The International Society of Krishna Consciousness, commonly known as the Hare Krishna Movement, has disseminated a flurry of antievolutionist media since its inception in 1966. Such communications frequently co-opt arguments employed by Christian creationists and Intelligent Design theorists. At the same time, however, there are indications that a scattering of ISKCON publications have articulated relatively ambiguous, less oppositional statements about evolutionary theory. This article reconsiders ISKCON's Darwin-skepticism by appraising recent, largely unexamined Hare Krishna publications, as well as responses to evolutionary (...) theory expressed by ISKCON's founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta, and his immediate Vaishnava forerunners. The analysis reveals that, although the majority of contemporary ISKCON materials are vehemently opposed to evolution, some leading voices demonstrate less combative, cautiously accommodating stances. These cases are suggestive of complexities in ISKCON's responses to evolution, both past and present, which are not necessarily encapsulated in the terms Vedic creationism or antievolutionism. (shrink)

A systematic treatment of Hume's conception of imagination in all the main topics of his philosophy.

David Liebesman argues that we never count by identity. He generalizes from an argument that we don't do so with sentences indicating fractions, or with measurement sentences on their supposed count readings. In response, I argue that measurement sentences aren't covered by the thesis that we count by identity, in part because they don't have count readings. Then I use the data to which Liebesman appeals, in his argument that we don't count by identity using measurement sentences, in order to (...) rebut his argument that we don't count by identity using sentences indicating fractions. (shrink)

This study examines whether journalists and bloggers label paid content. In Germany, as in many other countries, advertorials have to be designated as advertising to enable the target audience to identify the promotional character of the content. This applies both to the traditional mass media and to blogs, for which advertorials provide a key source of income. To date, there have been no empirical findings on the designation practice based on a comparison of journalists and bloggers. The present study presents (...) an online survey in Germany completed by 936 journalists and 463 bloggers in 2017. The results indicate that, in fact, bloggers do not label advertorials less frequently than journalists do: 91.6 % of bloggers and 91.7 % of journalists stated that they label paid content as advertising. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungUnter „Selbstbindungen“ versteht man in medizinethischen Kontexten vorwegnehmende Bitten von Patienten an ihre Ärzte, eigene spätere Behandlungspräferenzen nicht zu befolgen. In diesem Beitrag werden zwei Arten von Selbstbindungen voneinander unterschieden. Wird nach einer Phase des Kompetenzverlustes, für die ein Handeln gegen den Patientenwillen vorausschauend autorisiert wird, die Kompetenz wiedererlangt, handelt es sich um eine Odysseus-Anweisung. Wird aber, wie insbesondere im Falle von Anweisungen für das Spätstadium der Demenz, die Kompetenz nach der Behandlungssituation nicht wiedererlangt, liegt eine Selbstbindung vor, die jedoch (...) keine Odysseus-Anweisung ist. In Bezug auf die erste Art von Selbstbindungen kommt die erwartete spätere Zustimmung des Patienten als Rechtfertigungskriterium für ein Handeln gegen den Patienwillen in Betracht. In Bezug auf die zweite Art von Selbstbindungen ist hingegen zu fragen, ob der Wille des Patienten in der Behandlungssituation als Widerruf des früheren Willens der kompetenten Person gelten kann. Ist dies der Fall, ist der zum früheren Zeitpunkt geäußerte Wunsch nicht mehr als derjenige einschlägig, der festlegt, was der Patient in der Behandlungssituation will. (shrink)

Angesichts der enormen Entwicklungen in der Technik zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere angesichts der »totalen Mobilmachung«, die man im Ersten Weltkrieg zu beobachten und zu erfahren glaubte, entstand in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren ein Diskurs über die Technik, in dem das ›Allesumfassende‹ und ›Allesvereinnahmende‹, also ›Totalisierende‹ der Maschinerien zum Thema gemacht wurde. So fragte sich Hans Freyer 1929 wie es sein konnte, dass »ein System von bloßen Mitteln derart schicksalsbestimmend, menschenverwandelnd, geschichtsbildend wirken kann«. Karl Jaspers wiederum beschrieb die (...) »globale« Dimension, die die Technik seiner Einschätzung nach angenommen hatte, und sprach 1931 in seinem Essay Die geistige Situation der Zeit von der »Herrschaft des Apparats« und sogar von einem »Riesenapparat«, der den einzelnen Menschen überformen würde, insbesondere durch eine normierende Massenkultur, die das tägliche Leben der Menschen grundlegend ändern würde. (shrink)

Es ist vermutlich kein Zufall, dass zu den ersten Maschinen, mit denen Menschen interagierten, auch Illusionsmaschinen gehörten. Die Theater im antiken Griechenland besaßen kranartige Vorrichtungen, die es erlaubten, Schauspieler überraschend in die Bühnenhandlung hineinschweben und eingreifen zu lassen, Götter mimend, die das Geschehen nach ihren Wünschen lenken konnten. Bekannt ist diese Theatertechnik als ›Deus ex machina‹.

This first-time translation makes available to English-speaking readers a seminal essay in Latin American thought by one of Latin America's leading intellectuals. Originally published in Mexico in 1957, The Role of the Americas in History explores the meaning of the history of the Americas in relation to universal history. Amy A. Oliver's introduction provides an excellent overview of such major themes in Zea's thought as marginality, humanism, Catholicism and Protestantism, philosophy of history, and liberation.

The author devotes a good number of pages to clarifying the relations between PHN, experimental psychology, and metaphysics. It is this thesis, a problem of the order of knowledge, that we wish to question. We shall first present some of the difficulties that give rise to the problem. Second, we shall indicate the kind of knowledge which PHN is. Third, we shall attempt to demonstrate that in the body of his work the kind of knowledge represented is that of the (...) "metaphysics of man" and not the "philosophy of human nature." Finally, we shall point out the importance, and non-verbal character, of a correct answer to the problem. (shrink)

_ AS Critical Thinking for AQA_ is the definitive textbook for students of the current AQA Advanced Subsidiary Level syllabus. Structured very closely around the AQA specification, it covers the two units of the AS level in an exceptionally clear and student-friendly style. The chapters are helpfully subdivided into short digestible passages, and include: intended learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter student exercises at the end of each section with a ‘stretching activity’ for more advanced learners exam orientated (...) questions key point summaries at the end of each section cross references. In line with the AQA specification, there is a heavy emphasis on more imaginative forms of source material, for example, music, film, artwork, historical documents, adverts, moral dilemmas and scientific debates, as a means of illustrating key points. A great deal of emphasis is also placed on ‘live’ or ‘real’ arguments, taking topical examples from the world of science, politics, entertainment and sport. The book is accompanied by a companion website with extensive resources for both instructors and students. (shrink)

Wie verhalten sich Körper und Geist oder Natur und Freiheit zueinander und welche Rolle spielt der Lebensbegriff bei der Bestimmung des Verhältnisses der Begriffe? Die Erarbeitung der „Funktionen des Lebendigen“ kann als ein vielschichtiges Arbeitsprogramm verstanden werden, mit dem eine zentrale Problemlage unserer Zeit, unserer Gesellschaft und unserer Technik erschlossen werden kann. In der Verbindung des methodologischen Begriffs der Funktion mit dem phänomenalen Begriff des Lebendigen liegt ein philosophisches, wissenschaftstheoretische und kulturreflexives Potential. Denn zum einen ist der Funktionsbegriff ein Schlüsselbegriff (...) im Diskurs der Moderne, gerade im Kontext von anthropologischen, lebensphänomenologischen und bioethischen Fragen. Und zum anderen stellt das Phänomen des Lebendigen nach wie vor eine der großen Herausforderungen für das philosophische Denken dar, sei es in ontologischer, anthropologischer oder ethischer Hinsicht. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes beleuchten die unterschiedlichen Problemdimensionen des Lebendigen durch begrifflich-systematische Überlegungen ebenso wie spezielle Analysen zu Formen, Normen, Erfahrungen und Grenzen des Lebendigen. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to defend a modified version of the report given by Strabo about the transmission of the writings of Aristotle during the Hellenistic period. The basic dilemma was pointed out by Dom Jean Liron in 1717: The existence of our Corpus Aristotelicum entails that Strabo must be exaggerating either in assuming that the manuscripts brought by Neleus to Scepsis were the only manuscripts of the Aristotelian and Theophrastean writings, or in asserting that these manuscripts were (...) severely damaged. Many writings of our Corpus are missing in the Hellenistic catalogue of Aristotle's works while they are listed in the later catalogue of Ptolemy al-Gharïb; furthermore, the single books of the transmitted treatises are labelled by means of the pre-Hellenistic system of 24 letter labels, whereas in the Hellenistic catalogue the single books are numbered by means of the Hellenistic system of 27 alphabetic numerals. This suggests that the treatises missing in the Hellenistic catalogue formed part of a collection which was inaccessible in Hellenistic times and which, therefore, preserved the pre-Hellenistic system of book-labelling. After the rediscovery of the collection its system of book-labelling was maintained by the editors who laid the foundations of our Corpus. The same criterion reveals the Eudemian Ethics in eight books to be a later compilation. (shrink)

Saul Kripke’s analysis of the concept of the natural numbers that we are taught in school yields a novel and axiomatically economical way of representing arithmetic in standard set theory—one that helps to answer Benacerraf’s objection from extraneous content as well as Wittgenstein’s objection from unsurveyability. After describing Kripke’s proposal in some detail, we examine it in the light of work by Quine, Steiner, Parsons, Boolos and Burgess. Although the primary aim of this paper is to present and explicate Kripke’s (...) view, we conclude by discussing some of the issues that are faced by Kripke’s proposal, so that the reader can get a sense of the geography of these issues. (shrink)

Time, space and matter are the most pervasive and inescapable aspects of the physical universe. And yet, notwithstanding the fact that they represent the most fundamental and ubiquitous characteristics of reality, they have always presented elements of mystery to the human mind. Thus on the level of common thought we ponder how the withering hand of time reaches from out the past into the future to bring decay and destruction to all things; and on the more sophisticated level, after the (...) fashion of Immanuel Kant, we are puzzled by certain antinomies of thought concerning the necessity for an origin, and an end, of the universe in time and space, in the face of the equally necessary reasons for regarding the universe as being unlimited in its space and time dimensions. In either case, however, we are paying tribute to the tantalizing nature of these problems concerning the cosmic framework of space-time-matter in which we live, and move, and have our being. Indeed, it is not too much to say that genuine philosophy took its origin in Zeno's paradoxes of motion, and will have its final consummation when it solves Kant's antinomies. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a Latin paraphrase of Aristotle's De caelo known as the Liber celi et mundi. The text was translated from Arabic in the third quarter of the twelfth century, and thus pre-dates all four Latin translations of De caelo in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was probably written by the ninth century Arab, Hunayn ibn Ishaq. I show the weakness of a previous theory that the Liber celi et mundi derives indirectly from Themistius's paraphrase of (...) De caelo. The text was translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus and his Jewish colleague, Johannes Hispanus. From c.1250, it was mis-attributed to Avicenna, and there is evidence that it had earlier been attributed to Aristotle by certain English writers. I consider the function of the Liber cell el mundi within the corpus of early Aristotelian translations, and the date of its expulsion from the corpus. (shrink)

Gibt es rechtfertigende Gründe dafür, demente Menschen für ihre im früheren Zustand der Kompetenz begangenen Taten staatlich zu strafen? Im folgenden Beitrag wird für eine bejahende Antwort auf diese Frage plädiert. Zunächst werden drei zentrale Straftheorien daraufhin befragt, ob das von ihnen verteidigte Kriterium der Strafrechtfertigung in Anwendung auf die Bestrafung Dementer erfüllt, also die Bestrafung Dementer ihnen zufolge gerechtfertigt sein kann: die Retributionstheorie, die Präventionstheorie und die Expressionstheorie. Es zeigt sich, dass einzig der Expressionstheorie zufolge die Bestrafung Dementer gerechtfertigt (...) sein kann. Im Folgenden wird für die These argumentiert, dass die Expressionstheorie, obwohl nicht überzeugend als allgemeine Theorie der Strafrechtfertigung, in Bezug auf einen bestimmten Teilbereich von Strafhandlungen plausibel ist. Dabei handelt es sich um diejenigen Strafhandlungen, mit denen wir beabsichtigen, ein Leiden zuzufügen, die aber de facto kein Leiden bewirken. Da die Bestrafung Dementer in diese Klasse von Strafhandlungen fällt, lässt sie sich auf der Grundlage einer Expressionstheorie rechtfertigen. Vier Einwände gegen diese These werden diskutiert und entkräftet. Abschließend wird auf praktische Konsequenzen dieser Ansicht verwiesen. (shrink)

A central question in the ethical debate on the practice of relinquishing in vitro fertilization surplus embryos for family building is whether we ought to think of it more in terms of donating these embryos or in terms of having them adopted. Deciding between these two alternatives is more than a matter of mere terminology. It has an impact on normative questions, e.g., on the question of what criteria for parent selection ought to be applied to the recipients of the (...) embryos, and on the moral evaluation of the act of ‘donating’ the embryo or ‘having it adopted’. In this article, I defend the view that we should conceptualize the relinquishment of spare embryos according to the adoption model, not as a donation. Section 2 sketches the outline of the argument by making clear how we may ground a defense of the adoption model in a theory of parental responsibility without implicitly elevating the moral status of the embryo. Section 3 contains a preliminary defense of the adoption model that draws on geneticism as what seems to me the most persuasive theory of parental responsibility. In section 4, I examine three objections to geneticism and either rebut them or, insofar as they are justified, try to accommodate them into my view. In section 5, I point out some features that distinguish embryo adoption from the adoption of (born) children. I contend, however, that these differences are compatible with the adoption model. Section 6 is concerned with the normative ramifications of this view. (shrink)