Allies are extremely important to LGBT rights. Though we don’t often enumerate what tasks we expect allies to do, a fairly common conception is that allies “support the LGBT community.” In the first section I introduce three difficulties for this position that collectively suggest it is conceptually insufficient. I then develop a positive account by starting with whom allies are allied to instead of what allies are supposed to do. We might obviously say here that allies are allied to the (...) LGBT community, but I will argue that this community is better thought of as a loose coalition because there are often intersectional issues and conflicting interests that challenge any unified sense of community. I argue that people typically become allies because a friend or family member is experiencing some kind of specific harm; if that harm or discrimination is what causally explains why people become allies, then allies are required to do more than we commonly think. Although allies have a prima facie obligation to honor what members of a subcommunity identify as a harm, this obligation is defeasible if an ally believes fulfilling the obligation would be harmful. I conclude by looking at how we can understand what an ally is in terms of a larger discussion about moral obligations. If people already have these obligations, whatever they are, because morality requires it, then the status “ally” is redundant. I conclude by showing that certain social statuses can not only transform or reprioritize prior moral commitments, but can also introduce new kinds of responsibility that an agent did not have before. (shrink)

The question of the moral status of human nature is today being posed above all under the influence of medical and biotechnological aspects. These facilitate not only an increasing number of, but also increasingly far-reaching interventions and manipulations in humans, so that the perspective of a gradual "technologization" of his physical constitution can no longer be regarded as merely utopian. Some authors are convinced that this disturbing development can only be halted when an inherent value is (once again) ascribed to (...) human nature. After a short description of this situation (I), the following paper first examines the difficulties that arise as regards an adequately precise descriptive definition of human nature (II) and, in a second step, the problems posed by the necessity to define the normative status of human nature (III). It hereby comes to the conclusion that a precise definition of "human nature" is not possible for fundamental reasons, and that only a weak normativity can be warranted. (shrink)

In its first part, this paper seeks to make plausible (a) that molecular genetic diagnostics differs in ethically relevant ways from traditional types of medical diagnostics and (b) that the consequences of introducing this technology in broad screening-programs to detect widespread genetic diseases in a population which is not at high risk may change our understanding of health and disease in a problematic way. In its second part, the paper discusses some aspects of public control of scientific and technological innovations (...) in the field of molecular genetic diagnostics. (shrink)

Judgment and Agency contains Sosa’s latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant’s beliefs might be a special case of performance normativity, with its superior value following from truisms about performance value. This paper argues that the new effort rests on mistaken assumptions about performance normativity. Once these mistaken assumptions are exposed, it becomes clear that higher epistemic value cannot be a mere special case of performance normativity, and its superiority cannot be (...) guaranteed just by truisms about performance value. Sections 1 and 2 set the stage, clarifying the thesis and the relevant features of Sosa’s strategy, and explaining why the strategy requires the mistaken assumptions. Section 3 presents a dilemma for the new account of higher epistemic value. Section 4 deepens the case for one of the horns. Section 5 takes stock and draws some broader morals. (shrink)

[ES] El logicismo de Frege o, en términos más generales, su esfuerzo por construir un fundamento de razonamiento deductivo para las matemáticas fue motivado por el deseo de combatir el empirismo radical que empezaba a dominar la discusión científica en las tierras de habla alemana después de la muerte de Hegel. El objetivo similar de Russell unas décadas después, en cambio, se debe en su origen preponderantemente al deseo de superar el neohegelianismo de Bradley. El joven Wittgenstein formuló a partir (...) de lo que aprendió de ambos el sistema del Tractatus, rechazando algunos aspectos claves de uno y otro. Hay, por consiguiente, incompatibilidades importantes entre las tres propuestas de solución para los problemas relacionados con el concepto de la verdad y de la relación que debemos suponer que existe entre mundo, lenguaje y pensamiento. Si sus reflexiones se comparan con el manejo de preguntas aproximadamente equivalentes hoy en día, en particular a raíz del concepto semántico de la verdad que debemos a Tarski, nos podemos dar cuenta que hemos logrado una enorme flexibilidad en el manejo de los lenguajes simbólicos; a este dominio técnico de las herramientas que nos dio la formalización de la lógica simbólica debemos, entre otros avances, el Internet y los teléfonos inteligentes. En cambio, se perdió de vista la profundidad filosófica que estuvo en su origen, y, se podría decir, algo de lo filosófico de la filosofía. El brillo intenso de las tecnologías nuevas junto con la sensación de que tenemos a nuestra disposición una jerarquía infinita de lenguajes o metalenguajes, que nos permiten manejar cualquier problema heredado del nivel anterior, hacen que nos parezca superflua la ocupación con cuestiones más propiamente filosóficas como las entendían los primeros proponentes de la filosofía analítica. Es en parte a esta pérdida de sentido filosófico del quehacer del filósofo que se deben otros fenómenos que hablan de la trivialización de la filosofía: someter esta actividad en el marco académico a una medición cuantitativa que produce un diluvio de trabajos perfectamente inútiles, o la confusión de la filosofía con la elaboración de reglas operativas para hospitales. [EN] Frege’s logicism or, more generally, his efforts to construct a foundation for mathematics based on deductive reasoning was motivated by his wish to fight the radical empiricism that began to dominate scientific argument in German speaking countries after Hegel’s death. Russell’s similar purpose a few decades later, on the other hand, was originally due mainly to their wish to overcome Bradley’s neo-Hegelianism. Young Wittgenstein forged the system of the Tractatus drawing from his knowledge of both, refuting some key aspects of one or other. There are therefore important incompatibilities between the three proposed solutions for the problems related to the concept of truth and to the relation we must suppose exists between world, language and thought. When we compare their thoughts to today’s ways of handling questions which are approximately equivalent, particularly in the wake of the semantic concept of truth we owe to Tarksi, we may become aware that we have certainly gained enormous flexibility in the handling of symbolic languages; the Internet and intelligent telephones, among other signs of progress would have been impossible without this technical mastery of tools we obtained thanks to the formalization of symbolic logic. But, on the other hand, we also lost view of the philosophical depth that stood at its cradle and, it might be said, a bit of what makes philosophy philosophical. The intense sparkle of the new technologies together with the impression that we have an infinite hierarchy of languages or metalanguages at our disposal which allow us to handle any problem inherited from the previous level, may give us the impression that questions related to more deeply philosophical problems, such as the first proponents of analytical philosophy tried to deal with, are idle. Other phenomena which bear witness to the trivialization of philosophy are in part due to this loss of philosophical meaning of the business of philosophy: subduing this activity within the academic framework to methods of quantification which result in a deluge of perfectly useless publications, or the confusion of philosophy with the elaboration of operating rules for hospitals. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss what we argue is a newly observed use of nouns like woman, man, and lawyer, in the sort of morphosyntax characteristic of count nouns. We argue that the relevant data constitutes normative uses of the relevant nouns, and we build an analysis on the assumption that such nouns are polysemous between descriptive and normative senses (Leslie 2015), using the formal account of polysemy in Pustejovsky (1998), and the analysis of count- ability in Rothstein (2010). In (...) doing so, we provide evidence in support of the aforementioned kinds of analyses of social terms and countability, as opposed to others which do not seem to be able to account for the data in as straight forward a way. (shrink)

Review Essay on: Simeon Wade, Foucault in California [A True Story – Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death], foreword by Heather Dundas.. 144 pp, ISBN 9781597144636.

Am Beispiel der Uhrenmetapher, deren Entstehung und Gestaltwandel ein bestimmtes Welt- und Staatsverständnis widerspiegelt, soll das Verhältnis von Metapher und Wirklichkeit deutlich werden. Die Geschichte der Uhrenmetapher, die u. a. über Cusanus, Kepler, Kopernikus, Leibniz, Hobbes, Descartes, Diderot, Voltaire, Wolff verfolgt wird, zeigt, dass sie schon im Mittelalter als Träger des Maschinenbegriffs verstanden wird und mit der Erfindung des Computers ihr Endstadium erreicht. Im Zeichen der Uhr als Symbol der Mechanik entfaltet sich im 17. Jahrhundert die Kontroverse zwischen Determinismus und (...) Willensfreiheit. Mit der Erfindung der mechanischen Uhr bildet sich ein abstrakter Begriff von Zeit heraus. Das mechanische Denken prägt bis in die Gegenwart hinein unser Wissenschaftsverständnis. (shrink)

Probably no one has done more than Frankena to bring about the recent shift in philosophical interest from the primarily linguistic concerns of metaethics to what he calls “meta-morals,” that is, to questions about morality as a whole. Instead of investigating what so-called ethical terms stood for, or whether ethical utterances employed propositions or proposals or imperatives or whether they expressed feelings, beliefs, descriptions or prescriptions, or whether they conformed to ordinary propositional logic or to an imperatival or some other (...) logic of their own, Frankena set out to investigate the moral enterprise itself. Quite recently he put together the results of these reflections in two series of lectures, “Three Questions About Morality” and Thinking About Morality. My own views had always been very close to his, but these recent lectures, which for the first time put his thoughts on this topic together in a systematic way, have made clear to me that, while the starting point of our investigations is indeed the same, our conclusions diverge on a number of important points. I want to take up some of the problems to which we offer different solutions. (shrink)

P. Bernays has pointed out that, in order to prove the consistency of classical number theory, it is necessary to extend Hilbert's finitary standpoint by admitting certain abstract concepts in addition to the combinatorial concepts referring to symbols. The abstract concepts that so far have been used for this purpose are those of the constructive theory of ordinals and those of intuitionistic logic. It is shown that the concept of a computable function of finite simple type over the integers can (...) be used instead, where no other procedures of constructing such functions are necessary except simple recursion by an integral variable and substitution of functions in each other (starting with trivial functions). (shrink)

Badania nad podstawami matematyki przyniosły w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach wyniki, które wydają mi się ciekawe nie tylko dla nich samych, lecz także z uwagi na wnioski, jakie płyną z nich w odniesieniu do tradycyjnych problemów filozoficznych dotyczących natury matematyki. Same wyniki są dość szeroko znane, mimo to jednak sądzę, że warto raz jeszcze przedstawić je w zarysie, zwłaszcza w obliczu faktu, że dzięki pracy szeregu matematyków zyskały one znacznie doskonalszą formę, niż miały pierwotnie. Największy postęp, mający decydujące znaczenie dla tych wyników, (...) stał się możliwy dzięki precyzyjnemu zdefiniowaniu pojęcia skończonej procedury. Definicję taką można uzyskać na różne sposoby, które w efekcie dają dokładnie to samo pojęcie. Najbardziej zadowalający sposób polega moim zdaniem na sprowadzeniu pojęcia skończonej procedury do pojęcia maszyny o skończonej liczbie części, co uczynił brytyjski matematyk Turing. Co do filozoficznych konsekwencji wspomnianych wyników, nie sądzę, by kiedykolwiek należycie je przedyskutowano, czy choćby zwrócono na nie uwagę. (shrink)

Historians of science have proposed many theories to explain why Copernicus rejected the Ptolemaic system and advanced his own heliocentric system. In support of his new cosmological system Copernicus always employed theoretical considerations and never the existence of discrepancies between the positions given in the Tables and those observed. It is shown that the general acceptance of the heliocentric system through the work of the astronomers resulted not so much from empirical considerations but rather from the fact that this system (...) was suited to a comprehensive, general dynamics. (shrink)

Die Arbeit setzt sich mit der neuzeitlichen Theodizeefrage auseinander. In einem ersten Schritt wird versucht, den genuinen Gehalt der Philosophie von Leibniz darzustellen, dessen Werk für die weitere Diskussion dieser Thematik maßgeblich wurde. Dabei wird aufgewiesen, dass die Argumente von Leibniz empiristischen und fideistischen Bestreitungen einer Theodizee standzuhalten und den Glauben an den allmächtigen und gütigen Gott mit dem Phänomen menschlicher Freiheit in Verbindung zu bringen vermögen. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die Positionen von Kant und Leibniz konfrontiert. Dabei zeigt (...) sich, dass Kant den von Leibniz bezeichneten Weg nicht verwirft, sondern weiterführt und die Theodizeefrage konsequent in der Praxis menschlichen Weltumgangs zu verorten vermag. (shrink)

Stoicism has had a diverse reception in German philosophy. This is the first interpretive study of shared themes and dialogues between late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century experts on classical antiquity and philosophers. Assessing how modern philosophers have incorporated ancient resources with the context of German philosophy, chapters in this volume are devoted to philosophical giants such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and Peter Sloterdijk. Among the ancient Stoics, the focus is on (...) Seneca, Epictetus, and doxography, but reference will also be made to texts that have so far been neglected by non-specialists. Often references to Stoic texts are playful, making it hard for non-specialists to reconstruct their understanding of the sources; by illuminating and enhancing the philosophical significance of these receptions, this book argues that they can change our understanding of Greek and Roman Stoic doctrines and authors, twentieth-century continental philosophy, and the themes which coordinate their ongoing dialogues. Some of these themes are surprising for Stoicism, such as the poetics of tragic drama and the anthropological foundations of hermeneutics. Others are already central to Stoic reception, such as the constitution of the subject in relation to various ethical, ecological, and metaphysical powers and processes; among these are contemplation and knowledge; identity and plurality; temporality, facticity, and fate; and personal, social, and planetary forms of self-cultivation and self-appropriation. Addressing the need for a synoptic vision of related continental readings of Stoicism, this book brings ancient texts into new dialogues with up-to-date scholarship, facilitating increased understanding, critical evaluation, and creative innovation within the continental response to Stoicism. (shrink)

Following a succint summary of the two disciplines, rhetoric and poetics, the article attempts to show that not only both of them are in good shape, but also that a fruitful marriage of these two "brides" is possible. In spite of the many controversies surrounding the usefulness and justification of one or the other and their applicability to philosophy and even after repeated declarations of their death, both the art of correct speaking and poetics, under the most diverse forms, have (...) shown latently or explicitly their capacity for renewal and adaptation in the course of already 2,500 years. (shrink)