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This essay considers whether sentences are distinguished by how they meet expectations or by how they disappoint them. The initial focus is on an aphorism of Friedrich Nietzsche in which he describes his ambition to say in ten sentences what others need a book or more to express. The force of this boast is compromised by a suggestive ellipsis and an ambiguous Gedankenstrich, raising the question of whether syntactic and semantic paradigms can account for the vicissitudes of punctuation. It is notoriously difficult to decide whether any given instance of a dash is a stand-in for unarticulated content, a figure of interruption, or a type of grammatical conjunction or logical connector. In an aphoristic review of these problems, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg characterizes language as forever frustrating the expectations of its readers, writers, and speakers. Wishing for a thought often produces only a word; a demand for a word may conjure up a mere Strich. The result, as Martin Heidegger hints in some comments about Nietzsche’s overreliance on Gedankenstriche, is that any linguistic element is perpetually at risk of being exposed as nothing more than a stray mark on the page. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The massive influx of migrants to European cities from Syria and beyond, since 2015, has demanded a rethink of how to accommodate refugees. Germany is a case in point: to avoid ghettoisation and aid social cohesion, efforts are being made to integrate newcomers with long‐term residents in urban neighbourhoods through specially built, mixed‐use schemes. Kaja Kuühl, a practising urban designer and adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York, and Julie Behrens, who directs the affordable housing consultancy Project Urbanista, showcase several such projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that when Lichtenberg recommends saying “It is thinking” instead of “I am thinking”, he is not suggesting that thought might be a subjectless occurrence. Lichtenberg’s point is, rather, that we are often the passive subject or medium of our thoughts. The author further argues that Descartes’ cogito argument is not affected by this point, because Descartes does not claim that we must be the active subject of all our thoughts. Moreover, the author suggests that the cogito argument operates with the notion of a qua-object: it consists in the move from “I am thinking” to “I-qua-thinking am”. Seen in this way, the cogito argument by itself leaves entirely open what might be true of me insofar as I am not thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of nudge theory by non-governmental organizations and governments as a means to encourage charitable donations in order to address global poverty has been the subject of much recent enthusiasm. Supporters argue that nudges aimed at altering behaviour are much less complex and normatively problematic than attempts to alter attitudes towards global poverty. This paper aims to challenge these assumptions. In order to do so, it identifies problems and shortcomings of the nudge approach, suggesting we should look again at alternative strategies. The argument consists of three parts. Section 1 outlines the nudge approach, dividing nudges into three distinct categories. Nudges in the first category, which operate through simple information provision, face no compelling objections as a means to motivate charitable giving. Section 2 examines nudges in the third category, typically considered the most pernicious form of nudge in the critical literature. As these nudges aim to bypass reflection, their use faces distinct normative problems in the context of global poverty. The third section, comprising the bulk of the discussion, examines the complex case presented by second-category nudges, which capitalize on prudential sources of motivation in order to motivate action to address global poverty. It argues that, although such cases may appear straightforward instances of favouring good outcomes over good motives, the reality is much more complex. Altering behaviour provides no easy substitute for the complex and vital task of altering attitudes towards global poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The eighteenth-century German physicist, philosopher, and aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99) is well known for his objection to the substantial view of the self, but his thoughts on idealism and the relationship of his views to the positions of his philosophical predecessors are less familiar. I argue that Lichtenberg's empiricism leads him to maintain a form of idealism according to which objects for us are only representations, and I show how this position relates to his linguistic idealism and his coherentist theory of truth. Seen in this light, Lichtenberg makes an important, if unacknowledged, contribution to the history of German philosophy distinct from later German idealism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]