ABSTRACTIn this contribution, Susanne Hennecke considers the theological meaning of biographies on the basis of the correspondence between Christian theologian Karl Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum as it has been edited by Rolf-Joachim Erler in 2008. After a brief introduction into this correspondence, she divides her article into three parts, namely a biographical-historical part, a complementary biographical part, in which she examines the autobiographical material of the correspondence with regard to the self-manifestation of the relationship between the correspondents (...) and a systematic-theological part, in which she examines in four sub-items the correspondence for the theological self-interpretations of the relationship contained therein. (shrink)

In her contribution, Susanne Hennecke investigates the possibility of a new perspective in the recent debate on monotheism. In this debate, a relation is often assumed between monotheism and western logocentrism. Here, her central theory is that it is also possible within the Christian tradition to speak of a critical reflection on western logocentrism. The author supports her theory, for example, with the investigation on the critical manner in which the concept of monotheism was introduced into the theology (...) of Karl Barth. Consequently, the author shows, however, that Barth is also guilty of the, initially rejected, western logocentrism. That is why she induces his thinking on three points using the thoughts of the Berlin systematic theologian Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt. Her research culminates with the conclusion that in a contemporary perspective, it is better to speak of an “eschatological relational reality” instead of monotheism. Furthermore, it is better to think theologically in terms of difference than in terms of dialectics. Also, a contemporary theological reflection should take into account more often the possibility of God’s absence from creation and history. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of triviality (...) and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

This book presents an analysis of the institutional development of selected social science and humanities disciplines in Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Where most narratives of a scholarly past are presented as a succession of ‘ideas,’ research results and theories, this collection highlights the structural shifts in the systems of higher education, as well as institutions of research and innovation within which these disciplines have developed. This institutional perspective will facilitate systematic comparisons between (...) developments in various disciplines and countries. Across eight country studies the book reveals remarkably different dynamics of disciplinary growth between countries, as well as important interdisciplinary differences within countries. In addition, instances of institutional contractions and downturns and veritable breaks of continuity under authoritarian political regimes can be observed, which are almost totally absent from narratives of individual disciplinary histories. This important work will provide a valuable resource to scholars of disciplinary history, the history of ideas, the sociology of education and of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Individuality and collectivity are central concepts in sociological inquiry. Incorporating cultural history, social theory, urban and economic sociology, Borch proposes an innovative rethinking of these key terms and their interconnections via the concept of the social avalanche. Drawing on classical sociology, he argues that while individuality embodies a tension between the collective and individual autonomy, certain situations, such as crowds and other moments of group behaviour, can subsume the individual entirely within the collective. These events, or social avalanches, produce an (...) experience of being swept away suddenly and losing one's sense of self. Cities are often on the verge of social avalanches, their urban inhabitants torn between de-individualising external pressure and autonomous self-presentation. Similarly, Borch argues that present-day financial markets, dominated by computerised trading, abound with social avalanches and the tensional interplay of mimesis and autonomous decision-making. Borch argues that it is no longer humans but fully automated algorithms that avalanche in these markets. (shrink)

The standard of proof in criminal trials should require that the evidence presented by the prosecution is robust. This requirement of robustness says that it must be unlikely that additional information would change the probability that the defendant is guilty. Robustness is difficult for a judge to estimate, as it requires the judge to assess the possible effect of information that the he or she does not have. This article is concerned with expert witnesses and proposes a method for reviewing (...) the robustness of expert testimony. According to the proposed method, the robustness of expert testimony is estimated with regard to competence, motivation, external strength, internal strength and relevance. The danger of trusting non-robust expert testimony is illustrated with an analysis of the Thomas Quick Case, a Swedish legal scandal where a patient at a mental institution was wrongfully convicted for eight murders. (shrink)

An experiment is proposed to test Bell’s theorem in a purely macroscopic domain. If realized, it would determine whether Bell inequalities are satisfied for a manifestly local, classical system. It is stressed why the inequalities should not be presumed to hold for such a macroscopic system without actual experimental evidence. In particular, by providing a purely classical, topological explanation for the EPR-Bohm type spin correlations, it is demonstrated why Bell inequalities must be violated in the manifestly local, macroscopic domain, just (...) as strongly as they are in the microscopic domain. (shrink)

Most accounts of welfare aggregation in the tradition of Arrow's and Sen's social-choice-theoretic frameworks represent the welfare of an individual in terms of a single welfare ordering or a single scalar-valued welfare function. I develop a multidimensional generalization of Arrow's and Sen's frameworks, representing individual welfare in terms of multiple personal welfare functions, corresponding to multiple 'dimensions' of welfare. I show that, as in the one-dimensional case, the existence of attractive aggregation procedures depends on certain informational assumptions, specifically about the (...) measurability of welfare and its comparability not only across individuals but also across dimensions. I state several impossibility and possibility results. Under Arrow-type conditions, insufficient comparability across individuals leads to dictatorship of a single individual, while insufficient comparability across dimensions leads to dominance of a single dimension. Given sufficient comparability both across individuals and across dimensions, a range of possibilities emerges. I discuss the substantive implications of the results. (shrink)

The question of observability of sign changes under 2pi rotations is considered. It is shown that in certain circumstances there are observable consequences of such sign changes in classical physics. A macroscopic experiment is proposed which could in principle detect the 4pi periodicity of rotations.

English summary: Was Paul of Tarsus a philosopher? Does he even rank amongst those philosophers who influenced occidental live and thought? The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says, that the Epistle to the Romans is the fundamental messianic text of the western culture. The Jewish scholars Jacob Taubes and Daniel Boyarin insist on the philosophical and political Force of Pauline thinking. Long before that, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger dealt intently with the Epistle. Was Paul a Philosopher? In any case he (...) received a lot of attention from the modern philosophers. The collection of contributions by theologians and philosophers gives profound insights into his thinking. German description: War Paulus aus Tarsus ein Philosoph? Zahlt er gar zu jenen bedeutenden Philosophen, die das abendlandische Leben und Denken massgeblich mit pragten? Der italienische Philosoph Giorgio Agamben bezeichnet jedenfalls den Romerbrief des Apostels als "grundlegenden messianischen Text der westlichen Kultur". Nachdrucklich weisen auch judische Gelehrte wie Jacob Taubes und Daniel Boyarin auf die philosophisch-politische Sprengkraft paulinischen Denkens hin. Lange zuvor setzten sich bereits Friedrich Nietzsche und Martin Heidegger intensiv mit den Briefen des Apostels auseinander. War Paulus ein Philosoph? In jedem Fall geniesst er unter den Philosophen der Moderne und Spatmoderne eine bemerkenswert grosse Aufmerksamkeit. Die hier versammelten Beitrage von Philosophen und Theologen geben einen profunden Einblick in sein denkerisches Potential. (shrink)

The most prominent argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism is Peter van Inwagen’s consequence argument. I offer a new diagnosis of what is wrong with this argument. Proponents and critics typically accept the way the argument is framed, and only disagree on whether the premisses and rules of inference are true. I suggest that the argument involves a category mistake: it conflates two different levels of description, namely, the physical level at which we describe the world from (...) the perspective of fundamental physics and the agential level at which we describe agents and their actions. My diagnosis is based on an account of free will as a higher-level phenomenon. I call this account ‘compatibilist libertarianism’, for reasons that will become clear. Although the paper addresses a primarily metaphysical question, it uses tools similar to those employed in philosophy-of-science work on determinism and indeterminism, higher-level phenomena, and dynamical systems. (shrink)

"Es gilt zu erahnen, wie die globale Vernetzung digitaler Informationen das Soziale selbst, namlich das gesamte gesellschaftliche Arrangement der Menschheit, tiefgreifend verandert." Epochale Umbruche sind in der Geschichte der Menschheit nicht neu. Scheinbar eigenstandige Entwicklungen verstarken sich gegenseitig und schaffen eine unubersichtliche Zeit des Ubergangs, die trotzdem in eine eindeutige Richtung weist. Damit verandert sich nicht nur die Soziale Arbeit. Es verandern sich auch ihre Rahmenbedingungen sowie der normative Horizont, vor dem sie stattfindet. Als Praktiker mit 25-jahriger Erfahrung in der (...) Fuhrung sozialer Unternehmen schildert der Autor die wesentlichen Aspekte dieser Entwicklung in einer allgemeinverstandlichen Weise, welche der Vielzahl an Professionen, die im Sektor der Sozialen Arbeit vertreten sind, Rechnung tragt. In der ethischen Reflexion kommt er dabei zu mitunter uberraschenden Empfehlungen. (shrink)

The classification-cum-explanation Kripke assigns to rigidity requires the notion to apply to singular and general terms alike. But Kripke's own notion of rigidity is tailor-made for singular terms, and an extensive debate has not secured a general notion of rigidity apt to provide the classification-cum-explanation Kripke aims for. I propose that we look for a Kripkean alternative to generalized rigidity. I argue that on Kripkean premises, natural kind terms and proper names belong to the meta-semantic category of paradigm terms. I (...) also argue that the property of being a paradigm term effects precisely the classification-cum-explanation Kripke attributes to rigidity. I conclude that Kripkeans should acknowledge that being a paradigm term, rather than designating rigidly, plays the role Kripke delineates, and that we can stop worrying about generalizing rigidity. Kripke's notion works fine for singular terms. And there is no need for rigidity to apply beyond these. (shrink)

This is an invited target article commenting on a paper by Blackie and Jayawickreme on post-traumatic growth.

The concept of preference structuration not only provides possible escape-routes from socialchoice-theoretic impossibility problems, but also points towards ways of formalizing notions of 'pluralism', 'consensus' and 'issue-dimensionality'. The present note introduces two methods of (operationally) measuring preference structuration, giving attention to both their conceptual characteristics and their computational feasibility. The method to be advocated, called the 'fractionalization' approach, combines well-known social-choice-theoretic criteria of preference structuration (such as single-peakedness or value-restriction) with the frequently used Rae-Taylor (1970) and Laakso-Taagepera (1979) approaches towards (...) measuring the level of fractionalization, and the effective number of components, in a system. (shrink)

This paper provides an introductory review of the theory of judgment aggregation. It introduces the paradoxes of majority voting that originally motivated the field, explains several key results on the impossibility of propositionwise judgment aggregation, presents a pedagogical proof of one of those results, discusses escape routes from the impossibility and relates judgment aggregation to some other salient aggregation problems, such as preference aggregation, abstract aggregation and probability aggregation. The present illustrative rather than exhaustive review is intended to give readers (...) new to the field of judgment aggregation a sense of this rapidly growing research area. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be impacting all industry sectors, while becoming a motor for innovation. The diffusion of AI from the civilian sector to the defense sector, and AI’s dual-use potential has drawn attention from security and ethics scholars. With the publication of the ethical guideline Trustworthy AI by the European Union (EU), normative questions on the application of AI have been further evaluated. In order to draw conclusions on Trustworthy AI as a point of reference for responsible research (...) and development (R&D), we approach the diffusion of AI across both civilian and military spheres in the EU. We capture the extent of technological diffusion and derive European and German patent citation networks. Both networks indicate a low degree of diffusion of AI between civilian and defense sectors. A qualitative investigation of project descriptions of a research institute’s work in both civilian and military fields shows that military AI applications stress accuracy or robustness, while civilian AI reflects a focus on human-centric values. Our work represents a first approach by linking processes of technology diffusion with normative evaluations of R&D. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The five volumes contain the main papers and lectures of invited speakers that were presented at the X. International Kant Congress in Sao Paolo in 2005.

The irreducibility of language : the history of rhetoric in the age of typewriters -- The failures of empiricism : language, science, and the philosophical tradition -- What is a trope? : the discourse of metaphor and the language of the body -- The nervous systems of modern consciousness : metaphor, physiology, and mind -- Interpretation and life : outlines of an anthropology of knowledge.

This paper connects work in psychology on the Big Five Model to the recent debate in philosophy on the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology.

Cet article analyse la manière dont l'engagement moral individuel est traité dans la théorie de la justice de John Rawls. En partant de la distinctionclé entre rationnel et raisonnable, la notion de « conformité » est décomposée en plusieurs strates. A une forme minimale de la conformité s'ajoutent des notions d'adhésion faible et d'adhésion forte. Diverses maximes de comportement individuel sont discutées, qui correspondent à différents degrés d'exigence morale. L'article s'achève sur une réflexion plus large sur le lien entre engagement (...) individuel et tolérance dans la société rawlsienne. This article analyzes the way in which individual moral commitment is treated in John Rawls's theory of justice. It starts with the central distinction between rational and reasonable and divides the notion of « compliance » into several components. Next to a minimal form of compliance, there is a weak form of adhesion and a strong one. Various maxims for individual behavior are discussed, corresponding to various degrees of moral demandingness. The article closes with a broader reflection on the link between moral commitment and tolerance in the Rawlsian society. (shrink)

Global capitalism is a transnational “operational space” which is produced by the practices of states, policy- and issue-specific government networks, and private organizations such as transnational corporations, global law firms, and standard-setting agencies. This “operational space,” which I call the transnational constellation, works through and beyond distinct spatial settings, endowing them with a global financial capitalistic logic and limiting the scope of democratic self-determination. In the second section, I analyze political protest against this transnational constellation in terms of democratic theory. (...) I argue that transnational protest and activism have to be appreciated for their reshaping of spaces of the political, for developing and delivering a genuinely global perspective on political problems, and for their politicization of the transnational constellation by revealing and contesting structures and strategies of domination. However,... (shrink)

In this comment, we pick up three points raised by Ohndorf et al. (Clim Chang 133:385–395, 2015) in their reply to our ethical assessment of the German Advisory Council’s Budget Approach (WBGUBA). First, we discuss and clarify the relationship between ethics and political feasibility, highlighting that the way Ohndorf et al. use feasibility creates an unwarranted status quo bias. Second, we explain the proper place historical responsibility should have within the WBGUBA, stressing the fact that the reasons why we choose (...) one policy proposal over another matter. Third, we analyze the limited extent to which a normative heuristic should motivate an ethically ambitious policy proposal like the WBGUBA. (shrink)

An elementary topological error in Bell's representation of the EPR elements of reality is identified. Once recognized, it leads to a topologically correct local-realistic framework that provides exact, deterministic, and local underpinning of at least the Bell, GHZ-3, GHZ-4, and Hardy states. The correlations exhibited by these states are shown to be exactly the classical correlations among the points of a 3 or 7-sphere, both of which are closed under multiplication, and hence preserve the locality condition of Bell. The alleged (...) non-localities of these states are thus shown to result from misidentified topologies of the EPR elements of reality. When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage proposé un panorama complet des débats contemporains en philosophie de la biologie. Il consacre une large place à la représentation des principes fondateurs de la théorie de l'évolution et des principaux concepts et lois génétiques, ainsi qu'à l'examen des questions posées par la sélection naturelle comme par la notion de fitness et l'unité de sélection. L'auteur discute en ces pages la définition du vivant et la potion de fonction biologique, et développe notamment une conception causale et mécaniste des (...) processus biologiques dans une perspective réductionniste originale. Clair et didactique, cet ouvrage résume systématiquement l'état actuel des connaissances, présente les différents concepts et positions, propose une évaluation des résultats et montre que les questions ouvertes dépasse largement le seul cadre de la biologie. Il vise ainsi à contribuer au développement d'une philosophie de la biologie nouvelle, en lien étroit avec la philosophie des sciences dans son ensemble. (shrink)

Standard versions of the requirement of informed consent state that patients who are offered to enter a clinical trial of a medical procedure should be informed about risks and possible benefits of this procedure (compared to available alternatives) in order to facilitate a rational decision whether or not to participate. However, in many real cases where new medical procedures are to be clinically tested for the first time the information available for such communication to prospective patients is very scarce, vague (...) and/or uncertain. This phenomenon is illustrated by the clinical introduction of new procedures in reproductive medicine, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Regarding such procedures, it has ben argued that, in such cases, the quality of the available information may be too low for the obtaining of informed consent to be possible, even if it is successfully communicated. Others, instead, holds that informed consent may always be obtained regardless of the quality of the available information. Unfortunately, the standard litterature on informed consent give no clue as to which of these interpretations is correct. This issue is explored by connecting the concept of informed consent to ethical ideas of respect for autonomy and ideas of rational decision making. It is argued, first, that low quality of available information regarding the risks and possible benefits of a medical procedure may indeed make the obtaining of informed consent from patients to undergo this procedure impossible even in theory. However, it is also argued that whether or not this is the case must be relativized to the actual needs and deires of individual patients. Thus, regarding one and the same procedure, informed consent may be impossible to obtain from some patients due to the low quality of the available information regarding this procedure, but still be possible to obtain from other patients. (shrink)