Hegels Philosophie des Geistes erhebt den Anspruch, den Menschen im Ganzen - durch und durch - als "geistig" zu denken. Thomas Oehl aktualisiert diesen Anspruch, indem er ihn an die gegenwartige philosophische Debatte um die sinnliche Wahrnehmung herantragt und damit kritisch in diese eingreift: Bereits in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung verhalt sich der Mensch aktiv und nicht, wie es in seinem naheliegenden Selbst(miss)verstandnis scheint, passiv. In der Wahrnehmung konstituiert der Mensch Natur und Welt, und ist eben dadurch selbst nicht einfach Teil (...) der Natur oder Welt, sondern "Geist". "Geist" ist so, wie Hegel sagt, das "absolut Erste" der Natur. Wie Oehl weiter zeigt, schliesst dies ein, dass "Geist" sich gerade dort vollendet, wo er den Menschen von seinem Selbstmissverstandnis befreit, Natur zu sein. Damit stellt sich "Geist" als etwas heraus, das mehr ist als bloss der Mensch, da es den Menschen uber seine Selbstverkehrung hinausfuhrt. So wird ein neuer Zugang zu Hegels Philosophie des absoluten Geistes gewonnen, die eben dieses Geschehen als von Gott bewirkte Befreiung des Menschen von seiner Selbstverkehrung begreift, wie es in Kunst, Religion und Philosophie Gestalt gewinnt. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde mit dem Promotionsforderpreis der Munchener Universitatsgesellschaft 2020 ausgezeichnet. (shrink)

BackgroundDebates around euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are ongoing around the globe. Public support has been mounting in Western countries, while some decline has been observed in the USA and Eastern Europe. Physicians’ support for euthanasia and PAS has been lower than that of the general public, but a trend toward higher acceptance among physicians has been seen in recent years. The aim of this study was to examine the current attitudes of Finnish physicians toward euthanasia and PAS and whether there (...) have been changes in these attitudes over three decades.MethodsA questionnaire survey was conducted with all Finnish physicians of working age in 2020 and the results were compared to previous studies conducted in 1993, 2003 and 2013.ResultsThe proportions of physicians fully agreeing and fully disagreeing with the legalization of euthanasia increased from 1993 to 2020. The number of physicians, who expressed no opinion for or against euthanasia decreased from 19 to 5% during the same period. The proportion of physicians having no opinion of whether a physician should be punished for assisting in a suicide decreased from 20 to 10%.ConclusionsThis study shows that Finnish physicians’ ambivalence toward euthanasia and PAS has decreased. The ongoing debate has probably forced physicians to form more solid opinions on these matters. Our study highlights that attitudes toward euthanasia and PAS are still divided within the medical profession. (shrink)

Each of our theories of mental representation provides some insight into how the mind works. However, these insights often seem incompatible, as the debates between symbolic, dynamical, emergentist, sub-symbolic, and grounded approaches to cognition attest. Mental representations—whatever they are—must share many features with each of our theories of representation, and yet there are few hypotheses about how a synthesis could be possible. Here, I develop a theory of the underpinnings of symbolic cognition that shows how sub-symbolic dynamics may give rise (...) to higher-level cognitive representations of structures, systems of knowledge, and algorithmic processes. This theory implements a version of conceptual role semantics by positing an internal universal representation language in which learners may create mental models to capture dynamics they observe in the world. The theory formalizes one account of how truly novel conceptual content may arise, allowing us to explain how even elementary logical and computational operations may be learned from a more primitive basis. I provide an implementation that learns to represent a variety of structures, including logic, number, kinship trees, regular languages, context-free languages, domains of theories like magnetism, dominance hierarchies, list structures, quantification, and computational primitives like repetition, reversal, and recursion. This account is based on simple discrete dynamical processes that could be implemented in a variety of different physical or biological systems. In particular, I describe how the required dynamics can be directly implemented in a connectionist framework. The resulting theory provides an “assembly language” for cognition, where high-level theories of symbolic computation can be implemented in simple dynamics that themselves could be encoded in biologically plausible systems. (shrink)

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) organelle is the key intracellular site of both protein and lipid biosynthesis. ER dysfunction, termed ER stress, can result in protein accretion within the ER and cell death; a pathophysiological process contributing to a range of metabolic diseases and cancers. ER stress leads to the activation of a protective signalling cascade termed the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR). However, chronic UPR activation can ultimately result in cellular apoptosis. Emerging evidence suggests that cells undergoing ER stress and UPR (...) activation can release extracellular signals that can propagate UPR activation to target tissues in a cell non‐autonomous signalling mechanism. Separately, studies have determined that the UPR plays a key regulatory role in the biosynthesis of bioactive signalling lipids including sphingolipids and ceramides. Here we weigh the evidence to combine these concepts and propose that during ER stress, UPR activation drives the biosynthesis of ceramide lipids, which are exported and function as cell non‐autonomous signals to propagate UPR activation in target cells and tissues. (shrink)

Background Research is crucial to improve treatment, survival and quality of life for children with cancer. However, recruitment of children for research raises ethical challenges. The aim of this study was to explore and describe ethical values and challenges related to the recruitment of children with cancer for research, from the perspectives and experiences of healthcare professionals in the Swedish context. Another aim was to explore their perceptions of research ethics competence in recruiting children for research. Methods An explorative qualitative (...) study using semi-structured interviews with key informants. Seven physicians and ten nurses were interviewed. Interviews were analysed using inductive qualitative content analysis. Results The respondents’ ethical challenges and values in recruitment mainly concerned establishing relationships and trust, meeting informational needs, acknowledging vulnerability, and balancing roles and interests. Ensuring ethical competence was raised as important, and interpersonal and communicative skills were highlighted. Conclusion This study provides empirical insight into recruitment of children with cancer, from the perspectives of healthcare professionals. It also contributes to the understanding of recruitment as a relational process, where aspects of vulnerability, trust and relationship building are important, alongside meeting informational needs. The results provide knowledge on the complexities raised by paediatric research and underpin the importance of building research ethics competence to ensure that the rights and interests of children with cancer are protected in research. (shrink)

We are material things of a specific sort: animals of the primate species Homo sapiens. This is the view known as animalism. The most common reason for rejecting animalism is that it is has unattractive consequences about what it takes for philosophers to persist through time. If human animals are animals essentially, then our being animals implies that we are animals essentially. If they are animals accidentally, then animalism implies that we are animals only accidentally. Aristotelians say that an animal (...) is a compound of matter and form. Animalists accept the indisputable fact that we have important features not shared by any nonhuman organisms that we know of: the capacity for sophisticated rational thought, for instance, and to speak a language with a complex grammatical structure. Since animals are bodies, it follows that people are not animals. Animals, even human animals, cannot have life after death. (shrink)

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

Both the concept of a Darwinian tree of life (TOL) and the possibility of its accurate reconstruction have been much criticized. Criticisms mostly revolve around the extensive occurrence of lateral gene transfer (LGT), instances of uptake of complete organisms to become organelles (with the associated subsequent gene transfer to the nucleus), as well as the implications of more subtle aspects of the biological species concept. Here we argue that none of these criticisms are sufficient to abandon the valuable TOL concept (...) and the biological realities it captures. Especially important is the need to conceptually distinguish between organismal trees and gene trees, which necessitates incorporating insights of widely occurring LGT into modern evolutionary theory. We demonstrate that all criticisms, while based on important new findings, do not invalidate the TOL. After considering the implications of these new insights, we find that the contours of evolution are best represented by a TOL. (shrink)

Kat Williams and Scott R. Stroud’s essay is about televised debates, but it is also about the value of television in a democracy. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that television is devoid of serious content, that it is superficial. But while the debates contain superficialities, they also reveal substantive issues about the candidates, the electorate, and the state of our democracy.

This study examines the cross‐cultural generality of Hering's (1878/1964) color‐opponent theory of color appearance. English‐speaking and Somali‐speaking observers performed variants of two paradigms classically used to study color‐opponency. First, both groups identified similar red, green, blue, and yellow unique hues. Second, 25 English‐speaking and 34 Somali‐speaking observers decomposed the colors present in 135 Munsell color samples into their component Hering elemental sensations—red,green,blue, yellow, white, and black—or else responded “no term.” Both groups responded no term for many samples, notably purples. Somali (...) terms for yellow were often used to name colors all around the color circle, including colors that are bluish according to Hering's theory. Four Somali Grue speakers named both green and blue elicitation samples by their term for green. However, that term did not name the union of all samples called blue or green by English speakers. A similar pattern was found among three Somali Achromatic speakers, who called the blue elicitation sample black or white. Thus, color decomposition by these Somali‐speaking observers suggests a lexically influenced re‐dimensionalization of color appearance space, rather than a simple reduction of the one proposed by Hering. Even some Somali Green‐Blue speakers, whose data were otherwise similar to English, showed similar trends in yellow and blue usage. World Color Survey data mirror these results. These within‐ and cross‐cultural violations of Hering's theory do not challenge the long‐standing view that universal sensory processes mediate color appearance. However, they do demonstrate an important contribution of language in the human understanding of color. (shrink)

The author reviews Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand’s Political Philosophy, edited by Gregory Salmieri and Robert Mayhew, and finds it to be a rich and provocative anthology. However, the author is unpersuaded by the arguments, from a number of the contributors, for separating the prohibition on initiatory force as an ethical principle, from individual rights as a political principle—a separation that, on the ethical side, unduly discards the Aristotelean ethical approach with which Randian ethics claims affiliation, (...) and on the political side, is employed to ground an unconvincing case for the legitimacy of the state. (shrink)

One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century's linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in - the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the (...) articulation of human relationships and dialogue. The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement - and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God. Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion. (shrink)

Recent attempts to develop and apply digital ethics principles to address the challenges of the digital transformation leave organisations with an operationalisation gap. To successfully implement such guidance, they must find ways to translate high-level ethics frameworks into practical methods and tools that match their specific workflows and needs. Here, we describe the development of a standardised risk assessment tool, the Principle-at-Risk Analysis (PaRA), as a means to close this operationalisation gap for a key level of the ethics infrastructure at (...) many organisations – the work of an interdisciplinary ethics panel. The PaRA tool serves to guide and harmonise the work of the Digital Ethics Advisory Panel at the multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA in alignment with the principles outlined in the company’s Code of Digital Ethics. We examine how such a tool can be used as part of a multifaceted approach to operationalise high-level principles at an organisational level and provide general requirements for its implementation. We showcase its application in an example case dealing with the comprehensibility of consent forms in a data-sharing context at Syntropy, a collaborative technology platform for clinical research. (shrink)

This chapter introduces to the main topic of the volume, namely the influence of the changing nature of warfare on the provision of medical care and the ethical challenges that occur. It presents the main ideas of relevant concepts such as asymmetrical warfare, hybrid warfare, and complex emergencies before illustrating the ethical challenges that new forms of warfare create for military and humanitarian health care providers. Examples of ethical challenges include embedding medical personnel in combating forces, questions regarding the treatment (...) of detainees, the need to uphold medical neutrality, and pitfalls of using medicine to non-medical ends. The chapter concludes with a synopsis of the volume. (shrink)

A characteristic of the modern mind is a disdain for tradition. Polanyi argues that neglecting the role of tradition leads to philosophical incoherence as well as moral and political chaos. Polanyi’s postcritical philosophy represents an attempt to show how tradition plays a vital role in the process of discovery. Ultimately, a coherent account of the sciences, as well as the humanities, is only possible when tradition is acknowledged as indispensable.

Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: surveying the landscape and defining terms -- The seventeenth-century denigration of tradition and a nineteenth-century response -- Michael oakeshott and the epistemic role of tradition -- Alasdair macintyre's tradition-constituted inquiry -- Michael polanyi and role of tacit knowledge -- The incoherence of liberalism and the response of tradition -- Afterword: a conservatism worth conserving, or conservatism as stewardship -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

A guide to the major and minor figures who shaped Transcendentalism in New England, particularly between 1830 and the Civil War. While most of the entries are for American thinkers, international figures who advanced Transcendentalism in New England and who were alive until at least 1830 are also covered.

Background: Treatment of psychotic disorders in pregnancy is often ethically and clinically challenging, especially when psychotic symptoms impair decision-making capacity. There are several competing ethical obligations to consider: the ethical obligation to maternal autonomy, the maternal and fetal beneficence-based obligations to treat peripartum psychosis, and the fetal beneficence-based obligation to minimize teratogenic exposure. Objective: This article outlines an ethical framework for clinical decision-making for the management of chronic psychosis in pregnancy, with an emphasis on special considerations in the previable and (...) periviable period. Case Presentation: A 31-year-old gravida 2, para 1 with intrauterine pregnancy at 12 weeks and 4 days gestation was brought to the emergency department by her husband seven months after delivering her first child, due to sudden onset of behavioral changes that included self-isolation, not eating, and not taking care of her child. Her past medical history included hypothyroidism and inflammatory bowel disease, but no prior psychiatric illness. After being admitted to the psychiatric hospital, she continued to have poor oral intake and weight loss despite initial inpatient treatment with antipsychotics, levothyroxine, and discontinuation of corticosteroids. Her pregnancy was also complicated by the diagnosis of multiple fetal anomalies at 20 weeks gestation, when the fetus was periviable. Conclusions: For previable or periviable pregnancies, the patient and/or surrogate should decide whether to pursue prenatal genetic screening and invasive diagnostic testing, as well as whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. When the choice is made to continue the pregnancy, initiation of long-term psychiatric treatment (including medications with potential adverse fetal effects) should be based on shared decision-making between the physician and the patient and/or surrogate. Although some pharmacologic interventions may have potential adverse effects on the developing fetus, the use of psychotropic medications can be ethically justified, even if the patient herself does not have the capacity to consent and requires a surrogate, when the goal is to restore maternal autonomy and minimize the risks of maternal and fetal harm from untreated psychiatric illness. (shrink)

Philosophy of Medicine has for a long time been preoccupied with analyzing the concepts of health, disease and illness. Relatively speaking, the concept of medicine itself has received very little attention. This paper is a contribution to the relatively neglected debate about the nature of medicine. Building on the work of Alex Broadbent (Broadbent, 2018a, b), Chadwin Harris (Harris, 2018) and Thaddeus Metz (Metz, 2018), in this paper I question the persuasiveness of Broadbent’s account of the “core business” of medicine, (...) The Inquiry Thesis, and propose an alternative: a revised version of The Curative Thesis, which I coin The Best Available Intervention Thesis. Crudely, this suggests that Medicine is the sustained and organised effort to determine and prescribe the best available treatment (curative or preventative) for patients. (shrink)

Когда у человека или у группы людей о чем-либо складываются некие представления, то всегда очень неплохо знать то, как такие представления возникли. А также то, как они сложились у того, кто в итоге оказался источником информации.

This volume conveys that Indian philosophy has intricate and complex metaphysical and epistemological theories as other philosophies and that these disciplines – epistemology and metaphysics – are an essential part of Indian philosophy.

This study analyzes the gendered nature of recent production and labor force restructuring in the Dominican Republic. Using a longitudinal case study of work relations on a large transnational corporate pineapple plantation, the author explores the production politics involved in the initial corporate attempt to create a wage labor force and the subsequent replacement of employees with contracted labor crews. She demonstrates how female, and then male, labor forces were negotiated in this process and how labor relations became embedded in (...) local gendered institutions. The study reveals how workforces and spheres of work are constituted through struggles over gender, as well as ethnicity and class, in intersecting arenas linking the local community to the global economy. In this case, gender proves critical in shaping both worker identity and the shifting scope and form of resistance to plantation practices. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to point out that Black Consciousness and Black Theology are conceptually and philosophically comrades in arms, fighting side-by-side for the liberation of the oppressed masses, especially the black people emerging from apartheid South Africa. Through the literature review, the two philosophical disciplines are historically sketched, defined, and compared. The Setswana idiom, Di ya thoteng di bapile (comradeship), like many African proverbs and idioms, is philosophically employed as a way of decolonising theology. The idiom is (...) used to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between Black Consciousness and Black Theology in fighting against structural injustices in societies. Historical evolvement of the two disciplines is narratively presented to demonstrate how the two philosophies can continue to fight together towards the liberation of the marginalised masses in post-apartheid South Africa. The article concludes by sketching some strategic initiatives that can be undertaken to create the space for these two disciplines to symbiotically lead to the liberation of people living under the new form of political, cultural and socio-economic marginalisations. The strategic initiatives include the enhancement of self-reliance, prophetic role, and dialogical processes that lead to emancipation of those who sense self-pity, dependency syndrome, and loss of sense of quality life. These initiatives can be achieved through symbiotic cooperation of Black Consciousness and Black Theology, eventually leading to human liberation from any form of oppression.Contribution: There is a symbiotic cooperation of Black Consciousness and Black Theology, eventually leading to human liberation from any form of oppression. (shrink)

This article proposes a theological emphasis to the definition of προσλαμβάνω in Romans 14–15. Previous accounts have emphasised the domestic and social implication of Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’ (Rom. 15:7a). The result has been that what Paul might have meant by God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ (Rom. 14:3 and 15:7b) has been governed by the ethical imperative. In order to investigate the ‘welcome’ of God and Christ, this article proposes a context of three important Septuagintal antecedents as yet unconsidered: 1 Samuel (...) 12, Psalm 18, and Psalm 65: In this context, God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ in Rom. 14–15 incorporates notions of justification, election, salvation, and unified worship. A theological reading of προσλαμβάνω, using these intertextual resources, therefore provides a stronger position from which to understand Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’. (shrink)