Artificial Intelligence (AI) often outperforms human doctors in terms of decisional speed. For some diseases, the expected benefit of a fast but less accurate decision exceeds the benefit of a slow but more accurate one. In such cases, we argue, it is often justified to rely on a medical AI to maximise decision speed – even if the AI is less accurate than human doctors.

This paper concerns the double standard debate in the ethics of AI literature. This debate essentially revolves around the question of whether we should subject AI systems to different normative standards than humans. So far, the debate has centered around the desideratum of transparency. That is, the debate has focused on whether AI systems must be more transparent than humans in their decision-making processes in order for it to be morally permissible to use such systems. Some have argued that the (...) same standards of transparency should be applied across the board, for AI systems and humans alike. Others have argued that we should hold AI systems to higher standards than humans in terms of transparency. In this paper, we first point out that there are structurally similar double standard debates to be had about other desiderata besides transparency, such as predictive accuracy. Second, we argue that when we focus on predictive accuracy, there are at least two reasons for holding AI systems to a lower standard than humans. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 311-312.

Many seem to think that AI-induced responsibility gaps are morally bad and therefore ought to be avoided. We argue, by contrast, that there is at least a pro tanto reason to welcome responsibility gaps. The central reason is that it can be bad for people to be responsible for wrongdoing. This, we argue, gives us one reason to prefer automated decision-making over human decision-making, especially in contexts where the risks of wrongdoing are high. While we are not the first to (...) suggest that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed, our argument is novel. Others have argued that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed because they can reduce or eliminate the psychological burdens caused by tragic moral choice-situations. By contrast, our argument explains why responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed even in the absence of tragic moral choice-situations, and even in the absence of psychological burdens. (shrink)

Hitchcock (2001a) argues that the distinction between singular and general causation conflates the two distinctions ‘actual causation vs. causal tendencies’ and ‘wide vs. narrow causation’. Based on a recent regularity account of causation I will show that Hitchcock’s introduction of the two distinctions is an unnecessary multiplication of causal concepts.

Recently, scholars have disputed whether Locke's political theory should be read as the groundwork of secular liberalism or as a Protestant political theology. Focusing on Locke's mature theory of toleration, the article raises a central question: What if these two readings are compatible? That is, what would be the consequences if Locke's political philosophy has theological foundations, but has also given shape to secular liberalism? Examining Locke's theory in the Letter Concerning Toleration , the article argues that this is indeed (...) the case. The liberal model of toleration is a secularization of the theology of Christian liberty and its division of society into a temporal political kingdom and the spiritual kingdom of Christ. Therefore, when liberal toleration travels beyond the boundaries of the Christian West or when western societies become multicultural, it threatens to lose its intelligibility. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have disputed whether Locke's political theory should be read as the groundwork of secular liberalism or as a Protestant political theology. Focusing on Locke's mature theory of toleration, the article raises a central question: What if these two readings are compatible? That is, what would be the consequences if Locke's political philosophy has theological foundations, but has also given shape to secular liberalism? Examining Locke's theory in the Letter Concerning Toleration, the article argues that this is indeed the (...) case. The liberal model of toleration is a secularization of the theology of Christian liberty and its division of society into a temporal political kingdom and the spiritual kingdom of Christ. Therefore, when liberal toleration travels beyond the boundaries of the Christian West or when western societies become multicultural, it threatens to lose its intelligibility. (shrink)

Professeur à Iéna, berceau historique de l'idéalisme allemand, Fries (1773-1843) y incarne une autre postérité du kantisme. Il tient la voie dans laquelle la philosophie s'est engagée après Kant pour un néodogmatisme et entreprend une critique psychologique - ou anthropologique - de la raison.

This book concentrates upon how economic rationalities have been embedded into particular historical practices, cultures, and moral systems. Through multiple case-studies, situated in different historical contexts of the modern West, the book shows that the development of economic rationalities takes place in the meeting with other regimes of thought, values, and moral discourses. The book offers new and refreshing insights, ranging from the development of early economic thinking to economic aspects and concepts in the works of classical thinkers such as (...) Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Karl Marx, to the role of economic reasoning in contemporary policies of art and health care. With economic rationalities as the read thread, the reader is offered a unique chance of historical self-awareness and recollection of how economic rationality became the powerful ideological and moral force that it is today. (shrink)

In life, identity is based on many things. In death, people tend to be identified more on the basis of religion: separate cemeteries for Jews, Buddhists and the Plymouth Brethren, separate quarters for Muslims, Yezidis, Bahá’í and Orthodox Christians. However, it is not true that cemeteries are only a place for religious division. They are also public spaces and, as such, places where people from all walks of life go. Cemeteries are places where religious preferences and customs are negotiated in (...) a very special way. In this article, practical and theological aspects of cemeteries are discussed from an inter-religious point of view. What areas of conflict are there? How do people of different faiths reflect on each other and the option of cohabiting in death? To what extent are the preferences of different religious groups met in Swedish cemeteries? To some extent, these practical and theological questions pertaining to cemeteries may serve as a lens that sharpens our eyes to challenges of religious freedom and our chance to live (and die) together. (shrink)

In this article our aim is to present some of the coordinates of the debate around common good. Starting by recognizing the importance of common good for the Christian worldview after the presence of it in St. Paul’s “the manifestation of Spirit is given for the common good”, we will present two ways of interpreting the development of our moral and emotional tendencies that have to do with two different evolutionary approaches. By the end of the article, we hope (...) to have established the argumental advantage of the cooperativist in front of the social Darwinist, opening the possibility for a possible interpretation of evolution as guided towards common good. (shrink)

In den letzten 25 Jahren hat das chinesische Recht eine beeindruckende Entwicklung erfahren. In zunehmendem Maße wird es Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen, und in Deutschland erscheinen in immer größerer Zahl Publikationen, die das chinesische Recht für die Rechtsvergleichung erschließen oder es rechtsvergleichend mit anderen Rechtsordnungen erörtern. In der neuen Schriftenreihe Schriften zum chinesischen Recht, die im Auftrag der Deutsch-Chinesischen Juristenvereinigung von Professor Dr. Uwe Blaurock, Freiburg, Professor Dr. Ulrich Manthe, Passau, Dr. Knut B. Pißler, Hamburg, und Professorin Dr. Christiane Wendehorst, Göttingen, (...) herausgegeben wird, sollen in erster Linie Monographien, wie etwa herausragende Dissertationen oder Habilitationsschriften erscheinen, darüber hinaus aber auch Tagungsbände sowie kommentierte Übersetzungen wichtiger chinesischer Gesetze oder zweisprachige Gesetzessammlungen. Es soll hiermit der wissenschaftliche Gedankenaustausch mit China gefördert und für rechtsvergleichend arbeitende Juristen eine Publikationsplattform geschaffen werden. Ein besonderer Gesichtspunkt ist dabei auch der Praxisbezug der veröffentlichten Werke. Die Herausgeber hoffen, dass die Schriften zum chinesischen Recht künftig einen wesentlichen Bestandteil des rechtlichen Dialogs zwischen Deutschland und China bilden werden und wünschen ihnen eine wohlwollende Aufnahme in der juristischen Öffentlichkeit. (shrink)

Inheritance is about cold cash and warm emotions. On a macroeconomic level inherited wealth is a source of inequality, but on a personal level it is a gift between relatives that can involve gratitude, but also a sense of obligation and duty continuity, but also conflicts. These perspectives often clash in public discussions about inheritance law and taxation. This article discusses the implicit notions about inheritance and their relationship to positions in the public debate in three Danish filmic works: Per (...) Fly’s Inheritance (2003), first season of the TV-series The Heirs (2014) and Christian Sønderby Jepsen’s The Will (2011). (shrink)

Early modern political thought transformed toleration from a prudential consideration into a moral obligation. Three questions need to be answered by any explanation of this transition: Did religious toleration really become an obligation of the state in this period? If this was the case, how could tolerating heresy and idolatry possibly become a moral duty to Christians? How could Europeans both condemn practices as idolatrous and immoral, and yet insist that these practices ought to be tolerated? To answer these questions, (...) the article shows how the early policy of toleration in British India was constituted by a Protestant theological framework. Toleration turned into a moral obligation, it is argued, because the Reformation had identified liberty in the religious realm as God's will for humanity. This gave rise to a dynamic in which Christian states and churches were continuously challenged for their violations of religious liberty. The principle of toleration developed as a part of this dynamic. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries estime que Kant a fait de funestes concessions au dogmatisme philosophique, dont il avait pourtant mieux que quiconque mis au jour les contradictions. Ainsi n’a-t-il pas distingué de façon suffisamment rigoureuse la connaissance transcendantale (qui est une connaissance de connaissances) de son objet (à savoir la connaissance a priori à laquelle elle se rapporte). Il en a conclu que la connaissance transcendantale était elle aussi a priori et a cherché à fonder les jugements synthétiques a priori (...) sur des connaissances elles-mêmes a priori. Kant a ainsi été victime d’un « préjugé de la preuve » auquel il a donné la forme spécifique d’un « préjugé du transcendantal » : dans la mesure où la « déduction transcendantale » cherche à donner une « preuve transcendantale » de la validité de nos connaissances, la théorie kantienne de la connaissance est donc menacée par un cercle logique. Aussi la déduction transcendantale bien comprise ne peut-elle être, selon Fries, qu’une déduction subjective, psychologique ou anthropologique, ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant que Fries entende réduire la philosophie à la psychologie, contrairement à ce que lui reprocheront les contempteurs de son psychologisme. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries estime que Kant a fait de funestes concessions au dogmatisme philosophique, dont il avait pourtant mieux que quiconque mis au jour les contradictions. Ainsi n’a-t-il pas distingué de façon suffisamment rigoureuse la connaissance transcendantale de son objet. Il en a conclu que la connaissance transcendantale était elle aussi a priori et a cherché à fonder les jugements synthétiques a priori sur des connaissances elles-mêmes a priori. Kant a ainsi été victime d’un « préjugé de la preuve (...) » auquel il a donné la forme spécifique d’un « préjugé du transcendantal » : dans la mesure où la « déduction transcendantale » cherche à donner une « preuve transcendantale » de la validité de nos connaissances, la théorie kantienne de la connaissance est donc menacée par un cercle logique. Aussi la déduction transcendantale bien comprise ne peut-elle être, selon Fries, qu’une déduction subjective, psychologique ou anthropologique, ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant que Fries entende réduire la philosophie à la psychologie, contrairement à ce que lui reprocheront les contempteurs de son psychologisme. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to identify common factors which constitute the foundation of decolonization in indigenous African religions. Since such aspects need to be essentially constructive in order to effectively and positively replace Colonial ideas, this particular search for common ground concerning decolonization in indigenous African religions is going to be pursued through the concept of ecodomy, seen as constructive process. When applied to decolonization with this postulated positivity, ecodomy coagulates three distinct aspects of indigenous African religions into a (...) common reality. These three aspects are ancestry, goodness, and the relationship with Christianity; they can function therefore as common denominator for various attempts to provide indigenous African religions with specific methodology in dealing with decolonization. This article is going to investigate four such methodologies which can confer positivity as well as an ecodomic, constructive character to decolonization efforts throughout the spectrum of indigenous African religions as they are reflected in the writings of John Mbiti, Isiaka P. Lalèyê, Jakob K. Olupona, and Israel Kamudzandu, all intellectuals of different geographical origin, religious backgrounds, university training, and personal convictions. With Mbiti promoting the superiority of Christianity, Lalèyê accepting it as irrelevant, Olupona preferring to deal without it, and Kamudzandu seeing it as essential, decolonizing efforts in indigenous African religions have at least four different methodologies which all aim at providing African communities with positive and ecodomic, essentially constructive ways to move forward beyond Colonial intellectual paradigms by making sure that peace and goodness are secured for everybody, African or not. (shrink)

Luca M. Possati, Jean Grondin, Paul Ricoeur ; Aurore Dumont, François Dosse et Catherine Goldenstein, Paul Ricoeur: penser la mémoire ; Paul-Gabriel Sandu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth of Language. Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement ; Paul Marinescu, Marc-Antoine Vallée, Gadamer et Ricoeur. La conception herméneutiquedu langage ; Witold Płotka, Saulius Geniusas, Th e Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology ; Delia Popa, Annabelle Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl ; (...) Maria GyemantDenis Seron, Ce que voir veut dire. Essai sur la perception ; Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Hans Friesen, Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf, Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Th eorie ; Bogdan MincăLarisa Cercel, John Stanley, Unterwegs zu einer hermeneutischen Übersetzungswissenschaft. Radegundis Stolze zu ihrem 60. Geburtstag ; Denisa Butnaru Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi. Essai d’herméneutique appliquée ; Ovidiu Stanciu, Jan Patočka, Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs. Trad. fr. Erika Abrams ; Mădălina Diaconu, Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen, Phänomenologie. (shrink)

Special issue. With contributions by Malcolm Forster, Rocio Garcia-Rotamero and Ulrich Hoffrage, Christian Jakob, Kevin Korb and Erik Nyberg, Michael Smithson, Daniel Steel, Brad Weslake, and Jon Williamson.

This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter. I begin, in part I, by noting marked differences between Newton’s and Kant’s laws of action and reaction. I (...) argue that these are explainable by Kant’s allegiance to a Leibnizian mechanics. I show (in part II) that Leibniz too had a model of action and reaction, at odds with Newton’s. Then I reconstruct how Jakob Hermann and Christian Wolff received Leibniz’s model. I present (in Part III) Kant’s early law of action and reaction for mechanics. I show that he devised it so as to solve extant problems in the Hermann-Wolff account. I reconstruct Kant’s views on ‘mechanical’ action and reaction in the 1780s, and highlight strong continuities with his earlier, pre-Critical stance. I use these continuities, and Kant’s earlier engagement with post-Leibnizians, to explain the un-Newtonian features of his law of action and reaction. (shrink)

When Jakob Freudenthal published Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas in 1899, it was the first collection of biographical documents on Spinoza, who was then still seen as something of an ascetic and isolated philosopher. This view had been suggested by Jarig Jelles’ preface to Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. Bayle had also used Spinoza’s unique vita when arguing for his claim that an atheist could live a virtuous life. While this had offered a pretext for reading Spinoza since the end of the seventeenth (...) century, once he was “christianized” by German idealism it became increasingly a way to ignore his critique of religion, as well as his Jewish roots. Our knowledge of Spinoza’s life was further extended by the findings of Carl Gebhardt, who, in a series of articles beginning in 1922, pointed to Spinoza’s association with Jewish heresy in Amsterdam. As a result, Spinoza’s turn to modern science and philosophy was seen as due, to some extent, to his association with Jewish heresy in Amsterdam. The next great step in Spinoza historiography was taken in 1932 by Mordechai Vaz Dias and Willem Tak, who published new biographical material showing us the young merchant Spinoza.Although none of the documents found since have changed our picture of Spinoza’s life as dramatically, they have never been collected in one place. Thanks to Walther’s new edition, we now have almost all of these documents in two large volumes with a rich commentary, the first of which includes the documents and. (shrink)

When Jakob Freudenthal published Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas in 1899, it was the first collection of biographical documents on Spinoza, who was then still seen as something of an ascetic and isolated philosopher. This view had been suggested by Jarig Jelles’ preface to Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. Bayle had also used Spinoza’s unique vita when arguing for his claim that an atheist could live a virtuous life. While this had offered a pretext for reading Spinoza since the end of the seventeenth (...) century, once he was “christianized” by German idealism it became increasingly a way to ignore his critique of religion, as well as his Jewish roots. Our knowledge of Spinoza’s life was further extended by the findings of Carl Gebhardt, who, in a series of articles beginning in 1922, pointed to Spinoza’s association with Jewish heresy in Amsterdam. As a result, Spinoza’s turn to modern science and philosophy was seen as due, to some extent, to his association with Jewish heresy in Amsterdam. The next great step in Spinoza historiography was taken in 1932 by Mordechai Vaz Dias and Willem Tak, who published new biographical material showing us the young merchant Spinoza.Although none of the documents found since have changed our picture of Spinoza’s life as dramatically, they have never been collected in one place. Thanks to Walther’s new edition, we now have almost all of these documents in two large volumes with a rich commentary, the first of which includes the documents and. (shrink)

Rudolf Otto is often spoken of as continuing the tradition of reflection on the nature of religion inaugurated by Schleiermacher. I argue that, on the contrary, there are important differences between Schleiermacher's and Otto's accounts of religion. Otto opposed naturalistic analyses of religion which threatened Christianity's claims to truth, and saw Schleiermacher as providing insufficient resources for resisting such analyses. Otto's grounding of his own religious epistemology in the work of Jakob Friedrich Fries provided him with an explicitly supernatural (...) ‘religious a priori’, and thus provided a universal legitimating ground for religion which resists naturalistic analysis. Schleiermacher, in contrast, explicitly ruled out the sort of ‘experience of the holy’ postulated by Otto by denying both the ‘givenness’ of God in experience and supernatural intervention in the natural order. Further, Schleiermacher's appreciation of humanity's embeddedness within ‘the system of nature’ led him to embrace the view that religion, like any natural phenomenon, is an appropriate subject for scientific investigation. (shrink)

For over a century, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard has been at the center of a number of important discussions, concerning not only philosophy and theology, but also, more recently, fields such as social thought, psychology, and contemporary aesthetics, especially literary theory. Despite his relatively short life, Kierkegaard was an extraordinarily prolific writer, as attested to by the 26-volume Princeton University Press edition of all of his published writings. But Kierkegaard left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which (...) consists of what are called his "journals and notebooks." Kierkegaard has long been recognized as one of history's great journal keepers, but only rather small portions of his journals and notebooks are what we usually understand by the term “diaries.” By far the greater part of Kierkegaard’s journals and notebooks consists of reflections on a myriad of subjects—philosophical, religious, political, personal. Studying his journals and notebooks takes us into his workshop, where we can see his entire universe of thought. We can witness the genesis of his published works, to be sure—but we can also see whole galaxies of concepts, new insights, and fragments, large and small, of partially completed but unpublished works. Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks enables us to see the thinker in dialogue with his times and with himself. Kierkegaard wrote his journals in a two-column format, one for his initial entries and the second for the extensive marginal comments that he added later. This edition of the journals reproduces this format, includes several photographs of original manuscript pages, and contains extensive scholarly commentary on the various entries and on the history of the manuscripts being reproduced. Volume 9 of this 11-volume series includes five of Kierkegaard’s important “NB” journals, which span from June 1852 to August 1854. This period was marked by Kierkegaard’s increasing preoccupation with what he saw as an unbridgeable gulf in Christianity—between the absolute ideal of the religion of the New Testament and the official, state-sanctioned culture of “Christendom,” which, embodied by the Danish People’s Church, Kierkegaard rejected with increasing vehemence. Crucially, Kierkegaard’s nemesis, Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster, died during this period and, in the months following, Kierkegaard can be seen moving inexorably toward the famous “attack on Christendom” with which he ended his life. (shrink)