Phenomenon of transdisciplinarity was put into the fore of analysis rather recently. In the article an attempt is made to find out whether it is possible to attribute this phenomenon not only to a science of the 21st century, or we have here the case where some scientific realities come to the attention of researchers with certain delay and has its value for the culture in general? It is possible to judge even the emergence of a kind of cognitive revolution (...) affecting both science culture. We need to find out what is meant by a transdisciplinarity, and how it differs from the inter- or multiransdisciplinarity. In the study the method of historical reconstruction, combining elements of presentism and antiqurism, was implemented. This method allows us to interpret historical events in the context of a specific level of knowledge, and at the same time to evaluate them in terms of modern ideas related to transdisciplinarity, inter- and multidisciplinarity. System-structural method, focused on an integrated analysis of the dynamics of development of cognitive processes in culture was implied as well, and the method of comparative analysis, which is aimed at comparing different but conceptually similar processes in various areas of conceptual art practice. It is in the framework of paradigm adopted a tacit agreement among scientists about the validity and effectiveness of research methods and techniques of inquiry. Within the paradigm, which presupposes certain fundamental principles, goals, and certain values shared by the scientific community, the novel sprouts of radical ideas once emerge. The scientific revolution here means a radical revision of the admissibility of accepted and proven methods, goals and values that are common to the members of the scientific community. Typically, new theories and concepts proposed and already mastered new scientific community, which is gradually replacing its representatives on the key command altitudes. The kernel of scientific community in fact is a style of thinking that is emerged in the context of a particular discipline, and then experience expansion in the form of discursive practices at a wide space of science and culture due to the novel cognitive schemes open the way to synthesize various research domains into a certain integrity. There is no question of the scientific revolution in the sense of Kuhn, since any significant goals and values of the scientific communities are not affected. Nevertheless, in some sense cognitive revolution taking place, the revolution of transdisciplinary type. The adoption of a new style of scientific thinking often gives rise to new types of objects and directions of cognitive activity, a new type of explanation that require new types of research proposals and cultural activities. Thus, the main idea of this article is that along with the Kuhn type scientific revolutions, transdisciplinary type scientific revolutions are conceivable, and even transdisciplinary cognitive types. This revolutions manifests in a change in style of reasoning, and it results in the expansion of this style to wide space of science and culture through the cognitive schemes and techniques, which enables to synthesize research and art activity in some integrity. Adoption of a new way of reasoning and the transition to new discursive practices generates new types of research facilities, new mechanisms of explanation, new cultural blueprints and instruments. Cognitive activity, based on a new style of thinking, involves multidisciplinarity, formation of new scientific and cultural institutions, and, therefore, causes a noticeable social change. Based on an analysis of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes in modern science and culture the authors claim that it is namely transdisciplinarity would determine the face of science and culture in the medium term, and will form the basis for the convergence of science, technology, art, and consciousness studies in general. (shrink)

Background Health care professionals have to judge the appropriateness of treatment in critical care on a daily basis. There is general consensus that critical care interventions should not be performed when they are inappropriate. It is not yet clear which chances of survival are considered necessary or which risk for serious disabilities is acceptable in quantitative terms for different stakeholders to start intensive care treatment. Methods We performed an anonymous online survey in a random sample of 1,052 participants recruited via (...) email invitation and social media. Age, sex, nationality, education, professional involvement in health care, critical care medicine and treatment decisions in critical care medicine as well as personal experience with critical illness were assessed as potential influencing variables. Participants provided their opinion on the necessary chances of survival and the acceptable risk for serious disabilities to start a high-risk or uncomfortable therapy for themselves, relatives or for their patients on a scale of 0–100%. Results Answers ranged from 0 to 100% for all questions. A three-peak pattern with different distributions of the peaks was observed. Sex, education, being a health care professional, being involved in treatment decisions and religiosity influence these opinions. Male respondents and those with a university education would agree that a risky and uncomfortable treatment should be started even with a low chance of survival for themselves, relatives and patients. More respondents would choose a lower necessary chance of survival when deciding for patients compared to themselves or relatives to start a risky and uncomfortable treatment. On the other hand, the majority of respondents would accept only a low risk of severe disability for both themselves and their patients. Conclusion No cut-off can be identified for the necessary chances of survival or the acceptable risk of disability to help quantify the “inappropriateness” of critical care treatment. Sex and education are the strongest influencing factors on this opinion. The large variation in personal opinions, depending on demographic and personality variables and education needs to be considered in the communication between health care professionals and patients or surrogates. (shrink)

The insight phenomenon is thought to comprise two components: cognitive and affective. The exact nature of the Aha! experience remains unclear; however, several explanations have been put forward. Based on the processing fluency account, the source of the Aha! experience is a sudden increase in processing fluency, associated with emerging of a solution. We hypothesized that in a situation which the Aha! experience accompanies the solution in, the problem would be judged as less difficult, regardless of the objective difficulty. We (...) also planned to confirm previously discovered associations between the Aha! experience and accuracy, confidence, and pleasure. To test the proposed hypothesis, during the preliminary stage of the study, we developed a set of 100 remote associate problems in Russian and asked 125 participants to solve problems and indicate the Aha! moment, confidence, difficulty, and likability of each problem. As expected, the Aha! experience often accompanied correct solutions and correlated with confidence judgments. We also found a positive correlation between the Aha! experience and problem likability. As for the main hypothesis, we confirmed that the Aha! experience after the presentation of the solution was associated with a decrease in subjective difficulty. When participants could not solve a problem but experienced the Aha! moment after the solution was presented to them, the problem was perceived as easier than one without the Aha! experience. We didn’t find the same effect for the Aha! after solution generation. Thus, our study partially supports the processing fluency account and demonstrates the association between the Aha! experience and metacognitive judgments about the accuracy and difficulty of problems. (shrink)

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: (...) in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges. (shrink)

This article considers the interplay between intellectual property rights and classic property rights raised by Hoffman v. Monsanto (2005) and advances the idea that intellectual property law can serve as an autonomous source of liability for intellectual property owners. The article develops the conceptual advantages of demarcating physical and intellectual properties and allocating rights and responsibilities based on the respective property sphere. It introduces a theoretical Hohfeldian framework, in which the grant of a positive limited-term monopoly right entails a corresponding (...) duty, to establish intellectual property law as a source of internal limits on intellectual property rights. The article is a prolegomena to a detailed matrix of those rights and duties within intellectual property law. This matrix could support patentee duties that go beyond public disclosure of the invention and could establish patent law as an alternative legal framework to tort law to address harms caused by inventions. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the use of legal ontologies as a basis to improve IT support for professional judges. As opposed to most legal ontologies designed so far, which are mostly based on dogmatic and normative knowledge, we emphasize the importance of professional knowledge and experience as an important pillar for constructing the ontology. We describe an intelligent FAQ system for junior judges that intensively use the ontology.

There is growing international debate about the so-called “right to health” and the likely content of such a right as it is gradually defined by international bodies such as the UN committee on economic, social, and cultural rights. Although some countries, such as Mexico, have incorporated the right of access to basic treatment into their national constitution, practical implications generally remain to be fully articulated. Lawyers have been trying to do this by developing internationally accepted indicators which can be used (...) to measure a nation's progress towards compliance with social, economic and cultural rights.1 Clearly, compliance can only be judged against the yardstick of resources. Restructuring of health services and the need to contain spiralling health costs have led many countries to focus on developing a basic health care package as a “right”. The USA, in the Clinton era, had inconclusive discussions about this and basic packages have been implemented by governments as diverse as Brazil, Germany, Israel, and the Netherlands. As the BMA has discussed,2 the prime responsibility for ensuring that rights are fulfilled rests with governments who are signatory to international human rights declarations. Nevertheless, hospitals and other health facilities may logically be deemed to have some obligations, by delegation from government, to respect the rights of people needing urgent treatment. The question of what this right means to health professionals needs exploring. Access to health care, particularly in a life-threatening emergency, appears to be a fundamental component of any such postulated right. Also, individual health professionals are generally perceived as having an ethical duty to respond to “need” when they are able to help. In July 2001, the potential legal consequences of failing to do so were highlighted by a case in India where the medical administrator of a Delhi hospital refused emergency treatment to …. (shrink)

A modern stage of globalization is a historical and logical continuation of “an economical social formation” (K.G. Marx), a civilization (L.G. Morgan). The analysis of this globalization in philosophy and social sciences has an extremely contradictory character which is law-governed in the modern society. Modern globalization has been showing itself as a qualitatively new historical process since 1991. Judging from the positions of the dialectical materialistic theory of history (K.G. Marx, F. Engels, V.I. Lenin and others) it by its essence (...) has got a postneoimperialistic, antagonistic character. It’s main features, attributes has been revealed. It doesn’t solve any sharp global problems, but only aggravated and intensifies them. This globalization has greatly increased, made inhuman the process of “cosmopolitization” which developed during the whole existence of capitalism and imperialism. A total degradation and dehumanization of a social person have been taking place, interstate and civil burst into flames, mass disturbances arise, hundreds thousands of people die, genocide and depopulation of some peoples on the planet become “normal” including the countries of the UIS. Destructive process of modern globalization with the USA as the main “player” together with corresponding international institutions (WTO, ICF, World bank, NATO and other), TNC have been resisted in a definite way by antiglobalizing andalterglobalizing movement in many countries on the planet. (shrink)

I should like to begin with something that has been spoken of more than once in today's discussion: that actually no one in the audience remains indifferent to Dvoretskii's play. When I try to understand the reason for the success of that play, I explain it to myself very roughly, and not at all in terms of scientific principles in the study of literature, by saying that Dvoretskii's play is not a work of illustration but one that tackles a problem (...) and touches upon acute and important questions that many had not thought about previously. Naturally, these problems are not by any means confined to some single factory in Leningrad. They arise everywhere, including in research institutions, about which I am in some position to judge. The arrival of "a man from outside" or of "people from outside" almost always creates a dramatic situation. People are carriers of specific traditions and ideas, and in conflicts among human beings, a genuine creative artist can detect those really existing in contemporary society. (shrink)

Is there any interesting sense in which we can speak of an act as 'evil', in contrast to simply "morally bad' or "immoral"? In ordinary language, we typically judge actions as evil that somehow differ significantly, in terms of degree or intensity, from commonplace wrongdoing. If taken to an extreme, however, this view simply reduces the difference between evil and immoral acts to a mere quantitative analysis. At worst, it leads to a wholly trivial account of evil as just those (...) actions we tend to regard as "really bad". In this paper, I outline a distinctively Kantian theory of evil that instead defends a fundamental qualitative difference between evil and more ordinary immoral actions, locating the main distinction in terms of the structure of the agent's will itself Broadly understood, this strategy endorses a Kantian account of "evil as dehumanization" in which a "material" -- as opposed to purely "formal" -- difference exists between the respective maxims of the immoral and the evil agent. In such instances, unlike typical cases of Kantian immoral actions, direct violation of another person's humanity qua human somehow comprises a necessary part of the "material object" of an evil agent's will. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious research has revealed a stable preference for words with inward consonantal-articulation patterns, over outward-words. Following the oral approach-avoidance account suggesting that the in–out effect is due to the resemblance between consonantal-articulations patterns and ingestion/expectoration, recent findings have shown that when judging inward-outward names for objects with particular oral functions, valence did not modulate the effect while the oral function did. To replicate and examine further the role of edibility and valence in shaping the in–out effect, we asked participants to (...) rate inward and outward names for edible and non-edible products while controlling for valence. Results revealed that the motor-to-affect link was only observed for edible products, regardless of valence. (shrink)

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a measure of analytical reasoning that cues an intuitive but incorrect response that must be rejected for successful performance to be attained. The CRT yields two types of errors: Intuitive errors, which are attributed to Type 1 processes; and non-intuitive errors, which result from poor numeracy skills or deficient reasoning. Past research shows that participants who commit the highest numbers of errors on the CRT overestimate their performance the most, whereas those with the lowest (...) error-rates tend to slightly underestimate. This is an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). The present study examined how intuitive vs. non-intuitive errors contribute to overestimation in the CRT at different levels of performance. Female undergraduate students completed a seven-item CRT test and subsequently estimated their raw score. They also filled out the Faith in Intuition (FI) questionnaire, which is a dispositional measure of intuitive thinking. Data was separated into quartiles based on level of performance on the CRT. The results demonstrated the DKE. Additionally, intuitive and non-intuitive errors predicted miscalibration among low, but not high performers. However, intuitive errors were a stronger predictor of miscalibration. Finally, FI was positively correlated with CRT self-estimates and miscalibration, indicating that participants who perceived themselves to be more intuitive were worse at estimating their score. These results taken together suggest that participants who perform poorly in the CRT and also those who score higher in intuitive thinking disposition are more susceptible to the influences of heuristic-based cues, such as answer fluency, when judging their performance. (shrink)

Our regular contributor on the business ethics scene in Poland reports on recent encouraging developments and sees them as contributing to the ‘moral revolution’ in addition to the political and economic ones which a leading Polish academic judges his country needs today. The author is Professor of Management at DePaul University Department of Management, 1 East Jackson Blvd, Chicago IL 60604, and Visiting Fulbright Professor of Management at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.

Objective: To analyse legislation and medical professionals’ position concerning the doctor’s role in assisted reproduction techniques in Italy, and to discuss the implications for physicians of preimplantation genetic diagnosis .Background: Until recently a strict interpretation of the assisted reproduction law and the guidelines subsequently issued, lead to denying infertile couples affected by genetic diseases the right to resort to PGD. In October 2006 the Constitutional Court ruled regarding the question of the constitutional legitimacy of the prohibition of PGD.Discussion: The Constitutional (...) Court declared the manifest inadmissibility of the question of the constitutional legitimacy of article 13 of law 40/2004. The debate has become very animated since the ruling. After the negative sentence of the Constitutional Court, three further sentences recognised the right of couples to obtain PGD, representing a hard blow to law 40/2004 and to the ministerial guidelines; a further confirmation of the untenability of a law that violates fundamental principles such as the right to healthcare for women and the unborn child, the right to responsible motherhood and to informed consent.Conclusion: It seems that in Italy the legislative inadequacy for medically assisted procreation is reprieved by the courageous decisions of the judges, which refer to the values of the Italian Constitution, in defence of the fundamental rights of the citizens. (shrink)

Our regular contributor on the business ethics scene in Poland reports on recent encouraging developments and sees them as contributing to the ‘moral revolution’ in addition to the political and economic ones which a leading Polish academic judges his country needs today. The author is Professor of Management at DePaul University Department of Management, 1 East Jackson Blvd, Chicago IL 60604, and Visiting Fulbright Professor of Management at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.

For Self-Examination and its companion piece Judge for Yourself! are the culmination of Søren Kierkegaard's "second authorship," which followed his Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Among the simplest and most readily comprehended of Kierkegaard's books, the two works are part of the signed direct communications, as distinguished from his earlier pseudonymous writings. The lucidity and pithiness, and the earnestness and power, of For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself! are enhanced when, as Kierkegaard requested, they are read aloud. They contain the well-known passages (...) on Socrates' defense speech, how to read, the lover's letter, the royal coachman and the carriage team, and the painter's relation to his painting. The aim of awakening and inward deepening is signaled by the opening section on Socrates in For Self-Examination and is pursued in the context of the relations of Christian ideality, grace, and response. The secondary aim, a critique of the established order, links the works to the final polemical writings that appear later after a four-year period of silence. (shrink)

The present study examined whether individuals with full-blown memories of highly implausible events are prone to commit source monitoring errors. Participants reporting previous-life memories and those without such memories completed a false fame task. This task provides an index of source monitoring errors . Participants with previous-life memories had a greater tendency to judge the names of previously presented non-famous people as famous than control participants. The two groups did not differ in terms of correct recognition of new non-famous names (...) and famous names. Although dissociation, cognitive failures, sleep-related experiences, depressive symptoms, and signs of psychological distress were all significantly higher in participants with previous-life memories than in controls, these variables did not predict the false fame illusion. (shrink)

. This essay attempts to explore the senses in which religious meanings may be understood to be grounded ontologically and in which they may be validly accepted as true. It begins by outlining Wolfhart Pannenberg’s proposal for conceiving the scientific status of theology and his formulation of the question of theological truth. Then certain epistemological presuppositions are challenged in light of Michael Polanyi’s theory of knowledge. Finally a revised understanding is proposed in Polanyian terms. Here in their primordial sense religious (...) meanings are based in the act of breaking out toward the ground of our tacit foreknowledge. In their primary sense religious symbolizations are accepted as human creations and judged to be valid insofar as they integrate meaningfully all the disparate elements of our experience. (shrink)

The lead-off essay by Kenneth Minogue is an Oakeshottian reflection on the extent to which modern people have become passive spectators of action, detached from traditional loyalties and modes of identity and thus a kind of new Epicurean, shorn of the genuinely contemplative character of the originals. Eric Ormsby follows this with a judicious appraisal of the possibilities and perils for culture associated with the advent of the new information technology. Anthony Daniels provides a similarly sober account of the many (...) consequences and dilemmas of medical technology for the noble Hippocratic art. David Pryce-Jones’s essay recounts the antipolitical utopianism of the totalitarian ideologies that shadowed most of the twentieth century and worries about the potentially destructive utopian tendencies in the contemporary project of European integration. Keith Windschuttle surveys the range of ideologies currently deployed in the academy, most of which derive from vulgarizations of Nietzsche. Edward Said’s influential body of work comes in for particular scrutiny here. Mark Steyn contributes a discussion of the now all-too-familiar self-hatred of Western intellectuals with the blunt precision and wit so characteristic of his splendid newspaper columns. Martin Greenberg’s essay on Burke manages to educe in brief compass the understanding of freedom that is the animating heart of that exemplary statesman’s thought and practice. Diana Schaub makes a case for the importance of political philosophy to the practice of modern politics centered on the statesmanship of Lincoln. Robert Bork’s chapter on the “adversary judiciary” limns the extent to which judges have gone from being the guarantors of the rule of law to the most effective antagonists of traditional institutions and values. Finally, Roger Kimball fittingly recalls the original Ciceronian understanding of culture as the development of the mind analogous to the cultivation of the earth, and connects it with the celebrated program of criticism proposed by Matthew Arnold. (shrink)

The paper discusses the Anglo-American philosophy of law of the 20th century, more specifically the philosophy of law of Ronald Myles Dworkin and his criticism of the legal positivism of Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart. The author presents the history of the criticism of legal positivism in Ronald Dworkin’s philosophy of law and distinguishes historical stages. The subject of the study is the critique of legal positivism but not the Hart-Dworkin debate itself, well known in Western philosophy of law. The reason (...) is that the discussion was conducted between Dworkin and Hart’s supporters but not between Dworkin and Hart by himself. The latter responded to the criticism only after twenty seven years. The article explains why Dworkin chose for his criticism Herbert Hart’s version of legal positivism. This is due to the fact that Dworkin highly appreciated Hart’s positivist theory of law and characterized it as the “most clear.” The article presents the methodological foundations of criticism of Hart’s legal positivism in Dworkin’s philosophy of law. It reveals a methodological divergence between the two legal theories, which directly affects the understanding of the concept of law and its content. Therefore, we can assume that the legal theories of Hart and Dworkin are two competing models of law: Dworkin’s model considers law as a set of rules and principles and Hart’s model acknowledges only rules and court decisions as a source of law. The article also presents the key principles of positivism criticized by Dworkin. These principles, firstly, interpret law as a set of legal rules determined through a special legal criterion, secondly, provide the judge with an opportunity to make a decision “at his own discretion” in a situation not regulated by law, and, thirdly, recognize only legal rights and obligations enshrined in legal regulations. It is important to note that in this article the author describes criticism as an independent phenomenon of legal philosophy with a particular focus on the history and foundations of this phenomenon. (shrink)

Mae Smethurst’s work has largely aimed to articulate nō theater in Western terms from their early roots, primarily through Aristotle’s On Tragedy. Her detailed examination of the shared structure of the content of these independent and superficially dissimilar arts reveals their mutual intelligibility and effectiveness through shared underlying universals. In this spirit, I outline how Zeami answers Plato’s first challenge to artistic performance, as expressed in Ion where Plato argues that rhapsody is not an art [techné] because it requires no (...) mastery. (Rhapsodes are instead vehicles of the divine.) This challenge to poetic performing arts, that is, to their claim to be arts at all, determines criteria by which we may judge any putative art, including sarugaku and its elevation to nōgaku. Though Zeami was unaware of Plato’s challenge, he nevertheless answers it in a way that brings Plato’s own assumptions and conceptual framework into relief. In this article I outline the first step of Zeami’s reply to Plato, how nō satisfies the criteria for mastery of a subject, with some help from zen master Dōgen. The focus of this article is twofold: 1) an examination of the ways Plato’s conception of a masterable subject entails metaphysical and epistemic tenets that may be revised or rejected in Buddhist tradition, and 2) a study of the means through which the sense of mindlessness that allegedly precludes rhapsody (and kamigakari) from qualifying as art (techné/michi) contrasts with the mushin and isshin of nō (and zazen). (shrink)

W. Dilthey’s program of “criticism of historical reason” was formed in a polemic with the legacy of I. Kant on the basis of transcendental reflection of the data of descriptive psychology. It was focused on understanding the radical difference between the sciences of the spirit and the sciences of nature. Starting from a critical rethinking of Kant's legacy within the boundaries of his own version of the academic philosophy of life, Dilthey began to talk about the fact that the reason, (...) directing the cognitive activity of the subject, is characterized, first of all, not by the theoretical “purity”, but by its involvement in the “open” flow of history, which it gives meaning and sense through language. It interacts with historical experience, which arises through the synthesis of actual events perception in the time flow and memory images with real categories and concepts constructed by the intellect of the human subject. The ability to judge what is happening in history, its assessment in a humanistic perspective, is also considered by Dilthey as inseparable from the work of historical reason. The reason involved in the flow of time and life cannot be a carrier of theoretical “purity” and acts as inherently hermeneutic in its nature. Dilthey presented an interesting analysis of the main levels of hermeneutical procedure - emotional perception, expression and understanding, aimed at comprehension of the diversity of spiritual and cultural worlds in synchrony and diachrony of their existence. Denying the possibility of comprehending the meaning and sense of history by constructing substantialist schemes, he asserted the importance of narrative representation of the past in the light of the present. Dilthey's project of “criticism of historical reason” was based on the idea of the “openness” of the meaning of the past, due to its rootedness in the very way of human existence in time. This idea was inherited and further developed in the horizon of the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and other contemporary thinkers of hermeneutical orientation. (shrink)

It is difficult to overestimate Paul Meehl's influence on judgment and decision-making research. His 'disturbing little book' Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence is known as an attack on human judgment and a call for replacing clinicians with actuarial methods. More than 40 years later, fast and frugal heuristics - proposed as models of human judgment - were formalized, tested, and found to be surprisingly accurate, often more so than the actuarial models that (...) Meehl advocated. We ask three questions: Do the findings of the two programs contradict each other? More generally, how are the programs conceptually connected? Is there anything they can learn from each other? After demonstrating that there need not be a contradiction, we show that both programs converge in their concern to develop domain-specific models of judgment and nonlinear process models that arise from the bounded nature of judgment. We then elaborate the differences between the programs and discuss how these differences can be viewed as mutually instructive: First, we show that the fast and frugal heuristic models can help bridge the clinical - actuarial divide, that is, they can be developed into actuarial methods that are both accurate and easy to implement by the unaided clinical judge. We then argue that Meehl's insistence on improving judgment makes clear the importance of examining the degree to which heuristics are used in the clinical domain and how acceptable they would be as actuarial tools. (shrink)

Is it morally acceptable to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of computer-driven algorithms in the determination of sentences on those who have broken the law? If so, how should such algorithms be used? This book is the first collective work devoted exclusively to the ethical and penal theoretical considerations of the use of AI at sentencing. It deals with a wide range of highly pertinent issues, such as the following: Should algorithmic-based decision-making be transparent? If so, what does (...) this mean and why is it important? Does a conflict between algorithmic transparency and algorithmic accuracy always constitute a moral dilemma? What does it mean to require that algorithmic sentencing decisions should be fair? When should an algorithm be regarded as discriminatory? Is it acceptable to use algorithms to produce risk assessments of future criminal conduct? Can algorithms ever be used in the exercise of mercy? Should AI only be used to guide judicial decision-making or could it ever be justified to replace a human sentencing judge with a robojudge? (shrink)

In Section One the automatic ratification of existing law as immediately self-validating is shown to undermine the very purpose of law - the surpassing of arbitrariness and of Czar-like ukases. In Sections Two and Three there is an attempt to explore the justification or grounding that can be given for the existing laws and civil disobedience, respectively. In both cases, the justification has been given in terms of fundamental human dignity which should never be violated by empirical laws. Only when (...) such a violation does occur can civil disobedience be justified. Therefore, the rationale for, and motivation of, both a legal system and civil disobedience are the same.However, one does not so easily resolve the opposition between the two. For the law itself is proclaimed apodictically, without the reservation that one may with impunity break the law and commit an act of civil disobedience whenever the law violates one's conscience. Otherwise, we do not have a rule of law but instead anarchy. For, as Jesus has said and Abraham Lincoln paraphrased it: “A kingdom divided against itself will not stand.” The law cannot declare that it is legal to break the law without incapacitating itself. The law must punish its violators to be a valid law; without powers of enforcing sanctions against violators the law is no law.However, we must not consider for this reason that those who are responsible for making, interpreting, and enforcing the law and those who are civilly disobedient are working at cross purposes. Both are concerned with justice. The civilly disobedient individual is concerned with improving the existing legal system. He envisions his role as therapeutic rather than destructive. He believes that the ideal of justice is being violated in some way in the existing laws. He therefore makes of himself a martyr, bearing witness to the truth, and hoping thereby to educate and enlighten and to move men of good will - in short, to effect a change in the law.Before an individual who respects the rule of law should be willing to be civilly disobedient he must be convinced of the violation of basic human rights in the law. He also must consider whether civil disobedience is the most effective means of producing the desired change. But beyond the pragmatic consideration of the most effective means to produce the desired end, there is also the question of what is most meaningful and suitable for him personally in living in conformity with the categorical imperative. Discussions of civil disobedience which limit themselves to questions of practical consequences do a great disservice to such actions. For, must we not admire those who resisted Hitler, even though they realized that their actions were futile in terms of changing the law and might even mean their deaths?In a free society, dedicated to the rule of law, all citizens are concerned with justice. Those entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the law obviously must do just that, so that violators of the law have to be punished. However, when legislators and judges notice that some of the most perspicacious and conscientious individuals are openly violating existing laws in the name of a higher law, they should also make a serious reappraisal of their positions, looking to see whether they may not have become morally insensitive or careless. Indeed, the real value of a free society is its flexibility and tolerance of dissent, even that of civil disobedience, which can serve to dramatize forcefully, deep-seated convictions concerning the injustice of certain laws on the books. It is true that fanatics from time immemorial have been willing to sacrifice much in the name of their cause. But whenever one finds that there is an individual who is willing to sacrifice much without the hope of personal advantage and who is also willing to provide arguments in defense of his position, society would do well to listen to his words and actions.Without the constant delving scrutiny and criticism of existing laws, there cannot be true legal responsibility. Therefore, the civilly disobedient individual, who is willing to put his head on the block in order to abrogate unjust laws, is in fact the legally responsible individual par excellence. (shrink)

Despite worries about the fairness of lotteries or the sources of the human psyche’s strong attraction to them, Americans have made lotteries a part of their civic lives. The popularity of gaming does not, however, gainsay the unease many Americans feel about state sponsorship of lotteries. The debates that surrounded the introduction of lotteries remain to this day, but the arguments are tired and the camps deadlocked. One camp argues that a lottery is simply a properly randomized drawing that determines (...) who among a freely chosen group of participants shall be awarded all or some of the monetary contributions of the group. These proponents suggest that the randomness of the drawing and the autonomy of the participants render the lottery fair and sponsorship by the state unobjectionable. Opponents of state-supported gambling argue, by contrast, that states market lotteries by making inappropriate emotional appeals and by supplying information of dubious veracity. Consequently, so this group argues, lotteries must be judged as unfair gaming devices and state support viewed as improper. I shall show that both camps have fundamentally misunderstood the problem. Evaluating whether state lotteries are sales or swindles relies neither on an analysis of subjective attitudes nor on an examination of purely procedural aspects of play. Correct analysis depends on a determination of what lotteries are. That is, there is a difference between claiming what a lottery does and what it claims to be, between how it works and what it is. If a lottery is claimed to be something that it is not, then regardless of what one gets for one’s money, one has been swindled. I will show that performing an ontological examination of the state-supported lottery reveals it to be a swindle. I conclude by suggesting that some of the confusion regarding the legitimacy of the state-sponsored lottery stems from misunderstandings of several tenets of liberalism. It is these misunderstandings that at times are employed to justify lotteries. (shrink)

A lively investigation of the intimate connections we maintain with the things we toss away It's hard to think of trash as anything but a growing menace. Our communities face crises over what to do with the mountains of rubbish we produce, the enormous amount of biological waste generated by humans and animals, and the truckloads of electronic equipment judged to be obsolete. All this effluvia poses widespread problems for human health, the well-being of the planet, and the quality of (...) our lives.But though our notorious habits of disposal have put us well on the way to making the earth inhospitable to life, our relation to rejectamenta includes much more than shedding and tossing. In Trash Talks, philosopher Elizabeth V. Spelman explores the extent to which we rely on trash and waste to make sense of our lives. Examples are rich: We use people's rubbish to gain information about them. We trumpet wastefulness as a means of signaling social status. We take the occupation of handling trash and garbage as revelatory of possible moral or spiritual shortcomings. We are intrigued by or in distress over the idea that evolution is a prodigiously wasteful process and that it is to the dustbin that each of us, and our species, shall ultimately repair. In the heaps of our trash, some see consequences of dissatisfaction, while others find confirmation of a flourishing consumer economy. While we may want to shove debris and detritus out of sight, many of our most impassioned projects involve keeping these objects resolutely in mind. Trash talks, and there is much of which it speaks. (shrink)

Bioethics is defined by the authors as a form of knowledge about the permissible limits of manipulating human life in the range from birth to dying. A comparative analysis of the materials of the Conference in Jerusalem and the «Handbook on Bioethics for Judges» prepared by the UNESCO Department of Bioethics in Haifa, on the one hand, and Statements of the Church and Social Council on Biomedical Ethics of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the other, was conducted. It proves (...) that bioethics as a type of modern medical ethics exists and will exist in the near future in conservative and liberal forms. Disclosure of their content contributes to solving the problem of finding compromises in specific situations of medical practice. (shrink)

The assessment of the prospects for the development of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the spiritual field of modern Ukraine should first of all be based on the achievements and problems of this Church that it has today. According to studies of the modern UGCC, it demonstrates a relative stabilization of development. Despite the persistence of self-identity seeking for Ukrainian Greek Catholicism, which is not difficult, the evolution of Greek Catholicism as a Catholic denomination continues, which is particularly evident (...) in the Church's practical activity. The regional features present in it are determined by the local specificity of the social status and, accordingly, the specificity of the tasks of pastoral work in different Ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian status of the UGCC is manifested not in the transfer of its leadership to the capital, but in its significant activities for society, which Greek Catholic factors seek to direct accordingly. In general, the current status of the UGCC can be judged to be sufficiently competitive in the "religion market" in today's pluralistic Ukraine. (shrink)

The second installment of Dr. Needham's epic venture into the intellectual history of ancient and medieval China. The work's general emphasis is upon science and technology; the present volume expounds the teachings of the main philosophical systems and schools--Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, etc.--and describes their bearing upon the scientific thinking of their times. The detail with which these accounts are carried out is staggering, yet the narrative line remains clear. The work's scope, too, is incredible, as Dr. Needham delves fully into (...) the backgrounds, social, cultural, and intellectual, of the various systems of thought. Full references to sources and complementary accounts, frank acknowledgment of the disputedness of certain interpretations, and the provision of the Chinese characters for key terms, increase the work's value for scholars. Certainly this is a monumental achievement, however the details be judged by the experts. The volume is beautifully produced, with tables and many fine illustrations.--V. C. C. (shrink)

This paper explores the connection between supererogation and the integrity of ethical agents. It argues two theses: there is a generally unrecognized but crucial social dimension to the moral integrity of individuals which challenges individual ideals and encourages supererogation; the social dimension of integrity, however, must have limits that preserve the individuals's integrity. The concept of integrity is explored through recent works by Christine Korsgaard, Charles Taylor, and Susan Babbitt. A life of integrity is in part a life whereby one (...) 'lives up to' one's own deeply held values. Yet, as one seeks to transcend the realm of the morally customary or the dutiful, one must check one's progress not only against one's own ideals but against the ideals and behavior of the ethical community. To answer affirmatively to one's own ideals is to hear the call of integrity both from within oneself and from without. However, by being free to hear, the freedom to close one's ears inevitably will arise. Only actions displaying such freedom can be actions of moral integrity. Since supererogatory actions are always left to an agent's discretion-that is, are fully optional-they show in paradigmatic fashion the integrity of moral agents. While an ethic of integrity and supererogation provides challenges to members of an ethical community by encouraging them continually to reevaluate their actions and character in reference to postulated ideals, it also leads us to be quite wary of judging individual's moral motives from the outside. A passage by Jonathan Kozol is cited that suggests our society routinely demands supererogatory action from its poorest members. This is illegitimate since they live in conditions that alienate rather than integrate them both with themselves and with the rest of the community. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man and of Judge William. The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." (...) The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life. Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions. (shrink)

The various kinds and conditions of love are a common theme for Kierkegaard, beginning with his early Either/Or, through "The Diary of the Seducer" and Judge William's eulogy on married love, to his last work, on the changelessness of God's love. Works of Love, the midpoint in the series, is also the monumental high point, because of its penetrating, illuminating analysis of the forms and sources of love. Love as feeling and mood is distinguished from works of love, love of (...) the lovable from love of the unlovely, preferential love from love as the royal law, love as mutual egotism from triangular love, and erotic love from self-giving love.This work is marked by Kierkegaard's Socratic awareness of the reader, both as the center of awakened understanding and as the initiator of action. Written to be read aloud, the book conveys a keenness of thought and an insightful, poetic imagination that make such an attentive approach richly rewarding. Works of Love not only serves as an excellent place to begin exploring the writings of Kierkegaard, but also rewards many rereadings. (shrink)

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way. The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to the speechmaking (...) on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of Stages. The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of Stages, in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection. (shrink)

Stages on Life's Way, the sequel to Either/Or, is an intensely poetic example of Kierkegaard's vision of the three stages, or spheres, of existence: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. With characteristic love for mystification, he presents the work as a bundle of documents fallen by chance into the hands of "Hilarius Bookbinder," who prepared them for printing. The book begins with a banquet scene patterned on Plato's Symposium. Next is a discourse by "Judge William" in praise of marriage (...) "in answer to objections." The remainder of the volume, almost two-thirds of the whole, is the diary of a young man, discovered by "Frater Taciturnus," who was deeply in love but felt compelled to break his engagement. The work closes with a letter to the reader from Taciturnus on the three "existence-spheres" represented by the three parts of the book.Stages on Life's Way not only repeats themes, characters, and pseudonymous authors of the earlier works but also goes beyond them and points to further development of central ideas in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. (shrink)

Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece. Imagined Occasions both complements and stands in contrast to Kierkegaard's pseudonymously published Stages on Life's Way. The two volumes not only have a chronological relation but treat some of the same distinct themes. The first of the three discourses, "On the Occasion of a Confession," centers on stillness, wonder, and one's search for God--in contrast to the speechmaking (...) on erotic love in "In Vino Veritas," part one of Stages. The second discourse, "On the Occasion of a Wedding," complements the second part of Stages, in which Judge William delivers a panegyric on marriage. The third discourse, "At a Graveside," sharpens the ethical and religious earnestness implicit in Stages's "'Guilty'/'Not Guilty'" and completes this collection. (shrink)