In response to the significant increase of judgment and judgmentalism in contemporary film and television, 'A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television' investigates the evolving connections between the aesthetics and ethics of judgment. The volume ultimately contemplates whether we should, and can, do without judgment, questions that are just the beginning of a much-needed re-examination. The individual contributions of the collection all work towards a very specific focus on judgment that is unprecedented in its transdisciplinary composition and contemporary relevance. (...) By exploring examples of entertainment that aim to instigate judgment, 'A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television' advances the as yet underdeveloped area of research into television and philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore and discuss the use of the concept of being affected in biomedical decision making processes in Germany. The corresponding German term ‘Betroffenheit’ characterizes on the one hand a relation between a state of affairs and a person and on the other an emotional reaction that involves feelings like concern and empathy with the suffering of others. An example for the increasing relevance of being affected is the postulation of the participation of people with disabilities and (...) chronic or acute diseases in the discourse, as partly realized in the German National Ethics Council or the Federal Joint Committee. Nevertheless, not only on the political level, the resistance against the participation of affected people is still strong; the academic debate seems to be cross-grained, too. Against this background, we explore the meaning and argumentative role of the concept of being affected as it is used by affected and lay people themselves. Our analysis is based on four focus group discussions in which lay people, patients and relatives of patients discuss their attitudes towards biomedical interventions such as organ transplantation and genetic testing. This setting allows for a comparison of how affected and non-affected people are concerned and deliberate about medical opportunities, but also of how they position themselves as being affected or non-affected with respect to (scientific) knowledge and morality. On this basis, we discuss the normative relevance of being affected for the justification of political participation. (shrink)

This book investigates context-sensitivity in natural language by examining the meaning and use of a target class of theoretically recalcitrant expressions. These expressions-including epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague language -exhibit systematic differences from paradigm context-sensitive expressions in their discourse dynamics and embedding properties. Many researchers have responded by rethinking the nature of linguistic meaning and communication. Drawing on general insights about the role of context in interpretation and collaborative action, Silk develops an improved contextualist theory of CR-expressions (...) within the classical truth-conditional paradigm: Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the distinctive linguistic behavior of a CR-expression from a particular contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. It is shown how in using CR-expressions, speakers can exploit their mutual grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning skills, to coordinate their attitudes and negotiate about how the context should evolve. The book focuses primarily on developing a Discourse Contextualist semantics and pragmatics for epistemic modals. The Discourse Contextualist framework is also applied to other categories of epistemic vocabulary, normative and evaluative vocabulary, and vague adjectives. The similarities/differences among these expressions, and among context-sensitive expressions more generally, have been underexplored. The development of Discourse Contextualism in this book sheds light on general features of meaning and communication, and the variety of ways in which context affects and is affected by uses of language. Discourse Contextualism provides a fruitful framework for theorizing about various broader issues in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. (shrink)

This paper argues that a standard analysis of modals from formal semantics suggests a solution to the detaching problem — the problem of whether un-embedded 'ought'-claims can "detach" (be derived) from hypothetical imperatives and their antecedent conditions. On a broadly Kratzerian analysis, modals have a skeletal conventional meaning and receive a particular reading (e.g., deontic, epistemic, teleological) only relative to certain forms of contextual supplementation. I argue that 'ought'-claims can detach — subject to an important qualification — but only as (...) long as the 'ought's in the conditional premise and conclusion are interpreted relative to the same ordering sources. Although modus ponens can be shown to fail with hypothetical imperatives, the cases in question do not constitute a failure of detachment in the sense that ethicists have cared about. Rival wide-scoping accounts are proven to be linguistically problematic. They make incorrect predictions about the meanings of hypothetical imperatives, and founder in response to quantificational variants of the detaching problem. (shrink)

Proceedings of the National Seminar on "Dharmaśāstra and Human Rights" held at University of Pune during 22-24 March 2010.

Papers presented at the National Seminar on 'Indian Hermeneutics : Theory and Application', held at Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, University of Pune during 11-13 January 2011.

Three laectures delivered in Wlson philological lectures, 2001.

Recent developments in medicine open up new possibilities for planning and shaping life. At the same time, this scope of new options and interventions also involves new forms and spheres of responsibilities. Elderly persons can be viewed as having a responsibility toward their families and partners to plan, via advance health care directives, the final stages of their life; individuals can be seen as responsible for late onset diseases when ignoring public incitements for a healthy life style; and medical professionals (...) can be regarded as responsible for “wrongful” lives.These new forms of responsibility concern medical professionals, patients, families, and even society in general. The emerging idea of “responsibilisation” by the new politics of “life itself”—as Rose termed it—warrants more attention and reflection. However, in bioethics, the term is notoriously unclear. This thematic issue of Medicine Studies tries therefore to explore the multiple meanings of responsibility in .. (shrink)

The mainstream literature on corporate governance is based on the premise of conflicts of interest in a competitive game played by variously defined stakeholders and thus builds explicitly and/or implicitly on masculinist ethical theories. This article argues that insights from feminist ethics, and in particular ethics of care, can provide a different, yet relevant, lens through which to study corporate governance. Based on feminist ethical theories, the article conceptualises a governance model that is different from the current normative orthodoxy.

This paper develops an interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethics and metaethics that reconciles his apparent antirealism with his engagement in normative discourse. Interpreting Nietzsche as a metaethical constructivist—as holding, to a first approximation, that evaluative facts are grounded purely in facts about the evaluative attitudes of the creatures to whom they apply—reconciles his vehement declarations that nothing is valuable in itself with his passionate expressions of a particular evaluative perspective and injunctions for the free spirits to create new values. Drawing on (...) Nietzsche’s broader epistemological and psychological views, I develop a distinctive, and genuinely Nietzschean, version of constructivism. On this account, evaluative properties are grounded in affective valuations of the new philosophers. The proposed interpretation synthesizes a variety of disparate features of Nietzsche’s writings and improves on existing interpretations in the literature. The resulting version of constr.. (shrink)

Business ethics and firm economic performance have traditionally often been regarded as mutually exclusive ends. We challenge this “either-or” belief and analyze when and how ethical firm leadership and firm performance may harmonize well. In extension of earlier research on ethical leadership and performance at the individual and team level, we study the context–dependency of the organization level relationship between CEO ethical leadership and firm performance. We propose a moderated mediation model of the link between CEO ethical leadership and firm (...) performance, identifying mediating and moderating variables unique to the organization-level of analysis. CEO ethical leadership is argued to work through organizational ethical culture which promotes firm performance under the condition that there is a strong corporate ethics program in place. Results from a multisource cross-sectional study, in which we surveyed 145 participants from 32 organizations and validated organizational performance ratings by objective performance data, showed support for our conceptual model. (shrink)

Today many scholars seem to agree that citizens should be involved in expert deliberations on science and technology issues. This interest in public deliberation has gained attraction in many practical settings, especially in the European Union, and holds the promise of more legitimate governance of science and technology. In this article, the authors draw on the European Commission’s report ‘‘Taking the European Knowledge Society Seriously’’ to ask how legitimate these efforts to ‘‘democratize’’ scientific expertise really are. While the report borrows (...) from deliberative democrats’ normative accounts of legitimacy, the authors identify a tension between the principles for legitimate rule prescribed by deliberative democratic theory and the report’s celebration of diversity and dissent. While this inconsistency suggests that the legitimacy of deliberative governance arrangements is justified on empirical rather than normative grounds, it remains an open question whether studies of science and technology offer enough empirical support for such a justification. In this article, the authors address this pressing question and propose three possible responses. (shrink)

“Ethics” is used as a label for a new kind of expertise in the field of science and technology. At the same time, it is not clear what ethical expertise consists in and what its political status in modern democracies can be. Starting from the “participatory turn” in recent social research and policy, we will argue that bioethical reasoning has to include public views of and attitudes towards biomedicine. We will sketch the outlines of a bioethical conception of “public understanding (...) of ethics,” addressing three different issues: the methodological relevance of moral questions and problems raised by lay persons in everyday life regarding biomedicine and technology, the normative relevance of such lay moralities for the justification of ethical decisions, and the necessity of public deliberation in this context. Finally, we draw conclusions in view of the concepts and methods such a conception of “public understanding of ethics” should employ. (shrink)

This book combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context — assignment variables — in the syntax and semantics of natural language. The proposed theory systematizes a spectrum of “shifting” phenomena in which the context relevant for interpreting certain expressions depends on features of the linguistic environment. Central applications include local and nonlocal contextual dependencies with (...) quantifiers, attitude ascriptions, conditionals, questions, and relativization. The result is an innovative, philosophically informed compositional semantics compatible with the truth-conditional paradigm. (shrink)

Current literature on ethical leadership and unethical leadership reflects a Western-based private sector perspective, pointing toward a compliance-oriented understanding of ethical and unethical leadership. As today’s executives increasingly have to ethically lead across different cultures and sectors, it becomes vitally important to develop a more holistic picture how ethical and unethical leadership is perceived in the Western and Eastern cultural cluster and the private and the public/social sector. Addressing this issue, the present study aims to identify cross-cultural and cross-sectoral commonalities (...) and differences in international executives’ perceptions of ethical and unethical leadership. Findings from in-depth interviews (N = 36) with executives from Western and Eastern cultures working in the private or the public/social sector reveal collectively held perceptions of ethical leadership (including leader honesty, integrity, concern for responsibility/sustainability, and people orientation) and of unethical leadership (referring to leader dishonesty, corruption, egocentrism, and manipulation). Results indicate limited support for a compliance-oriented perspective on ethical and unethical leadership but yield a much greater trend toward a value-oriented perspective. Concrete practice examples illustrate these different perspectives. Cultural and sectoral particularities of executive perceptions of ethical and unethical leadership are discussed. (shrink)

Expressivism promises an illuminating account of the nature of normative judgment. But worries about the details of expressivist semantics have led many to doubt whether expressivism's putative advantages can be secured. Drawing on insights from linguistic semantics and decision theory, I develop a novel framework for implementing an expressivist semantics that I call ordering expressivism. I argue that by systematically interpreting the orderings that figure in analyses of normative terms in terms of the basic practical attitude of conditional weak preference, (...) the expressivist can explain the semantic properties of normative sentences in terms of the logical properties of that attitude. Expressivism's problems with capturing the logical relations among normative sentences can be reduced to the familiar, more tractable problem of explaining certain coherence constraints on preferences. Particular attention is given to the interpretation of wide-scope negation. The proposed solution is also extended to other types of embedded contexts—most notably, disjunctions. (shrink)

In The Abyss Above, Silke-Maria Weineck offers the first sustained discussion of the relationship between poetic madness and philosophy. Focusing on the mad poet as a key figure in what Plato called "the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry," Weineck explores key texts from antiquity to modernity in order to understand why we have come to associate art with irrationality. She shows that the philosophy of madness concedes to the mad a privilege that continues to haunt the Western dream (...) of reason, and that the theory of creative madness always strains the discourse on authenticity, pitching the controlled, repeatable, but restrained labor of philosophy against the spontaneous production of poetic texts said to be, by definition, unique. (shrink)

The use of patristic texts was tightly bound up with the needs of the contemporary discussion which provided Grotius with sources for his patristic citations. His use of ancient texts especially in Ordinum Hollandiae ac Westfrisiae pietas proved to be highly controversial.Grotius's advocacy of tolerance with respect to various forms of Christianity determines his use of patristic texts as well. He looks for examples of moderation in the Early Church and by this accomplishes a significant shift of perspective. He points (...) out the diversity of expressions in the Early Church and therefore replaces questions of dogmatic definition with the question of how to handle orthodoxy and heresy in society. In doing so, he implies requirements for the proper reading of patristic texts in his own times. Grotius's notion of Christian liberty is connected to awareness of context and intrinsically linked to a historical understanding. In his writings, contextualisation involves both religious-historical comparison and the integration of general sources from antiquity. With regard to early Christian sources, this means that Grotius understands them as deeply rooted in the broader ancient context. This approach to early Christian literature is already visible in De Iure Praedae. His sensibility for cultural variation, his comparative method and historical interest in ancient institutions are outstanding, and Grotius has these characteristics in common with legal humanists like François Baudouin. (shrink)

Purpose: Empirical studies suggest that corporate social responsibility (CSR) impacts young job seekers’ choices of an employer. Values seem to affect CSR preferences, influencing the felt fit between the person and the organization and hereby the valence of working for that company. This article aims to research in more detail the preference structure of young graduate job seekers. In particular, it seeks to understand whether CSR is important when there is a trade-off between CSR and non-CSR attributes and whether basic (...) value orientations of job seekers have a moderating effect on their employer preferences. Design/methodology/approach: This article used a quantitative approach with a survey sample of 577 German students who were in their last year of study. To gain information on the relative impact of CSR- and non-CSR-related employer characteristics on employer attractiveness, an adaptive conjoint analysis was applied. Correlation analysis and a two-step hierarchical regression were conducted to detect the effects of individual value orientations. Findings: Only a few CSR attributes are relevant for young job seekers compared with other traditional employer attributes. Specific value orientations can be identified as having a moderating effect on CSR preferences. This is particularly the case for value orientations indicating a concern for the welfare of others and the environment positively affect the importance of most CSR attributes while more selfish value orientations have a negative effect. Originality/value: This study sheds light on the relative importance of CSR attributes when compared with non-CSR attributes. Moreover, it relates employee-related preferences to individual value orientations and shows that selected values have a modifying effect on the importance of CSR for job choice. (shrink)

Study of Navyanyāyabhāṣāpradīpa of Maheśacandranyāyaratna on Navya Nyāya philosophy; includes Sankrit text with English translation.

Nonhuman primates don’t have formal kinship systems, but genetic relatedness shapes patterns of residence, behavior, mating preferences, and cognition in the primate order. The goal of this article is to provide insight about the ancestral foundations on which the first human kinship systems were built. In order for evolution to favor nepotistic biases in behavior, individuals need to have opportunities to interact with their relatives and to be able to identify them. Both these requirements impose constraints on the evolution of (...) kinship bonds in primate species. For nonhuman primates and many other mammals, maternal care generates close ties between mothers and offspring and among littermates. For species in which mother–offspring bonds extend beyond weaning, associations with the mother also generate familiarity among siblings of different ages. For species with female philopatry, mother–offspring ties provide the foundation for lifelong relationships between mothers and daughters, and dense matrilineal kin networks. However, several factors constrain the development of kinship bonds in nonhuman primates. First, dispersal strategies, which are designed to reduce inbreeding, bias kinship networks in favor of the philopatric sex. Second, hostile relationships between groups mean that kin ties are usually severed when individuals move from one group to another. Third, in species with polygynandrous mating systems, uncertainty about paternity and restricted periods of male reproductive monopoly limit the scope for development of ties among fathers and offspring, paternal siblings, or extended paternal kin networks. In this article, I explore the impact of these factors on the evolution of ancestral human kinship systems. (shrink)

This chapter develops a contextualist account of normative language, focusing on broadly normative readings of modal verbs. The account draws on a more general framework for implementing a contextualist semantics and pragmatics, Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the discourse properties of normative language from a contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with principles of interpretation and conversation. In using normative language, interlocutors can exploit their grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning (...) skills, to manage an evolving system of norms. Discourse Contextualism provides a perspicuous framework for further philosophical theorizing about the nature of normativity, normative language, and normative judgment. Delineating these issues can help refine our understanding of the space of overall theories and motivate more fruitful ways the dialectics may proceed. Discourse Contextualism provides a linguistic basis for a more comprehensive theory of normativity and normative discourse and practice. (shrink)

Kolodny and MacFarlane have made a pioneering contribution to our understanding of how the interpretation of deontic modals can be sensitive to evidence and information. But integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard Kratzerian framework for modals suggests ways of capturing the relevant data without treating deontic modals as “informational modals” in their sense. I show that though one such way of capturing the data within the standard semantics fails, an alternative does not. Nevertheless I argue that we have (...) good reasons to adopt an information-sensitive semantics of the general type Kolodny and MacFarlane describe. Contrary to the standard semantics, relative deontic value between possibilities sometimes depends on which possibilities are live. I develop an ordering semantics for deontic modals that captures this point and addresses various complications introduced by integrating the discussion of information-sensitivity into the standard semantic framework. By attending to these complexities, we can also illuminate various roles that information and evidence play in logical arguments, discourse, and deliberation. (shrink)

Within the context of applied bioethical reasoning, various conceptions of the human body are focused upon by the author in relation to normative notions of autonomy.

This paper considers three horary quadrants of strikingly similar design and underlying mode of conception. Two are dated, 1398 and 1399, while the third, undated instrument can now be dated for the first time with some certainty to 1400. The parameters used in their construction are analysed, and the latitude for which they were made is elucidated. This shows that all three were made for use in London or southern England. One of the three, dated 1399, has previously been attributed (...) to the patronage of Richard II, King of England, by virtue of the badge decorating the quadrant. The badge on the second quadrant, dated 1398, for a long time also associated with Richard II, has now been established to have been used by Richard's half brother, John Holland, Duke of Exeter. The third quadrant undoubtedlybelongs to the group, but cannot be assigned to the patronage of any individual. (shrink)

The development of abstract schemas and productive rules in language is affected by both token and type frequencies. High token frequencies and surface similarities help to discover formal and functional commonalities between utterances and categorize them as instances of the same schema. High type frequencies and diversity help to develop slots in these schemas, which allow the production and comprehension of novel utterances. In the current study we looked at both token and type frequencies in two related constructions in German (...) child-directed speech: simple transitive and complement-clause constructions. Both constructions contain high frequency verbs, which potentially support the development of verb-specific schemas. However, only the frequent verbs in the transitive constructions occur with a variety of subject types, which also supports the development of a slot in the subject position. We then used an elicited production task to compare 4- and 5-year-old German-speaking children's productivity with simple transitive constructions and complement-clause constructions. The children were prompted to change the subjects of high and low frequency simple transitive verbs, such as essen ‘eat’ and naschen ‘nibble’, mental-state complement-taking verbs, such as denken ‘think’ and vermuten ‘presume’, and communication complement-taking verbs, such as sagen ‘say’ and berichten ‘report’. In accordance with earlier findings, children had less difficulty producing new utterances with high frequency transitive verbs than with low frequency transitive verbs. For the other verb classes, however, we found either reverse frequency effects or no frequency effects. For these verb classes, children's productivity can be determined by diversity rather than simple token frequency. We discuss how token frequency interacts with diversity, discourse function, semantic complexity, and syntactic complexity. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 40-60.

Research on the cognitive abilities involved in decision making has shown that, under objective risk conditions (i.e., when explicit information about possible outcomes and risks is available), superior decisions are especially predicted by executive functions and exact number processing skills, also referred to as objective numeracy. So far, decision-making research has mainly focused on exact number processing skills, such as performing calculations or transformations of symbolic numbers. There is evidence that such exact numeric skills are based on approximate number processing (...) (ANP) skills, which enable quick and accurate processing of non-symbolic numbers (e.g. Chen and Li, 2014). Very few studies, however, have investigated ANP skills in the context of risky decision making and have analyzed direct associations among the aforementioned sub functions. Possible interactions between the closely related skills have not been considered. The current study (N = 128) examines interactions of ANP skills with executive functions and objective numeracy, in predicting risky choice behavior. ANP skills are represented by the accuracy in a dot-comparison task. Decision making is measured by two versions of the Game of Dice Task (GDT), which place different emphases on the reflection of potential risks. The results show two-way as well as three-way interactions between the measures of ANP skills, executive functions, and objective numeracy in predicting risky decisions in both GDT versions. The riskiest decisions were most frequently made in case of low scores in all of the three competencies, while good performance in any one of them resulted in significant reductions of disadvantageous decisions. The findings indicate that high ANP skills can positively affect choice behavior in individuals who have weaknesses in reflectively attributed skills, namely executive functions and objective numeracy. Potential compensatory effects and mechanisms of ANP in decision making are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical reflection deals not only with the moral standing and handling of animals, it should also include a critical analysis of the underlying relationship. Anthropological, psychological, and sociological aspects of the human–animal-relationship should be taken into account. Two conditions, asymmetry and ambivalence, are taken as the historical and empirical basis for reflections on the human–animal-relationship in late modern societies. These conditions explain the variety of moral practice, apart from paradoxes, and provide a framework to systematize animal ethical problems in a (...) broader field. This allows the development of ideal relationships as moral orientation across anthropocentric or sentientistic ethical theories. These ideal relationships are called the patronage-model, the friendship-model and the partnership-model. The ethical problem of creating transgenic animals is discussed in the light of these ideal relationships. (shrink)

The paper draws upon new conceptions of place, space, interaction and community in Geography and Media Studies to explore the possibilities of extending existing conceptions of care and caring from the context with which they are traditionally associated—face-to-face encounters within a shared physical locale. It proposes three structures of 'caring at a distance', all of which have a core element of mediated or distanciated interaction, and concludes that mass media and electronic networks play a significant role in extending the scope (...) of beneficence beyond our 'nearest and dearest' to embrace distant others. (shrink)

In the past two decades, the public communication of universities has become more important and received increased scholarly attention. While many studies have focused on individual university communicators (micro level) or all such practitioners in one country (macro level), our study analyzes organizational differences. It is the first-ever study to typologize universities’ communication practices and structures at the organizational level across an entire country. Based on a survey of communication practitioners in the central communication offices at all universities in Switzerland (...) and using hierarchical cluster analysis, we classify 37 universities into four types of communicating universities: minimalists, well-resourced competitors, specialized strategists, and professional all-rounders. Those types are further characterized on the basis of official statistics. The analysis shows that the four types of universities differ considerably in their communication patterns and organizational characteristics and that the amount of resources available for communication is only loosely coupled with professional and strategic communication practices. (shrink)