In den letzten drei Dekaden ist es zu einer Renaissance des Republikanismus gekommen. Ein spezifisch republikanisches Freiheitsverstandnis und die Debatte um entpolitisierende Wirkungen komplexer liberaler Demokratien haben sich dabei als in hohem Masse anschlussfahig an eine Vielzahl gegenwartiger Diskurse - von Global Governance bis hin zu Postdemokratie - erwiesen. Das Verstandnis von Republikanismus als einer modernen politischen Theorie wurde so weiter gestarkt und republikanische Ansatze gelten wieder als der zentrale Gegenspieler eines liberalen Staats- und Politikverstandnisses. Der Sammelband greift diese Renaissance (...) auf und bietet einen fur den deutschen Sprachraum bis dato fehlenden Uberblick uber Entwicklungstendenzen und Debatten im modernen republikanischen Denken. Er liefert eine Systematisierung von Ansatzen und Stromungen und erortert die Leistungsfahigkeit republikanischer Theorie gerade mit Blick auf Gegenwartsfragen. Mit Beitragen von: Richard Bellamy, Dorothea Gadeke, Philip Holzing, Sebastian Huhnholz, Marcus Llanque, Horst Mewes, Andreas Oldenbourg, Emanuel Richter, Daniel Schulz, Winfried Thaa, Thorsten Thiel, Christian Volk, Florian Weber und Sabrina Zucca-Soest. (shrink)

Research on personality psychology is making important contributions to psychological science and applied psychology. This second edition of The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology offers a one-stop resource for scientific personality psychology. It summarizes cutting-edge personality research in all its forms, including genetics, psychometrics, social-cognitive psychology, and real-world expressions, with informative and lively chapters that also highlight some areas of controversy. The team of renowned international authors, led by two esteemed editors, ensures a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Each research (...) area is discussed in terms of scientific foundations, main theories and findings, and future directions for research. The handbook also features advances in technology, such as molecular genetics and functional neuroimaging, as well as contemporary statistical approaches. An invaluable aid to understanding the central role played by personality in psychology, it will appeal to students, researchers, and practitioners in psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and the social sciences. (shrink)

In this chapter, we consider ethical and philosophical aspects of trust in the practice of medicine. We focus on trust within the patient-physician relationship, trust and professionalism, and trust in Western (allopathic) institutions of medicine and medical research. Philosophical approaches to trust contain important insights into medicine as an ethical and social practice. In what follows we explain several philosophical approaches and discuss their strengths and weaknesses in this context. We also highlight some relevant empirical work in the section on (...) trust in the institutions of medicine. It is hoped that the approaches discussed here can be extended to nursing and other topics in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

Instead of conceiving ethical commands as divine revelations or as the discoveries of brilliant thinkers, we should see our ethical practices as evolving over tens of thousands of years, as members of our species have worked out how to live together and prosper. Here, Kitcher elaborates his radical vision of this millennia-long ethical project.

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

Higher order cognitive processes, including ethical decision making (EDM), are influenced by the experiencing of discrete emotions. Recent research highlights the negative influence one such emotion, anger, has on EDM and its underlying processes. The mechanism, however, by which anger disrupts the EDM has not been investigated. The current study sought to discover whether cognitive appraisals of an emotion-evoking event are the driving mechanisms behind the influence of anger on EDM. One primary (goal obstacle) and one secondary (certainty) appraisal of (...) anger were examined. Study results suggest that appraisals of certainty are the driving mechanism behind the negative relationship between anger and EDM. Certainty appraisals led to less application of EDM-promoting strategies and more unethical social motives. Findings further highlight the value of investigating appraisals of emotional events, given their cognitive nature, for their potential effects on cognitive operations, such as EDM. Future directions and implications are discussed. (shrink)

This volume introduces readers to emergence theory, outlines the major arguments in its defence, and summarizes the most powerful objections against it. It provides the clearest explication yet of this exciting new theory of science, which challenges the reductionist approach by proposing the continuous emergence of novel phenomena.

Introductory Chapter to the _Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition_ (CUP, 2009).

An esteemed philosopher discusses his theory of universal freedom, describing how even those who are members of free societies may find their liberties curtailed and includes tests of freedom including the eyeball test and the tough-luck test.

Cases have been employed across multiple disciplines, including ethics education, as effective pedagogical tools. However, the benefit of case-based learning in the ethics domain varies across cases, suggesting that not all cases are equal in terms of pedagogical value. Indeed, case content appears to influence the extent to which cases promote learning and transfer. Consistent with this argument, the current study explored the influences of contextual and personal factors embedded in case content on ethical decision-making. Cases were manipulated to include (...) a clear description of the social context and the goals of the characters involved. Results indicated that social context, specifically the description of an autonomy-supportive environment, facilitated execution of sensemaking processes and resulted in greater decision ethicality. Implications for designing optimal cases and case-based training programs are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing on the latest work in cognitive neuroscience, a philosopher proposes that delusions are narrative models that accommodate anomalous experiences.

A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...) to reasons, and it is compatible with a subjective awareness of the available options. (shrink)

_Idealist Alternatives to Materialist Philosophies of Science_ (ed. Philip MacEwen) presents some of the major challenges to materialist interpretations of science while also giving materialism a full hearing.

In “Scientific Knowledge,” Philip Kitcher challenges arguments that deny the truth of the theoretical claims of science, and he attempts to discover reasons for endorsing the truth of such claims. He suggests that the discovery of such reasons might succeed if we ask why anyone thinks that the theoretical claims we accept are true and then look for answers that reconstruct actual belief‐generating processes. To this end, Kitcher presents the “homely argument” for scientific truth, which claims that when a (...) field of science is continually applied to yield precise predictions, then it is at least approximately true. He defends this approach and offers a supplementary account that gives more attention to detail. This account includes a historical aspect that must answer to skeptical challenges and a social aspect. (shrink)

People who work and live in a certain moral practice usually possess a specific form of moral wisdom. If we manage to incorporate their moral intuitions in ethical reasoning, we can arrive at judgements and theories that grasp a moral experience that generally cannot be found outside the said practice. To achieve this goal, we need a legitimate way to balance moral intuitions, ethical principles and general theories. In the present contribution, we describe a version of the model of Reflective (...) Equilibrium, which we call the Normative-Empirical Reflective Equilibrium . RE provides a framework for ethical thinking that includes both moral experience and normative theory.After an outline of the model, we focus on the role of empirical research and illustrate how empirical data on moral intuitions can add to the comprehensiveness of the set of moral beliefs in NE-RE. Subsequently, we describe how coherence among the elements of an NE-RE can be understood and measured. Finally, we address an important question for any method of moral reasoning: what is the status of the outcome of the reasoning process? This is a matter of justification. We argue for a so-called good reasoning-justified outcome strategy in NE-RE. This strategy is built on a reasoning process in which the reason-giving force of each element is tested and weighed. The thinker has to work towards a coherent view in which only the elements with sufficient justificatory power are retained. If the thinker decides that the elements fit together into a coherent view, a reflective equilibrium is reached. NE-RE is an attempt to describe a model for moral reasoning that can profit from the moral wisdom present among experienced agents through the use of empirical research. (shrink)

A recurrent issue in the vast amount of literature on reasoning models in ethics is the role and nature of moral intuitions. In this paper, we start from the view that people who work and live in a certain moral practice usually possess specific moral wisdom. If we manage to incorporate their moral intuitions in ethical reasoning, we can arrive at judgements and (modest) theories that grasp a moral experience that generally cannot be found outside the practice. Reflective equilibrium (RE) (...) provides a framework for balancing moral intuitions, ethical principles and general theories. Nevertheless, persisting problems associated with the use of intuitions need to be addressed. One is the objection that moral intuitions lack the credibility necessary to guide moral reasoning. Ethicists have tried to solve this problem by formulating criteria to separate the “bad” intuitions from the “good” ones at the beginning of the reasoning process. We call this the credible input-justified outcome strategy. An example is the appeal to the common morality by Beauchamp and Childress. We think this approach is unsuccessful. As an alternative, we outline the good reasoning-justified outcome strategy. It connects to a variant of RE in which intuitions from different sources are incorporated. We argue that the elements of RE have different levels of justificatory power at the start of reasoning. In our strategy, each element can gain or lose justificatory power when it is tested in a reasoning process that meets several criteria. (shrink)

Sustainability science seeks to extend scientific investigation into domains characterized by a distinct problem-solving agenda, physical and social complexity, and complex moral and ethical landscapes. In this endeavor it arguably pushes scientific investigation beyond its usual comfort zones, raising fundamental issues about how best to structure such investigation. Philosophers of science have long scrutinized the structure of science and scientific practices, and the conditions under which they operate effectively. We propose a critical engagement between sustainability scientists and philosophers of science (...) with respect to how to engage in scientific activity in these complex domains. We identify specific issues philosophers of science raise concerning current sustainability science and the contributions philosophers can make to resolving them. In conclusion we reflect on the steps philosophers of science could take to advance sustainability science. (shrink)

This chapter explores Gottlob Frege's contribution to logic. Frege has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, but he failed to gain influence on the mathematical community of his time and the depth and pioneering character of his work was acknowledged only after the collapse of his logicist program due to the Zermelo–Russell antinomy in 1902. Frege, by proving his theorem χ without recourse to Wertverläufe, exhibited an inconsistency (or at least an incoherence) in the traditional notion of the extension (...) of a concept. He prompted our awareness of a situation the future analyses of which will hopefully not only deepen our systematic control of the interplay of concepts and their extensions but also improve our understanding of the historical development of the notion of “extension of a concept” and its historiographical assessment. (shrink)

Respect for autonomy is well known as a core element of normative views on good care. Most often it is interpreted in a liberal way, with a focus on independence and self-determination. In this article we argue that this interpretation is too narrow in the context of care in nursing homes. With the aim of developing an alternative view on respect for autonomy in this setting we described four interpretations and investigated the moral intuitions (i.e. moral judgements) of caregivers regarding (...) these approaches. We found that these caregivers seemed to value different notions relating to respect for autonomy under different circumstances. There was no significant difference in moral judgements between men and women or between doctors and nurses. We conclude that a multidimensional understanding of this principle would best fit this context. We end this article with a description of a modest theory of respect for autonomy in nursing homes. (shrink)

People who work and live in a certain moral practice usually possess a specific form of moral wisdom. If we manage to incorporate their moral intuitions in ethical reasoning, we can arrive at judgements and theories that grasp a moral experience that generally cannot be found outside the said practice. To achieve this goal, we need a legitimate way to balance moral intuitions, ethical principles and general theories. In the present contribution, we describe a version of the model of Reflective (...) Equilibrium, which we call the Normative-Empirical Reflective Equilibrium . RE provides a framework for ethical thinking that includes both moral experience and normative theory.After an outline of the model, we focus on the role of empirical research and illustrate how empirical data on moral intuitions can add to the comprehensiveness of the set of moral beliefs in NE-RE. Subsequently, we describe how coherence among the elements of an NE-RE can be understood and measured. Finally, we address an important question for any method of moral reasoning: what is the status of the outcome of the reasoning process? This is a matter of justification. We argue for a so-called good reasoning-justified outcome strategy in NE-RE. This strategy is built on a reasoning process in which the reason-giving force of each element is tested and weighed. The thinker has to work towards a coherent view in which only the elements with sufficient justificatory power are retained. If the thinker decides that the elements fit together into a coherent view, a reflective equilibrium is reached. NE-RE is an attempt to describe a model for moral reasoning that can profit from the moral wisdom present among experienced agents through the use of empirical research. (shrink)

On 5 May 1957, Leopold Löwenheim passed away in a Berlin hospital following a short but severe illness, unnoticed by the community of mathematical logicians who believed that he had perished in a Nazi concentration camp in or shortly after 1940 (the year of publication in the Journal of Symbolic Logic of his last paper before the end of World War II). The 50th anniversary of his death seems an appropriate date for the posthumous publication of a paper that was (...) supposed to appear in Fundamenta Mathematicae in 1939, the galley proofs of which Löwenheim had already seen and corrected when German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Löwenheim managed to save the proofs through the War, despite the loss of most of his possessions during the bombing of Berlin in 1943 and 1944. By another lucky chance, a copy of the proofs survived in the present author's possession, when the originals were lost during a flat clearing in Berlin as part of the estate of Johannes Teichert (1904?1994), Löwenheim's step-son, when his widow moved into a nursing-home in May 1999. Later, I will expand these short remarks slightly but seize the present opportunity to resume (and in some places add to) the extant data on Löwenheim's life and writings. (shrink)

This book argues against the view that mathematical knowledge is a priori,contending that mathematics is an empirical science and develops historically,just as ...

Examines what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia, and what steps such a group might take to establish self‐control. The topic has some interest in itself, and the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal of (...) agency. This image fits well with the constitutional model of the soul in Plato's Republic. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

Can groups be rational agents over and above their individual members? We argue that group agents are distinguished by their capacity to mimic the way in which individual agents act and that this capacity must “supervene” on the group members' contributions. But what is the nature of this supervenience relation? Focusing on group judgments, we argue that, for a group to be rational, its judgment on a particular proposition cannot generally be a function of the members' individual judgments on that (...) proposition. Rather, it must be a function of their individual sets of judgments across many propositions. So knowing what the group members individually think about some proposition does not generally tell us how the group collectively adjudicates that proposition: the supervenience relation must be “setwise,” not “proposition‐wise.” Our account preserves the individualistic view that group agency is nothing mysterious but also suggests that a group agent may hold judgments that are not directly continuous with its members' corresponding individual judgments. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the legalization of assisted suicide for persons with a death wish without severe illness, often referred to as persons with “completed life” or “tiredness of life,” is intensel...

There has recently been a revival of interest in panpsychism as a theory of consciousness. The hope of the contemporary proponents of panpsychism is that the view enables us to integrate consciousness into our overall theory of reality in a way that avoids the deep difficulties that plague the more conventional options of physicalism on the one hand and dualism on the other. However, panpsychism comes in two forms — strong and weak emergentist — and there are arguments that seem (...) to show that weak emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of physicalism whilst strong emergentist panpsychism faces problems analogous to those of dualism. In this paper, I will develop a new hybrid of the strong and weak emergentist forms of panpsychism, a view according to which subjects of experience are strongly emergent but their phenomenal properties are weakly emergent. I will argue that this hybrid view manages to avoid the challenges facing both physicalism and dualism, and the analogues of those challenges that seem to undermine standard forms of panpsychism. (shrink)

Based on a survey of editors, publishers and staff members of 300 newspapers, this work documents the ethical confusion in the American press in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers controversy. It provides an analytical and historical framework to show how the press reached this point and argues for an ethical audit to give publications an independent check on their moral condition.

This chapter outlines three programs that aim to use biological insights in support of philosophical positions in ethics: Aristotelian approaches found, for example, in Thomas Hurka and Philippa Foot; Humean approaches found in Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; and biologically grounded approaches found in of Elliott Sober and Brian Skyrms. The first two approaches begin with a philosophical view, and seek support for it in biology. The third approach begins with biology, and uses it to illuminate the status of morality. (...) This chapter pursues a version of the third program. A major accomplishment of evolutionary biology has been the explanation of biological altruism, which opens the door to a similar explanation of psychological altruism, or “fellow-feeling.” The chapter conjectures that humans have evolved a capacity for normative governance by socially shared rules. A process of cultural evolution led to the social rules with which we are familiar. This genealogical story poses a challenge, for the idea of moral truth plays no role in it. The story therefore lends support to non-cognitivism or anti-realist expressivism. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of the genealogical story for moral knowledge, moral objectivity, and the idea of moral authority. (shrink)

Some recent accounts of testimonial warrant base it on trust, and claim that doing so helps explain asymmetries between the intended recipient of testimony and other non-intended hearers, e.g. differences in their entitlement to challenge the speaker or to rebuke the speaker for lying. In this explanation ‘dependence-responsiveness’ is invoked as an essential feature of trust: the trustor believes the trustee to be motivationally responsive to the fact that the trustor is relying on the trustee. I argue that dependence-responsiveness is (...) not essential to trust and that the asymmetries, where genuine, can be better explained without reference to trust. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker (2013), moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the Harm Account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the Qualified Harm Account, there is (...) no harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective, or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

This is a book about the aesthetics of wonder, about wonder as it figures in our relation to the visual world and to rare or new experiences.

Worries about safety of approved drugs have pushed post registration research to become the fastest growing drug research phase. Until recently, phase IV studies were mainly conducted for marketing purposes and run much like a phase III trial—at institutions with experienced investigators and a list of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Innovative phase IV studies involve ordinary physicians in research naïve communities. This brings ethical issues familiar to medical research into clinical practice. As a consequence, individual physicians are challenged to protect (...) scientific integrity and to secure the ethical conduct of research. Several ethical issues need to be addressed in the process of developing a scientifically sound and ethically high principled practice of phase IV research.PHASE IVEssential to phase IV research is the focus on how drugs work in the real world. The research goal may be to explore a specific pharmacological effect, to establish the incidence of adverse reactions, or to determine the effects of long-term administration of a drug. They may also be designed to establish a new clinical indication for a drug.1 Subjects may or may not be randomised, and the studies typically involve large numbers of patient-subjects and physicians.Doubts concerning the scientific rigor and clinical value have put postmarketing research in a poor light. However, high quality phase IV research is badly needed to further pharmaceutical science. First, because it can provide reliable data on the effectiveness, safety and optimal use of a drug in treated populations.2 3 In pre-registration clinical trials , a pharmaceutical product is studied under unrealistic circumstances. Under-representation of women and elderly are common and the concomitant use of medicines is usually extremely restrictive in these trials.4 Second, phase IV can provide much needed data for evidence-based …. (shrink)

Technology is a practically indispensible means for satisfying one’s basic interests in all central areas of human life including nutrition, habitation, health care, entertainment, transportation, and social interaction. It is impossible for any one person, even a well-trained scientist or engineer, to know enough about how technology works in these different areas to make a calculated choice about whether to rely on the vast majority of the technologies she/he in fact relies upon. Yet, there are substantial risks, uncertainties, and unforeseen (...) practical consequences associated with the use of technological artifacts and systems. The salience of technological failure (both catastrophic and mundane), as well as technology’s sometimes unforeseeable influence on our behavior, makes it relevant to wonder whether we are really justified as individuals in our practical reliance on technology. Of course, even if we are not justified, we might nonetheless continue in our technological reliance, since the alternatives might not be attractive or feasible. In this chapter I argue that a conception of trust in technological artifacts and systems is plausible and helps us understand what is at stake philosophically in our reliance on technology. Such an account also helps us understand the relationship between trust and technological risk and the ethical obligations of those who design, manufacture, and deploy technological artifacts. (shrink)