One set of arguments on judicial review states that this is a necessary consequence of understanding rights as limits to democracy. This paper brings some nuances to this argument, arguing that the answer to the problem of judicial review should rely not only on rights‐based arguments, but also on institutional arguments. In order to do so, the first part will present the idea that links rights as trumps to judicial review. In the second part, the article will show it is (...) possible to split the conception of rights as limits into two questions, one regarding what the state should or should not do and the other regarding who should be the one to give content to this set of decisions. The third part will show that all rights‐based arguments fail because they cannot deal with the fact of disagreement. The last part will show that rights still have a part to play in the discussion on judicial review, though without the final word. (shrink)

The contingency/inevitability (C/I) problem consists in questions about the extent to which science is contingent or inevitable, what parts of it are contingent or inevitable, and whether alternative scientific trajectories might be just as successful as the one we have. It is relatively new as a well-delineated object of philosophical inquiry, dating to Ian Hacking’s observation in The Social Construction of What? (1999) that the social construction movement raises questions about contingency and inevitability that can be understood as distinct from, (...) and perhaps more promising than, longstanding debates about scientific realism and anti-realism. In the years since Hacking defined the key terms of the C/I problem, a group of scholars has coalesced around the questions he posed. Those questions motivated, for example, a 2009 workshop at the Fondation Des Treilles in Tourtour, France, and this book synthesizes its results. (shrink)

Drosophila flies began to be used in the study of species evolution during the late 1930s. The geneticists Natasha Sivertzeva-Dobzhansky and Elizabeth Reed pioneered this work in the United States, and María Monclús conducted similar studies in Spain. The research they carried out with their husbands enabled Drosophila population genetics to take off and reveals a genealogy of women geneticists grounded in mutual inspiration. Their work also shows that women were present in population genetics from the beginning, although their contributions (...) have previously remained unacknowledged. The similarities between their research biographies also illustrate their position in a genealogy of partnerships working on Drosophila genetics. (shrink)

I discuss the problem that Kant’s ethics seems to be incapable of capturing our strong intuition that emergencies create a context for actions that is very different from other cases of helping and from other opportunities to further obligatory ends. I argue that if we pay attention to how Kant grounds beneficence we see that distress and emergency function as constitutive concerns. They are vital to establishing the duty of beneficence in the first place, and they also guide the application (...) of duties to specific cases. Kant’s conception of imperfect duties to others, when understood correctly, offers a way to understand why emergencies are morally important, but also why other factors have a place in our moral reasoning. (shrink)

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, (...) we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger's thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche's has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and the Western philosophical tradition developed. With his new reading, Heidegger delineates three Nietzschean modes of history, which should be understood as grounded in (...) the structure of temporality or historicity and also offers a metaphysical determination of life and the essence of humankind. Ullrich Hasse and Mark Sinclair offer a clear and accessible translation despite the fragmentary and disjointed quality of the original lecture notes that comprise this text. (shrink)

Das Christentum sagt, dass Jesus Christus sowohl wahrer Mensch als auch wahrer Gott war. Doch wie kann das genauer gedacht werden? Das Buch rekonstruiert umfassend, wie Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel und damit einer der einflussreichsten und interessantesten Denker der Moderne diese Frage beantwortet. Anschließend wird Hegels Lösungsansatz aus theologischer wie aus philosophischer Perspektive kritisiert und der Ansatz eines eigenen Vorschlags skizziert. Zuletzt wird der explizite und implizite Umgang mit Hegel in der gegenwärtigen Theologie untersucht.

In their self-understanding, expert committees solely draw on scientific knowledge to provide policy advice. However, we try to show, first, on the basis of material related to the German Radiation Protection Commission that much of their work consists in active model building. Second, expert advice is judged by criteria that diverge from standards used for judging epistemic research. In particular, the commitment to generality or universality is replaced by the criterion of specificity, and the value of precision gives way to (...) epistemic robustness. Third, non-epistemic considerations are included in the reasoning—albeit hesitantly. Manageability and social robustness, understood as compatibility with widespread value attitudes in society, affect the content of the recommendations. (shrink)

Discussion of sexuality in African cultures has a long history, but since the 1990s ethical reflections on homosexuality on the continent have often degenerated into furors and provoked a spate of anti-gay legislation in several countries. Refutations of homophobic dispositions encounter as barrier a pervasive belief in African cultures, that childbearing for community replenishment is a cherished moral duty. Several philosophers consider these to be exaggerated inhibitions that unjustifiably impede social acceptance of homosexuality, and have proposed as a solution what (...) they consider to be self-justifying political-moral principles, that terminate in value-pluralistic ideas such as the acceptance of the equality of sexual orientations and vindication of the right to the freedom to choose and satisfy sexual desire. I question the adequacy of such self-justificatory normative principles and consider the solutions they proffer as depreciating the moral point of the African pro-natalist position. Consequently, I develop a moral argument grounded in the ontology of Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarian theory of personhood as the most persuasive justification for homosexuality. (shrink)

Funding policies for science are usually directed at supporting technological innovations. The im-pact and success of such policies depend crucially on how science and technology are connected to each other. I propose an “interactive view” of the relationship between basic science and technol-ogy development which comprises the following four claims: First, technological change derives from science but only in part. The local models used in accounting for technologically relevant phenomena contain theoretical and non-theoretical elements alike. Second, existing technologies and rules (...) of experience constitute another major repository of technological inventions. Third, technology dynamics is only weakly coupled to progress in basic science but it is closely related to science. There is a dependence of technological change on a more fundamental understanding, to be sure, but it is of an indirect and long-term character. Fourth, progress in basic research is some-times the effect of technological change. Technological change sometimes brings about increased theoretical understanding. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of action and the philosophy of science over folk psychological explanations of human action: do the (perhaps implicit) generalizations that underwrite such explanations purport to state contingent, empirically established connections between beliefs, desires, and actions, or do such generalizations serve rather to define, at least in part, what it is to have a belief or desire, or perform an action? This question has proven important because of certain traditional assumptions made about the (...) role of law-statements in scientific explanations. According to this tradition, law-statements take the form of generalizations, and the laws we find in well-established sciences are contingent and empirical; as such, if the kinds of generalizations at work in folk psychological explanations of human action act like definitions, or state conceptual connections, then such generalizations could not play the kind of explanatory role we find in mature sciences. This paper argues that the aforementioned way of framing the debate reflects a still powerful but impoverished conception of the role laws play in scientific explanations, a conception that, moreover, cannot be reconciled with a good deal of actual scientific practice. When we update the philosophy of science, we find the concerns that are raised for folk psychological explanations largely evaporate or are found not to be specific to such explanations. (shrink)

Kant uses two metaphors in his early works on cosmogony: “Fire Treasures” and his famous figure of a “Phoenix of Nature”. This study suggests two sources Kant may have known. The first metaphor, goes back to the German translation of Leibniz’s Protogaea (1749) or a review of the Protogaea by Gottsched. Both appeared in the same year as the Latin text. Kant receipts the second metaphor most likely from the English poet Abraham Cowley (his poem: “The Extasie”). Both metaphors are (...) significant because they explain and illustrate Kant’s recourse to the Stoic doctrine of ekpyrosis, i. e. the passing away through a world-fire and the renewal of the cosmos from the elementary particles created in this holocaustic process. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Im illegalen Nierenhandel werden Verkaufer oft uber den Tisch gezogen, sie werden genotigt, es wird ihnen angemessene medizinische Betreuung vorenthalten und sie werden uber die Gefahren und die Illegalitat der Nierenentnahme in die Irre gefuhrt. Die Empfanger bezahlen oft fur qualitativ schlechte Operationen sowie ungesunde oder unpassende Nieren. Einige Autoren argumentieren, es sei die Illegalitat, die dieses Leid und dieses Unrecht verursachen, nicht der Handel an sich. Sie argumentieren, die Legalisierung von Nierenverkaufen wurde das Leid verringern. Dieses Leidensverringerungsargument ist (...) es, das in diesem Aufsatz entwickelt und untersucht wird. Es werden zunachst die ethischen und empirischen Bestandteile einer utilitaristischen Version von Leidensverringerung dargelegt. Und es wird erklart, wie eine Legalisierung das Leiden auf Schwarzmarkten vermutlich verringern wurde, aber auch, warum wir nicht wissen, wie die Legalisierung das Angebot an Organen oder die Anzahl leidvoller Transaktionen auf ‘weisen Markten’ beeinflussen wurde. Kurz gesagt, wir konnen nicht sicher sein, dass seine Legalisierung das Leiden insgesamt verringern wurde. Dennoch versucht dieser Aufsatz zu zeigen, dass die Argumentation zugunsten von einer Legalisierung gestarkt werden kann, wenn man dem utilitaristischen Hauptanliegen des aggregierten Wohlergehens etwas hinzufugt. Den besonderen Anliegen der am schlechtesten Gestellten und dem Unrecht des Verkaufsakts kann man durch Legalisierung besser gerecht werden als durch Kriminalisierung. Das Leidensverringerungsargument entscheidet diese Debatte uber die Legalisierung des Organhandels zwar nicht, aber es ist entscheidender als Kritiker bislang zugestehen wollten. (shrink)

G. H. Mead developed an alternative "metaphysics" of selfhood and agency that underlies, but is seldom made explicit in discussions of, his social developmental psychology. This is an alternative metaphysics that rejects any pregiven, fixed foundations for being and knowing. It assumes the emergence of social psychological phenomena such as mind, self, and deliberative agency through the activity of human actors and interactors within their biophysical and sociocultural world. Of central importance to the emergence of self-consciousness and deliberative forms of (...) human agency is the ability of developing individuals to take the perspectives of others within their own conduct. However, precisely what is involved in this process, and whether or not it assumes the preexistence of exactly those forms of selfhood and agency, the emergence of which it seeks to explain, have been much disputed. In this essay, recent reinterpretations of Mead's "metaphysics" are used to argue that his overall theoretical program contains resources necessary to overcome charges of ontological and epistemological circularity. In particular, once his interactionism, perspectivism, emergentism, and compatibilism are explicated, it is possible to see that Mead's "taking the perspective of the other" is not primarily a process of internalization that requires a preexisting "internalizer," but a process of participation with others within conventionalized sequences of interactivity. This participatory process enables the development of prereflective forms of perspective taking and self-other differentiation that serve as necessary conditions for the further emergence of more reflective forms of perspective taking, self-consciousness, and deliberative agency. Compatibilist interpretations of deliberative agency, thus understood, also are discussed. (shrink)

Utopia and dystopia are brought together by Kant and Rousseau to the point of their indistinguishability: Dystopia is the reverse side of utopia, utopia that of dystopia. The essay traces this structure in Rousseau’s oeuvre – in Julie, the Discourse on Inequality and the Contrat Social – in order to uncover how Kant carried it forward in the Staatsrecht of his late Rechtslehre with regard to modern representative democracy and the problem of popular sovereignty.