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Gender in Philosophy and Law
by Laura PalazzaniThis book is an introductory systematic framework in the complex and interdisciplinary sex/gender debate, focusing on philosophy of law.The volume analyses the different theories that have dealt with the gender category, highlighting the conceptual premises and the arguments of the most influential theories in the debate, which have had repercussions on the field of the ethical and juridical debate (with reference to intersexuality, transsexualism, transgender, homosexuality). The aim is to offer a sort of conceptual orientation in the complexity of the debate, in an effort to identify the various aspects and development processes of the theories, so as to highlight the conceptual elements of the theorisations to grasp the problem areas within them. It is therefore an overall synthetic and also explicative analysis, but not only explicative: the aim is to outline the arguments supporting the different theories and the counter-arguments too, for the purpose of proposing categories to weigh up the elements and to take one's own critical stance, with a methodological style that is neither descriptive nor prescriptive, but critical.
Forces of Nature and Cultural Responses
by Katrin Pfeifer Niki PfeiferHow do and how did people perceive, manage and respond to natural disasters? How are the causes of natural disasters explained in history, how are they explained today? This volume investigates relationships between forces of nature and human culture in a multidisciplinary context bridging science and the humanities. Forces of nature and cultural responses is divided into four sections: (1) ball lightnings, (2) earthquakes and tsunamis, (3) volcanic eruptions and plagues, and (4) hurricanes and floodings. Specifically, Section 1 investigates theories and case studies of ball lightning phenomena. Section 2 includes a psychological study on the impact of earthquakes on academic performance, a study on tsunami vulnerability and recovery strategies in Thailand and a study on the social and economic aftermaths of a tsunami and a hurricane in Hawaii. Section 3 consists of a chapter on volcanic eruptions and plagues as well as cultural responses in Ancient Times and a study on contemporary vulnerability and resilience under chronic volcanic eruptions. Section 4 investigates the impact of hurricane Katrina on the current jazz scene in New Orleans and cultural responses to floodings in The Netherlands in Early Modern Times.
The Structural Links between Ecology, Evolution and Ethics
by Donato BergandiEvolutionary biology, ecology and ethics: at first glance, three different objects of research, three different worldviews and three different scientific communities. In reality, there are both structural and historical links between these disciplines. First, some topics are obviously common across the board. Second, the emerging need for environmental policy management has gradually but radically changed the relationship between these disciplines. Over the last decades in particular, there has emerged a need for an interconnecting meta-paradigm that integrates more strictly evolutionary studies, biodiversity studies and the ethical frameworks that are most appropriate for allowing a lasting co-evolution between natural and social systems. Today such a need is more than a mere luxury, it is an epistemological and practical necessity.
LAWS, LANGUAGE and LIFE
by Howard Hunt Pattee Joanna Rączaszek-LeonardiHoward Pattee is a physicist who for many years has taken his own path in studying the physics of symbols, which is now a foundation for biosemiotics. By extending von Neumann's logical requirements for self-replication, to the physical requirements of symbolic instruction at the molecular level, he concludes that a form of quantum measurement is necessary for life. He explains why all non-dynamic symbolic and informational controls act as special (allosteric) constraints on dynamical systems. Pattee also points out that symbols do not exist in isolation but in coordinated symbol systems we call languages. Such insights turn out to be necessary to situate biosemiotics as an objective scientific endeavor. By proposing a way to relate quiescent symbolic constraints to dynamics, Pattee's work builds a bridge between physical, biological, and psychological models that are based on dynamical systems theory. Pattee's work awakes new interest in cognitive scientists, where his recognition of the necessary separation--the epistemic cut--between the subject and object provides a basis for a complementary third way of relating the purely symbolic, computational models of cognition and the purely dynamic, non-representational models. This selection of Pattee's papers also addresses several other fields, including hierarchy theory, artificial life, self-organization, complexity theory, and the complementary epistemologies of the physical and biological sciences.
Around the Tree: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues Concerning Branching and the Open Future (Synthese Library #361)
by Fabrice Correia Andrea IaconaOver the past few years, the tree model of time has been widely employed to deal with issues concerning the semantics of tensed discourse. The thought that has motivated its adoption is that the most plausible way to make sense of indeterminism is to conceive of future possibilities as branches that depart from a common trunk, constituted by the past and the present. However, the thought still needs to be further articulated and defended, and several important questions remain open, such as the question of how actuality can be understood and formally represented in a branching framework. The present volume is intended to be a 360 degree reflection on the tree model. The contributions is gathers concern the model and its alternatives, both from a semantic and from a metaphysical point of view.
European Data Protection: Coming of Age
by Paul De Hert Yves Poullet Ronald Leenes Serge GutwirthOn 25 January 2012, the European Commission presented its long awaited new "Data protection package". With this proposal for a drastic revision of the data protection framework in Europe, it is fair to say that we are witnessing a rebirth of European data protection, and perhaps, its passage from an impulsive youth to a more mature state. Technology advances rapidly and mobile devices are significantly changing the landscape. Increasingly, we carry powerful, connected, devices, whose location and activities can be monitored by various stakeholders. Very powerful social network sites emerged in the first half of last decade, processing personal data of many millions of users. Updating the regulatory network was imminent and the presentation of the new package will initiate a period of intense debate in which the proposals will be thoroughly commented upon and criticized, and numerous amendments will undoubtedly be proposed. This volume brings together some 19 chapters offering conceptual analyses, highlighting issues, proposing solutions, and discussing practices regarding privacy and data protection. In the first part of the book, conceptual analyses of concepts such as privacy and anonymity are provided. The second section focuses on the contrasted positions of digital natives and ageing users in the information society. The third section provides four chapters on privacy by design, including discussions on roadmapping and concrete techniques. The fourth section is devoted to surveillance and profiling, with illustrations from the domain of smart metering, self-surveillance and the benefits and risks of profiling. The book concludes with case studies pertaining to communicating privacy in organisations, the fate of a data protection supervisor in one of the EU member states and data protection in social network sites and online media. This volume brings together some 19 chapters offering conceptual analyses, highlighting issues, proposing solutions, and discussing practices regarding privacy and data protection. In the first part of the book, conceptual analyses of concepts such as privacy and anonymity are provided. The second section focuses on the contrasted positions of digital natives and ageing users in the information society. The third section provides four chapters on privacy by design, including discussions on roadmapping and concrete techniques. The fourth section is devoted to surveillance and profiling, with illustrations from the domain of smart metering, self-surveillance and the benefits and risks of profiling. The book concludes with case studies pertaining to communicating privacy in organisations, the fate of a data protection supervisor in one of the EU member states and data protection in social network sites and online media.
Leibniz: Logico-Philosophical Puzzles in the Law
by Giovanni Sartor Bernardo Pieri Alberto ArtosiThis volume presents two Leibnizian writings, the Specimen of Philosophical Questions Collected from the Law and the Dissertation on Perplexing Cases. These works, originally published in 1664 and 1666, constitute, respectively, Leibniz's thesis for the title of Master of Philosophy and his doctoral dissertation in law. Besides providing evidence of the earliest development of Leibniz's thought and amazing anticipations of his mature views, they present a genuine intellectual interest, for the freshness and originality of Leibniz's reflections on a striking variety of logico-philosophical puzzles drawn from the law. The Specimen addresses puzzling issues resulting from apparent conflicts between law and philosophy (the latter broadly understood as comprising also mathematics, as well as empirical sciences). The Dissertation addresses cases whose solution is puzzling because of the convoluted logical form of legal dispositions and contractual clauses, or because of conflicting priorities between concurring parties. In each case, Leibniz dissects the problems with the greatest ingenuity, disentangling their different aspects, and proposing solutions always reasonable and sometimes surprising. And he does not refrain from peppering his intellectual acrobatics with some humorous comments.
Norms in Technology
by Sven Ove Hansson Anthonie W.M. Meijers Marc J VriesThis book is a distinctive fusion of philosophy and technology, delineating the normative landscape that informs today's technologies and tomorrow's inventions. The authors examine what we deem to be the internal norms that govern our ever-expanding technical universe. Recognizing that developments in technology and engineering literally create our human future, transforming existing knowledge into tomorrow's tools and infrastructure, they chart the normative criteria we use to evaluate novel technological artifacts: how, for example, do we judge a 'good' from a 'bad' expert system or nuclear power plant? As well as these 'functional' norms, and the norms that guide technological knowledge and reasoning, the book examines commonly agreed benchmarks in safety and risk reduction, which play a pivotal role in engineering practice. Informed by the core insight that, in technology and engineering, factual knowledge relating, for example, to the properties of materials or the load-bearing characteristics of differing construction designs is not enough, this analysis follows the often unseen foundations upon which technologies rest--the norms that guide the creative forces shaping the technical landscape to come. The book, a comprehensive survey of these emerging topics in the philosophy of technology, clarifies the role these norms (epistemological, functional, and risk-assessing) play in technological innovation, and the consequences they have for our understanding of technological knowledge.
Resistance, Liberation Technology and Human Rights in the Digital Age
by Giovanni ZiccardiThis book explains strategies, techniques, legal issues and the relationships between digital resistance activities, information warfare actions, liberation technology and human rights. It studies the concept of authority in the digital era and focuses in particular on the actions of so-called digital dissidents. Moving from the difference between hacking and computer crimes, the book explains concepts of hacktivism, the information war between states, a new form of politics (such as open data movements, radical transparency, crowd sourcing and "Twitter Revolutions"), and the hacking of political systems and of state technologies. The book focuses on the protection of human rights in countries with oppressive regimes.
Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry
by John Douard Pamela D. SchultzThe metaphor of the monster or predator--usually a sexual predator, drug dealer in areas frequented by children, or psychopathic murderer--is a powerful framing device in public discourse about how the criminal justice system should respond to serious violent crimes. The cultural history of the monster reveals significant features of the metaphor that raise questions about the extent to which justice can be achieved in both the punishment of what are regarded as "monstrous crimes" and the treatment of those who commit such crimes. This book is the first to address the connections between the history of the monster metaphor, the 19th century idea of the criminal as monster, and the 20th century conception of the psychopath: the new monster. The book addresses, in particular, the ways in which the metaphor is used to scapegoat certain categories of crimes and criminals for anxieties about our own potential for deviant, and, indeed, dangerous interests. These interests have long been found to be associated with the fascination people have for monsters in most cultures, including the West. The book outlines an alternative public health approach to sex offending, and crime in general, that can incorporate what we know about illness prevention while protecting the rights, and humanity, of offenders. The book concludes with an analysis of the role of forensic psychiatrists and psychologists in representing criminal defendants as psychopaths, or persons with certain personality disorders. As psychiatry and psychology have transformed bad behavior into mad behavior, these institutions have taken on the legal role of helping to sort out the most dangerous among us for preventive "treatment" rather than carceral "punishment."
Engineering, Development and Philosophy
by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen Yanming An Bocong Li Carl MitchamThis inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today's cultural triumvirate--American, European and Chinese--are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics of engineers. The first volume to offer a systematic and collaborative study that cuts across continental boundaries, the book delineates the kinds of skills and competences that tomorrow's engineering success stories will require, and analyzes fascinating aspects of the interplay between engineering and philosophy, such as how traditionally Chinese ways of thinking can influence modern engineering practice in the world's most populous country. China's problematic mix of engineering woes and wonders, from the high-profile crash on its high-profile rail network to its 'bird's nest' Olympic stadium, adds to the urgency for reform, while Europe's Enlightenment-informed legal frameworks are contrasted with Chinese mechanisms in their governance of the field of nanotechnology, a crucial element of future technical evolution. Fascinating and compelling in equal measure, this volume addresses one of the topics at the leading edge of humanity's quest to survive, and to thrive.
Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages
by Cornelia Ebert Stefan HinterwimmerThis anthology of papers analyzes a range of specificity markers found in natural languages. It reflects the fact that despite intensive research into these markers, the vast differences between the markers across languages and even within single languages have been less acknowledged. Commonly regarded specific indefinites are by no means a homogenous class, and so this volume fills a gap in our understanding of the semantics and pragmatics of indefinites. The papers explore differences and similarities among these specificity markers, concentrating on the following issues: whether specificity is a purely semantic or also a pragmatic notion; whether the contribution of specificity markers is located on the level of the at-issue content; whether some kind of speaker-listener asymmetry concerning the identification of the referent is involved; and the behavioral scope of these indefinites in the context of other quantifiers, negation, attitude verbs, and intensional/modal operators.
Rangeland Stewardship in Central Asia
by Victor R. SquiresThis volume of 18 chapters is the work of more than 30 authors, many of whom are natives of the Central Asian region or are researchers who have dedicated a large part of their working lives to studying the development dynamics in this vast and fascinating region. The work focuses on the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. But it also traces the attitudes of land users to the land dating from before the late 19th century, when Russian conquest and colonization occurred, and through the upheavals caused by Soviet-style collectivization and sedentarization. The book is rich with new data presented in 68 easy to understand charts/graphs (many in color) and 50 Tables. Information was generated for this book by experts working in-country. It presents for the first time in English a digest of plethora of previously inaccessible Russian reports and scientific literature that will be invaluable for development agencies, including UN, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Bank as well as to students of this vast and fascinating region who seek up to date and authoritive information.
Origins of Mind
by Liz SwanThe big question of how and why mindedness evolved necessitates collaborative, multidisciplinary investigation. Biosemiotics provides a new conceptual space that attracts a multitude of thinkers in the biological and cognitive sciences and the humanities who recognize continuity in the biosphere from the simplest to the most complex organisms, and who are united in the project of trying to account for even language and human consciousness in this comprehensive picture of life. The young interdiscipline of biosemiotics has so far by and large focused on codes, signs and sign processes in the microworld--a fact that reflects the field's strong representation in microbiology and embryology. What philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists can contribute to the growing interdiscipline are insights into how the biosemiotic weltanschauung applies to complex organisms like humans where such signs and sign processes constitute human society and culture.
Epistemology of Decision
by Mario GrazianoThis book carries out an epistemological analysis of the decision, including a critical analysis through the continuous reference to an interdisciplinary approach including a synthesis of philosophical approaches, biology and neuroscience. Besides this it represents the analysis of causality here seen not from the formal point of view, but from the "embodied" point of view.
Essentials of Risk Theory
by Per Sandin Rafaela Hillerbrand Sabine Roeser Martin PetersonRisk has become one of the main topics in fields as diverse as engineering, medicine and economics, and it is also studied by social scientists, psychologists and legal scholars. This Springer Essentials version offers an overview of the in-depth handbook and highlights some of the main points covered in the Handbook of Risk Theory. The topic of risk also leads to more fundamental questions such as: What is risk? What can decision theory contribute to the analysis of risk? What does the human perception of risk mean for society? How should we judge whether a risk is morally acceptable or not? Over the last couple of decades questions like these have attracted interest from philosophers and other scholars into risk theory. This brief offers the essentials of the handbook provides for an overview into key topics in a major new field of research and addresses a wide range of topics, ranging from decision theory, risk perception to ethics and social implications of risk. It aims to promote communication and information among all those who are interested in theoretical issues concerning risk and uncertainty. The Essentials of Risk Theory brings together internationally leading philosophers and scholars from other disciplines who work on risk theory. The contributions are accessibly written and highly relevant to issues that are studied by risk scholars. The Essentials of Risk Theory will be a helpful starting point for all risk scholars who are interested in broadening and deepening their current perspectives.
Lawyers Making Meaning....
by Jan M. Broekman Larry Catà BackerThis book present a structure for understanding and exploring the semiotic character of law and law systems. Cultivating a deep understanding for the ways in which lawyers make meaning--the way in which they help make the world and are made, in turn by the world they create --can provide a basis for consciously engaging in the work of the law and in the production of meaning. The book first introduces the reader to the idea of semiotics in general and legal semiotics in particular, as well as to the major actors and shapers of the field, and to the heart of the matter: signs. The second part studies the development of the strains of thinking that together now define semiotics, with attention being paid to the pragmatics, psychology and language of legal semiotics. A third part examines the link between legal theory and semiotics, the practice of law, the critical legal studies movement in the USA, the semiotics of politics and structuralism. The last part of the book ties the different strands of legal semiotics together, and closely looks at semiotics in the lawyer's toolkit--such as: text, name and meaning.
Agreement Technologies: Second International Conference, At 2013, Beijing, China, August 1-2, 2013. Proceedings (Law, Governance and Technology Series #8)
by Sascha OssowskiMore and more transactions, whether in business or related to leisure activities, are mediated automatically by computers and computer networks, and this trend is having a significant impact on the conception and design of new computer applications. The next generation of these applications will be based on software agents to which increasingly complex tasks can be delegated, and which interact with each other in sophisticated ways so as to forge agreements in the interest of their human users. The wide variety of technologies supporting this vision is the subject of this volume. It summarises the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action project on Agreement Technologies (AT), during which approximately 200 researchers from 25 European countries, along with eight institutions from non-COST countries, cooperated as part of a number of working groups. The book is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of Agreement Technologies, written and coordinated by the leading researchers in the field. The results set out here are due for wide dissemination beyond the computer technology sector, involving law and social science as well.
The Threads of Natural Law
by Francisco José ContrerasThe notion of "natural law" has repeatedly furnished human beings with a shared grammar in times of moral and cultural crisis. Stoic natural law, for example, emerged precisely when the Ancient World lost the Greek polis, which had been the point of reference for Plato's and Aristotle's political philosophy. In key moments such as this, natural law has enabled moral and legal dialogue between peoples and traditions holding apparently clashing world-views. This volume revisits some of these key moments in intellectual and social history, partly with an eye to extracting valuable lessons for ideological conflicts in the present and perhaps near future. The contributions to this volume discuss both historical and contemporary schools of natural law. Topics on historical schools of natural law include: how Aristotelian theory of rules paved the way for the birth of the idea of "natural law"; the idea's first mature account in Cicero's work; the tension between two rival meanings of "man's rational nature" in Aquinas' natural law theory; and the scope of Kant's allusions to "natural law". Topics on contemporary natural law schools include: John Finnis's and Germain Grisez's "new natural law theory"; natural law theories in a "broader" sense, such as Adolf Reinach's legal phenomenology; Ortega y Gasset's and Scheler's "ethical perspectivism"; the natural law response to Kelsen's conflation of democracy and moral relativism; natural law's role in 20th century international law doctrine; Ronald Dworkin's understanding of law as "a branch of political morality"; and Alasdair Macintyre's "virtue"-based approach to natural law.
The Principle of Proportionality
by Peter HulsrojThe book applies the principle of proportionality to a number of conventional wisdoms in the social sciences, such as in dubio pro reo and the assumption that a crime is always a crime; that you must go to war if instructed to do so. Individuals and states are not obliged to come to the aid of stricken individuals and states. The book is organised in seven chapters, each dealing with a self-standing theme related to proportionality.
New Issues in Polar Tourism
by Dieter K. Müller Linda Lundmark Raynald H. LemelinNew Issues in Polar Tourism traces and analyzes a decade of growing interest in the polar regions, and the consequent challenges and opportunities of increasing tourist traffic in formerly remote and seldom-visited places. The book arises from the recently-formed International Polar Tourism Research Network (IPTRN), and documents the outcomes of its 2010 conference, held at Sweden's Abisko Scientific Research Station.
Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa
by John TurriThis collection is a major contribution to the understanding and evaluation of Ernest Sosa's profound and wide-ranging philosophy, in epistemology and beyond. A balanced, fair and critical volume, it offers a sensitive appreciation of his wide philosophical purview, a nuanced assessment of the detail of his thought, and a spur to exploring the linkages between the varied topics explored by the subtle mind of this great American scholar. The papers explore a wealth of Sosa's academic interests, including his work on philosophical method, the philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, and value theory, in addition to his output on epistemology itself. It offers, for example, a rebuttal of the counterarguments to Sosa's reliabilist theory of introspective justification, which itself concludes with some objections to Sosa's stated views on the 'speckled hen' problem. Other authors track the connections of his virtue theory to his advocacy of bi-level epistemology, provide reflections on Sosa's views on the epistemological tradition, and examine the nexus of his beliefs on intuition and philosophical methodology. This volume is an insightful reckoning of Sosa's academic account.
Spheres of Global Justice: Volume 1 Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy. Political Participation, Minorities and Migrations; Volume 2 Fair Distribution - Global Economic, Social and Intergenerational Justice
by Jean-Christophe MerleSpheres of Global Justice analyzes six of the most important and controversial spheres of global justice, each concerning a specific global social good. These spheres are democratic participation, migrations, cultural minorities, economic justice, social justice, and intergenerational justice. Together they constitute two constellations dealt with, in this collection of essays by leading scholars, in two different volumes: Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy and Fair Distribution. These essays illustrate each of the spheres, delving into their differences, commonalities, collisions and interconnections. Unlike many writings on global justice, Spheres of Global Justice does not content itself with describing the painful and advantageous effects of the globalization process as being ipso facto a global injustice or a just global order. Rather, this multidisciplinary collection of essays, from a pluralist inspiration, combines empirical analysis with theoretical approaches and ethical principles, paying close attention to two aspects of the effects of the globalization process. These aspects are the causal relationships that lead to such effects and the kinds of obligations, or of normative relationships between global rights and correlative duties, that applies to each specific individual case. This volume illustrates how diverse global obligations are, and how they can be, grounded in diverse relationships (identity, ability to provide help, causal responsibility, past injustices, protection of agency and promotion of independence, etc.). These essays also demonstrate that an ethical global approach has not only international or transnational, but also domestic, local and interpersonal dimensions.
Terrorism and Counterterrorism
by Carl WellmanThis book presents a definition of terrorism that is broad and descriptive and much needed to prevent misunderstanding. The book identifies the features that make terrorism 'wrong', including coerciveness, the violation of rights and undermining of trust. Next, it evaluates reasons given for terrorism such as the protection of human rights and the liberation of oppressed groups as not normally justified. Following this, the book identifies and evaluates international responses to terrorism, taking into account General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, United Nations conventions and criminalization in international law. It also looks at national responses which often take the shape of surveillance, detention, interrogation, trials, targeted killings, intrusion and invasion. Finally, the book discusses how, if at all, the moral norms of personal morality apply to the actions of nation states.
Human Being @ Risk: Enhancement, Technology, and the Evaluation of Vulnerability Transformations
by Mark CoeckelberghWhereas standard approaches to risk and vulnerability presuppose a strict separation between humans and their world, this book develops an existential-phenomenological approach according to which we are always already beings-at-risk. Moreover, it is argued that in our struggle against vulnerability, we create new vulnerabilities and thereby transform ourselves as much as we transform the world. Responding to the discussion about human enhancement and information technologies, the book then shows that this dynamic-relational approach has important implications for the evaluation of new technologies and their risks. It calls for a normative anthropology of vulnerability that does not ask which objective risks are acceptable, how we can become invulnerable, or which technologies threaten human nature, but which vulnerability transformations we want. To the extent that we can steer the growth of new technologies at all, this tragic and sometimes comic project should therefore be guided by what we want to become.