Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. His central thesis, as well as the many novel supporting arguments used to defend it, will spark much controversy among those concerned with the foundations of ethics.

Martin Heidegger und Hans Jantzen gehören zu den wichtigsten Vertretern der Philosophie und Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Seit den 1920er bis Ende der 1960er Jahre kritisierten sie vorherrschende, naturwissenschaftlich geprägte Auffassungen des Raums und entwickelten einen neuartigen Begriff. Dieser sogenannte künstlerische Raum sei ein freies Zusammenspiel von materiellen und immateriellen Bestandteilen, das als solches erst in der Wahrnehmung real wird. Die Autorin arbeitet dieses Verständnis heraus und stellt es in einen geistes- und zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext. Neben der Bedeutung der Bestandteile und (...) der Grenze für die Gestalt und die Wirkung des Raums kommt der des Lichts sowie Jantzens Diaphanie-Begriff besondere Aufmerksamkeit zu. Für die erörterte Raumbeschaffenheit werden Anhaltspunkte in der gotischen Kathedrale und in Werken der Bronzezeit, Dorik, Ottonik und Moderne sowie von Kindern und Laien festgestellt. Im Anschluss an zeitgenössische Theorien ergeben sich Übereinstimmungen mit dem Konzept des geopolitischen Groß-raums und einer erdbezogenen Ästhetik. Vor dem Hintergrund des Kunst- und Sprachbegriffs der Epoche wird abschließend Heideggers und Jantzens Ansicht untersucht, alle Kunst sei sprachlich, sowie inwiefern sich diese Sprachlichkeit räumlich manifestiert. Die Zusammenführung von Jantzens Analyse ottonischer Wortbilder mit Heideggers Auslegung moderner Dichtung und Bildkunst zeigt, dass deren Raumbegriff unabhängig von politischen Bezügen bestehen kann. „Bei diesem Buch handelt es sich fraglos um eine kunsthistorisch und philosophisch bedeutsame Untersuchung.“. (shrink)

mechanism" is frequently encountered in the social science literature, but there is considerable confusion about the exact meaning of the term. The article begins by addressing the main conceptual issues. Use of this term is the hallmark of an approach that is critical of the explanatory deficits of correlational analysis and of the covering-law model, advocating instead the causal reconstruction of the processes that account for given macro-phenomena. The term "social mechanisms" should be used to refer to recurrent processes generating (...) a specific kind of outcome. Explanation of social macro-phenomena by mechanisms typically involves causal regression to lower-level elements, as stipulated by methodological individualism. While there exist a good many mechanism models to explain emergent effects of collective behavior, we lack a similarly systematic treatment of generative mechanisms in which institutions and specific kinds of structural configurations play the decisive role. Key Words: causal regression • correlational analysis • emergent effects • micro-macro processes • social mechanisms • structural determinants. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs what I take to be the central evolutionary debunking argument that underlies recent critiques of moral realism. The argument claims that given the extent of evolutionary influence on our moral faculties, and assuming the truth of moral realism, it would be a massive coincidence were our moral faculties reliable ones. Given this coincidence, any presumptive warrant enjoyed by our moral beliefs is defeated. So if moral realism is true, then we can have no warranted moral beliefs, and (...) hence no moral knowledge. In response, I first develop what is perhaps the most natural reply on behalf of realism namely, that many of our highly presumptively warranted moral beliefs are immune to evolutionary influence and so can be used to assess and eventually resuscitate the epistemic merits of those that have been subject to such influence. I then identify five distinct ways in which the charge of massive coincidence has been understood and defended. I argue that each interpretation is subject to serious worries. If I am right, these putative defeaters are themselves subject to defeat. Thus many of our moral beliefs continue to be highly warranted, even if moral realism is true. (shrink)

On 9 May 2005, the Israeli Ministry of Health issued guidelines spelling out the conditions under which sex selection by preimplantation genetic diagnosis for social purposes is to be permitted in Israel. This article first reviews the available medical methods for sex selection, the preference for children of a specific gender in various societies and the ethical controversies surrounding PGD for medical and social purposes in different countries. It focuses then on the question of whether procreative liberty or parental responsibility (...) should be the centre of attention in this context. Finally, the article critically examines the new Israeli guidelines and their implications for the women undergoing the necessary medical treatments, for the children born as a result, for other members of the family and for society in general. (shrink)

There is a strong interconnection between the social and environmental spheres. The efforts of monitoring and forecasting of disastrous events can illustrate benefits and threats of technicization and science. In ecophilosophy the forecasting of hazards is today extremely needed. It is not about creating theoretical unified structures or practical return to holistic harmony of a primordial man with nature. It is about, as Félix Guattari once held it, the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment. Though the (...) desired maintenance of the conflict between industrial society and natural systems now seems impossible, we still can start moving towards it: theoretically, by developing eco-philosophical ideas, and practically, monitoring and forecasting catastrophes and disasters, to protect human life and health and, as eco-philosophers would say, keep land usable for human purposes. The topic of the earthquakes forecast today is more in demand than ever. (shrink)

As COVID-19 continues to spread, a variety of COVID-19 tracking apps have been introduced to help contain the pandemic. Deployment of this technology poses serious challenges of effectiveness, technological problems and risks to privacy and equity. The ethical use of CTAs depends heavily on the protection of voluntariness. Voluntary use of CTAs implies not only the absence of a legal obligation to employ the app but also the absence of more subtle forms of coercion such as enforced exclusion from certain (...) social and work activities. The protection of individual rights to voluntary use can be enhanced through an ethics by design approach in the development of CTAs that treat the introduction of CTAs for what it is: a complete novelty that is being tested for the first time in democracies. (shrink)

Knowledge work increasingly takes place in collaborative events from different and changing workplaces due to mobility, multi-locational, and geographical distribution of team members. What are the key elements to create mutual understanding and make creative collaborative decisions in global business meetings? How can these key elements be designed as shikake nudges to build awareness of the individual and team conditions to help knowledge workers make better work environment choices and reach higher levels of engagement? We addressed this question as a (...) transformative journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding in the context of collaborative decision making in creative global business meetings. We present a “Six Steps to Engagement” framework that offers three feedback loops as shikake triggers to improve the local and global collaboration context and behavior, and three choice-decision-commitment steps toward improving the work environment and increasing knowledge work productivity. To support this framework, we define the following: (1) mutual understanding metrics (MUM) and method for self-assessment and 360 team assessment that define different MUM stages in the journey from island of knowledge to mutual understanding; and (2) an engagement Matrix of Choices (eMoC) prototype to assist geographically distributed knowledge workers to make explicit choices with an understanding of the potential level of engagement and collaboration they can achieve and the respective enablers and hindrances. We argue that iterative and continuous MUM assessment and explicit eMoC choices are central to achieve mutual understanding, high-performance teamwork, and eliminate rework, coordination, and decision wait time. This iterative process (1) allows team members to build awareness of their local conditions and make their local conditions transparent and visible to the rest of the team; (2) provides a feedback mechanism that indicates the engagement potential of each team member and the team, as well as a trigger or nudge toward moving to higher levels of engagement; (3) leads to the alignment of expectations and synchronicity of potential engagement levels. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn has developed an interesting challenge to moral realism based on its alleged inability to account for supervenience relations between the moral and nonmoral. If supervenience holds, then any base property once giving rise to a supervening one must always do so. The realist accepts supervenience, but also (according to Blackburn) accepts the claim that nonmoral base properties do not necessitate the moral ones that supervene on them. This combination is thought deadly, because it leaves the realist without an (...) explanation of why ethical supervenience should be true. I offer three responses on behalf of the moral realist. The first rejects the need for explanation, arguing that supervenience should be understood as closely analogous to Leibniz's law, which, I argue, needs no defense. I next argue that ethical naturalism may be right, and if so, would provide an adequate response to Blackburn. Lastly, I show that the success of Blackburn's arguments implies a global antirealism, and so does not, as he claims, amount to a special problem for realism in ethics. (shrink)

The development of postgraduate studies and the establishment of the Ph.D. in Britain are discussed. Events leading to the introduction of the Ph.D. degree between 1917 and 1920 are traced, and Germany and America's influence on the acceptance of postgraduate education and research in Britain is addressed. An analysis of the highly developed college system peculiar to the ancient English universities is included to identify factors that delayed the introduction of the Ph.D. in Britain. Individual provincial universities are chronicled, together (...) with Cambridge, London, Scotland, Wales, and Oxford (the first to institute the Ph.D.). In analyzing the political forces at work in the inception of the research degree, attention is directed to the vital role played by the Universities Bureau of the British Empire (predecessor of the Association of Commonwealth Universities) and the pressures exerted by government to persuade the universities to cooperate with each other in providing postgradute courses and degrees. It is concluded that the arrival of the Ph.D. at British universities symbolized the modern era of organized training in research that was conceived and nurtured in Germany and imported and commercialized by America. (SW). (shrink)

The epistemological problems of unification of two distinct theories are discussed. An approach related to the work of Soviet authors (Stepin, Podgoretzky and Smorodinsky) is used and developed. The notion of ‘crossbred objects’—theoretical objects with contradictory properties which are part of the domain of application of two independent theories—is introduced which helps to describe the dynamics of revolutionary theory change. The occurrence of the cross-contradiction of two theories is reconstructed and the reductionistic and the synthetic means of its elimination are (...) proposed. The results of the methodological analysis are applied to the paradox of equivalence. (shrink)

Wahrnehmen - was ist das? Worauf kommt es an bei der Wahrnehmung sozialer Wirklichkeit? Welche Zugange sind produktiv fur die Annaherung an die Wirklichkeit sozialer Berufe? Soziale bzw. helfende Berufe haben sehr viel damit zu tun, andere Menschen in ihrer Lebensbewaltigung zu unterstutzen und zu begleiten. Hierfur sind hilfreiche Strukturen in der Gesellschaft zu kultivieren. Die helfenden Professionen greifen dabei auf Menschenbilder, Gesellschaftsbilder, soziale Gegebenheiten, Strukturen und Ziele fur ein "gelingendes Leben" zu, bezogen auf den jeweils Anderen in seinen spezifischen (...) Kontexten sozialer Wirklichkeit. Den Anderen in seiner sozialen Wirklichkeit wahrnehmen ist damit Grundkompetenz in sozialen bzw. helfenden Berufen. (shrink)

In his “Reply to Iddo Landau,” Edmund Wall responds to the author’s critique of some of the views expressed in his “Sexual Harassment and Wrongful Communication.” The present article concentrates on what the author takes to be the main problem in Wall’s definition: by requiring that any act, even if intentional and cruel in nature, needs to be repeated to count as sexual harassment, Wall allows too much leeway and renders permissible a wide range of intentional, mean, and harmful (...) actions that most, including, the author believes, Wall himself, would like to outlaw. The article considers Wall’s linguistic and nonlinguistic responses to this critique and finds them problematic. (shrink)

The traditional conception of ethical theory sees it as the project of developing a coherent set of rules from which one can infer all determinate moral verdicts. I am not optimistic about the prospects for constructing such a theory. To explain this pessimism, we need to understand what moral rules are and what roles they might play in ethical theory.

The contents of the inaugural volume of Oxford Studies in Metaethics nicely mirror the variety of issues that make this area of philosophy so interesting. The volume opens with Peter Railton's exploration of some central features of normative guidance, the mental states that underwrite it, and its relationship to our reasons for feeling and acting. In the next offering, Terence Cuneo takes up the case against expressivism, arguing that its central account of the nature of moral judgments is badly mistaken. (...) Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons, two of the most prominent contemporary expressivists, then offer their take on how expressivism manages to avoid a different objection-that of collapsing into an objectionable form of relativism. Daniel Jacobson and Justin D'Arms next offer an article that continues their research program devoted to exploring the extent to which values might depend upon, or be constrained by, human psychology. Ralph Wedgwood engages in some classical metaethical conceptual analysis, seeking to explicate the meaning of ought. Mark van Roojen then contributes a new take on the Moral Twin Earth Argument, a prominent anti-realist puzzle advanced in the early 1990s by Horgan and Timmons. -/- Allan Gibbard next presents his latest thoughts on the nature of moral feelings and moral concepts, crucial elements in the overall project of defending the expressivism he is so well known for. James Dreier then takes up the details of Gibbard's recent efforts to provide a solution to what many view as the most serious difficulty for expressivism, namely, the Frege-Geach problem. Dreier identifies difficulties in Gibbard's expressivist account, and offers a suggestion for their solution. Sergio Tenenbaum explores the concept of a direction of fit, relied on so heavily nowadays in accounts of moral motivation. Nadeem Hussain and Nishiten Shah then consider the merits of Christine Korsgaard's influential critique of moral realism. T. M. Scanlon's widely-discussed buck-passing account of value attracts the critical eye of Pekka Väyrynen, who attempts to reveal the reasons that we might resist it. Derek Parfit's contribution concludes this volume, with an article on normativity that presents his most recent thinking on this fundamental notion. (shrink)

The variety of feminist thought has produced many fruitful discussions and debates. Liberal, radical, postmodern, psychoanalytic, and other feminists have criticized each others' work and underlying presuppositions. The aim of this paper is to point out a prejudice which has not yet received sufficient attention, although it lies at the base of a fair amount of feminist research: the bias that whereas men are bad and aggressive, women are good and peaceful. Although as an explicit view this contention has been (...) debated, its distortive influence on feminist research has so far remained undiscussed. In what follows I present examples of the effect of this bias on feminist research . Then I suggest why the bias has not yet been discussed . Finally I argue that feminist research should be as critically received and treated as any other. (shrink)

We set ourselves ends and strive to achieve them. We hope that their attainment will improve our condition. The closer we get to our goals, the happier we feel. Paradoxically, however, when we finally do achieve them our joy is sometimes diminished. We have a sense of insignificance and emptiness, and we feel that in attaining our goal we have lost the meaningfulness and balance we experienced while we were striving towards it. In some ways, it seems to us, the (...) struggle is more gratifying than the achievement of the end. (shrink)

Revolutions often retain more characteristics of the pre-revolutionary state than their makers like to admit. Characterizing the pre-revolutionary state as bad , and wishing to accentuate the greatness of their doings, revolutionaries like to stress the differences between the previous state of affairs and the new one, and prefer to see the similarities as few and insignificant. They are frequently wrong. 1.

This paper contributes to the (re-)conceptualisation of responsible innovation by proposing an evolutionary economic approach that focuses on the role of consumers in the innovation process. After a discussion of the philosophical foundations and ethical implications of this approach, which bears an explanatory potential that has not been adequately considered in previous discussions of responsible innovation, we present a first step towards capturing the important but often neglected role of consumers in innovation processes (including responsible innovation): We propose an agent-based (...) model that incorporates a multidimensional space of characteristics in which new products or services are represented by more than the mere aspect of price and quality. Instead, innovations are denoted by a large set of characteristics, including also negative or harmful ones. The model is used to illustrate that consumers’ heterogeneity and bounded rationality – even if considered in a simple manner – indeed play a crucial role in the creation and diffusion of responsible innovation which can and should be used for further work in this field and for possible extensions of the model. (shrink)

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Vol. 5, number 1, Autumn 1991, pp. 79-87. R.M. Nugayev. -/- The fundamental laws of physics can tell the truth. -/- Abstract. Nancy Cartwright’s arguments in favour of phenomenological laws and against fundamental ones are discussed. Her criticisms of the standard cjvering-law account are extended using Vyacheslav Stepin’s analysis of the structure of fundamental theories. It is argued that Cartwright’s thesis 9that the laws of physics lie) is too radical to accept. A model (...) of theory change is proposed which demonstrates how the fundamental laws of physics can, in fact, be confronted with experience. -/- . (shrink)

Recent developments around the sharing economy bring to the fore questions of governability and broader societal benefit—and subsequently the need to explore effective means of public governance, from nurturing, on the one hand, to restriction, on the other. As sharing is a predominately urban phenomenon in modern societies, cities around the globe have become both locus of action and central actor in the debates over the nature and organization of the sharing economy. However, cities vary substantially in the interpretation of (...) potential opportunities and challenges, as well as in their governance responses. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 16 leading global cities, our findings reveal four framings of the sharing economy: ‘societal endangerment,’ ‘societal enhancement,’ ‘market disruption,’ and ‘ecological transition.’ Such framings go hand in hand with patterned governance responses: although there is considerable heterogeneity in the combination of public governance strategies, we find specific configurations of framings and public governance strategies. Our work reflects the political and ethical debates on various economic, social, and moral issues related to the sharing economy, and contributes to a better understanding of the field-level institutional arrangements—a prerequisite for examining moral behavior of sharing economy organizations. (shrink)