In the chapter on Observing Reason in the Phenomenology, as well as in §368 of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel deals with the life sciences of his time. There, he labels the methodology of its representatives, namely zoology and comparative anatomy, as external teleology. In this paper I want to show that by doing so he is actually discussing a general kind of functionalism. Thereby, I want to highlight a line of thought in Hegel's texts which represents a productive reading (...) of external teleology contrary to a destructive reading on which scholars have mainly focussed. (shrink)

Using relations of solidarity in global contexts, this article explores some of the debates about what constitutes solidarity. Three primary forms of solidarity are discussed, with particular attention to the different nature of the solidaristic relations and their moral obligations.

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 2, Page 270-289, June 2021.

Designing a successful graduate seminar should account for more than just the content to be conveyed and the completion of the standard seminar paper. This article dissects the seminar structure, revealing some of what is obscured by the “hidden curriculum” of graduate education, with an eye toward transforming the climate in philosophy. I begin with a brief review of literature on graduate teaching and inclusive teaching in philosophy. I then examine four components of a typical graduate seminar: the faculty instructor (...) of graduate courses, the graduate students themselves, the material selection, and the course requirements. Reflecting on the graduate seminar compels revisiting learning goals, ensuring inclusivity and accessibility, and adopting a more intentional approach to graduate course design that ties course goals to specific activities and assessments for the life of the professional philosopher. (shrink)

In the spring of 2008, the artist Georg Schneider announced an art performance with a mortally ill person. Most of the responses to this art project were very critical. While the artist argued that the exhibition of a dying person should be understood as a humanistic intervention against the social taboo of death, commentators often criticized the exhibition as voyeuristic. Based on this discussion, the article explores what it means to stage a dying person as a piece of art and (...) investigates the historical conditions of this project by locating the longing for ethic and aesthetic self-determination within the humanistic tradition of the modern concept of the work of art. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is textual evidence that the chapter on Teleology in Hegel's Science of Logic, read under certain premises, also discusses something that in contemporary analytic philosophy is called a ‘basic action’. The three moments of Teleology—(a) ‘The Subjective Purpose’, (b) ‘The Means’ and (c) ‘The Realized Purpose’—can be interpreted as (a) a certain intentional content in the mind of a subject, which can be expressed in the form of an imperative, (b) the immediate taking (...) in possession of the body, which can be described as a basic action, and (c) the description of the relation of the event brought about by the basic action with other events in the world, which can be described in the terms of event-causality. This reading reveals an astonishing parallel to Donald Davidson's distinction between proper basic actions and their different descriptions in the form of events. In this way we can make Hegel's, at first glance, confusing identification of subjective purpose (intention), means (basic action) and realized purpose (event) comprehensible. Through that, the actual aim is to show that what I call basic actions are in fact an example of a more general thought that Hegel calls a teleological relation. (shrink)

This paper studies the effects of social comparison on risk taking behavior. In our theoretical framework, decision makers evaluate the consequences of their choices relative to both their own and their peers’ conditions. We test experimentally whether the position in the social ranking affects risk attitudes. Subjects interact in a simulated workplace environment where they perform a work task, receive possibly different wages, and then undertake a risky decision that may produce an extra gain. We find that social comparison matters (...) for risk attitudes. Subjects are more risk averse in the presence of small social gain than social loss. In addition, risk aversion is decreasing in the size of the social gain. (shrink)

Bücher zählen bis heute zu den wichtigsten kulturellen Errungenschaften der Menschheit. Ihre Erfindung war mit der Einführung des Buchdrucks ähnlich bedeutsam wie des Internets: Erstmals wurde eine massenweise Weitergabe von Informationen möglich. Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung, aber auch die Unterhaltung wurde auf neuartige, technisch wie inhaltlich revolutionäre Basis gestellt. Bücher verändern die Gesellschaft bei heute. Die technischen Möglichkeiten des Massen-Buchdrucks führten zu einem radikalen Zuwachs an Titeln im 18. Und 19 Jahrhundert. Dennoch waren die Rahmenbedingungen immer noch ganz andere als heute: (...) Wer damals ein Buch schrieb, verfasste oftmals ein Lebenswerk. Dies spiegelt sich in der hohen Qualität alter Bücher wider. Leider altern Bücher. Papier ist nicht für die Ewigkeit gemacht. Daher haben wir es uns zur Aufgabe gemacht, das zu Buch gebrachte Wissen der Menschheit zu konservieren und alte Bücher in möglichst hoher Qualität zu niedrigen Preisen verfügbar zu machen. (shrink)

This article seeks to shine some light on the teaching demonstration from the perspective of observers using three guiding attributes of effective teaching: connection, commitment, and coachability. Discussing what observers are looking for and how observers interpret what is seen, the article presents the basic forms, common myths, and practical wisdom for teaching demonstrations. By reframing the goals of the teaching demonstration, the article demystifies a key part of the campus interview for the academic job market.

The unity with others in collective action to achieve a particular goal, known as political solidarity, transforms the individual. I examine the dual nature of that personal transformation — the motivational transformation and the normative transformation — and offer a study of the relation between political solidarity and empathy. While empathy may be part of the normative transformation, I argue that it is not a necessary element of the motivational transformation. I conclude with a discussion of epistemic empathy.

This article examines the particular moral obligations of solidarity focusing on the solidary commitment against injustice or oppression. I argue that political solidarity entails three relationships—to other participants in action, to a cause or goal, and to those outside the unity of political solidarity. These relationships inform certain obligations. Activism is one of those obligations and I argue that violent activism is incompatible with the other relations and duties of solidarity. Activists may find themselves confronted with a difficult choice between (...) respecting the relationships of political solidarity or employing physical violence in resistant self-defense against oppressive practices. -/- . (shrink)

"Der Aufsatz rekonstruiert die historische Genese der politischen Ökologie im 19. Jahrhundert am Beispiel des Zoologen Karl August Möbius. Als entscheidendes Paradigma der Vorgeschichte wird die Bevölkerungsdebatte um 1800 herausgearbeitet. Vor diesem Hintergrund entsteht die politisch-ökologische Perspektive durch die Übertragung klassischer Prinzipien der Ökonomie auf Tiergemeinschaften und von dort wieder zurück auf eine zoologisch verstandene Menschenwelt. The paper reconstructs the historical genesis of political ecology in the 19th century by the example of the zoologist Karl Möbius. The population debate around (...) 1800 is elaborated as a decisive paradigm of its emergence. Against this background, the political-ecological perspective arises through the transfer of classical economic principles on animal com- munities and their retransfer back to a human world that is now understood in zoological terms. ". (shrink)

Experiences of solidarity have figured prominently in the politics of the modern era, from the rallying cry of liberation theology for solidarity with the poor and oppressed, through feminist calls for sisterhood, to such political movements as Solidarity in Poland. Yet very little academic writing has focused on solidarity in conceptual rather than empirical terms. Sally Scholz takes on this critical task here. She lays the groundwork for a theory of political solidarity, asking what solidarity means and how it (...) differs fundamentally from other social and political concepts like camaraderie, association, or community. Scholz distinguishes a variety of types and levels of solidarity by their social ontologies, moral relations, and corresponding obligations. Political solidarity, in contrast to social solidarity and civic solidarity, aims to bring about social change by uniting individuals in their response to particular situations of injustice, oppression, or tyranny. The book explores the moral relation of political solidarity in detail, with chapters on the nature of the solidary group, obligations within solidarity, the “paradox of the privileged,” the goals of solidarity movements, and the prospects for global solidarity. ��. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The profound influence of Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee’s integrative social contracts theory on the field of business ethics has been challenged by Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo’s Habermasian approach, which has achieved prominence of late with articles that expressly question the defensibility of ISCT’s hypernorms. This article builds on recent efforts by Donaldson and Scherer to bridge their accounts by providing discursive foundations to the hypernorms at the heart of the ISCT framework. Extending prior literature, we propose an ISCT* (...) framework designed to retain ISCT’s practical virtue of managerial guidance while answering the demands of Scherer and Palazzo’s discursive account. By subscribing to a suitable portfolio of discursively justified hypernorms, we argue, companies unlock the valuable moral guidance of ISCT*, which says to treat these hypernorms as unequivocal outer bounds to the pursuit of business and as a starting point to tailor local norms through discursive stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

It is essential for the strategy of open access self-archiving that scientific authors are given comprehensive information on publisher copyright policies. DINI, the German Initiative for Networked Information, has developed a German (and potentially multilingual) interface to the English SHERPA/RoMEO service to provide additional information on German publishers' open access policies. As a next step, this interface was enhanced to an integration layer combining different sources on publisher copyright policies. This integration layer can be used in many different contexts. Together (...) with the SHERPA/RoMEO team, DINI aims to build an international support structure for open access information. (shrink)

Moral judgment depends critically on theory of mind, reasoning about mental states such as beliefs and intentions. People assign blame for failed attempts to harm and offer forgiveness in the case of accidents. Here we use fMRI to investigate the role of ToM in moral judgment of harmful vs. helpful actions. Is ToM deployed differently for judgments of blame vs. praise? Participants evaluated agents who produced a harmful, helpful, or neutral outcome, based on a harmful, helpful, or neutral intention; participants (...) made blame and praise judgments. In the right temporo-parietal junction, and, to a lesser extent, the left TPJ and medial prefrontal cortex, the neural response reflected an interaction between belief and outcome factors, for both blame and praise judgments: The response in these regions was highest when participants delivered a negative moral judgment, i.e., assigned blame or withheld praise, based solely on the agent's intent. These results show enhanced attention to mental states for negative moral verdicts based exclusively on mental state information. (shrink)

Organizational ecology is commonly seen as a Darwinian research program that seeks to explain the diversity of organizational structures, properties and behaviors as the product of selection in past social environments in a similar manner as evolutionary biology seeks to explain the forms, properties and behaviors of organisms as consequences of selection in past natural environments. We argue that this explanatory strategy does not succeed because organizational ecology theory lacks an evolutionary mechanism that could be identified as the principal cause (...) of organizational diversity. The “evolution” of organizational populations by means of selection, which organizational ecologists put forward as the mechanism responsible for the extant diversity of organizational forms, is not evolution in any proper sense, because organizational populations do not have what it takes to participate in evolutionary processes. This implies that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program and that it cannot explain organizational diversity. (shrink)

Each of the three volumes of Erasmus Francisci’s Acerra Exoticorum (1672-74), a collection of stories and reports from all corners of the known world, begins with a Vorrede to the reader. These texts address the rationale for his work, apologize for errors in spelling and/or meaning, and outline his thinking about stories and histories, or more precisely, the difference between reports of current events and histories proven true by the test of time. Each of the three tomes offers stories from (...) all over the known world, gathered and arranged without any easily perceptible organizing principle. Still, some of the narratives do suggest a teaching or moralizing function, while others seem to serve mostly to inform and entertain introducing the reader to »meldungswürdige Sitten/ Gewonheiten / so wol als andrer anmercklicher Sachen außheimischer Sachen,« as truthfully and historically accurate as possible. Francisci presents his Acerra Exoticorum as a receptacle of events outside of Germany. He will inform the reader about old and new »Ordnungen und Gewohnheiten,« corroborated by the writings of trusted authors. While paying special attention to the programmatic Vorreden of the three Acerra-volumes, I will examine how Francisci handles both textual and narrative varieties, news reports and historical texts, and what this tells us about his historical, cultural, and geographic reach. (shrink)

Although blame for systemic sexual abuse in the Catholic church primarily rests with the perpetrators and institutional actors who engaged in cover-up, regular people also failed in their duties, both their secular or civil duties and their moral and religious duties. Using the language of social sin, this article examines responsibility for social sin and the structures of sin that contributed to the abuse of children within the church community. Using the tools of Catholic social teaching—especially the framework of “conversion, (...) communion, and solidarity”—the article articulates some tenets of social morality in the wake of sexual abuse and cover-up. A conversion experience is needed to see how ordinary actions unintentionally contribute to injustice and social sin, and how structures of sin lead to intentional decisions that would not otherwise be pursued. Catholic social teaching helps to provide a framework for thinking through some of the obligations of ordinary folks in the aftermath of the collective failure to protect children from abuse and the structural injustices that encouraged it to continue. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching of late has a lot more in common with feminist moral theory than might be evident at first glance. After a brief explanation of Catholic Social Teaching’s duty of solidarity, and a look at some of the feminist critiques of this solidarity, I point out some of the significant similarities between feminist ethics and the duty of solidarity. The last section focuses on community and care, the epistemological role of experience and the world view of the other, (...) the centrality of self-determination, and the final goal of both the duty of solidarity and feminist ethics: liberation from oppression. (shrink)

Alles, was der Mensch von sich wissen kann, lässt sich an den Werkzeugen und Medien ablesen, die er gebraucht. Diese These steht im Mittelpunkt des Werks von Ernst Kapp (1808-1896), Gymnasiallehrer für Geschichte und Erdkunde, Technikphilosoph und Farmer in Texas. Obwohl Ernst Kapp unbestritten als Begründer der modernen Technikphilosophie gilt, ist sein anthropologischer Ansatz bislang kaum systematisch rezipiert worden. Zwar wird sein Werk in Überblicken meist als wichtiger Ausgangspunkt für die Technikphilosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts genannt, sein heuristisches Theorem der Organprojektion (...) wird dabei jedoch oft falsch als Vorläufer der Prothesentheorie von Freud bis McLuhan eingeordnet und nicht als kulturhistorische Erkenntnistheorie verstanden. Bei dem vorliegenden Buch handelt es sich um den ersten Forschungsband zum Werk von Ernst Kapp. Mit Beiträgen von Suzana Alpsancar, Christine Blättler, Lorenz Engell, Volker Gerhardt, Frank Hartmann, Christoph Hubig, Friedrich A. Kittler, Harun Maye, Alfred Nordmann, Birgit Recki, Hans-Martin Sass, Leander Scholz, Johanna Seifert, Christiane Voss und Niels Werber"--Back cover. (shrink)

Social criticism can take on many forms ranging from theoretical exposition to non-violent protests. This paper considers literary art as a form of social criticism and uses Morrison's novel Paradise as the exemplary case to show that the confrontation of unjust ideas through social criticism is essential in building non-oppressive relations open to diversity. In this sense, social criticism is a paradigm of communication that, although often entailing conflict, ultimately aims at reconciliation. I begin with a discussion of social criticism (...) followed by a short synopsis of the novel. I then examine the novel as social criticism focusing on a process I call "twinning." The paper ends with a critical evaluation of the power and possibilities of literary art as social criticism. (shrink)

We study a Weyl geometric scalar tensor theory of gravity with scalar field \ and scale invariant “aquadratic” kinematical Lagrange density. The Weylian scale connection in Einstein gauge induces an additional acceleration. In the weak field, static, low velocity limit it acquires the deep MOND form of Milgrom/Bekenstein’s gravity. The energy momentum of \ leads to another add on to Newton acceleration. Both additional accelerations together imply a MOND-ian phenomenology of the model. It has unusual transition functions \, \nu _w\). (...) They imply higher phantom energy density than in the case of the more common MOND models with transition functions \, \, \mu _2\). A considerable part of it is due to the scalar field’s energy density which, in our model, gives a scale and generally covariant expression for the self-energy of the gravitational field. (shrink)

This book assesses the extent to which transnational non-state associations help to cultivate greater respect for the moral equality of all humans and to build transnational communities. It shows that such cosmopolitan ideals can arise from unexpected places in our world without the self-conscious intention of advancing a common human community.

This essay considers the theoretical attention that recent social theories show for wayward object relations and inquires as to how this adjusts to the philosophical occupation with the status of "things". For while we find, at least since the 18th century and most notably with regard to epistemology, the dismissal of "the thing" as an ontological entity, this new attention, with its interest in material matters, seems, at first glance, to contradict that tradition.