A gradual reformation: empirical character and causal powers in Kant

According to Kant each person has an empirical character, which is ultimately grounded in one’s free choice. The popular Causal Laws interpretation of empirical character holds that it consists of the causal laws governing our psychology. I argue that this reading has difficulties explaining moral change, the ‘gradual reformation’ of our empirical character: Causal laws cannot change and hence cannot be gradually reformed. I propose an alternative Causal Powers interpretation of empirical character, where our empirical character consists of our mind’s causal powers. The resulting picture of empirical character allows for moral change and Kantian weakness of will.     

Freedom of Expression,Laïcité and Islam in France: The Tension between Two Different (Universal) Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In France, freedom of expression is perceived as a sort of liberté matricielle, a matrix of other fundamental freedoms. As such, it is reflected in many constitutional provisions, including those referring to religion. In addition, the practical exercise of freedom of expression remains strictly linked with the principle of laïcité, which is part of the institutional, legal and intellectual history of the French Republic and has even become the basis of its founding “values.” All this, however, also implies an accentuation of individual freedom of expression, which normally takes precedence over the protection of religions, sometimes justifying caricature of divinities, rules, rites and symbols. The legal cases related to the right to satirical expression are examples of this. The article underlines the role of freedom of expression in the light of the principle of laïcité, which normally rejects the communitarian dimension of religious rights, which may explain some important aspects of, on the one hand, the evolution of legislation regarding both hate speech and blasphemy within French liberal constitutionalism and, on the other, the relationship between freedom of expression and the secular state. This approach offers a possibility of better evaluating existing French law in relation to some religious nomoi groups, specifically, Islamic organizations. These issues are particularly analysed from two perspectives: the right to criticize or challenge religions and the right to satirize. This analysis makes it possible to identify the legal limits of freedom of expression before and after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo tragedy and highlights the difficulties faced by the so-called laïcité à la française in dealing with today's multicultural societies. The need emerges for a proper balance to be struck between religious diversity and protection of human rights – not only the rights of groups to be different, but also the rights of persons within these groups, which also involves the efforts of religious denominations to articulate their claims in order to make them more compatible with constitutional rights, including those referring to freedom of expression.     

Articles of Faith: Freedom of Expression and Religious Freedom in Contemporary Multiculture

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between freedom of religion and freedom of speech and expression within contemporary multicultural liberal democracies. These two fundamental human rights have increasingly been seen, in public and political discourse, in terms of tension if not outright opposition, a view reinforced by the Charlie Hebdo killings in January 2015. And yet in every human rights charter they are proximate to one another. This essay argues that this adjacency is not coincidental, that it has a history and that, in illuminating this history, it is possible to explore how the contemporary framing of these two rights as being in opposition has come about. Looking back to the framing of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the essay offers an historical perspective that, in turn, facilitates a reappraisal and re-evaluation of these two liberties that is the necessary, albeit insufficient, predicate to the task of addressing the problematic of multicultural ‘crisis' in the contemporary liberal democracies of Western Europe, North America and Australasia, in which the presence of certain religious communities (Muslims, in particular) and the role of religion in public and political life more generally (and, conversely, of secularism) has assumed a central importance.     

Kant and the Problem of Recognition: Freedom,Transcendental Idealism,and the Third-Person

Kant wants to show that freedom is possible in the face of natural necessity. Transcendental idealism is his solution, which locates freedom outside of nature. I accept that this makes freedom possible, but object that it precludes the recognition of other rational agents. In making this case, I trace some of the history of Kant’s thoughts on freedom. In several of his earlier works, he argues that we are aware of our own activity. He later abandons this approach, as he worries that any awareness of our activity involves access to the noumenal, and thereby conflicts with the epistemic limits of transcendental idealism. In its place, from the second Critique onwards, Kant argues that we are conscious of the moral law, which tells me that I ought to do something, thus revealing that I can. This is the only proof of freedom consistent with transcendental idealism, but I argue that such an exclusively first-personal approach precludes the (third-personal) recognition of other rational agents. I conclude that transcendental idealism thus fails to provide an adequate account of freedom. In its place, I sketch an alternative picture of how freedom is possible, one that locates freedom within, rather than outside of nature.     

Embodied Paths in Aging: Body Journeys Towards Enhanced Agency and Self-Attunement

Informed by the Developmental Theory of Embodiment, the article describes the embodied journeys of 31 women, ages 50 to 70 years, who participated in 52 life-history interviews, and delineates the implications of the theory and the research program to the practice of feminist therapy with women in older adulthood. In the domain of Physical Freedom, a core construct of the theory, the research suggests that women at these ages often seek to re-capture experiences of joyful immersion and competence in physical action as well as of moving freely and taking space in the physical territory; safety where it has been violated; and attuned comfort and agency with physical desire. In the domain of Mental Freedom, another core construct of the theory, the research suggests that women in later adulthood aim to challenge long-held constraining ‘feminine’ molds, such as inhabiting the body as an object to be gazed at and as a deficient site, caring for others at the expense of oneself, or acting demure and submissive. Older adulthood seems to be a productive phase for transformations in the way women engage with the world.     

表达抑制调节负性情绪的男性优势——来自事件相关电位的证据

生活经验和文献证明,男性相比女性有更少的情绪表达行为。据此,本研究假设表达抑制进行负性情绪调节具有男性优势,而采用认知重评调节时可能没有该性别差异。在不同的实验阶段,被试分别采用自由观看、表达抑制和认知重评策略观看负性情绪图片,同时记录事件相关电位(ERP),以及使用各种策略之后的主观情绪体验。结果表明,采用表达抑制和认知重评调节情绪后,被试报告的负性情绪体验没有出现男女差异。然而,对ERP晚期正电位(Late Positive Potential,LPP)的统计分析发现,LPP的中期(2000~3000 ms)与晚期(3000~4000 ms)波幅均出现了调控策略与性别的交互作用。对男性而言,负性图片诱发的LPP波幅(2000~4000 ms)在表达抑制条件下相比自由观看条件出现显著降低,但女性没有出现上述效应。此外,在LPP各个时间窗口,采用认知重评策略进行情绪调节时均无显著性别差异。上述结果表明采用表达抑制策略进行负面情绪调节时,男性具有相比女性更好的调控效果。这提示男性比女性更适合采用抑制情绪表达的方式进行日常情绪管理。这种性别优势可能来源于社会对男女性性别角色的不同期望。     

Freedom and the psychoanalytic ontology of quantum physics

Jung's paper ‘Synchronicity – an acausal connecting principle’, defining the phenomenon as a ‘meaningful’ coincidence depending on archetypal activation, was published in 1952, together with a conceptually related piece by physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli entitled, ‘The influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler’. Slavoj ?i?ek, in The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters, suggests that, in contrast to any notion of a ‘pre‐modern Jungian harmony’, the main lesson of quantum physics was that not only was the psychoanalytic, empty subject of the signifier constitutively out‐of‐joint with respect to the world, but that the Real in itself was already incomplete, out‐of‐joint, ‘not‐all’. Yet while ?i?ek frequently tries to separate Jung from his own ontology, this paper shows that his ontology is not as different as he suggests. Consistent with our earlier publications on Jung and Zizek, a closer investigation reveals an underlying congruence of both of their approaches. In this paper we show that this affinity lies in the rejection by both Jung and ?i?ek of the ideology of reductive materialism, a rejection that demonstrably draws on quantum physics in similar ways. While Jung posits an inherently meaningful universe, ?i?ek attempts to salvage the freedom of human subjectivity by opposing his Lacanian ‘dialectical materialism’ to reductive materialism.     

Human Rights and Religion: A Sociological Perspective

This essay aims to review mainstream literature and research perspectives on the sociology of human rights with the further focus on relationship between human rights and religion. We consider the challenges of late engagement of sociology with human rights and current narratives of the relationship of human rights and religion that encompass normativity as the central category of historically oriented sociology. We discuss the contribution of two empirical research mainstreams on human rights and religion and focus on a new field of study—sociology of religious freedom. A detailed new agenda for sociological research on human rights and religion is explored in the final part of our assessment.     

情绪调节策略：认知重评优于表达抑制

Gross提出情绪调节产生于情绪发生的过程中,主要有两种普遍的调节策略：认知重评和表达抑制。本文探讨了这两种策略在情绪反应和神经机制上的异同,以及二者对认知活动造成的不同影响。与表达抑制相比,认知重评能更好地降低情绪体验,减少生理反应和交感神经系统的激活,降低杏仁核的激活水平,并对认知活动不产生影响;而表达抑制虽然能够降低情绪行为,但生理反应和交感神经系统的激活却增强,而杏仁核激活水平并未降低,且干扰认知活动的完成。神经病理学的证据进一步表明,相较于表达抑制,认知重评能更好地调节情绪,有利于人们的身心健康。     

Notes on Logics of Metric Spaces

In [14], we studied the computational behaviour of various first-order and modal languages interpreted in metric or weaker distance spaces. [13] gave an axiomatisation of an expressive and decidable metric logic. The main result of this paper is in showing that the technique of representing metric spaces by means of Kripke frames can be extended to cover the modal (hybrid) language that is expressively complete over metric spaces for the (undecidable) two-variable fragment of first-order logic with binary pred-icates interpreting the metric. The frame conditions needed correspond rather directly with a Boolean modal logic that is, again, of the same expressivity as the two-variable fragment. We use this representation to derive an axiomatisation of the modal hybrid variant of the two-variable fragment, discuss the compactness property in distance logics, and derive some results on (the failure of) interpolation in distance logics of various expressive power. Presented by Melvin Fitting