Recent Supreme Court decisions have established second tier protection for commercial speech under the First Amendment by according it some, but not all, of the protections accorded ideological speech. The Court''s arguments closely parallel John Staurt Mill''s utilitarian arguments about liberty, liberty-limiting principles and trade in his classic essay,On Liberty, and hence are subject to the same defects as any utilitarian analysis and justification of a right. Recent philosophical apologies for the Court''s bifurcated approach to free speech are unpersuasive. (...) Commercial speech protects fundamental interests. There are important connections between freedom of commercial speech and political and personal autonomy. It is possible to extend full protection to commercial speech, while simultaneously minimizing its potential for abuse. Such considerations provide compelling arguments for taking the right to freedom of commercial communication seriously by according it full First Amendment protection and by restricting it only when competing and over-riding rights claims, or weightier considerations of justice, can be adduced. (shrink)

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

The British bestseller Straw Dogs is an exciting, radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the (...) Earth. John Gray argues that this belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs. Will Self, in the New Statesman , called Straw Dogs his book of the year: “I read it once, I read it twice and took notes . . . I thought it that good.” “Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book” ( Sunday Telegraph ). (shrink)

When we say that someone knows something we are making a value judgment—we are saying that there is something intellectually good or right about the person’s belief, or about the way she believes it, or perhaps about her. We are saying, for example, that her belief is intellectually better than someone else’s mere opinion. Notice that we might make this sort of value judgment even if the two persons agree. Suppose that two people agree that the earth is the third (...) planet from the sun. Nevertheless, we might think that one person knows this while the other person merely believes it. If so, we are making a value judgment—we are saying that there is something intellectually better going on in the case of knowledge. Another way to put the point is to say that knowledge is a normative notion. There is something normatively better about the case of knowledge, as opposed to the case of mere opinion, or even the case of true opinion. Finally, saying that someone knows something is not the only sort of value judgment we can make about her belief. Even if we agree that some belief falls short of knowledge, we might nevertheless judge that it is justified, or rational, or reasonable, or responsible. In each such case, we are saying that there is something normatively better about the case in question, as opposed to the case of mere opinion, or even the case of true opinion. (shrink)

Great technological advances in such areas as computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics have brought the advent of artificially intelligent robots within our reach within the next century. Against this background, the interdisciplinary field of machine ethics is concerned with the vital issue of making robots “ethical” and examining the moral status of autonomous robots that are capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. The existence of such robots will deeply reshape our socio-political life. This paper focuses on whether such highly (...) advanced yet artificially intelligent beings will deserve moral protection once they become capable of moral reasoning and decision-making. I argue that we are obligated to grant them moral rights once they have become full ethical agents, i.e., subjects of morality. I present four related arguments in support of this claim and thereafter examine four main objections to the idea of ascribing moral rights to artificial intelligent robots. (shrink)

This paper considers the hotly debated issue of whether one should grant moral and legal personhood to intelligent robots once they have achieved a certain standard of sophistication based on such criteria as rationality, autonomy, and social relations. The starting point for the analysis is the European Parliament’s resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics and its recommendation that robots be granted legal status and electronic personhood. The resolution is discussed against the background of the so-called Robotics Open Letter, which (...) is critical of the Civil Law Rules on Robotics. The paper reviews issues related to the moral and legal status of intelligent robots and the notion of legal personhood, including an analysis of the relation between moral and legal personhood in general and with respect to robots in particular. It examines two analogies, to corporations and animals, that have been proposed to elucidate the moral and legal status of robots. The paper concludes that one should not ascribe moral and legal personhood to currently existing robots, given their technological limitations, but that one should do so once they have achieved a certain level at which they would become comparable to human beings. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy of science takes on sharp contour in terms of his interaction with the practicing life scientists of his day, particularly Johann Blumenbach and the latter’s student, Christoph Girtanner, who in 1796 attempted to synthesize the ideas of Kant and Blumenbach. Indeed, Kant’s engagement with the life sciences played a far more substantial role in his transcendental philosophy than has been recognized hitherto. The theory of epigenesis, especially in light of Kant’s famous analogy in the first Critique, posed crucial (...) questions regarding the ‘looseness of fit’ between the constitutive and the regulative in Kant’s theory of empirical law. A detailed examination of Kant’s struggle with epigenesis between 1784 and 1790 demonstrates his grave reservations about its hylozoist implications, leading to his even stronger insistence on the discrimination of constitutive from regulative uses of reason. The continuing relevance of these issues for Kant’s philosophy of science is clear from the work of Buchdahl and its contemporary reception. (shrink)

The danger of human operators devolving responsibility to machines and failing to detect cases where they fail has been recognised for many years by industrial psychologists and engineers studying the human operators of complex machines. We call it “the control problem”, understood as the tendency of the human within a human–machine control loop to become complacent, over-reliant or unduly diffident when faced with the outputs of a reliable autonomous system. While the control problem has been investigated for some time, up (...) to this point its manifestation in machine learning contexts has not received serious attention. This paper aims to fill that gap. We argue that, except in certain special circumstances, algorithmic decision tools should not be used in high-stakes or safety-critical decisions unless the systems concerned are significantly “better than human” in the relevant domain or subdomain of decision-making. More concretely, we recommend three strategies to address the control problem, the most promising of which involves a complementary coupling between highly proficient algorithmic tools and human agents working alongside one another. We also identify six key principles which all such human–machine systems should reflect in their design. These can serve as a framework both for assessing the viability of any such human–machine system as well as guiding the design and implementation of such systems generally. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 1, Page 88-117, March 2022.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy after ChristJohn O'CallaghanConsider the words of Justin Martyr written in the middle of the second century after the birth of Christ and after Justin's conversion to Christianity:Philosophy is indeed one's greatest possession, and is most precious in the sight of God, to whom it alone leads us and to whom it unites us, and in truth they who have applied themselves to philosophy are holy men.1In addition to (...) the praise heaped upon the philosophers, among whom Justin had counted himself before his conversion,2 the text is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the historical reality of Christian intellectual engagement with pagan or secular philosophy. Whether that engagement proved spiritually fruitful or sterile in any particular age or any particular tradition of philosophy, Christian intellectuals have often sought out engagement with philosophy as an inherent task of the intellectual life of the Church, in order to pursue and develop the understanding of Christian revelation and the mode of life informed by it. One lasting result of the impetus represented by Justin is to be found even now in the normative requirement in Catholic education that, at a certain stage of development, anyone who receives a [End Page 49] serious Catholic education must be introduced to serious philosophical reflection on where we came from, what we are, and where we are born to go.In addition, one of the general points John Henry Newman made in The Idea of a University is that the human mind looks for unity in the diversity of intellectual disciplines it pursues. In search of this unity, it seeks a kind of primary discipline that takes into account the truths discovered throughout the other disciplines as it seeks to understand what it can of the whole of reality, not just its parts. But Newman also pointed out that, in the absence of such a unifying discipline, practitioners of each particular discipline will often claim for their particular discipline the prize of being primary—of being the discipline by which all others must be understood and judged.3Take classical and modern physics. A familiar claim of some physicists, but even more so of non-physicist physicalists, is that physics is the fundamental intellectual discipline for understanding what is real. All reality, living reality, historical reality, moral reality, indeed perhaps even literary reality, must be reduced to reality as described by the physicists or rejected as unreal or epiphenomenal, or in a kinder, gentler vein, non-reductively emergent and supervenient. Whichever position is taken, whether reduction, non-reductive emergence, or epiphenomenalism, the thought is that the real work of the really real is done by reality as described by physics, either in its actual contemporary state or, more likely, in an idealized future state always on the horizon of where physics presently is. We are really atoms spinning ceaselessly in the void, mostly empty space, the warp and woof of a four-dimensional space-time manifold, or congeries of strings in an even more bizarre thirteen-dimensional manifold, or whatever was said most recently to surpass what was said before that by the leading physicists in California or Cambridge.However, anyone who has actually practiced physics knows that, even when uttered by a physicist, these are not claims of physics, but about physics. What prompts them is the sense that there is no intellectual discipline other than contemporary physics itself that can both understand the achievements of physics and integrate them into a larger intellectual comprehension of reality as a whole. These claims about physics nicely display Newman's point about the way in which a particular discipline, in the absence of a larger more comprehensive discipline, can take on an importance for its practitioners well beyond its disciplinary limits. [End Page 50]In the case of physics, if a more comprehensive unifying discipline is not to be found, this attitude is not entirely unjustified, for Newman's point is partly Aristotelian. Aristotle had pointed out that, if one cannot show that unchangeable, and thus non-physical beings, exist, then what Aristotle called "first philosophy" would just be physics as he understood it, the science of... (shrink)

This volume brings together J.S. Mills On Liberty and a selection of important essays by such eminent scholars as Isaiah Berlin, Alan Ryan, John Rees, C.L. Ten and Richard Wollheim. As well as providing authoritative commentary upon On Liberty , the essays reflect a broader debate about the philosophical foundations of Mill's liberalism, particularly the question of the connection betweenMill's professed utilitarianism and his commitment to individual liberty. Introduced and edited by John Gray and G.W. Smith, the book (...) will be of interest to students of Mill, to ethical and political philosophers and to anyone interested in the contemporary status of liberalism. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 3, Page 181-193, September 2022.

Why is the human imagination to blame for the worst crimes of the twentieth century? Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why is contemporary atheism just a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, author of Straw Dogsand Black Mass, is one of the most original and iconoclastic thinkers of our time. In this pugnacious and brilliantly readable collection of essays from across his career, he smashes through humanity's most cherished beliefs to overturn our view of the world, and our (...) place in it. 'If humans are different from other animals it is chiefly in being governed by myths, which are not creations of the will but creatures of the imagination.' 'No traditional myth is as untruthful as the modern myth of progress. All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce.'. (shrink)

"[The authors] artfully piece together important essays in educational policy and philosophy. . . . The book deals in detail with such issues as teacher professionalization, moral responsibility of public schools, accountability, and ethical codes of practice. Must reading for teachers, administrators, and professors in schools and departments of education." --Choice.

The imagery we adopt when recalling the personal past may involve different perspectives. In many cases, we remember the past event from our original point of view. In some cases, however, we remember the past event from an external “observer” perspective and view ourselves in the remembered scene. Are such observer perspective images genuine memories? Are they accurate representations of the personal past? This chapter focuses on such observer perspectives in memory, and outlines and examines proposals about the nature of (...) such imagery. (shrink)

The central conceptual idea of the contemporary theory of general relativity--or geometrodynamics--is the identification of matter with the structure of space-time. No entities foreign to space-time, like masses, charges, or independent fields are needed, and physics thus becomes identical with the geometry of space-time. This idea implies a philosophical description of the universe that is monistic and organic, characterized by an all-encompassing interdependence of events. Moreover, it is an idea with deep roots in the history of philosophy. For these reasons, (...) the author of this important study strives to clarify these philosophical and historical issues before proceeding to the details of the physical theory of geometrodynamics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Are There Failed Persons?John O'CallaghanIntroductionAre there failed persons? Yes. However, before explaining what a failed person is, it will be good to consider closely a very significant part of our society to get a sense of what it thinks a failed person is, since my account of what a failed person is is markedly different. It is important to think about the question of failed persons because there (...) are growing movements here and abroad aimed at killing by medical means human beings who are judged in some sense to be failed persons, human beings who do not count as persons according to a common societal notion of persons, a social-psychological notion of persons.The question for anyone who lives within this society with its notion of failed persons is whether one will take part in and support this movement toward killing human beings or avoid it, indeed whether one will push back against it. It is easy enough to fall into a trap of thinking about failed persons the way much of our society does. One's complicity in adopting the social-psychological notion of person contributes to enabling the acceptance of such killing, even if one believes one would never perform the killing act. My effort here is precisely to push back against such killing, by pushing back against the notion of persons that animates it.The killing of human beings by our society is not simply confined to abortion, as it has been legally and widely available here in the United States for almost fifty years now. Recent political discussions in the wake of the Dobbs decision have made it clear that many political leaders think such killing ought to be allowed all the way up until birth, and perhaps after. Relatively [End Page 1123] recently there was an article in a mainstream bioethics journal by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva arguing that what most people would take to be cases of infanticide should be renamed, per their title, "After-Birth Abortion."1 The article was not about the moral legitimacy of either infanticide or abortion. The moral legitimacy of those acts for various reasons was taken as a given by the authors. In the case of euthanizing infants, they noted the expanding number of arguments for it among philosophers, the desire for guidelines for doing it among members of the medical profession, and the protocols for it established in places like the Netherlands.The authors argued that in the case of newborns, including healthy newborns, killing them should not be considered infanticide or euthanasia.2 They distinguished abortion from both euthanasia and infanticide. Euthanasia involves killing a human person, where a person is understood to be a being that can experience itself as having interests that can be harmed. "We take 'person' to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her."3 Euthanasia, when justified, is justified by being in the best "interests" of the person killed. Infanticide involves euthanizing children.However, the authors claim that a newborn is not a person in the sense of "person" specified. So, the authors' term "after-birth abortion" is a terminological distinction based upon denying that a newborn is a child, children being persons. They also assume that infants are children as they understand "child." So not being a child, a newborn cannot be an infant. Not being an infant, killing it cannot be infanticide or euthanasia, again as the authors define those terms.4 Instead, killing the newborns, healthy or not, should be thought of as having the same moral weight as an abortion before birth, and thus rather than being called infanticide or euthanasia, it should be called "after-birth abortion."5Killing a newborn then is "ethically permissible" in just the same circumstances and for the same reasons as abortion is ethically permissible. Among [End Page 1124] the "ethically permissible" circumstances for killing newborns, including perfectly healthy newborns, are that the "well-being of the family is at risk" with respect to "social, psychological, economic" factors,6 but also the fact... (shrink)

Sven Bernecker has raised questions about how agent reliabilism should adjudicate clairvoyance cases.1 Bernecker’s charge is that the view cannot accommodate internalist intuitions about such cases while remaining psychologically plausible. His more specific charge is that invoking the notion of cognitive integration does not help. This paper responds to Bernecker’s charges. In section 1 we clarify a version of agent reliabilism and Bernecker’s objections against it. In section 2 we say more about how the notion of cognitive integration helps to (...) adjudicate clairvoyance cases and other proposed counterexamples to reliabilism. The central idea is that cognitive integration underwrites a kind of belief ownership, which in turn underwrites the sort of responsibility for belief required for subjective justification. In section 3 we say more about what cognitive integration amounts to, drawing on some recent accounts of desire ownership from the literature on autonomy and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Sanford Goldberg has called our attention to an interesting problem: How is it that young children can learn from the testimony of their caregivers (their parents, teachers, and nannies, for example) even when the children themselves are undiscriminating consumers of testimony? Part One describes the importance and scope of the problem, showing that it generalizes beyond tots and their caregivers. Part Two considers and rejects several strategies for solving the problem, including Goldberg's own. Part Three defends a solution, positing a (...) previously unnoticed social dimension to knowledge. (shrink)

The leading hypothesis concerning the “reuse” or “recycling” of neural circuits builds on the assumption that evolution might prefer the redeployment of established circuits over the development of new ones. What conception of cognitive architecture can survive the evidence for this hypothesis? In particular, what sorts of “modules” are compatible with this evidence? I argue that the only likely candidates will, in effect, be the columns which Vernon Mountcastle originally hypothesized some 60 years ago, and which form part of the (...) well-known columnar hypothesis in neuroscience—systems that cannot handle gross cognitive functions as distinct from strictly exiguous subfunctions. This is in stark contrast to the modules postulated by much of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. And yet the fate of this revised notion is unclear. The main issue confronting it is the effect of the neural network context on local function. At some point the effects of context are so strong that the degree of specialization required for modularity is not able to be met. Still, despite indications from neuroimaging that peripheral and central systems deploy shared circuitry, some skills clearly do seem to display modularization and autonomy. This article: provides an in-depth analytical and historical review of the fortunes of modular thinking in cognitive science; offers a systematic calibration of brain regions in terms of degrees of functional specificity and robustness; and suggests another way of accounting for the partially encapsulated character of expertise and other highly practiced skills without having to resort to domain-specific modules. (shrink)

The past two decades have witnessed a revival of interest in multiple realization and multiply realized kinds. Bechtel and Mundale’s (1999) illuminating discussion of the subject must no doubt be credited with having generated much of this renewed interest. Among other virtues, their paper expresses what seems to be an important insight about multiple realization: that unless we keep a consistent grain across realized and realizing kinds, claims alleging the multiple realization of psychological kinds are vulnerable to refutation. In this (...) paper I argue that, intuitions notwithstanding, the terms of their recommendation make it impossible to follow, while also misleadingly insinuating that its application virtually guarantees mind-brain identity. Instead of a matching of grains, what multiple realization really requires is a principled method for adjudicating upon differences between tokens. Shapiro’s (2000) work on multiple realization can be understood as an attempt to adumbrate just such a method. While his “causal relevance” criterion can easily be mistaken for Bechtel and Mundale’s grain requirement, my analysis reveals exactly where and why these two tests diverge. (shrink)

The earliest writer who deserves to be called a psychologist is Hobbes; and if we consider the time when he wrote, we cannot fail to be surprised at what I may term his prevision of the most important results which have now been established by science. He was the first clearly to sound the note which has ever since constituted the bass, or fundamental tone, of scientific thought. Let us listen to it through the clear instrumentality of his own language:-.

This paper examines the ethical pitfalls and challenges that non-ethicists, such as researchers and programmers in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, face when building moral machines. Whether ethics is “computable” depends on how programmers understand ethics in the first place and on the adequacy of their understanding of the ethical problems and methodological challenges in these fields. Researchers and programmers face at least two types of problems due to their general lack of ethical knowledge or expertise. (...) The first type is so-called rookie mistakes, which could be addressed by providing these people with the necessary ethical knowledge. The second, more difficult methodological issue concerns areas of peer disagreement in ethics, where no easy solutions are currently available. This paper examines several existing approaches to highlight the ethical pitfalls and challenges involved. Familiarity with these and similar problems can help programmers to avoid pitfalls and build better moral machines. The paper concludes that ethical decisions regarding moral robots should be based on avoiding what is immoral in combination with a pluralistic ethical method of solving moral problems, rather than relying on a particular ethical approach, so as to avoid a normative bias. (shrink)

A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life. For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas -- from psychiatry to evolution to Communist -- seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God. This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is (...) a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals -- popularized through mediums and automatic writing -- that there was a non-religious form of life after death. Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives. (shrink)

What makes ethical accounts natural law ethical is, I argue, commonly misrepresented in teaching within much of the philosophical academy. Yet those immersed in the field of natural law and ethics rarely give definitions/brief characterisations of what makes ethical accounts natural law ethical. I suggest theoretical reasons for the lack. I argue that bringing natural law into ethics is best understood as leading to theoretically unitary accounts, not simply collections of positions detachable from each other: an overlooked and significant point (...) when defending natural law ethical accounts. My arguments throughout rely on the metaethical/normative ethical distinction, which is relatively little used in the natural law literature. I argue that the distinction helps clarify what is distinctive of natural law ethical accounts in general, especially to the secular contemporary philosophical academy, where appreciation of natural law ethical accounts is commonly appreciably lower than in philosophical contexts with a religious ethos. (shrink)

Modularity is a fundamental doctrine in the cognitive sciences. It holds a preeminent position in cognitive psychology and generative linguistics, as well as a long history in neurophysiology, with roots going all the way back to the early nineteenth century. But a mature field of neuroscience is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has challenged orthodox conceptions of the modular mind. One way of accommodating modularity within the new framework suggested by these developments is to go for increasingly soft versions of (...) modularity. One such version, which I call the “system” view, is so soft that it promises to meet practically any challenge neuroscience can throw at it. In this paper, I reconsider afresh what we ought to regard as the sine qua non of modularity and offer a few arguments against the view that an insipid “system” module could be the legitimate successor of the traditional notion. (shrink)

We develop an account of societal democratization that synthesizes cultural sociology and deliberative democracy. Cultural sociologists emphasize the symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups into the civil sphere. Deliberative democrats stress growth in the deliberative capacity of society. We argue that democratization entails the co-evolution of culture and reason. The basis of co-evolution is the performative construction of an inclusive demos, which requires a deliberative background but is also a source of the moral emotions that motivate deliberation. Since moral emotions can (...) also sweep people up and make them do reckless things, they must in turn be redeemable in inclusive deliberation. This synthesis sharpens a normative position for the evaluation of episodes of inclusion, extends current accounts of the place of emotion in cultural sociology and deliberative democracy, and provides a frame for comparative analyses of democratization. We illustrate with an examination of the exclusion and inclusion of Indigenous Australians. (shrink)

_The Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset_ is the third and final volume of John T. Graham's massive investigation of the thought of Ortega, the renowned twentieth-century Spanish essayist and philosopher. This volume concludes the synthetic trilogy on Ortega's thought as a whole, after previous studies of his philosophy of life and his theory of history. As the last thing on which he labored, Ortega's social theory completed what he called a "system of life" in three dimensions—a unity in (...) the plurality of philosophy, history, and sociology as three fundamental disciplines that enter into and overlap each other and other humanities. In this volume, Graham investigates Ortega's social thought as expressed in his central work, _Man and People,_ and in several pragmatic fields, interpreting it all in terms of comprehensive categories of postmodernism and interdisciplinarity. While others have studied Ortega's social thought and recently his postmodernity, no one has done so in the context of his thought as a whole or by such a variety of methods. The "unity in plurality" of Ortega's system is evident in the broad and varied structure of his sociology, which he intended to serve for postmodern times. His own postmodernism was rooted in Nietzsche but also in the pragmatism—from James, Peirce, and Dewey—that informs all parts of this trilogy. Ortega was the first educator with an interdisciplinary theory and practice—another aspect of the "unity in plurality" of his system. He found inspiration in both ancient and modern precedents for what he saw as a postmodern method of investigating themes and problems that are common to all the human sciences. Innovations at his Institute of Humanities were early postmodern precedents for a new interdisciplinary social method for use by specialists in a variety of fields. All of those interested in Ortega can utilize such methods to elucidate his thought as a whole as well as to pursue their own collaborative work. Home Complete Catalog Order Information Search. (shrink)

Contemporary society operates beyond safe boundaries of the Earth system. Returning to a safe operating space for humanity within Earth system boundaries is a question of justice. The relevance of the economy—and thus of business—for bringing society back to a safe and just operating space highlights the importance of business ethics research for understanding the role of business in Earth system justice. In this commentary, we explore the relevance of business ethics research for understanding the crucial role of business in (...) the dynamics of the Earth system. We do so by integrating the perspectives of business ethics and system-oriented sustainability science on the basis of the theory of metabolic rift, which explains how the dynamics of capitalism result in the destruction of the natural environment. On this basis, we argue that a mutually reinforcing relationship between perpetual economic growth and profit seeking behaviour of business, which we call the _loop of unsustainability_, continually deepens the metabolic rift and keeps business from effectively contributing to Earth system justice. This perspective allows us to formulate firm-level and system-level preconditions for attaining Earth system justice, and to sketch a research agenda that links business ethics scholarship with questions of Earth system justice. (shrink)

The four-principle approach to biomedical ethics is used worldwide by practitioners and researchers alike but it is rather unclear what exactly people do when they apply this approach. Ranking, specification, and balancing vary greatly among different people regarding a particular case. Thus, a sound and coherent applicability of principlism seems somewhat mysterious. What are principlists doing? The article examines the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the applicability of this approach. The most important result is that a sound and comprehensible application (...) of the four principles is additionally ensured by making use of the organizing meta-principle of common morality, which is the starting point and constraining framework of moral reasoning. (shrink)

The present volume, _Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights_, contains fourteen outstanding and challenging articles concerning fundamental rights and Artificial Intelligence at the intersection of law, ethics and smart technologies.