According to accounts of the Passion, Christ cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cry, I argue, manifests that Christ lacks a belief that God is with him. Given the standard view of faith—belief that p is required for faith that p—it would follow that Christ lost his faith that God is with him just before he died. In this paper, I challenge the standard view by looking at the cognitive requirement of (...) faith. Although faith that p requires some positive cognitive orientation toward p, that orientation need not be belief. I show that reliance is an alternative stance that fulfills the cognitive requirement of faith. Reliance aims at providing sensible guidance for action that is in accord with one’s values/ends. Thinking of the cognitive component of Christ’s faith in terms of reliance makes sense of the doubt manifested in his cry. (shrink)

Philosophie ist der Versuch, durch überzeugendes und durchsichtiges Argumentieren bestimmte Fragen zu lösen. Philosophische Grundthemen sind Fragen nach dem Verständnis der Welt im Ganzen und unserer Stellung in ihr. Diese Fragen können prinzipiell nur kontrovers beantwortet werden. Die Reihe Grundthemen Philosophie möchte der Diskussion solcher philosophischen Grundthemen einen Ort geben. Anstelle einer umfassenden einführenden Darstellung werden in den einzelnen Bänden in Auseinandersetzung mit ausgewählten historischen Positionen die jeweiligen Probleme analysiert und Lösungsmöglichkeiten diskutiert. Dabei setzt der Verfasser/die Verfasserin eigene Akzente und (...) bezieht Stellung, so dass sich nicht bloß ein Blick auf die Geschichte der Philosophie, sondern zugleich auch ein systematischer Beitrag zur Problemdiskussion ergibt. Zur Zeit sind weitere Bände zu den Themen Beziehungen, Kultur, Wissenschaft und Moralbegründung geplant. Die Bände der Reihe richten sich gleichermaßen an Studierende der Philosophie und anderer Fächer sowie an professionelle Philosophen. Außerdem wendet sich die Reihe an alle, die an Grundthemen der Philosophie interessiert sind. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the various dual-use concepts applied in national and international non-proliferation and anti-terrorism legislation, such as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and national export control legislation and in relevant codes of conduct. While there is a vast literature covering dual-use concepts in particular with regard to life sciences, this is the first paper that incorporates into such discussion the United Nations Security Council Resolution (...) 1540. In addition, recent developments such as the extension of dual-use export control legislation in the area of human rights protection are also identified and reviewed. The discussion of dual-use concepts is hereby undertaken in the context of human- and/or national-security-based approaches to security. This paper discusses four main concepts of dual use as applied today in international and national law: civilian versus military, peaceful versus non-peaceful, legitimate versus illegitimate and benevolent versus malevolent. In addition, the usage of the term to describe positive technology spin-offs between civilian and military applications is also briefly addressed. Attention is also given to the roles civil society and research ethics may play in the governance of dual-use sciences and technologies. (shrink)

Marginalized communities are confronted with issues resulting from their marginalization, such as exclusion, invisibility, misrepresentation, and hate speech, not only offline but – due to digital change – increasingly online. Our research project DigitalDialog21 aims at evaluating the effects of digital change on society and how digital change, and the risks and possibilities that come with it, is perceived by the population. Digital change is understood as a factor of social change in this project. By investigating digital change and its (...) effects on society, we are able to draw more general inferences on how societies change socially and what needs to be done in education to establish digital trust. In 2017 the Digital Evolution Index observed an increasing trust deficit and skepticism towards digitalization in both very industrialized and lesser industrialized countries. We will draw inferences from these observations here and hypothesize the following: It seems that especially in marginalized communities, that is: in communities that are structurally and systemically disadvantaged and that experience societal marginalization, this trust deficit and skepticism towards digitalization is prevalent. This could be so because, as a member of a marginalized community, one might quickly find issues resulting from marginalization to be present in digital spaces just like they are present in non-digital spaces. This paper will examine critically how attitudes in marginalized communities towards digital media are influenced by digital change. Do the risks of digitalization outweigh the advantages for marginalized communities? Are digital media perceived to provide advantages such as increased visibility and representation or are they perceived to fuel discrimination against marginalized people? Our research project brings together secondary analyses of existing studies with the results of our own qualitative interview study on marginalized people's perceptions of digital change. The paper will portray some example interviews, and thereby analyze if and how attitudes in the margins towards digital media change, what this change consists of, and how we can understand the changing attitudes within an ethical and educational framework. Our findings will point at a necessity to increase ethically based digital literacy (PEAT) in the German education system, starting in early education. Marginalized groups in particular must be empowered to become digitally competent through problem-oriented education. Independent self-efficacy can increase digital trust in fragmented societies. The paper concludes by introducing media ethics tools that are being developed as part of the project. (shrink)

This volume deals with the normative challenges and the ethical questions imposed by, and through, the developments and changes in everyday life, culture and society in the context of media change. We are thus concerned with the questions of whether and how the central concept of ethics must evolve under these premises—or in other words: what form do ethics take in mediatized societies? In order to address this question and to stimulate and initiate a debate, we have focused on two (...) concepts: responsibility and resistance. (shrink)

Toward the end of Light in August, in the climactic scene in Chapter 1 where the authorities of justice pursue the elusive Joe Christmas through the streets of Jefferson, William Faulkner introduces a new character, Percy Grimm, a twenty-five-year-old captain in the State National Guard who has relentlessly acquired the rank of a special deputy for the search. As the town closes for the weekend, Grimm keeps vigil at a downtown store where other townsfolk have begun a poker game to (...) stay awake through the night as the search goes on. In their zeal to uphold law and justice, his men revel in their fantastic make-believe that they are doing the work of “a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye watching the doings of men.” The poker game goes on through Saturday night until Christmas is spotted and given chase. As Grimm runs through the streets after the fleeing man, Faulkner presents to us the deputy's stream of thought from an omniscient point of view: “There was nothing vengeful about him either, no fury, no outrage. He was moving again almost before he had stopped, with that lean, swift, blind obedience to whatever Player moved him on the Board” (437). Through the rest of the chapter, Grimm, who has not participated in the poker game at all, thinks and acts as if he is engaged in a chess game, not as a player but as the stake or the pawn in a board game in which Jefferson is the board on which he and Christmas are being moved from place to place by two larger forces, he by the benevolent Providence and Christmas by the powers opposed to God. Finally, when Christmas is cornered and fatally shot in Reverend Hightower's kitchen, this fantasized game seems to end. (shrink)

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

The volume deals with the normative challenges and the ethical questions imposed by, and through, the developments and changes in everyday life, culture and society in the context of media change. It is thus concerned with the questions of whether and how the central concept of ethics must evolve under these premises – or in other words: what form do ethics take in mediatized societies? In order to address this question and to stimulate and initiate a debate, the authors focus (...) on two concepts: responsibility and resistance. Their contributions try to shed light not only on the empirical shreds of evidence of change in mediatized societies, but also on the normative challenges and ethical possibilities of these developments. (shrink)

Digital change is one of the most critical factors influencing social change in most societies. The Digital Evaluation Index 2017 (Chakravorti & Chaturvedi, 2017) showed based on 60 national economies that almost no digitally indifferent societies exist anymore. However, different speeds of development and, above all, different attitudes towards the challenges and opportunities of digitization can be observed. Primarily industrially, highly developed nations are also digitally highly developed. However, a "trust deficit" is prevalent in those nations as well; that is, (...) there is a rather reserved attitude on the side of policymakers and the population towards digital development. This "trust deficit" points to a changing attitude towards media and thus towards social change as a whole. According to the mediatization theory (Krotz, 2009), "digitization" can be understood as a factor of social change brought about by media-technical progress. This media-driven change is pedagogically and ethically relevant. Digitization does not only influence the ways we engage with one another (online vs. offline) but, more importantly, seems to influence the attitudes and feelings we have towards engaging with one another and also the attitudes and feelings towards how we engage with one another. Phenomena like cyberbullying, hate speech, digital addiction are examples of behaviors that are (seemingly) made possible through digitization. These negative examples might be considered to show the downsides of digitization, though, at the same time, the way these examples are portrayed generates a fear-based attitude around digitization that contributes to the "trust deficit." German teachers – as several international studies, especially the ICILS studies (cf. Fraillon et al. 2014; Fraillon et al. 2019), have shown – are rather critical and restorative media users. Research shows that ethically sound knowledge and easy use tools for reviewing and normatively evaluating media offerings and practices can have a positive impact on educational institutions (Marci-Boehncke & Vogel 2018). The interdisciplinary German research project DigitalDialog21 aims to contribute to a comprehensive evaluation of current and future technologies, practices, and ways of thinking of digital change. The task of an ethical reconstruction of the "trust deficit" is to make the attitudes of the population accessible and processable via a digital assessment of ethics (Rath, 2003). This task will set the theoretical framework for comprehensive digital literacy. One pedagogical goal of the project is to develop practical tools that help to arrive at a concrete, well-founded evaluation of digital offers at the individual level. (shrink)

This paper deals with the challenges of rationing of existential goods due to scarcity and conflicting interests (at the latest in the question of costs). The legal-political example pursued in this paper is rationing in the health care system, i. e. in curative and partly also in preventive measures. In each case - and in everyday life and by no means only in extreme corona pandemic situations - it is a question of whether there are absolute, ponder-proof claims to certain (...) goods. Ultimately, this is to be denied, even if rationing, especially in Germany, is usually concealed behind vague concepts such as the medical necessity and economic efficiency of treatment. But the public authorities cannot escape the weighing process - even if its consequences are often fatal in industrial society. In particular, misunderstandings of human dignity as well as skewed accusations of utilitarianism and a misleading pseudo-controversy between deontology and consequentialism have for a long time obscured the fact that in liberal democracies a balancing of different aspects of freedom and freedom preconditions is inevitable. Due to parliamentary reservations, however, this weighing must not be outsourced to administrative committees. Caution is called for in all of this with the economic cost-benefit analysis, which is hardly tenable in its foundations, with egalitarian approaches, and with the traditional but unfounded idea that fundamental rights are primarily (or exclusively) protected in single situations and are not relevant in the case of mass concern. Based on the latter point, it can also be shown that the previous tendency is not convincing to judge areas such as curative health treatment, preventive corona hazard control and fine dust or climate policy as being completely different from each other in terms of fundamental rights. (shrink)

Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath greifen zentrale Fragen der heutigen Zeit auf: Was ist Glück? Woher kommt Glück? Wie kann man Glück erreichen? Zunächst geht es um klassische philosophische Ansätze – was verstehen antike Denker wie Demokrit, Platon, Aristoteles und Epikur sowie neuzeitliche Philosophen wie Montaigne, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud und Adorno darunter? Es zeigt sich die Historizität der Glückskonzepte und die Notwendigkeit einer Kritik am »falschen« Glück. Psychologische Konzepte von Glück sind ebenso schillernd. Sie untersuchen empirisch, wie subjektive Glücksgefühle (...) zustande kommen, welche emotionalen, kognitiven und handlungsbezogenen Prozesse ihnen zu Grunde liegen und in welchen Situationen sich Menschen glücklich fühlen. Auch hier erscheint ein kritischer Standpunkt notwendig: Kritik an unterschiedlichen Glücksdefinitionen, Kritik an Erhebungsinstrumenten und Kritik an der Instrumentalisierung und Kommerzialisierung von Forschungsergebnissen. Gerade im Blick auf eine neuerdings weit verbreitete Positive Psychologie besteht ein Ideologieverdacht: Könnte es sich hier um kaum einlösbare Versprechungen einer affirmativen psychologischen Glücksforschung handeln? Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath gehen diesen Fragen im Dialog zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Trotz der unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen und Perspektiven der beiden Autoren zeigen sich erstaunliche Übereinstimmungen hinsichtlich einer kritischen Theorie des Glücks. (shrink)

The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League club’s (...) football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club’s operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general. (shrink)

In this article, we observe the possibility of ‘practicing’ cosmopolitanism in three distinct experiential spaces intrinsic to human existence: knowledge spaces, habitation spaces and marketplaces. Although cosmopolitanism has been overwhelmingly deliberated upon across multiple disciplines, it has been confined to ‘conceptualisms’ in the Western scholarship. On the other hand, we find that some of the works of thinkers, such as, Rabindranath Tagore’s Creative Unity, Aurobindo Ghosh’s The Ideal of Human Unity and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, open the possibilities (...) of experiencing cosmopolitanism in lived human spaces. Cosmopolitanism emerges through knowledge generation and exchanges in the academic vision of Tagore’s ideal Visva-Bharati, in the everydayness of city life through Aurobindo’s Auroville and in the cultural spaces of the Bakhtinian marketplace. Further, we find that cosmopolitanism in these thinkers interweaves the physical place with spaces of the mind. The individual emerges as a core of their cosmopolitan worldview. We argue that these thinkers not only pave the way for recognizing cosmopolitanism in real, lived spaces but also inspire a future vision, practicable in the society through academic institutions, human habitats and regular interactions at marketplaces. (shrink)

How Do Pictures Act? Two Semiotic Aspects of Picture Activity/Frederik Stjernfelt, s. 19-26, ill.

Rather than being merely a descriptive template for distinct and historically differentiated processes of media practices, mediatization is an expression of a growing awareness that imputes a logic of change to observable media and communications practices. It can be conceived of as one, or perhaps even the, definitive category of the contemporary epoch’s reflexive self-understanding. To clarify this, the theory of mediatization is first taken up from an anthropological perspective and defined as an epochal awareness concept. The mediatized world is (...) thus not merely the description of contemporary everyday life, culture and society, but also the description of the pertinent contemporary self-understanding of everyday life, culture and society. This has relevance for today’s concept of ethics in general: present-day normative ethics is the ethics of the mediatized world or it is none at all. (shrink)

It is the metaphoric doubling of past into present that gave Renaissance ekphrastic representations its techniques of self-understanding. In effect, in the ekphrastic doubling of the past in the present, we notice that historicity becomes an inalienable part of its contemporary credibility. The reduction of distance between life and art, as evident in contemporary obsession with selfies and photographs, thus begins to become the central project of early modern ekphrasis, enhanced in the Renaissance. In sum, art becomes equivalent to legal (...) tender, and ekphrasis, a principle of exchange and substitution, through which objects and artefacts seem to be in danger of losing their particularities and gaining new generic human values. When Shakespeare wrote The Rape of Lucrece, it was ekphrasis that allowed Shakespeare to speak about the ills of his own times through a Greco-Roman subject. The metaphorical implications that his story has for the issues of good government and private and public securit... (shrink)

"My energies for near a lifetime have been used almost entirely to win such prominence as I could in outdoor photography."--H. H. Bennett Henry Hamilton Bennett became a celebrated photographer in the half-century following the American Civil War. Bennett is admired for his superb depictions of dramatic landscapes of the Dells of the Wisconsin River and also for his many technical innovations in photography, including a stop-action shutter and a revolving solar printing house that is now housed at the Smithsonian (...) Institution. With his instantaneous shutter, he gained recognition for his striking images of moving subjects, such as lumber raftsmen shooting the river rapids and his son Ashley leaping in midair from a bluff to the craggy pillar of Stand Rock. Less well-known are Bennett's splendid urban photographs of nineteenth-century Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. This engaging biography of H. H. Bennett tells his life story, illustrated throughout with his remarkable photographs, some of them rarely viewed before. It draws on the photographer's own letters and journals, along with other family documents, to portray the sweep of his career and personal life. An important figure in the history of photography, he also contributed to the growth of American tourism: his nationally distributed stereoscopic views of Dells rock formations and his portraits of local Ho-Chunk Indians played a significant role in creating the Wisconsin Dells as the popular tourist destination it is today. Despite personal challenges--a crippling Civil War injury, the death of his first wife, and continual financial worries--Bennett produced an extensive portfolio that captures the midwestern culture of his time. He accepted commissions in the 1890s to document Chicago's modern skyscrapers, grand residences of Milwaukee's entrepreneurs and sailing ships in its harbor, enormous scenic panoramas along the routes of Wisconsin railroads, and sparkling ice palaces lit by fireworks at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Finalist, Midwest Regional Interest, Midwest Book Awards. (shrink)

Die grundlegende Metaphysikkritik seit Immanuel Kant macht eine essenzialistische Wesensdefinition des Menschen obsolet. Es wird vorgeschlagen, die alltagslateinische Formel „conditio humana“ als das jeweilige epochale Menschsein in den thematisch definierten „Metaprozessen“ Mediatisierung, Globalisierung und Ökonomisierung zu konzeptionalisieren. „Conditio humana“ beschreibt dann das Spezifikum des Menschen nicht mehr essenziell, sondern funktional. Der Mensch war und ist immer global, ökonomisch und medial. Daraus zieht der Beitrag zwei Folgerungen: Anthropologisch werden diese Metaprozesse als historisch unterschiedlich dominante Bewusstseinsformen bestimmt. Und ethisch ermöglicht die kritische (...) Reflexion auf diese Metaprozesse, sie nicht in ihrer Funktion als Movens sozialen und kulturellen Wandels zu verneinen, sondern sie unter den Anspruch plausibilisierter normativer Prinzipien der intentionalen und reflektierten Gestaltung dieser Metaprozesse zu stellen: normative Orientierung, menschliche Würde und kommunikative Authentizität. (shrink)

Der Band untersucht die besonderen ethischen Probleme, die die Entwicklung autonom „handelnder“ und „kommunizierender“ medialer Systeme aufwirft. Da sie Prozesse nicht nur eigenständig vollziehen, sondern zugleich steuern, stellt sich die Frage, inwieweit sie in diesem „Handeln“ und „Entscheiden“ normativ orientiert werden können. Über frühere Entwicklungen hinaus entsteht zudem eine computergesteuerte digitale Infrastruktur, die alle symbolischen Operationen integriert und an sich bindet. Ausgehend von der Mediatisierungstheorie werden die medienethischen Implikationen solcher Systeme diskutiert.