This article discusses some aspects of animal ethics from an Aristotelian virtue ethics point of view. Because the notion of friendship (philia) is central to Aristotle’s ethical theory, the focus of the article is whether humans and animals can be friends. It is argued that new empirical findings in cognitive ethology indicate that animals actually do fulfill the Aristotelian condition for friendship based on mutual advantage. The practical ethical implications of these findings are discussed, and it is argued that eating (...) meat from free-living animals is more morally acceptable than eating cattle because hunters (unlike farmers) do not befriend their prey. (shrink)

This volume, derived from the Royal Institute of Philosophy 1992 conference, brings together some of the leading figures in the burgeoning field of cognitive science to explore current and potential advances in the philosophical understanding of mind and cognition. Drawing on work in psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy, the papers tackle such issues as concept acquisition, blindsight, rationality and related questions as well as contributing to the lively debates about connectionism and neural networks. The collection as (...) a whole reflects the theoretical and methodological dynamism of this interdisciplinary field. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz werden die Veröffentlichungen des Jesuiten Erich Przywara und der sehr einflussreichen jesuitischen Zeitschrift Stimmen der Zeit aus den frühen 193oern Jahren und besonders aus dem Jahr 1933 analysiert. In diesem Zusammenhang antworte ich auch meinen Kritikern. Außerdem werden die Hintergründe und Quellen der spezifischen Form des Antisemitismus dargestellt, die in den Stimmen der Zeit vertreten wurde. Deutsche Jesuiten propagierten 1933 durchaus radikale Positionen in der Zeitschrift. In dem katholischen Blatt liest man u. a., dass die Juden dem (...) deutschen Volk mehr Schaden als Nutzen brächten. Es wurde damals auch die nordische Rasse als für Herrschaft besonders geeignet bezeichnet. Im letzten Teil dieses Aufsatzes werden Przywaras spätere Briefe an Carl Schmitt, den gläubigen antisemitischen deutschen Katholiken, analysiert. Sie zeigen, dass Przywara von dessen antidemokratischer politischer Theorie der 1930er Jahre zutiefst beeindruckt war und die Ideen des Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches sogar noch in der Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg verbreiten wollte. (shrink)

Romano Guardini was one of the most important intellectuals of German Catholicism in the twentieth century. He influenced nearly an entire generation of German Catholic theologians and was the leading figure of the German Catholic youth movement as it grew exponentially in the 1920s. Yet there are many open questions about his early intellectual development and his academic contribution to religious, cultural, social and political questions in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialist Germany. This article draws upon Guardini’s publications, (...) the secondary literature on Guardini and on some archival material, seeking to outline his early development and his engagement with the ideological context following World War I and in National Socialist Germany. Here Guardini’s criticisms of the modern age are presented. Besides this many other issues are addressed, such as his criticism of the women’s movement, his understanding of the youth movement, reception of Carl Schmitt, views of race, interpretation of the controversial Volk-concept, contribution to a Jewish journal in 1933, and his basic positions on the issues of obedience, order and authority. While Guardini was viewed critically by some National Socialists in the Third Reich, the administrative correspondences on him in the 1940s actually show that there was an internal debate about him among the National Socialist officials. This involved different figures, including a diplomat who came to Guardini’s defense. The internal disagreements were made more complicated because Guardini’s brothers were apparently members of the Fascist Party in Italy at this time. (shrink)

This final reply responds to Honohan’s invitation to articulate the Arendtian tone of the key-note paper. It spells out the philosophical intuition that the political life of citizens, at least potentially, is capable of making visible what makes human life worthwhile and fully meaningful, and the philosophical curiosity to see whether traces of this deep political awareness can be retrieved in dialogues with volunteers. In response to Dekker’s critical doubts, this final reply clarifies the central stakes of Claes’s paper. (...) The core argument was not to show that the biographical model of meaningfulness is the prevailing approach of meaning in/of volunteering, but to assess the potentials and limits of the model’s interpretive power. Moreover, the paper argues for an alternative, existential model of meaningfulness. This approach refers to deep experiences of meaning that emerge from the practice of volunteering and that shift into powerful political experiences of hope, and a lived sense of equality. (shrink)

In science and technology studies today, there is a troubling tendency to portray actors in the biosciences as “cultural dopes” and technology as having monolithic qualities with predetermined outcomes. To remedy this analytical impasse, this article introduces the concept styles of valuation to analyze how actors struggle with valuing technology in practice. Empirically, this article examines how actors in a bioscientific laboratory struggle with valuing the properties and qualities of algorithms in a high-throughput setting and identifies the copresence of several (...) different styles. The question that the actors struggle with is what different configurations of algorithms, devices, and humans are “good bioscience,” that is, what do the actors perform as a good distribution of agency between algorithms and humans? A key finding is that algorithms, robots, and humans are valued in multiple ways in the same setting. For the actors, it is not apparent which configuration of agency and devices is more authoritative nor is it obvious which skills and functions should be redistributed to the algorithms. Thus, rather than tying algorithms to one set of values, such as “speed,” “precision,” or “automation,” this article demonstrates the broad utility of attending to the multivalence of algorithms and technology in practice. (shrink)

In den historiographischen Debatten über die verschiedenen Ideologien der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wird der Begriff „katholischer Faschismus“ gelegentlich verwendet, um eine spezifische Version des Faschismus in den 1920ern, 1930ern und 1940ern Jahren zu bezeichnen. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird dieses Konzept in historischer und historiographischer Perspektive analysiert. Dabei geht es v. a. um den religiösen Hintergrund, die verschiedenen begrifflichen Unterscheidungen, die wichtigsten Ereignisse und die ideologischen Zusammenhänge. Der protestantische Faschismus sowie das Konfliktfeld zwischen Katholizismus und faschistischer Ideologie werden auch (...) thematisiert.In the historiographical debates about the different streams of ideology in the first half of the 20th century, the term “Catholic fascism” has been used on occasion to refer to a specific version of fascism and Catholicism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The following article analyzes this concept in historical and historiographical perspective, drawing attention to the religious background, the various conceptual distinctions, key events and ideological interrelationships. Protestant fascism is also addressed along with the ideological conflict between Catholicism and fascist ideology. Before turning to these themes, however, the critical role of papal theological and cultural analysis will be addressed. (shrink)

Despite remarkable empirical and methodological advances, our theoretical understanding of the evolutionary processes that made us human remains fragmented and contentious. Here, we make the radical proposition that the cultural communities within which Homo emerged may be understood as a novel exotic form of organism. The argument begins from a deep congruence between robust features of Pan community life cycles and protocell models of the origins of life. We argue that if a cultural tradition, meeting certain requirements, arises in the (...) context of such a “social protocell,” the outcome will be an evolutionary transition in individuality whereby traditions and hominins coalesce into a macroscopic bio-socio-technical system, with an organismal organization that is culturally inherited through irreversible fission events on the community level. We refer to the resulting hypothetical evolutionary individual as a “sociont.” The social protocell provides a preadapted source of alignment of fitness interests that addresses a number of open questions about the origins of shared adaptive cultural organization, and the derived genetic adaptations that support them. Also, social cooperation between hominins is no longer in exclusive focus since cooperation among traditions becomes salient in this model. This provides novel avenues for explanation. We go on to hypothesize that the fate of the hominin in such a setting would be mutualistic coadaptation into a part-whole relation with the sociont, and we propose that the unusual suite of derived features in Homo is consistent with this hypothesis. (shrink)

We sympathize with the project of a synthetic approach for devising a “theory of intentional change” and agree that Darwinism should be central in such a theory. But Darwinism is not the only process of evolution that needs to be included. Evolutionary biology itself has taken such a turn recently, with the emergence of developmental evolutionary approaches.

With essays by David Hume, Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel kant, William Blake, Jeremy Bentham, Richard Whately, John Henry Newman, Karl Marx, James Whistler, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, etc.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forms of Life and Cultural EndowmentsVictor Peterson IIYou know, honey, us colored folk is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways.—Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God 15)what does it mean when we speak of a form of life? When speaking of a form of life, we consider one different from others by way of its mode of expression, that is, by (...) its means of construction. This interpretation lends itself to a functional analysis of the material put to use and whose operations jointly express the concept we are after. Modes of expression can be plotted between a rhetorical and semantic axis (Gates 48). As such, "[t]he level of connotation of the visual sign, of its contextual reference and positioning in different discursive fields of meaning and association, is the point where already coded signs intersect with the deep semantic codes of a culture and take on additional more active ideological dimensions" (Hall 56). Coordinates within this domain encode signifying practices, revitalizing the traditional concept of signification as a function of what's signified with respect to a signifier. The content of a syntagm in this coordinate system, a point in this plane, indexes its function with respect to others. As such, we will conceive of the content of modes of expression functionally.A function is defined by pairing an element from a domain and another from a sub/co-domain whereby that pair is an element of that function. In this way, we can treat functions as abstract objects. If we treat a domain as what determines the availability of an expression, and a sub/co-domain as representative of its range of application, then the function of applying some proposition maps a movement from a domain of selection to one of composition, that is, its use with respect to others. The function of an expression, then, represents an operation over the possible worlds of its appropriate application (Taylor 201–02, 269, 276). This becomes more interesting when considering assertions whereby one subject is known to be the case for another, a concept that's modeled when a proposition from one is appearing in the object position of another (Fara 65–73). Resultingly, a proposal for an [End Page 26] ontology constituted by modes of interaction rather than identity stipulations to physical entities arises. It follows that if a form of life is understood by way of its mode of expression, then its content is expressed as an ensemble of the functions of its operations. Let this ensemble of functions be called an endowment.There is a pervasive debate in cultural studies that obsesses over proprietary notions as well as the ability to locate an origin. With that in mind, let us consider a coordinate system where there are two perpendicular axes, and we define positions within the space provided at the intersection of lines drawn from each. Each axis is represented by an ordered series of markers. A line drawn from each axis indicates that the coordinates indexed at their intersection is a function of these two markers. This locates an individual at a point in that domain, indexing a relation between the axes framing that space. Therefore, that coordinate-wise space, here a domain of possible expression, is not "empty" as pessimists would claim, but is filled with functional-content, albeit functions yet applied and marked by a point in that plane.Although we are currently speaking of two-dimensional space, the same follows for as many dimensions as we want. A point's location is a function of three values in three dimensions, four in four dimensions, and so on. Forms of life, then, will be comprised of four dimensions. This allows for a space-time conception, wherein joint expressions bend space-time and that space dictates those individuals' possible movements. From this, we construct a geometrical model of space-time represented as a cube composed of two-dimensional slices with these slices extending in a particular direction like cards stacked one on top of the other to model time.We want our conception of a form of life to be spatial. After all, it... (shrink)

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

Human knowledge is a phenomenon whose roots extend from the cultural, through the neural and the biological and finally all the way down into the Precambrian “primordial soup.” The present paper reports an attempt at understanding this Greater System of Knowledge (GSK) as a hierarchical nested set of selection processes acting concurrently on several different scales of time and space. To this end, a general selection theory extending mainly from the work of Hull and Campbell is introduced. The perhaps most (...) drastic change from previous similar theories is that replication is revealed as a composite function consisting of what is referred to as memory and synthesis. This move is argued to drastically improve the fit between theory and human-related knowledge systems. The introduced theory is then used to interpret the subsystems of the GSK and their interrelations. This is done to the end of demonstrating some of the new perspectives offered by this view. (shrink)

This article argues that supported decision making is ideal for people with dynamic cognitive and functional impairments that place them at the margins of autonomy. First, we argue that guardianship and similar surrogate decision-making frameworks may be inappropriate for people with dynamic impairments. Second, we provide a conceptual foundation for supported decision making for individuals with dynamic impairments, which integrates the social model of disability with relational accounts of autonomy. Third, we propose a three-step model that specifies the necessary conditions (...) of supported decision making: identifying domains for support; identifying kinds of supports; and reaching a mutually acceptable and formal agreement. Finally, we identify a series of challenges for supported decision making, provide preliminary responses, and highlight avenues for future bioethics research. (shrink)

Two interpretations of the precautionary principle are considered. According to the normative interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges doctors and other decision makers to do. According to the epistemic interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges us to believe. This paper recommends against the use of the precautionary principle as a decision rule in medical decision making, based on an impossibility theorem presented in Peterson . However, (...) the main point of the paper is an argument to the effect that decision theoretical problems associated with the precautionary principle can be overcome by paying greater attention to its epistemic dimension. Three epistemic principles inherent in a precautionary approach to medical risk analysis are characterised and defended. (shrink)

The monthly magazine Hochland was probably the most influential Catholic cultural periodical in Germany in the Weimar Period. According to Georg Cardinal von Kopp’s assessment in 1911, it was “unfortunately the most read periodical in all of the educated circles of Germany, Austria and German Switzerland”. Moving beyond the simple rejection of modern culture in Germany, the journal tried to follow a new program of mediatory engagement, although it did continue to hold to traditional positions in many regards. In this (...) article the reception of modern, Enlightenment-affirmative philosophy of religion in the journal is introduced with reference to reviews and essays from the later 1910s to the early 1930s. The journal’s treatment of a few critical subject areas is given close interpretive analysis, including the journal’s treatment of Gertrud Simmel’s Über das Religiöse, individually conceptualized forms of personalist moral theory, and the general shift to phenomenological discourses and the individual in the philosophy of religion. The fundamental rejections of these ideas and these schools of thought in reviews and essays, which are also found in the journal at this time (as in most all German language Catholic cultural journals of the period), are not addressed in this article. The article thus sheds light on an often-forgotten and relatively small minority phenomenon in German Catholic intellectual circles of the Weimar Period, namely the positive embrace of Enlightenment-oriented modern thought. By promoting these ideas at this time, this group made themselves highly vulnerable to disciplinary measures by the Catholic Church. (The journal was put on the Index in 1911.). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if just price could be given a precise and relevant definition. First, the historical background is sketched. Then a definition is formulated which is based on a gradual interpretation of possibility. The meaning of the definition is, that the buyer and the seller are given equal opportunity of reaching a justified standard of living.

This commentary critically examines a recent qualitative study, published in this issue of Neuroethics, on the attitudes of family caregivers toward evidence of covert consciousness in brain-injured patients.

In this paper, we examine the case of psychedelic medicine for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). These “mind-altering” drugs are not currently offered as treatments to persons with AD/ADRD, though there is growing interest in their use to treat underlying causes and associated psychiatric symptoms. We present a research agenda for examining the ethics of psychedelic medicine and research involving persons living with AD/ADRD, and offer preliminary analyses of six ethical issues: the impact of psychedelics on autonomy and consent; (...) the impact of “ego dissolution” on persons experiencing a pathology of self; how psychedelics might impact caregiving; the potential exploitation of patient desperation; institutional review boards’ orientation to psychedelic research; and methods to mitigate inequity. These ethical issues are magnified for AD/ADRD but bear broader relevance to psychedelic medicine and research in other clinical populations. (shrink)

In July 1976 the OECD adopted voluntary guidelines for multinational enterprises. These guidelines deal, among other things, with transfer pricing and other transactions between companies which belong to the same multinational enterprise. The purpose of the present article is to analyze the OECD Guidelines from the point of view of business ethics. It is shown that inherent in the guidelines is a conflict between different goals. In the latter part of the article it is shown how this conflict could be (...) solved. (shrink)

The present paper introduces "ontomimetic simulation" and argues that this class of models has enabled the investigation of hypotheses about complex systems in new ways that have epistemological relevance. Ontomimetic simulation can be differentiated from other types of modeling by its reliance on causal similarity in addition to representation. Phenomena are modeled not directly but via mimesis of the ontology (i.e. the "underlying physics", microlevel etc.) of systems and a subsequent animation of the resulting model ontology as a dynamical system. (...) While the ontology is clearly used for computing system states, what is epistemologically important is that it is viewed as a hypothesis about the makeup of the studied system. This type of simulation, where model ontologies are used as hypotheses, is here called inverse ontomimetic simulation since it reverses the typical informational path from the target to the model system. It links experimental and analytical techniques in being explicitly dynamical while at the same time capable of abstraction. Inverse ontomimetic simulation is argued to have a great impact on science and to be the tool for hypothesis-testing that has made systematic theory development for complex systems possible. (shrink)

The standpoint of realism has been widely used to argue in favour of, or against, particular physical theories. An analysis is made of the adequacy of such arguments, taking an argument by Einstein as a starting point.Some reflexions are given on relativism and invariance. Invariances can be seen as generators of both regularity and paradox in physics.

This bookis about the roots of managerial rationality. A theoretical base, founded on the concept of 'memetics' is developed in order to explain human thinking and human reason as products of cultural evolution. Cultural change and development are explained by simple, value-driven memetic mechanisms like 'ritualization' and 'extremization'.