More than a purely philosophical problem, straddling the ambivalent terrain between necessity and impossibility, contingency seems to have become today the very horizon of our everyday life. Often used as a synonym for the precariousness of working conditions under neoliberalism, for the unknown threats posed by terrorism, or for the uncertain future of the planet itself, contingency needs to be calculated and controlled in the name of the protection of life. The overcoming of contingency is not only called upon to (...) justify questionable mechanisms of political control; it serves as a central legitimating factor for Enlightenment itself. In this volume, nine major philosophers and theorists address a range of questions around contingency and moral philosophy. How can we rethink contingency in its creative aspects, outside the dominant rhetoric of risk and dangerous exposure? What is the status of contingency-as the unnecessary and law-defying-in or for ethics? What would an alternative "ethics of contingency"-one that does not simply attempt to sublate it out of existence-look like? The volume tackles the problem contingency has always posed to both ethical theory and dialectics: that of difference itself, in the difficult mediation between the particular and the universal, same and other, the contingent singularity of the event and the necessary generality of the norms and laws. From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers reshape many of the most debated concepts in moral philosophy: difference, agency, community, and life itself. Contributors: Étienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, Thomas Claviez, Drucilla Cornell, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Viola Marchi, Michael Naas, Cary Wolfe, Slavoj Žižek. (shrink)

Arranges the work of Viola Cordova, presenting her understanding and interpretation of the interactions between people and nature.

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

This article investigates how much influence consumers could have in the GDR during the 1960s by means of a case study of a patient striving towards an apparently reasonable psychiatric treatment through his actions in- and outside the clinic. The patient tried to obtain an effective therapy by referring to his model socialist work and life. The former patient also subsequently acted as a consumer via different activities, both within the GDR and abroad. Finally, against the background of different theories (...) of patient and consumer history, this article will discuss how consumer historical approaches can be useful for studying a socialist state. (shrink)

The search for truth and spirituality, intertwined with the search for one’s self, has been a perennial theme in arts and literature. In some works of Finnish literature at the turn of the twentieth century, the figure of a person seeking for spiritual fulfilment tended to intertwine with that of the upstart. At first sight, it might seem odd that these two figures should overlap in literary works, but as I show, especially in early twentieth-century Finnish literature, such cases are (...) not rare, given the wide range of meanings that the word nousukas would denote. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

A comparison between the Prolegomena of Chapter II of De iure praedae and the Prolegomena of De iure belli ac pacis leads to the conclusion that the ideas of Grotius on legal systematization have changed considerably between 1604 and 1625. Whereas Grotius starts in IPC with general principles with a rather unclear distinction between leges and regulae, in IBP he gives first the philosophical and theological basis of international law, intertwined by a concise set of general legal rules, mostly derived (...) from Roman law after its reception in Western Europe. The general outlines of legal systematization in the early-modern period are expounded. In the attempts of legal systematization the concept of subjective rights is essential. These subjective rights are not, as is sometimes assumed, a medieval renewal of legal technique, but can be found essentially already in classical Roman law of the first centuries AD.The institutional system is not yet visible in De iure praedae, it might be different for De iure belli ac pacis. Significant here are possibly the expressions ius ad bellum and ius in bello. (shrink)

My strategy is to examine a recent trend in philosophical discussions of responsibility, a trend that tries, but I think ultimately fails, to give an acceptable analysis of the conditions of responsibility. It fails due to what at first appear to be deep and irresolvable metaphysical problems. It is here that I suggest that the condition of sanity comes to the rescue. What at first appears to be an impossible requirement for responsibility---the requirement that the responsible agent have created her- (...) or himself---turns out to be the vastly more mundane and non controversial requirement that the responsible agent must, in a fairly standard sense, be sane. (shrink)

Experimentation represents today a ‘hot’ topic in computing. If experiments made with the support of computers, such as computer simulations, have received increasing attention from philosophers of science and technology, questions such as “what does it mean to do experiments in computer science and engineering and what are their benefits?” emerged only recently as central in the debate over the disciplinary status of the discipline. In this work we aim at showing, also by means of paradigmatic examples, how the traditional (...) notion of controlled experiment should be revised to take into account a part of the experimental practice in computing along the lines of experimentation as exploration. Taking inspiration from the discussion on exploratory experimentation in the philosophy of science—experimentation that is not theory-driven—we advance the idea of explorative experiments that, although not new, can contribute to enlarge the debate about the nature and role of experimental methods in computing. In order to further refine this concept we recast explorative experiments as socio-technical experiments, that test new technologies in their socio-technical contexts. We suggest that, when experiments are explorative, control should be intended in a posteriori form, in opposition to the a priori form that usually takes place in traditional experimental contexts. (shrink)

The question about the scientific nature of computing has been widely debated with no universal consensus reached about its disciplinary status. Positions vary from acknowledging computing as the science of computers to defining it as a synthetic engineering discipline. In this paper, we aim at discussing the nature of computing from a methodological perspective. We consider, in particular, the nature and role of experiments in this field, whether they can be considered close to the traditional experimental scientific method or, instead, (...) they possess peculiar and unique features. We argue that this experimental perspective should be taken into account when discussing the status of computing. We critically survey how the experimental method has been conceived and applied in computing, and some open issues that could be tackled with the aid of the history of science, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

This paper presents a case of severe uncertainty in the development of autonomous and intelligent systems in Artificial Intelligence and autonomous robotics. After discussing how uncertainty emerges from the complexity of the systems and their interaction with unknown environments, the paper describes the novel framework of explorative experiments. This framework presents a suitable context in which many of the issues relative to uncertainty, both at the epistemological level and at the ethical one, in this field should be reframed. The case (...) of autonomous robot systems for search and rescue is used to make the discussion more concrete. (shrink)

Abstract (German version follows): -/- This paper develops a new proposal for a coherentist business ethic in which ethically justified and empirically supported proposed solutions to economic problems are developed through a coherentist process of adjustments between the three levels of (1) conception of problem and its solution, (2) positive economic theory, and (3) ethical theories. Using an example, it illustrates how in this framework, Homann's business ethics gains in validity and relevance but loses its claim to universality. // -/- (...) Diese Arbeit entwickelt eine kohärentistische Wirtschaftsethik, in der ethisch begründete und empirisch gestützte Lösungsvorschläge für ökonomische Probleme durch einen kohärentistischen Anpassungsprozess zwischen den drei Ebenen (1) Auffassung von Problem und Lösungsansatz, (2) positive ökonomische Theorie, sowie (3) ethischen Theorien erarbeitet werden. Anhand eines Beispiels wird illustriert, wie Homanns Wirtschaftsethik in diesem Rahmen an Validität und Relevanz gewinnt, jedoch ihren Universalitätsanspruch verliert. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) gilt mit seiner Philosophie der symbolischen Formen als Begrunder der Kulturphilosophie. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) war lange Zeit einer der beruhmtesten franzosischen Denker und ist im Deutschen bekannt als Lebensphilosoph. Und Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) kennt man als Mathematiker und, mit Bertrand Russell, Herausgeber der Principia Mathematica, weniger als Philosophen. Doch dass sie alle drei in ahnlicher Weise eine Philosophie der Erfahrung als dynamisches System entworfen haben, das die philosophische Tradition revolutioniert und als Fundament fur die heute interessantesten (...) philosophischen Stromungen gelten kann, ist wenig bekannt. In diesem Buch wird die Originalitat und Eigenstandigkeit dieser drei grossen Philosophen gezeigt, indem ihr gemeinsamer phanomenologischer Ansatz vorgefuhrt und ausgebaut wird: die Dynamisierung der Form und die Betonung der Kreativitat, die es ermoglichen, Erfahrung als die Entstehung von etwas Neuem zu denken. (shrink)

The Library of the Royal Society of London contains a large collection of manuscript material relating to Henry Oldenburg and his correspondents. Oldenburg was one of the two Secretaries of the Royal Society when it was founded in 1662. For many years he acted as intermediary between British and Continental philosophers: and scientists. He also edited the early volumes of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions . His contacts were accordingly very extensive. Nearly all the seventeenth-century pioneers of science were among (...) his correspondents. In his role of intermediary he was in the habit of sending extracts from some of his foreign letters to. (shrink)

A System of philosophy, a comprehensive world-view, is a work of art, although it is also more than that. Already Plato described the philosopher as a poet, and Plato himself was a great poet as well as a great philosopher. In recent years Professor Alexander has explained, on various occasions, that there is artistry involved in all scientific and philosophic thought. They demand creative intellectual construction of a high order. In so far as this is true, as I believe it (...) is, it should be possible, sometimes at least, to contemplate a great system of philosophy as a work of art, to enjoy it in a spirit of detachment, above the noise and the tumult of conflicting personal convictions.It is more or less in this spirit that I propose on this occasion to deal with some of the fundamental ideas of Spinoza. That, I believe, is in accordance with his own wishes. He wanted his works to be published anonymously, so that his philosophy might be considered impersonally, entirely on its own merits. Such a method of treatment may in any case be most suitable on this occasion when, in spite of probably great divergences in our individual views, we have come together to do honour to his memory. This kind of personal tribute may be contrary to his own wishes. But we owe it to ourselves, and to mankind at large, to keep alive the remembrance of one of the greatest masters of the art of high thinking and plain living. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 688-690, August 2012.

This chapter discusses the analysis of Joseph Raz on coercion, trust, and citizenship. The chapter starts with a number of brief comments on some of his observations regarding the doctrine of liberty and the preference for minimum government. The chapter also includes one of Raz's arguments that states that some people favour non-perfectionist forms of government out of a misunderstanding of the implications of perfectionism for liberty.

I here present a feminine voice version of the moral case against abortion and draw from it some conclusions for public policy. My motto is solidarity with the last and least. The unborn individual is “one of us”—to be welcomed, not dismissed as a burden on society. Abortion, I argue, is bad for women, bad for children, and bad for the rest of us. Public policy should reflect these conclusions.