The contributors to this volume examine recent controversies about the importance of common sense psychology for our understanding of the human mind. Common sense provides a familiar and friendly psychological scheme by which to talk about the mind. Its categories tend to portray the mind as quite different from the rest of nature, and thus irreducible to physical matters and its laws. In this volume a variety of positions on common sense psychology from critical to supportive, from exegetical to speculative, (...) are represented. Among the questions posed are: Is common sense psychology an empirical theory, a body of analytic knowledge, a practice or a strategy? If it is a legitimate enterprise can it be naturalized or not? If it is not legitimate can it be eliminated? Is its fate tied to our understanding of consciousness? Should we approach its concepts and generalizations from the standpoint of conceptual analysis or from the philosophy of science? (shrink)

What is it that one thinks or believes when one thinks or believes something? A mental formula? A sentence in some natural language? Its truth conditions? Or perhaps an abstract proposition? The current story of content is fairly ecumenical. It says that a number of aspects, some mental, other semantic, go into our understanding of content. Yet the current story is incomplete. It leaves out a very important aspect of content, one which I call incremental information. It is information in (...) a specific format, information as a limited or local increment, structured by a number of underlying parameters. It is in the form of such increments that information drives cognition and behavior. This is why, perhaps of all aspects of content, it is incremental information which matters most when we want to understand cognitive attitudes and performances. This in turn must have an impact on our philosophical notions of content, propositional attitudes, inference, justification and knowledge. (shrink)

Leading invasion biologists sometimes dismiss critics and criticisms of their field by invoking “the straw man” fallacy. Critics of invasion biology are also labelled as a small group of “naysayers” or “contrarians”, who are sometimes engaging in “science denialism”. Such unfortunate labels can be seen as a way to possibly suppress legitimate debates and dismiss or minimize reasonable concerns about some aspects of invasion biology, including the uncertainties about the geographic origins and complex environmental impacts of species, and the control (...) programs against species perceived as “invasive”. In assessing the quality of the debate in this area, we examine the validity of the use of various strategies, including the “straw man” concept, and explore a range of potential logical fallacies present in some recent prominent discussions about invasion biology and so-called “invasive” species. The goal is to add some clarity to the concepts involved, point out some problematic issues, and improve the quality of the debates as the discussions move forward. (shrink)

JUSTIFICATION and knowledge are thought to be closed under known implication..1 This widely shared assumption is embodied in the following principles of epistemic closure.

An exploration of why and how the human competence for predication came to be.

Some of the topics presented in this volume of original essays on contemporary approaches to belief include the problem of misrepresentation and false belief, conscious versus unconscious belief, explicit versus tacit belief, and the durable versus ephemeral question of the nature of belief. The contributors, Fred Dretske, Keith Lehrer, William Lycan, Stephen Schiffer, Stephen P. Stich, and the editor, Radu Bogdan, focus on the mental realization of belief, its cognitive and behavioral aspects, and the semantic aspects of its content. (...) This interdisciplinary study takes advantage of many new theories in what has become an important area of research. (shrink)

An important part of responsible business practices is compliance with the law. This article details what actually happens when the laws of the host country fail to ensure adequate protection. The focus here is on land dispossession and loss of livelihood in relation to a gold mine project in central Ghana. How is it that a well‐known international company—Newmont—with its own corporate social responsibility (CSR) statements sets up a project in the year 2003 that displaces subsistence farmers from their land (...) without compensating in cash or with replacement land? The analysis identifies the factors that lead the company to not compensate farmers for their lost land: cost‐cutting, strict adherence to the law, CSR commitment that was new and not internalized, complexities of the Ghanaian land tenure system, peer pressure to preserve the status quo, selection of an “old‐school” CSR manager, and the inadequacy of Ghanaian mining law to account for relatively novel, “open‐pit” mining techniques. However, the specter of famine raised by civil society activism, the involvement of the International Financial Corporation, and a better qualified CSR team constitute another set of factors that lead to a comprehensive package of livelihood improvement measures. There is a contrast between the complexity, long‐term, and advanced type of assistance Newmont currently envisages and the backward, short‐term, formalism, and brutality of denying compensation for land back in 2003. This research is based on the extensive documentation Newmont makes available on its web site, interviews conducted in Ghana, and literature research. (shrink)

The article presents the preliminary results of the author’s study of the unedited homily De transfiguratione et eleemosyna, ascribed to John Chrysostom. The question of the manuscript tradition is first discussed. The article shows that Maurice Sachot is right when he indicates only the manuscript Romanus Angelicus gr. 125 as a manuscript witness of this homily and that the other two witnesses indicated by Pinakes are erroneous. Then, the descriptions of the folios that preserve the homily are analysed in the (...) light of a new examination of them. This re-examination shows that hitherto several sources that inspired the compiler have gone unnoticed. This is followed by a brief summary of the contents of the homily and an analysis of the passages in which almsgiving is mentioned.Contribution: The article offers a re-examination of the folios 353v–361 from the manuscript Romanus Angelicus gr. 125, the first presentation of the content of the homily De transfiguratione et eleemosyna, and tries to shed light on the association of the theme of the Transfiguration with almsgiving. (shrink)

The theme of this essay is rather simple, though its demonstration is not. It is that humans think reflexively or metamentally because -- and often in the forms in which -- they interpret each other. In this essay ‘metamental’ means ‘about mental’ and ‘reflexive mind’ means ‘a mind thinking about its own thoughts.’ To think reflexively or metamentally is to think about thoughts deliberately and explicitly, as in thinking that my current thoughts about metamentation are right. Thinking about thoughts requires (...) understanding thoughts as thoughts, as mental structures that represent; it also requires an ability to relate thoughts to other thoughts and to recognize such inter-thought relations. Since metamentation is essential to and uniquely distinctive of human minds, the idea that it originates in interpreting other minds can be encapsulated in the slogan that minds are minded because minds mind minds. This word play translates as: minds evolve into reflexive minds because they mind other minds -- where ‘minding other minds’ means interacting and bonding with other minds, being concerned or curious about them, representing their relations to the world, manipulating and using these relations for some purpose, and the like. All of this amounts (in my terminology) to interpreting other minds in social contexts of cooperation, communication, education, politics, and so on. It follows that intermental relations among individuals, handled by a distinct competence for interpretation, are essential to the evolution of abilities to represent intramental relations among thoughts, typical of a reflexive mind. I take ‘interpretation’ to be a convenient, short, and grammatically flexible label for what is known in philosophy as commonsense or folk psychology and in psychology as theory of mind, mindreading, or naive psychology. Interpretation is a cognitive rapport between an interpreter (she, in this book) and a subject (he), whereby she represents his mind-world relations, from the simplest, such as seeing.... (shrink)

This is how guidance of behavior to goal grounds and explains cognition and the main forms in which it manages information.

AN INTENSIONAL INTERPRETATION OF TRUTH-VALUES* 1. Introduction In a profound and seminal paper of 1956 'Begrundung einer strengen Implikation', JSL), ...

There is a wide and puzzleful gap between the child’s mastery of first- and recursive or higher-order attributions of attitudes, measured not only in years but also in the cognitive resources involved. Some accounts explain the gap in terms of the maturation of the competencies involved, others invoke the slow development of enabling resources, such as short-term memory, the syntax of sentence embedding or sequential reasoning. All these accounts assume a continuity of competence between first- and higher-order attributions. I disagree (...) and argue, with psychological and neuroscientific support, that there are two distinct (though developmentally overlapping and interacting) competencies, one metaintentional and the other metarepresentational. I focus below on the former and argue that it is egocentric, situated, nonpropositional and thus intrinsically limited to first-order attributions, even when all the enabling resources are in place. (shrink)

In his inventory of the manuscript tradition of the homilies on the Transfiguration, Maurice Sachot stated that folios 46r-55r of the codex Parisinus graecus 1611 contain the homily In transfigurationem Domini (BHGn 1980a). He also stated that this text is unedited and that it is most probably a recension of the homily In transfigurationem Domini (CPG 5807; BHG 1980) attributed to Proclus of Constantinople. To date, however, this homily has remained unpublished and unstudied. After a brief presentation of the codex (...) Parisinus graecus 1611, this article brings to light a surprise that emerges from examining folios 46r-55r of the Parisian manuscript. CONTRIBUTION: The article proves that the homily In transfigurationem Domini (BHGn 1980a) is not a recension of the homily on the Transfiguration (CPG 5807; BHG 1980), but a compilation for which the beginning of the homily on the Transfiguration attributed to Proclus of Constantinople was used. (shrink)

This article pays special attention to some issues of justice erased by extending constitutional and political problems to a more generally rank. Controversies generated by the principle of justice are multiplicated in their formulation in different social spaces and time relocation. In this article we test the applicability of the theoretical model of intergenerational justice in changing political orders, emphasizing its particularities and limitations. Solving past political problems in different political regimes induces many theoretical disscutions. In spite of all dificulties, (...) new debates in intergenerational justice appears like a possibility in approaching controversial political matters. We’ll try also to formulate some proposals concerning the possibility of applications of some constrains of the theoretical model of intergenerational justice to changing political order issues. (shrink)

Cyber risk has become one of the greatest threats to firms in recent years. Accordingly, boards of directors must be continually vigilant about this danger. They have a duty to ensure that the companies adopt appropriate cybersecurity measures to manage the risk of cyber fraud. Boards should also ensure that the firm disclose material cyber risk and breaches. We examine how the board’s gender composition can influence the extent of such disclosure, based on a sample of the companies listed on (...) the S&P/TSX 60 Index over the period 2014–2018. Results show evidence of a positive association between the presence and level of cybersecurity disclosure and board gender diversity. However, the board must boast a critical mass of at least three women before this positive impact can be observed. Our findings contribute to the debate on the importance of gender diversity by adding the concept of the positive influence of heterogeneity on cyber disclosure. We also augment the literature on the critical mass of women in boardrooms by providing empirical evidence that three or more women constitute the threshold for better governance. Our study has important implications for investors, stakeholders and regulators. If investors wish to increase cybersecurity disclosure, they should ask for more diversified boards. Our findings support regulators in their efforts to increase women’s representation on boards by providing empirical evidence of better outcomes with this type of board composition. (shrink)

Although the Internet is frequently referred to as a global public resource, its functioning remains predominantly controlled by private actors. The Internet brought about significant shifts in the way we conceptualize governance. In particular, the handling of “big data” by private intermediaries has a direct impact on routine practices and personal lives. The implementation of the “right to be forgotten” following the May 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union against Google blurs the boundaries between the (...) public and the private, and extends the responsibilities of the latter to court-style decision making. This article analyzes the regulatory developments in this area and the implications of outsourcing of important governance practices to private intermediaries. It looks at the decision-making process for the “right to be forgotten” to illustrate the extent to which the hybridization of such procedures results in new arrangements between public and private ordering in Internet governance. (shrink)

Many philosophers and a few psychologists think that we understand our own minds before we understand those of others. Most developmental psychologists think that children understand their own minds at about the same time they understand other minds, by using the same cognitive abilities. I disagree with both views. I think that children understand other minds before they understand their own. Their self-understanding depends on some cognitive abilities that develop later than, and independently of, the abilities involved in understanding other (...) minds. This is the general theme of this chapter. (shrink)

In the perspective of biocultural homogenization and the increasingly prominent use of technology, environmental ethics faces new challenges. Development policies, governance, and economic factors impose new ways of understanding and managing coexistence. Phenomena such as pandemics, global warming, migratory phenomena, the expansion of urban and rural areas, and the development of large-scale monocultures show us that human agency, resources, the environment, and surroundings are increasingly intertwined, both physically and metaphysically, in an increasingly encompassing organism where the dissociation between the local (...) and the global becomes difficult to achieve. With a wide range of actions and relationships, environmental psychology and ethics have the task of rethinking the relationship between cultural elements and the biosphere, in order to achieve a balance between sensibility, responsibility, and responsivity. In this article, I aim to illustrate that a biocultural ethical framework emphasizing socio-environmental justice, applied to geoengineering, not only promotes global socio-environmental sustainability but also recognizes the crucial significance of local ecosystems in climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. To do so, I will briefly present some theoretical elements related to the importance of environmental psychology in understanding the connection between individuals and the surrounding environment. Then, I will succinctly present the concept of the ”3Hs” and its implication on biocultural ethics, and subsequently integrate specific elements of biocultural ethics into the analysis of geoengineering ethics to illustrate the need for a perspective that takes this into account. Through this endeavor, I intend to emphasize the vital role of a holistic, multidimensional perspective that guides individual values and community policies towards sustainable practices, ensuring social cohesion and dialogue, respecting the coexistence of life forms, and protecting their habitats. (shrink)

Following the violent protests in the Republic of Moldova against the Communist Party – governing since 2001 – that took place in April 2009, after the release of the parliamentary elections results, the Romanian Government has adopted the measure of simplifying the fundamental and formal conditions for regaining Romanian citizenship through Government Emergency Ordinance (GEO) No. 36/2009 for modifying and completing Law on Citizenship No. 21/1991. This measure is focusing particularly on the citizens of the Republic of Moldova who wish (...) to be granted Romanian citizenship. By presenting the changes brought by GEO No. 36/2009, by comparing them to the other changes made to Law No. 21/1991 in 2007 and 2008, this article tries to answer the question of how the system of granting and regaining Romanian citizenship should be regulated, taking into account the Romanian accession to the European Union and the necessity to discard the consequences of the Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact, which was officially condemned by the Romanian Parliament in 1991. The de lege ferenda proposals made in this article have the purpose to make the system of acquiring Romanian citizenship more transparent and easier to explain to the entitled persons and to the European Union institutions monitoring the legal and illegal migration. (shrink)

Starting from the cyclic principle in the process of a society's development, invoking „the end of history" that Hegel mentions, adding the paradoxical principle of Huntington's civilizations, of a unity in diversity, through which we can have a clear and universal image of the conflicts, as actions generated by a cultural-religious interaction, and passing these through the filter of the noble origin of the Occidental civilization, we renew a typology of the inter-societies conflict and we keep the possibility of finding (...) some methods for settling them. (shrink)

”The Barometer of Flaubert or Literature and Reality”. Discussing the relationship between literature and reality, this study focuses on the analysis of the“reality effect” (effet de réel) which is applied to the narrative technique in Gogol’s novel Dead Souls by revisiting it through a Nabokovian perspective.

”The Barometer of Flaubert or Literature and Reality”. Discussing the relationship between literature and reality, this study focuses on the analysis of the“reality effect” (effet de réel) which is applied to the narrative technique in Gogol’s novel Dead Souls by revisiting it through a Nabokovian perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the emergence of the pirate movements in the European Union. Our goal is to sketch the steps towards a research agenda for this grassroots political movement which gained momentum since 2009. To attain our goal we showed the re-signification of the concept of piracy in the debate around intellectual property and its institutional settlement. Afterwards we analysed the big political themes of several European Pirate Parties and their struggle to follow the preferences (...) of the median voter. We concluded with a set of hypotheses of which the most important is that the pirates will inscribe neither to the left nor to the right part of the political spectrum. (shrink)

Images under Attack: Soup on Paintings and the Decline of Aesthetic Contemplation. In 2022, two cans of tomato soup were thrown over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London by two climate activists. The aim of this paper is not to explain the motives behind the protest in terms of environmental activism, but to address the implications of this phenomenon for the status of artistic images in our time. The protest in question is one of the many symptoms (...) of the fact that images associated with a pure state of gaze have become morally dubious due to a certain moralistic turn in contemporary discourses on art. Consequently, what seems to be lost in today’s movements of moralizing aesthetics, whether in art or in environmental activism, is not only the “aura” of an artwork, but also the idea that the contemplation of beauty in and for itself would provide a foundation for humans’ moral vocation. In a gaseous state of art (Y. Michaud) in which the transient effects of things are more important than their essence, the moralistic tendencies combined with the lack of moral foundations can no longer conceive of the ethical effects of images without explicit moral content, thus calling for a new form of heteronomy in art. (shrink)

In this original and provocative book, Bogdan proposes that the ability to interpret others' mental states should be viewed as an evolutionary adaptation.

Eliminativism assumes that commonsense psychology describes and explains the mind in terms of the internal design and operation of the mind. If this assumption is invalidated, so is eliminativism. The same conditional is true of intentional realism. Elsewhere (Bogdan 1991) I have argued against this 'folk- theory-theory' assumption by showing that commonsense psychology is not an empirical prototheory of the mind but a biosocially motivated practice of coding, utilizing, and sharing information from and about conspecifics. Here, without presupposing a specific (...) analysis of commonsense psychology, I want to challenge a key implication of the 'folk-theory-theory' assumption to the effect that commonsense psychology is committed to a definite architecture of the mind. (shrink)

Drawing on recent theories and debates concerning the everydayness of non-artistic and even private aesthetic experiences, this article aims at differentiating new ways of dealing with revulsion at the intersection of negative and everyday aesthetics, as another manner of extending or transcending the scope of traditional art-oriented aesthetics. The paradigms that I will trace in the history of negative aesthetics are not mere occurrences of disgust or repulsiveness in art and in everyday life, but ways of addressing the repulsive in (...) relation to the culturally variable scope of art and aesthetics. Besides the classical paradigm that associates repugnant subjects with their pleasure-inducing imitations in art, and the transgressions of modern and contemporary art that increasingly shocked their audience, revulsion can also be regarded as a form of displeasure linked to the quotidian, yet aesthetically relevant forms of life. By virtue of this ordinary nature, which is not unfamiliar to other (non-Western) cultures, revulsion could be placed at the core of everyday aesthetics, since it confirms both the transition from contemplation to action in recent aesthetics, that is, the practical preoccupation with the aesthetic quality of living, and the broader redefinition of aesthetics in terms of sensory reactions. (shrink)

Review of Ștefan Iloaie, Cultura vieții. Aspecte morale în bioetică (Culture of life. Moral aspects in bioethics) (Cluj -Napoca: Editura Renașterea, 2009).

Following a critical reconstruction of the shift from norms of communication to norms of identity formation, and thus from conditions of argumentation to conditions of recognition, the paper argues that a non-foundationalist critique of ideology must be based on a theory of motivation and social mobilization.