The project of articulating a theological ethics on the basis of liturgical anthropology is bound to fail if the necessary consequence is that one has to quit the forum of critical modern rationality. The risk of Engelhardt's approach is to limit rationality to a narrow vision of reason. Sin is not to be understood as the negation of human holiness, but as the negation of divine holiness. The only way to renew theological ethics is to understand sin as the anthropological (...) and ethical expression of the biblical message of the justification by faith only. Sin is therefore a secondary category, which can only by interpreted in light of the positive manifestation of liberation, justification, and grace. The central issue of Christian ethics is not ritual purity or morality, but experience, confession and recognition of our own injustice in our dealing with God and men. (shrink)

This book discusses undercover reporting and deception in journalism, addressing the ethical issues encountered by professionals when deception is involved and providing an explanation of how high-profile cases have developed. Carson and Muller begin by examining how philosophical theories which form the basis of contemporary ethical codes for journalists, bear upon undercover reporting and questions of deception in the digital age. Drawing upon case studies such as Al Jazeera's undercover operation against the National Rifle Association in the US and the (...) One Nation political party in Australia, and Britain's Channel 4 infiltration of Cambridge Analytica, this book goes on to define and discuss the ethical concepts behind deception and betrayal and lays out an original ethical framework for undercover journalists facing related challenges in their work. Undercover Reporting, Deception and Betrayal in Journalism is an important research text for students and academics in journalism and media studies. (shrink)

Rare earth elements have become increasingly important because of their relative scarcity and worldwide increasing demand, as well as China’s quasi-monopoly of this market. REEs are virtually not substitutable, and they are essential for a variety of high-tech products and modern key technologies. This has raised serious concerns that China will misuse its dominant position to set export quotas in order to maximize its own profits at the expense of other rare earth user industries. In fact, export restrictions on REEs (...) were the catalyst for the U.S. to lodge a formal complaint against China in 2012 at the World Trade Organization. This paper analyzes possible wealth transfer effects by focusing on export quota announcements by China, and the share price reactions of Chinese REE suppliers, the U.S. REE users, and the rest of the world REE refiners. Overall, we find limited support for the view of a wealth transfer in connection with MOFCOM announcements only when disentangling events prior to and post the initiation of the WTO trial, consistent with the trial triggering changes to China’s REE policy and recent announcement to abolish quotas. We do find, however, that extreme REE price movements have a first-order effect on all companies in the REE industry consistent with recent market trends to enable hedging against REE price volatility. (shrink)

Agent-Based Models are useful to describe and understand social, economic and spatial systems' dynamics. But, beside the facilities which this methodology offers, evaluation and comparison of simulation models are sometimes problematic. A rigorous conceptual frame needs to be developed. This is in order to ensure the coherence in the chain linking at the one extreme the scientist's hypotheses about the modeled phenomenon and at the other the structure of rules in the computer program. This also systematizes the model design from (...) the thematician conceptual framework as well. The aim is to reflect upon the role that a well defined ontology, based on the crossing of the philosophical and the computer science insights, can play to solve such questions and help the model building. We analyze different conceptions of ontology, introduce the 'ontological test' and show its usefulness to compare models. Then we focus on the model building and show the place of a systematic ABM ontology. The latter process is situated within a larger framework called the 'knowledge framework' in which not only the ontologies but also the notions of theory, model and empirical data take place. At last the relation between emergence and ontology is discussed. (shrink)

L’auteur revisite certains textes de Paul Ricœur publiés entre 1960 et 1992, afin d’exposer le rapport de cette philosophie avec la théologie chrétienne. Il interroge le statut de la théologie spéculative, dévolu par cette pensée, qui accorde un certain privilège à la théologie herméneutique et à la théologie politique.

This article presents and discusses the meaning of a possible foundation of ethics, both from a philosophical perspective and with regard to religious representations. It proposes to enlarge the conception of rationality in order to take into account the critical contribution of cultures, traditions and religions to an ethics of reconstruction. This also entails rethinking the role of theological ethics and seeking to make more explicit the cultural plausibility and the practical credibility of Christianity in public ethics today.

Afin de saisir la portée du débat nord-américain sur les communautarismes pour l’éthique théologique chrétienne actuelle, il paraît nécessaire de faire le point sur la différence entre le communautarisme des traditions intellectuelles, morales et spirituelles partagées, ou communautarisme éthico-religieux et éthico-politique, et le communautarisme politique. Le second, pour autant qu’il postule l’existence de communautés séparées au sein du politique, en est selon nous réduit à échouer comme modèle politique, aussi bien en ce qui concerne la démocratie à l’intérieur des Etats-nations (...) qu’en ce qui touche les relations entre Etats-nations . D. Müller prête ici attention à la valeur herméneutique constructive des traditions intellectuelles, morales et ou spirituelles, et plaide pour la fécondité partielle d’une telle approche lorsqu’il est question de construire une éthique théologique à visée vraiment universelle.To understand the scope of the North American debate on the communitarianisms for Christian theological ethics today, it seems necessary to discuss the difference between the communitarism of shared intellectual, moral and spiritual traditions or ethical-religious and ethical-political communitarianism, and political communitarianism. The latter, insofar as it postulates the existence of separate communities within the political sphere is, in our view, bound to fail as a political model, both as regards democracy inside nation-states , and as regards relations between nation-states . D. Müller is calling attention here to the constructive hermeneutic value of intellectual, moral and spiritual traditions and arguing in favor of the partial fecundity of such an approach when it is a question of constructing a theological ethic with a truly universal outlook. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse and to reconsider the role of theologians in the public sphere, especially within ethic commissions or committees. First, the author discusses origin and structures of the so-called bioethical paradigm. Then, he compares some theoretical models of how this challenge might be met: theological deduction of ethics, autonomy of ethics, and >re-theologisation decentration< or reformulation, and creative reconstruction.

Suite à une question initiale du théologien catholique Adrian Holderegger, l�auteur s�interroge sur la question du rôle de la raison en théologie et en éthique théologique. Il présente et discute la critique de la raison sourde proposée par Maurice Bellet. Les relations entre la rationalité athétique,athématique et amodale conduisent à se demander si une conception négative et critique de la rationalité ne serait pas la condition d�un redéploiement positif de la raison de l�être humain singulier comme capacité d�écoute attentive de (...) l�autre, du monde et de Dieu. (shrink)

Résumé L’auteur s’interroge sur la situation nouvelle de l’éthique théologique, laquelle semble écartelée entre des visions purement séculières de l’éthique et des velléités de réaffirmation théologique forte. Afin de dépasser ces oppositions stériles, il propose une dialectique de l’immanence et de la transcendance, dans l’espoir qu’elle puisse conduire à une libération de l’agir humain et à davantage de justice.The author analyses and discusses the new situation of theological ethics, divided between purely secular approaches of ethics and hints of massive theological (...) reaffirmations. In order to overcome such sterile oppositions, he proposes a dialectical interpretation of immanence and transcendence, in the hope that it might lead to a liberation of human behaviour and to a greater sense of justice. (shrink)

En réponse aux questions de Philippe Cardon, et indépendamment de remarques de détail, brièvement discutées, l�auteur se réjouit de se voir décerner un certificat de non barthisme. Il s�étonne par contre de la grande naïveté de Philippe Cardon, dont le projet théologique lui semble s�apparenter à un retour massif à Barth, traité de manière littérale et orthodoxe. L�auteur demeure attaché, au contraire, à une reconstruction critique non seulement de la pensée de Barth, mais de l�ensemble de la théologie contemporaine, d�où (...) quelques observations sur les débats actuels au sujet de l�avenir de la théologie académique. (shrink)

Anthony Everett has argued that fictional realism entails that some fictional characters are indeterminately identical. Benjamin Schnieder and Tatjana von Solodkoff deny that fictional realism has that entailment. But, we argue in this paper, their view is arbitrary, since there is no reason to prefer their principles to alternative ones. We don’t take this to show that fictional realism should be rejected. But we do take this to show that fictional realists who deny that some fictional characters are indeterminately identical (...) need another response to Everett’s argument. (shrink)

This paper presents a reading of the Tractatus’ remarks on ethics. Drawing on work by Anselm Müller, subsequently developed by Anthony Price, the reading makes of some of Wittgenstein’s most striking and most puzzling early remarks a recognizable and insightful account of ethical experience, while also accommodating the equally striking formal quality of those remarks. The account identifies a distinctive ethical achievement that requires a distance from particular concrete goods that one might pursue and a responsiveness to those goods as (...) a whole—to one’s world as a whole; only through such openness is one open to the abstract objective that is doing what is best; and only through openness to that does one express oneself in, and assume responsibility for, one’s actions. This account allows us to understand why, for example, Wittgenstein connects “absolute or ethical value” with “wonder at the existence of the world” and with “understand[ing] the question about the meaning of life”. But it also makes sense of why that is precisely a question, and why those to whom “the meaning of life … become[s] clear” cannot “say in what this meaning consist[s]”. The responsiveness to a good which ethical subjects distinctively manifest is a responsiveness not to some distinctive and describable state of affairs but to the question of what is best—willing determination of what here and now that is. This account yields a vision of self-expression not as hearkening to some inner voice but as an openness to one’s life as a whole; and this, in turn, opens up a way of approaching the puzzle of Wittgenstein’s insistence that “of [the willing subject] we cannot speak”. I also suggest that we find here one possible sense for Wittgenstein’s famous remark to Ludwig von Ficker that “the point of [the Tractatus] is ethical”, in that openness to the world as a whole—openness to how things are as such and as a whole—emerges as fundamentally a practical, rather than theoretical achievement. (shrink)

In the case of Schmitt, much of recent scholarship in English has overlooked or even denied the radical conservatism of his Weimar writings. The approach pursued here will, I hope, put his works into more historically accurate perspective. In the case of both Freyer and Schmitt, their intellectual and rhetorical gifts helped undermine support for liberal democracy in Germany, and indeed were intended to do so; this paper, however, focuses on their social and political thought rather than on their influence.

In this paper we show that Audi’s fallibilist foundationalism is beset by three unclarities. First, there is a conceptual unclarity in that Audi leaves open if and how to distinguish clearly between the concepts of fallibility and defeasibility. Second, there is a general unclarity: it is not always clear which fallibility/defeasibility-theses Audi accepts or denies. Finally, there is an unclarity of self-application because Audi does not specify his own claim that fallibilist foundationalism is an inductivist, and therefore itself fallible, thesis. (...) The critical part of our paper is supplemented by a constructive part, in which we present a space of possible distinctions between different fallibility and defeasibility theses. These distinctions can be used by Audi as a toolkit to improve the clarity of fallibilist foundationalism and thus provide means to strengthen his position. (shrink)

This article analyses the reception of John Rawls's thought by Otfried Höffe, Jürgen Habermas and other political theorists on the German liberal left. It argues that, ironically, as Rawls's theory has become more historically self-conscious and sociologically oriented since A Theory of Justice, Habermas, while denying any fundamental difference between him and Rawls in this `neo-Kantian family quarrel', has moved in the opposite direction. One might even say that there has been some mid-Atlantic convergence in political theory. Nevertheless, there remain (...) peculiarities of German political thought, in particular its more sociological bent, a (positive or negative) fixation on the state, and the persistently felt need finally to reconcile a perceived conflict between liberalism and democracy. (shrink)

Fully embracing one's embodied suffering, rather than denying it or mentally explaining it away, can open an individual to a broader sense of interbeing, to the ability to endure, survive, and move through pain and toward a deeper sense of compassion, peace, joy, and liberation. The self benefits from exploring interbeing using an environmental metaphor to consider the human body: the body as terroir. Terroir is analogous to the specific microclimate and natural environment in which quality wine is produced. Appreciation (...) of oneself as a unique mobile terroir can reveal estranged aspects of the host/guest relationship of interbeing within the individual body/self. Perhaps this is what those who practice interbeing in the real world have come to understand. (shrink)

Are we perhaps in the "matrix", or anyway, victims of perfect and permanent computer simulation? No. The most convincing—and shortest—version of Putnam's argument against the possibility of our eternal envattment is due to Crispin Wright (1994). It avoids most of the misunderstandings that have been elicited by Putnam's original presentation of the argument in "Reason, Truth and History" (1981). But it is still open to the charge of question-begging. True enough, the premisses of the argument (disquotation and externalism) can be (...) formulated and defended without presupposing external objects whose existence appears doubtful in the light of the very skeptical scenario which Putnam wants to repudiate. However, the argument is only valid if we add an extra premiss as to the existence of some external objects. In order to avoid circularity, we should run the argument with external objects which must exist even if we are brains in a vat, e.g. with computers rather than with trees. As long as the skeptic is engaged in a discussion of the brain-in-a-vat scenario, she should neither deny the existence of computers nor the existence of causal relations; for if she does, she is in fact denying that we are brains in a vat. (shrink)

Can we conceive of a mind without body? Does, for example, the idea of the soul's immortality make sense? Certain versions of materialism deny such questions; I shall try to prove that these versions of materialism cannot be right. They fail because they cannot account for the mental vocabulary from the language of brains in the vat. Envatted expressions such as "I think", "I believe", etc., do not have to be reinterpreted when we translate them to our language; they are (...) semantically stable. By contrast, physical expressions from the vat language are semantically instable; due to Putnam's externalism they cannot be transported to our language without change. This contrast opens the way to a new understanding of what the immortality of the soul might be like: A brain in a vat (and its mental life) might survive what the brain calls "my physical body's death". (shrink)

Analytic history is the legitimate successor of philosophy of history. To speak of laws that predict historical succession no longer seems justified. Nonetheless, generally valid statements about "invariances" continue to be necessary conditions of any objective analysis. Historicism has often confused formal methods and material content and thus erroneously denied important generalizations. A close examination of historical action shows the need for rules, or codes, as frameworks for any action. Such rules or codes condition but do not cause, or determine, (...) individual actions. Since these rules are subject to rational scrutiny, they are able to provide an objective understanding of history. Among all conceptual tools, the founding function is the most powerful one. Thus, the vague statement that culture is dependent on society becomes amenable to a strict logical formulation, which culminates in a formula expressing the categories of historical description. (shrink)

Considered by many to be Abraham Robinson's magnum opus, this book offers an explanation of the development and applications of non-standard analysis by the mathematician who founded the subject. Non-standard analysis grew out of Robinson's attempt to resolve the contradictions posed by infinitesimals within calculus. He introduced this new subject in a seminar at Princeton in 1960, and it remains as controversial today as it was then. This paperback reprint of the 1974 revised edition is indispensable reading for anyone interested (...) in non-standard analysis. It treats in rich detail many areas of application, including topology, functions of a real variable, functions of a complex variable, and normed linear spaces, together with problems of boundary layer flow of viscous fluids and rederivations of Saint-Venant's hypothesis concerning the distribution of stresses in an elastic body. (shrink)

Ernst Haeckel was convinced that the origin of language was the keyto understand human evolution. The distinguished slavist AugustSchleicher was his original inspiration on that matter but hiscousin Wilhelm Bleek was the deciisive source for his views of human language. Bleek lived in Southern Africa, studied Xhosa andZulu, and had the rare opportunity to learn the bushman languagewhich, with its characteristic clicks, suggested the form of theoriginal human language in its evolution from ape-like sounds.Haeckel's view of anthropology based on cultural (...) elements ratherthan physical characters alone was shared by other scholars includingthe Vienna-based Friedrich Mueller who applied Haeckel's approachin his studies during the voyage of the Habsburg ship ``Novara.'' Haeckel's anthropological views were heavily entangled with contemporaryconceps of race so that he and Mueller related different languages todifferent human groups both from a cultural and racial angle. Suchracialist attitude presented obvious political implications which allauthors mentioned denied vehemently. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology changes in population structure are explained by citing trait fitness distribution. I distinguish three interpretations of fitness explanations—the Two‐Factor Model, the Single‐Factor Model, and the Statistical Interpretation—and argue for the last of these. These interpretations differ in their degrees of causal commitment. The first two hold that trait fitness distribution causes population change. Trait fitness explanations, according to these interpretations, are causal explanations. The last maintains that trait fitness distribution correlates with population change but does not cause (...) it. My defense of the Statistical Interpretation relies on a distinctive feature of causation. Causes conform to the Sure Thing Principle. Trait fitness distributions, I argue, do not. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy/Institute for the History, Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada; e‐mail: denis[email protected]. (shrink)

Since the validity of Bell's inequalities implies the existence of joint probabilities for non-commuting observables, there is no universal consensus as to what the violation of these inequalities signifies. While the majority view is that the violation teaches us an important lesson about the possibility of explanations, if not about metaphysical issues, there is also a minimalist position claiming that the violation is to be expected from simple facts about probability theory. This minimalist position is backed by theorems due to (...) A. Fine and I. Pitowsky.Our paper shows that the minimalist position cannot be sustained. To this end,we give a formally rigorous interpretation of joint probabilities in thecombined modal and spatiotemporal framework of `stochastic outcomes inbranching space-time' (SOBST) (Kowalski and Placek, 1999; Placek, 2000). We show in this framework that the claim that there can be no joint probabilities fornon-commuting observables is incorrect. The lesson from Fine's theorem is notthat Bell's inequalities will be violated anyhow, but that an adequate modelfor the Bell/aspect experiment must not define global joint probabilities. Thus we investigate the class of stochastic hidden variable models, whichprima facie do not define such joint probabilities. The reasonwhy these models fail supports the majority view: Bell's inequalities are notjust a mathematical artifact. (shrink)

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant (...) theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this. (shrink)

A shared narrative in the literature on the evolution of cooperation maintains that social _learning_ evolves early to allow for the transmission of cumulative culture. Social _norms_, whilst present at the outset, only rise to prominence later on, mainly to stabilise cooperation against the threat of defection. In contrast, I argue that once we consider insights from social epistemology, an expansion of this narrative presents itself: An interesting kind of social norm — an epistemic coordination norm — was operative in (...) early and important instances of specialised social learning. I show how there’s a need for such norms in two key social learning strategies and explain how this need is constituted. In assessor-teaching (e.g. Castro et al., 2019b, 2021), epistemic coordination norms allow agents to coordinate around the _content_ of social learning, i.e., what is to be known and how this is to be done. These norms also allow agents to coordinate around the form of cultural learning in what’s sometimes called strategic social learning (Laland, 2004; Hoppitt & Laland, 2013; Heyes, 2018, Chap. 5) and elsewhere. Broadly speaking, this concerns how cultural learning is organised within the social group. The upshot is that the evolution of social learning and social norms are intertwined in important and underappreciated ways from early on. The above matters as it informs our views about the evolution of social norms more generally. Truly _social_ norms emerged to coordinate a plurality of complex behaviours and interactions, amongst them specialised social learning. I substantiate this view by contrasting it with Jonathan Birch’s views on the evolution of norms. What results is a general but cohesive narrative on the early evolution of social norms. (shrink)