Building on research demonstrating relationships between well being and perceptions of aspects of life as sacred, this study describes the rationale for and development of a scale measuring perceiving sacredness in life. It then explores associations between perceptions of sacredness in life and these four domains: religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational. Participants responded to a mailing to a national random sample within the United States, completing 16 scales pertaining to the religious/spiritual, personal, social, and situational domains. While many variables were (...) correlated with perceiving sacredness in life, there were three overall predictors: intrinsic religiosity, mysticism, and community service attitude. (shrink)

In this new book, Marko Zlomislić argues that Slavoj Žižek's work does not contain any sort of radical emancipatory project, especially as it passes through the ideology of communism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The evidence for the failure of communism is vast and includes the more than six hundred mass graves recently located in Žižek's homeland of Slovenia. Zlomislić demonstrates that the way out of the capitalist dilemma is not a repetition of communism but a return to the late medieval notion (...) of haecceity or "individual thisness" that was rejected by modernity. Haecceity, or the indescribable and indefinite here and now of the person, shows that the late medieval Franciscans were already "postmodernists." It is no wonder that the totalitarianism of the modernist Hegel is embraced by thinkers such as Žižek, Badiou, Hardt, Negri, and Laclau and was already rejected by Leibnitz, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, Deleuze, and Derrida. This important book shows that Žižek's work must be rejected because it does not uphold the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of the person. (shrink)

Regress arguments have convinced many that reasoning cannot require beliefs about what follows from what. In this paper I argue that this is a mistake. Regress arguments rest on dubious (although deeply entrenched) assumptions about the nature of reasoning — most prominently, the assumption that believing p by reasoning is simply a matter of having a belief in p with the right causal ancestry. I propose an alternative account, according to which beliefs about what follows from what play a constitutive (...) role in reasoning. (shrink)

This is a wide ranging and deeply learned examination of evolutionary developmental biology, and the foundations of life from the perspective of information theory. Hermeneutics was a method developed in the humanities to achieve understanding, in a given context, of texts, history, and artwork. In Readers of the Book of Life, the author shows that living beings are also hermeneutical interpreters of genetics texts saved in DNA; an interpretation based on the past experience of the cell (cell lineage, species), confronted (...) with and incorporating present environmental clues. This approach stresses the history, not only of the digital record saved in the DNA, but also of the flesh - the cellular organization which has a direct time-continuity with the very origins of life. This book is aimed at reconciling two opposite approaches to life. The first strictly sticking to a belief that all phenomena observed in the realm of the living can be explained from laws of physics. The opposite stressing the importance of features characteristic for a given level of description. To bring both views into a common understanding, the first part gives a comparison of the two problem solving strategies. The second part surveys the development of 20th century biology, bringing to light branches that never became part of the research mainstream. The third section of the book reviews a large body of recent evidence that can be interpreted in favor of the hermeneutic arguments. (shrink)

Effective and specifically targeted social and therapeutic responses for antisocial personality disorders and psychopathy are scarce. Some authors maintain that this scarcity should be overcome by revising current syndrome - based classifications of these conditions and devising better biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. The inspiration for the latter classifications has been embedded in the Research domain criteria approach (RDoC). RDoC - type approaches to psychiatric research aim at transforming diagnosis, provide valid measures of disorders, aid clinical practice, and improve health (...) outcomes by integrating the data on the genetic, neural, cognitive, and affective systems underlying psychiatric conditions. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the benefits of such approaches in comparison to the dominant syndrome-based ones and review recent attempts at building biocognitive classifications of antisocial individuals. Other researchers, how ever, have objected that biocognitive approaches in psychiatry are committed to an untenable form of explanatory. (shrink)

Menexenus is one of the least studied among Plato's works, mostly because of the puzzling nature of the text, which has led many scholars either to reject the dialogue as spurious or to consider it as a mocking parody of Athenian funeral rhetoric. In this book, Pappas and Zelcer provide a persuasive alternative reading of the text, one that contributes in many ways to our understanding of Plato, and specifically to our understanding of his political thought. The book is organized (...) into two parts. In the first part the authors offer a synopsis of the dialogue, address the setting and its background in terms of the Athenian funeral speech, and discuss the alternative readings of the dialogue, showing their weaknesses and strengths. In the second part, the authors offer their positive interpretation of the dialogue, taking particular care to explain and ground their interpretive criteria and method, which considers Plato's text not simply as a de-contextualized collection of philosophical arguments but offers a theoretically reading of the text that situates it firmly within its historical context. The book will become a reference point in the debate about the Menexenus and Plato's political philosophy more generally and marks an important contribution to our understanding of ancient thought and classical Athenian society. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on reasoning is dominated by the assumption that reasoning is essentially a matter of following rules. This paper challenges this view, by arguing that it misrepresents the nature of reasoning as a personal level activity. Reasoning must reflect the reasoner’s take on her evidence. The rule-following model seems ill-suited to accommodate this fact. Accordingly, this paper suggests replacing the rule-following model with a different, semantic approach to reasoning.

The articles in this volume offer a fresh perspective on the important role of the concept of law (lex) in the moral and political philosophy of the 'School of Salamanca'.

The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus has disrupted many sectors of normal life, including the communal worship of religious bodies. This essay first looks at the recent case of the Minnesota Catholic bishops and the Governor of Minnesota which came close to civil disobedience. Then the essay will consider the thought of John Courtney Murray on when it is legitimate for the coercive powers of the state to be used to limit religious freedom, including the right to worship. (...) Finally, those standards are applied to the Minnesota case, arguing that the initial actions of the Governor failed to meet Murray’s test, while the revised executive order succeeded in meeting Murray’s standards. (shrink)

This dissertation brings Plato's critique of poetry to bear on the issue of how to read his dialogues. Since antiquity commentators on Plato have debated the extent to which he actually meant the philosophical doctrines in his works; since the early nineteenth century this debate has been complicated by the claim that the dialogues count as literature. To treat them as literature is to hold, in a subtler sense, that Plato does not himself assert what their characters say. ;I therefore (...) categorize this view as a brand of skepticism. Only one sort of attention to the form of the dialogues avoids both this skepticism and its equally undesirable opposite, simple acceptance of the philosophical claims as Plato's own. That alternative is the aporetic reading, according to which one treats the dialogues as open-ended discussions to be continued by the reader. ;I argue that this model of reading arises naturally from the short Socratic dialogues. When pressed to its extreme implication, it turns Socrates' veneration for logical argument into a method of reading that denies all appeals to the author. ;Moreover, a view of reading much like this one can be found in Plato's fullest criticisms of poetry, in the Republic and Phaedrus. There the problem with existing literature turns out to be the context-dependence of its claims: they only mean what they mean because a dramatic character, or a poet, asserts them. The cure lies in a detachment of truth-claims from all conditions of their assertion. ;Like the simpler aporetic model, this prescription to readers turns us away from the person of the author. Skepticism and dogmatism about Plato's dialogues disagree over whether Plato meant the claims in his dialogues; the aporetic model denies the epistemological possibility of that question. It does not state that Plato's authorial intentions cannot be reached, but that reaching them does not count as knowledge. Worse, the endeavor leads away from knowledge. ;This denial of the individual person in the search for knowledge affects more than the debate over the dialogues. It also reveals philosophy's anti-literary self-conception, and its ideal of an impersonal universal voice. (shrink)

: One of the outcomes from low self-confidence of basketball is aggressive behavior. Helpless feeling caused by low self-confidence could turn an athlete using aggressive behavior as alternate behavior in the interaction with the opponent during a game. The level of the aggression can be seen in the injury rate in that particular sport. This research objective is to find out the relation between self-confidence and the appearance of the aggressive behavior in basketball player. It involves 64 athletes in West (...) Jakarta between 17 to 28 years old. Data that was measured by questionnaires has shown there is a negative association between self-confidence and aggressive behavior in basketball athlete.  . (shrink)

Which epistemic value is the standard according to which we ought to compare, assess and design institutional arrangements in terms of their epistemic properties? Two main options are agent development and attainment of truth. The options are presented through two authoritative contemporary accounts-agent development by Robert Talisse?s understanding in Democracy and Moral Conflict and attainment of truth by David Estlund?s treatment, most prominently in Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Both options are shown to be unsatisfactory because they are subject to (...) problematic risk of suboptimal epistemic state lock-in. The ability of the social epistemic system to revise suboptimal epistemic states is argued to be the best option for a comparative standard in institutional epistemology. nema. (shrink)

This essay considers P. J. Ivanhoe's critical challenge to Slingerland's analysis of wuwei(‘effortless action’). While I agree with Ivanhoe that we should do more work to embody and understand the concept of wuwei, I will defend Slingerland's notion that wuwei involves paradox—particularly in the cases of Zhuangi and Laozi. The present essay is not a defense of the specifics of Slingerland's analysis. Nonetheless, this essay focuses on defending the notion of paradox. Ivanhoe offers an alternative view of wuwei, one that (...) sees the paradox as a riddle. I argue that this kind of formulation would frame the problem of wuwei in an unhelpful manner. I offer several novel ways of overcoming, or at least qualifying, the experience of paradox that seems to be at play in nondoing. (shrink)

MIRJAM HORN, POSTMODERN PLAGIARISMS: CULTURAL AGENDA AND AESTHETIC STRATEGIES OF APPROPRIATION IN US-AMERICAN LITERATURE, WALTER DE GRUYTER, BERLIN/BOSTON, 2015.Marko Bogunović.

This textbook offers the first unified treatment of wave propagation in electronic and electromagnetic systems and introduces readers to the essentials of the transfer matrix method, a powerful analytical tool that can be used to model and study an array of problems pertaining to wave propagation in electrons and photons. It is aimed at graduate and advanced undergraduate students in physics, materials science, electrical and computer engineering, and mathematics, and is ideal for researchers in photonic crystals, negative index materials, left-handed (...) materials, plasmonics, nonlinear effects, and optics. Peter Markos and Costas Soukoulis begin by establishing the analogy between wave propagation in electronic systems and electromagnetic media and then show how the transfer matrix can be easily applied to any type of wave propagation, such as electromagnetic, acoustic, and elastic waves. The transfer matrix approach of the tight-binding model allows readers to understand its implementation quickly and all the concepts of solid-state physics are clearly introduced. Markos and Soukoulis then build the discussion of such topics as random systems and localized and delocalized modes around the transfer matrix, bringing remarkable clarity to the subject. Total internal reflection, Brewster angles, evanescent waves, surface waves, and resonant tunneling in left-handed materials are introduced and treated in detail, as are important new developments like photonic crystals, negative index materials, and surface plasmons. Problem sets aid students working through the subject for the first time. (shrink)

According to current orthodoxy in the philosophy of action, intentional actions consist in intrinsically mindless bodily movements that stand in causal relations to appropriate mental states. This paper challenges this approach to intentional action, by arguing that there are not enough appropriate mental states around to ‘animate’ all of the bodily movements we intuitively count as intentional actions. In the alternative picture I suggest, the bodily movements that constitute our intentional actions are themselves to be thought of as cognitive events, (...) embodying our grasp of ways of acting. (shrink)

In §24 of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant remarks that his account of the capacity of the understanding to spontaneously determine sensibility explains how empirical self-knowledge is possible through inner-sense. Although most commentators consider Kant's conception of empirical self-knowledge through inner sense to be either a failure or at least drastically under-developed, I argue that (just as Kant claims) his account of the capacity of the understanding to determine sensibility - the "productive imagination" - can ground an attractive account of self-knowledge. (...) The account of inner sense I propose, however, may seem to conflict with some of Kant's views on time. I close the paper by arguing that the apparent conflict is not a fault specific to my account of inner sense, but rather indicative of a deeper tension, internal to Kant's views on time. (shrink)

The recurring claim that the construct of psychopathy is value laden often is not qualified in enough detail. The chapters in this part of the volume, instead, investigate in depth the role and significance of values in different aspects of the construct of psychopathy. Following these chapters, but also by offering a background to them, we show how certain values are involved in the characterisation of psychopathy, inform societal needs satisfied by this construct, and have a central role in determining (...) whether psychopathy is a mental disorder. Moreover, we relate this description to our criticism of the view that the entrenchment of the notion of psychopathy with values in principle renders it irreconcilable with sound psychiatric theory and practice. However, we also recognize that the value-ladenness of psychopathy leaves open other important challenges. Meeting them needs addressing interdisciplinary interrelated issues that have empirical, normative, and theoretical dimensions. (shrink)

The issue whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions on moral psychology and in those concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability for transferring the motivation by means-ends reasoning. In fact, we defend the different claim that these experiments (...) appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue. (shrink)

Does rationality require us to take the means to our ends? Intuitively, it seems clear that it does. And yet it has proven difficult to explain why this should be so: after all, if one is pursuing an end that one has decisive reason not to pursue, the balance of reasons will presumably speak against one's taking the means necessary to bring that end about. In this paper I propose a novel account of the instrumental requirement which addresses this problem. (...) On the view I develop, the instrumental requirement is normative not because agents have reasons to comply with it, but because it is a normative standard intrinsic to intentional action—i.e., it is a standard that partly spells out what it is to exercise one's agency well. (shrink)

Editorial introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy.

Almost everything that we do, we do by doing other things. Even actions we perform without deliberation or conscious planning are composed of ‘smaller’, subsidiary actions. But how should we think of such subsidiary actions? Are they fully-fledged intentional actions (in the sense of things that we do for reasons) in their own right? In this paper I defend an affirmative answer to this question, against a recently influential form of scepticism. Drawing on a distinctive kind of ‘action-demonstrative’ representation, I (...) show that the sceptic's arguments do not go through. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘infodemic’ has become a popular explanation for the rejection of anti-COVID-19 crisis governance measures. In this paper, we argue that infodemic is an inherent property of society under free institutions misused to pursue an epistemically vicious political epistemology. Furthermore, we provide an alternative account of political epistemology of COVID-19 governance and popular resistance to it. Namely, we argue that 1) pandemics represent a complex problem, and some level of resistance to governance which restricts liberties while informed (...) by ongoing scientific and political learning processes is inevitable, and 2) the resistance is exacerbated by the history of technocratization of governance and the exclusionary socio-economic inequalities which condition political and epistemic deficiencies easily exploitable by the political entrepreneurs of right-wing populism, particularly under the conditions of social media which gamifies public discourse. Thus, we argue, the correct response to the cultures of rejection of anti-COVID-19 measures is to change the underlying political and economic conditions and not to limit speech or restrict franchise as the infodemic diagnosis suggests. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the influence of senior leadership on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We integrate upper echelons research that has investigated either the influence of the CEO or the top management team on CSR. We contend that functional experience complementarity between CEOs and TMTs in formulating and implementing CSR strategy may underlie differentiated strategies in CSR. We find that when CEOs who have predominant experience in output functions are complemented by TMTs with a lower proportion of members who (...) have experience in output functions, there is a pronounced effect on the community, product, and diversity dimensions of CSR. In turn, when output-oriented CEOs are complemented by output-oriented TMTs, we observe an effect on the employee relations dimension of CSR. Interestingly, we find no influence of CEO-TMT complementarity on the environment dimension of CSR. In general, our empirical results support the relevance of the interaction between CEOs and their TMTs in defining their firms’ CSR profile. (shrink)

The harm usually associated with psychopathy requires therapeutically, legally, and ethically satisfactory solutions. Scholars from different fields have, thus, examined whether empirical evidence shows that individuals with psychopathic traits satisfy concepts, such as responsibility, mental disorder, or disability, that have specific legal or ethical implications. The present paper considers the less discussed issue of whether psychopathy is a disability. As it has been shown for the cases of the responsibility and mental disorder status of psychopathic individuals, we argue that it (...) is undecided whether psychopathy is a disability. Nonetheless, based on insights from disability studies and legislations, we propose that interventions to directly modify the propensities of individuals with psychopathic tendencies should be balanced with modifications of the social and physical environments to accommodate their peculiarities. We also suggest how this social approach in some practical contexts that involve non-offender populations might be effective in addressing some of the negative effects of psychopathy. (shrink)

Considered from a specific perspective, the world is full actions and agents: a star explodes, grass grows, a spider spins its web, a cat stalks a bird, Fred butters a piece of toast, Mary plays a...

Attempts to explain behavior genetically face two major problems: the application of the concept of genetic coding and the theoretical possibility of decomposing behavior. This paper argues that using the notion of genetic coding is appropriate in explanations of protein synthesis but inadequate and even misleading in the context of explanations of behavior. Genes should be regarded as disparate components of mechanisms that account for behavior rather than as codes for behavioral phenotypes. Such mechanistic explanations, however, presuppose the possibility of (...) decomposing behavioral phenotypes, which is strongly disputed by researchers holding an interactionist view of behavior. It is argued that these researchers fail to distinguish etiological from constitutive decomposition, and that their objections apply to the former but not to the latter kind. Constitutive decomposition might identify genes as disparate components and open up the possibility of explaining behavior mechanistically by isolating causal paths from genes to behavior. Finally, research on the single gene disorder phenylketonuria is introduced to illustrate and test these views. With respect to this disorder it is demonstrated that applying the concept of genetic coding would be inappropriate and misguiding, while nonetheless the phenotype is decomposable and can be explained mechanistically by singling out a genetic causal path.t is demonstrated that applying the concept of genetic coding would be inappropriate and misguiding, while nonetheless the phenotype is decomposable and can be explained mechanistically by singling out a genetic causal path. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an epistemological argument for freedom from poverty, building on Gerald Gaus’ work on political and moral disagreement in New Diversity Theory (NDT). NDT argues that diversity and disagreement are fundamental to political and moral learning. In this paper, I address Gaus’ central arguments in NDT, and focus on what I argue to be the key epistemological distinction of his account—namely, the argument that the relevant diversity, which is conducive to political and moral learning and should (...) therefore be protected by an institutional order, should not be defended or defined by reference to its performance with regards to discovery of true beliefs, but by reference to the independent epistemic value of protection of disagreeing, redundant and distant investigators. I develop a restatement of this argument from the perspective of institutional epistemology, and show that (along with constitutional liberties, polycentric self-governance and markets) freedom from poverty must be considered an institutional “device” conducive to such a conception of diversity. While Gaus rejects redistributive policies at the level of an institutional order, it is precisely his account of the epistemic powers of diversity and disagreement which provides the strongest defense of minimal redistribution. (shrink)

What exactly is reasoning? While debate on this question is ongoing, most philosophers seem to agree on at least the following: reasoning is a mental process operating on contents, which consists in adopting or revising some of your attitudes in light of others. In this paper, I argue that this characterisation is mistaken: there is no single mental phenomenon that satisfies both of these conditions. Instead, I characterise two distinct mental phenomena, which I call ‘deducing’, on the one hand, and (...) ‘reasoning’ or ‘inference’ on the other, to play each of these roles. Recognising this division of labour is essential to developing a better understanding of our rational economy. (shrink)

In the paper, I examine the conditions that are necessary for the correct characterization of the phenomenon of self-deception. Deflationists believe that the phenomenon of self-deception can be characterized as a kind of motivationally biased belief-forming process. They face the selectivity problem according to which the presence of a desire for something to be the case is not enough to produce a self-deceptive belief. Intentionalists argue that the solution to the selectivity problem consists in invoking the notion of intention. According (...) to them, self-deception involves intentional distortion of one's own belief-forming process. In this paper, I defend the claim that intentionalists also face the problem of selectivity. Accordingly, I argue that this objection cannot be used to determine which theory of self-deception is superior. Furthermore, I argue that limiting folk-psychological explanations to reason-based explanations might be responsible for the resilience of the selectivity problem. In that context, as an additional explanatory factor, I emphasize personality traits that, along with motives, play an important role in the psychological explanation of human behavior. In the rest of the paper, I explore how such an expanded view of the folk-psychological explanation can be used to better capture individual cases of self-deception. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to show, first of all, how landscape cannot but stand out on the horizon of a cognitive flux that affects every aspect of our being in the world (or, better said, of our being in the world) world). A special role will be reserved for aesthetic mediation, to be understood as a n act that regulates the epistemic negotiation between what is in the center and what is ”in the surroundings”. In this sense, the (...) work will start from bio cognitive assumptions on the species specific ways in which an organism circumscribes and enriches its world, and will then finally arrive at considerations that should, in our hopes, demonstrate how aisthesis is, in fact, the conceptual category that best lends itself to describing this process, in virtue of the particular gnoseological value it assigns to the se nsitive body and its extension extension. (shrink)

Motivated by the analogy which holds within the context of discovery between mathematics and physics, we aim to show that there is a connection between two fields within the context of justification too. Based on the careful analysis of examples from science (especially within the domain of physics) we suggest that the logic of scientific research, which might appear as enumerative induction, is deduction, and we propose it to be universal generalization inference rule. Our main argument closely follows the analysis (...) of the structure of physical theory proposed by theoretical physicist Eugene P. Wigner. (shrink)

Introduction. Going digital: cinema's new age -- The reality of the index, or where does the truth lie? -- Physical presences: reality, materiality, corporeality -- Spatial coordinates: in between celluloid strips and codified pixels -- Rediscovering cinematic time -- Tracing an ethics of the movie image -- Conclusion. change: a point of constant departure.