If the future of human rights is dependent on the capacity of the state to fulfill them, then one must focus on how the private sector interfaces with public values—an interface that directly affects how billions of people survive both economically and with dignity. During the last few years reports about multinational corporations shielding phenomenal profits from meaningful taxation have troubled governments and individual taxpayers alike. But there has been little effort to associate such tax avoidance schemes with corporate abdication (...) of responsibility for advancing critical societal goals. Instead, much of the ensuing debate has centered on how to tax corporate profits fairly and more efficiently. While the ideas being marketed in this area are enlightening, there has been less discussion about why corporate taxation is a worthy public goal or what corporations should do voluntarily. The linkage between corporate tax avoidance and “corporate social responsibility” has not yet been clearly drawn, but the moment has arrived to bridge the gap. That task may necessitate changing, fundamentally, the ethical framework within which corporate officers, boards of directors, shareholders, tax advisers, and stakeholders in general operate. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

In this case study I argue that experts, to gain relevance in a jury trial, need to fit into a manifold division of knowing. They do so by borrowing and sharing diverse knowledges. These exchanges place the modest expert testimony right into an authoritative and powerful decision-making apparatus. This argument derives from an ethnographic study of a ‘‘sleepwalking defense.’’ The division of knowing embraces the certified facts, the instructed case, the competing expertise, and the common sense. As a conclusion, I (...) identify the experts’ twofold relevance. Experts perform the case as undecided and decidable. They provide exclusive knowledge and affirm a set of other knowledges. By ‘‘knowing’’ and ‘‘not knowing,’’ the experts perform individual modesty and systemic immodesty by the same token. (shrink)

Analytical ethnography does not presume a principal analytical frame. It does not know (yet) where and when the field takes place. Rather, the ethnographer is in search for appropriate spatiotemporal frames in correspondence with the occurrences in the field. Accordingly, the author organizes a dialogue between conceptual frames and his various empirical accounts. He confronts snapshots of English Crown Court proceedings with models of event and process from micro-sociology and macro-sociology. A range of–more or less early or late, relevant or (...) irrelevant, contingent or predetermined–processual events serves as the vantage point to access event and process relations. In this line, Crown Court proceedings serve as an introductory and exemplary field for analytical ethnography, because they involve both: (strong) events and their process and (strong) processes and their events. (shrink)

Democratic institutions are under pressure as was also the case at the end of the sixties. But where in those days the critique was left-liberal and seeking to extend democracy, now the discomfort with democracy has concervative-populist overtones, related to the reaffirmation of exclusive, mostly national, identities. The populist critique of liberal achievements and institutions has raised questions of ethnicity and identity. The historical tension between national identiy and parliamentary democracy offers a broader frame against which the emergence of nationalist (...) and populist movements, like the Republikaner, Front National and the Vlaams Blok can be understood. These considerations lead to some important questions : is a parlementary democracy in the European Union possible? Does democracy need a specific cultural society? If so, European unification would break the historical link between parliamentery democracy and the nation, without realizing a democracy on a higher multi-national level. Those who want to defend the liberal democracy against the challenge of populist and nationalist political movements, will need to study more closely the cultural foundations of democracy. (shrink)

This article suggests a discourse analysis suitable for multi-dimensional processes. The exemplar in focus is a single narrative that travelled a long way through an English criminal pre-trial to the finalising Crown Court-hearing. The following case study asks how this story was mobilised by the defence to challenge the prosecution's case. The resulting sequential analysis of the story's career profits a good deal from Laboratory Studies. Like ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, the analysis involves an extended production process—and the (...) productivities of the artefacts produced. It shows, furthermore, how the mobilisation of the alibi is at some points threatened by emerging potentialities to undermine it. All in all, the resulting micro-history on the story's career hinges on as well as exceeds common preferences in social constructivism: for collaborative and local accomplishments, for structural and antagonistic oppositions, and for success stories. (shrink)

This volume describes features of biological autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype, and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated (...) during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach. (shrink)

There has been much debate whether computers can be responsible. This question is usually discussed in terms of personhood and personal characteristics, which a computer may or may not possess. If a computer fulfils the conditions required for agency or personhood, then it can be responsible; otherwise not. This paper suggests a different approach. An analysis of the concept of responsibility shows that it is a social construct of ascription which is only viable in certain social contexts and which serves (...) particular social aims. If this is the main aspect of responsibility then the question whether computers can be responsible no longer hinges on the difficult problem of agency but on the possibly simpler question whether responsibility ascriptions to computers can fulfil social goals. The suggested solution to the question whether computers can be subjects of responsibility is the introduction of a new concept, called “quasi-responsibility” which will emphasise the social aim of responsibility ascription and which can be applied to computers. (shrink)

By means of an ecological and system theoretic example it is argued, that the methodological principle of repeatable effects is only partially valid. In 1970 a conjecture of system's properties was published which was refuted later, but further research was initiated in different fields, just because it referred to a non-repeatable "false" result. The heuristic content of a concept seemed to be more important than a successful replication of an experiment. The case study exhibits the restricted validity of general methodological (...) rules. (shrink)

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

M. Wetzel: Objektiver Idealismus und Prinzip Subjektivität in der Philosophie der Natur - G. F. Frigo: Aristoteles' Einfluß auf Hegels Naturphilosophie - W. Neuser: Das Anderssein der Idee, das Außereinandersein der Natur und der Begriff - H.-H. von Borzesz-kowski / R. Wahsner: Gibt es eine Logik der Physik als Vorstufe zur Hegelschen Begriffslogik - E.-O. Onnasch: System und Methode in der Philosophie Hegels - B. Braßler: Vorzüge einer Theorie der Dialektik - L. Fleischhacker: Mathematik und Natur, Verwandte oder Fremde - (...) P. Stekeler-Weithofer: Mathematisches und begriffliches Denken in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik - M. J. Petry: Physik und Mathematik um 1790: Hegel und Schelling als Schüler Pfleiderers - P. Ziche: Raumdimensionen und Prinzipienreduktion. Beweise für die Dreidimensionalität des Raumes bei Schelling und Hegel - T. Bach: Leben als Gattungsprozeß: Historisch-systematische An-merkungen von Pflanze und Tier bei Hegel - S. Büttner: Das Manko des Organischen und die Krankheit als dessen Wahrheit - O. Breidbach: Überlegungen zur Typik des Organischen in Hegels Denken - C. Illies: Die Gene, die Meme und Wir - W. Kellerwessel: Reschers idealistische Dialektik - V. Hösle: Wahrheit und Verstehen. Davidson, Gadamer und das Desiderat einer objektiv-idealistsichen Hermeneutik - P. Várdy: Das Lächerliche und das Absolute - A. Rieckers: Photons and Mcroscopic Reality. (shrink)

The contributors to _Constructing the Pluriverse_ critique the hegemony of the postcolonial Western tradition and its claims to universality by offering a set of “pluriversal” approaches to understanding the coexisting epistemologies and practices of the different worlds and problems we inhabit and encounter. Moving beyond critiques of colonialism, the contributors rethink the relationship between knowledge and power, offering new perspectives on development, democracy, and ideology while providing diverse methodologies for non-Western thought and practice that range from feminist approaches to scientific (...) research to ways of knowing expressed through West African oral traditions. In combination, these wide-ranging approaches and understandings form a new analytical toolbox for those seeking creative solutions for dismantling Westernization throughout the world. Contributors Zaid Ahmad, Manuela Boatcă, Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Arturo Escobar, Sandra Harding, Ehsan Kashfi, Venu Mehta, Walter D. Mignolo, Ulrich Oslender, Isiaka Ouattara, Manu Samnotra, Aram Ziai. (shrink)

Information security can be of high moral value. It can equally be used for immoral purposes and have undesirable consequences. In this paper we suggest that critical theory can facilitate a better understanding of possible ethical issues and can provide support when finding ways of addressing them. The paper argues that critical theory has intrinsic links to ethics and that it is possible to identify concepts frequently used in critical theory to pinpoint ethical concerns. Using the example of UK electronic (...) medical records the paper demonstrates that a critical lens can highlight issues that traditional ethical theories tend to overlook. These are often linked to collective issues such as social and organisational structures, which philosophical ethics with its typical focus on the individual does not tend to emphasise. The paper suggests that this insight can help in developing ways of researching and innovating responsibly in the area of information security. (shrink)

Ethical issues of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important because they can have significant effects on human liberty, happiness, and people’s ability to lead a good life. They are also of functional interest because they can determine whether technologies are used and whether their positive potential can unfold. For these reasons, policy makers are interested in finding out what these issues are and how they can be addressed. The best way of creating ICT policy that is sensitive to ethical (...) issues pertain to being proactive in addressing such issues at an early stage of the technology life cycle. The present paper uses this position as a starting point and discusses how knowledge of ethical aspects of emerging ICTs can be gained. It develops a methodology that goes beyond established futures methodologies to cater for the difficult nature of ethical issues. The authors outline how the description of emerging ICTs can be used for an ethical analysis. (shrink)

Biografie van de filosoof en cultuurpessimist die trachtte tegenstellingen tussen emotie en ratio te overbruggen en correspondeerde met beroemde schrijvers zoals Thomas Mann.

Der Aufstieg der Datenökonomie impliziert erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die Gesellschaft und deren kollektive Verfasstheit. Mit der Inwertsetzung des Wissens über den Einzelnen gehen zwangsläufig auch neue Formen seiner Adressierung einher. Ob als Werbekunde, Versicherungsnehmer oder Kreditempfänger, auf der Grundlage der erfassten Dispositionen kann der Einzelne individuell oder als Teil eines Kollektivs taxiert werden. Der Beitrag fragt nach den Auswirkungen einer solchen datengestützen Kollektivbildung, die extern über ökonomische Selektionsmechanismen vorangetrieben wird. Konträr zu den vorherrschenden Mobilisierungsnarrativen im Digitalisierungszeitalter wird argumentiert, dass sie (...) das Soziale tendenziell reproduziert. (shrink)

Attempts to explain the origin of macroevolutionary innovations have been only partially successful. Here it is proposed that the patterns of major evolutionary transitions have to be understood first, before it is possible to further analyse the forces behind the process. The hypothesis is that major evolutionary innovations are characterized by an increase in organismal autonomy, in the sense of emancipation from the environment. After a brief overview of the literature on this subject, increasing autonomy is defined as the evolutionary (...) shift in the individual system–environment relationship, such that the direct influences of the environment are gradually reduced and a stabilization of self-referential, intrinsic functions within the system is generated. This is described as relative autonomy because numerous interconnections with the environment and dependencies upon it are retained. Features of increasing autonomy are spatial separations, an increase in homeostatic functions and in body size, internalizations and an increase in physiological and behavioral flexibility. It is described how these features are present in different combinations in the major evolutionary transitions of metazoans and, consequently, how they should be taken into consideration when evolutionary innovations are studied. The hypothesis contributes to a reconsideration of the relationship between organisms and their environment. (shrink)

The assumption that the onset of puberty is a context-sensitive marker of a reproductive strategy is tested by comparing parental and filial childhood context and somatic development in West and East Germany. Sixty-eight mother-daughter dyads and 35 father-son dyads were taken from two samples of families from Osnabrück in West Germany and Halle in East Germany. According to the observed context discontinuity between the generations in the male dyads, linear regression models show that no indicator of male sexual maturation was (...) influenced significantly by the somatic development of the father. Instead of an inherited timing of maturation, antecedent distal factors like socioeconomic childhood context variables and critical life events lead to an acceleration of male sexual maturation. Finally we test the effect of two different conditions of childhood context continuity on daughter’s age at menarche with maternal age at menarche controlled. Linear regression models show that mother’s age at menarche predicts daughter’s age at menarche only under the condition of contextual continuity between generations, which was the case in the West German sample only. In East Germany, where mother’s age at menarche had no significant effect, the amount of variance explained by childhood context variables was almost the same. These results indicate the context sensitivity of somatic development which seems to follow an evolutionary rationale. (shrink)

Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of evolution; (2) An incongruence exists (...) between the notion of progress and Darwin’s theory of selection; (3) It is still not possible to give more than a rudimentary definition of the general patterns that were generated during the macroevolution of organisms. The paper consists of two parts: the first is a historical overview of the roots of the term “progress” in evolutionary biology, the second discusses epistemological, ontological and empirical problems. It is stated that the term has so far served as a metaphor for general patterns generated amongst organisms during evolution. It is proposed that a reformulation is needed to eliminate historically imported implications and that it is necessary to develop a concept for an appropriate empirical description of macroevolutionary patterns. This is the third way between, on the one hand, using the term indiscriminately and, on the other hand, ignoring the general patterns that evolution has produced. (shrink)

How can we best identify, understand, and deal with ethical and societal issues raised by healthcare robotics? This paper argues that next to ethical analysis, classic technology assessment, and philosophical speculation we need forms of reflection, dialogue, and experiment that come, quite literally, much closer to innovation practices and contexts of use. The authors discuss a number of ways how to achieve that. Informed by their experience with “embedded” ethics in technical projects and with various tools and methods of responsible (...) research and innovation, the paper identifies “internal” and “external” forms of dialogical research and innovation, reflections on the possibilities and limitations of these forms of ethical–technological innovation, and explores a number of ways how they can be supported by policy at national and supranational level. (shrink)

Achievement flow involves total absorption in an activity, high concentration without effort and merging of thought and action. The authors propose that achievement flow is facilitated by dynamic alternatives between low positive affect (“seeing difficulty”) and high positive affect (“mastering difficulty”). Consistent with this hypothesis, three studies showed that traits associated with reduced positive affect (avoidant adult attachment, schizoid-like personality style, introversion) and traits supportive of restoring positive affect (mastery orientation) predicted achievement flow, as assessed with a new operant motive (...) test (OMT). Achievement flow motives were further found to be associated with flow experiences in achievement tasks (Study 1), intrinsic motivation in an academic context (Study 2), and volitional facilitation as assessed by removal of Stroop interference after experimentally induced difficulty and positive affect (Study 3). These findings offer converging evidence that flow experiences arise from dynamic changes in positive affect. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo investigar como o movimento Cidades Educadoras pode contribuir para a educação em humanidades, a qual vem sendo, a cada reforma educacional, mais escamoteada. Pretende-se demonstrar a possibilidade da educação em humanidades nos espaços não formais e informais de ensino, como é o caso da cidade. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica na qual serão abordados, na primeira parte o conceito de cidade e democracia. Posteriormente, apresenta-se uma análise da importância da educação em humanidades no contexto (...) democrático. E, por fim, identifica-se as contribuições do movimento Cidades Educadoras para a educação em humanidades, concluindo. (shrink)

Auf dem Wege zu einer aufgabenzentrierten Professionstheorie pädagogischen Handeins I. Die Verberuflichung des Erziehens ist historisch weitgehend abgeschlossen. In den modemen Industrie-und Dienstleistungsgesellschaften hat sich ein eigenständiger Sektor der institutionalisierten Erziehung ausdifferenziert, der mittlerweile zu einem der größten Teilsysteme der Gesellschaft geworden ist und immer größere Gruppen der Bevölkerung durch alle Lebensphasen hindurch erfaßt. In diesem Sektor ist eine Vielzahl von Berufen entstanden, zu der die Kindergärtnerin, die Lehrerin, die Sozialpädagogin, die Erziehungsberaterin, die Erwachsenenbildnerin und bald auch die Gerontagogin rechnet. (...) Sie decken ein weites Spektrum von erzieherischen Tätigkeiten ab und sind - gemessen an der Ausbildungsart und -dauer -auf ganz unterschiedlichen Qualifikationsniveaus angesiedelt: von der Erzieherin mit Fach schulausbildung über Fachhochschulabsolventinnen z. B. der Sozialpädagogik, über Lehrer verschiedener Schulstufen mit akademischer oder universitärer Ausbildung bis zu Diplom-Pädagoginnen mit und ohne Promotion. Sie alle erziehen - sei es der Absicht nach, sei es beiläufig oder verschämt. Unerledigt ist die Frage der Professionalisierung des Erziehens. Die Formulie rung und die Institutionalisierung pädagogischer Berufsbilder und ihre Legitimation durch entsprechende Zertifikate stellen keine Garantie für Professionalität dar. Dies gilt jedenfalls dann, wenn unter Professionalisierung nicht nur der historische Prozeß gemeint ist, in dem sich eine Gruppe von Berufen etablieren konnte, sondern auch die Ausbildung einer spezifischen Handlungskompetenz, die von der Struktur der professionellen Handlung erfordert wird. (shrink)

The term “synthetic biology” is a popular label of an emerging biotechnological field with strong claims to robustness, modularity, and controlled construction, finally enabling the creation of new organisms. Although the research community is heterogeneous, it advocates a common denominator that seems to define this field: the principles of rational engineering. However, it still remains unclear to what extent rational engineering—rather than “tinkering” or the usage of random based or non-rational processes—actually constitutes the basis for the techniques of synthetic biology. (...) In this article, we present the results of a quantitative bibliometric analysis of the realized extent of rational engineering in synthetic biology. In our analysis, we examine three issues: (1) We evaluate whether work at three levels of synthetic biology (parts, devices, and systems) is consistent with the principles of rational engineering. (2) We estimate the extent of rational engineering in synthetic biology laboratory practice by an evaluation of publications in synthetic biology. (3) We examine the methodological specialization in rational engineering of authors in synthetic biology. Our analysis demonstrates that rational engineering is prevalent in about half of the articles related to synthetic biology. Interestingly, in recent years the relative number of respective publications has decreased. Despite its prominent role among the claims of synthetic biology, rational engineering has not yet entirely replaced biotechnological methods based on “tinkering” and non-rational principles. (shrink)

This article discusses the 2019 Event Horizon Telescope image of a black hole as an ontological question for photography, contrasting its spatially distributed operations as a planetary apparatus against its temporal inscriptions of successive histories of scientific realisms following Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. The 'becoming photographic' of this image, this text argues, hinges on the distance it traverses from its scientific milieu to its vernacular reception, making visible the cultural calibrations that produce a consensually legible image.

The Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopadie der Theologie und der Kirchen (DBETh) (German Biographical Encyclopaedia of Theology and the Church) offers biographical articles on 8,000 people from the areas of church, theology and the non-Christian religions, in the German-speaking regions. This biographical encyclopaedia of the church and the history of religion reaches from the early Middle Ages to the present, covering a period of more than a thousand years. Christians of different confessions and communities, Jews, prominent theologians and religious leaders and representatives (...) of religious studies are presented with their life histories and life's work. The DBETh is a unique type of lexical work of unparalleled extensiveness. The geographical area covered by the DBETh is defined by the German language. Besides Germany, it covers Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, the Alsace and Transylvania, the Baltic and South Tyrol. The biographical articles are free of value judgements and censorship, and do not cover people still living. Men and women, who made a significant impact during their lives and had far reaching influence following their deaths, are dealt with more extensively in articles written and signed by experts. Almost all the articles have details of further reading. Indexes of persons and places make it easier to use and to find connections. The sphere of people covered is broad: theologians, holders of church offices, philosophers with a religious-theological emphasis as well as artists concentrating primarily on ecclesiastical themes and activities - writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and architects. Also included are secular leaders who were specifically influential in church politics. Vicars recognized as writers or as naturalists are not forgotten any more than members of orders, acknowledged as astronomers or mathematicians.". (shrink)