Purpose This paper aims to examine exceptionalisms in ethics in general and in the fields of animal and technology ethics in particular. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews five sample works in animal/technology ethics it considers representative for particularly popular forms of “exceptionalism”. Findings The shared feature of the exceptionalisms exhibited by the chosen samples appears to be born out of the cultural and biological history, which provides powerful intuitions regarding the on “specialness”. Research limitations/implications As this paper is mostly a critique (...) of existing approaches, it contains only a limited amount of counter-proposed alternative approaches. Practical implications This is a discussion worth having because arguments based on exceptionalism have more chance of resulting in significantly altered theoretical conclusions and practical suggestions for normative guidance than non-exceptionalist perspectives. Social implications The approaches critiqued in this paper have a significant effect on the way the authors approach animals, machines/technologies and each other. Originality/value The paper identifies intuitive notions of exceptionalism and argues in favour of a reformist, ethical expansionist stance, which views humanity as residing on the same plane of ethical significance as any other entity regardless of its material composition. (shrink)

As Thomas Uebel has recently argued, some early logical positivists saw American pragmatism as a kindred form of scientific philosophy. They associated pragmatism with William James, whom they rightly saw as allied with Ernst Mach. But what apparently blocked sympathetic positivists from pursuing commonalities with American pragmatism was the concern that James advocated some form of psychologism, a view they thought could not do justice to the a priori. This paper argues that positivists were wrong to read James as offering (...) a psychologistic account of the a priori. They had encountered James by reading Pragmatism as translated by the unabashedly psychologistic Wilhelm Jerusalem. But in more technical works, James had actually developed a form of conventionalism that anticipated the so-called “relativized” a priori positivists themselves would independently develop. While positivists arrived at conventionalism largely through reflection on the exact sciences, though, James’s account of the a priori grew from his reflections on the biological evolution of cognition, particularly in the context of his Darwin-inspired critique of Herbert Spencer. (shrink)

Die unter dem Titel "Metaphysik "überlieferte kleine Abhandlung des Aristotelesschülers Theophrast enthält eine ebenso kompakte wie kritische Rekonstruktion ungelöster systematischer Grundlagenprobleme der klassischen griechischen Philosophie, angefangen bei den Vorsokratikern über Platon und die Akademie bis hin zu Aristoteles. Es geht vornehmlich um fundamentale Aporien der Ontologie und der Naturphilosophie, wie die Frage nach der Interdependenz ideeller Prinzipien und wahrnehmbarer Phänomene oder die Plausibilität der Teleologie als methodisches Prinzip der Naturerklärung. Theophrast analysiert und bewertet die geläufigen konkurrierenden Lösungsvorschläge und zeigt ihre (...) Defizite unerbittlich auf: ein Stück synoptischer Metaphysikkritik, das an zeitgenössische Typen der Dekonstruktion erinnert. Der Text hat seinen Wert als Dokument für den Übergang von einer konstruktiven zu einer eher skeptischen, in Teilen sogar destruktiven Phase der klassischen griechischen Tradition und zeigt exemplarisch, vor allem am Verhältnis der theophrastschen zur aristotelischen "Metaphysik", wie sehr die jeweiligen philosophischen Positionen sich in Abhängigkeit von der jeweiligen Rezeption vorgängiger Rezeptionsprozesse entwickelten. Die erstmals mit einer deutschen Übersetzung erscheinende kritische Edition dieses philosophiehistorischen Schlüsseltextes hat das Ziel, diese Bedeutung des bislang zu wenig beachteten Dokuments aus der Schule des Aristoteles sichtbar zu machen. (shrink)

Examines the role of language in Nietzsche's thought, including the relationship between style and subjectivity, the semiological underpinnings of his theory of tragedy, his naturalism, and his theory of language and rhetoric.

v. 1. Schriften zur Anthropologie und Geschichte -- v. 2. Schriften zur Altertumskunde und Ästhetik. Die Vasken -- v. 3. Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie -- v. 4. Schriften zur politik und zum bildungswesen -- v. 5. Kleine Schriften, autobiographisches, Dichtungen, Briefe, Kommentare und Ammerkungen zu Band I-V, Anhang.

In this article, we describe four theoretical and methodological problems that have impeded implicit attitude research and the popular understanding of its findings. The problems all revolve around assumptions made about the relationships among measures, constructs, cognitive processes, and features of processing. These assumptions have confused our understandings of exactly what we are measuring, the processes that produce implicit evaluations, the meaning of differences in implicit evaluations across people and contexts, the meaning of changes in implicit evaluations in response to (...) intervention, and how implicit evaluations predict behavior. We describe formal modeling as one means to address these problems, and provide illustrative examples. Clarifying these issues has important implications for our understanding of who has particular implicit evaluations and why, when those evaluations are likely to be particularly problematic, how we might best try to change them, and what interventions are best suited to minimize the effects of implicit evaluations on behavior. (shrink)

An analysis of the 1784 essays by immanuel kant and moses mendelssohn on the question "what is enlightenment?" emphasis is placed on discussions of the nature and limits of enlightenment within the berlin "aufklarung" as evidenced by debates within the berlin "mittwochsgesellschaft" (a secret society of "friends of the enlightenment") and articles in the "berlinische monatsschrift". Among the views surveyed are those of the publicists johann erich biester, Friedrich gedike, And friedrich nicolai, The jurists karl gottlieb svarez and ernst ferdinand (...) klein, The physician johann karl wilhelm mohsen, And the theologian johann friedrich zollner. (shrink)

Separation-based accounts of privacy define privacy as being left alone and unaccessed. Pyrrho et al. propose a more control-based account where privacy is about having the age...

Patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) face many difficult, timing-sensitive decisions over the course of their illness, weighing present versus future harms and benefits. Supplemented by interviews with people with ALS, we argue for a relational approach to understanding these decisions and their effects on identity. We highlight two critical aspects of the patient–caregiver relationship: (1) the extent to which each may rely on the other leaves their wellbeing intimately intertwined and (2) patients often require others to help with the (...) imaginative task of considering possible futures for each therapeutic option. We show why family involvement in decisionmaking practices can be so critical, and shed light on the ways intimate others help preserve and protect people’s identities amidst the destabilizing uncertainty illness and treatment can bring. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging data, and discusses the application of neuroimaging techniques to various fields, including cognitive sciences. It considers the role of neuroimaging data in providing informative evidence regarding hypotheses in cognitive science, and explains differences in data, high-level null hypotheses, and ways to accommodate null hypotheses. Finally, the chapter looks into the scope of neuroimaging data in the cognitive sciences.

Quantifier expressions like “many” and “at least” are part of a rich repository of words in language representing magnitude information. The role of numerical processing in comprehending quantifiers was studied in a semantic truth value judgment task, asking adults to quickly verify sentences about visual displays using numerical or proportional quantifiers. The visual displays were composed of systematically varied proportions of yellow and blue circles. The results demonstrated that numerical estimation and numerical reference information are fundamental in encoding the meaning (...) of quantifiers in terms of response times and acceptability judgments. However, a difference emerges in the comparison strategies when a fixed external reference numerosity is used for numerical quantifiers, whereas an internal numerical criterion is invoked for proportional quantifiers. Moreover, for both quantifier types, quantifier semantics and its polarity biased the response direction. Overall, our results indicate that quantifier comprehension involves core numerical and lexical semantic properties, demonstrating integrated processing of language and numbers. (shrink)

Cet article présente les politiques de promotion des sciences humaines poursuivies par le gouvernement coréen au cours des dernières années. Il explique l’importance accordée à ces disciplines dans le contexte du développement économique du pays et insiste sur l’importance que revêt une formation humaniste pour une compétitivité accrue de la Corée à l’échelle globale. Il détaille les actions et programmes principaux mis en place ainsi que les perspectives d’avenir. L’auteur dirige la Division de affaires universitaires auprès du Ministère de l’Éducation, (...) de la Science et de la Technologie de la République de Corée. (shrink)

We study the logic of neighbourhood models with pointwise intersection, as a means to characterize multi-modal logics. Pointwise intersection takes us from a set of neighbourhood sets Ni (one for each member i of a set G used to interpret the modality □) to a new neighbourhood set NG, which in turn allows us to interpret the operator □G Here, X is in the neighbourhood for G if and only if X equals the intersection of some Y {Yi | Yi (...) ∈G}. We show that the notion of pointwise intersection has various applications in epistemic and doxastic logic, deontic logic, coalition logic, and evidence logic. We then establish sound and strongly complete axiomatizations for the weakest logic characterized by pointwise intersection and for a number of variants, using a new and generally applicable technique for canonical model construction. (shrink)