This paper aims to contribute to the attempts to clarify and classify the vague notion of “technosciences” from a historical perspective. A key question that is raised is as follows: Does Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of the modern age, provide a hitherto largely undiscovered programmatic position, which might facilitate a more profound understanding of technosciences ? The paper argues that nearly everything we need today for an ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the (...) works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real - constructivism. Rather than realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon could contribute to the expanding and critical discussion on technoscience. In the following I will reconstruct the term “technoscience”. My finding is that at least four different understandings or types of the term “technoscience” co-exist. In a second step, I will analyze and elaborate on Bacon’s epistemological position. I will identify central elements of the four different understandings in Bacon’s work. Finally, I will conclude that the epistemology of technoscience is, indeed, very old—it is the epistemological position put forward by Bacon. (shrink)

The eighteenth-century philosopher Francis Hutcheson contends that the morality of an agent's action or character depends on the pleasurable or painful feelings which, through the moral sense, it arouses in an observer. His is the first fully-developed "moral sense" theory in the history of ethics, and there is evidence that David Hume's moral epistemology contains the critical features of such a theory as well. Commentators on the work of these two philosophers have offered widely divergent interpretations of their theories, (...) ranging from emotivist to realist readings. In my dissertation, I examine the conflicting readings and defend my own interpretation. ;I contend that the ordinary emotivist interpretation wrongly treats Hutcheson and Hume as defending theses of mere moral sentiment--where no epistemological status is attached to the pertinent feelings--and that textual evidence militates against this and the moral realist readings . In my view, Hutcheson and Hume postulate a conscious parallel between their conceptions of secondary qualities and the treatment of moral qualities, which renders them moral subjectivists of a "mitigated" sort for whom, in virtue of their reference to standard conditions of perception, moral distinctions are contingent upon the constitution of the normal perceiver. Hume emerges here as a moral cognitivist, holding that moral judgments are beliefs, and as an emotivist of a sort, holding that these beliefs are also feelings. I attempt to reconcile this cognitivist interpretation of Hume with his claim that "ought"-conclusions cannot follow from "is"-premises and with his view that morality is essentially connected to motives. I also exhibit the unexpected differences between Hume's view of motivation and that of Hutcheson, who on my reading has it that moral distinctions and desire are only contingently related. ;Two formidable problems arise for these theories. First, particular true moral evaluations could become false with changes in the normal human perceiver, so that an agent's enduring character could be good at one time and evil at another. Second, the requirements for experiencing approval are not merely contingent as the requirements for experiencing sensations are. Despite these objections, I briefly examine to what extent human feelings may be valuable as a source of moral knowledge. (shrink)

ContentTruth-telling is an integral part of medical practice in many parts of the world. However, recent public inquiries, including the Francis Inquiry reveal that a duty of candour in practise, are at times compromised. Consequently, the duty of candour became a statutory requirement in England. This study aimed to explore clinicians’ perspectives of the implications of the legislation for medical ethics education, as raising standards to improve patient safety remains an international concern.MethodsOne-to-one interviews with clinical educators from various specialties (...) who contribute to the MBChB programme at the authors’ university. Once data saturation had been assessed, transcripts were analysed using a thematic approach by the following concurrent activities: data reduction and coding into themes. Example quotations are used to illustrate that key themes are grounded in the data.ResultsEleven clinical educators were interviewed; three general practitioners, six physicians and two surgeons. Thematic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN HINDU RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Francis X. Clooney, SJ. Boston College Outline I.Violence, Sacrifice and Ritual 1. Some basic attitudes toward the killing of animals 2.Resolving the problem of sacrificial violence by internalization 3.Substitutions 4.Renunciation and nonviolence: an elite pathway 5.Violence andnonviolenceinrelation to vegetarianism: Hans Schmidt's theses?. Traditional Hindu Theorizations of Violence in Mimamsa Ritual Theory and Vedanta Theology 1. The ritual analysis (at Mimamsa (...) Sutra 1.1.2) of the Shyena rite which is performed in order to harm enemies 2.The Vedanta analysis (at Uttara Mimamsa Sutra 3.1.25) of ritual violence in relation to the prohibition of violence??. Violence in the Life of the State HOFrancis X. Clooney, S.J. 1. The royal power to punish (danda) 2.The synthesis of the ideals of brahmin and king a..The distribution and management of violence in the Laws ofManu (1st century CE) b. Policy toward warfare in the Arthashastra of Kautilya 3.The collapse of the brahmanical synthesis—and the emergence of a (seemingly) more nonviolent Hinduism 4.A comment on Gandhi (1 869-1948) and the contemporary emergence of post-Gandhian Hindu perspectives IV.Alternate Views from Outside the Sanskritic Tradition 1. Tamil Wisdom on Violence and Nonviolence: a.Tirukkural (c. 2nd century CE) b.Cilappatikaram (5th century CE) 2.Blood and Goddesses 3.From a Village Perspective a. Some Trouble with Cows b.Mahasweta Devi and the Literary Exposure of Violence V.The Question of a Christian Perspective on the Hindu Treatment of Violence and Religion: Are Victims Necessary? Some Presuppositions: • The following reflections, complex as they are, are governed by a reluctance to simplify Hindu teaching. I seek to avoid the view that the Hindu traditions had only one view of violence and nonviolence. • I use the term "Hindu" loosely and as a shorthand, without claiming that there is a single Hindu tradition, or a single creed shared by all Hindus, or a single attitude toward violence. But neither do I claim that there are simply many traditions without any common elements which justify the appellation "Hindu." • I am reluctant to idealize the Hindu traditions as if nonviolence must necessarily be taken as the epitome ofHindu thought. India's traditions are complex, and require complex treatment. • A serious artificiality of this paper is that I treat Hinduism without simultaneously lookinginto Buddhist andJain materials, though both were traditions with important and enduring commitments to nonviolence. Particularly with respect to the renunciant, marginal components of traditions, one ought not to make overly neat or decisive distinctions Violence and Nonviolence in Hindu Religious Traditions 1 1 1 between the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain theories and practices related to violence and nonviolence. • I attempt to give preference to indigenous discussions ofissues related to violence and nonviolence; the context and mode of thinking are important, notjust the conclusions drawn. I therefore avoid simply mining Hindu texts for an answer to a contemporary question, "What is the Hindu attitude toward violence and nonviolence?" • In most ofwhat follows we must distinguish contexts where "violence" indicates "physical action which causes pain to some living being," from contexts where "violence" indicates "an intention, rooted in anger or malice, to hurt someone." I use the word "violence" for both in order to highlight the complex issues of distinction involved. In considering the Sanskrit formulations, one likewise has to distinguish himsa as "causing pain" from himsa as "intending to harm." • It is often difficult to date ancient texts, and even when one narrows down a date—within 200-300 years—its significance still depends on other, often equally broadly stated dates. Nevertheless, I do offer dates throughout, as summarized here: •ancient Vedic sacrificial practices, from before 1200 BCE •Vedic ritual analyses and reformulations of sacrifices as ritualized acts, in the Brahmanas, from after 1000 BCE •the Upanishadic exploration of the deeper meanings of ritual and interiorized alternatives to ritual, from after 900 BCE •the Buddha, c. 500 BCE •key texts in the theorization of royal power, The Laws of Manu (beginning of Common Era) and Arthashastra (c. 150 CE) •the Tamil wisdom text Tirukkural (100 CE) •Goddess texts as evidenced in Sanskrit formulations, from after 500 CE... (shrink)

The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest (...) that reasons-first epistemology might have within an evidentialist framework. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and in ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. Responsibility for Rationality is the first book that connects recent debates on responsibility and on rationality in a unifying dialectic. It achieves four main goals: first, it reinterprets the problem of responsibility (...) for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality; second, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by defending a hybrid view; third, it provides novel support to recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by arguing that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons; fourth, it sets the foundations and the research agenda for an ‘ethics of mind’, including an illustration of how to approach applied issues in epistemology within the presented framework. After spelling out connections between responsibility and rationality (part I), the book engages in debates in normative epistemology (part II) and brings them to bear on the broader field of an ethics of mind (part III). -/- Full draft of current version available on request, comments welcome! (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

Der Monotheismus ist die wohl wichtigste Entdeckung - oder Erfindung? - der Geistesgeschichte. Er entwickelte sich im Verlauf der Bewältigungsversuche komplexer als erwartet. Gottes (vermeintliche) Offenbarung bleibt geheimnisvoll: Sind intellektueller und kultischer Gottesbezug überhaupt möglich oder sind sie ein paradoxes Geschäft, das seinen Gegenstand erst produziert? Wie könnte man sich diesem Gegenstand nähern? Ist es überhaupt ein Gegenstand oder sprengt Gott alle Begrifflichkeit und alle menschliche Vernunft? Ist vielleicht negative Theologie die vernünftigste 'Logie'? Oder solle man die Intellektualität im Bezug (...) auf Gott aufgeben? Kann man vielleicht Gott an Spuren erkennen? Und warum wüsste man, dass es seine Spuren sind? Das Buch stellt Fragen nach dem angemessenen Umgang mit dem Unverfügbaren; und schon das Fragestellen erweist sich als problematisch. Die Fragen bleiben unbeantwortet. Aber sie werden gestellt. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, geb. 1946, Dr. phil., Professor für Philosophie an der Freien Universität Berlin; 1999 Fellow an der University of Pennsylvania, 2004/05 am Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton; 2011 Gastprofessor an der Universität Tel-Aviv; Forschungsschwerpunkte: Religionsphilosophie, Geschichte der Philosophie und Philologie in der Frühen Neuzeit, Geschichtsphilosophie, Geschichte der Metaphysik und Geschichte der politischen Philosophie. (shrink)

English summary: The modern age understands justice not only as being an object of jurisprudence. Historical, philosophical, social and cultural studies along with theological approaches each draw near to justice in their own way. This collection devotes itself to the intricate interaction of outside perspectives with the judicial-interdisciplinary thematisation of the law, presenting revised papers delivered at the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research's symposium in honour of Professor Dr. Dres. h.c. Eberhard Schmidt-Aamann. The case studies and basic considerations deal (...) with, among other things, the function of the law in antique city states, the immanence and transcendence of justice from a theological perspective, as well as the relationship between economics and legal study. German description: Das Recht ist in der Moderne langst nicht nur Gegenstand der Rechtswissenschaft. Historische, philosophische, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche wie auch theologische Ansatze nahern sich dem Recht in je eigener Weise. Solche Aussenperspektiven stehen in komplexer Wechselwirkung mit der juristisch-binnendisziplinaren Thematisierung des Rechts. Dieser Sammelband ist dem Wechselspiel von Aussen- und Binnenperspektiven gewidmet. Er vereint die uberarbeiteten Beitrage eines Symposions, das an der Forschungsstatte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft in Heidelberg zu Ehren von Prof. Dr. Dres. h.c. Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann veranstaltet wurde. Die exemplarischen Fallstudien und Grundsatzuberlegungen thematisieren unter anderem die Funktion des Rechts in antiken Stadtstaaten, die Immanenz und Transzendenz des Rechts aus theologischer Perspektive sowie das Verhaltnis von Okonomik und Rechtswissenschaft. Mit Beitragen von: Hans Diefenbacher, Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Klaus Gunther, Christoph Mollers, Thorsten Moos, Michael Moxter, Bernhard Nagel, Martin Ramstedt, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Magnus Schlette, Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Die Analyse von Klangphänomenen und ihrer (inter)kulturellen Funktion ist inzwischen zu einem wichtigen Forschungsfeld avanciert. Grundlage der Aufsätze dieses Bandes ist eine anthropologische Perspektive, die darauf abzielt, auch den naturwissenschaftlich-empirischen Diskurs produktiv einzubeziehen. Die Beiträge gehen dem Verhältnis von Klang und Kognition, Kulturtheorie, Literaturästhetik, Medialität, Kunstpraxis sowie Transzendenz nach.

When animal ethicists deal with welfare they seem to face a dilemma: On the one hand, they recognize the necessity of welfare concepts for their ethical approaches. On the other hand, many animal ethicists do not want to be considered reformist welfarists. Moreover, animal welfare scientists may feel pressed by moral demands for a fundamental change in our attitude towards animals. The analysis of this conflict from the perspective of animal ethics shows that animal welfare science and animal ethics highly (...) depend on each other. Welfare concepts are indispensable in the whole field of animal ethics. Evidence for this can be found by analyzing the structure of theories of animal ethics and the different ways in which these theories employ welfare concepts. Furthermore, the background of values underneath every welfare theory is essential to pursue animal welfare science. Animal ethics can make important contributions to the clarification of underlying normative assumptions with regard to the value of the animal, with regard to ideas about what is valuable for the animal, and with regard to the actions that should follow from the results of animal welfare science. (shrink)

An inclusive vision of mathematics-- its beauty, its humanity, and its power to build virtues that help us all flourish. For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a diverse audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves personal reflections, puzzles, and stories (...) to show how mathematics meets basic human desires and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. Readers will explore mathematical concepts-- and see how mathematical thinking can even fulfill such longings as for love, play, freedom, justice, and community. Some lessons come from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher Jackson's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can-- and must-- be open to all. (shrink)

We discuss the astronomical underpinning of the improved calendar of 1700. Starting from the astronomical motivation of the Gregorian calendar of 1582 and the rejection of this reform in Protestant states in Europe, we describe how the astronomical Easter reckoning based on Kepler’s Rudolphine tables led to the foundation of Berlin Observatory and enabled the founding of the Electoral Brandenburg Society of Sciences, which had to finance itself through a calendar monopoly.

Thema dieser Studie ist die Philosophie des Geistes bei Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza und Leibniz. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass die Frage nach dem Wesen des Geistes bei diesen Autoren von vorneherein im Kontext einer erkenntnistheoretischen Problematik behandelt wird und erst dadurch ihr eigentümliches Profil erhält. Wie muss der menschliche Geist beschaffen sein, wenn sichere Erkenntnis möglich sein soll? Das ist die zentrale Frage, die im frühneuzeitlichen Rationalismus gestellt wird. Sie wird von den Autoren des klassischen Rationalismus in mehreren monumentalen Anläufen (...) beantwortet, indem der menschliche Geist als etwas beschrieben wird, das wesentlich auf Gott und seine Allwissenheit bezogen ist. In radikalisierender Anknüpfung an die scholastische Philosophie erweist sich die visio beatifica, die es dem endlichen Geist erlaubt, an Gottes Unendlichkeit teilzuhaben, als das zentrale epistemologische Paradigma, das von den genannten Autoren auf je unterschiedliche Weise ausbuchstabiert wird. So zeigt sich, dass die Philosophie des Geistes, weit davon entfernt, eine bloße Subdisziplin der Philosophie zu sein, für die rationalistischen Philosophen des 17. Jahrhunderts ins Zentrum der prima philosophia rückt - als die privilegierte Schnittstelle, an der sich Erkenntnistheorie, Religionsphilosophie und Subjektivitätstheorie treffen und wechselseitig artikulieren. (shrink)

(2005). Freedom in Responsibility: On the Relevance of “Sin” As a Hermeneutic Guiding Principle in Bioethical Decision Making. Christian Bioethics: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 147-165.

Most recent texts in moral philosophy have either concentrated on practical moral issues or else, if theoretical, have tended toward one-sided presentations of recent, fashionable views. Discussions of applied ethics cannot go very far without revealing underlying philosophical assumptions about how deeper, more general issues are treated. Similarly, recent approaches to ethics are difficult to understand without a knowledge of the context of the historical views against which these approaches are reacting. The Nature of Moral Thinking will satisfy the intellectually (...) curious student, providing a solid and fair discussion of the classical philosophical questions about our moral thinking, surveying the main types of meta-ethical and normative ethical theories, while not excluding the more recent discussions of moral realism, of anti-realism, and of virtue morality. Francis Snare demonstrates that glib intellectualistic thinking about morality, especially in regard to relativism andsubjectivism, is seriously flawed. He also focuses attention on the question of whether particular theories of the origins of morality (for example, those of Nietzsche and Marx) undermine morality. All students and teachers of ethics and philosophy will find this book one of the most complete and detailed introductory-level surveys of the foundations of ethics with emphasis on the problems of the subjectivity, the relativity, and the origins of morality. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) was undoutedly one of the most renowned intellectuals of his generation. This volume contains eighteen published and unpublished essays from the last decade of Rorty’s lif...

In these replies, I react to comments on my paper “Facts about Incoherence as Non-Evidential Epistemic Reasons”, provided by Aleks Knoks, Sebastian Schmidt, Keshav Singh, and Conor McHugh. I discuss potential counterexamples to my claim that the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason for her to suspend; whether such incoherence-based reasons bear on individual attitudes or only on combinations of attitudes; the prospects of restricting evidentialism about epistemic reasons to reasons to believe; whether (...) incoherence-based reasons are truly epistemic; the alleged normative and motivational expendability of incoherence-based reasons; the possibility of incoherence-based reasons to suspend without actual belief in the incoherent propositions; the relationship between suspension, inquiry, and incoherence; and the nature of suspension of judgment. (shrink)