C. A. P. A. Rémi

Friedrich Vollhardt befasst sich in seiner Untersuchung „Selbstliebe und Geselligkeit" und vielen weiteren Arbeiten intensiv mit dem Verhältnis der Literatur zu Wissensbeständen, die sich der praktischen Vernunft zuordnen lassen. Dazu zählen neben Rechts- und Morallehren auch Theorien der Politik und der Religion. Daher lässt sich sagen, dass sich Vollhardts Forschungen im Sinne des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts auf die Bedeutung einer philosophia practica universalis für die Literatur konzentrieren. Diesem Themenkomplex ist auch die Festschrift zu Vollhardts 60. Geburtstag gewidmet: Lehrer und Kollegen, Schüler und Freunde des Geehrten setzen sich aus philologischen, philosophischen, theologischen und historischen Perspektiven mit dem Verhältnis von Literatur und praktischer Vernunft auseinander. Sie spannen dabei einen Bogen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart.

This short paper focuses on understanding moral dilemmas, Artificial Moral Advisors, and their possible roles in ethical decision-making. After a brief analysis of the philosophical debate around dilemmas, we propose three different classes of dilemmas. We then discuss how AI-based advisors could be used to enhance human ethical decision-making, with a particular focus on three possible AI skills (identifying, presenting and settling dilemmas), as well as on their role as ethical experts. The resulting proposal opens up to new possible uses of AI moral advisors, and to the help they might offer in difficult decisions.

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that obedience in the Milgram paradigm is underpinned by stress vulnerability and inhibitory control over pain sharing. Because self-regulatory fatigue induction is a suited method to investigate the influence of inhibitory control on behaviour, participants were randomly assigned to a High vs. Low self-regulatory condition. Heart rate variability was collected during 5-min baseline and continuously during the experimental procedure. Prior to the experiment, participants completed an online survey assessing right-wing authoritarianism, a well-known predictor of obedience. Using the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment, we found that lower resting HRV predicted higher destructive obedience, that low self-regulatory inhibition reduced destructive obedience, that the well-established influence of RWA on destructive obedience was suppressed in the presence of SRF. Implic...

Looking at a pair of objects is easy when automatic grouping mechanisms bind these objects together, but visual exploration can also be more flexible. It is possible to mentally “re-group” two objects that are not only separate but belong to different pairs of objects. “Re-grouping” is in conflict with automatic grouping, since it entails a separation of each item from the set it belongs to. This ability appears to be impaired in patients with schizophrenia. Here we check if this impairment is selective, which would suggest a dissociation between grouping and “re-grouping,” or if it impacts on usual, automatic grouping, which would call for a better understanding of the interactions between automatic grouping and “re-grouping.” Sixteen outpatients with schizophrenia and healthy controls had to identify two identical and contiguous target figures within a display of circles and squares alternating around a fixation point. Eye-tracking was used to check central fixation. The target pair could be located in the same or separate hemifields. Identical figures were grouped by a connector (grouped automatically) or not (to be re-grouped). Attention modulation of automatic grouping was tested by manipulating the proportion of connected and unconnected targets, thus prompting subjects to focalize on either connected or unconnected pairs. Both groups were sensitive to automatic grouping in most conditions, but patients were unusually slowed down for connected targets while focalizing on unconnected pairs. In addition, this unusual effect occurred only when targets were presented within the same hemifield. Patients and controls differed on this asymmetry between within- and acrosshemifield presentation, suggesting that patients with schizophrenia do not re-group figures in the same way as controls do.We discuss possible implications on how “re-grouping” ties in with ongoing, automatic perception in healthy volunteers.

Les chercheurs en sciences sociales font souvent l'impasse sur les dimensions temporelles des phénomènes qu'ils prétendent étudier. Les auteurs en donnent plusieurs exemples avant d'examiner les causes de cette faille. Ne pèchent pas en la matière les seuls sociologues, psychologues ou économistes, mais aussi de nombreux historiens qui donnent une vision exclusivement "territoriale" des périodes qu'ils étudient. Le livre esquisse en quoi consiste une analyse de la durée, de l'ordre et du rythme, non seulement des phénomènes étudiés, mais aussi des théories et méthodes employées pour en rendre compte. Demander l'introduction de ces dimensions ne revient pas pour autant à substituer un déterminisme à un autre. Les auteurs concluent en évoquant les relations difficiles du temps et de la liberté.

This study provides evidence that personality traits associated with responsiveness to conscious reward cues also influence responsiveness to unconscious reward cues. Participants with low and high levels of Novelty Seeking performed updating tasks in which they could either gain 1 euro or 5 cents. Gains were presented either supraliminally or subliminally at the beginning of each trial. Results showed that low NS participants performed better in the high-reward than in the low-reward condition, whereas high NS participants’ performance did not differ between reward conditions. Interestingly, we found that low NS participants performed significantly better when rewards were presented unconsciously, whereas high NS participants’ performance did not differ whether reward cues were presented subliminally or supraliminally. Our findings highlight the necessity of taking personality into account in unconscious cognition research. They also suggest that individual differences might determine whether implicit and explicit motives have similar or complementary influences.

This article is a theoretical consideration on the role of sensory pleasure and mental joy as optimizers of behavior. It ends with an axiomatic proposal. When they compare the human body to its environment, Philosophers recognise the cosmos as the Large Infinite, and the atomic particles as the Small Infinite. The human brain reaches such a degree of complexity that it may be considered as a third infinite in the universe, a Complex Infinite. It follows that any force capable of moving such an infinite deserves a place among the forces of the universe. Physicists have recognized four forces, the gravitational, the electromagnetic, the weak, and the strong nuclear force. Forces are defined in four dimentions (reversible or not in time) and it is postulated that these forces are valid and applicable everywhere. Pleasure and displeasure, the affective axis of consciousness, can move the infinitely complex into action and no human brain can avoid the trend to maximize its pleasure. Therefore, we suggest, axiomatically, that the affective capability of consciousness operates in a way similar to the four forces of the Physics, i.e. influences the behavior of conscious agents in a way similar to the way the four forces influence masses and particles. However, since a mental phenomenon is dimensioneless we propose to call the affective capability of consciousness the fifth influence rather than the fifth force.