This paper gives insight into the Islamic bioethical discussion on harvesting and using human embryonic and adult stem cells. It describes some of the Islamic legal mechanisms involved in the bioethical discourse among Muslims. As the contemporary Islamic bioethical discourse is very diverse, the paper focuses on the critical discussion of related resolutions of the Saudi-based Islamic Fiqh Academy due to the esteem in which the IFA is held in the Islamic world and the pertinence of their rulings on this (...) issue. This study discusses the different sources of human adult and embryonic stem cells and their use from an Islamic perspective, while questioning some directions the Islamic bioethical discourse has taken. The paper invites interested parties to deliberate the use of some of the legal means resorted to in the ongoing Islamic bioethical discourse. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between the critical theory of Moishe Postone and the philosophy of Theodor Adorno. While the former is clearly influenced by the latter, these influences mostly stay implicit. When explicit, he does not so easily put his own thought in line with Adorno’s and is highly critical of him. I will investigate the ways in which ideas from Adorno made their way into Postone’s work, but also where the latter diverts from them. As will be shown, (...) Postone’s critical theory runs into a problem when one examines the immanent ground of his critical norm, freedom. Adorno, on the contrary, does succeed in employing the same norm in his own immanent critique. I will conclude that the problem Postone encounters can be avoided by being more of an ‘Adornian’, and that his theory allows this. (shrink)

Historians have usually connected the presentation of nature as a part of natural history with the natural cabinet or the natural history museum. A closer look at travel and field work, however, shows that display of nature as a spatial concept and set of material conditions begins already in the first moment of collecting objects, specimens and economic information about a region. In 1720 Tsar Peter I of Russia sent the German physician Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt to Siberia to explore this (...) hitherto terra incognita. During his travels Messerschmidt established two main instruments for collecting data and things, which I shall describe as organizing, material principles for his field work: written lists and notes, and boxes and cases. An analysis of these material objects and their specific uses reveals the intellectual and practical traditions in which learned activities and strategies took place at the beginning of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that liberal multiculturalism is neither a necessary nor a convincing extension of liberalism. In evaluating the two main strands of liberal multiculturalism, I will first analyse the approaches of Charles Taylor and Bhikhu Parekh as the main proponents of the version that focuses on the cultures themselves and raises the issue of the value of cultures in connection with public discourse. I will then turn to Amy Gutmann and Will Kymlicka as liberal multiculturalists who (...) use the liberal norm of individual equality as a starting point. I will show that the arguments adduced in favour of liberal multiculturalism fail, due to the following shortcomings. Taylor’s approach is underspecified with respect to the relationship between the process of evaluating cultures and its outcome. Gutmann’s theory fails to bridge the gaps between the individual, cultural belonging and positive duties of the state. Parekh’s and Kymlicka’s theories lead back to liberalism. I conclude that the idea of cultural difference has little of substance to add to the liberal view of social justice. (shrink)

People struggling with addiction are neither powerless over their addiction, nor are they fully in control. Lewis vigorously objects to the brain disease model of addiction, because it makes people lose belief in their self-efficacy, and hence hinders their recovery. Although he acknowledges that there is a compulsive state in addiction, he objects to the claim that this compulsion is carved in stone. Lewis argues that the BDMA underestimates the agency of addicted people, and hence hinder their recovery. Lewis’s work (...) offers us a very much to be welcomed neurobiology of recovery. It offers addicted people a hopeful and respectful narrative for their recovery that treats them as agents rather than as damaged brains. However, I argue that overestimating people’s agency can also result in people losing belief in their self-efficacy. Lewis’s strong focus on the agency of addicted people might not match their experiences of struggle, hence reinforcing their feelings of guilt when they fail to control their use. I propose to replace the notion of addiction as a disease with a notion of a disease-like stage in addiction. I call this stage the duress stage in addiction, in which the addictive behaviour is largely impervious to the agent’s values and to available techniques of self-control. However, the agent can overcome this stage by developing new techniques of self-control, by building on their self-concept and belief in self-efficacy, by changing their environments and habits, and by engaging in projects that are meaningful to the agent. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of the influence of the work of Michel Foucault on the philosophy of Agamben. Discussed are Foucault’s influence on the Homo Sacer cycle, on (the development) of Agamben’s notion of power (and on his closely related notion of freedom and art of life), as well as on Agamben’s philosophy of language and methodology. While most commentaries focus on Agamben’s interpretation of Foucault’s concept of biopower, his work also contains many interesting references to Foucault on freedom (...) and possibilities—and I think that it is here that Foucault’s influence on Agamben is most deeply felt. This article focuses on the shifts Agamben takes while looking for the Entwicklungsfähigkeit in the work of Foucault. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to question the punitive approach towards substance dependent parents, especially substance dependent parents struggling with poverty, by outlining the complex ways in which poverty can shape reasoning, and hence capacities for self-control. I will outline two ways in which poverty can shape reasoning: a rational shift from a global to a local perspective, and a more invasive one: resignation. I will argue that when people with addictions become resigned, it is especially important to not (...) hold a punitive approach, but to treat them with compassion while simultaneously bootstrapping their sense of agency. I will argue that having children can be an important turning point for people struggling with addiction, and possibly resignation. In order to successfully turn their lives around, they must feel comfortable to seek professional support without fear for retribution or stigma. This paradigm shift in how we treat substance dependent parents will be an important contribution to breaking the circle of intergenerational transmission of resignation, poverty and substance abuse. (shrink)

This article presents estimates of the global cost of collective and interpersonal violence for the period of one year. This includes war, terrorism, homicides, assaults and domestic violence against women and children. The cost of conventionally defined interpersonal violence, that is, homicides and assault, are about 7.5 times higher than the cost due to war and terrorism. I also estimate the costs of non-fatal domestic violence against children and women and suggest that these costs are much higher than the combined (...) costs of homicide, assault, terrorism and war. The main reason is that the prevalence of these types of violence is very high: possibly as many as 16 per cent of all children are punished using violent methods and about 12 per cent of all women experience intimate partner violence. Richer societies have lower levels of violence, and there is evidence that prevalence rates have been declining over time. However, it is often unclear why this is the case. Much of the evidence from violence red... (shrink)

This collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars’s thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars’s place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book’s final section extracts some of the most (...) significant lessons Sellars’s work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience. (shrink)

This paper explores some ideas of Wilfrid Sellars to raise two difficulties for a naturalistic approach to the mind. The first difficulty, which is methodological, is a corollary of Sellars’s distinction between two images of man-in-the-world, the manifest and the scientific image. For Sellars, taking science seriously requires that we think of it as constructing a unified image of man-in-the-world of its own. I argue that it is the rivalry between the manifest and the scientific image which gives rise to (...) the mind-body-problem. The challenge for a naturalistic solution to the mind-body-problem is that it is not legitimate to isolate single scientific results from their theoretical context in order to integrate them piecemeal into the manifest image. According to Sellars, a satisfactory solution to the mind-body-problem must attempt nothing less than a fusion of both images which somehow respects and preserves the unity of each. The second, substantial difficulty for a naturalistic approach to the mind is that of coming to terms with the normativity of the mental. Many interpreters take Sellars to hold that normativity sets the mental apart from the rest of nature. Against this I argue that according to Sellars the living is governed by norms of its own. It follows that normativity cannot serve as the mark of the mental. I argue that according to Sellars the distinguishing feature of the mental lies elsewhere, namely in the way in which normative force comes about. Unlike biological norms, the norms of thought owe their force to a common practice of mutual evaluation. However, the assumption that there are norms in animate nature should make it easier for naturalists to accept that the mental is characterized by norms of its own. (shrink)

The value-freedom of scientific knowledge is commonly hold to be a necessary condition for objectivity. Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism aims to overcome this connection. She questions the suitability of the normative ideal of value-freedom and develops an alternative conception of objectivity, which integrates social and epistemic aspects of scientific enquiry. The function of this notion of ‘social objectivity’ is to make value-laden assumptions assessable through a process of criticism, even if there cannot be any guarantee of their elimination. This assessability (...) requires common standards of evaluation, which are threatened by Longino’s rejection of the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive values guiding theory choice. I will argue that in order to resolve this inherent tension, social objectivity has to be understood as based on a procedural epistemology and, differing from Longino’s own approach, must include the normative requirement to strive for consensus instead of allowing for epistemological pluralism. (shrink)

People with mental illnesses have higher prevalence and mortality rates with regard to common somatic diseases and causes of death, such as cardio-vascular conditions or cancer. One factor contributing to this excess morbidity and mortality is the sub-standard level of physical healthcare offered to the mentally ill. In particular, they are often subject to diagnostic overshadowing: a tendency to attribute physical symptoms to a pre-existing diagnosis of mental illness. This might be seen as an unfortunate instance of epistemic bad luck, (...) where particular features of a group of patients make a timely and correct diagnosis unlikely. While this can explain some cases of diagnostic overshadowing, I argue that in other cases, epistemic injustice is involved. Analyzing the case of diagnostic overshadowing, I distinguish two kinds of testimonial injustice. For one, there are classic cases of transactional testimonial injustice resulting from prejudices against the mentally ill. In addition, there are cases of structural testimonial injustice resulting from features of health care systems. To overcome diagnostic overshadowing, remedies on the individual as well as structural level are thus needed. (shrink)

In this article I will look at literary imagination and the ways it is undermined and transformed by its relationship to apparatuses. I will compare the apparatus of Aby Warburg’s library with Peter Dittmer’s recent poetic apparatus Die Amme (1992–2006) in order to find out how poetics gets trapped by, and responds to, the challenge of apparatuses by employing the logistics of writing. A key concern of this article is to determine the role that speculation plays in poetics, in the (...) apparatuses that govern writing, and in the economics of both. (shrink)

In this article I will look at literary imagination and the ways it is undermined and transformed by its relationship to apparatuses. I will compare the apparatus of Aby Warburg’s library with Peter Dittmer’s recent poetic apparatus Die Amme in order to find out how poetics gets trapped by, and responds to, the challenge of apparatuses by employing the logistics of writing. A key concern of this article is to determine the role that speculation plays in poetics, in the apparatuses (...) that govern writing, and in the economics of both. (shrink)

In this paper I will analyze several cases from the American Civil War, the two World Wars and the American Vietnam War, and contemporary research in enhancement substance, to determine how drug use can be analyzed and understood in both physical and moral (ethical) terms. This will require a discussion of drug use at different levels. First, I will address the consequences of drug use for the physical and mental sanity of soldiers, during and after wartime, irrespective of the reason (...) for drug use. Second, I will look into the moral questions related to drug use for the enhancement of soldiers, that is, as a method for modern warfare. The moral dimension has at least two different angles: (i) the moral responsibility of superiors administering drugs to their inferiors who are exposed to the rule of full obedience, and (ii) the ethical consequences of enhancement for moral judgment by soldiers in the gray zone between acts of war and war crimes (the difference between the Super soldier and the Killing machine). (shrink)

This text describes a single engraving of the picture encyclopediaBilder-Akademie für die Jugend published from 1780 to 1784. It consisted of 52 picture tableaus, each with nine images that were connected through the biblical topic. The particular image under examination, the “Table 38”, shows the healing wonders of Christ, the electrifying maschine, a healing physician and the structure of ear and eye. Goal of this text will be to describe the different connections and meanings of these depicted scenes, as in (...) the same time I will argue, that pictures can not only be interpreted by understanding how people looked at them, but also to take into question what people did with them. (shrink)

ArgumentIn the spring of 1893, the Austrian writer and critic Hermann Bahr began interviewing various people on antisemitism, a subject of heated discussion in the European feuilleton around 1900. “Once again, I am travelling the world sounding out people’s opinions and listening to what they have to say,” he wrote in his introduction to a series of articles on that issue that appeared in the feuilleton of the Deutsche Zeitung between March and September 1893. A year later, the Berlin publishing (...) house S. Fischer turned Bahr’s articles into a book. Bahr conducted a total of thirty-eight interviews with prominent personages, such as August Bebel, Theodor Mommsen, Ernst Haeckel, Henrik Ibsen and Jules Simon. Bahr did not focus on the arguments in favour or against antisemitism. Instead, he set out explicitly to investigate the sentiments, perceptions and opinions on this topic within the cultured classes. Yet, as I will show in this article, Bahr tried to capture not only the “sentiments” [Empfindungen] aired by his interviewees, but also the settings and interiors in which the interviews took place. I argue that these descriptions of physical space served Bahr as authentication, as a three-dimensional certificate for the “facts of opinion” [Meinungstatsachen] he recorded. (shrink)

The presentation of nature as part of natural history is usually connected with a natural cabinet or natural history museum. A closer look at travel and field work, however, shows that display of nature as a spatial concept and material conditions begins already in the first moment of collecting objects, specimens, and economis news about a region to be investigated. In the year 1720 the German physician Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt was sent to Siberia by the Tsar Peter I of Russia (...) to explore this hithero terra incognita. During his travels Messerschmidt established two main instruments for collecting data and things, which I shall describe as organizing, material principles for his field work: written lists and notes, and boxes and cases. An analysis of these material objects and their specific uses reveals the intellectual and practical traditions in which learned activities and strategies took place in the beginning of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Based on the ideas of two main representatives of the academic discourse on Ubuntu, Michael O. Eze and Mogobe B. Ramose, the paper shows how the concept of Ubuntu can contribute to transcending conventional concepts of cosmopolitanism. Referring to the concept of Ubuntu, Ramose and Eze criticize ‘Western’ concepts of cosmopolitanism because they always seem to start from binary oppositions (‘I’ and ‘other’), which must be reconciled. ‘Western’ cosmopolitanism continues to build on boundaries (nations, cultures, etc.) that constitute communities and (...) exclude the ‘other’. Here the boundary remains a place of exclusion. Therefore, it is necessary to conceptualize categories such as ‘boundary’ and the ‘Other’ in a different way. Ubuntu as a concept where the human being is essentially a relational being (one who exists in and through relationships) seems to offer an alternative in the sense of a ‘critical’ (Mignolo, 2002a) or ‘emancipatory’ cosmopolitanism. (Pieterse, 2006; Ngcoya, 2015). (shrink)

The article discusses two claims from Seiberth's book Intentionality in Sellars: A Transcendental Account of Finite Knowledge, both of which bear on the question of what it takes to be in touch with the world. Seiberth claims, first, that the philosophical method known as transcendental analysis, which Sellars adopts from Kant, is more basic than Sellars's other methodological commitments, including the method of providing a conceptual analysis of the manifest and the scientific image of man-in-the-world. I ask whether the results (...) of transcendental analysis should be applied to the manifest image. Does Sellars think that the manifest image fulfills the transcendental conditions for any conceptual system that is a) about the world of which it is a part and that b) allows those using it to gain knowledge of that world? On Seiberth's reading of Sellars, the answer seems to be negative. Second, Seiberth claims that there is only one kind of vertical relation between the conceptual and the real, the non-semantic relation Sellars calls picturing. I contest that claim, arguing that Seiberth gives too strong an interpretation of Sellars's denial that meaning statements are relational statements connecting a word with an independently existing object. This precludes Seiberth from seeing that Sellars, just like Kant, is an empirical realist in a robust sense. I also argue that picturing provides a meagre substitute for what in my reading of Sellars we might call vertical 'semantical' relations between words and things after all. (shrink)

The distinction between ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ has played an important role in the debate between naturalism and normativism. Both employ these notions, yet disagree on whether to assign priority to ‘disease’ or ‘illness’. I argue that this discussion suffers from implicit differences in the underlying interpretations: While for naturalists the distinction between ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ is one between a descriptive and a prescriptive notion, for normativists it is one between cause and effect. This discrepancy is connected to different interpretations of (...) priority, which also tend to be conflated in the debate. I disambiguate these different usages and develop a distinction between ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ that is theoretically neutral with regard to naturalism or normativism. Moreover, I propose a concept of heuristic priority that could serve as a common focus. This framework can avoid common confusions by providing a shared terminology and thereby help to make debates on disease-concepts more fruitful. (shrink)

This article is dedicated to a topic that has been largely neglected in the historiography of philosophy to date: the position of philosophers towards the institution of slavery. Especially in survey works on the history of philosophy, positions on slavery and colonial conquest are not addressed, but have so far only been discussed in a few individual studies. From the beginning of European expansion, however, philosophical and political theories no longer emerged independently of these developments, as the expansion forced reflection (...) on how to deal with the conquered regions and peoples, and thus on the problematic sides of the ‘voyages of discovery’: land grabbing, subjugation and slavery. Such entanglements are briefly explained using John Locke as an example. In view of the “colonial ensnarement of the Enlightenment” (Elberfeld) and the need for a critical examination of it, I propose as a methodological approach to include texts by thinkers of African origin, who had first-hand experiences of the institution of slavery and critically reflected on their own social position, the social and political conditions of their time as well as moral questions. Using three selected Black thinkers, the poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784), the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) and the theologian Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein (ca. 1717–1747), I discuss the relevance of texts by former slaves for the historiography of philosophy. (shrink)

Looking at contemporary Japanese images of the self and how Japanese scholars have conceptualised the notion of the subjectivity three remarkable concepts of “the self” can be identified and distinguished from another: the Inner Self, the Political Self, the Social Self. In my paper I will discuss these concepts by high lightening their hybridity, plurality and their emphasis on the identity as an effect of self-realization. I shall argue that the investigation in the Japaneseunderstanding of the self is particularly fruitful (...) for a global understanding of subjectivity, because Japanese selfhood does not represent the “otherness” of the western thought but is actually crisscrossed by western and eastern ideas. What can be marked as the Inner Self combines ideas of the Buddhist “Non-Self” (anatman) and the European Idealistic Ego (Ich). Embedded in practises of meditation the Inner Self in the Japanese understanding is realized through the activity of finding and loosing oneself. The Political Self can be perceived as an amalgamation of the Asian art of the regime of the group and the western thought of Liberalism and personal identity. Somewhat discovered in Japan as a possibility of the self in the 19th century the Political Self comes into existence througheducational practise. Furthermore the Social Self brings together Chinese Confucian ethics and ancient Japanese Shintoism. Understood as a particle in the flow of social relations the Social Self is realized in Japan within the rituals of everyday live and physical hence tactical education in the childhood of a person. The Japanese concepts of the self exemplify on the level of their formal configuration the qualities of what can be called a plural anthropology. (shrink)

This text describes a single engraving of the picture encyclopediaBilder-Akademie für die Jugend published from 1780 to 1784. It consisted of 52 picture tableaus, each with nine images that were connected through the biblical topic. The particular image under examination, the “Table 38”, shows the healing wonders of Christ, the electrifying maschine, a healing physician and the structure of ear and eye. Goal of this text will be to describe the different connections and meanings of these depicted scenes, as in (...) the same time I will argue, that pictures can not only be interpreted by understanding how people looked at them, but also to take into question what people did with them. (shrink)

This text describes a single engraving of the picture encyclopediaBilder-Akademie für die Jugend published from 1780 to 1784. It consisted of 52 picture tableaus, each with nine images that were connected through the biblical topic. The particular image under examination, the “Table 38”, shows the healing wonders of Christ, the electrifying maschine, a healing physician and the structure of ear and eye. Goal of this text will be to describe the different connections and meanings of these depicted scenes, as in (...) the same time I will argue, that pictures can not only be interpreted by understanding how people looked at them, but also to take into question what people did with them. (shrink)

The presentation of nature as part of natural history is usually connected with a natural cabinet or natural history museum. A closer look at travel and field work, however, shows that display of nature as a spatial concept and material conditions begins already in the first moment of collecting objects, specimens, and economis news about a region to be investigated. In the year 1720 the German physician Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt was sent to Siberia by the Tsar Peter I of Russia (...) to explore this hithero terra incognita. During his travels Messerschmidt established two main instruments for collecting data and things, which I shall describe as organizing, material principles for his field work: written lists and notes, and boxes and cases. An analysis of these material objects and their specific uses reveals the intellectual and practical traditions in which learned activities and strategies took place in the beginning of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

The article discusses two claims from Seiberth's book Intentionality in Sellars: A Transcendental Account of Finite Knowledge, both of which bear on the question of what it takes to be in touch with the world. Seiberth claims, first, that the philosophical method known as transcendental analysis, which Sellars adopts from Kant, is more basic than Sellars's other methodological commitments, including the method of providing a conceptual analysis of the manifest and the scientific image of man-in-the-world. I ask whether the results (...) of transcendental analysis should be applied to the manifest image. Does Sellars think that the manifest image fulfills the transcendental conditions for any conceptual system that is a) about the world of which it is a part and that b) allows those using it to gain knowledge of that world? On Seiberth's reading of Sellars, the answer seems to be negative. Second, Seiberth claims that there is only one kind of vertical relation between the conceptual and the real, the non-semantic relation Sellars calls picturing. I contest that claim, arguing that Seiberth gives too strong an interpretation of Sellars's denial that meaning statements are relational statements connecting a word with an independently existing object. This precludes Seiberth from seeing that Sellars, just like Kant, is an empirical realist in a robust sense. I also argue that picturing provides a meagre substitute for what in my reading of Sellars we might call vertical 'semantical' relations between words and things after all. (shrink)

Bringing readers from aww to awful! in a matter of seconds, I Don't Really Love You seamlessly blends images of charming pets with hilarious, soul-crushing captions about the existential dread that seems to permeate daily life. Darkly humorous one-liners, from "Birthdays don't matter" to "Inadequacy haunts me endlessly," will peek out from behind the forms of calm cats and happy-go-lucky puppies, creating an unexpected contrast that takes readers on a journey from delightful to depressing (and back again!) Pet lovers and (...) humor lovers will be captivated in equal measure, with more than 75 full-color photographs of cats and dogs in a range of breeds, alongside an off-beat, subversive voice. With the perfect attitude for our rapidly changing world, this quirky book will make readers laugh out loud (after sending them crawling under the covers to contemplate their existence). (shrink)

I propose to apply a version of contextualism about knowledge to the special case that represents the topic of this volume. I begin by motivating my preferred version of contextualism, which may be labelled as conventionalist contextualism; here I start from a well-known problem that besets epistemic internalism (section I). Following this, I pose a problem for conventionalist contextualism and argue that it can be solved by invoking, first, the idea of what I shall call the lifewordly background of epistemic (...) justifi cation, an idea originating from Husserl and Wittgenstein, and, secondly, the associated notion of normality, to be found in Husserl (section II). Finally, I apply the resulting conception of justification to philosophical knowledge, particularly focussing on the special role of intuitions (section III). (shrink)

John Searle''s hypothesis of the Background seems to conflict with his initial representationalism according to which each Intentional state contains a particular content that determines its conditions of satisfaction. In Section I of this essay I expose Searle''s initial theory of Intentionality and relate it to Edmund Husserl''s earlier phenomenology. In Section II I make it clear that Searle''s introduction of the notion of Network, though indispensable, does not, by itself, force us to modify that initial theory. However, a comparison (...) of this notion to the notion of horizon from Husserl''s later phenomenology and an interpretation of Husserl''s conception of the determinable X as providing a solution to the problem of perceptual misidentification lead me to conclude that in his discussion of ''twin examples'' Searle had better modified his initial theory. Finally, I critically examine Searle''s claim that anyone who tries seriously to follow out the threads in the Network will eventually reach a bedrock of non-Intentional capacities. In Section III I show in detail, partly in a rather Husserlian vein, that Searle''s four official arguments for the Background thesis, though containing some very valuable contributions to a theory of linguistic skills, are not convincing at all if they are to be understood as going beyond the scope of Searle''s ''content-cum-Network'' picture of Intentionality. The upshot of these considerations is that the Background thesis should be read as a thesis concerning the causal neurophysiological preconditions of human Intentionality rather than concerning the logical properties of Intentional states in general. Recently Searle himself has come to the same result, but he does not say for which reasons. The present essay makes it clear why Searle just had to arrive at this important result. (shrink)

I. Über den Stil des Poems des Matthaios und seinen Inhalt Wir sind nicht die ersten, die sich mit dem Poem des „minderwertigen Priesters Matthaios“ über die Stadt Theodoro beschäftigen. Silvio Mercati gab es bereits im Jahr 1927 heraus, nachdem er zunächst die in ihm beschriebene Stadt fälschlich mit Theodosia (Kaffa) identifiziert hatte, den Fehler aber schon in einer Zusatzbemerkung im selben Band der „Studi bizantini“ verbesserte, in welchem er das Poem publizierte. Mercati unterzog das Gedicht einer strengen literarhistorischen Kritik. (...) Doch seine Bewertung erweist sich nicht in jedem Punkt als stichhaltig, wenn er behauptet: „das vorgegebene Thema ist abgesehen vom Wunder die Klage und die Zerknirschung“. Eine Begeisterung des Autors für das, was er mit Sinnen wahrnimmt, ist durchaus zu verspüren. Er hat eine positive Einstellung zu dem, was er sieht, und stellt es in den Rahmen der göttlichen Schöpfung. Klage und Lobpreis der mönchischen Lebensweise treten dabei in den Hintergrund. Der Dichter schöpft diese Themen nicht aus. Nachdem er am Schluss des Poems der Eitelkeit des Lebens im Sinne des Predigers Salomo vier Verse (143–146) gewidmet hat, kehrt er zur Verherrlichung des Schöpfers zurück und beendet seine Unterweisung mit christlicher Tröstung durch die Liebe ( Vers 147–150). (shrink)

In this work, I argue for the overall explanatory superiority of philosophical naturalism to a theistic worldview. Pursuant to that, this piece develops and defends a functionalist theory of explanation, which is then used in addressing several particular topics in the philosophy of religion: the law-governed nature of the world, the intelligibility of the world, alleged "fine-tuning", reports of religious experiences and the occurrence of evils. In each case, I argue that a naturalistic explanation is as good or superior to (...) a theistic worldview in helping us to understand such phenomena. Some original parts of the work include developing out a naturalistic explanation of religious experiences grounded in normal human perceptual and cognitive fallacies, an explanatory critique of several traditional theodicies, and a rebuttal of contemporary fine-tuning arguments on the basis of their reliance on unestablished assumptions that add no explanatory improvement. (shrink)

This essay aims to morally evaluate psychotherapy as it is currently practiced through the lens of sales/exchange ethics. The main focus of the essay is on psychotherapists’ claims to special expertise at diagnosing and treating mental illness. I review the research evidence relevant to these claims and conclude that these claims are not supported by the available evidence. Psychotherapists do not appear to be any better than actuarial tests at diagnosing mental illnesses, and meta-analyses of psychotherapy outcome studies casts serious (...) doubt on the existence of treatment expertise. Given that the expertise that psychotherapists claim to have is lacking, those seeking psychotherapy are not adequately informed about the quality of the product that they are seeking. Using Holley’s principles of sales ethics as a springboard, I argue that this situation is morally unacceptable; thus the current practice of psychotherapy is morally impermissible. I provide and evaluate some suggestions for rectifying this problem. The most important of these is Dawes’s suggestion that psychotherapists be licensed according to their use of experimentally confirmed diagnostic and treatment methods. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit besteht, von Beigaben wie Indizes und Bibliographie abgesehen, aus einer 124 Seiten umfassenden Einleitung und einer 328 Seiten umfassenden vollständigen Werkausgabe des bisher wenig bekannten Antipalamiten Theodoros Dexios. Seine Schriften, eine von POLEMIS (P.) als „Appellatio“ bezeichnete Beschwerde über die Voreingenommenheit des Ioannes Kantakuzenos auf dem Konzil von 1351, zwei Briefe und ein von P. so genannter „Tractatus brevis de Christo ipso splendente in Transfiguratione“ sind anonym überliefert, zudem auch ohne Überschriften. Zu Beginn der Einleitung wird G. (...) MERCATIs Annahme, daß die Schriften von Dexios verfaßt wurden, gegen J. MEYENDORFF, der sie dem Arsenios von Tyros zuwies, überzeugend verteidigt. Der Autor des 1. Briefes vertrat die merkwürdige Meinung, daß das Thaborlicht mit dem menschlichen Körper Christi identisch gewesen sei (XVI). Diese Ansicht kritisierte Isaak Argyros in seinem Brief an Gedeon unter Namensnennung des Dexios, wie Mercati bereits feststellte (XXIII f.). Daß die genannten Schriften, die teils in Vat. Gr. 1111, teils in Vat. Gr. 1823 überliefert sind (XIII), auf denselben Autor zurückgehen, ist daraus zu erschließen, daß der Schreiber von Vat. Gr. 1823 in Vat. Gr. 1111 Autorenkorrekturen vornahm (XV f.). Ein wichtiger Punkt der Widerlegung Meyendorffs besteht auch darin, daß dieser die Worte des Dexios, die sich auf den Schluß des vom „seligen Gregoras“ inspirierten Glaubensbekenntnisses der Antipalamiten im Jahr 1351 beziehen, nämlich „an letzter Stelle war in ihm (dem Bekenntnis) folgendes zu lesen: ‚Hinsichtlich des Kalabrers Barlaam und des Akindynos sagen wir, daß wir damit einverstanden sind, was die heilige Kirche Gottes entschieden und festgelegt hat‘ (220), indem wir auf unseren Patriarchen verwiesen“, auf Ignatios von Antiochien, den Vorgesetzten des Arsenios, bezog, dieser schmähliche, wenn auch wohl postume Verrat an Akindynos (so unsere Meinung) aber laut P. eine Anerkennung des Tomos von 1341 bedeutet, mit dem Patriarchen demnach Kalekas gemeint ist (XX f.). P. weist nach, daß der Brief des Dexios, auf den sich Argyros in seinem Brief an Gedeon bezieht, trotz gleicher Thematik nicht mit dem von ihm herausgegeben Brief I identisch ist, sondern etwas früher (XXVI versehentlich „later“) geschrieben wurde (XXVI–XXVIII). Die Datierung der „Appellatio“ auf die Zeit zwischen 1351 und 1354 (Sturz des Kantakuzenos) ist sicherlich richtig. Da Gregoras in seinen zweiten „Antirrhetikoi“ wie Dexios von der Nichtveröffentlichung des Tomos von 1351, der Unvollständigkeit der erworbenen Abschrift wie auch von der Gefahr spricht, durch den Herrscher ermordet zu werden (s. JÖB 36, 1986, 263 f. 276), ist laut meiner Datierung (s. JÖB 27, 1978, 146, Nr. 70) 1353 als wahrscheinliches Datum der Abfassung anzusehen. P. verfaßte eine bemerkenswerte Anmerkung zu Georgios von Pelagonia (XXXI f., A. 65). Die Identifizierung des Georgios Gabrielopulos mit Georgios, dem Philosophen, geht auf R.-J. LOENERTZ und F. TINNEFELD zurück, die mögliche Identifizierung des Georgios von Pelagonia mit Gabrielopulos auf mich (s. PLP II, Nr. 3433 und Talbot in ODB II 838 f., die PLP ausschreibt). Inzwischen bin ich zu dem Schluß gekommen, daß Georgios von Pelagonia, der an Akindynos Kritik übt, auf Grund seiner guten Informiertheit kein anderer sein kann als Akindynos, der wegen seiner Voreingenommenheit gegen Barlaam im Jahr 1341 Selbstkritik übt. Akindynos stammte aus der Region von Pelagonia. Möglicherweise ist er nach seiner Flucht aus Konstantinopel 1347 mit Hilfe Stefan Dušans sogar Bischof von Pelagonia geworden. (shrink)