This memorandum was prepared by Daniel Steiner, General Counsel to Harvard University on behalf of the President's Office and distributed to the faculty in October, 1980. It reviews recent Harvard policy with regard to patents and technology transfer. Spurred by recombinant DNA research, at Harvard and elsewhere, benefits and pitfalls of the University's participation as a minor shareholder in a company engaged in research and development are identified. The author notes that “The memorandum has benefited from numerous discussions (...) with members of the faculty and administration and in particular from the comments of President Bok and Dean Rosovsky.”. (shrink)

Individual and institutional conflict of interests in biomedical research have becomes matters of increasing concern in recent years. In the United States, the growth in relationships — sponsored research agreements, consultancies, memberships on boards, licensing agreements, and equity ownership — between for-profit corporations and research universities and their scientists has made the problem of conflicts, particularly financial conflicts, more acute. Conflicts can interfere with or compromise important principles and obligations of researchers and their institutions, e.g., adherence to accepted research norms, (...) duty of care to patients, and open exchange of information. Disclosure is a key component of a successful conflict policy. Commitments which conflict with a faculty member's primary obligations to teaching, research, administrative responsibilities, or patient care also need attention. Institutional conflict of interests present different problems, some of which are discussed in an analysis of an actual problem posed by two proposed clinical trials. (shrink)

A partir de las reflexiones que Durkheim lleva a cabo en La División del Trabajo Social, podemos entender que un intento por desarrollar un concepto de sociedad es una tarea abordable a partir de la indagación sobre sus formas de integración. Siguiendo sus planteamientos, referirse sociológicame..

Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach (...) to animal rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship. (shrink)

Dans son « Découverte d'un nouveau principe de mécanique » (1750) Euler a donné, pour la première fois, une preuve du théorème qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le Théorème d'Euler. Dans cet article je vais me concentrer sur la preuve originale d'Euler, et je vais montrer comment la pratique mathématique d Euler peut éclairer le débat philosophique sur la notion de preuves explicatives en mathématiques. En particulier, je montrerai comment l'un des modèles d'explication mathématique les plus connus, celui proposé par Mark (...) class='Hi'>Steiner dans son article « Mathematical explanation » (1978), n'est pas en mesure de rendre compte du caractère explicatif de la preuve donnée par Euler. Cela contredit l'intuition originale du mathématicien Euler, qui attribuait à sa preuve un caractère explicatif spécifique. (shrink)

Dans son « Découverte d'un nouveau principe de mécanique » (1750) Euler a donné, pour la première fois, une preuve du théorème qu'on appelle aujourd'hui le Théorème d'Euler. Dans cet article je vais me concentrer sur la preuve originale d'Euler, et je vais montrer comment la pratique mathématique d Euler peut éclairer le débat philosophique sur la notion de preuves explicatives en mathématiques. En particulier, je montrerai comment l'un des modèles d'explication mathématique les plus connus, celui proposé par Mark (...) class='Hi'>Steiner dans son article « Mathematical explanation » (1978), n'est pas en mesure de rendre compte du caractère explicatif de la preuve donnée par Euler. Cela contredit l'intuition originale du mathématicien Euler, qui attribuait à sa preuve un caractère explicatif spécifique. (shrink)

El artículo indaga la legitimidad libertaria de las fronteras estatales para excluir inmigrantes. Se sostiene que en estas teorías la legitimidad de las fronteras se construye mediante la legitimidad de la propiedad. El artículo analiza las teorías libertarias de Nozick y Steiner y argumenta contra la idea de que el derecho de propiedad libertario permite excluir en las fronteras y sostiene que las condiciones de legitimidad de la propiedad implican una potestad estatal reducida para controlar fronteras. Si bien en (...) un mundo ideal las comunidades dispondrían del poder total para controlarlas, en nuestro mundo imperfecto los estados carecen de esa potestad. (shrink)

Daniel Marcelle, Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch, Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, Dordrecht: Springer, 2009; Volume II: Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Volume III: The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin, Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Claudia Șerban, Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes negatives, Paris: Grasset, 2010; Christian Rössner, Hans-Dieter Gondek, László Tengelyi, Neue Phanomenologie in Frankreich, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011; Daniel Dwyer, Hans-Helmuth Gander, Husserl-Lexikon, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010; Délia Popa, Jean-François Lavigne, (...) Acceder au transcendantal? Reduction et idealisme transcendantal dans les Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie pure et une philosophie phénoménologique de Husserl, Paris: Vrin, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Lambert Wiesing, Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Eine Autopsie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Sam B. Girgus, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption. Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; Rolf Kühn, Frédéric Seyler, ≪ Barbarie ou culture ≫ : L’ethique de l’affectivitedans la phenomenologie de Michel Henry, Paris: Kimé, 2010; Stephan Steiner, Mette Lebech, On the Problem of Human Dignity. A Hermeneutical and henomenological Investigation, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. (shrink)

Les défis permanents, mais très actuels, liés aux questions éducatives nécessitent d'enrichir les ressources à disposition des enseignants, des formateurs, des éducateurs... Cet ouvrage propose de re-découvrir des réflexions et des propositions d'auteurs soucieux de renforcer la relation entre l'apprenant et le savoir, entre apprenants, entre apprenants et adultes-référents favorisant l'émergence d'un homme rigoureux intellectuellement et pleinement équilibré. Ce travail s'appuie sur des contributions diversifiées permettant de disposer de nouvelles clés pour exercer au quotidien un métier sans cesse en questionnement. (...) On appréciera ce travail de synthèse mettant à la portée de chacun les enseignements de Jung, Krishnamurti, La Garanderie, Rogers, Steiner, mais également les apports du yoga, d'une éducation à la joie, à la recherche du sens... (shrink)

"Ist der Mensch in seinem Denken und Handeln ein geistig freies Wesen oder steht er unter dem Zwange einer rein naturgesetzlichen ehernen Notwendigkeit? Auf wenige Fragen ist so viel Scharfsinn gewendet worden als auf diese. Die Idee der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens hat warme Anhänger wie hartnäckige Gegner in reicher Zahl gefunden. Ein und dasselbe Ding wird hier gleich oft für das kostbarste Gut der Menschheit wie für die ärgste Illusion erklärt." Rudolf Steiner (Gröls-Klassiker - Edition Werke der Weltliteratur).

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

In _Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism_, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment (...) of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals--as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

With characteristic lucidity and style, Steiner makes Heidegger's immensely difficult body of work accessible to the general reader. In a new introduction, Steiner addresses language and philosophy and the rise of Nazism. "It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger."--George Kateb, The New Republic.

An anthology of writings by and about Rudolf Steiner qua economist that documents his search for a deeper understanding of modern economic life. This book throws light on many of the problems that face us today, problems that we cannot solve unless we take hold of the economic life in a conscious, human way and resist the temptation to defer to market forces alone. Though well-known as a seer, the idea of Rudolf Steiner as an economist may seem (...) surprising. Seers do not usually have much concrete to say about economic life, beyond laments about its evils and injunctions that it be guided by some moral dimension. Rudolf Steiner, however, gave many lectures and wrote many articles about modern economic life, which he saw as the arena in which humanity has to find a new relationship to the spirituality that formerly came from above or outside -- from churches and external principles. Today the human being has to find morality within, which one cannot fully do unless one takes hold of the economic realm in a conscious, human way. Whether through concrete references to the meaning and working of money, or in attempting to give a fuller understanding of work or of the significance of market economics in our time, Steiner shows himself to be well versed in the subject. This publication presents a selection of his articles in a context of essays by Christopher Houghton Budd. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of (...) cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

Examines the lived experience of social encounters drawing on phenomenological insights.

In a remarkable book, one of the preeminent essayists and literary thinkers of our era concerns himself with language and its relation to literature and religion. Written during a period when the art of reading and the status of a text have been threatened by literary movements that question their validity and by computer technology, Steiner's essays affirm the primacy of reading in the classical sense.

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

This book contains a collection of important recent writing on left-liberalism, a political philosophy that recognizes both strong liberty rights and strong ...

Supererogatory acts—good deeds “beyond the call of duty”—are a part of moral common sense, but conceptually puzzling. I propose a unified solution to three of the most infamous puzzles: the classic Paradox of Supererogation (if it’s so good, why isn’t it just obligatory?), Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, and Kamm’s Intransitivity Paradox. I conclude that supererogation makes sense if, and only if, the grounds of rightness are multi-dimensional and comparative.

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

In this chapter, I pursue two aims. Firstly, I propose an original survey and analysis of the way proponents of 4E cognition have until now defined the relations between normativity and cognitive science. A first distinction is made between making normativity an explanandum of 4E cognitive science, and turning normativity into a property or part of the explanantia of 4E cognitive science. Inside of the latter option, one must distinguish between methodological, ontological and semantic claims on the value of normativity (...) for studying and defining cognitive phenomena. The second aim of the paper consists in developing the further claim that normativity is an essential property of daily intentional concepts and of scientific concepts. I show how 4E cognition might further develop this latter claim in the context of recent debates about cognitive ontologies in neuroscience. (shrink)

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a startling (...) account of the human mind working at its highest potential. To approach her subject John-Steiner goes directly to the source, assembling the thoughts of "experienced thinkers"--artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists able to reflect on their own imaginative patterns. More than fifty interviews, along with excerpts from the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of such gifted giants as Leo Tolstoy, Marie Curie, and Diego Rivera, among others, provide illuminating insights into creative activity. We read, for example, of Darwin's preoccupation with the image of nature as a branched tree while working on his concept of evolution. Mozart testifies to the vital influence on his mature art of the wondrous "bag of memories" he retained from childhood. Anais Nin describes her sense of words as oppressive, explaining how imagistic free association freed her as a writer. Adding these personal accounts to laboratory studies of thought process, John-Steiner takes a refreshingly holistic approach to the question of creativity. What emerges is an intriguing demonstration of how specific socio-cultural circumstances interact with certain personality traits to encourage the creative mind. Among the topics examined here are the importance of childhood mentor figures; the lengthy apprenticeship of the talented person; and the development of self- expression through highly individualistic languages, whether in images, movement or inner speech. Now, with a new introduction, this award-winning book provides an uniquely broad-based study of the origins, development and fruits of human inspiration. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

This book strongly challenges the Western philosophical tradition's assertion that humans are superior to nonhuman animals. It provides a full and direct moral status of nonhuman animals. The book provides basis for a radical critique of the entire trajectory of animal studies over the past fifteen years. The key idea explored is of 'felt kinship' a sense of shared fate with and obligations to all sentient life. It will help to inspire some deep rethinking on the part of leading exponents (...) of animal studies. The book's strong outlook is expressed through an appeal for radical humility on the side of humans rather than a constant reference to the 'human-animal divide'. Historical figures examined in depth include Aristotle; Seneca, and Kant; contemporary figures examined include Christine Korsgaard and Martha Nussbaum. This book presents an account in which the tradition has proceeded based on impartial motivations at all, but instead has made a set of pointedly self-serving assumptions about the proper criteria for assessing moral worth. Readers of this book will gain exposure to a wide variety of thinkers in the Western philosophical tradition, historical as well as contemporary. This book is suitable for professionals working in nonhuman animal studies, students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners working in the fields of philosophy, environmental studies, law, literature, anthropology, and related fields. (shrink)

Supererogatory acts are those that lie “beyond the call of duty.” There are two standard ways to define this idea more precisely. Although the definitions are often seen as equivalent, I argue that they can diverge when options are infinite, or when there are cycles of better options; moreover, each definition is acceptable in only one case. I consider two ways out of this dilemma.

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)