Interdisciplinarity has seemingly become a paradigm for modern and meaningful research. Clearly, the interdisciplinary modus of deliberation enables to unfold relevant but quite different disciplinary perspectives to the reflection of broader scientific questions or societal problems. However, whether the comprehensive results of interdisciplinary reflection prove to be valid or to be acceptable in trans-disciplinary terms depends upon certain preconditions, which have to be fulfilled for securing scientific quality and social trust in advisory contexts. The present book is written by experts (...) and practitioners of interdisciplinary research and policy advice. It analyses topical and methodological approaches towards interdisciplinarity, starting with the current role of scientific research in society. The volume continues with contributions to the issues of knowledge and acting and to trans-disciplinary deliberation. The final conclusions address the scientific system as substantial actor itself as well as the relevant research and education politics. (shrink)

Since the cloned sheep Dolly was born, reproductive cloning of humans (i.e. the cloning of complete human individuals) has seemed to be – at least in principle – achievable. The technical possibility of reproductive cloning leaves the question unanswered of whether the actual production of a clone would be morally acceptable. Considering several arguments against reproductive cloning – which claim that the moral status of a cloned individual and its clone respectively renders it morally objectionable to carry out cloning – (...) we defend the thesis that these arguments are not apodictic (i.e. relative to all ends and means of cloning humans) but are only hypothetical (i.e. relative to some ends and means of cloning humans). Although at present we think it is difficult to find a plausible aim of cloning that is not an instrumentalisation of the cloned (and, therefore, morally objectionable), it could, nevertheless, be that in the future there might be ends and means that justify reproductive cloning. We conclude by criticising the apodictic ban on reproductive cloning declared by most international resolutions and much national legislation. (shrink)

Die »Enzyklopädie Philosophie- und Wissenschaftstheorie«, das größte allgemeine Nachschlagewerk zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum, wurde 1980 begonnen und 1996 mit dem vierten Band abgeschlossen. Sie erschien 2005 bis 2018 in einer komplett aktualisierten und erweiterten 8-bändigen Neuauflage, die hiermit nun in einer kartonierten Sonderausgabe vorliegt. Die »Enzyklopädie« umfasst in Sach- und Personenartikeln nicht nur den klassischen Bestand des philosophischen Wissens, sondern auch die neuere Entwicklung der Philosophie, insbesondere in den Bereichen Logik, Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie sowie Sprachphilosophie. Zugleich finden Grundlagenreflexionen in (...) den Wissenschaften und deren Geschichte ausführliche Berücksichtigung. Die umfassenden Bibliographien und Werkverzeichnisse wurden für die 2. Auflage in allen Artikeln auf den neuesten Stand gebracht. Der Herausgeber Jürgen Mittelstraß, Professor em. für Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie an der Universität Konstanz, ist einer der international renommiertesten deutschen Philosophen. 1989 erhielt er den Leibniz-Preis der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) und seitdem zahlreiche weitere Wissenschaftspreise sowie Ehrendoktorwürden. Er ist Direktor des Konstanzer Wissenschaftsforums, war Präsident der Academia Europaea (2002-2008) und Vorsitzender des Österreichischen Wissenschaftsrates (2005-2015). Band 1: A-B | Band 2: C-F | Band 3: G-Inn | Band 4: Ins-Loc | Band 5: Log-N | Band 6: O-Ra | Band 7: Re-Te | Band 8: Th-Z. (shrink)

In this paper a semantics for dynamic predicate logic is developed that uses sequence valued assignments. This semantics is compared with the usual relational semantics for dynamic predicate logic: it is shown that the most important intuitions of the usual semantics are preserved. Then it is shown that the refined semantics reflects out intuitions about information growth. Some other issues in dynamic semantics are formulated and discussed in terms of the new sequence semantics.

Corporate governance is increasingly becoming an issue of global concern, not least because we are more and more living in a corporate world that transcends international boundaries. The main purpose and motivation of this study is to determine how the international community should motivate businesses in fostering exemplary corporate governance, therefore eliminating obstacles to ethically exemplary behavior. The empirical approach utilized here has been applied to 161 businesses, both listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies, with the results indicating that ethical considerations, (...) corporate governance and organizational performance are inextricably linked and, to an extent, demonstrably proportional. This study also indicates a major finding that family management is a significant mediating variable of the ethical considerations of corporate governance and organizational performance. Finally, this study has developed an operational model of ethical considerations of corporate governance as a consultancy aid for businesses that wish to implement and/or boost their performance in respect to corporate governance. (shrink)

Companies do have ethical responsibility and are not protected by limited liability from the consequences of their actions. A company's record and the preception of its ethics affect its reputation and ensure long term success or failure.The financial community has a history of placing moral considerations above legal or opportunistic expedients. But we are often exposed to moral dangers and the dangers of contamination are increasing. Deregulation and the technological revolution are sharpening ethical conflicts.

Tradition in either of its two senses—the act of handing on , and what is handed on—is a particular instance of a law of human existence that men live in dependence on one another and by the processes of giving and receiving. So a sociologist can write, ‘If we are able to speak of real tradition, we must find the past spontaneously taken into account as the meaning of the present, without any discontinuity of social time, and without any consideration (...) of the past as irrelevant’ . ‘If democracy’, wrote Chesterton, ‘means that I give a man a vote even though he is my chauffeur, tradition means that I give a man a vote even though he is my great-great-grandfather’. What is handed on, however, is not existence of a purely biological kind, to remain always what it has been or to change very slowly over a space of aeons. Except in primitive tribes even tradition is not simply passed on as something static and timeless, and it is received by men who, though themselves in time, are not totally time-bound or restricted by what they receive. They believe themselves to be capable of significant action which is more than the repetition and reproduction of what has gone before. They are able to grasp a span of time and to call it history; they believe themselves to have a history, and they write history. (shrink)

Contrary to the widely held view that the Roman-Carthaginian naval encounter Polybios reports at 1.21.9-11 was separate from the one off Mylae (260 BC) told at length right afterwards (1.23), the battle at the ‘Cape of Italy’ is in fact - as suspected by some scholars long ago - identical with the one at Mylae. However, far from mistaking (as has been suggested) Philinos’ account of the latter for a separate engagement, Polybios knowingly and deliberately told the battle of Mylae (...) twice: first in a brief summary, stripped of all detail, to illustrate how the Roman commander Cn. Scipio Asina (cos. 260) and his Punic counterpart, Hannibal, were both guilty of equally inappropriate acts of recklessness; then for a second time in detail and in its proper chronological place. Compositional considerations prompted this approach: to wait with the moralizing parallel until after his full account of Mylae (preceded in turn by the long technical disquisition on the Roman boarding bridges) would spoil the effect, and Polybios chose to place it immediately after Asina’s capture. (shrink)