The increasing digitalization in the field of psychological and educational testing opens up new opportunities to innovate assessments in many respects (e.g., new item formats, flexible test assembly, efficient data handling). In particular, computerized adaptive testing provides the opportunity to make tests more individualized and more efficient. The newly developed continuous calibration strategy (CCS) from Fink, Born, Spoden, and Frey (2018) makes it possible to construct computerized adaptive tests in application areas where separate calibration studies are not feasible. Due (...) to the goal of reporting on a common metric across test cycles, the equating is crucial for the CCS. The quality of the equating depends on the common items selected and the scale transformation method applied. Given the novelty of the CCS, the aim of the study was to evaluate different equating setups in the CCS and to derive practical recommendations. The impact of different equating setups on the precision of item parameter estimates and on the quality of the equating was examined in a Monte Carlo simulation, based on a fully crossed design with the factors common item difficulty distribution (bimodal, normal, uniform), scale transformation method (mean/mean, mean/sigma, Haebara, Stocking-Lord), and sample size per test cycle (50, 100, 300). The quality of the equating was operationalized by three criteria (proportion of feasible equatings, proportion of drifted items, and error of transformation constants). The precision of the item parameter estimates increased with increasing sample size per test cycle, but no substantial difference was found with respect to the common item difficulty distribution and the scale transformation method. With regard to the feasibility of the equatings, no differences were found for the different scale transformation methods. However, when using the moment methods (mean/mean, mean/sigma), quite extrem levels of error for the transformation constants A and B occurred. Among the characteristic curve method the performance of the Stocking-Lord method was slightly better than for the Haebara method. Thus, while no clear recommendation can be made with regard to the common item difficulty distribution, the characteristic curve methods turned out to be the most favorable scale transformation methods within the CCS. (shrink)

Oswald Spenglers Kulturmorphologie diente als Ausgangspunkt einer internationalen und interdisziplinär angelegten Tagung, deren Beiträge in diesem Band vorliegen. Sie behandeln eine Vielfalt an Themen, die von der Menschwerdung, über die Kulturen des Altertums bis hin zu aktuellen politischen und sozialen Fragestellungen reichen. Schließlich sind auch Studien zur Spenglerforschung im engeren Sinne vertreten.

Carl Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt: Ein Forscherleben zwischen Orient und Okzident. Edited by Sebastian Fink; Klaus Eisterer; Robert Rollinger; and Dirk Rupnow. Classica et Orientalia, vol. 11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. Pp. vi + 217, illus. €48.

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge.

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in (...) virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

In his book The Formation of Reason (2011), David Bakhurst asserts that the end of education is autonomy, which he explains is the power to determine what to do.

According to Russell and Norvig’s (2009) classification, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the field that aims at building systems which either think rationally, act rationally, think like humans, or...

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

What is attention? Attention is often seen as a subject matter for the hard sciences of cognitive and brain processes, and is understood in terms of sub-personal mechanisms and processes. Correspondingly, there still is a stark contrast between the central role attention plays for the empirical investigation of the mind in psychology and the neurosciences, and its relative neglect in philosophy. Yet, over the past years, several philosophers have challenged the standard conception. A number of interesting philosophical questions concerning the (...) nature of attention arise. This article provides an introduction to contemporary debates concerning these questions. In particular, it discusses the question of how the pre-theoretic conception of attention might be reconciled with a scientific conception, arguments that provide support for an anti-reductivist theory of attention, and sketches several recent anti-reductivist theories and their inter-relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the concept of ineffability: what does it mean to say that something cannot be said? I begin by distinguishing ineffability from paradox: if something cannot be said truly or without contradiction, this is not an instance of ineffability. Next, I distinguish two different meanings of ‘saying something’ which result from a fundamental ambiguity in the term ‘language’, viz. language as a system of symbols and language as a medium of communication. Accordingly, ‘ineffability’ is ambiguous, too, (...) and we should make a distinction between weak and strong ineffability. Weak ineffability is rooted in the deficiencies of a particular language while strong ineffability stems from the structure of a particular cognitive system and its capacities for conceptual mental representation. Mental contents are only sayable if we are able to conceptualize them and then create signs to represent them in communication. (shrink)

How would it be assessed from an ethical point of view if human wage work were replaced by artificially intelligent systems (AI) in the course of an automation process? An answer to this question has been discussed above all under the aspects of individual well-being and social justice. Although these perspectives are important, in this article, we approach the question from a different perspective: that of leading a meaningful life, as understood in analytical ethics on the basis of the so-called (...) meaning-in-life debate. Our thesis here is that a life without wage work loses specific sources of meaning, but can still be sufficiently meaningful in certain other ways. Our starting point is John Danaher’s claim that ubiquitous automation inevitably leads to an achievement gap. Although we share this diagnosis, we reject his provocative solution according to which game-like virtual realities could be an adequate substitute source of meaning. Subsequently, we outline our own systematic alternative which we regard as a decidedly humanistic perspective. It focuses both on different kinds of social work and on rather passive forms of being related to meaningful contents. Finally, we go into the limits and unresolved points of our argumentation as part of an outlook, but we also try to defend its fundamental persuasiveness against a potential objection. (shrink)

What is the philosophical significance of attention? The present article provides an overview of recent debates surrounding the connections between attention and other topics of philosophical interest. In particular, it discusses the interplay between attention and consciousness, attention and agency, and attention and reference. The article outlines the questions and contemporary positions concerning how attention shapes the phenomenal character of experience, whether it is necessary or sufficient for consciousness, and whether it plays a special role in the best philosophical theories (...) of action or conceptual reference. Various interdependencies between the answers to these questions are indicated, as well as how these answers might depend on the metaphysics of attention. Together with its companion piece this article serves as an introduction to the philosophy of attention. (shrink)

Intentional transaction. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2014.941909.

Should artificial agents (such as robots) be granted moral status? This seems like an important question to resolve, given that we will encounter a growing number of increasingly sophisticated artificial agents in the not too distant future. However, many will think that before we can even start to tackle questions about the moral status of artificial agents, we first need to solve tricky issues in the philosophy of mind. After all, most orthodox views about moral status imply that only entities (...) with a mental life are eligible for moral status. But, whether an unfamiliar entity like an artificial agent has a mental life raises controversial questions in the philosophy of mind. Given this, one might hope that we can resolve questions about the moral status of robots via “minimalist” views that give sufficient conditions for granting moral status to an entity that we can know to be satisfied without knowing whether the entity in question has a mind. This paper argues that we should be pessimistic about the prospects of minimalist views avoiding controversial questions in the philosophy of mind, by arguing that minimalist sufficient conditions are only plausible if combined with assumptions in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Departing from the claim that AI needs to be trustworthy, we find that ethical advice from an AI-powered algorithm is trusted even when its users know nothing about its training data and when they learn information about it that warrants distrust. We conducted online experiments where the subjects took the role of decision-makers who received advice from an algorithm on how to deal with an ethical dilemma. We manipulated the information about the algorithm and studied its influence. Our findings suggest (...) that AI is overtrusted rather than distrusted. We suggest digital literacy as a potential remedy to ensure the responsible use of AI. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt at the investigation of the nature of polarity contrast in natural languages. Truth conditions for natural language sentences are incomplete unless they include a proper definition of the conditions under which they are false. It is argued that the tertium non datur principle of classical bivalent logical systems is empirically invalid for natural languages: falsity cannot be equated with non-truth. Lacking a direct intuition about the conditions under which a sentence is false, we need (...) an independent foundation of the concept of falsity. The solution I offer is a definition of falsity in terms of the truth of a syntactic negation of the sentence. A definition of syntactic negation is proposed for English. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates the nature, the phenomenal character and the philosophical significance of attention. According to its central thesis, attention is the ongoing mental activity of structuring the stream of consciousness or phenomenal field. The dissertation connects the scientific study of attention in psychology and the neurosciences with central discussions in the philosophy of mind. Once we get clear on the nature and the phenomenal character of attention, we can make progress toward understanding foundational issues concerning the nature and the (...) structure of conscious mentality itself. We understand better how consciousness is connected to self-awareness and to agency, and we get a better grip on the nature of perceptual experience, the unity of consciousness, and its subjective character. The dissertation also aims at showing that the current empirical investigation of attention should be complemented with work at the level of generality that a philosophical analysis can provide; it shows how such an analysis is relevant for the scientific study of attention by providing a new conceptual framework and suggesting several new areas of research. (shrink)

Salloch and Eriksen (2024) present a compelling case for including patients as co-reasoners in medical decision-making involving artificial intelligence (AI). Drawing on O'Neill’s neo-Kantian frame...

The first part of this essay develops the idea of logic as the science of thought, articulating, and thus being, the self-consciousness of thought. It explains that logic, so understood, is nothing other than metaphysics, the science of what is in so far as it is. Self-consciousness, then, thought itself, is not empty, but the source of all content. The second part of the essay discusses the opening paragraphs of Hegel’sScience of Logic; it shows how, in these paragraphs, thought is (...) revealed to be the source of its own content in virtue of its original negativity. Thus the second part begins to make concrete the idea of logic provided by the first. (shrink)

Perceptual illusions have often served as an important tool in the study of perceptual experience. In this paper I argue that a recently discovered set of visual illusions sheds new light on the nature of time consciousness. I suggest the study of these silencing illusions as a tool kit for any philosopher interested in the experience of time and show how to better understand time consciousness by combining detailed empirical investigations with a detailed philosophical analysis. In addition, and more specifically, (...) I argue against an initially plausible range of views that assume a close match between the temporal content of visual experience and the temporal layout of experience itself. Against such a widely held structural matching thesis I argue that which temporal changes we are experiencing bears no close relation to how our experience itself is changing over time. Explanations of the silencing illusions that are compatible with the structural matching thesis fail. (shrink)

Animal models of human diseases are often used in biomedical research in place of human subjects. However, results obtained by animal models may fail to hold true for humans. One way of addressing this problem is to make animal models more similar to humans by placing human tissue into animal models, rendering them chimeric. Since technical and ethical limitations make neurological disorders difficult to study in humans, chimeric models with human neural tissue could help advance our understanding of neuropathophysiology. In (...) this article, we examine whether the introduction of human neural tissue and any consequent cognitive change is relevant to the way we ought to treat chimeras. We argue that changes in cognitive abilities are morally relevant to the extent that they increase the capacities that affect the moral status of any entity, including awareness, autonomy, and sociability. We posit that no being, regardless of species, should be treated in a way that is incommensurate with its moral status. Finally, we propose a framework that can be used to guide ethical assessment of research involving chimeras with advanced cognitive capacities. We advance this framework as a useful tool for bringing relevant considerations to the forefront for those considering the ethical merit of proposed chimeric research. In doing so, we examine concepts relevant to the question of how any entity may be treated, including moral status, dignity, and capacities. (shrink)

The KK principle states that knowing entails knowing that one knows. This historically popular principle has fallen out of favour among many contemporary philosophers in light of putative counterexamples. Recently, some have defended more palatable versions of KK by weakening the principle. These revisions remain faithful to their predecessor in spirit while escaping crucial objections. This paper examines the prospects of such a strategy. It is argued that revisions of the original principle can be captured by a generalized knowledge iteration (...) principle, Weak-KK, which states that knowing entails the possibility of knowing that one knows. But Weak-KK is vulnerable to an unknowability result and therefore must be rejected. The arguments here suggest that retreating to weaker iteration principles is not an option for the KK enthusiast. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

So-called 'realists' have argued that political philosophers should engage with real politics, but that mainstream 'non-realist' political philosophers fail to do so. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the discussions between realists and their critics have not drawn much on debates in metaethics. In this paper, I argue that this is an oversight. There are important connections between the realism/non-realism debate and certain controversies in metaethics. Both realism and non-realism come with metaethical baggage. By considering several arguments that could be made for (...) and against both positions, each of which rests on contested views about the metaphysics and epistemology of value, I outline exactly which metaethical claims realists and nonrealists must defend in order to make their position tenable. (shrink)

This paper presents scientists’ understanding of their roles in society and corresponding responsibilities. It discusses the researchers’ perspective against the background of the contemporary literature on scientific responsibility in the social sciences and philosophy and proposes a heuristic that improves the understanding of the complexity of scientific responsibility. The study is based on qualitative interviews with senior scientists. The presented results show what researchers themselves see as their responsibilities, how they assume them, and what challenges they perceive with respect to (...) their responsibilities. Regarding the latter, the interviewed researchers highlight those aspects of responsibility that go beyond the expertise of their professional role, and thus cannot be carried by scientists alone. For example, scientists alone cannot determine the general direction science takes, or the useful application of their research. The interviewed researchers describe those challenges as responsibilities that must be shared across different societal groups. In the theoretical literature, responsibility has been described as a relation between an actor (who), the action for which someone is responsible (what), and the normative framework against which someone is responsible (why). We will draw on this concept of “relational responsibility” to identify the various actors, normative frameworks, and actions relevant to scientific responsibility. This will serve as a heuristic tool to help identify the entanglement of responsibilities spread across several societal groups. (shrink)

Die analytische Philosophie hat selbst da, wo sie explizit an Kant anschließt, erhebliche Schwierigkeiten mit dessen Idee eines synthetischen Wissens a priori. Damit verliert sie eine ganze Dimension der philosophischen Tradition. Das vorliegende Buch gewinnt diese Idee zurück, indem es gerade den Anschauungsbezug und damit den Zeitbezug des menschlichen Denkens zum Gegenstand einer logischen Untersuchung macht. Nur wenn man die Zeit als inneres und formbildendes Merkmal des menschlichen Aussagens erkennt, versteht man den Begriff empirischer Wahrheit und sinnlich vermittelter Erkenntnis. In (...) diesem Gedanken, so zeigt sich, liegt die Einheit einer philosophischen Tradition, die Aristoteles mit Kant und beide mit dem späten Wittgenstein verbindet. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)

In a series of essays, Bratman defines a concept, which we may call the concept of Bratmanian action by many. Our discussion of this concept, in section 1, reveals that it is not the one called to mind by the usual examples of joint action. Section 2 lays alongside it a different concept of doing something together. According to it, many are doing A together if and only if the principle of the actions in which they are doing A is (...) a joint intention to do A, an act of intending that is theirs. It seems fitting to call this joint intentional action. In distinction to Bratmanian action by many, joint intentional action is ubiquitous in human life. This raises the question what may be the interest of Bratman's concept. Its interest can reside only in a relation it bears to the concept of joint intentional action. Section 3 discusses the suggestion that Bratmanian action by many is a precursor of joint action in human phylogenesis. This is wrong because subjects are capable of Bratmanian action only in virtue of being subjects of joint action. (shrink)

We were astonished to read a recent media news item about a 51-year-old woman in Ontario who was offered and accepted medical assistance in dying (MAID) because she was experiencing multiple chemical sensitivities, also known by its preferred diagnostic term, idiopathic environmental intolerance (IEI). Reportedly, she could not access appropriate housing. We find this concerning, as providing MAID to individuals with refractory IEI symptoms on the basis of housing unavailability implies that there were no better management options available. This case (...) should prompt ethical reflection on whether our supports for the most vulnerable enable them to maintain basic human dignity, and whether systemic societal action in other ways could better support people with IEI. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of non-personal immortality. Non-personal theories of immortality claim that even though there is no personal or individual survival of death, it is still possible to continue to exist in a non-personal state. The most important challenge for non-personal conceptions of immortality is solving the apparent contradiction between on the one hand accepting that individual existence ends with death and on the other hand maintaining that death nevertheless is not equal to total annihilation. I present two (...) theories of non-personal immortality found in Schopenhauer and William James and derive a set of systematic core theses from them. Finally, I discuss whether the notion of non-personal immortality is consistent, and whether a non-personal afterlife could be desirable. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ancient commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo by Olympiodorus and Damascius and aims to present the relevance of their challenging and valuable readings of the dialogue to Neoplatonic ethics.

What does the truth of a judgment consist of, according to F. H. Bradley? What is its ultimate nature? In particular, how does such a property relate to reality? At least three interpretive theses have been offered: (i) that Bradley defended a theory of truth as coherence; (ii) that, rather, Bradley defended a robust variant of the identity theory of truth; and (iii) that, in any case, Bradley rejected the correspondence theory of truth. In this article I question these three (...) theses and argue that the position defended by Bradley is perfectly compatible with a weak variant of the correspondence theory of truth. This, by the way, makes his position vulnerable to certain objections. Bradley’s merit consists not so much in having answered them satisfactorily as in having anticipated them and assumed them as eventual consequences of his position. (shrink)

One way to seek to reduce the risk of potential offenders engaging in certain types of crime in a public or semi-public area is to make it much more difficult, or even impossible, for them to gain access to the area in question and subject them to a sanction if they do enter the area. This paper considers whether preventive exclusion of this kind should be considered a pro tanto morally impermissible means of crime prevention because it violates the agency (...) of those excluded. Several variants of this agency objection to preventive exclusion are identified and critically assessed. It is argued that none persuasively show preventive exclusion to be pro tanto morally wrong. (shrink)

Proponents of an intentionalist theory of perceptual experience have taken for granted that perceptual experience is an informing form of intentionality. Hence they often speak of the way an experience represents the environment to be, or what there is. In this respect perceptual experience is thus assumed to resemble a speech act like assertion or a mental state like belief. There is another important form of intentionality though that concerns not what there is, but what to do. I call this (...) a guiding form of intentionality. In speech, there are – for example – imperatives and among intentional mental states there are desires and intentions. In this paper I argue that perceptual experience is at least sometimes characterized by such a guiding form of intentionality. Perception does not just inform, it is sometimes intrinsically action-guiding. I call this the perceptual guidance claim. I distinguish the perceptual guidance claim from related, but importantly distinct claims , and argue that perceptual action guidance occurs not just in an unconscious vision-for-action system, but also within conscious perceptual experience. (shrink)

There was a time when meta-ethical expressivism seemed to be the only game in town for meta-ethical non-representationalists. In recent years, though, meta-ethical inferentialism has emerged as a promising non-representationalist alternative. So far, however, inferentialists lack something that would really allow them to draw level with expressivists. This is an explanation for the distinctive difference between normative and descriptive vocabulary when it comes to disagreement—something expressivists can explain in terms of the difference between representational and desire-like states and which constitutes (...) one of the primary motivations for expressivism. This paper develops a novel and distinctive account for this difference on behalf of inferentialists, based on the different functions of these two vocabularies. Not only does this account help inferentialists, it also shows how non-representionalist accounts can capture the relevant disagreement phenomena without appealing to the sorts of desire-like states expressivists tend to appeal to. (shrink)

I begin to develop a framework for emergence in the physical sciences. Namely, I propose to explicate ontological emergence in terms of the notion of ‘novel reference’, and of an account of interpretation as a map from theory to world. I then construe ontological emergence as the “failure of the interpretation to mesh” with an appropriate linkage map between theories. Ontological emergence can obtain between theories that have the same extension but different intensions, and between theories that have both different (...) extensions and intensions. I illustrate the framework in three examples: the emergence of spontaneous magnetisation in a ferromagnet, the emergence of masslessness, and the emergence of space, in specific models of physics. The account explains why ontological emergence is independent of reduction: namely, because emergence is primarily concerned with adequate interpretation, while the sense of reduction that is relevant here is concerned with inter-theoretic relations between uninterpreted theories. (shrink)

Whistleblowing is an effective tool against fraud and corruption in organizations. However, as researchers have struggled to acquire data on actual whistleblowers, research relies on hypothetical intention data and student samples, which is seen as a major limitation. Using a field study of 1,416 employees from China, Germany, and Russia, the purpose of this article is to identify differences and similarities between intention and actual whistleblowing decisions, thus aiding research and interpretation of prior and future studies. I also contribute by (...) analyzing whether findings can be generalized across different cultures and whether status and power influence the whistleblowing process. My results reveal that the key difference between hypothetical and real decisions is not in variables that affect the process, but in effect sizes: Employees underestimate the effect of situational (retaliation) and organizational (compliance measures) variables in hypothetical compared to actual whistleblowing. Thus, reliance on intention research is not inherently problematic, when effect sizes are interpreted with caution. I also find that results are similar across countries and that status and power may not be decisive factors in whistleblowing. My findings should also be of interest to practitioners and policymakers, as they assist in designing effective whistleblowing systems and environments in organizations. (shrink)

Wenn wir Peter Singers Konklusion in „Famine, Affluence, and Morality“ (1972) akzeptieren, dann handeln wir im Alltag sehr viel häufiger falsch, als es uns lieb ist. Anstatt über die Natur von Altruismus zu philosophieren, könnten wir auch möglichst effektiv Hungerleidenden helfen. Ist es daher etwa moralisch verwerflich – weil egoistisch – zu philosophieren? In diesem Beitrag beleuchte ich die Gründe, die wir haben, Philosophie in den Mittelpunkt unseres Lebens zu stellen. Ich argumentiere, dass Philosophieren – genauso wie die Beschäftigung mit (...) Kunst und Wissenschaft – nur dann gerechtfertigt sein kann, wenn es praktische Gründe jenseits von Gründen des persönlichen Nutzens und der Moral gibt. Dabei schliesse ich an Susan Wolfs Idee an, dass diese Tätigkeiten ein Leben mit Sinn erfüllen können. Es bleibt jedoch offen, ob in einer Welt voller Ungerechtigkeit die moralischen Gründe gegen das Philosophieren (und für andere Handlungsoptionen) nicht dennoch überwiegen. (shrink)