Recently, the debate on human enhancement has shifted from familiar topics like cognitive enhancement and mood enhancement to a new and – to no one's surprise – controversial subject, namely moral enhancement. Some proponents from the transhumanist camp allude to the ‘urgent need’ of improving the moral conduct of humankind in the face of ever growing technological progress and the substantial dangers entailed in this enterprise. Other thinkers express more sceptical views about this proposal. As the debate has revealed so (...) far, there is no shared opinion among philosophers about the meaning, prospects, and ethical evaluation of moral enhancement. In this article I will address several conceptual and practical problems of this issue, in order to encourage discussion about the prospects of moral enhancement in the future. My assumption is that for the short term, there is little chance of arriving at an agreement on the proper understanding of morality and the appropriateness of one single ethical theory; apart from this, there are further philosophical puzzles loosely referred to in the debate which add to theoretical confusion; and even if these conceptual problems could be solved, there are still practical problems to be smoothed out if moral enhancement is ever to gain relevance apart from merely theoretical interest. My tentative conclusion, therefore, will be that moral enhancement is not very likely to be made sense of – let alone realized – in the medium-term future. (shrink)

Die Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der (...) Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten. (shrink)

The concept of “self-awareness” ( svasaṃvedana ) enters Buddhist epistemological discourse in the Pramāṇasamuccaya and - vṛtti by Dignāga (ca. 480–540), the founder of the Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition. Though some of the key passages have already been dealt with in various publications, no attempt has been made to comprehensively examine all of them as a whole. A close reading is here proposed to make up for this deficit. In connection with a particularly difficult passage (PS(V) 1.8cd-10) that presents the means (...) of valid cognition and its result ( pramāṇa/pramāṇaphala ), a new interpretation is suggested, inspired by the commentary of Jinendrabuddhi. This interpretation highlights an aspect of selfawareness that has hitherto not been claimed for Dignāga: self-awareness offers essentially subjective access to one’s own mental states and factors. (shrink)

1. This article reflects on the potential merits of a dialogical research design and practice with a view to caring for oneself and others. As my research is premised on dialogue, the self-care of...

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 71-89.

Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object‐directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants’ predictive gaze‐shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to‐be‐obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By (...) about 6 months of age, infants show goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants’ ability for action‐goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non‐human agents (e.g., object‐directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self‐propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action‐event perspective. In particular, infants’ goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom‐up processing of perceptual information and top‐down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Kommentar wirft, nach einer knappen Zusammenfassung der Argumentation des Beitrags von Tatjana Tarkian, einige grundsätzliche Fragen auf, welche die Geltungsreichweite und Anwendbarkeit der Prinzipien der reproduktiven Autonomie und der wohltätigen Fortpflanzung betreffen. Welche prospektiven Eltern sind Adressat*innen der Prinzipien der reproduktiven Freiheit und der wohltätigen Fortpflanzung? Stellen diese Prinzipien universell und überzeitlich gültige allgemeine Prinzipien dar, die generell in jeder Situation reproduktiver Entscheidung Berücksichtigung finden sollten? Lassen sie sich nur unter der Voraussetzung bestimmter Bedingungen bzw. im Rahmen bestimmter (...) Kontexte anwenden? Sind die beiden Prinzipien kompatibel oder widersprechen sie sich? Kommt prospektiven Eltern eine moralische Verantwortung für die Umsetzbarkeit ihrer reproduktiven Freiheit zu? (shrink)

This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the six articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.

Levinas's ethics has in the last decades exerted a significant influence on Nursing and Caring Science. The core of Levinas's ethics – his analyses of how our subjectivity is established in the ethical encounter with our neighbour or the Other – is applied both to healthcare practice and in the project of building an identity of Nursing and Caring Science. Levinas's analyses are highly abstract and metaphysical, and also non‐normative. Thus, his analyses cannot be applied directly to practical problems and (...) questions. Theorists in Nursing and Caring Science are generally aware of this. Nevertheless, many of them use Levinas's analyses to explore and solve questions of practical and normative character. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas of using Levinas in this manner.The article is divided into two parts. The first part presents some central ideas of Levinas's ethics based on the latter part of his authorship. The main focus is on the radicalism of Levinas's critique of the symbolic order (which includes concepts, categories, knowledge, etc.) – or as he puts it ‘the said’ – as a basis for subjectivity and responsibility. Levinas's notions of saying, anarchy, and singularity accentuate this point of view. These notions refer to conditions in the language, which counteract the symbolic order in the ethical encounter to such an extent that it becomes an incomprehensible. Levinas gives the argumentation a metaphysical frame: The encounter with the incomprehensible is an encounter with the Holy, which is not the ontological God, but a metaphysical desire. It is a mystery as to what this means, and herein lies possibly the main challenge when using Levinas's ethics in science and research: How to maintain the radicalism of his critique of the symbolic order when this is to be communicated in a scientific context that expects clarification of statements and ideas? The second part of the article explores this question by examining how some theorists use Levinas's ethics on questions and problems in the area of healthcare and Nursing and Caring Science. The focus is especially on the theorists' reception and use of the just mentioned notions. The study reveals that these theorists to a large extent transform Levinas's ethics according to their own approaches, with the result that his ethics loses its critical radicalism. Thus, I question the reason why they use Levinas. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts two infinite regress arguments against higher-order theories of consciousness that were put forward by the Buddhist epistemologists Dignāga (ca. 480–540 CE) and Dharmakīrti (ca. 600–660). The two arguments differ considerably from each other, and they also differ from the infinite regress argument that scholars usually attribute to Dignāga or his followers. The analysis shows that the two philosophers, in these arguments, work with different assumptions for why an object-cognition must be cognised: for Dignāga it must (...) be cognised in order to enable subsequent memory of it, for Dharmakīrti it must be cognised if it is to cognise an object. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Während die Bedingungsfaktoren der generellen Sportaktivität und der Sportvereinsaktivität für die Adoleszenz gut belegt sind, werden andere Settings wie das informelle Sporttreiben nur vereinzelt explizit betrachtet. Der Beitrag greift dies auf und analysiert die Sozialisationsbedingungen für die Teilnahme am informellen und vereinsorganisierten Sport. In Anlehnung an die interaktionale Sozialisationstheorie werden die soziale Lage, personale und soziale Ressourcen als sozialisationsrelevante Dimensionen fokussiert. Gesellschaftliche Mediatisierungsprozesse und die Bedeutungszunahme von Aktivitäten in und mit sozialen Medien führen zudem zur Berücksichtigung medialer Ressourcen. Mittels (...) binärer Regressionsmodelle werden in dieser Sekundäranalyse der MediKuS-Studie die Sozialisationsbedingungen für den informellen und vereinsorganisierten Sport analysiert.Mein Besonderer Dank gilt dem Deutschen Jugendinstitut und dem Deutschen Internationalen Institut für Pädagogische Forschung für die Möglichkeit die Daten der ‚Medien, Kultur und Sport’-Studie für Sekundärdatenanalysen im Rahmen meines Promotionsvorhabens zu nutzen. (shrink)

This article analyses the slippery notions of the normal and normality in select works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and argues that homosexuality became a ‘boundary object’ between the normal and the abnormal in their works. Constructing homosexuality as ‘normal enough’ provided these two key thinkers of the fin de siècle with an opportunity to challenge societal and medical norms: Krafft-Ebing did this through mapping perversions; Freud, by challenging perceived norms about sexual development more broadly. The (...) article submits that the scientific logic presented in Krafft-Ebing’s seminal case study compilation Psychopathia Sexualis and Freud’s early theoretical writings and cases, including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), was itself haunted by notions of norms and the normal that were not always easy to resolve, and sometimes involved a certain amount of inspired conjecture on the part of both thinkers in order to develop and validate their differing tripartite models of normality. Krafft-Ebing imagined homosexuality as a variation of the normal by generalizing a gay male experience. He also recorded the obstreperous cases of homosexual women based largely inside the clinic but by and large ignored this evidence. Freud inextricably bound homosexuality to normality (and vice versa) by redefining homosexuals as a group to include individuals with unconscious same-sex desire. Doing so allowed him to conceptualize the fear of homosexuality as crucial in the formation of neurosis and psychosis, and at the same time put him at odds with relevant early identity politics. (shrink)

Der Text enthält die im dritten Method Lab im Januar 2019 an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf präsentierten Erhebungen zu Milo Raus Inszenierung Lam Gods – the Ghent Altarpiece am NTGent 2018. Zentral ist hier einerseits die in der Inszenierung thematisierte soziomaterielle Zugänglichkeit des ursprünglichen Altarbilds in der Stadt Gent für ihre aktuelle Bürgerschaft und Touristen, andererseits der Affektraum, insbesondere der Affekt der Scham, der im Reenactment der Adam und Eva-Figuren des Altarbilds in der Inszenierung erzeugt wurde. Die dort auf der Bühne (...) vor den Augen des Kinderchors und den Zuschauer*innen vor der Bühne präsentierte ‚Geste der Scham’ provozierte bei der Forschenden eine affektive Reaktion, die den Umgang mit Scham, Fremdscham und unfreiwilliger Zeugenschaft in der Inszenierung hinterfragte. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 2 Seiten: 99-112.

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the importance of high standards in ethics, governance and the integrity of research. This paper is a case study of the University of Bristol's approach to address these important activities in a Higher Education Institution. It will highlight the importance of working closely with the academic research community to ensure maximum engagement, leading to a sustained culture change that recognizes faculty and departmental specific needs. A key tool to ensuring high standards (...) of research integrity and compliance with the legislative framework is the development of a supportive quality assurance programme. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether infants learn the effects of other persons' actions like they do for their own actions, and whether infants transfer observed action-effect relations to their own actions. Nine-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-olds explored an object that allowed two actions, and that produced a certain salient effect after each action. In a self-exploration group, infants explored the object directly, whereas in two observation groups, infants first watched an adult model acting on the object and obtaining a certain (...) effect with each action before exploring the objects by themselves. In one observation group, the infants' actions were followed by the same effects as the model's actions, but in the other group, the action-effect mapping for the infant was reversed to that of the model. The results showed that the observation of the model had an impact on the infants' exploration behavior from 12 months, but not earlier, and that the specific relations between observed actions and effects were acquired by 15 months. Thus, around their first birthday infants learn the effects of other persons' actions by observation, and they transfer the observed action-effect relations to their own actions in the second year of life. (shrink)

The discussion on subjectivity isbased on the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan'sunderstanding of subjectivity as constructed inand through language, and the philosopherCharles Sanders Peirce's general ideas ofsignifying construction as an unlimitedsign-exchanging process – the idea of theunlimited semiosis. The article advocatescombining Lacanian subjectivity and Peirceansemiosis in a model of the formal structure ofthe semiosis of Lacanian subjectivity. In thelight of this model the article claims thatLacanian subjectivity opens to a process ofsubjectivization within the semiosis ofsubjectivity, whereby that which is other ismade our (...) own. Two researchers' differentarguments on subjectivity, both of which referto Lacan's ideas on subjectivity, are used asdiscussion partners in the exploration of thesemiosis of Lacanian subjectivity. While theone researcher claims that subjectivity is anideological construction, the other maintainsthat subjectivity is a free play of signs. Thearticle claims that neither of these tworesearchers considers that there may be aprocess of subjectivization in the semiosis ofsubjectivity. Thus the one researcher can claimthat subjectivity `is constituted outside ofitself', and the other can maintain that `thesubject is doomed to perpetual exile fromitself' in the construction of her or hissubjectivity. (shrink)

The exhibition Critical Zones – Horizonte einer neuen Erdpolitik (2020–2022) at the ZKM Karlsruhe is a renewed attempt to unite artistic, philosophical, and scientific knowledge production in the medium of the ›Gedankenausstellung‹ (thought exhibition). The thematic orientation of the exhibition draws upon the writings of Bruno Latour, one of the curators. The article analyzes how his research on the critical zone, the terrestrial, and the Gaia hypothesis has been transformed into an exhibition format, intending a transmedial spatialization of thoughts combined (...) with the visitor’s experience ›how to land on earth‹. Based on a detailed exhibition analysis, it examines the curation and mediation of Latour’s earth-political thoughts and concepts in both the physical exhibition and the digital exhibition platform that evolved in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Mythos und Neue Musik' erforscht erstmalig die spannende Beziehung zwischen den antiken Mythen und der Musik. Birgit Johanna Wertenson widmet sich vor allem zeitgenössischen Kompositionen und weist über die beiden Figuren Orpheus und Kassandra anschaulich nach, dass die Beschäftigung mit dem Mythos auch heute eine komplexe Auseinandersetzung mit elementaren Lebensfragen des Menschen bedeutet. Da die archaischen Figuren stets neue Rezeptionen herausfordern, bleibt der Mythos als Ort kulturellen Wissens aktuell. Das Buch widmet sich dem Thema über einen Dialog aus Philosophie, (...) Kultur- und Musikwissenschaft: Damit wird nicht zuletzt das mittlerweile unübersichtliche Dickicht aus Mythosbegriffen durchdrungen und eine klare Terminologie gewonnen, die auch für andere Kulturwissenschaften eine Basis zum Umgang mit dem Mythos liefern kann. (shrink)

Russian cosmism is a highly speculative concept couched in vague terminology. The term itself appeared only in the 1970s, based on a belief in progress, but also reflecting the increasing awareness...

The auto-drama Bildbeschreibung (1984), written by Heiner Müller in the form of a poetic prose, can be read as a response to the emergence of a post-dramatic theater of images and media. In the work of the playwright Müller, it plays a key role as a performance-related Sehtext (viewing text). Under the agenda of image aesthetics, the article explores how the theater text Bildbeschreibung adopts the classical tradition of ekphrasis in order to transform it by transcription. It discusses the literary (...) form and activity of image description as a process of intermedial translation through which the described picture – a drawing of a stage setting – is continuously covered with writing and this way “overpainted” in layers. In a close reading of the written (not staged) dramatic text the multilayered entanglements between description, viewing and observation are exposed. A special focus is drawn on the poetic method of over- painting(Übermalung) as an iconoclastic collision between images – literary images, theater images, film images, and artistic images. The article conclusively argues that Heiner Müller’s overpaintings (Übermalungen) can be qualified as an image-critical strategy of performative iconoclasm by means of which the surrogate function and staging character of images can be crossed and suspended, but also the productive power of imaginatio as a free and uncontrolled stream of images can be activated. (shrink)

Law firms, bars and lawyers associations qualify as ‘enterprises’ in the sense of all international CSR norms such as the UN Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles, the OECD Guidelines for Multi...