Society’s relationship with modern animal farming is an ambivalent one: on the one hand there is rising criticism about modern animal farming; on the other hand people appreciate certain aspects of it, such as increased food safety and low food prices. This ambivalence reflects the two faces of modernity: the negative (exploitation of nature and loss of traditions) and the positive (progress, convenience, and efficiency). This article draws on a national survey carried out in the Netherlands that aimed at gaining (...) a deeper understanding about the acceptance of modern dairy farming in Dutch society. People take two dimensions into account when evaluating different aspects of modern dairy farming: (1) the way living beings are used for production and (2) the way a dairy farm functions as a business. In both these dimensions people appeared to adopt cautious opinions: most people preferred relatively traditional and natural farms and were concerned about the use of nature and treatment of animals in modern production—although this did not imply an outright rejection of modern animal farming. The study also looked for (and sought to explain) differences of opinion between social groups. Besides socio-demographic factors such as age and gender, farming experience and value-orientation (such as socially minded and professional) appeared to be important variables. The values and convictions within modern society can help to explain why some people are greatly concerned about animal welfare while some show less concern. This diversity also helps to explain why general information campaigns are quite ineffective in allaying concerns about modern animal farming. (shrink)
This paper presents and evaluates two advanced courses organised in Oxford as part of the European project Nanobio-RAISE and suggests using their format to encourage multidisciplinary engagement between nanoscientists and nanoethicists. Several nanoethicists have recently identified the need for ‘better’ ethics of emerging technologies, arguing that ethical reflection should become part and parcel of the research and development (R&D) process itself. Such new forms of ethical deliberation, it is argued, transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and require the active engagement and involvement (...) of both nanoethicists and nanoscientists with the broader issues surrounding technological developments. Whereas significant research efforts into multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations during R&D processes are now emerging, opportunities for encouraging multidisciplinary engagement through education have remained relatively underexplored. This paper argues that educational programmes could be a natural extension of ongoing collaborative research efforts ‘in the lab’ and analyses how the Nanobio-RAISE courses could be used as a model for course development. In addition to exploring how the elements that were conducive to multidisciplinary engagement in this course could be preserved in future courses, this paper suggests shifting the emphasis from public communication towards ethical deliberation. Further course work could thus build capacity among both nanoscientists and nanoethicists for doing ‘better’ nanoethics. (shrink)
Johannes Daubert he was an acknowledged leader, and in some respects the founder, of the early phenomenological movement, and was considered – as much by its members as by Husserl himself – the most brilliant member of the group. In Daubert’s unpublished writings we find a series of reflections on Lask, and on Neo-Kantianism, which form the subject-matter of this paper. They range over topics such as the ontology of the ‘Sachverhalt’ or state of affairs, truthvalues (Wahrheitswerte) and the (...) value of truth, negative judgments and the copula, and the relation between perception and judgment. (shrink)
This article by Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., never before translated into English, describes his contacts with Martin Heidegger. First it describes his arrival, along with Karl Rahner, S.J., to pursue doctoral studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and their first experiences with the famous professor. Lotz continues his narrative by mentioning times he met with Heidegger over the subsequent forty years up to the philosopher’s death. With Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller, Bernhard Welte, and Karl Rahner, Lotz belonged to a group (...) of Catholic thinkers influenced—some more, some less—by Martin Heidegger. In Lotz’s view some of Heidegger’s ideas were already found in Aquinas, and a philosophy of Being needed to go beyond existential analysis into religion, revelation, and cultural criticism. (shrink)
To seek to elucidate Husserl's phenomenology by contrasting it with that of the Munich phenomenologist Johannes Daubert (1877-1947) is to betray an intention to explain something well-known by reference to something that is wholly obscure. Thus most philosophers are somehow aware of Edmund Husserl. But Johannes Daubert?
The German Johannes Sharpe is the most important and original author of the so called "Oxford Realists": his semantic and metaphysical theories are the end product of the two main medieval philosophical traditions, realism and nominalism, for he contributed to the new form of realism inaugurated by Wyclif, but was receptive to many nominalist criticisms. Starting from the main thesis of Wyclif's metaphysics, that the universal and individual are really identical but formally distinct, Oxford Realists introduced a new type (...) of predication, based on a partial identity between the entities for which the subject and predicate stood, called predication by essence, and then redefined the traditional post-Aristotelian categories of essential and accidental predication in terms of this partial identity. Sharpe substantially shares the metaphysical view and principles of the other Oxford Realists, but he elaborates a completely different semantics, since he accepts the nominalist principle of the autonomy of thought in relation to the world, and Ockham's explanation for the universality of concepts. Unfortunately, this semantic approach partially undermines his defence of realism, since it deprives Sharpe of any compelling semantic and epistemological reasons to posit universalia in re. Therefore, Sharpe's main ontological theses certainly are sensible and reasonable, but, paradoxically, within his philosophical system they cannot in any way be considered as absolutely consistent. (shrink)
In this paper I take issue with James Conant’s claim that Johannes Climacus seeks to engage his reader in the Postscript by himself enacting the confusions to which he thinks his reader is prone. I contend that Conant’s way of reading the Postscript fosters a hermeneutic of suspicion that leads him (and those who follow his approach) to be unduly suspicious of some of Climacus’ philosophical activity. I argue that instead of serving as a mirror of his reader’s faults, (...) Climacus is better conceived of as a Socratic figure whose own philosophical activity represents a positive alternative to the Hegelian style of doing philosophy that is under attack in the Postscript. I close the paper by arguing that Climacus adopts two very different experimental stances in his two books: while in Fragments Climacus adopts the stance of someone who has “forgotten” about Christianity, in the Postscript he openly declares that he is not a Christian and then proceeds to investigate the question, appropriately cast in the first person, “How do I,Johannes Climacus, become a Christian?” I maintain that we will not be in a position to appreciate what makes the Postscript a profound work of philosophy until we obtain a better understanding of the various respects in which Climacus is a Socratic figure. (shrink)
impermissibly favorable to Jews? -- Humanist origins -- Humanism at court -- Discovery of Hebrew -- Johannes Pfefferkorn and the campaign against Jews -- Who saved the Jewish books? -- Inquisition -- Trial at Rome and the Christian debates -- The Luther affair -- As if the first martyr of Hebrew letters.
Romantic Naturphilosophie has been at the centre of almost every account of early nineteenth-century sciences, be it as an obstacle or as an aid for scientific advancement. The following paper suggests a change of perspective. I seek to read Naturphilosophie as one manifestation among others of a more general concern with the question of how experience enables the subject to acquire knowledge about objects. To illustrate such an approach, I focus on Johannes Muller's early work. Here one finds two (...) contrasting images of microscopical observation, its set-up, and the observer: the embryological study of 1830 demands a 'philosophical grasp' of the appearances. In contrast, the investigations of blood of 1832 are presented as a series of controlled experiments. I argue that an interpretation of this contrast in terms of an appropriation and casting aside of Naturphilosophie is not altogether convincing. Instead, both images of microscopy are manifestations of a more general problem, namely, the problem of exactly how subject and object came together in experience. I show how this concern not only shaped the methodological sensibilities particular to Muller's embryology and the investigation of bodily liquids but also provided the epistemological principles and the target for his sense-physiological experiments. It bound Muller's work together with Naturphilosophie and linked Naturphilosophie with other contemporaneous projects in philosophy. All of these enterprises sought to contribute to ongoing debates about how experience allowed the subject to acquire knowledge about the world. (shrink)
Johannes Kinker (1764–1845) who tried to promote Kantian philosophy in different ways, was also interested in the phenomenon of language. His general language theory is presented in Inleiding eener Wijsgeerige Algemeene Theorie der Talen, published in 1817. An impression of that theory is given in this paper. Some important questions arise, viz. whether Kinker was influenced by others; whether his theory was an original one and what the place of the theory is in the linguistic situation of the eighteenth (...) and the beginning of the nineteenth century. (shrink)
Die Frage, mit der sich Johannes Haag in Erfahrung und Gegenstand auseinandersetzt, lautet: „Auf welchem Grunde beruht die Beziehung desjenigen, was man in uns empirische Vorstellung, d. i. Erfahrung nennt, auf den Gegenstand überhaupt?“ ...
impermissibly favorable to Jews? -- Humanist origins -- Humanism at court -- Discovery of Hebrew -- Johannes Pfefferkorn and the campaign against Jews -- Who saved the Jewish books? -- Inquisition -- Trial at Rome and the Christian debates -- The Luther affair -- As if the first martyr of Hebrew letters.
You and I are watching a spider crawl across the carpet. We are both aware of the spider, and aware that both are so aware. We are jointly attending to it. This collection of essays addresses a bewildering array of questions that arise regarding the notion of joint attention. How should joint attention be characterised in adults? In particular, how can we articulate the sense in which it is plausible to say that nothing is hidden from either participant in cases (...) of joint attention? What is the relationship between joint attention and the much discussed phenomenon of common, or mutual, knowledge? What account should be given of the development of the capacity for joint attention in children (and in non-human primates)? At what age is it correct to say that children are engaging in episodes of full blown joint attention? Relatedly, what is the relation between joint attention and pointing behaviour, gaze following and mutual affect regulation? Why is it that autistic children appear to exhibit a joint attention deficiency, and what might this tell us about autism, or about joint attention itself? Does the capacity for joint attention presuppose an understanding of the notion of attention, or more generally a subject of experience, and if so what is the relation between that understanding and the types of behaviour associated with joint attention? More generally, how does joint attention relate to our understanding of others? Finally, is the capacity for joint attention pivotal for the development of linguistic communication, or perhaps even a sense of objectivity—of the mind independence of the world? (shrink)
Though there are significant points of overlap between Michelle Kosch's reading of Fear and Trembling and my own, this paper focuses primarily on a significant difference: the legitimacy or otherwise of looking to paradigmatic exemplars of faith in order to understand faith. I argue that Kosch's reading threatens to underplay the importance of exemplarity in Kierkegaard's thought, and that there is good reason to resist her use of Philosophical Fragments as the key to interpreting the 'hidden message' of Fear and (...) Trembling. Key to both claims is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. I also briefly sketch an alternative reading of the 'hidden message', one in which Kierkegaard's Christian commitments play a notably different role. (shrink)
On hearing a sound behind me I may turn my head in order to see what is happening. This piece of behaviour is a deliberate action, one which feels to be under my own control. If asked what I am doing, I will be able to provide an immediate and knowledgeable answer, viz. 'turning my head' or maybe 'looking to see what is going on'. Not only do I know that an action is taking place, I know which action is (...) taking place, and I know who the agent of that action is. (shrink)
