The recent progress in the development of autonomous cars has seen ethical questions come to the forefront. In particular, life and death decisions regarding the behavior of self-driving cars in trolley dilemma situations are attracting widespread interest in the recent debate. In this essay we want to ask whether we should implement a mandatory ethics setting for the whole of society or, whether every driver should have the choice to select his own personal ethics setting. While the consensus view seems (...) to be that people would not be willing to use an automated car that might sacrifice themselves in a dilemma situation, we will defend the somewhat contra-intuitive claim that this would be nevertheless in their best interest. The reason is, simply put, that a PES regime would most likely result in a prisoner’s dilemma. (shrink)

History begins inseparably with the birth of the polis and of philosophy. Both represent a unity in strife. History is life that no longer takes itself for granted. To speak, then, of the meaning of history is not to tell a story with a projected happy or unhappy ending, as Western civilization has hoped, at least since the French Revolution. History's meaning is the meaning of the struggle in which being both reveals and conceals itself. Technological society represents both the (...) triumph of historicity and its implosion, since here humans turn from reaching for the sacrum imperium - life lived in the perspective of truth and justice - to the mundane satisfaction of mundane needs, to life lived for the sake of catering to life. (shrink)

The bulk of the present book has not been published previously though Chapters II and IV are based in part on two earlier papers of mine: "The Influence of Harald H!1lffding's Philosophy on Niels Bohr's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", which appeared in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 1979, and "The Bohr-H!1lffding Relationship Reconsidered", published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 1988. These two papers comple ment each other, and in order to give the whole issue a more extended treatment (...) I have sought, in the present volume by drawing on relevant historical material, to substantiate the claim that H!1lffding was Bohr's mentor. Besides containing a detailed account of Bohr's philosophy, the book, at the same time, serves the purpose of making H!1lffding' s ideas and historical significance better known to a non-Danish readership. During my work on this book I have consulted the Royal Danish Library; the National Archive of Denmark and the Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, in search of relevant material. I am grateful for permission to use and quote material from these sources. Likewise, I am indebted to colleagues and friends for commenting upon the manuscript: I am especially grateful to Professor Henry Folse for our many discussions during my visit to New Orleans in November-December 1988 and again here in Elsinore in July 1990. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The semantic theory of truth, formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1939s, is primarily a mathematical theory. On the other hand, it also has a considerable philosophical content. This paper presents the second aspect of this theory. It can be shown that several traditional philosophical issues pertaining to the concept of truth can be illuminated by Tarski’s account of truth. It concerns, for instance, the idea of correspondence, the relation of truth and logic, the problem of the relativity/absoluteness of truth, (...) etc. (shrink)

Paradoks implikacji materialnej pozostawał nierozwiązany od starożytności, ponieważ uważano, że naturą implikacji jest wynikanie. Artykuł ukazuje, że tą naturą jest przeciwstawność. Zostaje podane rozwiązanie paradoksu wraz z odpowiednimi zmianami nazewnictwa, dodaniem konektywów i postulatem przejęcia roli dotychczasowej implikacji przez równoważność. Ponadto zaproponowane zostają zmiany nazewnictwa bramek logicznych, odwzorowujących kompetycję w elektronice.

Liberty is what libertarians advocate. Both because of the inherent value of human liberty and because of the increasing wealth and welfare it brings to all. They see the aggressive coercion of the state as the main enemy of liberty. The solution is to roll back the state until there is little or no state left. Libertarianism has been rapidly growing since the 1970s. But it is still not commonly understood or even given a proper hearing. However, you will increasingly (...) come across it. Often it will be through state enthusiasts disingenuously claiming to be libertarians . At other times it will be through state enthusiasts attacking libertarianism as an extremist ideology. And very occasionally it will be real libertarians explaining and defending their views. J C Lester is a libertarian philosopher who has been writing about why liberty is preferable to politics for many years. This book contains many of his shorter writings on the subject. These range from the populist to the philosophical. Together they function as a miscellaneous introduction to libertarianism. The various different topics and approaches should give the reader a good cross-reference grasp of the subject. (shrink)

The dilemma mentioned in the title have long been a puzzle to logic. To solve it, it was necessary to make some philosophical decisions. The article provides these decisions and discusses the way to solve the problem.

We study Kim-independence over arbitrary sets. Assuming that forking satisfies existence, we establish Kim's lemma for Kim-dividing over arbitrary sets in an NSOP1 theory. We deduce symmetry of Kim-independence and the independence theorem for Lascar strong types.

Relevance drives our actions and channels our attention; it shapes how we make sense of the world and communicate with each other. Irrelevance spreads a twilight which blurs the line between information we do not want to access and information we cannot access. In disciplines as diverse as philosophy, sociology, the information sciences and linguistics, “relevance” has been proposed as a key concept. This book is the first to bring together the often unrelated traditions. Researchers from different fields discuss relevance (...) and relate it to the challenges of “irrelevance”, which have so far been neglected despite their significance for our chances of making well-informed decisions and understanding others. The contributions focus on theoretical and conceptual questions, on specific factors and fields, and on practical and political implications of relevance and irrelevance as forces which are even stronger when they remain in the background. (shrink)

Philosophers, particularly moral philosophers, are increasingly being involved in public decision‐making in areas which are seen to raise ethical issues. For example, Dame Mary Warnock chaired the ‘Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology’ in the UK in 1982–4; the Philosophy Department at Auckland was commissioned by the Auckland Regional Authority to report on the ethical aspects of fluoridating the public water supply in 1990; and many of us are serving on ethics committees of various sorts. Not only are (...) philosophers actually being called on or consulted, but many of us would argue that a philosophical contribution in such areas is essential.The involvement of moral philosophers in public policy decisions raises a question of professional ethics, viz, what role should a philosopher's own moral perspective or judgements play in the advice s/he gives, or contribution s/he makes, to public decision‐making on ethical issues. Like most problems in professional ethics, this prompts reflection on the nature of the profession, and in particular on the expertise we take moral philosophy to offer. It also prompts reflection on how processes of public decision making in ethically problematic areas should be understood. I explore these issues in this paper. (shrink)

Software systems play an ever more important role in our lives and software engineers and their companies find themselves in a position where they are held responsible for ethical issues that may arise. In this paper, we try to disentangle ethical considerations that can be performed at the level of the software engineer from those that belong in the wider domain of business ethics. The handling of ethical problems that fall into the responsibility of the engineer has traditionally been addressed (...) by the publication of Codes of Ethics and Conduct. We argue that these Codes are barely able to provide normative orientation in software development. The main contribution of this paper is, thus, to analyze the normative features of Codes of Ethics in software engineering and to explicate how their value-based approach might prevent their usefulness from a normative perspective. Codes of Conduct cannot replace ethical deliberation because they do not and cannot offer guidance because of their underdetermined nature. This lack of orientation, we argue, triggers reactive behavior such as “cherry-picking,” “risk of indifference,” “ex-post orientation,” and the “desire to rely on gut feeling.” In the light of this, we propose to implement ethical deliberation within software development teams as a way out. (shrink)

This paper presents life and work in logic of Jerzy Słupecki, a distinguished Polish logician.

The article starts from the questions: what is it to be an inhabitant or citizen of a globalised world, and how are we to think of education in relation to such inhabitants? We examine more specifically the so–called ‘European area of higher education’ that is on the way to being established and that can be regarded as a concrete example of a process of globalisation. In the first part of the paper we try to show that the discursive horizon, and (...) the concrete techniques and strategies that accompany the establishment of this space of higher education, invite the inhabitants of that space to see themselves as entrepreneurial and autonomous entities. In the second part we show how this specific kind of subjectivation (this production of subjects), related as it is to this globalised space, involves what we call an immunisation that also affects our thinking and our ideas in and about education. To refer to this as a kind of immunisation implies that globalisation could in fact be considered a closing or enclosing rather than an opening up. We argue, therefore, that this immunisation needs to be refused in favour of the invention of other kinds of subjectivity, other ways of speaking and writing about the world and about education, such that we relate to ourselves in a different way. (shrink)

The main aim of the paper is critical reflection of the ethics of social consequences. The reflection is based on two partially related positions. Ethics of social consequences is, on the one hand, characterized as a contemporary ethical theory and, on the other, as a specific form of consequentialism. Methodology of criticism is based on the works of a homogenous group of modern-day consequentialist authors (though these are of diverse platforms): Pettit, Singer, Sen, Shaw. The purpose of this paper is (...) to provide objective reflection on the ethics of social consequences which may possibly become the base for further development and / or improvement of this original Slovak ethical theory. (shrink)

_Vygotsky Philosophy and Education_ reassesses the works of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky work by arguing that his central ideas about the nature of rationality and knowledge were informed by the philosophic tradition of Spinoza and Hegel. Presents a reassessment of the works of Lev Vygotsky in light of the tradition of Spinoza and Hegel informing his work Reveals Vygotsky’s connection with the work of contemporary philosophers such as Brandom and McDowell Draws on discussions in contemporary philosophy to revise prominent readings (...) of Vygotskian psychology and revisits educational debates where Vygotsky’s ideas were central Reveals the limitations of appropriations of Vygotsky which fail to recognize the Hegelian provenance of his work Shows the relevance of Brandom’s inferentialism for contemporary educational theory and practice. (shrink)

While Reinhart Koselleck articulated the limits of conceptual history in relation to social history, and the limits of historiographical understanding in his discussion of the event, his thinking about the limits of the conceptual as such is harder to trace. However, a close reading of key texts where he discusses situations or events marked as “meaningless” or absurd, allows us to uncover both his ethics and analytics of the limit of meaning, of what we call “the ungraspable.” It is further (...) argued that Koselleck's conceptual mapping of European modernity can be fruitfully extended by bringing it into contact with the ideas of thinkers such as Michel De Certeau, Edourd Glissant, and Francis Affergan who have contemplated how especially “the colonial” both represents the outside to and is the site from which the limit of European modernity and its conceptual universe might be (re)thought. (shrink)

Ideas about freedom and related concepts like autonomy and self-determination play a prominent role in the moral debate about human enhancement interventions. However, there is not a single understanding of freedom available, and arguments referring to freedom are simultaneously used to argue both for and against enhancement interventions. This gives rise to misunderstandings and polemical arguments. The paper attempts to disentangle the different distinguishable concepts, classifies them and shows how they relate to one another in order to allow for a (...) more structured and clearer debate. It concludes in identifying the individual underpinnings and the social conditions of choice and decision-making as particularly salient dimensions of freedom in the ethical debate about human enhancement. (shrink)

We introduce a cyclic proof system for the two-way alternation-free modal μ-calculus. The system manipulates one-sided Gentzen sequents and locally deals with the backwards modalities by allowing analytic applications of the cut rule. The global effect of backwards modalities on traces is handled by making the semantics relative to a specific strategy of the opponent in the evaluation game. This allows us to augment sequents by so-called trace atoms, describing traces that the proponent can construct against the opponent’s strategy. The (...) idea for trace atoms comes from Vardi’s reduction of alternating two-way automata to deterministic one-way automata. Using the multi-focus annotations introduced earlier by Marti and Venema, we turn this trace-based system into a path-based system. We prove that our system is sound for all sequents and complete for sequents not containing trace atoms. (shrink)

The ongoing legal and bioethics debates on consent requirements for collecting, storing, and utilizing human biological material for purposes of basic and applied research—that is, genomic research biobanking—have already managed to pass through three ostensibly dissimilar stages.

The issues that Paul Standish alerts us to are significant since they situate McDowell's argument in reference to works lying outside the mainstream tradition o.

There is a dearth of academic research on the ethics of pigeon racing. We argue that pigeon racing is associated with significant benefits and disadvantages, but that the benefits that have been associated with it can be provided by alternative practices. Disadvantages include the competitive element associated with racing, which creates a strong incentive to kill birds where this is not in their best interests, as well as the welfare issues related to transportation, the widowhood system, the races themselves, and (...) the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Whilst some of these disadvantages can be diminished, we argue that an ethical form of pigeon racing is not possible, and that it therefore ought to be prohibited. In the final part of this article, we question whether the moral problems associated with pigeon racing include the keeping of pigeons per se. On this issue, we argue that keeping pigeons does pose moral problems, but that more research is needed to explore whether these might be relatively minor compared to the problems associated with de-domesticating pigeons. The moral implications of our research extend beyond the world of pigeon racing as similar arguments should be used to question the racing and keeping of many other animals. (shrink)

This innovative book proposes a unique and original perspective on the nature of the mind and how phenomenal consciousness may arise in a physical world. From simple sentient organisms to complex self-reflective systems, Faye argues for a naturalistic-evolutionary approach to philosophy of mind and consciousness. Drawing on substantial literature in evolutionary biology and cognitive science, this book offers a promising alternative to the major theories of the mind-body problem: the quality of our experiences should not, as some philosophers have claimed, (...) be associated with subjectivity that is not open for scientific explanation, nor should it be associated with intrinsic properties of the brain. Instead, Faye argues that mental properties are extrinsic properties of the brain caused by the organism’s interaction with its environment. Taking on the explanatory gap, and rejecting the ontological pluralism of present naturalist theories of the mind, Faye thus proposes a unified view of reality in which it is possible to explain qualitative mental presentations as part of the physical world. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article examines the connections between social perfectibility and individual identity through George Orwell's famous non-place "Oceania" in 1984 (1949). It is argued that "Ingsoc" Party members see reality filtered through "collective solipsism," which is a mirage that is superimposed upon the material state of affairs in individual perception by the augmentation of every individual's environment with constant feedback from the social superstructure. Thus, perceptions, memories, and possibly even personalities are constructed situationally as fit for the superstructure. Due to the (...) constantly intensifying regress of cognitive and material enabling factors, this "collective delusion" will detach itself from the material realm completely in 2050 when individual consciousness fully dissolves into Big Brother's super-mind. 1984 thus depicts a dystopian-utopian, "blackwhite" society on the "event horizon" to a "singularity," which will emerge when the state or collective becomes an absolute and no traces of private life remain. (shrink)

ABSTRACT On 22 January 2001, the UK became the first country to approve of embryonic stem cell research by passing the Human Fertilisation (Research Purposes) Regulations 2001, which legislated new research purposes for which early embryos can be used, in addition to those approved by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Legal advisory committees, most notably the Chief Medical Officer's Expert Group and the House of Lords’ Select Committee, have offered various reasons, which can also be found in the (...) ethics literature, to justify this change. Those examined here are the views that: 1. Early embryos lack relevant qualities (or ‘the argument from lack of qualities’) and 2. Early embryos only have a potentiality to become humans with moral status (or ‘the argument from potentiality’). The validity of these arguments is questioned and a case is made for egalitarian speciesism. Embryos have moral status (used here in the restricted sense of the status possessed by all members of the class of beings which deserve the greatest moral significance in equal measure). They have more value than the value that should be assigned to nonhuman beings from the start of fertilisation. Current UK legislation on embryo research is immoral. (shrink)

Embodied cognition is an interpretative—or hermeneutical—cognition inherent in motor-sensory perception intrinsically informed by biological and sociocultural memory, a cognition embedded in the organism as well as the socio-cultural environment interacting with it (Ward et al. TOPOI 36:365–375, 2017), of which technologies are a part. Yet, smart machines are advancing on human abilities to perceive and interpret concerning the accuracy, quantity, and quality of the data processed. Machines process and categorize images, perform classification tasks, they calculate and perform pattern analysis, all (...) machine learning processes are task-specific. Machine learning processes resemble human interpretative processes; however, these are two very different ways of “dealing with something,” although both can be said to be hermeneutical, one enactive, the other material; the first is a meaning-generating interpretative process, the second a statistics-based information output. The information extracted from all the data fed into the computer is the end-product of machine learning, whereas human interpretative enactments are continuous and necessary for any application of the information output. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION This study arose from involvement with the works of Thomas Aquinas (/5-) that was not only intensive, but also extensive in the time devoted to ...

The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.

The paper deals with Pico’s conception of man, especially with regard to his use of Jewish sources. This is mostly apparent in Pico’s works Oratio (1486), Conclusiones (1486) and Heptaplus (1488/89). Firstly, we point out his collaboration with Flavius Mithridates, who was Pico’s Hebrew teacher and an intepreter of some Jewish mystical texts (Gersonides, Nahmanides, Recanati). Secondly, we emphasize that at the same time Pico was in contact with another Jewish scholar Yohanan Alemanno as well. For this reason, modern interpreters (...) (Idel, Lelli) believe that one of the main sources not only for Pico’s Oratio but also for his late work Heptaplus were some of Alemanno’s writings (particularly his Heshek Shlomo and Hay ha-‘Olamin). Therefore, I examine Pico’s syncretic model of dignitas hominis, which was inspired on one hand by Neoplatonic philosophy and Aristotelianism, and on the other hand by Jewish and Christian mystical tradition. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

Biography of the Indian philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950.

Political and social developments in Venezuela have significantly influenced the events of the entire Latin American continent in the first two decades of the 21st century. Our research, time-framed between 1999 and 2013, focuses on the political, legal, social and economic aspects of the Venezuelan society development at the end of the last century and the first two decades of our century. The article also examines how social movements set in motion by chavismo led, in 1999, to the adoption of (...) a new constitution based on the principles of the separation of the five powers and how it contributed to the formation of the political movements across the Latin American continent known as the pink tide (marea rosa). (shrink)