According to the order ethics approach to business ethics, moral rules must be im-plemented by institutions that provide incentives for following the rules. As a minimal (normative) condition, these institutions must be able to motivate the homo eco-nomicus. But even if an institution passes this test, it will only motivate actual people (i.e. the homo psychologicus) to follow moral rules, if they have the relevant compe-tences and self-efficacy beliefs. Consequently, good institutional design includes com-prehensive change management. At this point applied (...) order ethics can draw on find-ings of psychology and experimental economics. It turns out, that role models can support self-efficacy beliefs and are thus more important for order ethics than has traditionally been assumed. (shrink)

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) reflects an innovation paradigm that acknowledges that market innovations do not automatically deliver on socially desirable objectives, and requires a broad governance of knowledge coalitions of governmental bodies as well as industrial and societal actors to address market deficits. Responsible Innovation should be understood as a new paradigm for innovation which requires institutional changes in the research and innovation system and the public governance of the economy. It also requires the institutionalisation of an ethics of (...) co-responsibility as well as the introduction of new standards and certification processes for products. Dr. Dr. phil. von Schomberg will introduce Responsible Innovation against the background of 6 deficits of the (global) research and innovation system. (shrink)

It is widely held that our beliefs can be epistemically faultless despite being morally flawed. Theories of moral encroachment challenge this, holding that moral considerations bear on the epistemic status of our attitudes. According to attitude-based theories of moral encroachment, morality encroaches upon the epistemic standing of our attitudes on the grounds that we can morally injure others with our epistemic practices. In this paper, I aim to show that current attitude-based theories have asymmetric mechanisms: moral features only make it (...) harder for attitudes to secure epistemic merits. I argue that, if attitudes can incur moral injury, failure to form attitudes can too. To make sense of this, I contend, attitude-based accounts require symmetric mechanisms, allowing that moral considerations make it both harder and easier for attitudes to attain epistemic merits. I maintain that, once we recognize this, attitude-based encroachment views must soon concede that they sometimes demand we believe against the evidence. (shrink)

We reflect on a decade of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a discourse emerging from the European Commission (EC) 10 years ago. We discuss the foundations for RRI, its emergence during the Seventh Framework programme and its subsequent evolution during Horizon 2020. We discuss how an original vision for RRI became framed around five so-called ‘keys’: gender, open access, science communication, ethics and public engagement. We consider the prospects for RRI within the context of the EC’s Open Science agenda (...) and Horizon Europe programme, before closing with some reflections on the contribution RRI has made to debates concerning the relationship between science, innovation and society over the last decade. (shrink)

We reflect on a decade of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a discourse emerging from the European Commission (EC) 10 years ago. We discuss the foundations for RRI, its emergence during the Seventh Framework programme and its subsequent evolution during Horizon 2020. We discuss how an original vision for RRI became framed around five so-called ‘keys’: gender, open access, science communication, ethics and public engagement. We consider the prospects for RRI within the context of the EC’s Open Science agenda (...) and Horizon Europe programme, before closing with some reflections on the contribution RRI has made to debates concerning the relationship between science, innovation and society over the last decade. (shrink)

The concept of innovation has entered a turbulent age. On the one hand, it is uncritically understood as ‘technological innovation’ and ‘commercialized innovation.’ On the other hand, ongoing research under the heading responsible research and innovation suggests that current global issues require innovation to go beyond its usual intent of generating commercial value. However, little thought goes into what innovation means conceptually. Although there is a focus on enabling outcomes of innovation processes to become more responsible and desirable, the technological (...) and commercial nature of these processes is rarely questioned. For these reasons, this paper poses the following research question: what concept of innovation is implicitly taken up by the RRI discourse and what implications does this concept have for the societal purpose of RRI? As a first step, we analyze the extent to which the concept of innovation in the RRI literature is uncritically presupposed to be technological. Subsequently, we examine the diverse meanings innovation has had over time and argue that while innovation originally had a political connotation it is only recently restricted to the meaning of technological innovation. We go on to show that even though the concept of technological innovation can contribute to the societal purpose of RRI, this requires certain conditions that are difficult to guarantee. Consequentially, we argue that future research should explore alternative understandings of innovation that better enable the overall feasibility of the emerging frameworks of RRI. (shrink)

Achievements have recently begun to attract increased attention from value theorists. One recurring idea in this budding literature is that one important factor determining the magnitude or value of an achievement is the amount of effort the achiever invested. The aim of this paper is to present the most plausible version of this idea. This advances the current state of debate where authors are invoking substantially different notions of effort and are thus talking past each other. While the concept of (...) effort has been invoked in the philosophical analysis of a number of important concepts such as desert, attention, competence, and distributive justice, it has hardly ever been analyzed itself. This paper makes headway in this regard by discussing three ambiguities in the everyday notion of effort. It continues to develop two accounts of effort and shows how both of them are achievement-enhancing. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses existing accounts of the nature of difficulty, finds them wanting, and proposes a new account. The concept of difficulty is routinely invoked in debates regarding degrees of moral responsibility, and the value of achievement. Until recently, however, there has not been any sustained attempt to provide an account of the nature of difficulty itself. This has changed with Gwen Bradford’s Achievement, which argues that difficulty is a matter of how much intense effort is expended. But while (...) this account captures something important about the relationship between difficulty and achievement, it fails to account for the fact that part of what makes achievements great is that they are difficult in a moderately agent-neutral kind of way. Nor is this thought captured by any other extant account. I argue that to fill this gap we should think of difficulty in terms of low probability of success. (shrink)

Open science will make science more efficient, reliable, and responsive to societal challenges. The European Commission has sought to advance open science policy from its inception in a holistic and integrated way, covering all aspects of the research cycle from scientific discovery and review to sharing knowledge, publishing, and outreach. We present the steps taken with a forward-looking perspective on the challenges laying ahead, in particular the necessary change of the rewards and incentives system for researchers (for which various actors (...) are co-responsible and which goes beyond the mandate of the European Commission). Finally, we discuss the role of artificial intelligence (AI) within an open science perspective. (shrink)

This paper responds to the Radical Behavioral Challenge to normative business ethics. According to RBC, recent research on bounded ethicality shows that it is psychologically impossible for people to follow the prescriptions of normative business ethics. Thus, said prescriptions run afoul of the principle that nobody has an obligation to do something that they cannot do. I show that the only explicit response to this challenge in the business ethics literature is flawed because it limits normative business ethics to condemning (...) practitioners’ behavior without providing usable suggestions for how to do better. I argue that a more satisfying response is to, first, recognize that most obligations in business are wide-scope which, second, implies that there are multiple ways of fulfilling them. This provides a solid theoretical grounding for the increasingly popular view that we have obligations to erect institutional safeguards when bounded ethicality is likely to interfere with our ability to do what is right. I conclude with examples of such safeguards and some advice on how to use the research findings on bounded ethicality in designing ethical business organizations. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation focus on (...) how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

he Handbook constitutes a global resource for the fast growing interdisciplinary research and policy communities addressing the challenge of driving innovation towards socially desirable outcomes. This book brings together well-known authors from the US, Europe, Asia and South-Africa who develop conceptual, ethical and regional perspectives on responsible innovation as well as exploring the prospects for further implementation of responsible innovation in emerging technological practices ranging from agriculture and medicine, to nanotechnology and robotics. The emphasis is on the socio-economic and normative (...) dimensions of innovation including issues of social risk and sustainability. (shrink)

Strudler rejects shareholder primacy and argues that, once contractual obligations have been fulfilled and shareholders have received a reasonable return on investment, corporate executives may use corporate wealth for the general good. He seeks to establish this claim via an argument that, contrary to the received view, shareholders do not own corporations. After raising some questions about the latter argument, this commentary goes on to argue that the question of corporate ownership is a red herring. The argument for shareholder primacy (...) that Strudler wants to reject does not rely on the premise that shareholders own the firm. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAchievements are among the things that make a life good. Assessing the plausibility of this intuitive claim requires an account of the nature of achievements. One necessary condition for achievement appears to be that the achieving agent acted competently, i.e. was not just lucky. I begin by critically assessing existing accounts of anti-luck conditions for achievements in both the ethics and epistemology literature. My own proposal is that a goal is reached competently, only if the actions of the would-be-achiever make (...) success likely, and that this is the reason why she acts that way. (shrink)

Business ethics denial refers to one of two claims about moral motivation in a business context: that there is no need for it, or that it is impossible. Neither of these radical claims is endorsed by serious theorists in the academic fields that study business ethics. Nevertheless, public commentators, as well as university students, often make claims that seem to imply that they subscribe to some form of business ethics denial. This paper fills a gap by making explicit both the (...) various forms that business ethics denial can take, and the reasons why such views are ultimately implausible. The paper argues that this type of serious engagement with business ethics denial should be an important part of the job description for teachers of business ethics. (shrink)

I (mostly) accept Ancell’s argument that my proposal for dealing with the radical behavioral challenge entails what he calls ‘the excessive recusal problem’. I argue that this is no reason to reject my proposal, but rather an opportunity for further reflection on what behavioral and normative ethicists can learn from each other. I make some suggestions for future lines of inquiry for both fields.

According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This answer (...) is inadequate, however, for it is the hierarchical firm, rather than the competitive market, that defines the role of corporate managers and shapes their professional obligations. Thus, if the obligations that the market failures approach generates are to apply to managers, they must do so in an indirect way. I suggest that the obligations the market failures approach generates directly apply to shareholders. Managers, in turn, inherit these obligations as part of their duties as loyal agents. (shrink)

This Article outlines a vision of responsible innovation and outlines a public policy and implementation strategy for it.

On the basis of Karl-Otto Apels’ diagnosis of the shortcomings of philosophical ethics in general, and any ethics of individual accountability in particular, I give an outline how these shortcoming are currently to be articulated in the context of ecological crisis and socio-technical change. This will be followed with three interpretations of Karl-Otto Apels’ proposal for an ethics of collective coresponsibility. In conclusion, I will advocate that only a further social evolution of the systems of science, economy and law will (...) enable a possible institutionalization of collective co-responsibility by means of a new innovation paradigm: responsible innovation. (shrink)

In this paper I confront what I take to be the crucial challenge for fictional realism, i.e. the view that fictional characters exist. This is the problem of accounting for the intuition that corresponding negative existentials such as ‘Sherlock Holmes does not exist’ are true (when, given fictional realism, taken literally they seem false). I advance a novel and detailed form of the response according to which we take them to mean variants of such claims as: there is no concrete (...) x such that x is Sherlock Holmes. (shrink)

In this article, I will explore how the underlying research values of ‘openness’ and ‘mutual responsiveness’, which are central to open science practices, can be integrated into a new ethos of science. Firstly, I will revisit Robert Merton's early contribution to this issue, examining whether the ethos of science should be understood as a set of norms for scientists to practice ‘good’ science or as a set of research values as a functional requirement of the scientific system to produce knowledge, (...) irrespective of individual adherence to these norms. Secondly, I will analyse the recent codification of scientific practice in terms of ‘scientific integrity’, a framework that Merton did not pursue. Based on this analysis, and illustrated on the case of COVID-19 as a case in which the institution of science was challenged to deliver urgently on societal desirable outcomes, I will argue that promoting open science and its core norms of collaboration and openness requires broader governance of the institution of science in its relationship with society at large, rather than relying solely on self-governance within the scientific community through a new ethos of science. This conclusion has implications for re-evaluating research assessments, suggesting that the evaluation of the scientific system should take precedence over evaluating individual researchers, and that incentives should be provided to encourage specific research behaviour rather than solely focusing on individual research outputs. This article is followed up by Commentaries of Carl Mitcham, Alfred Nordmann, Sabina Leonelli, Lukas Fuchs, Monica Edwards-Schachter. (shrink)

The precautionary principle in public decision making concerns situations where following an assessment of the available scientific information, there are reasonable grounds for concern for the possibility of adverse effects on the environment or human health, but scientific uncertainty persists. In such cases provisional risk management measures may be adopted, without having to wait until the reality and seriousness of those adverse effects become fully apparent. This is the definition of the precautionary principle as operationalized under EU law. The precautionary (...) principle is a deliberative principle. Its application involves deliberation on a range of normative dimensions which need to be taken into account while making the principle operational in the public policy context. Under EU law, any risk management measures to be adopted while implementing the precautionary principle, have to be proportionate to ensure the chosen high level of protection in the European Community. This articlewill illustrate the established practice concerning the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment and how the principle is implemented under hard law. The article also provides an outlook on what this may imply for the relative new case of nanotechnology and the use of precautionary principle within the context of soft law (use of codes of conduct). (shrink)

English: Between 1960 and 2000 many German-speaking professors of philosophy confined their research to the history of philosophy, they did not defend their own answers to philosophical questions. This article describes some possible causes of this phenomenon, makes a plea for defending answers to philosophical questions, and gives some guidelines for doing so which anticipate some objections. -/- German: Zwischen 1960 und 2000 beschränkten sich viele deutschsprachige Philosophieprofessoren auf Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung, sie verteidigten nicht ihre eigenen Antworten auf philosophische Fragen. Dieser Aufsatz (...) beschreibt einige mögliche Ursachen dafür, ruft dazu auf, wieder Antworten auf philosophische Fragen zu verteidigen, und schlägt einige Leitlinien dafür vor, welche einigen Einwänden vorbeugen sollen. (shrink)

In diesem Eintrag werden zwei miteinander zusammenhängende Aspekte betrachtet. Nun betreffen diese zwei Aspekte aber nicht ontologische Fragen erster Ordnung, d. h. Fragen, was es gibt. Vielmehr sind es Fragen zweiter Ordnung, ›metaontologische‹ Fragen dazu, wie philosophisch untersucht werden sollte, was es gibt. Der Fokus dieses Eintrags liegt dabei auf der Standardauffassung ontologischer Untersuchung, die die philosophische Literatur der letzten Jahre dominiert hat. Diese Auffassung haben wir zum größten Teil dem Einfluss von Willard Van Orman Quine zu verdanken.

At or near the beginning of many textbooks and syllabi in applied or professional ethics is a unit on philosophical moral theories (such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics). However, teaching such theories is of questionable value in this context. This article introduces the moral vocabulary approach. Instead of burdening students with complex ethical theories, they are introduced to the logic of elementary moral concepts. This avoids many of the drawbacks of teaching ethical theories, while preserving the benefit of equipping (...) students with the conceptual tools they need to critically analyse ethical issues. (shrink)

Among recent developments in the anthropological sciences, hardly any have found so much attention and led to so much controversy as have the views advanced by the late Benjamin Whorf.The hypothesis offered by Whorf is,“that the commonly held belief that the cognitive processes of all human beings possess a common logical structure which operates prior to and independently of communication through language, is erroneous. It is Whorf's view that the linguistic patterns themselves determine what the individual perceives in this world (...) and how he thinks about it. Since these patterns vary widely, the modes of thinking and perceiving in groups utilizing different linguistic systems will result in basically different world views”.“We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar. … We cut up and organize the spread and flow of events as we do largely because, through our mother tongue, we are parties to an agreement to do so, not because nature itself is segmented in exactly that way for all to see”. (shrink)

Many nongovernmental forms of business regulation aim at reducing ethical violations in commerce. We argue that such nongovernmental ethics standards, while often laudable, raise their own ethical challenges. In particular, when such standards place burdens upon vulnerable market participants (often, though not always, SMEs), they do so without the backing of traditional legitimate political authority. We argue that this constitutes a structural analogy to wars of humanitarian intervention. Moreover, we show that, while some harms imposed by such standards are desirable, (...) others are best thought of as a form of collateral damage. We thus look at the well-developed literature on just war theory for inspiration and find that the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello contain many insights that can be fruitfully adapted to the case of nongovernmental standard-setting. Consequently, we propose the Ius ad Normam—a set of principles that should guide would-be standard-setters in assessing whether imposing those burdens is ethically justifiable in particular cases. We also discuss how powerful multinational businesses often act simultaneously as standard-takers and standard-setters and explore the normative implications of this dual role. (shrink)

According to reductivist axiological perfectionism about well-being (RAP), well-being is constituted by the development and exercise of central human capacities. In defending this view, proponents have relied heavily on the claim that RAP provides a unifying explanation of the entries on the ‘objective list’ of well-being constituents. I argue that this argument fails to provide independent support for the theory. RAP does not render a plausible objective list unless such a list is used at every stage of theory development to (...) shape the details of the view. Absent such motivated fine-tuning, RAP even fails to provide a satisfying account of two supposed paradigm cases of perfectionist value: achievement and knowledge. Thus, if RAP is to be defended, it must be defended directly by providing reasons for accepting the axiological principle at its heart. It cannot be defended, indirectly, by pointing to its attractive implications. (shrink)

Theories of well-being that give an important role to satisfied pro-attitudes need to account for the fact that, intuitively, the scope of possible objects of pro-attitudes seems much wider than the scope of things, states, or events that affect our well-being. Parfit famously illustrated this with his wish that a stranger may recover from an illness: it seems implausible that the stranger’s recovery would constitute a benefit for Parfit. There is no consensus in the literature about how to rule out (...) such well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes. I argue, first, that there is no distinction in kind between well-being-relevant and irrelevant pro-attitudes. Instead, well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes are the limiting cases on the scale measuring how much of a difference pro-attitudes make to the subject’s well-being. Second, I propose a particular scalar model according to which the well-being-relevance of pro-attitudes is measured by either their hedonic tone, or by the subject’s conative commitment. (shrink)

This article introduces the notion of the directedness of a process, which underlies event causation as well as the persistence of things. Using this notion it investigates what happens in typical cases of active event causation. Causes never necessitate their effects because even non- probabilistic causes can be counteracted.

The legend of Robin Hood exemplifies a distinct concern of justice neglected by theorists: the distributive results of systemic injustices. Robin Hood’s redistributive activities are justified by the principle that the distributive results of systemic injustices are unjust and should be corrected. This principle has relevance beyond the legend: since current inequalities in the US are results of systemic injustices, the US has good reason to take from the rich and give to the poor.

This article argues that shareholder primacy cannot be defended on the grounds that there is something special about the position of shareholders that grounds a right to preferential treatment on part of management. The notions of property and contract, traditionally thought to ground such a right, are now widely recognized as incapable of playing that role. This leaves shareholder theorists with two options. They can either abandon the project of arguing for their view on broadly deontological grounds and try to (...) advance consequentialist arguments instead, or they can search for other morally relevant properties that could ground shareholder rights. The most sustained argument in the latter vein is Marcoux’s attempt to show that the vulnerability of shareholders mandates that managers are their fiduciaries. I show that this argument leads to the unacceptable conclusion that it would be unethical for corporations to make incomplete contracts with nonshareholding stakeholders. (shrink)

Some have tried to make miracles compatible with the laws of nature by re-defining them as something other than interventions. By contrast, this article argues that although miracles are divine interventions, they are not violations of the laws of nature. Miracles are also not exceptions to the laws, nor do the laws not apply to them. The laws never have exceptions; they never are violated or suspended, are probably necessary and unchangeable, and apply also to divine interventions. We need to (...) reconsider not miracles but laws. The main claim of this article is that laws of nature do not entail regularities, and therefore that miracles do not violate the laws. We need a new theory of the laws of nature: the tendency theory. (shrink)

Zeitgenössische Positionen in der Debatte über fiktionale Namen lassen sich in zwei Lager aufteilen: deskriptivistische und Millsche Ansätze. Deskriptivisten nehmen an, dass der semantische Inhalt eines Namens synonym mit einer Kennzeichnung sei, während Millianerinnen, behaupten, dass der semantische Inhalt eines Namens sein Bezugsobjekt sei. Da es sich bei diesen Ansätzen um Theorien handelt, die sich nicht auf fiktionale Namen beschränken, sondern Eigennamen generell behandeln, müssen sie sich auch Einwänden stellen, die nicht nur auf fiktionale Namen zutreffen. Dieses Kapitel konzentriert sich (...) weniger auf die Darstellung allgemeiner Probleme, sondern auf solche, die sich besonders im Zusammenhang mit fiktionalen Namen stellen. (shrink)

Initially, astrobiology subsumed into philosophy. However, philosophy has increasingly subsumed into astrobiology concurrent with it steadily becoming an observational and experimental activity that mainly focuses on the link between life and the cosmos, rather than on extra-terrestrial life per se. However, the steadily increasing probability of locating such extra-terrestrial life and the questions this will lead to might require a refinement of astrobiology, with a bifurcation into astrobiology and astrophilosophy. There are many reasons for the emergence and necessity of astrobiology. (...) One barely realized reason for its emergence, I will argue, is the dawning realization that biology, until now, has been under a geocentric limitation, which has unavoidably pervaded the perception of life. Additionally, as astrobiology can be said to be a long last movement away from this limitation, astrophilosophy represents a movement away from that limitation because philosophy has, strictly speaking, been restrained by the frames for one species, Homo sapiens. Thus, philosophy has, strictly speaking, been anthropomorphic. Thus, when philosophy, like astrobiology, incorporates the Copernican principle, assuming that terrestrial life, and the thinking of Homo sapiens, is not privileged in the universe, astrophilosophy emerges. Astrobiology and astrophilosophy are not competitors but are rather two distinct but complementary activities that address questions with their own well-defined methods and rigor while still informing each other in an inter-dependent manner. Astrophilosophy concerns questions that are philosophical in nature but are procured by an astrobiological perspective. By including scenarios procured by astrobiology, a number of questions regarding value, rights, communication and intelligence that could arise in the interaction between Homo sapiens and extra-terrestrial life can be addressed. (shrink)

Economistic Business Ethics Denial (BED) is the belief that contemporary business has features that make it systematically incompatible with ethics. Using over 1200 participants across seven separate samples we established the substantive validity of a BED Scale, confirmed its theorized structure, psychometric properties, convergent, and discriminant validity. The results suggest that the scale assesses four correlated factors of economistic BED. The scale can be used in future research on ethical decision making in business, and business ethics education.

Driven by a sharp increase in claims for reparations, reparative justice has become a topic of academic debate. To some extent this debate has been marred by a failure to realize the complexity of reparative justice. In this essay we try to amend this shortcoming. We do this by developing a taxonomy of different kinds of wrongs that can underwrite claims to reparations. We identify four kinds of wrongs: entitlement violations, unjust exclusions from an otherwise acceptable system of entitlements, and (...) two kinds where a social practice systematically fails to embody an acceptable system of entitlements. In deliberation about what is required to repair a historical injustice the weight of backward- and forward-looking considerations is a function of the distinctive features of the injustice in question. Hence, the first step in adjudicating claims for reparation is to identify what kind of wrong the claim arises from. From the taxonomy of wrongs we are thus able to construct what we call the Field of Reparative Justice, which illustrates how the structure of deliberation for reparative justice tracks the distinctive features of different kinds of wrongs. (shrink)

Western societies are experiencing a crisis of trust: we no longer enjoy high levels of confidence in social institutions and are increasingly skeptical of those holding positions of authority. The crisis of trust, however, seems paradoxical: at the same time we report greater feelings of mistrust or an erosion of trust in institutions and technologies we increasingly entrust our wellbeing and security to these very same technologies and institutions. Analyzing trust not only will help resolve the paradox but suggests that (...) the crisis entails normative expectations linked to collective identity, and as such, trust can be understood as a public virtue. (shrink)

Holt argues that Rawls’s first principle of justice requires democratic control of the economy and that property owning democracy fails to satisfy this requirement; only liberal socialism is fully democratic. However, the notion of democratic control is ambiguous, and Holt has to choose between the weaker notion of democratic control that Rawls is committed to and the stronger notion that property owning democracy fails to satisfy. It may be that there is a tension between capitalism and democracy, so that only (...) liberal socialism can be fully democratic, but if so, we should reject, rather than argue from, the theory of democracy we find in justice as fairness. (shrink)

This article criticises Alvin Plantinga’s claim that ‘basic’ design beliefs, which arise without a conscious inference, have more positive epistemic status than non-basic ones and that we cannot evaluate the probabilities involved in inferential, inductive design arguments.

In line with the tradition running from Ancients through Christian thought, Kant affirms the idea of moral freedom: that true freedom consists in moral self-determination. The idea of moral freedom raises the problem of moral freedom: if freedom is moral self-determination, it seems that the wicked are not free and therefore not responsible for their wrongdoings. In this essay I discuss Kant's solution to this problem. I argue that Kant distinguishes between four modalities of freedom as moral self-determination and that (...) the problem of moral freedom disappears when these distinctions are brought to light. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch out a novel theory of well-being according to which well-being is constituted by harmony between mind and world. The notion of harmony I develop has three aspects. First there is correspondence between mind and world in the sense that events in the world match the content of our mental states. Second there is positive orientation towards the world, meaning that we have pro-attitudes towards the world we find ourselves in. Third there is fitting response to (...) the world. Taken together these three aspects make up an ideal of being attuned to, or at home in, the world. Such harmony between mind and world constitutes well-being. Its opposite – being disoriented, ill-at-ease in, or hostile to the world – makes a life go poorly. And, as we shall see, many of the things that intuitively contribute to well-being are instantiating one or more of the three aspects of harmony. (shrink)

Many authors hold that we cannot have the kind of free will that we seem to have. This article spells out and defends that kind of free will. Most libertarians hold that a free action involves a probabilistic process at some stage. Like the compatibilists, I hold that this is not only not required for free will but even reduces or excludes freedom. But contrary to the compatibilist and contrary to most libertarians, I claim that free will requires that we (...) can bring about events that have no preceding cause. That is what our experience suggests, and there are no beliefs that contradict this and are justified. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermacher suggested that his project was to make Christianity compatible with reason and with the natural sciences. This article argues that Schleiermacher re- jected Christian doctrine und developed a religion which he called ‘Christian’ but which does not contain the Chris- tian doctrine and which is not rational. The article sketches Schleiermachers rejection of Christian doctrine, examines his claim that the natural sciences exclude miracles, criti- cises Schleiermachers non-cognitivism, and sketches the role of doctrine in Christianity.

On Jaakko Hintikka’s understanding of Aristotle’s modal thought, Aristotle is committed to a version of the Principle of Plenitude, which is the thesis that no genuine possibility will go unactualized in an infinity of time. If in fact Aristotle endorses the Principle of Plenitude, everything becomes necessary. Despite the strong evidence that Aristotle indeed accepts that Principle of Plenitude, there are key texts in which Aristotle seems to contradict it. On Hintikka’s final word on the matter, Aristotle either endorses the (...) Principle of Plenitude or Aristotle is simply inconsistent. Without challenging Hintikka’s interpretation of the relevant texts, I show how Aristotle may accept a form of the Principle of Plenitude that allows for genuine unactualized possibilities in the world. What allows me to reconcile the seemingly inconsistent data is to show how Aristotle is only committed to a de re version of the Principle of Plenitude. After I lay out my proposal, I show how it opens up new ways in which we might understand Aristotle’s attempt to reject fatalism in his De interpretatione 9. (shrink)

In the following, I will discuss the current social reaction to the ecological crisis and the ways in which society reacts to technological risks, which can be understood primarily as a reaction to scientific and moral or ethical uncertainty. In the first section, I will clarify what is meant by scientific and moral or ethical uncertainty. In the second section, I will contrast Max Weber's differentiation of science, law [Recht) and morality in the modern world with the process of de-differentiation (...) of these value spheres, a trend which can be observed in the present-day context of the ecological crisis and technological risks. We shall see that social contradictions emerge in the functional relationships between these value spheres, and that such contradictions go hand in hand with these value spheres or contexts of discourse either losing their original function or becoming transformed. Science forfeits its role as a functional authority and becomes a strategic resource for politics. Law becomes a basic constituent of an amoral form of negotiation, which can no longer be properly grasped in terms of legal categories. Morality is transformed into fear, and economics yields unprofitable practices. In the third section, I will in attempt to open up the moral and ethical dimension of how to deal with uncertainty with the help of discourse theory (Apel, 1988; Habermas, 1996), as well as outline a possible solution. (shrink)

Bei der Renaissance der philosophischen Auseinandersetzung mit Fragen über Gott spielte der Oxforder Philosoph Richard Swinburne eine wesentliche Rolle. Er kann als der bedeutendste zeitgenössische Vertreter der natürlichen Theologie gelten. Natürliche Theologie ist das Unternehmen, philosophisch zu untersuchen, ob es einen Gott gibt und wie er beschaffen ist. Dies ›philosophisch‹ und nicht theologisch zu untersuchen, heißt, direkte Offenbarung dabei nicht als Erkenntnisquelle zu verwenden.