It has been argued that moral problems in relation to Information Technology (IT) require new theories of ethics. In recent years, an interesting new theory to address such concerns has been proposed, namely the theory of Information Ethics (IE). Despite the promise of IE, the theory has not enjoyed public discussion. The aim of this paper is to initiate such discussion by critically evaluating the theory of IE.

The idea that Adorno should be read as a “realist” of any sort may indeed sound odd. And unpacking from Adorno’s elusive prose a credible and useful normative reconstruction of epistemology and metaphysics will take some work. But we argue that he should be added to the growing group of epistemologists and metaphysicians who have been developing post-positivist versions of realism such as contextual, internal, pragmatic and critical realisms. These latter realisms, however, while helpfully showing how realism can coexist with (...) ontological pluralism, for example, as well as a highly contextualised account of knowledge, have not developed a political reflexivity about how the object of knowledge—the real—is constructed. As a field, then, post-positivist realisms have been politically naïve, which is perhaps why they have not enjoyed more influence among Continental philosophers. (shrink)

Kant is known for having said relatively little about truth in Critique of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, there are important lessons to be learned from this work about truth, lessons that apply to the contemporary debate on the nature and structure of truth and its theory. In this paper I suggest two such lessons. The first lesson concerns the structure of a substantive theory of truth as contrasted with a deflationist theory; the second concerns the structure of a correspondence theory of (...) truth. The first lesson warns us against conceiving of a substantive theory of truth in a way that led Kant to conclude that such a theory is unviable. In so doing it indirectly suggests what a viable substantive theory of truth would be like. The second lesson teaches us that a correspondence theory of truth need not be as naive and overly simplistic as it is usually thought to be, but can, and should be, far more complex. This lesson is based on a correspondence theory of truth incipient in the Critique, one whose structure reflects the complexity of the relation between mind and world in Kant’s theory. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Schopenhauer’s idealism and investigates how its elaboration was related not only to Kant but also to Berkeley – a theme generally overlooked by scholars. Schopenhauer viewed B...

With the publication of Ethical and World-View Philosophy [EWP], the complete six-volume edition of Dilthey’s Selected Writings has now appeared. Four decades in the making, the collection testifie...

After the failure of all enterprises in legal ontology, and after the success of all enterprises in legal system internal theodicy, the field of legal theory is now open to receive a range of more complex, less universalist, less politicised, but also more personally shaped, more fragile suggestions. My article focusses on three such ways of dealing with the law question: the work of Pierre Legendre, a French psychoanalyst and specialist of the history of administrative law and Christian religion, the (...) work of Niklas Luhmann, the recently deceased founder of a new German schoolof sociological systems theory, and that of Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher whose re-opening of the discussion on the Benjaminian notion of bare life and its relationship to law has provoked worldwide attention. (shrink)

In his 1969 Trevelyan Lectures, Franco Venturi argued that Kant's response to the question ?What is Enlightenment?? has tended to promote a ?philosophical interpretation? of the Enlightenment that leads scholars away from the political questions that were central to its concerns. But while Kant's response is well known, it has been often misunderstood by scholars who see it as offering a definition of an historical period, rather than an attempt at characterizing a process that had a significant implications. This article (...) seeks (1) to clarify, briefly, the particular question that Kant was answering, (2) to examine ? using Jürgen Habermas? work as a case in point ? the tension between readings that use Kant's answer as a way of discussing the Enlightenment as a discrete historical period and those readings that see it as offering a broad outline of an ?Enlightenment Project? that continues into the present, and (3) to explore how Michel Foucault, in a series of discussions of Kant's response, sketched an approach to Kant's text that offers a way of reframing Venturi's distinction between ?philosophical? and ?political? interpretations of the Enlightenment. ??Thanks to an invitation from Karlis Racevskis, an earlier version of this article was delivered as the George R. Havens Lecture at Ohio State University in May 2007. I have also benefitted from discussions at a workshop arranged by Kenneth Baynes at Syracuse University in November 2009. (shrink)

SUMMARYJeremy Bentham has two very strong commitments in his thought: one is to the principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, as the fundamental principle of morality; the other is to truth, as indicated, for instance, in his opposition to falsehood and fiction in the law. How, then, did Bentham view the relationship between utility and truth? Did he think that utility and truth simply coincided, and hence that falsehood necessarily led to a diminution in happiness, and conversely truth (...) led to an increase in happiness? This article addresses this issue through two bodies of material: the first consists of Bentham's writings on religion under the heading of ‘Juggernaut’ and dating from 1811 to 1821; the second consists of the writings on judicial evidence dating from 1803 to 1812 and which appeared in Rationale of Judicial Evidence. (shrink)

This paper looks at the ways in which Mikhail Bakhtin had appropriated the ideas of Kant and of the Marburg neo-Kantian school. While Bakhtin was greatly indebted to Kantian philosophy, and is known to have referred to himself as a neo-Kantian, he rejects the main tenets of neo-Kantianism. Instead, Bakhtin offers a substantial re-interpretation of Kantian thought. His frequent borrowings from neo-Kantian philosophers (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and others) also follow a distinctive pattern of appropriation, whereby blocks of interconnected ideas (...) are removed from their original context, and made to serve Bakhtin’s own—substantially different—philosophical purposes in the context of his own thought. Bakhtin’s thought thus remains original even as he is borrowing ideas from others. (shrink)

This article advances a new account of Kant’s views on conceptualism. On the one hand, I argue that Kant was a nonconceptualist. On the other hand, my approach accommodates many motivations underlying the conceptualist reading of his work: for example, it is fully compatible with the success of the Transcendental Deduction. I motivate my view by providing a new analysis of both Kant’s theory of perception and of the role of categorical synthesis: I look in particular at the categories of (...) quantity. Locating my interpretation in relation to recent research by Allais, Ginsborg, Tolley and others, I argue that it offers an attractive compromise on this important theoretical and exegetical issue. (shrink)

This paper proposes to analyse the process that makes paths of action meaningful. It argues that this process is one of ‘figuration’. The term ‘figuration’ intends to outline how the experience of moral meaning is one that already positively marks out a field and to identify and analyse the mechanisms used for such marking and selection. It is my contention that these mechanisms predate the persuasion to a moral path; they are the process through which this path is constructed as (...) meaningful. This thesis is elucidated through an analysis of the tactics of meaning in Kant’s moral theory. Kant turns to aesthetics as a means of corroboration for his moral theory, but he also attempts to limit the scope of the interactions between his aesthetic and moral theory. For instance, when he writes on the topic of form in aesthetic taste or outlines the technical specifications of aesthetic judgment, it is arguably the arcane peculiarities of his system that are met. For this reason, Kant insists on the merely analogical relations between beauty and morality. However, it is also possible to see how certain aspects of Kant’s aesthetic theory execute wider, and potentially more important, functions for his practical philosophy, such as providing meaningful orientation for the ascetic moral attitude of his duty-ethics. In this respect, certain figures of Kant’s aesthetic theory may well be viewed as complementing the dependence in his moral philosophy, in the important sections on moral pedagogy and methodology, on appeals to heroic models and stories as ways of shaping and inculcating the moral disposition. This paper considers these aspects of interaction between Kant’s aesthetic and moral philosophies as both 1) a problem for the consistency of his philosophy given his avowed exclusion of aesthetic and religious elements of meaning in his duty-ethics; and 2) as a case study for the new, schematic analysis of ‘moral figuration’ outlined in the paper. (shrink)

The empirical study of visual space has centered on determining its geometry, whether it is a perspective projection, flat or curved, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, whereas the topology of space consists of those properties that remain invariant under stretching but not tearing. For that reason distance is a property not preserved in topological space whereas the property of spatial order is preserved. Specifically the topological properties of dimensionality, orientability, continuity, and connectivity define “real” space as studied by physics and are the (...) spatial properties that characterize the physical universe as being an integral whole. By contrast the geometrical analysis of VS has taken little cognizance of its topology. Instead such properties have been presupposed a priori rather than being established a posteriori by empirical means, perhaps because these properties are self-evident. Applying the method of coordinative definition expounded by Hans Reichenbach for determining geometrical and topological properties of physical space, it can be shown that VS fulfills the topological criteria of being a “real” space sui generis. Though theorized to be produced by the brain, the topology of VS is not topologically equivalent with the structure and activity of the brain because, as will be shown, the topology of VS cannot be formed from the topology of the brain without tearing and/or cutting and pasting. (shrink)

Finding myself writing this introduction on the same day that Greta Thunberg is addressing the United Nations, it seems impossible not to understand her parrhesia concerning the biospheric crisis a...

The essay deals with problems encountered by Western researchers working in the field of Chinese philosophy. It begins with a discussion of intercultural and transcultural methodologies and illuminates some of the most common issues inherent in traditional intercultural comparisons in the field of philosophy. Taking into account the current state of the so-called postcomparative discourses in the field of transcultural philosophy and starting from the notion of culturally divergent frames of reference, it focuses upon semantic aspects of the Chinese philosophical (...) tradition and exposes the need for discursive translations. On this basis, a new postcomparative approach in transcultural philosophical studies of Chinese philosophy is suggested. In this context, the author proposes the application of an innovative principle, based upon what can preliminary be denoted as the method of sublation. (shrink)

In the middle section of Theory and Practice, Kant speaks briefly `against Hobbes '; but for a fuller version of Kant's anti-Hobbesianism one must turn to the three Critiques, the Groundwork, and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. It is in those works that one learns that, for Kant, Hobbes 's notion of `will' as fully determined `last appetite' destroys the freedom needed to take `ought' or moral necessity as the motives for self-determined action; that Hobbes ' s version (...) of the social contract is thus incoherent; that Hobbes is not even able to show how moral ideas are conceivable through the `pressure' of `outward objects'. For Kant, in short, Hobbes has no adequate notions of will, freedom, moral necessity, ideation, or even obligatory contract, and therefore fails in his own stated aims. Key Words: Hobbes • Kant • politics • reason • teleology • will. (shrink)

This article argues—against the present compatibilist orthodoxy in the philosophy of criminal law—for the contemporary relevance of a kind of critique of criminal law known as the ‘determinist challenge’, through a reconstruction of Theodor Adorno’s thought on freedom and determinism. The article begins by considering traditional forms of the determinist challenge, which expressed a widespread intuition that it is irrational or inappropriate for the criminal law to hold people responsible for actions that are causally determined by social and psychological forces (...) in such a way that they cannot be said to have acted freely. Yet as traditionally presented it was possible for its opponents to interpret this challenge as an incompatibilist position within the traditional free will/determinism debate, and to present compatibilist arguments against it—in particular, that the determinist challenge is unmotivated and has implausible implications. It is argued that these compatibilist objections hold only on a certain interpretation of the determinist challenge, but that this interpretation is not the only one available. Adorno’s distinctive position on freedom and determinism is presented as an alternative version of the challenge, which cannot be assimilated to the terms of the traditional compatibilist/incompatibilist disputes. This novel, ‘metacritical’ version of the determinist challenge is essentially a social–historical, not metaphysical, thesis about the moral significance of the freedom-undermining effects of modern social forms. As such, it is argued, it is invulnerable to the usual compatibilist objections, and presents a serious challenge to our criminal legal institutions. (shrink)

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required (...) for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014). (shrink)

The name of Michel Foucault is most commonly associated with words such as power, knowledge, discourse, archaeology, and genealogy. However, in his final public lectures delivered prior to his death in June 1984 at the Collège de France from 1981 to 1984 and at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983, Foucault turned his focus to another word, parrhesia, a Greek term ordinarily translated into English by “candor, frankness; outspokenness or boldness of speech”. The parrhesiastes is the one who (...) uses parrhesia, i.e., the one who speaks the truth. This paper is about Foucault’s choice of parrhesia as the topic of his final lectures and what the articulation of these lectures tells us about truth telling in a specific academic context. It will consider Foucault’s treatment of parrhesia with respect to the specific practice of Foucault’s articulation of this work in the specific formal settings in which it occurred at the Collège de France and the University of California at Berkeley. The objective here is to consider Foucault’s lectures as potential examples of parrhesia and address the question of whether or not is possible to “speak the truth,” in the Greek sense of the term, within the institutional constraints of academic discourse. (shrink)

Author's reply to comments on J. RADDEN, Imagined and delusional pain, Forum Imagining pain, in: «Rivista internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia», vol. XII, n. 2, 2021, pp. 151-206.

: Extreme pain and suffering are associated with depression as well as tissue damage. The impossibility of imagining any feelings of pain and suffering intersect with two matters: the kind of imagining involved, and the nature of delusions. These two correspond to the sequence of the following discussion, in which it is contended first that feelings of pain and suffering resist being imagined in a certain, key way, and second that, given a certain analysis of delusional thought, this precludes the (...) possibility of delusional affections while allowing delusions about affections. Keywords: Pain; Imagination; Delusion; Affection; Feelings Dolore immaginato e dolore illusorio Riassunto: Dolore estremo e sofferenza sono solitamente associati a depressione e danni tissutali. L’impossibilità di immaginare il provare dolore e sofferenza dipende da due fattori: il tipo di immaginazione coinvolta e la natura dell’illusione. Questi due fattori saranno trattati in parallelo nell’analisi che qui si propone, in cui si discuterà in primo luogo come il provare dolore e sofferenza oppongano resistenza all’essere immaginati in un certo modo e in secondo luogo come, secondo una certa analisi del pensiero illusorio, questo preclude la possibilità di affezioni illusorie mentre consente illusioni circa le affezioni. Parole chiave: Dolore; Immaginazione; Illusioni; Affezione; Sensazioni. (shrink)

The term dual use technologies refers to research and technology with the potential both to yield valuable scientific knowledge and to be used for nefarious purposes with serious consequences for public health or the environment. There are two main approaches to assessing dual use technologies: pragmatic and metaphysical. A pragmatic approach relies on ethical principles and norms to generate specific guidance and policy for dual use technologies. A metaphysical approach exhorts us to the deeper study of human nature, our intentions, (...) goals, values ideals and social relations when considering dual use technology. Use of science and technology (S and T) is determined by two components of human nature: human intentions and choices. We have drawn a distinction between specific measures, goals and intentions with respect to technologies in order to show that moral judgment about technologies must precede their use. Understanding of our intentionality and values, and our moral ideals, as a measurable, tangible part of the real world is important for the prevention of any possible harm from S and T. In the context of dual use technologies, we stress the importance of three main understandings of human nature: vulnerability, responsibility and narrative identity. These can become a strong ontological “antidote” to technology’s poisoning of modern man. Each new technology can be measured and compared with man’s values, traditions and societal norms. This can be done bearing in mind the concept that human nature is not dualistic, but pluralistic. A system of ethical principles that includes the principles of good intentions, the correspondence of goals and means, the balancing of risks and benefits, simplicity, and contextuality, will help ensure that technologies are more humanistic and friendly to human beings. (shrink)

Against the standard interpretation of Kant's ‘Copernican revolution’ as the prioritization of epistemology over ontology, I argue in this paper that his critique of traditional metaphysics must be seen as a farewell to the perfectionism on which early modern rationalist ontology and epistemology are built. However, Kant does not simply replace ‘perfection’ with another fundamental concept of normativity. More radically, Kant realizes that it is not simply ideas but only the relation of ideas that can be subject to norms, and (...) thus he shifts the focus from the reality of ideas to the validity of judgments. Section 1 of this paper clarifies the pre-Kantian role of the concept of perfection and examines Kant's critical response to that concept. Section 2 identifies Kant's point of departure from the Cartesian ‘way of ideas.’ Section 3 explains the key problem of his novel account of epistemic normativity. I conclude that Kant's anti-perfectionism must be seen as the driving force behind his ‘Copernican revolution’ in order to fully appreciate his mature account of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

According to an often repeated definition, economics is the science of individual choices and their consequences. The emphasis on choice is often used – implicitly or explicitly – to mark a contrast between markets and the state: While the price mechanism in well-functioning markets preserves freedom of choice and still efficiently coordinates individual actions, the state has to rely to some degree on coercion to coordinate individual actions. Since coercion should not be used arbitrarily, coordination by the state needs to (...) be legitimized by the consent of its citizens. The emphasis in economic theory on freedom of choice in the market sphere suggests that legitimization in the market sphere is “automatic” and that markets can thus avoid the typical legitimization problem of the state. In this paper, I shall question the alleged dichotomy between legitimization in the market and in the state. I shall argue that it is the result of a conflation of choice and consent in economics and show how an independent concept of consent makes the need for legitimization of market transactions visible. Footnotes1 For helpful comments and suggestions I am most grateful to Marc Fleurbaey, Alain Marciano, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Thomas Pogge, Hans Bernhard Schmid, to seminar or conference participants in Aix-Marseille, Tutzing, Paris, and Amsterdam, and to two anonymous referees. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s overlooked concept of “active play,” as opposed to “free play,” in connection with the influence of the Brunonian system of medicine, both of which, I propose, are central to understanding the broader significance of intoxication in Kant’s post-1795 work. Beginning with a discussion of the late-18th century German reception of Brunonian theory, the idea of vital stimulus, and their importance for Kant, I assess the distinction drawn between gluttony and intoxication in The Metaphysics of Morals and (...) Anthropology from a Practical Point of View. Both are analysed in the context of the Brunonian system of medicine, having establishing Kant’s commitment to the Brunonianism system, as corroborated by Wasianski. What emerges is a novel understanding of intoxication in the work of Immanuel Kant, which brings to light a previously unexamined dynamic between imagination, intoxication, and the aesthetic. (shrink)

This critical notice highlights the important contributions that Eric Watkins's writings have made to our understanding of theories about causation developed in eighteenth-century German philosophy and by Kant in particular. Watkins provides a convincing argument that central to Kant's theory of causation is the notion of a real ground or causal power that is non-Humean (since it doesn't reduce to regularities or counterfactual dependencies among events or states) and non-Leibnizean because it doesn't reduce to logical or conceptual relations. However, we (...) raise questions about Watkins's more specific claims that Kant completely rejects a model on which the first relatum of a phenomenal causal relation is an event and that he maintains that real grounds are metaphysically and not just epistemically indeterminate. -/- . (shrink)

The deduction of the categories lies undoubtedly at the very heart of Kant's theoretical philosophy and, for this reason, it is one of items in the philosophical canon that is greatly discussed and least agreed upon. In the modern and contemporary Western philosophical tradition as well as in Kant’s literature, the loci classici for its consideration are the 1781 and 1787 editions of the Critique of pure reason. In this paper, I aim at presenting and discussing an argument that Kant (...) advances in the Prolegomena and which is virtually ignored in the approach of the deduction of the categories. At first, an inquiry into the distinction between analytic and synthetic methods is carried out. After that, the difference between judgments of perception and judgments of experience is taken into account. Finally, the Prolegomena’s argument for the categories is brought into discussion. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the prevailing assumption that there is a right to procreate and question whether there exists a coherent notion of such a right. I argue that we should question any and all procreative activities, not just alternative procreative means and contexts. I suggest that clinging to the assumption of a right to procreate prevents serious scrutiny of reproductive behavior and that, instead of continuing to embrace this assumption, attempts should be made to provide a proper foundation (...) for it. I argue that the focus of procreative activities and discourse on reproductive ethics should be on obligations instead of rights, as rights talk tends to obfuscate recognition of obligations toward others, particularly those who bear the most significant burdens of the procreative process. I examine some possible foundations of a right to procreate as well as John Robertson’s thoughtful account of “procreative liberty” but conclude that at the present time there exists no compelling account of a right to procreate. Finally, I conclude that in the absence of a satisfactory account of a right to procreate, we should refrain from grounding practices or polices on the assumption that there is such a right. (shrink)

This article explores Darwall’s second-­‐personal account of morality, which draws on Fichte’s practical philosophy, particularly Fichte’s notions of a summons and principle of right. Darwall maintains that Fichte offers a philosophically more appealing account of relations of right than Kant. Likewise, he thinks that his second-­‐personal interpretation of morality gives rise to contractualism. I reject Darwall’s criticism of Kant’s conception of right. Moreover, I try to show that Darwall’s second-­‐personal conception of morality relies on a Kantian form of contractualism. Instead (...) of accepting Darwall’s claim that contractualism depends upon a second-­‐personal account of morality, I will argue that contractualism provides the foundations not only for second-­‐personal moral relations, but also for first-­‐personal moral authority. (shrink)

German supporters of the Kantian philosophy in the late 19th century took one of two forks in the road: the fork leading to Baden, and the Southwest School of neo-Kantian philosophy, and the fork leading to Marburg, and the Marburg School, founded by Hermann Cohen. Between 1876, when Cohen came to Marburg, and 1918, the year of Cohen's death, Cohen, with his Marburg School, had a profound influence on German academia.

This paper outlines Foucault's genealogical conception of critique and argues that it is not inconsistent with his appeals to concepts of right so long as these are understood in terms of his historical and naturalistic approach to rights. This approach is explained by reference to Nietzsche's account of the origins of rights and duties and the example of Aboriginal rights is used to exemplify the historical character of rights understood as internal to power relations. Drawing upon the contemporary 'externalist' approach (...) to rights, it is argued that the normative force of rights can only come from within historically available moral and political discourses. Reading Foucault's 1978-1979 lectures on liberal governmentality in this manner suggests that his call for new forms of right in order to criticise disciplinary power should be answered by reference to concepts drawn from the liberal tradition of governmental reason. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with what I believe is the epistemological mission of Kant’s doctrine of taste. The third Critique inherits two problems from the first. The evident one is that the categorial constitution of nature must be complemented with the notion of purposiveness. The less evident one is that the transcendental theory of experience needs a common sense in order to secure a common objectivity. The judgment of taste, conceived of by Kant as a ‘cognition in general’ not restricted (...) to either the particular subject or the particular object, offers a solution. It turns out to be a judgment that cannot be made without assuming the purposiveness of nature and the uniformity of the cognizing subjects. (shrink)

Quantum indeterminism seems incompatible with Kant’s defense of causality in his Second Analogy. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This article argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to the world as observable, not to hypothetical (unobservable) objects such as quarks, detectable only by high energy accelerators. Taking Planck’s constant and the speed of light as the lower and upper bounds of observability provides a way of interpreting the observables of quantum mechanics (...) as empirically real even though they are transcendentally (i.e., preobservationally) ideal.El indeterminismo cuántico parece incompatible con la defensa de la causalidad que hace Kant en su Segunda Analogía. La interpretación de Copenhague de la mecánica cuántica también considera a esta teoría como evidencia a favor del antirrealismo. Este artículo defiende que la ley (trascendental) de la causalidadse aplica solamente al mundo en tanto que observable, y no a objetos hipotéticos (inobservables) como los quarks, detectables solo mediante aceleradores de altas energías. Tomar la constante de Planck y la velocidad de la luz como límites inferior y superior de la observabilidad nos ofrece un modo de interpretar losobservables de la mecánica cuántica como empíricamente reales, incluso aunque estos sean trascendentalmente, es decir, preobservacionalmente, ideales. (shrink)

The paper examines how technology challenges conventional borders of national legal systems, as shown by cases that scholars address as a part of their everyday work in the fields of information technology (IT)-Law, i.e., computer crimes, data protection, digital copyright, and so forth. Information on the internet has in fact a ubiquitous nature that transcends political borders and questions the notion of the law as made of commands enforced through physical sanctions. Whereas many of today’s impasses on jurisdiction, international conflicts (...) of law and diverging interpretations of statutes can be addressed by embedding legal safeguards in ICT and other kinds of technology, to overcome the ineffectiveness of state action by design entails its own risks, e.g., threats of paternalism hinging on the regulatory tools of technology. Rather than modelling people’s behaviour by design, the article suggests that design policies should respect individual and collective autonomy by decreasing the impact of harm-generating behaviour (e.g., security measures and default settings for data protection), or by widening the range of people’s choices (e.g., user friendly interfaces). (shrink)

This paper deals with the ontological foundations of the Soviet interpretation of dialectical materialism as exemplified by one of its “founding fathers,” Abram Deborin, in his works of the late 1920s. It has been claimed that the “ontologizing” tendency in Soviet philosophy is due to the influence of Friedrich Engels and his ideas pertaining to the dialectics of nature. However, a more plausible interpretation is that the ontologism of Soviet philosophy is connected with the rejection of the Kantian Copernican turn (...) in philosophy and the idea of the primacy of gnoseology it implies. In this article, I argue in favor of the latter thesis. Ontologism, i.e., the tendency to give priority in philosophy to questions concerning Being, and anti-Kantianism are but two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

Beginning in 1953 the American Psychological Association (APA) has advanced twelve iterations of a professional ethical code. In recent years the adequacy of the Ethics Code as well as APA’s ethics enforcement has come under increased scrutiny. In 2015 the APA empaneled an Ethics Commission which made a series of recommendations; however, the Commission itself as well as its recommendations are also controversial. This paper presents criticisms of the Ethics Code that have generally not been discussed in the previous literature.

ABSTRACT Foregrounding Hegel’s political cosmology allows us to set his dialectic-speculative theory of the political world in contrast both to ideal theories and to historicist-positivist theories. Against these positions, Hegel upholds his “realism of the idea”: the claim that a rational world is neither a pre-given whole nor an unattainable ideal, but the dynamic, immanent orientation of reason that continually constructs and animates the world. Hegel’s view of the world thus provides him with a way of reconceiving the relationship between (...) philosophy and actuality. In this view, philosophy is not immune from, or external to, the world it theorizes, but is produced and checked by that world, which it, in turn, produces. (shrink)

This paper compares Kant’s and Leibniz’s views on the relation between knowing subjects and known objects. Kant discusses Leibniz’s philosophy in the ‘Amphiboly’ section of the first Critique. According to Kant, Leibniz’s main error is mistaking objects in space and time for mind-independent things in themselves, that is, for monads. The paper argues that, pace Kant, Leibniz regards objects in space and time as mind-dependent. A deeper divergence between the two philosophers concerns knowing subjects. For Leibniz, they are substances. For (...) Kant, we cannot know whether they are substances. Kant conceives of knowing subjects as complex systems of cognitive capacities. (shrink)

In the article I justify the acceptability of ex vivo transplantation and I provide the ethical evaluation of trafficking in human organs from the Kantian perspective. Firstly, I refer to passages of Kant's works, where he explicitly states that depriving oneself of one’s body parts for other purposes than self-preservation is not permitted. I explain that the negative ethical evaluation of the disposal of the body parts was given various justifications by Kant. Subsequently, I provide partial criticism of this justification, (...) resulting in the recognition of the admissibility of ex vivo transplantation. Secondly, I analyse the Kantian slippery-slope argument which, as some philosophers believe, supports banning trade in human organs. It turns out, however, that this argument has wider application, namely it applies to all forms of the instrumental treatment of the human body. Using a previously introduced distinction between organs of the first and the second order, I show that the slippery-slope argument is inconclusive. However, I propose a reinterpretation of this reasoning, which results in using this argument as an additional reason to support prohibiting trade in human organs. (shrink)

Author Aubrey Neal suggests that one of these issues that lingers with us today is scepticism, and in 'How Skeptics do Ethics', he unravels the thread of this philosophy from its origins in enlightenment thinking down to our present age.

Abstract In his 2009 article "Right and Coercion," Marcus Willaschek argues that the Categorical Imperative and the Universal Principle of Right are conceptually independent of one another because (1) the concept of right and the authorization to use coercion are analytically connected in Kant's "Doctrine of Right", but (2) the authorization to coerce cannot be derived from the Categorical Imperative. Given that the principle of right just is a principle of authorized coercion, the fact that the authorization to coerce cannot (...) be derived from the Categorical Imperative implies that the Principle of Right cannot be derived from the Categorical Imperative. Against this claim, I first argue that a satisfactory deduction of the concept of right can be constructed out of the Categorical Imperative, the fact that we are embodied, and the fact that we act from motives other than duty. I then argue that the insufficiency of the Categorical Imperative, by itself, to generate the Principle of Right does not prevent us from interpreting the Principle of Right as a specification of the Categorical Imperative. I develop this point by means of an analogy with Kant's discussion of the moral law and the Categorical Imperative in the Groundwork. (shrink)