Generative AI programs can produce high-quality written and visual content that may be used for good or ill. We argue that a credit–blame asymmetry arises for assigning responsibility for these outputs and discuss urgent ethical and policy implications focused on large-scale language models.

Anthropologie und Moralphilosophie wurden von Kant ausfuhrlicher und differenzierter behandelt als bisher angenommen. Daruber hinaus sind beide Disziplinen notwendig voneinander abhangig und aufeinander bezogen. Seine Konzeption des Verhaltnisses von Anthropologie und Moralphilosophie weist Kant aus als wurdigen Gesprachspartner in der modernen Anthropologie- und Moralphilosophie-Diskussion.".

The notion of empathy has been explicated in different ways in the current debate on how to understand others. Whereas defenders of simulation-based approaches claim that empathy involves some kind of isomorphism between the empathizer’s and the target’s mental state, defenders of the phenomenological account vehemently deny this and claim that empathy allows us to directly perceive someone else’s mental states. Although these views are typically presented as being opposed, I argue that at least one version of a simulation-based approach—the (...) account given by de Vignemont and Jacob—is compatible with the direct-perception view. My argument has two parts: My first step is to show that the conflict between these accounts is not—as it seems at first glance—a disagreement on the mechanism by which empathy comes about. Rather, it is due to the fact that their proponents attribute two very different roles to empathy in understanding others. My second step is to introduce Stein’s account of empathy. By not restricting empathy to either one of these two roles, her process model of empathy helps to see how the divergent intuitions that have been brought forward in the current debate could be integrated. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option. In this paper I argue that this way of framing the debate is misleading. Although defenders of second person accounts make use of the vocabulary of the theory of mind debate, they understand some (...) of the core expressions in a different way. I will illustrate this claim by focusing on Reddy’s and Gallagher’s accounts and argue that these authors use the notions of knowing and of understanding other minds differently than traditionally assumed. As a consequence, second person accounts thus conceived do not directly address the questions that gave rise to the theory of mind debate. They invite us, however, to critically reflect upon the way the debate has been set up. (shrink)

Comprehensive study of the Vākyapadīya of Bhartr̥hari, work on semantics and philosophy of Sanskrit grammar.

Introducing the first macro-sociological perspective on the concept of creativity this book includes a review of ten domains which have studied creativity. It also explores the results of a six-year on-going research project comparing students' ideas on creativity with employers' and industry professionals' views.

Die Autorin zeigt anhand der Texte von Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Novalis und Jean Paul, wie Motive aus der nachkopernikanischen und newtonschen Astronomie zu Schlüsselmetaphern werden. Die Denker und Dichter erörtern mit diesen die Möglichkeiten eines neuen Grundlagendenkens und -handelns im Angesicht der Verwissenschaftlichung des Weltbildes.

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in human rights policy documents, reports, and case law focusing on the impacts of climate change on human rights. In academic discussions, the concept, however, has also sparked a discussion on its benefits and challenges for the advancement of human rights, especially concerning the principles of equality and non-discrimination. This article aims at contributing to this debate from a frame-analytical perspective. In social sciences, frame-analysis is a form of discourse analysis which focuses on (...) the consequences of different concepts for legal, political, and social discussions and norms. With the example of selected UN documents on different human rights issues in the context of climate change, the article, firstly, analyzes whether and how the concept of vulnerability is defined in the documents and why it is used in the documents. Secondly, it is elaborated to which individuals and groups the concept is applied. Thirdly, it is discussed how vulnerability is conceptualized in relation to or in distinction to the concepts of inequality and discrimination. In a further section it is analyzed what narratives are mobilized by the frame of vulnerability. The article concludes that from a discourse-analytical perspective the frame of vulnerability mobilizes problematic narratives which has gendered and racialized implications for those labeled vulnerable. (shrink)

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas - entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties - the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of (...) the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni. (shrink)

Van Goghs Malerei vollzieht den Wandel vom traditionellen Verständnis des Bildes als Repräsentation zum Bild als einer a-mimetischen, eigengesetzlichen Wirklichkeit, der sich äusserst anregend auf den Expressionismus und auf die abstrakte Malerei ausgewirkt hat. Weniger bekannt ist die Tatsache, dass sein Werk auch zur Entstehung von modernen Dichtungs- und Kunsttheorien beitrug. So wies es Rilke den Weg zur Sachlichkeit des Sagens, Hofmannsthal ermöglichte es ein neues Verständnis von Wirklichkeit, Heidegger unterstützte es bei der Erweiterung und Verwandlung der Metaphysik, während es (...) Jaspers zur Entwicklung seiner künftigen Existenzphilosophie anstiess. (shrink)

The Latin text Disputatio nova contra Mulieres, Qua probatur eas Homines non esse, published at the end of the sixteenth century, proved immensely popular in the years to come. Today, this book, the title of which raises doubts about the humanity of women, falls within the context of the longstanding historical debate known as the querelle des femmes. We have two French translations of this Latin text: the first one by Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon made in 1744, the second by (...) Charles Clapiès in 1766. The two translation texts perfectly exemplify the discussion regarding the relative merits of free translation and literal translation in the Age of Enlightenment. Comparing these two translations yields important insights related to fidelity and transposition in translation. (shrink)

In dieser Studie untersucht Monika Palowski das kontrovers diskutierte Phänomen der Klassenwiederholung erstmals aus Perspektive der Wissenssoziologischen Diskursanalyse. Anhand von insgesamt über 700 Texten aus Erziehungswissenschaft und Printmedien werden machtvolle Diskursstränge und -formationen rekonstruiert, die nicht nur die Wahrnehmung von Klassenwiederholung und schulischer Selektion, sondern auch der betroffenen Subjekte je spezifisch präfigurieren und dadurch Klassenwiederholung teils auch legitimieren. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse sind daher einerseits für die erziehungswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit schulischer Selektion und Bildungsungerechtigkeit relevant, andererseits aber auch für die (...) Diskurs- und Subjektivierungsforschung. (shrink)

The series Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Studies in German Literature) presents outstanding analyses of German-speaking literature from the early modern period to the present day. It particularly embraces comparative, cultural and historical-epistemological questions and serves as a tradition-steeped forum for innovative literary research. All submitted manuscripts undergo a double peer-review process.

This volume discusses the definitional problems and conceptual strategies involved in defining the human. By crossing the boundaries of disciplines and themes, it offers a transdisciplinary platform for exploring the new ideas of the human and adjusting to the dynamic in which we are plunged. The emerging cyborgs and transhumans call for an urgent reconsideration of humans as individuals and collectives. The identity of the human in the 21st century eludes definitions underpinned by simplifying and simplified dichotomies. Affecting all the (...) spheres of life, the discoveries and achievements of recent decades have challenged the bipolar categorizations of human/nonhuman and human/machine, real/virtual and thus opened the door to transdisciplinary considerations. Ours is a new world where the boundaries of normality and abnormality, a legacy of the long history of philosophy, medicine, and science need dismantling. We are now on our way to re-examine, re-understand, and re-describe what normal-abnormal, human-nonhuman, and I-we-they mean. We find ourselves facing what resembles the liminal stage of a global ritual, a stage of being in-between—between the old anthropocentric order and a new position of blurred boundaries. The volume addresses philosophical, bioethical, sociological, and cognitive approaches developed to transcend the binaries of human-nonhuman, natural-artificial, individual-collective, and real-virtual. (shrink)

Vocal fry is a phonation, or voicing, in which an individual drops their voice below its natural register and consequently emits a low, growly, creaky tone of voice. Media outlets have widely acknowledged it as a generational vocal style characteristic of millennial women. Critics of vocal fry often claim that it is an exclusively female vocal pattern, and some say that the voicing is so distracting that they cannot understand what is being said under the phonation. Claiming that a phonation (...) is so distracting as to prevent uptake of the semantic content of an utterance associated with it is an extreme reaction, especially when accompanied by demands for women to change their phonation. We argue that this reaction limits women's communicative autonomy. We analyze the extreme reaction to female vocal fry, which we characterize as a non-content-based response, from the perspectives of philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, and linguistics. We argue that when fry is heard as annoying and distracting, it is because the hearer interprets the speaker as echoing an utterance from a position of authority to which she is not entitled. We show that this reaction encodes conscious or unconscious sexist attitudes toward women's voices. (shrink)

Our daily lives unfold continuously, yet our memories are organised into distinct events, situated in a specific context of space and time, and chunked when this context changes (at event boundaries). Previous research showed that this process, termed event segmentation, enhances object-context binding but impairs temporal order memory. Physiologically, peaks in pupil dilation index event segmentation, similar to emotion-induced bursts of autonomic arousal. Emotional arousal also modulates object-context binding and temporal order memory. Yet, these two critical factors have not been (...) systematically studied together. To address this gap, we ran a behavioural experiment using a paradigm validated to study event segmentation and extended it with emotion manipulation. During encoding, we sequentially presented greyscale objects embedded in coloured frames (colour changes defining events), with a neutral or aversive sound. During retrieval, we tested participants’ memory of temporal order memory and object-colour binding. We found opposite effects of emotion and event segmentation on episodic memory. While event segmentation enhanced object-context binding, emotion impaired it. On the contrary, event segmentation impaired temporal order memory, but emotion enhanced it. These findings increase our understanding of episodic memory organisation in laboratory settings, and potentially in real life with perceptual changes and emotion fluctuations constantly interacting. (shrink)

_Reinventing Film Studies_ Edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams London: Arnold Publishers, 2000 ISBN 0-340-67723-6 464 pp.

Human–nonhuman chimeras have been the focus of ethical controversies for more than a decade, yet some related issues remain unaddressed. For example, little has been said about the relationship between the origin of transferred cells and the morally relevant capacities to which they may give rise. Consider, for example, a developing mouse fetus that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a human and another that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a dolphin. If both chimeras acquire morally relevant (...) capacities as a result of transplantation, and if those capacities are indistinguishable, should the difference in cell origin matter to how we classify these creatures? I argue that if morally relevant capacities are easy to detect, cell origin is irrelevant to how the chimera ought to be treated. However, if such capacities are hard to detect, cell origin should play a role in considerations about how to treat the chimera. (shrink)

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws (...) in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking. (shrink)

Extrapolation from a well-understood base population to a less-understood target population can fail if the base and target populations are not sufficiently similar. Differences between laboratory mice and humans, for example, can hinder extrapolation in medical research. Mice that carry a partial or complete human physiological system, known as humanized mice, are supposed to make extrapolation more reliable by simulating a variety of human diseases. But what justifies our belief that these mice are similar enough to their human counterparts to (...) simulate human disease? I argue that, unless three requirements are met in the process of humanizing mice, very little does. My requirements are not meant to provide necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee a particular outcome. Instead, they serve as a heuristic for guiding scientific judgments involving extrapolation. In developing each requirement, I engage with philosophical issues concerning the nature of model-based science and the mechanistic approach (and its limits) to making generalizations in the life sciences. (shrink)

What’s the basis for considering an egg donor a genetic parent but not a mitochondrial donor? I will argue that a closer look at the biological facts will not give us an answer to this question because the process by which one becomes a genetic parent, i.e., the process of reproduction, is not a concept that can be settled by looking. It is, rather, a concept in need of philosophical attention. The details of my argument will rest on recent developments (...) in biological technology, but the persuasiveness of my argument will turn on the history of another biological concept, death. Given some important similarities between the two concepts, the way in which ‘death’ evolved in the recent past can provide guidance on how we should think about ‘reproduction.’. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers a reinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish text and the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presents a method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificational formal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, he demonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions of the semantic notions of definability and denotation and that the notion (...) in a structure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to define truth. Tarski’s piece is considered to be one of the major contributions to logic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the author points out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it was translated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work was translated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in addition to new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts, sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offering explanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they have influenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certain passages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski’s article, offering interpretations and comments on the work. (shrink)

The Theory of Mind Debate has seen a recent shift of focus from social observation toward social interaction. Defenders of so-called second-person accounts claim that social interactions reveal an understanding of another person which is different in kind to merely knowing that the other has a particular mental state. The aim of this paper is to specify this new form of understanding. In the first part, I criticize attempts to describe it as the knowledge of how to react to the (...) other’s mental state, i.e. as the exhibition of a social skill. In the second part, I develop an alternative proposal which is based upon the work of Cavell and Thompson. I suggest that understanding another person in a social interaction is to be conceptualized as the propositional nexus of acknowledging his mental state to him. (shrink)

The concept of the dialogical soul proposed by Joseph Ratzinger is a contemporary attempt to describe the anthropology of humanity in terms of basic, fundamental theological concepts. Epistemological approach of the dialogic soul is not about the division, but co-existence in the concept of humanity significantly different anthropological concepts. Modern neuroscience, although following completely different paths of knowing is currently concerning an important issue "of the embodied mind". Such a holistic effort to discover the truth about the man, though carried (...) out on completely different epistemological platforms, however, have some points in common. The difficulty in finding a common language for the dialogue in this field can be overcome and lead to dialogue, which is extremely difficult but doable. We must, however, at the beginning formulate certain fundamental axioms that define class concepts used in different areas of scientific activity. The concept of dialogical soul of Ratzinger’s now exceeds the barrier of scientific paradigms axioms. It does not stop on the vision of human oneself, but recognition of one in the area of relationships and makes room for a substantial dialogue with the world of modern science. (shrink)

What is the nature and what is the role of trust between teacher and student in academic education at school? Providing a philosophically informed answer to these questions is the aim of this paper. In its first part, I present a relationship account of trust based on two fundamental assumptions: first, trust between teacher and student is essentially about them being in a trust relationship, and second, the reasons for trust are relationship dependent. The second part explores the role of (...) trust by looking at two aspects of academic education at school: the student's acquisition of knowledge from the teacher's testimony and the student's development of epistemic confidence, the latter being a key constituent of competent epistemic agency. Drawing on findings from developmental psychology, I explain how trust is involved in successful academic education at school. My aim is to provide a detailed conception of trust in the teacher–student relationship, as well as a conclusive argument for the importance and the value of trust in academic education at school. (shrink)

Research ethics committees must sometimes deliberate about objects that do not fit nicely into any existing category. This is currently the case with the “gastruloid,” which is a self-assembling blob of cells that resembles a human embryo. The resemblance makes it tempting to group it with other members of that kind, and thus to ask whether gastruloids really are embryos. But fitting an ambiguous object into an existing category with well-worn pathways in research ethics, like the embryo, is only a (...) temporary fix. The bigger problem is that we no longer know what an embryo is. We haven’t had a non-absurd definition of ‘embryo’ for several decades and without a well-defined comparison class, asking whether gastruloids belong to the morally relevant class of things we call embryos is to ask a question without an answer. What’s the alternative? A better approach needs to avoid what I’ll refer to as “the potentiality trap” and, instead, rely on the emergence of morally salient facts about gastruloids and other synthetic embryos. (shrink)

Die philosophische Kausaldebatte hat in den vergangenen vier Jahrzehnten eine neue Blüte erlebt. Kontrafaktische, interventionistische, mechanistische und transfertheoretische Ansätze haben sich neben den bislang dominierenden Regularitätstheorien etabliert. Vertreter aller dieser Ansätze sehen sich jedoch mit Gegenbeispielen konfrontiert, keine Theorie scheint allen unseren intuitiven Kausalurteilen gerecht werden zu können. Dieses Buch führt anhand ausgewählter Beispiele in die aktuelle Debatte ein und liefert eine Erklärung für die derzeitige Patt-Situation. Der Grund dafür, dass sich zu jedem Ansatz offenbar mühelos Gegenbeispiele finden lassen, liegt, (...) so zeigt die Autorin, in einer bislang unbemerkten Mehrdeutigkeit des Ausdrucks »kausaler Zusammenhang«. Wer danach fragt, was ein kausaler Zusammenhang sei, kann damit entweder einen konkreten Vorgang – Verursachung – oder einen Zusammenhang zwischen zwei Tatsachen – kausale Relevanz – meinen. Der Unterschied zwischen diesen beiden Begriffen wird mit Hilfe einer sprachphilosophischen Analyse singulärer Kausalaussagen belegt und auf zwei verschiedene Zugänge zu kausalen Zusammenhängen – Kausalwahrnehmung und kausales Schließen – zurückgeführt. (shrink)

In this essay, the reminiscences of Margaret Fuller, feminist activist and member of the American Transcendentalist movement, from her journey to the Great Lakes region, entitled Summer on the Lakes, are considered in the light of EcoGothic considerations. The essay shows how Fuller’s journey disillusioned her about progress and led to abandoning the serene vision of nature and landscapes reflected in the works of Transcendentalists. The destruction of nature and landscape verging on an ecological catastrophe is presented by Fuller in (...) the perspective of the Gothic, as a price for the technological development driven by the capitalist economy. The Gothic character of Summer on the Lakes derives from the mental condition of the writer and a pessimistic vision arising from the debunking of the myth of America as a virgin land. Fuller’s work constitutes an EcoGothic tribute to the indigenous inhabitants of America—but also a Gothic live burial of the Native Americans who do still live in the regions she visits—as well as to Mariana and Frederica, unusual and gothicized women excluded from society. By bringing together Fuller’s observations about nature, indigenous peoples and marginalized women, the essay shows how Fuller’s text prophetically announces the beginning of the end of the American environment. (shrink)

Science communication has gained high importance in the current knowledge and risk society. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of qualitative studies on how non-experts and experts engage in opinionated scientific debates and which linguistic devices they use to gain influence on other people’s attitudes toward a scientific issue. In our study, we examine dialogical modes of science communication (i.e. weblogs) used by bloggers and audiences to engage into opinionated discourse about scientific endeavors. As those exchanges easily lead to controversies (...) between different points of views, stances and attitudes, we focus from a rhetorically-driven linguistic perspective on devices to persuade the other participants and readers and to control the discourse. Hence, we ask which linguistic instruments are used to gain influence on influence. The aim of our study is to get deeper insights into the persuasive strategies mainly used in those forms of external science communication. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz vertrete ich die These, dass die Betreuungsverbote und einschränkungen für Kleinkinder, die im Zuge der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland galten und immer noch gelten, in bestimmten Fällen zu signifikanten Verlusten des Wohlergehens von Kleinkindern führen. Dabei beziehe ich mich auf Kleinkinder, die in Strukturen leben, in denen die außerhäusliche Betreuung einen gewichtigen Beitrag zur Kinderbetreuung leistet. Ich werde dafür argumentieren, dass für diese Kinder der Wegfall der Kinderbetreuung bedeuten kann, dass gewichtige aktuelle immaterielle Wohlergehensinteressen nur noch teilweise oder (...) gar nicht mehr befriedigt werden. Um diese Interessen und das Ausmaß ihrer Nichtbefriedigung zu beschreiben, greife ich auf das Konzept der Kindheitsgüter zurück und werde mich dabei auf drei gewichtige immaterielle Wohlergehensinteressen konzentrieren: das Interesse des Kindes an pädagogisch wertvollen Betreuungsstrukturen, das Bedürfnis des Kindes nach Austausch und Spiel mit Gleichaltrigen und das Interesse des Kindes, frei von Sorgen und Ängsten zu sein. Die anschließende kinderethische Auswertung dreier aktueller Studien zur Situation der Kinder und Familien unter den Bedingungen der Corona-Pandemie zeigt, dass besonders die Umstände während des Lockdowns im Frühjahr 2020, aber auch die fortbestehenden Einschränkungen bei der Kinderbetreuung sowie die veränderte Arbeitssituation der Eltern erheblich dazu beitragen, dass das Wohlergehen von Kleinkindern in dieser Hinsicht beeinträchtigt wird. Am Ende des Aufsatzes werde ich mich der Frage widmen, was bei der Ausgestaltung zukünftiger Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Corona-Pandemie aus kinderethischer Perspektive berücksichtigt werden sollte, um das Wohlergehen der Kleinkinder so gut wie möglich zu schützen. (shrink)

As driving functions become increasingly automated, motorists run the risk of becoming cognitively removed from the driving process. Psychophysiological measures may provide added value not captured through behavioral or self-report measures alone. This paper provides a selective review of the psychophysiological measures that can be utilized to assess cognitive states in real-world driving environments. First, the importance of psychophysiological measures within the context of traffic safety is discussed. Next, the most commonly used physiology-based indices of cognitive states are considered as (...) potential candidates relevant for driving research. These include: electroencephalography and event-related potentials, optical imaging, heart rate and heart rate variability, blood pressure, skin conductance, electromyography, thermal imaging, and pupillometry. For each of these measures, an overview is provided, followed by a discussion of the methods for measuring it in a driving context. Drawing from recent empirical driving and psychophysiology research, the relative strengths and limitations of each measure are discussed to highlight each measures’ unique value. Challenges and recommendations for valid and reliable quantification from lab to (less predictable) real-world driving settings are considered. Finally, we discuss measures that may be better candidates for a near real-time assessment of motorists’ cognitive states that can be utilized in applied settings outside the lab. This review synthesizes the literature on in-vehicle psychophysiological measures to advance the development of effective human-machine driving interfaces and driver support systems. (shrink)

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the (...) issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future Scholar research – in philosophy, history, and sociology. -/- (ISSN: 0929-6328). (shrink)