Recently, the debate on human enhancement has shifted from familiar topics like cognitive enhancement and mood enhancement to a new and – to no one's surprise – controversial subject, namely moral enhancement. Some proponents from the transhumanist camp allude to the ‘urgent need’ of improving the moral conduct of humankind in the face of ever growing technological progress and the substantial dangers entailed in this enterprise. Other thinkers express more sceptical views about this proposal. As the debate has revealed so (...) far, there is no shared opinion among philosophers about the meaning, prospects, and ethical evaluation of moral enhancement. In this article I will address several conceptual and practical problems of this issue, in order to encourage discussion about the prospects of moral enhancement in the future. My assumption is that for the short term, there is little chance of arriving at an agreement on the proper understanding of morality and the appropriateness of one single ethical theory; apart from this, there are further philosophical puzzles loosely referred to in the debate which add to theoretical confusion; and even if these conceptual problems could be solved, there are still practical problems to be smoothed out if moral enhancement is ever to gain relevance apart from merely theoretical interest. My tentative conclusion, therefore, will be that moral enhancement is not very likely to be made sense of – let alone realized – in the medium-term future. (shrink)

Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object‐directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants’ predictive gaze‐shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to‐be‐obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By (...) about 6 months of age, infants show goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants’ ability for action‐goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non‐human agents (e.g., object‐directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self‐propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action‐event perspective. In particular, infants’ goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom‐up processing of perceptual information and top‐down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. (shrink)

Les programmes d’éducation inclusive (IE) visent à intégrer les enfants handicapés dans les écoles ordinaires en leur offrant une éducation de qualité dans un environnement sans obstacles. Si l’éducation inclusive fait désormais partie intégrante du programme de développement mondial, de nombreuses questions subsistent à propos de la meilleure façon de mettre en œuvre ces programmes d’éducation inclusive, compte tenu des contextes et des défis différents qui se présentent dans les pays en développement. “One Class for All” est un programme d’éducation (...) informelle financé par Light for the World, une ONG internationale, et mis en œuvre par 14 organisations partenaires éthiopiennes. Les auteurs de cet article ont utilisé un modèle d’évaluation descriptive de la mise en œuvre combinant des éléments qualitatifs et quantitatifs pour évaluer l’étendue, la qualité et la satisfaction des programmes d’éducation informelle mis en œuvre par un échantillon de partenaires de Light for the World. Les données utilisées comprenaient des données de suivi de la mise en œuvre de routine, une enquête auprès de tous les partenaires de mise en œuvre, des entretiens avec des informateurs clés et des observations structurées des écoles et des participants dans les écoles de l’échantillon en Éthiopie. L’évaluation a principalement indiqué la nécessité de plans de développement plus structurés pour chaque école et d’un programme de formation des enseignants plus structuré. Cette évaluation contribue à la littérature limitée sur la mise en œuvre d’un programme d’éducation inclusive dans un pays africain. (shrink)

The concept of “self-awareness” ( svasaṃvedana ) enters Buddhist epistemological discourse in the Pramāṇasamuccaya and - vṛtti by Dignāga (ca. 480–540), the founder of the Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition. Though some of the key passages have already been dealt with in various publications, no attempt has been made to comprehensively examine all of them as a whole. A close reading is here proposed to make up for this deficit. In connection with a particularly difficult passage (PS(V) 1.8cd-10) that presents the means (...) of valid cognition and its result ( pramāṇa/pramāṇaphala ), a new interpretation is suggested, inspired by the commentary of Jinendrabuddhi. This interpretation highlights an aspect of selfawareness that has hitherto not been claimed for Dignāga: self-awareness offers essentially subjective access to one’s own mental states and factors. (shrink)

Ever since Kant asked: “How am I to develop the sense of freedom in spite of the restraint?” in his lecture on education, the tension between necessary educational influence and unacceptable restriction of the child’s individual development and freedom has been considered an educational paradox. Many have suggested solutions to the paradox; however, this article endorses recent discussions in educational philosophy that pursue the need to fundamentally rethink our understanding of education and upbringing. In this article it is argued that (...) it is incomprehensible to describe an intervention of an educator as a constraint on a child’s actions and that such an intervention would be in need of justification; as Kant and many others after him have done. Educational intervention should not be understood as a restriction of a child’s endeavour to learn, because any educational intervention is educational. Furthermore, it is argued that the notion of restraint is based on the concept of human beings as radically separated which lead to the assumption that education is restrictive per se. In contrast, this article argues that indoctrination, manipulation, and coercion are rather phenomena within our educational forms of life. Recognizing the interrelations between human beings should play a constitutive part in the conceptualisation of individual freedom. A bond with others is the foundation upon which a child develops its own identity and an understanding of itself as an agent who can express its own will and takes responsibility for its words and actions. (shrink)

This paper informs about a specific German concept in Pedagogy, the concept of “tact”.Following an initial discussion of the particularities of the concept of (socio-) pedagogical tact, including its ethical and moral self-positioning and current demands for its operationality (1); will come the presentation of an empirical examination of the opportunities and limits to the feasibility of meeting these demands, based on a current example from the field of social work: ‘integrated family support’ (2); finally, options for further investigation of (...) the potential effects of ‘socio-pedagogical tact’ will be identified (3). (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit versteht sich als eine Einführung in den systematischen Teil des Werkes in das, was über die Buchdeckelgrenzen des gleichnamigen Serienwerkes hinaus als Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen bezeichnet werden darf. Die Betonung soll dabei auf dem unbestimmten Artikel liegen: Es ist eine Weise des grundlegenden Verständnisses, die hier präsentiert wird. Sie steht im Verhältnis von Variation und Ergänzung zu den bereits vorliegenden Einführungen in Cassirers Werk; zugleich beansprucht sie aber insofern, etwas Neues und eine Alternative zu bieten, (...) als sie den Primat des Praktischen, unter dem Cassirers Kulturphilosophie steht, ernst nimmt und zum Leitfaden der Interpretation macht. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts two infinite regress arguments against higher-order theories of consciousness that were put forward by the Buddhist epistemologists Dignāga (ca. 480–540 CE) and Dharmakīrti (ca. 600–660). The two arguments differ considerably from each other, and they also differ from the infinite regress argument that scholars usually attribute to Dignāga or his followers. The analysis shows that the two philosophers, in these arguments, work with different assumptions for why an object-cognition must be cognised: for Dignāga it must (...) be cognised in order to enable subsequent memory of it, for Dharmakīrti it must be cognised if it is to cognise an object. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether infants learn the effects of other persons' actions like they do for their own actions, and whether infants transfer observed action-effect relations to their own actions. Nine-, 12-, 15- and 18-month-olds explored an object that allowed two actions, and that produced a certain salient effect after each action. In a self-exploration group, infants explored the object directly, whereas in two observation groups, infants first watched an adult model acting on the object and obtaining a certain (...) effect with each action before exploring the objects by themselves. In one observation group, the infants' actions were followed by the same effects as the model's actions, but in the other group, the action-effect mapping for the infant was reversed to that of the model. The results showed that the observation of the model had an impact on the infants' exploration behavior from 12 months, but not earlier, and that the specific relations between observed actions and effects were acquired by 15 months. Thus, around their first birthday infants learn the effects of other persons' actions by observation, and they transfer the observed action-effect relations to their own actions in the second year of life. (shrink)

Die Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der (...) Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten. (shrink)

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the importance of high standards in ethics, governance and the integrity of research. This paper is a case study of the University of Bristol's approach to address these important activities in a Higher Education Institution. It will highlight the importance of working closely with the academic research community to ensure maximum engagement, leading to a sustained culture change that recognizes faculty and departmental specific needs. A key tool to ensuring high standards (...) of research integrity and compliance with the legislative framework is the development of a supportive quality assurance programme. (shrink)

Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Problematisierung der Freiheit in den Kontroversen, die sich um den Anspruch auf Freiheit entwickelt haben, auf der Kontextualisierung der Freiheit in den Determinismen aller Provenienz; ein weiterer in ...

With only a few exceptions, the literary theme of madness has long been a domain of Western cultural studies. Much of Western writing represents madness as an inquiry into the deepest recesses of the mind, while the comparatively scarce Chinese tradition is generally defined by madness as a voice of social truth. This paper looks at five works of twentieth-century Chinese fiction that draw on socio-somatic aspects of madness to reflect upon social truths, suggesting that the inner voice of subjectivity (...) is perhaps not the only true voice of the self. (shrink)

The auto-drama Bildbeschreibung (1984), written by Heiner Müller in the form of a poetic prose, can be read as a response to the emergence of a post-dramatic theater of images and media. In the work of the playwright Müller, it plays a key role as a performance-related Sehtext (viewing text). Under the agenda of image aesthetics, the article explores how the theater text Bildbeschreibung adopts the classical tradition of ekphrasis in order to transform it by transcription. It discusses the literary (...) form and activity of image description as a process of intermedial translation through which the described picture – a drawing of a stage setting – is continuously covered with writing and this way “overpainted” in layers. In a close reading of the written (not staged) dramatic text the multilayered entanglements between description, viewing and observation are exposed. A special focus is drawn on the poetic method of over- painting(Übermalung) as an iconoclastic collision between images – literary images, theater images, film images, and artistic images. The article conclusively argues that Heiner Müller’s overpaintings (Übermalungen) can be qualified as an image-critical strategy of performative iconoclasm by means of which the surrogate function and staging character of images can be crossed and suspended, but also the productive power of imaginatio as a free and uncontrolled stream of images can be activated. (shrink)

The essay focuses on a point in Hannah Arendt’s work which – though of great importance whenever the systematic outlines of her thinking should be taken into regard – has not yet attracted much attention: After having faced the challenge of evil (Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil, 1963), in her New York Lectures on Some Questions of Moral Philosophy (ed. by Jerome Kohn in 2003) in 1965 Arendt turned with equal energy towards the notion of (...) moral goodness. Starting from the astonishing example of those very few men and women who refused to surrender to the spirit of public crime in Nazi Germany, she rediscovers the features of a moral self-understanding with constant reference to Plato’s Socrates. In this essay, Arendt’s reflections are taken in earnest as genuine elements of a moral groundwork. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 71-89.

The notion of Bildung has been a catalyst for educational theories about the human relation to the material and social world. Place, both as a concrete spatial location and as metaphorical spatialization have been central to the understanding of Bildung. Nevertheless, the tradition of Bildung has treated the material world mainly as a restricting and adversarial space for human becoming. By asking why the role of belonging to a concrete place is absent from several contemporary debates on Bildung, we discuss (...) themes in Hegel’s and Humboldt’s conceptions of human formation, and argue that the preoccupation with different ideas of becoming human, through moving beyond material restrictions, centres on a notion of Bildung as a movement in time, a temporal dialectic. In contrast to conceptualizations of the world as binding and restricting, we then ask what place there is for ‘place’ in a theory of Bildung, and argue that the relation between the subject and the world can be perceived as a much more supportive dialogical relationship than these discussions suggest. With reference to insights from Rudolf Laban’s and Irmgard Bartenieff’s Movement Studies (LBMS), we illustrate an alternative perspective on the role of the material world in human physical, social, and cognitive development. These dimensions of development suggest that becoming and belonging in the world necessarily involve a simultaneously functional and expressive element, where the subject’s expressive movement of freedom and intention is balanced by their trustful resting in a concrete place. (shrink)

This introduction elaborates how the relationship between religion and light can and should be addressed as a key theme for the critical study of religion. It synthesizes the principal arguments of the six articles collected in this special journal issue and locates them in a broader theoretical framework, focussing especially on the politics of knowledge production.

Until today, an externally imposed epistemological paradigm is dominant in most educational curricula at universities in Africa. Despite ongoing Eurocentrism and Western hegemony in mainstream agricultural trainings in Africa, Indigenous knowledge on agriculture still exists: it has been preserved for generations by farmers and wise elders in rural communities who often are knowledge authorities on African agrarian Indigenous knowledge, values and practices. An imposed epistemological paradigm on the African continent reinforces epistemic injustice by dominating and ignoring Indigenous African ways of (...) doing and knowing, which is deeply dehumanizing. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s ‘humanising pedagogy’ and Mogobe Ramose’s call for mothofatso in human relations, we explore a re-humanising pedagogy for African agrarian philosophy, which addresses the following questions: Can African agrarian philosophy contribute to re-humanization by reviving and restoring Indigenous agricultural knowledge, values and practices? If so, what pedagogy and educational methods are appropriate? In search for answers to these questions, we reflect on a two-week educational program on an endogenous approach to community resilience in Ghana, as a pedagogy that is emerging. In doing so, the chapter is firmly rooted in African soil, both practically—through trainings in Ghana—and theoretically—through African agrarian philosophy. By connecting educational experiences with insights from theory, seven themes for a pedagogy for African agrarian philosophy come to the front: an African agrarian philosophy with memory; a dialogical student–teacher relation; the value of lived experiences; intergenerational and spiritual methods of education; relationality of human beings and Mother Earth; unity between theory and practice; critical consciousness about people’s rights. The thesis defended is that African agrarian philosophy is without relevance if it remains a theoretical exercise that is not developed and put to use with farmers, wise elders and youth in the communities. Instead, when combined with a re-humanising pedagogy, African agrarian philosophy can contribute to reconnecting and reviving African agricultural knowledge, values and practices, which subsequently contributes to transforming African food systems that heals the environment and produces enough food to feed communities. (shrink)