Brain Organoids in their current state of development are patentable. Future brain organoids may face some challenges in this regard, which I address in this contribution. Brain organoids unproblematically fulfil the general prerequisites of patentability set forth in Art. 3 (1) EU-Directive 98/44/ec (invention, novelty, inventive step and susceptibility of industrial application). Patentability is excluded if an invention makes use of human embryos or constitutes a stage of the human body in the individual phases of its formation and development. Both (...) do not apply to brain organoids, unless ES-cells are used. Art. 6 (1) EU-Directive 98/44/ec excludes patentability for inventions “the commercial exploitation of which would be contrary to ordre public or morality”. While there is no conceivable scenario, in which the commercial application of current brain organoids violates the ordre public, the same is not necessarily true for future brain organoids. Keeping in mind that a development of consciousness-like abilities in future brain organoids cannot be excluded and that an ability for both physical and psychological suffering has been theorized, both of which are aspects of the ordre public, certain applications of future brain organoids may constitute a violation of the ordre public and therefore lead to an exclusion of patentability. (shrink)

Wodurch zeichnet sich menschliches intelligentes Handeln aus und in welcher Beziehung steht dieses Handeln zum Wissen der handelnden Personen? Diesen Fragen wird im vorliegenden Buch nachgegangen. Praktische Intelligenz wird als Fähigkeit verstanden, im Denken, Handeln und Fühlen durch Standards und Normen geleitet zu werden. Aufbauend auf eine Interpretation von Überlegungen Gilbert Ryles entwickelt Hannes Worthmann einen neuartigen Ansatz, praktische Intelligenz und die Unterscheidung zwischen Wissen-wie und Wissen-dass jenseits verbreiteter intellektualistischer und anti-intellektualistischer Auffassungen verständlich zu machen.

The growing use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems in the public sector and the need to control these has raised many legal questions in academic research and in policymaking. One of the timely means of legal control is accountability, which traditionally includes the ability to impose sanctions on the violator as one dimension. Even though many risks regarding the use of ADM have been noted and there is a common will to promote the safety of these systems, the relevance of (...) the safety research has been discussed little in this context. In this article, I evaluate regulating accountability over the use of ADM in the public sector in relation to the findings of safety research. I conducted the study by focusing on ongoing regulatory projects regarding ADM, the Finnish ADM legislation draft and the EU proposal for the AI Act. The critical question raised in the article is what the role of sanctions is. I ask if official accountability could mean more of an opportunity to learn from mistakes, share knowledge and compensate for harm instead of control via sanctions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue for a revised and precisified version of the infamous Verifiability Criterion for the meaningfulness of declarative sentences. The argument is based on independently plausible premises concerning probabilistic confirmation and meaning as context-change potential, it is shown to be logically valid, and its ramifications for potential applications of the criterion are being discussed. Although the paper is not historical but systematic, the criterion thus vindicated will resemble the original one(s) in some important ways. (...) At the same time, it will also be more modest insofar as meaningfulness will turn out to be relativized linguistically and probabilistically, and different choices of the linguistic and probabilistic parameters may lead to different verdicts on meaningfulness. (shrink)

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its prequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In the prequel, we made this norm mathematically precise; in this paper, we derive its consequences. We show that the two core tenets of Bayesianism (...) follow from the norm, while the characteristic claim of the Objectivist Bayesian follows from the norm along with an extra assumption. Finally, we consider Richard Jeffrey’s proposed generalization of conditionalization. We show not only that his rule cannot be derived from the norm, unless the requirement of Rigidity is imposed from the start, but further that the norm reveals it to be illegitimate. We end by deriving an alternative updating rule for those cases in which Jeffrey’s is usually supposed to apply. (shrink)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing stands out among the thinkers of the 18th century for his refusal to synthesize theology and philosophy. But due to his notorious ambivalence about religious questions, even Lessing’s contemporaries remained uncertain whether he ultimately sided with the former or the latter. The short dialogue Hercules and Omphale is, to the detriment of research on this topic, largely unknown. I show that the dialogue offers in a nutshell Lessing’s comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and religious situation of his (...) time. By calling on the mythical travesty of the Asian queen and the Greek hero, Lessing illustrates the mutual attraction that has led astray both Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary Lutheran orthodoxy. Implicitly, his diagnosis of the aberrations of philosophy and theology sheds light on Lessing’s own position. The twofold criticism is an attempt to restore theology as well as philosophy in their genuine forms and to reestablish their proper relationship. Through his twofold restitutio in integrum, Lessing is able to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment and, thus, to radically renew the all but forgotten theologico-philosophical antagonism. (shrink)

This edited book explores diverse contestations and transformations of sovereignty around the world. Sovereignty plays a central role in modern political thought and practice, but it also remains fundamentally contested. Depending on the context and perspective, it seems either omnipresent or elusive, liberating or oppressive, fading or resilient. Indeed, if in recent decades sovereignty has been expected to wane, today it is back on the agenda; not as the solid bedrock of modern - international - politics, which it never was, (...) but as variations on a concept and institution that are ever contested and, as a result, constantly transforming. Bringing together perspectives from various disciplines, including International Relations (IR), political theory, geography, law, and anthropology, this volume: - goes beyond debates over the resilience or decline of sovereignty to instead emphasize how precisely the inherent ambiguities, tensions, and contestations in scholarship and practice spark sovereignty's manifold transformations; - offers three theoretical chapters that examine the illusions, contradictions, transformation, and lasting appeal of sovereignty and the nation-state; - explores sovereignty from various disciplinary perspectives in 11 empirical chapters that highlight its role in different contexts around the world, from the European Union (EU) to the South China Sea, to Western Sahara and Palestine; - problematizes the interplay between theory and practice of statehood and sovereignty, as in the perception of Northern Cyprus as a 'fake state', scholars' promotion of Kurdish 'statehood' in Iraq, and studies affirming the 'Islamic State'. This book will be of much interest to students of statehood, sovereignty, conflict studies and International Relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I work through the possible contours of an anti-genocide based on a framework informed by the work of Giorgio Agamben. Such a framework posits the inherent need to circumvent sovereign power within any form of normative activism. To begin, I show how the nascent anti-genocide movement promotes an ideal in which ?Western? states, particularly the USA, accept the global responsibility to protect persecuted life beyond national boundaries. Using Agamben, I argue that this vision also entails an acceptance (...) of a sovereign framework for the valuation of life, thus failing to confront the inherent power of the sovereign to condemn life in the first place. I then highlight the limitations that Agamben's ontology places on us in dealing with this inherent problem within the sovereign-subject relationship. By positing an alternative ontology, I suggest the possibility of establishing communities of solidarity that challenge the sovereign's self-ascribed role as the absolute valuator of life. Counter to Agamben, I argue that the basis for such communities could be a dedication to the universal sacredness of human life, which is maintained independently of, and in challenge to, sovereign power. (shrink)

Deux ques t ions impor tantes sont rarement posées à propos de l’introduction possible de Quotas Individuels Transférables dans les pêcheries : Pourquoi n’y a-t-il que deux pays dans le monde, l’Islande et la Nouvelle Zélande, qui ont introduit un système compréhensible de QIT dans leurs pêcheries? et : qui s’occupe de la privatisation des biens d’accès libre? L’expérience de l’Islande peut donner quelques réponses. Dans une première partie, l’évolution du système de QIT en Islande entre 1975 et 2000 est (...) décrite comme un processus difficile de marchandage. D’une part les coûts de marchandage furent abaissés par la crainte répandue de la disparition des stocks de poisson, et par la relative homogénéité dans les pêcheries pélagiques. D’autre part ces coûts furent augmentés, par l’hétérogénéité dans les pêcheries démersales, avec des différences immenses entre les propriétaires de petits bateaux et ceux de grands chalutiers, ainsi que des différences entre les régions. Dans la seconde partie, est décrite la nature du système de QIT: alors que ceux qui détiennent des QIT jouissent de droits d’extraction plutôt que de la propriété, l’introduction du système de QIT équivaut à clôturer partiellement les stocks de poisson dans les eaux d’Islande, résolvant ainsi la plupart des problèmes associés à la “tragédie des communs”. Le système a plutôt bien opéré mis à part quelques problèmes subsistants, en particulier le statut légal incertain des QIT et les prises de premier choix. La troisième partie décrit les controverses actuelles au sujet du système des QIT. Nous démontrons que le seul moyen de rendre l’introduction de ce système acceptable pour les propriétaires d’un capital de pêche était d’allouer des quotas sur la base de l’histoire des prises, et qu’une taxe spéciale sur la location des ressources serait injuste car elle frapperait ceux qui ont choisi de rester dans les pêcheries et non ceux qui ont été mis à l’écart.Two important questions are rarely asked about the possible introduction of ITQs in fisheries: Why are there only two countries in the world, Iceland and New Zealand, which have introduced a comprehensive ITQ system into their fisheries? and: Who cares whether the commons is privatized? The experience in Iceland may provide some answers. In Part 1, the evolution of the ITQ system in Iceland in 1975-2000 is described as a difficult process of bargaining. Costs of bargaining were lowered by the widespread fear of the collapse of the fish stocks, and by the relative homogeneity in the pelagic fisheries. Those costs were increased, on the other hand, by the heterogeneity in the demersal fisheries, with vast differences between owners of small boats and large trawlers, and also between regions. In Part II, the nature of the ITQ system is described: while those who hold ITQs enjoy rights of extraction rather than property, the introduction of the ITQ system amounts to the partial enclosure of the fish stocks in Icelandic waters, solving most of the problems associated with the “tragedy of the commons”. The system has performed quite well although some problems remain, in particular the uncertain legal status of the ITQs and high-grading. In Part III, current controversies about the ITQ system are described. It is argued that the only way to make the introduction of the system acceptable to owners of fishing capital was to allocate quotas on the basis of catch history, and that a special resource rent tax would be unjust, since it would hit those who chose to remain in the fisheries, not those who were bought out. (shrink)

In exod. 752-782 the anonymous author of the „Heptateuchos“ closely paraphrases the Decalogue section of the Biblical book „Exodus“ (Ex 20, 1-17), while simultaneously accentuating the obligatory nature of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament for Christian readers by cautiously reworking the underlying text. In pursuit of this goal, he opens up the exclusive contractual relationship between JHWH and his people (Israel) and proclaims a universal God who addresses His Commandments to the whole of humankind. Furthermore, the paraphrase is (...) more insistent than the Biblical base text on a personal internalisation of the Commandments promulgated in the Decalogue. This tendency is based on Jesus’ understanding of the Tora. This approach is deeply embedded in the text by the many references to the NT, and particularly to the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Pindar's victory songs teem with divinity. By exploring them within the lived religious landscapes of the fifth century BCE, Hanne Eisenfeld demonstrates that they are in fact engaged in theological work. Focusing on a set of mythical figures whose identities blur the boundaries between mortality and immortality, she newly interprets the value of immortality in the epinician corpus. Pindar's depiction of these figures responds to and shapes contemporary religious experience and revalues mortality as a prerequisite for the glory found (...) in victory. The book combines close reading and philological analysis with religious historical approaches to Pindar's songs and his world. It highlights the inextricability of Greek literature and Greek religion, and models a novel approach to Greek lyric poetry at the intersection of these fields. (shrink)

In everyday life we either express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms or we resort to numerical probabilities: I believe it's going to rain or my chance of winning is one in a million. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that allows us to reason with all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief simultaneously.

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its sequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In this paper, we make this norm mathematically precise in various ways. We describe three epistemic dilemmas that an agent might face if she attempts (...) to follow Accuracy, and we show that the only inaccuracy measures that do not give rise to such dilemmas are the quadratic inaccuracy measures. In the sequel, we derive the main tenets of Bayesianism from the relevant mathematical versions of Accuracy to which this characterization of the legitimate inaccuracy measures gives rise, but we also show that Jeffrey conditionalization has to be replaced by a different method of update in order for Accuracy to be satisfied. (shrink)

This article outlines what a formal theory of truth should be like, at least at first glance. As not all of the stated constraints can be satisfied at the same time, in view of notorious semantic paradoxes such as the Liar paradox, we consider the maximal consistent combinations of these desiderata and compare their relative advantages and disadvantages.

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

This chapter explains how artificial neural networks may be used as models for reasoning, conditionals, and conditional logic. It starts with the historical overlap between neural network research and logic, it discusses connectionism as a paradigm in cognitive science that opposes the traditional paradigm of symbolic computationalism, it mentions some recent accounts of how logic and neural networks may be combined, and it ends with a couple of open questions concerning the future of this area of research.

"Hegels Philosophie ist einer der letzten Versuche, alle Wissengebiete in ihren Zusammenhängen verständlich zu machen. Dass Hegel dabei auch theologisches Wissen als grundlegend ansieht, ist oft übersehen worden, weil Kants scharfe Kritik an Wissenansprüchen in der Theologie nur wenige Jahrzehnte wirkmächtig war. Jedoch zeigt Hannes Gustave Melichar anhand des ontologischen Gottesbeweises, das Hegels Denken zutiefst mit den Fragen der philosophischen Theologie verworben ist." --.

We have achieved a residue‐level resolution of genetic interaction mapping – a technique that measures how the function of one gene is affected by the alteration of a second gene – by analyzing point mutations. Here, we describe how to interpret point mutant genetic interactions, and outline key applications for the approach, including interrogation of protein interaction interfaces and active sites, and examination of post‐translational modifications. Genetic interaction analysis has proven effective for characterizing cellular processes; however, to date, systematic high‐throughput (...) genetic interaction screens have relied on gene deletions or knockdowns, which limits the resolution of gene function analysis and poses problems for multifunctional genes. Our point mutant approach addresses these issues, and further provides a tool for in vivo structure‐function analysis that complements traditional biophysical methods. We also discuss the potential for genetic interaction mapping of point mutations in human cells and its application to personalized medicine. (shrink)

A perceptive and reflective state? Such a state might not exist yet, but it refers to an ideal for state-provided care which can protect both the caregiver and recipient of care from emotional overload and indifference. Such an ideal introduces new lines of enquiry to contemporary theories of care and their sociological orientation. It is argued that theories of care need to be combined with insights from political science concerning power and dilemmas within care. Dilemmas within state-provided care which might (...) temporarily be overcome through an application of an interactive universalism such as more generally advocated by the Turkish-American feminist philosopher Seyla Benhabib. Interactive universalism implies a shift of perspective, a kind of hypothetical moral dialogue, which would bring a stronger element of reflection into caring practices in the welfare state. However, interactive universalism presupposes empathy understood as a kind of emotional attention to the other. If implemented this ideal will introduce a new form of authority: more compassionate and bodily oriented. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag geht es vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Neokapitaltheorien um Bestimmungsmöglichkeiten eines spirituellen bzw. religiösen Kapitals und die solchen Kapitalformen zugrunde liegenden Begriffe von Religion und Spiritualität. Ein eigener Ansatz wird in die Diskussion gebracht, der eine Ausdifferenzierung in spiritualisierendes und spirituelles, exoterisches religiöses und esoterisches religiöses Kapital vorschlägt. Die vorgeschlagenen Begriffe werden anhand aktueller Entwicklungen in der afrobrasilianischen Candomblé-Religion erörtert.

Anstatt die Herkunft von Leibniz' Monadenkonzept in rezeptionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive nachweisen zu wollen, erklärt die vorliegende Studie die offensichtliche Präsenz und Virulenz des Monadenbegriffs im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert selbst zu ihrem Untersuchungsgegenstand.Sie rekonstruiert den frühneuzeitlichen Bildungskanon zum Pythagoreismus, in dem der Monadenbegriff tradiert worden ist, und analysiert vor diesem Hintergrund die monadologischen Philosophien von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff und Andreas Clavius. An reichem Quellenmaterial zeigt sie, wie die ahistorisch argumentierenden Monadologien von Leibniz und Wolff von deren Zeitgenossen rehistorisiert bzw. (...) "repythagoreisiert", in das Raster des Antike-Moderne-Verhältnisses verortet und auf diese Weise evaluiert worden sind.Ein die Studie beschließender Ausblick fasst die Ergebnisse zusammen und weist selektiv auf die Wege der Monaden in die Moderne hin. (shrink)

Am Beispiel des lutherischen Erbauungsschriftstellers Johann Arndt (1555-1621) läßt sich ein naturtheologisches Frömmigkeitsverständnis aufzeigen, das vom Florentiner Neuplatonismus, von Paracelsus, vom Paracelsismus und von der Alchemie Heinrich Khunraths beeinflußt ist. Der Autor vorliegender Studie zeichnet die relevanten Traditionslinien quellennah nach und analysiert deren Einbindung und Interpretation in Arndts Schriften. Eine systematische Darstellung der Kohärenz von Naturphilosophie und Mystik in der frühen Neuzeit beschließt vorliegende Studie.

Lingualism claims there is no thought without language. At the other end of the theoretical spectrum, strong nativist 'Language of Thought' theories hold that public language is inessential to private thought. For an adequate empirical description of the ontogeny of thought and language, however, we need an intermediate position recognizing the dialectical interplay between pre-linguistic thought, language acquisition and the development of full-fledged linguistic reason. In this article recent findings from developmental and comparative psychology are reviewed that highlight the need (...) for such a dialectical picture. These findings concern basic cognitive capacities common to pre-linguistic infants and many non-linguistic animals, specific social-cognitive abilities in human infants that enable language acquisition, and the influence of language on the subsequent cognitive development. (shrink)

Neueste Ergebnisse vergleichender Kognitionsforschung werden im Hinblick auf ihre Relevanz für einzigartig menschliches kulturelles Lernern diskutiert. Während menschliche Kleinkinder und andere Primaten ähnliche Fähigkeiten individueller Intentionalität entwickeln, liegt der Kern spezifisch menschlicher Kognition in kollektiver Intentionalität, so eine zentrale These. Das Verhältnis von vorsprachlicher Kognition und Sprache wird thematisiert unter Rückgriff auf verschiedene Positionen der jüngsten analytischen Philosophie.

I will defend the claim that we need to differentiate between thinking and reasoning in order to make progress in understanding the intricate relation between language and mind. The distinction between thinking and reasoning will allow us to apply a structural equivalent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to the domain of mind and language. This argumentative strategy enables us to show that and how a certain subcategory of cognitive processes, namely reasoning, is constitutively dependent on language. The final outcome (...) and claim of this paper can be summarized as follows: We can think without language, but we cannot reason without language. While this still leaves several questions about the relation between mind and language unanswered, I hold that the insights defended in this paper provide the basis and proper framework for further investigation about the relationship between language and the mind.Keywords: Private language argument, Wittgenstein, thought/mind and language, reasoning, linguistic relativity, non-linguistic cognition. (shrink)

Hans Blumenbergs Werk ist mit einer Theorie des Mythos, der Metapher und der Epochenumbrüche, technikphilosophischen Reflexionen, literaturtheoretischen Überlegungen und literarischen Glossen ungewöhnlich vielgestaltig. Die Beiträge des Bandes begegnen diesem Umstand, indem sie nicht einzelne Grundgedanken, sondern Vorgehensweisen und Techniken, methodische Ansätze und taktische Blickwendungen fokussieren. Ihr Interesse gilt Blumenbergs Verfahren. Sie betrachten etwa den Metapherngebrauch des Metaphorologen und seine Vorliebe für implikative Zugänge, die unmögliche Abschreitung des Horizonts und die Verabschiedung der Theorie als theoretisches Verfahren. Auf welche Weise nähert sich (...) Blumenberg den Wirklichkeiten, in denen wir leben? Wie wird die Arbeit an der Bedeutsamkeit ins Werk gesetzt? Und welche dieser Verfahren lassen sich heute noch in Anspruch nehmen oder weiterdenken? Mit Beiträgen von Hannes Bajohr, Rüdiger Campe, Johannes Endres, Sebastian Feil, Petra Gehring, Eva Geulen, Anselm Haverkamp, Felix Heidenreich, Katharina Hertfelder, Wolfgang Hottner, Niklaus Largier, Christoph Paret, Birgit Recki und Christine Weder. (shrink)

The article recapitulates what logic is about traditionally and works out two roles it has been playing in philosophy: the role of an instrument and of a philosophical discipline in its own right. Using Tarski’s philosophical-logical work as case study, it develops a logical reconstructionist methodology of philosophical logic that extends and refines Rudolf Carnap’s account of explication and rational reconstruction. The methodology overlaps with, but also partially diverges from, contemporary anti-exceptionalism about logic.

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so) and that the principles (...) are jointly satisfied if and only if rational belief is equivalent to the assignment of a stably high rational degree of belief. Although the logical closure of belief and the Lockean thesis are attractive postulates in themselves, initially this may seem like a formal “curiosity”; however, as will be argued in the rest of the essay, a very reasonable theory of rational belief can be built around these principles that is not ad hoc and that has various philosophical features that are plausible independently. In particular, this essay shows that the theory allows for a solution to the Lottery Paradox, and it has nice applications to formal epistemology. The price that is to be paid for this theory is a strong dependency of belief on the context, where a context involves both the agent's degree of belief function and the partitioning or individuation of the underlying possibilities. But as this essay argues, that price seems to be affordable. (shrink)

The literatures on both authentic leadership and behavioral integrity have argued that leader integrity drives follower performance. Yet, despite overlap in conceptualization and mechanisms, no research has investigated how authentic leadership and behavioral integrity relate to one another in driving follower performance. In this study, we propose and test the notion that authentic leadership behavior is an antecedent to perceptions of leader behavioral integrity, which in turn affects follower affective organizational commitment and follower work role performance. Analysis of a survey (...) of 49 teams in the service industry supports the proposition that authentic leadership is related to follower affective organizational commitment, fully mediated through leader behavioral integrity. Next, we found that authentic leadership and leader behavioral integrity are related to follower work role performance, fully mediated through follower affective organizational commitment. These relationships hold when controlling for ethical organizational culture. (shrink)

In discussions about whether the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is compatible with structuralist ontologies of mathematics, it is usually assumed that individual objects are subject to criteria of identity which somehow account for the identity of the individuals. Much of this debate concerns structures that admit of non-trivial automorphisms. We consider cases from graph theory that violate even weak formulations of PII. We argue that (i) the identity or difference of places in a structure is not to be (...) accounted for by anything other than the structure itself and that (ii) mathematical practice provides evidence for this view. We want to thank Leon Horsten, Jeff Ketland, Øystein Linnebo, John Mayberry, Richard Pettigrew, and Philip Welch for valuable comments on drafts of this paper. We are especially grateful to Fraser MacBride for correcting our interpretation of two of his papers and for other helpful comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there (...) is but one way of determining the extension of the concept of belief that does the job. The qualitative concept of belief is not to be eliminated from scientific or philosophical discourse, rather, by reducing qualitative belief to assignments of resiliently high degrees of belief and a “cautiousness” threshold, qualitative and quantitative belief turn out to be governed by one unified theory that offers the prospects of a huge range of applications. Within that theory, logic and probability theory are not opposed to each other but go hand in hand. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of historical references and arguments in the current policy debate on non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Germany. It analyses major documents and opinion statements, including the recent parliamentary debate (2019). The implementation of NIPT is accompanied by concerns and strong criticism, particularly in Germany. Many perceive the new test to be a problematic step that facilitates selective practices and is reminiscent of eugenics. Analysis of the German policy discourse shows that ‘eugenics’, and even more strongly, (...) ‘selection’, are pivotal terms for rejecting NIPT and its coverage by public health insurance. They touch on a historical dimension in public deliberation, namely the fundamental distancing from the inhuman practices of the National Socialist period and anything that resembles them. However, using these terms to criticize prenatal genetic testing is controversial, and recent discourse demonstrates their avoidance as well, with many supporters of a limited coverage by public health insurance contrasting their approach with more widespread screening. Here, ‘screening’ has a negative connotation, and functions to demarcate the debate in a way that may reflect distance from certain modes of historical reasoning, but still expresses a special need to reconcile prenatal testing with the principles of dignity, inclusion and diversity. This article aims to elucidate the concerns involved in the national debates on prenatal testing and to increase awareness of the historical dimensions of the language and reasoning with which such methods are negotiated today and in future. (shrink)

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory. Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation (...) of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today. On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general. (shrink)

In his Encyclopedia, the late Hegel makes the highest demands on truth and justification from the first paragraph onward. With this, Hegel takes up the skeptical challenge and believes that he can overcome this problem. However, it is not easy to see how Hegel tries to meet this challenge in the Science of Logic, which plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s encyclopedic project. The present article argues that the question of the justification of the claim to truth is a fruitful (...) perspective for the interpretation of the Science of Logic. For this purpose Hegel’s answer to the Agrippan Trilemma is examined, which P. Franks analyzed as a basic problem for Classical German Philosophy. One possible interpretation of Hegel sees him solving the skeptical trilemma at the beginning of the Logic. The article argues against this possibility that the Logic of the Concept contains Hegel’s actual solution. This solution consists in that the concept represents the principle of logic and that the concept itself must be presented in the form of an apagogical argument. Finally, the article gives a reason why Hegel sees an analogy to the ontological argument in this attempt of an ultimate justification. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 1 Seiten: 28-36.

Formålet med nærværende oversigtsartikel er at undersøge den stigende digitalisering og deling af personlige informationer i sundhedsvæsenet, samt hvilke etiske udfordringer denne udvikling har for den enkelte borger. Mere præcis vil vi rammesætte denne diskussion i en dansk kontekst eksemplificeret ved Det Fælles Medicinkort. Det Fælles Medicinkort er en obligatorisk database for danske borgere indeholdende informationer om patienters medicinske historie to år tilbage. Denne database kan tilgås af en bred vifte af sundhedsprofessionelle i Danmark.På trods af lovede sundhedsmæssige fordele, såsom (...) en højere grad af sikkerhed i forbindelse med medicinering, en øget effektivisering af sundhedsvæsenet og dermed besparelser på de offentlige budgetter, plæderer vi i artiklen for, at implementeringen af Det Fælles Medicinkort kompromitterer den enkeltes privathed. Den enkelte borger er ikke i tilstrækkelig grad informeret om brugen af Det Fælles Medicinkort. Ydermere finder vi ikke, at borgerens autonomi i forhold til indholdet af personlige oplysninger i Det Fælles Medicinkort er opretholdt på en tilfredsstillende måde.Artiklens primære perspektiv er deontologisk, men for at nuancere vores diskussion inddrages lejlighedsvist også utilitaristiske argumenter. Endvidere inddrages i artiklen Helen Nissenbaum, Tom L. Beauchamp og James F. Childress samt John Rawls. I artiklen vil tre konkrete problemstillinger blive diskuteret i relation til Det Fælles Medicinkort: Deler vi relevante og passende data? Er distributionen af disse data til en så bred vifte af sundhedsprofessionelle på sin plads? Og slutteligt: Er den enkelte borgers beslutningsdygtighed, og dermed mulighed for autonomi i forhold til personrelaterede informationer, tilstrækkelig.Nøgleord: digitalisering, privathed, Danmark, sundhedsvæsen, Det Fælles MedicinkortEnglish summary: The right to privacy in Danish healthcareThe scope of this paper is to assess the growing digitalization of personal information in healthcare and the ethical challenges this development poses to the citizen. Specifically the paper discusses the right to privacy in a Danish context, namely in relation to the use of The Shared Medical Record. The Shared Medical Record is a default digital health record consisting of every patient’s medical history for the previous two years, accessible to a broad range of health professionals in Denmark.In this paper we discuss three aspects of The Shared Medical Record, primarily from a normative point of view: 1) Are the personal data shared by The Shared Medical Record relevant and appropriate? 2) Is the distribution of this information to the current array of health professionals appropriate? And 3) Does The Shared Medical Record adequately support and account for the quorum and autonomy of the individual citizen with regards to personal information?We argue that, advantages such as heightened security, efficiency and convenience aside, the citizens’ right to privacy is to some extent compromised by the terms and use of this record. The citizen is not extensively informed on the use of the record, and does not hold a sufficient degree of autonomy over the content and distribution of their personal data. The primary ethical perspective of the paper is deontological, but in order to properly nuance our stance we have chosen to include traditionally utilitarian points of view throughout our discussions.In the paper we introduce Helen Nissenbaum’s notion of contextual integrity in order to thoroughly assess the service’s ethical implications for Danish citizens and their future privacy, as well as points from John Rawls, Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress. (shrink)