How does intentional communication evolve? Comparative studies can shed light on the evolutionary history of this relevant feature of human language and its distribution before modern humans. The current animal literature on intentional signaling consists mostly of ape gestural studies with evidence of subjects persisting and elaborating with sometimes arbitrary signals toward a desired outcome. Although vocalizations can also have such imperative qualities, they are typically produced in a functionally fixed manner, as if evolved for a specific purpose. Yet, intentionality (...) can sometimes transpire even in functionally fixed calls, for example, if production is adapted to audience composition. In this study, we carried out field experiments to test whether free-ranging sooty mangabeys adjusted snake alarm call production to their audiences. We found a positive relation between alarm call production and naïve individuals arriving, suggesting that callers attempted to influence their behaviors relative to the snake. Subjects called more with smaller audiences, if they had not heard other calls before, and if socially important individuals were in the area. We concluded that sooty mangabeys alarm call production can be explained as an active attempt to refer to an external event, rather than a mere readout of an internal state. (shrink)

The two main theories of food-associated calls in animals propose functions either in cooperative recruitment or competitive spacing. However, not all social animals produce food calls and it is largely unclear under what circumstances this call type evolves. Sooty mangabeys do not have food calls, but they frequently produce grunts during foraging, their most common vocalisation. We found that grunt rates were significantly higher when subjects were foraging in the group’s periphery and with small audiences, in line with the cooperative (...) recruitment hypothesis. In a subsequent field experiment we presented highly desired food items and found that discovering individuals called, unless harassed by competitors, but that the calls never attracted others, confirming that the grunts do not convey any information referential to food. Our data thus suggest that the evolution of cooperative food calling is a two-step process, starting with increased motivation to vocalise in the feeding context, followed by the evolution of acoustic variants derived from context-general contact calls. This evolutionary transition may only occur in species that feed on clumped, high-quality resources where social feeding is competitive, a condition not met in sooty mangabeys. (shrink)

The chapter 'Of power' of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a very fine discussion of agency and a very complex piece of philosophy. It is the result of the superimposition of at least three layers of text (those of the first, second and fifth editions of the Essay), expressive of widely differing views of the same matters. The argument concerning agency and free will that it puts forward (as it now stands, reporting Locke's last word on the subject) is (...) thus beset with problems, and even inconsistencies. But these textual and analytical difficulties should not hide from us the relevance and, in a way, the deep coherence of Locke's philosophy of action. In what follows, I will attempt to cast some light on this complicated interpretive and conceptual matter, by a careful reading of some parts of Locke's discussion. The first section shows how accounting for the evaluation and choice of remote goods, in terms of their real value and in preference to smaller, nearer ones, is a crucial problem for Locke's philosophy of action. The second section reads Locke's move from an internalist to an externalist view of motivation as a first, conceptually complex step towards such an account; and shows how this is linked to a change in the concept of will. The third and fourth sections reconstruct Locke's account (a pattern of suspension and examination of occurrent desire); discuss the role of the motivational and normative concept of happiness; and cast some doubt on the consistency of Locke's position. (shrink)

Predicates such as tall or to know Latin, which intuitively denote permanent properties, are called individual-level predicates. Many peculiar properties of this class of predicates have been noted in the literature. One such property is that we cannot say #John is sometimes tall. Here is a way to account for this property: this sentence sounds odd because it triggers the scalar implicature that the alternative John is always tall is false, which cannot be, given that, if John is sometimes tall, (...) then he always is. This intuition faces two challenges. First: this scalar implicature has a weird nature, since it must be surprisingly robust (otherwise, it could be cancelled and the sentence rescued) and furthermore blind to the common knowledge that tallness is a permanent property (since this piece of common knowledge makes the two alternatives equivalent). Second: it is not clear how this intuition could be extended to other, more complicated properties of individual-level predicates. The goal of this paper is to defend the idea of an implicature-based theory of individual-level predicates by facing these two challenges. In the first part of the paper, I try to make sense of the weird nature of these special mismatching implicatures within the recent grammatical framework for scalar implicatures of Chierchia (Structures and beyond, 2004) and Fox (2007). In the second part of the paper, I show how this implicature-based line of reasoning can be extended to more complicated properties of individual-level predicates, such as restrictions on the interpretation of their bare plural subjects, noted in Carlson (Reference to kinds in English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1977), Milsark (Linguistic Analysis 3.1: 1–29, 1977), and Fox (Natural Language Semantics 3: 283–341, 1995); restrictions on German word order, noted in Diesing (Indefinites, 1992); and restrictions on Q-adverbs, noted in Kratzer (The Generic Book, ed. Carlson and Pelletier, 125–175, 1995). (shrink)

Recently, the mechanistic framework of active inference has been put forward as a principled foundation to develop an overarching theory of consciousness which would help address conceptual disparities in the field (Wiese 2018 ; Hohwy and Seth 2020 ). For that promise to bear out, we argue that current proposals resting on the active inference scheme need refinement to become a process theory of consciousness. One way of improving a theory in mechanistic terms is to use formalisms such as computational (...) models that implement, attune and validate the conceptual notions put forward. Here, we examine how computational modelling approaches have been used to refine the theoretical proposals linking active inference and consciousness, with a focus on the extent and success to which they have been developed to accommodate different facets of consciousness and experimental paradigms, as well as how simulations and empirical data have been used to test and improve these computational models. While current attempts using this approach have shown promising results, we argue they remain preliminary in nature. To refine their predictive and structural validity, testing those models against empirical data is needed i.e., new and unobserved neural data. A remaining challenge for active inference to become a theory of consciousness is to generalize the model to accommodate the broad range of consciousness explananda; and in particular to account for the phenomenological aspects of experience. Notwithstanding these gaps, this approach has proven to be a valuable avenue for theory advancement and holds great potential for future research. (shrink)

For Hegel and Merleau-Ponty, the concept of expression is crucial to understand meaning and signification in a variety of contexts, including the aesthetic, anthropological, and psychological domain. However, they also point out the paradoxical nature of the notion of expression, in that it presupposes what it is supposed to explain, namely its principle of determination. In my reading, both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty endorse a common strategy to avoid the paradox, and their approach is rooted in the use of genetic descriptions. (...) In this way, they bring to light the active side of receptivity without producing any hypostatization of a prior Logos. Before addressing their common strategy, I briefly present the earlier articulation of the problem of expression in Hegel’s Science of Logic. (shrink)

Husserls Ansatz der Transzendentalphänomenologie wird gemeinhin als Versuch einer rationalen Letztbegründung von Erkenntnis überhaupt gedeutet. Sein Verständnis der konstitutiven Rolle des reinen Bewußtseins gegenüber dem Weltphänomen als solchem sowie seine Betonung des teleologischen Aspektes der transzendentalen Vernunft scheint sein Denken von vornherein in radikalen Gegensatz zu all jenen phänomenologischen Entwürfen zu bringen, die – wie etwa Heidegger oder Fink – die Beziehung von Subjekt und Welt sowie die Philosophie als ganze wesentlich vom Spiel her zu verstehen suchen. Andererseits hat die (...) phänomenologische Epoché durch die in ihr liegende Neutralisierung der Existenzsetzung von transzendenter Wirklichkeit bisweilen in dem Ruf gestanden, sich in die freischwebende Sphäre der „reinen Denkbarkeiten und Fiktionen zurückziehen zu wollen. Ausgehend von gewissen kritischen Bemerkungen Husserls zu den Analysen der praktischen Verwendungs- und Verstehenszusammenhänge in Sein und Zeit soll in diesem Artikel gezeigt werden, daß der Spielbegriff bei Husserl so vielschichtig ist wie die intentionale Struktur des Bewußtseins selbst. Zwischen der existenzneutralen Betrachtung „freischwebender eidetischer Strukturen einerseits und der Betonung des absoluten teleologischen Zwecksinnes der transzendentalen Bewußtseinsaktivität andererseits versucht Husserl, die Motivation des Durchbruchs der rein theoretischen Haltung als solcher vor dem Hintergrund spielerischer Freiheit und Spontaneität zu verstehen. Im Gegensatz zu Heidegger wird die „spielerische Neugierde der theoretischen Haltung, die auch der Epoché zugrunde liegt, als ein positives Grundphänomen verstanden, das auf die Freiheit des transzendentalen Subjekts von dinglichen Zweckzusammenhängen und damit auf seine überweltliche Würde als transzendentale Person verweist. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

Instructions for authors need to be informative and regularly updated. We hypothesized that journals with a higher impact factor have more comprehensive IFA. The aim of the study was to examine whether IFA of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports 2013, “Medical Laboratory Technology” category, are written in accordance with the latest recommendations and whether the quality of instructions correlates with the journals’ IF. 6 out of 31 journals indexed in “Medical Laboratory Technology” category were excluded. The remaining 25 (...) journals were scored based on a set of 41 yes/no questions and divided into four groups by three authors independently. We tested the correlation between IF and total score and the difference between scores in separate question groups. The median total score was 26 [portion of positive answers 0.63 ]. There was no statistically significant correlation between a journal’s IF and the total score. IFA included recommendations concerning research ethics and manuscript preparation more extensively than recommendations concerning editorial policy and research integrity. Some policies were poorly described, for example: procedure for author’s appeal, editorial submissions, appointed body for research integrity issues. The IF of the “Medical Laboratory Technology” journals does not reflect a journals’ compliance to uniform standards. There is a need for improving editorial policies and the policies on research integrity. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 725-739, June 2022.

Raimund Bleischwitz and Martina Etzbach respond to the question how the global warming foracested by climate research will change the relations between the North and the South. After a description of ecological and socio-economic implication of the potential catastrophy of a global climate change the authors discuss possible instrument of an international climate policy. The considerations focus on institutional problems, especially on possible actors and borlies responsible for a global environmental policy.

The paper aims to investigate the thesis of the so-called Neue Mythologie within the fragment entitled “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus” [“The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism”]. The latter presents a revolutionary project of social pedagogy linked to the use of the aesthetic character of myth and poetry in the formation of the conscience and the intellect of the people. The program, therefore, formulates a fertile dialogue between the emancipatory potential of the Enlightenment and Jena Romanticism, in that (...) it proposes a re-evaluation of feelings and Sinnlichkeit [sensuousness] in connection to modern rationality and freedom. The links between the rational mythology of the program and Hegelian philosophy will be explored, starting from his early writings, which are strictly concerned with the importance of a popular and sensuous religion (Volksreligion). Secondly, the work will retrace the same sensuous externalization of philosophical ideas within the relationships between art, religion and philosophy in the mature system, addressing the problem of Hegel’s change of heart regarding art and mythology between the two phases of his thought. In the end the value of symbolical mediation of concepts and idea will be established. (shrink)

Ačkoli pojmy pro vyjádření komplexity v běžném jazyce jsou známy již od antiky, západní způsob přemýšlení o světě je ve své podstatě doménově specifický. Věda se rozdělila do mnoha specifických oblastí a suboblastí, mezi nimiž panovala jen velmi slabá spolupráce. Svět byl nahlížen jako soustava částí na sobě nezávislých, a tedy hierarchicky uspořádaných. Tento přístup je vhodný tehdy, jestliže pracujeme s velmi jednoduchými systémy, kde interakce mezi komponenty nejsou relevantní (jestli takové vůbec existují). Jestliže se ovšem chceme skutečně pokusit porozumět (...) světu kolem nás je nevyhnutelně nutný komplexně systémový přístup. Pojmy jako objekty, struktury, prostředí, emergence, univerzalita, interakce, měřítko nebo evoluce dnes plní články předních odborníků v každé vědecké oblasti.Předkládaná kritická stať má dvě části: deskriptivní, kde se zaměřuji na jednu vybranou esej v rámci každého jednotlivého tématu a kritickou, v níž jedno vybrané téma analyzuji podrobněji. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.1 (2002) 103-113 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note Update Searching Across Boundaries: National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics* While indeed an historical moment, the announcement of the mapping of the human genome has been treated in the literature as a beginning—a new way to think about biology and the ways in which biological concepts are applied to medicine. Issues of both (...) Science and Nature magazines celebrated the event by establishing interdisciplinary websites where readers can access essays on aspects of genome mapping and directly link to databases to search for more information on the topics (IV. Genome Gateway 2001; The Human Genome 2001). Since 1994, the National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics (NIREHG), a special project of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC), has been providing such an integrated information service on ethics and genetics. Designed to enable a wide range of users to go from annotated bibliographies (Scope Notes) and brief essays (called "enotes") to database searching, NIREHG fosters an interdisciplinary approach to research on ethics and genetics. Links are provided between and among Scope Notes and enotes to information maintained on the NIREHG site as well as to sources found throughout the Internet. In providing the following annotations added to NIREHG materials since 1997, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (in its online presence through Project Muse) becomes an additional forum for NIREHG links. "It is a rare and wonderful moment when success teaches us humility, and this, I argue, is precisely the moment at which we find ourselves at the end of the twentieth century" (IV. Keller 2000, p. 7). It is with both joy and humility that we celebrate the mapping of the human genome. [End Page 103] I. Genetic Testing Andrews, Lori B. Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions About Genetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 264 p.Noting the wide impact of genetic testing, Andrews discusses patient self concept, reproduction decisions, confidentiality, discriminations in health insurance and employment, the need for competent counseling, and the legal, ethical, and social regulations she deems important to help solve dilemmas arising from the tests and their ensuing ramifications. She describes three models, pointing out both advantages and problems: a medical model with physician gatekeepers, a public health model that could provide education as well some testing for those unable to afford tests, and a fundamental rights model that could give greater weight to individuals decisions about the use of health care services. The book has 85 pages of footnotes.American Society of Human Genetics. Social Issues Subcommittee on Familial Disclosure. Professional Disclosure of Familial Genetic Information. American Journal of Human Genetics 62 (2): 474-83, February 1998.The ASHG statement outlines points to consider: the general rule of confidentiality, exceptional circumstances that permit disclosure, and the ethical duty to inform patients about familial implications. Background discussion includes: ethical frameworks for disclosure of otherwise confidential information, the duty to warn under law, and international trends and positions.Boetzkes, Elisabeth. Genetic Knowledge and Third-Party Interests. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 8 (4): 386-92, Summer 1999.Protection from the interests of insurers or prospective employers are discussed from the point of view of the ethical basis of the professional obligation to confidentiality as well as the right to privacy of those tested. However, the author supports family members, saying that "first-party resistance to disclosure may be overcome by weighty third-party claims."Chadwick, Ruth; Shickle, Darren; ten Have, Henk; and Wiesing, Urban, eds. The Ethics of Genetic Screening. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. 255 p.Twenty-one chapters and 23 authors provide views of genetic testing/screening in different European countries and offer brief discussions of sociological perspectives, moral and philosophical issues, privacy, reconciling liberty and the common good, and questions raised in genetic testing of children.Clayton, Ellen Wright. Genetic Testing in Children. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (3): 233-51, June 1997.Clayton argues that there is room for... (shrink)

In this paper, I shall investigate Edith Stein’s account of empathic subjectivity in light of the “affective turn” that characterises the current literature on Stein’s phenomenology. I shall argue that Stein develops an original approach to empathy that is not restricted to the model of “direct access” to others. I shall claim that, for Stein, empathy is an attitude that shares significant similarities with retention and imagining-how. More precisely, I shall show that the significance of empathy lies in striving to (...) respond appropriately to the other through the constitution of types or examples that involve features inherent in personality and values. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to explore whether and how emotions build on a state of being motivated that is linked to character and requires the positive contribution of habit. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of motivation, I argue that the relation between emotions and character depends on the institution of an emotional space, which is responsible for our sensitivity to the values of the felt situation and yet it is open to changes and revisions.

With the exception of James Ostrow’s 1990 study, social sensitivity has received scarce attention in philosophy, whilst it has become an important area of research in social and clinical psychology, where it is commonly known as interpersonal sensitivity. The latter is usually understood as a form of social skill to appropriately recognise and decode the appearance and behaviour of others. However, this view suffers from conceptual limitations in that it tends to reduce social sensitivity to standardised skilful behaviour. Drawing on (...) Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, I disambiguate social sensitivity from social skills, arguing that the former builds on the receptivity of habit to beliefs and cognitive dissonance. In this revised sense, social sensitivity informs processes of attitude change that challenge ingrained dispositions and potentially defy social codes and expectations. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall focus on the relation between habitual body and memory in Hegel’sPhilosophy of Subjective Spiritand Merleau-Ponty’sPhenomenology of Perception. Both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty defend a view of the self that is centred on the role of habituality as embodied activity situated in a context. However, both philosophers avoid committing to what Edward Casey has defined habitual body memory, i.e., an active immanence of the past in the body that informs present bodily actions in an efficacious, orienting and (...) regular manner. I shall explore the reasons why neither Hegel nor Merleau-Ponty develops an explicit account of habitual body memory. This will shed light not only on Hegel’s account of lived experience, but also on Hegel and Merleau-Ponty’s common concern with the habitual body. (shrink)

To become a unifying theory of brain function, predictive processing must accommodate its rich representational diversity. Gilead et al. claim such diversity requires a multi-process theory, and thus is out of reach for PP, which postulates a universal canonical computation. We contend this argument and instead propose that PP fails to account for the experiential level of representations.

Abstract:I suggest that Hume’s recantation, in the Appendix to the Treatise, of his account of the idea of personal identity in section 1.4.6 hinges on the contrast between the first-personal cognitive roles of that idea and its imagination-based explanation. In stark, if implicit, contrast with Locke, Hume’s account divorces personal identity from consciousness, considering oneself as oneself. But, later in the Appendix, Hume realized, if imperfectly, that something was missing from the idea of self he had constructed. I suggest that (...) what is missing is the intimate consciousness of ourselves that idea should allow us to achieve. While Hume despaired to find a solution to this problem, a change in the background of his earlier theory—a change he had available and which is perhaps alluded to in a letter to Kames—could have made his original account consistent with the first-personal features of the idea of self. (shrink)

Analytic metaphysics displays a meta-metaphysical pattern: A shift toward a foundational conception of the aims and methods of metaphysical enquiry and away from a pragmatic understanding of foundational questions of metaphysics. Pragmatism looms large in Carnap’s and Quine’s metaphysics, across the differences between ontological pluralism and antirealism and extensionalist ontological realism. The two philosophers share the pairing of a deflationary take on ontology and a pragmatist rendering of foundational issues. In particular, Quine complements his quantification-based ontology, which denies ontological pluralism, (...) with a pragmatic understanding of cognitive and explanatory significance. This pattern is traceable in Lewis’s modal realism. A different line in analytic meta-metaphysics is characterized by easing of pragmatist commitments and redefining the object of enquiry, from what there is to what is fundamental. I give and discuss examples of this different theoretical line and illustrate their contribution to the ineludible task of a philosophical revision of pragmatism. (shrink)

O texto analisa o conceito de crença [Glaube]e sua relação com a razão na fenomenologia de Husserl, sob três aspectos. Primeiramente, a partir da concepção da razão como essência e telos do homem e da concepção da filosofia como o modo de vida que lhe corresponde e que exige a crença na razão. Em segundo lugar é analisada a crença como posição de ser e a sua legitimação pela razão. O último aspecto analisado é o da implição da crença em (...) Deus na elucidação da exigência da vida ética para o sentido racional da existência no mundo. A concepção teleológica da vida da subjetividade e intersubjetividade marca a compreensão da relação entre crença e razão; esta última é alargada de modo a permitir pensar uma originária unidade entre as suas dimensões teórica e prática. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone recuperar los principales aportes de Hegel sobre el problema del delito y la pena en el esquema que presenta en la Filosofía del Derecho, haciendo un continuo esfuerzo por enmarcarlos en su compleja propuesta filosófica más general, es decir, en el marco del movimiento dialéctico con el que piensa el continuo hacerse de las sociedades y los sujetos. Buscaremos principalmente mostrar el modo en que Hegel rechaza las concepciones utilitaristas sobre la pena para proponer una (...) idea del castigo en tanto retribución, pero donde retribución adquiere un sentido peculiar que, consideramos, sólo puede ser leído a la luz de su dialéctica y de su singular concepción del derecho. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to explore the contribution of the phenomenological reduction to a distinct form of empathy, which has been identified and called by Ratcliffe :473–495, 2012) radical empathy. This form of empathy brings to light the sense of reality experienced by the subject rather than a mere mental state. However, I shall consider whether and how the phenomenological reduction allows different interpretations of the same experience, thereby impacting on our understanding of another’s sense of reality. Far from (...) dismissing the role of the reduction, I propose a reconsideration of its relevance for radical empathy. In order to spell out my argument, I propose a case ex negativo that looks at Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s different analyses of the sense of reality experienced by obsessive patients. I argue that this interpretative difference ultimately depends on two opposite uses of the reduction itself, and that Merleau-Ponty’s account offers a promising perspective to reintegrate and contextualize the phenomenological reduction into radical empathy. (shrink)