The Infinite Working with the infinite is tricky business. Zeno’s paradoxes first alerted philosophers to this in 450 B.C.E. when he argued that a fast runner such as Achilles has an infinite number of places to reach during the pursuit of a slower runner. Since then, there has been a struggle to understand how to […].

Zeno’s Paradoxes In the fifth century B.C.E., Zeno offered arguments that led to conclusions contradicting what we all know from our physical experience—that runners run, that arrows fly, and that there are many different things in the world. The arguments were paradoxes for the ancient Greek philosophers. Because many of the arguments turn crucially on … Continue reading Zeno’s Paradoxes →.

One of the most recent controversies to arise in the field of bioethics concerns the ethics for the Groningen Protocol: the guidelines proposed by the Groningen Academic Hospital in The Netherlands, which would permit doctors to actively euthanise terminally ill infants who are suffering. The Groningen Protocol has been met with an intense amount of criticism, some even calling it a relapse into a Hitleresque style of eugenics, where people with disabilities are killed solely because of their handicaps. The purpose (...) of this paper is threefold. First, the paper will attempt to disabuse readers of this erroneous understanding of the Groningen Protocol by showing how such a policy does not aim at making quality-of-life judgements, given that it restricts euthanasia to suffering and terminally ill infants. Second, the paper illustrates that what the Groningen Protocol proposes to do is both ethical and also the most humane alternative for these suffering and dying infants. Lastly, responses are given to some of the worries expressed by ethicists on the practice of any type of non-voluntary active euthanasia. (shrink)

This article deals with the specific claim that prophylactic male infant circumcision should be employed to prevent HIV transmission in countries in which the prevalence of HIV is relatively low. In a recent editorial, Australian researchers sought to promote the procedure as a ‘surgical vaccine’ against HIV in their country. This raises the question whether it would be reasonable for the UK to adopt a policy of mass infant male circumcision in order to protect individuals from heterosexually acquired infection with (...) HIV. A review of the relevant data and associated commentary indicates that the actual benefits of real-world circumcision policies to prevent HIV transmission are disputed and that circumcision, at best, provides partial protection. In addition, it is uncertain whether infant circumcision confers the same benefits that the adult procedure is proposed to provide. Reasons for performing circumcisions on infants include that the procedure is easier, less complicated and cheaper. However, it is not risk free. Despite arguments to the contrary, this article contends that it is morally problematic to operate on thousands of male infants each year for little benefit to children qua children. It is also argued that the use of the term ‘surgical vaccine’ to describe the procedure is both inaccurate and misleading. (shrink)

Le but principal de la conférence est de montrer comment l’hypothèse monadologique explique les rapports entre l’âme et le cerveau.Elle est divisée en trois parties, dont la première expose les faits de la localisation cérébrale des phénomènes psychiques, la deuxième la localisation de ceux-ci dans la conscience elle-même, et la troisième l’explication monadologique des rapports entre l’âme et le cerveau.Dans la première, l’auteur insiste d’abord sur la différence anatomique entre les centres de projection et les centres dassociation dans l’écorce cérébrale, (...) et il énumère ensuite, d’après Flechsig, les régions de celle-ci où se trouvent les centres sensoriels.Dans la deuxième partie, l’auteur montre que tous les contenus de la conscience sont localisés, directement ou indirectement, dans l’espace visuel.Dans la troisième partie, l’auteur démontre d’abord l’impossibilité de la localisation directe des phénomènes psychiques dans l’écorce cérébrale ; il énumère ensuite les difficultés anatomiques et physiologiques du siège simple de l’âme ; et il montre enfin que ces difficultés disparaissent dans l’hypothèse monado- logicrue. (shrink)

Context: The debate around and about constructivism in German-language communication studies. Problem: The reception of constructivism in German-language communication studies exhibits all the features of an instructive lesson: it makes clear how an academic field reacts, and how it can react, to the introduction of specific theories. Moreover, this case highlights the persistent virulent fundamental conflict between realist and relativist epistemologies in conjunction with a matching catalogue of accusations raised – whether rightly or wrongly – towards all those representatives of (...) communication studies that have adopted a constructivist approach making use of constructivist arguments. Method: By reconstructing the debate as precisely as possible it is mapped onto the fundamental problems of the conception of constructivist theory. Results: It is demonstrated that the depicted reservations and accusations can essentially be mapped onto three fundamental problems of constructivist theory development. 1. The problem of practice-relevance. The central question is how the relationship between (constructivist) epistemology and everyday practice ought to be spelled out in concrete terms, because this very relationship is the source of many worries (“Constructivism undermines the journalistic ideal of objectivity,” etc.). 2. The problem of self-contradiction. It is essentially represented by the question of how one ought to present and promote a relativist epistemology – without at the same time, explicitly or implicitly, introducing absolute claims of validity that contradict one’s own initial premises. 3. The problem of terminological imprecision and referential confusion: concepts and terms such as “truth,” “reality” and “objective knowledge” are used in many different ways. It is not always clear whether an author wants to refer to an absolute reality or whether he or she is talking about a concept that is admittedly created within given frontiers of knowledge. (shrink)

Problem: The task of developing an ethics for the media according to constructivist principles is heavily loaded in two respects. On the one hand, critics of constructivism insist that this discourse generally legitimates forgery, arbitrariness, and laissez-faire -- a hotchpotch of facts and fictions; on the other, constructivists protest that their very school of thought inspires the maximum measure of personal responsibility and ethical-moral sensibility. Method: Taking as its point of departure a media falsification scandal that received wide publicity in (...) Germany, this article seeks to outline some of the fundamental questions of a constructivist media ethics. The close scrutiny of the scandal involving the interview fabricator, Tom Kummer, leads the author to identify three fundamental questions of a constructivist media ethics: (1) the question of autonomy; (2) the question of fact and fiction; (3) the question of responsibility. These questions are discussed at length, and with particular attention to the current debates regarding the ethics of media and communication studies. Findings: The author is able to show that constructivist premises and postulates will certainly help to create ethical-moral sensibility, but cannot supply, as immediate derivatives of constructivist epistemology, programmes for action or concrete regulations of behaviour that can be implemented step by step. For an ethics of the media, constructivism can thus primarily provide meta-reflections and meta-rules. (shrink)

"This title was first published in 2003.Developments in genetic science are opening up new possibilities for human beings; both the creation and the shaping of human life are now possible in the laboratory. As these techniques develop, questions are increasingly asked about how far everything that is scientifically possible should - morally, legally and socially - be pursued. Whilst much attention and policy-making has focussed on the development of regulation of technologies affecting human reproduction, regulation where plants and animals are (...) concerned is much more limited. In this book, developments in genetics are addressed in the broad sense by an international range of contributors. This includes not only issues such as eugenics and the modification of the human embryo, but also the genetic modification of plants and animals in the pursuit of commerce, agriculture and biomedical research. This book is published in association with the Society for Applied Philosophy"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Consciousness as Self-Description in Differences” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: The account, in the target article, of consciousness as a self-contained, self-referential autopoietic system faces a potential problem when we seek to ground meaning and norms. I will discuss three ways in which meaning can be grounded, the last of which requires reasons for action to be grounded from a subjective point of view, with the qualitative character of affective valence performing a regress-stopping role. I (...) will explore the implications of my conclusions for a methodological approach based on second-order cybernetics. (shrink)

" Medieval Thought provides a clear and authoritative introduction to an important period in intellectual history. It studies the course of medieval intellectualisation, analysing how tension between the religious and non-religious components of medieval culture resulted in its sophisticated development. The most influential vehicle for medieval intellectualisation was philosophy. Philosophy became the mode of expression in religion, providing religious thinkers with a unifying vocabulary and means of reasoning. In turn philosophers found in religion fertile ground for metaphysical discussion. The initial (...) alliance between philosophy and religion did not, however, hold, for Christianity's necessity for theological strength through uniformity inevitably clashed with the dissenting questioning of philosophy. This book will be accessible to even those with little knowledge of Christian theology. Appendices have been included to help the reader surmount possible difficulties, and no prior knowledge of Latin is assumed. Each chapter ends with a select bibliography to direct the reader toward further study, and an additional, more comprehensive, annotated bibliography is included at the end of the book. (shrink)