abstract David Boonin, in his A Defense of Abortion, argues that abortions that involve killing the foetus are morally permissible, even if granting for the sake of argument that the foetus has a right to life. His primary argument is an argument by analogy to a ‘trolley case’. I offer two lines of counterargument to his argument by analogy. First, I argue that Boonin's analogy between his trolley case and a normal unwanted pregnancy does not hold. I revise his trolley (...) case in light of my objections. Second, I argue that Boonin's arguments for the permissibility of killing, when applied to this revised trolley case — and by extension, typical unwanted pregnancies — do not succeed in justifying killing. (shrink)

abstract David Boonin, in his A Defense of Abortion, argues that abortions that involve killing the foetus are morally permissible, even if granting for the sake of argument that the foetus has a right to life. His primary argument is an argument by analogy to a 'trolley case'. I offer two lines of counterargument to his argument by analogy. First, I argue that Boonin's analogy between his trolley case and a normal unwanted pregnancy does not hold. I revise his trolley (...) case in light of my objections. Second, I argue that Boonin's arguments for the permissibility of killing, when applied to this revised trolley case — and by extension, typical unwanted pregnancies — do not succeed in justifying killing. (shrink)

Wayne Sumner, in the first six chapters of his excellent book Welfare, Happiness and Ethics, argues for what he calls an authentic life satisfaction theory of welfare. Somewhat generally, Sumner's theory of welfare is a sophisticated subjective account that treats one's happiness of a certain sort, and in the right conditions, as enhancing one's welfare. In this essay, I critically explore Sumner's account of welfare. I argue that Sumner's arguments for his own account of welfare, when followed to their logical (...) conclusion, support a position which is slightly, but significantly, different from his own position. Additionally, I argue that Sumner's account of welfare has several counter-intuitive implications. I conclude that his account is seriously flawed. (shrink)

Title from title page of source document.

This paper investigates how reticulate evolution contributes to a better understanding of human sociocultural evolution in general, and community formation in particular. Reticulate evolution is evolution as it occurs by means of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. From these mechanisms and processes, we mainly zoom in on symbiosis and we investigate how it underlies the rise of (1) human, plant, animal, and machine interactions typical of agriculture, animal husbandry, farming, and industrialization; (2) diet-microbiome relationships; and (3) (...) host-virome and other pathogen interactions that underlie human health and disease. We demonstrate that reticulate evolution necessitates an understanding of behavioral and cultural evolution at a community level, where reticulate causal processes underlie the rise of synergistic organizational traits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Research suggests that ethical leadership affects employee behavior and organizational functioning. This study aimed to determine the relationship between EL and productive energy, as mediated by person-organizational fit. The study used assumptions of the social learning and social exchange theories that posit that leadership has a direct impact on employee behavior, mainly through role modeling and the reciprocal nature thereof. An empirical paradigm using a cross sectional quantitative design was used. The PE instrument was assessed for construct validity within (...) the South African context. The analysis included a comparison between the private and public sectors, emphasizing the importance of context as differentiator. Relatively high, statistically significant correlations were found between the variables for both sectors and the combined sample. The hierarchical regression analysis indicated that 18% of the variance in PE is explained by EL. This model was improved by the inclusion of POF. The conceptual model was confirmed with structural equation modeling. The findings of this study suggest that EL has a significantly positive effect on PE and POF, which mediates the relationship between EL and PE. Sectoral differences were reported. (shrink)

In the present paper, on the basis of the theory of production principles and production revolutions, we reveal the interrelation between K-waves and major technological breakthroughs in history and make some predictions about features of the sixth Kondratieff wave in the light of the Cybernetic Revolution which, we think, started in the 1950s. We assume that the sixth K-wave in the 2030s and 2040s will merge with the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (which we call the phase of self-regulating (...) systems). This period will be characterized by breakthroughs in medical technologies which will manage to combine many other technologies into a single complex of MBNRIC-technologies (med-bio-nano-robo-info-cognitive technologies). The article offers some predictions concerning the development of these technologies. (shrink)

The philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology involves three related tasks: (1) asking what inferences might be drawn from the paleontological and archaeological records to past cognition, behavior and culture; (2) constructing synthetic accounts of the evolution of distinctive hominin capacities; (3) exploring how results from cognitive paleoanthropology might inform philosophy. We introduce some distinctive cognitive paleoanthropological inferences and discuss their epistemic standing, before considering how attention to the material records and the practice of paleoanthropology can inform and transform philosophical approaches.

Reproductive autonomy has been challenged by the availability of genetic information, disability and the ethics of selective reproduction. Utilitarian and rights-based approaches, as well as procreative beneficence fail to provide compelling reasons for infringing RA, and may even be likened to dangerous eugenics. Parents are not morally obliged to prevent the birth of a disabled child. Society should rather adopt inclusivity, recognising and providing persons with disabilities opportunities for capability and worthwhile lives.

This critical review concentrates on four important parts of Raimo Tuomela’s analytical theory of social action. It examines the book’s reconstructions of social action, of practical reasoning in this context, of social norms and it investigates its claim to a conceptual individualism. The result is critical in several aspects. Tuomela’s most original idea in the analysis of joint action, that of we-intentions, is not broad enough to cover more than a part of social action in the commonly understood sense. His (...) ‘social’ practical reasoning incorporates an implausible premiss. The game-theoretical reconstruction of social norms strikes one as unlikely to be fulfilled in social reality. Hardly any of these analyses back up the individualist claims of Tuomela’s project. (shrink)

This paper introduces a Special Issue of Topoi entitled "Archaeology and philosophy".

Myers' offer of cooperation as a medicine for ailing moral theories is welcomed as potentially helpful, even if his handling of it is diagnosed as implicitly one-sided consequentialist. His search for an ethically “substantive way of engaging with others” is shown as not coherent with his remarks on the tasks cooperation as an ethical concept has to fulfil. Instead, it is proposed that the concept be disentangled from the micro- problems Myers' wants it to solve, and that it be read (...) more freely, from the perspective of Rawls' conception of cooperation. (shrink)

Die Kantische Ethik gilt bis heute als die dominante Theorie der Moral, und das nicht nur mit Blick auf ihre moralischen Inhalte, sondern mehr noch mit Bezug auf ihre Begründung der moralischen Prinzipien aus der Vernunft. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Kant führt jedoch zu der Einsicht, daß wir unsere Vorstellungen vom Verhältnis zwischen Ethik und Moral, sowie von der Verbindung von Moral und sozialer Realität reformulieren müssen. Die im vorliegenden Buch gesammelten Artikel verbindet die Erwartung, daß die Moral statt über die (...) Vernunft über ihre Funktion im Rahmen sozialer Beziehungen besser zu verstehen und gestalten sein sollte. Den konkreten Reichtum unserer Handlungsziele, Beziehungsmöglichkeiten und sozialen Fähigkeiten sind wir nur dann in der Lage zu erschließen, wenn wir das Werkzeug der abstrakten Vernunft als unbrauchbar beiseite legen und statt dessen mit den alltäglichen, persönlichen und überpersönlichen, Erfahrungen arbeiten, nit denen wir uns auskennen. Weil einzig aus den Beziehungsformen Normativität erwächst, sollten uns diese selbst, ihre Bedeutungen und ihre Wandelbarkeit interessieren, weniger kodifizierbare moralische Pflichten und Regeln. Gegenstand der Ethik der Beziehungen sind die konkreten Spielräume und Kräfte der sozialen Verhältnisse zwischen Menschen, nicht die abstrakten Fingerzeige eines von den Beziehungen unabhängigen ‚moralischen Gesetzes'. (shrink)

Morality and society in moral philosophy are rarely brought into direct contact, at least not at a fundamental level of justification. David Copp develops an account of practical and moral rationality that could constitute a radical change. According to Copp moral theory has tobe ‘society-centered’ rather than focussing on the individual. This article is devoted to the moral content and structural features of a socially centered moral theory, and along those lines to its critical assessment. Concluding, it will seek to (...) present an argument why moral philosophy ought not place society at the centre of its view. (shrink)

During the last years Anglosaxon discussion about Marx and Marxism has been characterized by an intensified interest in historical materialism as a general theory of history. The most extensive, careful and analytically rigorous among several new treatments is the one by G.A. Cohen, which is the subject of four critical articles in the present issue of Analyse & Kritik. To make these articles and Cohen’s project understandable to the German reader, an attempt is made in the following to summarize the (...) main arguments of Cohen’s defence of historical materialism and of the ensuing comprehensive and detailed discussion. (shrink)

Since Hobbes' Leviathan was published in 1651, the 'problem of order' has been known for some time. Despite this long gestation period for social theory even today we do not have a universally agreed upon answer to this 'problem'. One of the reasons behind this lacuna may be the overly dispersed work being done in the economic and sociological traditions. Whereas one tradition favours 'collective action' as a central answer, the other thinks of the problem itself being dissolved by the (...) acceptance of 'socialized man'. Here, an attempt is made to offer the phenomenon of 'cooperation' as a promising middle ground for both traditions. To underline the importance of cooperation as an elementary social activity, first, cooperation is shown as working in tandem with its rival 'competition'. Secondly, several conceptual analyses of what is included in collective action and cooperation are offered. These analyses, thirdly, are deepened by an overview of the motivational bases potentially advancing cooperation. Overall, an awareness of the self-creating character of cooperation is explored, and put forward as the most feasible way of answering the classical problem of order. (shrink)

What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes is the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the most important are the three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution and 3) the Scientific-Information Revolution which will transform into the Cybernetic one. The article introduces the Theory of Production Revolutions. This is a new explanatory paradigm which is of value when analyzing causes (...) and trends of global shifts in historical process. The article describes the course of techno-logical transformations in history and demonstrates a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. The authors argue that the third production revolution that started in the 1950s and which they call the Cybernetic one, in the coming decades, that is in the 2030s and 2040s, will get a new impetus and enter its final stage – the epoch of (self)controllable systems. There are given certain forecasts concerning the development in such spheres as medicine, biotechnologies and nanotechnolo-gies in the coming decades (the 2010s – 2060s). (shrink)

In this article I offer a defence of the use of deceptive placebos—inert treatments like sugar pills or saline injections—in clinical practice. In particular, I will defend what I call the ideal placebo case—where a doctor or nurse has good reason to believe that a deceptive placebo offers a patient’s best, or only, chance of some therapeutic benefit. Taking a Kantian approach to the question of clinical placebo use, I examine the Kantian prohibition on deception as interference with the will (...) of a rational agent, and argue that deception to promote the placebo effect can be carried out in a way that does not interfere with the patient’s will in the way prohibited by Kant. The deception involved in a placebo treatment is not carried out to interfere with or obstruct the function of the will, but merely to make possible a means to the patient’s ends that that would otherwise be unavailable. I will therefore argue that deception carried out in order to promote a therapeutic placebo effect can be done in a way that is consistent with respect for a patient’s autonomy, and may be a rare case of deception that is compatible with a Kantian ethical approach. (shrink)

Andrea Kern has criticized the view that the fallibility of judgements is due to their objectivity and has tried to show that objective knowledge is comprehensible only if its infallibility is not logically excluded. She argues that the notion of knowledge is more fundamental than that of error and that we must bring into play an epistemic capacity as a form of perfection to understand what knowledge is. In the present article, this position is charitably criticized and modified. It is (...) argued that infallible knowledge is even actual, but not fully objective. Infallibility characterises our knowledge of logical and of spatio–temporal form and our judgments of the kind "it seems to me that p". This knowledge is in neither case knowledge of particular objective facts, but in both cases knowledge of what Sebastian Rödl calls the object überhaupt. (shrink)

Thirty-eight million Polo Mints are consumed every day, apparently without a second thought. However, could this humble little minty fella actually be the gateway to true knowledge about life, the Universe and everything? We have drawn on the inspiration of Sartre, the Dalai Lama, Tao Ti Ching, Heidegger and Mahayana Buddhism to find five reasons why the Polo Mint's inner emptiness, with its sweet minty after taste, can lead to contemplations of the ultimate truth.

Moral transformation is the process by which a person grows in holiness. The grace of the Holy Spirit enables this growth. This article explores how the notion of ‘prudence of the Spirit’ in Aquinas’s commentary on Romans can help to further elaborate the concept of moral transformation. It does so by first presenting this transformation as a human process. Second, the article presents an in-depth interpretation of Aquinas’s commentary on Romans 8:14: ‘those who are led by the Spirit of God (...) are children of God’. Here, special attention will be given to the proper character of the prudence the Holy Spirit forms in believers. The concluding discussion draws lessons from our reading of the commentary and related texts. This reinforces the conviction that grace enables freedom and will help us to find proper metaphors for speaking of the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

liber 1. Disquiritur Critice rationis purae.--liber 2. Discutitur sic dicta Fundatio metaphysices morum.