Wie denkt Friedrich Schleiermacher, mit dem man zuerst die Bestimmung von Frömmigkeit als Gefühl der schlechthinnigen Abhängigkeit verbindet, die Freiheit des Subjekts? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, untersucht Katharina Gutekunst die relevanten Werke aus allen Schaffensperioden Schleiermachers: die Jugendschriften, die Monologen, die Erwählungsschrift, die Glaubenslehre und die Vorlesungen zu Psychologie, Philosophischer Ethik und Dialektik. Die Rekonstruktion und Diskussion der Freiheitstheorie Schleiermachers erfolgt dabei im Horizont der aktuellen Debatte um die Willensfreiheit in der analytischen Philosophie. So wird deutlich, dass (...) Schleiermacher eine kompatibilistische Theorie vertritt, die auch die ontologischen und metaphysischen Begründungszusammenhänge von Freiheit reflektiert. (shrink)

Testimony of oppression is testimony that something constitutes or contributes to a form of oppression, such as, for example, “The stranger’s comment was sexist.” Testimony of oppression that is given by members of the relevant oppressed group has the potential to play an important role in fostering a shared understanding of oppression. Yet, it is frequently dismissed out of hand. Against the background of a recent debate on moral testimony, this paper discusses the following question: How should privileged hearers approach (...) testimony of oppression if they aim to do so in an ethically and epistemically sound way? Should they defer or try to understand? Both strategies constitute ways of learning from testimony of oppression. However, they differ in important respects and exclude each other. Because testimony of oppression is often based on personal experience, empathizing with the speaker can play an important role in trying to understand testimony of oppression. While the fact that empathy can change your mind and the advantages of understanding over knowledge support trying to understand as the right approach to testimony of oppression, considerations of the “limits of empathy” and the value of deference support deferring. I argue that, on balance, these contrasting arguments allow for a limited defense of the role of empathy in learning from testimony of oppression. We should try to understand testimony of oppression by empathizing with the speaker, but not treat our ability to understand as a condition on accepting a speaker’s claim. (shrink)

Formwerdung, als Vorgang des Ausdrückens, ist eine der Natur inhärente technische Dimension - so eine These über den Zusammenhang von Technik- und Naturphilosophie. Demnach überzeugen die techniktheoretischen Überlegungen von Kapp, Deleuze/Guattari und Simondon insbesondere, weil dort Technik als ein Problem des Ausdrucks behandelt wird. Um diesen Gedanken auszuführen, spannt Katharina D. Martin einen Bogen von Lamarck über Schelling und Uexküll bis zu Deleuze. Dabei gelingt es ihr nicht nur, die vielfältigen Diskurse transdisziplinär zu vermitteln, sie führt uns auch zu (...) einem ökologischen und topologischen Denken, das in der Lage ist, die problematische Dimension der Technologisierung unserer Umwelt zu erfassen. (shrink)

Although moral relativists often appeal to cases of apparent moral disagreement between members of different communities to motivate their view, accounting for these exchanges as evincing genuine disagreements constitutes a challenge to the coherence of moral relativism. While many moral relativists acknowledge this problem, attempts to solve it so far have been wanting. In response, moral relativists either give up the claim that there can be moral disagreement between members of different communities or end up with a view on which (...) these disagreements have no “epistemic significance” because they are always faultless. This paper introduces an alternative strategy: accounting for disagreement in terms of “metalinguistic negotiation”. It argues that this strategy constitutes a better solution to the challenge disagreement poses for moral relativists because it leads to a nuanced understanding of the epistemic significance of moral disagreement between members of different communities. The upshot is a novel account of disagreement for moral relativists that has consequences for how moral relativism should be understood. (shrink)

A realist view of numbers often rests on the following thesis: statements like ‘The number of moons of Jupiter is four’ are identity statements in which the copula is flanked by singular terms whose semantic function consists in referring to a number (henceforth: Identity). On the basis of Identity the realists argue that the assertive use of such statements commits us to numbers. Recently, some anti-realists have disputed this argument. According to them, Identity is false, and, thus, we may deny (...) that the relevant statements commit us to numbers. The present paper argues that the correct linguistic analysis of the relevant number statements supports the anti-realist view that Identity is false. However, as will further be shown, pace the anti-realist, this analysis does not establish that such statements do not commit us to numbers after all. (shrink)

Katharina D. Giesel befasst sich mit den Fragen, was in den verschiedensten Sozialwissenschaften unter Leitbildern verstanden wird, wie diese Kategorie konzeptionell in Forschungs- und Handlungskonzepte eingebunden wird und inwiefern ...

This paper draws some bold conclusions from modest premises. My topic is an old one, the Neohumean view of practical rationality. First, I show that this view consists of two independent claims, instrumentalism and subjectivism. Most critics run these together. Instrumentalism is entailed by many theories beyond Neohumeanism, viz. by any theory that says rational actions maximize something. Second, I give a new argument against instrumentalism, using simple counterexamples. This argument systematically undermines consequentialism and rational choice theory, I show, using (...) detailed examples of their many social science applications. There is no obvious fix. (shrink)

During gestation, fetomaternal exchange occurs in the villous tree (labyrinth) of the placenta. Development of this structure depends on tightly coordinated cellular processes of branching morphogenesis and differentiation of specialized trophoblast cells. The basal chorionic trophoblast (BCT) cell layer that localizes next to the chorioallantoic interface is of critical importance for labyrinth morphogenesis in rodents. Gcm1‐positive cell clusters within this layer initiate branching morphogenesis thereby guiding allantoic fetal blood vessels towards maternal blood sinuses. Later these cells differentiate and contribute to (...) the syncytiotrophoblast of the fetomaternal barrier. Additional cells within the BCT layer sustain continued morphogenesis, possibly through a repopulating progenitor population. Several mouse mutants highlight the importance of a structurally intact BCT epithelium, and a growing number of studies addresses its patterning and epithelial architecture. Here, we review and discuss emerging concepts in labyrinth development focussing on the biology of the BCT cell layer. (shrink)

Meta-emotions are emotions about emotions, such as, for example, shame about anger. An important subset of meta-emotions constitutes a special case of co-experienced emotions, in which one emotion is directed at another emotion experienced by a subject at the same time. By making us reflectively aware of our own first-order emotions and suggesting an evaluation of them, meta-emotions enable reflection on our own emotional sensibility. In this paper, I explore the roles of meta-emotions in the context of affective empathy. I (...) show that, whereas meta-emotions on the side of the target person increase the complexity of empathy’s success conditions, meta-emotions on the side of the empathiser expand the role of meta-emotions for self-reflection and give rise to parallel phenomena of other-directed reflection. Exploring the roles of meta-emotions in the context of affective empathy allows us to better understand the significance of meta-emotions, as well as the functions of affective empathy. (shrink)

When facing a choice between saving one person and saving many, some people have argued that fairness requires us to decide without aggregating numbers; rather we should decide by coin toss or some form of lottery, or alternatively we should straightforwardly save the greater number but justify this in a non-aggregating contractualist way. This paper expands the debate beyond well-known number cases to previously under-considered probability cases, in which not (only) the numbers of people, but (also) the probabilities of success (...) for saving people vary. It is shown that, in these latter cases, both the coin toss and the lottery lead to what is called an awkward conclusion, which makes probabilities count in a problematic way. Attempts to avoid this conclusion are shown to lead into difficulties as well. Finally, it is shown that while the greater number method cannot be justified on contractualist grounds for probability cases, it may be replaced by another decision method which is so justified. This decision method is extensionally equivalent to maximising expected value and seems to be the least problematic way of dealing with probability cases in a non-aggregating manner. (shrink)

Laura Valentini’s novel theory, the Agency-Respect View, says that we have a fundamental moral duty to honor other people’s convictions, at least pro tanto and under certain conditions. I raise doubts that such a duty exists indeed and that informative conditions have been specified. The questions that Valentini faces here have a parallel in Kant’s moral philosophy, viz. the question of why one has a duty to value the other’s humanity and the question of how to specify the maxim of (...) one’s action. Additionally, I discuss the concept of a social convention and Valentini’s use of it. (shrink)

Is argumentation essentially adversarial? The concept of a devil's advocate—a cooperative arguer who assumes the role of an opponent for the sake of the argument—serves as a lens to bring into clearer focus the ways that adversarial arguers can be virtuous and adversariality itself can contribute to argumentation's goals. It also shows the different ways arguments can be adversarial and the different ways that argumentation can be said to be "essentially" adversarial.

Background: Pediatric guidelines recommend that children and adolescents participate in a developmentally appropriate way in end-of-life decision making. Shared decision making in pediatrics is unique because of the triadic relationship of patient, parents, and physician. The involvement of the patient may vary on a continuum from no involvement to being the sole decision maker. However, the effects of child participation have not been thoroughly studied. The aims of this literature review are to identify studies on end-of-life decision making in pediatrics, (...) to explore patient participation, and to assess the effects of such participation. Methods: Five databases—PubMed, PsycInfo, Medline, CINAHL, and Sociological Abstract—were searched for empirical studies on end-of-life decision making in pediatrics. Selected articles fulfilling the criteria were assessed for type of decision, participants’ characteristics, reports on participation of the minor patient, and outcome. Results: Fifty-seven articles on end-of-life decision making in pediatrics were identified. The majority of papers (n = 43, 75%) investigated parents’ and clinicians’ perspectives, while only 14 articles (25%) included perspectives of children and adolescents. Twenty-two articles (39%) reported some details on various forms of children's participation (e.g., receive information, plan care details, consulted before or after a decision was made). Positive (e.g., respect for patient's preferences) and negative (e.g., conflict due to diverging opinions) effects of children's participation in end-of-life decision making were reported. Conclusions: This systematic review highlights the need for research to identify factors that contribute to a favorable participation of minors in decision-making processes, as well as strategies to solve possible conflicts. More research should take into account the dynamics in the triadic process of decision making and emphasize children and adolescents’ perspectives. A better understanding of how to meaningfully involve children and adolescents in end-of-life decision making could facilitate the practice of patient participation in pediatrics. (shrink)

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his (...) Lectures and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology. (shrink)

In recent literature many theorists, including Eklund (2011), endorse or express sympathy towards the view that the evaluative content of thick terms is not asserted with utterances of sentences containing them but rather part of their secondary content. In this article we discuss a number of features of thick terms which speak against this view. We further argue that these features are not shared by another, recently much-discussed, class of hybrid evaluative terms, so-called slurs, and that the evaluative contents of (...) these might thus very well be secondary. (shrink)

A powerful objection against moral conventionalism says that it gives the wrong reasons for individual rights and duties. The reason why I must not break my promise to you, for example, should lie in the damage to you—rather than to the practice of promising or to all other participants in that practice. Common targets of this objection include the theories of Hobbes, Gauthier, Hooker, Binmore, and Rawls. I argue that the conventionalism of these theories is superficial; genuinely conventionalist theories are (...) not vulnerable to the objection; and genuine moral conventionalism is independently plausible. (shrink)

"Hungarian Cubes" proposes an aesthetical typology of the ornamentation of cubic houses from the 1960s 70s in Hungary. The book is based on the artistic project Magyar Kocka Hungarian Cube, which German-Hungarian artist Katharina Roters is pursuing since 2005. The origins of the Hungarian Cube, a standardized type of residential house, date back to the 1920s, when the cube as prototype of a radically functional design first appeared in plans for single-family homes in Budapest s suburbs and also in (...) social housing projects. During Hungary s communist era after WW II, many villages were rebuilt on uniform schemes of single-family homes and the "Magyar Kocka "or "Kadar Kocka, " as they were also named after Hungary s communist president Janos Kadar became ubiquitous. A unique characteristic of this housing type is the ornamental decoration of its facades. The facade thereby became an opportunity of both individual and collective expression within uniformity. The ornament is not merely an aesthetic sign. It rather creates meaningful identity and distinguishes the appearance of entire dwellings across the country. Often this individualized ornament can also be read as an act of subversion against the pressure of conformity in the socialist system. Katharina Roters has been investigating and documenting this previously neglected ornamental phenomenon since 2005 from an artistic point of view. The houses are shown in her images cleaned of all surplus information, fences and railings, antennas, road signs, electric power lines. Only by this deletion of additions to each house the project can reach beyond a merely archival nature and the photograph becomes a document of aesthetic typology. The book combines the serial composition of Roters s images with essays on various aspects of this architectural phenomenon. ". (shrink)

One of the reasons why empathy is a topic of enduring interest is the role it can play in understanding others. Empathy can help us to predict each other’s future actions and explain past ones; to...

Hegel introduced the Phenomenology of Mind as a work on the problem of knowledge. In the first chapter, entitled “Sense Certainty, or the This and Meaning,” he concluded that knowledge cannot consist of an immediate awareness of particulars ). The tradition discusses sense certainty in terms of this failure of immediate knowledge without, however, specifically addressing the problem of reference. Yet reference is distinct from knowledge in the sense that while there can be no knowledge of objects without reference, there (...) may be reference without knowledge. If that is the case, then the failure of immediate knowledge does not entitle us to conclude anything about the success or failure of reference. It is not surprising, then, that a few scholars have begun to examine sense certainty primarily as a thesis about reference. (shrink)

Introduction Death is an inevitable part of clinical practice and affects, in its very own way, not only next of kin and friends but also the members of the clinical team, in particular physicians and nurses, as those who take care of a patient in the very last moments of his or her life. Nevertheless, in clinical everyday life, it is no matter of course to meet the end of human life not only on a physical but also metaphysical level. (...) Definition of the problem In Western sociocultural contexts, silence is commonly regarded as an adequate expression of respect in the context of death. Considering that time is a more than limited resource in Western healthcare systems, it can, however, be challenging for the clinical team to pause and pay respect to the life that has passed and to generally deal with the unfathomability of human finiteness. Instead, death tends to become drowned out by a strident clinging to the common routines of patient care, in the course of which everyday clinical noises can turn into a roaring, almost inhuman cacophony—a cacophony that may not do justice to the dignity of the deceased, the relatives, or the clinic team. Objective With that said, this article focuses on forms of bidding farewell in clinical patient care, with an emphasis on post-mortem silence. Drawing on examples from literature, medical ethics, and the law, I will plead for a moment of silence in everyday clinical practice as a possible means to interrupt the noise of medicine in the immediate aftermath of death to honor the dignity of both the dead and the living. (shrink)

Cedant arma togae, ‘let arms yield to the toga’. Thus begins the famous verse from Cicero's poem on his consulship that highlights the protagonist's suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy by favourably contrasting this political achievement with success on the battlefield. But how does the line continue? Its conclusion is transmitted in two different versions,concedat laurea laudiandconcedat laurea linguae, and scholars have long been divided over which one is Cicero's original text. In this paper, we revisit the issue and not only (...) propose an answer to the question of what Cicero actually wrote, but also examine those attestations of the verse that date to the author's own lifetime, elucidating the contexts that account for the quotation of one variant rather than the other. (shrink)

This article sets out to describe and solve two puzzles that emerge in segregated labour markets (e.g. the USA or Sweden). First, in many hiring contexts people profess to adhere to egalitarian norms, and specifically to a qualification norm according to which job qualification should be the basis of employment. Still there is evidence of frequent norm violations (discrimination). Surprisingly, the norm persists and people do not frequently protest against such norm violations. The second puzzle is that people are suspicious (...) of the hiring of minorities, perceiving such hirings as evidence that a ‘political correctness’ norm has replaced the qualification norm. The article proposes that both puzzles can be solved within a game-theoretical model of social norm-following, where implicit bias is introduced into an ‘employment game’. Within this model, implicit bias plays a double role. First, it interferes with employers' hiring decisions regarding ethnic majority and minority members, respectively. This is the standard way of understanding the effects of implicit bias. Second, implicit bias interferes with bystander evaluations of hired candidates' qualifications. This is a hitherto overlooked effect of implicit bias. The article concludes that once we understand the double role of implicit bias, the two puzzles are resolved. (shrink)

When evaluating the arguer instead of the argument, we soon find ourselves confronted with a puzzling situation: what seems to be a virtue in one argumentative situation could very well be called a vice in another. This paper will present the idea that there are in fact two sets of virtues an arguer has to master—and with them four sometimes very different roles.

If circumstances were always simple and all arguers were always exclusively concerned with cognitive improvement, arguments would probably always be cooperative. However, we have other goals and there are other arguers, so in practice the default seems to be adversarial argumentation. We naturally inhabit the heuristically helpful but cooperation-inhibiting roles of proponents and opponents. We can, however, opt for more cooperative roles. The resources of virtue argumentation theory are used to explain when proactive cooperation is permissible, advisable, and even mandatory (...) – and also when it is not. (shrink)

When we learn about a severe moral transgression that has been committed, we are often not only horrified but also puzzled. We are inclined to raise questions such as ‘Why did they do this?’ or exclaim: ‘I cannot understand why anyone would do such a thing!’. This suggests that there is something difficult to understand about severe moral wrongs. In this paper, I offer an explanation of the phenomenon that severe moral transgressions are often difficult to understand. I begin by (...) arguing that the relevant sense in which we try but often fail to understand morally bad action is that we try but fail to empathize with the agent at the time of the action. Then, I introduce a distinction between two broad kinds of morally bad action. Finally, I show that each of these kinds of morally bad action gives rise to obstacles to empathizing with the agent at the time of the action. Based on this explanation, I consider whether we should try to overcome this limitation to our understanding. (shrink)

Feminist argumentation theorists have criticized the Dominant Adversarial Model in argumentation, according to which arguers should take proponent and opponent roles and argue against one another. The model is deficient because it creates disadvantages for feminine gendered persons in a way that causes significant epistemic and practical harms. In this paper, I argue that the problem that these critics have pointed out can be generalized: whenever an arguer is given a role in the argument the associated tasks and norms of (...) which she cannot fulfill, she is liable to suffer morally significant harms. One way to react to this problem is by requiring arguers to set up argument structures and allocate roles so that the argument will be reasons-reflective in as balanced a way as possible. However, I argue that this would create to heavy a burden. Arguers would then habitually have to take on roles that require them to divert time and energy away from the goals that they started arguing for and instead serve the goal of ideal reasons-reflectiveness. At least prima facie arguers should be able to legitimately devote their time and energy towards their own goals. This creates a problem: On the one hand, structures that create morally significant harms for some arguers should be avoided—on the other hand, arguers should be able to take argument-roles that allow them to devote themselves to their own argumentative goals. Fulfilling the second requirement for some arguers will often create the morally significant harms for their interlocutors. There are two possible solutions for this problem: first, arguers might be required to reach free, consensual agreements on the structure they will adopt for their argument and the way they will distribute argumentative roles. I reject this option as both fundamentally unfeasible and practically unrealistic, based on arguments developed by theorists like Krabbe and Jacobs. I argue that instead, we should take a liberal view on argument ethics. Arguers should abide by moral side constraints to their role taking. They should feel free to take roles that will allow them to concentrate on their argumentative goals, but only if this does not create a situation in which their interlocutors are pushed into a role that that they cannot effectively play. (shrink)

Developmental psychology currently faces a deep puzzle: most children before 4 years of age fail elicited-response false-belief tasks, but preverbal infants demonstrate spontaneous false-belief understanding. Two main strategies are available: cultural constructivism and early-belief understanding. The latter view assumes that failure at elicited-response false-belief tasks need not reflect the inability to understand false beliefs. The burden of early-belief understanding is to explain why elicited-response false-belief tasks are so challenging for most children under 4 years of age. The goal of this (...) article is to offer a pragmatic framework whose purpose is to discharge this burden. (shrink)

Summary In this contribution, I discuss the relevance of epistemological models for psychotherapy. Despite its importance epistemology is seldom explicitly dealt with in the psychotherapeutic landscape. Based on the presentation of “Critical Realism (CR),” the epistemological position of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy (GTP), I intend to show to which extent this explanatory model supports a differentiated understanding of problems between human beings, arising from the differences in experiencing “reality.” The presentation deals explicitly with some conclusions that can be drawn from the (...) CR model for practical psychotherapeutic work. In particular, the aspects of basic therapeutic attitude, therapeutic relationship, and praxeology are highlighted. (shrink)

Anscombe is usually seen as a critic of “Modern Moral Philosophy.” I attempt a systematic reconstruction and a defense of Anscombe’s positive theory. Anscombe’s metaethics is a hybrid of social constructivism and Aristotelian naturalism. Her three main claims are the following: (1) We cannot trace all duties back to one moral principle; there is more than one source of normativity. (2) Whether I have a certain duty will often be determined by the social practices of my community. For instance, duties (...) imposed by other people’s rights are socially constructed. (3) Whether something constitutes a good, however, will often be determined by human nature—which is not socially constructed. (shrink)

This paper investigates the process of reasoning through which a judge determines whether a precedent-case gives her a binding reason to follow in her present-case. I review the objections that have been raised against the two main accounts of reasoning by precedent: the rule-account and the analogy-account. I argue that both accounts can be made viable by amending them to meet the objections. Nonetheless, I believe that there is an argument for preferring accounts that integrate analogical reasoning: any account of (...) reasoning by precedent that is descriptively minimally adequate will leave some room for judicial discretion. Discretion should be used under consideration of the best legally relevant arguments for and against a decision. Integrating analogical reasoning helps the judge to bring to her own attention the strongest case for following. Analogical reasoning also eases the recognition of possible reasons for distinguishing. Thereby, it facilitates a more balanced decision-making process. (shrink)

Vladimir Solov’ëv, Sergej Bulgakov, Nikolaj Berdjaev, and Semën Frank shared the conviction that Creation is incomplete: humanity must arrive at organizing social life on an “eighth day.” Thus they prophesied the Universal Church, “social Christianity,” “personalist socialism,” and “spiritual democracy.” Their attempt to avoid any illegitimate confusion between independent rational thought and Christian faith prompted Bulgakov to become an ordained theologian, Berdjaev a “philosophical poet,” and Frank a “Christian realist.” Solov’ëv’s theosophical attempt to philosophically substantiate faith and consequently eschatological prophecy (...) finds itself in the same tragic predicament as Christian faith in general when amalgamated on a one to one basis with the world. I am to show that this is not the case for any of the three other authors discussed, however, much they did adhere to some of Solov’ëv’s major lines of thought. (shrink)