Metaphors “highlight and hide” different aspects of phenomena. A behavioral economic metaphor for excessive consumption highlights the contextual features of behavioral-environment relations. Can the behavioral momentum metaphor generate a representation of context that is at least as useful as that generated by behavioral economics? Maybe, maybe not; or maybe a mixed metaphor will do a better job than either alone.

Melioration is not superior and may be inferior to other extensions of behavioral choice theory to addiction studies. Progress in the addiction field will be accelerated by the demise of the disease model rather than by attempting to resolve the contradictions it has created.

Stress-induced brain-mediated immunoregulation is effected by two pathways: autonomic outflow and (neuro)endocrine outflow. Particular attention is given to the interaction-effects of chronic an acute stress. Recent data have established that cells of the immune system produce neuro-peptides and hormones. In concert with cytokines released by these immune cells the brain can be informed on the nature of ongoing immune activity. The significance of conditioning of immune responses is discussed.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is presented and understood as the primary reference point regarding questions of children’s rights. However, the UNCRC is not a neutral instrument deployed to meet the rights of children: it embodies a specific perception of the child, childhood and citizenship. The interpretation of the UNCRC from the point of view of children’s legal status emphasises the autonomy of children; the focus is on the rights that children possess. Conversely, the (...) social-political interpretation of the UNCRC addresses the question of how the rights of children can be realised. It is suggested that distinguishing between these interpretations is essential with regard to questions of pedagogy and education. (shrink)

O marxismo aparece insistentemente na teologia e no magistério de Joseph Ratzinger-Bento XVI como um inimigo permanente ao qual o cristianismo deve se contrapor, sem possibilidades de conciliação entre ambos. Mas qual concepção subjaz essa rejeição tão peremptória, tão decidida? Para alcançarmos a resposta a tal questão, aprofundamos a visão de Joseph Ratzinger a partir de alguns de seus escritos teológicos (anteriores ao pontificado) e, em seguida, nas suas três encíclicas, o ponto alto de seu magistério papal ( Deus caritas (...) est, Spe salvi e Caritas in veritate ). Defendemos que a crítica de Bento XVI, antes de ser exclusivamente teológica (ou doutrinária), é filosófica, baseada na racionalidade e não na fé professada pela Igreja, que lhe permite tratar o marxismo não simplesmente como um programa político que vai contra alguns valores cristãos, mas como uma escatologia judaico-cristã secularizada, um messianismo político, portanto, como uma religião , como uma fé , que nega e esvazia o núcleo essencial da fé cristã. E aqui está a raiz da sua oposição. Palavras-chave: Marxismo. Bento XVI. Messianismo. Escatologia política.: Marxism appears repeatedly in Pope Benedict’s theology and teaching as a permanent enemy that Christianity must oppose without any possibilities of conciliation between them. However, what underlies this decisive rejection? To answer this question we look further into Joseph Ratzinger’s perspective starting with some of his theological writings (before the pontificate) followed by three of his encyclicals, the high point of his papal teaching ( Deus caritas est , Spe salvi e Caritas in veritate ). We argue that Benedict XVI's criticism, prior to being purely theological (or doctrinal), is philosophical, based on rationality and not in the faith professed by the Church, allowing him to treat marxism not simply as a political program that goes against some Christian values, but as a secularized Judeo-Christian eschatology, as a political messianism, therefore, as a religion, as a faith , that denies and empties the essential core of the Christian faith. And here is the root of his opposition. Keywords: Marxism. Benedict XVI. Messianism. Political eschatology. (shrink)

Web sites of the 50 state legislatures are evaluated on five criteria: content, usability, interactivity, transparency, and audience. An overall quality score for each site was computed. The evaluation revealed a wide range of quality in the sites, including that of features or aspects that could possibly foster citizen participation. The higher rated sites help define “best practices” in this regard and provide suggestions as to how other states' sites might make improvements and possibly increase participation.

Les pages que Husserl a consacrées à l'art et à la conscience esthétique sont rares et éparses. Il n'en reste pas moins que la théorie qui y voit le jour fait preuve d'une grande systématicité. L'oeuvre d'art, comme elle le sera plus tard chez Sartre, y est invariablement désignée au titre d'objet irréel. Non qu'elle ne possède une effectivité matérielle qui en assure la présence dans le champ de la perception et en constitue le soubassement physique, mais, bien plutôt, qu'elle (...) soit illocalisable dans ce champ et irréductible à ce soubassement. La raison en étant que l'objet d'art est un objet imaginaire qui ne trouve dans la réalité dont il est fait que le moyen de s'y objectiver et non celui de s'y individualiser. Son irréalité, il la reçoit du regard "désintéressé", au sens kantien du terme, qu'il appelle, de la visée intentionnelle particulière qui lui donne d'apparaître en tant que "néant" ou "rien", comme se plaît à le répéter Husserl. C'est à retracer la genèse de cette conception dématérialisée de l'oeuvre artistique et du type de conscience qui l'appréhende que s'attache ce livre, non moins qu'à en cerner les enjeux théoriques. Deux voies d'investigation ont été privilégiées à cet égard. L'une, interne, s'efforce d'en dégager la provenance et d'en saisir le statut au sein même de la phénoménologie husserlienne. L'autre, externe, la confronte à des théories esthétiques rivales et à la production artistique dont elle a à rendre compte afin, par contraste, d'en faire jaillir et d'en apprécier la véritable portée heuristique. Le résultat est que les catégories conceptuelles élaborées par Husserl pour fonder son approche du phénomène de l'art et de l'intention qui en prend acte s'avèrent, en définitive, sujettes à la critique. (shrink)

Non una pacifica esplorazione ma un’avanscoperta bellicosa, in sardonica guerrilla con alcuni baluardi della tradizione filosofica occidentale: le leggi e il linguaggio della metafisica, la concezione stabile e unitaria dell'identità personale, il modello tragico della volontà, il pregiudizio antropocentrico e l’asservimento della natura al dominio della tecnica. Senza la pretesa di comporre un discorso esaustivo o sistematico, Capra recupera soprattutto Nietzsche e il Wittgenstein delle Ricerche Logiche in una (auto)critica comparativa, per mostrare in quali modi il pensiero correlativo delle filosofie (...) orientali possa integrare e talvolta superare le impasse del pensiero antitetico. (shrink)

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Gregory Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle and propose a novel solution to it. Like some previous accounts, mine postulates a tight link between intentions and reasons but, unlike them, in my account these are motivating rather than normative reasons, i.e. reasons that explain (rather than justify) the intended action. I argue that sensitivity to the absence of possible motivational explanations for the intended action is constitutive of deliberation-based intentions. Since ordinary rational agents display this sensitivity, when placed (...) in the toxin scenario they will believe that there is no motivational explanation for actually drinking the toxin and this is why they can’t form the intention to drink it in the first place. I thus argue that my Motivating-Explanatory Reason Principle correctly explains the toxin puzzle, thereby revealing itself as a genuine metaphysical constraint on intentions. I also explore at length the implications of my account for the nature of intention and rational agency. (shrink)

In this chapter I survey the two main families of views about the moral psychology of moral responsibility, i.e., about the mental capacities or psychological functioning that distinguishes responsible agents from non-responsible agents. These are self-expression views, which maintain that responsible agency is essentially about being able to express one's practical stance or moral orientation in conduct; and reasons-responsiveness views, according to which responsible agency requires a suite of powers that make their possessors capable of detecting and responding apppropriately to (...) the moral considerations against their conduct (in the case of wrong actions). I explore different contemporary variants of each of these families of views and assess their weaknesses and strenghts. Finally, I sketch a methodology for settling this debate, the essence of which is to note that the debate about the moral psychology of moral responsibility is ancilliary to a broader debate about the nature of moral responsibility itself and, in particular, about the nature of blame and blaming reactions. On the basis of this methodology, I end up taking sides with a particular variant of the self-expression paradigm. (shrink)

In his final interview Foucault surprised many a reader by stating that the whole of his philosophical development had been influenced by his reading of Heidegger. Until now this Foucault /Heidegger relation has been left largely unexplored, and the few articles that discussed it, took first and foremost an interest in finding parallels between the works of these thinkers. Our title, however, indicates that a different, non-doxographical approach is at stake here : the move from Foucault to Heidegger for which (...) we argue is motivated by the aporia into which Foucault's project worked itself by aspiring to be not only a genealogy but also a critique. In our first section Foucault's peculiar type of framework relativism is shown to have made it impossible for him both to stick to his most interesting philosophical concept (“order”) and to derive a critique from it which would differ from an expression of his personal whims. It is suggested, however, that this aporia is due not to the concept of "order" itself, but to the type of critique Foucault wanted to derive from it. In the remainder of the article we look for a way to reinscribe this concept into the project of a critique of objectivism. We therefore turn to Heidegger. At first a parallel between alètheia and Foucaultian “truth” is sketched. But our interest evidently lies not in the parallel as such, but in the differences that become hightlighted by the attempt to find as strict a parallel as possible. Furthermore, our questioning does not restrict itself to differences between Foucault and Heidegger, but focuses on the fissures in the work of each of them (for this reason we refer to their works by putting their author's name in quotation marks, e. g. "Foucault", thereby suggesting that their texts involve various parallellograms of forces). Thus, to prepare for the critique of objectivism we were unable to find in “Foucault”, the article goes on to outline a deconstruction of “Heidegger”. We touch on Heidegger's anti-epistemologism, on his resistance to mimesis, and on the latent subject-phobia which seems to have crept into his writing after the “Turning”. It is suggested that these problems call for a new reading of “Heidegger”, and that such a reading would not only throw an unexpected light on authenticity, both in Being and Time and in the later Heidegger, but would also enable us to analyse technological “enframing” as the highest danger in a way which may be still Heideggerian, but which differs from the argument Heidegger himself offers in The Memorial Address and The Principle of Reason. This way of problematizing the “order” or technology twists us out of Foucault's aporia, by opening up a domain which is no longer that of a politics but of an ethics of truth. (shrink)

The author deals with the operational core oflogic, i.e. its diverse procedures ofinference, in order to show that logicallyfalse inferences may in fact be right because –in contrast to logical rationality – theyactually enlarge our knowledge of the world.This does not only mean that logically trueinferences say nothing about the world, butalso that all our inferences are inventedhypotheses the adequacy of which cannot beproved within logic but only pragmatically. Inconclusion the author demonstrates, through therelationship between rule-following andrationality, that it is (...) most irrational to wantto exclude the irrational: it may, at times, bemost rational to think and infer irrationally.Focussing on the operational aspects of knowingas inferring does away with the hiatus betweenlogic and life, cognition and the world(reality) – or whatever other dualism one wantsto invoke –: knowing means inferring, inferringmeans rule-governed interpreting, interpretingis a constructive, synthetic act, and aconstruction that proves adequate (viable) inthe ``world of experience'', in life, in thepraxis of living, is, to the constructivistmind, knowledge. It is the practice of livingwhich provides the orienting standards forconstructivist thinking and its judgments ofviability. The question of truth is replaced bythe question of viability, and viabilitydepends on the (right) kind of experiential fit. (shrink)

Wittgenstein vergleicht seine Arbeitsweise häufig mit der eines Malers, wobei er Denken (und Sprechen) mit dem Zeichnen von Bildern analogisiert. Der Begriff des Bildes ist ein Schlüssel zu seinem Sprachdenken und wird in der Bildtheorie des Tractatus (T) enfaltet. Die Klärung, wie ein Bild (bzw. Satz) Wirklichkeit abzubilden vermag, ist das Paradigma, anhand dessen Wittgenstein die Abbildbarkeit von Wirklichkeit klären möchte. Abbildung im bildlichen bzw. sprachlichen Sinne ist im Tractatus explizit ein Konstruktionsprozess, der Satz ist „Projektionsmethode“. Die Methode sichtbare Dinge (...) in einem Bild so darzustellen, dass sie für einen Betrachter als realistisches, i.e. perspektivisches Abbild erscheinen, wurde im 15. Jh. auf Grundlage geometrischer und optischer Gesetze erfunden (Alberti, Brunelleschi). Albertis Bildtheorie, mit dem Velum als Projektionstechnik, ist analog zur Abbildtheorie im Tractatus. Im Rekurs auf Alberti und anhand einiger Bilder zeigt Hans Rudi Fischer, dass der Tractatus die Konstruktionslogik der Perspektivtheorie nutzt, 2. dass und wie der Tractatus konstruktivistisch zu lesen ist und 3. wie darin W´s Ambivalenzen gegenüber der eigenen, auf Ein-Eindeutigkeit zielenden Logik des Tractatus zum Ausdruck kommen. Wittgensteins Ambivalenz gegenüber der zweiwertigen Logik, die er im Tractatus auf so geniale Weise exponiert hat, bleibt die kreative Quelle seiner konstruktivistisch besser zu verstehenden Spätphilosophie. Aber: die Entscheidung zwischen Realismus und Konstruktivismus ist rational unentscheidbar, sie bleibt ambivalent bis in die letzten Passagen von Über Gewißheit. (shrink)

In Being and Time the broken piece of equipment (§ 16) or the dead body of an Other (§ 47) were seen as resulting from a process of transition (Übergang) between an original state and a position not so removed from it that one had to do with something entirely different. ‚The Origin of the Work of Art‘ takes a more radical approach: rather than leading toward a ‚no longer, but not yet‘, the movement here is toward a ‚no longer, (...) but already‘. Hence its famous thesis: either art is at work, or it is no longer art and already a mere object of art, a piece of art. Contrary to those of Heidegger’s readers who have suggested that his earlier views on transition would have saved him some of the (i.e. political) trouble the art essay runs into, the present paper aims to show that both the earlier and the later view fail to come to terms with what happens in transition as such. This is illustrated by an analysis of the corpse (ad BT § 47), and of junk (ad BT § 16) and leads us to a different approach to what is at stake in art and in the kind of Darstellung exemplified by it. (shrink)

Transcendence, Levinas tells us, is not a failed immanence. It presupposes an Exteriority that cannot be integrated into a totality. Such is its excellence: a surplus that rends Being's monism and allows for a pluralism that is not a "missed union". In the first sections of this article I show how the ethical relation with the Other is the only one that, for Levinas, satisfies the conditions he thus imposes on a metaphysical — i.e. transcendent — relation. I subsequently link (...) this 'return' to Plato's idea of a 'Good beyond Being' to the problem of Evil. If Evil is the refusal of the Good, we should, of course, first understand what it means that, as Levinas contends, the Good has chosen us before we could choose it. Are we to think of this 'election' as a command or as an invitation? Concretely: is the appeal of the Other something one cannot not hear, or does it only have the force to disturb those who "retain it"? In other words: should one think of Evil in terms of a choice for irresponsibility which is already situated in the horizon of a responsibility one cannot refuse; or should what in the former case is called Evil, not rather be thought of in terms of a deafness that is sui generis and not the privation of a hearing that ought to be there? Could there not be an irresponsibility that is not the refusal of responsibility, and that, instead of being situated within ethics, would rather complicate our way of conceiving the ethical relation? In the last section I oppose to Levinas's way of conceiving the relation between transcendence and immanence a different approach: the Good is inevitably incarnated and thus pluralized to a point where it becomes difficult to still present it as the Good. Incarnating the transcendent is not merely wrapping it in a context which leaves it unaltered. The incarnans is not just the envelope for the incarnatum. It is its "originary supplement" (Derrida). But then, inevitably, the relation between 'the' Good and 'Being' becomes anti-platonic: transcendence becomes mortal and fragile. It can bleed! It is in terms of such bleeding that we ought to look at some of the conflicts that trouble our societies — multiculturalism being one example amongst others. (shrink)

Erkennen wir die Welt so, wie sie wirklich ist oder konstruieren wir die Wirklichkeit, in der wir leben? Der einführende Artikel vom Herausgeber und der Beitrag von E. von Glasersfeld wollen zeigen, dass diese Streitfrage sich durch die ganze abendländische Philosophiegeschichte zieht. In dem Sammelband wird der Streit auf der Grundlage alter und neuer Argumente noch einmal ausgefochten. Stützen sich die einen auf die wissenschaftliche Erforschung unseres Gehirns und unserer kognitiven Fähigkeiten, um ihre These der Nichterkennbarkeit einer von uns unabhängig (...) existierenden Welt zu untermauern, so meinen die anderen, diese Argumentation sei zirkulär, ja, habe der radikale Konstruktivismus recht, so sei er widersprüchlich und damit falsch. Hinter dem konstruktivistischen Paradigma verberge sich zudem letztlich ein naiver Naturalismus, der glaubt, mit Hilfe wissenschaftlicher Forschungen allein erkenntnistheoretische Aussagen machen zu können, so die Argumentation von H.J. Wendel. Hingegen sind es vor allem Literatur- und Sozialwissenschaftler, die in etwas abgewandelter Form den Konstruktivismus durchaus als wissenschaftliches Paradigma akzeptieren. So verteidigt Wolfgang Frindte einen Sozialen Konstruktivismus, der die Auffassung vertritt, wir erzeugten unsere Wirklichkeit zusammen im Diskurs. S.J. Schmidt geht davon aus, dass soziale Systeme über Wirklichkeitsmodelle verfügen, die in der gesellschaftlichen Evolution über die Konstitution und Thematisierung für essentiell gehaltener Unterscheidungen entstehen. Verschiedene Beiträge beziehen sich explizit auf die Theorie von Humberto Maturana. Busse, Locker und Nüse erörtern in ihren Aufsätzen besonders die Problematik, die sich aus dem Konzept der Autopoiese und der daraus resultierenden Geschlossenheit des zentralen Nervensystems ergeben. O. Breidbach nimmt auf die biologische Forschung Bezug und zieht den es noch viel zu verfrüht ist, um auf dem heutigen Kenntnisstand bereits Aussagen über unsere Erkenntnisfähigkeit zu machen. Einige Beiträge befassen sich mehr mit den praktischen Auswirkungen konstruktivistischer Annahmen z.B. in der Familientherapie (Stierlin) oder in der Lerntheorie (Simon). Von Interesse sind auch die Beiträge von Hans Geisslinger, die beschreiben, wie sich unsere Wirklichkeit mit Hilfe einiger weniger Parameter verändern lässt. (shrink)

En Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard defiende la conclusión de que el imperativo categórico rige la acción humana porque es el único principio que permite alcanzar la unidad psíquica plena, la cual, según Korsgaard, es un prerrequisito esencial para la acción efectiva. Para los agentes humanos, alcanzar esa unidad -que consiste en hacer coherentes distintos impulsos hacia la acción- es una actividad constante, denominada "autoconstitución". De acuerdo con Korsgaard, ésta es la fuente originaria de la normatividad y (...) de las identidades prácticas e incluso de la identidad personal. Después de exponer las ideas centrales del libro, presento dos objeciones: primero, critico la equiparación del imperativo categórico con la autoconstitución exitosa, pues no toda falla de auto-constitución es una falla moral. Segundo, argumento que la tesis de que la identidad personal es producto de la autoconstitución es problemática y que, al defenderla, Korsgaard confunde identidad práctica con identidad personal. In Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity (2009), Christine Korsgaard argues that the categorical imperative rules human action because it is the sole principle that allows us to reach the complete psychic unity that, Korsgaard thinks, is an essential prerequisite for effective action. Reaching this unity -which consists in making cohere diverging impulses for action- is for human agents a constant activity called "self-constitution." According to Korsgaard, this activity is the source of normativity, of human practical identities and even of personal identity. After explaining the main ideas of the book, I present two objections. First, I criticize the linkage of the categorical imperative to successful self-constitution, for not every failure of the latter counts as a moral failure. Second, I argue that the thesis that personal identity is a product of self-constitution is problematic and that it betrays a confusion between practical identity and personal identity. (shrink)

In Bijdragen 59 Rudi te Velde argued that our appeal to St. Anselm in elucidating the tenets of the ‘Utrecht school’ in philosophical theology is unjustified, because of a presumed anti-realist tendency in our thinking. In our reply we point out that this accusation is the result of a confusion between the disciplines of philosophical theology and religious epistemology. Philosophical theology accepts from an insiders-perspective belief claims which are not directly accessible to reason or observation – such as the claim (...) that God exists. From the fact that the Utrecht philosophical theologians do not attempt to prove these claims, but interpret them as the constitutive presuppositions of the Christian form of life, it does not follow that they doubt their truth. On the contrary, in quite a number of writings representatives of the Utrecht school have insisted on a realist reading of the belief claims of the Christian faith. Our realism goes even further than Te Velde’s. According to Te Velde our religious language is inadequate to such an extent, that it doesn’t enable us to give correct descriptions of reality. We show that this view necessarily leads to agnosticism. Next, as to religious epistemology we point out that since the collapse of foundationalism realists as well as others have reasons to be suspicious of attempts to prove the existence of God. In any case, we don’t needto prove such belief claims in order to be intellectually entitled to accept them – which is not to say that arguments for the existence of God have no value at all. Finally, it is precisely this complementarity of philosophical theology and religious epistemology which we find supremely exemplified in Anselm’s Proslogion. Whether one interprets the ontological argument as functioning sola ratione, i.e. independently of faith in God, or rather as functioning within the framework of the faith seeking understanding programe, the main part of the Proslogion’s ‘single argument’ is devoted to philosophical theology in the sense advocated and illustrated by the Utrecht School, i.e. to the search for insight into the reality and the attributes of God rather than for proof. (shrink)

Scholarly studies of physical mediumship typically list D. D. Home and Eusapia Palladino as the most convincingly documented mediums of all time, and most also rate Home’s case as among the most spectacular. Although many consider other cases of physical mediumship to be as dramatic as that of Home (e.g., that of Carlos Mirabelli, and Indridi Indridason), and while other less dramatic cases are often ranked as highly significant (e.g., Kathleen Goligher, Rudi Schneider, Eva C.), the prevailing view is that, (...) despite their different virtues, these cases lie within the shadows of Home and Palladino. My own survey of physical mediumship (Braude 1997) represents this received opinion, an opinion which the book currently under review has forced me to reconsider. (shrink)

Interpretation of the classics in political theory seems to go in waves. For a while we had John Locke, the bourgeois thinker. Now we seem to be in a Locke-as-radical-democrat phase. Locke-the-bourgeois had problems of its own, but a radically democratic Locke -- not just the old Locke as liberal democrat but Locke as quasi-Leveller -- strains the interpretative imagination more than most; yet in recent years, several different kinds of argument have been advanced in support of it, both textual (...) and contextual. The most effective argument has proceeded by situating Locke in the context of radical Whig politics in the 1670s and '80s, the struggles over religious toleration and the royal succession, in particular the �Exclusion Crisis� of 1679-81. This contextual argument has been accompanied by various textual interpretations having to do with Locke's conceptions of property, consent, representation, the right of revolution and natural law. Among other things, these are supposed to show that while Locke had nothing explicit to say about the extent of the franchise, the weight of evidence suggests that he would have supported a fairly wide franchise, perhaps even something like the (almost) manhood suffrage advocated by the Levellers (at least according to some, and probably the most convincing, interpretations of their ideas). Most recently, in these pages, Martin Hughes, building on the work of James Tully and Richard Ashcraft in particular, has pushed the argument as far as it can probably go. His argument on taxation and suffrage has provided a motivation here for a wider exploration of Locke's views on representation, consent and the franchise. (shrink)