The purpose of this brief paper is to show that the primary problem of technology, like all problems related to possibilities and actions, is the conceptualiadequacyof the intentions and values it implies, and not, as many critics have suggested, its social effects. Presupposed for this statement and evaluation is an interpretation of experience called here experiential idealism. On the basis of this position some suggestions are made about the meaning of technology and its correlative possibilities and constraints.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The immediate motive occasioning this letter was the worker E. Kopanitsyn's letter to the newspaper Izvestiia in which he eloquently recounts his difficulties with a new machine manufactured in a factory in the city of Cheliabinsk. After telling what effort it had cost him to get this machine going, Kopanitsyn in a fit of temper exclaims: "I am completely unable to understand one simple thing: How could such a machine come into being at all? The hands of many workers touched (...) it, except that these were not working hands. Can it really be true that no one, not a single person, was aroused enough to say: Just what are we doing here, brothers?". (shrink)

This article highlights the distinction between the ‘art of nursing’ and ‘fine art’. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as ‘the art of nursing’, it is not to be misunderstood as ‘fine art’ or craft. Therefore, the term ‘aesthetic’ in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, which is treated in (...) a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term ‘art of nursing’ in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence. (shrink)

It is a safe prediction that, especially now with cultural contacts freely flowing between East and West in both directions, the Hungarian thinker Istvan Bibo will soon be given full accolade as one of the most outstanding political theorists of this century, in stature equal to the �greats� in the entire European tradition of political thought. Bibo's significance far exceeds local, parochial interests. While profoundly original and organically stemming from Hungarian culture, Bibo belongs also to the �West�. If his political (...) thought is to be epitomized in one succinct phrase, it is �the realism of moralism�, or the almost flawless synthesis of a deeply radical, morally infused vision and value-system with the hard-nosed, unsentimental realist-s insight into enduring problems of politics and society. This synthesis is �almost� flawless: in the closing section of this article I will advance a few constructively critical remarks concerning some questionable points in the trajectory of Bibo's thought. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is a (...) moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

Contrary to what might be expected given a religious or other motivation, Pierre Duhem's interest in mediaeval science was the result of his surprise encounter with Jordanus de Nemore while working on Les origines de la statique in the late autumn of 1903. Historical assumptions common among physicists at that time may explain this surprise, which occasioned a frantic search for more mediaeval precursors for Renaissance mechanics. It also raised serious historiographical problems that threatened even his methodological views, until they (...) were resolved in his To save the phenomena of 1908. (shrink)

Is an ethical leader an oxymoron? Society demands and expects greater accountability from organizational leaders. The literature on leadership, especially business leadership, has neglected ethical issues by focusing only on those approaches and strategies that emphasize self-centred, individualistic concerns. How ever, true and effective leadership is one in which the leader's behaviour and the exercise of the leadership influence process are consistent with ethical and moral values. The authors argue that our understanding of leadership is incomplete, if not deformed, if (...) it does not include the three critical dimensions of ethical leadership. (shrink)

I would like to develop a few critical observations on some substantive moral ideas propounded in Professor R. M. Hare's Freedom and Reason a work where formal and substantive moral arguments are blended in an attractive and plausible, though at times somewhat exasperating, mixture. Hare's formal doctrines, the celebrated theses of prescriptivity and universalizability, will not as such interest me here, though I shall have to take notice of at least one of them, viz. universalizability, in so far as it (...) has a bearing on what I take to be Hare's substantive position. The arguments in Freedom and Reason are compounded of Kantian and utilitarian elements, and culminate in Hare's conceptualization of two antithetical types of person, whom he calls respectively the ‘liberal’ and the ‘fanatic’. This distinction itself is based on a rigid and uncompromising dichotomy of ‘interest’ and ‘ideal’, and it is on this dichotomy that Hare's substantive moral doctrine hinges. Hare's argument is that the morally good person is one who subordinates his ideal to a moral principle that takes interests into account, in contradistinction to the fanatic who allows interests to be overridden by his ideal. There is much to recommend in this doctrine, and distinctions of this nature can and ought to be drawn. But the way in which it is done in Hare's work opens up fresh doubts and fails to solve some fundamental problems. As I do not think that his distinction between ‘interest’ and ‘ideal’ is tenable, I cannot agree wholly to the predominantly formal manner in which Hare deals with the important question of distinguishing between liberalism and fanaticism. The upshot of my arguments is that this distinction can only be made intelligible in substantive terms. Although I cannot here offer a positive alternative to Hare beyond some oblique hints at the end, my critical remarks on Hare's doctrine ought at least to go some way in establishing the need for such an alternative. (shrink)