Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of responding to the (...) question whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence. (shrink)

An irrealist conception of a given region of discourse is the view that no real properties answer to the central predicates of the region in question. Any such conception emerges, invariably, as the result of the interaction of two forces. An account of the meaning of the central predicates, along with a conception of the sorts of property the world may contain, conspire to show that, if the predicates of the region are taken to express properties, their extensions would have (...) to be deemed uniformly empty. The question then becomes whether the predicates are best understood as expressing properties, and hence as founded on error, or whether they ought to be understood along non-factualist lines.z Historically, irrealist models were developed primarily in connection with evaluative discourse, although as physicalism has flourished and as reductionist programs have failed, their application has been extended to many other domains. Indeed, it is one of the more influential suggestions in contemporary philosophy of mind that they apply even to ordinary belief/desire psychology. A correct understanding of the semantics and metaphysics of content-based psychology leaves us, so the proponents of the in-. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in Morality, Mortality, Volume I. Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems. She looks at the distinction between killing and letting die, and between intending and foreseeing, and also at the concepts of rights, prerogatives, and supererogation. She shows that a sophisticated non-consequentialist theory can be modelled which copes convincingly with practical ethical issues, and throws considerable (...) light on some of the key distinctions and concepts of ethical discourse. (shrink)

The prominent place 0f corpuscularizm mechanism in L0ckc`s Essay is nowadays universally acknowledged} Certainly, L0ckc’s discussions 0f the primary/secondary quality distinction and 0f real essences cannot be understood without reference to the corpuscularizm science 0f his day, which held that all macroscopic bodily phenomena should bc explained in terms 0f the motions and impacts 0f submicroscopic particles, 0r corpuscles, each of which can bc fully characterized in terms of 21 strictly limited range 0f (primary) properties: size, shape, motion (or mobility), (...) and, perhaps, solidity 0r impcnctrability.2 Indeed, L0ckc’s lists 0f primary quali-. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the nature and moral status of manipulation. I analyse a popular account of manipulation by Robert Noggle and assess a challenge that has been posed by Moti Gorin. I argue that Noggle’s theory can fend off the challenge. The analysis is instructive in that it enables one to look more closely at the nature of manipulation. I argue, contrary to some proposed accounts, that manipulation essentially involves deception about the manipulator’s intentions. Secondly, since manipulation contains (...) an element of deception, it is, I maintain, prima facie immoral. Finally, I analyse and explain away several examples of allegedly morally non-problematic manipulation. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of the imitation game is defended over the rival gender interpretation though it is noted that Turing himself proposed several variations of his imitation game. The Turing test is then justified as an inductive test not as an operational definition as commonly suggested. Turing's famous prediction about his test being passed at the 70% level is disconfirmed by the results of the Loebner 2000 contest and the absence of any serious Turing test competitors from AI on the (...) horizon. But, reports of the death of the Turing test and AI are premature. AI continues to flourish and the test continues to play an important philosophical role in AI. Intelligence attribution, methodological, and visionary arguments are given in defense of a continuing role for the Turing test. With regard to Turing's predictions one is disconfirmed, one is confirmed, but another is still outstanding. (shrink)

Nicholas Agar argues that it is possible, and even likely, that radically enhanced human beings will turn out to be ‘post-persons’, that is, beings with a moral status higher than that of mere persons such as us.1 This would mean that they will be morally justified in sacrificing our lives and well-being not merely in cases of emergency, but also in cases of ‘supreme opportunities’ , that is, whenever such a sacrifice leads to ‘significant benefits for post-persons’. For this (...) reason, Agar believes, it would be morally wrong to allow any cognitive enhancement of people that might entail the risk of moral status enhancement.However, neither are there sufficient grounds to expect radically enhanced human beings to have a higher moral status than unenhanced human beings, nor would it, even if they did, be morally wrong to bring about their existence. We use moral status ascriptions mostly as a convenient shorthand to indicate a difference in capacities that strikes us as morally relevant. Rocks have zero moral status because they cannot feel or think, so we cannot hurt or kill them. Whatever we do to them, it does not affect them. Animals, on the other hand, …. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine subjective and objective socioeconomic status as predictors, cognitive abilities as confounders, and personal control perceptions as mediators of health behaviours.DesignA cross-sectional study including 197 participants aged 30–50 years, recruited from the crowd-working platform, Prolific.Main Outcome MeasureThe Good Health Practices Scale, a 16-item inventory of health behaviours.ResultsSSES was the most important predictor of health behaviours. Among the OSES indicators, education, but not income, predicted health behaviours. Intelligence and memory were negatively correlated with health-promoting behaviours, and the effect of (...) memory was upheld in the multivariate model. Personal control perceptions did not act as mediators.ConclusionSSES predicted health behaviours beyond OSES. The effect of socioeconomic indicators was not confounded by cognitive abilities. Surprisingly, cognitive abilities were negatively associated with health-promoting behaviours. Future research should emphasise SSES as a predictor of health behaviours. Delineating the psychological mechanisms linking SSES with health behaviours would be a valuable contribution toward improved understanding of socioeconomic disparities in health behaviours. (shrink)

The Argument from Vagueness for Universalism contends that any non-arbitrary restriction on composition must be vague, but that vague composition leads to unacceptable count indeterminacy. One common response to the argument is that borderline cases of composition don’t necessarily lead to count indeterminacy because a determinately existing thing may be a borderline case of a presently existing concrete composite object. We can collectively refer to such views as versions of the Status Response. This paper argues that the Status (...) Response cannot handle count indeterminacy about various categories of things, such as events, states of affairs, tropes, holes, shadows, and created abstracta, when these are understood in the right way. This makes the Status Response objectionablfy ad hoc, which should lead us to look for alternative ways of resisting the Argument from Vagueness. (shrink)

To establish the claim that racism is an ideology that consists of having morally impermissible attitudes towards people in virtue of their racialised identities, Appiah claims that a (false) belief in race is not automatically morally wrong. This paper examines what is involved in believing in races and shows that believing in races is in itself morally problematic as it involves stereotyping that undermines agency.

Giubilini and Minerva ask why birth should be a critical dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable reasons for terminating existence. Their argument is that birth does not change moral status in the sense that is relevant: the ability to be harmed by interruption of one's aims. Rather than question the plausibility of their position or the argument they give, we ask instead about the importance to scholarship or policy of publishing the article: does it to any extent make a (...) novel or needed addition to the literature? Giubilini and Minerva's argument is remarkably similar to one advanced by Michael Tooley in ‘Abortion and Infanticide,’ almost 40 years ago. There have been immense changes in the intervening 40 years: in the ability to diagnose conditions early in pregnancy, in genetics and in the availability of in vitro fertilization; in understanding of the capabilities of persons with disabilities; in law; in economic support and access to healthcare for pregnant women and their children; in social customs and arrangements; and even in philosophy, with developments in feminist thought, bioethics and cognitive science. Some of these changes have been for the better, but others, such as the unravelling of social safety nets, have arguably been for the worse. Any or all of these changes might give rise to moral reasons for the relevance of birth that were not available 40 years ago. These changes might also be relevant to the identification of cases, if any, in which ‘after-birth abortion’ might be considered. If context is relevant to the applicability of moral reasons—as for theorists of justice in the non-idealised world it surely should be—it is questionable whether a view of the birth-line that ignores contextualising change can be adequate. (shrink)

The present study aims to explore the status of filled pauses as pragmatic markers by taking into account their accompanying visual and gestural behavior. This aspect has not yet been widely explored, and the current study breaks new ground by demonstrating that the analysis of gaze and gesture can shed substantial light on the pragmatic functions of filled pauses and other pausing phenomena. Filled pauses (FPs) serve several pragmatic functions in speech, mainly planning but also turn-holding and emphasis, and (...) their use is also highly determined by register and setting. This research explores the different pragmatic functions of FPs by analyzing their distribution in two different communication settings (conversation vs presentation setting), combining a quantitative and a qualitative methodology, following Kosmala & Crible’s (2021) study on the same data. Particular attention was paid to the co-occurring gestural activity of uh/ums and gaze behavior. Analyses show that the pragmatic functions of FPs are also embodied in kinetic activities which differ according to the setting: more pragmatic and referential ones were found during FPs in conversation than in the presentation setting, as well as more eye-contact, which reflects their potential communicative role during interactional sequences. (shrink)

Vasiṣṭha claims both that all four _āśramas_ are equal and that the householder is the best of the four _āśramas_. This apparent contradiction would be resolved if either of these claims could be dismissed. Vasiṣṭha's claim that the four _āśramas_ are equal seems entailed, however, by his endorsement of the original formulation of the _āśrama_ system. His claim that the householder is superior, in turn, seems supported by the surplus of arguments that he offers in favor of the householder. Patrick (...) Olivelle takes Vasiṣṭha to advance this surplus of arguments for the householder only to bolster the more modest claim that the householder is _equal_—and therefore not inferior—to the celibate _āśramas_. If this right, then Vasiṣṭha's claim that the householder is superior might be understood in the same way. If the balance of evidence weighs in favor of one claim or the other, however, it seems to weigh in favor of the superiority of the householder, rather than the equality of the _āśramas_. An alternative interpretation takes Vasiṣṭha to evaluate the householder in relation to two distinct metrics. The four _āśramas_ are equal, he says, in their ability to attain the highest heaven. The householder is superior to the other three _āśramas_, however, in his unmatched contributions to the general welfare. (shrink)

In this paper, changes in the status and nature of one case from the Family Court of England and Wales will be discussed. The changes cover two aspects of the case. Firstly, the shift from a civil action – a standard family court case concerning the break-up of a relationship and its effect on the children born from the relationship – to a quasi-criminal case in which contempt of court plays the central role; this will be discussed from a (...) Greimasian perspective. Secondly, the case is accompanied by types of silence – from the textual silence of private proceedings in the Family Court to the conversational silence in the form of one of the protagonists’ right of silence. (shrink)

Book Information The Moral and Political Status of Children. The Moral and Political Status of Children David Archard , Colin M. Macleod , eds. , Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press , 2002 , viii + 296 , US$60 (cloth). Edited by David Archard; , Colin M. Macleod; , eds.. Oxford University Press. Oxford and New York. Pp. viii + 296. US$60 (cloth).

The rapid development of widely available and effective vaccines has been integral to the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a significant minority of those offered vaccination have refused, often due to their adherence to ‘anti-vax’ beliefs. These beliefs include that vaccines are dangerous, render the recipient magnetic or contain government microchips.During the pandemic, numerous calls were made for those voluntarily refusing vaccination to be deprioritised when allocating scarce healthcare resources. While these calls were rejected, the likelihood of the (...) same calls being made during future pandemics necessitates a thorough examination of the ethical implications entailed by such a policy.Here, I consider an intuitive argument for the use of vaccination status when allocating healthcare resources. This argument claims that, by avoiding vaccination, vaccine refusers are failing to fulfil a social obligation to protect those around them from harm by facilitating herd immunity. They are, therefore, less deserving of healthcare than their vaccinated peers.I explore three objections to this argument. While a first objection, asserting that no individual can be held responsible for a failure to develop herd immunity, fails, I find two further responses, respectively asserting the primacy of patient autonomy and highlighting the harms deprioritising vaccine refusers would cause to disadvantaged minorities, compelling. I, therefore, conclude that vaccination status should not be considered during healthcare resource allocation, as such discrimination would disproportionately harm marginalised communities. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Leibniz’s account of the epistemic status of the Christian Mysteries in his “Preliminary Dissertation on the Conformity of Faith with Reason.” In it, the Mysteries are held to be true, yet also to be beyond human comprehension. This conjunction gives rise to a dilemma: how can the Mysteries bemeaningfully asserted if they are unintelligible? To answer this, Leibniz compares them to natural truths, which are demonstrable by God alone. To complicate matters, however, he suggests (...) that certain Mysteries have the status of truths of logic, or of mathematics; this raises a special problem in understanding his view of the epistemic status of such Mysteries for us. I offer a suggestion as to how he may have wanted us to think of the relationship between these Mysteries and our faculty of comprehension. I then employ my conclusions in explaining Leibniz’s answer to Bayle’s skepticism regarding the Mysteries, as well as in explaining his answer to the question as to how belief in the Mysteries can be rationally justified. (shrink)

Today, there is a growing consensus among philosophers in Africa, Latin America and other regions of the world that the history of philosophy has to consider both written and oral sources in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy. Even though it is usually not denied that philosophy also expresses itself in oral practices, such as conversation or instruction, the question remains as to how oral philosophical traditions can become part of a history of philosophy. This is subject to a (...) number of methodological questions. On the basis of discourses in contemporary African philosophy as well as examples from other regions of the world, this article discusses selected methodological challenges that oral traditions pose for the historiography of philosophy, with a focus on the relation between philosophy and written texts and philosophy and practice. It is argued that a turn to philosophical practices can offer new insights into philosophy in oral societies. (shrink)

Sartre attacks the "illusion" that mental images are "immanent" in consciousness. After comparing sartre with husserl, I develop his view that mental images are non-Perceptual phenomena involving a relationship with something non-Present. From the impoverished, Unworldly view that results, I suggest that sartre's own view is still too attached to the perceptual analogy and conclude with the richer, Alternative view of ricoeur that imaginal fiction has a constructive role in shaping reality.

We examined the influence of identity fusion and status of evaluator on willingness to fight for one’s group after group-descriptive or not group-descriptive feedback. The valence of evaluative information was varied as well: feedback either support negative group-stereotype or contradict negative group-stereotype. In two studies we partially replicated previous findings on self-verification. Individuals fused with one’s group were more prone than non fused to fight for group members after receiving, challenging, not group-describing feedback, but only when evaluator’s status (...) was high. When the evaluator’ status was low, fused participants engaged in self-enhancement strategies: that is they endorse radical behavior after negative, even if group-describing, feedback. We discuss the importance of identity fusion and evaluator’s status for determining when self-enhancement and self-verification will and will not be evoke. (shrink)

This paper focuses on what could be learned about statuses and status groups from the work of Randall Collins in the 1980s, and in particular from Weberian Sociological Theory (1986). I mention how I myself found this book useful at that time to further my own work in the sociology of science and in sociological theory, and emphasise its value in appreciating the fundamental and irremediable deficiencies of individualistic rational choice theory in both contexts. I go on to note (...) how Collins, a ‘macro’ sociologist in the 1980s, was nonetheless well aware of the indispensable role of micro-sociology in advancing the fundamental understanding of the field as a whole, and his singling out of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel as primus inter pares for their special theoretical importance at this time. I say a little about why these two did indeed have much to contribute to an understanding of statuses and of status groups and still do even today, and end by noting how effectively Collins has used and built upon the work of Goffman in particular since the 1980s. (shrink)

This paper is a summary and evaluation of work presented at the AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Machine Ethics that brought together participants from the fields of Computer Science and Philosophy to the end of clarifying the nature of this newly emerging field and discussing different approaches one could take towards realizing the ultimate goal of creating an ethical machine.

What is the moral status of animals? What’s the moral status of fetuses? What’s the moral status of the permanently comatose? While questions like these are sometimes asked (also about ‘moral standing’), I have written a few paragraphs where I argue that the term “moral status” shouldn’t be used.

It matters a great deal whether animals have moral status. If animals have moral status, it may be wrong for us to use them as we currently do – hunting, farming, eating, and experimenting on them. The argument from marginal cases provides us with a reason to think that some animals have moral status that is equal to that of “marginal” humans.

In this paper we propose a conceptualization of ‘posthumous social status’ as a performative reality accomplished through collective actions that are materially and symbolically legitimated. We question the classical definitions of social status that lead to oversocialized theoretical models, and we argue for the necessity to reconsider the relation between social status and social roles in order to gain insight into the reality of a social presence after death. On this account, we claim that the prestige attached (...) to one's position in society is a social phenomenon produced through autopoietic systems of social influence rather than a pre-existent and stable feature embedded in hierarchical structures and actions. Therefore, we clarify the link between social status and systems of influence through a case study in which we discuss how the Christian-Orthodox tradition is socially organized as a powerful realm of doing posthumous social status. (shrink)

In the literature on social ontology, two perspectives on collective agency have been developed. The first is the internal perspective, the second the external one. The internal perspective takes the point of view of the members as its point of departure and appeals, inter alia, to the joint intentions they form. The idea is that collective agents perform joint actions such as dancing the tango, organizing prayer meetings, or performing symphonies. Such actions are generated by joint intentions, a topic which (...) has been investigated extensively in recent decades.1 The external perspective takes the point of view of outsiders as its point of departure. Here the idea is that outsiders ascribe certain properties to collections of individuals that thereby acquire a new status. An example that is discussed in some detail below is provided by universities that, at least initially, had to be recognized by the pope in order to perform the actions that are characteristic of universities, in particular the awarding of academic degrees. This perspective has received considerably less attention.2 In this paper I present and defend a new account of collective agents from the external perspective. I call it ‘the status account’. At the heart of this account lies the idea just mentioned. A collective agent can come into existence by outsiders granting a collection of individuals some kind of status. I call a collective agent for which this holds a ‘corporate agent’, because such an agent is or has been, in a sense to be explained, incorporated. I develop this idea by distinguishing between two kinds of rules: status rules and constitutive rules. Status rules explicate the normative attributes that are characteristic of a particular kind of corporate agent. Constitutive rules specify the conditions that have to be met for a certain collection of individuals to have those attributes. The status account shares some important features with John Searle’s social ontology.3 The advantages that my account has over Searle’s are discussed in section 2.2, immediately after the account has been introduced in section 2.1. Before doing that, however, I shall discuss the internal perspective.. (shrink)

Article 14 Chapter I ‘The State of Lithuania’ of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992 reads as follows: ‘Lithuanian shall be the State language’. This principle is not new in the Lithuanian history of constitutionalization, as Lithuanian was the official language of the State in the interwar period but lost this status during the Soviet occupation. After 1988, when many political, economic and social changes crucial for further development of the State took place in Lithuania, linguistic (...) issues re-emerged. It was recognized back then that language played a vital role in the life of the State and the society, and the Lithuanian language was given back its status of the official language by the Constitution. The principle that Lithuanian is the official language of the State, enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, was further elaborated by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania in its rulings and judgments. According to its official constitutional doctrine, the Lithuanian language should be treated as a very specific constitutional value, as it forms the basis of the ethnic and cultural identity of the Lithuanian nation and is the guarantor of the national identity and survival. The status of Lithuanian as the official language means that the Lithuanian language must be used in all spheres of public life. The Court also holds that having this principle enshrined in Chapter I ‘The State of Lithuania’ of the Constitution implies that the Lithuanian language enjoys particular protection since the provisions of this Chapter may be amended only by a referendum. (shrink)

In this introductory paper, we assess the current status of blindsight -- the phenomenon in which patients with damage to their primary visual cortex retain the ability to detect, discriminate and localize visual stimuli presented in areas of their visual field in which they report that they are subjectively blind. Blindsight has garnered a great deal of interest and critical research, in part because of its important implications for the philosophy of mind. We briefly consider why this is so, (...) and then go on to examine three empirical questions which have fuelled challenges to the validity of blindsight as a distinct neuropsychological phenomenon. First, is blindsight simply degraded normal vision? Second, does blindsight depend on undamaged areas of primary visual cortex? Third, does evidence that blindsight patients are aware of moving stimuli undermine the apparent dissociation between access to visual information and visual experience in blindsight? In the course of the review we introduce the four other papers on blindsight in this issue. We conclude that, although patients with primary visual cortex damage may indeed perceive moving stimuli, there is still good evidence for a dissociation between access to information and phenomenal experience which cannot be accounted for in terms of degraded normal vision or undamaged primary visual cortex. (shrink)

Are children of equal, lesser, or perhaps even greater moral importance than adults? This work of applied moral philosophy develops a comprehensive account of how adults as moral agents ascribe moral status to beings - ourselves and others - and on the basis of that account identifies multiple criteria for having moral status. It argues that proper application of those criteria should lead us to treat children as of greater moral importance than adults. This conclusion presents a basis (...) for critiquing existing social practices, many of which implicitly presuppose that children occupy an inferior status, and for suggesting how government policy, law, and social life might be different if it reflected an assumption that children are actually of superior status. (shrink)

Gopal Sreenivasan’s “hybrid theory” states that a moral duty is directed toward an individual because her interests justify the assignment of control over the duty. An alternative “plain theory” states that the individual’s interests justify the duty itself. I argue that a strong moral status constraint explains Sreenivasan’s instrumentalization objection to a Razian plain theory but that his own model violates this constraint. I suggest how both approaches can be reformulated to satisfy the constraint, and I argue that a (...) reformulated plain theory can also avoid an insufficiency objection. The hybrid approach consequently has no clear advantage over the plain approach. (shrink)

Darwinizing culture: the status of memetics as a science pits leading intellectuals, against each other to battle it out, in this, the first debate over 'memes'. With a foreword by Daniel Dennett, and contributions from Dan Sperber, David Hull, Robert Boyd, Susan Blackmore, Henry Plotkin, and others, the result is a thrilling and challenging debate that will perhaps mark a turning point for the field, and for future research.

The aim of this paper is to paraphrase, using the terminological framework of the idealisational theory of science, the issue of the accuracy of explanation. Chris Lorenz, describing the “theoretical historical debate” on the status of scientific laws, mentioned the standpoint of Nancy Cartwright. According to him, this post-positivistic approach introduced new perspectives on understanding lawfulness. The purpose of this paper is to present assumptions of another post-positivistic approach to science, namely an idealizational theory of science and to paraphrase (...) in the terminological framework of this approach some problems posed by Lorenz like the issue of accuracy of explanation. In this paper Hempel’s explanatory sketch is paraphrased using the terminological framework of the idealisational model of science which provides a solution to the problem of the accuracy of explanation posed by Lorenz. (shrink)

When Buchanan discusses the constitutional changes that members of society would agree to, he uses the status quo as the default. If no agreement occurs, we continue with the constitutional rules that are currently in place. This article argues that this choice results in an unjustified status quo bias. To make this point, I examine and challenge three possible arguments in favor of using the status quo as the default. Then, I give two arguments in favor of (...) a form of contractarianism that does not use the status quo as a default. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to analyse the current status of the precautionary principle in international law and outline the tendencies of its development into a rule of customary law. The methods of comparative and systematic analysis were used in this paper. The article concludes that there is sufficient state practice and opinio iuris to support the position of the European Communities that the precautionary principle has already crystallized into a general customary rule. Evidence may be found (...) in international legally binding and non-binding documents, domestic law, and the jurisprudence of national and international courts and tribunals. (shrink)

U antropocentričkim se pristupima čovjekovim potrebama i interesima u vegetativnoj prirodi pripisuje moralna vrijednost. Imaju li i druga živa bića interese koje bi čovjek u svom ophođenju s njima trebao uzimati u obzir? To se pitanje ovdje obrađuje raspravom o interesima , intrinzičkoj vrijednosti i o »moralnim pravima« biljaka kao mogućim nositeljima njihova moralnoga statusa. Analogno osjetilnoj sposobnosti životinja, pokušava se u sposobnosti biljke da uspijeva prepoznati onu sposobnost koja bi mogla utemeljiti njezin moralni status .Mogu li se ljudi (...) u svome djelovanju naspram biljaka ponašati pogrešno ili ispravno i jesu li posljedice toga odnosa etički relevantne, ne samo naočigled ljudskih interesa i potreba nego i biljaka samih, ovisi o moralnom statusu biljaka. Njihovo se moralno zahtijevanje naspram ljudi temelji u njihovu moralnom statusu.In den anthropozentrischen Positionen treten die Bedürfnisse und Interessen des Menschen an vegetativer Natur als tragende Elemente auf, denen ein moralischer Wert zugesprochen wird. Demzufolge wird gefragt, ob auch die nichtmenschlichen Lebewesen Interesse hätten, die vom Menschen in seinem Umgang mit ihnen berücksichtigt werden sollten? Dieser Frage wird hier nachgegangen, indem die Interessen , Eigenwerte , „moralische Rechte“ der Pflanzen als mögliche Träger ihres „moralischen Status“ hinterfragt werden. Es wird versucht in der Fähigkeit der Pflanze zu gedeihen – analog zu der Empfindungsfähigkeit bei den Tieren – jene Eigenschaft zu erkennen, die den „moralischen Status“ der Pflanzen begründen könnte .Ob sich Menschen in ihrem Handeln den Pflanzen gegenüber falsch oder richtig verhalten können, und ob die Folgen dieses Verhaltens nicht nur angesichts der menschlichen Interessen und Bedürfnisse, sondern wegen der Pflanzen selbst ethisch relevant sind, hängt davon ab, was für einen „moralischen Status“ Pflanzen haben. Ihr moralischer Anspruch an die Menschen gründet in ihrem „moralischen Status“. (shrink)

On the Cratylus dialogue, much has been written. However, is it possible to say that the beauty and the intelligence of that Platonic dialogue has been fully explained and justified? First of all, the Cratylus continues to be considered a work that is not fully successful artistically: its very long etimological review has yet to find an explanation that justifies, from a dramatic point of view, such an excessively prolix section. Secondly, the Cratylus is a dialogue that is doctrinally empty. (...) Plato seems to have dedicated an entire work to the issue of the theory of names, only to demonstrate in the end that considering such a question is not in fact useful to the understanding of the truth; to understand the truth, one must look not to language but to the things themselves. This article, other than indicating the status questionis regarding the Cratylus, suggests a new approach which will resolve both the issues raised above. It intends to demonstrate that to formulate an interpretation worthy of Plato from both the speculative and dramatic points of view, one must undertake an ontological and mystagogical reading of the Cratylus, an approach not yet made. The ontological reading complements the anti-ideological interpretations already developed by a number of scholars; the mystagogical reading is explicitly alternative to the esoteric interpretation of the dialogue proposed by Szlezák, the authoritative representative of the Tubingen School. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan has recently defended the view that it is morally worse for a human being to suffer some harm than it is for a lower animal (such as a dog or a cow) to suffer a harm that is equally severe (ceteris paribus). In this paper, I argue that this view receives rather less support from our intuitions than one might at first suppose. According to Kagan, moreover, an individual’s moral status depends partly upon her ‘modal capacities.’ In (...) this paper, I argue that the most natural strategy for justifying Kagan’s theory faces some important challenges. More generally, I argue that philosophers who wish to defend the view that human beings have a higher moral status than that of the lower animals face a dilemma. Either their theory of moral status will imply (unacceptably) that some severely cognitively impaired human beings have a significantly lower moral status than that of typical human beings, or these philosophers will be forced to ground moral status in a set of properties so far removed from a subject’s actual capacities that it will become difficult to see why these kinds of properties should have such moral importance. (shrink)

Moral status is a vexing topic. Linked for so long to the unending debates about ensoulment and the morality of abortion, it has recently resurfaced in the embryonic stem cell controversy. In this new context, it should benefit from new insights originating in recent scientific advances. We believe that the recently observed capability of somatic cells to return to a pluripotential state (a capability we propose to name 'reversed potency') in a controlled manner requires us to modify the traditional (...) concept of moral status and to consider it as referring not only to intrinsic properties (like 'to possess reason' or 'to be a person'), but also to extrinsic or relational ones. (shrink)

This paper offers several criticisms of the account of rightholding laid out in S. Matthew Liao’s recent paper “The Basis of Human Moral Status.” I argue that Liao’s account both does too much and too little: it grants rightholder status to those who may not deserve it, and it does not provide grounds for offering such status to those who arguably do deserve it. Given these troubling aspects of his approach, I encourage Liao to abandon his “physical (...) basis of moral agency” account of moral status and instead adopt a position closer to a traditional “speciesist” view. (shrink)

Author: Nowak Krzysztof Title: THE STATUS OF THE CATEGORY OF WORK IN THE CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION. THE CONTROVERSY OVER JÜRGEN HABERMAS’ INTERACTIVE CONCEPT OF WORK (Status kategorii pracy w krytycznej teorii działania komunikacyjnego. Kontrowersje wokół Jürgena Habermasa interakcyjnego pojęcia pracy) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2005, vol:.5, number: 2005/1, pages: 221-242 Keywords: HABERMAS, CATEGORY OF WORK, CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:In this article (...) I investigate the question of normative devaluation of the category of work, which took place in Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory of communicative action. As it turned out, his redefinition of the concept of work was only a part of a broader shift in the area of Critical Theory, that is, a shift from production paradigm (but not work paradigm) to the communication paradigm. In this context I want to show, that the reconceptualization of work was based on the thesis about the end of the work-based society. Next, I am going to present a new critical framework which enabled Jürgen Habermas to make a diagnosis of contemporary condition of the social category of work. Finally, I will argue that the category of work proposed by Jürgen Habermas – despite an opinion of the author of the Theory of communicative action – still possesses – unrealized emancipatory potential. (shrink)

The book contains original essays by distinguished moral and political philosophers on the topic of the moral and political status of children. It covers the themes of children's rights, parental rights and duties, the family and justice, and civic education.

If we were required to sacrifice our own interests whenever doing so was best overall, or prohibited from doing so unless it was optimal, then we would be mere sites for the realisation of value. Our interests, not ourselves, would wholly determine what we ought to do. We are not mere sites for the realisation of value — instead we, ourselves, matter unconditionally. So we have options to act suboptimally. These options have limits, grounded in the very same considerations. Though (...) not merely such sites, you and I are also sites for the realisation of value, and our interests (and ourselves) must therefore sometimes determine what others ought to do, in particular requiring them to bear reasonable costs for our sake. Likewise, just as my moral status grounds a requirement that others show me appropriate respect, so must I do to myself. (shrink)

Some people contend that fetuses have moral status but less than that of paradigm persons. Many people hold views implying that sentient animals have moral status but less than that of persons. These positions suggest that moral status admits of degrees. Does it? To address this question, we must first clarify what it means to speak of degrees of moral status. The paper begins by clarifying the more basic concept of moral status and presenting two (...) models of degrees of moral status. It then sketches several significant considerations in favor of, and several against, the assertion of degrees of moral status. The paper concludes by drawing lessons from the discussion. (shrink)