Cirocco, Josie My mini thesis of 'Finding God in Art: Karl Rahner on the Nature of Religious Art' was part of my master's project with the Flinders University, South Australia, completed in December 2014. With my research topic, 'Finding God in Art', in mind, I was seeking to go beyond the classical idea of sacred art to explore the way other art may genuinely be religious even though it is not overtly about a religious subject. To do this I adopted (...) some of the insights of Karl Rahner's theology. The immense success of Rahner's work is a tribute to his ability to speak profoundly about the everyday life of ordinary men and women. I explored Rahner's thought about art, both verbal and non-verbal, within a Christian context. (shrink)

Smartphones are increasingly entangled with the most intimate areas of everyday life, providing possibilities for the continued expansion of digital self-tracking technologies. Within this context, the development of smartphone applications targeted at female reproductive health are offering novel forms and practices of knowledge production about reproductive bodies and processes. This article presents empirical research from the United Kingdom on women’s use of fertility tracking applications, known more generally as fertility apps, while trying to conceive. Drawing on material from interviews with (...) women who had experience of using fertility apps, I demonstrate the significance of this particular form of fertility tracking for the embodied shift from pregnancy prevention to actively facilitating pregnancy, participants’ sense of self and identity and how they perceived the reproductive potentiality of their bodies. I argue that fertility apps are significantly involved in making fertility cycles known and thus configuring the pre-pregnant reproductive body. (shrink)

Students coming into a third-year business ethics course I teach are often confused about the use and meaning of the terms social responsibility and ethics. This motivated me to take a closer look at a sample of the management and business ethics literature for an explanation of their confusion. I found that there are inconsistencies in the way the two terms are employed and the way the concepts are defined. This paper identifies the different ways the relationship between social responsibility (...) and ethics has been represented, the various uses of these two terms, and the contrasting views regarding the connection between morality and ethics. While this analysis does not resolve any difficult substantive questions, it does provide conceptual clarity as a necessary first step towards facilitating students critical engagement with the substantive issues. (shrink)

Este artigo é parte do estudo de mestrado que investigou a concepção de educação e pessoa à luz do personalismo de Emmanuel Mounier. Para o personalismo mounieriano a pessoa não nasce perfeita, ou seja, pronta. O homem é chamado a “amadurecer livremente” como pessoa. Isso envolve dois aspectos fundamentais para o seu desenvolvimento – a liberdade, que lhe confere a possibilidade de escolha, e o protagonismo, que o coloca como principal responsável por seu desenvolvimento. O desenvolvimento da pessoa, em Mounier, (...) é um processo que depende, sobretudo, da própria pessoa. Tal protagonismo evidencia que a educação, para o personalismo é, na verdade, autoeducação. (shrink)

Noetherian type and Noetherian π-type are two cardinal functions which were introduced by Peregudov in 1997, capturing some properties studied earlier by the Russian School. Their behavior has been shown to be akin to that of the cellularity, that is the supremum of the sizes of pairwise disjoint non-empty open sets in a topological space. Building on that analogy, we study the Noetherian π-type of κ-Suslin Lines, and we are able to determine it for every κ up to the first (...) singular cardinal. We then prove a consequence of Changʼs Conjecture for ℵω regarding the Noetherian type of countably supported box products which generalizes a result of Lajos Soukup. We finish with a connection between PCF theory and the Noetherian type of certain Pixley–Roy hyperspaces. (shrink)

Three widely accepted principles – autonomy, beneficence and justice – provide a useful analytic framework for considering controversies and conflicts in bioethics. Since these principles capture key concepts found in diverse normative theories they provide a starting point from which consistent ethical analysis and comparison can begin. While justice is commonly discussed in the business ethics literature, the other two principles are not widely discussed. This paper investigates whether the principles of autonomy and beneficence provide a framework that is equally (...) useful for framing issues in business ethics. It is argued that they do. First, the principle of autonomy, with its associated notions of informed consent, privacy, confidentiality, voluntariness, self-mastery, and so on, provides a consistent approach to the analysis of diverse issues that arise in business ethics from market research to recruitment practices. Second, it is argued that the relationships between a business and its stakeholders ground duties of beneficence. The principle of beneficence provides a framework for considering the issues that arise in these relationships. (shrink)

The current voluntary posthumous organ donation policy fails to provide sufficient organs to meet the demand. In these circumstances xenografts have been regarded as an expedient solution. The public perception seems to be that the only impediments to this technology are technical and biological. There are, however, important ethical issues raised by xenotransplantation that need to be considered as a matter of urgency. When the ethical issues raised by using non-human animals to provide replacement organs for human beings are considered (...) in a wider context and the possible alternatives to xenotransplantation are taken into account, a new dimension is added to the debate. In this broader context it is argued that a less ethically problematic solution is to adopt a presumed consent or opt-out organ procurement policy to regulate posthumous organ harvesting from humans. If there are still too few organs available, then the whole question of transplantation must be reassessed. (shrink)

The law commonly conceived as a norm : deficiency of this conception -- On some general hints of this deficiency, and in particular those evinced by the likely origin of the current definitions of law -- The need to distinguish the distinct legal norms from the legal order considered as a whole. The logical impossibility of defining the legal order as a set of norms -- How the unity of a legal order has been sometimes intuited -- How a legal (...) order is not only a set of norms, as it also encompasses other elements -- How such ements are implicitly postulated by the common inquiry into the distinguishing characteristics of law -- Assessment, from this point of view, of the so-called objectivity of law -- The element of sanction -- The expression "the legal order" -- The essential elements of the concept of law. The law as an institution and the law as a precept -- The preceding doctrine on the concept of institution -- My concept of institution and its fundamental characteristics : 1. The objective existence of the institution; 2. Institution and social body; 3. The institution's selfness; 4. The unity of the institution -- Equivalence of the concept of institution and the concept of a legal order -- Evidence for this equivalence based on the doctrine that the law is only "form" -- Mention of some problems that need solving in the light of this equivalence -- Cases in which the original establishment of a law does not depend on norms, but on the emergence of an institution, and the impossibility of reducing the institution to the norms -- The concept of institution and the international legal order -- The institution and the legal relationship: relationships between more persons -- Relationships between persons and things : examples of some of these relationships that, considered more broadly, cab be portrayed as institutions -- The institution and the legal person -- My conception of the law with respect to certain problems relating to : 1. The legal character of state power; 2. The extension of the state personality; 3. The legal relevance of its territory and citizenry -- Critical assessment of some opinions that attach importance to the legal order only insofar as it reflect relationships between persons. Applications to: 1. The legal sanction; 2. The state territory and citizenship; 3. The state bodies; 4. The limits of the legislative function -- Some consequences of my conception with regard to the subjective aspect of the law: the legal relationship; the status of persons; rights in rem; the correlation between rights and obligations; the equal position of subjects -- Recapitulatory remarks -- The plurality of legal orders and the doctrine that reduces all law to state law -- The untenability of this doctrine from a historical and theoretical point of view -- Its untenability with respect to the existing law -- Non-state legal orders; international law -- Ecclesiastical law -- The order of entities that are considered unlawful or are ignored by the state -- Entities that are regulated by the state, but also have an order of their own which is not recognized by the state (private disciplinary orders; the internal organisation of workplaces; so-called unrecognized associations or institutions, etc.) -- Doctrines that confine the concept of a legal order to the order of communities in general and specifically to necessary communities -- The relations between different legal orders. Principles that have to be taken into account with respect to : 1. Original or derivative institutions; 2. The particular or general ends of institutions; 3. Their diverse basis; 4. Simple or complex institutions; 5. Perfect or imperfect; 6. With or without personality; 7. Independent, coordinated or subordinated -- The concept of relevance of one order to another -- The title for this relevance: a. The relation of superiority and correlative dependence between two orders; b. The relation whereby an order presupposes another; c. The relation whereby reciprocally independent orders depend a further one; d. The relevance unilaterally attributed by an order to another on which it depends; e. The relation of succession between orders -- Diverse aspects (existence, content, effectiveness) expressing the relevance an order to another one. Cases in which the existence of an order depends on another: a. Complete subordination of the former to the latter which directly establishes the former or assigns limited autonomy to it. Independence, as far as its existence is concerned, of an order in case of a less expansive subordination (some spheres of the order of the states of a federal state vis-à-vis the latter; the order of states vis-à-vis international law) and general principles; b. In the hypothesis of an order that represents the presupposition of another (state law vis-à-vis international law) -- The relevance of an order to another with respect to its content. Various cases: a. The superior order as the mediated or unmediated source of an inferior order; the superior order (international law, ecclesiastical concordats) which is not the source, and yet affects the content of inferior orders; b. the Superior order about effects the content of more orders subjected to, which however are independent from each other; c. the order of that itself that determines its own content by considering a subjected or independent order : private international law; ecclesiastical law as it refers to civil laws; the law of the state that refers to ecclesiastical law; d. an order that incorporates another -- The relevance of an order to one another with respect to its effects: external and internal effectiveness of an order. Various cases of external effectiveness: a. The relationships between orders where the one partially or totally depends on the other; b. Relationships between more orders that are independent from each other because of a unilateral disposition of one or each of them. Private international law; civil effectiveness of ecclesiastical law; c. Relationships meeting more orders in which one is of the presupposition of the other; d. Relationships between orders that succeed each other -- Diverse extension of the relevance of an order to another. Applications with regard to the problem of so-called natural obligations -- The irrelevance of an order to another; total or partial, reciprocal or unilateral -- A legal order that as such is irrelevant to another, but it is relevant in other respects (orders that are considered unlawful by the state; corporations, de facto institutions) -- Total developments of an order to another: possibility of such an irrelevance also with respect to the order of the state -- Critical assessment of the opposite doctrine. The limitations of the state order; various figures and consequences; examples of matters that are legally indifferent to the state (private disciplinary orders; particular religious orders; the orders of some non-patrimonial associations; etc.) -- The internal orders of the institutions, especially state ones, vis-à-vis the order of other institutions in which they are included. (shrink)

While there is increasing pressure on scarce health care resources, advances in medical science have blurred the boundary between life and death. Individuals can survive for decades without consciousness and individuals whose whole brains are dead can be supported for extended periods. One suggested response is to redefine death, justifying a higher brain criterion for death. This argument fails because it conflates two distinct notions about the demise of human beings--the one, biological and the other, ontological. Death is a biological (...) phenomenon. This view entails the rejection of a higher brain criterion of death. Moreover, I claim that the justification of the whole brain (or brain stem) criterion of death is also cast into doubt by these advances in medical science. I proceed to argue that there is no need to redefine death in order to identify which treatments ought to be provided for the permanently and irreversibly unconscious. There are already clear treatment guidelines. (shrink)

El ordenamiento jurídico de Santi Romano es, sin duda alguna, una obra fundamental. Y no es la circunstancia concreta de presentar ahora la obra al lector español la que dicta estas palabras, sino que las recojo conociendo plenamente el valor objetivo que ellas tienen; sobradamente tendremos ocasión de ver la consideración que la obra de Romano recibe por parte de la doctrina, como de un auténtico y verdadero hito en el desarrollo del pensamiento jurídico contemporáneo. De ahí precisamente que no (...) trate de llevar a cabo ni un análisis crítico de la misma, ni menos aún de la obra de Romano en general; tal pretensión de enjuiciamiento limitaría casi con lo grotesco, por carecer de toda autoridad en el campo de la dogmática general del Derecho, que es en el que, en concreto, se mueve Santi Romano en la obra que presentamos. Estas páginas, por el contrario, pretenden tener una finalidad mucho más modesta: simplemente presentar la obra al lector español, formulando al mismo tiempo algunas aplicaciones concretas de la tesis ordinamental en el campo específico del Derecho administrativo. Sebastián Martín Retortillo. (shrink)

The goal of the present paper is to assess Hans Vaihinger’s understanding of the notion of the given in Die Philosophie des Als Ob. The claim will be advanced that the overall framework of Vaihinger’s theory of knowledge and, more specifically, his understanding of both the given and fictions should be sought for in the manner in which R. Hermann Lotze assesses the problem of knowledge, namely, the relation between thought and being in both his early and late Logik. As (...) we will argue, the way in which Vaihinger recasts the opposition between what is given objectively (data of sensations) and what is added subjectively is to be deemed a direct radicalization of Lotze’s own stance. As the conclusion will further add, what is at stake inVaihinger’s fictionalism is a quite specific understanding of the ideas of reason and transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Social data mining has become an emerging area of research in information and communication technology fields. The scope of social data mining has expanded significantly in the recent years with the advance of telecommunication technologies and the rapidly increasing accessibility of computing resources and mobile devices. People increasingly engage in and rely on phone communications for both personal and business purposes. Hence, mobile phones become an indispensable part of life for many people. In this article, we perform social data mining (...) on mobile social networking by presenting a simple but efficient method to define social closeness and social grouping, which are then used to identify social sizes and scaling ratio of close to “8”. We conclude that social mobile network is a subset of the face-to-face social network, and both groupings are not necessary the same, hence the scaling ratios are distinct. Mobile social data mining. (shrink)

This study deals with an exploratory research about understanding of art in students of different age, grades and kind of schools attended. In particular, we analysed how beliefs and reflections about art and aesthetical experiences expressed during a cross-age interview, changed in elementary school children involved for two years in a UE Project titled “Philosophy and European Contemporary Art”. The activities are based on guided philosophical discussions, transforming the classroom in a “community of inquiry”, according to the methodology of “Philosophy (...) for Children” program . The elementary school group was tested pre and post the program activities. A qualitative analysis of the students’ answers was carried out, considering the data with respect to the five stages of art understanding defined by Micheal Parsons which correspond to different beliefs about art in the subjects. (shrink)

The present essay offers a first, systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s understanding of Socrates’ philosophical position in the Ideengeschichte with a special focus on the Socratic method. Our goal is twofold. On the one hand, we aim to provide a clear presentation of the way in which Husserl himself conceives of the “beginning” of Western philosophy by tackling the specifically Socratic contribution to it. On the other hand, we will clarify in what sense, and to what extent, the assessment of Husserl’s (...) Socrates helps shed some light upon the properly Husserlian conception of philosophy, notably, his twofold notion of “rationality.”. (shrink)

This paper aims at offering a concise, yet systematic, presentation of the Husserlian method of “self-variation” in connection to eidetic variation sic et simpliciter. After a brief review of the different meanings of this method in Husserl’s writings, I will focus on the way in which Husserl employs it to bring the eidos “ego” to the fore. To this end, I will take into account the specific subject matter of self-variation by resorting to a twofold concept of essence as well (...) as to the formal-ontological notion of τóδε τι. The present investigation will have an almost exclusively methodological character, its purpose being to clarify a specific, yet still quite unexplored, tool of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic discussion of the development of Husserl’s concept of the a priori from his early and through his later writings. The chapters contained herein analyze the different phases and aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of the a priori in light of his twofold notion of reason, construed as both ontological and transcendental. Starting from the assessment of the introduction of the notion of a priori knowledge in the context of the Logical Investigations, this text uniquely explores its (...) development during the Göttingen years. It is at this time during his work on The Crisis of European Sciences, that Husserl comes to see the a priori as a criterion to interpret the history of philosophy, notably, modern philosophy. This book sheds light upon such concepts as: essence and eidos; ideation, eidetic attitude and eidetic reduction; as well as formal and material, innate and contingent a priori. The author argues that the a priori becomes for Husserl the expression of an ontological form of rationality, i.e., the rationality immanent to being. This book appeals to students and researchers working on Husserl and phenomenology. (shrink)

"Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements, and it continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today with relevance beyond philosophy in areas such as medicine and cognitive sciences. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is an outstanding guide and reference source to this important and fascinating topic. Comprising seventy-five chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook offers unparalleled coverage of the subject, and is divided into five clear parts: Phenomenology and (...) the History of Philosophy Issues and Concepts in phnomenology Major Figures in Phenomenology Intersections Phenomenology in the World. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy studying phenomenology, The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, literature, sociology and anthropology"--. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to critically review the design of methods for ethically robust forms of technology appraisal in the regulation of research and innovation in synthetic biology. It will focus, in particular, on the extent to which cost‐benefit analysis offers a basis for informing decisions about which technological pathways to pursue and which to discourage. A further goal is to consider what (if anything) the precautionary principle might offer in enabling better decisions. And this, in turn, raises (...) questions about why mention of precaution can excite accusations of unscientific bias or irrational, “anti‐innovation” extremism. What does the polarized debate tell us about the politics around synthetic biology? In seeking more rigorous, timely, and practical ways to govern these remarkable new technologies, what might we be missing?The sophistication, diversity, and scope of synthetic biology may seem to make it a rather idiosyncratic area for exploring these general issues. It may seem to be a special case, with the bewildering pace of change amplifying the difficulties. But at root, some of the trickiest issues are just specific instances of familiar and long‐standing conundrums in the governance of science and technology. The basic challenge is how to weigh up, for a wide range of potential options, the various pros and cons, as viewed from divergent perspectives, and find a way to justify the best course of action on behalf of society as a whole. This is the central problem addressed by a number of techniques in CBA. On the face of it, synthetic biology seems to present just one more application of these well‐established and self‐confident prescriptive methods.But there do emerge several obstinate, even prohibitive, difficulties for CBA. Although they are well acknowledged by the scholarly literature on and around this topic, they are often sidelined in practice. Yet all are central to the case for applying the concept of precaution to a field like synthetic biology. This essay will briefly explore multicriteria mapping, an appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on emerging technologies, as one practical way to address them. The essay focuses on MCM, not because it presents any sort of panacea for appraisal, but because it is illustrative of the concrete implications of precaution. Setting out even just one among potentially many practical alternative methods at least refutes the last‐ditch argument that CBA is the only operational choice. (shrink)

The present essay, here published for the first time, is part of a group of four texts on the history of the early phenomenological movement that Theodor Conrad wrote right after World War II. One of these texts known as “Conrads Bericht” was edited by Eberhard Avé-Lallemant and Karl Schuhmann and published in Husserl Studies in 1992. The four original typescripts are preserved in the archive of the Munich Circle of phenomenology at the Bavarian State Library. As the reader will (...) immediately realize, at the center of the present text is a peculiar account of the beginning of the phenomenological tradition, namely, of its first schism. Contrary to the usual thesis according to which the first schism revolved mainly, if not exclusively around the so-called “idealism-realism controversy,” Conrad points out that this was only part of it, and that the first controversy between Husserl and some of his early disciples or students bore on the nature of phenomenology itself. (shrink)

The present research contributes to the elucidation of an important aspect of Husserl’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, that is, his reading of the beginning of Western thought. In par...