Traditionally, discussions of moral participation – and in particular moral agency – have focused on fully formed human actors. There has been some interest in the development of morality in humans, as well as interest in cultural differences when it comes to moral practices, commitments, and actions. However, until relatively recently, there has been little focus on the possibility that nonhuman animals have any role to play in morality, save being the objects of moral concern. Moreover, when nonhuman cases are (...) considered as evidence of moral agency or subjecthood, there has been an anthropocentric tendency to focus on those behaviors that inform our attributions of moral agency to humans. For example, some argue that the ability to evaluate the principles upon which a moral norm is grounded is required for full moral agency. Certainly, if a moral agent must understand what makes an action right or wrong, then most nonhuman animals would not qualify (and perhaps some humans too). However, if we are to understand the evolution of moral psychology and moral practice, we need to turn our attention to the foundations of full moral agency. We must first pay attention to the more broadly normative practices of other animals. Here, we begin that project by considering evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practices. (shrink)

Conciliationism is a view—well, a family of views—in the epistemology of disagreement. The idea, simply put, is that, in a wide range of cases where you find yourself in disagreement with another reasoner about the truth of some proposition, you are rationally obliged to adjust your credence in the direction of hers. Conciliationism enjoys a fair bit of prima facie plausibility. Most versions of it, however, suffer from a common (and rather obvious) problem: self-incrimination. Although there is some recognition in (...) the recent literature on disagreement that there is a problem in this vicinity, it, more often than not, is completely ignored. When it is not completely ignored, both the conciliationists and their critics tend to frame the problem incorrectly. As a result, they end up focusing most of their attention on pseudo-problems rather than the genuine worry. Furthermore, even when they have hit on the genuine worry, conciliationists have tended to give surprising and implausible responses to it. Even by their own lights, conciliationists aren’t justified in believing their conciliationist theses. In this paper, I argue that it’s time to come clean. Time to look for a view on the epistemic significance of disagreement that we can actually be justified in believing. (shrink)

To be autonomous is to be a law to oneself; autonomous agents are self-governing agents. Most of us want to be autonomous because we want to be accountable for what we do, and because it seems that if we are not the ones calling the shots, then we cannot be accountable. More importantly, perhaps, the value of autonomy is tied to the value of self-integration. We don't want to be alien to, or at war with, ourselves; and it seems that (...) when our intentions are not under our own control, we suffer from self-alienation. What conditions must be satisfied in order to ensure that we govern ourselves when we act? Philosophers have offered a wide range of competing answers to this question. (shrink)

Borders are essentially imaginary structures, but their effects are very real. This volume explores both geopolitical and conceptual borders through an interdisciplinary lens, bridging the disciplines of philosophy and literature. With contributions from scholars around the world, this collection closely examines the concepts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the paradoxical ambiguities inherent in these seemingly solid binary oppositions, while critiquing structures of power that produce and police these borders. As a political paradigm, liminality may be (...) embraced by marginal subjects and communities, further blurring the boundaries between oppressive distinctions and categories. (shrink)

This chapter considers an epistemological argument from disagreement which concludes that many of most people’s moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge. Various ways of understanding the argument are considered and it is argued that each relies on an epistemic principle that is under-motivated, overgeneralizes, and is indeed self-incriminating. These problems, it is suggested, infect many conciliationist theses in the epistemology of disagreement. Knowledge, it is argued, can withstand not only acknowledged peer disagreement, but also disagreement with the acknowledged experts. (...) If this is right, then the sort of epistemic principle that is required to move from moral disagreement to the conclusion that many of most people’s moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge has landed well off the mark. (shrink)

Technology Assessment (TA) is a problem oriented endeavour dealing with political, societal, ecological, etc. problems. Only in rare cases is one individual scientific discipline sufficient to assess these problems. Usually the perspectives of different scientific disciplines have to be combined in order to develop interdisciplinary based recommendations to act. In this paper a quality controlled interdisciplinary discussion process is described which encourages an expert group to generate argumentation chains cross-cutting the disciplinary boundaries. The role of ethical reflection in this procedure (...) depends on the problem situation. Whenever a technical application is on the agenda which cannot be allocated to a so-called “business-as-usual” case, one would ask for ethical reflection. This contribution argues that this ethical reflection has to take place together with the interdisciplinary discussion due to two reasons. Firstly, the technical, economical, legal and social aspects are deeply cross-correlated with the ethical reflection. And secondly, participating in such interdisciplinary discussions enables an ethical reflection which keeps in touch with the real world. Two case studies dealing with robotics applications in health care are mentioned as examples for problem settings, in which interdisciplinary TA succeed in developing discipline-crossing argumentation chains. (shrink)

Work defines the lives of most people. Many people work overtime, work second jobs, or bring work home with them. It is often difficult to know when work stops and the rest of life begins. In a culture where work is central to our identities, good work is increasingly difficult to find. This article argues that one of the impediments to imagining a future beyond work is the productivist logic that predominates today, which determines labor and production to be key (...) activities and values. To sketch a path beyond work, the author turns to Marx, arguing that Marx provides an important critique of productivism and gestures toward a postwork future in his own writings. To do so, the author defends Marx against critiques of productivism. (shrink)

In this thesis I determine what is required in an account of money. I compare John’s Searle’s idea of institutions, as ontologically subjective, to Francesco Guala’s idea of an institution as a functional, rule-based equilibrium. I find both, as accounts of money, to be inadequate on their own. In response, I develop a new account of money which has functional components akin to Guala’s but with the addition of intentionality. This adds mind-dependence back into the account of money but, if (...) Khalidi’s theory of social kinds is correct, my account of money is still open to scientific investigation, because it might be kind of natural. (shrink)

The first major publication in English on the bamboo slips excavated from a late fourth century B.C. Chu-state tomb at Guodian, Hubei, in 1993. The slip texts include both Daoist and Confucian works, many previously unknown. Thie monograph is a full account of the international conference held on these texts, at which leading scholars from China, the United States, Europe, and Japan analyzed the Laozi materials and a previously unknown cosmological text. In addition, the contents include nine essays on topics (...) such as the archaeological background of the discovery, conservation of the slip-texts, and the relation of the Guodian Laozi materials to the received Laozi text. An annotated edition of the Guodian Laozi materials and the cosmological text are included, as well as a critical bibliography with summary of Chinese scholarship on the Guodian texts in the year following the conference. (shrink)

This book focuses on some of the most pressing methodological, ethical, and technique-philosophical questions that are connected with the concept of artificial autonomous systems. (Series: Hermeneutics and Anthropology / Hermeneutik und ...

Heraclitus has often been read through Aristotelian and Stoic paradigms that do not contextualize his text in the poetic tradition with which his fragments engage. This paper is a close study of Heraclitus’s DK 1 as a demonstration of his poetic methods, and argues that Heraclitus’s text is an example of what Marcel Detienne calls magico-religious speech. Heraclitus’s logos is a living thing, not only words but ‘works,’ as Heraclitus refers to his logos in DK 1, using the Homeric formula (...) “words and works.” Heraclitus’s teaching is experiential, and depends on memory as the antidote to oblivion and forgetting, often associated with sleeping and death. In reading DK 1 and following the paths that it traces to other fragments, Heraclitus’s teaching as a method of escaping the private world is revealed. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 20s, Russia was devastated by famine and plagues. This paper deals with the life and work of the Leipzig physician Paul Carly Seyfarth (1890–1950), who participated in the Red Cross relief expedition to Russia. In 1922/23, Seyfarth was appointed director of the German Alexander-Hospital in Petersburg, which he reorganized and modernized for the treatment of infectious diseases.

‘Recognition’ is a normative concept denoting the ascription of positive status to a group or an individual by (an) other(s). In its larger meaning, it carries the implication that when a group or an individual can justifiably expect such a positive status-ascription, its denial (misrecognition) is unjustified and unethical. I discuss the role that the concept of recognition can play at the intersection of two philosophies, pragmatism and contemporary critical theory. My perspective is one that embraces the ‘pragmatic turn’ in (...) critical theory and sees the possibility of reciprocal benefit for pragmatism in how critical theory handles issues of material culture, alienation and networks of power. I argue that a critical social theory incorporating pragmatist presuppositions ought to bring the concept of recognition to bear in how it isolates and treats the ‘real interests’ of groups and individuals who have suffered and continue to suffer from broad social ascriptions of negative status, or who, through lack of voice and access to the public sphere, remain paralysed to participation in a thriving liberal democracy. In doing so, I do not construe recognition primarily as ‘positive tolerance’ or understanding of cultural, ethnic, or gender identity, but as a minimally substantive tool for understanding, and potentially correcting, how misrecognition impacts the collective and individual agency of the historically oppressed. (shrink)

This book provides an interdisciplinary study of how design and botanical science came together in the 19th century, examining the work of leading botanists, designers and illustrators such as Sarah Drake, John Lindley, Owen Jones and Christopher Dresser. It reveals how design reformers looked to 'art botany', the practice of basing decorative form and ornament on the hidden, natural laws that govern plant growth and structure, as a model for how to create and identify what is new and incorporate (...) it into what was already familiar and meaningful, in order to develop a national design aesthetic and a professional field of practice. (shrink)

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Henri Bergson's philosophy, which Sartre studied as a student, had a profound but largely neglected influence on his thinking. In this paper I focus on the new light that recognition of this influence throws on Sartre's central argument about the relationship between negation and nothingness in his Being and Nothingness. Sartre's argument is in part a response to Bergson's dismissive, eliminativist account of nothingness in Creative Evolution (1907): the objections to the concept of nothingness with which Sartre engages are precisely (...) those raised by Bergson. Even if Sartre's account of nothingness in its entirety is found to be flawed, I argue that the points he makes specifically against Bergson are powerful. My discussion concludes with a brief examination of the wider philosophical background to Sartre's and Bergson's discussion of nothingness: here I point to some important aspects of Sartre's early philosophy, including some features of his conception of nothingness, that may testify to Bergson's positive influence on his thought. (shrink)

Since there have been many recent occurrences of alleged wrongdoing by business persons and other professionals, it seems additional ethics research is needed to obtain knowledge that will impact real-world behavior. An empirical study assessed business students' impressions of hypothetical wrongdoers and whistleblowers. To some extent, impressions of an unethical executive and a whistleblower were influenced by the same variables and in opposite directions. Female respondents judged the unethical executive less favorably and the whistleblower more favorably than did males. The (...) executive was rated less favorably and the whistleblower more favorably when the executive sought a small gain than when the goal was a large gain or prevention of a loss of either magnitude. Some manipulations, however, impacted impressions of one actor, but not the other. Perhaps ethics training can make students aware that issue framing and moral intensity components may bias decisions. (shrink)

The essays in this volume tackle the philosophical questions from these blockbuster films including: Was Anakin predestined to fall to the Dark Side? Are the Jedi truly role models of moral virtue? Why would the citizens and protectors of a democratic Republic allow it to descend into a tyrannical empire? Is Yoda a peaceful Zen master or a great warrior, or both? Why is there both a light and a dark side of the Force? Star Wars and Philosophy ponders the (...) depths of these subjects and asks what it truly means to be mindful of the "living force.". (shrink)

The dystopian elements of the Alien films display the dark side of social mechanisms. Modern philosophy is not exempt from the temptations of this “authoritarian synthesis”. It also responds to the themes of impurity, whether through religious heresy, mental illness, or bodily invasion or corruption. In the shooting script for Alien, it is clear that Ripley has been “infected” by the Xenomorph Facehugger in the pod; on screen, that fact is held from us until much later in the film for (...) dramatic effect. Ripley's fears about contagion actually fit together well with the thinking of the German Idealist philosophers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who were among the first philosophers of biology. Ripley does not seem much interested in sex throughout the first two Alien films, but she is interested in having a family, especially after Newt's death. (shrink)

Han Solo‐orphan, laconically cool Corellian smuggler, Rebel general, and martyr for the Resistance, is one of the most‐loved characters in the Star Wars universe. His emotional and moral development throughout the original trilogy into a trusted friend, Leia's lover, and a warrior for Rebel values is inspiring. In the sequel trilogy, he's returned to smuggling and reluctantly re‐assumes the mantle of father to Ben Solo, an alienated and ultimately patricidal son, but even death fails to stop him from offering fatherly (...) advice to bring Kylo Ren back to the light side. In a universe of tyrants, freedom‐fighters, Force‐sensitives, Jedi, and Sith, everybody seems to be peddling a philosophy. But Han Solo is a scoundrel, a skeptic, and a Corellian who seems to want to evade a philosophical life. Skepticism, anti‐authoritarianism, and a desire to demystify–to strip away pretensions to reveal the true, but often ugly face of reality. (shrink)

This volume considers the numerous philosophical ideas and arguments found in and inspired by the critically acclaimed series Breaking Bad. This show garnered both critical and popular attention for its portrayal of a cancer-stricken, middle-aged, middle-class, high school chemistry teacher’s drift into the dark world of selling methamphetamine to support his family. Its characters, situations, and aesthetic raise serious and familiar philosophical issues, especially related to ethics and morality. The show provokes a bevy of rich questions and discussion points, such (...) as: What are the ethical issues surrounding drugs? What lessons about existentialism and fatalism does the show present? How does the show grapple with the concept of the end ‘justifying’ the means? Is Walt really free not to ‘break bad’? Can he be redeemed? What is the definition and nature of badness itself? Contributors address these and other questions as they dissect the legacy of the show and discuss its contributions to philosophical conversations. (shrink)

This paper explores one aspect of the political in the early Hegel, that of criminal action and its relationship to the concept of recognition in the System of Ethical Life. While it is clear that in this work Hegel thinks that criminal action plays an important role in the transformation of simple ethical communities, it is not clear that, for Hegel, the formal character of crime in the struggle for recognition is anything but negative. I attempt to show how this (...) role for crime leads Hegel to a legalistic conception of Right that has no solid connection with recognition as a social force. (shrink)

Like many episodes of South Park, “Medicinal Fried Chicken” drags real political scenarios into the cold, hard light of the Rocky Mountains. In this chapter, the author aims at challenging the received interpretation of the moral message behind “Medicinal Fried Chicken” and many other South Park episodes, the message that legislating lifestyles is immoral at worst and ridiculous at best. This message is encapsulated by the moral perspective known of libertarianism, which takes individual rights in political and social scenarios to (...) be not only basic, but also to trump many other moral considerations. For tensions between an individual's good and the common good in the drug legalization debate, the chapter further discusses a 1989 exchange between Milton Friedman and William J. Bennett. (shrink)

Any evolved disposition for fairness and cooperation would not replace but merely compete with selfish and other antisocial impulses. Therefore, we propose that human cooperation and fairness depend on self-regulation. Evidence shows reductions in fairness and other prosocial tendencies when self-regulation fails.

Sarah A. Mattice develops a comparative intervention in contemporary metaphilosophy. Drawing on resources from hermeneutics, cognitive linguistics, aesthetics, and Chinese philosophy, she explores how philosophical language is deeply intertwined with the definition and practice of the discipline.