As behavioural economics reveals, human decision-making deviates from neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour and people (often) fail to make the ‘right’ welfare-enhancing choice. The purpose of Sunstein and Thaler’s concept of ‘nudge’ is to improve individual welfare. To provide normative justification, they argue that the only relevant normative criterion is whether the individual is ‘better off as judged by themselves’, so that the direction in which people are to be nudged is defined by their own preferences. In light of behavioural (...) findings, however, people’s choices do not provide a sound basis for eliciting preferences and thus for assessing welfare. In this paper, I aim to challenge Sunstein and Thaler’s normative view, arguing that it is unreasonable to rely on conventional welfare economics, particularly considering the given context. Sunstein and Thaler depend on an approach of ‘preference purification’ which assumes informed, latent, and true preferences: As a result they face crucial methodological, epistemological, and practical objections, and cannot show how their approach enhances individual welfare. By building on the concepts of R. Sugden and C. Schubert, I develop an alternative normative framework for behavioural public policy, based on a contractualist perspective in which people may consent to collective choice rules in order to align future behaviour with values, to achieve particular goals or to preserve personal integrity. Individual consent and citizens’ participation and deliberation are crucial to this approach. This contractualist approach may provide a normative justification for behavioural public policy, and help to reconcile behavioural and normative economics. (shrink)
New technologies not only contribute greatly to society and the economy; they also involve fundamental societal shifts, challenging our values and ideas about ourselves and the world. With a view to aligning technological change and innovation with ethical values, the concept of responsible innovation advocates the inclusion of a variety of stakeholders, in particular from society. In shifting moral responsibility towards the producers of innovations, responsible innovation rejects the standard normative economic view that the ethical evaluation of innovations is a (...) matter of individual consumers’ market-based choices. However, in this article we argue that responsible innovation should not abandon all normative consideration of the individual outright, to which end we present an alternative normative economic approach based on preference learning. We show how this approach can provide an enhanced understanding of responsible innovation by clarifying the redistribution of moral responsibility and casting individuals in the normative role of co-innovators, rather than mere consumers. We argue that responsible innovation should enable individuals to form preferences and evaluate innovations, so as to align innovation with ethical demands. Finally, we show how our proposed approach can be put into practice in so-called laboratories in real-world contexts, using methods from the field of design. In short, drawing on normative economics, this article aims to establish a new understanding of responsible innovation that is conceptually sound and can form the basis for novel innovation practices. (shrink)
Das Buch legt in geschichtlicher Reihenfolge dar, wie sich herausragende Denker des Abendlandes Gott geistig und geistlich angenähert haben und wer für sie Gott im Wesentlichen war. So war für die antiken Philosophen Platon und Plotin das Göttliche vor allem das Gute, Schöne oder Eine. Als christliche Denker suchten dann im Früh- und Hochmittelalter Augustinus, Richard von St. Viktor und Thomas von Aquin auf je eigene Weise die Dreieinheit Gottes zu erklären. Am Beginn der Neuzeit endete die lebenslange Suche des (...) Nikolaus von Kues nach dem angemessensten Gottesbegriff schliesslich beim "Können selbst." In der Neuzeit erfuhr Teresa von Avila Gott als das Innerste ihrer Seele, während ihr Ordensbruder Johannes vom Kreuz Gott als lebendige Liebesflamme erlebte. In seinen "Meditationen" bestimmte Descartes Gott als das vollkommenste Wesen. Wiederum dem dreieinen Gott näherte sich Hegel mit seiner spekulativen Lehre vom Reich des Vaters, des Sohnes und des Geistes. Für Hans Urs von Balthasar war im 20. Jh. das stellvertretende Leiden des Gottessohnes für uns Menschen von entscheidender Bedeutung. Im selben Zeitraum verstand Karl Rahner Gott primär als das heilige Geheimnis. Anhand eines Hauptwerkes oder mehrerer Werke wird jeweils der Weg oder ein Weg dieser Denker zu Gott nachgezeichnet. Ausserdem werden mithilfe neuerer angelsächsischer Diskussionen einige Eigenschaften Gottes erörtert: sein Schöpfertum sowie seine Allmacht, Allwissenheit und Ewigkeit.-- Back cover. (shrink)
During the last decade, Network Science has become one of the most active fields in applied physics and mathematics, since it allows the analysis of a diversity of social, biological and technological systems [24]. From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion paper we are concerned about its potential to analyse one of the most extended group sports, Football (soccer in U.S. terminology) [29], since it allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance not captured (...) by classical analyses based on the performance of individual players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which, paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences “can not be analysed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the contrary, considering the system as a whole” or, in the classical words of after-match interviews “it’s not just me, it’s the team”. The recent ability of obtaining datasets of all events occurring during a match, including the position of the players and the interactions between them has opened the door to new kind of studies where it is possible to analyse and quantify the behaviour of a team as a whole, together with the role of a single player [17]. Under this framework, the organization of a team can be considered as the result of the interaction between its players, creating a network based on passes. In this way, we can create passing networks, which are directed (i.e.,... (shrink)
JohannJakob Engel ist einer der profiliertesten Köpfe der Berliner Aufklärung. Als Lehrer am Joachimsthalschen Gymnasium, Mitglied der geheimen Mittwochsgesellschaft, der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Prinzenerzieher des späteren Königs Friedrich Wilhelm III. und Direktor des Nationaltheaters prägte er von 1775 bis 1794 maßgeblich das kulturelle und intellektuelle Profil Berlins. Der Band geht auf ein Colloquium zu Engels 200. Todestag zurück und berücksichtigt die wichtigsten Facetten des Schriftstellers, Kritikers, Kunsttheoretikers und "Philosophen für die Welt".
This essay examines Descartes’s impact on medical faculties in the German Reformed context, focusing on the case of the Marburg physician JohannJakob Waldschmidt (1644–89). It first surveys the wider backdrop of Descartes-reception in German universities, and highlights its generally conciliatory character. Waldschmidt appears as a counterpoint to this tendency. The essay then situates Waldschmidt’s work in the context of confessional politics at the University of Marburg, and specifically of the heightened controversy in Hesse around the teaching of (...) Descartes in the last years of Waldschmidt’s life. The second half of the essay details Waldschmidt’s ambitious program to reform medicine along Cartesian lines, in physiology, pathology, and therapy, and evaluates its merits and limits. (shrink)
This paper reports two cases in Hong Kong involving two native Chinese adolescent cancer patients (APs) who were denied their rights to consent to necessary treatments refused by their parents, resulting in serious harm. We argue that the dynamics of the 'AP-physician-family-relationship' and the dominant role Chinese families play in medical decision-making (MDM) are best understood in terms of the tendency to hierarchy and parental authoritarianism in traditional Confucianism. This ethic has been confirmed and endorsed by various Chinese writers from (...) Mainland China and Hong Kong. Rather than giving an unqualified endorsement to this ethic, based more on cultural sentimentalism than rational moral reasoning, we warn that a strong familism in MDM, which deprives 'weak' family members of rights, represents the less desirable elements of this tradition, against which healthcare professionals working in this cultural milieu need to safeguard. Specifically for APs, we suggest that parental authority and family integrity should be re-interpreted in terms of parental responsibility and the enhancement of children's interests respectively, as done in the West. This implies that when parents refuse to consent to necessary treatment and deny their adolescent children's right to consent, doctors, as the only remaining advocates of the APs' interest, have the duty to inform the state, which can override parental refusal to enable the doctors to fulfill their professional and moral obligations. In so doing the state exercises its 'parens patriae' power to defend the defenseless in society and the integrity of the medical profession. (shrink)
JohannJakob Wagner (1775-1841), disciple de Schelling et important acteur de la Naturphilosophie allemande, publie en 1803 un ouvrage intitulé Von der Natur der Dinge où il lance le projet d’une réforme de la mathématique visant à l’intégrer à la philosophie. Il provoque ainsi un débat animé dans lequel divers acteurs, scientifiques et philosophes, vont exprimer leur point de vue sur la relation entre les deux disciplines. Nous nous intéresserons en particulier à la réponse de Johann Schön (...) (1771-1839), un mathématicien qui publie l’année suivante un livre aujourd’hui oublié dans lequel il rejette vigoureusement le projet de Wagner. L’analyse de ce débat aide, dans le contexte des réformes universitaires du début du xixe, à comprendre l’histoire de l’émergence en Allemagne d’une discipline mathématique autonome, ainsi que l’apparition de nouvelles problématiques autour de l’axiomatisation et de la systématique. (shrink)
Le philosophe populaire berlinois JohannJakob Engel a amorcé, à la fin du XVIII siècle, des recherches importantes dans le domaine de la sémiotique esthétique, problématique alors presque entièrement neuve que venait de lancer le Laocoon de Lessing. A peine quelque années plus tard, l’œuvre de Engel constitue déjà un élargissement considérable de la problématique lessingienne, tout autant d’ailleurs qu’une remise en cause de certaines de ses prémisses : la sémiotique théâtrale ne peut-elle constituer une alternative à la (...) scission sémiotique des « arts du temps » et des « arts de l’espace » ? Plus spécifiquement, l’analyse sémiotique du geste sera pour Engel l’occasion de dégager deux notions singulièrement opératoires : « peinture » et « expression » (Malerei, Ausdruck) qui seront transposables dans une sémiotique esthétique générale. En effet, elles permettent à Engel est de dégager analogies fortes entre musique, poétique, gestuel, pour s’acheminer vers une sémiotique comparée dont la perspective est entièrement neuve. On en retracera les ressorts essentiels en mettant en lumière le rôle intermédiaire important dévolu d’une part au modèle rhétorique de l’éloquence, d’autre part à la fonction métaphorique – moteurs de la transposition d’une sémiotique du langage à celle d’un « langage du geste ». (shrink)
Objectives: To investigate whether Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong share similar perceptions with their Western counterparts regarding their capacity for autonomous decision-making, and secondarily whether Chinese parents underestimate their adolescent children's desire and capacity for autonomous decision-making.Method:‘Healthy Adolescents’ and their parents were recruited from four local secondary schools, and ‘Sick Adolescents’ and their parents from the pediatric wards and outpatient clinics. Their perceptions of adolescents' understanding of illnesses and treatments, maturity in judgment, risk-taking, openness to divergent opinions, pressure from parents (...) and doctors, submission to parental authority and preference for autonomy in medical decision-making are surveyed by a 50-item questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale.Results: Findings indicate that Chinese adolescents aged 14–16 perceive themselves to possess the necessary cognitive abilities and maturity in judgment to be autonomous decision-makers like their Western counterparts. Paradoxically, although they hesitate to assert their autonomy, they are also unwilling to surrender that autonomy to their parents even under coercion or intimidation. Parents tend to underestimate their adolescents' preferences for making autonomous decisions and overestimate the importance of parental authority in decision-making.Conclusion:‘14-and-above’ Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong perceive themselves as capable of autonomous decision-making in medically-related matters, but hesitate to assert their autonomy, probably because of the Confucian values of parental authority and filial piety that are deeply embedded in the local culture. (shrink)
As a social and political thought, communitarian ideas appeared in the Pre-Qin Confucianism. By the Song Dynasty, it had become a systematic theory, namely, the learning of the “four books.” As a social and political theory, not only can Confucian communitarianism contribute to Western liberalism, but it can also be an intellectual resource for the development of democracy in East Asian countries and regions. The future of the Confucian communitarianism lies in its critique of itself and its discourse with Western (...) liberalism, by which Confucianism evolves from communitarianism into liberalism. (shrink)
