CHAPTER I THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUSSERL'S 'PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC'. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: WEIERSTRASS AND THE ARITHMETIZATION OF ANALYSIS In ...

Introduction -- Part I: Starting points -- Some decisions are easier than others -- Easy decisions -- More difficult decisions -- Moral dilemmas -- The deep basis of the moral life -- Practical decision making -- Why ethics is ultimately religious -- Acceptable and unacceptable forms of revelation -- The useful incomplete ness of religious tradition -- Moral virtue and character -- Intuition and deliberation in moral decision-making -- The absolute and the relative in moral life -- Have we become (...) too relativistic? -- The natural law approach -- God as the absolute -- Facts and values -- Individual integrity and communal authority -- The transcendent absolute -- Rules and relationships -- The moral burden of proof -- The legal analogy -- Applying the idea of "presumption" to ethical decision-making -- Moral presumptions as a common starting point -- Basic moral presumptions -- Uses of scripture -- Positive Christian value presumptions -- The limits and flaws in human nature -- Presumptions that preserve balance -- A presumption for Scripture and tradition -- When presumptions are in conflict -- Part II: Applications and illustrations -- Difficult personal decisions -- Sexual intimacy and family life -- Contraception and abortion -- Choosing a spouse -- Divorce -- Vocational choices -- The uses of our money -- Political choices -- Hard choices in the public arena -- Abortion -- Homosexuality -- The dilemma of "affirmative action" -- Securing economic justice -- Environmental policies -- Criminal justice -- Uses of military power -- Hard choices at the global level -- International institution building -- International security and policing -- Nuclear disarmament -- Economic globalization -- Global warming -- Hard choices in communities of faith. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology, as the study of conscious experience, has often been accused of solipsism. Husserl’s method, it is argued, does not have the resources to provide an account of consciousness of other minds. This chapter will address this issue by providing a brief overview of the multiple angles from which Husserl approached the theme of intersubjectivity, with specific focus on the details of his account of the concrete interpersonal encounter – “empathy.” Husserl understood empathy as a direct, quasi-perceptual form of (...) intentionality through which the sense of the Other is constituted. Furthermore, his account of empathy is holistically integrated with his overall theory of intersubjectivity, including his discussions of the objectivity of nature, and the social, historical, and communal aspects of subjectivity. Husserl’s theory of empathy continues to cast a long shadow, influencing both the analytic and continental approaches to the problem of other minds, as well as contemporary account of social cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Classifying human beings according to race and ethnicity may seem straightforward to some but it, in fact, belies a difficult process. No standard procedure exists for categorizing according to race and ethnicity, calling into question the variables’ use in research. This article explores the use of race and ethnicity variables in the nursing research literature. Content analysis was conducted of a sample of 337 original research studies published in Nursing Research from the years 1952, 1955, and then every 5 years (...) through to 2000. Of the 337 research articles reviewed, 167 mentioned race, ethnicity, or their 81 code words or phrases. Out of the 167 articles, 153 used race or ethnicity to describe the study sample, and 45 of the 167 articles included race or ethnicity as an element of data analysis. Throughout the sample, there was substantial inconsistency related to race and ethnicity categorization, meanings of the terms, and use of these variables. Specificity related to conceptual assumptions, definitions, and context was missing and, as a result, data interpretation and understanding are suspect. The integrity of nursing knowledge requires that nurse researchers recognize and address the difficulties inherent in using race and ethnicity in health research. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

Robert Sokolowski’s concise and accessible new book introduces phenomenology not as a historical movement, but as an approach to philosophy that still has much to offer. It discusses central topics in Husserlian phenomenology, but without quoting Husserl and for the most part without mentioning him by name. Instead of examining the contributions of individual phenomenologists, the book extracts and synthesizes the insights of various figures, formulating them in new ways and showing why they are important in the context of contemporary (...) intellectual life. (shrink)

The goal of this study is to use Husserl's phenomenological method to clarify the epistemic achievement of modern mathematics. It is not primarily an examination of Husserl's opinions on specific questions in the philosophy of mathematics, many of which were formulated in his early, pre-phenomenological works. Rather, Lohmar takes the methodological ideas presented in Husserl's mature works, particularly Formal and Transcendental Logic and Experience and Judgment, as a point of departure for his own examination of a number of important questions.

This volume contains the text of a lecture course Heidegger presented in Marburg in the winter semester of 1924/25, just a year before completing his work on the manuscript for Being and Time. A lengthy introductory section examines the concept of truth in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics. The "Main Section" presents a detailed commentary on the Greek text of Plato's Sophist. Part 1 deals with the various attempts made at the beginning of the dialogue to define "the factical existence (...) of the sophist." Part 2 is devoted to the ontological discussion which arises out of these attempts. (shrink)

The scope of this study is the early phase of Husserl's philosophy, from On the Concept of Number and Philosophy of Arithmetic through the Logical Investigations. Like others who have studied this period, Cooper-Wiele wants to trace the development of themes understood to play a central role in Husserl's mature, phenomenological philosophy. Of central concern to him is the emergence of Husserl's transcendental point of view, which Cooper-Wiele characterizes as "a conquest of spatio-temporal phenomena," "the dissolution of the threat" to (...) certainty and teleology posed by the assumption that causal reality is an ultimate philosophical category. The "key" to the early development of transcendental phenomenology is said to be Husserl's study of the mental act of collecting--or, as the author prefers, the "totalizing act.". (shrink)

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects of the We, but (...) fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness. “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life. (shrink)

Husserl introduces a phenomenological concept called “motivation” early in the First Investigation of his magnum opus, the Logical Investigations. The importance of this concept has been overlooked since Husserl passes over it rather quickly on his way to an analysis of the meaningful nature of expression. I argue, however, that motivation is essential to Husserl’s overall project, even if it is not essen- tial for defining expression in the First Investigation. For Husserl, motivation is a relation between mental acts whereby (...) the content of one act make some fur- ther meaningful content probable. I explicate the nature of this relation in terms of “evidentiary weight” and differentiate it from Husserl’s notion of Evidenz, often translated as “self-evidence”. I elucidate the importance of motivation in Husserl’s overall phenomenological project by focusing on his analyses of thing-perception and empathy. Through these examples, we can better understand the continuity between the Logical Investigations and Husserl’s later work. (shrink)

We take ourselves to have an inner life of thought, and we take ourselves to be capable of linguistically expressing our thoughts to others. But what is the nature of this “inner life” of thought? Is conscious thought necessarily carried out in language? This paper takes up these questions by examining Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. For Merleau-Ponty, language expresses thought. Thus it would seem that thought must be independent of, and in some sense prior to, the speech that expresses it. (...) He also claims, however, that thinking just is linguistic expression, and thus that language constitutes thought. The primary aim of this paper is to make sense of this constitutive claim while maintaining that, for Merleau-Ponty, there is an inner life of thought that exists independently of linguistic expression, and that this inner life rightly deserves the label “thought”. The upshot of this account is twofold. First, it explains why the mainstream view of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression seems plausible, but is ultimately inadequate. Second, it functions as a corrective to contemporary debates about the nature and scope of phenomenal consciousness and the sense in which conscious experience has content. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker, moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the harm account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the qualified harm account, there is no (...) harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

This paper sets out an account of trust in AI as a relationship between clinicians, AI applications, and AI practitioners in which AI is given discretionary authority over medical questions by clinicians. Compared to other accounts in recent literature, this account more adequately explains the normative commitments created by practitioners when inviting clinicians’ trust in AI. To avoid committing to an account of trust in AI applications themselves, I sketch a reductive view on which discretionary authority is exercised by AI (...) practitioners through the vehicle of an AI application. I conclude with four critical questions based on the discretionary account to determine if trust in particular AI applications is sound, and a brief discussion of the possibility that the main roles of the physician could be replaced by AI. (shrink)

This paper brings together several strands of thought from both the analytic and phenomenological traditions in order to critically examine accounts of cognitive enhancement that rely on the idea of cognitive extension. First, I explain the idea of cognitive extension, the metaphysics of mind on which it depends, and how it has figured in recent discussions of cognitive enhancement. Then, I develop ideas from Husserl that emphasize the agential character of thought and the distinctive way that conscious thoughts are related (...) to one another. I argue that these considerations are necessary for understanding why forms of cognitive extension may diminish our cognitive lives in different ways. This does not lead to a categorical rejection of cognitive enhancement as unethical or bad for human flourishing, but does warrant a conservative approach to the design and implementation of cognitive artifacts. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory role (...) of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness. (shrink)

A concise and accessible introduction to the evolution of the concept of moral self-cultivation in the Chinese Confucian tradition, this volume begins with an explanation of the pre-philosophical development of ideas central to this concept, followed by an examination of the specific treatment of self cultivation in the philosophy of Kongzi ("Confucius"), Mengzi ("Mencius"), Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, Yan Yuan and Dai Zhen. In addition to providing a survey of the views of some of the most influential Confucian thinkers (...) on an issue of fundamental importance to the tradition, Ivanhoe also relates their concern with moral self-cultivation to a number of topics in the Western ethical tradition. Bibliography and index are included. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...) to reasons, and it is compatible with a subjective awareness of the available options. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl has been understood along a spectrum running from outright repudiation to deep appreciation. The aim of this paper is to clarify a significant and heretofore largely neglected unifying thread connecting Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, while also demonstrating its general philosophical import for phenomenological philosophy. On this account, the details of a programmatic philosophical continuity between these two phenomenologists can be structured around the concept of motivation. Merleau-Ponty sees in Husserl’s concept of motivation a necessary and innovative concept (...) that we must formulate in order to properly theorize the anonymous and passive functioning of “operative intentionality.” Motivation is the principle that bridges this domain with the egoic life of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on anonymity, bodily habit, and other facets of operative intentionality are thus not a repudiation of Husserl’s analyses of intentionality, but rather a deepening of the notion of consciousness. I conclude by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s early work on motivation lays the conceptual groundwork for his later rethinking of intentionality in terms of institution, and thus mature ontology of the flesh. (shrink)

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, remained seated during the national anthem in order to protest racial injustice and police brutality against African-Americans. After consulting with National Football League and military veteran Nate Boyer, Kaepernick switched to taking a knee during the anthem for the remainder of the season. Several NFL players and other professional athletes subsequently adopted this gesture. This article brings together complementary Confucian and phenomenological analyses to elucidate the significance of Kaepernick’s gesture, (...) and in the process provide a phenomenological characterization of the connection between the Confucian notions of sagehood and ritual. Kaepernick’s gesture subverts the anthem ritual from within while simultaneously remaining faithful to the ideals it is meant to express. Furthermore, it institutes a new bodily form of patriotic self-expression compatible with both American and Confucian ideals. (shrink)