Contrary to received opinion among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, conscious duality as a principle of brain organization is neither incoherent nor demonstrably false. The present paper begins by reviewing the history of the theory and its anatomical basis and defending it against the claim that it rests upon an arbitrary decision as to what constitutes the biological substratum of mind or person.

Introduction to Engineering Ethics provides the background for discussion of the basic issues in engineering ethics. Emphasis is given to the moral problems engineers face in the corporate setting. It places those issues within a philosophical framework, and it seems to exhibit both their social importance and their intellectual challenge. The primary goal is to stimulate critical and responsible reflection on moral issues surrounding engineering practice and to provide the conceptual tools necessary for pursuing those issues. As per new ABET (...) 2000 guidelines, more and more introductory engineering courses cover engineering ethics as part of their instruction. Students preparing to function within the engineering profession need to be introduced to the basic issues in engineering ethics. This book places those issues within a wider philosophical framework than has been customary in the past and aims to stimulate critical and responsible reflection on the moral issues surrounding engineering practice and to provide the conceptual tools necessary for pursuing those issues. (shrink)

This article compares the material pollution of life's elementary resources, i.e., water, soil, and air, with the semiotic pollution of the elementary resources of sign-processes, i.e., channel, sign-matter, and message; code, signifier, and signified; as well as context, sender, and recipient. It is claimed that semiotic pollution interferes with sign-processes as much as material pollution interferes with the fundamental processes of life; both types of pollution are similar in that they produce stress for human beings in current societies. It is (...) argued that semiotics is able to provide the conceptual tools necessary to develop policies that can reduce semiotic pollution. As is shown, however, additional research is required to operationalize and metricize generalized concepts of semiotic pollutionsuch as "channel-related", "semiosis-related", and "situation-related noise". (shrink)

The contribution focuses on Neo-Confucian texts as collected by Zhu Xi and Lü Zuqian and is a look from the ‘outside’, from the perspective of German theories of Bildung. It aims at demonstrating that among other insights that today’s readers may gather from Neo-Confucian literature, one aspect protrudes from others: that learning can be considered as a virtue—even a meta-virtue—a form of life and mode of self-formation of the person. It does not seem exaggerated, from this perspective, to state that (...) Neo-Confucian philosophy is—to a large extent—a philosophy of learning and self-transformation which offers fruitful irritants for questioning the widespread habits of thinking about skills and their development in today’s strong and problematic discourses and corresponding educational policies. (shrink)

In order to be able to raise the question of the “world” today in an effective way, we have to reactivate the Goethean categories of Weltliteratur and Weltschmerz for a critique of our own historical moment. We need to understand the phenomenon of Weltschmerz as a symptom of the impossibility of Weltliteratur. Going beyond the context of the original formulation of these categories, we could argue that something akin to the historical phenomenon of Weltschmerz emerges every time the ideological constitution (...) of the world threatens to fail. Today, we live in an age of a generalised state of cultural disorientation that has produced its own Weltliteratur, which includes a wide range of discourses about the “world” – from officially endorsed theories of economic globalisation, to scientific treatises on the Anthropocene, environmental protest movements, philosophical pamphlets, all the way to world-historical conspiracy theories. Yet, an anxiety concerning the impossibility of world-formation in general is also recorded in these documents. In order to be able to capture our contemporary Weltschmerz, the article turns to the young Walter Benjamin’s suggestion that the task of this age is to produce an “objective” Weltschmerz. However, the most effective tools to conceptualise this objective Weltschmerz come from the traditions of philosophical acosmism. It is a notable philosophical development of our times that some elements of the acosmic tradition have recently resurfaced in speculative realism. Thus, speculative realism could be described as a possible site of our contemporary Weltschmerz: its acosmic metaphysics is repeatedly tamed by a mournful longing for the world. (shrink)

Folter gilt weithin als paradigmatisches Beispiel einer Verletzung der Menschenwürde. Doch was macht Folter zu einem so eindeutigen Fall einer Menschenwürdeverletzung? Das ist die Leitfrage dieses Beitrags. Dazu werden zwei Menschenwürdetheorien herangezogen und auf ihr Potential hin untersucht, die Folter als paradigmatische Menschenwürdeverletzung verständlich zu machen: zum einen Ralf Stoeckers Theorie, die die individuelle Identität und die darauf aufbauende kontingente Würde in den Mittelpunkt stellt; zum anderen meine Theorie, die die menschliche Orientierung an einem sinnvollen Leben ins Zentrum rückt.

The word “real” (from the Latin “res” = thing) was coined in the 13th century to signify “having Properties” (Pierce. 1958, p. 358), whereas a “model” refers to an analogical representation, the structure of which should correspond to the structure or properties of that which it represents. For Scudder the mind is a system of models and each mind develops different models. We all have a different reality in mind and so we each live in a slightly different world (Scudder, (...) 1975). Hence the real nature of the model and the model nature of reality are often indistinguishable. A snail, for example, when exposed to four tactile stimuli per second (with a rod on his belly) will be compelled to crawl upon that non-existing coherent spatial surface (Brecher, 1966). For the snail four tactile stimuli per second correspond to, or are isomorphic with, the structure of a spatial surface, but it is impossible for the snail to “know” which of the two structures is real. (shrink)

Cet article prend pour point de départ les généalogies de l’enfance de Michel Foucault disséminées dans son œuvre et complexifiées par les études foucaldiennes contemporaines, en particulier les recherches féministes de Silvia Federici (et ses généalogies des femmes) et les études postcoloniales d’Ann Laura Stoler (et ses généalogies des colonisés). Foucault passant sous silences l’histoire des femmes et des colonies, ce détour par des généalogies féministes et postcoloniales nous permettra de nous inscrire dans les débats sur l’intersectionnalité. En effet, depuis (...) les années 1990, cette perspective méthodologique a été pensée de multiples manières (comme articulation, matrice, assemblage etc.), il s’agira donc de voir comment penser l’intersectionnalité en référence aux cadres d’analyse foucaldiens et à leurs critiques. Plus précisément, en réunissant ces auteurs et leurs généalogies, cet article tentera de se situer dans les débats contemporains sur l’intersection du Childism et du mouvement décolonial. Alors que certains auteurs considèrent que la production de l’enfance/de l’âge précède la production de la colonialité/de la race, d’autres voient le contraire. Pour entrer dans ces débats, nous reprendrons à Bacchetta (2015) l’idée de co-formations et de co-productions des rapports coloniaux et âgistes dans l’histoire longue des métropoles et des colonies. Ce faisant, nous tenterons de décrire et d’analyser les relations d’assujettissement (de genre, de classe, de race ou d’âge) d’une part, comme un effet de multiplicité selon des conjonctures spécifiques, et d’autre part, comme la cristallisation de relations de pouvoir qui s’étendent sur de larges espace-temps. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has argued that his basis-relative anti-luck construal of a safety condition on knowing avoids the problem with necessary truths that safety conditions are often thought to have, viz., that beliefs the contents of which are necessarily true are trivially safe. He has further argued that adding an ability condition to truth, belief, and his anti-luck safety conditions yields an adequate account of knowledge. In this paper, we argue that not only does Pritchard’s anti-luck safety condition have a problem (...) with necessary truths, adding an ability condition is of no help. Indeed, the same sort of case that precipitates Pritchard’s introduction of an ability condition shows the inadequacy of his completed anti-luck account of knowledge. Moreover, reconstruing safety as an anti-risk condition as Pritchard has recently done does not fix the problem we’ve identified. We conclude by entertaining a radical suggestion to the effect that the failures of safety-based accounts of modal knowledge are due to failures of doxastic success rather than failures to satisfy an anti-luck (or anti-risk) condition. Accepting this radical suggestion makes available the view that there is, after all, no special problem between safety and necessary truths. (shrink)

In Nozick’s rendition of the decision situation given in Newcomb’s Paradox dominance and the principle of maximum expected utility recommend different strategies. While evidential decision theory seems to be split over which principle to apply and how to interpret the principles in the first place, causal decision theory seems to go for the solution recommended by dominance. As a reply to the CDT proposal by Wolfgang Spohn, who opts for “one-boxing” by employing reflexive decision graphs, I will draw on the (...) framework of causal knowledge patterns, i.e., Bayes net causal models, augmented by non-causal knowledge, to finally arrive at “one-boxing” – more intuitively and more closely to what actually is in Nozick’s story. This proposal allows the careful re-examination of all relevant concepts in the original story and might cast new light on the following questions: How may causality in general be understood to allow causal inference from hybrid patterns encoding subjective knowledge? How can the notion of prediction be analyzed – philosophically and formally? And what’s the decision-maker’s conceptualization of the situation he will act upon? (shrink)

This article reassesses a rarely noted aspect of the Russian Revolution: the long interaction between Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the ‘God-builder’. It traces the way Lunacharsky first outlined the God-building position in his Religion and Socialism, a text virtually lost to scholarship and interpretations of the Russian revolution. It explores Lenin's initial condemnation, for political but above all theoretical reasons, only to find him reassessing his whole argument six years later in light of his re-engagement with Hegel in 1914. Seeing (...) that his earlier condemnation no longer held, Lenin's response to Lunacharsky's God-building undergoes a noticeable shift. He now realizes that marginal forms of interaction with religion may sit well with, if not lead to, communism. An examination of Lunacharsky's own perseverance with God-building after he was appointed Commissar for Enlightenment in the new Soviet state, and of Lenin's awareness and tacit allowance for such expressions, indicate a more complex and ambivalent approach to religion on Lenin's part. (shrink)

If the Bucolics as a whole ‘ look on us with dark enigmatical eyes,’ for long no more impenetrable darkness and no more compelling enigma could be found than that of the fourth poem in the collection. But Skutsch, the authors of Virgil's Messianic Eclogue, and more recently Mr. Royds in his Virgil and Isaiah, have done much to solve its many mysteries. Their efforts, however, were mainly directed towards the problems of fact contained in the Eclogue, and so far (...) little attention seems to have been given to an equally interesting point, that of its metrical arrangement. It is plain that we must consult the Sibyll for help: if it is not plain, that is not Virgil's fault. I hope to be able to show here that Virgil himself has left in this poem certain unmistakeable signs for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, besides his own rather casual reference to the Cumaeum carmen, and incidentally to dispose anew of the theory which reads in that expression an allusion not to the Sibyl but to Hesiod. (shrink)

Two major management philosophies of the 20th Century, scientific management and quality management, are often contrasted. Scientific management is seen as a system that focuses on task efficiencies whereas quality management is described as a collaborative, people-centered process approach to continuous improvement. This paper examines the ethical implications of these diverse approaches, particularly in the way information is used to decide which employees to lay off in times of economic difficulty. The paper uses case examples of quality management as teaching (...) tools to place the conduct of managers within utilitarian, deontological and justice approaches to ethical decision making. Finally, it suggests that a third system, open-book management, may help deal with this ethical dilemma, though not without risk. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: The question whether a prohibition of physician-assisted suicide is justifiable plays a prominent role in recent debate about this practice. Many authors argue that assisted suicide is an issue of individual choice, that a prohibition would base on particular conceptions of the good and that such a justification is not acceptable in a liberal society. Arguments: Within the frame of a communitarian approach the article demonstrates that the handling of dying and what physicians are allowed to (...) do is central for society and the professional identity of physicians and that every ethical position within this debate unavoidably rests upon certain conceptions of the good. Conclusion: Therefore it is necessary to deal with these conceptions in a transparent way and it is justifiable to impose a prohibition of physician-assisted suicide based on a conception of the common good that does not consult supposed social consequences. (shrink)

This is a survey of some possible extensions of ZF to a larger universe, closer to the “naive set theory” (the universes discussed here concern, roughly speaking : stratified sets, partial sets, positive sets, paradoxical sets and double sets).

Definition of the problem: The ethical debate about assisted suicide remains controversial and is also based in part on assumptions that are taken for granted, but which, on closer inspection, lack a justification. Arguments: The article develops a new approach by focusing on the social dimension of the denial of meaning in life, which is often expressed by suicides. For a fundamental social connection is included in the human orientation towards the goal of a meaningful life, namely an implicit appreciation (...) of human beings as potential sources of meaning and as subjects of judgments about the meaningfulness. Suicides tend to deny this connection. Conclusion: This understanding of suicide can, among other things, adequately understand the meaning of (assisted) suicide and justify the widely shared assumptions of a primacy of suicide prevention and a conscientious objection right of doctors. (shrink)

While recent science and technology studies literature focuses on “projectification” and its felt tensions for researchers, a surprising scarcity of empirical work addresses experiences at the “other end,” such as funding bodies often held “responsible” for tensions encountered by researchers. Actors in funding bodies experience similar tensions, however. While projectification necessitates predictability and individual project objectives, research funding is also increasingly organized in networks promoting local experimentation. Moreover, funding bodies are part of a system of accountability in which investments are (...) legitimized politically in often reductionist ways. We argue for the salience of more detailed empirical investigations into the work of funding bodies as they navigate these tensions. We apply a dramaturgical perspective to investigate the “staging work” of program committees responsible for the management of funded programs, identifying three forms of staging work: setting the scene, temporal narration, and signifying success. All come with discursive, material, and symbolic dimensions. We develop the notion “adaptive coherence” to show how the program committee sought to maintain the coherence of the overall program despite continuous risks of fragmentation due to projectification, local experimentation, and divergence in interests. “Adaptive coherence” proves productive in incorporating the temporal and spatial dimensions of staging work in networked contexts. (shrink)

The late French literary and social critic's intimate journal, first published after his death and translated into English here for the first time, and three other autobiographical texts in which he explores his homosexuality are combined in one volume. Original.

This paper gives a short description of basic features of the dominating mindset in the Western world between the 1970s and today, often called “post-modern”, through a re-reading of John Ashbery’s poem “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” . In doing so, it applies the viewpoint of an interdisciplinary history of ideas. Since collective mindsets have become the most important contextual political factors, the implications are multiple.

Slavoj Zizek i Julia Kristeva su sledili neobicno slicne puteve u svom intelektualnom i politickom razvoju od marksizma, preko psihoanalize, do hriscanstva. Ovaj clanak prati nacin na koji su se oni distancirali od marksizma i preuzeli psihoanalizu u frojdovskoj ili lakanovskoj verziji. Za Kristevu psihoanaliza pruza terapeutsko resenje za individualne i, povremeno drustvene probleme, dok za Zizeka ona predstavlja najbolji opis tih problema ali ne nuzno i odgovor na njih. Pa ipak, posredstvom psihoanalize, oni su otisli korak dalje, postavsi zaokupljeni (...) hriscanstvom, osobito Pavlovim pismima u Novom zavetu i ucenjem o ljubavi. Za Kristevu Pavle pruza drukciju i raniju verziju psihoanalitickih resenja, a Zizeku on pomaze da nadje socijalne i politicke odgovore koje trazi. Dovodeci u vezu ove intelektualne pomake s njihovim vlastitim napustanjem Istocne Evrope, Jugoslavije u jednom slucaju, i Bugarske u drugom, zastupam stanoviste da njihova potraga za iskupljenjem, u licnom i socijalnom smislu, odaje recidive socijalizma. U stvari, njihovo kretanje ka psihoanalizi i hriscanstvu moglo bi se tumaciti kao kompenzacija za izgubljeni socijalizam, utoliko sto Zizek pomalo zadocnelo obnavlja Marksa posredstvom hriscanstva, a Kristeva nikad ne moze da izbaci Marksa iz svog misljenja. (shrink)