Explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity - two fundamendtal features of human subjectivity - as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the sevententh and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and (...) personal identity is in many ways characteristic [of] and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is also an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases"--Publisher's description, p. [4] of dust jacket. (shrink)

Internalists about practical reasons maintain that all of an agent’s reasons for action derive their normative force via some relation in which they stand with that agent’s pro-attitudes, or the pro-attitudes that the agent would have in some idealized set of circumstances. One common complaint against internalism is that the view is extensionally inadequate – that it cannot render the correct verdicts about what reasons agents have in a range of important cases. In this paper, I examine that charge of (...) extensional inadequacy, taking as my starting point an argument that Derek Parfit has recently leveled against internalism. Through a close evaluation of that argument and potential replies to it, I attempt to show that internalists cannot accommodate important pre-theoretical intuitions about what reasons we have. However, I also argue that Parfit’s case is importantly overstated; I set out to show that his argument cannot establish, as he thinks it does, that no reasons derive their normative force in the way that internalists believe that all do. In doing so, I draw attention to the possibility of a hybrid position about practical reasons that, surprisingly, receives little attention in the existing literature. If the arguments of the paper succeed, I will have established a modest theoretical advantage for hybridism over internalism – namely, that it is not vulnerable to the charge of extensional inadequacy. My hope is that this goes some way toward establishing hybridism’s credentials as a serious alternative to its “pure” competitors. (shrink)

Promotion is the relation between an act and a desire that obtains when the act advances or serves the desire. Under what conditions does an act promote a desire? Probabilistic accounts of promotion, the most prominent accounts, analyze promotion in terms of an increase in the probability of the desire’s satisfaction. In this paper, we clarify the promotion relation and explain why probabilistic accounts are attractive. Then we identify two questions probabilistic accounts must answer: the Baseline Question and the Interpretation (...) Question. We discuss and reject the three answers to the Baseline Question found in the literature, and explain the challenge future attempts at answering this question will face. Proponents of probabilistic accounts have not adequately addressed the Interpretation Question. We survey three answers to this question, finding each unsatisfactory. We conclude that no satisfactory probabilistic account has yet been offered, and that there are significant hurdles to providing one in the future. (shrink)

Source Hybridism about practical reasons is the position that facts that constitute reasons sometimes derive their normative force from external metaphysical grounds, and sometimes from internal. Although historically less popular than either Source Internalism or Source Externalism, hybridism has lately begun to garner more attention. Here, I further the hybridist's cause by defending Source Hybridism from three objections. I argue that we are not warranted in rejecting hybridism for any of the following reasons: that hybridists cannot provide an account of (...) normative weight, that hybridists are committed to implausible results concerning practical deliberation, or that Source Hybridism is objectionably unparsimonious. (shrink)

Jherings Rechtsdenken ist ein noch nicht ausgeschöpftes Guthaben der deutschen Rechtskultur. Erst in jüngerer Zeit konnte es von schweren Mißverständnissen befreit und in seiner kulturanthropologischen, die menschliche Zivilisation als Ganzes erfassenden Weite deutlich gemacht werden. Okko Behrends beleuchtet Jhering als Schriftsteller, Rechtstheoretiker und Juristen. Er verfolgt die Wirkung seines realistischen, aber an der Idee des rechtsethischen Fortschritts festhaltenden Denkens in Europa (Deutschland, Rußland, Schweden, Italien), Ostasien (Japan und Korea) sowie Nord- und Südamerika.

Dieser Band stellt Abhandlungen von Udo Müllges (1926-1985), Universitätsprofessor an der RWTH Aachen, vor, die in ihrer Gesamtheit ein pädagogisches Programm spiegeln, das auf der geisteswissenschaftlichen Tradition fußt und sich dieser verpflichtet weiß. Der Bogen ist von der konstitutiv-kritischen Frage nach dem Wissenschaftscharakter der Pädagogik bis hin zu aktuellen schulpolitischen Problemen gespannt. In ihrer Gesamtheit bieten die Beiträge einen Einblick in das breite Feld pädagogischer Forschung und eröffnen die Möglichkeit zur produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit den von Udo Müllges erarbeiteten Konzepten zur (...) Klärung gegenwärtiger theoretischer und praktischer Fragen. Das Buch bietet gleichermaßen Anregungen für Fachkollegen, Studierende und Praktiker des pädagogischen Bereiches. (shrink)

Background: The advent of AIDS brought about a group of patients unwilling to accept crucial aspects of the methodological standards for clinical research investigating Phase 1 drugs, surgeries or devices. Their arguments against placebo controls in trials, which depended-at the time-on the terminal status of patient volunteers led to a renewed discussion of the ethics of denying patients with catastrophic illnesses access to last-chance experimental drugs, surgeries or devices. Sources of data: Existing ethics and health policy literature on the topic (...) of access to experimental drugs. Areas of agreement: The positions of those arguing for or against free access to experimental drugs for terminally ill patients are irreconcilable. Areas of controversy: At stake are questions about the kinds of personal sacrifices society can reasonably expect patients in clinical trials to make to ensure statistically predictive results. These would benefit by necessity a much larger number of current and future patients-the conflict is about individual versus public interests. It is also about the question of whether or not the state can legitimately prevent patients with terminal illnesses from unfettered access to experimental drugs, surgeries or devices in order to motivate them to participate in clinical trials. We review the ethical arguments for and against the provision of access to Phase 1 agents for terminally ill patients. Growing points: Finding a compromise between providing free or no access to Phase 1 drugs for terminally ill patients. Areas timely for developing research: We ought to investigate means to increase access to experimental drugs for terminally ill patients without sacrificing necessary clinical trials' sounds scientific methods. (shrink)

This paper argues against two prominent accounts of what it is to "promote a desire," found in the work of Stephen Finlay and Mark Schroeder.

We describe a number of conscientious objection cases in a liberal Western democracy. These cases strongly suggest that the typical conscientious objector does not object to unreasonable, controversial professional services—involving torture, for instance—but to the provision of professional services that are both uncontroversially legal and that patients are entitled to receive. We analyse the conflict between these patients' access rights and the conscientious objection accommodation demanded by monopoly providers of such healthcare services. It is implausible that professionals who voluntarily join (...) a profession should be endowed with a legal claim not to provide services that are within the scope of the profession's practice and that society expects them to provide. We discuss common counterarguments to this view and reject all of them. (shrink)

In this article, I articulate and respond to an epistemological challenge to meta-normative realism. The challenge has it that, if realism about the normative is correct, and if evolutionary forces have significantly influenced our normative judgments, then it would be a remarkable coincidence if the content of the normative facts and our normative judgments were aligned. I criticize David Enoch's recent attempt to meet this challenge, but provide an alternative response that is structurally similar. I argue that if realism is (...) correct, then it would be remarkable if the content of our normative judgments and the normative facts were not significantly aligned. (shrink)

This paper makes a conceptual inquiry into the notion of ‘publics’, and forwards an understanding of this notion that allows more responsible forms of decision-making with regards to technologies that have localized impacts, such as wind parks, hydrogen stations or flood barriers. The outcome of this inquiry is that the acceptability of a decision is to be assessed by a plurality of ‘publics’, including that of a local community. Even though a plurality of ‘publics’ might create competing normative demands, its (...) acknowledgment is necessary to withstand the monopolization of the process of technology appraisal. The paper presents four ways in which such an appropriation of publicness takes place. The creation of dedicated ‘local publics’, in contrast, helps to overcome these problems and allows for more responsible forms of decision-making. We describe ‘local publics’ as those in which stakeholders from the different publics that are related to the process of technology implementation are brought together, and in which concerns and issues from these publics are deliberated upon. The paper will present eight conditions for increasing the effectiveness of such ‘local publics’. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 99-99, September 2021.

Some health-care professionals refuse to perform certain services because doing so would violate their conscientiously held beliefs. Arguments for and against their accommodation claims continue both in the public square and in the courts, as well as in bioethics. This chapter introduces this debate by discussing jurisdictions in which accommodation is granted. We offer evidence of the detrimental effects it has on access to health-care services. An overview of influential ethical arguments for and against conscientious objection accommodation, including but not (...) limited to the incompatibility thesis and the moral integrity defense, is presented. We conclude with a discussion of arguments based on the values of diversity and equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Einleitung -- Kindheit und Jugend im grossbürgerlichen Ambiente in Kiel, Cuxhaven und Lübeck -- Student und politischer Aktivist in Tübingen -- Doktorand in Berlin und die Beziehungen zu Aussenminister Gustav Stresemann -- Polltische und berufliche Aktivitäten in den Krisenjahren der Republik -- Wirtschaftspolitischer Amtsträger im Dritten Reich -- In der Regierung von Württemberg-Hohenzollern -- Professor für Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Tübingen -- "Öffentlicher Professor" sowie interner Berater und Kritiker -- Lebensabend : Familiäres, Krankheiten und die Fron des Memoirenschreibens -- Epilog.

Knowing that technologies are inherently value-laden and systemically interwoven with society, the question is how individual engineers can take up the challenge of accepting the responsibility for their work? This paper will argue that engineers have no institutional structure at the level of society that allows them to recognize, reflect upon, and actively integrate the value-laden character of their designs. Instead, engineers have to tap on the different institutional realms of market, science, and state, making their work a ‘hybrid’ activity (...) combining elements from the different institutional realms. To deal with this institutional hybridity, engineers develop routines and heuristics in their professional network, which do not allow societal values to be expressed in a satisfactory manner. To allow forms of ‘active’ responsibility, there have to be so-called ‘accountability forums’ that guide moral reflections of individual actors. The paper will subsequently look at the methodologies of value-sensitive design and constructive technology assessment and explore whether and how these methodologies allow engineers to integrate societal values into the design technological artifacts and systems. As VSD and CTA are methodologies that look at the process of technological design, whereas the focus of this paper is on the designer, they can only be used indirectly, namely as frameworks which help to identify the contours of a framework for active responsibility of engineers. (shrink)

Emotions are often met with suspicion in political debates about risky technologies, because they are seen as contrary to rational decision making. However, recent emotion research rejects such a dichotomous view of reason and emotion, by seeing emotions as an important source of moral insight. Moral emotions such as compassion and feelings of responsibility and justice can play an important role in judging ethical aspects of technological risks, such as justice, fairness, and autonomy. This article discusses how this idea can (...) be integrated into approaches for political decision making about risk. The article starts with an analysis of the dichotomous view of reason and emotion in risk theory, in approaches to participatory risk assessment as well as in relevant approaches to political philosophy. This article then presents alternative approaches in political philosophy and political theory that do explicitly endorse the importance of emotions. Based on these insights, a procedural approach for policy making is presented, in which emotional responses to technological risks, and the ethical concerns that lie behind them, are taken seriously. This approach allows for morally better political decisions about risky technologies and a better understanding between experts and laypeople. (shrink)

In a commentary published in Bioethics I defended Qatar as the location of the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics (Schuklenk 2023). I have since, reluctantly, changed my views on this.This brief resp...

The ongoing explosion of interest in artificial intelligence is fueled in part by recently developed techniques in machine learning. Those techniques allow automated systems to process huge amounts of data, utilizing mathematical methods that depart from traditional statistical approaches, and resulting in impressive advancements in our ability to make predictions and uncover correlations across a host of interesting domains. But as is now widely discussed, the way that those systems arrive at their outputs is often opaque, even to the experts (...) who design and deploy them. Is it morally problematic to make use of opaque automated methods when making high-stakes decisions, like whether to issue a loan to an applicant, or whether to approve a parole request? Many scholars answer in the affirmative. However, there is no widely accepted explanation for why transparent systems are morally preferable to opaque systems. We argue that the use of automated decision-making systems sometimes violates duties of consideration that are owed by decision-makers to decision-subjects, duties that are both epistemic and practical in character. Violations of that kind generate a weighty consideration against the use of opaque decision systems. In the course of defending our approach, we show that it is able to address three major challenges sometimes leveled against attempts to defend the moral import of transparency in automated decision-making. (shrink)

New network technologies are framed as eliminating ‘transaction costs’, a notion first developed in economic theory that now drives the design of market systems. However, the actual promise of the elimination of transaction costs seems unfeasible, because of a cyclical pattern in which network technologies that make that promise create processes of institutionalization that create new forms transaction costs. Nonetheless, the promises legitimize the exemption of innovations of network technologies from critical scrutiny.

Der Autor untersucht das Paar Repräsentation/Nichtrepräsentation über mehrere Sprachen (Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch) und verschiedene theoretische Perspektiven hinweg (u. a. Lacan, Laplanche, Botella, Levine). Dabei kommt er zu dem Ergebnis, dass es unangemessen ist, Freuds Psychoanalyse als eine »Theorie der Repräsentation« zu bezeichnen: Weder gibt es im Unbewussten Repräsentationen, noch lässt sich das Unbewusste selbst repräsentieren. Die Sphäre des Unbewussten und die der Repräsentation sind miteinander radikal inkompatibel. Für den Autor benennt Lacans Begriff des Realen jene Zone des Psychischen, in der (...) die Darstellungsmittel des psychischen Apparates an seine Grenze stoßen. Dies wird an mehreren Traumbeispielen gezeigt. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 1, Page 1-2, January 2022.

Between Wolff and Kant: Merian's Theory of Apperception UDO THIEL IT IS WELL KNOWN that the nodon of apperception or self-consciousness is central to Kant's theoretical philosophy. Kant introduces the notion in one of the crucial parts of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, and assigns it an important role in his critique of traditional metaphysics of the soul in the Transcendental Dialectic.' It is also well known that Kant did not invent the term "apperception." (...) Leibniz had introduced the French 'Tapperception" into philosophical terminology early in the eigh- teenth century. Kant scholars generally stress, rightly, that Kant's notion of apperception differs significandy from that of his predecessors. However, the precise relation between Kant's concept of apperception and earlier accounts has not been considered in any detail. Wolfgang Carl, for example, simply states that the main difference is that, prior to Kant, apperception was under- stood as relating only to mental acts and their contents, and not to the subject that thinks and has ideas, whereas in Kant apperception relates essentially to the thinking subject. 2 This very general thesis is questionable even in regard to some of the philosophers that Carl cites in this context . It is clearly not true of some other pre-Kantian philoso- phers who deal with self-consciousness. ' References to the Critique of Pure.. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about at least two normative challenges on unprecedented scale for liberal democracies. One concerned prioritization decisions when health care resources were constrained. The other, which arguably led to lasting damage to social cohesion and citizens’ trust in government and government public health institutions, concerned policies introduced with the aim of reducing the spread of SARS-CoV2, some of which turned out to be mistaken. I discuss in this essay a few examples of misguided, liberty-limiting public health policies (...) and describe how public health and public health ethics principlism provided cover for such policies. Citizens had reasons to be concerned about the duration of such liberty-infringing policies, the absence of predictable government policies, and the absence of transparent justifications for the policies that were implemented. (shrink)

Religious considerations and language do not typically belong in the professional advice rendered by a doctor to a patient. Among the rationales mounted by Greenblum and Hubbard in support of that conclusion is that religious considerations and language are incompatible with the role of doctors as public officials.1 Much as I agree with their conclusion, I take issue with this particular aspect of their analysis. It seems based on a mischaracterisation of what societal role doctors fulfil, qua doctors. What obliges (...) doctors to communicate by means of content that is expressed in public reason-based language is not that they are public officials. Doctors as doctors are not necessarily public officials. Rather, doctors have such obligations, because they are professionals. Unlike public officials doctors are part of a profession that is to a significant extent self-governing. This holds true for all professions. The …. (shrink)

This paper examines the intrinsic relation between institutions and social justice. Its starting point is that processes of institutionalization invoke societal groups to articulate justice demands which, in their turn, give rise to processes of institutional redesign. In liberal democracies, demands for justice are articulated as a pursuit for emancipation and empowerment of groups that feel excluded by dominant categorizations. The imminent presence of this twin pursuit for justice can be explained by the conceptual inconsistencies that characterize the distinction between (...) the public and private sphere. These inconsistencies also explain why demands for emancipation and empowerment are intrinsically ambiguous and inconsistent. In order to reconsider the question how institutions are to be adapted to allow for social justice while acknowledging the plurality, ambiguity and volatility of justice demands, the paper will propose an empirical and normative research agenda. (shrink)

Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957) wird oft als einer der Begründer der psychosomatischen Medizin im deutschsprachigen Raum angeführt. Doch ist mit dieser Zuschreibung sein Versuch einer grundlegenden Reform der Medizin nur unzureichend charakterisiert. Im Zentrum des vorliegenden Bandes stehen daher Studien zu seiner anthropologischen Medizin und Sozialmedizin, die nicht nur «psycho-somatisch» ausgerichtet, sondern auch erkenntnis- und gesellschaftskritisch gefaßt waren. Dabei wird sowohl die Aktualität der Gedanken von Weizsäckers als auch ihr Zeitbezug und ihre Zeitbedingtheit, gerade in den Jahren zwischen 1933 und (...) 1945, deutlich. (shrink)

In der sog. »aristotelischen Zeitaporie« (Physik IV) äußert sich Aristoteles zum Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele. Dieser Text gehört zu den umstrittensten Abschnitten seines Zeittraktates. Zur Interpretation rekonstruiert die vorgelegte Untersuchung die Entwicklungslinien der Analysen zur Zeitaporie von der Spätantike über die arabische Philosophie bis zur Frühphase der lateinischen Aristoteleskommentierung im 13. Jahrhundert. Der erste Abschnitt zeigt, wie die antike Physik-Kommentatoren diesen Text erklärten. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Auslegung des Alexander von Aphrodisias. Den der Spätantike diskutierten die Araber. Ein (...) zweite Abschnitt stellt daher die Analysen der arabischen Zeitphilosophie vor. Vermittelt durch lateinische Übersetzungen, beeinflussen arabische und jüdische Theoretiker die Zeitphilosophie des 13. Jahrhunderts. Die Geschichte des sukzessiven Vordringens der Konzeption des Averroes in die Auslegung der Zeitaporie im 13. Jahrhundert expliziert daher ein dritter Teil. Erst die Philosophen dieser Zeit konnten die These des Aristoteles zum Verhältnis von Zeit und Seele mit der Konzeption des Augustinus vergleichen. Sie haben das elfte Buch der Bekenntnisse neu entdeckt. (shrink)

"Der Vernunft kommt bei Eckhart fundamentalste Bedeutung zu. Sie bricht - so der Thüringer Meister - in den Grund. Ermöglicht wird sie durch das vernünftige Erkennen, das intelligere des Einen. In der Gottesgeburt wird der Mensch qualifiziert zu univokem Erkennen. Als Sohn Gottes wird der Mensch vernünftig zu weitem unbegrenztem Wissen geführt. Der Logos, das Wort ist substantiale und hermeneutische Grundlage vernünftigen Verstehens. Auch das Vergehen, die Sünde wird produktiv in dieses aufgenommen. Der Vernünftige ist der Demütige, Gelassene und Freie. (...) Das Höchste, was dem Menschen ontologisch und in seinem Wirken und Leben zuteil wird, ist das 'Draussen-wie-drinnen-Stehen'. Eckhart sagt: 'Lausche nun auf das Wunderbare! Welch wunderbares Stehen draußen wie drinnen, begreifen und umgriffen werden, schauen und das Geschaute selbst sein, es in sich haben und gehalten werden: das ist die Vollendung, wo der Geist voll Ruhe in der Einheit der lieben Ewigkeit bleibt'."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)