Was ist Natur oder was könnte sie sein? Diese und weitere Fragen sind grundlegend für Naturdenken und -handeln. Das Lehr- und Studienbuch bietet eine historisch-systematische und zugleich praxisbezogene Einführung in die Naturphilosophie mit ihren wichtigsten Begriffen. Es nimmt den pluralen Charakter der Wahrnehmung von Natur in den philosophischen Blick und ist auch zum Selbststudium bestens geeignet.

Was Natur für uns ist und welche Bereiche unserer Umwelt als natürlich erfahren werden, scheint sich einer prinzipiellen Bestimmung zu entziehen. Auch ist weitgehend unklar, worauf sich der verantwortliche Umgang "des" Menschen mit "der" Natur beziehen soll? Etwa auf die Erhaltung des Status quo der Natur oder auf die maßvolle Steuerung des Wandels der Natur? Ist in den gegenwärtigen umweltpolitischen und den Naturschutz betreffenden Überlegungen tatsächlich "die" Natur der Referenzrahmen verantwortlichen Handelns oder geht es uns vor allem um die Erhaltung (...) eines nützlichen Zustands für uns und nachfolgende Generationen? Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes ziehen die Gewissheiten unseres theoretischen und praktischen Umgangs mit der Natur in Frage und suchen nach neuen Perspektiven. -/- Unter den Stichworten Objektive Natur (I.), Natur als Resonanzraum (II.), Natur als Ressource und Wert (III.), Natur als natürliche Umwelt (IV.), Künstliche Natur (V.), Vergesellschaftete Natur (VI.) und Verantwortete Natur (VII.) sind Beiträge der Philosophinnen Heike Baranzke und Christine Zunke sowie der Philosophen Michael Großheim, Michael Hauskeller, Kristian Köchy, Ulrich Krohs und Gregor Schiemann versammelt. Interdisziplinäre Herausforderungen zur Thematik werden in den Studien von Jörn Ahrens (Kultursoziologie), Karl-Werner Brand (Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung), Hans Diefenbacher (Wirtschaftswissenschaften), Thomas Fuchs (Psychiatrie), Ulrich Gebhard (Erziehungswissenschaften), Thomas Kirchhoff (Ökologie), Dörte Martens/ Nicole Bauer (Umweltpsychologie), Hartmut Rosa (Soziologie), Heinrich Spanier (Umweltschutz), Vera Tekken/ Josef Settele (Umweltforschung), Frank Uekötter (Umweltgeschichte) und Michael Wink (Biologie) deutlich herausgearbeitet. Die Beiträge der Theologen Dirk Evers und Thorsten Moos runden den Band ab. (shrink)

Die Idee, dass vor allem monetäre Anreize das Verhalten von Wirtschaftsakteuren in gewünschte Richtungen lenken und sogar dabei helfen können, durch Leistungssteigerung zusätzliche Wohlfahrtseffekte zu generieren, spielt in der politischen Ökonomie seit ihren Anfängen eine zentrale Rolle. Es spricht sogar einiges dafür, dass dieser Gedanke das verbindende Glied der Ökonomik als Gesellschaftstheorie im Gegensatz zu anderen gesellschaftstheoretischen Entwürfen ausmacht. Dennoch halte ich dieses Anreizargument aus normativer Perspektive für unterentwickelt, wie ich in Auseinandersetzung mit der Ökonomischen Ethik bzw. Ordnungsethik nach Karl (...) Homann und der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik zeigen möchte. Weder gelingt es der Ordnungsethik nach Karl Homann, die Bedeutung von Anreizstrukturen hinreichend zu begründen, obwohl sie in Ansätzen wichtige Argumente formuliert. Noch gelingt es der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik, die zentrale Rolle von Anreizstrukturen für die normative Theoriebildung überzeugend zurückzuweisen. Mir geht es nicht darum, den einen oder anderen wirtschaftsethischen Ansatz grundsätzlich zurückzuweisen, sondern vielmehr, auf Lücken in der Argumentation und sich daraus ergebende Forschungsfragen hinzuweisen. Vor diesem Hintergrund könnte es helfen, einen verwandten Diskurs aus der gegenwärtigen Gerechtigkeitstheorie in die Überlegungen mit einzubeziehen. Denn die grundlegende Idee der ökonomischen Gesellschaftstheorie einer Wohlfahrtssteigerung durch die gezielte Manipulation von Anreizstrukturen hat auch in der gegenwärtigen Gerechtigkeitstheorie ihre Wirkung entfaltet. In seiner Theorie der Gerechtigkeit hat John Rawls argumentiert, dass selbst Egalitaristen bestimmte Einkommensunterschiede zulassen müssen, wenn dadurch für Leistungsträgerinnen solche Anreize gesetzt werden, die gleichzeitig auch den Schlechtestgestellten zum Vorteil gereichen. Diese Argumentation ist von Gerald Cohen einer harschen Kritik ausgesetzt worden. Cohen behauptet, dass Rawls mit diesem Anreizargument seinen eigenen Egalitarismus unterläuft. Ich glaube, dass diese philosophische Diskussion des Anreizargumentes in der Gerechtigkeitstheorie für wirtschaftsethische Überlegungen relevant ist, obwohl sie innerhalb eines idealtheoretischen und egalitaristischen Bezugsrahmens geführt wird. Für diese Relevanz werde ich in vier Abschnitten argumentieren. In einem ersten Teil werde ich die Positionen der Ökonomischen Ethik von Karl Homann und der Integrativen Wirtschaftsethik von Peter Ulrich zur Rolle von Anreizen einführen und darlegen, warum ich beide Ansätze für normativ unterbestimmt halte. In einem zweiten Teil werde ich kurz die Argumentation von John Rawls und ausführlicher die Kritik von Gerald Cohen an dieser Position vorstellen. In einem dritten Teil werde ich einige Einwände gegen Cohen formulieren und die Notwendigkeit einer nichtidealen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit betonen. In einem vierten und abschließenden Teil werde ich vorschlagen, einen Teil der Wirtschaftsethik als nichtideale Gerechtigkeitstheorie zu verstehen und aus dieser Perspektive nur kurz andeuten, welche systematische Rolle dem Anreizargument zukommt. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe there to be a fundamental difference between the present and past and future times, but they tend to disagree amongst themselves about what this difference is. Some think that the present is singled out by consciousness, while others believe that it marks the position to which the flow of time has advanced. According to presentism, the current moment is ontologically privileged: nothing exists that is not present. My aim in this chapter is to argue that this particular (...) attempt at distinguishing the present from other times is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Defence cases with an escalatory structure, in which the levels of violence between aggressor and defender start out as minor and then become major, even lethal, raise sharp problems for defence theory, and for our understanding of the conditions of defence: proportionality, necessity, and imminence. It is argued here that defenders are not morally required to withdraw from participation in these cases, and that defensive escalations do not offend against any of the conditions of defence, on an adequate understanding of (...) them. No plausible interpretation of proportionality or necessity excludes defensive permissions in escalatory cases. Moreover, the structure of escalatory defensive cases also sheds useful light on permissible responses to conditional deadly threats. This is because we can analyse conditional deadly threats as disguised cases of escalation. Because defensive resistance is permissible in escalatory cases, it is also permissible in cases involving conditional deadly threats. (shrink)

Theologies of human nature routinely reflect the insights of evolutionary biology, for which human biological nature is variable, changing and indeterminate in its boundaries with other living things. However, these theologies do not yet reflect what biotechnology discloses about human biological nature, namely, that it is malleable and indeterminate in its boundaries with machines. Does respect for human biological nature as created by God, or protection of the human person whose nature it is, require us to refrain from taking advantage (...) of its malleability and indeterminacy to select or design functions and traits? Or should we welcome malleability and indeterminacy as conditions for us to fulfill a vocation to determine our nature or bring it to perfection? And do malleability and indeterminacy render obsolete the notion that we look to our nature to determine what our good is? This article answers these questions. (shrink)

Emotion regulation choices are known to be profoundly consequential across affective, cognitive, and social domains. Prior studies have identified two important external factors of emotion regulati...

With the rigorous development of modal logic in the first half of the twentieth century, it became custom amongst philosophers to characterize different views about necessity and possibility in terms of rival axiomatic systems for the modal operators ‘ ’ (‘possibly’) and ‘ ’ (‘necessarily’). From the late 1950s onwards, Arthur Prior began to argue that temporal distinctions ought to be given a similar treatment, in terms of axiomatic systems for sentential tense operators, such as ‘P’ (‘it was the case (...) that’) and ‘F’ (‘it will be the case that’).1 My aim here is to give a brief survey of the extent to which time can be treated on the model of modality. I shall not try to address the further question of whether such ‘modal’ accounts of time are to be preferred over ‘spatial’ accounts that treat times more like places. (shrink)

The article critically analyses the gaps and the analytical potential in Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere concerning corporate discourses and debates. It is shown that Habermas only analyses the field of work in abstract terms, neglecting in particular corporate public spheres. In contrast, corporate public spheres are developed as an analytical concept, expressed by companies in the form of institutionalized co-determination, situationally granted opportunities for participation and self-willed public spheres of workers. These three fields are discussed (...) using empirical examples. It is shown that corporate public spheres are eroded by precarization and instrumentalized by management. Furthermore, digitalization is working towards a comprehensive algorithmic control of corporate public spheres by companies, but also towards new autonomous communication networks that establish proletarian public spheres, so that both refeudalization and revitalization of corporate public spheres can be observed. (shrink)

Darwin’s claim about natural selection is reconstructed as an empirical claim about a causal connection leading from the match of the physiology of an individual and its environment to leaving surviving progeny. Variations in this match, Darwin claims, cause differences in the survival of the progeny. Modern concepts of fitness focus the survival side of this chain. Therefore, the assumption that evolutionary theory wants to explain reproductive success in terms of a modern concept of fitness has given rise to the (...) so-called tautology problem. It is shown that the tautology problem reappears in the treatment of fitness proxies in today’s experimental evolutionary biology when these proxies are considered to indicate fitness only. Taking Darwin’s empirical claim seriously suggests, by contrast, that fitness proxies are first of all measures of the match between organism and environment, which I call the organism’s ‘fittedness’. At the same time, they are indeed related to reproductive success. Thus looking in both directions, at fitness and at fittedness, they are janiform. Acknowledging this situation not only allows for rejection of the tautology objection, but also for integration of Darwin’s argument into current evolutionary biology. It is suggested that this helps reframe and alleviate the dispute between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. (shrink)

Nurses are often caught in the middle of what appear to be intractable moral conflicts. For such times, the function and limits of moral compromise need to be explored. Compromise is compatible with moral integrity if a number of conditions are met. Among these are the sharing of a moral language, mutual respect on the part of those who differ, acknowledgement of factual and moral complexities, and recognition of limits to compromise. Nurses are in a position uniquely suited to leadership (...) in fostering an environment that makes compromise with integrity possible. Keywords: compromise, integrity, nursing ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This essay explores the nihilistic nature of the idea of postmodern aesthetics in the Western world by highlighting its historical and cultural specificity in contrast with non-Western postmodernities, in particular in East Asia, and this in spite of their formal similarities. We then have to question the nature, possibility and implication of Western postmodern aesthetics overcoming itself within the context of globalisation.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Universes-Consciousness-Experience-Understanding/dp/1874440050/ ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8.

Many scholars suggest that one of the main differences between Xenophon’s and Plato’s portrayals of Socrates is in their emphases on the self-control the self-knowledge respectively. The aim of the paper is to examine the role the self-knowledge plays in Xenophon’s Memorabilia. In its first part Xenophon’s conception of the self-knowledge is analysed. Then it tries to answer the question whether the self-knowledge requires any preconditions. The last part is focused on the possible obstacles precluding the self-knowledge.

The consequences of a generalized Dirac equation are discussed for the energy levels of the hydrogen atom. Apart from the usual generalizations of the Dirac equation by adding new interaction terms, we generalize the anticommutation rule of the Dirac matrices, which leads to spin-dependent propagation properties. Such a theory can be looked at as a model theory for testing Lorentz invariance or as an outcome of pregeometric dynamical induction schemes for space-time structure.For special examples of generalized Dirac matrices including perturbation (...) terms with respect to the SRT Dirac matrices, we derive the energy level of the hydrogen atom and find a hyperfine splitting due to these perturbations. A comparison of this additional splitting with Lamb shift measurements gives us upper limits for possible perturbations, which turn out to be of measurable magnitude. Spin precession experiments give much more restrictive limits. So, it turns out that the hydrogen atom is not such a sensitive indicator for the Lorentz invariance as widely believed. (shrink)

Shaʻar rishon. Hagut hilkhatit u-midrashit be-sifrut Ḥazal -- Shaʻar sheni. Haguto ha-hilkhatit shel ha-Rambam -- Shaʻar shelishi. Hagut ṿa-halakhah bi-yeme ha-benayim -- Shaʻar reviʻi. Hagut rabanit ba-ʻet ha-ḥadashah.

First published in 2012, Doing Philosophy presents the basics of how 'to do' philosophy -- what philosophy is, how we can think, the nature of logic, some special terms -- in a straightforward and easy to understand style. Then, using questions and exercises as well as everyday examples, the author takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour of key philosophical topics which, as well as the 'standard fare' of logic, epistemology, mind, God etc., also includes ethical, social, scientific, cultural and (...) human issues such as time, cosmology, war, animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, genetics, evolution, and the meaning of life. The author's emphasis throughout is that philosophy is accessible to anyone keen enough to try and do it and that, as a subject, philosophy is practical, fascinating and exciting. By encouraging independent critical thinking and being succinct yet informative, the book involves the reader with the history, the breadth of subject matter, the skills of philosophising and the benefits that philosophy can offer to the enquiring individual. The book accesses major philosophical topics briefly, breaking them down into convenient points, with challenging questions throughout and exercise questions at the end of each chapter, whilst introducing major thinkers and their ideas. There is an extensive further reading list to help those who wish to take this absorbing subject further. (shrink)

There is increasing evidence that carbohydrate antigens act as cell recognition molecules in the highly organized structure of the nervous system. These carbohydrate antigens may be expressed as glycolipids, glycoproteins or proteoglycans, and in some cases all three forms of these glycoconjugates, expressing identical carbohydrate epitopes, can be detected in a specific brain region. This article summarizes recent studies concerning the expression of glycoconjugates during development of the vertebrate central nervous system. These findings are discussed in association with current models (...) of glycoconjugate function. (shrink)

Report on the National Seminar on Indian Psychology, Bangalore, December 2007, jointly organized by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana.

The city of Jerusalem is the focal point of Augustine’s exegesis of the Psalms of Ascent. In Enarratio in Psalmum 121, Augustine presents Jerusalem as a collective unity contemplating God’s being. The city is thoroughly established in peace and love and participates intimately in the divine life. The essential features of the Jerusalem described in Enarratio in Psalmum 121 align neatly with the created intellectual realm of contemplation outlined in Confessiones Book 12. Both texts envisage a city that participates in (...) the divine idipsum. This city is a creature so intimate with God’s being that its creaturely mutability is checked. Both texts articulate this created intellectual realm as participating in God’s eternity. In both cases, this participation is realized in contemplation: through the constancy of its vision, it is conformed to that which it sees. Finally, both the aeterna Ierusalem and the caelum caeli are a communion—in fact, a city—united in love. In Enarratio in Psalmum 121, Augustine urges his congregants to join themselves to this edifice that is still under construction; in the Confessiones, he presents himself as a pilgrim groaning and longing with desire to be part of the Jerusalem that is above, his mother and patria. (shrink)

Originally published in 1964, this book examines the influence of reason and authority upon English thought in the eighteenth century. The text relates these two concepts to movements in religious and political thought, beginning with Locke's views on faith and reason before going through various areas and finishing with the beginnings of Romanticism. The age of the Enlightenment is seen as constituted, on the one hand, by an attempt to relate all significant intellectual movements to reason and, on the other, (...) an attempt to devise proper restraints on the authority of reason. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in philosophy, social and political thought, and eighteenth-century English history. (shrink)