In this paper, we argue that solutions to normative challenges associated with autonomous driving, such as real-world trolley cases or distributions of risk in mundane driving situations, face the problem of reasonable pluralism: Reasonable pluralism refers to the fact that there exists a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive moral doctrines within liberal democracies. The corresponding problem is that a politically acceptable solution cannot refer to only one of these comprehensive doctrines. Yet a politically adequate solution to the normative challenges (...) of autonomous driving need not come at the expense of an ethical solution, if it is based on moral beliefs that are (1) shared in an overlapping consensus and (2) systematized through public reason. Therefore, we argue that a Rawlsian justificatory framework is able to adequately address the normative challenges of autonomous driving and elaborate on how such a framework might be employed for this purpose. (shrink)

Presenting real life cases from clinical practice, this book claims that children can be conceived of as moral equals without ignoring the fact that they still are children and in need of strong family relationships. Drawing upon recent advances in childhood studies and its key feature, the ‘agentic child’, it uncovers the ideology of adultism which has seeped into much what has been written about childhood ethics. However, this book also critically examines those positions that do accord moral equality to (...) children but on grounds not strong enough to support their claim. It lays the groundwork for a theory of moral equality by assessing the concepts of parenthood, family, best interest, paternalism, and, above all, autonomy and trust which are so important in envisioning what we owe the child. It does not only show how children – like adults – should be considered moral agents from infancy but also how ethical theories addressing adults can significantly profit from recognizing this. The analysis takes into account contributions from European as well as American scholars and makes use of a wide range of ethical, psychological, cultural, and social-scientific research. (shrink)

The dynamic organisational processes in businesses dilute the boundaries between the individual, organisational, and societal drivers of corporate philanthropy. This creates a complex framework in which charitable project selection occurs. Using the example of European tour operators, this study investigates the mechanisms through which companies invest in charitable projects in overseas destinations. Inextricably linked to this is the increasing contestation by local communities as to how they are able to engage effectively with tourism in order to realise the benefits tourism (...) development can bring. This research furthers such debates by exploring the processes through which tour operators facilitate community development through charitable giving. Findings show, with no formal frameworks in existence, project selection depends upon emergent strategies that connect the professional with the personal, with trust being positioned as a central driver of these informal processes. Discretionary responsibilities are reworked through business leaders’ commitment to responsible business practises and the ethical subjectivity guiding these processes. (shrink)

This article re-examines Vilém Flusser's philosophy of photography and its relation to what I will name the philosophical question of 'image-thinking'. It places his work on photography in the context of the much discussed 'pictorial' and 'iconic' turns in the study of visual culture and, through this, aims to reveal the depth of Flusser's approach to understanding media culture and to argue for the significance and continuing relevance of his philosophy of photography.

El aumento de la complejidad sintáctica evidencia el desarrollo lingüístico de los niños. El uso de ciertas medidas de lenguaje permite dar cuenta de dicho proceso, lo que ha sido corroborado en niños preescolares hispanohablantes y en niños en etapas tardías de desarrollo. Este trabajo propone explorar dicho desarrollo contrastando a un grupo de niños chilenos con desarrollo típico que asisten a preescolar con un grupo de primer año básico. Las medidas incluyeron índices primarios y secundarios de complejidad y se (...) obtuvieron a partir de recontados narrativos producidos por los niños. En los resultados se observa que no todos los índices aumentan al contrastar los dos grupos. Solo aumenta un índice primario de densidad clausular dentro de las oraciones complejas y el número de subordinadas sustantivas, particularmente en las etapas narrativas de presentación y final; en paralelo, disminuye el número de subordinadas adverbiales en la fase de final. Estos resultados evidencian que, si bien se observa un aumento en algunas medidas de complejidad al contrastar los grupos, el desarrollo de estas habilidades no presenta un mismo patrón en todas las dimensiones, lo que puede deberse a factores discursivos o del propio proceso de desarrollo lingüístico. (shrink)

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be indispensable for political philosophers (...) and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher and writer of notable range and influence whose work is central to feminist theory, French existentialism, and contemporary moral and social philosophy. The essays in this 2003 volume examine all the major aspects of her thought, including her views on issues such as the role of biology, sexuality and sexual difference, and evil, the influence on her work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and others, and the philosophical significance of her memoirs and fiction. New (...) readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Beauvoir currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Beauvoir. (shrink)

This thesis aims to study the origins of interiority from an externalist perspective. The process by which self-knowledge is formed is considered in relation to the development of the first-person perspective. From a first-person perspective, one is capable of self-referring and knowing one's own mental and physical states. Self-consciousness and self-knowledge are discussed in relation to Descartes' idea of first-person authority. The Cartesian idea contends that the first-person perspective has privileged and non-empirical access to one's own mental state. On the (...) contrary, externalism's central thesis contends that the content of one's own mental state originates from interactions with the environment, thus, there is no privileged access of one's own mental state. Thus, the externalist's thesis puts into question the Cartesian idea of privileged epistemic access of the first person. The perceptual externalism of Davidson, for example, proposes a triadic solution to the origins of self-knowledge. Davidson's thesis is presented as reconciling self-knowledge and the basic externalist ideas. Two externalist models on the origins of self-knowledge are further discussed: 1) ecological models proposing a development of a sense of self as a function of interactions with the environment; 2) the psychological model of Winnicott proposing that the developing sense of self arises from the triadic relation between self, others, and transitional object(s). We defend the thesis that Winnicott's model is the most apt at describing the Davidsonian externalist model of the origins of self-knowledge. (shrink)

No presente artigo pretendo apresentar a Autopoiesis, uma teoria formulada pelo biólogo chileno Humberto Maturana e pelo médico chileno Francisco Varela. Além de mostrar as similaridades entre o processo orgânico e o processo epistemológico, presentes nesta teoria, busco ressaltar a importância da Autopoiesis não somente no campo científico, como teoria epistemológica, mas também no campo ético e cultural, como uma teoria que ressalta desde a dinâmica interna do ser vivo, enquanto unidade, até a importância de sua interação com o mundo (...) em que vive. Assim, descrevo a formação do processo cognitivo através dos fundamentos autopoiéticos e de conceitos centrais, tais como: fronteira membranosa, metabolismo dinâmico, sistema operacionalmente fechado, acoplamento estrutural e deriva natural. A Autopoiesis demonstra que a experiência cognitiva do observador é intrínseca a sua estrutura biológica, ressaltando, assim, o papel do observador e questionando a validade de suas certezas sobre o que se propôs observar. A proposta deste trabalho será, portanto, trazer a discussão sobre a forma como conhecemos e sobre o processo de aprendizagem do homem e a influência de sua estrutura biológica e toda complexidade de fatores que estão envolvidos na extensa rede da vida que serão considerados aqui, fatores que são, antes de tudo, biológico-culturais. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 50-53.

SUMMARYIt lies in the biblical line of thought that cultic sacrifices to God are made superfluous by human love of God and the neighbor. But is it possible to completely get rid of any sort of sacrifice in interhuman love relationships? With reference to texts by Kierkegaard and Levinas, this article discusses the paradigms of love as self-sacrifice, love as self-giving, and the double bind between the two. Part I clarifies that their affirmation of self-sacrificial love is to be read (...) against the backdrop of their critique of selfish sacrificial love that has not the power to renounce itself, even if the relation will be the other's ruin. Part II explains why proclaiming one's love as self-sacrifice means misunderstanding oneself, the other, and the relation between self and other. The result is that unselfish love cannot adequately be captured in terms of sacrifice at all, since it turns its logic ‘A sacrifices B to C for the sake of D’ upside down. In contrast, the logic of gift leads into surplus despite loss. Yet, in Part III it turns out that we cannot ‘sacrifice’ the notion of sacrifice in the name of love. Not only is there a hidden gift in sacrifice , but also a sacrifice in the gift of love . This has interesting implications for the debate on gender, including a self-critical impetus reminding the feminist movement of the fact that it is wrong to conceive of women as purely passive victims of male manipulation. The highly ambiguous role that the ‘self’ is playing in its self-sacrifice is worth being reconsidered. (shrink)

Given the negative consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on public health, his study aimed at investigating: the differences between adults with and without chronic illness in buying behavior, vaccination intention, pandemic worry, and the health belief model components; the HBM components as mediators of the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention. The sample consisted of 864 adults, of which 20.5% reported having a chronic illness. Associations between pandemic worry, vaccination intention, and HBM were ascertained using correlation and mediation (...) analyses. Individuals with chronic illness reported a higher level of pandemic worry, higher levels of perceived threat, greater benefits from vaccination, had lower self-efficacy and bought more medicine and sanitary/hygienic products. No significant differences were observed regarding vaccination intention, barriers against vaccination, and changes in food buying behavior. We found that the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention was partially mediated by the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. Pandemic worry predicted vaccination intention directly but also through the contribution of the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. These findings suggest that presenting evidence of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and the benefits of having the vaccine will encourage the population to follow vaccination recommendations. (shrink)

This article contributes to the analysis of refusal to license cases as abuse of a dominant position pursuant Article 82 EC from an economic perspective. In the Microsoft case, the European Commission introduced an "Incentives Balance Test" to assess whether the refusal to give access to interface information can be justified by arguing that this information is protected by Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs): The Commission argued that if the overall innovative effects evoked by a compulsory license are significantly higher than (...) without this access, the IPR owner is obliged to license. This should be assessed through balancing the different incentives to innovate between the dominant firm and its competitors. In the paper we pursue two objectives: Firstly, we analyze to what extent the decision of the Court of First Instance, which confirmed the decision of the Commission, helps to clarify the criteria in refusal to license cases; in fact, it is disappointing in this regard. Secondly, we demonstrate that the basic idea of the Incentives Balance Test can be interpreted as a test whether the specific IPRs of the dominant firm can be defended from the perspective of the economics of IPRs. This implies that Article 82 allows competition law to correct economically not optimal IPRs through a specific economic analysis. This is followed by a broad overview on theoretical and empirical insights from economics of IPRs, innovation economics and competition and network economics that can help to develop a more general and sophisticated Innovation Effects Test that can be applied in Article 82 refusal to license cases. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for (...) the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies. (shrink)

Centuries II and III of Francis Bacon’s posthumous natural history Sylva Sylvarum are largely dedicated to sound. This paper claims that Bacon’s investigation on this topic is fruitfully read against the background of the Aristotelian theory of sound, as presented in De anima commentaries. I argue that Bacon agreed with the general lines of this tradition in a crucial aspect: he rejected the reduction of sound to local motion. Many of the experimental instances and more theoretical remarks from his natural (...) history of sound can be elucidated against this wider concern of distinguishing sound from motion, a theme that had been a staple of Aristotelian discussions of sound and hearing since the Middle Ages. Bacon admits that local motion is part of the efficient cause of sound, but he denies that it is its form, which means that sound cannot be reduced to a type of local motion. This position places him outside subsequent developments in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. (shrink)

During the 1890s William James and Carl Georg Lange's works on emotion were discussed in psychological journals under the heading of the “James–Lange theory” of emotion. Yet Lange's work is much less known because it was linked with James' theory and because later neurophysiological research demonstrated that Lange's proposed mechanism for processing emotion could not be correct. However, a reappraisal of his work is warranted for several reasons: For his attempt to ground the emotions in physiology at a time when (...) psychologists advocated a purely spiritual conception of emotions, for his insights in biological psychiatry, for postulating a neuroanatomical centre for processing emotion. Finally, in the light of contemporary research, because Lange deconstructed the emotions into combinations of components, which makes his work a precursor to component and appraisal theories of emotion. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss three personal examples of contemporary Austrians' defensive reactions when confronted with the book The Political of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (Leeb, 2018). The defensive reactions underline that Austrians evaded confronting themselves with their repressed guilt about their violent National Socialist past and failed at working through their past. It also explains the centrality of "embodied reflective spaces" and the idea of the "subject-in-outline" to counter the continuation of the cycle of violence engendered (...) through repressed guilt and to assist a nation's successful working through its past. (shrink)

This article explores various scenes of shame, raising the questions of what shame discloses about the self and how this self-disclosure takes place. Thereby, the common idea that shame discloses the self’s debasement will be challenged. The dramatic dialectics of showing and hiding display a much more ambiguous, dynamic self-image as result of an interactive evaluation of oneself by oneself and others. Seeing oneself seen contributes to the sense of who one becomes. From being absorbed in what one does, one (...) might suddenly become self-aware, shift viewpoints and feel pressed to put on masks. In putting on a mask, one relates to oneself in distancing oneself from oneself. In being at once a moral agent and a performing actor with an audience and norms in mind, one embodies and transcends the social roles one takes. In addition to the feeling of shame, in which the self finds itself passively reflected, the self’s active reflections on its shame are to be taken into account. As examples from Milan Kundera, Shakespeare’s King Lear, a line from Kingsley Amis, a speech by Vaclav Havel and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments indicate, self-presentation in the public and the private sphere is a complex hermeneutical process with surprising twists. (shrink)

A Priestley duality is developed for the variety j of all modal lattices. This is achieved by restricting to j a known Priestley duality for the variety of all bounded distributive lattices with a meet-homomorphism. The variety j was first studied by R. Beazer in 1986.The dual spaces of free modal lattices are constructed, paralleling P.R. Halmos'' construction of the dual spaces of free monadic Boolean algebras and its generalization, by R. Cignoli, to distributive lattices with a quantifier.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDas Thema des vorliegenden Artikels ist das Gewissen als Instanz der Selbsterschließung. Der Artikel wird durch drei Fragen strukturiert: Erstens, wer oder was ist die erschließende Instanz? Zweitens, wie geht die Erschließung vor sich? Und drittens, was wird über das Selbstsein erschlossen? Diese Fragen werden am Beispiel der Beiträge von Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard und Martin Heidegger untersucht. Deren Texte stehen in einem Rezeptionszusammenhang und haben Implikationen, die theologisch und anthropologisch relevant sind. Um den Manifestationen des Gewissens in der menschlichen (...) Erfahrung auf die Spur zu kommen, wird den drei genannten Leitfragen entsprechend bei allen drei Autoren erstens der Ursprung der im Gewissen vorgehenden Selbsterschließung, zweitens die Art und Weise der Selbsterschließung und drittens der erschlossene Inhalt eruiert. Dies geschieht in drei Schritten: Zunächst in textnahen Einzeldarstellungen , dann im kritischen Vergleich und schließlich in der Diskussion kontroverser Punkte . Zur Diskussion gestellt wird 1. der methodische Zugang zu Fragen der Selbsterschließung, 2. die Bestimmung und Bewertung der durch das Gewissen erschlossenen ›Schuld‹ und 3. das Verständnis der Freiheit oder Unfreiheit des Menschen.SUMMARYThe article focuses on conscience as an instance of self-disclosure. The article is structured by three questions: First, who or what is performing the disclosure? Second, in what ways is the self-disclosure enacted? And third, what is disclosed about selfhood? These questions are examined with respect to the contributions by Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger. Their works stand in a line of reception and have implications that are theologically and anthropologically relevant. In order to find out how conscience manifests itself in human experience, the texts will be analyzed with regard to the origin and/or subject of disclosing, the mode of disclosure, and the disclosed content. The investigation proceeds in the following steps: Part I is dedicated to the differing descriptions of conscience and introduces the texts of the individual authors. Part II offers a brief comparison of their approaches. Part III is an attempt to formulate and discuss the controversial points. The issues to be discussed are, first, the methodological approach to questions of self-disclosure; second, the definition and evaluation of the ›guilt‹ disclosed by conscience; and, third, the understanding of human freedom or unfreedom. (shrink)

This article investigates difficulties in defining the concept of God by focusing on the question of what it means to understand God as a ‘person.’ This question is explored with respect to the work of Søren Kierkegaard, in dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. Thereby, the following three questions regarding divine ‘personhood’ come into view: First, how can God be a partner of dialogue if he at the same time remains unknown and unthinkable, a limit-concept of understanding? (...) Second, if God is love in person and at the same time a spiritual reality ‘between’ human agents, in what ways are his personal and trans-personal traits related to each other? Third, what exactly is revealed through God’s ‘name’? By way of an inconclusive conclusion, divine personhood is discussed in regard to prayer, where the problems of predication that arise in third-personal speech about God are linked with the second-personal encounter with God. (shrink)

This chapter examines Soren Kierkegaard's writings about and related to phenomenology. It evaluates whether Kierkegaard's account of religious life can be considered a phenomenology of religion, and reviews arguments for and against interpreting Kierkegaard as a phenomenologist. The chapter also explores the relation between Kierkegaard and phenomenology by examining the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in Kierkegaard, and by comparing Edmund Husserl's and Martin Heidegger's forms of phenomenology to that of Kierkegaard.

This article explores the ethical implications of the dialectics between the human being’s visibility and invisibility by means of a phenomenological approach: In what ways can ›human dignity‹ be experienced, and to what extent does it, as a normative notion, transcend its possible givenness to experience? While there is a consensus that the requirement of respect is implied in this notion, it is controversial how this requirement is realized and fulfilled. Kierkegaard’s ethics of loving vision and Sartre’s description of the (...) objectifying gaze inform a discussion of the feeling of shame: can it protect the dignity of the other person? The following three levels of argumentation will be taken into account: An exchange of glances denoting reciprocal recognition can, on the level of factuality, count as the condition for the subjective constitution of human dignity insofar as it can be experienced in actual contexts of interaction. In a legal context, the constitutional principle of all people’s invisible, inviolable dignity, which is the source of their rights and deserves protection regardless of people’s characteristics and behavior, must be defended against the idea that human dignity is nothing but a contingent, self-posited norm or gradual attribute. The theological dimension of human dignity is considered in regard to its non-empirical ground and destination and to the question of whether human dignity persists post mortem. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 1 Seiten: 363-378.

The concept of citizenship in Europe after World War II faces two major challenges: migration and European integration. This introduction precedes a group of articles examining debates and law-making processes related to the concept of citizenship in Europe after World War II. The introduction sketches the historical development of citizenship in European representative democracies, taking into account four basic dimensions for analyzing changes in the concept of citizenship.

Die Studie richtet sich gegen die verbreitete Auffassung, Senecas Tragödien und Lucans Bürgerkriegsepos demonstrieren die Enttäuschung ihrer Autoren darüber, dass die stoische Doktrin angesichts des Bösen im menschlichen Handeln oder unvermeidbarer Schicksalsschläge keine überzeugende Antwort bereithalte. Die Werke beider Dichter setzen gezielt und in paralleler Behandlung die stoischen Fragestellungen zum Spannungsfeld von menschlicher Entscheidungsfreiheit und Determinismus literarisch um.

Eco-Islam is often discussed from a theological perspective, but there are hardly any studies on the activist’s practices, their experiences and reasoning. In order to fill this gap and to emphasise the importance of studying lived religion, this article presents three interviews with young Eco-Islam activists in Germany. By using the method of cultural analysis, the author compares, summarises and abstracts their statements and activities, so that a comprehensive configuration is revealed. Cultural analysis focuses on cultural constellations and tries to (...) think historical, social and biographical components together. To understand the Eco-Islam activist’s perspectives at a deeper cultural level, the author firstly represents a thick description of the statements and activities of her three respondents. Afterwards, she scrutinises the actors’ practices and processes by applying the dimensions of belief, practice and community on their everyday life and performative action. At last she filters three related themes on a cultural constellational level. Contribution: In this article, the author simultaneously highlights the implicit connections of eco-Islamic Activism to aspects of Othering and empowerment, aspects of (re-) interpretation of religious norms and aspects of transgressing environmental activism and the idea of an Islamic community. (shrink)

Religious communities often tend to distinguish themselves from otherreligious communities – especially from diverging communities rooting in their own tradition. Social stigmata are brought forward to describe these deviant socalledsects: They were immoral, their adherents sexually deviant and havingstrange, improper acquaintances. Calling themselves religion is said to be a trickto fool the simple ones out of their money. These topoi can be found in heresiographies,guidebooks on sects and in public discourse throughout the centuries.They are not even restricted to religious groups, (...) but are part on the polemicalliterature against secularist groups (as the German Monist League). By this continuity in terms and motives, debates on sects are a superb object toreconstruct borders of tolerance and constructions of “the other” historically.The paper restricts itself to sources from the German Early Modern Period andModernity to strengthen the arguments; but the thesis can be held in general.With this temporal and local focus, we encounter a sphere of cultural continuityas well as cultural change, seeing the structural continuities as well as assimilationsand thus internal developments. (shrink)

There is an argument that has recently been deployed in favor of thinking that the mind is mostly (or even exclusively) composed of cognitive modules; an argument that draws from some ideas and concepts of evolutionary and of developmental biology. In a nutshell, the argument concludes that a mind that is massively composed of cognitive mechanisms that are cognitively modular (henceforth, c-modular) is more evolvable than a mind that is not c-modular (or that is scarcely c-modular), since a cognitive mechanism (...) that is c-modular is likely to be biologically modular (henceforth, b-modular), and b-modular characters are more evolvable (e.g., Sperber 2002, Carruthers 2005). In evolutionary biology, the evolvability of a character in an organism is understood as the “organism’s capacity to facilitate the generation of non-lethal selectable phenotypic variation from random mutation” with respect to that character. Here I will argue that the notion of cognitive modularity needed to make this argument plausible will have to be understood in terms of the biological notion of variational independence; that is, it will have to be understood in such a way that a cognitive feature is c-modular only if few or no other morphological changes (cognitive and not) are significantly correlated with variations of that feature arising in members of the relevant population. I will also argue that all –except for (possibly) one—of the connotations contained in a cluster of notions of cognitive modularity widely accepted in some of the mainstream currents of thought in classical cognitive science, are simply irrelevant to the argument. In order to argue for this, I will have to examine the question as to whether there are any strong theoretical connections between (1) those connotations and (2) notions of modularity accepted in biology, specially in evolutionary and in developmental biology, that are thought to be most relevant to arguments to the effect that biological modularity enhances evolvability. (shrink)