Sexual and gender minorities in contemporary India are formed in the interstices between the neoliberal, Hindutva state; transnational discourses of liberal democracy and sexual ‘rights’; as well as cosmopolitan culture and global LGBT movements. As is evident in recent court judgments and legislation, particularly since 2014, postcolonial Hindu nationalism has created cultural conditions where forms of queer gender are permissible while queer sexuality is generally unacceptable. In recent years, significant developments have focused on transgender communities, complicating activism surrounding sexual and (...) gender identities. By positing some identities as state-sanctioned acceptable citizens and others as not, certain ‘transgender’ individuals are conceptualised as bearers of rights while finding other facets of their identities discriminated against and maintained as illegal. The 2014 Supreme Court NALSA v. Union of India judgment and The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 passed by the Lok Sabha, alongside further judgments and legislation affecting wider LGBT communities, have kept discourses fixed on sexual and gender identities and their relationship to Indian citizenship at the forefront of discussions of gender justices and injustices in India today. Focusing on recent judicial and legislative developments, this paper examines how transgender rights are being granted in the context of the neoliberal, Hindutva state and considers which forms of transgender identity are currently being conceptualised as legitimate and authentic in such discourses, which can serve to bolster larger right-wing visions and ideologies of the nation and its citizens. It contemplates the ways in which gender ‘justices’, framed in relation to both transnational LGBT rights discourses and right-wing agendas, are conceptualised and played out on the bodies of sexual and gender minorities. (shrink)

This article explores sex selective abortion as a form of structural violence within the broader notion of women's ‘protection’ in contemporary India. While SSA tends to be framed more generally within ethical and choice-based frameworks around abortion access and reproductive ‘rights’, and specifically in India around preference for sons as a discriminatory, cultural, technological misogyny, this article argues that sex selective abortion in India needs to be understood as an outcome of broader systemic economic, political and social processes. The deepening (...) of neoliberal values through state policies has impacted significantly on social relations, shaping SSA as a manifestation of structural violence. State-driven policies in India reflect a neoliberal governmentality through state patriarchy that is implicit within the neoliberal developmental, governmental and capitalist paradigm of contemporary India. This article argues that SSA is structurally produced and therefore cannot be remedied through awareness-raising strategies such as beti bachao or financial inclusion as a means to ‘protect’ or ‘save the girl child’. Indeed, it is neoliberal economic forces that actively, though seemingly inadvertently, promote anti-women, sex selective abortion as a reproductive strategy, which is then disciplined through neoliberal governmentality. This highlights SSA as a form of gendered and structural, rather than discriminatory, violence. (shrink)

Examining the ethics of long-term, career involvement by physicians in global health work is vital, given growing professional interest and potential health implications for communities abroad. However, current literature remains heavily focused on ethical considerations of short-term global health training experiences. A literature review informed our development of an ethics framework centered on two perspectives: the practitioner perspective, further subdivided into extrinsic and intrinsic factors, and community perspectives, specifically that of the host community and the physician’s home community. Some physician (...) factors included cultural/linguistic differences, power imbalances, and sustainable skills/competencies. Receiving community factors included resource limitations, standard of care disparities, and community autonomy. Home community factors focused on the opportunity cost of an unavailable physician who was trained and supported by the local community. Descriptive review permitted comparison with existing short-term literature, noting similarities and differences. Our framework provides a basis for further research and critical analysis of ethical implications of career-long physician global health work. (shrink)

Robots as social companions in close proximity to humans have a strong potential of becoming more and more prevalent in the coming years, especially in the realms of elder day care, child rearing, and education. As human beings, we have the fascinating ability to emotionally bond with various counterparts, not exclusively with other human beings, but also with animals, plants, and sometimes even objects. Therefore, we need to answer the fundamental ethical questions that concern human-robot-interactions per se, and we need (...) to address how we conceive of »good lives«, as more and more of the aspects of our daily lives will be interwoven with social robots. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethical implications of perverse incentives with regard to autonomous driving. We define perverse incentives as a feature of an action, technology, or social policy that invites behavior which negates the primary goal of the actors initiating the action, introducing a certain technology, or implementing a social policy. As a special form of means-end-irrationality, perverse incentives are to be avoided from a prudential standpoint, as they prove to be directly self-defeating: They are not just a form of (...) unintended side effect that must be balanced against the main goal or value to be realized by an action, technology, or policy. Instead, they directly cause the primary goals of the actors—i.e., the goals that they ultimately pursue with the action, technology, or policy—to be “worse achieved”. In this paper, we elaborate on this definition and distinguish three ideal-typical phases of adverse incentives, where only in the last one the threshold for a perverse incentive is crossed. In addition, we discuss different possible relevant actors and their goals in implementing autonomous vehicles. We conclude that even if some actors do not pursue traffic safety as their primary goal, as part of a responsibility network they incur the responsibility to act on the common primary goal of the network, which we argue to be traffic safety. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two main questions regarding the notion of privacy: “What is privacy?” and “Why do/should we value privacy?”. In developing a social-ontological recognitional model of privacy, it gives an answer to the first question. According to the SORM, Privacy is a second order quality of roles within social practices. It is a function of who is or should be recognized as a “standard authority”. Enjoying standard authority means to have the right to interpret and contest role behavior (...) and role obligations within a specific practice, as well as evaluate the normative structure, the fundamental practice norms as well as the roles and their status. The SORM utilizes the concept of standard authority to explicate privacy with regard to two categories that capture the relevant phenomena of privacy: decisional and informational privacy. Within a practice, an actor is said to have decisional privacy if she as a BCR does not recognize bearers of accidental roles as standard authorities. Vice versa, an actor is said to enjoy informational privacy if all other BCRs recognize her as a standard authority. Additionally, the requirement of mutual recognition by the practice participants as standard authorities introduces a “weak normativity” into the theory, which can be used to identify deficient privacy arrangements within practices. (shrink)

Matthias Braun’s1 concise reflections on the ethical challenges posed by digital twins in medicine are briefly supplemented below by a thought that, in my view, seems to run through the text like a thread, but whose ethical implications are not explicitly stated. Braun states in the final paragraph that ‘digital twins do not fundamentally threaten the embodied person’, at least not as long as the person in question has ‘control over her simulated representation’. I agree with this, but would like (...) to point out that it is not just the embodied person who has control. Regardless of whether the person embodied by the digital twin has permanent control over it, which enables them to revoke their agreed representation at any time, the company that developed or uses the digital twin also has control over it. The control of the company or companies and other involved parties lies in the fact that data and information are …. (shrink)

Following the recent practice turn in privacy research, informational privacy is increasingly analyzed with regard to the “appropriate flow of information” within a given practice, which preserves the “contextual integrity” of that practice (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 149; 2015). Such a practice-theoretical take on privacy emphasizes the normative structure of practices as well as its structural injustices and power asymmetries, rather than focusing on the intentions and moral considerations of individual or institutional actors. Since privacy norms are seen to be institutionalized (...) via the role obligations of the practice's participants, this approach can analyze structural and systematic privacy infringements in terms of “defective role performances and defective social relations” (Roessler & Mokrosinska, 2013, p. 780). -/- Unfortunately, it is still often somewhat unclear what this exactly means within the context of informational privacy, why these performances and relations are defective and for whom. This raises the common objection of a so-called “practice positivism” (Applbaum, 1999, p. 51), that is, the difficulty of practice–theoretical accounts to take a practice-independent standpoint, from which to normatively evaluate the existing practice norms themselves. For example, Nissenbaum herself initially argues for a “presumption in favor of the status quo” with respect to the appropriateness and flow of privacy norms within a practice (Nissenbaum, 2004, p. 127). Such a “practice conservatism” (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 169) comes dangerously close to committing a naturalistic fallacy, if not undergirded by practice-external criteria (which is ultimately what she does). -/- Merely resorting to existing practice norms to assess what defective role performances amount to, only shifts the question from how to recognize an appropriate flow of information to the question of how to recognize those defective role performances and social relations. Against this backdrop, the central aim of this article is to shed light on this question without resorting to practice-independent first principles or far-reaching universalistic anthropological assumptions. For this, I will analyze the notion of “defective role performances and social relations” in terms of social pathologies.1 Doing so has two advantages: First of all, it can draw on already existing concepts and distinctions, which help to categorize the different levels of analysis that exist in informational privacy research and situate the notion of “defective role performances” within them (Section 1). Second, those concepts and distinctions can serve as a basis for establishing a typology of phenomena with regard to deficient practices of informational privacy (Section 4). (shrink)

Der Titel dieses Aufsatzes mag zunächst befremden, gar als unsachliche Bösartigkeit aufgefaßt werden, doch „Vorurteil“ und „Wahn“ sind im Rahmen von Psychologie bzw. Sozialpsychologie und Psychopathologie definierte Begriffe. Untersucht man unter diesem Aspekt den mathematischen Grundlagenstreit in diesem Jahrhundert, der richtiger „logisch-mathematischer Grundlagenstreit“ zu nennen wäre, dann wird ein Argumentationsklima deutlich, das von Vorurteils- und Wahnstrukturen geprägt ist, das sich zu Ungungsten der empirisch orientierten Begründungsposition auswirkte. Sollte sich angesichts erneuter Stimmen für die empirische Position wieder eine Grundlagendiskussion entwickeln, wäre (...) das Argumentationsniveau zu verbessern. Hierzu gehört zunächst die Erwägung von Alternativen, besonders bezüglich möglicher Gegenstände von Logik und Mathematik. Weiterhin wären erkenntnistheoretische Konzepte zu entwickeln, die dem eigenständigen Charakter von „reiner“ Logik und Mathematik gerecht werden, aber dennoch empirische Begründung ermöglichen. (shrink)

„Polyamorie“ ist die Bezeichnung für das explizite und konsensuelle Eingehen mehrerer Liebesbeziehungen zur selben Zeit. Mit polyamoren Konstellationen korreliert, dafür wird in diesem Beitrag argumentiert, eine Ethik der Beziehungsgestaltung und sie schließen darüber hinaus für gewöhnlich das Teilen äquivalenter gesellschaftspolitischer Prämissen ein, auf die im Folgenden an einigen Stellen hingewiesen wird. Eine Ethik der Polyamorie umfasst zwei Eigenschaften: Polyethiken brechen zum einen mit dem traditionellen Verständnis vom Individuum oder Handlungssubjekt. Ich werde zeigen, dass polyamoren Beziehungsnetzwerken und der Ethik, die in (...) ihnen idealiter gelebt wird, ein relationales Denken zugrunde liegt. Zum anderen zeichnen sich Polyethiken durch ein besonderes Augenmerk auf die Beziehungen, die als poly bezeichnet werden können, aus, in denen typischerweise eine Reihe von Werten realisiert werden. Zuvor gilt es allerdings, das Verständnis von Liebe zu definieren, das nach meinem Verständnis einem Polycule bzw. polyamoren Beziehungsnetzwerken im Allgemeinen zugrunde liegt. (shrink)

Researches on Kant as Example of Lack of Methods Arising Through One's Own Fault. The researches on Kant are one example of the high degree of differences in opinions about mentalities. The lack of methods is one reason. Kant researchers have regretted this too. But as available methods are not developed, these regrets are not very convincing. For instance, the old method to sort concepts in different degrees of abstraction is not developed as a method of interpretation. This method will (...) be exemplified for the question whether Kant was idealist or realist. It could have been an old well-known method as a method of interpretation, but this has not yet been done. Other reasons for this lack of methods are to be inquired. Some philosophical positions presuppose the lack of methods and this could be a fundamental reason for the lack of methods of interpretation. (shrink)

Making use of the liberal concept of civil disobedience, this paper assesses, under which circumstances instances of illegal digital protest—called “hacktivism”—can be justified vis-à-vis the pro t...

Political participation lies at the heart of normative democratic theory. To foster participatory interactions between citizens, some advocates and designers are resorting to gamification as the use of psycho-motivational involvement strategies from games in non-game contexts. The hope is that through gamification mechanisms, citizens will be drawn more easily towards participation platforms, apps, and digital services, as well as remain there longer, thereby effectively enhancing participation numbers and time. In this article, I will explore the potential problems of these involvement (...) strategies, namely the worry that they may be able to undermine citizen’s individual and political autonomy by manipulating them into participating. Depending on the severity of the psycho-motivational effect as well as the covertness of the mechanism, gamification may constitute inadmissible forms of paternalism. (shrink)

This book is an English-to-Chinese translation of 'Origen Against Plato', by Mark Julian Edwards.

This book is a German-to-Chinese translation of 'Augustine', by Christoph Horn.

While recent studies suggest that augmented learning employing smart glasses increases overall learning performance, in this paper we are more interested in the question which repercussions ALSG will have on the type of knowledge that is acquired. Drawing from the theoretical discussion within epistemology about the differences between Knowledge-How and Knowledge-That, we will argue that ALSG furthers understanding as a series of epistemic and non-epistemic Knowing-Hows. Focusing on academic knowledge acquisition, especially with respect to early curriculum experiments in various STEM (...) disciplines as investigated by the BmBF “Be-Greifen” project, we take the Be-Greifen holo.lab setup as an example for showing that ALSG shifts the learning focus from propositional knowledge to epistemic competencies, which can be differentiated as “grasping”, “wielding”, and “transferring”. (shrink)

Learn all about animal rights activism, from ending animal testing to veganism. Get a global look at the history of the movement, meet the activists involved, and celebrate some of the legal victories! Each chapters end with a call to action, so kids can feel inspired to get involved in their own communities. This high-interest book is written at a lower reading level for struggling readers. Considerate text and engaging art and photographs are sure to grab even the most reluctant (...) readers. Series includes a table of contents, sidebars, bibliography, glossary, index, and author biography. (shrink)

This book is a German-to-Mandarin translation of 'Luther, Calvin und die anderen – Die Reformation und ihre Folgen', by Armin Kohnle.

ZusammenfassungDie klassische Aussagenlogik wird falsch gedeutet. Korrigiert man die Deutungen, dann ist sie eine epistemische Möglichkeitenlogik, die sich aus assertorischen und kon‐tingenten Aussagen zusammensetzt. Da sie nicht modalitatenneutral ist, dürfen andere Logiken nicht auf ihr ohne diese Einschrankung aufbauen. Sie bedarf zur sinnvollen Deutung einer handlungstheoretischen Einbettung und ist insofern selbst schon ein Stück pragmatische Logik. Der Gebrauch der Negation dyadischer Aussagen beruht auf einer willkürlichen Festlegung, die durch die Abstraktion vom epistemisch‐hand‐lungstheoretischen Zusammenhang ermöglicht wird.

There has been little attention to feminism and gender issues in mainstream philosophy of technology and vice versa. Since the beginning of the so-called »second wave feminism« (in the middle of the 20th century), there has been a growing awareness of the urgency of a critical reflection of technology and science within feminist discourse. But feminist thinkers have not consistently interpreted technology and science as emancipative and liberating for the feminist movement. Because technological development is mostly embedded in social, political, (...) and economic systems that are patriarchally hierarchized, many feminists criticized the structures of dominance, marginalization and oppression inherent in numerous technologies. Therefore, the question of defining and ascribing responsibility in technics and science is essential for this anthology – regarding for instance the technological transformation of labor, the life in the information society, and the relationship between humans and machines. (shrink)

Jesus and Socrates shared a remarkable gift; a channel of inner spiritual communication, to afford them truthful guidance in their respective religious discourse. Jesus is part of the Trinity; he is the Son, the Son of God. In mortal life he is the son of a carpenter. He called on all peoples to repent of their sins but fell foul of the authorities and was crucified. Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher and the son of an artisan. His mission is (...) to drive the Athenians to investigate truth, but he too incurs the displeasure of fellow citizens, to the extent of execution. The accusations made against them centre around, in Jesus’ case, proclaiming himself the Son of God, with the means to pardon, and in Socrates’, that a daimonion, an inner voice, speaks to him in his heart. Jesus talks with God directly through prayer, as the pneuma of God, i.e. to pneuma to hagion, or Holy Spirit, is with him. Socrates seems to enter what we would now think of as a trance-like condition, wherein he communicates with his inner daimonion, who directs him to take courage on the righteous path. (shrink)

Vermutlich sind sich Technik und Mensch nirgendwo so nahe, sind auf intime und verbindliche Weise miteinander verschränkt, wie in den Bereichen von Medizin, Therapie und Pflege. Am Nexus von Medizin und Technik werden deshalb zahlreiche ethische Fragen aufgeworfen. Dieser Band verfolgt das zweifache Anliegen, die Verschränkungen von Medizin, Technik und Ethik einerseits aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Perspektiven zu beleuchten sowie andererseits einen Blick in die Praxis zu werfen, in die Erfahrungsräume der in der Medizin tätigen Menschen und ihre Interaktionen mit Technologien.

Porphyry, the Phoenician polymath, having studied with Plotinus when he was thirty years old, was a well-known Hellenic philosopher, an opponent of Christianity, and was born in Tyre, in the Roman Empire. We know of his anti-Christian ideology and of his defence of traditional Roman religions, by means of a fragment of his Adversus Christianos. This work incurred controversy among early Christians. His Adversus Christianos has been served as a critique of Christianity and a defence of the worship of the (...) traditional gods, so it is inevitable that his texts involved Biblical culture and religious Hellenism. Augustine, in his De Civitate Dei 10. 28, reproves Porphyry for wasting so much time in learning the theurgic arts and rites. This paper does not inquire into whether Porphyry’s philosophical monistic theology is shown in Plotinus’ Enneads, but focuses on his anti-Christian thought through the fragments that we have, particularly Augustine’s De Civitate Dei. (shrink)

Plato, as a poet, employs muthos extensively to express his philosophical dialectical development, so the majority of his dialogues are comprised of muthoi. We cannot separate his muthos from his philosophical thought, since the former has great influence in the latter. So the methodology of this paper is first to discuss the dialogue "Theaetetus" to find out why he compares Socrates to the Greek goddess Artemis; then his concept of Maieutikē will be investigated. At the beginning of Plato’s "Theaetetus", Socrates (...) first likens himself to the goddess Artemis, who, though unmarried, has a duty to assist women in labour. Socrates’ role, as Plato portrays, is the same as that of Artemis; and the technē he possesses is Maieutikē, which is to assist his students in giving birth to their mental offspring. This paper will focus on discussion on the Socratic mythological role in Platonic interpretation and dialectics so as to reveal the philosophical meaning of Socratic ignorance. (shrink)

The benefits of the digital age are huge. Our lives have been transformed, both in the developed and the undeveloped world. However, this transformation has its dark side. The same powerful technologies have enabled cultural or religious grooming to flourish, unmoderated social 'influencing' to have free reign, fake information to spread, and sophisticated hackers to create destabilizing international mayhem. What place does the Church have in all this? How does it respond? What about the great philosophers of the neo-Platonic age, (...) whose wisdom, borne of the great philosopher himself, was formed through the emerging doctrines of the early Christian church? The excellent and thought-provoking essays gathered here provide answers to these questions and more. (shrink)

Both Christianity and Plato claim that the psychē is immortal, that there is life after death. However, Plato’s theory of the psychē has been misinterpreted by some Christian scholars and theologians, who rail against Greek philosophy for distorting Christianity’s doctrine of the psychē, and who hold further that Plato’s theory of the psychē is a dualism. This thesis will prove that Plato does not assert the sōma-psychē bipartite, and try to solve the Christian debate between the sōma-psychē bipartite and sōma, (...) psychē and pneuma tripartite. The importance of Plato’s Timaeus in the ancient world - particularly in the Academy - is the same as that of the Bible in the modern one. This paper will focus on Plato’s Timaeus with the help of his Phaedo and Gorgias to discuss his theory of the birth of the psychē and sōma and the relationship between them. So the main purpose of this article is to inquire into the Gospel of Matthew, thus I hope to show the similarities and the discriminations between the relative thought of Christianity and of Plato. Furthermore, I would like to illustrate that Plato is not a dualist, contrary to the assertions of some Christian scholars. (shrink)

Summary Not ‘human sciences’, but physics is said to be the measure for that what is called science . Deficiencies of human sciences are led back to complexity, external influences etc. If one differentiates several orientations for that what is called science , another reason is determinable. The conceptions of science in modern thinking are monistically orientated, because they have the aim to reach exceptional knowledge, that lets eliminate alternatives. Elimination combined with competition leads to prejudices. Competition does not reduce (...) the irrationality, like Popper, Toulmin and others assumed, but further it. Only a polyistic orientation, for which the aim of science would be the making and maintenance of alternatives, would diminish the causes for prejudices. Since in the ‘human sciences’ unlike natural sciences prejudices are objects of research this leads to a weakening of the object orientated elimination. What therefore has become an ideal for physics, has fatal consequences for ‘human sciences’, which a physics orientated philosophy of science consolidates. For that reason a polyistic orientated understanding of science has to be developed, that can be divided in eclectic (pluralistic) and systematic conceptions. As an intensional combinatorics produces systematically alternatives systematic polyism and combinatorics are connected with each other. (shrink)