Im zweiten Buch seiner rechtstheologischen Summe De legibus ac Deo legislatore aus dem Jahre 1612 entwickelt Francisco Suárez seine Theorie des Naturrechts. Dabei gelingt Suárez die kritische Überarbeitung der lex-naturalis-Theorien des Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin und damit eine kritische Kontinuität mittelalterlicher Rechtstheologie. Suárez formuliert aber darüber hinaus eine für das frühe 17. Jahrhundert eigenständige Konzeption, die als innovatives Modell von Naturrecht mit den Entwürfen Hugo Grotius’ und Thomas Hobbes’ zu konkurrieren vermag. Die Einflüsse dieses genuin politisch-theologischen Naturrechtskonzepts reichen bis (...) zu Pufendorf und Wolff. Der Band erschließt diesen Schlüsseltext des frühneuzeitlichen Naturrechts im Sinne eine kooperativen Kommentars. Mit Beiträgen von Oliver Bach, Nobert Brieskorn, Simon Eultgen, Holger Glinka, Frank Grunert, Dominik Recknagel, Stefan Schweighöfer, Kurt Seelmann und Gideon Stiening. (shrink)

Recent writers claim that responsibilist virtue epistemology courts skepticism, owing to the fact that most of us lack the virtues it deems necessary for justified belief and knowledge. A powerful version of this objection is the challenge from situationist social psychology pressed by Alfano (2012, 2013) and Olin and Doris (2014). This paper develops a new version of responsibilism that is immune from this objection, and shows that this view has many advantages over other forms of virtue epistemology. My responsibilism (...) dispenses with the ubiquitous but (I argue) mistaken idea that responsibilist virtue properties must be understood in terms of character traits. My view parallels an often overlooked form of virtue ethics suggested by Thomson (1997) that some situationists (e.g., Harman (2001)) have praised. That form shares with other forms the thought that virtue properties are normatively fundamental, but it adds that act-attaching ones are prior to person-attaching ones, and require no backing by character traits. Far from being an ad hoc retreat position, I argue that this view is independently attractive. (shrink)

The uncanny valley—the unnerving nature of humanlike robots—is an intriguing idea, but both its existence and its underlying cause are debated. We propose that humanlike robots are not only unnerving, but are so because their appearance prompts attributions of mind. In particular, we suggest that machines become unnerving when people ascribe to them experience, rather than agency. Experiment 1 examined whether a machine’s humanlike appearance prompts both ascriptions of experience and feelings of unease. Experiment 2 tested whether a machine capable (...) of experience remains unnerving, even without a humanlike appearance. Experiment 3 investigated whether the perceived lack of experience can also help explain the creepiness of unfeeling humans and philosophical zombies. These experiments demonstrate that feelings of uncanniness are tied to perceptions of experience, and also suggest that experience—but not agency—is seen as fundamental to humans, and fundamentally lacking in machines. (shrink)

Concepts from functional theories of emotions are integrated with principles of skill development to produce a theory of emotional development. The theory provides tools for predicting both the sequences of emotional development and the ways emotions shape development. Emotions are characterised in terms of three component models: (a) the process of emotion generation from event appraisal, (b) a hierarchy of emotion categories organised around a handful of basic-emotion families, and (c) a characterisation of emotions in terms of prototypic event scripts. (...) The basic emotions and the positive vs. negative hedonic components of emotions function as constraints or organisers that shape behaviour whenever an emotion is activated. Through these patterning effects, emotions shape both short-term behavioural organisation and long-term development. The skill-development component of the theory explains how, as children grow, they construct and control increasingly complex skills—which affect many aspects of emotion, from appraisal to emotional self-control. These skills can be characterised in terms of a series of developmental tiers and levels; they are not fixed traits of the child but instead are affected by assessment conditions and emotional action tendencies. The developmental process gradually moves from basic, species-specific emotions to culture-specific, subordinate-category emotions and the complexities of adult emotional experiences. The theory provides a set of conceptual and methodological tools to predict and assess emotional development. It also indicates how emotional development fits with other aspects of systematic change in the organisation of behaviour. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Platon" verfügbar.

M̀atter Matters is a work of genius. The work exhibits a breathtaking spread of erudition from antiquity to the present, mobilized to elucidate the early modern significance of the concept of matter. The slight play of words in the title expresses the principal thesis of the work, that mathematics is intelligible for Descartes if and only if matter exists as its object. Smith understands, better than anyone, how Descartes could claim, literally, that "my physics is nothing but geometry." Many will (...) be convinced, some dismayed, and all will be dazzled by this book.'---Thomas M. Lennon, The University of Western Ontario". (shrink)

Bioethical debate in Europe is partly a reaction to political endeavors and events. In line with the political goal of a united Europe, a European regulation is being sought for medical research and medical ethics ('Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine'). A certain degree of ambivalence has come to the fore: whilst it does seem possible to reach a consensus (albeit a merely 'diplomatic' consensus) about complicated bioethical issues at an international level when certain controversial matters are excluded or a (...) certain vagueness maintained, new principles are also required at a national level, for example when the medical profession of one state feels obliged to assume a 'local' stance, such as in the sensitive issue of termination of treatment. The individual contributions to this publication, together with various other current fields of bioethical conflict in Europe - especially Germany - are introduced below against a common background, namely that the original dividing line between the concealed and the revealed has shifted. (shrink)