117] discusses four related forms of methodological intolerance with respect to field experiments: field experiments should rely on some form of randomization, should be disconnected from theory, the concept of causality should only be defined in terms of observables, and the role of laboratory experiments is dismissed. As is often the case, the cause of intolerance is ignorance, as it is here. To acquire knowledge about potential influences, which we need for both (...) the evaluation of internal and external validity of experimental results, we cannot do without theory. A purely empiricist methodology will be unable to give us sufficient understanding of the validity of these results. An account of causality only based on directly observed things, is an account based on factual influences only. This account will be too restricted, because it will not deal with the unobserved potential influences, which we need – again – for the evaluat... (shrink)

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird eine normative Analyse und Verteidigung der Erbschaftssteuer unternommen. Zunächst wird eine egalitaristische Argumentation für die Steuer entfaltet. Aufgrund ihrer progressiven Struktur ist die Erbschaftssteuer ein geeignetes Instrument, um der wachsenden ökonomischen Ungleichheit entgegenzuwirken und letztlich verschiedene egalitäre Ideale (politische Gleichheit, Chancengleicheit etc.) zu befördern. Anschließend wird untersucht, wie aus normativer Perspektive zu beurteilen ist, dass der Erblasser bei Erhebung der Steuer nicht mehr lebt. Die restliche Arbeit besteht in einer Auseinandersetzung mit den wichtigsten Einwänden gegen (...) die Erbschaftssteuer. So wird oft behauptet, diese verletze die natürlichen Eigentumsrechte des Erblassers bzw. des Erben und sie ignoriere zudem die Verdienstansprüche des Erblassers. Schließlich sei die Steuer aus diversen "familien-basierten" Erwägungen abzulehnen. Nicht nur werden diese Einwände erfolgreich zurückgewiesen; ferner wird gezeigt, dass einige der, diesen Argumenten zugrundeliegenden, Prinzipien selbst zur Verteidigung einer egalitären Erbschaftssteuer (also einer Erbschaftssteuer, die aus egalitären Prinzipien folgt) herangezogen werden können. (shrink)

Templates travel because they offer a tractable format that can be used for model-building in a variety of domains. It is often because of this quality that a particular template is chosen. But one cannot assume that there are always templates ready to model a new phenomenon, and moreover, templates have also been designed at some point. A critical aspect of this designing process is the choice of the mathematical objects with which one hopes to capture this phenomenon. This means (...) that one has to assess which of the properties of different kinds of mathematical objects and which combinations of them are most appropriate. The selection of these objects is based on whether their properties enable the model to perform its function. This selection of mathematical objects is similar to the selection of materials in mechanical design. (shrink)

Generally, rational decision-making is conceived as arriving at a decision by a correct application of the rules of logic and statistics. If not, the conclusions are called biased. After an impressive series of experiments and tests carried out in the last few decades, the view arose that rationality is tough for all, skilled field experts not excluded. A new type of planner's counsellor is called for: the normative statistician, the expert in reasoning with uncertainty par excellence. To unravel this view, (...) the paper explores a specific practice of clinical decision-making, namely Evidence-Based Medicine. This practice is chosen, because it is very explicit about how to rationalize practice. The paper shows that whether a decision-making process is rational cannot be assessed without taking into account the environment in which the decisions have to be taken. To be more specific, the decision to call for new evidence should be rational too. This decision and the way in which this evidence is obtained are crucial to validate the base rates. Rationality should be model-based, which means that not only the isolated decision-making process should take a Bayesian updating process as its norm, but should also model the acquisition of evidence (priors and tests results) as a rational process. (shrink)

Scientific measurements are made objective through the use of reliable instruments. Instruments can have this function because they can - as material objects - be investigated independently of the specific measurements at hand. However, their materiality appears to be crucial for the assessment of their reliability. The usual strategies to investigate an instrument’s reliability depend on and assume possibilities of control, and control is usually specified in terms of materiality of the instrument and environment. The aim of this paper is (...) to investigate the problem of reliability for non-material instruments, the instruments being applied in the social sciences. Any possible lack of reliability of the instrument hinders the measurements of ever becoming objective. (shrink)

This article follows the discussion begun by Pierre-Marie Beaude on the distinction between singularity and intention in aesthetics, considered in its relation to theology. If it is admitted that an author really has an intention, this may be perceivably different than a particular expression of singularity. Also, the concept of intention can be considered from an analytical perspective based on linguistic criteria, with intention becoming an intentional state and the substantival proposition an intentional object. Propositional attitudes, particularly the attitude of (...) belief, play a primary role in this perspective. This allows for the consideration of theological discourse as a collection of sentences meant to incite to a transfer of belief. (shrink)

The assessment of models in an experiment depends on their material nature and their function in the experiment. Models that are used to make the phenomenon under investigation visible - sensors - are assessed by calibration. However, calibration strategies assume material intervention. The experiment discssed in this paper is an experiment in economics to measure the influence of technology shocks on business cycles. It uses immaterial, mathematical instruments. It appears that calibration did not work for these kinds of models, it (...) did not provide reliable evidence for the facts of the business cycle. (shrink)

El modelo viquiano propuesto en este trabajo tiene hoy día implicaciones concretas para la lingüística y las ciencias cognitivas. A nuestro parecer, hoy las investigaciones en estos campos no hacen otra cosa que verificar la existencia de un vínculo gnoseológico entre sentido, concepto y metáfora que Vico exponía en la Scienza nuova. Vico demostró, ante todo, que la lógica poética constituye la facultad preliminar que permite el comportamiento simbólico humano. Dicha noción falta del todo en las actuales investigaciones sobre la (...) metáfora; y falta claramente la noción de Homo Poeticus en todas las visiones hasta ahora expuestas en lingüística. La concepción viquiana de la lógica poética permitirá a estas ciencias trazar el recorrido científico que deberán seguir en el futuro.Recent researches in linguistics and cognitive sciences may be brought as to show that there exist a empistemological bound between sense, concept and metaphor which Vico already acknowledged in his Scienza nuova. While Vico clearly showed that poetical logic helps to developing the human symbolic behavior; the concept of Homo poeticus is lacking in recent scholar contributions on issues related with metaphors and linguistics. It is assumed that the Vichian conception on poetical logic may improve a better understanding of the problems with which those sciences have hitherto been concerned. (shrink)

Depuis le 29 juin 2006, le Conseil des droits de l’homme a adopté la « Déclaration sur les droits des peuples autochtones » ; elle doit être débattue par l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, à New York. Les citoyens d’Athènes, familiers des oraisons funèbres, annuellement prononcées chez eux sur le thème de l’Autochtonie, se sont dits..