Maria mediatrix represents a paradigm of mediality in the Middle Ages. Mary′s power consists in bridging the gap between the celestial sphere and the world, the Christ and mankind. She is full of grace and conveying grace, participating in humanity and divinity by these characteristics. Her influence is based on having given birth to the Christ, accompanied his life until his death on the cross, having suffered and died in her soul with him in love. She incites the individual to (...) follow her on her paths, to love and suffer as she did, to follow the Christ. Her path – if followed – offers the perspective to reach redemption and salvation. But she is also interceding for the sinners. Ascended to heaven and crowned as queen, she is able to change the severity of judgements of her son into mercy. The present article outlines a “mediologic” approach, presenting some developments from the bible to the Middle Ages and giving examples of different ways of Mary′s mediation. The latter are mainly focussed on homilies written by Bernhard de Clairvaux (1090–1153) on the occasion of the feasts of the birth and ascension of Mary and five chapters of the ‘Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit’ by Heinrich Seuse (1295–1366). (shrink)

In the contemporary philosophical literature, political legitimacy is often identified with a right to rule. However, this term is problematic. First, if we accept an interest theory of rights, it often remains unclear whose interests justify a right to rule : either the interest of the holders of this right to rule or the interests of those subject to the authority. And second, if we analyse the right to rule in terms of Wesley Hohfeld’s characterization of rights, we find disagreement (...) among philosophers about what constitutes the conceptual core of political authority: a power-right or a claim-right to rule. In this paper I show that both of these are problematic for a number of reasons. First, if we think that it is only the interests of the holders of a right to rule that justify the possession of authority, the conceptual core of authority must consist in a claim-right. However, this understanding of authority biases our thinking about legitimacy in favor of democratic exercises of power. Second, if we hold such a decisively democratic view of legitimacy, we confront an impasse with respect to addressing global collective action problems. Although it is clear that political authority is necessary or useful for solving these issues, it is doubtful that we can establish global institutions that are democratically authorized anytime soon. The paper suggests an alternative ‘Power-Right to Command View’ of political legitimacy that avoids the democratic bias and allows for thinking about solutions to global problems via global service authorities. (shrink)

This paper argues that Internet access should be recognised as a human right because it has become practically indispensable for having adequate opportunities to realise our socio-economic human rights. This argument is significant for a philosophically informed public understanding of the Internet and because it provides the basis for creating new duties. For instance, accepting a human right to Internet access minimally requires guaranteeing access for everyone and protecting Internet access and use from certain objectionable interferences (e.g. surveillance, censorship, online (...) abuse). Realising this right thus requires creating an Internet that is crucially different from the one we currently have. The argument thus has wide-ranging implications. (shrink)

Although the principle of informed consent is well established and its importance widely acknowledged, it has met with criticism for decades. Doubts have been raised for a number of different reasons. In particular, empirical data show that people regularly fail to reproduce the information provided to them. Many critics agree, therefore, that the received concept of informed consent is no more than a myth. Strategies to overcome this problem often rest on a flawed concept of informed consent. In this paper, (...) it is suggested that informed consent is a communicative act between two persons. The challenge is to elucidate the norms and constraints for successfully performing such a communicative act. The view developed here has major consequences with regard to the standards for information disclosure as well as for the general scope of informed consent. (shrink)

Despite Kant's explicit statement that every murderer must suffer death, there are at least four situations to be found in Kant's work in which the killing of a human being should not lead to the death penalty: when too many murderers are involved; when a mother kills her illegitimate child; when one duellist kills the other; when one person pushes another off a plank in order to save his life. This paper discusses these situation and concentrates on the last situation (...) - Kant's interpretation of the plank of Carneades – with an eye to what they learn us about Kant understanding of the law. Does Kant acknowledge a legal vacuum? In order to come to a conclusion, Kant's 'solution' of the plank is compared with those suggested by other authors, such as Cicero, Pufendorf and Lon Fuller in his famous 'speluncean explorers' case. (shrink)

Examines the diverse cultural influences which have shaped the basic philosophical traditions of India "Indian philosophy was at the heart of Zimmer's interest..

In 2016, the United Nation’s General Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution regarding ‘The Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet’. At the heart of this resolution is the UN’s concern that ‘rights that people have offline must also be protected online.’ While the UN thus recognises the importance of the Internet, it does so problematically selectively by focusing on protecting existing offline rights online. I argue instead that Internet access is itself a moral human right that requires (...) that everyone has unmonitored and uncensored access to this global medium, which should be publicly provided free of charge for those unable to afford it. Rather than being a mere luxury, Internet access should be considered a universal entitlement because it is necessary for people to be able to lead minimally decent lives. Accepting this claim transforms our conception of the Internet from a technology to that of a basic right. (shrink)

Since the Brexit Referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016, the term ‘fake news’ has become a significant source of concern. Recently, the European Commission and the British House of Commons have condemned the phenomenon as a threat to their institutions’ democratic processes and values. However, political disinformation is nothing new, and empirical studies suggest that fake news has not decided crucial elections, that most readers do not believe the online fake (...) news stories they read, and that political polarization in Western democracies like the US began to increase long before online fake news existed. The question then is: how exactly does fake news threaten democracies? This paper argues that online fake news threatens democratic processes because it undermines citizens’ epistemic trust in each other. This in turn threatens to undermine the perceived legitimacy and the moral justification of democratic institutions as a whole. While online fake news is a symptom of a much larger issue (how has the Internet affected democracies, and how can we use its positive power while checking its negative effects?), it deserves particular attention given the potential danger it presents for the viability and the legitimacy of the democratic process. (shrink)

A strong coloring on a cardinal $\kappa $ is a function $f:[\kappa ]^2\to \kappa $ such that for every $A\subseteq \kappa $ of full size $\kappa $, every color $\unicode{x3b3} <\kappa $ is attained by $f\restriction [A]^2$. The symbol $$ \begin{align*} \kappa\nrightarrow[\kappa]^2_{\kappa} \end{align*} $$ asserts the existence of a strong coloring on $\kappa $.We introduce the symbol $$ \begin{align*} \kappa\nrightarrow_p[\kappa]^2_{\kappa} \end{align*} $$ which asserts the existence of a coloring $f:[\kappa ]^2\to \kappa $ which is strong over a partition $p:[\kappa ]^2\to (...) \theta $. A coloring f is strong over p if for every $A\in [\kappa ]^{\kappa }$ there is $i<\theta $ so that for every color $\unicode{x3b3} <\kappa $ is attained by $f\restriction )$.We prove that whenever $\kappa \nrightarrow [\kappa ]^2_{\kappa }$ holds, also $\kappa \nrightarrow _p[\kappa ]^2_{\kappa }$ holds for an arbitrary finite partition p. Similarly, arbitrary finite p-s can be added to stronger symbols which hold in any model of ZFC. If $\kappa ^{\theta }=\kappa $, then $\kappa \nrightarrow _p[\kappa ]^2_{\kappa }$ and stronger symbols, like $\operatorname {Pr}_1_p$ or $\operatorname {Pr}_0_p$, also hold for an arbitrary partition p to $\theta $ parts.The symbols $$ \begin{gather*} \aleph_1\nrightarrow_p[\aleph_1]^2_{\aleph_1},\;\;\; \aleph_1\nrightarrow_p[\aleph_1\circledast \aleph_1]^2_{\aleph_1},\;\;\; \aleph_0\circledast\aleph_1\nrightarrow_p[1\circledast\aleph_1]^2_{\aleph_1}, \\ \operatorname{Pr}_1_p,\;\;\;\text{ and } \;\;\; \operatorname{Pr}_0_p \end{gather*} $$ hold for an arbitrary countable partition p under the Continuum Hypothesis and are independent over ZFC $+ \neg $ CH. (shrink)

We experience perception as a holistic phenomenon that can be unfolded in different aspects assigned to different senses. Against this background two interrelated questions can be asked pointing us in opposite directions: If our original experience is a holistic one, how do we ever come to divide the unity of our perception into a multiplicity of sensory objects and experiences? And if different senses can be distinguished, what in turn is the reason for their interaction in a synesthetic unity of (...) experience?—To answer both questions, the role of our experiences of two diferent movements associated with our perception is analyzed: (1) the so-called kinesthetic experiences, and (2) the dynamic movements associated with perceived things, events, atmospheres, etc., and their affective significance for the perceiving subject. The article argues that attention to both movements is crucial both for the possibility of separating different sensory perceptions and for the experience of a sensory unity in our perception. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is recognized as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice he is mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in this paper that an analysis of Kant’s late work on rights and justice provides ample resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in global politics. Kant’s comments in the Doctrine of (...) Right clarify that he thinks we need a coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive possessions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus, this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conservative thinker about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin. (shrink)

Proof Theory of Modal Logic is devoted to a thorough study of proof systems for modal logics, that is, logics of necessity, possibility, knowledge, belief, time, computations etc. It contains many new technical results and presentations of novel proof procedures. The volume is of immense importance for the interdisciplinary fields of logic, knowledge representation, and automated deduction.

We construct a model where every increasing ω-sequence of regular cardinals carries a mutually stationary sequence which is not tightly stationary, and show that this property is preserved under a class of Prikry-type forcings. Along the way, we give examples in the Cohen and Prikry models of ω-sequences of regular cardinals for which there is a non-tightly stationary sequence of stationary subsets consisting of cofinality ω_1 ordinals, and show that such stationary sequences are mutually stationary in the presence of interleaved (...) supercompact cardinals. (shrink)

The question whether distributive justice is at bottom practice-dependent or practice-independent has received much attention in recent years. I argue that the problem of intergenerational justice resolves this dispute in favor of practice-independence. Many believe that we owe more to our descendants than leaving them a world in which they can merely lead minimally decent lives. This thought is particularly convincing given the fact that it is us who determine to a significant extent what this future world will look like. (...) However, no practices that would trigger distributive obligations exist between distant generations. Thus, if we have to leave more than a minimum for future generations, we cannot conceive of distributive justice in terms of the justification of ongoing social interactions. Rather we have to think of the entire concept as an idea based on persons’ legitimate interests and capacity for well-being, and which abstracts from participation in particular practices. (shrink)

As the discoverer of electromagnetic waves, Hertz is one of the most important figures in the history of physics. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his death, this volume ties together his personal and professional life. It contains 11 of Hertz's most important papers, seven accounts of his life by renowned contemporaries, and a biographical introduction. A bibliography of Hertz's scientific papers, a general bibliography of books and articles about his contributions to physics, and a comprehensive index round out (...) the coverage. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to analyse compactness properties of nonmonotonic inference operations within the framework of model theory. For this purpose the concepts of a deductive frame and its semantical counterpart, a semantical frame are introduced. Compactness properties play a fundamental in the study of non-monotonic inference, and in the paper several new versions of compactness are studied.

Human rights protect the conditions of a minimally decent life of which mental health is an indispensable element. Adequate care for mental health is thus recognized as part of the human right to health. However, for populations living far from urban centers, adequate in-person (mental) health care is often extremely costly and thus not provided. Digital mental health care options have become an effective alternative to in-person treatment. Benefitting from these new digital opportunities, though, requires sufficient access to the internet. (...) Because everyone has a human right to adequate health care, and digital mental health care is now an effective option for progressively realizing this human right for people who live in remote regions, these people also have to be understood to have a right to access to the internet. This right to internet access creates duties for public authorities and the international community to create the required digital infrastructure and (where needed) to cover the costs of internet access where this is the only feasible way of delivering, or progressively realizing, the mental health care that is indispensable for having the opportunity to lead minimally decent lives. (shrink)

Proponents of practice-dependent egalitarianism argue that egalitarian duties and entitlements only apply among participants in morally relevant practices. In this paper, I argue that these views are implausible because they allow for objectionable treatment of non-participants. I show that it is impossible, on the basis of practice-internal considerations alone, to determine the extent to which the pursuit of practices can permissibly limit the opportunities of non-participants. There are opportunities beyond the current holdings of practices to which no one has a (...) privileged claim (such as unowned natural resources), and the distribution of which is a matter of justice. A just distribution of such unowned distributive goods, though, requires a practice-independent distributive baseline. I further show that such a baseline can only be egalitarian because all alternative baselines face serious objections. From this I conclude that any plausible theory of distributive justice must accept some form of equal practice-independent distributive entitlements. (shrink)

This article presents a mutual critique of the analytic and phenomenological theory of action. The first perspective focuses on the standard approach introduced by G.E.M. Anscombe. According to Anscombe, actions are events that are intentional under a description. Consequently, the distinction between action and mere behavior depends on the linguistic description of behavior. However, this perspective fails to address the possible transitions between behavior and action. One way to fill this gap is by investigating the specific form of intentionality belonging (...) to striving or tendency. Such an investigation can complement the standard theory of action by illuminating the realm in which volitional and intentional actions are formed. In this regard, it is instructive to examine A. Pfänder’s and E. Husserl’s philosophy of striving and willing. Pfänder’s _Phenomenology of Willing_ (1900) and the essay _Motives and Motivation_ (1911) reflect on the genesis of volition from striving. Both texts view willing as a particular form of striving that may, but does not have to, lead to action. Similarly, Husserl aims to retrace the pre-voluntary roots of willing, but unlike Pfänder, he considers willing and action to be necessarily connected. The second perspective focuses on what analytic philosophy contributes to philosophical action theory: the recognition of language’s constitutive role in determining actions. This is evident not only in terms of how we describe actions (Anscombe), but also in how we ascribe willing, intending, and acting to one another in communicative contexts (H.L.A. Hart). Therefore, a phenomenological investigation of action should be complemented by linguistic analysis. This idea is already outlined in rudiments by Husserl and particularly by Pfänder. (shrink)

A self-fulfilling prophecy is, roughly, a prediction that brings about its own truth. Although true predictions are hard to fault, self-fulfilling prophecies are often regarded with suspicion. In this article, we vindicate this suspicion by explaining what self-fulfilling prophecies are and what is problematic about them, paying special attention to how their problems are exacerbated through automated prediction. Our descriptive account of self-fulfilling prophecies articulates the four elements that define them. Based on this account, we begin our critique by showing (...) that typical self-fulfilling prophecies arise due to mistakes about the relationship between a prediction and its object. Such mistakes—along with other mistakes in predicting or in the larger practical endeavor—are easily overlooked when the predictions turn out true. Thus we note that self-fulfilling prophecies prompt no error signals; truth shrouds their mistakes from humans and machines alike. Consequently, self-fulfilling prophecies create several obstacles to accountability for the outcomes they produce. We conclude our critique by showing how failures of accountability, and the associated failures to make corrections, explain the connection between self-fulfilling prophecies and feedback loops. By analyzing the complex relationships between accuracy and other evaluatively significant features of predictions, this article sheds light both on the special case of self-fulfilling prophecies and on the ethics of prediction more generally. (shrink)

In this thesis I defend the principle of global egalitarianism. According to this idea most of the existing detrimental inequalities in this world are morally objectionable. As detrimental inequalities I understand those that are not to the benefit of the worst off people and that can be non-wastefully removed. To begin with, I consider various justifications of the idea that only those detrimental inequalities that occur within one and the same state are morally objectionable. I identify Thomas Nagel’s approach as (...) the most promising defence of this traditional position. However, I also show that Nagel’s argument does not even justify the elimination of detrimental inequalities within states. A discussion of the concept of political legitimacy rather shows that egalitarian justice is not a necessary condition of the justifiability of the exercise of coercive political power. I, then, consider other, more Rawlsian approaches to the question of detrimental inequalities. These views appear more plausible than Nagel’s position and argue that egalitarian duties also arise in certain international contexts. But also these more global theories of distributive justice suffer from shortcomings. Since they make the application of duties of justice dependent on the existence of social practices they cannot adequately account for the justified interests of non-participants that are affected by these practices. The counter-intuitive implications of practice-dependent theories lead me to investigate the plausibility of a theory that does not limit justice to existing practices and that argues for the inherent value of equality. This theory is global egalitarianism. I defend global egalitarianism by debilitating three objections that opponents of this idea frequently present in the relevant literature. Finally I also address two particular objections to the idea that global egalitarian duties are institutionalizable with the help of coercive global authorities. (shrink)

In her debate with Michael Blake, Gillian Brock sets out to justify emigration restrictions on medical workers from poor states on the basis of their free-riding on the public investment that their states have made in them in form of a publicly funded education. For this purpose, Brock aims to isolate the question of emigration restrictions from the larger question of responsibilities for remedying global inequalities. I argue that this approach is misguided because it is blind to decisive factors at (...) play in the problem of medical brain drain and consequently distorts the different responsibilities this problem generates. Brock’s strategy, if successful, would effectively lead to punishing emigrating workers from poor states for the free-riding and exploitation that is committed by affluent states – which is a counter-intuitive result. (shrink)