Misery Loves Company

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-90
Author(s):  
Julia Nefsky
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Concern For Others

When one is going through a personal hardship, it is often comforting, or emotionally helpful, to hear from someone else who has gone through something similar. This is a common, familiar human phenomenon, but this chapter argues that it is philosophically puzzling. Unless one is in some sort of moment of vice, one would not want the other person to have suffered the hardship, and one should be pained to hear that they have. And yet the phenomenon is that hearing about their similar hardship makes one feel better, rather than worse. Why is that? The chapter considers a range of intuitive replies. It argues that while each might be part of the story, none resolves the puzzle. There remains a question why the phenomenon does not reflect a vice of insufficient care or concern for others. It then considers two possible answers, drawing on ideas from Adams and Bommarito, but argues that neither is satisfactory. The aim of the chapter is to bring out the puzzle and show that it is difficult to resolve. But it ends with a suggestion as to a resolution.

scholarly journals Menneskeverd og menneskerettighetsundervisning: En sosialsemiotisk multimodalitetsanalyse og drøfting av verdighetsbegrepet i filmen A Path to Dignity: The Power of Human Rights Education

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-168
Author(s):  
Eva Maagerø ◽  
Ådne Valen-Sendstad
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The State ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
Indian Children ◽  
Concern For Others ◽  
Analytical Tools

This chapter is an analysis and discussion of the globally popular human rights education film: A Path to Dignity: the Power of Human Rights Education. The film is produced by Ellen Bruno and is a cooperation with the UN department OHCHR and the human rights education organisations HREA and SGI. The film combines human rights education and dignity. Our research question is how human rights education and dignity is presented and understood in the film. The film is organized in three parts, and addresses Indian children, a Muslim woman and police in Australia. We have analysed the part about the young children in India. In our discussion of the film we have applied social semiotic theory and related analytical tools. We have analysed the representations, interactions and composition of the film. The result of the analysis shows a focus on the local situation of the children. Through human rights education the children experience a transformation in gaining a sense of dignity. This leads to a particular concern for others whose dignity is violated. The state that is responsible for their human rights is not addressed. The film presents human rights education with an interest for individual children, and dignity is understood morally, as responsibility for the other.

Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Business Partnerships ◽  
Concern For Others ◽  
Mutual Advantage ◽  
As If

It is common to regard love, friendship, and other associational ties to others as an important part of a happy or flourishing life. This would be easy enough to understand if we focused on friendships based on pleasure, or associations, such as business partnerships, predicated on mutual advantage. For then we could understand in a straightforward way how these interpersonal relationships would be valuable for someone involved in such relationships just insofar as they caused her pleasure or causally promoted her own independent interests. But many who regard love, friendship, and other associational ties as an important part of a happy or flourishing life suppose that in many sorts of associations—especially intimate associations—the proper attitude among associates is concern for the other for the other's own sake, not just for the pleasure or benefits one can extract from one's associates. It is fairly clear how having friends of this sort is beneficial. What is less clear is how being a friend of this sort might contribute to one's own happiness or well-being. Even if we can explain this, it looks as if the contribution that friendship makes to one's happiness could not be the reason one has to care for friends, for that would seem to make one's concern for others instrumental, not a concern for the other for her own sake.

Resistant Exits

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennet Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Country Of Origin ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Political Obligations ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Concern For Others ◽  
Self Interest

This chapter explores a dilemma faced by some political activists operating in constrained political contexts. Should they stay or should they go? In authoritarian contexts, remaining in the country of origin can carry serious risks—including torture, incarceration, and death. Leaving, on the other hand, may be seen as cowardly, self-interested, or an abandonment of political obligations to the cause of opposition. This chapter looks at contemporary political exiles who have negotiated this dilemma in an innovative way by continuing their opposition from abroad. It illuminates resistant exits in a contemporary political contexts and looks more closely at the a complicated set of relationships between self-interest and political concern for others. It argues that it can be difficult to discern a sharp demarcation between acting selfishly and behaving selflessly for these activists. The connection between the two is tangled, one in which self-interested concerns lie atop and underneath more selfless political and moral obligations.

Identification and Economic Behavior Sympathy and Empathy in Historical Perspective

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Utility Functions ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social State ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Concern For Others

In modern economics, the use of sympathy and empathy shows significant ambiguity. Sympathy has been used in two different senses. First, it refers to cases where the concern for others directly affects an individual's own welfare (Sen, 1977). Second, the term has served the purposes of welfare economics, where it is associated with interpersonal comparisons of the extended sympathy type, that is, comparisons between one's own situation in a social state and someone else's in a different social state (Arrow, 1963 [1951]). On the other hand, empathy has been used interchangeably with sympathy either to render the idea of interdependent utility functions (Leibenstein, 1976), or to convey the imaginative process of imagining oneself in someone else's place (Harsanyi, 1977).

Inward and Outward with the Modern Self

Dialogue ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Braybrooke
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Full Credit ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Concern For Others ◽  
The Family ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
The One ◽  
Made In

The modern self, with its inwardness, its freedom and its individuality (p. ix), suffers, Taylor tells us, from disenchantment (p. 500, cf. pp. 17-18, 186). Moreover, disenchantment has come in spite of the advance, to which Taylor wishes to give full credit, that modernity has made in giving great value to ordinary life at work and in the family (p. 211). For religion, though still present as one layer of sentiment among many in the historical deposits that compose modern culture, has given ground to “disengaged instrumentalism” or to its antagonist, romantic “expressivism” (p. 498). Taylor, a philosopher of uncommonly generous spirit, is willing to find good in each of these orientations: the first, for example, has with utilitarianism put the relief of needless suffering at the top of the moral agenda (p. 331), along with redeeming from superstitious repression a number of innocent pleasures; the second has deepened human capacity, on the one hand by deepening emotions (both in the sense of oneself and in concern for others), on the other hand by gaining for them intellectual respect (pp. 294, 372, 419).

Stromatoporoids from the Famennian (Devonian) Wabamun Formation, Normandville oilfield, north–central Alberta, Canada

1988 ◽  
Vol 62 (03) ◽  
pp. 411-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin W. Stearn
Keyword(s):  
Patch Reef ◽  
Abundant Species ◽  
The Other ◽  
North Central ◽  
Biotic Crisis

Stromatoporoids are the principal framebuilding organisms in the patch reef that is part of the reservoir of the Normandville field. The reef is 10 m thick and 1.5 km2in area and demonstrates that stromatoporoids retained their ability to build reefal edifices into Famennian time despite the biotic crisis at the close of Frasnian time. The fauna is dominated by labechiids but includes three non-labechiid species. The most abundant species isStylostroma sinense(Dong) butLabechia palliseriStearn is also common. Both these species are highly variable and are described in terms of multiple phases that occur in a single skeleton. The other species described areClathrostromacf.C. jukkenseYavorsky,Gerronostromasp. (a columnar species), andStromatoporasp. The fauna belongs in Famennian/Strunian assemblage 2 as defined by Stearn et al. (1988).

D. The Line Spectrum of Pulsating Variable Stars

1967 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 207-244
Author(s):  
R. P. Kraft
Keyword(s):  
Variable Stars ◽  
The Other ◽  
Line Spectrum ◽  
Afternoon Session ◽  
Empirical Information ◽  
Pulsating Variable Stars ◽  
Almost Continuous ◽  
Informal Approach

(Ed. note:Encouraged by the success of the more informal approach in Christy's presentation, we tried an even more extreme experiment in this session, I-D. In essence, Kraft held the floor continuously all morning, and for the hour and a half afternoon session, serving as a combined Summary-Introductory speaker and a marathon-moderator of a running discussion on the line spectrum of cepheids. There was almost continuous interruption of his presentation; and most points raised from the floor were followed through in detail, no matter how digressive to the main presentation. This approach turned out to be much too extreme. It is wearing on the speaker, and the other members of the symposium feel more like an audience and less like participants in a dissective discussion. Because Kraft presented a compendious collection of empirical information, and, based on it, an exceedingly novel series of suggestions on the cepheid problem, these defects were probably aggravated by the first and alleviated by the second. I am much indebted to Kraft for working with me on a preliminary editing, to try to delete the side-excursions and to retain coherence about the main points. As usual, however, all responsibility for defects in final editing is wholly my own.)

C. The Continuous Spectrum of Pulsating Variable Stars

1967 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 177-206
Author(s):  
J. B. Oke ◽  
C. A. Whitney
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Spectrum ◽  
Variable Stars ◽  
Velocity Fields ◽  
The Other ◽  
Line Spectrum ◽  
Direct Information ◽  
Thermodynamic Structure ◽  
Diagnostic Interpretation ◽  
Pulsating Variable Stars ◽  
The Continuum

Pecker:The topic to be considered today is the continuous spectrum of certain stars, whose variability we attribute to a pulsation of some part of their structure. Obviously, this continuous spectrum provides a test of the pulsation theory to the extent that the continuum is completely and accurately observed and that we can analyse it to infer the structure of the star producing it. The continuum is one of the two possible spectral observations; the other is the line spectrum. It is obvious that from studies of the continuum alone, we obtain no direct information on the velocity fields in the star. We obtain information only on the thermodynamic structure of the photospheric layers of these stars–the photospheric layers being defined as those from which the observed continuum directly arises. So the problems arising in a study of the continuum are of two general kinds: completeness of observation, and adequacy of diagnostic interpretation. I will make a few comments on these, then turn the meeting over to Oke and Whitney.

Observing programme for the 24-inch/36-inch Schmidt telescope

1966 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 337
Author(s):  
W. Iwanowska
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Schmidt Telescope ◽  
Flint Glass

A new 24-inch/36-inch//3 Schmidt telescope, made by C. Zeiss, Jena, has been installed since 30 August 1962, at the N. Copernicus University Observatory in Toruń. It is equipped with two objective prisms, used separately, one of crown the other of flint glass, each of 5° refracting angle, giving dispersions of 560Å/mm and 250Å/ mm respectively.

A hard choice for Tomasello

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Pettit
Keyword(s):  
Joint Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hard Choice ◽  
Margaret Gilbert ◽  
Michael Bratman ◽  
Human Sense ◽  
Sense Of Obligation

Abstract Michael Tomasello explains the human sense of obligation by the role it plays in negotiating practices of acting jointly and the commitments they underwrite. He draws in his work on two models of joint action, one from Michael Bratman, the other from Margaret Gilbert. But Bratman's makes the explanation too difficult to succeed, and Gilbert's makes it too easy.

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