Love, the law and religion:

To the question “Are we as humans obliged to something because it is good, or because it is prescribed by God?”, the Christian Church father Tertullian answered: we obey because of God's will. Today, many are inclined to give the first answer, and even to distrust people who follow Tertullian. In this article, however, the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of Tertullian’s paradigm about reason/will in modern political philosophy: for example, in Thomas Hobbes’ “decisionist” maxim: not truth, but the will of formal authority establishes the law. Or in the democratic combination of rational discussion and decisive majority will. This gives modern democracy the character of a ritual instead of a rational machinery: a kind of secular divine judgement. Also another issue allows us to demonstrate the lasting actuality of Tertullian’s paired concepts: the issue that a political community not only needs democratic legitimacy, but also national unity. Here also the relationship with the question of violence becomes relevant. The author presents four “dangerous liaisons” between love and rational justice. The basic intuition here is that we “not only want to live in a world which we are able to consider just, but in a reality which we experience as valuable in and of itself” (Paul W. Kahn). Love can strengthen rational justice, and vice versa; love can get in conflict with justice; justice can try to expand itself at the expensive of love; and – the other way around – love can drive us to the universal and transcend legal boundaries. As a conclusion, we can distinguish clearly between nationalism and patriotism. And second, we must admit that, while love will always destabilize law, the opposite is also true: we have to make calculations, so that justice can also destabilize love.

On the Paradigmatic Conception of the Physical

What “physical” means is sometimes clarified by appealing to paradigmatically physical objects, properties, or phenomena. This move is not entirely unmotivated. The most basic intuition behind physicalism can be identified as that we, as conscious beings, are not ontologically special: we are, ultimately, like all these inanimate and unconscious things; we do not exemplify any mysterious properties that are categorically over and above all the properties that are exemplified by ordinary things like chairs or rocks or their constituents. And, according to the dualists, we are, in terms of substance or property, metaphysically different from chairs, rocks, and the like. The kind of conception of the physical that refers to paradigm cases of the physical is in line with this disagreement in intuition between the physicalist and the dualist. Trying to conceptualize the physical based on some paradigmatically physical objects or phenomena, I argue, however, is a dead-end.

What Do Americans Know about Campaign Finance?

Chapter 2 establishes a baseline by reviewing public opinion concerning money and politics, pre– and post–Citizens United, focusing on what Americans know about money in politics and campaign spending. On the one hand, given that citizens are typically not well informed about politics, it should come as no surprise that they do not know all that much about candidate spending or campaign finance. On the other hand, the public is not completely off base with respect to its sense of money in politics, and this basic intuition is perhaps even sharper in the post–Citizens United era. The data suggest that while Americans know a little bit about campaign finance, there is no systematic correlation between the regulatory environment of the state and how much people in that state know about campaign finance.

The Foundations of the Human Person’s Dynamism in Karol Wojtyła’s Anthropology. A Study in Light of “The Acting Person”

In traditional anthropology, the problem of the dynamism of the human being was explained by means of human faculties that were seen as distinct from one another on the basis of the activities of man. Having accepted that the traditional approach is well-known and thoroughly elaborated, Karol Wojtyła proposed a complementary approach, enhancing the classical explanation of human dynamism by following the basic intuition of the person who reveals himself in action. In this article, through several steps, the author presents the framework of the basic thesis of Karol Wojtyła's anthropology, which claims that the action performed by man includes the truth about not only his personal dynamism, but also the very subject of that dynamism itself, that is, the human person. The author shows Wojtyła's stance beginning with the distinction of personal action made against the background of other forms of human dynamism. Then, he describes Wojtyła’s methods of explanation in reference to the Aristotelian theory of act and potency. Continuing, he analyzes the problem of causativeness of action, which will turn out to be crucial for understanding man as a person. Finally, he sketches Wojtyla's conception of the fulfillment of man through his action.

The Idoma Concept of Ihotu (Love)

The notion of love is one of the fascinating concepts available to humans. Love is perhaps the most powerful emotion a human being can experience. Love is immediately recognized as a feeling. It is only after observing human conduct that it dawns on us that there is a rational dimension of love. In this paper I will discuss the Idoma-African concept of ihotu, or love. Since the very idea of an Idoma philosophy of love is an entirely novel idea, with no prior identifiable research in this field, I will rely heavily on my knowledge of Idoma culture and conversations with Ihonde Ameh of Ochobo community who has an in-depth knowledge of Idoma value-system. I will proceed to show how the consolationist theory of love is a systematization of the basic ethnophilosophical data supplied by Idoma traditional thought. With consolation philosophy transcending the basic intuition of the African collective, in this particular case the Idoma of Central Nigeria, I will argue for the rationality of love by pointing out its indispensability in the formation and expression of what we consider right or moral behaviour. I will argue that a greater part of the conduct we approve of as ethical is founded on our emotional experience and that this emotional experience is to a large extent determined by the urgings of pity or empathy. I will attempt to exhibit the philosophical grounds of empathy from the African perspective of consolationism and, in the process, delve into philosophical psychology from the African place. In achieving these objectives, I will have recourse to the metaphysics and epistemology of love from the consolationist perspective. The methodology adopted here is the analytical, conversational, and evaluative methodology. Key words: Love, Ihotu, reason, consolationism, emotion, empathy.

People, Territory, Plebiscite: The Main Features—Objections and Answers

This chapter discusses three main aspects of the new rule: people, territory, and plebiscite. It also considers some objections to the new rule and its effects—including the possibility that it would make things worse. The chapter then answers those objections and provides a theoretical justification for the basic intuition that democratic decision-making by local majorities is a positive good. An important theme will emerge: In many respects, the new rule is flawed—in the same ways the current rule is. And in other respects, this flawed new rule offers something more in keeping with people's better natures. The new rule is principally designed to be used before a crisis; it provides a pathway for peaceful change so that crisis need not come.

Physicalism and moral responsibility: presentation of derivative consequence argument

In this paper, the author introduces the derivative consequence argument, which aims to demonstrate that moral responsibility is impossible in the world where physicalism and the strong realism about the laws of nature are both true. The basic intuition of the argument is that if the laws of nature determine the events, then nobody can be responsible for those events, because nobody is responsible for the laws of nature. This intuitive idea is formalized in the categories of derivative causation and motion. This argument is compatible with determinism and indeterminism, and all types of physicalism

Distressed Debt

This chapter provides an introduction to distressed debt, primarily from the vantage point of debtholders in financially distressed corporations. In doing so, it gives a description of this sub-asset class and the basic intuition along with stylized examples to explain the motivating factors behind the strategic behavior of other stakeholders that may devalue a distressed-debt investor’s financial claim if left unattended. This chapter also discusses the considerations in distressed debt exchanges of public bond issuances or in the restructuring of private loan agreements, with the view to minimizing the likelihood of strategic default and other inefficient outcomes to investors of distressed debt. Overall, this chapter offers exposure to the basic features and terminology in distressed debt and debt restructuring.

Linking planetesimal and dust content in protoplanetary disks via a local toy model

Context. If planetesimal formation is an efficient process, as suggested by several models involving gravitational collapse of pebble clouds, then, not before long, a significant part of the primordial dust mass should be absorbed in many km-sized objects. A good understanding of the total amount of solids in the disk around a young star is crucial for planet formation theory. However, as the mass of particles above the mm size cannot be assessed observationally, one must ask how much mass is hidden in bigger objects. Aims. We performed 0-d local simulations to study how the planetesimal to dust and pebble ratio evolves in time and to develop an understanding of the potentially existing mass in planetesimals for a certain amount of dust and pebbles at a given disk age. Methods. We performed a parameter study based on a model considering dust growth, planetesimal formation, and collisional fragmentation of planetesimals, while neglecting radial transport processes. Results. While at early times, dust is the dominant solid particle species, there is a phase during which planetesimals make up a significant portion of the total mass starting at approximately 104–106 yr. The time of this phase and the maximal total planetesimal mass strongly depend on the distance to the star R, the initial disk mass, and the efficiency of planetesimal formation ɛ. Planetesimal collisions are more significant in more massive disks, leading to lower relative planetesimal fractions compared to less massive disks. After approximately 106 yr, our model predicts planetesimal collisions to dominate, which resupplies small particles. Conclusions. In our model, planetesimals form fast and everywhere in the disk. For a given ɛ, we are able to relate the dust content and mass of a given disk to its planetesimal content, providing us with some helpful basic intuition about mass distribution of solids and its dependence on underlying physical processes.

Origins of the concepts cause, cost, and goal in prereaching infants

We investigated the origins and interrelations of causal knowledge and knowledge of agency in 3-month-old infants, who cannot yet effect changes in the world by reaching for, grasping, and picking up objects. Across 5 experiments, n = 152 prereaching infants viewed object-directed reaches that varied in efficiency (following the shortest physically possible path vs. a longer path), goal (lifting an object vs. causing a change in its state), and causal structure (action on contact vs. action at a distance and after a delay). Prereaching infants showed no strong looking preference between a person’s efficient and inefficient reaches when the person grasped and displaced an object. When the person reached for and caused a change in the state of the object on contact, however, infants looked longer when this action was inefficient than when it was efficient. Three-month-old infants also showed a key signature of adults’ and older infants’ causal inferences: This looking preference was abolished if a short spatial and temporal gap separated the action from its effect. The basic intuition that people are causal agents, who navigate around physical constraints to change the state of the world, may be one important foundation for infants’ ability to plan their own actions and learn from the acts of others.