Was oder wer wird im Konkreten damonisiert? Wie gehen Alltags- und Popularkultur damit um? Welche religionspadagogischen Modelle und Konsequenzen ergeben sich? "Das Bose" wird wieder verstarkt thematisiert.

This volume of Hume Studies is a special double-issue devoted to discussions of four recent books on Hume: Hume: an Intellectual Biography, by James Harris; Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects, by Stefanie Rocknak; Hume's True Scepticism, by Donald Ainslie; and Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy, and Society in Hume's Philosophy, by Jacqueline Taylor. The latter three discussions began as Author-Meets-Critics sessions at the 43rd International Hume Conference in Sydney, Australia, and the present volume keeps the AMC format: each discussion (...) starts with a short précis of the book from the author, followed by comments from three respondents, and concludes with the author's reply. The selection of books... (shrink)

Das Sammelwerk legt umfassend den Stand der Staatstheorie dar und arbeitet die Beiträge der bedeutendsten Staatsdenker und der wichtigsten Strömungen des Staatsdenkens zum heutigen Staatsverständnis exemplarisch heraus.Renommierte Philosophen, Historiker, Sozial-, Kultur- und Rechtswissenschaftler aus Universitäten und Forschungseinrichtungen in ganz Europa stellen in 15 gleichgewichteten Kapiteln das Staatsdenken von der Antike bis zur Postdemokratie facettenreich heraus. Jedes Kapitel firmiert unter einem Schwerpunkt, angefangen beim klassischen und konservativen über das liberale und feministische bis hin zum anarchistischen und religiösen Staatsdenken. Einen besonderen Stellenwert (...) nimmt dabei das Staatsdenken in anderen Kulturen ein, darunter China, Indien, die arabische Welt sowie das vor- und das postkoloniale Afrika.Die Schlussbetrachtung zum "Staat der Zukunft" bilanziert die Probleme von Souveränitätsverlust, Staatszerfall und Postdemokratie vor dem Hintergrund von Globalisierung, Ökonomisierung und Individualisierung.Praktische Querverweise und ein umfassendes Literaturverzeichnis erleichtern den Zugriff, detaillierte Stichwort- und Personenregister runden das Werk ab.Mit Beiträgen von:Helga Albrecht, Andreas Anter, Olaf Asbach, Friedrich Balke, Ernst Baltrusch, Michael Becker, Hannah Bethke, Karl-Heinz Breier, Michael Brie, Norbert Campagna, Lars Distelhorst, Sabine Doyé, Dominik Finkelde, Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Alexander Gantschow, Eva Geulen, Gerhard Göhler, Dieter Grimm, Martin Gronau, Gregor Hain, Hendrik Hansen, Leonhard Harding, Oliver Hidalgo, Wilhelm Hofmann, Frauke Höntzsch, Dana Ionescu, Matthias Jestaedt, Dirk Jörke, John Kannankulam, Stefan Koslowski, Oliver W. Lembcke, Rochus Leonhardt, Roland Lhotta, Mathias Lindenau, Marion Löffler, Gundula Ludwig, Günter Maschke, Jean-Christophe Merle, Dominique Fabian Miething, Andreas Niederberger, Claudia Opitz-Belakhal, Henning Ottmann, Gregor Paul, Thore Prien, Walter Reese-Schäfer, Claudia Ritzi, Samuel Salzborn, Stefano Saracino, Birgit Sauer, Peter Seyferth, Thomas Schölderle, Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann, Ulrich Seeber, Veith Selk, Harald Sippel, Tine Stein, Kazuhiro Takii, Ulrich Thiele, Andreas Vasilache, Rüdiger Voigt, Christian Wendt, Stefanie Wöhl, Joachim Wurst, Holger Zapf und Barbara Zehnpfennig. (shrink)

For three centuries, concepts of the state have been animated by one of the most powerful metaphors in politics: the body politic, a claustrophobic and bounded image of sovereignty. Climate change, neoliberalism, mass migration, and other aspects of the late Anthropocene have increasingly revealed the limitations of this metaphor. Just as the human body is not whole and separate from other bodies--comprising microbes, bacteria, water, and radioactive isotopes--Stefanie R. Fishel argues that the body politic of the state exists in (...) dense entanglement with other communities and forms of life. Drawing on insights from continental philosophy, science and technology studies, and international relations theory, this path-breaking book critiques the concept of the body politic on the grounds of its very materiality. Fishel both redefines and extends the metaphor of the body politic and its role in understanding an increasingly posthuman, globalized world politics. By conceiving of bodies and states as lively vessels, living harmoniously with multiplicity and the biosphere, she argues that a radical shift in metaphors can challenge a politics based on fear to open new forms of global political practice and community. Reframing the concept of the body politic to accommodate greater levels of complexity, Fishel suggests, will result in new configurations for the political and social organization necessary to build a world in which the planet's inhabitants do not merely live but actively thrive. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an argument for a view about the epistemology of peer disagreement, which I call the “Rational Symmetry View”. I argue that this view follows from a natural conception of the epistemology of testimony, together with a basic entitlement to trust our own faculties for belief formation. I then discuss some objections to this view, focusing on its relationship to other well-known views in the literature. The upshot of this discussion is that, if the Rational Symmetry (...) View is correct, much of the action in the epistemology of disagreement relates—not to how one should treat those one regards as an “epistemic peer” in the sense popular in that literature—but rather to who one should treat as such. (shrink)

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, (...) but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism is one of the main movements within contemporary metaethics – especially among those with Kantian inclinations. But both the philosophical coherence and the Kantian pedigree of constructivism are hotly contested. In the first half of this article, I first explore the sense in which Kant's own views might be described as constructivist and then use the resulting understanding as a guide to how we might think about Kantian constructivism today. Along the way, I hope to suggest that a (...) fairly diverse range of views within contemporary metaethics – including some without any explicit allegiance to Kant – may be thought of as pursuing a version of the resulting strategy. (shrink)

We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states that, under the limit property, the axiom of mere addition also conflicts with avoidance (...) of the repugnant conclusion. This result is a consequence of a similar observation that appears in the earlier literature. (shrink)

[A]ny theory of practical rationality must explain— or explain away—the following: Rational: In many cases, what it is rational (in some sense) for one to do or intend to do depends on what one desires. [...] I argue that in order to capture the rational significance of desire, we need to consider both its content and its force, on analogy to the rational significance of both the force and content of beliefs and perceptual experiences. This will open up a new (...) and more elegant way of explaining Rational, while also allowing us to understand how our desires provide us with a basic form of normative experience. Thus, in the end, this will provide the basis for a novel defense of the ancient thesis that desire, in some sense, presents its object under the “guise of the good.”. (shrink)

Schafer contends that we suffer from an overabundance of acoustic information, and explores ways to restore our ability to hear the nuances of sounds around us.

We examine the maximal-element rationalizability of choice functions with arbitrary domains. While rationality formulated in terms of the choice of greatest elements according to a rationalizing relation has been analyzed relatively thoroughly in the earlier literature, this is not the case for maximal-element rationalizability, except when it coincides with greatest-element rationalizability because of properties imposed on the rationalizing relation. We develop necessary and sufficient conditions for maximal-element rationalizability by itself, and for maximal-element rationalizability in conjunction with additional properties of a (...) rationalizing relation such as reflexivity, completeness, P-acyclicity, quasi-transitivity, consistency and transitivity. (shrink)

This book offers an innovative defense of Wilfrid Sellar's notion of ideal truth. Sellars adopts two attractive ideas about truth: the pragmatist idea that the concept of truth cannot be understood independently from the norms and practices we find ourselves with and the realist idea that there is one ultimate truth about how the world is. Sellars is thus committed both to an immanent notion of truth and an ideal notion of truth. This book discusses these countervailing tendencies and tries (...) to reconcile them. The author's defense of Sellars's notion of truth minimizes problematic commitments while still being recognizably rooted in Sellars's texts. Additionally, the author defends several innovative claims with respect to Sellars's thinking, for example, about the relative unimportance of his controversial concept of pictorial adequacy and about the neglected significance of considerations concerning context-sensitive expressions in his thought. Wilfrid Sellars on Truth will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wilfrid Sellars, pragmatism, and questions about truth, naturalism, and scientific realism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 9 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 4-24.

To investigate the effects of mood on people's end-of-life treatment decisions and their false memories of those decisions, participants took part in two sessions. At Time 1, participants were experimentally induced into positive or negative moods. They decided whether they would want to receive or refuse treatments in a range of hypothetical medical scenarios, such as tube feeding while in a coma. Four weeks later, at Time 2, participants were induced into the same or the opposite mood and made these (...) decisions a second time. They also recalled their previous decisions. Participants in negative moods at Time 2 changed more of their current decisions and falsely remembered more of their previous decisions than participants in positive moods. These findings suggest that people's current moods influence whether they change their treatment decisions; current decisions in turn bias recall of past decisions. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

For valid informed consent, it is crucial that patients or research participants fully understand all that their consent entails. Testing and revising informed consent documents with the assistance of their addressees can improve their understandability. In this study we aimed at further developing a method for testing and improving informed consent documents with regard to readability and test-readers’ understanding and reactions. We tested, revised, and retested template informed consent documents for biobank research by means of 11 focus group interviews with (...) members from the documents’ target population. For the analysis of focus group excerpts we used qualitative content analysis. Revisions were made based on focus group feedback in an iterative process. Focus group participants gave substantial feedback on the original and on the revised version of the tested documents. Revisions included adding and clarifying explanations, including an info-box summarizing the main points of the text and an illustrative graphic. Our results indicate positive effects on the tested and revised informed consent documents in regard to general readability and test-readers’ understanding and reactions. Participatory methods for improving informed consent should be more often applied and further evaluated for both, medical interventions and clinical research. Particular conceptual and methodological challenges need to be addressed in the future. (shrink)

In the second half of this essay, I discuss the robust conception of rationality that lies at the heart of the Kantian version of Rationalist Constructivism – offering some reasons to prefer this conception to the more minimal accounts of rationality associated with Humean views. I then go on to discuss some of the potential metaethical advantages of the resulting form of constructivism.

In this article I offer an opinionated overview of the central elements of Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. I begin with a brief characterization of how Kant conceives of the aims of human inquiry – focusing on the idea that inquiry ideally aims at not just cognition (Erkenntnis), but also the more demanding cognitive achievements that Kant labels insight (Einsehen) and comprehension (Begreifen). Then I explore the implications of this picture for philosophy — emphasizing Kant’s distinction between critical (...) and doctrinal phases of philosophical inquiry, with the first of these playing both a negative and a positive role with respect to the second. Then, I will argue that this positive role is possible, according to Kant, only insofar as philosophy follows what I call a “capacities-first” methodology – that is, one that treats basic cognitive capacities (such as reason) and their self-conscious activities as fundamental (in both a cognitive sense and in an explanatory sense) for the sort of philosophy human beings are capable of. It is this methodology, I will argue, that allows Kant to introduce the first principles that philosophy in its doctrinal phase requires in a manner that is neither arbitrary nor (at least obviously) incompatible with Kant’s own critical restrictions on cognition. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this methodological picture – including the methodological significance of self-consciousness and regressive or “transcendental” arguments, Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic methods in philosophy, and Kant’s conception of reason as autonomous. (shrink)

The use of genetic engineering is increasingly discussed for nature conservation. At the same time, recent animal ethics approaches debate whether humans should genetically engineer wild animals to improve their welfare. This paper examines if obligations towards wild sentient animals require humans to genetically engineering wild animals, while arguing that there is no moral need to do so. The focus is on arguments from animal ethics, but they are linked to conservation ethics, highlighting the often neglected overlap between the two (...) fields. The paper emphasizes that a) the benefits of genetic engineering are overestimated and at the same time harms from its development and use underestimated, b) the assumption that genetic engineering is an appropriate ‘last resort’ tool is wrong, c) many arguments in favor of genetic engineering are based on an inadequate understanding of ecology and biotechnological processes, and d) the debate downplays the importance of self-determination for wild animals. (shrink)

This book presents an exploration of the idea of the common or social good, extended so that alternatives with different populations can be ranked. The approach is, in the main, welfarist, basing rankings on the well-being, broadly conceived, of those who are alive. The axiomatic method is employed, and topics investigated include: the measurement of individual well-being, social attitudes toward inequality of well-being, the main classes of population principles, principles that provide incomplete rankings, principles that rank uncertain alternatives, best choices (...) from feasible sets, and applications. The chapters are divided, with mathematical arguments confined to the second part. The first part is intended to make the arguments accessible to a more general readership. Although the book can be read as a defense of the critical-level generalized-utilitarian class of principles, comprehensive examinations of other classes are included. (shrink)

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services : global justice between different people of the present generation ; justice between people of different generations. Three hypotheses about their relationship — independency, facilitation and rivalry — are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity and (...) quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions. (shrink)

Contemporary forms of Kantian constitutivism generally begin with a conception of agency on which the constitutive aim of agency is some form of autonomy or self-unification. This chapter argues for a re-orientation of the Kantian constitutivist project towards views that begin with a conception of rationality on which both theoretical and practical rationality aim at forms of understanding. In a slogan, then, understanding-first as opposed to autonomy-first constitutivism. Such a view gives the constitutivist new resources for explaining many classes of (...) reasons, while also offering a new way of understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason. The chapter concludes by arguing that the resulting view is best understood, not so much as an alternative to autonomy-first constitutivism, but as a complement to it. (shrink)

This paper argues that existing human-animal relations contribute to the pressing socio-ecological crises of our time, and therefore, they should be discussed in the context of Sustainable Development. This holds true even from a purely anthropocentric perspective, as these crises are threats to humans. However, sentient nonhuman animals possess interests as well and should be included in the moral community. Therefore, ignoring their interests in Sustainable Development is falling short. Furthermore, the paper argues that the anthropocentric perspective of Sustainable Development (...) is flawed because the normative foundations of Sustainable Development (intra- and intergenerational justice) can be convincingly applied to nonhuman animals. According to approaches of interspecies justice, the normative foundations of Sustainable Development not merely can but should be applied to nonhuman animals. The paper argues for including nonhuman animals into the scope of justice and, therefore, in a theory of Sustainable Development. What such inclusion means at the practical level is examined in the last section of the paper, which investigates a field of application important for transforming societies into more sustainable ones, namely energy systems. This last section discusses how more sustainable, more animal-friendly energy systems would look like. (shrink)

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant’s conception of reason and its philosophical significance, focusing on two claims. First, it argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or “comprehension”). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, through it, we see why the (...) activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason also reads Kant as presenting us with a compelling picture of the role that reason (as a capacity or power) should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats as fundamental neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality, but instead a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity — namely, the capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of “rational constitutivism” – one which contrasts both with the forms of “reasons fundamentalism” that are currently fashionable and the forms of “agency-first constitutivism” that have dominated much of Kantian metaethics. In this sense, the aim of the book is to vindicate Kant’s insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason’s implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness. (shrink)

A common complaint about Kantian ethics is that it cannot do justice to the social or intersubjective dimensions of human life – that, unlike Fichte, Hegel, or Marx, Kant remains caught within a fundamentally individualistic perspective on practical or moral questions. In this way, the objection goes, Kantian ethics leaves agents alienated from others around them and their larger community. While not entirely unnatural, I argue here that such concerns rest on a mischaracterization of where the most serious problems in (...) this region for Kant lie. Far from being too individualistic, the real worry about Kantian moral theory is that it may not be individualistic enough. In a contemporary context, where Kantian ethics is associated with the “self-constitution” of agents or the “separateness of persons”, the idea that it is insufficiently concerned with individual persons may come as a surprise. But it would not surprise Kant’s immediate successors like Fichte and Hegel. For this is where they often located the deepest problems facing Kant’s moral philosophy. As we will see, in making such points, they were in some ways closer to Kant’s own views than they recognized. Nonetheless, if this is right, Kantian ethics may in fact more anti-individualistic than many of the ethical systems that followed in his wake. And the most radical elements in Kant’s ethics might point, less to Fichte and Hegel, and more to figures like Schopenhauer who sought to develop a synthesis of Kant and ideas from South Asian philosophy. Perhaps, we might say, Kant has been sitting under the Bodhi tree all along? (shrink)

In this essay, I develop and defend a virtue‐theoretic conception of rationality as a capacity whose function is understanding, as opposed to mere truth or correctness. I focus on two main potential advantages of this view. First, its ability to explain the rationality of forms of explanatory reasoning, and second, its ability to offer a more unified account of theoretical and practical rationality.

It has recently been argued that certain areas of discourse, such as discourse about matters of taste, involve a phenomenon of ‘‘ faultless disagreement ’’ that rules out giving a standard realist or contextualist semantics for them. Thus, it is argued, we are left with no choice but to consider more adventurous semantic alternatives for these areas, such as a semantic account that involves relativizing truth to perspectives or contexts of assessment. I argue that the sort of faultless disagreement present (...) in these cases is in fact compatible with a realist treatment of their semantics. Then I briefly consider other considerations that might be thought to speak against realism about these areas of discourse. I conclude with the tentative suggestion that realism about matters of taste is far more plausible than most philosophers believe today. (shrink)

It is increasingly common to suggest that the combination of evolutionary theory and normative realism leads inevitably to a general scepticism about our ability to reliably form normative beliefs. In what follows, I argue that this is not the case. In particular, I consider several possible arguments from evolutionary theory and normative realism to normative scepticism and explain where they go wrong. I then offer a more general diagnosis of the tendency to accept such arguments and why this tendency should (...) be resisted. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume’s conception of objects in Book I of the Treatise. What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, I show that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. However, I argue that he struggled with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believed that we always and universally imagine that objects are (...) the causes of our perceptions. On the other hand, he thought that we only imagine such causes when we reach a “philosophical” level of thought. This tension manifests itself in Hume’s account of personal identity; a tension that, I argue, Hume acknowledges in the Appendix to the Treatise. As a result of presenting a detailed account of Hume’s conception of objects, we are forced to accommodate new interpretations of, at least, Hume’s notions of belief, personal identity, justification and causality. (shrink)

Despite decades of research, morphogenesis along the various body axes remains one of the major mysteries in developmental biology. A milestone in the field was the realisation that a set of closely related regulators, called Hox genes, specifies the identity of body segments along the anterior–posterior (AP) axis in most animals. Hox genes have been highly conserved throughout metazoan evolution and code for homeodomain‐containing transcription factors. Thus, they exert their function mainly through activation or repression of downstream genes. However, while (...) much is known about Hox gene structure and molecular function, only a few target genes have been identified and studied in detail. Our knowledge of Hox downstream genes is therefore far from complete and consequently Hox‐controlled morphogenesis is still poorly understood. Genome‐wide approaches have facilitated the identification of large numbers of Hox downstream genes both in Drosophila and vertebrates, and represent a crucial step towards a comprehensive understanding of how Hox proteins drive morphological diversification. In this review, we focus on the role of Hox genes in shaping segmental morphologies along the AP axis in Drosophila, discuss some of the conclusions drawn from analyses of large target gene sets and highlight methods that could be used to gain a more thorough understanding of Hox molecular function. In addition, the mechanisms of Hox target gene regulation are considered with special emphasis on recent findings and their implications for Hox protein specificity in the context of the whole organism. BioEssays 30:965–979, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article illustrates how axiomatic social choice theory can be used in the evaluation of measures of group fitness for a biological hierarchy, thereby contributing to the dialogue between the philosophy of biology and social choice theory. It provides an axiomatic characterization of the ordering underlying the MichodSolariNedelcu index of group fitness for a multicellular organism. The MVSHN index has been used to analyse the germ-soma specialization and the fitness decoupling between the cell and organism levels that takes place during (...) the evolutionary transition to multicellularity. It is argued that some of the axioms satisfied by the MVSHN group fitness ordering are not appropriate for all stages in this transition. (shrink)

Motivated by accounts of concept use in autistic spectrum disorder and a computational model of weak central coherence we examined comprehension and production vocabulary in typically‐developing children and those with ASD and Down syndrome. Controlling for frequency, familiarity, length and imageability, Colorado Meaningfulness played a hitherto unremarked role in the vocabularies of children with ASD. High Colorado Meaningful words were underrepresented in the comprehension vocabularies of 2‐ to 12‐year‐olds with ASD. The Colorado Meaningfulness of a word is a measure of (...) how many words can be associated with it. Situations in which high Colorado Meaningfulness words are encountered are typically highly variable, and words with High Colorado Meaningfulness often involve extensive use of context. Our data suggest that the number of contexts in which a particular word can appear has a role in determining vocabulary in ASD. This suggestion is consistent with the weak central coherence theory of autism. (shrink)