Establishing acceptable norms of behavior and consistent standards of conduct has been part of the human enterprise since the dawn of time. Without principles of ethics and the moral rules that affect individual behavior, humankind would plunge into a state of chaotic indifference, insecurity, and unending fear. But while few question the need for moral guidance, a growing number of people believe that the only ethic worth considering must rest on a biblical foundation. Is morality dependent upon God and "revealed (...) truths" found in scripture? Must this claim be accepted without question lest we risk the torment of eternal damnation for questioning it? Without critical evaluation and careful scrutiny, there is little hope of distinguishing truth from unfounded belief. How valuable is the Bible as a source for ethical truth? Do the scriptures truly have the insight needed to guide humankind safely through the moral dilemmas of modern society? What constitutes a biblical ethic? Should the Bible be construed as the only basis for moral teaching? Is it really the final authority on moral issues, or are there secular alternatives that can serve as guides to acceptable conduct within the human community? A distinguished group of social philosophers, biblical scholars, and ethicists met at the University of Richmond, Virginia, under the aegis of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion and its Biblical Criticism Research Project, to address these and related questions. The essays in this provocative work demonstrate a diversity of perspective and breadth of insight that will shed much needed light on the nature of ethics. The contributors to this volume include: Robert S. Alley, Joe Edward Barnhart, Joseph L. Blau, Frank E. Eakin, Jr., Lewis S. Feuer, Joseph Fletcher, Theodor H. Gaster, James H. Hall, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Paul Kurtz, Gerald A. Larue, John Priest, Ellis Rivkin, Richard L. Rubenstein, and Richard Taylor. (shrink)

XLVIII+462 S., geb., € 49,90. ISBN 978‐3‐7705‐5281‐8.

This study builds on the work of contemporary civic republicans, supplying a detailed analysis of the concept of domination absent in the familiar accounts of political freedom as non-domination.

This article reconstructs Badiou’s oeuvre from the vantage point of the last volume of his Being and Event trilogy. It determines the perspective and task of The Immanence of Truths and demonstrates in what way an “absolute ontology” is the result of an act of forcing that serves as the measure for a truth’s truthness. This allows to argue that Badiou’s is and always was a philosophy of freedom.

This article aims to offer a refined way of understanding what we mean by the concepts of meaningfulness and meaning in life. The first step is to separate worthwhileness, as the broadest evaluation of life taking all types of values into account, from meaningfulness, which is seen as one type of intrinsic value along with, for example, well-being, moral praiseworthiness, and authenticity, which I argue are also separate types of intrinsic value. After discussing why we should not settle with the (...) currently popular fitting attitudes analysis of meaningfulness, I argue that the meaningfulness of a life should be seen to be about the positive contribution beyond itself that this particular life is able to make. I show how this analysis is different from previous similar accounts and how it is able to avoid a number of challenges that have troubled these previous accounts, such as the pleasure machine challenge, the results machine challenge, and the doing good unintentionally challenge. I also demonstrate how it is able to account for prototypical examples of meaningful and meaningless lives and how it is compatible with subjectivism, supernaturalism, and objective naturalism, which is seen as a merit. Finally, I conclude with some notes about what could make life meaningful, given the current analysis of meaningfulness itself. (shrink)

a critical introduction Frank Cunningham. economic 200; and globality/ globalism 200, 204 group loyalties 62-3 group representation 95-100; challenges 97-100; modes 97; types 96 guild socialism 137 hegemony 190-1,213 Hobbesist 73, ...

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in Finland (n = 594, employees (...) of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)

Wie kann man einen historischen Blick auf das eigene Fach werfen? Diese Frage ist nicht einfach zu beantworten – will man einerseits nicht in einer Nabelschau und Hagiographie enden, andererseits aber auch keinen umfassenden Entwurf einer zukünftigen Historiographie vorlegen. Die hier in loser Folge publizierten Interviews mit bekannten Protagonist:innen der Berliner Wissenschaftsgeschichte von ca. 1970–1990 in West und Ost rücken die Geschichte des Faches deshalb in einem bestimmten Milieu in den Fokus und versuchen, die Historiographie jenseits einer Institutionen- oder Theoriegeschichte (...) voranzutreiben. Welche Motivationen oder Probleme bewegten einzelne Wissenschaftler:innen, sich der Geschichte ihres Faches zu widmen oder sich etwa aus der Soziologie oder Philosophie in die Wissenschaftsgeschichte zu bewegen? Welche Ausbildungspraktiken existierten in diesem heterogenen, zwischen den Disziplinen angesiedelten Feld, welche Anregungen bezog man aus welchen Kontexten? Wie war Lehre strukturiert und welche Netzwerke bildeten sich mit der Zeit? Kurz: Mit welchem Interesse kam man zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und was wurde daraus? Die Auswahl der Interviewees erfolgt ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit oder Proporz; der Fragenkatalog der Interviews richtet sich individuell nach den Biographien und dem Werk und entfaltet sich oft spontan im Gespräch. Die Interviews wurden digital aufgezeichnet, transkribiert, der Schriftsprache angepasst, gegebenenfalls gekürzt, annotiert und von den Interviewees authentifiziert. Wir beabsichtigen mit dieser Serie von Interviews zunächst die Dokumentation rezenter Geschichte durch eine Oral History, die subjektive Wahrnehmungen und persönliche Erlebnisse einschließt. Auf diese Weise werden Segmente einer größtenteils ungeschriebenen Geschichte anhand von Biographien erfahrbar und damit auch einer weiteren kritischen Bearbeitung und Integration in ein Gesamtbild zugänglich. Da uns im Zuge der jeweiligen Vorbereitung und Durchführung, Transkription und Abstimmung der Interviews daran gelegen war, aus Sicht der Akteur:innen wichtige Sammelbände und Aufsätze, Monographien oder auch „graue Literatur“ zu erfassen, wird nebenbei eine kommentierte Bibliographie zur Geschichte der Wissenschaftsgeschichte entstehen. Unsere Hoffnung besteht darin, mittels dieser Sammlung mit Berlin einen fruchtbaren Raum und mit den siebziger und achtziger Jahren eine produktive Zeit des Faches jenseits von Reminiszenz oder Nostalgie zu erkunden – nicht zuletzt auch, um den Blick für gegenwärtige Herausforderungen des Faches zu schärfen. (shrink)

In this article, the authors explore the impact of a potential future regulatory decision by FDA whether or not to continue its enforcement discretion policy allowing physicians to perform, and stool banks to sell, stool product for fecal microbiota transplantation as a treatment for recurrent Clostridium Difficile infection without an Investigative New Drug application. The paper looks at the Agency's regulatory options in light of the current gut microbiota based products that are in the FDA pipeline for drug approval and (...) the potential impact and repercussions of their approval on FDA action. In laying out FDA's options we consider the implications of market exclusivity and off-label use of newly approved drugs. Ultimately, we explore the potential impact of FDA's decision on patients, research, and innovation. (shrink)

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows (...) how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas. (shrink)

John Dewey’s willingness to endorse a remedial form of education for African American students offers us a rare glimpse of the racial assumptions underlying Dewey’s educational philosophy. By considering a variety of clues — Dewey’s silences on racial equality, his understanding of race and racial progress, and his respective prescriptions for European American and African American students — Frank Margonis offers in this essay a speculative case suggesting that the visionary child‐centered education for which Dewey was most well‐known was (...) intended for European American students and not African American students. Because of the racial assumptions operative in Dewey’s educational philosophy, Margonis suggests, Dewey’s fundamental conceptions of the “student” and “classroom community” would best be abandoned by educational philosophers hoping to write philosophy that serves all students. (shrink)

Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne: The future of mind.--Marquis de Condorcet: The taming of the future.--Comte de Saint-Simon: The pear is ripe.--Children of Saint-Simon: The triumph of love.--Charles Fourier: The burgeoning of instinct.--Auguste Comte: Embodiment in the great being.

Warburgs eigenwillige Begriffsübernahmen und -prägungen wie etwa Mneme, kinetische/potentielle Energie oder Dynamogramm verweisen auf ein enges Verhältnis zu zeitgenössischen naturwissenschaftlichen Modellen. Die Beiträge des Bandes fragen nach der Bedeutung von Vererbungslehre und Evolutionsbiologie, Völker- und Affektpsychologie, aber auch von Physik und Mathematik für Warburgs Bilderdenken.

Unter dem Titel Hans Blumenberg: Pädagogische Lektüren erkunden die Autorinnen und Autoren Hans Blumenbergs Werk nach bildungsphilosophischen und erziehungswissenschaftlichen Problem- und Fragestellungen. Das Werk des Münsteraner Philosophen erscheint der Erziehungswissenschaft bisher nicht nur deshalb als terra incognita, weil er sich zu pädagogischen Themen kaum geäußert hat, sondern auch, weil sein Werk bereits zu Lebzeiten einen beachtlichen Umfang aufwies und durch zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen aus dem Nachlass nochmals bedeutend erweitert wurde. Nur vereinzelt und verstreut liegen bisher disziplinbezogene Anschlussversuche vor. Mit diesem Band (...) wird deshalb der erste Sammelband zur erziehungswissenschaftlichen Blumenberg-Rezeption vorgelegt, der Beiträge zu Blumenbergs Metaphorologie, Anthropologie und seiner kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Platons Höhlenmythos zusammenträgt. (shrink)

Autor (2020) desenvolveu duas semânticas informacionais para a Lógica Sentencial Clássica, decorrentes da utilização de formais normais. A abordagem informacional em questão utiliza unidades mínimas de informação (infons) para realizar o trabalho lógico. Neste artigo, expandiremos a aplicação da abordagem informacional às lógicas sentenciais polivalentes finitas mediante um procedimento dedicado à extração de unidades mínimas de informação (infons). Tal procedimento decorre do trabalho com tablôs semânticos para Lógicas Sentenciais Polivalentes Finitas desenvolvido por Carnielli (1982).

Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War, a new Cold War is being waged in our societies. During the Cold War a theoretical model of man was developed by economists and the military, an egotistical being interested only in his own benefit and in duping his opponents to achieve his ends: a modern homo oeconomicus. After his career in the Cold War ended, he was not scrapped but adapted to the needs of the twenty-first century. He became the (...) ringmaster of a new era of information capitalism. He sought to read, control and influence thoughts; to predict, price and eliminate risks. Today stock-market trading is guided by him. He uses computer algorithms and Big Data to build up detailed pictures of our preferences and then suggest and sell goods to us. The model has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are no longer the masters of our own fate. The Game of Life runs without us. Schirrmacher traces the progress of this extreme rationalization of social life from the Cold War games of the 1950s Rand Corporation to the stock-market trading techniques that brought about the financial crash of 2008, showing how these developments were interwoven with the rise of game theory, rational choice theory and neoliberal economics. The state and politics increasingly submitted themselves to the logic of computerized game theory and an economistic view of the world, evading real decision-making in the process. In this brave new world individuals, alone in front of their computers, may think they are constructing a reality of their own choosing, but in fact they are being manipulated all along by others who are setting the rules of the game. This international bestseller by one of Germanys most distinguished journalists is a powerful indictment of a way of thinking that has become pervasive and threatens to undermine not only parliaments and constitutions but also the sovereignty of the individual to be the person he or she wants to be. (shrink)

Algorithmic decision-making increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by scholars and policymakers requires considering people's fairness perceptions when designing and implementing algorithmic decision-making. We provide a comprehensive, systematic literature review synthesizing the existing empirical insights on perceptions of algorithmic fairness from 58 empirical studies spanning multiple domains and scientific disciplines. Through thorough coding, we systemize the current empirical literature along (...) four dimensions: (1) algorithmic predictors, (2) human predictors, (3) comparative effects (human decision-making vs. algorithmic decision-making), and (4) consequences of algorithmic decision-making. While we identify much heterogeneity around the theoretical concepts and empirical measurements of algorithmic fairness, the insights come almost exclusively from Western-democratic contexts. By advocating for more interdisciplinary research adopting a society-in-the-loop framework, we hope our work will contribute to fairer and more responsible algorithmic decision-making. (shrink)

Strong reciprocity is an effective way to promote cooperation. This is especially true when one not only cooperates with cooperators and defects on defectors (second-party punishment) but even punishes those who defect on others (third-party, “altruistic” punishment). Some suggest we humans have a taste for such altruistic punishment and that this was important in the evolution of human cooperation. To assess this we need to look across a wide range of cultures. As part of a cross-cultural project, I played three (...) experimental economics games with the Hadza, who are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The Hadza frequently engaged in second-party punishment but they rarely engaged in third-party punishment. Other small-scale societies engaged in less third-party punishment as well. I suggest third-party punishment only became more important in large, complex societies to solve more pressing collective-action problems. (shrink)

In The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, Alessandro Ferrara seeks a philosophical breakthrough from what looks like it could be a pending dead-end for democracy. The best hope, Ferrara superbly maintains, lies through an extension or updating – a “renewal,” as he calls it – of lines of thought bequeathed to us, by John Rawls and others, under the name of political liberalism. Somewhere near the crux of Ferrara’s reflection stands a class of institutional fixtures whose (...) name is missing from his title. I mean the class “constitution.” I use that word to name a country’s scriptural basic law, its publicly cognizable corpus of canonically worded sentences ordaining the country’s basic institutional framework. My suggestion will be that it is no less tellingly a “constitutional” than a “democratic” horizon that Ferrara’s work, in conjunction with Rawls’s, shows us to be facing. (shrink)

Though the geographic dimensions of philosophical history were always, in principle at least, the whole globe, for the last two thousand years the ...

John Rawls proposed, as what he called “the liberal principle of legitimacy,” that coercive exercises of political power can be justified to free and equal dissenters when “in accordance with a constitution (written or unwritten) the essentials of which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can endorse.” Does “unwritten constitution” there refer to norms of constitutional import, but that subsist only as custom, not as law? To norms that subsist as common law but not as code law? To empirical regularities (...) of political practice, as opposed to normative rules and standards? Which interpretation is best? (shrink)

During the Covid‐19 pandemic, as resources dwindled, clinicians, health care institutions, and policymakers have expressed concern about potential legal liability for following crisis standards of care (CSC) plans. Although there is no robust empirical research to demonstrate that liability protections actually influence physician behavior, we argue that limited liability protections for health care professionals who follow established CSC plans may instead be justified by reliance on the principle of reciprocity. Expecting physicians to do something they know will harm their patients (...) causes moral distress and suffering that may leave lasting scars. Limited liability shields are both appropriate and proportionate to the risk physicians are being asked to take in such circumstances. Under certain narrow circumstances, it remains unclear that the standard of care is sufficiently flexible to protect physicians from liability. Given this uncertainty, the likelihood that physicians would be sued for such an act, and their desire for such immunity, this limited protection is morally legitimate. (shrink)

In contrast to educational policies in the U.S., which assume an individualistic path of success and promote the assimilation of students, this essay argues for pedagogies where teachers focus upon facilitating the development of strong relationships en route to creating exciting educational environments and fertile contexts for social justice movements. Powerful teachers model the process whereby a commitment to appreciating the perspectives of individual students is combined with the orchestration of a dynamic intersubjective context, because such contexts call out the (...) strongest performances of individuals. Viewing educational events in terms of the patterns and rhythms that transpire in a particular social fields allows educators ways to create powerful educational environments even in neocolonial contexts that pit students and teachers against one another. Viewing educational events as social fields also allows us to understand how the common classroom, which focuses each student on the material in front of them, creates impotent individuals who dissociate themselves from others. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qu'un 'philosophe', au regard de l'histoire et singulièrement du XXIe siècle? Frank Pierobon, en s'appuyant sur son propre parcours et aussi sur ses dix années d'engagement dans la riche aventure des Matins-Philo à Bruxelles, tente d'apporter une réponse située à la question. Loin des imageries populaires, il fait du philosophe un homme de métier et de savoir-être dont toute l'existence oscillerait entre la création de concepts et, en même temps, une quête incessante du désir de sens. Un texte (...) court et fulgurant qui redit que nul n'est dispensé de philosopher. (shrink)

Avatar, le film de James Cameron (2009), aura ete un succes commercial d'une ampleur exceptionnelle, a considerer davantage comme le symptome d'une certaine societe en crise spirituelle, que comme l'expression personnelle d'un createur, fut-il exceptionnel. Sur cette base, Frank Pierobon, au terme d'une deconstruction tres poussee, en extrait l'embleme de notre postmodernite finissante: un Deus ex Fantasma, soit une derisoire redemption par le reve, faute de tout autre salut.

This research looks what happens to human reproduction when human genetic information is digitized. By employing speculative design as a transdisciplinary strategy to construct such an alternative future to open up public dialogues, it aims to stimulate audiences in an artistic way to deliberate two key questions: (1) how will biotechnology recondition and recontextualize the natural processes of genetic information (i.e. expression, replication, transmission and mutation) and our physiological processes (e.g. reproduction)? And (2) what might be the ethical, legal and (...) social implications (ELSI) for using such biotechnology? To this end, this practice-based research introduces the ‘e-gamete Digital Procreation Service’ (2019) – a speculative design project that has been developed as an approach to invite audiences to a future scenario of network-transmitted genetic information and computer-simulated human procreation. The carefully designed future service (an ironic practice of commercialization) allows human reproduction to take place outside of the human body. Audiences are encouraged to contemplate what novel situations might occur within their own futures and to consider broader questions like how family, parenthood, marriage, etc. are redefined and what new social relationships might emerge. By employing speculative design as an artistic research tool/tactic to step outside the technical limitations and craft the future service, the project asks vital question about the future in a provocative and quasi-realistic manner. Thus, the research forms a unique entanglement of sensitive topics by dealing with future biotechnology and human reproduction. (shrink)

Philosophical Virtues and Psychological Strengths brings Catholic philosophical and theological moral thought into direct dialogue with the psychological sciences and aims to establish the basis for developing a common framework of understanding. This volumes thirteen essays illustrate philosophical psychology in a realist mode; the authors have been guided by Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter Fides et ratio and by the virtue theory of St Thomas Aquinas. In these pages, they identify those elements of the Catholic tradition that remain indispensable (...) for sustaining a credible dialogue between Christian doctrine and secular psychology. The carefully selected contributors have established a common language that enables philosophers, theologians, and psychologists to share a profound understanding of the human person. The philosopher, the theologian, and the psychologist will each receive this text with distinct interests and perspectives: For the Philosopher, the interest lies in the classic idiom enriched at the developmental level by psychology. For the Theologian, the interest is both the normative philosophical reflections that steady the interdisciplinary dialogue and the psychological findings that enhance the tradition at the level of understanding human weakness and growth. For the Psychologist, the interest lies in the philosophical contextualizing of the person and the theologically rich conception of human flourishing, relationship, and purpose. The essays were composed by a group of renowned scholars who participated in an intense four-year research project at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia. The senior scholars include Benedict Ashley, Romanus Cessario, Kenneth Schmitz, Roger Scruton, and Paul Vitz; the junior scholars are John A. Cuddeback, Matthew Cuddeback, J. David Franks, Paul Gondreau, Tobias Hoffmann, Daniel McInerny, Christopher J. Thompson, and Craig Steven Titus. Book jacket. (shrink)

The Pentecostal understandings of baptism in the Holy Spirit hold potential for a more substantively pneumatological understanding of spiritual formation, but there are conceptual barriers to overcome before this potential can be realized. Specifically, the emphasis of revivalism on crisis experience and individualistic piety must be set within a larger framework that is more expansively ecclesiological and eschatological. A more expansively eschatological view of Spirit baptism can provide this framework, opening breathing room for prioritizing a pneumatological vision of spiritual formation (...) in the life and mission of the church. Spirit baptism can still refer to new breakthroughs in the life of the Spirit but those experiences would be couched within a larger vision of spiritual formation. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 59-61, December 2011.