The False Promise of Thought Experimentation in Moral and Political Philosophy

Prof. Miščević has long been an ardent defender of the use of thought experiments in philosophy, foremost metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind. Recently he has, in his typically sophisticated manner, extended his general account of philosophical thought-experimenting to the domain of normative politics. Not only can the history of political philosophy be better understood and appreciated, according to Miščević, when seen as a more or less continuous, yet covert, practice of thought-experimenting, the very progress of the discipline may crucially depend on finding the right balance between the constraints of (biological, psychological, economic, political, and so on) reality and political-moral ideals when we set to design our basic political notions and institutions. I have much less confidence in this project than prof. Miščević does. As a subspecies of moral TE, political TE share all their problems plus exhibit some of their own. In the paper, I present and discuss two types of evidence that threaten to undermine political philosophers’ trust in thought-experiments and the ethical/political intuitions elicited by them: (i) the dismal past record of thought-experimentation in moral and political philosophy; and (ii) the variety, prevalence, and stubbornness, of bias in ordinary social/political judgment

Persons, Agents, and the End-of-life Decisions

Extensive discussions about the nature and value of personhood, of metaphysical and normative aspects of becoming a person and ceasing to be one, having been conducted at the very center of the debates on abortion, therapeutic human cloning, embryo experimentation, and so on, for decades have proven notoriously difficult and their insights disappointingly inconclusive. In the paper I would like to turn our attention to the other end of the life span and explore the moral implications of acknowledging to, or witholding from, someone the status of a person, i.e. a rational being, for the choice between prolonging her life and facilitating her death. The philosophical challenge facing the opponent of euthanasia can then be put as follows: suppose the patient's decision to have her life terminated is both voluntary and prudent; further suppose that neither her decision nor the carrying out of it by a health professional violates anyone's rights or fails to discharge anyone's duties. What else could possibly make the doctor's compliance with the patient's request wrong and what other moral objections could possibly be raised against the proposal to provide a legal protection for such an option for the terminally-ill patients

Early verb development in one austrian child

The purpose of this paper is to trace the early development of verbs (first 50 verb lemmas) in one Austrian child. The paper focusses on verb morphology, and especially on the emergence of first verb paradigms

Moral Thought-Experiments, Intuitions, and Heuristics

Philosophical thought-experimentation has a long and influential history. In recent years, however, both the traditionally secure place of the method of thought experimentation in philosophy and its presumed epistemic credentials have been increasingly and repeatedly questioned. In the paper, I join the choir of the discontents. I present and discuss two types of evidence that in my opinion undermine our close-to-blind trust in moral thought experiments and the intuitions that these elicit: the disappointing record of thought-experimentation in contemporary moral philosophy, and the more general considerations explaining why this failure is not accidental. The diagnosis is not optimistic. The past record of moral TEs is far from impressive. Most, if not all, moral TEs fail to corroborate their target moral hypotheses. Moral intuitions appear to be produced by moral heuristics which we have every reason to suspect will systematically misfi re in typical moral TEs. Rather than keep relying on moral TEs, we should therefore begin to explore other, more sound alternatives to thought-experimentation in moral philosophy

Euthanasia Laws, Slippery Slopes, and (Un)reasonable Precaution

The article examines the so-called slippery slope argument (SSA) against the legalization of active voluntary euthanasia (AVE). According to the SSA, by legalizing AVE, the least morally controversial type of euthanasia, we will take the first step onto a slippery slope and inevitably end up in the moral abyss of widespread abuse and violations of the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable patients. In the first part of the paper, empirical evidence to the contrary is presented and analyzed: None of the forecasted regrettable trends can be elicited from the body of existing statistical data. Accordingly, we have no good reason to believe either that we already are, or are sooner or later going to be, sliding into a moral abyss. A related question is then considered: Would it not be wiser and safer to stick to the status quo and preserve the existing legal ban on AVE even if the risk of its abuse is uncertain and may well turn out to be relatively low? It is argued that such an appeal to precautionary reasoning fails to justify an outright legal ban on AVE for at least two reasons: (i) it grossly underestimates the hidden moral costs of current legal arrangements (competent terminal patients suffer both disrespect for their autonomous will and deprivation of the good of a timely death) and (ii) the ban is both too inefficient and disproportionate to qualify as a reasonable measure of precaution

Should we Consult Kant when Assessing Agent’s Moral Responsibility for Harm?

The paper focuses on the conditions under which an agent can be justifiably held responsible or liable for the harmful consequences of his or her actions. Kant has famously argued that as long as the agent fulfills his or her moral duty, he or she cannot be blamed for any potential harm that might result from his or her action, no matter how foreseeable these may (have) be(en). I call this the Duty-Absolves-Thesis or DA. I begin by stating the thesis in a more precise form and then go on to assess, one by one, several possible justifications for it: that (i) it wasn’t the view Kant himself actually held or was committed to; (ii) there is nothing strange about the DA, either theoretically or intuitively; (iii) the DA is more plausible as an account of legal (either criminal or tort) liability; (iv) the DA becomes perfectly plausible when conceived as a thesis about what insulates the agent from either remedial moral responsibility or the demands of compensatory justice; (v) the rationale for the DA is to protect our moral assessment of agents and their actions from the threat of moral luck. I show, with the help of the infamous Inquiring Murderer example, all these (and some other) justificatory attempts unsuccessful. I conclude that besides being counter-intuitive, the DA-thesis also lacks firm theoretical grounding and should therefore be rejected as (part of) an account of outcome moral responsibility

E-Portfolios als Instrument zur Professionalisierung in der Lehrer- und Lehrerinnenausbildung: Bewertung technologischer und motivationaler Faktoren der Nutzung durch Studierende

E-Portfolios haben in den letzten Jahren große Aufmerksamkeit in der aktuellen pädagogischen Fachdiskussion erfahren und werden in Verbindung mit Individualisierung des Lernprozesses, selbstorganisiertem Lernen, Reflexion des Lernprozesses, kompetenzorientiertem Assessment aber auch mit institutioneller Personalentwicklung diskutiert. Seit Beginn des Studienjahres 2008/09 besteht für Studierende der Privaten Pädagogischen Hochschule der Diözese Linz die Möglichkeit, ihre schulpraktische Ausbildung mit einem E-Portfolio zu begleiten. Dabei dient das E-Portfolio einerseits als Instrument der professionellen Entwicklung der Studierenden beim Unterrichten, um eigene Lernprozesse zu reflektieren und den Verlauf der eigenen Kompetenzentwicklung zu visualisieren, andererseits als professionelles Feedbackinstrument. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit besteht darin, motivationale und technologische Faktoren der Nutzung von E-Portfolios durch Studierende zu bewerten und E-Portfolios sowohl als Werkzeug als auch als Methode in der Pädagogen- und Pädagoginnenbildung weiter zu entwickeln. Daraus ergeben sich folgende forschungsleitende Fragen: • Wie wird E-Portfolioarbeit durch Studierende eingeschätzt? (u.a. Einstellung, Nutzen, Relevanz, technische Bedienung, Motivation und Akzeptanz) • Wovon ist die Akzeptanz der Arbeit mit E-Portfolios bzw. die Motivation für die E-Portfolio-Arbeit abhängig? • Gibt es Unterschiede, wenn die Studierenden Feedback für ihre E-Portfolioarbeit bzw. ihre personale Entwicklung nur am Ende eines Semesters bekommen oder wenn eine laufende Bewertung der Beiträge erfolgt? Grundlage und Ausgangspunkt der Forschung ist ein Modell zur Motivation und Akzeptanz der E-Portfolioarbeit in den Schulpraktischen Studien einer Pädagogischen Hochschule, das anhand einer quantitativen hypothesenbasierenden Untersuchung empirisch überprüft und adaptiert wird. Das resultierende kausale Modell wird in einer zweiten Stufe durch eine Partial Least Square (PLS) – Analyse zur Schätzung kausaler Wirkungs-zusammenhänge bewertet und optimiert