This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

In “patchwork” families, full siblings, maternal and paternal half-siblings, and non-related children are raised together, and sometimes, genetically related children are separated. As their number is steadily growing, the investigation of the factors that influence within-family relations is becoming more important. Our aim was to explore whether people differentiate between half- and full-siblings in their social relations as implied by the theory of inclusive fitness, and to test whether co-residence or genetic relatedness improves sibling relations to a larger extent. We (...) administered the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire to 196 individuals who were in contact with full-, half-, or step-siblings in their childhood. We built Generalized Linear Mixed Models models to test for the effects of relatedness and co-residence on sibling relations. In general, a higher degree of relatedness was associated with better sibling relations, but only among those who did not live together during childhood. Co-resident siblings’ overall pattern of relation quality was not influenced by the actual level of genetic relatedness. In contrast to this, full siblings reported having experienced more conflicts during childhood than half-siblings, possibly resulting from enhanced competition for the same parental resources. The results suggest that inclusive fitness drives siblings’ relations even in recent industrial societies. However, among individuals who live together, the effect of relatedness might be obscured by fitness interdependence and the subjective feeling of kinship. (shrink)

v. 1 Egyetem, nevelés, értelmiségi lét.

Bekanntlich ging Fichte von der Philosophie Kants aus und zwar von der praktischen Philosophie Kants und ihrer Deklaration des Prinzips der menschlichen Freiheit. Fichte war nämlich der Ansicht, daß die theoretische Philosophie Kants trotz ihrer guten Tendenzen keine zureichende Basis für die Erklärung der menschlichen Freiheit biete, da Kant die richtige Tendenz nicht konsequent weiterverfolgt habe. Fichte war deshalb anfangs der Meinung - und bis zu einem gewissen Grade zu Recht - daß das, was er tat, einfach die folgerichtige Ausgestaltung (...) der Philosophie Kants sei; übrigens hat auch Hegel in seinen die Wissenschaft der Philosophiegeschichte sozusagen allererst begründenden denkwürdigen Vorträgen[...] die historische Stellung der Philosophie Fichtes so eingeschätzt. Ursprüngliches Ziel Fichtes ist also ein »echter, durchgeführter Kritizismus«, die Realisierung einer Philosophie, die die Prinzipien Kants sowohl vom formellen als auch inhaltlichen Gesichtspunkt her gleichermaßen konsequent verfolgt: »Kant hat nach meiner Überzeugung das System nicht dargestellt, aber er hat es im Besitz« - schreibt Fichte in einem seiner Briefe. (shrink)

This book presents the psychological basis, methodology, and application of Marton's phenomenographic approach to the theory of learning.

Agents have no control over the formation of their own zygote. Others may do. According to a well-known argument, the so-called Zygote Argument for incompatibilism, these facts, together with a prima facie plausible further assumption, are sufficient to prove that human agents cannot be responsible for their actions if they live in a deterministic universe. This paper argues that the lack of agents’ control over the constitution of their own zygote can undermine their responsibility only in exceptional conditions and that (...) the occurrence or non-occurrence of those conditions has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of determinism. What undermines agents’ responsibility in the situations described by the Zygote Argument is the occurrence of some specific initial conditions which may render the manipulation of agents’ behaviour possible, and not the truth of determinism. (shrink)

Introductory essay / Peter Jones -- The usefulness of the arts and the humanities : the case of Descartes / Gábor Boros -- Roads of remembrance : the treatment of imagination and memory in Gerard's Essay on genius / Zsolt Komáromy -- Diderot's untimeliness / László Kisbali ; transl. Márton Dornbach -- Melody vs. harmony : Rousseau, or, The aesthetics of vowels / Mária Ludassy ; transl. Zsolt Komáromy -- Judgement and taste : from Shakespeare to Shaftesbury / Ferenc (...) Hörcher -- Lord Shaftesbury's "aesthetic freedom" / Endre Szécsényi -- Why one should imitate the Greeks : on Winckelmann / Sándor Radnóti ; transl. Márton Dornbach -- Beauty or beast, or, Monstrous regiments? : Robertson and Burke on women and the public scene / László Kontler -- The concept of nature and the theodicy problem in the Malebranche-Arnauld-Leibniz debate / Dániel Schmal -- Lessing's anti-candide : between reason and revelation / Krisztina Utasi ; transl. Márton Dornbach. (shrink)

An aesthetic sense—a taste for the creation and/or appreciation of that which strikes one as, e.g., attractive or awesome—is often assumed to be a distinctively H. sapiens phenomenon. However, recent paleoanthropological research is revealing its archaeologically visible, deeper roots. The sensorimotor/perceptual and cognitive capacities underpinning aesthetic activities are a major focus of evolutionary aesthetics. Here we take a diachronic, evolutionary perspective and assess ongoing scepticism regarding whether, and to what extent, aesthetic capacity extends to our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals. The (...) goal of this article is twofold. First, it serves as a defence of the attribution of Neanderthal aesthetic capacity by marshalling archaeological data best explained by positing a Neanderthal aesthetic sense. Second, it offers an opportunity to make progress on understanding some epistemically relevant features of the wider debate in evolutionary aesthetics. First, we outline and analyse a range of distinct ‘sceptical arguments’ derived from attitudes and claims found in the literature and broader debate that aim to dial down the case for Neanderthal aesthetic capacity. We show that these arguments not only miss their target, they divert the debate away from more compelling questions. We then consider the case for protoaesthetic capacities and sensitivities in the Acheulean stone tool industry and argue that Neanderthals likely inherited the protoaesthetic package from ancient ancestors that they shared with H. sapiens. Finally, we sketch and defend a research agenda for framing Neanderthal aesthetic niche(s) beyond H. sapiens-derived standards, which we see as a priority for future archaeological, cognitive, and philosophical research. While we resist sceptical arguments and the often-implied inferiority of Neanderthals to humans, we also deny that Neanderthals and ancient humans were indistinguishable. Understanding the differences is an important goal of interpretation, and we apply this line of reasoning to the case of aesthetics. (shrink)

_Freedom of the Will_ provides a novel interpretation of G. E. Moore’s famous conditional analysis of free will and discusses several questions about the meaning of free will and its significance for moral responsibility. Although Moore’ theory has a strong initial appeal, most metaphysicians believe that there are conclusive arguments against it. Huoranszki argues that the importance of conditional analysis must be reevaluated in light of some recent developments in the theory of dispositions. The original analysis can be amended so (...) that the revised conditional account is not only a good response to determinist worries about the possibility of free will, but it can also explain the sense in which free will is an important condition of moral responsibility. This study addresses three fundamental issues about free will as a metaphysical condition of responsibility. First, the book explains why agents are responsible for their actions or omissions only if they have the ability to do otherwise and shows that the relevant ability is best captured by the revised conditional analysis. Second, it aims to clarify the relation between agents’ free will and their rational capacities. It argues that free will as a condition of responsibility must be understood in terms of agents’ ability to do otherwise rather than in terms of their capacity to respond to reasons. Finally, the book explains in which sense responsibility requires self-determination and argues that it is compatible with agents’ limited capacity to control their own character, reasons, and motives. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of how economic and political institutions can limit the applicability of principles of justice even in non-relational cosmopolitan conceptions. It shows that fundamental principles of justice underdetermine fair distributive shares as well as justice -based requirements. It argues that institutions partially constitute the content of justice by determining distributive shares and by resolving indeterminacies about justice -based requirements resulting from strategic interaction and disagreement. In the absence of existing institutions principles of justice might not be (...) applicable for assessing distributions or guiding individual action and institutional design. Hence, accepting a specific cosmopolitan conception of justice is insufficient to settle global distributive questions. (shrink)

A simple inductive argument shows natural languages to have infinitly many sentences, but workers in the field have uncovered clear evidence of a diverse group of ‘exceptional’ languages from Proto-Uralic to Dyirbal and most recently, Pirahã, that appear to lack recursive devices entirely. We argue that in an information-theoretic setting non-recursive natural languages appear neither exceptional nor functionally inferior to the recursive majority.

Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This paper (...) offers a framework to identify exploitation in mutually beneficial exchange, focusing on the case of sweatshop labor. It argues that an employer can be viewed as taking unfair advantage of an underlying injustice if and only if the employer’s surplus from the exchange in the unjust state of affairs exceeds the surplus it could maximally obtain in a just state of affairs. The paper illustrates the applicability of this framework using three different conceptions of justice and argues that it is superior to microlevel accounts of exploitation that regard background justice as irrelevant. The paper concludes by describing some normative implications that follow from judging an exchange exploitative. (shrink)

Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic aspects of the putative link between emotions and value by asking two related questions. First, how exactly are emotions supposed to latch onto or track values? And second, how well suited are emotions to detecting or learning about values? To answer the first question, the paper develops the heuristics-model of emotions. This approach models emotions as sui generis heuristics of value. The empirical plausibility of the heuristics-model (...) is demonstrated using evidence from experimental psychology, evolutionary anthropology and neuroscience. The model is used then to answer the second question. If emotions are indeed heuristics of value, then it follows that emotions can be an important and useful source of information about value. However, emotions will not be epistemically superior in the sense of being the highest court of appeal for the justification of axiological beliefs (the latter view is referred to as the Epistemic Dependence Thesis, or EDT for short). The paper applies the heuristics-model to celebrated cases from the philosophy of emotions literature arguing that while the heuristics-model offers a good explanation of typical patterns of emotional reactions in such cases, advocates of EDT will have a hard time accounting for these patterns. The paper also shows that the conclusions drawn from special cases generalize. The paper ends by arguing that skepticism about the metaethical significance of emotions is compatible with a commitment to the importance of emotions in first-order normative ethics. (shrink)

Whether truth is absolute or relative has been a widely discussed topic for over two thousand years in epistemology and the philosophy of science. However, this issue has not yet been discussed systematically with respect to linguistics. The present paper attempts to make the first step toward filling this gap. It raises the following question in Sect. 1: What kind of relationship is there between the pluralism of inquiry, the relativistic and the absolutistic approach to truth, and the tolerance of (...) views differing from one’s own in the practice of linguistic research? After Sect. 2 has clarified what is meant by ‘relativism’, ‘absolutism’, ‘pluralism’ and ‘tolerance’, Sects. 3–5 describe, analyse, and systematize the ways in which relativistic and absolutistic views are manifested in linguistic theorizing. Finally, Sect. 6 summarizes the findings and gives a sophisticated answer to the main question of the paper. (shrink)

This book provides a critical survey of measurement theories and a clear exposition of the concerning philosophical questions. The author offers a new, constructive interpretation for measurement in both physics and the social sciences, arguing for a constructivist approach.

In an effort to give a historical depth to recent discussions on taste in Aesthetic theory, this paper recovers a 19th century Hungarian paradigm. While taste first came to the forefront of philosophical reflection with the Enlightenment and especially with Kant, by now there is a growing literature on the survival of that discourse in the first half of the 19th century. The present author contributed to the research, which tried to show that in Hungary Count István Széchenyi, an influential (...) political reformer, can be regarded as an author, who for socio-political reasons relied heavily on the British discourse of politeness and taste. This paper aims to show that the same discourse lived on and was employed in the second half of the 19th century in socio-political debates. The example is Baron Zsigmond Kemény, an admirer and follower of Széchenyi, who transformed the discourse into a bourgeois political-educational program. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.