Článek pojednává o filosofickém pozadí, charakteristických rysech a aktuálních podnětech etiky techniky židovského filosofa Hanse Jonase (1903-1993). Cílem autora je pokusit se téma představit a kriticky reflektovat v širším kontextu relevantních německých zdrojů. V první kapitole jsou představena filosofická východiska jonasovské etiky techniky, především epistemologicko-ontologický a antropologický předpoklad moderní techniky, jonasovská interpretace geneze moderní techniky a jejího vztahu k moderní koncepci vědy. Ve druhé kapitole najdeme jonasovskou analýzu technické praxe v podobě jejích pěti specifických vlastností: ambivalence účinků, nutnost použití, globální (...) rozsah a dosah v prostoru a čase, prolomení antropocentrismu a vzbuzování metafyzických otázek. Na začátku třetí kapitoly autor velmi stručně srovnává jonasovský přístup s přístupem španělského filosofa Ortegy y Gasseta, a také s přístupem Günthera Anderse, Martina Heidegerra a Karla Jasperse, tak, aby vynikly charakteristické rysy přístupu jonasovského. Dále autor některé vybrané charakteristické rysy kriticky reflektuje a zabývá se i otázkou aplikace principu předběžné opatrnosti. Třetí kapitolu uzavírá výčet možných aktuálních podnětů jonasovské etiky techniky a formulace etických maxim, které autor navrhuje, vycházeje přitom z pěti uvedených vlastností techniky, přidávaje šestou: utopické tendence. Závěr práce shrnuje dosažené poznatky a prohlubuje autorovu reflexi ze třetí kapitoly. Článek představuje sondu do tématu, které nebylo v českém myšlenkovém prostředí dosud podrobněji zpracováno. (shrink)

Book review:Galilei, Galileo. Prubíř. Translation by Markéta Ledvoňová and Jana Malá. Edited and commented by Markéta Ledvoňová, Daniel Špelda, and Vladimír Štefl. Praha: Togga, 2020. 354 pages.

When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built (...) from the ontology’s signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their ‘meaningfulness’ was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a ‘quality ordering’ of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions. (shrink)

The paper aims to explain different cases of disobedient institutional behavior using the attitude-based model. The issue of how to analyze and capture the faces of disobedience in a simple model is approached in three steps: first, misbehavior is defined as a certain lack in normative attitudes; second, these attitudes are distinguished in terms of normative acceptance and normative guidance; and third, combinations of these attitudes represent basic types of disobedience: opposing, transgressing and conforming. These three categories constitute an analytical (...) typology of disobedient agents compatible with the theory of social institutions. (shrink)

This article introduces an agent-based and a system-dynamics model investigating the cultural transmission of frequent collective rituals. It focuses on social function and cognitive attraction as independently affecting transmission. The models focus on the historical context of early Christian meals, where various theoretically inspiring trends in cultural transmission of rituals can be observed. The primary purpose of the article is to contribute to theorizing about cultural transmission of rituals by suggesting a clear operationalization of their social function and cognitive attraction. (...) Furthermore, the article challenges recent trends in the field by providing a theoretically feasible model for how, under certain conditions, cognitive attraction can influence the transmission to a relatively greater extent than social function. In the system dynamics model we reproduce the results of our agent-based model while putting some of our basic operational assumptions under scrutiny. We consider approaching social function and cognitive attraction in isolation as a preliminary but necessary step in the process of creating more complex models of the cultural selection of rituals, where the two aspects will be combined to produce ritual forms with greater correspondence to real-world religious rituals. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of compatibility of social institution and convention. At first, it introduces the modest account of conventionality building on five distinctive features – interdependence, arbitrariness, mind-independence, spontaneity, and normative-neutrality – which constitute conventional behaviour, then it presents the two major theories of social institutions that explain them in terms of rules, or equilibria. The argument is that conventions cover a wide-ranging area and cannot be identified with the category of institutions because it would be too (...) restrictive and contradictory to the initial modest account. (shrink)

Schon als Schüler erlernte Ignaz von Döllinger so hervorragend die englische Sprache, dass ihn später viele seiner britischen Korrespondenzpartner und Freunde für einen native speaker hielten. Seine ausgezeichneten Englisch-Kenntnisse ermöglichten dem Münchner Kirchenhistoriker und Präsidenten der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften nicht nur eine intensive Wahrnehmung und Lektüre englischsprachiger Publikationen, darunter auch politischer Zeitungen und Zeitschriften, sondern auch eine sehr genaue Beobachtungen der kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen in der Church of England, die er als die faszinierendste aller nachreformatorischen Kirchenbildungen hoch schätzte. Der Beitrag (...) macht zunächst an Döllingers The Church and the Churches aus dem Jahre 1861, sodann an den kurz nach der deutschen Reichsgründung, 1872 gehaltenen Lectures on the Reunion of the Churches, weiterhin an den von Döllinger initiierten Bonner Unionskonferenzen 1874/75 und kurz auch an The History of Religious Freedom die wachsende Sympathie Döllingers für den anglikanischen Kirchentypus deutlich. Zwar litter stark unter Edward B. Puseys Ablehnung der Bonner Konsensgespräche. Aber langfristig bereitete Döllinger mit seinen zahlreichen ökumenischen Initiativen den Weg für die 1931 vereinbarte Abendmahlsgemeinschaft zwischen Anglikanern und Altkatholiken. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel view of social norms that reflects the importance of different agent types, their specific motivations and roles. How one identifies with a role and behavioral options available to the agent is crucial for the sustainability of the social norms. The analysis of a simple case of social norm is suggested as a default model for analysis, and then the classification of subjects, enforcers, and audience is introduced. This triangular typology of agents is extended by introducing (...) a network of interlocking patterns underlying social behavior. Lastly, the paper describes two categories of transgressions based on misidentification. (shrink)

:The aim of this article is to reopen the rather neglected issue of the nature and internal structure of the.

This paper aims to assess current theoretical findings on the origin of coordination by salience and suggests a way to clarify the existing framework. The main concern is to reveal how different coordination mechanisms rely on specific epistemic aspects of reasoning. The paper highlights the fact that basic epistemic assumptions of theories diverge in a way that makes them essentially distinctive. Consequently, recommendations and predictions of the traditional views of coordination by salience are, in principle, based on the processes related (...) to the agent’s presumptions regarding the cognitive abilities of a co-player. This finding implies that we should consider these theories as complementary, and not competitive, explanations of the same phenomenon. -/- . (shrink)

The study proposes a new approach towards a social phenomenon called convention and submits a minimalistic definition of convention, which provides a promising basis for future analysis unburdened by contra-Lewisian objections. The definition itself, based on the insights of Ruth Millikan in the study Language Conventions Made Simple, represents a simple and efficient means of delimiting essential components of conventional behaviour (stripped of most of the controversial issues from previous debates on Lewis’s notion) solely by means of the role of (...) precedent and its ability to reproduce. Yet, it is argued that a few additional conditions are required for a valid and distinct notion of conventionality: namely, the inclusion of a coordination aspect and an extension of the concept of precedent. The final version of the definition, thereafter, meets intuitive requirements of conventionality (e.g., arbitrariness) and has the generality to embrace different types of conventions. (shrink)

The main aim of the article is to show how panpsychism, that is, the idea the everything in the world is endowed with a soul, was varied even during the periods in the history of philosophy when it flourished. In the Renaissance, I focus on Francesco Patrizi: he coined the term, which originally meant that everything is ensouled. The article starts by an investigation of Patrizi’s attempt to trace panpsychism back to the most ancient thinkers. His conclusions are, in general, (...) in agreement with current scholarly assessment of early Greek philosophers, whose views I attempt to reconstruct in a kind of survey. A closer comparison, however, shows significant differences between Patrizi’s and today’s account of the most ancient conception of panpsychism. While Patrizi uses the concept to state that the world as a whole is ensouled, early Greek philosophers understood it to mean that every thing in the world possesses a particular soul. From a broader perspective, it is clear that, while Patrizi builds on the notion of all-embracing ancient philosophy, modern scholarship assumes a more historical account of ancient thought characterised by a gradual progress from simple, more empirically based concepts, to more complex and metaphysical ones. (shrink)

The paper proposes an alternative approach to the ontology of social institutions by systematizing various normative institutional influences and identifying processes that distinguish between conforming and violating behaviour. The prevailing – cost-based model – suggests that an agent's conformity to a specific institutional rule can be represented by a single measure – cost. The model is limited in its explanatory potential since it accounts for varieties of institutional behaviour in terms of single parametrical changes in the agents' utilities. The central (...) argument shows that normative attitudes represent a distinctive normative structure capable of explaining crucial aspects of institutional behaviour. These attitudinal aspects provide the structure necessary for understanding institutional normativity and its violations. (shrink)

I defend the doctrine of double effect and a so-called ‘strict’ definition of intention: A intends an effect if and only if A has it as an end or believes that it is a state of affairs in the causal sequence that will result in A's end. Following Kamm's proposed ‘doctrine of triple effect’, I distinguish an intended effect from an effect that motivates an action, and show that this distinction is morally significant. I use several contrived cases as illustrations, (...) but my position does not depend on intuitive judgements about them. Instead, it follows from the view that the moral permissibility of an action depends at least partly on how it forms the agent's character. I also respond to some objections presented by Harris, Bennett, McIntyre, Thomson and Scanlon to the doctrine of double effect. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I argue that physicians can save women from life-threatening pregnancies by performing a craniotomy, placentectomy, or salpingotomy without intending death or harm. To support this conclusion, I defend the relevance thesis about intentions (a person intends X only if X explains the action). I then criticize the identity thesis (if a person intends X and knows X is Y then the person intends Y) and three mistakenly strict moral principles: (1) one may not intend something that is a serious harm (...) for an innocent person, (2) one may not intend to terminate pregnancy before viability, which would prohibit, and (3) one may not act on a person’s body in a harmful way in order to benefit another person. (1) would prohibit procuring organs from living donors, (2) would prohibit treating hepatic pregnancies and other ectopic pregnancies, and (3) would prohibit procuring organs from living donors and performing many prenatal surgeries. (shrink)

Manuel Velasquez and F. Neil Brady apply the doctrine of double effect to business ethics and conclude that the doctrine allows a pharmaceutical company to sell a drug with potentially fatal side effects only if it also has the good effect of saving lives. This forbidsthe sale of many common products, such as automobiles and alcohol. My account preserves the virtues of the doctrine of double effectwithout making it too restrictive. I apply the doctrine to a pharmaceutical company’s decision to (...) market a drug with dangerous side effects and argue that free markets often offer the best way to compare the good and bad effects of business decisions. I conclude that the doctrine does allow a business to sell a potentially fatal product that does not save lives, provided that it warns consumers about the danger. (shrink)

Text sleduje proměny reinkarnačních představ v počátcích řecké filosofie. Chce upozornit na několik méně známých a nesamozřejmých skutečností, které souvisejí se změnou pochopení převtělující se duše mezi presokratiky a Platónem.

The research presented in this article is motivated by the increasing importance of complex human relations in linked data, either extracted from social networks, or found in existing databases. The FOAF vocabulary, targeted in our research, plays a central role in those data, and is a model for lightweight ontologies largely used in linked data, such as the DBpedia ontology and schema-org. We provide an overview of FOAF and other approaches for describing human relations, followed by a detailed analysis and (...) critique of the FOAF Relationship Vocabulary, the most important FOAF extension. We propose an explicit formal axiomatization of this vocabulary, and an ontological analysis concerning the properties used to describe human relationships. We analyze the distribution of human relations based on their epistemological status, and define an ontoepistemic meta-property as characteristic of some of these predicates. Our analysis is generalizable to semantic modeling of social networks. Additionally, the modeling patterns used in other relevant linked data vocabularies are analyzed for comparison. (shrink)

This study takes up the phenomenon of disappointment in today’s environmental movements. It analyses two distinct streams of environmental movements – neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project. On the basis of their published written statements, it describes these movements, analyses the opinions of their members regarding possible future developments and examines their ethical motivations. It examines the members’ motivations in terms of three categories – teleological, deontological and virtue ethics – and asserts that each of these contains various expectations, implying (...) varying potential for disappointment. The text’s conclusion compares and assesses the attitudes of the members of neo-environmentalism and the Dark Mountain Project, their optimism and pessimism, from the perspective of the philosophers Hans Jonas, Roger Scruton and Romano Guardini. (shrink)

In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law as “Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity”, and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that aims to be (...) informative for evaluating specific arguments for Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law. Since each of the conditions seems to significantly contribute to the complexity of the resulting model, formally evaluating the hypothesis might be exceedingly difficult. This raises the possibility that whether the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence is real or not, the underlying dynamics might be invisible to current scientific methods. (shrink)

I argue that Kant identifies the only principle that refutes war realism, or the view that warring nations should do whatever they can to win the war as quickly as possible. According to Kant, warring nations must follow principles that preserve the possibility of entering a peaceful condition, and the peaceful condition is not merely an end to hositilities.

The trend of emerging biorefineries is to process the harvest as efficiently as possible and without any waste. From the most valuable phytomass, refined medicines, enzymes, dyes and other special reactants are created. Functional foods, food ingredients, oils, alcohol, solvents, plastics, fillers and a wide variety of other chemical products follow. After being treated with nutrient recovery techniques, biofuels or soil improvers are produced from the leftovers. Economic optimization algorithms have confirmed that such complex biorefineries can be financially viable only (...) when a high degree of feedstock concentration is included. Because the plant material is extremely voluminous before processing, the farming intensity of special plants increases in the nearest vicinity of agglomerations where the biorefineries are built for logistical reasons. Interdisciplinary analyses revealed that these optimization measures lead to significantly increased pollen levels in neighbouring urban areas and subsequently an increased risk of allergies, respectively costs to the national health system. A new moral dilemma between the shareholder’s profit and public interest was uncovered and subjected to disputation. (shrink)

I argue that the contralife argument, which new natural law theorists have proposed as an argument against contraception, also would rule out altered nuclear transfer, which has been proposed as a way of procuring human stem cells without destroying human embryos.

In a recent contribution to this journal, Patrick Tully criticizes my view that the doctrine of double effect does not prohibit a pharmaceutical company from selling a drug that has potentially fatal side-effects and that does not treat a life-threatening condition. Tully alleges my account is too permissive and makes the doctrine irrelevant to decisions about selling harmful products. In the following paper, I respond to Tully’s objections and show that he misinterprets my position and misstates some elements of the (...) doctrine of double effect. I also show how the doctrine constrains some decisions about marketing drugs with potentially fatal side-effects. (shrink)

The principle of double effect has a long history, from scholastic disputations about self-defense and scandal to current debates about terrorism, torture, euthanasia, and abortion. Despite being widely debated, the principle remains poorly understood. In Intention, Character, and Double Effect, Lawrence Masek combines theoretical and applied questions into a systematic defense of the principle that does not depend on appeals to authority or intuitions about cases. Masek argues that actions can be wrong because they corrupt the agent's character and that (...) one must consider the agent's perspective to determine which effects the agent intends. This defense of the principle clears up common confusions and overcomes critics' objections, including confusions about trolley and transplant cases and objections from neuroscience and moral psychology. This book will interest scholars and students in different fields of study, including moral philosophy, action theory, moral theology, and moral psychology. Its discussion of contemporary ethical issues and sparse use of technical jargon make it suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in applied ethics. The appendix summarizes the main cases that have been used to illustrate or to criticize the principle of double effect. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant identifies what is morally good as what allows people to fulfill their essential purpose. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre contends that the Enlightenment project of justifying morality had to fail because Enlightenment thinkers did not treat moral judgments as teleological judgments. However, Kant claims in his Critique of Judgment that judging something to be good always refers to a purpose. I reconcile this claim with some passages from Kant’s writings that seem to contradict it, including (...) passages about a good will, the categorical imperative, and the boundary of human knowledge. I also explain how following the moral law allows humans to fulfill their essential purpose of becoming worthy of happiness. (shrink)

I clarify Kant's classification of duties and criticize the apocryphal tradition that, according to Kant, perfect duties trump imperfect duties. I then use Kant's view to argue that judges who believe that an action is immoral and should be illegal need not set aside their beliefs in order to comply with binding precedents that permit the action. The same view of morality that causes some people to oppose certain actions, including abortion, requires lower–court judges to comply with binding precedents. Therefore, (...) someone's opposition to legal abortion, by itself, does not justify opposing that person's nomination to a lower court. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Steven Dezort criticizes two versions of the contralife argument, including my version and a version defended by some prominent new natural law theorists. In this essay, I argue that people should accept the contralife argument even if they disagree with other principles of new natural law theory. To defend this thesis, I correct some misstatements about the contralife argument and identify basic disagreements about defining actions and respecting human life.

The author uses the central insight of the principle of double effect—that the distinction between intended effects and foreseen side effects is morally significant—to distinguish contraception from natural family planning. After summarizing the contralife argument against contraception, the author identifies limitations of arguments presented by Pope John Paul II and by Martin Rhonheimer. To show that the contralife argument does not apply to NFP, the author argues that agents do not intend every effect that motivates their actions. This argument supplements (...) the action theory of Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and other proponents of new natural law theory. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 : 83–97. (shrink)

I present the strict definition of intended effects and pose two questions for its critics: Apart from rationalizing moral intuitions about the craniotomy and other controversial cases, why classify an effect as intended if it does not explain the action? What definition of intended effects can people use to guide their actions? These questions show that broad definitions of intended effects have no basis in action theory and are too vague to guide people’s actions. I suggest that broad definitions seem (...) plausible because people confuse what someone intends and what someone is responsible for causing. (shrink)