Lara Buchak sets out a new account of rational decision-making in the face of risk. She argues that the orthodox view is too narrow, and suggests an alternative, more permissive theory: one that allows individuals to pay attention to the worst-case or best-case scenario, and vindicates the ordinary decision-maker.

There are currently two robust traditions in philosophy dealing with doxastic attitudes: the tradition that is concerned primarily with all-or-nothing belief, and the tradition that is concerned primarily with degree of belief or credence. This paper concerns the relationship between belief and credence for a rational agent, and is directed at those who may have hoped that the notion of belief can either be reduced to credence or eliminated altogether when characterizing the norms governing ideally rational agents. It presents a (...) puzzle which lends support to two theses. First, that there is no formal reduction of a rational agent’s beliefs to her credences, because belief and credence are each responsive to different features of a body of evidence. Second, that if our traditional understanding of our practices of holding each other responsible is correct, then belief has a distinctive role to play, even for ideally rational agents, that cannot be played by credence. The question of which avenues remain for the credence-only theorist is considered. (shrink)

Next SectionThe current focus on early intervention trials in Alzheimer's disease research raises particular ethical issues. These arise out of problems of validating study results and translating them into general practice for one thing and out of unwanted effects of an uncertain diagnosis for diagnosed people for another. The first addresses the demands of scientific research compared to those of medical practice, questioning how the medical value of clinical trials is evaluated. The second relates the scientific and medical value of (...) early intervention trials to the normative value of an uncertain diagnosis. Are people who are diagnosed with a potential early form of AD in clinical studies patients proper—although they would not have been diagnosed with the given “disease” in non-research-oriented medical settings? The very problem of framing this question in terms of diagnostic misconceptions connects conceptual with ethical issues of research into preclinical stages of neurodegenerative diseases. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the concept of prefiguration by outlining the necessity of its contribution to a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. In the introduction, I explain how the object of critique for many social theorists has shifted over the course of the last decade from neoliberal globalization to capitalism understood as an encompassing form of life. In light of this, I enumerate the features that should define a progressive public philosophy: radical, emancipatory, and (...) decolonized. The introduction is followed by an overview of the academic debates emerging after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007–8. Among these, accelerationism fundamentally rejects the incorporation of prefigurative politics in any emancipatory political agenda. To better understand this position, I examine the origin and meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative practices in more detail in Section III. In it, I argue that prefigurative politics entails a holistic approach to social change that digs its roots in feminist and ecological thought and focuses on social reproduction and the preservation of life rather than solely economic production. Subsequently, I deploy the case of Occupy Wall Street to show that a growing number of contemporary social movements are implementing a dualistic strategy that simultaneously combines repertoires of action typical of protest movements with prefigurative practices focused on the embodiment of alternatives. This dualism, along with the limited success of Occupy Wall Street in concretizing its claims and goals, has led prefigurative politics to being labelled as incompatible with, if not even hindering, any emancipatory strategy. My argument instead is that prefigurative politics constitutes a fundamental and necessary component of any political strategy aimed at transcending contemporary capitalism since it conceives progressive social change in an ontologically and epistemologically different way with respect to political parties and protest movements. Taking this into consideration, I conclude that conventional politics and prefigurative politics can be seen as having the potential to mutually reinforce each other and that prefigurative politics should be acknowledged as a pivotal concept in establishing a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. Only by doing so, will this philosophy be truly radical, emancipatory, and decolonial. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of what it is to have faith in a proposition p, in both religious and mundane contexts. It is argued that faith in p doesn’t require adopting a degree of belief that isn’t supported by one’s evidence but rather it requires terminating one’s search for further evidence and acting on the supposition that p. It is then shown, by responding to a formal result due to I.J. Good, that doing so can be rational in a (...) number of circumstances. If expected utility theory is the correct account of practical rationality, then having faith can be both epistemically and practically rational if the costs associated with gathering further evidence or postponing the decision are high. If a more permissive framework is adopted, then having faith can be rational even when there are no costs associated with gathering further evidence. (shrink)

Heavily influenced by Frantz Fanon and critically engaging the theories of decoloniality and liberatory psychoanalysis, Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi platform the lives, perspectives, and insights of psychoanalytically-inflected Palestinian psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals, centering the stories that non-clinical Palestinians have entrusted to them over four years of community engagement with clinicians throughout historic Palestine. Sheehi and Sheehi document the stories of Palestinian clinicians in relation to settler-colonialism and violence but, even more so, in relation to their (...) patients, communities, families, and one another (as a clinical community). In doing so, they track the appearance of settler colonialism as a psychologically extractive process, one that is often effaced by discourses of "normalization," "trauma," "resilience," and human rights, with the aid of clinicians, as well as psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine unpacks the intersection of psychoanalysis as a psychological practice in Palestine, while also advancing a set of therapeutic theories in which to critically engage and "read" the politically complex array of conditions that define life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. (shrink)

Faith is a central attitude in Christian religious practice. The problem of faith and reason is the problem of reconciling religious faith with the standards for our belief-forming practices in general (‘ordinary epistemic standards’). In order to see whether and when faith can be reconciled with ordinary epistemic standards, we first need to know what faith is. This chapter examines and catalogues views of propositional faith: faith that p. It is concerned with the epistemology of such faith: what cognitive attitudes (...) does such faith require, what epistemic norms govern these attitudes, and whether Christian faith can ever adhere to them. (shrink)

Conceptions of evil have changed dramatically over time, and though humans continue to commit acts of cruelty against one another, today we possess a clearer, more moral way of analyzing them. In _Narrating Evil_, María Pía Lara explores what has changed in our understanding of evil, why the transformation matters, and how we can learn from this specific historical development. Drawing on Immanuel Kant's and Hannah Arendt's ideas about reflective judgment, Lara argues that narrative plays a key role (...) in helping societies acknowledge their pasts. Particular stories haunt our consciousness and lead to a kind of examination and dialogue that shape notions of morality. A powerful description of a crime can act as a filter, helping us to draw conclusions about what constitutes a moral wrong, and public debates over these narratives allow us to construct a more accurate picture of historical truth, leading to a better understanding of why such actions are possible. In building her argument, Lara considers Greek tragedies, Shakespeare's depictions of evil, Joseph Conrad's literary metaphors, and movies that portray human cruelty. Turning to such philosophers and writers as Jürgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Primo Levi, Giorgio Agamben, and Ariel Dorfman, Lara defines a reflexive relationship between an event, the narrative of the event, and the public reception of the narrative, and she proves that the stories of perpetrators and sufferers are always intertwined. The process of disclosure, debate, and the public fashioning of collective judgment are vital methods through which we make sense not only of new forms of cruelty but of past crimes as well. _Narrating Evil_ describes the steps of this process and why they are a crucial part of our attempt to build a different, more just world. (shrink)

The ‘rollback argument,’ pioneered by Peter van Inwagen, purports to show that indeterminism in any form is incompatible with free will. The argument has two major premises: the first claims that certain facts about chances obtain in a certain kind of hypothetical situation, and the second that these facts entail that some actual act is not free. Since the publication of the rollback argument, the second claim has been vehemently debated, but everyone seems to have taken the first claim for (...) granted. Nevertheless, the first claim is totally unjustified. Even if we accept the second claim, therefore, the argument gives us no reason to think that free will and indeterminism are incompatible. Furthermore, seeing where the rollback argument goes wrong illuminates how a certain kind of incompatibilist, the ‘chance-incompatibilist,’ ought to think about free will and chance, and points to a possibility for free will that has remained largely unexplored. (shrink)

In this book, Lara Ostaric argues that Kant’s seminal Critique of Judgment is properly understood as completing his Critical system. The two seemingly disparate halves of the text are unified under this larger project insofar as both aesthetic and teleological judgment indirectly exhibit the final end of reason, the Ideas of the highest good and the postulates, as if obtaining in nature. She relates Kant’s discussion of aesthetic and teleological judgment to important yet under-explored concepts in his philosophy, and (...) helps the reader to recognize the relevance of his aesthetics and teleology for our understanding of fine arts and genius, the possibility of pure judgments of ugliness, Kant’s philosophy of history, his philosophy of religion, and his conception of autonomy. Ostaric’s novel and thoroughly integrative presentation of Kant’s system will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those working in religious studies, art history, political theory, and intellectual history. (shrink)

In “Can it be rational to have faith?”, it was argued that to have faith in some proposition consists, roughly speaking, in stopping one’s search for evidence and committing to act on that proposition without further evidence. That paper also outlined when and why stopping the search for evidence and acting is rationally required. Because the framework of that paper was that of formal decision theory, it primarily considered the relationship between faith and degrees of belief, rather than between faith (...) and belief full stop. This paper explores the relationship between rational faith and justified belief, by considering four prominent proposals about the relationship between belief and degrees of belief, and by examining what follows about faith and belief according to each of these proposals. It is argued that we cannot reach consensus concerning the relationship between faith and belief at present because of the more general epistemological lack of consensus over how belief relates to rationality: in particular, over how belief relates to the degrees of belief it is rational to have given one’s evidence. (shrink)

A natural view in distributive ethics is that everyone's interests matter, but the interests of the relatively worse off matter more than the interests of the relatively better off. I provide a new argument for this view. The argument takes as its starting point the proposal, due to Harsanyi and Rawls, that facts about distributive ethics are discerned from individual preferences in the "original position." I draw on recent work in decision theory, along with an intuitive principle about risk-taking, to (...) derive the view. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature and foundation of duties to oneself in Kant's moral theory. Duties to oneself embody the requirement of the formula of humanity that agents respect rational nature in them-selves as well as in others. So understood, duties to oneself are not subject to the sorts of conceptual objections often raised against duties to oneself; nor do these duties support objections that Kant's moral theory is overly demanding or produces agents who are preoccupied with their own virtue. (...) Duties to oneself emerge as an essential and compelling part of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

Decision theory has at its core a set of mathematical theorems that connect rational preferences to functions with certain structural properties. The components of these theorems, as well as their bearing on questions surrounding rationality, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Philosophy’s current interest in decision theory represents a convergence of two very different lines of thought, one concerned with the question of how one ought to act, and the other concerned with the question of what action consists (...) in and what it reveals about the actor’s mental states. As a result, the theory has come to have two different uses in philosophy, which we might call the normative use and the interpretive use. It also has a related use that is largely within the domain of psychology, the descriptive use. This essay examines the historical development of decision theory and its uses; the relationship between the norm of decision theory and the notion of rationality; and the interdependence of the uses of decision theory. (shrink)

In this article I deal with Kant's concept of reflective judgment, and recover it through its links to the aesthetic dimension as its fundamental scenario. Then I go on to explain why Hannah Arendt understood this important Kantian connection, and why she thought it would allow her to develop it through a political dimension. Last, having reviewed both Kant and Arendt's contributions to the concept of reflective judgment, I recover my own input to the concept by showing its linguistic dimension (...) based on the Heideggerian notion of world-disclosure. With this in mind, I show how the concept of reflective judgment is the most suitable to analyze evil actions. (shrink)

This paper examines medical scientists’ accounts of their rediscoveries and reassessments of old materials. It looks at how historical patient files and brain samples of the first cases of Alzheimer’s disease became reused as scientific objects of inquiry in the 1990s, when a genetic neuropathologist from Munich and a psychiatrist from Frankfurt lead searches for left-overs of Alzheimer’s ‘founder cases’ from the 1900s. How and why did these researchers use historical methods, materials and narratives, and why did the biomedical community (...) cherish their findings as valuable scientific facts about Alzheimer’s disease? The paper approaches these questions by analysing how researchers conceptualised ‘history’ while backtracking and reassessing clinical and histological materials from the past. It elucidates six ways of conceptualising history as a biomedical matter: scientific assessments of the past, i.e. natural scientific understandings of ‘historical facts’; history in biomedicine, e.g. uses of old histological collections in present day brain banks; provenance research, e.g. applying historical methods to ensure the authenticity of brain samples; technical biomedical history, e.g. reproducing original staining techniques to identify how old histological slides were made; founding traditions, i.e. references to historical objects and persons within founding stories of scientific communities; and priority debates, e.g. evaluating the role particular persons played in the discovery of a disease such as Alzheimer’s. Against this background, the paper concludes with how the various ways of using and understanding ‘history’ were put forward to re-present historic cases as ‘proto-types’ for studying Alzheimer’s disease in the present. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether gathering additional evidence is always rationally required, both from the point of view of instrumental rationality and of epistemic rationality. It is shown that in certain situations, it is not instrumentally rational to look for more evidence before making a decision. These are situations in which the risk of “misleading” evidence – a concept that has both instrumental and epistemic senses – is not offset by the gains from the possibility of non-misleading evidence. (...) These situations also undermine a particular argument for the claim that it is epistemically rational to look for more evidence, though it is argued that the relationship between instrumental and epistemic rationality makes such arguments flawed to begin with. Furthermore, these situations show us that our epistemic and our practical goals sometimes point us in different directions, not merely because of our limited resources or because our desires are sometimes best served by being in particular epistemic states, but because of the nature of rational action. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that faith is recalcitrant in the face of new evidence, but it is puzzling how such recalcitrance could be rational or laudable. I explain this aspect of faith and why faith is not only rational, but in addition serves an important purpose in human life. Because faith requires maintaining a commitment to act on the claim one has faith in, even in the face of counter-evidence, faith allows us to carry out long-term, risky projects that we (...) might otherwise abandon. Thus, faith allows us to maintain integrity over time. (shrink)

Kant’s ethics conceives of rational beings as autonomous–capable of legislating the moral law, and of motivating themselves to act out of respect for that law. Kant’s ethics also includes a notion of the highest good, the union of virtue with happiness proportional to, and consequent on, virtue. According to Kant, morality sets forth the highest good as an object of the totality of all things good as ends. Much about Kant’s conception of the highest good is controversial. This paper focuses (...) on the apparent conflict between Kant’s claim that we are autonomous, and passages in which he seems to suggest that we require belief in the possibility of the highest good to motivate moral action. I distinguish three distinct versions of these problematic claims that seem to be present in Kant’s texts: that the highest good serves as (1) a motivational supplement to respect for the moral law, (2) a fundamental spring of right action, and (3) a condition of the bindingness of moral requirements. I argue that the texts are better interpreted to yield alternatives to (2) and (3) that do not conflict with our autonomy. I also argue that, properly understood, (1) does not conflict with our autonomy. In arguing for the last claim, I explore Kant’s notion of radical evil and its implications for human agency and virtue. (shrink)

In Kant scholarship the significance of the beauty of nature for Kant’s aesthetics has been traditionally favored over the beauty of art. By focusing on Kant’s characterization of genius as a gift of nature, my aim is to show that, in contrast to the already existing interpretations of this issue in Kant literature, the works of art as the works of genius can indeed serve as ‘signs’ that nature and the world as a whole is hospitable to the realization of (...) our moral ends, or is morally purposive. My claim that for Kant not only the beauty of nature but also the works of art as the works of genius serve as signs of world’s moral purposiveness, or of—in Dieter Henrich’s words—the “moral image of the world,” calls for a reevaluation of the role of art in Kant’s moral teleology and, consequently, for a reevaluation of the place of art in Kant’s aesthetics. (shrink)

The article considers the history of electroshock therapy as a history of medical technology, professional cooperation and business competition. A variation of a history from below is intended; though not from the patients’ perspective (Porter, Theory Soc 14:175–198, 1985), but with a focus on electrodes, circuitry and patents. Such a ‘material history’ of electroshock therapy reveals that the technical make-up of electroshock devices and what they were used for was relative to the changing interests of physicians, industrial companies and mental (...) health politics; it makes an intriguing case for the Social Construction of Technology theory (Bijker et al., The social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987). (shrink)

In the peer disagreement debate, three intuitively attractive claims seem to conflict: there is disagreement among peers on many important matters; peer disagreement is a serious challenge to one’s own opinion; and yet one should be able to maintain one’s opinion on important matters. I show that contrary to initial appearances, we can accept all three of these claims. Disagreement significantly shifts the balance of the evidence; but with respect to certain kinds of claims, one should nonetheless retain one’s beliefs. (...) And one should retain them even though these beliefs would not be supported by the new total evidence if one didn’t already hold them. (shrink)

Existing accounts of the early history of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on Alois Alzheimer’s (1864–1915) publications of two ‘peculiar cases’ of middle-aged patients who showed symptoms associated with senile dementia, and Emil Kraepelin’s (1856–1926) discussion of these and a few other cases under the newly introduced name of ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ in his Textbook of Psychiatry. This article questions the underpinnings of these accounts that rely mainly on publications and describe ‘presenility’ as a defining characteristic of the disease. Drawing on archival (...) research in the Munich psychiatric clinic, in which Alzheimer and Kraepelin practised, this article looks at the use of the category as a diagnostic label in practice. It argues that the first cases only got their exemplary status as key referents of Alzheimer’s disease in later readings of the original publications. In the 1900s, the published cases rather functioned as material to think about the limits of the category of senile dementia. The examination of paper technologies in the Munich psychiatric clinic reveals that the use of the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was not limited to patients of a certain age and did not exclude ‘senile’ cases. Moreover, the archival records reflect that many diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease were noted in the medical records as suspicions rather than conclusions. Against this background, the article argues that in theory and practice, Alzheimer’s disease was not treated as a well-defined disease entity in the Munich clinic, but as an exploratory category for the clinical and histopathological investigation of varieties of organic brain diseases. (shrink)

The moral enhancement of human beings is a constant theme in the history of humanity. Today, faced with the threats of a new, globalised world, concern over this matter is more pressing. For this reason, the use of biotechnology to make human beings more moral has been considered. However, this approach is dangerous and very controversial. The purpose of this article is to argue that the use of another new technology, AI, would be preferable to achieve this goal. Whilst several (...) proposals have been made on how to use AI for moral enhancement, we present an alternative that we argue to be superior to other proposals that have been developed. (shrink)

It is essential to engage the public in conservation measures to conserve insects. We investigate the Protection Motivation Theory, as well as knowledge, attitudes, and sociodemographic variables as predictors of willingness to donate and actual donations to insect conservation for a representative German sample. The PMT subcomponents severity, self-efficacy, and response efficacy, as well as attitudes toward insects, income, and education level, significantly predicted WTD. In contrast, severity, response barriers, age, gender, and the WTD significantly influenced actual donations. Overall, components (...) of the PMT have high predictive power for both dependent variables. Our results suggest that an intention-behavior gap exists between the intention to donate and the actual donation toward insect conservation. Measures to increase WTD and actual donations for insect conservation are discussed. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, containing the Doctrine of Right and Doctrine of Virtue, is his final major work of practical philosophy. Its focus is not rational beings in general but human beings in particular, and it presupposes and deepens Kant's earlier accounts of morality, freedom and moral psychology. In this volume of newly-commissioned essays, a distinguished team of contributors explores the Metaphysics of Morals in relation to Kant's earlier works, as well as examining themes which emerge from the text (...) itself. Topics include the relation between right and virtue, property, punishment, and moral feeling. Their diversity of questions, perspectives and approaches will provide new insights into the work for scholars in Kant's moral and political theory. (shrink)

Cultural aspects frame our perception of the world and direct the many different ways people interact with things in it. For this reason, these aspects should be considered when designing technology with the purpose to positively impact people in a community. In this paper, we revisit the foundations of culture aiming to bring this concept in dialogue with design. To inform design with cultural aspects, we model reality in three levels of formality: informal, formal, and technical, and subscribe to a (...) systemic vision that considers the technical solution as part of a more complex social system in which people live and interact. In this paper, we instantiate this theoretical and methodological view by presenting two case studies of technology design in which culture-based artefacts were employed to inform the design process. We claim that as important as including issues related to culture in the ICT design agenda—from the conception to the development, evaluation, and adoption of a technology—is the need to support the design process with adequate artefacts that help identifying cultural aspects within communities and translating them into sociotechnical requirements. We argue that a culturally informed perspective on design can go beyond an informative analysis, and can be integrated with the theoretical and methodological framework used to support design, throughout the entire design process. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza las relaciones entre el discurso ficcional y el discurso factual en las narrativas hispanoamericanas del siglo xix. En el análisis se considera que ambos discursos establecen una estrecha relación al interior de los textos que se han visto como parte de la literatura de ficción, así como en aquellos que se han clasificado como ensayísticos. Desde ahí se abre la posibilidad de analizar en términos narrativos obras que históricamente se han ubicado en un entre-medio de la crítica (...) historiográfica y la crítica literaria. El análisis propuesto considera el estudio de dos textos: El Periquillo Sarniento, de José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, y Mariluán, de Alberto Blest Gana. (shrink)

Notable examples of macaronics, the insertion of foreign vocabulary into poetry, are attributed to the well-known eighth-century poet, Abū Nuwās, who experimented with mixing Persian in his Arabic poetry but whose motivation remains unclear. This article looks at a selection of his and other macaronic verses ranging from the seventh to tenth centuries and argues that Persian was inserted deliberately as a marker of a Persian identity, standing for the “foreign Other.” Far from being a sign of a pro-Persian shuʿūbī (...) sentiment, the employment of Persian only reinforces the established hierarchy of the two identities in that period. By the tenth century, however, this hierarchy is cleverly flipped on its head in a macaronic poem by the popular Iraqi poet, Ibn al-Ḥajjāj. While many of the examples are comic and even obscene in character, this article shows that the employment of Persian in Arabic poetry was a deliberate practice with serious and meaningful implications. (shrink)

This is a survey article in which I explore some important recent work on the topic in question, Kant’s formula of the end in itself (or “formula of humanity”). I first provide an overview of the formulation, including what the formula seems roughly to be saying, and what Kant’s main argument for it seems to be. I then call the reader’s attention to a variety of questions one might have about the import of and argument for this formula, alluding to (...) some of the works in which philosophers have recently raised or tried to answer these questions. Then, for the bulk of the paper, I focus my discussion on two issues of contention: the identity of the “end in itself” that the formula refers to, and the relation between the value of the end in itself and the value of other ends. I do not attempt to argue for a particular position of my own regarding these issues. Instead, I explain a number of the more interesting or influential recent attempts to answer these questions, compare these approaches in various ways, draw implications from them, and raise concerns about some of them. I also suggest that an important link connects the question about the identity of the end in itself and the question about the relation between the value of the end in itself in relation to the value of other ends: How one answers these questions commits one to a position on the thorny issue of whether, how, and how fully, autonomy is manifested through empirical (not simply pure) practical reason. (shrink)

One phenomenon arising in epistemic life is allegiance to, and break from, a tradition. This phenomenon has three central features. First, individuals who adhere to a tradition seem to respond dogmatically to evidence against their tradition. Second, individuals from different traditions appear to see the same evidence differently. And third, conversion from one tradition to another appears to be different in kind from ordinary belief shift. This paper uses recent work on the nature and rationality of faith to show that (...) these features can all emerge from individuals acting rationally—in particular, from individuals rationally having faith in the core assumptions of their traditions. One upshot is that we don't need to employ the idea of incommensurability to explain these features. (shrink)

In secondary literature, Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is most commonly discussed within the context of Kant’s epistemology and the transcendental deduction, which was swiftly identified by the generation of young Kantians as a skeptical problem, i.e., the need to demonstrate that our a priori conditions of knowledge indeed determine their object. In this paper I argue that the central concern that motivates Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is better understood within the context of the question of unity of theoretical and practical reason with which Schelling (...) was familiar from his study of Kant’s third Critique. But unlike Kant, for whom the occurrences of beauty and organisms in the world exhibit a contingent harmony of nature with the demands of our rationality, Schelling demands a necessary correspondence between reason and nature. Schelling anchors the necessary correspondence between the self and nature in the claim that nature is not a dead object of self-consciousness, but that which is at the same time a subject and its own object. He takes the latter to be the essential characteristic of 'life'. Nature must not be conceived as a dead mechanism, but as a living organization and as an “analogue of reason” because to be one’s own subject and object defines both the spontaneity of self-consciousness and the spontaneity of self-determination. Thus, nature that is no longer represented mechanically, but as an “analogue of reason,” is nature that is necessarily amenable with both the minimal (i.e., cognitive) and final ends of our rationality (i.e., freedom). (shrink)

Basile and Lyssy’s volume is a collection of eleven essays published in honor of Günter Zöller and dedicated to the conceptions of system and freedom in Kant and Fichte, which have been central to Zöller’s research. The editors rightly emphasize that systematicity in Kant is related to metaphysics as a disposition of reason. For Kant, reason is teleological, namely, directed toward its final end, the realization of the highest good in the world. This is why Kant’s theoretical philosophy—his transcendental idealism (...) as a metaphysical doctrine— makes room for the possibility of freedom, while his practical philosophy shows freedom’s reality and the need of theoretical reason to cohere with the demands of practical... Read More. (shrink)

The progress of electronic health technologies and biobanks holds enormous promise for efficient research. Evidence shows that studies based on sharing and secondary use of data/samples have the potential to significantly advance medical knowledge. However, sharing of such resources for international collaboration is hampered by the lack of clarity about ethical and legal requirements for transfer of data and samples across international borders. Here, the International Clinical Trial Center Network reports the legal and ethical requirements governing data and sample exchange (...) across four continents. The most recurring requirement is ethical approval, whereas only in specific conditions approval of national health authorities is required. Informed consent is not required in all sharing situations. However, waiver of informed consent is only allowed in certain countries/regions and under certain circumstances. The current legal and ethical landscape appears to be very complex and under constant evolution. Regulations differ between countries/regions and are often incomplete, leading to uncertainty. With this work, ICN illuminates the unmet need for a single international collaborative framework to facilitate DSE. Harmonising requirements for global DSE will reduce inefficiency and waste in research. There are many challenges to realising this ambitious vision, including inconsistent terminology and definitions, and heterogeneous and dynamic legal constraints. Here, we identify areas of agreement and significant difference as a necessary first step towards facilitating international collaboration. We propose the establishment of a working group to continue the comparison across jurisdictions, create a standardised glossary and define a set of basic principles and fundamental requirements for DSE. (shrink)

Aby Warburg a accordé une attention particulière au monstre comme motif iconographique mais aussi comme notion abstraite impliquant un certain type de rapport du sujet au réel. Pour comprendre ce qu’il entendait par la « causalité monstrueuse » et la « dialectique du monstre », l’article fait retour sur ses Fragments sur l’expression (1888-1903) et les met en parallèle avec les « Mnemosyne Allgemeine Ideen » et les « Mnemosyne Grundbegriffe I et II » (1927-1929) qui devaient accompagner le célèbre (...) Atlas Mnémosyne. Le monstre apparaît alors non comme un innommable qui résiste à la rationalité mais comme un des points d’appui du sujet rationnel dans son effort pour élaborer un espace de pensée. (shrink)

Kant’s Third Analogy of Experience seeks to establish the mutual interaction of all objects of experience as a transcendental condition on the possibility of our experience of coexistence, and by extension of any cohesive or unified experience. Of Kant’s three Analogies, the Third has received both the least attention and the most criticism. I present an analysis of the Third Analogy focussing on the spatial aspect of Kant’s argument. I examine the interrelated nature of the forms of inner and outer (...) sense in the Third Analogy, linking this to their function in the Transcendental Deduction and subsequently turning to look at the problem posed by Kant’s argument regarding empty space in the Third Analogy. I present a tentative interpretation whereby the Third Analogy establishes a mutual dependence between space as a singular pure intuition, and the instantiation of the category of community in experience. (shrink)