In this article the authors focus on the emergence, or disappearance, of notions of responsibility in social dynamic processes. Hence, the starting point in this article is concrete behavior within organisational settings. This article presents a systematic overview of mechanisms related to acting upon a sense of moral responsibility. Some of these mechanisms are based on individual characteristics, others are embedded in the social context wherein responsible behaviour emerges or disappears. In this article, various mechanisms are identified and labelled in (...) order to analyse what types of processes are behind the mechanisms. In this way, the article yields important understandings for the conscious use of these mechanisms to strengthen responsible behavior within organisations. (shrink)

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this (...) book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice. (shrink)

Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that ...

In this essay, I argue that Ted Poston's theory of explanatory coherentism is well-suited as a tool for causal explanation in the health sciences, particularly in epidemiology. Coherence has not only played a role in epidemiology for more than half a century as one of Hill's viewpoints, it can also provide background theory for the development of explanatory systems by integrating epidemiologic evidence with a diversity of other error-independent data. I propose that computational formalization of Hill's viewpoints in an explanatory (...) coherentist framework would provide an excellent starting point for a formal epistemological (knowledge-theoretical) project designed to improve causal explanation in the health sciences. As an example, I briefly introduce Paul Thagard's ECHO system and offer my responses to possible objections to my proposal. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDie Kirche sieht sich in der Zuständigkeit für die Verwaltung des Transzendenten. Gestützt auf die Genesis erhebt sie aber auch den Erklärungsanspruch für die Entstehung der irdischen Welt. Jedoch weicht sie hier mehr und mehr der naturwissenschaftlichen Konkurrenz. Selbst die Evolutionstheorie wird heute nicht mehr rundweg abgelehnt. Die Neubewertung des Realitäts-begriffs und der Naturgesetze durch die evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie zeigt jedoch, dass auch der Erklärungsanspruch empirischer Weltbilder überdacht werden muss, was nicht ohne Einfluss auf das Verhältnis zu den religiösen Weltbildern bleibt.Viel (...) gravierender jedoch kann die Tendenz werden, dass sich die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Religion und Wissenschaften immer mehr von den Naturwissenschaften zu den Sozialwissenschaften verlagert. Probleme der physischen Naturbeherrschung sind heute sehr viel weiter gehend gelöst als die Probleme der sozialen Umwelt. Schon heute ist das zentrale Paradigma der Menschheit die Bewältigung sozialer Probleme. Die Beherrschung des Klimas zum Beispiel, von der Sache her ein physisches Problem, wird mehr und mehr zum sozialen Problem. Wollen die Kirchen hier als gestaltende Kraft mithalten, müssen sie sich von der auf die Bibel gestützten Angebotsorientierung fortentwickeln zu der Nachfrageorientierung politischer Parteien und anderer Sozialorganisationen. Das könnte sich zur Bedrohung der theologischen Bedeutung der Kirchen entwickeln. SUMMARYThe church sees itself as the general administrator of the transcendent. But at the same time, based on the genesis, it claims as well the competence to explain the creation of the physical world. Here, however, it recoils more and more from the natural sciences. Even the idea of biological evolution is no longer flatly rejected. However, the reinterpretation of the natural laws and the notion of reality within the framework of the evolutionary epistemology show that the explanatory power of the natural sciences is no longer unquestionable. This, no doubt, has consequences for the relationship of natural and transcendental sciences.Of far more impact, however, can be the trend that the dispute between religion and sciences is shifting from the nature sciences towards the social sciences. Problems we have with our natural environment and to be solved by nature sciences are replaced more and more by problems we have with our social environment and to be solved by the social sciences. Already nowadays the central paradigm of mankind is the solution of social problems. Mastering the climate, for example, though primarily a physical problem becomes more and more a social subject. If the churches want to keep up here they have to shift from the supply orientation as provided by the bible towards the demand orientation presented by political and other social organisations. This could begin to threaten the theological importance of the churches. (shrink)

Starting from a passage in the treatise De universali reali by Jean de Maisonneuve, where Jean de Maisonneuve denounces John Buridan as a materialist, the article looks for textual evidence that would support or otherwise refute this claim in Buridan’s works on natural philosophy. In particular, the article analyzes Buridan’s discussion of universal knowledge in the final redactions of his commentaries on Aristotle’s Physica and De anima, which turn out to complement each other. Here, Buridan asks if something extended and (...) material can have universal knowledge. Against the opinion commonly held, according to Buridan, not only by many of his contemporaries, but also by almost all of the ancient commentators, Buridan argues that traditional arguments against a materialistic theory of the human mind are not conclusive. After having removed the main stumbling blocks, he goes on to sketch a theory of universal knowledge that is compatible with the assumption that the human intellect is a material form. As an appendix, the paper contains an edition of the key question on universal knowledge in the penultimate redaction of John Buridan’s Physics commentary, which is made available in print for the first time here. (shrink)

Neopragmatist epistemology rejects any significant distinction between ethics and the sciences. The idea is that in ethics, we acquire knowledge in similar ways as in the natural sciences. Quine/duhem holism applies to both fields, which explains why the aim of reaching reflective equilibrium is prominent in many meta-ethical accounts: As in the sciences, our ethical system of belief is constrained by logic, observation, coherence, simplicity and parsimony. Whereas considerations of beauty (an important ingredient of scientific methodology) are irrelevant in ethical (...) epistemology, emotions play an essential role; these, in turn, do not matter in the sciences. (shrink)

Randolph Bourne was only thirty-two when he died in 1918, but he left a legacy of astonishingly mature and incisive writings on politics, literature, and culture, which were of enormous influence in shaping the American intellectual climate of the 1920s and 1930s. This definitive collection, back in print at last, includes such noted essays as "The War and the Intellectuals," "The Fragment of the State," "The Development of Public Opinion," and "John Dewey's Philosophy." Bourne's critique of militarism and advocacy of (...) cultural pluralism are enduring contributions to social and political thought, sure to have an equally strong impact in our own time. In their introduction and preface, Olaf Hansen and Christopher Lasch provide biographical and historical context for Bourne's work. (shrink)