Transitions between superstatistical regimes: Validity, breakdown and applications

It is pleasure to acknowledge helpful conversations with D. Xu and H. Kleinert. P.J., J.K., M.P. and V.S. were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) Grant No. 17–33812L. C.B. was supported by EPSRC via the grant EP/N013492/1. J.K. also acknowledges support from the Austrian Science Fund, Grant No. I 3073-N32

Seks tussen volwassenen en kinderen – wat is daar mis mee?

What (if anything) makes adult-child sex morally wrong? Two standard answers are given to this question. The first one (the harm argument) is that sexual contacts between adults and children are wrong because they likely are harmful to the child. The second one (the consent argument) localizes the wrong-making characteristic in the child’s inability to give valid consent to sex with adults. Both standard arguments are explained and assessed. The upshot is that both arguments are sound, but only with respect to a particular subclass of sexual contacts between adults and children. The harm argument is effective only if the child is unwilling to participate in the sexual encounter, and the consent argument is successful only if the child’s parents did not give the adult permission to have sex with the child. Consequently, both argu-ments fail if the child participates freely and the adult involved received parental per-mis-sion. It will be argued that what makes these cases of adult-child sex morally wrong, or at least most of these cases, is the fact that if the parents had taken their role-responsibilities seriously, they would not have granted the adult permission to have sex with their child

Zelfconcept en maatschappelijke integratie

In this paper the politically correct credo 'Integration while maintaining one's identity' is analyzed by means of arguments from cultural psychology. First it explores the requirements of being a good citizen in a liberal democracy. Following Rawls, we state that justice is the cardinal liberal virtue and that this virtue includes having dispositions like respecting the rights of all citizens equally. Then it investigates the notion of identity and the relation between culture and identity from a cultural-psychological perspective. We focus on the distinction between collectivistic cultures and interdependent self-concepts on the one hand and individualistic cultures and independent self-concepts on the other. It is concluded that developing into a good citizen in a liberal democracy cannot be combined with the full preservation of an interdependent self-concept. Further, we argue that the state has the right and the duty to promote the development of liberal virtues in schools, even if this means that the development of an interdependent self-concept of children from particular immigrant groups is hampered