The globalization movement in recent decades has meant rapid growth in trade, financial transactions, and cross-country ownership of economic assets. In this article, we examine how the globalization of national business systems has influenced the framing of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This is done using text analysis of CEO letters appearing in the annual reports of 15 major corporations in Sweden during a period of transformational change. The results show that the discourse about CSR in the annual reports has changed (...) from a national and communitarian view of social responsibility (cf. a negotiated view of CSR) toward an international and individualistic view of social responsibility (cf. a self-regulating view of CSR). The article contributes theoretically (1) by adding a national–global dimension to previous conceptualizations of CSR and (2) by showing that the rise of CSR discourse and activities in the last 10 years does not have to imply an increased commitment and interest in corporate responsibility per se, only that there are increased societal expectations that corporations should develop the capability to act more independently as moral agents. (shrink)

Most accounts of our knowledge of the successor axiom claim that this is based on the procedure of adding one. While they usually don’t claim to provide an account of how children actually acquire this knowledge, one may well think that this is how they get that knowledge. I argue that when we look at children’s responses in interviews, the time when they learn the successor axiom and the intermediate learning stages they find themselves in, that there is an empirically (...) viable alternative. I argue that they could also learn it on the basis of a method that has to do with the structure of the numeral system. Specifically, that they (1) use the syntactic structure of the numeral system and (2) attend to the leftmost digits, the one with the highest place-value. Children can learn that this is a reliable method of forming larger numbers by combining two elements. First, a grasp of the syntactic structure of the numeral system. That way they know that the leftmost digit receives the highest value. Second, an interpretation of numerals as designating cardinal values, so that they also realise that increasing or adding digits on the lefthand side of a numeral produces a larger number. There are thus two, currently equally well-supported, ways in which children might learn that there are infinitely many natural numbers. (shrink)

Masculinity and femininity can both be freely defined through the spectrum of certain characteristics, points of view, features, expectations, and explanations linked to the behavioural traits of masculine and feminine individuals. Those are socially constructed dimensions that explain the male and female status, alongside the position of the sexes within societies. The aim of this study is to re-examine the extent to which culture and cultural context impact the shaping of male and female individuals, as well as the ways through (...) which those influences take place. The relationships between the culturally established set of categories, such as those for gender identification in individuals, are referred to as “human taxonomy”, or “cultural classification”. Hence, the norms, regulations, stances, behaviours, conduct, and, ultimately, the expectations of individuals in a sociocultural environment greatly depend on the relations between mannature-culture. In that context, this paper elaborates on different socio-anthropological theoretic concepts revolving around the creation of masculinity and femininity while emphasizing the historical and contemporary d. (shrink)

Die Begriffe Körper und Gesundheit sind (nicht erst) seit dem sogenannten body-, corporeal- oder somatic-turn Gegenstand sehr unterschiedlicher Disziplinen und Perspektiven: Die Komplexität der Zusammenhänge, Verschränkungen, Bedingungen des Gegenstandspaares Körper-Gesundheit bis hin zur Identifikation macht es erforderlich, multidisziplinär und multiperspektivisch vorzugehen. In diesem Band sind unterschiedliche Disziplinen und Perspektiven versammelt, die sich aus ihrer Fachgenese und wissenschaftlichen Position heraus mit Körper, Leib und Gesundheit beschäftigen, um v.a. Forschungsfelder zu erschließen und praxeologische Konsequenzen zu benennen.

Transhumanism : in a nutshell -- On a silicon-based transhumanism -- On a carbon-based transhumanism -- A fictive ethics -- The end of the beginning.

Equal Justice explores the role of the idea of equality in liberal theories of justice. The title indicates the book’s two-part thesis: first, I claim that justice is the central moral category in the socio-political domain; second, I argue for a specific conceptual and normative connection between the ideas of justice and equality. This pertains to the age-old question concerning the normative significance of equality in a theory of justice. The book develops an independent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of equality (...) and egalitarianism. The principal question is about the importance of equality in a theory of justice. More precisely, we should pose questions in four contracting circles: 1. Is justice the supreme value guiding our setup of the basic structure of society, or are there other, equally important values, such as recognition, care, communal belonging? 2. If justice is the highest guiding principle, which competing ideals—especially equality and freedom—ought to have precedence in a policy oriented toward justice? What status does the ideal of equality have in that framework? 3. If equality is a basic ideal of just policy, how should it be practically realized? What sort of equality (equal opportunity, equality of welfare, resource equality) should be demanded? 4. What patterned distribution of which specific goods does the ideal of equality demand? Which principles of distribution can be justified according to our justice ideal? To conclude and summarize: 5. What is the essential core of an egalitarian theory of justice, as opposed to an inegalitarian theory? These five questions structure the work’s order of argumentation. Part A elaborates the conceptual foundations and basic moral principles of justice and equality. Chapter I sets out to install justice as the central moral category in the socio-political domain. At the beginning of the first chapter, the conceptual foundations of justice are clarified. While not eliminating the classical distinctions between different forms of justice, I argue that the distributive paradigm is of primary importance. The primacy of justice in the socio-political domain is developed out of a confrontation with alternative positions, those which maintain either that justice generally, or distributive justice in particular, are subsidiary virtues. At the end of Chapter I, the first of the questions mentioned above is answered in a way that establishes justice as the guiding normative concept for the foundation and evaluation of any social order. To clarify the role of equality in a theory of justice, Chapter II separates the idea of equality into four different principles. They are organized in a way that begins with the most general and uncontroversial principle of equality, and progresses towards increasingly detailed and contested principles. There are two theses that articulate and defend the significance of equality for justice: First there is a conceptual connection between justice and equality, in that principles of formal and proportional equality are necessary in order to explicate the concept of justice. These two principles establish an unbreakable bond between justice and equality. Justice can only be explained—or so I argue—by reference to these and other (normative) principles of equality. The second thesis posits a normative relationship between justice and equality, which is disclosed by three substantive principles of equality: moral equality, the presumption of equality, and the principle of responsibility. I argue that the normative core of an egalitarian theory of justice is expressed by the latter two principles, which are themselves based on the first principle, that of moral equality. When we view one another as persons, what form of equality or equal treatment is normatively demanded? I argue that the answer to this question is given by the procedural principle of the presumption of equality: regardless of their apparent differences, all persons deserve strictly equal treatment, unless certain kinds of differences have whatever particular relevance would justify, on generally acceptable grounds, unequal treatment or unequal distribution. The justification of the presumption of equality is central to this work and has considerable importance. If the presumption principle’s validity can be justified by enlisting the principle of general justification, then the primacy of equality, and the essential argument for an egalitarian theory of justice, is established. This would likewise provide a procedure for the construction of a material theory of justice. The second question is answered thereby at the end of Chapter II: Equality should have primacy over competing ideals within a justice-oriented policy. The presumption of equality establishes this primacy and, at the same time, offers an appropriate metric and guideline for the construction of a material theory of distributive justice. The presumption of equality in Part B offers an elegant procedure for the development of a theory of distributive justice. Chapter III clearly sets out the necessary prerequisites that a theory of distribution must satisfy in order to determine a liberal-egalitarian distributional framework. We need to specify in which situation the distribution takes place; which goods are and are not to be distributed; in which respect the presumptive equality is to be produced; and by and to whom, and for what period, the relevant goods are to be distributed. The distribution is based on resources understood as general-purpose means. It is necessary to divide goods into different categories, since the justification for unequal treatment in one domain will not carry over into another. This makes presumptive equality necessarily complex. To that end, four spheres of justice are distinguished: (1) the political sphere, which involves allocating rights through the distribution of civil liberties; (2) the democratic sphere, in which political power and the rights of political participation are regulated; (3) the economic sphere, in which income and property are distributed; (4) the social sphere, in which social positions and opportunities are distributed. This framework of distributive justice answers the third of our guiding questions, about the nature of equality, in terms of equality of resources. Chapters IV and V set out the egalitarian distributive criteria for each sphere. I argue that the generally accepted, fundamental rights of classical liberalism are more effectively reconstructed by reference to the equal resource distribution presumptively required in those spheres. Chapter IV shows that when it comes to the first two spheres, those involving basic rights and freedoms and entitlement political participation, there can be no justified exceptions to the equal distribution of the relevant goods. That section argues, contrary to what we commonly find in theories of freedom or popular sovereignty, that the value of freedom and self-determination as the political basis of autonomy is best realized through the presumption of equal distribution. Chapter V deals with the other two spheres, those of economic goods and social positions, and argues for justified exceptions to equal distribution. In the economic sphere we find one principal reason favouring unequal distribution of resources, and three restrictions and compensations limiting that inequality. The basic exception to equal economic distribution arises from the unequal consequences of personal responsibility. From a suitably egalitarian standpoint, the principle of responsibility is the normative principle that determines which reasons justify economic inequality. Here the basic idea is that unequal shares of social goods are fair if they result from the choices and deliberate actions of the relevant parties. That individuals have to bear the costs of their own choices is a condition of autonomy. However, benefits or disadvantages arising from arbitrary and unmerited differences in social circumstances or natural endowments is unfair. The unequal consequences of independent decision-making and action must therefore be limited by compensating first for preferences, secondly for disadvantages, and thirdly by redistributing wealth in aid of the worse-off. I situations of emergency, compensating for disadvantages has priority over all other claims, owing to the urgency of the situation. Social inequalities go beyond the permissible limit if it is possible to improve the long-term social or economic situation of the worse-off by redistributing wealth to them. These exceptions lead to a complex system of free economic action within a framework of compensatory tax and transfer mechanisms. Finally, in the social sphere, the distribution of social positions, offices and opportunities must be structured to ensure that equally talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal chances of obtaining those offices or positions, irrespective of their economic or social class backgrounds. This compromise is permissible for reasons of freedom and prudence, and it makes a certain measure of inequality acceptable. The fourth of our guiding questions is answered accordingly. There are five principles of justice for the basic structure of society, and five legal principles that govern the special distribution of goods in the respective spheres—all are ranked according to their most defensible grounds of priority, ensuring that everyone is accorded equal justice. Chapter VI recapitulates the initial question of equality’s value. The conception of equal justice developed in this work postulates five principles of equality and five principles of law; these constitute an egalitarian framework because they support and promote social justice. Equality has value with respect to them, but is not given any independent, intrinsic value. That is why I call the account developed here a form of constitutive egalitarianism: justice is realized through the realization of equality, itself accomplished by applying the five postulates of equality and five distributive principles of law. This is an egalitarianism on two levels. The first level is involves the claim that morality or justice is conceptually connected with equality. The second level gives equality a substantial weight in what is conceptually validated at the first level, namely the presumption of equality, and constructs an appropriate interpretation and conception of distributive justice through principles of distribution for the individual spheres. The weight and importance of equality is shown by the distributive criteria applied to those spheres. This answers our final guiding question about the nature of an egalitarian theory. (shrink)

Research on the base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) approach and the associated business case for deprived participants in informal markets now appears frequently in a range of business ethics and management-related journals. The present analysis of how supply chain management (SCM) and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) concepts are habitually used in base-of-the-pyramid research serves to strengthen the theoretical foundation of BoP research by addressing the related business case. Based on a content analysis of BoP papers published in English-speaking peer-reviewed journals between 2000 (...) and 2014 from the Web of Science database, this literature review comprehends existing research in the context of established SCM and SSCM frameworks, using both frequency and contingency analyses. The frequency analysis indicates that supply chain management and sustainable supply chain management [(S)SCM] constructs regularly discussed in the BoP literature include supplier integration, strategic purchasing, decommoditization, long-term relationship and enhanced communication among supply chain actors. The identified contingencies reflect linkages between BoP research and (S)SCM constructs. The highest number of links was found between the SCM constructs of strategic purchasing and long-term relationship and the SSCM constructs of supplier integration and communication and coordination with suppliers. These can be regarded as the most crucial (S)SCM constructs in the BoP business environment. This analysis facilitates the development of future research propositions at this intersection, including the use of tools from (S)SCM theories to evaluate BoP propositions and projects. Granted the limited range of BoP-related papers analyzed, the findings provide a coherent understanding of (S)SCM practices crucial to the functioning of BoP markets and why they matter, so contributing to the related ethical rationale. These findings will be of use to researchers and practitioners alike for the formulation of business development strategies and their subsequent implementation in informal market economies. (shrink)

There are several important criticisms against the unificationist model of scientific explanation: Unification is a broad and heterogeneous notion and it is hard to see how a model of explanation based exclusively on unification can make a distinction between genuine explanatory unification from cases of ordering or classification. Unification alone cannot solve the asymmetry and irrelevance problems. Unification and explanation pull in different directions and should be decoupled, because for good scientific explanation extra ad explanandum information is often required. I (...) am presenting a possible solution to those problems, by focusing on an often overlooked but important element of how theoretic unification is achieved—the conceptual frameworks of theories. The core conceptual assumptions behind theories are decisive for discriminating between explanatory and non-explanatory unification. The conceptual framework is also flexible enough to balance the tension between informativeness and maximum systematization in constructing explanatory inferences. A short case study of orthogenetic and Darwinian explanations in paleontology is presented as an illustration of how my addition to the unificationist model is applicable to a historical debate between rival explanations. (shrink)

Over the past 20 years, the participation of laypersons or representatives of civil society has become a guiding principle in processes of research and innovation. There is now a significant litera...

Im Fokus dieses Artikels steht die Vorstellung einer neuen Normativitätstheorie. Ich nenne sie metaethischen Konativismus. Der Konativismus ist der Theorienfamilie des Humeanismus zuzuordnen – er stellt konative Einstellungen in den Mittelpunkt – und ähnelt in seinen Grundzügen den Theorien von Bernard Williams, Mark Schroeder, David Sobel oder Peter Stemmer. Da er sich jedoch, wie ich zeigen werde, in einigen Kernelementen stark von bereits bestehenden Positionen unterscheidet, darf er als eigenständige Theorie gelten. Mein Hauptziel besteht darin, zu zeigen, dass der Konativismus (...) vier zentrale und historisch einflussreiche Einwände gegen humeanische Theorien zurückweisen kann. Diese betreffen die Phänomenologie praktischer Überlegungen, die rationale Kritik konativer Einstellungen, die Verwechslung von motivationaler Kraft und normativem Gewicht, sowie die Frage nach der moralischen Adäquatheit. Mein Ergebnis ist, erstens, dass der Konativismus der Phänomenologie praktischer Überlegungen gerecht wird. Außerdem ergibt sich, zweitens, aus dem Konativismus ganz natürlich die Idee, dass es Gründe „hinter“ unseren konativen Einstellungen gibt, die als Grundlage für eine rationale Kritik selbiger dienen können. Darüber hinaus unterscheidet er, drittens, klar zwischen normativem Gewicht und motivationaler Kraft. Und schließlich, viertens, liefert er eine gute Grundlage dafür, robuste und gewichtige moralische Gründe zu generieren. Es zeigt sich also, dass vier der wichtigsten und einflussreichsten Einwände gegen Humeanische Positionen, die von zahlreichen namhaften AutorInnen immer wieder vorgebracht wurden, das theoretische Potential selbiger stark unterschätzt haben. Der Konativismus stellt eine neue Theorie praktischer Gründe dar, die sich dieses Potential zunutze macht und damit ihren Hut als attraktive Option in den Ring wirft. (shrink)

Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) has become famous, and perhaps infamous, for many reasons. Presently, he is probably most widely-known for his paintings of plants and animals in his very popular book, Art Forms in Nature, originally collected and published in 1904. However, in addition to Haeckel’s art, he is also well-known for his advocacy of Darwinism and Social Darwinism, for first coining the term ‘ecology,’ for having his work utilized by Nazi pseudo-scientists (Dombrowksi in Tech Commun Q 12:303–319, 2003), and for (...) famously (perhaps fraudulently) producing drawings of animal and human embryos so as to confirm his biogenetic law (Gould in Nat Hist 109:44–45, 2000). Something Haeckel is not as well-known for today is the fact that he seemed to be both a strenuous critic of the metaphysical and moral philosophies of Immanuel Kant and yet also something of an adherent to Kant’s aesthetic views. In terms of metaphysics and morality, Haeckel sought to exorcise Kant’s ideas as much as possible from twentieth century views on science, humanity, and nature; however, in terms of aesthetic theory, Haeckel seemed to embrace a distinctly Kantian approach to art and artworks. This essay proposes to: (1) carefully examine Haeckel’s refutations of some of Kant’s central metaphysical concepts, (2) explore some of the, arguably Kantian, assumptions underlying Haeckel’s approach to aesthetics and his artistic practice, and (3) combine these two lines of inquiry into a portrait of Haeckel’s mind as one that is conflicted about the role Kantian philosophy, and more specifically Kantian noumena, should play in twentieth century science and art. This unresolved tension in Haeckel’s mind regarding Kant’s noumenal realm is what I propose to call his ‘Kant Problem’. (shrink)

In this article, the author attempts to identify the sources of good and evil as undertaken by the Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy (LWSP) founded by Kazimierz Twardowski. Such attempts were undertaken by both Twardowski himself and his closest students and associates; Władysław Witwicki, Tadeusz Kotarbiński. Tadeusz Czeżowski, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The best-known approach is Kotarbiński’s independent ethics in which the author refers to Aristotle perceiving such potential in the characteristics of each individual as to distinguish elementary qualities in the form (...) of opposites including opposition to good and evil. According to this approach, man acts in an evil manner because he stops following the natural voice of his own heart and instead implements set proposals provided by external factors. In the opinion of the author, the proposals formulated within the LWSP can form the basis for a rational explanation of the atrocities committed during World War II which modern ethics, being focused on neutral metaethical issues, fails to do. (shrink)

Als einer der prominentesten Vertreter seines Faches hat Horst Bredekamp nicht nur die Kunst- und Bildgeschichte tiefgehend geprägt, sondern auch in Kultur und Politik gewirkt. Dabei hat er es geschafft, belastbare Brücken zwischen diesen oft weit auseinander liegenden Bereichen zu schlagen. Ein Porträt Bredekamps als Gelehrter und disziplinübergreifender Vermittler scheint aufgrund dieser Fülle an Handlungsebenen nur über ein Tableau von Berichten derjenigen möglich, die mit ihm über die Jahre im Austausch standen, ihn begleitet und geprägt, mit ihm diskutiert und gestritten (...) haben. Dabei sind die Fragen an diese Wegbegleiter auch gleichzeitig an den Wissenschaftsbetrieb des 21. Jahrhunderts gerichtet; Sie bilden somit eine Positionsschrift zur Lage der Wissenschaft in Deutschland und an internationalen Forschungsinstituten. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that the innate versus acquired distinction is a false dichotomy. Yet many scientists continue to describe certain traits as “innate” and take this to imply that those traits are not acquired, or “unlearned.” This article asks what cognitive role, if any, the concept of innateness should play in the psychological and behavioural sciences. I consider three arguments for eliminating innateness from scientific discourse. First, the classification of a trait as innate is thought to discourage empirical research (...) into its developmental origin. Second, this concept lumps together a number of different biological properties that ought to be treated as distinct. Third, innateness is associated with the outmoded folk biological theory of essentialism. In response to these objections, I consider two attempts to revise the concept of innateness which aim to make it more suitable for scientific explanation and research. One proposal is that innateness can be defined in terms of the biological property of environmental canalization. On this view, a trait is innate to the extent that it is developmentally buffered against a range of different environments. Another proposal is that innateness serves as an explanatory primitive for cognitive science. This view holds that there exist a sharp boundary between psychological and biological explanations and that to identify a trait as innate means that it falls into the latter explanatory domain. This essay ends with some questions for future research. (shrink)

The subject of my dissertation is "rationality". In this book I undertake a comprehensive, systematic and independent treatment of the problem of rationality. This furthers progress toward a general theory of rationality, one that represents and defends a uniform conception of reason. The structure and general outline are as follows: Part I: General Definition of the Concept; Part II: Rationality in the Theoretical Realm; Part III: Rationality in the Practical Realm (parts II and III are divided respectively into A. Relative (...) Reasons and B. Absolute Reasons); Part IV: Grounds for the Principle of Reason. My aim in this work is to prove that a conception of rationality as justification of our usage of language is more significant than has been classically recognized, without, however, reducing the concept of rationality. After a definition of the term is provided in the first chapter by means of language analysis, the following three questions are dealt with in the subsequent chapters: a) Exhaustion of rationality in relative reasons—i.e., is reasoning exhausted by reference to existing views and goals, or does rationality also exist in a strong sense? The latter would be the case if the views and goals referred to the relative conception must themselves be justified de novo. I argue that such an absolute justification of views and goals cannot be provided. To this end, in the theoretical domain, I discuss a question prominent in the debate over the rationality of worldviews, namely the question of whether the standards of theoretical rationality are merely culturally relative (chapter V.). Here I arrive at the position that standards of theoretical rationality are only transcultural insofar as there are goals which are not themselves culturally-dependent. With regard to practically fundamental goals, the core standards of modern science can be justified. This justification strategy therefore requires that such goals be established. In practical terms, first I address (in Chapter VII) the so-called "final justification" of norms problem. Here I discuss above all the transcendental-pragmatic proposal and the contractualist conception. According to my view, neither succeed in providing a final rational grounding for norms. That grounding pertains instead to the rationale for objectives, and Chapter VIII demonstrates that even a final justification of objectives is impossible. This does not mean, however, that a person's goals cannot be criticized as irrational. But the warrant in this case depends on the rules that govern the genesis of desires being accepted by the subject. b) If substantive rationality does not exist because no absolute grounding for opinions and goals can obtain, then the question of how strong or weak the concept of rationality is acquires further weight. On that basis, relative theoretical and practical rationality is examined in detail. I aim with this analysis of (relative) rationality to apprehend the structural parallelism between rationality in both the practical and the theoretical domain, and therefore to defend a uniform conception of reason or rationality. This is accomplished by identifying a concept that exhibits the same structure in both theoretical and practical domains: the term "rational" is applied to actions and opinions in order to claim, first of all, that they are "well-founded." For example, one must inquire into the precise rational justification for opinions or actions. To determine the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions required for an opinion or action to be rational, one must first provide a formal characterization of the rationality of those opinions or actions. What is to count as a rational ground can only be explained by formal procedures and results achievable via those procedures. To be more specific, I claim that the process of opinion formation and practical reflection is subject to rational justification based on internalist rules. The rules governing theoretical rationality can have their content transformed in a further move, if one takes the result of the process of rational opinion-formation as the product of an epistemological determination, that is, as a decision about which opinion to hold that is made on the basis of epistemological or prudential goals. Implicit in this position is the controversial idea that one can actually decide to believe something. The rules of practical reason are the rules that guide the rational selection of objectives and actions. The structural parallelism of theoretical and practical rationality consists, therefore, in the fact that both refer to mental processes that are controlled by rules which one freely accepts and follows. In both cases, these rules are to be understood as governing the rational choice of a mental or physical action. c) Therefore, the question of whether rationality—being rational—can in turn be grounded by reasons can be answered in the following way: The rules of rationality can only be justified with reference to a person’s goals, as the best strategy for achieving those goals. If someone does not desire the optimal realization of his goals, there is no other way of arguing directly for rationality. One can only attempt to demonstrate—if the person is open to argument—that it is typically in the person's own best interest to adhere to the rules of rationality. (shrink)

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well-known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time. It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final (...) essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti-totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience. (shrink)

In a recent article, Emanuel Rutten has presented a novel argument for the existence of God, defined as a personal being that is the first cause of reality. An interesting feature of the argument, which caused quite a stir, is that it does not fall within any of the traditional categories of arguments for God’s existence. Rutten calls his argument a modal-epistemic one, which reflects the fact that the first premise of his argument states that all possible truths are knowable. (...) The main purpose of this article is a simple one: to point out that Rutten’s modal-epistemic argument is flawed. (shrink)

Was Marxism a variety of German Idealist self-actualization in economic form? A deeply flawed blueprint for social engineering? A catechism for post-colonial insurgencies? the intellectual foundations of modern social democracy? In this wide ranging summation, Sullivan tackles the multi-tentacled reach of Marx's legacy, and explores both the limits and the lasting significance of his ideas. Structured around three obstacles to freedom - poverty, corruption and banality - the work engages both Marx and his critics in addressing unresolved issues of the (...) current social and political order. As such, the work, after two introductory chapters, leaves behind Marxology and its familiar cast of characters (Bernstein, Kautsky, Adorno, Lukacs, Fanon, Horkheimer, Marcuse, etc.) to address both neo-Marxist and non-Marxist interpretations of these obstacles. These include growth-led poverty alleviation, human capital theory, current debates on rent-seeking and public choice theory, weaknesses in Frankfurt School approaches to mass culture, and emerging trends in cyberspace and leisure consumption. Marx for a Post-Communist Era is credited as a foundational theoretical source in a wide range of contemporary studies. Some examples include a government-sponsored anti-corruption report in Peru, a study of neoliberalism and education reform in the UK, and an urban planning essay on museum spaces and the public good. (shrink)

In order to at least begin addressing the extensive the problem of moral clarity in aiding the deprived to some degree, I first argue that the duty to aid the deprived is not merely a charitable one, dependent on the discretion, or the arbitrary will, of the giver (1). Then, before further analysing the individual duty to aid, I critically examine whether deprivation is better alleviated or remedied through the duties of corrective justice. I argue that the perspective of corrective (...) justice is important, but not sufficient when it comes to dealing with deprivation (2). I then argue that non-domination cannot serve as a first-order principle of justice. It is too minimalistic, since it would not require duties of justice where deprivation exists, but dominating relations and institutions do not. (3). Going back to the individual duty to help, I argue that the duties to aid the needy must be assessed according to the situation at hand (4). In order to avoid meaninglessness and morality’s excessive demands, one should be able to identify the responsible agents by constructing a shared and, in the last resort, institution-based duty to help (5). The institutional approach in this paper argues that we should create and reform institutions in order to realize the pre-existing requirement to alleviate global deprivation. This is a form of “global political justice” that does not start with politics, but ends with global political institutions. (shrink)

I propose to show that any direct moral bioenhancement procedures that could be realized within a relatively short period of time are not realistic options. This does not have to worry us; however; because alternative options for promoting morality are available. Consequently; moral bioenhancement is not an option for dealing successfully with the increased potential destructiveness of contemporary technologies within a short-term framework; i.e. within this century. In what follows; I will explain why this is the case; and why; contrary (...) to Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu; I think this need not worry us too much. In section 1.; I will critically analyze moral bioenhancement by means of citalopram; aimed at reducing the tendency to harm others directly. I give this prominence because it could be a practical option for altering human emotions and dispositions – to my mind; it seems the most promising practical option in this field. In later sections; I will consider other means of realizing moral bioenhancement; since the first option does not do the job it is supposed to; and because Persson and Savulescu are concerned with alternative approaches. (shrink)

On the basis of an earlier contribution to the philosophy of computer science by Amnon Eden, this essay discusses to what extent Eden’s ‘paradigms’ of computer science can be transferred or applied to software engineering. This discussion implies an analysis of how software engineering and computer science are related to each other. The essay concludes that software engineering can neither be fully subsumed by computer science, nor vice versa. Consequently, also the philosophies of computer science and software engineering—though related to (...) each other—are not identical branches of a general philosophy of science. This also implies that not all of Eden’s earlier arguments can be directly mapped from the domain of computer science into the domain of software science. After the discussion of this main topic, the essay also points to some further problems and open issues for future studies in the philosophy of software science and engineering. (shrink)

Much recent work in Cognitive Linguistics and neighbouring disciplines has adopted a so-called usage-based perspective in which generalizations are based on the analysis of authentic usage data provided by computerized corpora. However, the analysis of such data does not always utilize methodological findings from other disciplines to avoid analytical pitfalls and, at the same time, generate robust results. A case in point is the strategy of using corpus frequencies. In this paper, we take up a recently much debated issue from (...) construction grammar concerning the association between verbs and argument-structure constructions, and investigate a construction, the English as-predicative, in order to test the predictive power of different kinds of frequency data against that of a recent, more refined corpus-based approach, the so-called collexeme analysis. To that end, the results of the application of these corpus-based approaches to an analysis of the as predicative are compared with the results of a sentence-completion experiment. Concerning the topic under consideration, collexeme analysis is not only shown to be superior on a variety of theoretical and methodological grounds, it also significantly outperforms frequency as a predictor of subjects’ production preferences. We conclude by pointing out some implications for usage-based approaches. (shrink)

The article takes on a less developed aspect of the sociology of the stranger: the normalized non-relations people in urban settings establish in their effort to stay strangers for one another. How is their “civil inattention”accomplished in practice? What is the social orderliness of “asocial” relations? In order to answer these questions the article uses the elevator as a sociological research instrument allowing for a highly detailed investigation in structural problems of public encounters: bodily navigation, contact avoidance, feigned preoccupation, and (...) the blocking of the automatism by which co-present bodies start interactions. The setting used for the investigation also raises questions about how the artifact and the bodies present are integrated into the interaction order. The “heteromobile” of the elevator offers specific sociotechnical scripts for interaction. While the human actors work hard at doing nothing, their bodies seem to take over their agency. The specific challenge of elevator riding for the enactment of indifference is the vanishing of actors: undoing presence. (shrink)

Examines widespread myths about transhumanism and explores the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.

As false information may spread rapidly on social media, a profound understanding of how it can be debunked is required. This study offers empirical insights into the development of rumors after they are debunked, the various user groups who are involved in the process, and their network structures. As crisis situations are highly sensitive to the spread of rumors, Twitter posts from during the 2017 G20 summit are examined. Tweets regarding five rumors that were debunked during this event were manually (...) coded into the following categories: rumor, debunking message, uncertainty about rumor, uncertainty about debunking message, and others. Our findings show that rumors which are debunked early and vehemently by official sources are the most likely to be stopped. When individuals participate in the process, they typically do so by sharing uncommented media content, as opposed to contributing user-generated content. Depending on the conditions in which a rumor arises, different network structures can be found. Since some rumors are easier for individuals to verify than others, our results have implications for the priorities of journalists and official sources. (shrink)

We investigate the Ramsey theory of continuous graph-structures on complete, separable metric spaces and apply the results to the problem of covering a plane by functions. Let the homogeneity number[Formula: see text] of a pair-coloring c:[X]2→2 be the number of c-homogeneous subsets of X needed to cover X. We isolate two continuous pair-colorings on the Cantor space 2ω, c min and c max, which satisfy [Formula: see text] and prove: Theorem. For every Polish space X and every continuous pair-coloringc:[X]2→2with[Formula: see (...) text], [Formula: see text] There is a model of set theory in which[Formula: see text]and[Formula: see text]. The consistency of [Formula: see text] and of [Formula: see text] follows from [20]. We prove that [Formula: see text] is equal to the covering number of 2 by graphs of Lipschitz functions and their reflections on the diagonal. An iteration of an optimal forcing notion associated to c min gives: Theorem. There is a model of set theory in which ℝ2 is coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of continuous real functions; ℝ2 is not coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of Lipschitz real functions. Figure 1.1 in the introduction summarizes the ZFC results in Part I of the paper. The independence results in Part II show that any two rows in Fig. 1.1 can be separated if one excludes [Formula: see text] from row. (shrink)

The diachronic change of word-formation patterns is currently gaining increasing interest in cognitive-linguistic and constructionist approaches. This paper contributes to this line of research with a corpus-based investigation of nominalization with the suffix -ung in German. In doing so, it puts forward both theoretical and methodological considerations on morphology and morphological change from a usage-based perspective. Regarding methodology, the long-standing topic of how to measure the productivity of a morphological pattern is discussed, and it is shown how statistical association measures (...) can be applied to quantify the relationship between word-formation patterns and their bases. These findings are linked up with theoretical considerations on the interplay between constructional schemas and their respective instances. (shrink)

In following paper an attempt will be made to analyse the statistical relationships between variables as the functions of causal relations existing between them. Our basic assumption here is that statistical relationships between traits, events, or characteristics of objects, may be logically derived from the pattern of their mutual causal connections, if this pattern is described by appropriate concepts and with sufficient precision. The first part of the paper presents basic concepts, which according to author's view may serve for the (...) description of different patterns of causal relations in such a way, that statistical relationships corresponding to each pattern may be derived. It gives also examples of such a derivation for some less complicated cases. The second part of the paper is an attempt of application of proposed method to the understanding and critical consideration of some standard techniques of statistical analysis, especially those mostly used in social sciences. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some of the central theoretical perspectives on culture and cultural practices implied in Pragmatism and interactive constructivism. The first part of the chapter highlights three major perspectives on cultural theory to be found in Dewey's thought: culture and experience, culture and habit, and culture and communication. The chapter then compares basic conceptual tools and interpretive approaches and shows that Dewey's work continues to provide fundamental resources in this field. Through this connection, it presents a brief introduction to (...) theories of discourse and power and discusses some implications for current controversies regarding multiculturalism. It argues that Dewey's Pragmatism and the Cologne program of interactive constructivism share a robust interest in culture and cultural diversity. (shrink)

Recent findings indicate that the constituting digits of multi-digit numbers are processed, decomposed into units, tens, and so on, rather than integrated into one entity. This is suggested by interfering effects of unit digit processing on two-digit number comparison. In the present study, we extended the computational model for two-digit number magnitude comparison of Moeller, Huber, Nuerk, and Willmes (2011a) to the case of three-digit number comparison (e.g., 371_826). In a second step, we evaluated how hundred-decade and hundred-unit compatibility effects (...) were moderated by varying the percentage of within-hundred (e.g., 539_582) and within-hundred-and-decade filler items (e.g., 483_489). From the results we predict that numerical distance as well as compatibility effects should indeed be modulated by the relevance of tens and units in three-digit number magnitude comparison: While in particular the hundred distance effect should decrease, we predict hundred-decade and hundred-unit compatibility effects to increase with the relevance of tens and units. (shrink)