[Omslag] Was is Sprache? Vom Wort als Laut und Gedanke bis zur Verwirklichung der Sprache als bedeutungsgeladenes Schweigen. Das Thema der Sprache kann und wird von verschiedenen Blickwinkeln behandelt: Sprache als Grammatik, als Baustein der Gedanken, als Kommunikationsmittel, als Kunst, als Ausdruck einer Kultur, einer Weltansicht... Aber was ist Sprache in ihrem wahren Sein? Ist Sprache wirklich bloß Wort? Oder ist Sprache doch ein komplexes, dynamisches Phänomen, welches sich auf mehreren Ebenen ereignet: Ebenen, die sich gegenseitig bedingen, voraussetzen und wesenhaft (...) erst definieren? Liegt die wesenhafte Verwirklichung der Sprache vielleicht in einem scheinbaren Paradox: in einem bedeutungsgeladenen Schweigen? Der vorliegende Versuch einer Sprachontologie befasst sich mit diesen Fragen und untersucht Augustinus, Martin Heidegger und Hans-Georg Gadamer auf ihr Verständnis des Seins der Sprache. (shrink)

Francis Remedios provides important criticisms of Fuller's position and Fuller's responses to philosophical debates, as well as reconstructions of Fuller's arguments. The result is a carefully argued, in-depth analysis of the work of a very important philosopher of science."--Jacket.

In dieser Studie untersucht Monika Palowski das kontrovers diskutierte Phänomen der Klassenwiederholung erstmals aus Perspektive der Wissenssoziologischen Diskursanalyse. Anhand von insgesamt über 700 Texten aus Erziehungswissenschaft und Printmedien werden machtvolle Diskursstränge und -formationen rekonstruiert, die nicht nur die Wahrnehmung von Klassenwiederholung und schulischer Selektion, sondern auch der betroffenen Subjekte je spezifisch präfigurieren und dadurch Klassenwiederholung teils auch legitimieren. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse sind daher einerseits für die erziehungswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit schulischer Selektion und Bildungsungerechtigkeit relevant, andererseits aber auch für die (...) Diskurs- und Subjektivierungsforschung. (shrink)

La migración internacional es parte de la globalización, todos los países desarrollados han recibido un gran número de inmigrantes. España también ha recibido a alta cantidad de nómadas. La población española era emigrante y ahora ella tiene que hacer frente a este nuevo fenómeno, las sociedades desarrolladas van a tener que adaptarse a las grandes afluencias de extranjeros. La migración ha sido a menudo una fuente de tensiones entre culturas e incluso entre movimientos racistas y xenófobos. Un problema político fundamental (...) en España es la situación que hay en la frontera del sur, por donde mucha gente intenta entrar en la UE desde África, arriesgando su vida y perdiéndola a menudo.International migration is part of globalization, all developed countries have received significant numbers of migrants. Spain have also received a high amount of migrants. Spanish people were traditionally emigrants and now they have to face this new phenomena, developed societies are going to have to face larger inflows of migrants. Migration has often been a source of tensions among cultures and even racist and xenophobic movements. A prominent political problem in Spain is the situation on the Southern border, where many people try to enter the EU from Africa, risking their life and often losing. (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)

El siguiente trabajo, dedicado a la memoria del profesor Mariano Álvarez Gómez, se basa en sus trabajos sobre Sófocles y reflexiona sobre la naturaleza del conflicto trágico. En Edipo Rey este conflicto se ilustra mediante la lucha entre realidad y apariencia, entre apariencia y ser, y es tanto más trágico cuanto más se obstina Edipo en conocer su origen. En Antígona, siguiendo la interpretación hegeliana, el conflicto se pone en relación con el concepto griego de phrónesis, a través de los (...) sucesivos enfrentamientos entre los principales protagonistas de la tragedia, pero se mantiene siempre abierta la posibilidad de superación de dicho conflicto. Al final, se apunta otra interpretación que afirma la imposibilidad de superarlo y la función que en ese caso asume el arte. (shrink)

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz vertrete ich die These, dass der Erwerb intellektueller Tugenden im Allgemeinen und der Tugend der intellektuellen Aufgeschlossenheit im Besonderen einen gewichtigen Beitrag zur Ausbildung und Perfektionierung argumentativer Fähigkeiten von Schüler_innen leisten. Dabei argumentiere ich für die Annahme, dass intellektuelle Tugenden sowohl die argumentativen Fähigkeiten der Schüler_innen als auch die Motivation, diese Fähigkeiten einzusetzen, signifikant befördern.

An analysis of Steve Fuller’s social epistemology and epistemic agency.

A special edition of the journal Social Epistemology on Fuller’s Thomas Kuhn.

This is a review symposium on Fuller”s Knowledge: A Philosophical Quest in History.

“Lo terrorífico del animal de ojos duros (…) es que ve todo el tiempo” (Derrida). No extraña que la pregunta por el fin de la intimidad se active en una época de conexión permanente, ojos-pantalla y sobreexposición generalizada. Si las subjetividades modernas se construyeron mirando a un lugar interior, hoy se deriva hacia la “exteriorización del yo”. Como efecto, las personalidades tienden a mercantilizarse y lo privado no se representa, se expone. En la cultura-red los clásicos ámbitos de relación se (...) diluyen en una esfera público-privada hipervisible, reduciendo a su menor expresión los tiempos de intimidad y como ciudadanos. Sin embargo, entre las amenazas para el sujeto humanista la alianza feminista se ve reforzada por este escenario donde lo personal político puede ser público y compartido. Las lecturas críticas señalan una discontinuidad histórica y cultural en el control sobre la visibilización del ámbito más personal y privado que oscila entre la voluntad propia de publicar lo íntimo y la presión del tecnoliberalismo por gestionarla, por dominar el párpado. (shrink)

Fullerand Rouse are both political social epistemologists concerned with the cognitive authority of science, though both disagree on what role it should play in science. Fullerar gues that political factors such as knowledge policy and a constitution play a primary role in the global legitimation of scientific knowledge, while Rouse holds that politics play a role on the local (practices) level but not on the global (metascientific) level of legitimation. While Fullerpr ovides a political response to the legitimation project, Rouse (...) rejects the legitimation project because he holds that it involves the need forglobal legitimation of the place of scientific knowledge in our culture. Key Words: legitimation project • social epistemology • epistemic sovereignty • metascience • scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at (...) least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. (shrink)

Remedios’s and Dusek’s response to Lynch’s review is that Lynch misreads Fuller on knowledge and misdirects his criticism of Fuller’s turn to agency.

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)

This paper argues that critical realism is one of the main theoretical orientations of the social sciences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critical realism aims to study the transcende...

As a problem for science studies, the commercialization of scientific knowledge is characterized as whether scientific knowledge is a public good, like health care and education, or a positional good, a good whose value allows for exclusion to clients, the opposite of a public good (Callon 1994; Mirowski and Sent 2007). Mirowski and Sent (2007) have highlighted the problem of the commercialization and privatization of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, Mirowski (2009) avers that the commercialization of scientific knowledge is the apotheosis of (...) a neoliberal program to promote and to construct free markets as the central condition of success of the neoliberal agenda. Mirowski argues that the problem of commercialization of scientific knowledge is that scientific knowledge is being transformed from a public good to a positional good. A further argument from Mirowski (2009b) is that science has been harmed by its commercialization. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to point out the basic areas of judgment made by employees considering the ethical or unethical behaviour of employers in the workplace. The authors analyse this subject from three perspectives: The first one is labour legislation in Poland; the second is the perspective of employers, especially codes of ethical standards created by contemporary organizations, and the third perspective is the point of view of employees. The conclusions in this area have been made on the (...) basis of research in two Polish insurance companies. The authors attempted to create a ranking of ethical elements significant for employees. Such knowledge could be very useful for creating proper personnel policy in any organisation. (shrink)

Christian hopes for salvation and redemption, and Marxist promises of emancipation and liberation have had and do have today much to do with each other. Historically they have grown up in dialogue with one another and today they address each other more than ever. Mutual condemnations get us nowhere. This article tries to identify areas of common intention and cooperation, without ignoring real differences, and offers a theological reflection that suggests an alliance with the critical elements within Marxist circles that (...) speak for humanism and the exercise of freedom in the present. (shrink)

This paper presents views on the aim of science worked out by Stanisław Kamiński (1919–1986) supplemented with applications added by his followers from the methodological school at KUL. First, Kamiński offers general and convenient categories with which to grasp problems of the philosophy of science using the category of the aim of science. Second, he adopts his own stand on the aim of science. He prefers theoretical aims to practical ones, but he considers them as complementary. Similarly, he prefers explanation (...) to description, but he maintains that they complement each other. His position is derivative of his broad and pluralistic notion of science, not limited to mathematical or natural sciences but including also (as antinaturalists do) human sciences, philosophy and theology as kinds of valuable knowledge. The paper does not discuss particular positions on the aim (aims) of science, but reports on the basic categories used to distinguish particular ways to understand it. They can help in the thoroughgoing analysis of the aim of science problems and they can be applied to characterize science in general, particular types of sciences, and studies that pass the limit of one discipline or one type of knowledge: interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary studies. (shrink)

The paper discusses the relation of genesis and validity ( Genesis and Geltung ) within the historical epistemologies of Gaston Bachelard, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault. From the perspective of emerging knowledge I examine the co-evolution of discontinuous moments, epistemic practices, and objects of knowledge. Based on this analysis, the paper argues that validity ( Geltung ) should be understood as situated knowledge.

Actions expressing emotions (such as caressing the clothes of one's dead friend in grief, or tearing apart a photograph out of jealousy) pose a notorious challenge to action theorists. They are thought to be intentional in that they are in some sense under the agent's control. They are not thought to be done for a reason, however, because they cannot be explained by considerations that favor them from the agent's point of view. This seems to be the case, at least, (...) if one subscribes to the Davidsonian standard model of action explanation. So far, philosophers have had three different reactions to this challenge. Rationalists insist that such actions can be rationalized by re-interpreting them. Arationalists insist that there simply is no reasoning process moving agents in emotional states to act. A third reaction questions the intentionality of such actions altogether. All three reactions, however, share the assumption underlying the standard account: if an agent is thought to act for a reason - and hence acts intentionally - he must entertain a desire and some means-end belief reflecting his reasoning process about how to attain what he desires by acting. In this paper, I try to show that this reflective reasoning mechanism is only one way to rationalize an action. Another way is by tracing an action to an unreflective valuing stance respresenting reasons the agent has from his point of view. Emotions are attitudes that help to grasp reasons the agent has. Since emotions come with a strong motivational potential they move the agent to act expressively. But the agent typically allows himself to do so, thereby monitoring the way in which he does it. To the extent that the agent unreflectively acts on a motive that is itself representative of his point of view, his expressive actions can be regarded as rationalizable. (shrink)

Although collegial relationships are among the most prevalent types of interpersonal relationships in our lives, they have not been the subject of much philosophical study. In this paper, we take the first step in the process of developing an ethics of collegiality by establishing what qualifies two people as colleagues and then by determining what it is that gives value to collegial relationships. We argue that A and B are colleagues if both exhibit sameness regarding at least two of the (...) following three features: the same work content or domain of activity; the same institutional affiliation or common purpose; and/or the same status or level of responsibility. Moreover, we describe how the potential value of collegial relationships is grounded in the relationship goods that two colleagues have reason to generate qua colleagues, namely, collegial solidarity and collegial recognition. Two interesting conclusions that can be drawn from our analysis are that one has to be proficient at one’s work if one is to be considered a good colleague and that we are also more likely to be better colleagues if we regard the work we do as valuable. Finally, we draw special attention to the working conditions that are conducive to the generation of good collegial relationships and suggest some policies to promote them. (shrink)

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas - entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties - the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of (...) the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni. (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)

El artículo de Sebastián Salgado trata de explicar las relaciones que la filosofía de Sartre comnparte con Spinoza. De esta manera, este artí culo quiere mostrar el significado del "deseo" como imposibilidad onto lógica del sujeto, es decir, como necesidad existencial de la libertad. En resumen, este articulo expone que la filosofía de Sartre ha conseguido resolver el problema de la fenomenología a través de la ética y la políti ca de Spinoza.

Comparison of Steve Fuller's and Alvin Goldman's social epistemologies.

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)

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)

The west-centrism in approaching the knowledge systems of east has been sufficiently highlighted and problematized. This paper argues that the attempts have often been restricted to a framework of colonial gaze that prevents the Indian classical philosophy from gaining a vantage of its own. The approach to the classical traditions have been largely fragmented, catering to the pressure of proving its “relevance” either as a knowledge system or as texts with useful resources and answers to contemporary problems. This “problem solving” (...) framework at the very outset de-recognizes the capacity of an entire philosophical tradition of problem identification and formulation, unsettling terrains of knowledge by asking new questions. The article presents a case for theorizing relevance as a prerequisite to resolving some of these issues. (shrink)

Similar to personal wisdom, which is believed to be beneficial for individuals, others, and the larger community, wise organizations are likely to have a positive impact on employee well-being if their ultimate goal is to promote the common good. To test this hypothesis and create a wise organization index, the cognitive, reflective, and compassionate dimensions of the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Model were integrated with the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness of Self-Determination Theory. The wise organization index consisted of the (...) average ratings of ten scales by forty-seven to 1,930 employees in twenty-four organizations. Analyses of two-level hierarchical linear models showed that the positive association between the wisdom scores of twenty-four organizations and the well-being scores of 9130 employees was mediated by supervisor support and job fulfillment. The study suggests that employees who are treated well, feel well and fulfilled at work, which likely benefits the organization’s long-term success. (shrink)