English summary: Contrary to the prevailing view that the 'Encheiridion' is a second rate summary of the 'Diatribai', this commentary makes clear the unique significance of this so-called handbook on stoic morality, which must rank as one of the first philosophical handbooks ever to be published. The commentary places the most popular work of this Stoic of the Roman Empire in the overall context of Epictetus's thought and discusses its significance in Stoic schools as well as with regard to both (...) precursory and contemporary followers from competing schools of philosophy. Taking into account the most important debates on terminology and the history of philosophy, the author describes the unique synthesis of rhetoric and debate, which reveal the 'Encheiridion' as being a workbook for character based self-education. German description: Entgegen der vorherrschenden Einschatzung, das 'Encheiridion' sei eine zweitrangige Zusammenfassung der 'Diatribai', begrundet der vorliegende Kommentar die eigenstandige Bedeutung des 'Handbuchleins zur stoischen Moral', das als eines der ersten philosophischen Handbucher uberhaupt gelten darf. In 53 Abschnitten bietet das 'Encheiridion' zahlreiche charakterliche und seelische Ubungen, um die stoische 'ars vitae' zu vervollkommnen. Mit ausdrucklichem Verweis auf die sokratische Tradition der epimeleia heautou stellt Epiktet den richtigen Gebrauch der Vorstellungen und fortwahrende Selbstuberprufung in den Mittelpunkt seines psychagogischen Programms. Der Kommentar ordnet das popularste Werk des kaiserzeitlichen Stoikers in den Gesamtzusammenhang des Denkens Epiktets ein und diskutiert dessen Positionen innerhalb des stoischen Schulsystems sowie in Hinsicht auf Vorlaufer und zeitgenossische Anhanger konkurrierender Philosophenschulen. Unter Berucksichtigung der wichtigsten terminologischen und philosophiegeschichtlichen Debatten wird die eigentumliche Synthese von rhetorischer und argumentativer Darstellung erlautert, anhand deren das 'Encheiridion' seine Wirkung als Ubungsbuch zur charakterlichen Selbstbildung entfaltet. (shrink)

We prove the following results: every recursively enumerable set approximated by finite sets of some set M of recursively enumerable sets with index set in π 2 is an element of M , provided that the finite sets in M are canonically enumerable. If both the finite sets in M and in M̄ are canonically enumerable, then the index set of M is in σ 2 ∩ π 2 if and only if M consists exactly of the sets approximated by (...) finite sets of M and the complement M̄ consists exactly of the sets approximated by finite sets of M̄ . Under the same condition M or M̄ has a non-empty subset with recursively enumerable index set, if the index set of M is in σ 2 ∩ π 2 . If the finite sets in M are canonically enumerable, then the following three statements are equivalent: the index set of M is in σ 2 \ π 2 , the index set of M is σ 2 -complete, the index set of M is in σ 2 and some sequence of finite sets in M approximate a set in M̄ . Finally, for every n ⩾ 2, an index set in σ n \ π n is presented which is not σ n -complete. (shrink)

Philosophical and sociological approaches in technology have increasingly shifted toward describing AI (artificial intelligence) systems as ‘(moral) agents,’ while also attributing ‘agency’ to them. It is only in this way – so their principal argument goes – that the effects of technological components in a complex human-computer interaction can be understood sufficiently in phenomenological-descriptive and ethical-normative respects. By contrast, this article aims to demonstrate that an explanatory model only achieves a descriptively and normatively satisfactory result if the concepts of ‘(moral) (...) agent’ and ‘(moral) agency’ are exclusively related to human agents. Initially, the division between symbolic and sub-symbolic AI, the black box character of (deep) machine learning, and the complex relationship network in the provision and application of machine learning are outlined. Next, the ontological and action-theoretical basic assumptions of an ‘agency’ attribution regarding both the current teleology-naturalism debate and the explanatory model of actor network theory are examined. On this basis, the technical-philosophical approaches of Luciano Floridi, Deborah G. Johnson, and Peter-Paul Verbeek will all be critically discussed. Despite their different approaches, they tend to fully integrate computational behavior into their concept of ‘(moral) agency.’ By contrast, this essay recommends distinguishing conceptually between the different entities, causalities, and relationships in a human-computer interaction, arguing that this is the only way to do justice to both human responsibility and the moral significance and causality of computational behavior. (shrink)

The conventional view of Just War thinking holds that militaries operate under “special” moral rules in war. Conventional Just War thinking establishes a principled approach to such moral exceptionalism in order to prevent arbitrary or capricious uses of military force. It relies on the notion that soldiers are instruments of the state, which is a view that has been critiqued by the Revisionist movement. The Revisionist critique rightly puts greater emphasis on the moral agency of individual soldiers: they are not (...) mere instruments of the state. Although Revisionism has something particularly important to contribute when applied to cases that are short-of-war, where an individual agent’s moral culpability plays a greater role, soldiers fighting wars are not wholly autonomous moral agents. An Institutionalist approach that responds to Revisionist criticisms is a plausible alternative to the conventional Just War account for grounding the moral exceptionalism of war. For the Institutionalist, soldiers are moral agents with state-imposed obligations whose fundamental responsibility is the performance of the proper moral ends of the military institution they serve. If this is true, then soldiers have a moral obligation to be attentive to the moral corruption of the military institution of which they are a part. (shrink)

Shepherd propounds a theory of mind with a fair claim to be better than Hume’s at explaining the sources of commonly held human beliefs about causal necessity due largely to her relational theory of sense perception. In comparison with Hume’s account, it incorporates a more sophisticated treatment of mental representation, especially the role of relational structure and logical form. Most important, perhaps, Shepherd’s theory enforces the division, obscured by Hume, between the evidence of necessity and the metaphysical foundation of necessity.

Although argumentation plays an essential role in our lives, there is no integrated area of research on the psychology of argumentation. Instead research on argumentation is conducted in a number of separate research communities that are spread across disciplines and have only limited interaction. With a view to bridging these different strands, we first distinguish between three meanings of the word ?argument?: argument as a reason, argument as a structured sequence of reasons and claims, and argument as a social exchange. (...) All three meanings are integral to a complete understanding of human reasoning and cognition. Cognitive psychological research on argumentation has focused mostly on the first and second of these meanings, so we present perspectives on argumentation from outside of cognitive psychology, which focus on the second and third. Specifically, we give anoverview of the methods, goals, and disciplinary backgrounds of research on the production, the analysis, and the evaluation of arguments. Finally, inintroducing the experimental studies included in this special issue, which were conducted by researchers from a range of theoretical backgrounds, weunderline the breadth of argumentation research as well as stress opportunities for mutual awareness and integration. (shrink)

Information generally comes from less than fully reliable sources. Rationality, it seems, requires that one take source reliability into account when reasoning on the basis of such information. Recently, Bovens and Hartmann (2003) proposed an account of the conjunction fallacy based on this idea. They show that, when statements in conjunction fallacy scenarios are perceived as coming from such sources, probability theory prescribes that the “fallacy” be committed in certain situations. Here, the empirical validity of their model was assessed. The (...) model predicts that statements added to standard conjunction problems will change the incidence of the fallacy. It also predicts that statements from reliable sources should yield an increase in fallacy rates (relative to unreliable sources). Neither the former (Experiment 1) nor the latter prediction (Experiment 3) was confirmed, although Experiment 2 showed that people can derive source reliability estimates from the likelihood of statements in a manner consistent with the tested model. In line with the experimental results, model fits and sensitivity analyses also provided very little evidence in favor of the model. This suggests that Bovens and Hartmann’s present model fails to explain fully people’s judgements in standard conjunction fallacy tasks. (shrink)

A large body of work has demonstrated the utility of the Bayesian framework for capturing inference in both specialist and everyday contexts. However, the central tool of the framework, conditionalization via Bayes’ rule, does not apply directly to a common type of learning: the acquisition of conditional information. How should an agent change her beliefs on learning that “If A, then C”? This issue, which is central to both reasoning and argumentation, has recently prompted considerable research interest. In this paper, (...) we critique a prominent proposal and provide a new, alternative, answer. -/- . (shrink)

Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979) have made a convincing case that neither mea- nings nor beliefs are in the head. Most philosophers, it seems, have accepted their argument. Putnam explained that a subject.

This collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars’s thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars’s place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book’s final section extracts some of the most (...) significant lessons Sellars’s work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience. (shrink)

In my comment on the article Christian Tolerance of Ambiguity I argue that we do not need an Ideological Surround Model for achieving a kind of "balanced objectivity" in the psychology of religion. In addition, I argue that the distinction between two ideological surrounds is much too simple with regard to the debates and controversies among psychologists of religion concerning the "good" theoretical concepts and empirical methods and the "evil" ones. I also formulate some problems I have with the suggested (...) Christian translation of the Budner Scale. (shrink)

Background: Psychiatric interventions are a contested area in medicine, not only because of their history of abuses, but also because their therapeutic goal is to affect emotions, thoughts, beliefs...

I defend a modified rights-based unjust threat account for morally justified killing in self-defense. Rights-based moral justifications for killing in self-defense presume that human beings have a right to defend themselves from unjust threats. An unjust threat account of self-defense says that this right is derived from an agent’s moral obligation to not pose a deadly threat to the defender. The failure to keep this moral obligation creates the moral asymmetry necessary to justify a defender killing the unjust threat in (...) self-defense. I argue that the other rights-based approaches explored here are unfair to the defender because they require her to prove moral fault in the threat. But then I suggest that the unjust threat account should be modified so that where the threat is non-culpable or only partially culpable, the defender should seek to share the cost and risk with the threat in order for both parties to survive. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine the key moral issues for the intelligence community with regard to the use of robots for intelligence collection. First, we survey the diverse range of spy robots that currently exist or are emerging, and examine their value for national security. This includes describing a number of plausible scenarios in which they have been (or could be) used, including: surveillance, attack, sentry, information collection, delivery, extraction, detention, interrogation and as Trojan horses. Second, we examine several areas (...) in which spy robots present serious ethical and legal challenges. We conclude by examining some moral concerns with shifting from intelligence collection to action, as enabled by robotics technology. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on his more narrow (...) use of jus ad vim which is the state’s use of lethal force. Next I address Tony Coady’s critique of jus ad vim. I argue that Coady highlights some important problems with jus ad vim, but these concerns are not sufficient to dismiss it completely. Then, in the final section, I argue that jus ad vim provides an appropriate “hybrid” moral framework for judging the ethical decision-making outside of war by complementing other conventional just war distinctions. A benefit of jus ad vim is that it stops us expanding the definition of war while still providing the necessary ethical framework for examining violent conflict outside that context. (shrink)

The experience of stress is receiving increasing attention in the context of adolescent mental health, which is why a valid and reliable stress assessment instrument is of great importance. For this purpose, an English-language adolescent stress questionnaire was developed, which assesses the subjective stress experience of adolescents in different areas of life. However, the latest long version of the questionnaire with 56 items was found to be too extensive, so a more economical short version ASQ-S with 27 items was developed. (...) The aim of this study was to validate a German and a Greek version of the ASQ-S. In order to investigate the psychometric properties of the German and Greek ASQ-S confirmatory factor analysis, analyses of variance and correlations were applied to sample data from Switzerland, Germany, and Greece. The results yielded only poor to moderate internal reliability across all three countries and the suggested 9-dimensional factor structure could not be confirmed. Instead, a modified 6-factor structure was tested which showed acceptable model fits while demonstrating form invariance across the three countries. Furthermore, the ASQ-S scales correlated positively with depressive symptoms and anxiety and negatively with self-esteem and life satisfaction, all of which supported adequate concurrent validity. The results revealed that the utility of the ASQ-S appears to be limited when translated to other languages and should be used with caution when administered in international contexts. (shrink)

Issues related to research integrity receive increasing attention in policy discourse and beyond with most universities having introduced by now courses addressing issues of good scientific practice. While communicating expectations and regulations related to good scientific practice is essential, criticism has been raised that integrity courses do not sufficiently address discipline and career-stage specific dimensions, and often do not open up spaces for in-depth engagement. In this article, we present the card-based engagement method RESPONSE_ABILITY, which aims at supporting researchers in (...) developing their ability to respond to challenges of good scientific practice. The method acknowledges that what counts and what does not count as acceptable practice may not be as clear-cut as imagined and that research environments matter when it comes to integrity issues. Using four sets of cards as stimulus material, participants are invited to reflect individually and collectively about questions of research integrity from different perspectives. This approach is meant to train them to negotiate in which contexts certain practices can still be regarded as acceptable and where possible transgressions might begin. RESPONSE_ABILITY can be seen as fostering the creation of an integrity culture as it invites a more reflexive engagement with ideals and realities of good practice and opens a space to address underlying value conflicts researchers may be confronted with. Concluding the article, we call for caution that addressing issues of integrity meaningfully requires striking a delicate balance between raising researchers’ awareness of individual responsibilities and creating institutional environments that allow them to be response-able. (shrink)

The US-Australia strategic relationship has evolved from more or less an adversarial position in the 19th century to an Australia largely dependent on the US during the Cold War to the interdependent partnership we see today. Strategic interdependence means that the US-Australia relationship is not merely a one-sided affair; that Australia has something of substance to offer the strategic relationship. Part of the reason that the relationship is strong is because of a shared language, similar social values, and compatible political-legal (...) systems. Moreover, the relationship has been thoroughly institutionalised via intelligence cooperation, defence science collaboration, and extensive personal relationships. But what the US really seems to value is Australia’s reliability as an ally. I argue that Australia best demonstrates its reliability as an ally, however, when it follows US strategic decision-making for the right reasons. This sense of reliability is more akin to trustworthiness than it is to loyalty. History demonstrates that Australia has not always agreed with the US. But agreeing doesn’t matter so much when Australia has established a track record of consistently applying sound reasoning to its strategic decisions and it has made substantive contributions to jointly sought after strategic outcomes. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Merabet and Hudry discuss models explaining the functional evolution of fushi tarazu (ftz) from an ancestral homeotic to a pair‐rule segmentation gene in Drosophila. As most of the experimental work underlying these models comes from our research, we wish to reply to Merabet and Hudry providing an explanation of the experimental approaches and logical framework underlying them. We review experimental data that support our hypotheses and discuss misconceptions in the literature. We emphasize that the change in (...) ftz function required changes in both expression pattern and protein function and review the evidence that these functional changes involved a switch in cofactor‐interaction motifs during arthropod radiations. While agreeing with Merabet and Hudry that protein context likely contributes to Ftz function, we argue that until supporting evidence for alternative mechanisms is obtained, the role of cofactor‐interaction motifs in driving a functional switch remains compelling. (shrink)

Leibniz repeatedly daims to refute "Hobbes' doctrine of arbitrary truth". I argue against several recent expositors of Hobbes that Hobbes' view comes to nothing more scandalous than "nominalism" about kind terms. Although some have recognized that it is this thesis which Leibniz claims to refute, his argument has not been correctly understood. I maintain that the argument rests upon Leibniz' theory of signs and his account of concepts. In brief, Leibniz argues that concepts have structures which correspond to structures of (...) (possible) things; thus, kinds are independent of language and truth is independent of arbitrary convention. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore the importance of ethics education for senior military officers with responsibilities at the strategic level of government. One problem, as I see it, is that senior commanders might demand “ethics” from their soldiers but then they are themselves primarily informed by a “morally skeptical viewpoint” (in the form of political realism). I argue that ethics are more than a matter of personal behavior alone: the ethical position of an armed service is a matter of the (...) collective responsibility of the people who constitute it, and senior military officers, having authority to give the orders, have a particularly important role. First, I discuss the continued prominence of a neorealist mindset in strategic thinking. Neorealist theory assumes that ethics is a largely irrelevant concern for strategic decision-makers. In contrast, I argue that consideration of moral values should be at the center of strategic theory and practice. Then, in the second section, I explore the “professional ethics” of senior military officers in order to develop an appreciation of the shared values and expectations regarding required conduct within any professional military service. I argue that senior military leaders should be concerned with what it means to be “good” and that this concept of the good can, and should, be applied across cultures and national boundaries. In the final section, I examine armed conflict and briefly discuss the moral reasoning involved to justify deliberate killing and destruction. I conclude that senior military officers require an understanding of sound moral reasoning to implement effective strategy. (shrink)

This chapter takes a longitudinal approach to the survey of intelligence research published in Australia, or by Australian authors overseas, in the decade 2007–2017, analyses it, and compares these findings with trends overseas. It then undertakes a quantitative and qualitative survey of intelligence education programs at Australian and Western tertiary institutions in order to show how Australia fares in an international context. It concludes by offering some suggestions on the way ahead for Intelligence Studies in Australia.

1. If Taylor's first two proposals are accepted, we must introduce a term to replace "know" in a familiar, but weaker, sense of the word. In ordinary speech it is correct to say that I know that p, even if my conviction that p might be somewhat increased by further evidence. In Taylor's stronger sense of "know" and "knowledge," it is doubtful that we have much, if any, knowledge. For even if we sometimes have evidence which is conclusive, and which (...) therefore might be said to "justify" complete conviction, it can still be doubted that in such cases we are as fully convinced as we could be. (shrink)

Cell morphogenesis encompasses all processes required to establish a three-dimensional cell shape. Cells acquire the architecture specific to their developmental context by using the spatial information provided by internal or external cues. As a response to these signals, cells become reorganized and establish functionally distinct subcellular domains that ultimately lead to morphological changes. In its simplest form, cell morphogenesis results in the establishment of asymmetry along one axis, a cell polarity. Although cell polarity has been studied intensively in budding yeast (...) and epithelial cells, little is known about more complex modes of cell morphogenesis involving multiple axes. In this review we compare the regulation of cell morphogenesis of different genetically well-characterized cell types in Arabidopsis thaliana. BioEssays 20:20–29, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

At the earliest break of ancient hominins from their primate relatives in vocal communication, we propose a selection pressure on vocal fitness signaling by hominin infants. Exploratory vocalizations, not tied to expression of distress or immediate need, could have helped persuade parents of the wellness and viability of the infants who produced them. We hypothesize that hominin parents invested more in infants who produced such signals of fitness plentifully, neglecting or abandoning them less often than infants who produced the sounds (...) less frequently. Selection for such exploratory vocalization provided a critically important inclination and capability relevant to language, we reason, because the system that encouraged spontaneous vocalization also made vocalization functionally flexible to an extent that has not been observed in any other animal. Although this vocal flexibility did not by itself create language, it provided an essential foundation upon which language would evolve through a variety of additional steps. In evaluating this speculation, we consider presumable barriers to evolving language that are thought to be implications of Darwinian Theory. It has been claimed that communication always involves sender self-interest and that self-interest leads to deceit, which is countered through clever detection by receivers. The constant battle of senders and receivers has been thought to pose an insuperable challenge to honest communication, which has been viewed as a requirement of language. To make communication honest, it has been proposed that stable signaling requires costly handicaps for the sender, and since language cannot entail high cost, the reasoning has suggested an insurmountable obstacle to the evolution of language. We think this presumed honesty barrier is an illusion that can be revealed by recognition of the fact that language is not inherently honest and in light of the distinction between illocutionary force and semantics. Our paper also considers barriers to the evolution of language (not having to do with honesty) that we think may have actually played important roles in preventing species other than humans from evolving language. (shrink)

Rationality has been a principle widely assumed in economics from early on. In contrast, rationality in the formation of economic expectations is rather new. Since the term “rational expectations” has meanwhile become a kind of slogan for diverse issues in economics as in related fields, there is some danger of authors’ not always being aware of the true meaning of this technical term. Sometimes it is used, in a context where expectation formation about uncertain events is essential, as if rational (...) expectations solved this fundamental problem. (shrink)

The disease status of mental disorders has been hotly debated and is still highly relevant for ethical and economic considerations regarding the human rights of psychiatric patients. Here we critically discuss traditional evolutionary and degenerative concepts of mental disorders and propose instead the differentiation between independent dimensions of mental health resources on the one hand and mental disorders on the other. We suggest that impairments of a minimal set of mental functions can serve as indicators of exogenous and endogenous psychoses, (...) while other mental disorders cannot be diagnosed without a reference to setting and culture. (shrink)

The coexistence of radically resistant body theology and unrestricted demands for submission in Rom. 12 and 13 presents a unique and unsettling dilemma for feminist and postcolonial exegetes and theorists. With a critical discussion of postcolonial hybridity theory and a turn towards – and back to – performativity this paper pushes the deviant metaphoricity in Rom. 12 from a shadowy existence to the centre stage and thereby redevelops Pauline concepts of perpetual bodily transformations as a challenge to reified body ideologies. (...) We demonstrate how the marginalized, subjugated and colonized body experience of St. Paul becomes a resource for opening, materialized and pervasive stimuli that go beyond essentializing identitarian and excluding body configurations. (shrink)

In social interactions, emotional biases can arise when the emotional state of oneself and another person are incongruent. A person’s ability to judge the other’s emotional state can then be biased by their own emotional state, leading to an emotional egocentric bias (EEB). Alternatively, a person’s perception of their own emotional state can be biased by the other’s emotional state leading to an emotional altercentric bias (EAB). Using a modified audiovisual paradigm, we examined in three studies (n = 171; two (...) online & one lab-based study) whether emotional biases can be considered traits by measuring two timepoints within participant and relating empathy trait scores to emotional biases, as well as the electrophysiological correlates of emotional biases. In all studies, we found a congruency effect, reflecting an EEB and EAB of small size. Both biases failed to correlate significantly within participants across timepoints and did not display significant relationships with empathy trait scores. On the electrophysiological level, we did not find any neural emotional bias effects in the time–frequency domain. Our results suggest that EEB and EAB effects are strongly task sensitive. Caution is warranted when studying interindividual differences in emotional biases using this paradigm, as they did not show significant test-retest reliabilities. (shrink)

By the very nature of information technology (IT), change and dynamism have always been significant drivers on its path to further development—and it has traditionally been the Western countries leading these. Now the picture is changing. The new high growth economies of the world (also known as BRIC countries) are increasingly pressing forward as active IT development drivers. Internal IT organizations of international companies are experiencing these global shifts firsthand and are facing changes in their traditional roles. This exploratory research (...) is aimed at clarifying the context of the impact of high growth economies on such IT departments of Western-rooted enterprises. Forty-six interviews were conducted with IT managers, HR managers and expatriates emphasizing the importance of intercultural interaction, maturing IT economies, change in IT landscape and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

The role of chance in historiography is a major question for the analysis of cultural transformations. Its main subject are the transformations of contingentia itself, which has undergone substantial changes in its mythical forms (as Tyche or Fortuna) as well in its historical expressions in philosophy, theology, politics, sciences, literature and art.