Der Quantenphysiker Herbert Pietschmann beschaftigt sich seit Jahrzehnten mit dem Phanomen Kommunikation. Der Kommunikationswissenschaftler Erich Hamberger setzt sich seit langem mit der Frage der Adaptierung erkenntnistheoretischer Einsichten der Quantentheorie fur die Geistes- und Biowissenschaften auseinander. 2003 begegnen sich die beiden - und staunen uber die "verschrankten Erkenntnisinteressen". 2006 bestreiten sie eine erste gemeinsame universitare Lehrveranstaltung. 2011 folgt Das Phanomen Kommunikation transdisziplinar betrachtet. Aus ihrer Zusammenarbeit ist dieses Buch entstanden. Naturwissenschaft arbeitet auf der Grundlage des mechanistischen Denkrahmens. Die bisher einzige (...) Ausnahme ist die Quantenphysik. Weder Leben noch Kommunikation ist mittels des mechanistischen Denkrahmens zu verstehen. Auch der Denkrahmen der Quantenphysik reicht dazu nicht aus. Der Bedarf nach adaquatem Denken im Bereich der Kommunikation kann durch quantenphysikalisches Denken NICHT befriedigt werden, jedoch kann dadurch ein Weg aufgezeigt werden, wie ein adaquater Denkrahmen zu gestalten ist. (shrink)

Paying research participants in developing countries like Uganda raises ethical concerns over potential for undue inducement. This article, based on an exploratory study, reviewed 49 research protocols from a national HIV/AIDS research ethics committee database. Payments mainly adhered to the reimbursement and compensation payment models. Offers made were diverse but basic in order to limit undue inducement. Implications in terms of undue inducement and possible impact on participants and research are discussed. We end by recommending standardization across comparable studies in (...) the interests of promoting high-quality research, altruism, voluntariness, and restraining unfair reimbursement practices in research. (shrink)

The increasing prevalence of ecologically sustainable products in consumer markets, such as organic produce, are generally assumed to curtail anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Here I intend to present an alternative perspective on sustainable production by interpreting the relationship between recent rises in organic agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production. I construct two time series fixed-effects panel regressions to estimate how increases in organic farmland impact greenhouse gas emissions derived from agricultural production. My analysis finds that the rise (...) of certified organic production in the United States is not correlated with declines in greenhouse gas emissions derived specifically from agricultural production, and on the contrary is associated positively overall agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. To make sense of this finding, I embed my research within the conventionalization thesis. As a result I argue that the recent USDA certification of organic farming has generated a bifurcated organic market, where one form of organic farming works as a sustainable counterforce to conventional agriculture and the other works to increase the economic accessibility of organic farming through weakening practice standards most conducive to reducing agricultural greenhouse gas output. Additionally, I construct my own theoretical framework known as the displacement paradox to further interpret my findings. (shrink)

In this book, Julius M. Moravcsik disputes that a natural language is not and should not be represented as a formal language. The book criticizes current philosophy of language as having an altered focus without adjusting the needed conceptual tools. It develops a new theory of lexical meaning, a new conception of cognition-humans not as information processing creatures but as primarily explanation and understanding seeking creatures-with information processing as a secondary, derivative activity. In conclusion, based on the theories of (...) lexical meaning and cognition, this work sketches an argument showing that the human understanding of human understanding must always remain just partial. (shrink)

I first characterize a moral mistake in coercion. The principle of independence with which I criticize coercion seems also to condemn exchange. I propose an account of exchange from which it follows that exchange upholds independence after all. In support of that account I argue that, of the accounts of exchange that occur to me, only this one has the consequence that, on general assumptions, a person can take part in exchange while acting, intending, and believing with sufficient reason. I (...) argue that the hiring of very poor people by very rich people for labor from which the rich draw a substantial surplus does not give rise to an exchange of this kind. These instances of the wage labor relation resemble coercion insofar as they violate independence. (shrink)

In Plato's Theaetetus Socrates is portrayed as a midwife of the intellect. The comparison of Socratic questioning to midwifery had until recently been commonly attributed to Socrates himself. In 1977 M. F. Burnyeat published Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration, which transformed the way in which the dialogue has since been perceived. The author maintains that the midwife comparison is in no sense to be attributed to the historical Socrates.

Morality is often thought of as non-rational or sub-rational. In Moral Notions, first published in 1967, Julius Kovesi argues that the rationality of morality is built into the way we construct moral concepts. In showing this he also resolves the old Humean conundrum of the relation between 'facts' and 'values'. And he puts forward a method of reasoning that might make 'applied ethics' (at present largely a hodge-podge of opinions) into a constructive discipline. Kovesi's general theory of concepts - (...) important in its own right - is indebted to his interpretation of Plato, and his three papers on Plato, first published here, explain this debt. This new edition of Moral Notions also includes a foreward by Philippa Foot, a biography of the author, and a substantial afterword in which the editors, Robert Ewin and Alan Tapper, explain the signficance of Kovesi's work. (shrink)

Plato and Platonism reviews the natures and limits of Platonic interpretation. Students, academics and researchers will find that Moravcsik's careful and rigorous analysis offers an understanding of what Platonism in our times would have been like. The book leads us to an appreciation of genuine Platonism, rarely discussed today.

`All over Italy men were conscripted, and weapons requisitioned; money was exacted from towns, and taken from shrines; and all the laws of god and man were overturned.' The Civil War is Caesar's masterly account of the celebrated war between himself and his great rival Pompey, from the crossing of the Rubicon in January 49 B.C. to Pompey's death and the start of the Alexandrian War in the autumn of the following year. His unfinished account of the continuing struggle with (...) Pompey's heirs and followers is completed by the three anonymous accounts of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish Wars, which bring the story down to within a year of Caesar's assassination in March 44 B.C. This generously annotated edition places the war in context and enables the reader to grasp it both in detail and as a whole. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

(Anna Maria Taigi 1769 - 1837)St. Alphonsus writes: "a single bad book will be sufficient to cause the destruction of a monastery." Pope Pius XII wrote in 1947 at the beatification of Blessed Maria Goretti: "There rises to Our lips the cry of the Saviour: 'Woe to the world because of scandals!' (Matthew 18:7). Woe to those who consciously and deliberately spread corruption-in novels, newspapers, magazines, theaters, films, in a world of immodesty!" We at St. Pius X Press are calling (...) for a crusade of good books. We want to restore 1,000 old Catholic books to the market. We ask for your assistance and prayers. This book is a photographic reprint of the original. The original has been inspected and many imperfections in the existing copy have been corrected. At Saint Pius X Press our goal is to remain faithful to the original in both photographic reproductions and in textual reproductions that are reprinted. Photographic reproductions are given a page by page inspection, whereas textual reproductions are proofread to correct any errors in reproduction. (shrink)

This paper suggests, against a comparative horizon and in broadly philosophical context, a fresh approach to the study of Hinduism. After indicating how religion in general and ‘Hinduism’ in particular are plural phenomena both internally and externally, the paper goes on to define a distinguishing property of Hinduness in terms of an approach that is based on a re-centring system of equilibrating and interactive polarities called ‘polycentrism’. This is described further as a calculated paradoxicality, which is articulated in the light (...) of possible objections. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Logik in ihrem Verhältnis zur Philosophie, geschichtlich betrachtet" verfügbar.

In Plato's Theaetetus Socrates is portrayed as a midwife of the intellect. The comparison of Socratic questioning to midwifery had until recently been commonly attributed to Socrates himself. In 1977 M. F. Burnyeat published Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration, which transformed the way in which the dialogue has since been perceived. The author maintains that the midwife comparison is in no sense to be attributed to the historical Socrates.

Diese Arbeit widmet sich einem Hauptproblem der kantischen Pflichtensystematik in der Tugendlehre: Der Unterscheidung von vollkommenen und unvollkommenen Pflichten und der resultierenden Spannung zwischen Einleitung und Elementarlehre. Während in der Einleitung in die Tugendlehre Tugendpflichten begrifflich nur als unvollkommene Pflichten eingeführt und abgeleitet werden, beginnt die Elementarlehre mit einem extensiven Abschnitt über vollkommene Pflichten, die dennoch Tugendpflichten sein sollen. Nach einer kurzen Betrachtung einschlägiger Vorschläge der Literatur zu diesem Problem, versucht die vorliegende Arbeit aus dem Konzept der Weite von Pflichten (...) Kriterien für die Zuordnung der verschiedenen Tugendpflichten zu gewinnen. Im Lichte dieser Kriterien erscheint Kants Beurteilung mancher verhandelter Pflichten als ‚vollkommen’ gerechtfertigt. Abschließend wird gezeigt, inwiefern sie dennoch zu den Tugendpflichten gehören können, indem Kants eher beiläufige Unterscheidung von Strebens- und Erhaltungspflichten in den Mittelpunkt gerückt wird. Unvollkommenheit einer Pflicht folgt nur aus ethischen Strebenspflichten, nicht aus gebotenen Maximen überhaupt. Das Ziel der Exposition aller relevanten Merkmale, die zu einer Tugendpflicht gehören können, lässt verstehen, warum die Einleitung nur auf Strebenspflichten zentriert ist.This essay is concerned with one of the main problems in Kant’s system of duties in the Tugendlehre: the difference between perfect and imperfect duties and the resulting inconsistency between introduction and Elementarlehre. Even though the introduction establishes and derives duties of virtue as imperfect duties only, the Elementarlehre begins with a long section concerning perfect duties, which nevertheless are supposed to be duties of virtue. After a brief consideration of other interpreter’s views on this topic, this essay tries to develop criteria for the categorisation of the different duties of virtue from the concept of a duty’s latitude. In light of these criteria, Kant’s categorizing some of the discussed duties as perfect seems justifiable. Finally I will show, why they can nevertheless be ‘duties of virtue’, by emphasizing Kant’s distinction between duties to strive and those to conserve. Imperfection of a duty follows from duties to strive only, not from obligatory maxims per se. The goal of introducing all relevant characteristics, a duty of virtue may have, can explain, why the introduction is only concerned with duties to strive. (shrink)

Originally published in 1990, this book centres on a certain way of surveying a variety of theories of language, and on outlining a new proposal of meaning within the framework set by the survey. One of the key features of both survey and proposal is the insistence on the need to locate theories of language within a large framework that includes questions about the nature of thought and about general ontological questions as well. The book deals in an interconnected way (...) with both very general and specific issues. At one end of this spectrum there are discussions of the contrast between realist and nominalist ontologies, while at the other are analyses of specific lexical items of English. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s idealization of public dialogue pits literature and narrative against objectivity and ethics, thus leaving non-intellectual practitioners in the lurch. The evolutionary arc of Rorty’s oeuvre merits an assessment of the historiography he uses to prevent figures like Michel Foucault and Cornel West from being full participants in public dialogue. Miranda Fricker’s account of the collective explains confidence and transparency in an ironized ethical tradition that mediates irony and objectivity. Fricker’s mediation positions West’s use of Foucault’s to re-narrate pragmatism (...) as a way to embrace the process of rendering ethical experience universalizable. Ironized post-philosophical cultures can be explained responsibly by ironists within critically reflective ethical traditions. Confidence in pragmatism occurs when publics admit critical self-reflective inquiry from non-intellectuals. (shrink)

Respectively, Martin Buber and Richard Rorty imaginatively account for the philosophy and publicity of dialogue. Rorty’s account imagines dialogue as if the secularization of public political culture is inevitable. Buber’s account imagines a philosophy of dialogue in which religious considerations are unproblematic. Rorty’s repudiation of religion’s political influence results in an unnecessary estimation of the American government’s role in redressing social evils, especially those evils that are the result of the collective action of affiliated agents whose individual intentional choices are (...) not presumed blameworthy.2 Social evils obtain when choices accrue in associations and institutions that cause cruelty on a... (shrink)

Each of two mutually recognising persons knows herself to be capable of and responsible for acting toward the other in ways that presuppose the other’s capability and responsibility for doing the same. The lecture brings out some egalitarian, libertarian and solidaristic aspects of an interpersonal ideal of mutual recognition, and it considers conversation, friendship and respect for right as three main examples of the syndrome.