This essay explores the digital challenge, how to humanize technology, and the need to rethink the digital-human divide. This is imperative in view of superintelligent Al, which may escape human control. The information age poses quandaries regarding the uses and abuses of technology. A major critique concerns the commercial design of digital technologies that engenders compulsive behavior. All technologies affect humans in a reciprocal way. The new digital technologies-from smartphones to the Internet—where humans are tethered to machines, can impair our (...) autonomy, hijack attention, rewire the brain, and diminish concentration, empathy, knowledge, and wisdom. The remedy is to restore deep reading, human interactions, personal conversations, real friendships, and respect for autonomy and privacy, building a nurturing culture of tolerance, coupled with transcendent norms and ideals worthy of a creature created in the image and likeness of God. This aspiration should be at the center of a new interdisciplinary field of inquiry—a phenomenology of communications. (shrink)

The United Nations confirmed that privacy remains a human right in the digital age, but our daily digital experiences and seemingly ever-increasing amounts of data suggest that privacy is a mundane, distributed and technologically mediated concept. This article explores privacy by mapping out different legal and conceptual approaches to privacy protection in the context of datafication. It provides an essential starting point to explore the entwinement of technological, ethical and regulatory dynamics. It clarifies why each of the presented approaches emphasises (...) particular aspects and analyses the tensions that arise. The resulting overview provides insight into the main strengths and limitations of the different approaches arising from specific traditions. This analytic overview therefore serves as a key resource to analyse the usefulness of the approaches in the context of the increasing datafication of both private and public spheres.Specifically, we contrast the approach focusing on data subjects whose data are being ‘protected’ with others, including Fair Information Practice Principles, the German right to ‘informational self-determination’, and the South American ‘habeas data’ doctrine. We also present and contrast emerging approaches to privacy and discuss their intersection with datafication. In conclusion, we put forth that rather than aiming for one single solution that works worldwide and across all situations, it is essential to identify synergies and stumbling blocks between the various regulatory settings and newly emerging approaches. (shrink)

Recent discussions among lawyers, philosophers, policy researchers and athletes have focused on the potential threat to privacy posed by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) whereabouts requirements. These requirements demand, among other things, that all elite athletes file their whereabouts information for the subsequent quarter on a quarterly basis and comprise data for one hour of each day when the athlete will be available and accessible for no advance notice testing at a specified location of their choosing. Failure to file one’s (...) whereabouts, or the non-availability for testing at said location on three occasions within any 18-month period constitutes an anti-doping rule violation that is equivalent to testing positive to a banned substance, and may lead to a suspension of the athlete for a time period of between one and two years. We critically explore the extent to which WADA’s whereabouts requirements are in tension with existing legislation on privacy, with respect to UK athletes, who are simultaneously protected by UK domestic and EU law. Both UK domestic and EU law are subject to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, which establishes a right to “respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. We critically discuss the centrality of the whereabouts requirements in relation to WADA’s aims, and the adoption and implementation of its whereabouts rules. We conclude that as WADA’s whereabouts requirements appear to be in breach of an elite athlete’s rights under European workers’ rights, health & safety and data protection law they are also, therefore, in conflict with Article 8 of the ECHR and the UK Human Rights Act 1998. We call for specific amendments that cater for the exceptional case of elite sports labour if the WADA requirements are to be considered legitimate. (shrink)

The ‘smart city’ has been driven by advances in information and communication technologies, with the aim of integrating these technologies with urban infrastructures for improved optimisation, automation and control. Smart cities have emerged as a response to the challenges faced by megacities and are likely to manifest the ‘datafying’ society in the public space. However, the pervasive nature of data collection, continuous analysis and inference, and long-term data storage result in a potentially problematic reconfiguration of society that undermines individual and (...) collective autonomy. This article proposes the concept of ‘data autonomy’ as a guiding principle for the development of smart cities, addressing challenges related to the potential misuse of personal data, sphere transgression, and datafied gentrification. Section II. explores concerns related to data protection law, which can be understood as a proxy for the relationship between the individual and society, highlighting power dynamics and the autonomy of individuals and communities. Section III. discusses the concept of sphere transgression, where tech giants expand their influence in society without adequate expertise or accountability. Section IV. examines the potential impact of datafied gentrification on individual and collective autonomy. Building on the challenges identified throughout these sections, this paper proposes ‘data autonomy’ as a guiding principle for smart city development in section V., promoting a value-based approach centred on human dignity. To make it practicable, increased interdisciplinary collaboration in the development of smart cities is needed, with a particular focus on improved design and impact assessment methodologies. (shrink)

Cross-cultural research provides invaluable information about the origins of and explanations for cognitive and behavioral diversity. Interest in cross-cultural research is growing, but the field continues to be dominated by WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) researchers conducting WEIRD science with WEIRD participants, using WEIRD protocols. To make progress toward improving cognitive and behavioral science, we argue that the field needs (1) data workflows and infrastructures to support long-term high-quality research that is compliant with open-science frameworks; (2) process and (...) participation standards to ensure research is valid, equitable, participatory, and inclusive; (3) training opportunities and resources to ensure the highest standards of proficiency, ethics, and transparency in data collection and processing. Here we discuss infrastructures for cross-cultural research in cognitive and behavioral sciences which we call __Cross-Cultural Data Infrastructures (CCDIs).__ We recommend building global networks of psychologists, anthropologists, demographers, experimental philosophers, educators, and cognitive, learning, and data scientists to distill their procedural and methodological knowledge into a set of community standards. We identify key challenges including protocol validity, researcher diversity, community inclusion, and lack of detail in reporting quality assurance and quality control (QAQC) workflows. Our objective is to help promote dialogue and efforts towards consolidating robust solutions by working with a broad research community to improve the efficiency and quality of cross-cultural research. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Willensfreiheit" verfügbar.

Reprint of the 1st ed. (1923) which was published in Bd. 6 of the Jahrbuch f'ur Philosophie und ph'anomenologische Forschung.

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced (...) construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter. (shrink)

In their recent contribution to this journal, Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu argue that "the 'medicalization of love' need not necessarily be problematic, on balance, but could plausibly be expected to have either good or bad consequences depending upon how it unfolds." Although I find myself in agreement with the majority of the points the authors make to this end, as well as with the general thrust of their position, I am nevertheless left feeling rather unsatisfied by (...) their overall exposition. This is largely because they fail to provide any substantial love-specific argument, as I demonstrate in this paper. (shrink)

The crying curve across early infancy may reflect the developing interaction between circadian and homeostatic processes of sleep-wake regulation. Excessive crying may be interpreted as a misalignment of the two processes. On the basis of the proposed mechanism, excessive crying may be an honest signal of need, namely, to elicit parental resources to modulate the behavioral state.

In speaking of transcendental philosophy here, I mean philosophy as a procedurally rigorous, systematic, and deductive instrument for the general and specific founding of science. I thereby presuppose that transcendental philosophy is not only possible but also is already established, at least in its general fundamentals. Its relevance to the empirical science of psychology can readily be conceived: transcendental philosophy should provide, in a rigorous, systematic, and deductive fashion, an a priori conceptual basis specific to psychology. This conceptual basis should (...) include the theoretical and practical heuristic principles necessary for meaningful research into the relevant area of reality, as well as for the sensible use of the resulting knowledge in general social praxis. (shrink)

From the Adriatic to the Baltic, from the Elbe to the Urals and beyond, totalitarianism has collapsed. Yet the 1989 bloodless revolution in Eastem Europe caught most observers by surprise. This essay explores the signal socio-cultural forces which contributed to the sea-change. Throughout Eastem Europe, grassroots movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s demanding greater participation in social, economic, cultural, and political life. Thus, the rise of a new civic culture and civil society preceded and fostered the momentous changes in (...) Eastem Europe, This essay offers a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy, highlighted by "The Menshevik Divide," and places East European nations and the USSR on a cognitive map which indicates the relative strength of civic values and autonomous action just before the revolution (1988), Curiously, this model also shows why the transition remains incomplete, since authoritarian values and political processes keep many post-communist systems in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship. Hence, the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society is still a futuristic project in much of Eastem Europe and the Soviet successor states, suspended between democracy and "virtual communism.". (shrink)

This essay explores a new conceptual paradigm for bridging the gulf separating what C. P. Snow called The Two Cultures--science and the humanities. Central to this rainbow paradigm is a more unified, holistic, and integral understanding of human life in society. A fruitful science-theology dialogue presupposes a much broader context of a revitalized Third Culture which weaves together insights from all the arts and sciences, social sciences and humanities. The essay thus invokes the incarnational dimension of man as God's creation (...) and truth as the Logos or ultimate Reality. The conclusion follows that a new lingua franca--a more felicitous conceptual understanding focusing on man as the missing link-requires integrative insights across all disciplines. Such an integral vision of what it means to be fully human reflects a sapiential, existential, and eschatological challenge of unity in diversity, that is, a truly human culture or a culture of cultures. (shrink)

This essay explores the intellectual and spiritual ferment in Tito's Yugoslavia focusing on its two major protagonists, Milovan Djilas and Mihajlo Mihajlov, Their quest for an open society and the first freedoms-thought, speech, press, assembly, and association-inspired a phenomenal rebirth ofcivic culture and civil society that toppled commmist rule in the 1989 peaceful revolution which swept across Eastern Europe and shook the Kremlin, This Third Revolution is set in the larger framework recalling the unique features of Yugoslavia's "independent road to (...) socialism," following the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, which made "Djilasism" possible. Titoism as a case study of modernization highlights the promises and pitfalls of Marxist-Leninist ideology whose utopia of a classless society remained a straitjacket limiting efforts at liberalization and democratization. Thus, post-Tito Yugoslavia became a cauldron of nationalist contestations for Tito's mantle of leadership. Mihajlov warned of the consequences of ethnic or identity politics in a multi-ethnic state, resulting in the division of post-Tito Yugoslavia along national/ethnic lines, which triggered the 1990s civil war and "ethnic cleansing" on all sides. The essay concludes that both Djilas and Mihajlov championed freedom. Yet Mihajlov's is the more enduring and universally redeeming vision whose transcendent grounding in a Christian metaphysics resonates across time and space, ennobling cultures. (shrink)

This essay proposes that the crisis of the contemporary university presents a unique challenge and opportunity to re-imagine the university as a quest for truth, reflecting John Henry Newman's ideal of a "wholeness of vision" and "enlargement of the mind" in educating the whole person. Higher education can become more meaningful and relevant by combining a strong core curriculum in the liberal arts with vocational and career preparation, interdisciplinary engagement, and consilience between Athens and Jerusalem as modeled in the science-ethics-religion (...) dialogue. A rediscovery of natural law and the moral law, universals and absolutes, which guide human aspirations for justice, fairness, and community, can counter the postmodem temptation for subjectivity and disconnection. The most cogent remedy for student boredom and faculty apathy is intellectual diversity for a renewed sense of excitement in exploring insights across the disciplines regarding ourselves and the world. This calls also for superceding the anti-liberal strictures of political correctness, rededicating the university to its essential task of free inquiry. (shrink)