What does it mean to be an individual and how can an individual exist within society? Serious Leisure and Individuality examines the circumstances in the modern world that make for individual distinctiveness, and the role of these conditions in personal and social life. "The individual," said Friedrich Nietzsche, "has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay (...) for the privilege of owning yourself." Elie Cohen-Gewerc and Robert Stebbins explore the road to finding that privilege. They approach individuality by examining its relationship to freedom and being free, and by defining and elaborating on the concept of leisure space. They also look at individuality's place in community, citizenship, and globalization. The complex relationship between individuality and alienation is put under the microscope to highlight the negative side of being distinctive, which has adverse consequences for the individual and society. There are many studies on the modern individual that centre almost entirely on the person facing his local community and broader society. What is missing in the literature - and what Serious Leisure and Individuality provides - is a broad, comprehensive examination of individuality, particularly as it is rooted in leisure and the leisure-like areas of work. (shrink)

The problem of Cartesian dualism is viewed as falling under a more general problem: the problem of human unity. This problem is both ancient and modern: whether a human being is a substantial unity of soul and body or merely a contingent one. I compare Aristotle's and Descartes's response to this problem. My thesis is that an important factor in generating Cartesian dualism is the rejection implicit in Descartes's metaphysical codification of the new mathematical science of nature, namely, the rejection (...) of Aristotle's radical teleological concept of nature. It is argued that the modern intractable problem of the relation of mind to body turns historically and metaphysically on the Cartesian substitution of the mathematically refined concept of body--three-dimensional extension--for the once-influential Aristotelian teleological concept of corporeal substance. (shrink)

The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has killed thousands across the world. SARS-CoV-2 is the latest but surely not the last such global pandemic we will face. The biomedical response to such pandemics includes treatment, vaccination, and so on. In this paper, though, we argue that it is time to consider an additional strategy: the somatic enhancement of human immunity. We argue for this approach and consider bioethics objections we believe can be overcome.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 10-14, March‐April 2022.

This essay discusses the new report, Heritable Human Genome Editing, by the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. After summarizing the report, we argue that the report takes four quite bold steps away from prior reports, namely (1) rejecting an omnibus approach to heritable human genome editing (HHGE) in favor of a case‐by‐case analysis of possible uses of HHGE, accepting that HHGE is acceptable in some cases; (2) recognizing that the interest in having (...) children who are genetically related to both would‐be rearing parents is one that the regulation of HHGE should honor; (3) patterning a regulatory model for HHGE on the United Kingdom's approach to regulating mitochondrial replacement techniques; and (4) conveying skepticism that international regulation is possible while showing a strong preference for a default into national regulatory regimes for HHGE. (shrink)

This essay discusses the new report, Heritable Human Genome Editing, by the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. After summarizing the report, we argue that the report takes four quite bold steps away from prior reports, namely (1) rejecting an omnibus approach to heritable human genome editing (HHGE) in favor of a case‐by‐case analysis of possible uses of HHGE, accepting that HHGE is acceptable in some cases; (2) recognizing that the interest in having (...) children who are genetically related to both would‐be rearing parents is one that the regulation of HHGE should honor; (3) patterning a regulatory model for HHGE on the United Kingdom's approach to regulating mitochondrial replacement techniques; and (4) conveying skepticism that international regulation is possible while showing a strong preference for a default into national regulatory regimes for HHGE. (shrink)

When prospective parents use in vitro fertilization, many of them hope to generate more embryos than they intend to implant immediately. The technology often requires multiple attempts to reach a successful pregnancy, and couples can cryopreserve any excess embryos so that they have them on hand for later attempts. As part of obtaining informed consent for IVF or cryopreservation, clinics typically ask patients to specify their preferences for the embryos in the event of divorce or death, offering options such as (...) use of the embryos by a specified partner, donation to research, or discarding the remaining embryos. Still, many courts face a recurring problem: the partners dissolve their relationship, and one party wants to use the frozen embryos over the objections of the other. Courts and legislatures have struggled with how to handle these cases, which seem to pit one partner's right to procreate against the other's right not to procreate. In this essay, we use one of the most recent decisions in this line of cases—the Appellate Court of Illinois's decision in Szafranski v. Dunston—to explain the current state of the law and make recommendations for changes. The issue is ripe for revisiting because in the last year, embryo disputes have become a battlefront for larger conflagrations over the moral status of embryos. (shrink)

Professor Sparrow’s (2022) Target Article helpfully elucidates the question of when the ordinary person-affecting conception of harm and benefit should apply to discussions of germline genome editi...

This study develops a pedagogy for the teaching of ethical principles in information systems (IS) classes, and reports on an empirical study that supports the efficacy of the approach. The proposed pedagogy involves having management information systems professors lead questioning and discussion on a list of ethical issues as part of their existing IS courses. The rationale for this pedagogy involves (1) the maturational aspects of ethics, and (2) the importance of repetition, challenge, and practice in developing a personal set (...) of ethics. A study of IS ethics using a pre-post test design found that classes receiving such treatment significantly improved their performance on an IS ethics questionnaire. (shrink)

Levinas Faces Biblical Figures captures the drama of the encounter between a great philosopher and a text of primary importance. The book considers the ways in which Levinas's thoughts can open up the biblical text to requestioning, and how the biblical text can inform our reading of Levinas.

Major Philosophers of Jewish Prayer in the Twentieth Century addresses the troubling questions posed by the modern Jewish worshiper, including such obstacles to prayer as the inability to concentrate on the words and meanings of formal liturgy, the paucity of emotional involvement, the lack of theological conviction, the anthropomorphic and particularly the masculine emphasis of prayer nomenclature, and other matters. In assessing these difficultites, Cohen brings to the reader the writings on prayer of some seminal 20th century Jewish theologians. (...) These include Herman Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Avraham Yitzhak, Hoakohen Kook, Mordecai M. Kaplan, R. Arele, Aaron Rote, Elie Munk, Abraham J. Heschel, Jakob J. Petuchowski, Eugene B. Borowitz, and Lawrence A. Hoffman. (shrink)

Title: Die Demokratische FragePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115723Author: Ulrich Rödel, Günter Frankenberg, Helmut Dubiel,Title: Autonome Gesellschaft und Libertäre DemokratiePublisher: SuhrkampISBN: 3518115731Author: Ulrich Rödel Title: Civil Society and Political TheoryPublisher: The MIT PressISBN: 0262031779Author: Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato.

What does it mean to"do theory" in America? In what ways has "French Theory" changed American intellectual and artistic life? How different is it from what French intellectuals themselves conceived, and what does all this tell us about American intellectual life? Is "French Theory" still a significant force in America, raising conceptual questions not easily answered? In this volume of new work--including the French writers Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilled Delezue, as well as essays by Sylvere Lotringer (...) and Sande Cohen, Mario Biagoli, Elie During, Chris Kraus, Alison Gingeras, and Kriss Ravetto, among others--French theorists assess the impact and reception of their work in America, and American-based critics account for their effects in different areas of cultural criticism and art over the last thirty years. (shrink)

This is a philosophical and historical study of the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. It is argued that Rosenzweig's thought is best understood within the horizon of German interwar philosophy alongside the thought of his contemporary, Martin Heidegger. The two philosophers are presented as offering divergent articulations of a larger, shared project; and they are understood as participants within a philosophical movement that the author calls "philosophical expressionism" after the various other expressionist movements of the 1920s. The affinity between Rosenzweig (...) and Heidegger is traced from Rosenzweig's earliest study of Hegel's statist theory through his engagement with Hermann Cohen's neo-Kantianism as well as the Bible-translation. The dissertation culminates in a detailed reconstruction of the famous Davos disputation between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, which Rosenzweig interpreted as a symbolic encounter between the older, idealist mode of philosophy and his own "new thinking" . It is argued that the affinities between Heidegger and Rosenzweig are far deeper than has been formerly acknowledged. (shrink)

Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of new essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, messianism, the influence of Kant, (...) and feminism. Included are essays on Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, and Levinas. Other thinkers discussed include Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt. The sixteen original essays are written by a world-renowned group of scholars especially for this volume and give a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four centuries. (shrink)

In three volumes, a distinguished group of scholars from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the humanities and the arts contribute essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The range of the essays, as well as their originality, and their critical and historical depth, pay tribute to the extraordinary scope of Professor Cohen's intellectual interests, as a scientist-philosopher and a humanist, and also to his engagement in the (...) world of social and political practice. Science, Mind and Art, Volume III of Essays in honor of Robert S. Cohen focuses on issues in contemporary epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of mind as well as on the relations of science and human values in ethical and religious thought. It also has important new work in contemporary metaphysics, as well as in the history of philosophy, and on questions of multiculturalism in science education. Contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Adolf Grünbaum, Joseph Margolis, Joëlle Proust, Erazim Kohak, Elie Wiesel, Miriam Bienenstock, and John Silber, among others. (shrink)

The youth of Bentham (1776-1789).--The evolution of the utilitarian doctrine from 1789 to 1815.--Philosophic radicalism.

This paper addresses epistemic aspects of the phenomenon of obstetric violence—which has been described as a kind of gender violence—mainly from the perspective of recent theories on epistemic injustice. I argue that what is behind the dismissal of women’s voices in labor is mainly how the birthing subject, in general, is conceived. Thus, I develop a link between the phenomenon of testimonial injustice in labor and the marked irrationality that is seen as a core characteristic of birthing subjects: an irrationality (...) that appears to be always at odds with the kind of knowledge that is, wrongly, privileged within medicalized childbirth. I use Miranda Fricker’s analysis to argue that a central part of obstetric violence involves laboring women being “wrongfully undermined specifically in their capacity as knowers” : they are disbelieved in the labor room because of a double prejudice, one deriving simply from their condition as women, the second involving the kind of knowledge that many women find useful in the process of birthing. Women in labor thus suffer from both systematic and incidental kinds of testimonial injustice. (shrink)

This volume contains the English translation of Felix Kaufmann's (1895-1945) main work Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936). In this book, Kaufmann develops a general theory of knowledge of the social sciences in his role as a cross-border commuter between Husserl's phenomenology, Kelsen's pure theory of law and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. This multilayered inquiry connects the value-oriented reflections of a general philosophy of science with the specificity of the methods and theories of the social sciences, as opposed to (...) abstract natural science and psychology. The core focus of the study is the attempt to elucidate how and under what conditions scientific knowledge about social facts, empirically justified and theoretically embedded, can be obtained. The empirical basis of knowledge within the social sciences forms a phenomenological concept of experience. According to Kaufmann, this concept of experience exhibits a complex structure. Within the meaning-interpretation of human action as the core of knowledge in the social sciences, this structure reaches out across the isolated act of verification toward the synthesis of external and internal experiences. The book opens with a detailed and useful introduction by Ingeborg K. Helling, which introduces the historical and theoretical background of Kaufmann's study and specifically illuminates his relation to Alfred Schütz and John Dewey. Finally, it contains interviews with and letters to members of his family, colleagues and students. (shrink)

We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘ theory of mind ’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘ theory ’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer (...) and Perner’s puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down’s syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions (...) as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart explore the ability of complicated rules to generate simple behaviour in nature through 'the collapse of chaos'.

La vida y la obra de Maimónides; introducción por León Dujovne. -- El imperio de la razón, por Ajad Haam (Ascher Guinzberg) -- Maimon y Maimónides; influjo de Maimónides en la filosofia alemana post-kantiana, por Hugo Bergmann. -- Caracteres de la ética de Maimónides, por Hermann Cohen. -- Doctrina de Maimónides sobre la profecía, por Z. Diesendruck. -- La revelación y la razón en la obra de Maimónides; su crítica de los Molecallemín, por Alfredo Franceschi. -- Maimónides y el (...) espíritu judío, por Alberto Gerchunoff. -- Actualidad de Maimónides, por Jacob Gordin. -- La obra fundamental de Maimónides, por Joseph Klausner. -- Maimónides, médico, por Elías Singer. -- Homenaje a Rambam, por Julien Weill. -- Maimónides en el pueblo, por Hilel Zeitlin. -- Selección de la obra de Maimónides (p. [311]-431). (shrink)

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced (...) by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism. (shrink)

"Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) a développé son œuvre sur deux versants : l'un, poétique ; l'autre, épistémologique. On ne retient bien souvent de sa pensée que la notion 'd'obstacles épistémologiques' et l'idée de sujet scientifique mettant en dialogue une 'raison appliquée' et un 'matérialisme technique'. Mais l'originalité et la profondeur de l'épistémologie de Bachelard débordent, bien évidemment, ces notions. L'intérêt du présent ouvrage est de proposer une reconstruction exhaustive de la philosophie des sciences de Bachelard. Pour cela, il éclaire les passages (...) les plus techniques (sur les mathématiques, la chimie ou la physique, la psychologie du sujet scientifique) et retrouve les sources philosophiques dont Bachelard s'inspire. Au fil de l'ouvrage, se découvre une épistémologie bachelardienne plus systématique et 'réaliste' qu'on ne l'a crue jusqu'alors. Ainsi, on comprend comment Bachelard a pu soutenir que les Relations mathématiques règnent sur le Réel." [Source : 4e de couverture]. (shrink)

Comment by Aaron L. Mackler on “‘Through Her I Too Shall Bear a Child’: Birth Surrogates in Jewish Law” by Elie Spitz Reply by Elie Kaplan Spitz Research Note by G. Scott Davis.