En este trabajo analizaremos dos tragedias en las cuales consideramos que los conceptos de libido y luxus juegan papeles centrales dentro de la representación: Phaedra y Thyestes ofrecen dos puestas en escena particulares del lujo impulsadas por un tipo particular de libido, las cuales, en apariencia, se adecúan a las habituales condenas moralizantes de la época de nuestro autor. Pero estas obras van un poco más allá, pues a través de la puesta en escena y la representación retórica de la (...) paupertas y cierto regreso a un estado natural, se deconstruye la idea de Naturaleza al mostrarla, paradójicamente, también como artificio. (shrink)

Kant was a keen psychological observer and theorist of the forms, mechanisms and sources of self-deception. In this Element, the author discusses the role of rationalizing/Vernünfteln for Kant's moral psychology, normative ethics and philosophical methodology. By drawing on the full breadth of examples of rationalizing Kant discusses, the author shows how rationalizing can extend to general features of morality and corrupt rational agents thoroughly. Furthermore, the author explains the often-overlooked roles common human reason, empirical practical reason and even pure practical (...) reason play for rationalizing. Kant is aware that rationality is a double-edged sword; reason is the source of morality and of our dignity, but it also enables us to seemingly justify moral transgressions to ourselves, and it creates an interest in this justification in the first place. Finally, this Element discusses whether Kant's ethical theory itself can be criticised as a product of rationalizing. (shrink)

This book provides the first systematic presentation of anthropology's 'ontological turn', placing it in the landscape of contemporary social theory.

Unlike earlier attempts to prove the completeness of the table of judgments, this book takes the fundamental position that an answer can only be found in the context of a basic interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason that encompasses the metaphysical and transcendental deduction of the categories and ideas, the role played by cognitive capacity, transcendental apperception, and the theory of affects.

Increasingly, companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains. This is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders. Yet, a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies, using them as a legitimacy front. This strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long-term trust in these instruments of CSR, meaning that (...) all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies. Therefore, this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection, implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company's aim, but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards. This research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research, comparing four different social and environmental standards, revealing weaknesses and strengths. It exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data. (shrink)

Recent research illustrates substantial gaps between entrepreneurial intentions and behavior. This is a challenge for entrepreneurship promotion interventions that have primarily focused on stimulating entrepreneurial intentions. However, extant literature suggests that implementation intentions enhance the likelihood of acting congruently to the behavioral intention. Furthermore, theory also suggests the condition effects of situations and the perceived control over them. We therefore hypothesized that implementation intentions mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and action, while perceived family support moderates the movement from implementation (...) intention to entrepreneurial action. Using two-wave survey data from a sample of students at an African university, we measured two psychological attributes as important precursors of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions present before undertaking an innovations and entrepreneurship course. Implementation intentions regarding entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial actions, and perceived parental support for entrepreneurial activities were also measured 2 weeks after completion of the course. Our results demonstrate support for the proposed moderated double mediation model in which the effects of the two psychological attributes on entrepreneurial actions are explained via entrepreneurial intentions and implementation intentions. We further find moderation effects of perceived family support indicating that implementation intentions more likely predicted entrepreneurial actions in cases of higher family support. (shrink)

This paper proposes how various disciplinary theories of cognition may be combined into a unifying, sub-symbolic, computational theory of cognition. The following theories are considered for integration: psychological theories, including the theory of event coding, event segmentation theory, the theory of anticipatory behavioral control, and concept development; artificial intelligence and machine learning theories, including reinforcement learning and generative artificial neural networks; and theories from theoretical and computational neuroscience, including predictive coding and free energy-based inference. In the light of such a (...) potential unification, it is discussed how abstract cognitive, conceptualized knowledge and understanding may be learned from actively gathered sensorimotor experiences. The unification rests on the free energy-based inference principle, which essentially implies that the brain builds a predictive, generative model of its environment. Neural activity-oriented inference causes the continuous adaptation of the currently active predictive encodings. Neural structure-oriented inference causes the longer term adaptation of the developing generative model as a whole. Finally, active inference strives for maintaining internal homeostasis, causing goal-directed motor behavior. To learn abstract, hierarchical encodings, however, it is proposed that free energy-based inference needs to be enhanced with structural priors, which bias cognitive development towards the formation of particular, behaviorally suitable encoding structures. As a result, it is hypothesized how abstract concepts can develop from, and thus how they are structured by and grounded in, sensorimotor experiences. Moreover, it is sketched-out how symbol-like thought can be generated by a temporarily active set of predictive encodings, which constitute a distributed neural attractor in the form of an interactive free-energy minimum. The activated, interactive network attractor essentially characterizes the semantics of a concept or a concept composition, such as an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Temporal successions of attractors then encode unfolding semantics, which may be generated by a behavioral or mental interaction with an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Implications, further predictions, possible verification and falsifications, as well as potential enhancements into a fully spelled-out unified theory of cognition are discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

This critical interpretation shows Derridian thought to be permeated by a semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs thus challenging the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots.

Ageism is the view that it is of greater moral value to allocate health care resources to younger people than to older people. In medical ethics, it is well-known that standard interpretations of distributive principles such as utilitarianism and egalitarianism imply some form of ageism. At times, ethicists argue as if practical complications are the only or main reason for not abiding to ageism. In this article, we argue that inferences to ageism from such distributive principles tend to commit what (...) we call the anticipation-blindness fallacy: A much too narrow focus on life quality benefits of health care treatments inclines us to overlook the importance of life quality benefits of health care safety, that is the mere trust in and expectation of being treated and cared for as one grows old. This is a key omission because health safety has value for a much larger population and for much longer time. Taking health safety into account therefore has important implications as for how ageist we ought to be. (shrink)

A political challenge facing constitutional democracies in Africa is the lack of adequate representation and participation of citizens in democratic processes and institutions. This challenge is manifest in the vesting of power solely in, and the exercise of this power by, a sectional group – the majority party – to the exclusion of others; as evinced in the liberal democratic systems extensively practised on the continent. Wiredu proposes as a solution to these challenges the adoption of consensual democracy; an indigenous, (...) non-party democratic system rooted in the traditional African humanist and communitarian conceptions of the individual and the community, in which political decisions are characteristically reached by consensus. In this article, I present a critical exposition of Wiredu’s consensual democracy and defend it against liberal democracy on the one hand, and criticisms levelled against it on the other hand. I also offer some modifications to Wiredu’s theory in a bid to render it more suitable for practice in Africa. (shrink)

This paper examines the structure of moral paradoxes, arguing that moral dilemmas are grounded in moral agents and necessitate the same explanation as the logical behavior of these agents. Consequently, logical and moral laws derive from a different source than nomological and metaphysical laws. Furthermore, it is asserted that logical and moral laws are pluralistic in nature, permitting numerous logical deviations without leading to absurdity.

This essay on Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt challenges her argument from two opposing sides. First, it critiques all jeremiads. It asks how a person uttering prophetic indictments, whether in the form of a classical jeremiad or the more moderate form that Kaveny argues for, can possibly know of what she speaks, given the otherness of God. Second, it calls for more jeremiads. It asks whether a person, whether religious or not, might indeed know enough to offer withering jeremiads, in (...) those cases where she sees the target of her jeremiad making flagrantly incompatible commitments. (shrink)

The main theme of the article, which by genre falls into the area of semiotically influenced philosophy, is a reflection on the relationship between the human and the non-human, using two partial but parallel discourses. The first discourse is the perspective of general semiotics, which is defined in the article on the basis of two distinct forms of rationality that, in different guises, still intervene in debates about the nature of the humanities and social sciences today. The first form of (...) this rationality is semiological, which can be classified under the encyclopaedic rubric of structuralism, and which has its main source of inspiration in general linguistics and its continuation in philosophical anti-humanism. The second perspective has its origins in Peirce’s logicist theory of the sign and his pragmatist metaphysics, and opens up thinking about the sign, the human, and the non-human to a non-language-centric view of the world. Despite their demonstrable theoretical and methodological incompatibility, the present text treats them as incompatible but largely complementary perspectives. It is in their mutual exposition that one can see the moments in which the view of modern human as a semiological and semiotic animal takes shape. The text brings this fundamental and founding theoretical schism into focus by examining two images from post/modern art: Ted Chiang’s “The Great Silence” and Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averroës’s Search.”. (shrink)

Durch rastlose Forschungsarbeit der letzten Jahrzehnte ist der gewaltige Einfluß, den das Eindringen der aristotelischen Philosophie in Verbindung mit der arabischen Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft auf die Entwicklung des späteren mittelalterlichen Geisteslebens ausgeübt hat, immer mehr und mehr ins Licht gestellt worden. Mühsame Einzelforschung - denn nur sie, nicht geistvolle Linienziehung gibt auf diesem schwierigen Gebiete sichere Führung - hat die Entwicklungsphasen der mittelalterlichen Aristotelesrezeption aufgehellt. Wenn nunmehr die Union académique internationale auf Vorschlag der polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften das große Werk (...) eines Aristoteles latinus, einer kritischen Edition der mittelalterlichen lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen, in Angriff genommen hat und unter der Leitung von G. Lacombe hierfür die Vorbereitungs- und Inventarisierarbeit im weitesten Umfang geleistet worden ist, so geht für die mittelalterliche geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung ein Wunsch in Erfüllung, den Clemens Baeumker und auch ich in unseren Arbeiten so lebhaft zum Ausdruck gebracht haben. Ich hatte, als ich im Jahre 1916, durch die Kriegsverhältnisse eingeengt, mein Buch »Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des 13. Jahrhunderts« schrieb, nicht daran gedacht, daß in so verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit der Plan einer Ausgabe der mittelalterlichen lateinischen Aristotelesübertragungen, der auch eine Gesamtausgabe der Werke des Averroes in sich begreifen soll, gefaßt und in so energischer, zielbewußter Weise der Verwirklichung entgegengeführt würde. [Aus der Einleitung]. (shrink)

Continuadores posteriores de la teoría crítica de la sociedad han cuestionado a Adorno por caer en una lógica de la emancipación frustrada aparentemente contradictoria, que reflexiona sobre la dominación social en condiciones bajo las cuales, empero, se declaran cerradas las posibilidades de transformación histórica. Sin embargo, sostengo que su teoría social remite también a un concepto novedoso de la emancipación sin totalidad, relevante para la reconstrucción de la teoría crítica ante los cuestionamientos pluralistas lanzados hacia el concepto de “totalidad”.

En medio del constante replanteo que la filosofía y las ciencias humanas en general han venido haciendo de nociones básicas como la de 'existencia', un horizonte de planteo intercultural permitirá acoger mejor las demandas de las sociedades contemporáneas cruzadas por diferentes centros histórico-culturales y por el fenómeno común de los movimientos sociales exigiendo cada uno reconocimiento de sus propios derechos. Se concibe tal planteo como una 'odisea de la libertad', ya que intenta perseguir el difícil camino de la libertad -en (...) tanto poder ser- hacia la realización de sí mismo, en relación al reconocimiento de sí y de los otros, en el ámbito comunitario y político. Sin olvidar la buena relación con la naturaleza y el cosmos y con lo que trasciende a cada realidad, en tanto abrigo de infinitud en el ámbito artístico y religioso. Se advierte entonces que el camino a la libertad atraviesa todo tipo de dificultades. Amid the constant reconsideration of basic notions such as "existence" by philosophy and human sciences, an intercultural proposal will give a better response to the demands of contemporary societies, which are crossed by different historical-cultural centers and by the common phenomenon of social movements claiming for their own rights. Such proposal is conceived as "an odyssey of freedom", since it pursues the hard path of freedom-as possibility to be-towards his own realization and regarding his own and others' acknowledgement in the community and political sphere, not forgetting the good relationship with nature and the cosmos and with what transcends each reality, as a shelter of infinity in the artistic and religious field. It is then noticed that the path to freedom undergoes all kinds of difficulties. (shrink)

This paper addresses the phenomenon of incomplete preferences in disaster risk management. If an agent finds two options to be incomparable and thus has an incomplete preference ordering, i.e., neither prefers one option over the other nor finds them equally as good, it is not possible for the agent to perform a value tradeoff, necessary for an informed decision, between these two options. In this paper we suggest a way to model incomplete preference orderings by means of probabilistic preferences, and (...) how to reveal an agent’s incomplete preference ordering within a behaviorist framework. (shrink)

This paper discusses a number of methodological issues with mainstream formal semantics and then investigates whetherWittgenstein’s later work provides an alternative approach that is able to avoid these issues.

Cognitive load theory has been widely used to help understand the process of learning and to design teaching interventions. The Cognitive Load Scale developed by Leppink and colleagues has emerged as one of the most validated and widely used self-report measures of intrinsic load, extraneous load, and germane load. In this paper we investigated an expansion of the CLS by using a multidimensional conceptualization of the EL construct that is relevant for physical and online teaching environments. The Multidimensional Cognitive Load (...) Scale for Physical and Online Lectures goes beyond the CLS's operationalization of EL by expanding the EL component which originally included factors related to instructions/explanations with sub-dimensions including EL stemming from noises, and EL stemming from both media and devices within the environment. Through three studies, we investigated the reliability, and internal and external validity of the MCLS-POL using the Partial Credit Model, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and differences between students either attending a lecture physically or online. The results of Study 1 provide initial evidence for the validity and reliability of the MCLS-POL within a higher education sample, but also highlighted several potential improvements which could be made to the measure. These changes were made before re-evaluating the validity and reliability of the measure in a new sample of higher education psychology students, and psychological testing students. Together the studies provide evidence for a multidimensional conceptualization cognitive load and provide evidence of the validity, reliability, and sensitivity of the MCLS-POL and provide suggestions for future research directions. (shrink)

In “Principled Compromise and the Abortion Controversy” Simon C. May argues that we do not have a principled moral reason to compromise. While I seek to understand how more precisely we are to understand this suggestion, I also object to it: I argue that we have a principled moral reason to accept democratic decisions that we disagree with, and that this can only be so if disagreement can change what the all things considered right political position is. But if this (...) is so, then also a principled moral reason to compromise is possible. I suggest that there is a class of procedures, including compromise, voting, expert delegation, and coin flip, such that when we disagree about what justice requires, we have a principled moral reason to engage in one of these procedures. (shrink)

The prelim contains section titled: Further reading on Deep Thought: a brief history Further reading on the A‐Z How to Experiment.

This appendix contains sections titled: Ancient Women Renaissance Women.