Cultural evolution depends on both innovation (the creation of new cultural variants by accident or design) and high-fidelity transmission (which preserves our accumulated knowledge and allows the storage of normative conventions). What is required is an overarching theory encompassing both dimensions, specifying the psychological motivations and mechanisms involved. The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition results from our ability to adopt different motivational stances flexibly during social learning and transmission. (...) We argue that the ways in which instrumental and ritual stances are adopted in cultural transmission influence the nature and degree of copying fidelity and thus also patterns of cultural spread and stability at a population level over time. BST creates a unifying framework for interpreting the findings of otherwise seemingly disparate areas of enquiry, including social learning, cumulative culture, overimitation, and ritual performance. We discuss the implications of BST for competing by-product accounts which assume that faithful copying is merely a side-effect of instrumental learning and action parsing. We also set out a novel “cultural action framework” bringing to light aspects of social learning that have been relatively neglected by behavioural ecologists and evolutionary psychologists and establishing a roadmap for future research on this topic. The BST framework sheds new light on the cognitive underpinnings of cumulative cultural change, selection, and spread within an encompassing evolutionary framework. (shrink)

The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution has prompted a wide-ranging discussion with broadly three aims: to apply the theory to novel contexts; to extend the conceptual framework; to offer critical feedback on various aspects of the theory. We first discuss BST's relevance to the diverse range of topics which emerged from the commentaries, followed by a consideration of how our framework can be supplemented by and compared to other theories. Lastly, the criticisms that were raised by a subset (...) of commentaries allow us to clarify parts of our theory. (shrink)

Slowing the aging process would be one of the most dramatic and momentous ways of enhancing human beings. It is also one that mainstream science is on the brink of pursuing. The state of the science, together with its possible impact, make it an important example for how to think about research into all enhancement technologies.

We are pleased to present the following Review Forum of Harvey Whitehouse’s book, Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 204 pages. ISBN 0-19- 823414-7 (cloth); 0-19-823415-5 (paper). We have given the contributors and the book’s author sufficient space to discuss its themes carefully and thus make a significant contribution to the further analysis of religion and ritual generally.

With contributions from founders of the field, including Justin Barrett, E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley, Paschal Boyer, Armin Geertz and Harvey Whitehouse, as well as from younger scholars from successive stages in the field's development, this is an important survey of the first twenty-five years of the cognitive science of religion. Each chapter provides the author's views on the contributions the cognitive science of religion has made to the academic study of religion, as well as any shortcomings (...) in the field and challenges for the future. Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years calls attention to the field whilst providing an accessible and diverse survey of approaches from key voices, as well as offering suggestions for further research within the field. This book is essential reading for anyone in religious studies, anthropology, and the scientific study of religion. (shrink)

In this article, I take up two arguments in favor of the discursive model of legal argumentation: the claim to correctness argument and the dual nature thesis. The argument of correctness implies the dual nature thesis, and the dual nature thesis implies a nonpositivistic concept of law. The nonpositivistic concept of law comprises five ideas. One of them is the special case thesis. The special case thesis says that positivistic elements, that is, statutes, precedents, and prevailing doctrines, are necessary for (...) law in order to achieve legal certainty. Without this, law would not be as perfect as it could possibly be. But it says, at the same time, that this alone would not be enough to fulfill the claim to correctness. The claim to correctness refers not only to the real dimension of law, defined by statutes, precedents, and prevailing doctrines, but also to its ideal dimension, defined, first and foremost, by justice. The special case thesis is my oldest thesis. It has remained an essential element of my system over the years. Its connection with four other theses—the Radbruch formula, the human rights thesis, the idea of deliberative democracy, and principles theory—does not change this at all. On the contrary, this connection has lent greater strength to the special case thesis. (shrink)

These are the answers I gave to Brian Bix, Peter Koller, Ralf Posher, Torben Spaak, Timothy Endicott, and Jan Sieckmann at the end of a splendid conference day in 2018. The critique given to me concerned important aspects of three main themes in my work: the claim to correctness, human and constitutional rights, and the ideal dimension of law. In the last decades I have attempted to connect these themes systematically. The result is the idea of democratic constitutionalism as an (...) institutionalization of practical reason. (shrink)

Gascoigne, Robert Review of: Between the 'mysticism of politics' and the 'politics of mysticism': Interpreting new pathways of holiness in the Roman Catholic tradition, by David Ranson, pp. 303, paperback $39.95, hardback $75.00.

Peut-on élucider le sens de la phénoménologie? La première section est consacrée à Husserl, la seconde à Hannah Arendt et la troisième à l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui. La première partie vise à montrer que la phénoménologie de Husserl porte en elle des thèmes par lesquels elle se soustrait au cadre métaphysique dans lequel elle s’est formée. La deuxième partie prétend que la phénoménologie politique de Hannah Arendt conduit à une mise en question de l’idéologie des droits de l’homme mais aussi à (...) une justification de l’idée des droits de l’homme. Cette section comprend en elle la reproduction d’un débat oral qui avait eu lieu sur France culture entre Claude Lefort, Alain Finkielkraut et Robert Legros. La troisième partie porte sur l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui. Elle montre que cette expérience prolonge et renouvelle d’une part la conception kantienne de l’expérience du proprement humain, et d’autre part la conception tocquevillienne de l’expérience du semblable. L’examen de l’expérience phénoménologique d’autrui s’achève par une confrontation entre Arendt et Levinas. (shrink)

These three impressive volumes seem likely to be for some time the standard collection of Leibniz’s writings in Italian translation. Replacing two volumes of 1967-68, with the same title and publisher, which were edited by Domenico Omero Bianca, the new translation by Massimo Mugnai and Enrico Pasini offers the Italian reader an outstandingly comprehensive selection of Leibniz’s works in a presentation richly though unobtrusively illuminated by the latest scholarship. My chief aim in this review will be to give scholars working (...) in English an idea of the lines of study suggested by this new product of Italian scholarship, and the resources available in it. (shrink)

Tekst niedostępny online z racji zgody na publikację przekładu tylko w wersji drukowanej.

A model of what an edition of a philosohic text for an introductory level should be. Introduction does an admirable job of putting Berkeley's thought in the intellectual context of its time. --Gary C. Hatfield.

Leibniz's version of the ontological argument, a modal argument for theism on which he worked most intensively in the 1670s, has two stages. The first, an “incomplete” proof, concludes that God can only be a necessary being, and therefore if God's existence is possible, then God exists. The second stage is an a priori argument that the existence of such a necessary God is indeed possible. Leibniz's fullest attempts at a possibility proof turn on his conception of a most perfect (...) being, and the chapter concludes that they are not likely to succeed, in part because of difficulties in connecting the concepts of perfection and necessary existence. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to flesh out a new distinction between moral responsibility, as it is understood in light of Strawson’s “reactive attitudes,” and an institutional form of responsibility—a responsibility that employees bear for their work to their superiors. I show that Strawson’s view of responsibility is separate from organizational responsibility, and hence the responsibility of employees to their managers cannot be understood in terms of indignation or resentment, both of which are key Strawsonian concepts. The latter type (...) of responsibility can be understood in terms of objective attitudes, managerial demands, organizational standards, and related expectations. Based on a Cartesian and a Wittgensteinian notions of asymmetry between first- and third-person uses of psychological concepts, Strawson developed a view of responsibility that dissolves the above asymmetry. In contrast with the latter asymmetry, which focuses on those who ascribe psychological concepts to themselves and to others, Strawson’s view is centered on the recipients of reactive attitudes. According to his view, resentment and indignation differ because they are aimed at different recipients, something that cannot be applied in cases of organizational responsibility. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est consacré à la refondation richirienne de la phénoménologie, à partir du traitement de la question de l'espace/temps phénoménologique archaïque. Par le biais de l'analyse de cette interrogation spatio-temporelle spécifique et de la pertinence qu'elle développe, l'objectif est double : d'une part, arriver à dégager un lieu de compréhensibilité, inédit, commun aux multiples enjeux les plus fondamentaux de la refonte et de la refondation de la phénoménologie transcendantale entreprises par Richir et, d'autre part, dans la foulée, permettre par (...) là même la possibilité de comprendre l'ensemble des textes du corpus. Cette compréhensibilité des mobiles philosophiques les plus importants de la phénoménologie refondue jointe à la possibilité d'une compréhension globale et transversale de la textualité richirienne doit permettre en outre de réfléchir et de fonder la démarche tout entière. En accomplissant cette refondation de manière tout à fait originale, dans une oeuvre commencée en 1968 qui compte en 2012 près de dix mille pages, réparties en vingt ouvrages et près de deux cents articles, Richir poursuit le but et a comme ambition de bouleverser et de changer en profondeur les paramètres essentiels de la phénoménologie. Et, chemin faisant, la philosophie tout entière est à reprendre à nouveaux frais. Le lecteur est convié à pénétrer au coeur de ce nouvel espace/temps richirien, véritable idée directrice de la phénoménologie et d'une philosophie sans précédent. (shrink)

Erscheint anlasslich des 15. Weltkongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie (IVR) vom 18. bis 24. August 1991 in Gottingen und enthalt eine Selbstdarstellung der deutschen Sektion der IVR. Die Autoren berichten uber ihre eigene theoretische Position oder uber neuere Diskussionszusammenhange, die ihnen wichtig erscheinen. Aus dem Inhalt: K. Adomeit: Menschenrechte und Rechtsphilosophie u H. Albert: Erkenntnis, Recht und soziale Ordnung u R. Alexy: Idee und Struktur eines vernunftigen Rechtssystems u O. Ballweg: Analytische Rhetorik als juristische Grundlagenforschung u R. (...) Dreier: Zur gegenwartigen Diskussion des Verhaltnisses von Recht und Moral u W. Eichhorn: Wege und Irrwege einer Transformation u M. Frommel: Mannliche Gerechtigkeitsmathematik versus weiblicher Kontextualismus? u H. Garrn: Zur rechtspraktischen Bedeutung einer Theorie der juristischen Rhetorik u G. Haney: Das Widerspruchsvolle des Rechtsbegriffs u W. Hassemer: Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtswissenschaft, Rechtspolitik - am Beispiel des Strafrechts u A. Kaufmann: 45 Jahre erlebte Jahre Rechtsphilosophie u H. Klenner: Die ontologische und gnoseologische Dimension der Sein/Sollen-Problematik u U. Klug: Multidimensionale Rechtsphilosophie u H.-J. Koch/H. Russmann: Juristische Methodenlehre und analytische Philosophie u M. Kriele: Die demokratische Weltrevolution u K. Kuhl: Rehabilitierung und Aktualisierung des kantischen Vernunftrechts u E.-J. Lampe: Moderne Rechtsanthropologie u K.A. Mollnau: Vom Beginn der Niedergangsjurisprudenz in der DDR u U. Neumann: Sprachphilosophische Ansatze in der neueren Rechtsphilosophie u u.a. (Franz Steiner 1991). (shrink)

This paper provides an overview, prepared by Robert Castel himself, of his last book, La montée des incertitudes. It describes how a new regime of capitalism has weakened and sometimes destroyed forms of social organization that had been established at the end of industrial capitalism. It discloses three main ongoing transformations: Labour market deregulations – in the sense of questioning both the right to work and the employment statute, and advances in insecurity; The reconfiguration of protective measures – in (...) the sense of the restriction of rights and a rapid rise in social insecurity; The paths of disaffiliation – or how it is that some categories of individuals find themselves destabilized and threatened with social invalidation in this new conjuncture. (shrink)

Robert Ackermann; VI—Consistency and Ethics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Pages 73–86, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

Bender, Robert Review of: Women in Cambridge: A Men's university - though of a mixed type, by Rita McWilliams-Tullberg, Gollancz 1975, 255 pp.

Die Fragestellungen der Metaphysik, so scheint es, sind nicht mehr zeitgemäß. Der Begriff erinnert an abgehobene Systeme ohne jeden Realitätssinn. Dabei gibt es kein Denken ohne Metaphysik. Unter Bezugnahme auf die Traditionen der Phänomenologie und der französischen Philosophie versteht Robert Hugo Ziegler Endlichkeit als eine positive Auszeichnung, während der Begriff der Zeitlichkeit die erste Dimension von Sein beschreibt. Sein grundlegender Beitrag zur Reflexion über Mensch und Welt zeigt, wie sich die Philosophie selbstbewusst einer Erneuerung der Metaphysik stellen kann.

Bill Bowring’s book attempts to argue for a Marxist account of international law that embraces it as a tool for progressive politics and revolutionary change. He argues it is necessary to give a substantive account of both, locating them in the real struggles of the oppressed. Specifically, he locates human rights in the three great revolutions ‐ the French, the Russian and the anticolonial. However, this revolutionary heritage has been ‘degraded’ by recent events. As such, it is necessary to adopt (...) ‘revolutionary conservatism’, invoking international law’s origins against its current degradation. This review argues that, owing to international law’s indeterminacy, Bowring’s project is susceptible to imperial appropriation. This means, however, that Bowring cannot give an account of why we should use international law. It then argues that Bowring’s account of Pashukanis is wrong, and that Pashukanis’s work can better make sense of Bowring’s insights and international law more generally. (shrink)