Research that is initiated, designed or funded by sponsor agencies based in countries with relatively high social and economic development, and conducted in countries that are relatively less developed, gives rise to many important ethical challenges. Although clinical trials of HIV vaccines began ten years ago in the US and Europe, an increasing number of trials are now being conducted or planned in other countries, including several that are considered “developing” countries. Safeguarding the rights and welfare of individuals participating as (...) research subjects in developing countries is a priority. In September, 1997, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS embarked on a process of international consultation; its purpose was further to define the important ethical issues and to formulate guidance that might facilitate the ethical design and conduct of HIV vaccine trials in international contexts. This paper summarises the major outcomes of the UNAIDS consultative process. (shrink)

In this paper, I interrogate an ethical obligation to participate in genomics research on the basis of solidarity. I explore two different ways in which solidarity is used to motivate participation in genomics research: as an appeal to participate in genomic research because it cultivates solidarity and as an appeal to participate in genomic research because it expresses solidarity. I critique those appeals and draw lessons from them for how we ought to understand solidarity. The working definition of solidarity that (...) I defend is that solidarity involves recognizing another creature, person, or persons as, like ourselves, vulnerable to injustice and entails acting in ways that contribute to creating, reforming, and participating in institutions that are aimed at enhancing their flourishing. I argue that participating in genomics research is not an expression of solidarity. Participation in research may be praiseworthy, a “good thing to do,” but actually cultivating and expressing solidarity requires much more of us. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

This study assessed self-reported health-related quality of life and psychological adjustment in 43 adolescents and young adults with congenital melanocytic nevi and examined associations with sociodemographic variables, characteristics of the CMN, perceived social reactions, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Outcome measures included the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ 4.0 and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Findings suggest impaired psychosocial health and psychological adjustment in youth with CMN compared to community norms. Impairments were associated with higher age of participants, lower socioeconomic (...) status, visibility of the skin lesion, perceived stigmatization, poorer perceived social support, and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies, but not with sex of participants, extent of the skin lesion, and surgical removal of the nevus. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed. (shrink)

The paper is a critical discussion of scholarship on the "Critique of Pure Reason" published during the past ten years. The emphasis is on Anglo-American authors. I identify and discuss three main trends in the field: a shift from the general discussion of transcendental arguments to the analysis and evaluation of particular proofs in Kant; a renewed interest in the doctrine of transcendental idealism and the distinction between things in themselves and appearances; and the emergence of an entire body of (...) literature on Kant's philosophy of mind, centered around the idea of a "transcendental psychology." The main body of the text is supplemented by extensive bibliographical information provided in the notes. (shrink)

In “Obligations of the Gift,” Lee argues that ethical thinking regarding return of genetic research results has been too narrowly focused on individual consent and participants’ “right to kn...

One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a semantics for the (...) theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)

This article compares Kant and Fichte from the double stand- point of identity and difference with regard to two thinkers who were at first united by a master-student relation but who later on drifted apart from each other due to mutual defamation. At the center of the present discussion stands the relationship between spirit of freedom and system’s form which binds Kant and Fichte beyond methodological divergences and doctrinal differ- ences. The critical comparison between Kant and Fichte will be developed (...) in four steps: it will start with the general positioning of Kant within German Idealism, and then move on to Kant’s double critical enterprise of grounding an aprioristic doctrine of principles of nature and freedom; it will later on address the conception championed by Fichte of having pre- sented the “first system of freedom”, and from there it will focus on the manifestations of freedom within Fichte’s philosophical system, with Kant’s position as contrast. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from (...) the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony. (shrink)

Scientific exploration and thus our knowledge about the outside world is subject to the conditions of our experience.These conditions are condensed here into an interface model which,besides being physical,has an additional interface structure not reducible to physics. We suggest that this structure can dynamically be characterized by separate modes.Their selection and operation presupposes free will and a rudimentary concept of time and space. Based on some analogies with quantum networks it is argued that the 'observed' gets 'dressed'as a consequence of (...) the observing. Interface dynamics and system dynamics supplement each other without over- determination. (shrink)

What kind of world do we want to live in? It’s rare that we ask this question of ourselves, and even rarer that we get to do so with others. In Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing, Francoise Baylis encourages us to keep this question in the forefront of our minds as we think about whether, when, or how to edit the human genome. She is neither an “enthusiastic proponent nor a staunch opponent” of heritable human (...) genome editing. She is, however, very clear that the ethics of human genome editing is not the domain of scientists, ethicists, or elites. Her thesis is that all of us must think together about what our collective future should look like, and then consider whether and how... (shrink)

New techniques for the genetic modification of organisms are creating new strategies for addressing persistent public health challenges. For example, the company Oxitec has conducted field trials internationally—and has attempted to conduct field trials in the United States—of a genetically modified mosquito that can be used to control dengue, Zika, and some other mosquito-borne diseases. In 2016, a report commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine discussed the potential benefits and risks of another strategy, using gene drives. (...) Driving a desired genotype through a population of wild animals or insects could lead to irreversible genetic modification of an entire species. The NASEM report recommends community, stakeholder, and public engagement about potential uses of the technology, and it argues that the engagement should occur as research advances, well before gene drives are deployed. Yet what “engagement” means in practice is unclear. This article seeks clarity on this problem by offering a justification for community engagement and drawing out implications of this argument for the implementation and desired outcomes of community engagement. Community engagement is essential when it comes to research that would release genetically modified insects or animals into the environment. By contrast, obtaining informed consent from people who live near such a proposed field trial is neither necessary nor sufficient. Drawing on the epistemic and moral arguments for deliberative democracy, I propose two discrete mechanisms of community engagement: community advisory boards and deliberative forums, neither of which has been systematically incorporated into research governance. The proposed mechanisms would engender respect for persons who live near field trials, even when the results of deliberation override some individuals’ preferences. Community engagement foregrounds the community in our thinking about humans’ relationship to nature, and it implies that deciding to release genetically modified insects or animals into the wild ought to be a collective decision, not one made by product developers, policy-makers, private companies, research funders, or scientists alone. (shrink)

Ontology development methodologies emphasise knowledge gathering from domain experts and documentary resources, and knowledge representation using an ontology language such as OWL or FOL. However, working ontologists are often surprised by how challenging and slow it can be to develop ontologies. Here, with a particular emphasis on the sorts of ontologies that are content-heavy and intended to be shared across a community of users (reference ontologies), we propose that a significant and heretofore under-emphasised contributor of challenges during ontology development is (...) the need to create, or bring about, consensus in the face of disagreement. For this reason reference ontology development cannot be automated, at least within the limitations of existing AI approaches. Further, for the same reason ontologists are required to have specific social-negotiating skills which are currently lacking in most technical curricula. (shrink)

The idea of global justice faces a serious challenge. We live in one global society and many regional and local societies at the same time. The existing plurality of institutional as well as cultural levels of social connection leads to this general question: what is the right site for addressing different questions of justice? Some philosophers argue that the paramount place for thinking about justice is the global level, but other philosophers claim that questions of justice presuppose a certain institutional (...) structure. It is therefore only at the local level, preferentially in the form of sovereign states, where questions of justice arise. I want to argue that it is possible to understand some issues of justice as global in an irreducible way, while other issues are best addressed on a local level not only for pragmatic reasons, but also for reasons that have to do with the normative significance of local institutions, cultural connections and social identities. (shrink)

:In a recent paper in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics on the necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research David DeGrazia and Jeff Sebo claim that the key requirements for morally responsible animal research are an assertion of sufficient net benefit, a worthwhile-life condition, and a no-unnecessary-harm condition. With regards to the assertion of sufficient net benefit, the authors claim that morally responsible research offers unique benefits to humans that outweigh the costs and harms to humans and animals. In this (...) commentary we will raise epistemic, practical, and ethical challenges to DeGrazia and Sebo’s emphasis on benefits in the prospective assessment of research studies involving animals. We do not disagree with DeGrazia and Sebo that, at the theoretical level, the benefits of research justify our using animals. Our contribution intends to clarify, at the practical level, how we should understand benefits in the prospective assessment and moral justification of animal research. We argue that ASNB should be understood as an assessment of Expectation of Knowledge Production in the prospective assessment and justification of animal research. EKP breaks down into two further claims: that morally responsible research generates knowledge worth having and that morally responsible research is designed and executed to produce generalizable knowledge. We understand the condition called knowledge worth having as scientists’ testing a hypothesis that, whether verified or falsified, advances an important interest, and production of generalizable knowledge in terms of scientific integrity. Generalizable knowledge refers to experimental results that generalize to a larger population beyond the animals studied. Generalizable scientific knowledge is reliable, replicable, and accurately descriptive. In sum, morally responsible research will be designed and carefully executed to successfully test a hypothesis that, whether verified or falsified, advances important interests. Our formulation of EKP, crucially, does not require further showing that an experiment involving animals will produce societal benefits. (shrink)

In Germany, like in many other liberal countries, there is an extensive public discourse about freedom of speech being at risk. It will be insisted in this contribution that on the one hand, freedom of speech as a subjective right of basic law is not endangered. On the other hand, it should be acknowledged that in public discourse moralistic exaggerations are quite common. Against this background, the paper asks when different opinions are to be respected and at what point it (...) is permitted or even required to condemn them as immoral. The basic argument advanced here is that opinions should be respected as long as they are based in or at least supported by reasonable moral theories. Those opinions that do not have such a support can be labelled as properly immoral and criticized as such. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 32-34.

As Husserl already noticed, artworks themselves have a phenomenological character. This means, however, that to experience artworks as phenomena no “epoché” and no “phenomenological reduction” is necessary. The leading question of my essay is whether, and possibly how, this observation can be methodologically generalized for understanding phenomena. I discuss if, and possibly how, a phenomenological reflection on art allows and even demands a general conception of phenomenology that nevertheless does not confuse artworks with phenomena in general. My intention is to (...) show that and how phenomenality can be clarified with reference to its spatial character. Accordingly, works of architecture that are artworks will play a decisive role in my argument. (shrink)

The potential of large language models (LLM) has captured the imagination of the public and researchers alike. In contrast to previous generations of machine learning models, LLMs are general-purpose tools, which can communicate with humans. In particular, they are able to define terms and answer factual questions based on some internally represented knowledge. Thus, LLMs support functionalities that are closely related to ontologies. In this perspective article, I will discuss the consequences of the advent of LLMs for the field of (...) applied ontology. (shrink)

Non-human animal models of human diseases advance our knowledge of the genetic underpinnings of disease and lead to the development of novel therapies for humans. While mice are the most common model organisms, their usefulness is limited. Larger animals may provide more accurate and valuable disease models, but it has, until recently, been challenging to create large animal disease models. Genome editors, such as Clustered Randomised Interspersed Palindromic Repeat, meet some of these challenges and bring routine genome engineering of larger (...) animals and non-human primates well within reach. There is growing interest in creating NHP models of brain disorders such as autism, depression and Alzheimer’s, which are very difficult to model or study in other organisms, including humans. New treatments are desperately needed for this set of disorders. This paper is novel in asking: Insofar as NHPs are being considered for use as model organisms for brain disorders, can this be done ethically? The paper concludes that it cannot. Notwithstanding ongoing debate about NHPs’ moral status, animal welfare concerns, the availability of alternative methods of studying brain disorders and unmet expectations of benefit justify a stop on the creation of NHP model organisms to study brain disorders. The lure of using new genetic technologies combined with the promise of novel therapeutics presents a formidable challenge to those who call for slow, careful, and only necessary research involving NHPs. But researchers should not create macaques with social deficits or capuchin monkeys with memory deficits just because they can. (shrink)

In Germany students sometimes complain that they have to learn too much about National Socialist Germany 1933-1945. They are born after the war and are not responsible for what happened and therefore they have no special responsibility to concern themselves with this darkest part of German history, or so it is complained. In this article I argue that responsibility as accountability should be distinguished from responsibility as care-taking. Although later-born generations certainly are not accountable for what happened before they were (...) born, they can have a special responsibility to care about those events, for instance to remember them for what they were. I claim that in the case of the Third Reich there are two different grounds for ascribing this kind of responsibility: German citizenship and identifying strongly with Germany as a nation. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

La volonté présente du christianisme de nouer un dialogue fraternel avec le judaïsme pose au premier le problème de reconnaître exactement l'identité du second, et d'interpréter correctement la judaïté de Jésus et la notion de « texte commun », présupposées à la base de cette rencontre. La religion de Jésus n'était pas encore ce qui allait devenir, après l’instauration du rabbinisme, la religion des juifs actuels, fondée sur la rédaction d'une Torah orale. Le judaïsme moderne et le christianisme sont à (...) la fois en rupture et en continuité herméneutique avec l'Ancien Testament, mais ils ne le lisent pas avec la même clé d'interprétation, le second le lisant à partir de son « accomplissement » dans le Nouveau, le premier en fonction de son « ouverture » à une autre nouveauté, qui sera le Talmud. L'idée d'un « patrimoine commun » aux juifs et aux chrétiens est née, dans un premier temps, de l'idéologie des Lumières, créatrice d’une culture commune, «judéo-chrétienne », au prix d'une lecture « scientifique » et désacralisante de la Bible. Dans un second temps, l'Holocauste, qui détournait les juifs, orthodoxes ou sionistes, de cet « héritage commun », conduisait inversement de nombreux chrétiens à le revendiquer, dans un aveu de culpabilité à l'égard de l'antisémitisme, mais aussi dans la méconnaissnce de la différence inéluctable du peuple juif. L'idéologie du « commun » peut être un facteur de fermeture là où elle ne se vérifie pas ou d'assimilation indue là où elle efface la singularité de l'un et de l'autre. On peut espérer du dialogue entre juifs et chrétiens qu’il suscite une authentique théologie de la rencontre.Today, the desire of Christianity to engage in a fraternal dialogue with Judaism poses the problem of encountering precisely the identity of the latter, and of interpreting correctly the Judaism of Jesus and the notion of « common text » which is presupposed at the basis of this encounter. The religion of Jesus was not yet that which it was to become after the installation of rabbinism, the religion of present day Jews, which was founded on the composition of an oral Torah. Modern Judaism and Christianity are, at the same time, in rupture and hermeneutic continuity with the Old Testament. But they do not read it with the same key of interpretation : Christianity’s reading sees its « accomplishment » in the New Testament, Judaism in function of its « opening » to another newness, which will be the Talmud. The idea of a « common patrimony » for Jews and Christians was born, in the first instance, of the ideology of the Enlightenment, creator of a common culture, « Judeo-Christian », at the price of a « scientific» and profane reading of the Bible. In a second stage, the Holocaust, which turned Orthodox and Zionist Jews away from this « common heritage », inversely led numerous Christians to vindicate it in an acknowledgment of culpability as regards anti-Semitism, but also in ignoring the ineluctable difference of the Jewish people. The ideology of the « common » can be a factor of closing dialogue when it is not verified or of undue assimilation when it wipes out the singularity of each one. One can hope for a dialogue between Jews and Christians that promotes an authentic theology of encounter. (shrink)

Relative poverty and absolute poverty are often seen to be very distinct concepts and seldom discussed together. While absolute poverty is seen to be about existential threats, relative poverty is understood to be about economic inequality only. One is an issue of basic rights then and the other a question of justice or fairness. But in this picture it becomes incomprehensible why the same concept is used for so different issues. This article tries to show that relative and absolute poverty (...) do have something very important in common. Both concepts are about not having enough goods in order to be able to life a decent life, i.e. a life in dignity. While absolute poverty indicates that someone does not have enough goods to live a decent life under any circumstances, relative poverty indicates that someone does not have enough goods to live a decent life in a given society. So understood poverty in both cases is a violation of human dignity. (shrink)

Recent reports and papers on chimeric research highlight the promise of chimeric models of human neuropsychiatric disorders to ameliorate human suffering due to autism spectrum disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. These calls, however, typically do not acknowledge, much less address, criticisms of model creation and validation, or concerns about scientific conduct more generally. The ethical justification for the use of nonhuman animals in research depends on the production of benefits to humans based on such research. But the assessment and production of (...) benefits are highly uncertain and rife with both practical and conceptual challenges. This essay provides a general framework for classifying the benefits of biomedical research and then focuses on two factors that directly impact—and threaten—the production of knowledge in research that models neuropsychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Founded on a commitment to social justice and health equity, community health centers in the United States provide high‐quality primary care to underserved populations and address social drivers of health disparities. Through an examination of two books on the history of community health centers, Peace & Health: How a Group of Small‐Town Activists and College Students Set Out to Change Healthcare, by Charles Barber, and Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People Who Made It Happen, by Bonnie Lefkowitz, this (...) essay provides insight into what it takes to center social justice in community‐based health care organizations. As bioethics reorganizes itself around an emphasis on justice, scholars in bioethics have much to learn from colleagues in community health. (shrink)

Historically contingent concepts like human dignity do not allow for the exclusion of historical considerations from their analysis. In order to demonstrate this, the present essay compares the positions of Hans-Johann Glock and Hans Blumenberg. While Glock deals with the convergence of analytic philosophy and historical approaches, Blumenberg highlights the importance of historical constants. Glock argues for a pragmatic historicism according to which historical inquiry is useful but not indispensable. Through comparison with Blumenberg’s position, it is shown that this assessment (...) is incomplete. It is then argued that there is a more fitting position, according to which historical inquiry is essential for some, though not all, concepts. This position is illustrated by the concept of human dignity, which cannot be adequately grasped without reference to its genesis. Blumenberg’s approach can thus help precisely where the connection between analytical philosophy and historical investigation in Glock’s sense falters. (shrink)

The following paper discusses Schiller’s interpretation of the German concept of Bildung. Bildung appears to be a central term in Germany’s culture, especially (but not limited to) the educational realm. As Bildung underwent massive transformations and has been re-interpreted multiple times throughout German history, this paper will start with a definitory exercise trying to organize the dynamics surrounding the term. Secondly, a two-fold historical context – firstly regarding the wider political and social dynamics of the time and secondly, a more (...) biographical approach focusing on Schiller – will be provided. These contextualizing efforts will be succeeded by elaborations on Schiller’s concept of Herzensbildung. The paper closes with a summary of key insights and further potential endeavors. (shrink)

It is now increasingly accepted that many existing biological and medical ontologies can be improved by adopting tools and methods that bring a greater degree of logical and ontological rigor. In this chapter we will focus on the merits of a logically sound approach to ontologies from a methodological point of view. As we shall see, one crucial feature of a logically sound approach is that we have clear and functional definitions of the relational expressions such as ‘is a’ and (...) ‘part of ’. (shrink)

In recent years, an interdisciplinary debate on the social and political role of business corporations has evolved. With this special issue, we would like to facilitate a comprehensive discussion of three questions that are especially pertinent in that debate: (1) How is the social and political agency of corporations to be understood? (2) How should the power of corporations be analyzed? (3) Under which conditions would the social and political roles of corporations be legitimate? In this introduction to the special (...) issue, we start with a short outline of the debate. In the next step, we provide an overview of the five contributions. We conclude by summarizing what can be learned from those contributions with respect to the three research questions. (shrink)

The article reviews the recent debate about workplace democracy. It first presents and critically discusses arguments in favor of democratizing the firm that are based on the analogy with states, meaningful work, the avoidance of unjustified hierarchies, and beneficial effects on political democracy. The second part presents and critically discusses arguments against workplace democracy that are based on considerations of efficiency, the difficulties of a transition towards democratic firms, and liberal commitments such as the rights of employees and owners to (...) work for or invest in nondemocratic firms. The conclusion summarizes the debate and argues that experiments with democratic workplaces as what Erik Olin Wright calls “real utopias” could deliver new insights and thus move the discussion forward. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill had strong sympathies with a liberal form of market socialism based on worker-owned and worker-managed firms. He thought that only very few government interventions were needed to trigger a peaceful and spontaneous transition to such an economic system. This article recapitulates his thesis and argument by focusing on his major workPrinciples of Political Economy, which is rather neglected by philosophers, especially in the German-speaking world. I will argue that Mill was too optimistic in his hope for a (...) spontaneous transition without government intervention. Since it is possible to reconstruct how Mill thought this transition would proceed, it is also possible to identify at what point the transition did not advance in the way envisioned by him, but was blocked by antagonistic forces. I will argue that this insight is not only of historical value, but still poses a serious problem for John Rawls’s theory of justice. Rawls follows Mill closely in his discussion of the proper economic system and he faces the same problem of transition. (shrink)

When President Obama laid out his vision for the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative in a 2016 Boston Globe op‐ed, he cautioned, “[I]t only works if we collect enough information first.” “Collecting information” is an apt way to describe the subject of both books reviewed here. Jenny Reardon's The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome traces the history of the Human Genome Project and efforts around the globe to obtain blood samples to extract not only genetic data but (...) also meaning from them. Barbara Prainsack's Personalized Medicine: Empowered Patients in the 21st Century? concerns the capture of digital, quantifiable, and computable information about nearly all aspects of people's lives in the pursuit of personalized medicine. Reardon and Prainsack critique scientists’ and corporations’ appeals to liberal democracy, justice, and empowerment to collect more and more information about people. They reveal the limitations and frequent superficiality of those appeals and remind us that person‐centric ethics rather than data‐centric research is needed to realize a more democratic, just, and empowered society. (shrink)

Patt's study attempts to explain Kant's doctrine of transcendental idealism through a detailed examination of Kant's theory of sensible intuition. The center of the book is a minute textual exegesis of Kant's direct proof for the doctrine of transcendental idealism in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the Critique of Pure Reason, focusing on the arguments concerning the nature of space and time and the conclusions that Kant draws from them. This middle part is preceded by three smaller chapters that examine the (...) Kantian distinction between appearances and things in themselves, the relation between intuition and sensation, and the function of intuition in synthetic judgments. The study concludes with an analysis of Kant's indirect proof of the doctrine of transcendental idealism in the "Transcendental Dialectic," with an emphasis on the treatment of the first two antinomies. No detailed consideration is given to the role of intuitions in Kant's theory of categories and principles in the "Transcendental Analytic.". (shrink)

This is an interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of subjective and objective freedom as presented in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The interpretation takes the form of a detailed commentary on the sections on practical subjective spirit and objective spirit from Part 3 of the Encyclopaedia.

The current philosophical debate on just international trade has moved away from purely idealistic theorizing into the direction of non-ideal theory. At the same time most philosophical thought on just trade is still rather idealistic and the main argument of the paper is that some philosophical reasoning about international trade justice should be more realistic. The paper develops in three steps. In a first step I will give a short overview over normative questions that arise with respect to international trade. (...) I will then highlight a proposal brought forward by Leif Wenar, because he is aware of the realist challenge and tries to counter it. In a second step I will discuss why it is important to integrate a realist perspective into philosophical considerations of international trade justice. Trade agreements are embedded in political contexts that influence the normative perspective one should take on trade justice. This leads to the third part of the article, where I will explore how a realist approach can go along with more idealistic perspectives, which leads to a weakly realist perspective on trade justice. (shrink)

Modules allow the reuse of an ontology as part of another ontology. If the ontologies do not share a common domain of discourse a simple ‘cut and paste’ approach to module reuse leads to unintended...

This volume discusses and expands the current state of research on military interventions. In this regard, it discusses questions concerning the legitimacy of interventions, their implementation and the actors involved. The volume is structured into three interdisciplinary parts, each with a focus on a specific topic. Part I deals with the question of under which circumstances intervention is legitimate and, if so, how it should be conducted. Part II focuses on the question of whether and, if so, why the high (...) thresholds currently applied to interventions should be considered legitimate. Finally, Part III elaborates on the question of who should intervene and which parts of society should be involved in post-conflict reconstruction. (shrink)

The growing concentration of wealth has acquired a new urgency in recent years. One particular view in this context is developed by Ingrid Robeyns in her ground-breaking work on limitarianism. According to this view, no one should have more than a certain amount of valuable goods, such as income and wealth. The contributors to this symposium, Brian Berkey, David Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen, Jessica Flanigan and Christopher Freiman, and Lena Halldenius, critically examine various aspects of limitarianism. In particular, they examine (...) how limitarianism should be interpreted and developed as a principle of justice, on what reasons speak in favour and against limitarianism, and on how limitarianism relates to other principles of distributive justice. Our hope is that this symposium will contribute to the ongoing debate in political philosophy about the concentration of wealth and economic justice. (shrink)

The micro blogging platform Twitter is actively used by millions of people. By using the geo tags of the messages sent a virtual landscape of online activity at a certain place is generated to visualize the interface between the real-world location and the virtual activity. These New City Landscapes (NCL) visualize the amount of activity as density surfaces with hills, peaks and valleys. Across a set of different cities from around the world the resulting landscape morphologies are compared and characterized (...) as types. This article focuses on temporal narratives and how they travel through the urban fabric via the virtual landscape in different cities around the world. The findings are discussed as cross comparisons according to activity in time and space. (shrink)