Eine nähere Untersuchung des semantischen Wahrheitsbegriffes von Tarski ergibt, daß diesen die von konsenstheoretischer Seite gegen ihn vorgebrachten Einwände nicht zu treffen vermögen. Indem Tarski den Wahrheitsbegriff auf eine nur für formale Systeme anwendbare Definition zusammenzieht, vermag er den Aporien der älteren korrespondenztheoretischen Versuche zu entgehen, muß dafür allerdings eine weitgehende praktische Bedeutungslosigkeit in Kauf nehmen, weil er weder ein Wahrheitskriterium noch gar einen Weg der Verifikation angibt. Dies nun jedoch stellt genau die Leistung der Konsenstheorie dar: der Konsens der (...) Beratenden liefert Definition, Kriterium und Verifikation der Wahrheit zugleich. Die Aufgabe einer schlüssigen Begründung dieser Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit wird am Beispiel von Habermas untersucht, wobei sich ergibt, daß eine transzendental vorgehende Argumentationsstrategie sich in Naturalismus- und Idealismusprobleme verstrickt. (shrink)

Purpose The idea of television as a space for cultural and local wisdom has been enthusiastically welcomed by many parties. Regrettably, this expectation proves to be nothing more than an empty hope. Indonesian national television rarely broadcasts content with local cultural nuances. National television broadcast is filled with popular and global cultural content. Only local television tries hard to remain the last guardian of Indonesian culture and local wisdom. Several studies have raised the issue of local television broadcast content but (...) have not succeeded in explaining the dynamics that occur in the management of local television to maintain and inherit local culture. This study aims to fill this gap. Design/methodology/approach This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive method with interview techniques as data collection methods. Findings Indonesian local television continues to struggle to become the guardian for the sustainability of Indonesian local culture by emphasizing its market segmentation and trying to meet their needs, trying hard to implement intensification and extensification strategies, continuing to struggle to balance the onslaught of global culture and relying on government agencies as a nice market. However, the role and support of the government are greatly needed. Without it, local television will surely fall. Originality/value This research reflects the dynamics that occur in the management of local television which is very challenging. By revealing the struggles that local television goes through in fortifying local culture and the minimal role of the Indonesian government, this research contributes to the development of sustainable strategies and the inheritance of local culture in this global era. (shrink)

The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late (...) capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. (shrink)

In 1850, Jacob Frerichs produced the first and until now the only edition of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s important lectures on Practical Theology. It is a mix and compilation of students’ transcripts from six different semesters, redundant and at times contradictory, which doesn’t correspond to Schleiermacher’s actual lectures. Most of the transcripts used by Frerichs are still preserved and have now been evaluated for a new edition of Schleiermacher’s Practical Theology. This article disassembles Frerichs’ edition into its components giving evidence for every (...) text passage from which source Frerichs took it. (shrink)

This article focuses stakeholder theory on that critical juncture where stakeholder relationships and corporate policy decisions converge. A case study methodology is described that permits detailed analyses of multiple stakeholders’ objectives; it is suitable for studies of major corporate strategic decisions that are complex, controversial, involve multiple stakeholders, and require strategic trade-offs. The methodology is applied here to the dramatic decision by a Pacific Northwest forest company to phase out traditional clear-cut harvesting methods of old-growth forests. The study’s findings point (...) to new research questions and have theoretical implications for a finer grained conceptualization of stakeholder groups, stakeholder objectives, and stakeholder issues. (shrink)

In his Metaphysics of Morals (particularly in the Doctrine of Virtue), but also in other late works, Kant extends and refines the content of his earlier works on ethics (Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason) to a considerable extent. These revisions and extensions not only show the limitations of an exclusive interpretation of Kants ethics as a deontological ethics of principles. His thoughts are also relevant for a large number of questions of theoretical morality currently under discussion. Thus, the distinction (...) drawn in the Doctrine of Virtue between perfect and imperfect obligations informs the problem of the solvability of moral conflicts and the role of supererogatory actions. Kant goes further into the question of what it means to be a good person, what moral significance is contained in close human ties such as friendship, and what role is played by happiness and the so-called obligations towards oneself. The papers each discuss Kants central ideas in the context of his earlier writings, but also within the context of our contemporary ethical debates. Thus attention is drawn to the significance and possible extent of an ethics of virtue understood in the Kantian sense. (shrink)

Extrapolation from a well-understood base population to a less-understood target population can fail if the base and target populations are not sufficiently similar. Differences between laboratory mice and humans, for example, can hinder extrapolation in medical research. Mice that carry a partial or complete human physiological system, known as humanized mice, are supposed to make extrapolation more reliable by simulating a variety of human diseases. But what justifies our belief that these mice are similar enough to their human counterparts to (...) simulate human disease? I argue that, unless three requirements are met in the process of humanizing mice, very little does. My requirements are not meant to provide necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee a particular outcome. Instead, they serve as a heuristic for guiding scientific judgments involving extrapolation. In developing each requirement, I engage with philosophical issues concerning the nature of model-based science and the mechanistic approach (and its limits) to making generalizations in the life sciences. (shrink)

Human–nonhuman chimeras have been the focus of ethical controversies for more than a decade, yet some related issues remain unaddressed. For example, little has been said about the relationship between the origin of transferred cells and the morally relevant capacities to which they may give rise. Consider, for example, a developing mouse fetus that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a human and another that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a dolphin. If both chimeras acquire morally relevant (...) capacities as a result of transplantation, and if those capacities are indistinguishable, should the difference in cell origin matter to how we classify these creatures? I argue that if morally relevant capacities are easy to detect, cell origin is irrelevant to how the chimera ought to be treated. However, if such capacities are hard to detect, cell origin should play a role in considerations about how to treat the chimera. (shrink)

Comparative genomicists seem to be convinced that the unit of measurement employed in their studies is a gene that drives the function of cells and ultimately organisms. As a result, they have come to some substantive conclusions about how similar humans are to other organisms based on the percentage of genetic makeup they share. I argue that the actual unit of measurement employed in the studies corresponds to a structural rather than a functional gene concept, thus rendering many of the (...) implications drawn from comparative genomic studies largely unwarranted, if not completely mistaken. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, 215 South Central Campus Drive, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building, 4th Floor, Salt Lake City, UT 84112; e‐mail: monika[email protected]. (shrink)

The current study investigated age differences in the use of attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression while regulating responses to sadness-eliciting content. We also tested to what extent these emotion regulation strategies were useful for each age group in managing response to age-relevant sad information. Forty-two young participants (Mage = 18.5, SE =.15) and 48 older participants (Mage = 71.42, SE = 1.15) watched four sadness-eliciting videos (about death/illness, four to five minutes long) under four conditions—no-regulation (no regulation instructions), attentional (...) deployment (divert attention away), positive reappraisal (focus on positive outcomes) and suppression (conceal emotional expressions). We assessed negative emotional experience, expression, skin conductance level (SCL) and visual fixation duration while participants watched the emotional clips and followed the instructions for each condition. Results suggest that older adults were more successful than younger adults at implementing both attentional deployment and positive reappraisal. Ability to suppress emotions appears to remain stable with age. Within age-group comparisons suggested that for the older adults, positive reappraisal was a more useful emotion regulation strategy than the others, while the pattern among younger adults was less conclusive. Age-relevant differences in motivation and successful emotion regulatory efforts based on theoretical and empirical literatures are discussed. (shrink)

The notion of empathy has been explicated in different ways in the current debate on how to understand others. Whereas defenders of simulation-based approaches claim that empathy involves some kind of isomorphism between the empathizer’s and the target’s mental state, defenders of the phenomenological account vehemently deny this and claim that empathy allows us to directly perceive someone else’s mental states. Although these views are typically presented as being opposed, I argue that at least one version of a simulation-based approach—the (...) account given by de Vignemont and Jacob—is compatible with the direct-perception view. My argument has two parts: My first step is to show that the conflict between these accounts is not—as it seems at first glance—a disagreement on the mechanism by which empathy comes about. Rather, it is due to the fact that their proponents attribute two very different roles to empathy in understanding others. My second step is to introduce Stein’s account of empathy. By not restricting empathy to either one of these two roles, her process model of empathy helps to see how the divergent intuitions that have been brought forward in the current debate could be integrated. (shrink)

The development of the modern democratic society depends upon the successful integration of main democratic values in all its spheres, including education. Schools are faced with these challenges as well. The main role in the process of school change is given to the school principal, who is the leader of every innovation in school. One out of many types of school leadership is called democratic school leadership. One of the goals of such leadership is the development of school culture that (...) is based on democratic values and practices. Further on, the development of democratic school leadership opens an opportunity for students and teachers to gain knowledge an develop skills needed for them to become active citizens in their communities. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing literature in the field of democratic school leadership. Special focus is on the theoretical and practical operationalization of the democratic school leadership as it is presented the literature. Further, we shall analyze the possible answers to the questions of why and how to develop the democratic school leadership, and what is its role in the development of the democratic school community. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the vice of misanthropy particularly as it manifests itself in people who love nature. Misanthropy is a hatred and disgust of humans, particularly of a group of humans. I look to wilderness to illustrate the vice of misanthropy. With regard to wilderness, misanthropy functions in three distinct spheres. First, there is misanthropy in the use of wilderness to flee other people. Second, there is misanthropy in the assumption that humans taint the wilderness. Finally, there (...) is misanthropy in the assumption that humans can only relate to nature in a way that is harmful. In the end, we need to avoid misanthropy and its attendant despair. It is important that we see ourselves, not as a determined mass of people, but rather as individual people who are able to create positive change. (shrink)

Die Unverzichtbarkeit der Beratung bzw. Prüfung einer medizinischen Studie durch eine Ethikkommission ist weithin anerkannt. Dennoch sind Forschungsethikkommissionen immer wieder der Kritik, z.B. nach mehr Effizienz, Transparenz oder Konsistenz ausgesetzt. Evaluationsinstrumente für Ethikkommissionen beinhalten oft implizite Vorstellungen „guter“ Qualität. Aus ethischer Sicht sind vor allem der Schutz der Versuchsperson und eine vertretbare Schaden-Nutzen-Bewertung wichtig. Der interdisziplinäre Sammelband geht der Frage auf den Grund, wie sich eine Qualitätsverbesserung aus ethischer Sicht gewährleisten und umsetzen lässt. Der Inhalt · Ethikkommissionen im rechtlichen und (...) ethischen Diskurs · Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen von Ethikkommissionen in der Schweiz und organisatorische und prozedurale Qualitätskriterien · Forschungs-Ethikkommissionen in der Schweiz: Qualitätsbewertung aus ethischer Sicht · Ethikkommissionen als Patientenschutzkommissionen · Die ethische Aufgabe von Ethikkommissionen angesichts normativer Divergenz von Therapie und Forschung · Ethische Theorien und die Bewertung von Forschungsvorhaben · Kriterien für die ethische Qualität des Begutachtungsprozesses · Schutz der Versuchsperson: Forderungen aus ethischer Sicht zur Struktur-, Prozess- und Ergebnisqualität Die Herausgeber Prof. Dr. Monika Bobbert lehrt und forscht zur Moraltheologie und Medizinethik an der Universität Münster. Dr. Gregor Scherzinger ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Sozialethik der Universität Luzern. (shrink)

Ex-gay ministries, like many evangelical groups, advocate traditional gender ideologies. But their discourses and practices generate masculine ideals that are quite distinct from hegemonic ones. I argue that rather than simply reproducing hegemonic masculinity, ex-gay ministries attempt to realize godly masculinity, an ideal that differs significantly from hegemonic masculinity and is explicitly critical of it. I discuss three aspects of the godly masculine ideal—de-emphasizing heterosexual conquest, inclusive masculinity, and homo-intimacy—that work to subvert hegemonic masculinity and allow ministry members to critique (...) it while still advocating for innate gender distinction and hierarchy. I conclude by arguing that gender theorists need to be more precise in distinguishing conservative religious masculinities from hegemonic ones. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions pose a notorious challenge to those concerned with the rational explanation of action. The standard view has it that an agent's desires and means‐end beliefs rationally explain his actions, in the sense that his desire‐belief conglomerates are seen as reasons for which he acts. In light of this view, philosophers are divided on the question of whether actions expressing emotions fall short of being rational, or whether the standard model simply needs to be revised to accommodate them (...) as rational. In this paper, I will show that a core class of actions expressing emotions can be explained as rational, yet not within the framework of the standard model. Instead, such actions can be thought of as grounded in reasons provided by the evaluative perspective that an agent has acquired over time, and by which he has come to identify himself. What moves him to act expressively is the fact that he faces rational pressure to revise or re‐affirm his ongoing evaluative perspective in light of changes in his environment that call that very perspective into question. Such expressive actions serve the function of helping the agent re‐adapt to the environment and re‐establish coherence within his evaluative perspective so as to avoid inner division. (shrink)

Article III of the U.S. Constitution establishes an independent federal judiciary: federal courts constitute a separate branch of the national government, federal judges enjoy tenure during good behavior, and their salaries cannot be diminished while they hold office. The framers who drafted Article III in 1787 were not working from whole cloth. Rather, they were familiar with the preceding colonial and state practices, including those from New York. This essay provides a case study of New York's judicial history: the Dutch (...) period, 1621-1664; the Ducal proprietary period, 1664-1685; the Royal period, 1685-1776; and the early state period. As will be seen, New York—among the most significant of the original thirteen states—was a state groping towards a new ideal of judicial independence: an ideal that became a reality a decade after its own constitution was enacted in 1777 and at a different level of government. Significantly, the uncertain status of New York's judiciary had profound consequences for the ultimate expression of judicial independence, judicial review. (shrink)

The two books surveyed in this review article have, despite containing quite different subject matter, two important aspects in common: they both try to push the borders of Ottoman historiography and to be truly innovative. The first does that within the challenging new topic of identity—in the first place Ottoman identity, but quite often another kind, sometimes expressed in the life of one person—and the second deals with a much more technical area, that of Ottoman law, challenging several of the (...) theoretical assumptions and conclusions of the former generation of Ottoman legal scholars. (shrink)