This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments?Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of (...) human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced.The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. (shrink)

Band 9 der Schriftenreihe Beitrage zur Angewandten Ethik versammelt Arbeiten zu aktuellen Problemen sowie zu Grundlagenfragen der Medizinischen Ethik. Es handelt sich dabei zum Teil um Beitrage zu wissenschaftlichen Symposien, die das Interuniversitare Institut fur Angewandte Ethik in den Jahren 2008-2011 veranstaltet hat, und zum anderen Teil um Forschungsarbeiten, die im Rahmen von Projekten dieses Instituts entstanden sind. Zu den aktuellen Problemen der Medizinischen Ethik, die in den einzelnen Beitragen angeschnitten werden, gehoren Fragen der Stammzellenforschung und der Praimplantationsdiagnostik ebenso wie (...) Fragen, die sich im Zusammenhang mit den bei der In-Vitro-Fertilisation entstehenden 'uberzahligen' Embryonen ergeben, sowie Fragen bezuglich der neuen Patientenverfugungen - also durchwegs Fragen von hochster Aktualitat und Brisanz. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

In this collection comprising four of his most influential essays, Henrich proves himself unique in the conjunction of philosophical acumen, insight, and originality that he brings to Kant interpretation.

Czy eutanazja gwałci prawo do życia ("the right to life")? Odpowiedź na to pytanie zależy od rozumienia terminu "prawo do życia". Autor, odwołując się do pojęcia uprawnienia i typologii uprawnień, zaproponowanej przez Stiga oraz Helle Kanger, wyróżnia i analizuje w kategoriach formalnologicznych cztery rozumienia tego terminu. Każdemu z nich odpowiada odmienne stanowisko w sprawie dopuszczalności eutanazji. Pierwszym z tych stanowisk jest "mocna doktryna świętości życia", według której prawu do życia towarzyszy obowiązek przedłużania życia za pomocą wszelkich możliwych środków. Eutanazja zatem, (...) według zwolenników tego stanowiska, jest niedopuszczalna pod żadną postacią. Takie zdecydowane odrzucenie eutanazji stoi w sprzeczności z zasadą szacunku dla autonomii pacjenta oraz zasadą niezadawania zbędnego cierpienia (the principle of nonmaleficence). Uwzględnienie tych dwóch zasad prowadzi do modyfikacji powyższego stanowiska, w wyniku czego otrzymujemy "słabą doktrynę świętości życia". Według tego stanowiska dopuszczalna jest pod pewnymi warunkami eutanazja bierna, czyli zaniechanie leczenia czy też podtrzymywania życia pacjenta. Odmienne stanowisko od zwolenników doktryny świętości życia w obu jej odmianach zajmują zwolennicy liberalnego podejścia do eutanazji. Tutaj także możemy wyróżnić dwa stanowiska. Według słabego stanowiska liberalnego, w pewnych warunkach dopuszczalne moralnie jest popełnienie samobójstwa, niemniej jednak ściśle zakazana jest pomoc osób trzecich w samobójstwie, jak też pozbawienie z rozmysłem życia drugiej osoby na jej własną prośbę. Mocne liberalne stanowisko uznaje za moralnie dopuszczalną pomoc w samobójstwie czy też pozbawienie z rozmysłem życia drugiej osoby na jej własną prośbę. Innymi słowy, za moralnie dopuszczalną uznaje eutanazję czynną. (shrink)

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

--Über Schellings Konstruktion des Christentums, von W. Becker.--Zur systematischen Differenz von Apriorität und Reinheit in Kants Lehre von den synthetischen Urteilen a priori, von K. Cramer.--Endlichkeit des Bewusstseins und absolulte Gewissheit bei Descartes, von H. Fahrenbach.--Objektivation und Designation, von W. Flach.--Über den spekulativen Anfang, von H.F. Fulda.--Vorgestalten der Reflexion, von H.-G. Gadamer.--Formalisierung und Formalismus von J. Glöckl.--Naturzweck und Wesenbegriff, von E. Heintel.--Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, von D. Heinrich.--Zur Präsenz der transzendentalen Differenz in der dialektischen Vernunft, von W. Marx.--Zum Verhältnis von Faktizität (...) und Reflexion in der Transzendent alphilosophie, von H. Radermacher.--Beziehung und Beziehungsloses (Absolutes) von J.J. Schaaf.--Ist Metaphysik des Transzendenten möglich? von H. Wagner.--Vernunft als Kanon, Organon und Kathartikon des allgemeinen Verstandes, von R. Wiehl.--Gestaltwelt, von G. Wolandt. (shrink)

Auf den ersten Blick scheint Selbstbewusstsein zu dem zu gehören, was sich nahezu von selbst versteht. In anhaltendem Nachdenken stellt sich aber heraus, dass mit ihm der Philosophie eines ihrer schwierigsten und folgenreichsten Probleme aufgegeben ist. Vor über fünfzig Jahren erschien Dieter Henrichs Abhandlung Fichtes ursprüngliche Einsicht, welche dieses Problem ausarbeitete. Sie zeigte, dass es Fichte war, der als erster das Problem sicher erfasste und zum Leitthema seines Denkens werden liess. Dem unveränderten Abdruck dieses Textes folgt nun -- als um (...) ein Vielfaches umfangreicherer Haupttext -- eine neue Folge von Überlegungen. Sie betreffen Selbstbewusstsein im Zusammenhang einer philosophischen Grundlegung und die Probleme, die Fichtes Systembildung unter dem Leitgedanken seiner ursprünglichen Einsicht in eine Bewegung ohne definitive Lösung versetzten. Henrichs Buch lässt sich als eine Erneuerung von Kants Denkart betrachten - in der Beziehung auf ein Thema, dessen Bedeutung für die Philosophie kaum noch bestritten wird, in einer der Erfahrungsart der Gegenwart gemässen Perspektive und in der Folge von Klärungen, die zu gewinnen sind, wenn man der Dynamik in Fichtes Systembildungen nachdenkt."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In a series of studies over the last 30 years, Henrich has shown that Hölderlin played a decisive role in the development of philosophy from Kant to Hegel. This book includes six of Henrich's most important essays on Hölderlin.

This paper presents a simple mathematical model that shows how economic inequality between social groups can arise and be maintained even when the only adaptive learning process driving cultural evolution increases individuals’ economic gains. The key assumptions are that human populations are structured into groups and that cultural learning is more likely to occur within than between groups. Then, if groups are sufficiently isolated and there are potential gains from specialization and exchange, stable stratification can sometimes result. This model predicts (...) that stratification is favored, ceteris paribus, by (1) greater surplus production, (2) more equitable divisions of the surplus among specialists, (3) greater cultural isolation among subpopulations within a society, and (4) more weight given to economic success by cultural learners. (shrink)

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey model implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some (...) time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere. (shrink)

On considere communement que la philosophie de la subjectivite a ete definitivement depassee par les differents courants de pensee du XXe siecle. Alors que l'approche naturaliste des neurosciences vise a une reduction complete de la conscience individuelle aux activites neuronales du cerveau, la phenomenologie de l'intersubjectivite et la philosophie de la communication contemporaines presupposent comme acquis que la relation a autrui jouit d'une primaute ultime sur toute egoite du moi. Sans proner un simple retour a la metaphysique du sujet au (...) sens classique, le present ouvrage entend montrer que la philosophie ne peut ni ne doit renoncer a la pensee de la subjectivite dans la mesure ou tout rapport au monde naturel et toute relation a autrui decoulent de la dynamique de la relation a soi primordiale dans laquelle chaque sujet se constitue a la fois comme libre et fini. (shrink)

Heinrich Rickert fut, avec Windelband et Lask, l’un des principaux représentants de l’école néokantienne de Heidelberg, qui se différencie essentiellement de l’école de Marbourg par la façon dont elle redéfinit l’idéalisme transcendantal à partir de la problématique de la validité, héritée notamment de la philosophie de Lotze.Les six articles réunis ici, publiés par Rickert dans la revue Logos entre 1911 et 1932, dessinent les grandes lignes d’une philosophie systématique des valeurs qui ne se veut pas seulement une théorie transcendantale du (...) valoir dans son opposition à l’être, mais aussi, en tant que doctrine des visions du monde, l’élaboration d’une réponse philosophique à la question du sens de la vie. À côté de recherches architectoniques portant sur la détermination et l’articulation des différents domaines axiologiques, mais aussi sur les problèmes généraux liés à la définition de la philosophie comme doctrine des valeurs, ces articles entretiennent une constante polémique à l’endroit de tout intuitionnisme et de toute « philosophie de la vie ». Contre le biologisme qui fait du vivant la valeur absolue et contre la dénonciation intuitionniste de la science comme intellectualisme, l’affirmation de la transcendance des valeurs garantit pour Rickert le droit d’une philosophie scientifique et critique de la culture, qui en appréhende la vie propre en rendant compte de l’articulation des valeurs et de l’effectivité empirique au sein d’un système des valeurs qui reste ouvert sur l’infinie nouveauté et l’inépuisable richesse du monde historique. (shrink)

This is a collection of four essays on aesthetic, ethical, and political issues by the pre-eminent Kant scholar in Germany today, perhaps best known for rekindling interest in the great classical German tradition from Kant to Fichte.

Vorwort - I. EINFUHRUNG IN DEN PROBLEMBEREICH EINER SPEKULATIVEN LOGIK. Werner Flach. Die dreifache Stellung des Denkens zur Objektivitat und das Problem der spekulativen Logik - Leo Lugarini. Die Bedeutung des Problems des Ganzen in der Hegelschen Logik - Pavel Apostol. Wie ist die Entwicklung einer logica humana im Rahmen der Darlegung der logica divina in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik moglich? II. STRUKTURPROBLEME DER WISSENSCHAFT DER LOGIK. Peter Rohs. Der Grund der Bewegung des Begriffs - Josef Simon. Die Bewegung des (...) Begriffs in Hegels Logik. - Werner Becker. Das Problem der Selbstanwendung im Kategorienverstandnis der dialektischen Logik - Reiner Wiehl. Selbstbeziehung und Selbstanwendung dialektischer Kategorien - Michael Kosok. The Dialectical Matrix or Hegel's Absolute Idea as Pure Method - David Lachterman. Response to Prof. M. Kosok's Lecture - Manfred Wetzel. Zum Verhaltnis von Darstellung und Dialektik in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik III. ANALYSEN ZUR LOGIK DES WESENS. Dominique Dubarle. La logique de la reflexion et la transition de la logique de l'etre a celle de l'essence - Dieter Henrich. Hegels Logik der Reflexion. Neue Fassung - David Lachterman. Response to Prof. D. Henrich: Hegels Logik der Reflexion - Yvon Belaval. L'essence de la force dans la logique de Hegel. Print-on-Demand-Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1978.". (shrink)

ResumoNo presente texto (“O Eu de Fichte”), no qual identifica duas épocas distintas na história da filosofia concernente ao desenvolvimento da teoria da consciência, D. Henrich volta-se, após caracterizar os componentes de cada período, à teoria da consciência do primeiro Fichte, o da Doutrina da Ciência de 1794, pondo ênfase sobre algumas aporiaspresentes nessa sua primeira formulação, na medida em que Fichte foi o primeiro a encarar o problema da consciência em sua perspectiva, no fundo, mais agônica, deixado sem (...) tratamento pela tradição da filosofia pré-kantiana e kantiana. AbstractIn the present text (Fichte’s Self), in which he identifies two distinct epochs in the history of philosophy concerning the development of the theory of consciousness, D. Henrich turns, after characterizing the components of each period, to the theory of consciousness of the first Fichte, that of the Doctrine of Science of 1794, placing emphasis on some of the aporias present in his first formulation, insofar as Fichte was the first to face the problem of consciousness in its essentially more agonistic perspective, left untreated by the tradition of pre-Kantian and Kantianphilosophy. (shrink)

Hence, there is still controversy over which of the two versions of the deduction deserves priority and whether indeed any distinction between them can be maintained that would go beyond questions of presentation and involve the structure of the proof itself. Schopenhauer and Heidegger held that the first edition alone fully expresses Kant's unique philosophy, while Kant himself, as well as many other Kantians, have only seen a difference in the method of presentation.