Recent decades have witnessed tremendous progress in artificial intelligence and in the development of autonomous systems that rely on artificial intelligence. Critics, however, have pointed to the difficulty of allocating responsibility for the actions of an autonomous system, especially when the autonomous system causes harm or damage. The highly autonomous behavior of such systems, for which neither the programmer, the manufacturer, nor the operator seems to be responsible, has been suspected to generate responsibility gaps. This has been the cause of (...) much concern. In this article, I propose a more optimistic view on artificial intelligence, raising two challenges for responsibility gap pessimists. First, proponents of responsibility gaps must say more about when responsibility gaps occur. Once we accept a difficult-to-reject plausibility constraint on the emergence of such gaps, it becomes apparent that the situations in which responsibility gaps occur are unclear. Second, assuming that responsibility gaps occur, more must be said about why we should be concerned about such gaps in the first place. I proceed by defusing what I take to be the two most important concerns about responsibility gaps, one relating to the consequences of responsibility gaps and the other relating to violations of jus in bello. (shrink)

This article investigates how text messages and mobile phone calls interrelate as parts of continuous communication sequences. Based on the recorded mobile communication of 14-year-olds in Denmark and a conversation-analytic approach, the article will show that after a text message in a continuous communication sequence, four different types of conversation may follow: the answer, the reminder, the resumption of conversation and the confirmation. In itself, the change from text message to conversation requires no interactional efforts from the participants. However, changes (...) of mode are related to the different communicative possibilities the text message and the phone call offer: text messages and calls have distinct formal qualities that govern their uses, and participants in a given sequence move between the two modes, exploiting the potential of each as they ascribe meaning to the written and spoken media. (shrink)

Toleranz wird für gewöhnlich als eine Einstellung definiert, die sich aus Akzeptanz und Ablehnung gegenüber der tolerierten Praxis zusammensetzt. In einem Aufsatz in dieser Zeitschrift hat Achim Lohmar dieses klassische Verständnis von Toleranz angegriffen und einen alternativen Toleranzbegriff stark gemacht. Ich werde argumentieren, dass Lohmars Analyse von Toleranz verfehlt ist, und zeigen, wie sich der klassische Toleranzbegriff gegen Lohmars Kritik verteidigen lässt. Dennoch ist Lohmars Kritik nicht uninteressant. Denn obwohl Lohmars begriffliche Kritik unzutreffend ist, lässt sich auf Lohmars Kritik aufbauend (...) ein inhaltliches Argument gegen die derzeit prominenteste Rechtfertigung von Toleranz formulieren, das Rawls’sche Argument von vernünftiger Meinungsverschiedenheit. Abschließend argumentiere ich gegen Lohmar, dass der personale Toleranzbegriff vom politischen nicht kategorial verschieden ist. (shrink)

Critics of Big Tech often describe ‘surveillance capitalism’ in grim terms, blaming it for all kinds of political and social ills. This article counters this pessimistic narrative, offering a more favorable take on companies like Google, YouTube, and Twitter/X. It argues that the downsides of surveillance capitalism are overstated, while the benefits are largely overlooked. Specifically, the article examines six critical areas: i) targeted advertising, ii) the influence of surveillance capitalism on politics, iii) its impact on mental health, iv) its (...) connection with government surveillance, v) its effects on the rule of law and social trust, and vi) privacy concerns. For each area, it will be argued that concerns about surveillance capitalism are unfounded or exaggerated. The article also explores some benefits of the services provided by these technology companies and concludes with a discussion of the practical implications. Throughout, the article draws on empirical evidence relating to the societal and political impact of digital technologies. (shrink)

One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take (...) on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike. (shrink)

SummaryChristian theologians can explain the Trinitarian faith today in dialogue with Islamic thinkers as “deepened monotheism”. Therefore it is important to widen the systematic-theological discourse in an ecumenical and transcultural perspective and to retrieve resources from Western and non-Western traditions of Trinitarian thought (I).In this paper I will first work out historically that the Trinitarian creed of Nicea and Constantinople was originally an ecumenical but non-Western creed (II). Afterwards, I investigate the philosophical-theological reflection on the Trinity by Anselm of Canterbury (...) (1033–1109) in the context of early interreligious encounters in the Latin West. Based on biblical, augustinian and Greek sources, he developed an approach to understand the mystery of the Trinity by rational arguments as “deepened monotheism” (III). Then I will proceed to explore the philosophical-theological dialogues on the Trinity from the Arabic philosopher and Syrian-orthodox theologian Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī (893–974). Much earlier he developed rational arguments for the Triunity of God with reference to Aristotle. Thereby he answers to anti-trinitarian arguments from Islamic thinkers like al-Kindī and al-Warrāq. He intends that the Trinitarian faith of Christian minorities can thereby be understood and tolerated by Islamic thinkers as rationally founded “deepened monotheism” (IV).In the end I will evaluate what these classics from the Western and non-western traditions of Trinitarian thought contribute to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity today in a pluralistic religious context as “deepened monotheism” (V). (shrink)

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der Stellung der Kritik der Urteilskraft im System der Kantischen Kritiken. Es wird die These vertreten, dass die Dreiteiligkeit des Kantischen Systems mit der Dreizahl der transzendentallogischen Erfordernisse der Erkenntnis zusammenhängt, die Kant mit den Begriffen des unum, verum und bonum verbindet. Daraus wird der Schluss gezogen, dass die Kritik der Urteilskraft zum übergreifenden Thema die Bedingungen materialer Wahrheit hat, sofern diese sich a priori, in der Form von Ideen, angeben lassen, im Unterschied zur Kritik (...) der reinen Vernunft, deren Thema die Einheit, und zur Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, deren Thema die Vollkommenheit bildet. (shrink)

In Hinsicht auf die moralischen Verwerfungen sexueller Verhaltensweisen stellt sich schliesslich die Frage, inwieweit diese nicht nur altere Begrundungsmuster maskieren.Gotz Konigs Studie zu Geschlechtsmoral und Gleichgeschlechtlichkeit im ...

Various theorems for the preservation of set-theoretic axioms under forcing are proved, regarding both forcing axioms and axioms true in the Lévy collapse. These show in particular that certain applications of forcing axioms require to add generic countable sequences high up in the set-theoretic hierarchy even before collapsing everything down to ‮א‬₁. Later we give applications, among them the consistency of MM with ‮א‬ω not being Jónsson which answers a question raised in the set theory meeting at Oberwolfach in 2005.

René Königs Buch "Vom Wesen der deutschen Universität" schildert beredt die hochschulpolitischen Anschauungen klassischer deutscher Denker. Fichte und Schelling, Schleiermacher und Humboldt werden daraufhin befragt, inwieweit ihre Überlegungen über den aktuellen Anlass hinaus Geltung für spätere Epochen beanspruchen dürfen.

This paper provides a discussion of the role that emotions may play in the justification of punishment. On the expressivist account of punishment, punishment has the purpose of expressing appropriate emotional reactions to wrongdoing, such as indignation, resentment or guilt. I will argue that this expressivist approach fails as these emotions can be expressed other than through the infliction of punishment. Another argument for hard treatment put forward by expressivists states that punitive sanctions are necessary in order for the law (...) to be valid. But this justification of punishment, too, is unconvincing. There are no good reasons to assume that we have to resort to punitive measures in order to vindicate the law. I will then raise the more general worry whether there is any intelligible link at all between moral emotions such as indignation, resentment or guilt and retributive behaviour. I will finally conclude with some sceptical remarks on the moral worth of retribution. (shrink)

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological theories (...) as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion. (shrink)

König often gave lectures based around Christian festivals, and the selection in this book were first presented at Easter time. The central theme here is the development of conscience and memory, which raises questions about individual freedom and spirituality, particularly in the context of community building. Running alongside the main theme, König discusses subjects close to his heart including the search for the Grail, Parsifal and St Paul, bringing them together in surprising and challenging ways.

Entre 1150 et 1280, le monde latin herite de la totalite de l'oeuvre d'Aristote par la biais d'une vaste entreprise de traductions du grec et de l'arabe, accompagnee d'interpretations arabes et neoplatoniciennes, et se trouve ainsi confronte a de nouvelles theories face auxquelles il s'agit de mettre en place des strategies d'assimiltation. Par l'etude des textes, ce livre restaure le temoignage de ces entreprises relativement aux lectures arabes de la Metaphysique et a la notion de matiere. Ou l'on voit qu'a (...) Paris, des disputes se mettent en place pour debattre sur les notions d'etre et d'essence, de temporalite et d'historicite du monde, de possibilite des choses et du statut des relations. Sont egalement abordees les difficultes theoriques que rencontrent les lecteurs latins face aux textes aristoteliciens, de Thomas d'Aquin a Guillaume d'Ockham, pour en mettre les principes au service de leur cosmogonie et de leur anthropologie. (shrink)

Advances in information and communication technologies enable more decentralized and individualized mechanisms for coordination and for managing societal complexity. This has important consequences for the role of conditionality and the idea of individual responsibility in two seemingly unrelated policy areas. First, the changing information infrastructure enables an extension of conditionality in the area of welfare through greater activation, enhanced self-management, and a personalization of risks. Second, conditionality and personal responsibility also form an important ideational template and a legitimatory basis for (...) facilitating value creation that is based on data as a raw material. This argument is illustrated looking at the trajectories of the digital strategies in the United Kingdom and Germany. In both cases, data protection is depicted as a question of individual responsibility and tied to certain forms of individual conduct. (shrink)

One of the most insidious consequences of continuous exposure to gaslighting is that agents develop an expectation of further emotional manipulation. Repeated exposure to demeaning and humiliating behavior can make agents prone to interpret any epistemic challenge as a potential instance of gaslighting. Embedded in physiological and affective habits, this expectation become an integral way of interpreting social interactions and other people’s intentions. The concept of gaslighting was originally coined to alleviate a form of hermeneutic injustice, but some applications of (...) the concept paradoxically come to perpetuate exactly this kind of injustice. When agents perceive gaslighting in epistemically ambiguous situations, they foreclose the possibility of benefiting from productive forms of epistemic frictions. (shrink)

Berlin has become the German place of remembrance for 1968. In other cities, too, students, artists, and professors rose up against authoritarian ways of life and institutions, pointing to the “fascism” of the Nazi period that their parents wished to repress. But remembrance likes the beauty of appearances, and the revolt in Berlin was initially colored by something unreal and playful, a counterpoint led to its conclusion, something both bounded and experimental. This something was lost between 1967 and 1969, though (...) it was even less present outside of Berlin, perhaps because of the delay with which the revolt spread beyond.. (shrink)

Crashes involving self-driving cars at least superficially resemble trolley dilemmas. This article discusses what lessons machine ethicists working on the ethics of self-driving cars can learn from trolleyology. The article proceeds by providing an account of the trolley problem as a paradox and by distinguishing two types of solutions to the trolley problem. According to an optimistic solution, our case intuitions about trolley dilemmas are responding to morally relevant differences. The pessimistic solution denies that this is the case. An optimistic (...) solution would yield first-order moral insights for the ethics of self-driving cars, but such a solution is difficult to come by. More plausible is the pessimistic solution, and it teaches us a methodological lesson. The lesson is that machine ethicists should discount case intuitions and instead rely on intuitions and judgments at a higher level of generality. (shrink)

An increasingly popular view in scholarly literature and public debate on implicit biases holds that there is progressive moral potential in the discomfort that liberals and egalitarians feel when they realize they harbor implicit biases. The strong voices among such discomfort advocates believe we have a moral and political duty to confront people with their biases even though we risk making them uncomfortable. Only a few voices have called attention to the aversive effects of discomfort. Such discomfort skeptics warn that, (...) because people often react negatively to feeling blamed or called-out, the result of confrontational approaches is often counterproductive. To deepen this critique, I distinguish between awareness discomfort and interaction discomfort, developing a contextual approach that draws on recent research on negative affect and emotions to chart a more complete picture of the moral limits of discomfort. I argue that discomfort advocates risk overrating the moral potential of discomfort if they underestimate the extent to which context shapes the interpretation of affect and simple, raw feelings. (shrink)

Existentialist philosophy offers an understanding of how trying to eliminate ambiguities that inevitably mark the human condition only seemingly leads to freedom. This existentialist outlook can also serve to shed light on how democratic politics may similarly show tendencies which aim at overcoming immanent tensions. Such tendencies in democratic politics can be clarified using Sartre’s notion of ignorance – and truth as its counterpart. His concept of ignorance goes beyond merely facts or knowledge and refers to a mode of being. (...) It expresses a subject’s desire to avoid, rather than confront, resistances stemming from the world. Based on a distinction of different forms in which this orientation can manifest itself, this article shows how democratic politics, too, can be threatened by ignorance as a way of doing politics. This ignorance comes in different guises which all express a desire to eliminate tensions that democratic politics cannot overcome without undermining itself. (shrink)