BackgroundSimilar to many other countries, in Germany patients with alcohol-related liver disease are obliged to prove their abstinence before being accepted on a waitlist for liver transplantation. Health care professionals (HCPs) must both treat patients and ensure that patients have proven their abstinence. The aim of this exploratory study was to develop a deeper understanding of how HCPs deal with this dual role.MethodsThe study used semi-structured interviews as the source of data. 11 healthcare professionals from ten of the 22 German (...) transplant centers were interviewed. After transcription, a qualitative content analysis was performed.ResultsWe found that these HCPs faced an ethical dilemma, as they must balance the roles of being both a treatment provider (the therapist role) and an assessor (the monitoring role). To solve this dilemma, the strategy seems to be a tendency for the HCPs to take on one dominant role amongst these two roles. HCPs who prefer to take on the therapist role seem to feel burdened by the 6-month abstinence rule and the obligation to monitor their patients. HCPs who prefer to take on the monitoring role tend to have negative assumptions about the patients. HCPs also reported the impression that patients perceive HCPs as more involved in monitoring and less open to the therapeutic role. From this it can be deduced that current regulations and structures lead both to stress for HCPs and to suboptimal therapy for those affected.ConclusionsThe results showed that current transplantation guidelines can have a negative impact on both patient care and the burdens on the HCPs. From our point of view, there are various changes that could be made to the current clinical practice that would help solve this dilemma. For instance, integrating other assessment criteria that are more closely adapted to the health status trajectory and psychosocial background of the individual patient would be both possible and would lead to improvements in practice. (shrink)

In this book, Binder shows that at the heart of the most prominent arguments in favour of value-neutral approaches to overall freedom lies the value freedom has for human agency and development. Far from leading to the adoption of a value-neutral approach, however, ascribing importance to freedom’s agency value requires one to adopt a refined value-based approach. Binder employs an axiomatic framework in order to develop such an approach. She shows that a focus on freedom’s agency value has (...) far reaching consequences for existing results in the freedom ranking literature: it requires one to move beyond a person’s given all-things-considered preferences to the values underlying a person’s preference formation. Furthermore, it requires, as Binder argues, one to account for those differences between choice options which really matter to people. Binder illustrates the implications of her analysis for the evaluation of public policy and human development with the capability approach: only if sufficient importance is ascribed to freedom’s agency value can the capability approach keep its promises. ​. (shrink)

Franz Brentano gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Philosophen an der Wende vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert. Dennoch sind die Philosophiehistoriker noch zu keinem endgültigen Urteil über seine Bedeutung gelangt. Der Grund hierfür ist vor allem darin zu suchen, dass Brentanos Werk bis heute nur unzureichend zugänglich ist, was vor allem daran liegt, dass der größte Teil davon nur in handschriftlicher Form existiert: Nach seinem unvollendet gebliebenen Hauptwerk, der Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, hat Brentano keine größere Arbeit mehr veröffentlicht. Im ersten (...) Teil analysiert Binder die Gründe für Brentanos zurückhaltende Publikationstätigkeit, wobei einerseits der konfliktbehaftete biographische Hintergrund und die komplexe Persönlichkeit des Philosophen, andererseits theoretische Probleme, eine psychologische Einheitswissenschaft zu formulieren, die ihn an der Fertigstellung seines Hauptwerks scheitern ließen, im Vordergrund stehen. Im zweiten Teil verfolgt der Autor die wechselhafte Geschichte von Brentanos philosophischem Nachlass, die ihrerseits die Rezeption seiner philosophischen Theorien stark behindert hat. (shrink)

This paper examines the existential context of physical and mental health. Hans Georg Gadamer and The World Health Organization’s conceptualizations are discussed, and current medicalized and idealized views on health are critically examined. The existential dimension of health is explored in the light of theories of selfhood consisting of different parts, Irvin Yalom’s approach to “ultimate concerns” and Martin Heidegger’s conceptualization of “existentials.” We often become aware of health as an existential concern during times of illness, and health and illness (...) can co-exist. The paper discusses how existential suffering in Western culture is described, to an increasing degree, as disorders or psychological deficits, and perfectionistic health goals easily can become a problem. We seek to avoid suffering rather than relate to it, with all the tension that may create. The paper argues that suffering is an unavoidable aspect of people’s experience of their lives, and actively relating to suffering must be regarded as a fundamental aspect of health. The need and usefulness of a concept of “existential health” is discussed. (shrink)

Karl Popper developed a theory of deductive logic in the late 1940s. In his approach, logic is a metalinguistic theory of deducibility relations that are based on certain purely structural rules. Logical constants are then characterized in terms of deducibility relations. Characterizations of this kind are also called inferential definitions by Popper. In this paper, we expound his theory and elaborate some of his ideas and results that in some cases were only sketched by him. Our focus is on Popper's (...) notion of duality, his theory of modalities, and his treatment of different kinds of negation. This allows us to show how his works on logic anticipate some later developments and discussions in philosophical logic, pertaining to trivializing connectives, the duality of logical constants, dual-intuitionistic logic, the conservativeness of language extensions, the existence of a bi-intuitionistic logic, the non-logicality of minimal negation, and to the problem of logicality in general. (shrink)

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and German philosopher Karl Jaspers were both born in 1883, and they both maintained the position that humans are principally historical beings. Therefore, as attested by this notion itself, there are points in which their philosophy coincides. Ortega argued that human beings have no nature, only history. His argument is that history as such is human nature; what is most natural about being human is the fact of being historical and thus always having historicity. (...) Jaspers maintained the same position that in contemplating historicity, one's focus should not be on human nature in the strictly hereditary sense, because it is one's traditions, not the genetic makeup, that most make one to be human. Jaspers emphasizes the conversion of an existential historic consciousness into a consciousness of historicity that is similar to what can be understood in Ortega as historical perspectivism imbued with pragmatism. (shrink)

Two decades ago, Rolf Landauer (1991) argued that “information is physical” and ought to have a role in the scientific analysis of reality comparable to that of matter, energy, space and time. This would also help to bridge the gap between biology and mathematics and physics. Although it can be argued that we are living in the ‘golden age’ of biology, both because of the great challenges posed by medicine and the environment and the significant advances that have been made—especially (...) in genetics and molecular and cell biology—we feel that information as an essential aspect of life has been neglected, or at least misunderstood. We therefore summon Maxwell’s Demon and its distant relative the ratchet, and apply these to biology. (shrink)

Scholars in both digital humanities and media studies have noted an apparent disconnect between computation and the interpretive methods of the humanities. Alan Liu has argued that literary scholars employing digital methods encounter a “meaning problem” due to the difficulty of reconciling algorithmic methods with interpretive ones. Conversely, the media scholar Friedrich Kittler has questioned the adequacy of hermeneutics as a means of studying computers. This paper argues that that this disconnect results from a set of contingent decisions made in (...) both humanistic and mathematical disciplines in the first half of the nineteenth century that delineated, with implications that continue to resonate in the present day, which aspects of human activity would come to be formalized in algorithms and which would not. I begin with a discussion of Nicolas de Condorcet, who attempted, at the height of the 1789 revolution, to turn algebra into a universal language; his work, I argue, exemplifies the form of algorithmic thinking that existed before the Romantic turn. Next, I discuss William Wordsworth’s arguments about the relationship of poetry and science. While Wordsworth is sometimes viewed as a critic of science, I argue that his polemic is specifically targeted at highly politicized projects like Condorcet’s that sought to supplant existing modes of thought with scientific rationality. Finally, I demonstrate the importance of Romantic thought for George Boole, creator of the logic system that would eventually form the basis of digital electronics. The reason Boole was able to succeed where Condorcet had failed, I argue, was that Romantic notions of culture enabled him to reconcile a mechanical view of mathematical reasoning with an organic view of the development of meaning—a dichotomy that remains a key assumption of computer interfaces in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In teaching statistics in secondary schools and at university, two visualizations are primarily used when situations with two dichotomous characteristics are represented: 2×2 tables and tree diagrams. Both visualizations can be depicted either with probabilities or with frequencies. Visualizations with frequencies have been shown to help students significantly more in Bayesian reasoning problems than probability visualizations do. Because tree diagrams or double-trees (which are largely unknown in school) are node-branch-structures, these two visualizations (compared to the 2×2 table) can even simultaneously (...) display probabilities on branches and frequencies inside the nodes. This is a teaching advantage as it allows the frequency concept to be used to better understand probabilities. However, 2×2 tables and (double-) trees have a decisive disadvantage: While joint probabilities (e.g., P(AB)) are represented in 2×2 tables but no conditional probabilities (e.g., P(A|B)), it is exactly the other way around with (double-) trees. Therefore, a visualization that is equally suitable for the representation of joint probabilities and conditional probabilities is desirable. In this article, we present a new visualization—the frequency net—in which all absolute frequencies and all types of probabilities can be depicted. In addition to a detailed theoretical analysis of the frequency net, we report the results of a study with 249 university students that shows that “net diagrams” can improve reasoning without previous instruction to a similar extent as 2×2 tables and double-trees. Regarding questions about conditional probabilities, frequency visualizations (2×2 table, double-tree, or net diagram with natural frequencies) are consistently superior to probability visualizations. The frequency net performs as well as the frequency double-tree. Only the 2×2 table with frequencies—the only visualization that participants were already familiar with —led to higher performance rates. If, on the other hand, a question about a joint probability had to be answered, all implemented visualizations clearly supported participants’ performance, and no uniform format effect becomes visible. Participants reached the highest performance in the versions with probability 2×2 tables and probability net diagrams. Furthermore, after conducting a detailed error analysis, we report interesting error shifts between the two information formats and the different visualizations and give recommendations for teaching probability. (shrink)

In Chap. 2 I argued that the availability of particular freedoms contributes to the agency value of a person’s freedom in virtue of enabling a person to make significant choices. In this chapter I explore how the differences between alternative choice options can enhance the faculties constitutive for a person’s agency and therefore increase the agency value of a person’s freedom. Information about the differences between the alternatives open for choice is commonly considered to increase the significance of choice and (...) thereby the freedom of choice a person enjoys. One class of contributions in the formal freedom ranking literature explores ways to incorporate information about the differences between alternatives available in a set: the more diverse the range of choice available to a person, the more significant it is and therefore the more freedom of choice she enjoys. A question which is hardly addressed in the formal literature, though, is which differences are relevant for the significance of a person’s choices. In this chapter I propose and analyse a way by which information about those differences among alternatives which matter to a person, and which are thus relevant for (significant) choice and freedom’s agency value, can be revealed from preference information. This chapter is based on Binder (Ration Mark Morals 5:120–132, 2014; A measure of choice-relevant diversity, Working Paper, 2017). (shrink)

In Chap. 2 I argued that an approach that aims to capture freedom’s agency value has to account for the value the availability of choice options has for a person’s deliberation about her values and goals before making decisions. Before addressing this question in greater detail in Chap. 5, I pose the question how this picture of a person reflecting upon a plurality of motives, as widely employed in the philosophy of action, relates to the assumption that a person’s (rational) (...) choices can be represented by a transitive, all-things-considered preference over the alternatives, as is commonly assumed in rational choice theory and the freedom ranking literature. Under which conditions can a person indeed form a transitive, all-things-considered preference from a set of plural (possibly conflicting) values, or as I call it, from her plural identities? I make use of a social choice framework in order to explore this question and illustrate the task the person is facing as an intra-personal aggregation problem: a person has to derive his (transitive) all-things-considered preference from a profile of preference relations reflecting his plural identity. This chapter is a slightly modified version of Binder (Soc Choice Welf 42:959–976, 2014). (shrink)

In this chapter I turn to one specific interpretation of the framework considered so far: the capability approach. By drawing on the analysis conducted in this book I shall discuss the question whether the capability approach can account for cultural diversity. In a first step, I explore how cultural differences may affect the construction of capability sets. In a second step, I turn to their ranking, and draw on discussions about the value of alternatives in freedom rankings in order to (...) explore how different ways to identify valuable functionings can affect the extent to which capability rankings can account for differences in the conception of well-being across different cultures. In a last step, I draw on Sen’s contributions in rational choice theory in order to illustrate how certain norms can render the value of functionings dependent on the capability set of which they form a part. I illustrate that existing contributions fail to account for such cases of context-dependency, and propose a way to refine the framework such that they can be taken into account. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of freedom’s agency value in allowing the capability approach to find a delicate balance in the evaluation of well-being across different cultures: namely to avoid the problem of preference adaptation it was meant to address, without becoming paternalistic. This chapter is a modified version of Binder (Context dependency of valuable functionings: how culture affects the capability framework. In: Chiappero-Martinetti E (ed) Debating global society: reach and limits of the capability approach. Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan, pp 205–232, 2009). (shrink)

We discuss the variety of sorts of sympathy Hume recognizes, the extent to which he thinks our sympathy with others’ feelings depends on inferences from the other’s expression, and from her perceived situation, and consider also whether he later changed his views about the nature and role of sympathy, in particular its role in morals.

It has always been an important task of economics to assess individual and social welfare. The traditional approach has assumed that the measuring rod for welfare is the satisfaction of the individual’s given and unchanging preferences, but recent work in behavioural economics has called this into question by pointing out the inconsistencies and context-dependencies of human behaviour. When preferences are no longer consistent, we have to ask whether a different measure for individual welfare can, and should, be found. This book (...) goes beyond the level of preference and instead considers whether a hedonistic view of welfare represents a viable alternative, and what its normative implications are. Offering a welfare theory with stronger behavioural and evolutionary foundations, Binder follows a naturalistic methodology to examine the foundations of welfare, connecting the concept with a dynamic theory of preference learning, and providing a more realistic account of human behaviour. This book will be of interest to researchers and those working in the fields of welfare economics, behavioural and evolutionary economics. (shrink)

Als Mitinitiator des Neuhegelianismus war Julius Binder (1870 - 1939) einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter auf dem Gebiet der Rechtsphilosophie. Die Fundamente seiner Philosophie des Rechtes entwickelte er in der vorliegenden Schrift. Ergänzend befindet sich zudem ein Beitrag zur Interpretation der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie in diesem Buch. Binder wurde am 12. Mai 1870 in Würzburg als Sohn einer Juristen- und Theologenfamilie geboren. Nach dem Studium der Rechtswissenschaften in München und Würzburg habilitierte er sich 1898 und wurde anschließend außerordentlicher Professor in (...) Rostock, Erlagen, Würzburg und Göttingen. Binder verstarb am 28. August 1939 in Starnberg bei München.'. (shrink)

A wide-ranging history of the intellectual developments that produced the modern idea of the algorithm. Bringing together the histories of mathematics, computer science, and linguistic thought, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm reveals how recent developments in artificial intelligence are reopening an issue that troubled mathematicians long before the computer age. How do you draw the line between computational rules and the complexities of making systems comprehensible to people? Here Jeffrey M. Binder offers a compelling tour of four (...) visions of universal computation that addressed this issue in very different ways: G. W. Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator; a universal algebra scheme Nicolas de Condorcet designed during the French Revolution; George Boole's nineteenth-century logic system; and the early programming language ALGOL, whose name is short for algorithmic language. These episodes show that symbolic computation has repeatedly become entangled in debates about the nature of communication. To what extent can meaning be controlled by individuals, like the values of a and b in algebra, and to what extent is meaning inevitably social? By attending to this long-neglected question, we come to see that the modern idea of the algorithm is implicated in a long history of attempts to maintain a disciplinary boundary separating technical knowledge from the languages people speak day to day. Machine learning, in its increasing dependence on words, now places this boundary in jeopardy, making its stakes all the more urgent to understand. The idea of the algorithm is a levee holding back the social complexity of language, and it is about to break. This book is about the flood that inspired its construction. (shrink)

What is an Author? What’s in a name? Marnie Binder asks if it matters who’s writing, and other questions of authorship.

From building a new piece of furniture to replacing a lightbulb, people must often figure out how to assemble an object from its parts. Although these physical assembly problems take on many different forms, they also pose common challenges. Chief among these is the question of how to break a complex problem down into subproblems that are easier to solve. What principles determine why some strategies for decomposing a problem are favored over others? Here, we investigate the decisions that people (...) make when considering different visual subgoals in the context of attempting to build a series of virtual block towers. We hypothesized that people favor subgoals achieving a balance between how much progress the subgoals would help achieve toward the final goal and how effortful they would be to solve. We tested this hypothesis by defining several computational models of planning and subgoal selection, then evaluating how well these models predicted human planning and subgoal selection behavior on the same problems. Our results suggest that participants rapidly differentiated the computational costs of otherwise similarly ambitious subgoals, and used these judgments to drive subgoal selection. Moreover, our findings are consistent with the possibility that participants were not only sensitive to the immediate computational costs associated with solving the very next subgoal, but also future costs that might be incurred when attempting the rest of the problem. Taken together, these results contribute to our understanding of how humans make efficient use of cognitive resources to solve complex, grounded planning problems. (shrink)

In Otto Neurath’s essay on the prehistory of the Vienna Circle, Franz Brentano is mentioned but only as a rather marginal figure. In some contrast to this view, Rudolf Haller sees Brentano and his school as the second important branch of his concept of “Austrian Philosophy”, a view that became known as the Neurath-Haller thesis. This is all the more astonishing as Brentano’s reception in Austria had largely come to a standstill in the 1950s and 1960s. This essay explores the (...) question of which sources might have influenced Haller in this remarkable reassessment of Brentano. (shrink)

This paper examines the psychology of existential guilt with Martin Heidegger and Rollo May’s conceptualizations as the point of departure. The concept of existential guilt describes preconditions for responsibility and accountability in life choices and the relationship to the potential given in the life of a human. It might also be used as a starting point to examine an individual’s relationship to the potential offered in their life and life context and, in this way, the hitherto unlived life of an (...) individual. The following questions are discussed in contexts of identity development, perfectionism, and current cultural shifts in conceptualizations of selfhood: How can humans relate to the fact that only limited parts of who they might be can ever be actualized? Moreover, how can they relate to the fundamental ambiguity and “groundlessness” in the contexts of life where choices are made? There are striking parallels between the role of exploration in the Eriksonian approaches to healthy identity development and the ontological groundlessness that stands out as a premise for existential guilt. There are also parallels between identity fore-closure and normative identity styles and “falling” into das Man in the existential framework. Perfectionistic ideals easily become an objectivization – and closure – of possible alternatives and choices. In contemporary theories of constructions of selfhood, the dangers of alienation from the community on the one hand and escape into what might become totalitarian collectivism on the other is pointed out. The contextualization of personal responsibility offered through the concept of existential guilt might address both dangers. It provides a perspective on how personal responsibility is embedded in contexts of human relationships, relationships to nature, and the finitude, freedom, uncertainties, and suffering that is given through human existence. Existential guilt can wake sorrow and regret over opportunities overlooked and lost. However, most of all, it can be seen as a drive toward repair in the relationship toward both oneself and the other. It takes the form of receptivity, an openness to a life not yet lived, and creative use of imagination. (shrink)

This case study on the use of robotic and AI systems in care work contexts presents scenarios of the partial transfer of responsibility from (mostly non-professional) careworkers to machine entities. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of a non-representative sample of eight in-depth interviews with people nursing relatives at their homes, five scenarios are introduced that address different degrees of technologization in care ranging from purely human/manual care work to the integrated use of humanoid robots with AI support. The (...) interviewees provide complex answers that outline varying concepts of everyday ethics pertaining to the use of digital and robotic systems in curative and nursing contexts. The results point at ethical challenges for people providing care work and deepen debates on gradual diffusions of responsibility. (shrink)

The use of computers to support learning at work has for long been propagated. Although a large bulk of experience exists in this field, it is still an open question what role computer applications play and can play in the process of learning. It can even be questioned if the learning processes themselves are sufficiently well understood to enable designers and others to provide relevant support. In this article these questions are addressed with reference to experience gained with two projects (...) on computer support for shop floor learning. The projects involved the future users actively in the design process and it is argued that this involvement reached far beyond the mere shaping of the learning artefacts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Critical Legal Studies as Analytic Jurisprudence: The Critique of Liberal Rights Theory Critical Legal Studies as Social Theory Conclusion References.

In this book I have explored how opportunity sets can be compared in terms of freedom’s agency value. For this purpose I drew on three different areas of the literature: the philosophical literature on (overall) freedom provided the conceptual depth and motivation of the concern with freedom’s agency value. The freedom ranking literature and its axiomatic apparatus was employed to gain a clearer understanding of the conditions under which problems of value-based approaches might occur, and the informational requirements needed to (...) compare states in terms of the agency value of freedom they offer to a person. Last but certainly not least, the capability framework provided the ‘link to the ground’. It enabled me to illustrate how the insights gained in this book can shed light on possible pitfalls related to the evaluation of well-being in a culturally diverse world, and to point to cases of high relevance in the evaluation of a person’s freedom across different societies and cultures which are not captured by existing contributions in the freedom ranking literature. (shrink)

Franz Brentanos (1838-1917) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte aus dem Jahre 1874 gehört zu den Klassikern der Philosophie und der Psychologie. Mit diesem Werk, das den Ausgangspunkt sowohl für die phänomenologische Tradition als auch für die heutige Philosophie des Geistes markiert, konnte sich Brentano im damaligen philosophischen Panorama durchsetzen - sein Name ist auch heute noch unauflöslich mit diesem Werk verknüpft. Die Entdeckung bzw. Wiederentdeckung der Grundstruktur psychischer Phänomene, d. h. deren Intentionalität, stellt wohl den wichtigsten Beitrag Brentanos zum Aufbau einer (...) Analytik des Geistes dar. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue for the importance of freedom’s agency value and the need to adopt a refined value-based approach to freedom in order to capture it. I focus on the debate between proponents of a value-neutral approach to overall freedom (Carter, A Measure of Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999; van Hees, Legal Reductionsim and Freedom, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000), and scholars who defend value-based approaches to overall freedom (Sen, J Econ 50:15–29, 1991; Oxf Econ Pap 45:519–541, 1993). In (...) this debate value-neutral approaches are commonly motivated by a rejection of value-based approaches. I show that the most prominent arguments that reject a value-based approach to overall freedom in favour of a value-neutral one are implicitly or explicitly based on the importance of freedom’s agency value. More specifically, I examine three prominent arguments raised against value-based approaches: the problem of preference dependency in subjective value-based approaches, the impossibility of paternalism, a problem of objective value-based approaches, and the non-specific value neglect, a general shortcoming of value-based approaches to overall freedom raised by Carter (A measure of freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999). In contrast to the way these problems are commonly employed in the literature, which is to motivate the rejection of value-based approaches and make the move to a value-neutral approach to overall freedom, I argue that these problems in fact make a case for a (refined) value-based approach. More precisely, all of the three problems are, as I argue, implicitly or explicitly based on the failure of the respective value-based approach to take freedom’s agency value into account, that is the value freedom has for being a necessary condition of a person’s agency. As opposed to existing contributions Carter (A measure of freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999) though, I argue that freedom’s agency value can only be captured by a (refined) value-based approach. This is an approach to overall freedom that takes account of the value of particular freedoms in terms of the various values and motives a person deliberates on before making choices. The chapter concludes with a more specific discussion of freedom’s agency value and how the availability of choice options can contribute to it. (shrink)

In this chapter the interest in freedom in general, and in freedom’s agency value in particular is motivated. For this purpose the three areas of the literature this book draws upon and contributes to are introduced: the literature on the conceptualization and the value of overall freedom in political philosophy, the axiomatic literature on freedom-rankings in welfare economics and the literature on the capability approach. This introductory chapter concludes with an outline of the book.

This paper explores the role of existential vulnerability in the experience of personal identity and how identity is found and created. Existential vulnerabilities mark a boundary between what humans can bring about willfully or manipulate to their advantage and what is resistant to such actions. These vulnerabilities have their origin, on an ontological level, in fundamental conditions of human existence. At the same time, they have implications on a psychological level when it comes to self-experience and identity formation. Narrative and (...) value-based identity depend on how a person relates to finitude and the ambiguous side of lived experience. Relational identity depends on how a person relates to existential aloneness and the fact that the meaning and value of our actions are partly out of our control; they are always also dependent on other people’s responses to us. Bodily identity makes us feel continuous and real, but at the same time vulnerable to death and the gaze and actions of others. Being ‘thrown’ into an arbitrary life context is also a form of existential vulnerability. Authentic psychological identities can develop by giving meaning to these circumstances and balancing acceptance of existential vulnerability with the courage to make choices and act. (shrink)

In this chapter I turn to the question of how the value of alternatives can be incorporated in freedom rankings such that freedom’s agency value is captured. I do so in a two step approach. In the first step I identify the formal and interpretational conditions under which a freedom ranking suffers the problem of desire dependency or the impossibility of paternalism. Given that the occurrence of these problems, as I have argued in Chap. 2, indicates a failure to take (...) freedom’s agency value into account, this allows me to rule out approaches that fail to capture that value. The somewhat puzzling finding, however, is that nearly all existing freedom rankings fail to capture freedom’s agency value. That is, given a widely accepted (formal) condition, both ways to interpret the preferences invoked to identify the valuable alternatives in a set face either the problem of desire dependency or the impossibility of paternalism. In the second step I suggest a way to capture freedom’s agency value. For this purpose I define freedom’s agency value more precisely, taking it to be the value freedom has in virtue of allowing a person to reflect and deliberate upon the relative priority of her plural identities at the moment of choice. I use a procedural criterion of ‘reasonableness’ to identify the valuable alternatives in a set on the basis of a person’s identity profile. It turns out that the same condition that -as it was shown in Chap. 4 – restricts the conflict among a person’s plural identities and allows for the transitivity of her all-things-considered preference, provides a way to account for the value the availability of options has for a person’s agency without suffering the problems of desire dependency or the impossibility of paternalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Critical Legal Studies as Analytic Jurisprudence: The Critique of Liberal Rights Theory Critical Legal Studies as Social Theory Conclusion References.

This work is concerned with the extent and magnitude of threat related to online radicalization in the context of terrorist acts and related offending. Online influences have been depicted as major drivers for the propagation and adoption of extremist ideologies, which often contain an element of collective grievance, and subsequent acts of violence. This is most pronounced in the discussion of so-called lone actor terrorism, but extends to all forms of extremist offending, and beyond. The present work situates online radicalization (...) leading to terrorist acts within the wider context of grievance-based beliefs and attitudes. Further, it addresses current positions and debates surrounding the relevance and mechanisms of online radicalization in terrorist offending. Recent evidence from quantitative studies is reviewed to estimate prevalence of online radicalization and the level of threat that results from it. This is followed by a discussion of plausible, but opposing, interpretations of the estimates presented. While online radicalization does occur, with and without reference to offline processes, the resulting threat is not overly high. This assessment, however, refers to the present only and is unlikely to hold for the future, given the general growth and acceleration of online activity among terrorist actors. (shrink)

Annette Baier's aim is to make sense of David Hume's Treatise as a whole. Hume's family motto, which appears on his bookplate, was True to the End. Baier argues that it is not until the end of the Treatise that we get his full story about truth and falsehood, reason and folly. By the end, we can see the cause to which Hume has been true throughout the work. Baier finds Hume's Treatise of Human Nature to be a carefully (...) crafted literary and philosophical work which itself displays a philosophical progress of sentiments. His starting place is an overly abstract intellectualism that deliberately thrusts passions and social concerns into the background. In the three interrelated books of the Treatise, his self-understander proceeds through partial successes and dramatic failures to emerge with new-found optimism, expecting that the exact knowledge the morally self-conscious anatomist of human nature can acquire will itself improve and correct our vision of morality. Baier describes how, by turning philosophy toward human nature instead of toward God and the universe, Hume initiated a new philosophy, a broader discipline of reflection that can embrace Charles Darwin and Michel Foucault as well as William James and Sigmund Freud. Hume belongs both to our present and to our past. (shrink)