In the traditional understanding, human dignity is often portrayed as a «final», «inherent», and «absolute» value. If human dignity as the core of the status of a human being did indeed have thos characteristics, this would yield a severe limitation for obligations that stem from the moral status of non-human animals, plants, eco systems and other entities discussed in environmental ethics; for obligations that arise from human dignity standardly take priority over the duties toward entities with non-human moral status. Yet, (...) many theorists of human dignity nowadays have given up the traditional picture in favour of a more «contingent» understanding of human dignity that abandons one or more of its traditional characteristics.In this paper, I argue that to the contrary, we have good reasons to think that the three characteristics of human dignity just mentioned can indeed be attributed to a value that deserves the name «human dignity». In a first part, I argue for a specific understanding of the three value characteristics under consideration. After these preliminaries, I show in a second part that given such an understanding, we have ample evidence that we can indeed say that human dignity is an inherent, absolute and final value; and also that these three characteristics are properties of a single value. (shrink)

The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. _The Neo-Kantian Reader_ is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, (...) and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections, placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history. (shrink)

The modal-Hamiltonian interpretation belongs to the modal family of interpretations of quantum mechanics. By endowing the Hamiltonian with the role of selecting the subset of the definite-valued observables of the system, it accounts for ideal and non-ideal measurements, and also supplies a criterion to distinguish between reliable and non-reliable measurements in the non-ideal case. It can be reformulated in an explicitly invariant form, in terms of the Casimir operators of the Galilean group, and the compatibility of the MHI with the (...) theory of decoherence has been proved. Nevertheless, perhaps its main advantage in the eyes of a scientist is given by its several applications to well-known physical situations, leading to results compatible with experimental evidence. The purpose of this paper is to add a new application to the list: the case of optical isomerism, which is a central issue for the philosophy of physics and of chemistry since it points to the core of the problem of the relationship between physics and chemistry. Here it will be shown that the MHI supplies a direct and physically natural solution to the problem, a solution that does not require putting classical assumptions in “by hand.”. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that meta-normative expressivism is best seen as a meta-semantic, rather than a semantic view. One strong motivation for this is that expressivism becomes, thereby, compatible with truth-conditional semantics. While this approach is promising, however, many of its details are still unexplored. One issue that still needs to be explored in particular, is what accounts of propositional contents are open to meta-semantic expressivists. This paper makes progress on this issue by developing an expressivist-friendly deflationary account of (...) such contents. (shrink)

Functions play an important role in neo-pragmatism. This paper advances neo-pragmatism’s prospects by investigating how functions are to be understood on this account. It argues that prominent ways of understanding functions do not suit neo-pragmatists’ meta-semantic commitments or their preferred methodology. It then presents an account that fits both, based on Laura and François Schroeter’s theory of rationalizing self-interpretation. On this account, a term’s function is what it allows us to do that makes our tradition with the term rational.

ResumenEl porvenir de Jacques Derrida se juega en su reflexión sobre lo político, la cual gira a su vez sobre este mismo concepto: porvenir. Por lo tanto, pensar en la deconstrucción de lo político llevada a cabo por Derrida necesariamente nos conducirá a analizar algunos ejes que atraviesan la cuestión del porvenir: herencia, aporía, mesianicidad sin mesianismo e invención. Nos proponemos en este recorrido destacar la importancia del pensamiento de Derrida dentro del debate político contemporáneo y la herencia que nos (...) ha legado, la cual nos obliga a seguir pensando la deconstrucción y su vínculo con la democracia por venir.Palabras clavePorvenir – Herencia – Aporía – Mesianicidad sin mesianismo – Democracia por venirAbstractIf there´s a future (à-venir) for Derrida´s philosophy, it depends on his political analysis, where the concept of «à-venir» has a fundamental role. Then, Derrida´s deconstruction of the political issue will take us to analyze some issues related to the à-venir question: inheritance, aporia, messianicity without messianism and invention. In this article we will emphasize the importance of Derrida´s philosophy for the contemporary political debate. This inheritance makes us go on thinking about the deconstruction and its connection with the democracy to come.KeywordsFuture – Inheritance – Aporia – Messianicity without Messianism – Democracy to com. (shrink)

Szkic anarchizmu aktualności. O pojęciu anarchistyczności.

Kant's influence on the history of philosophy is vast and protean. The transcendental turn denotes one of its most important forms, defined by the notion that Kant's deepest insight should not be identified with any specific epistemological or metaphysical doctrine, but rather concerns the fundamental standpoint and terms of reference of philosophical enquiry. To take the transcendental turn is not to endorse any of Kant's specific teachings, but to accept that the Copernican revolution announced in the Preface of the Critique (...) of Pure Reason sets philosophy on a new footing and constitutes the proper starting point of philosophical reflection.In this volume a team of leading philosophers explore the concept of the transcendental as it developed through history, focusing on approaches to the transcendental project by Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Bernard Williams. By giving systematic shape to historical material, the volume provides a unique resource for systematic reflection on transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Im Alltag äußern wir nicht nur Aussagen darüber, wie die Welt tatsächlich beschaffen ist, sondern auch darüber, was notwendigerweise oder möglicherweise der Fall ist. Doch worin ist die Wahrheit solcher sogenannten Modalaussagen fundiert? Auf diese Frage gibt Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz bereits in der Frühen Neuzeit eine höchst interessante Antwort: Für ihn sind modale Wahrheiten im Intellekt Gottes fundiert. Diese Modalitätskonzeption analysiert Sebastian Bender in der vorliegenden Studie auf systematisch informierte Weise. Dabei kommt er zu folgenden Ergebnissen: Erstens vertritt Leibniz, (...) anders als häufig angenommen, eine nicht-reduktionistische Metaphysik der Modalität– Modales wird von ihm also nicht auf etwas Nicht-Modales reduziert. Zweitens ist Leibniz' Theorie der Modalität kombinatorisch geprägt. Drittens repräsentieren mögliche Welten für Leibniz nicht alles metaphysisch Mögliche. Gott kann im Prinzip auch Ansammlungen von Substanzen erschaffen, die keine Welten konstituieren. Viertens schließlich ist das für Leibniz zentrale Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes kontingent und nicht, wie häufig vorausgesetzt, notwendig. Auf diese Weise gelingt es Leibniz, seinen Rationalismus mit seinem Theismus zu verbinden. (shrink)

One worry about metaethical expressivism is that it reduces to some form of subjectivism. This worry is enforced by subjectivists who argue that subjectivism can explain certain phenomena thought to support expressivism equally well. Recently, authors have started to suggest that subjectivism can take away what has often been seen as expressivism's biggest explanatory advantage, namely expressivism's ability to explain the possibility of moral disagreement. In this paper, I will give a response to an argument recently given by Frank Jackson (...) to this conclusion that will show that it is false that subjectivism could explain disagreement as well as expressivism. (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)

The dominant assumption about the causal architecture of the mind is, that it is composed of a stable set of components that contribute independently to relevant observables that are employed to measure cognitive activity. This view has been called component-dominant dynamics. An alternative has been proposed, according to which the different components are not independent, but fundamentally interdependent, and are not stable basic properties of the mind, but rather an emergent feature of the mind given a particular task context. This (...) view has been called interaction-dominant dynamics. In this paper, we review evidence for interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind. We point out, that such an architecture is consistent with problems of convergence in research on the level of results and theorizing. Moreover, we point out that if interaction-dominant dynamics as the causal architecture of the mind were to be true, this would naturally lead to problems with generalization and replicability in sciences of the mind and brain, and would probably warrant changes in the scientific practice with regard to study-design and data analysis. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Kant's Statement of the Principle of the Primacy of Practical Reason, and its Role in Kant's Moral Theology The Primacy of Practical Reason in the Broader Sense The Primacy of Practical Reason and the Assumption of Freedom: Their Relation The Primacy of Practical Reason in Relation to the Theological Postulates Kant's Argument in “On the Primacy” Other Texts Kant's Copernicanism and the Concept of Practical Cognition in the Context of the Postulates Influence.

Die öffentliche Diskussion um die „personalisierte Medizin“ legt nahe, dass mit diesem medizinischen Ansatz hohe Erwartungen an einen Beitrag zur klinischen Versorgung verbunden werden. Über die Wahrnehmungen und Bewertungen klinisch tätiger Ärzte ist jedoch wenig bekannt. Die vorliegende qualitative Interviewstudie gibt einen Einblick bezüglich des Einflusses „personalisierter Medizin“ auf die klinische Praxis aus ärztlicher Perspektive. Die Ärzte im vorliegenden Sample nehmen „personalisierte Medizin“ zwar als einen medizinischen Fortschritt wahr, sehen allerdings keine grundsätzliche Veränderung der bisherigen medizinischen Praxis. Als zentrales Problem (...) wird die Handhabung und Verwertung von molekulargenetischen Informationen für Diagnose und Therapie in der klinischen Praxis thematisiert. In Anbetracht der Ergebnisse muss infrage gestellt werden, ob „personalisierte Medizin“ nicht das Gegenteil von dem, was ihr Name nahe legt – eine personenorientiertere Medizin – bewirkt. Die Strategien im Umgang mit den Informationsmassen produzieren selbst neue Herausforderungen, die ein Hindernis für eine personenorientierte Medizin darstellen könnten. (shrink)

One argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the (...) nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses the argument from objectification – as recently presented by Elizabeth Shaw – against mandatory direct brain interventions targeting criminal offenders’ values as part of rehabilitative or reformative schemes. Shaw contends that such DBIs would objectify offenders because a DBI “excludes offenders by portraying them as a group to whom we need not listen” and “implies that offenders are radically defective with regard to one of the most fundamental aspects of their agency”. To ensure that offenders are (...) not objectified, Shaw first maintains that we should restrict rehabilitative/reformative schemes to attempts at rational dialogue because such an approach respects the offender’s personhood. Second, Shaw claims that we should not portray offenders as radically defective because such treatment would only negatively impact offenders’ already tenuous relationship with society. Third, Shaw contends that we should not confer the state the power to change an offender’s values because the state lacks insight into what constitutes the right values. I contend that none of these arguments should prevent the use of value-targeting DBIs. First, I show that the dialogue requirement for rehabilitative schemes is insufficient ground from which to oppose the use of these DBIs. Second, I show that it is doubtful that the use of DBIs as proposed would damage the relationship between offenders and society. Finally, although the state may often lack insight into what constitutes the correct values, this lack of insight should not by itself prevent value-targeting DBIs from being employed on certain groups of offenders. (shrink)

Starting with an empirical study of several Jehovah’s Witnesses1 congregations we aim to highlight the social mechanisms of religious conversion and the phases an individual passes through before becoming a Witness. By applying Lewis Rambo’s systemic stage model of conversion we are able to identify a series of elements that characterize the conversion to this religion in Romania, such as: social filtering, delegitimation of the previous religion, and incipient identification with the Witnesses’ group. The article asserts that the Witnesses’ decision (...) to convert implies the deliberate assumption of the others’ disapproval and even social stigmatization. Nevertheless they opt for this religious status because the immediate benefits brought by the religious community and the future benefits of the earthly Heaven offer them sufficient motives for becoming Witnesses. (shrink)

Recent years have seen incredible advances in our abilities to gather and store data, as well as in the computational power and methods—most prominently in machine learning—to do things with those data. These advances have given rise to the emerging field “data science.” Because of its immense power for providing practically useful information about the world, data science is a field of increasing importance. This paper argues that a core part of what data scientists are doing should be understood as (...) conceptual engineering. At all stages of the data science process, data scientists need to deliberate about, evaluate, and make classificatory choices in a variety of ways, including as part of training and evaluating machine learning models. Viewing these activities as involved in conceptual engineering offers a new way to think about them, one that helps to clarify what is at stake in them, what sorts of considerations are relevant, and how to systematically think about the choices faced. Given the increasing importance of data science, if conceptual engineering is relevant for activities in data science, this also highlights the relevance and impact of conceptual engineering as a method. Furthermore, the paper also suggests that machine learning opens distinctive and novel ways in which data scientists engage in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Nietzsches Ausnahmestatus als Philosoph gründet nicht zuletzt in seinem künstlerischen Verhältnis zur Sprache. Der Grenzen sprengende Denker erweist sich zugleich als ein Grenzen sprengender Sprachartist, der den traditionellen Unterschied zwischen Philosophie und Dichtung zum Verschwimmen bringt. Während die Forschung meist den Hauptakzent auf den Denker Nietzsche legt, widmet sich der vorliegende Band dem Dichter Nietzsche. Untersucht wird ein großes, von der Forschung bislang erst ansatzweise erschlossenes Korpus von Gedichten und Gedichtfragmenten. Betrachtet werden darüber hinaus auch weitere literarische Ausdrucksformen Nietzsches sowie (...) ausgewählte Stationen seiner Rezeption als Dichter. (shrink)

En los últimos años, el comportamiento bosónico que un sistema de fermiones puede exhibir ha despertado el interés de los físicos. En este trabajo, se adopta un enfoque basado en estructuras producto tensorial y se asume una ontología de propiedades para argumentar en favor de la relatividad de la noción de identidad estadística y en favor de una interpretación realista del comportamiento trans-estadístico.

In his recent Editorial Article, Jeffrey Seeman calls for the promotion of collaborative work among different disciplines, focusing on the case of the interaction between chemistry, the history of chemistry and the philosophy of chemistry. From a general viewpoint, it is difficult to disagree with this claim; moreover, the interest of scientists in the history and the philosophy of science is always welcome. However, the devil is in the details: there are several points that, we think, must be discussed more (...) carefully with the aim of arriving at far-reaching conclusions. (shrink)

Problem ukrytości Boga staje się coraz częściej dyskutowanym tematem filozoficznym. W swoim artykule chciałbym zająć się kwestią nazwaną przez Jacka Wojtysiaka (w jego książce Między jawnością a ukryciem) (Wojtysiak 2023) „wiedzą testymonialną” i powiązać ją z Newmanowską koncepcją rozumowania implikatywnego. Odróżnienie od siebie dwóch rodzajów rozumowania — jednego spontanicznego, praktycznego, znajdującego swoje zastosowanie m.in. w obszarze wiary i moralności, oraz drugiego krytycznego, analitycznego i retrospektywnego, używanego w nauce, a także w filozofii i teologii – wydaje mi się kluczowe dla zrozumienia (...) obserwowalnej ukrytości Boga. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the question of the proper place of substantial general metaphysics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. For reasons articulated in writings from the 1950s, analytic aesthetics denies that there is any relation of dependence and regards the intrusion of metaphysics into reflection on art as not merely superfluous but also methodologically inappropriate. Against this I argue that analytic aesthetics in its circumscription of the bounds of the discipline is not metaphysically neutral, that it is (...) vulnerable to the challenge of scientific naturalism, and that a case for the necessity of metaphysics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art can be made on the grounds of the constitutive opacity of art and the aesthetic from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness. The analytic reception of Kant’s aesthetic theory, I argue, supports this conclusion. (shrink)

The historical review of Brazilian foreign policy is in a constant debate, revealing the gap between the development aspirations of a Southern actor and its obstacles to inserting itself into the North. Immersed in this discussion, this article identifies Itamaraty's defining features, seeking to shed light on the ideas that nourish his political thinking today. First, it outlines the three ideational currents that dispute foreign policy decision-making and its effects up to 1990. Next, it analyses the gradual rise of Brazil's (...) international legitimacy based on a foreign policy of prestige. Finally, it examines the decline of Brazilian foreign policy since 2014. This article aims to contribute to the systematic characterization of Itamaraty's schools of thought, tracing some of the narratives that permeate Brazil's international identity. (shrink)

Resumo A partir da concepção de que filosofia, para Nietzsche, é a arte da transfiguração, o texto analisa como Nietzsche incorpora e transfigura Os deuses no exílio, de Heinrich Heine. Nietzsche teria invertido a perspectiva do problema posto por Heine, bem como o seu procedimento expositivo: se o poeta traz o que seria uma humanização e aburguesamento dos antigos deuses como ato de degradação cósmica pelo qual a ascensão do cristianismo seria culpada, Nietzsche analisa a equivocada autodivinização do homem por (...) meio da moral como megalomania trágica, cuja consequência seria a invocação do sofrimento da existência terrena e a esperança numa vida melhor, supraterrena.Taking Nietzsche´s comprehension of philosophy as the art of transfiguration, the text analyses how the philosopher incorporates and transfigures The Gods in Exile, from Heinrich Heine. The philosopher would have inverted the perspective of the problem settled by Heine and his expositive procedure: if the poet bring us what would be an humanization and a “gentifrication” of the ancient gods as a cosmic degradation act by which the ascension of Christianity would be blamed, Nietzsche analyses the mistaken autodivinization of man through morals as a tragic megalomania, whose consequence would be the invocation of a suffering at the core of earthly existence and a hope in a better, ethereal life. (shrink)

Die neuzeitliche Philosophie beginnt mit der Einsicht Descartes', daß sich die Aussagen, in denen man sich selbst Gedanken, Absichten, Meinungen zuschreibt, fundamental von denen unterscheiden, in denen man die Welt der körperlichen Dinge beschreibt. Descartes, und mit ihm eine bis heute mächtige Tradition, schließt daraus, daß sich diese Ich-Aussagen auf eine eigene Welt geistiger Dinge beziehen. Der von den Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften inspirierte philosophische Naturalismus hat dagegen in jüngster Zeit eine Reihe von Arbeiten hervorgebracht, die dem Selbstbezug unseres geistigen Lebens (...) einen Ort in der einheitlichen Welt natürlicher Phänomene zuweisen. Das vorliegende Buch zeigt, warum die cartesische wie die naturalistische Deutung des bewußten Selbstbezugs gleichermaßen verfehlt sind. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Aktuelle Debatten zu gesellschaftspolitischen Folgen der Corona-Pandemie zeigen, dass Intellektuelle wie Giorgio Agamben und Roberto Esposito den Begriff „Biopolitik“ ins Treffen führen, um Regierungsmaßnahmen zur Eindämmung des Virus zu analysieren. Seit Michel Foucaults Überlegungen zur Funktionsweise und Genealogie der Biopolitik birgt der Begriff jedoch eine gewisse Problematik: Aufgrund strukturell bedingter Mechanismen der Inklusion und Exklusion menschlichen Lebens gelingt es den biopolitischen Modellen nach Agamben und Esposito nicht – so die These –, ein zentrales Element des Politischen zu beschreiben. Unberücksichtigt (...) bleibt die Möglichkeit des Widerstands und der Kritik an Regierungsmaßnahmen; eine Möglichkeit, die gerade die Heterogenität politischer Ordnungsstrukturen anzeigt. Im Zuge der Analytik moderner Machttechniken verschiebt Foucault anders als Agamben und Esposito den Fokus von der Biopolitik hin zu einem umfassenderen Paradigma des „Regierens“, der Gouvernementalität. Infolgedessen lässt sich die Biopolitik als Regierungsweise thematisieren, mit der immer schon Formen widerständigen Handelns einhergehen. Um dieser Perspektive Rechnung zu tragen, argumentiert mein Beitrag mit Foucault gegen die primär strukturale Auffassung politischer Ordnungen nach Agamben und Esposito. (shrink)

na parte importante de la literatura sobre la ontología de las normas jurídicas se ha decantado por entenderlas como algún tipo de objeto o entidad abstracta. Sin embargo, más allá de los matices propios de cada concepción, aún no se presenta una discusión en torno a qué implica que las normas jurídicas sean entendidas de esta manera. Esta omisión se podría explicar porque en el propio debate filosófico todavía no hay una articulación teórica respecto de qué subyace a la dicotomía (...) concreto/abstracto, sino más bien distintas maneras de explicar la distinción. De ahí que, en el intersticio entre dos problemáticas no suficientemente abordadas, este trabajo se propone enmendar uno de dichos vacíos explicativos a través de contribuir a determinar si corresponde (o no) entender las normas jurídicas como objetos abstractos. (shrink)

Baldwin, T. (ed.) Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870 -1945.

This article re-introduces the notion of liturgical mysticism from both the perspectives of systematic theology and Church history. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach grounded in theology aiming to revisit the concept of liturgical mysticism in order to contribute to developing an adequate interpretive model for mystical texts. The article introduces the notion of liturgical mysticism firstly by a systematic-theological fundamental analysis of Christian mystical experience, showing the uniqueness of that experience and the possible interconnections with liturgy; secondly, by studying (...) liturgical mysticism historically, in the context of the Middle Dutch tradition in the sixteenth century, especially the Arnhem Mystical Sermons, in order to provide a solid historical basis for our argumentation; lastly, the article explores first the impact of our findings on the theological understanding and method in the study of mysticism, and second it notes some ramifications for contemporary Christian spirituality. The authors attempt to show that liturgical mysticism, understood and practised as a tradition bound and context sensitive religious experience, is historically plausible and theologically promising. (shrink)

Review of: Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, Walter Benjamin, Peter Fenves (ed.) and Julia Ng (ed.) (2021) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 368 pp., ISBN 978-0-80474-952-7, h/bk, $25.00.