The “new categorical imperative” and Adorno’s aporetic moral philosophy

This article offers a new interpretation of Adorno’s “new categorical imperative”: it suggests that the new imperative is an important element of Adorno’s moral philosophy and at the same time runs counter to some of its essential features. It is suggested that Adorno’s moral philosophy leads to two aporiae, which create an impasse that the new categorical imperative attempts to circumvent. The first aporia results from the tension between Adorno’s acknowledgement that praxis is an essential part of moral philosophy, and his view according to which existing social conditions make it impossible for moral knowledge to be translated into “right” action. The second aporia results from the tension between the uncompromising sensitivity to suffering that underlies Adorno’s moral thought, and his analysis of the culture industry mechanisms which turn people into happy, satisfied customers—an incompatibility which threatens to pull the rug out from under Adorno’s moral philosophy. My interpretation of the “new categorical imperative” focuses on two characteristics it inherits from the “old,” Kantian one—self-evidence and unconditionality—in order to present the new imperative as a response to these two aporiae.     

Transformation of flow in rehabilitation: The role of advanced communication technologies

Authentic rehabilitation requires the active participation of patients and their involvement with opportunities for action and development. Within this framework, in this article we outline the possibility of using two emerging computing and communication technologies—ambient intelligence (AmI) and virtual reality (VR)—for a new breed of rehabilitative and clinical applications based on a strategy defined astransformation of flow. Transformation of flow is a person’s ability to exploit an optimal (flow) experience to identify and use new and unexpected psychological resources as sources of involvement. We identify the feeling ofpresence—the feeling of being in a world that exists outside oneself—as the theoretical link between the technology and rehabilitation. AmI and VR are used to trigger broad empowerment processes induced by a strong sense of presence, leading to greater agency and control over one’s actions and environment.     

One-year temporal stability of delay-discount rates

The temporal stability of delay-discount rates for monetary rewards was assessed using a monetary choice questionnaire (Kirby & Marakovic, 1996). Of 100 undergraduate participants who completed the questionnaire at the initial session, 81 returned 5 weeks later and 46 returned 57 weeks later for subsequent sessions. The 5-week test—retest stability of discount rates was .77 (95% confidence interval 5 .67—.85), the 1-year stability was .71 (.50–.84), and the 57-week stability was .63 (.41—.77). Thus, at least when similar testing situations are reinstated, discount rates as individual differences have 1-year stabilities in the range that is typically obtained for personality traits. Discount rates index an attribute of the person that is relatively stable over time but that is moderated by aspects of the situation, such as reward type and deprivational state.     

The old and the new sublimes: Do they signify? God?

Conclusion It is not the case that God is interestingly like the unavailable transcendental signified in being unavailable. God always was absconded. The signified may not even really have gone away at all. And if it has, it is not God; it is only like Him in having gone away. And it has gone away, if it has, in a different mode of ‘going away’. To use a Turneresque metaphor: God is and will always be another, far, range behind the misty-but-glittering and absconded signifieds, which leave only the trace which is the play of signifiers in the immediate foreground. One is free to attend to whichever range one wishes, or one may attend only to the foreground. But the dazzlingsublime ¹² of the foreground, “That change of cloud and light, never-ending and agitating itself into kaleidoscopic patterns, the play of signifiers”, is—and never could be—quite like the “sublime” of the far, far range whose Inhabitant is said to be, “From everlasting to everlasting”. His “play” is said to be not of signifiers, butof all there is; it is notsemiological butontological. And He is altogether beyond the sublime, for with Him, or with the Beatific Vision of Her,there would be no critical problem left. The Logos is not a signifier. —shakes a dust Of the doctrine, flavours thence, he well knows how, The narrative of the novel,—half believes All for the book's sake… Robert Browning     

Modern medicine and biotechnology: an ethical conflict of interest?

When confronting the issues related to developments in modern medicine and biotechnology, we must repeatedly ask ourselves anew what can and cannot be justified in an ethical sense. For radically new ethical questions seem to arise through innovative techniques such as stem cell research or preimplantation diagnosis — and with them new areas of conflicting interests. If one scrutinizes the previous positions related to this subject, it becomes conspicuous that a multitude of questions has quickly piled up — however, (as in the case of Germany) comprehensive and differentiated views have mostly been lacking. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

Worlds,Capabilities and Well-Being

Critics suggest that without some “objective” account of well-being we cannot explain why satisfying some preferences is, as we believe, better than satisfying others, why satisfying some preferences may leave us on net worse off or why, in a range of cases, we should reject life-adjustment in favor of life-improvement. I defend a subjective welfarist understanding of well-being against such objections by reconstructing the Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a preferentist account of well-being. According to the proposed account preference satisfaction alone—possible as well as actual—is of value. States of affairs contribute to well-being because and to the extent that they satisfy actual or nearby possible preferences, and are fruitful, that is, compatible with a range states that satisfy further actual or nearby possible preferences. The proposed account solves the problem of adaptive preference. Individuals whose preferences are “deformed” are satisfied with fruitless states of affairs, which constrain their options so that they are incapable of satisfying a wide range of nearby possible preferences—preferences they “could easily have had.” Recognizing the value of capabilities as well as actual attainments allows us to explain why individuals who satisfy “deformed” or perverse preferences may not on net benefit from doing so. More fundamentally, it explains why some states are, as Sen suggests, bad, awful or gruesome while others are good, excellent or superb without appeal to any objective account of value.     

System of Spheres-based Multiple Contractions

We propose a new class of multiple contraction operations — the system of spheres-based multiple contractions — which are a generalization of Grove’s system of spheres-based (singleton) contractions to the case of contractions by (possibly non-singleton) sets of sentences. Furthermore, we show that this new class of functions is a subclass of the class of the partial meet multiple contractions.     

Nanotechnology — A new field of ethical inquiry?

Parallel to the public discussion on the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, a debate on the ethics of nanotechnology has begun. It has been postulated that a new “nano-ethics” is necessary. In this debate, the — positive as well as negative — visionary and speculative innovations which are brought into connection with nanotechnology stand in the foreground. In this contribution, an attempt is made to discover new ethical aspects of nanotechnology in a more systematic manner than has been the case. It turns out that there are hardly any completely new ethical aspects raised by nanotechnology. It is much rather primarily a case of gradual shifts of emphasis and of relevance in questions which, in principle, are already known and which give reason for ethical discussions on nanotechnology. In a certain manner, structurally novel ethical aspects arise through the important role played by visions in the public discourse. New questions are also posed by the fact that previously separate lines of ethical reflection converge in the field of nanotechnology. The proposal of an independent “nano-ethics”, however, seems exaggerated.     

The Journeys of Generation Y Missionaries from the United Kingdom: A Modification of Lewis Rambo’s ‘Stages of Religious Change’ Model

The metaphorical journeys of GenY missionaries from the United Kingdom towards commitment to long-term, cross-cultural missionary work overseas were studied using data collected by interview and questionnaire. Lewis Rambo’s ‘stages of religious change’ model describes many aspects of these journeys. The addition of two new dimensions—recognising events that deflect a person from a straight-line trajectory (‘deflection’) and events that provide the encouragement to go on (‘support’)—produces a model that describes these journeys more accurately. The model is further improved by adding new aspects to the ‘quest,’ ‘commitment’ and ‘consequences’ dimensions, and by the identification of differences between men and women. The modified model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the journey of GenY-ers toward a missionary career.     

Phenomenological immanence,normativity, and semantic externalism

This paper argues that transcendental phenomenology (here represented by Edmund Husserl) can accommodate the main thesis of semantic externalism, namely, that intentional content is not simply a matter of what is ‘in the head,’ but depends on how the world is. I first introduce the semantic problem as an issue of how linguistic tokens or mental states can have ‘content’—that is, how they can set up conditions of satisfaction or be responsive to norms such that they can succeed or fail at referring. The standard representationalist view—which thinks of the problem in first-person terms—is contrasted with Brandom’s pragmatic inferentialist approach, which adopts a third-person stance. The rest of the paper defends a phenomenological version of the representationalist position (seeking to preserve its first-person stance) but offers a conception of representation that does not identify it with an entity ‘in the head.’ The standard view of Husserl as a Cartesian internalist is undermined by rejecting its fundamental assumption—that Husserl’s concept of the ‘noema’ is a mental entity—and by defending a concept of ‘phenomenological immanence’ that has a normative, rather than a psychological, structure. Finally, it is argued that phenomenological immanence cannot be identified with ‘consciousness’ in Husserl’s sense, though consciousness is a necessary condition for it.     

Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping

The Leximancer system is a relatively new method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in an unsupervised manner. It employs two stages of co-occurrence information extraction—semantic andrelational—using a different algorithm for each stage. The algorithms used are statistical, but they employ nonlinear dynamics and machine learning. This article is an attempt to validate the output of Leximancer, using a set of evaluation criteria taken from content analysis that are appropriate for knowledge discovery tasks.     

“Things that went well — No serious injuries or deaths”: Ethical reasoning in a normal engineering design process

We argue that considering only a few ‘big’ ethical decisions in any engineering design process — both in education and practice — only reinforces the mistaken idea of engineering design as a series of independent sub-problems. Using data collected in engineering design organisations over a seven year period, we show how an ethical component to engineering decisions is much more pervasive. We distinguish three types of ethical justification for engineering decisions: (1) consequential, (2) deontological or non-consequential, and (3) virtue-based. We find that although there is some evidence for engineering designers as ‘classic’ consequentialists, a more egocentric consequentialism would appear more fitting. We also explain how the idea of a ‘folk ethics’ — a justification in the second category that consciously weighs one thing with another — fits with the idea of the engineering design process as social negotiation rather than as technological progress.     

Representationalism and Husserlian Phenomenology

According to contemporary representationalism, phenomenal qualia—of specifically sensory experiences—supervene on representational content. Most arguments for representationalism share a common, phenomenological premise: the so-called “transparency thesis.” According to the transparency thesis, it is difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish the quality or character of experiencing an object from the perceived properties of that object. In this paper, I show that Husserl would react negatively to the transparency thesis; and, consequently, that Husserl would be opposed to at least two versions of contemporary representationalism. First, I show that Husserl would be opposed to strong representationalism, since he believes the cognitive content of a perceptual episode can vary despite constancy of sensory qualia. Second, I then show that Husserl would be opposed to weak representationalism, since he believes that sensory qualia—specifically, the sort that he calls “kinesthetic sensations”—can vary despite constancy in representational content.     

Saving Strawson: Evil and Strawsonian Accounts of Moral Responsibility

Almost everyone allows that conditions can obtain that exempt agents from moral responsibility—that someone is not a morally responsible agent if certain conditions obtain. In his seminal “Freedom and Resentment,” Peter Strawson denies that the truth of determinism globally exempts agents from moral responsibility. As has been noted elsewhere, Strawson appears committed to the surprising thesis that being an evil person is an exempting condition. Less often noted is the fact that various Strawsonians—philosophers sympathetic with Strawson’s account of moral responsibility—at least appear to have difficulty incorporating evil persons into their accounts of moral responsibility. In what follows, I argue that Strawson is not committed to supposing that being evil is an exempting condition—at least, that he can allow that evil persons are morally responsible agents.     

Construction area (no hard hat required)

A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.     

Naturalizing the essential tension

Kuhn’s “essential tension” between conservative and innovative imperatives in enquiry has an empirical analogue—between the potential benefits of collectivization of enquiry and the social dynamic impediments to effective sharing of information and insights in collective settings. A range of empirical materials from social psychology and organization theory are considered which bear on the issue of balancing these opposing forces and an institution is described in which they are balanced in a way which is appropriate for collective knowledge production.     

Jumping to conclusions: A network model predicts schizophrenic patients’ performance on a probabilistic reasoning task

This article extends computational models of schizophrenia that focus on the negative aspects of this syndrome to behavioral biases that are associated with a positive symptom of schizophrenia, namely delusions. The phenomenon studied is the “jump-to-conclusions” style of reasoning that is characterized by delusional patients—in comparison with controls—whereby they make less-informed decisions when an option to collect more decision-specific information is available. Simulations show that these differences can be mimicked by modulating the gain parameter—associated with variations in dopamine level—in a simple network model.     

Towards a Religiously Adequate Alternative to OmniGod Theism

Theistic religious believers should be concerned that the God they worship is not an idol. Conceptions of God thus need to be judged according to criteria of religious adequacy that are implicit in the ‘God-role’—that is, the way the concept of God properly functions in the conceptual economy and form of life of theistic believers. I argue that the conception of God as ‘omniGod’—an immaterial personal creator with the omni-properties—may reasonably be judged inadequate, at any rate from the perspective of a relationship ethics based on the Christian revelation that God is Love. I go on to suggest that a conception of God as the power of love within the natural universe might prove more adequate, with God’s role as creator understood in terms of final rather than efficient causation.     

Measuring Satisfaction with Religiosity and Its Contribution to the Personal Well-Being Index in a Muslim Sample

This research aims to explore Satisfaction with Religiosity/Spirituality (SR/S) in a large sample of Muslims (1388 males, 1172 females) from Algeria. It also provides empirical evidence for the addition of a SR/S Domain item to the Personal Well-Being Index (PWI). A questionnaire dealing with satisfaction with a range of personal and societal domains was used. Results support previous findings (Wills Journal of Happiness Studies 10(1):49–69, 2009), and are in agreement with the recommendations of the International Well-being Group (Group discussion, 2006; IWG 2006). The new domain item makes a statistically significant — albeit a slight — contribution in predicting general satisfaction with life (SWL). Notably, higher satisfaction with religiosity/spirituality is found in women compared to men, married individuals compared to single ones, and inhabitants of the Sahara desert locations compared to people from other regions of Algeria.