Die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 und die Wellen der Finanzkrise haben die ethischen Grundlagen politischen Handelns verstärkt ins Bewusstsein gerückt. Dieses Buch ist ein praxisorientierter Leitfaden durch alle wesentlichen Grundfragen der politischen Ethik.

Walter Reese-Schäfer, Karl-Otto Apel, Zur Einführung (with an Afterword by Jürgen Habermas), Junis Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 1990, 176pp. DM 17.80 -/- The author, presently a freelance writer published in the newspaper “Die Zeit” and the magazine “Stern,” pro­vides in this small book a clear and concise introduction to sources, themes and conclusions in the philosophy of Karl-Otto Apel. Apel, Emeritus Pro­fessor at Frank­furt, and close colleague of Habermas, characterizes his viewpoint as a “transcen­dental pragmatism” in which a (...) Kantian concern for question regarding “the conditions for the possi­bility of some­thing,” (p.10) mixes with deontological discourse-ethics, semeiotic themes from Peirce, an ap­proach to fallibilism, the demand for “final justifica­tions” (Letzt­begründung) and German her­meneutics. In view of the “den­sity and concentration” of Apel’s texts, which often have a “deterrent effect” upon those not already at home with “the phil­osophical language game,” it is the announced aim of this book to provide a work of translation and clarification of Apel’s special­ized efforts --in effect an orientation to Apel’s work. The book divides into an Introduction, 8 chapters and a summary conclusion --with Habermas’ appreciation, “A Master Builder with Hermeneutic Feeling --The Way of Philosopher Karl-Otto Apel,” bringing up the rear. There is also a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a short table outlining highlights of Apel’s career. The “Introduction” provides a good overview of the aims of the book and gets one started on central themes. (shrink)

The prospect of consumable meat produced in a laboratory setting without the need to raise and slaughter animals is both realistic and exciting. Not only could such in vitro meat become popular due to potential cost savings, but it also avoids many of the ethical and environmental problems with traditional meat productions. However, as with any new technology, in vitro meat is likely to face some detractors. We examine in detail three potential objections: 1) in vitro meat is disrespectful, either (...) to nature or to animals; 2) it will reduce the number of happy animals in the world; and 3) it will open the door to cannibalism. While each objection has some attraction, we ultimately find that all can be overcome. The upshot is that in vitro meat production is generally permissible and, especially for ethical vegetarians, worth promoting. (shrink)

First published in 1980, and now substantially revised and enlarged, this panoramic survey of philosophic and religious thought, both ancient and modern, provides access to a wide array of ideas. More than just a dictionary, this well-designed reference work contains analytical commentary and historical accounts on a vast range of topics, select bibliographies attached to many of the entries, and considerable cross-referencing. The cross-references run from philosophic movements, to technical terms, to the positions of individual philosophers, thus encouraging a personal (...) exploration of the themes, movements, and thinkers of any particular school of thought. The end result is a reasonably compact single volume with many of the features of a multivolume encyclopedia. Reese covers both analytic and Continental philosophy, and includes a good deal of the history of philosophy. There are biographical entries for more than 900 ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers, for a total number of entries of over 4000. This new edition expands on the original treatment of religion and Asian philosophy and includes enlarged perspectives on Continental philosophy. Named "Outstanding Reference Work" by the American Library Association, the first edition was a Book-of-the-Month science pick and a selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. Authoritative, comprehensive, clear, and interesting, The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion will benefit the nonspecialist and specialist alike. (shrink)

This article explores Franz Brentano's opposition to papal infallibility, and sets this in the context of his development as a Catholic scholar. An active participant in the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century, Brentano contributed to the emergence of neoscholasticism through his philosophical rehabilitation of Aristotle. Brentano ultimately left the Church however as the result of intensive scrutiny of his faith occasioned by his analysis of infallibility. This article explores this crisis of faith by analyzing, for the first time, Brentano's (...) position on papal infallibility, and suggesting ways that it informed his philosophical development. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

This wide-ranging anthology of philosophical writings on the concept of God presents a systematic overview of the chief conceptions of deity as well as skeptical and atheistic critiques of theological ideas. The selections cover key philosophic developments in this subject area from ancient times to modern in both the East and West. Editors Hartshorne and Reese-two of the most highly respected scholars in the philosophy of religion-have not only selected many arresting passages from the world's great thinkers but have (...) also analyzed and evaluated the underlying ideas, showing how they fit into major, overarching systems of thought. Part One, "Classical Views," includes passages from ancient Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as philosophical writings from ancient Greece, the medieval church, and the Enlightenment. Part Two, "Modern Views," considers the ideas of more recent influential thinkers from diverse cultures and philosophical schools: Schelling, Peirce, Whitehead, Schweitzer, Buber, Radhakrishnan, and Watts, among others, are represented and discussed. Part Three, "Skeptical or Atheistic Views: Ancient and Modern," examines various kinds of skepticism and includes selections from Carneades, Buddha, Hume, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Dennes, and Freud. Throughout their presentation the editors analyze and contrast theistic, atheistic, pantheistic, and panentheistic systems of thought. Philosophers Speak of God is a richly varied selection of high-quality writing on a perennial subject that will provide the serious student a thorough foundation in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The predominant view is that a study using health data is observational research and should require individual consent unless it can be shown that gaining consent is impractical. But recent arguments have been made that citizens have an ethical obligation to share their health information for research purposes. In our view, this obligation is sufficient ground to expand the circumstances where secondary use research with identifiable health information is permitted without explicit subject consent. As such, for some studies the Institutional (...) Review Board/Research Ethics Committee review process should not assess the practicality of gaining consent for data use. Instead the review process should focus on assessing the public good of the research, public engagement and transparency. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making frameworks assist in identifying the issues at stake in a particular setting and thinking through, in a methodical manner, the ethical issues that require consideration as well as the values that need to be considered and promoted. Decisions made about the use, sharing, and re-use of big data are complex and laden with values. This paper sets out an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research developed by a working group convened by the Science, Health and (...) Policy-relevant Ethics in Singapore Initiative. It presents the aim and rationale for this framework supported by the underlying ethical concerns that relate to all health and research contexts. It also describes a set of substantive and procedural values that can be weighed up in addressing these concerns, and a step-by-step process for identifying, considering, and resolving the ethical issues arising from big data uses in health and research. This Framework is subsequently applied in the papers published in this Special Issue. These papers each address one of six domains where big data is currently employed: openness in big data and data repositories, precision medicine and big data, real-world data to generate evidence about healthcare interventions, AI-assisted decision-making in healthcare, public-private partnerships in healthcare and research, and cross-sectoral big data. (shrink)

Computability, while usually performed within the context of ω, may be extended to larger ordinals by means of α-recursion. In this article, we concentrate on the particular case of ω1-recursion, and study the differences in the behavior of ${\rm{\Pi }}_1^0$-classes between this case and the standard one.Of particular interest are the ${\rm{\Pi }}_1^0$-classes corresponding to computable trees of countable width. Classically, it is well-known that the analog to König’s Lemma—“every tree of countable width and uncountable height has an uncountable branch”—fails; (...) we demonstrate that not only does it fail effectively, but also that the failure is as drastic as possible. This is proven by showing that the ω1-Turing degrees of even isolated paths in computable trees of countable width are cofinal in the ${\rm{\Delta }}_1^1\,{\omega _1}$-Turing degrees.Finally, we consider questions of nonisolated paths, and demonstrate that the degrees realizable as isolated paths and the degrees realizable as nonisolated ones are very distinct; in particular, we show that there exists a computable tree of countable width so that every branch can only be ω1-Turing equivalent to branches of trees with ${\aleph _2}$-many branches. (shrink)

Descriptive set theory and computability theory are closely-related fields of logic; both are oriented around a notion of descriptive complexity. However, the two fields typically consider objects of very different sizes; computability theory is principally concerned with subsets of the naturals, while descriptive set theory is interested primarily in subsets of the reals. In this paper, we apply a generalization of computability theory, admissible recursion theory, to consider the relative complexity of notions that are of interest in descriptive set theory. (...) In particular, we examine the perfect set property, determinacy, the Baire property, and Lebesgue measurability. We demonstrate that there is a separation of descriptive complexity between the perfect set property and determinacy for analytic sets of reals; we also show that the Baire property and Lebesgue measurability are both equivalent in complexity to the property of simply being a Borel set, for $\boldsymbol {\Sigma ^{1}_{2}}$ sets of reals. (shrink)

The future of health research will be characterised by three continuing trends: rising demand for health data; increasing impracticability of obtaining specific consent for secondary research; and decreasing capacity to effectively anonymise data. In this context, governments, clinicians and the research community must demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of health data. IRBs and RECs sit at heart of this process because in many jurisdictions they have the capacity to grant consent waivers when research is judged to be of (...) particular value. However, several different terms are used to refer to this value, indicating a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the appropriate test for access to health data for research without consent. In this paper we do three things. First we describe the current confusion and instability in terminology relating to public interest in the context of consent waivers. Second we argue for harmonisation of terminology on the grounds of clarity, transparency and consistency. Third we argue that the term ‘public interest’ best reflects the normative work required to justify consent waivers because it is the broadest of the competing terms. ‘Public interest’ contains within its scope positive and negative implications of a study, as well as welfare, justice and rights considerations. In making this argument, we explain the normative basis for consent waivers, and provide a starting place for further discussion about the precise conditions in which a given study can be said to advance the public interest. Ipsos MORI study found that: … the public would be broadly happy with administrative data linking for research projects provided Those projects have social value, broadly defined. Data are de-identified. Data are kept secure. Businesses are not able to access the data for profit. (shrink)

In God, Value, and Nature, Fiona Ellis dissects philosophical and theological positions on the metaphysics of our universe. Drawing on the works of John McDowell and Peter Railton, Ellis examines the dominant dichotomy between naturalism and supernaturalism among the perspectives of scientists, philosophers, and theologians. She challenges this metaphysical bifurcation, reframing the question of naturalism. Rather than asking what fits into the category of natural and what fits into the category of supernatural, the question should be, how should we understand (...) this category of natural that we are talking about in the first place? Ellis then seeks to expand the scope of what... (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has both exposed and created deep rifts in society. It has thrust us into deep ethical thinking to help justify the difficult decisions many will be called upon to make and to protect from decisions that lack ethical underpinnings. This paper aims to highlight ethical issues in six different areas of life highlighting the enormity of the task we are faced with globally. In the context of COVID-19, we consider health inequity, dilemmas in triage and allocation of (...) scarce resources, ethical issues associated with research, ethical considerations relating to tracing apps, and exit strategies such as immunity passports and COVID-19 vaccines. Finally, we consider environmental issues in light of COVID-19. The paper also offers some ethical reflection on these areas as many parts of the world contemplate the recovery phase. (shrink)

An alarming number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that mind extends beyond the brain and body. This book evaluates these arguments and suggests that, typically, it does not. A timely and relevant study that exposes the need to develop a more sophisticated theory of cognition, while pointing to a bold new direction in exploring the nature of cognition Articulates and defends the “mark of the cognitive”, a common sense theory used to distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive processes Challenges (...) the current popularity of extended cognition theory through critical analysis and by pointing out fallacies and shortcoming in the literature Stimulates discussions that will advance debate about the nature of cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Introduction: the advance of governmentality -- Foucault, power, and governmentality: introduction; what is governmentality?; beyond the microphysics of power?; from theory of the state to genealogy of the state; history of the art of government; pastoral power; raison d'état; liberal governmentality; five propositions on foucault and governmentality -- Governmentality 3.4.7.: introduction; governmentality after Foucault; governmentality and the political sciences; some problems in governmentality -- Foucault effect redux? some notes on international governmentality studies: constellation; a few preliminary observations; problems and debates (...) in international governmentality studies -- Reconnecting governmentality and genealogy: introduction; genealogy and governmentality; pluralizing genealogy; practicing genealogy; lines of descent: the family tree of power?; counter-memory and re-serialization; the retrieval of forgotten struggles and subjugated knowledges -- Conclusion: encountering governmentality: governmentality as a new cartography of power; from mapping to encountering; governmentality and politics. (shrink)

More than a decade of experimental research confirms that external linguistic information provided in the form of word labels can induce a "mutually exclusive" bias against double naming and lead children to infer the name of novel objects and parts. Linguistic labels have also been shown to encourage more sophisticated reasoning, particularly with respect to superordinate and atypical object categorization. By contrast, however, the inverse possibility that the linguistic labeling of basic-level objects may also developmentally support the kind of "phonological (...) reorganization" observed within infant speech categorization has yet to be theoretically isolated and experimentally explored. Yet the dynamic of relying on labels to inform object categorization clearly presupposes that potential word labels themselves have already been classified into language-specific phonemic categories. However, a two-staged strategy of first relying on basic-level object categories to refine speech categorization, and then exploiting such learned speech categories to fine tune object categorization would reveal a cyclically opportunistic learner. A uniform assumption of a one to one pairing between words and objects allows bootstrapping not only from language to object classification, but also from basic object categorization to phonemic speech classification. (shrink)

We study the values on which managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) draw when constructing their personal and organizational-level engagement with environmental issues, particularly climate change. Values play an important mediating role in business environmental engagement, but relatively little research has been conducted on individual values in smaller organizations. Using the Schwartz Value System (SVS) as a framework for a qualitative analysis, we identify four “ideal-types” of SME managers and provide rich descriptions of the ways in which values shape (...) their constructions of environmental engagement. In contrast to previous research, which is framed around a binary divide between self-enhancing and self-transcending values, our typology distinguishes between individuals drawing primarily on Power or on Achievement values and indicates how a combination of Achievement and Benevolence values is particularly significant in shaping environmental engagement. This demonstrates the theoretical usefulness of focusing on a complete range of values. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. (shrink)

High degrees of uncertainty and a lack of effective therapeutic treatments have characterized the COVID-19 pandemic and the provision of drug products outside research settings has been controversial. International guidelines for providing patients with experimental interventions to treat infectious diseases outside of clinical trials exist but it is unclear if or how they should apply in settings where clinical trials and research are strongly regulated. We propose the Professional Oversight of Emergency-Use Interventions and Monitoring System as an alternative pathway based (...) on guidance developed for the ethical provision of experimental interventions to treat COVID-19 in Singapore. We support our proposal with justifications that establish moral duties for physicians to record outcomes data and for institutions to establish monitoring systems for reporting information on safety and effectiveness to the relevant authorities. Institutions also have a duty to support generation of evidence for what constitutes good clinical practice and so should ensure the unproven intervention is made the subject of research studies that can contribute to generalizable knowledge as soon as practical and that physicians remain committed to supporting learning health systems. We outline key differences between POEIMS and other pathways for the provision of experimental interventions in public health emergencies. (shrink)

Ethicists, policy-makers, and the general public have questioned whether artificial entities such as robots warrant rights or other forms of moral consideration. There is little synthesis of the research on this topic so far. We identify 294 relevant research or discussion items in our literature review of this topic. There is widespread agreement among scholars that some artificial entities could warrant moral consideration in the future, if not also the present. The reasoning varies, such as concern for the effects on (...) artificial entities and concern for the effects on human society. Beyond the conventional consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethicist ethical frameworks, some scholars encourage “information ethics” and “social-relational” approaches, though there are opportunities for more in-depth ethical research on the nuances of moral consideration of artificial entities. There is limited relevant empirical data collection, primarily in a few psychological studies on current moral and social attitudes of humans towards robots and other artificial entities. This suggests an important gap for psychological, sociological, economic, and organizational research on how artificial entities will be integrated into society and the factors that will determine how the interests of artificial entities are considered. (shrink)

Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. (...) Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz and Paul M. Postal, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions. (shrink)

Though largely unnoticed, in “Two Dogmas” Quine himself invokes a distinction: a distinction between logical and analytic truths. Unlike analytic statements equating ‘bachelor’ with ‘unmarried man’, strictly logical tautologies relating two word-tokens of the same word-type, e.g., ‘bachelor’ and ‘bachelor’ are true merely in virtue of basic phonological form, putatively an exclusively non-semantic function of perceptual categorization or brute stimulus behavior. Yet natural language phonemic categorization is not entirely free of interpretive semantic considerations. “Phonemic reductionism” in both its linguistic and (...) behavioral, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 164–167) guise is false. The semantic basis of phonological equivalence, however, has repercussions vis-à-vis Quine’s critique of analyticity. A consistent rejection of meaning-based equivalencies eliminates not only analyticity, but imposes a form of phonological eliminativism too. Phonological eliminativism is the reductio result of applying Quinean meaning skepticism to the phonological typing of natural language. But unlike analyticity, phonology is presumably not subject to philosophical dismissal. The semantic basis of natural language phonology serves to neutralize Quine’s argument against analyticity: without the semantics of meaning, more than just synonymy is lost; basic phonology must also be forfeited. Let’s begin with the fact that even Quine has to admit that it is possible for two tokens of the same orthographic type to be synonymous, for that much is presupposed by his own account of logical truth. Paul Boghossian. (shrink)

This dissertation work is premised upon the observation that semantic information is required in order to group phonetically distinct word-tokens into phonemically equivalent word-types. For philosophers, like W. V. Quine, who have a dim view of meaning, this claim regarding the semantic basis of natural language phonology, if true, is problematic. This is why in a series of publications, Quine has attempted to avoid any appeal to semantics in his efforts to reconstruct phonemic word-type equivalence. Consistent with his rejection of (...) meaning-based analytic equivalence, Quine rejects a meaning-based account of basic phonological equivalence. However, given the empirical failures to "reduce the phoneme" to acoustic, phonetic, and/or distributional data within phonology---combined with the philosophical short-comings of a behavioral reduction---a consistent disavowal of meaning prohibits Quine from acknowledging the legitimacy of basic phonological equivalence anymore than he wishes to acknowledge the legitimacy of analytic equivalence. In this way, a consistent Quinean rejection of meaning entails not only a skeptical dismissal of analytic equivalence, but also a dismissal of basic phonological equivalence. ;Yet the observation that semantic information is required in order to group word-tokens into phonemic word-types also has a Fregean application. This is because the semantic information required to reconstruct basic phonology is not entirely intensional in character. In addition to typing word-tokens of various predicates in terms of properties, word-tokens of names must also be phonologically typed. So whereas Quineans reject synonymous substitutions because they are based upon meaning, Fregeans claim reference is insufficient to guarantee the substitution of co-referring names salva veritate. But if basic phonological substitutions among word-tokens are premised upon co-reference , a consistent rejection of co-naming substitutions within belief contexts also threatens the substitution of allophonically related word-tokens in belief contexts. The semantic basis of natural language phonemic categorization has a number of implications vis-a-vis contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

Though largely unnoticed, in "Two Dogmas" Quine himself invokes a distinction: a distinction between logical and analytic truths. Unlike analytic statements equating 'bachelor' with 'unmarried man', strictly logical tautologies relating two word-tokens of the same word-type, e.g., 'bachelor' and 'bachelor' are true merely in virtue of basic phonological form, putatively an exclusively non-semantic function of perceptual categorization or brute stimulus behavior. Yet natural language phonemic categorization is not entirely free of interpretive semantic considerations. "Phonemic reductionism" in both its linguistic and (...) behavioral, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 164-167) guise is false. The semantic basis of phonological equivalence, however, has repercussions vis-à-vis Quine's critique of analyticity. A consistent rejection of meaning-based equivalencies eliminates not only analyticity, but imposes a form of phonological eliminativism too. Phonological eliminativism is the reductio result of applying Quinean meaning skepticism to the phonological typing of natural language. But unlike analyticity, phonology is presumably not subject to philosophical dismissal. The semantic basis of natural language phonology serves to neutralize Quine's argument against analyticity: without the semantics of meaning, more than just synonymy is lost; basic phonology must also be forfeited. (shrink)

Dennett's intended rapprochement between physical realism and intentional relativism fails because it is premised upon conflicting arguments governing the status of design. Indeed, Dennett's remarks on design serve to highlight tensions buried deep within his theory. For inasmuch as Dennett succeeds in objectifying attributions of design, attributions of intentionality readily follow suit, leading to a form of intentional realism. But inasmuch as Dennett is successful in relativizing attributions of design, scientific realism at large is subject to renewed anti-realistic criticism. Dennettian-inspired (...) considerations of adaptationism substantiate the former move towards intentional realism, while considerations of the relativity of artifactual design encourage the latter move towards physical relativism. The ambivalence intrinsic to Dennett's ``mild realism'' can be viewed as a function of these two conflicting positions on design, for Dennett can no more avoid objectifying intentionality when he is realistic about design than he can avoid relativizing physical causality when relativistic about design. (shrink)