In their paper on the influence of meta-induction to the wisdom of the crowd, Paul Thorn and Gerhard Schurz argue that adding meta-inductive methods to a group influences the group positively, whereas replacing independent methods of a group with meta-inductive ones may have a negative impact. The first fact is due to an improvement of average ability of a group, the second fact is due to an impairment of average diversity within a group by meta-induction. In this paper some critical (...) remarks to meta-inductive group expansion and replacement are made. In particular it is stressed that both ability and diversity are of equal importance to a group's performance. (shrink)

In their paper on the influence of meta-induction to the wisdom of the crowd, Paul Thorn and Gerhard Schurz argue that adding meta-inductive methods to a group influences the group positively, whereas replacing independend methods of a group with meta-inductive ones may have a negative impact. The first fact is due to an improvement of average ability of a group, the second fact is due to an impairment of average diversity within a group by meta-induction. In this paper some critical (...) remarks to meta-inductive group expansion and replacement are made. In particular it is stressed that both ability and diversity are of equal importance to a group’s performance. (shrink)

Die Reaktion der Weltwirtschaft auf Epidemien globalen Ausmasses zeigt, wie anfällig ein global-vernetztes Wirtschaftssystem für Störungen ist. Zentrale volkswirtschaftliche Themen wie Armut, Existenzsicherung, ungleich verteilter Reichtum, Arbeit und Arbeitslosigkeit, Verschuldung, Migration und Schwächen des weltweiten Handels- und Finanzsystems sind zudem nach wie vor ungelöst.Christian J. Jäggi zeigt, dass die grossen Weltreligionen - darunter das Judentum, das Christentum und der Islam - wichtige Beiträge zur Lösung dieser Fragen leisten könnten. In diesem Buch analysiert und diskutiert er Standpunkte des biblischen Christentums (...) zu zentralen volkswirtschaftlichen Fragen. Er skizziert mögliche Elemente einer christlichen Wirtschaftsordnungsethik, erarbeitet Lösungsansätze aus christlicher Perspektive und hinterfragt neuere und neueste Texte der christlichen Kirchen sowie christlicher Theologinnen und Theologen zu Vorstellungen von einer gerechten Wirtschaft"-- Back cover. (shrink)

In der heutigen Zeit haben aktuelle politische Fragen - wie etwa die Konflikte im Nahen Osten - häufig eine religiöse Dimension oder werden auch über die Religion ausgetragen. Eine globale Friedensordnung ist nur denkbar, wenn die großen weltanschaulichen Systeme, also auch die großen Religionen, einbezogen werden. Die großen Religionen haben auch einen wichtigen Beitrag an die Friedensthematik zu leisten. Der vorliegende Band analysiert, diskutiert und entfaltet schwergewichtig die Beiträge der jüdischen Tradition und besonders des jüdischen Schrifttums, also Tanach und Talmud, (...) zu Fragen der Friedensordnung, zu einer übergreifenden politischen Ethik und zu Themen wie Krieg, Gewalt, Frieden und Versöhnung. Zur Sprache kommen neben den Schriften des antik-klassischen Judentums punktuell auch rabbinische Stellungnahmen, jüdische Autoren des Mittelalters und moderne jüdische Autoren. Das Buch ist Bestandteil einer fünfbändigen Reihe. Bereits erschienen ist Frieden, politische Ordnung und Ethik. Fragestellungen - Erklärungsmodelle - Lösungsstrategien (2018). (shrink)

Eine globale Friedensordnung kann nur nachhaltig sein, wenn sie auf entsprechenden Wertvorstellungen und Normen begründet ist, die ihrerseits auf säkularen Friedenskonzepten und religiösen Friedens- und Heilsvorstellungen beruhen. Darum gilt es, friedenfördernde Seiten der Religionen und insbesondere auch des Islams herauszuarbeiten, zu vertiefen und theologisch zu reflektieren. In den meisten Fällen wird Gewalt nicht primär durch Religionen verursacht, aber oft religiös oder theologisch legitimiert, instrumentalisiert oder gar mithilfe religiöser Argumente eskaliert. Der Band thematisiert Fragen zu einer politischen Ethik und zu Friedensvorstellungen (...) aus der Perspektive des Islams. (shrink)

Die Paragonefrage, erstmals ausgiebig von Leonardo diskutiert, besitzt im gesamten Quattrocento eine rege Vorgeschichte, die bei allen frühen Impulsen durch Petrarca als die entscheidende Phase der Formierung der Debatte betrachtet werden muss. Spektakuläre Textfunde der Humanisten, Kunsttraktate, auch eigenhändig von Malern oder Bildhauern verfasst, die Blüte an Vielfachbegabungen, öffentlichen Künstlerwettbewerben und gattungsmäßigen Grenzüberschreitungen verliehen dem wertenden Vergleich der Künste im Italien des 15. Jahrhunderts sein ganz eigenes Gepräge. Erstmals steht dieses - mitsamt dem Fundus an eruierten Quellen - im Zentrum (...) einer grundlegenden Monographie. Leonardos argumentativer Eigenanteil gewinnt ebenso Konturen wie die Genese der Diskussion. Vorweg zweiseitig bemalte Bildnistafeln wie Leonardos Porträt der Ginevra de ́ Benci bieten mit Steinimitationen und Versen spannungsreiche "Übergriffe" in die Nachbargattungen. Für Piero della Francesca waren sie Programm, als er das vierteilige Landschaftspanorama im buchartigen Montefeltro-Diptychon zum Ariadnefaden einer poetischen Erzählung machte. (shrink)

The western-based leadership and ethics literatures were reviewed to identify the key characteristics that conceptually define what it means to be an ethical leader. Data from the Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (GLOBE) project were then used to analyze the degree to which four aspects of ethical leadership – Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation, and Encouragement – were endorsed as important for effective leadership across cultures. First, using multi-group confirmatory factor analyses measurement equivalence of the ethical leadership scales was found, which (...) provides indication that the four dimensions have similar meaning across cultures. Then, using analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests each of the four dimensions were found to be universally endorsed as important for effective leadership. However, cultures also varied significantly in the degree of endorsement for each dimension. In the increasingly global business environment, these findings have implications for organizations implementing ethics programs across cultures and preparing leaders for expatriate assignments. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say 'yes', but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say 'no'. This distinction is practically important: additive axiologies support 'arguments from astronomical scale' which suggest (among other things) that it is overwhelmingly important for humanity to avoid premature extinction and ensure the existence of a (...) large future population, while non-additive axiologies need not. We show, however, that when there is a large enough 'background population' unaffected by our choices, a wide range of non-additive axiologies converge in their implications with some additive axiology -- for instance, average utilitarianism converges to critical-level utilitarianism and various egalitarian theories converge to prioritiarianism. We further argue that real-world background populations may be large enough to make these limit results practically significant. This means that arguments from astronomical scale, and other arguments in practical ethics that seem to presuppose additive separability, may be truth-preserving in practice whether or not we accept additive separability as a basic axiological principle. (shrink)

There can be little doubt that the “will to power” remains one of Nietzsche’s most controversial philosophical concepts. Leaving aside its colorful and controversial political history in the first half of the twentieth century, the will to power poses considerable problems for any serious reconstruction of Nietzsche’s project. This is particularly the case for analytic reconstructions, which view Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism largely through the lens of metaethical concerns that are themselves grounded in a psychological reading of will, affect, value, or (...) ressentiment.1 The will to power, though, defies interpretations that are schooled in contemporary philosophy of mind, or cognitive psychology. Even.. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 35-37.

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 40-42.

ABSTRACT Average utilitarianism and several related axiologies, when paired with the standard expectational theory of decision-making under risk and with reasonable empirical credences, can find their practical prescriptions overwhelmingly determined by the minuscule probability that the agent assigns to solipsism—that is, to the hypothesis that there is only one welfare subject in the world, namely, herself. This either (i) constitutes a reductio of these axiologies, (ii) suggests that they require bespoke decision theories, or (iii) furnishes an unexpected argument for ethical (...) egoism. (shrink)

*The views represented in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the American Medical Association.

Despite the increasingly multinational nature of the workplace, there have been few studies of the convergence and divergence in beliefs about ethics-based leadership across cultures. This study examines the meaning of ethical and unethical leadership held by managers in six societies with the goal of identifying areas of convergence and divergence across cultures. More specifically, qualitative research methods were used to identify the attributes and behaviors that managers from the People’s Republic of China (the PRC), Hong Kong, the Republic of (...) China (Taiwan), the United States (the U.S.), Ireland, and Germany attribute to ethical and unethical leaders. Across societies, six ethical leadership themes and six unethical leadership themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses. Dominant themes for ethical and unethical leadership for each society are identified and examined within the context of the core cultural values and practices of that society. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed. (shrink)

Eleonore Stump claims in her book "Wandering in Darkness" that the problem of evil can be solved best by the help of narratives. This - so Stump - is due to the fact that narratives allow one to get a general view about relevant parts of the discussion of suffering. In this context she distinguishes the more detailed view of the discussion from a more general one by two different modes of cognition: the mode of gathering "knowledge that" and that (...) one of gathering "knowledge how". Knowledge by narratives is a subcategory of the last-mentioned one. In the paper I argue for the thesis that this distinction is not really crucial for Stump's argumentation and that in fact only "knowledge that" is relevant for her proposed solution. (shrink)

*The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the American Medical Association.

Focusing on the close connection between Friedrich Nietzsche's historical thought and the discourse of German historicism in the second half of the nineteenth century, this article argues in a thick contextual reading that Nietzsche's second VomNutzenundNachtheilderHistoriefürdasLeben(1874), needs to be understood as a reflection on the political dimension of historical consciousness, outlining what I shall term a In contrast to the standard emphasis on Nietzsche's presumed aestheticism, he is shown to react to rather specific developments within the contemporary intellectual context, such (...) as the establishment of specific historical foundation myths for a new German nation state, exemplified by the public monuments and commemorations of the 1870s, the effect of such foundation myths on the political imagination of historical scholarship, and the intellectual antagonism between Basel's and the German nation state. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Catharsis: The Theory of Tragedy and the Anthropology of Power. Nietzsche’s conception of catharsis undercuts the Aristotelian tradition by emphasizing that catharsis does not aim at a purification of the passions but at a cleansing of human judgment from moral sentiment. As such, Nietzsche develops a naturalistic counter-model to eighteenth-century theories of pity. By bringing together ancient Greece and the experience of modernity, this counter-model shifts the concept of catharsis into the realm of the political and enriches the theory (...) of tragedy with an anthropology of power. What is at stake in Nietzsche’s discussion of catharsis is an insight into the instability of normative order, which is triggered by the modern experience of the „phenomenon of Napoleon“ as an overcoming of Enlightenment conceptions of moral conscience. If modernity has to be understood along the lines of tragedy, Napoleon Bonaparte is the cathartic event in the realm of the political. (shrink)

One challenge of societies in the 21st century is the conflict of norms between different cultures. In Ancient Greece, too, such conflicts arose, and great thinkers offered great solutions. In this contribution we will argue for the following: - Ancient ethical theories were not only individual ethical theories but also social ethical theories (II). - The ancient methods of scientific examinations are useful not only in classical sciences but also in ethics (III). - Accepting the result of (III) yields highly (...) interesting theoretical results about conflicts of norms between different cultures (IV). (shrink)

In philosophy of science concept formation and reduction is usually discussed with respect to definability. In the paper at hand this discussion is slightly expanded to an investigation of concept formation and reduction by analogies. It is argued that many kinds of such analogies bear some important features of partial contextual definitions. -/- With the help of a detailed investigation of the so-called gene-meme-analogy it is then demonstrated how the meme-concept is introduced via analogies into an expanded theory of (cultural) (...) evolution. As a consequence it is shown that the diversity of meanings of the meme-concept fits into the current state of establishing this analogy. (shrink)

This paper discusses one of the advantages of applying formal methods in ethics. First, an approach from democratic morality—which is a special case of contractualist ethics that brings together theories of legal and moral philosophy—will be adopted, in order to argue for the non-trivial thesis that moral norms are increasingly democratically motivated. To accept this thesis also as a desired way of justifying ethical principles raises some issues, such as the problem of providing adequate principles for moral opinion pooling. Secondly, (...) it is therefore shown how formal criteria of rationality provide at least a partial solution to such problems. In a broad context this results can be seen as formal preliminaries to contractualist ethics. (shrink)

One problem of intergenerational justice concerns the question whether the present generation bears moral responsibility for future generations and how to justify such a responsibility. A way of justification is to take a person-affecting view of ethics, according to which no action is morally bad per se, but only with respect to someone (e.g. with respect to future generations). Against a person-affecting view sometimes the so-called non-identity-problem is posed. This problem states that there are actions which - from a person-affecting (...) point of view - have to be considered as bad for a person, although without execution of the action the person would not exist. In this paper I will try to show how this conflict can be solved by an exact analysis of its structure. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden einige wissenschaftstheoretische Thesen u.a. von Paul K. Feyerabend hinsichtlich ad-hoc-Hypothesen untersucht. Es wird dabei gezeigt, dass Feyerabends Empfehlungen dafür, ad-hoc-Hypothesen zu akzeptieren oder abzulehnen, vom Einfluss dieser Hypothesen auf die Entwicklung von Technik abhängen. In einem weiteren Schritt wird angedeutet, dass eine derartige Relativierung auch in gängigen Bestätigungstheorien nahegelegt wird, dass man also gängigen Bestätigungstheorien und Feyerabend zufolge ad-hoc-Hypothesen nur hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf die Technikentwicklung akzeptieren oder ablehnen sollte.

In diesem Beitrag wird das Verhalten des Papstes im europäischen Dialog der Religionen und Weltanschauungen kritisch erörtert. Am Anfang steht eine kurze Analyse der Sprache der Religionen bzw. Weltanschauungen, die in Anlehnung an Joseph Maria Bochenski durchgeführt ist. Es wird dabei die Auffassung vertreten, dass Religionen und manche Weltanschauungen Behauptungen über die Wirklichkeit aufstellen, Sprache in einer deskriptiv-kognitiven Funktion verwenden, dass ein solcher Sprachgebrauch eine epistemische Verpflichtung auf Bescheidenheit mit sich bringt und dass eine solche Verpflichtung wiederum eine Basis für (...) einen ernstgemeinten europäischen Dialog bieten könnte. Danach werden von einem theologischen Standpunkt ausgehend Bedingungen dafür untersucht, dass ein europäischer Dialog stattfinden kann. Anhand konkreter Beispiele, im Speziellen anhand der "Regensburger Rede" und der "Neuformulierung der Karfreitagsfürbitte für die Juden", wird gezeigt, wie sich der Papst im europäischen Dialog tatsächlich verhält und wie von Seiten der jeweiligen Religion auf dieses Verhalten eingegangen wird. Da er vor allem in der menschlichen Vernunft eine Brücke für einen europäischen Dialog sieht, wird anschließend auf seine Argumentation für eine Ausweitung der Vernunft und seinen Gebrauch der Wörter "Vernunft" und "Glauben" eingegangen. Dabei wird hauptsächlich auf Schriften, in denen der Papst seine Überzeugung ausdrückt, dass Religion und Vernunft sich gegenseitig korrigieren, begrenzen und unterstützen müssen, Bezug genommen. Abschließend wird ein bestimmtes Argument des Papstes für diese Überzeugung expliziert und bewertet. (shrink)

Brian Leiter and Peter Kail have delivered thoughtful critiques of my book, Nietzsche’s Naturalism: Philosophy and the Life Sciences in the Nineteenth Century.1 It is a great pleasure to respond to these critiques, since they raise some crucial issues with regard to Nietzsche’s understanding of naturalism and normativity. On the one hand, there are many areas of agreement: Nietzsche’s philosophical project is best understood along the lines of naturalism; developments in the nineteenth-century life sciences, broadly speaking, play a crucial role (...) in the formation of Nietzsche’s naturalism; and Nietzsche’s relationship to both Darwin and Darwin’s neo-Kantian interpreters is more complex than generally assumed. On the... (shrink)

There can be little doubt that, over the last decade or so, the work of Carl Schmitt has emerged as a central point of reference, in both positive and negative terms, for many debates within contemporary political theory. Despite Schmitt's notoriously controversial and complex position within the intellectual field of modern political thought, a growing interest, for instance, in his critique of parliamentary democracy and his conceptualization of partisan warfare can be felt not only among political movements with revolutionary agendas, (...) but it can also easily be observed in main-stream political thought on both sides of the Atlantic.1 With the…. (shrink)

Serious study of Peirce began some fifty years ago, in 1931, with the publication of the first of six volumes of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Arthur Burks added two volumes to that collection in 1958. In the meantime there had appeared, and continued to appear, several one-volume editions, namely those by Morris R. Cohen, Justus Buchler, Vincent Tomas, Philip P. Wiener, and Edward C. Moore. A new era in Peirce scholarship (...) began in 1975 with the appearance of the first of three important multi-volume editions: Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to “The Nation,” edited by Kenneth L. Ketner and James E. Cook ; The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, edited by Carolyn Eisele ; and Charles Sanders Peirce: Complete Published Works, Including Selected Secondary Materials, the 149-microfiche collection edited by members of the Texas Tech University Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. (shrink)

This paper argues that Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money is best understood as a political theory that focuses on the normativity of finance capitalism and the latter's effects on modern societies. Simmel shares some common ground with recent critiques of capitalism, such as the work of Thomas Piketty and Joseph Vogl, but he also presents a more comprehensive philosophical framework for understanding the dynamics of capitalism and financialization.

The encounter between a patient and her surgeon is unique for several reasons. The surgeon inflicts pain upon a patient for the patient’s own good. An operative intervention is irreducibly personal, such that the decisions about and performance of operations are inseparable from the idiosyncrasies of the individual surgeon. Furthermore, there is a chasm of knowledge between the patient and surgeon that is difficult to cross. Hence, training in the discipline of surgery includes the inculcation of certain virtues and practices (...) to safeguard against abuses of this relationship and to make sure that the best interests of the patient are prioritized. The stories in this issue are evidence that in contemporary practice this is not quite enough, as surgeons reflect on instances they felt were ethically challenging. Common themes include the difficulty in communicating surgical uncertainty, patient–surgeon relationships, ethical issues in surgical training, and the impact of the technological imperative on caring for dying patients. (shrink)

ExcerptCarl Schmitt's recently translated Constitutional Theory (Verfassungslehre), first published in 1928 at the end of a period of relative stability in Weimar Germany, is a strangely timely work—both with regard to the continued relevance of the themes and problems it discusses and with regard to the current state of scholarship about Weimar constitutionalism. But, first things first, as befits what was originally intended as a short review article: The translation is accurate, even though it was occasionally necessary to break down (...) Schmitt's legal Germanicisms into more manageable English syntax. The long introduction, jointly written by Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill,…. (shrink)

Hugo Drochon's Nietzsche's Great Politics is a well-written and well-argued account of Nietzsche's political vision that presents itself squarely within the tradition of Cambridge School intellectual history. As such, Drochon explicitly rejects interpretations of Nietzsche's political thought that start from the premise of normative democratic theory, but he also fully and rightly rejects any attempt to read Nietzsche's political ideas through the lens of his appropriation by the Nazi regime. Instead, Drochon's aim is to situate Nietzsche in the context of (...) the nineteenth century, especially Imperial Germany, and he is correct in pointing out that the formative periods in Nietzsche's intellectual development roughly... (shrink)