Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

There are two bodies of literature, one offering theories of the legitimacy of domestic institutions like states, another offering theories of the legitimacy of international institutions like the IMF. Accounts of domestic legitimacy stress the importance of democratic procedure, while few to no theorists make democracy a necessary condition for the legitimacy of international institutions. In this paper, I ask whether this asymmetry can be defended. Is there a unified higher-order theory which can explain why legitimacy requires democracy in the (...) domestic context, but not in the international context? I argue that no proceduralist higher-order theory succeeds, and that we need to look for other solutions. (shrink)

This paper argues that data-driven medicine gives rise to a particular normative challenge. Against the backdrop of a distinction between the good and the right, harnessing personal health data towards the development and refinement of data-driven medicine is to be welcomed from the perspective of the good. Enacting solidarity drives progress in research and clinical practice. At the same time, such acts of sharing could—especially considering current developments in big data and artificial intelligence—compromise the right by leading to injustices and (...) affecting concrete modes of individual self-determination. In order to address this potential tension, two key elements for ethical reflection on data-driven medicine are proposed: the controllability of information flows, including technical infrastructures that are conducive towards controllability, and a paradigm shift towards output-orientation in governance and policy. (shrink)

Some authors have argued that legitimacy without authority is possible, though their work has not found much uptake in mainstream political philosophy. I provide an improved model how legitimate political institutions without authority are possible, the Transmission Model, which I couple with a thin substantive position, the Moral Value View. I defend the model against three common objections.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Some moral value is transparent just in case an agent with average mental capacities can feasibly come to know whether some entity does, or does not, possess that value. In this paper, I consider whether legitimacy—that is, the property of exercises of political power to be permissible—is transparent. Implicit in much theorising about legitimacy is the idea that it is. I will offer two counter-arguments. First, injustice can defeat legitimacy, and injustice can be intransparent. Second, legitimacy can play a critical (...) function in our practical thought, which sometimes requires intransparency. (shrink)

Some European countries legally recognise a “right to roam”—a right to freely traverse across land, even if privately owned. Political philosophers have paid little attention to the right, and have often conceptualised property rights to include strong claim-rights to exclude others. I offer an account of the right to roam, and consider whether it can be philosophically justified on a left-liberal account of property. After finding a defence in terms of the interests served by the right lacking, I suggest that (...) the most promising defence of the right to roam is that it serves as a symbolic reminder of a fundamental type of social equality. (shrink)

One of the most common arguments in favour of the state's authority is that without the coordinating hand of political institutions, we could not achieve important moral benefits. I argue that if we understand authority correctly, then coordination cannot even in principle establish that coordinators have political authority.

It is common in the literature to claim that legitimacy is the right to rule and that, accordingly, Hohfeldian rights analysis can be used to understand the concept. However, we argue that authors in the legitimacy literature have not generally realised the full potential of Hohfeldian analysis. We discuss extant approaches in the literature that conceptually identify legitimacy with one particular Hohfeldian incident, or, more rarely, a determinate set of incidents. Against these views, and building on parallel debates in property (...) theory, we suggest that Hohfeldian analysis pushes one towards the claim that legitimacy possesses no determinate essence. We provide a rationale for this novel view and disarm a series of objections. (shrink)

In today’s world, Artificial Intelligence plays a central role in many decision-making processes. However, its use can lead to structural and epistemic injustices—especially in the context of healt...

Tradition is a complex phenomenon of which we can find a multiplicity of conceptualizations in the philosophical, sociological, anthropological, and economic literature. In this paper, I offer both a critical and a constructive contribution to answering the question of how tradition should be conceptualized. In the critical part, I argue against attempts to construct a unified conception of tradition. In the constructive part, I discuss three taxonomies proposed in the literature and then develop an analytical grid for conceptions of tradition (...) as an alternative. This analytical grid is based on a sample of 28 accounts of tradition sourced from the contemporary scholarly literature, and makes use of seven dimensions to distinguish among these conceptions. (shrink)

In the article ‘Represent Me: Please! Towards an Ethics of Digital Twins in Medicine’, I analysed and tried to better understand the main ethical challenges associated with Digital Twins. For those who are just entering the debate with this article: DT is a metaphor for a bundle of artificial intelligence driven simulation technologies that constantly, in real time and ad personam simulate single or multiple parts of the body and make predictions about future health states based on these simulations. My (...) argument addresses the need to look at the breadth of challenges through a perspective of representation. From such a take, key consequences can be drawn for the further development of such technologies, the required means of control and not least the way to think about the interaction between humans and ‘their’ simulations. I am very grateful for the subsequent suggestions, criticisms and further arguments, which have helped me to elaborate my arguments more clearly and have led to a substantial advancement of the debate and the discussion about ethical questions in dealing with DT. Jenny Blumenthal-Barby,1 Deborah Lupton,2 Jenny Krutzinna,3 Janina Loh,4 Brent Mittelstadt,5 Sven Nyholm,6 Daniel Tigard7 and Max Tretter8 have made excellent points, which, in the following, I will not be able to reply to individually and in detail. In this response, I will try to bundle the open points and questions along the comments and considerations mentioned above and attempt to outline their significance for an ethics of DT. Four challenges seem to be central. A first point addresses anthropological issues. It is concerned …. (shrink)

It is increasingly common in the philosophical literature to claim that political legitimacy, normatively understood, comes in degrees. However, most authors fail to specify what talk of degrees means, and the notion remains opaque. Using the Hohfeld schema as a guide, I survey possible accounts, distinguishing them into “width”, “depth”, and “weight” proposals. I argue that each fails to provide a convincing account of scalar legitimacy. Thus, talk of degrees of legitimacy, as currently used, is in serious need of explanation.

I defend the idea that objects and events in three-dimensional space are part of the derivative ontology of quantum mechanics, rather than its fundamental ontology. The main objection to this idea stems from the question of how it can endow local beables with physical salience, as opposed to mere mathematical definability. I show that the responses to this objection in the previous literature are insufficient, and I provide the necessary arguments to render them successful. This includes demonstrating the legitimacy of (...) dynamical considerations in the derivation of local beables and responding to the threat stemming from the availability of different sets of local beables in the context of the GRW theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a re-interpretation of qualitative and quantitative modeling from a representationalist perspective. In this view, both approaches attempt to construct abstract representations of empirical relational structures. Whereas quantitative research uses variable-based models that abstract from individual cases, qualitative research favors case-based models that abstract from individual characteristics. Variable-based models are usually stated in the form of quantified sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about individual cases are derived using deductive reasoning. In contrast, case-based models are (...) usually stated using context-dependent existential sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about other cases are justifiable by inductive reasoning. We apply this representationalist perspective to the problems of generalization and replication. Using the analytical framework of modal logic, we argue that the modes of reasoning are often not only applied to the context that has been studied empirically, but also on a between-contexts level. Consequently, quantitative researchers mostly adhere to a top-down strategy of generalization, whereas qualitative researchers usually follow a bottom-up strategy of generalization. Depending on which strategy is employed, the role of replication attempts is very different. In deductive reasoning, replication attempts serve as empirical tests of the underlying theory. Therefore, failed replications imply a faulty theory. From an inductive perspective, however, replication attempts serve to explore the scope of the theory. Consequently, failed replications do not question the theory per se, but help to shape its boundary conditions. We conclude that quantitative research may benefit from a bottom-up generalization strategy as it is employed in most qualitative research programs. Inductive reasoning forces us to think about the boundary conditions of our theories and provides a framework for generalization beyond statistical testing. In this perspective, failed replications are just as informative as successful replications, because they help to explore the scope of our theories. (shrink)

In his action theory, John Dewey makes use of the concept of capability to highlight the way human capacities depend on the environment and the character of an agent. In his capability approach, Amartya Sen likewise refers to the environment by discussing the role of conversion factors. Yet, he abstains from a discussion of character development, presumably in order to allow for a variety of conceptions of the good and ways in which characters can develop. In this paper, I develop (...) the outlines of a pragmatist capability theory by enriching the core concepts of Sen’s capability approach with the Deweyan notions of habit and character. In this way, the role of the environment in the capability approach can be reaffirmed and supplemented by a notion of character development. Subsequently, I explore the implications of this framework for Sen’s notions of impartiality and freedom. The result is a pragmatist capability theory which builds on Sen’s conceptual framework and puts additional emphasis on character development and sensitivity to one’s environment. (shrink)

I would like to know who of mycontemporaries should be more competent inKantian philosophy than me.(Schopenhauer in a letter to Rosenkranz and Schubert, 18371)In this paper the attempt is made to show how Schopenhauer's critique of Kant leads from initial disagreements to a fundamental modification, even a new formation, of the Kantian concepts of understanding, reason, imagination, perception, idea and thing-in-itself. The starting point and the core of his critique is the demand for the appreciation of intuitive knowledge which is (...) apart from and independent of reason. The intuitive knowledge goes back to images and its highest form is aesthetic contemplation. Without a participation of concepts it is sufficient to explain objective reality. Particularly on the basis of Schopenhauer's critical examination of Kant's schematism it can be shown that his alternative conception of an image-based objectivity of experience is to be taken seriously, even if the way he presents it sometimes gives the impression of a mere misunderstanding of Kant's theory of cognition. (shrink)

Fathom is a sound installation by Jane Grant and John Matthias, which was commissioned by the River Tamar Project and was premiered at the Factory Cooperage Building in Royal William Yard, Plymouth, UK in September 2013. Visitors entering the installation were able to hear live and edited sound recorded underwater in Plymouth Sound, a large estuarine body of water from which the Plym, Tamar and Hamaoze Rivers flow into the sea. Six-step ladders in the centre of the installation space (...) surrounded by several additional speakers enabled visitors to climb out of the underwater sonic environment, above the fathom, and hear live acoustic sound relayed by microphones above the water. The artists worked with a team including production manager, Simon Honywill and Martin Audio to create a sonic ‘surface’ 6ft above the ground to enable this to happen. This article will describe how Fathom was created and, in particular, will focus on how the creation of the sonic surface affected the way in which the visiting public interacted with the work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Pure Subject of Cognition The Artist as Pure Subject of Cognition Notes References Further Reading.

In the academic world, Joseph Margolis is best known as the proponent of a particular combination of radical historicism and robust relativism. In his publications, he argues that “humankind is the measure of all things” with regard to aesthetics, history, natural and social sciences, and philosophy. In doing so, he effortlessly interacts with authors from the continental, pragmatist, and analytic traditions. His book Three Paradoxes of Personhood is a collection of the three Venetian lecture...

Das Denken Martin Heideggers ist von der Auseinandersetzung mit der antiken Philosophie geprägt. Die klassischen Texte werden jedoch nicht bloß als historische Dokumente aus einer fernen Zeit verstanden, sondern vielmehr als Grundtexte, die dem heutigen Philosophieren etwas zu sagen haben. Gerade dem Anfang der Geschichte gilt es laut Heidegger nachzuspüren, um die Ausprägung der ontologischen Grundbegriffe deutlich zu machen und sich von dort her Alternativen für ein zukünftiges Denken aufgeben zu lassen. Dieser Band versammelt unterschiedliche Bezugnahmen auf Heideggers Lektüre der (...) Antike von Heraklit über Platon und Aristoteles bis hin zu Augustinus, die den Verlauf seiner Gespräche durchleuchten und hinterfragen, ja im besten Fall in eigenständiger Weise fortzuführen im Stande sind. (shrink)

In this article, we use the account of the “inhuman” that is developed in the work of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard to develop a critique of human-centred AI. We argue that Lyotard’s philosophy not only provides resources for a negative critique of human-centred AI discourse, but also contains inspiration for a more constructive account of how the discourse around human-centred AI can take a broader view of the human that includes key dimensions of Lyotard’s inhuman, namely performativity, vulnerability, and (...) novelty. We link these dimensions to questions of epistemic injustice and social recognition. In this way, we hope to develop a proposal for what a richer and more meaningful understanding of human-centred AI might look like. (shrink)

Definition of the Problem: One of the main ethical arguments against the therapeutic transplantation of fetal tissue in severe cases of Parkinson’s disease is the allegation that the relationship between the abortion and the transplantation is a (bad)-means-to-a-(good)-end-relation.Arguments: This paper differentiates between the actual experimental single-case treatment and a potential mass treatment. In the former case, ethical guidelines seem to guarantee that abortion and transplantation are two distinct actions and therefore abortion is not a means to the end transplantation on (...) principle. However, in the latter case – the potential mass treatment of patients with more severe cases of Parkinson’s disease – there seem to be several technical, logistical and psychological reasons for the impossibility to distinguish between abortion and transplantation.Conclusion: Although abortion is not a means to the end transplantation as a matter of principle the ethical problems of a mass treatment would be immense. (shrink)

During my preparations for this lecture, I realized that the German Coordinating Group had already sponsored a lecture with the title “On the struggle against Anti-Semitism today” in 1962.1 At that time they invited a more prominent speaker—a person whom I esteem and admire, Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno's suggestions for combating anti-Semitism remain relevant today, a point to which I will return later. Anti-Semitism itself, however, which at that time Adorno attributed to an “excessive nationalism,” has changed its form of (...) appearance. First of all, hostility against Jews today is directed less against the Jewish minority in Europe and more…. (shrink)

Schopenhauer gilt als Vorreiter oder erster Vertreter der Lebensphilosophie, wie sie später von Dilthey, Nietzsche, Bergson und anderen entfaltet wurde. Im Unterschied zur klassischen Lebensphilosophie und zu den an sie anknüpfenden ethischen Entwürfen wird das Leben bei Schopenhauer aber nicht als Zweck betrachtet, sondern als Mittel zu einem anderen Zweck, nämlich für die Ethik, die in der Verneinung des Willens zum Leben gipfelt. Schon in den frühesten handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen verwendet Schopenhauer verschiedene Metaphern, um das Leben als Medium der ethischen Erkenntnis (...) zu charakterisieren. Besonders häufig tritt dabei das Bild vom Leben als Spiegel auf, in dem der Mensch sein eigenes Wesen und damit auch das Wesen der Welt erblickt. Im Hauptwerk wird dann dieses Bild vom Begriff der Objektivation des Willens abgelöst. Insofern die höchste und deutlichste Objektivation des Willens der Lebenslauf des menschlichen Individuums darstellt, ist Schopenhauers Lebensbegriff eng mit seiner Charakterlehre verknüpft. In dem Beitrag wird das verwickelte Verhältnis von Leben, Erkennen und Ethik vor dem Hintergrund der proto-hermeneutischen Metaphysikkonzeption Schopenhauers anhand der Entwicklung der Spiegelmetapher betrachtet. Schopenhauer is said to be precursor or first exponent of the philosophy of life as it has been developed later on by Dilthey, Nietzsche, Bergson and others. However, in contrast to classical philosophy of life and to the ethical conceptions going back to it, in Schopenhauer life is not viewed as an end but as a means to another end, namely to the ethics which culminates in the denial of the will-to-live. Already in the earliest hand-written manuscripts Schopenhauer uses different metaphors in order to characterize life as a medium of ethical knowledge. In particular the image of life as a mirror in which a human being sees his own nature and thus realizes the essence of the world often occurs. In the mature work this image is replaced by the concept of objectivation of will. As far as the highest and clearest objectivation of will is the life story of a human individual Schopenhauer’s concept of life is bound up with his theory of character. In my essay I consider the complicated relationship between life, knowledge and ethics in Schopenhauer on the background of his proto-hermeneutic metaphysics by following the development of his use of the mirror-metaphor. (shrink)

Mit dem Problem des Verhaltnisses von Wissenschaft und Ethik ist die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Wissen und Handeln wieder akut geworden. Auf der Interpretation zweier Philosophen aufbauend, die zu Beginn des technischen Zeitalters die Frage nach dem Verhaltnis von Wissen und Handeln scheinbar in entgegengesetzter Weise beantwortet haben, wird in dieser Untersuchung der Begriff der ethischen Erfahrung entwickelt. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass die immer als Gegensatze aufgefassten Philosophien Hegels und Schopenhauers sich in der Sache nur um eine Nuance (...) unterscheiden. In diesem Spannungsfeld aber wird die Bedeutung des ethischen Erfahrungsbegriffs offenbar, der eine Grundlage zur Erfassung und Beurteilung des Zusammenhangs von Wissen und Moralitat bietet.". (shrink)

Immer öfter werden der Natur eigene Rechte zugesprochen. Rund um den Globus helfen sie gefährdeten Ökosystemen, sich gegen schädliche Wirtschaftsinteressen zu verteidigen. Seit ihrer Einführung in die ecuadorianische Verfassung im Jahre 2008 wurden Rechte der Natur unter anderem in Bolivien, Kanada, Kolumbien, Neuseeland und den USA eingeführt. Zuletzt in Spanien zum Schutz einer Salzwasserlagune. Dieses Buch zeigt, wie die Idee der Rechte der Natur entstand, wie sie immer mehr an Fahrt aufnahm und wie sie uns künftig helfen kann, die Natur (...) und gefährdete Ökosysteme zu schützen. Dabei begibt es sich auf die Reise durch verschiedene Länder und Kontinente und stellt konkrete Anwendungsfälle und Initiativen vor. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to refute the aphorism “There is no arguing about taste”. On the one hand, judgements of taste arise from individual feelings, on the other hand, they claim to be universally valid. The question of whether there can be sensible dispute about taste arises from this conflict between subjectivity and universality. The article shows how sensible dispute is possible without denying the subjective character of the judgement. Dispute leads to an explication of the standard that (...) determined the individual judgement of taste. Based on this, three stages of sensible dispute open up: adjustment of the standard, improvement of the standard, and idealisation of the standard. Thus, the article demonstrates not only that it is possible to argue about taste in a sensible way, but also on which levels such a dispute can take place. (shrink)