Information security can be of high moral value. It can equally be used for immoral purposes and have undesirable consequences. In this paper we suggest that critical theory can facilitate a better understanding of possible ethical issues and can provide support when finding ways of addressing them. The paper argues that critical theory has intrinsic links to ethics and that it is possible to identify concepts frequently used in critical theory to pinpoint ethical concerns. Using the example of UK electronic (...) medical records the paper demonstrates that a critical lens can highlight issues that traditional ethical theories tend to overlook. These are often linked to collective issues such as social and organisational structures, which philosophical ethics with its typical focus on the individual does not tend to emphasise. The paper suggests that this insight can help in developing ways of researching and innovating responsibly in the area of information security. (shrink)

Die leitende These des Buches besagt, dass der Staats- und Rechtsphilosophie Hegels ein 'grunes' Weltbild zugrunde liegt. Sie handelt vom Antagonismus zweier Naturen, der 'primaren' bzw. vorgefundenen und der menschgeschaffenen 'produzierten'. Soll die Schopfung Bestand haben, so muss dieser Gegensatz 'vermittelt' werden. Nach Wegfall der Bindung an Kategorien wie Abstammung oder Herkunft ist dies die Aufgabe einer 'Vernunftgestalt', d.h. einer Sonderform des Seins, deren Umrisse Hegel vor allem in seiner 'Wesenslogik' aufzeigt. uber sie wird die 'primare' Natur, die durch die (...) Vorherrschaft der 'produzierten' Natur rechtlos und zum Objekt ungehemmter Ausbeutung gemacht worden war, als gleichberechtigtes Subjekt in die politische Organisation zuruckgefuhrt. Sie in die Praxis zu uberfuhren, ist das Gebot der Stunde. (shrink)

Following the publication of 7 letters from Baer to the Frorieps by H.E. Müller-Dietz inNTM N.S. 1 (1993), 2 further letters from Baer and 8 from the Frorieps are published. A curious technical problem in the presentation of the journalNotizen published by Froriep in his Landes-industriecomptoir in Weimar is discussed at length. Froriep recommends his son Robert, to whom Baer sends several enquiries and commissions, which Robert deals with carefully (1831 in Jena, 1849 in Paris). Robert explains in great detail (...) his intention to leave Jena for Berlin in 1831. After his father's death in 1847 he returns to take charge of the Landesindustriecomptoir and begins to cooperate with the newly founded Russian Geographic Society as publisher on behalf of the Society. But about 1850 the cooperation is discontinued by the Russians, and Froriep, who is in economic difficulties, asks Baer (who lives and works in St. Petersburg) urgently (but in vain) to help him with the Society. (shrink)

Trichoplax adhaerens is more simply organized than any other living metazoan. This tiny marine animal looks like a irregular “hairy plate” (“tricho plax”) with a simple upper and lower epithelium and some loose cells in between. After its original description by F.E. Schulze 1883, it attracted particular attention as a potential candidate representing the basic and ancestral state of metazoan organization. The lack of any kind of symmetry, organs, nerve cells, muscle cells, basal lamina and extracellular matrix originally left little (...) doubt about the basal position of T. adhaerens. Nevertheless, the interest of zoologists and evolutionary biologists suddenly vanished for more than half a century when Trichoplax was claimed to be an aberrant hydrozoan planula larva. Recently, Trichoplax has been rediscovered as a key species for unraveling early metazoan evolution. For example, research on regulatory genes and whole genome sequencing promise insights into the genetics underlying the origin and development of basal metazoan phyla. Trichoplax offers unique potential for understanding the minimal requirements of metazoan animal organization. BioEssays 27:1294–1302, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens is a tiny hairy plate and more simply organized than any other living metazoan. After its original description by F.E. Schulze in 1883, it attracted attention as a potential model for the ancestral state of metazoan organization, the “Urmetazoon”. Trichoplax lacks any kind of symmetry, organs, nerve cells, muscle cells, basal lamina, and extracellular matrix. Furthermore, the placozoan genome is the smallest (not secondarily reduced) genome of all metazoan genomes. It harbors a remarkably rich diversity of (...) genes and has been considered the best living surrogate for a metazoan ancestor genome. The phylum Placozoa presently harbors three formally described species, while several dozen “cryptic” species are yet awaiting their description. The phylogenetic position of placozoans has recently become a contested arena for modern phylogenetic analyses and view‐driven claims. Trichoplax offers unique prospects for understanding the minimal requirements of metazoan animal organization and their corresponding malfunctions. (shrink)

M. Wetzel: Objektiver Idealismus und Prinzip Subjektivität in der Philosophie der Natur - G. F. Frigo: Aristoteles' Einfluß auf Hegels Naturphilosophie - W. Neuser: Das Anderssein der Idee, das Außereinandersein der Natur und der Begriff - H.-H. von Borzesz-kowski / R. Wahsner: Gibt es eine Logik der Physik als Vorstufe zur Hegelschen Begriffslogik - E.-O. Onnasch: System und Methode in der Philosophie Hegels - B. Braßler: Vorzüge einer Theorie der Dialektik - L. Fleischhacker: Mathematik und Natur, Verwandte oder Fremde - (...) P. Stekeler-Weithofer: Mathematisches und begriffliches Denken in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik - M. J. Petry: Physik und Mathematik um 1790: Hegel und Schelling als Schüler Pfleiderers - P. Ziche: Raumdimensionen und Prinzipienreduktion. Beweise für die Dreidimensionalität des Raumes bei Schelling und Hegel - T. Bach: Leben als Gattungsprozeß: Historisch-systematische An-merkungen von Pflanze und Tier bei Hegel - S. Büttner: Das Manko des Organischen und die Krankheit als dessen Wahrheit - O. Breidbach: Überlegungen zur Typik des Organischen in Hegels Denken - C. Illies: Die Gene, die Meme und Wir - W. Kellerwessel: Reschers idealistische Dialektik - V. Hösle: Wahrheit und Verstehen. Davidson, Gadamer und das Desiderat einer objektiv-idealistsichen Hermeneutik - P. Várdy: Das Lächerliche und das Absolute - A. Rieckers: Photons and Mcroscopic Reality. (shrink)

A famous passage in the first Critique (A 557 f.) often gives rise to the belief that Kant had not yet delivered a full treatment of freedom in 1781 and intended to shift this treatment to future writings. However, a closer inspection of the passage reveals that, to the contrary, Kant claims that due to the limitations of human reason his critical account of freedom given thus far must be considered complete. And indeed, this account reappears unchanged in the Groundwork. (...) When considered in this light, not only do the exact achievements of the first Critique concerning Kant’s doctrine of freedom become evident, but so too does the further development of this doctrine. In 1785, the Groundwork supplies a new conceptual link between freedom and the moral law (and with it an explanation of the possibility of categorical imperatives). And thanks to this very link, Kant is able, in the second Critique (1787/88), to remedy a ‘dogmatic’ mistake (discovered by a reviewer in 1786) in his 1781/85 account of freedom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:480 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY categories can be applied to the objects of moral distinctions. Nor, on the other hand, can moral distinctions be derived from causal reasoning, although naturally we can make causal inferences about moral distinctions. In the Humean account, moral distinctions must be impressions derived from a moral sense existing independently of any consideration of divine sanction. Hume, in effect, separates ethics from religion, though he admits (...) that the idea of a divine pattern of reward and punishment may reinforce moral behavior. I have tried to give a brief summary of the book's main points, and I will now turn to what is necessarily a rather random and selective criticism of the many features and arguments Capaldi pursues. My first and main criticism is that Capaldi has been too ambitious in trying to cover the whole range of Hume's thought in a fairly small book. He would be the last to deny the extent and profundity of Hume's thought, and his reader is therefore left rather breathless as he is led on a gallop from one mountain top to another. Secondly, while fully accepting the importance of Newton as an influence on Hume, I see no reason to insist on its exclusiveness. Brief mention is made of Bayle, but Hutcheson is cast aside while lesser but influential figures like Mandeville are scarcely mentioned. The reader should be warned as well that there is a scholarly view that considers Hume to have been deluded about the extent of his own Newtonianism" and plenty of respectable support for putting him in the sensationalist tradtion of Locke and Berkeley.s No doubt Newton is, above all others, the leading influence on Hume, but in ideas, as in affairs, fruitfulness often results from a plurality of relationships. Other faults in the book seem to result from taking everything Hume said as gospel. Thus Capaldi says if Hume is mistaken, he is only mistaken about facts because Hume claimed to be concerned only with them. This is bad question begging. Nor when Hume firmly commits himself to psychologism, is there any reason why we need not point out that giving psychological explanations for moral behavior, though considerably advanced by Hume, need not be the end nor even the beginning of our questions about ethics. A passing tribute might have been made to Kant and to other externalists who rejected Hume's approach. Smaller points can be made about particular passages: thus, in a rather muddled paragraph Hume emerges as the Copernicus rather than the Newton of the social sciences (a term that I think, despite Hume's pretensions, we should be careful of using in the context of eighteenth-century studies). I would not like to leave the reader with the impression that these remarks mean that I did not enjoy Capaldi's book. He has given us plenty to think about in his analysis, and he surely demonstrates that the old, rigidified exegesis of textbook Hume is dead and buried and that we are now in a much more exciting.world of Hume scholarship. MALCOLM JACK London Franr Hemsterhuis. By Heinz Moenkemeyer. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975. Pp. 206. $9.95) This little-known eighteenth-century Dutch philosopher (1721-1790) wrote all his philosophical works, many of them dialogues, in French. No doubt he was hoping that the language 4See, for example, an opinion that Newton's influence was minimal in L. L. Laudan, "Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological Thought," in The Methodological Heritage of Newton (Oxford, 1970), p. 105. See Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (London, 1961), p. 634, for the connection with Berkeley. On the influence of Hutcheson see T. E. Jessop, "The Misunderstood Hume," in Hume and the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1974), p. 11. For a viewof Mandeville's influence on Hume see F. A. Hayek, "Dr. Bernard Mandeville," Proceedings of the British Academy LII (1966) : 139. BOOK REVIEWS 481 of Voltaire would help him reach a wider, more cultivated audience; but his use of French is also a sign that his works had been composed with the philosophical currents of the French Englightenment very much in mind, and that he wanted... (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Subsystem Formation Driven by Double Contingency” by Bernd Porr & Paolo Di Prodi. Upshot: By analyzing Porr and Di Prodi’s model for addressing the double contingency problem, I try to take a step further by questioning the importance and implications of the loop concept in the constructivist approach.

In his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, T. H. Green characterizes a right as ‘a power claimed and recognized as contributory to a common good’ (LPPO §99). Scholars such as Rex Martin have noted that Green’s characterization of a right has multiple elements: it includes social recognition and the common good,1 as well as the idea of a power. More formally, it seems that Green wants to say that R is a right if and only if R is (...) (i) a power that is (ii) recognized by some others or by society as (iii) contributing to a common good. Much of the scholarship on Green has been devoted to explicating and defending this third feature, which grounds rights on Green’s core idea of a common good.2 In this chapter I shall stress claim (ii) —the recognition thesis —though we shall see that pursuing claim (ii) will enlighten us as to why Green links the recognition thesis to the common good claim, (iii). And claim (i), I shall argue, reinforces the plausibility of the recognition thesis. So.. (shrink)

In his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, T. H. Green characterizes a right as ‘a power claimed and recognized as contributory to a common good’ (LPPO §99). Scholars such as Rex Martin have noted that Green’s characterization of a right has multiple elements: it includes social recognition and the common good,1 as well as the idea of a power. More formally, it seems that Green wants to say that R is a right if and only if R is (...) (i) a power that is (ii) recognized by some others or by society as (iii) contributing to a common good. Much of the scholarship on Green has been devoted to explicating and defending this third feature, which grounds rights on Green’s core idea of a common good.2 In this chapter I shall stress claim (ii) —the recognition thesis —though we shall see that pursuing claim (ii) will enlighten us as to why Green links the recognition thesis to the common good claim, (iii). And claim (i), I shall argue, reinforces the plausibility of the recognition thesis. So.. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

Neptunus et Apollo dicuntur Troiam muro cinxisse; his rex Laomedon uouit quod regno suo pecoris eo anno natum esset immolaturum. id uotum auaritia fefellit. alii dicunt †parum eum promisisse. The story that Neptune and Apollo together built the walls of Troy for Laomedon is well known from Homer. At the end of their year's service the perfidious king refused to pay the agreed wages. Ovid tells the familiar story in one of his transitional sections in the Metamorphoses. Hyginus' account poses (...) the textual problem indicated above. H. I. Rose comments on ‘parum’ as follows: ‘procul dubio corruptum hoc neque arridet Schmidtii coniectura promsisse. fuitne partum equarum? hoc enim plerumque narratur, equos quos a Ioue accepisset promisisse Laomedontem mercedis nomine…sed Herculi; quod facile ad deos mercennarios transferri potuit; atque non equos sed equas fuisse tradit Apollod. II, 104’. Rose rightly rejects Schmidt's emendation ‘promsisse’. ‘Promisisse’ has every sign of soundness and the difficulty lies, as Rose sees, with ‘parum’. Rose's own conjecture ‘partum equarum’, however, will not do. Apart from the oddity of the expression, one would need a good deal more persuasion than Rose offers to accept that the well-known promise of Zeus' horses which Laomedon made to Hercules was transferred from Hercules to Neptune and Apollo. There is no suggestion anywhere in the sources that Laomedon promised to give Neptune and Apollo the famous horses as payment for building the walls. (shrink)

This book offers a critical evaluation of Weber's ideology of value-choice. The author establishes Weber's ideology and then considers it in light of his sociological methodology. He also weighs the critical assessments of Weber made by Vogelin, Strauss, Aron, Gouldner, Rex, and Mommsen and examines Weber's misperceptions concerning natural law and moral and political philosophy.

Rex Martin has written the most important analysis and justification of political authority and obligation since T. H. Green’s Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [hereafter LPO]. Indeed, defying a good deal of contemporary philosophical orthodoxy, Martin resurrects some fundamental claims of Green’s political philosophy.

On the formation of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Glasgow. -/- When the University of Glasgow’s new 'Crichton College' opened its doors in September 1999, its small staff had that rare opportunity in an academic’s career to launch a new curriculum based on clearly enunciated ideals. In the following six years under the direction of Professor Rex C. Taylor, those ideals remained firm even as numbers grew and external circumstances mutated. The theme of this book concerns (...) the ideas, activities and problems – intellectual, curricular and administrative – that shaped the University of Glasgow Crichton Campus during its first six years. Its dozen contributors provide varied perspectives on the problems of creation. (shrink)

This collection of essays is a sequel to the editors' 1976 volume Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition. Philosophers, theologians, and literary historians discuss important aspects of Nietzsche's attack on Judaism and Christianity. The book contains studies of his view of biblical figures, Luther and Pascal as well as comparisons of his thought with that of Spinoza, Lessing, Heine, and Kierkegaard. Nietzsche's critique of the Old Testament, the Jewish religion of the diaspora, and historical Christianity are also investigated. Of (...) the eighteen articles included here, thirteen were prepared expressly for this volume--five were translated from German, one from French, and one from Hebrew. Contributors to this volume are: Eugen Biser, Harry Neumann, Israel Eldad, Charles Lewis, Jorg Salaquarda, Joan Stambaugh, Max L. Baeumer, Brendan Donellan, Diana Behler, Sander L. Gilman, Gerd-Gunther Grau, Josef Simon, James C. O'Flaherty, Bernd Magnus, Georges Goedert, Hans Lung, and Karl Barth. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of work on the concept of rights, Including the concept of human rights, From 1963 to 1978. Our focus is mainly on issues of the analysis of rights and human rights. We do not deal with the closely related issues bearing on the normative foundations of moral and human rights. Nor have we attempted much in the way of historical treatment of our topic. Section I surveys general characterizations of rights. In section ii, We (...) discuss treatments of the defeasibility of rights with special attention to the notion of a prima facie right. Section iii takes up attempts to give an account of human rights. Section iv provides a brief conclusion. A bibliography listing what we take to be the most important works in this area, Including everything cited, Concludes our essay. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Background A Global Difference Principle? Two Main Cases A Closer Look Rawls's Background Thinking Puzzlement Rawls's Arguments: an Appraisal Notes.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to Christiansen's paper, Ellen Christiansen “From ‘ethics of the eye’ to ‘ethics of the hand’ by collaborative prototyping”,Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 12 No. 1.Design/methodology/approach– Reflection and critique of Christiansen's position.Findings– The paper raises questions about the conceptual basis, the realisation of participation and the conditions required for participative practice to be more broadly employed.Originality/value– It is an original response.

Two jarring results concerning the main theses of Georg Henrik von Wright's Explanation and Understanding are reached through an examination and criticism of his project. It is shown, contrary to his settled judgment both in EU and subsequently, that the schema of practical inference is a causal principle, and that it is nomological in character. But one feature of von Wright's overall analysis holds up and continues to show promise: his idea of understanding explanation. This idea combines the EU account (...) of the schema and its instantiation with the notion of an intelligible connection of these instantiating elements with one another. Here the schema is deployed in conjunction with the test of intelligible connection as one of its conditions of application. The schema, so deployed, is revisable on the basis of experiences that do not conform to what we expect them to be when they are regimented in accordance with the model of understanding explanation; thus, even though the schema is not a general law, we have a basis for characterizing it as nomological, nonetheless. (shrink)

The early modern period was characterized by the diversification of knowledge as a result of technological, institutional, socio-cultural, and epistemic breakthroughs as well as intercultural influences. This volume examines the resulting transformations in learned discourses about morality and ethics in contemporary literary and philosophical texts.