According to accounts of the Passion, Christ cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cry, I argue, manifests that Christ lacks a belief that God is with him. Given the standard view of faith—belief that p is required for faith that p—it would follow that Christ lost his faith that God is with him just before he died. In this paper, I challenge the standard view by looking at the cognitive requirement of (...) faith. Although faith that p requires some positive cognitive orientation toward p, that orientation need not be belief. I show that reliance is an alternative stance that fulfills the cognitive requirement of faith. Reliance aims at providing sensible guidance for action that is in accord with one’s values/ends. Thinking of the cognitive component of Christ’s faith in terms of reliance makes sense of the doubt manifested in his cry. (shrink)

The findings of our experiments showed that social network sites such as Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter, have the ability to acquire knowledge about their users’ movements not only within SNSs but also beyond SNS boundaries, particularly among websites that embedded SNS widgets such as Google’s Plus One button, Facebook’s Like button, and Twitter’s Tweet button. In this paper, we analysed the privacy implication of such a practice from a moral perspective by applying Helen Nissenbaum’s decision heuristic derived from her (...) contextual integrity framework in order to answer the question of whether or not an online user’s privacy is being violated by this practice. (shrink)

Every civilized society treasures through its folk tales and folk myths the elements of its native tribal life as points of cultural reference. The tribe not only acts as a foil to our culture, but also sustains its very being and gauges the degree of progress and change in the civilization that we uphold. This interdependence has a vital force: insofar as civilized societies define themselves by the distance they have built up between themselves and their respective primitive societies, a (...) civilized culture without its indigenous tribal past risks the authenticity of its process of change to challenge and doubt. Hence, our adulation of distance in both time and space between ourselves and our tribal forefathers, and our eagerness to recognize, maintain, and even glorify our tribes—a necessary syllogism in our postulation of a self-preserving argument. In a peculiarly chiastic way, we thrive on our existential reliance on the very primitiveness that we seek to repudiate as characteristic of a world past. We celebrate our present by eulogizing our past, and to fit the tribes in the large scheme of our self-definition we iconize them. These idealized images hide a creative mask through which we embrace the romantic myths of our respective origins and progress; the parades we arrange for our tribal history—through performance on our streets, or through semantics in our literature—subtly embody this dependence. (shrink)

Since 1999, dozens of companies have created senior executive privacy officer positions.

How Do Pictures Act? Two Semiotic Aspects of Picture Activity/Frederik Stjernfelt, s. 19-26, ill.

The Management Centre for Human Values (MCHV) along with the participants of the Post-Graduate Program for Executives (PGPEX) and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) arranged a seminar on Socially Conscious Leadership, or the Lattice 2010, on 19 December 2010. The seminar debate on the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in contemporary business makes for an interesting note that would befit the Journal (...) of Human Values (JHV). This is so because the invitees to the seminar, through their singular and idiosyncratic narration of experiences, have inevitably problematized the basic concepts of CSR itself. Concepts like ‘human values’, ‘ethics’, ‘social consciousness’ no longer exist as water-tight compartments of traditional or even autonomous sanctuaries of humane goodness. These concepts have been transformed from ‘value-adding’ propositions to ‘value-appropriating’ propositions, or in other words, social issues have become business issues. A wide spectrum of views coming from Gen. Bajwa, representing the army; Prof. Chaudhuri and Prof. Bhatta, representing administrative academia; Sri Salvi and Sri Tyagi, endorsing real-life CSR; Mr Ahir and Mr Rayaprolu, representing the corporate; Ms Vatsa and Ms Swami, representing NGOs; and Prof. Sarkar, Prof. Mohanty and Prof. Chatterjee, representing the academicians; along with the presence of Ms M. Bhattacharya from ONGC—all of them have aided and abetted in establishing the contemporary position of CSR as a successful and competitive business proposition. The note addresses the issues developed from their individual experiences and opinions, and attempts to establish, but on an individual level, an intellectual point of departure for an academic discussion of CSR that would initiate further potent research and theorization in this regard. (shrink)

Toward the end of Light in August, in the climactic scene in Chapter 1 where the authorities of justice pursue the elusive Joe Christmas through the streets of Jefferson, William Faulkner introduces a new character, Percy Grimm, a twenty-five-year-old captain in the State National Guard who has relentlessly acquired the rank of a special deputy for the search. As the town closes for the weekend, Grimm keeps vigil at a downtown store where other townsfolk have begun a poker game to (...) stay awake through the night as the search goes on. In their zeal to uphold law and justice, his men revel in their fantastic make-believe that they are doing the work of “a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye watching the doings of men.” The poker game goes on through Saturday night until Christmas is spotted and given chase. As Grimm runs through the streets after the fleeing man, Faulkner presents to us the deputy's stream of thought from an omniscient point of view: “There was nothing vengeful about him either, no fury, no outrage. He was moving again almost before he had stopped, with that lean, swift, blind obedience to whatever Player moved him on the Board” (437). Through the rest of the chapter, Grimm, who has not participated in the poker game at all, thinks and acts as if he is engaged in a chess game, not as a player but as the stake or the pawn in a board game in which Jefferson is the board on which he and Christmas are being moved from place to place by two larger forces, he by the benevolent Providence and Christmas by the powers opposed to God. Finally, when Christmas is cornered and fatally shot in Reverend Hightower's kitchen, this fantasized game seems to end. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a critical phenomenological investigation of immigrant indebtedness, with special focus on its temporality. I understand immigrant indebtedness as a relation of debt where what is owed is gratitude, and which takes on a special meaning when the debtor in question is racially construed as immigrant. Understood as such, immigrant indebtedness has the power to function as a social structure that organizes, conditions and impacts people’s lives. By analysing writer and poet Sumaya Jirde Ali's descriptions of (...) immigrant indebtedness in dialogue with Marianne Gullestad, Alia Al-Saji and Maurizio Lazzarato, I argue that the harm of immigrant indebtedness becomes visible once we pay attention to its temporal structure—involving the permanence of the debt-relation, the freezing and distortion of the past, as well as their limiting effects on future and present. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the various dual-use concepts applied in national and international non-proliferation and anti-terrorism legislation, such as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and national export control legislation and in relevant codes of conduct. While there is a vast literature covering dual-use concepts in particular with regard to life sciences, this is the first paper that incorporates into such discussion the United Nations Security Council Resolution (...) 1540. In addition, recent developments such as the extension of dual-use export control legislation in the area of human rights protection are also identified and reviewed. The discussion of dual-use concepts is hereby undertaken in the context of human- and/or national-security-based approaches to security. This paper discusses four main concepts of dual use as applied today in international and national law: civilian versus military, peaceful versus non-peaceful, legitimate versus illegitimate and benevolent versus malevolent. In addition, the usage of the term to describe positive technology spin-offs between civilian and military applications is also briefly addressed. Attention is also given to the roles civil society and research ethics may play in the governance of dual-use sciences and technologies. (shrink)

Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath greifen zentrale Fragen der heutigen Zeit auf: Was ist Glück? Woher kommt Glück? Wie kann man Glück erreichen? Zunächst geht es um klassische philosophische Ansätze – was verstehen antike Denker wie Demokrit, Platon, Aristoteles und Epikur sowie neuzeitliche Philosophen wie Montaigne, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud und Adorno darunter? Es zeigt sich die Historizität der Glückskonzepte und die Notwendigkeit einer Kritik am »falschen« Glück. Psychologische Konzepte von Glück sind ebenso schillernd. Sie untersuchen empirisch, wie subjektive (...) Glücksgefühle zustande kommen, welche emotionalen, kognitiven und handlungsbezogenen Prozesse ihnen zu Grunde liegen und in welchen Situationen sich Menschen glücklich fühlen. Auch hier erscheint ein kritischer Standpunkt notwendig: Kritik an unterschiedlichen Glücksdefinitionen, Kritik an Erhebungsinstrumenten und Kritik an der Instrumentalisierung und Kommerzialisierung von Forschungsergebnissen. Gerade im Blick auf eine neuerdings weit verbreitete Positive Psychologie besteht ein Ideologieverdacht: Könnte es sich hier um kaum einlösbare Versprechungen einer affirmativen psychologischen Glücksforschung handeln? Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath gehen diesen Fragen im Dialog zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Trotz der unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen und Perspektiven der beiden Autoren zeigen sich erstaunliche Übereinstimmungen hinsichtlich einer kritischen Theorie des Glücks. (shrink)

With the themed issue “The Critical Phenomenology of Borders and Migration,” we at Puncta wish to highlight the need for a continued systematic reflection on the lived experiences of migrants in relation to the political and social structures that inform these experiences. By claiming that critical phenomenology can be a fruitful approach to this work, we insist that the complex lived experience of migrants should not only be acknowledged and included in the form of examples and anecdotes, but systematically integrated (...) and interrogated in philosophical conversations on migration-related matters. The hope is that critically attuned phenomenological analyses of migrant lived experiences may contribute to offer new knowledges indispensable for understanding what is actually at stake—philosophically, politically, ethically, and existentially—with the particular situations that migrants, border-crossers and border-dwellers continually negotiate. (shrink)

Digital change is one of the most critical factors influencing social change in most societies. The Digital Evaluation Index 2017 (Chakravorti & Chaturvedi, 2017) showed based on 60 national economies that almost no digitally indifferent societies exist anymore. However, different speeds of development and, above all, different attitudes towards the challenges and opportunities of digitization can be observed. Primarily industrially, highly developed nations are also digitally highly developed. However, a "trust deficit" is prevalent in those nations as well; that is, (...) there is a rather reserved attitude on the side of policymakers and the population towards digital development. This "trust deficit" points to a changing attitude towards media and thus towards social change as a whole. According to the mediatization theory (Krotz, 2009), "digitization" can be understood as a factor of social change brought about by media-technical progress. This media-driven change is pedagogically and ethically relevant. Digitization does not only influence the ways we engage with one another (online vs. offline) but, more importantly, seems to influence the attitudes and feelings we have towards engaging with one another and also the attitudes and feelings towards how we engage with one another. Phenomena like cyberbullying, hate speech, digital addiction are examples of behaviors that are (seemingly) made possible through digitization. These negative examples might be considered to show the downsides of digitization, though, at the same time, the way these examples are portrayed generates a fear-based attitude around digitization that contributes to the "trust deficit." German teachers – as several international studies, especially the ICILS studies (cf. Fraillon et al. 2014; Fraillon et al. 2019), have shown – are rather critical and restorative media users. Research shows that ethically sound knowledge and easy use tools for reviewing and normatively evaluating media offerings and practices can have a positive impact on educational institutions (Marci-Boehncke & Vogel 2018). The interdisciplinary German research project DigitalDialog21 aims to contribute to a comprehensive evaluation of current and future technologies, practices, and ways of thinking of digital change. The task of an ethical reconstruction of the "trust deficit" is to make the attitudes of the population accessible and processable via a digital assessment of ethics (Rath, 2003). This task will set the theoretical framework for comprehensive digital literacy. One pedagogical goal of the project is to develop practical tools that help to arrive at a concrete, well-founded evaluation of digital offers at the individual level. (shrink)

In this article, I first problematize the concept of rationality as educational ideal through the use of feminist philosophy. I then offer an alternative concept of rationality as educational ideal based on my reading of Catherine Malabou’s work on plasticity, epigenesis, and rationality. In a last part, I explore the ontological and normative dimensions of this new concept of rationality through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “hyper-dialectics.”.

Papers presented at an international seminar held at IIT, Chennai, during Dec. 19-20, 2009.

"My energies for near a lifetime have been used almost entirely to win such prominence as I could in outdoor photography."--H. H. Bennett Henry Hamilton Bennett became a celebrated photographer in the half-century following the American Civil War. Bennett is admired for his superb depictions of dramatic landscapes of the Dells of the Wisconsin River and also for his many technical innovations in photography, including a stop-action shutter and a revolving solar printing house that is now housed at the Smithsonian (...) Institution. With his instantaneous shutter, he gained recognition for his striking images of moving subjects, such as lumber raftsmen shooting the river rapids and his son Ashley leaping in midair from a bluff to the craggy pillar of Stand Rock. Less well-known are Bennett's splendid urban photographs of nineteenth-century Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. This engaging biography of H. H. Bennett tells his life story, illustrated throughout with his remarkable photographs, some of them rarely viewed before. It draws on the photographer's own letters and journals, along with other family documents, to portray the sweep of his career and personal life. An important figure in the history of photography, he also contributed to the growth of American tourism: his nationally distributed stereoscopic views of Dells rock formations and his portraits of local Ho-Chunk Indians played a significant role in creating the Wisconsin Dells as the popular tourist destination it is today. Despite personal challenges--a crippling Civil War injury, the death of his first wife, and continual financial worries--Bennett produced an extensive portfolio that captures the midwestern culture of his time. He accepted commissions in the 1890s to document Chicago's modern skyscrapers, grand residences of Milwaukee's entrepreneurs and sailing ships in its harbor, enormous scenic panoramas along the routes of Wisconsin railroads, and sparkling ice palaces lit by fireworks at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Finalist, Midwest Regional Interest, Midwest Book Awards. (shrink)

This paper deals with the challenges of rationing of existential goods due to scarcity and conflicting interests (at the latest in the question of costs). The legal-political example pursued in this paper is rationing in the health care system, i. e. in curative and partly also in preventive measures. In each case - and in everyday life and by no means only in extreme corona pandemic situations - it is a question of whether there are absolute, ponder-proof claims to certain (...) goods. Ultimately, this is to be denied, even if rationing, especially in Germany, is usually concealed behind vague concepts such as the medical necessity and economic efficiency of treatment. But the public authorities cannot escape the weighing process - even if its consequences are often fatal in industrial society. In particular, misunderstandings of human dignity as well as skewed accusations of utilitarianism and a misleading pseudo-controversy between deontology and consequentialism have for a long time obscured the fact that in liberal democracies a balancing of different aspects of freedom and freedom preconditions is inevitable. Due to parliamentary reservations, however, this weighing must not be outsourced to administrative committees. Caution is called for in all of this with the economic cost-benefit analysis, which is hardly tenable in its foundations, with egalitarian approaches, and with the traditional but unfounded idea that fundamental rights are primarily (or exclusively) protected in single situations and are not relevant in the case of mass concern. Based on the latter point, it can also be shown that the previous tendency is not convincing to judge areas such as curative health treatment, preventive corona hazard control and fine dust or climate policy as being completely different from each other in terms of fundamental rights. (shrink)

The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League club’s (...) football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club’s operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general. (shrink)