Discourse Ethics

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual, and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform) may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e., morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence, and common knowledge from epistemic logic.

This paper illustrates how the possibilities for normative social critique from a critical discourseanalytical perspective are substantively enhanced by drawing on argumentation theory. We advocate viewing political discourse as primarily argumentative discourse, and as typically involving practical arguments, arguments about what to do. We discuss two distinct cases of rationalization, showing in what way they are defective, unreasonable arguments, and we indicate in what way critical questioning of such arguments involves ethical questions: questions of sincerity and deception, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, questions having to do with the rational acceptability of the values that inform action and their relationship to the other premises of the argument and its conclusion.

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

The following paper will trace the recently established field of Information Ethics through it’s various evolutions, from it’s origins in Librarianship to it’s role as a global player in areas as diverse as technology, media, global humanitarianism, and the philosophy of information. The praxis of the field will be outlined for the uninitiated reader, followed by an intimate history of the founding players and their continued contribution to this ever-evolving field. The current evolutions of Information Ethics will then be explored in the context of their application to the viral global phenomena of Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE), and finally, the paper will conclude with projections towards future evolutions in Information Ethics, as well as an exploration of potential definitions for the field.

Habermas' project of reformulating the critical theory of society was characterized from the very beginning by a dispute with Marx. Habermas' critique of the so-called “Production Paradigm” of Marx claims that it involves a reduction of “rules of social interaction” to “technical-utilitarian rules of production and the use of products” and thus amounts to a truncated conceptualization of social praxis.
This article will demonstrate that Habermas, through his approach to Marx oriented toward the latter's early writings, and due to his dualistic theoretical construction of “labour” and “interaction” or “system” and “life world” respectively, not only fails to perceive the central categories of Marx's social theory, but also fundamentally misses the point of the specificity of capitalist social constitution. Above all, Habermas ignores the form-analytical distinction, first elaborated by Marx in Capital, between concrete and abstract labour. It turns out that the core problem of Habermas' social theory is that by substituting the concept of “institutional framework” for that of “relations of production”, or respectively the concept of “interaction” on the one hand and the subsystem of “purposive rational activity” on the other, he misses the innovative content of the concept of society in the critique of political economy, thus transforming social theory into an extrinsic combination of symbolic-interactionist reductionism and the systems-theoretical affirmation of social alienation. Society is dissolved into the dualisms of labour and interaction, technics and ethics, relations between people and things and relations between people.  Habermas thereby consummates a separation of the class relation from its objective mediation, i.e. its economic character in a narrower sense, as well as trivializing independent economic mechanisms as primarily mediums of communication that unburden activity with the goals of increasing utility and optimal material reproduction.
Following Dieter Wolf and Moishe Postone, I will demonstrate that production and labour in Marx's work, contrary to Habermas' interpretation, are two-dimensional categories, which definitely, alongside the content of normative regulations, also represent forms of social unity in capitalism, and are constitutive for an understanding of modern relations of domination.

Habermas’ Projekt einer Reformulierung der kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie stand von Beginn an im Zeichen einer Auseinandersetzung mit Marx. Habermas’ Kritik am sogenannten ‚Produktionsparadigma’ von Marx lautet, dass es eine Reduktion von „Regeln der sozialen Interaktion“ auf „technisch-utilitäre[...] Regeln der Produktion und der Verwendung von Produkten“ mit sich bringe und so eine verkürzte Konzeptualisierung gesellschaftlicher Praxis darstelle.
Der Aufsatz zeigt, dass Habermas durch seinen von den Frühschriften ausgehenden Zugang zu Marx und aufgrund seiner dualistischen Theorieanlage von ‚Arbeit‘ und ‚Interaktion‘ bzw. ‚System‘ und ‚Lebenswelt‘, nicht nur zentrale sozialtheoretische Kategorien von Marx nicht wahrnimmt, sondern grundlegend die Spezifik kapitalistischer Vergesellschaftung verfehlt. Habermas ignoriert vor allem die formanalytische Differenzierung von abstrakter und konkreter Arbeit, die Marx erst im Kapital ausformuliert. Als Kernproblem der Habermasschen Gesellschaftstheorie erweist sich, dass mit der Ersetzung des Begriffs ‚Produktionsverhältnis’ durch den des ‚institutionellen Rahmens’, bzw. der ‚Interaktion’ einerseits und des Konzepts des ‚Subsystems zweckrationalen Handelns’ andererseits, der innovative Gehalt des ökonomiekritischen Gesellschaftsbegriffs verfehlt wird, wobei Sozialtheorie in eine äußerliche Kombination von symbolisch-interaktionistischem Reduktionismus und systemtheoretischer Affirmation gesellschaftlicher Entfremdung transformiert wird. Gesellschaft löst sich in die Dualismen von Arbeit und Interaktion, Technik und Ethik, Mensch-Ding- und Mensch-Mensch-Verhältnissen auf. Dabei vollzieht Habermas eine Trennung des Klassenverhältnisses von seiner gegenständlichen Vermittlung, d.h. seinem im engeren Sinn ökonomischen Charakter, sowie eine Verharmlosung verselbständigter ökonomischer Mechanismen zu vor allem handlungsentlastenden Kommunikationsmedien mit dem Ziel der Nutzenmehrung und optimalen materiellen Reproduktion.
In Anlehnung an Moishe Postone und Dieter Wolf wird dagegen gezeigt, dass Produktion und Arbeit bei Marx im Gegensatz zur Habermasschen Deutung zweidimensionale Kategorien darstellen, die sehr wohl neben dem Inhalt normativer Regelungen selbst eine Form gesellschaftlicher Einheit im Kapitalismus darstellen und konstitutiv zum Verständnis moderner Herrschaftsverhältnisse sind.

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field of Information Ethics is both unattainable and unwarranted. The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a worldview remains constantly in flux due to, what Luciano Floridi terms, ‘philosophical naturalism’. As such, a broadening understanding of the field will only serve to further collapse categorization. The following paper will outline, using a discourse analysis methodology, how the nature of the field of Information Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily defy classification. The assumptions behind the current classifications of the field will be questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception of the field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Floridi, this paper will explicate how any such attempt to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always remain incomplete.

"In this paper, the Habermasian approach to discourse ethics is summarized and criticized in a systematic way in order to give the reader a comprehensive but short review of the central ideas, strengths and shortcomings of the Habermasian discourse ethics. The following points are considered: The Kantian origin of discourse ethics and its central theorems; the genesis and necessity of morals as a result of the individual reciprocal vulnerability in a social world; the difference between moral and evaluative questions; the moral point of view of the practical discourse; the problem of ultimate justification; the problem of practical application of discourse ethics; and finally further critique. The paper bases on the anthology „Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik“ by Jürgen Habermas (1991).

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Dieses Paper möchte den Versuch unternehmen, anhand des 1991 erschienenen Habermasschen Buches „Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik“ dessen Diskursethik systematisch darzustellen und sich auch inhaltlich mit ihr auseinanderzusetzen. Dabei wird zuerst der Kantische Ursprung der Diskursethik herausgestellt und deren zentrale Sätze vorgestellt. Anschließend wird der theoretische Ansatz des Habermas inhaltlich aufgegliedert. Als Erstes wird mit Habermas die Entstehung und Notwendigkeit der Moral aufgezeigt, die sich insbesondere aus der Verletzlichkeit des Individuums in der Gesellschaft ergäbe. Im Anschluss werden kurz moralische von evaluativen Fragen unterschieden, um danach ausführlicher auf den moral point of view des praktischen Diskurses einzugehen. Zudem wird die Frage der Letztbegründung der Ethik bei Habermas erörtert und das Problem der praktischen Anwendung der Diskursethik diskutiert. Unter diesen Punkten werden auch Kritikpunkte aufgegriffen, die Habermas selbst behandelt. Im letzten Kapitel möchte ich mich selbst argumentativ mit der Habermasschen Diskursethik auseinandersetzen, wobei auch der Philosoph Albrecht Wellmer kurz zu Gehör kommen soll.

In this paper we analyze the role trust plays in an ethical evaluation of PT. We distinguish between trust in PT itself, and trust in those humans who design, produce and deploy it and draw on Discourse Ethics to further distinguish two types of communication embodied in PTs: asymmetrical and symmetrical communication.

In The Origins of Collective Decision Making, Andy Blunden identifies three paradigms of collective decision making – Counsel, Majority and Consensus, discovers their origins in traditional, medieval and modern times, and traces their evolution over centuries up to the present. The study reveals that these three paradigms have an ethical foundation, deeply rooted in historical experiences. The narrative takes the reader into the very moments when individual leaders and organisers made the crucial developments in white heat of critical moments in history, such as the English Revolution of the 1640s, the Chartist Movement of the 1840s and the early Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This history provides a valuable resource for resolving current social movement conflict over decision making. -- to be released in hardback 17th April 2016

El tema del libro es la fundamentación ético discursiva propuesta por Karl-Otto Apel en el marco de su pragmática trascendental. El examen crítico de esta propuesta filosófica tiene el objetivo de reforzar los argumentos a favor de una fundamentación trascendental de la ética. Se enfrenta inicialmente a la pragmática apeliana con una serie de críticas provenientes del debate analítico sobre los “argumentos trascendentales”, iniciada en los años sesenta del siglo XX. Se reconstruyen tres líneas principales: una que atañe a la forma de los argumentos trascendentales,  otra a su capacidad para demostrar validez objetiva, y la otra a su capacidad  para demostrar la unicidad de un esquema conceptual (iniciadas respectivamente por M. Gram, B. Stroud y S. Körner).
La discusión y posterior aplicación a Apel de  las críticas de este debate conduce a tres conclusiones principales. La primera  es que no existen razones concluyentes en contra de realizar una reflexión trascendental sobre las condiciones de posibilidad del conocimiento válido. La segunda es que la fundamentación trascendental debe hacerse en el marco de un  modelo filosófico dialógico y auto-reflexivo (diferente al asumido por los  autores del debate). Precisamente, la tercera conclusión es que todo método trascendental debe ser “interno”, es decir, debe asumir las condiciones que  investiga. Se aborda entonces el problema de concebir un  método que asuma la circularidad de la investigación y le dé un contenido  concreto a la fundamentación. En lugar de la fórmula apeliana, se sostiene la conveniencia de entender la pragmática trascendental como una continuación, corregida en un sentido trascendental, de la hermenéutica iniciada por Heidegger y renovada por Gadamer. Un método interno “hermenéutico trascendental” puede describirse con los rasgos de la  dialogicidad, la auto-reflexión y la crítica del sentido. El interés  fundamental es, como para Apel, la reconstrucción de aquellos presupuestos que  conforman la base de la ética discursiva, la cual transforma de manera comunicativa el imperativo categórico kantiano. Se discute finalmente la cuestión de cómo es  posible pensar que los presupuestos argumentativos no están sometidos a cambios históricos. La respuesta apunta a señalar que la objeción de “otra razón  posible” carece de argumentos sustantivos en contra de la fundamentación.

This paper will begin with an explication of the central tenets of Nussbaum’s capabilities theory. The next section examines Nussabum’s two-fold justification of capabilities; namely, the substantive good approach (or intuitionism), which serves as the primary justification, and a version of Kantian proceduralism, which provides ancillary support. The following section focuses on Jaggar’s critique of Nussbaum. Here, I will discuss three criteria of adequacy for a global ethic and their importance, why we should accept them and how both of Nussbaum’s justification strategies fail to satisfy them. In the fifth section, I propose a version of discourse ethics as an alternative justification for capabilities that can satisfy the adequacy discerned from Jaggar’s critique. This account of discourse ethics reveals that intersubjective dialogue under certain conditions is more likely to provide adequate justification of capabilities, and those engaged in dialogue are also likely to develop practical reason and affiliation. So this method of justification does not merely ground the capabilities, but helps people realize them. Finally, the sixth section presents an example from the Self-Employed Women’s Association as a real-life case illustrating how this version of discourse ethics can be manifested.

Como teórico político, Jürgen Habermas ha intentado conciliar dos enfoques muy distintos: por un lado, una ética que conduce directamente a una teoría de la democracia radical; por otro, una teoría de la sociedad contemporánea que, entre otras cosas, identifica con claridad los condicionantes sociales que frustran hoy cualquier proyecto de democracia radical. No es de extrañar que una combinación de enfoques tan dispares, incluso tan contradictorios, provoque tensiones en el interior de una teoría. Son esas tensiones, y el esfuerzo de Habermas por resolverlas, lo que intentaremos exponer en las páginas que siguen. Este hilo conductor nos obliga a proceder muy selectivamente, y por tanto a dejar de lado muchos aspectos interesantes de la compleja filosofía de Habermas, incluso de su filosofía política. 1 Nos atendremos, en realidad, sólo a tres temas: en primer lugar (I), analizaremos el modo en que la ética del discurso revisa y corrige la ética de Kant, para mostrar después sus implicaciones sociales y políticas inmediatas. A continuación (II y III) examinaremos cómo la teoría de la democracia deliberativa de Habermas intenta evitar las consecuencias más radicales de la ética del discurso, sin renunciar, por otra parte, a las intuiciones básicas de ésta. Y por último (IV), una somera presentación de las principales objeciones contra este modelo de democracia deliberativa nos permitirá poner de manifiesto esas tensiones, quizás no bien resueltas, que recorren toda la teoría política de este autor.

Gordon and Burckhart have assembled a collection of essays that are grouped together complimentarily and flow well from one to the next. As to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual essays, they are predominantly well written, well researched, and constructively critical while remaining true to the spirit of Jonas’ thought.

El presente trabajo tiene por objetivo reconstruir sistemáticamente la “hermenéutica trascendental” de Karl-Otto Apel. En primer lugar, se describe el desarrollo de la interpretación apeliana de Heidegger, la cual consideramos que puede ser dividida en cuatro momentos. En segundo lugar, se explican los principales puntos de disenso de Apel con la hermenéutica filosófica de Gadamer. A lo largo del trabajo sugerimos, además, posibles caminos teóricos abiertos para la hermenéutica trascendental en tanto programa filosófico de investigación.

Thus far, the fact that, in a sufficient number of cases, human discourse ceases to play the role of a dominant medium of interacting between some political/diplomatic parties, which motivates such parties to engage in violent interaction, including primarily war, was not described in more detail, let alone theorized or explained in satisfactory terms – this book fills the gap by proposing, on discourse-ethical premises, a discourse-theoretical analysis of communication patterns as actually displayed by political/diplomatic actors.
Hence, this book's key contention is that the attitude to language should be theorized as one of the major causes of war. Perhaps the easiest way to put it is to quote a famous Canadian fiction writer, Margaret Atwood, one of whose characters stated that war is what happens when language fails.

In diesem Essay soll die praktische Philosophie von Jürgen Habermas, dessen Diskursethik vor allem in der modernen deutschen Unternehmensethik eine große Rolle spielt, vorgestellt und in Verhältnis zu seinen Überlegungen zur Diskurstheorie der Wahrheit und zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns gesetzt werden.

Recent years have seen an influx of medical technologies capable of remotely monitoring the health and behaviours of individuals to detect, manage and prevent health problems.  Known collectively as personal health monitoring (PHM), these systems are intended to supplement medical care with health monitoring outside traditional care environments such as hospitals, ranging in complexity from mobile devices to complex networks of sensors measuring physiological parameters and behaviours.  This research project assesses the potential ethical implications of PHM as an emerging medical technology, amenable to anticipatory action intended to prevent or mitigate problematic ethical issues in the future.

PHM fundamentally changes how medical care can be delivered: patients can be monitored and consulted at a distance, eliminating opportunities for face-to-face actions and potentially undermining the importance of social, emotional and psychological aspects of medical care.  The norms evident in this movement may clash with existing standards of ‘good’ medical practice from the perspective of patients, clinicians and institutions.    By relating utilitarianism, virtue ethics and theories of surveillance to Habermas’ concept of colonisation of the lifeworld, a conceptual framework is created which can explain how PHM may be allowed to change medicine as a practice in an ethically problematic way.  The framework relates the inhibition of virtuous behaviour among practitioners of medicine, understood as a moral practice, to the movement in medicine towards remote monitoring. 

To assess the explanatory power of the conceptual framework and expand its borders, a qualitative interview empirical study with potential users of PHM in England is carried out.  Recognising that the inherent uncertainty of the future undermines the validity of empirical research, a novel epistemological framework based in Habermas’ discourse ethics is created to justify the empirical study.  By developing Habermas’ concept of translation into a procedure for assessing the credibility of uncertain normative claims about the future, a novel methodology for empirical ethical assessment of emerging technologies is created and tested.  Various methods of analysis are employed, including review of academic discourses, empirical and theoretical analyses of the moral potential of PHM.  Recommendations are made concerning ethical issues in the deployment and design of PHM systems, analysis and application of PHM data, and the shortcomings of existing research and protection mechanisms in responding to potential ethical implications of the technology.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe contends that the fact that a person has the capacity to argue entails that she has the moral right of exclusive control over her own body. Critics of Hoppe’s argument do not appear to have pinpointed its flaws. I expose the logical structure of Hoppe’s argument, distinguishing its pragmatic-contradiction and its mutual-recognition components. I provide three counterexamples to show that Hoppe’s mutual-recognition argument is invalid and I argue that the truth that appears to motivate the argument is simply a banality. I show that Hoppe’s pragmatic-contradiction argument is invalid, has a false premise and fails to link up with his mutual-recognition argument in the way that he requires to reach his conclusion. I conclude by outlining three perils of pragmatic-contradiction arguments, the weakness of mutual-recognition arguments, and the implausibility of attempts to derive a universal moral status from a specialised activity such as argumentation.

Third of three articles on the practical philosophy of Jurgen Habermas within the "Reflections on reflective practice" series. The present first half focuses on discourse ethics, while the second half, yet to be completed, will focus on deliberative democracy.

Arguing against the view that populists oppose the idea of political representation, the chapter builds on J.S Mill’s view of representative government to develop an interpretation of populism as a theory of political representation. This framework can allow us to distinguish between practices of representation that can claim to stand for the people and those that cannot.

The paper reconstructs and criticises Habermas' justification of his discourse ethics as well as of his interpretation. - (1) First the main theses of Habermas' discourse ethics are presented, especially the principle of universalization U and the principle of discourse ethics D. (2) Then a detailed analysis shows that Habermas' arguments for these principles are fallacious in various respects. The consideration of earlier versions of these arguments and later comments by Habermas reveals in Habermas some turning away from transcendental pragmatics towards intuitionism and that he weakens to zero his claim to have founded those principles. (3) A criticism of four interpretations of U and (4) of the two main interpretations of D shows that these criteria of morality are unsuitable in many respects and that they are only verbal combinations of ideals difficult to combine.

En la primera sección me ocupo de aquellas limitaciones inherentes a la “ética discursiva” que son objeto de una recepción crítica en la obra de Axel Honneth; sólo desde esta base es posible apreciar en su justa medida las influencias del Sistema de la Eticidad hegeliano en la “ética del reconocimiento” –segunda y tercera sección-. De los impedimentos existentes a un verdadero reconocimiento ético da cuenta la cuarta sección del artículo. En la quinta y última parte analizo la respuesta de Honneth ante las críticas de procedencia althusseriana donde el reconocimiento es equiparado a “ideología”.

Immanuel Kant's moral thesis is that reason alone must identify moral laws. Examining various interpretations of his ethics, this essay shows that the thesis fails. G. W. F. Hegel criticizes Kant's Formula of Universal Law as an empty formalism. Although Christine Korsgaard's Logical and Practical Contradiction Interpretations, Barbara Herman's contradiction in conception and contradiction in will tests, and Kenneth Westphal's paired use of Kant's universalization test all refute what Allen Wood calls a stronger form of the formalism charge, they are not free from a weaker form of it. Some philosophers try to avoid both forms of the formalism charge in the following ways: First, some underline the roles of Kant's other formulas. Second, some interpret the Formula of Universal Law teleologically. Third, some claim that a maxim must be something all those potentially affected by it can rationally accept. Fourth, Robert Louden introduces the empirical to evaluate a maxim. All those attempts introduce heteronomy into Kant's ethics. Besides, on the third response, from the fact that all those potentially affected accept a maxim, it does not follow that it is morally right. It is impossible to avoid the formalism charge without making his ethics heteronomous. Thus, Kant's ethics is either empty or heteronomous. Either way it fails to identify moral laws by reason alone.

Considering the German idea of Bildung, I argue that it is a central concern of Habermas’s. First, he criticized the idea of being educated as a sign of innate abilities, emphasizing instead the significance of the social conditions of the upbringing. Subsequently, inspired by Adorno, he performed an analysis of Bildung, based on critique of ideology, in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The basic critique is that Bildung is too tightly connected to societal dominance, but still the ideal holds some truth. His comments on Bildung over the subsequent years are sparse. However, in Knowledge and Human Interest he works his way out of the framework of philosophy of consciousness, which results in the Theory of Communicative Action, and with this approach he can discuss Bildung in relation to discourse ethics and the role of the university. In this new version, Bildung finally becomes crucial to Habermas’s political philosophy in Between Facts and Norms.

Environmental ethicists typically consider Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action to exclude moral consideration for nonhuman animals. Habermas's early work indeed limits relationships with nature to instrumental ones. Yet, interspersed throughout Habermas's writings are clear indications that nonhuman life deserves moral consideration, and that humans can enter into communicative relationships with nonhumans, however asymmetrical. Habermas's anthropocentric theoretical foundations can achieve a revised, reflective equilibrium congruent with his persistent intuitions that nonhumans also possess powers of communication (but not discourse) that would grant them moral consideration, perhaps allowing us to enter into non-linguistic interspecies communicative activity. Habermasians can incorporate non-instrumental relationships with nature into discourse ethics' set of applications without ignoring the special role of language in communication. Rather than holding that the differencia specifica between humans and nonhumans exists in communication, it makes more sense instead to displace this distinction between communicative action as a general category and the special case of discourse. Doing so permits intuitions of nonhuman moral considerability and communicative possibility without altering the discursive core of Habermas's theory.

Alison Jaggar, in her treatment of feminist discourse
ethics, expresses worries about using “idealized and imaginary
communities” as elucidatory tools for discursive ethics. In
response, this paper presents the history of 924 Gilman (an allages
punk rock collective in the San Francisco Bay area) as a case
study of a non-imagined and real discursive community. While
the example of 924 Gilman, with its overtly feminist agenda and
democratic ethos, bolsters Jaggar’s claims about the need for
“closed communities” within discourse ethics, it also challenges
some of her basic assumptions and raises important pragmatic
and theoretical criticisms against discourse ethics.

The question of how society should deal with social conflicts arising from cultural differences persists. Should we adopt an exclusivist approach by excluding reasons based on specific cultural traditions (culture-based reasons) from public debates about social policy, especially because these reasons do not appeal to the public at large? Or should we resort to an inclusivist approach by including reasons based on cultural traditions in public debate to give recognition to the diverse cultural identities of those who practice these traditions? While these two approaches assign different roles to cultural traditions in public debate, both seem to welcome compromise between conflicting parties. This paper reviews contending normative approaches for dealing with conflicts in multicultural societies and explores the place of culture-based reasons in public debates designed to resolve conflicts.

The paper develops ethical guidelines for the development and usage of persuasive technologies (PT) that can be derived from applying discourse ethics to this type of technologies. The application of discourse ethics is of particular interest for PT, since ‘persuasion’ refers to an act of communication that might be interpreted as holding the middle between ‘manipulation’ and ‘convincing’. One can distinguish two elements of discourse ethics that prove fruitful when applied to PT: the analysis of the inherent normativity of acts of communication (‘speech acts’) and the Habermasian distinction between ‘communicative’ and ‘strategic rationality’ and their broader societal interpretation. This essay investigates what consequences can be drawn if one applies these two elements of discourse ethics to PT.

Sprache und Gerechtigkeit hängen auf vielfältige Weise zusammen. Wir verständigen uns im Medium der Sprache, durch das Geben von Gründen und Gegengründen darauf, was als gerecht gelten kann. Sprache kann jedoch auch selbst zur Herstellung von Ungerechtigkeit beitragen, auf der Ebene intentionalen sprachlichen Handelns genauso wie auf der Ebene überindividueller Sprachstrukturen. Schließlich stellen sich Fragen der Gerechtigkeit angesichts der Vielfalt menschlicher Sprachen: Wenn manche Sprachen als Minderheitensprachen marginalisiert und andere sogar vom Verschwinden bedroht sind, dann ergeben sich Probleme der Sprachengerechtigkeit.

Current studies that social neuroscience has developed in the last years announce an important relationship between reason and emotion in human brain during social behavior. The study of different brain areas has removed the straight barrier which existed in neural specialization regarding the relationship emotion-reason, being able to observe a large number of interconnections between them. In fact, social and cognitive neuroscience techniques ‒especially functional magnetic resonance image fMRI‒ have had an enormous impact on the understanding of human brain, showing great normative and methodological relevance in these studies.
In this paper are shown some of these relationships at the neural and moral level, trying to prove that social neuroscience and some moral philosophical theories affect the same assumptions, but from different points of view. The main hypothesis is that social perception of others is the first step as in a moral theory as in a social neuroscience scenario. In this sense, could the discoveries of social neuroscience, in relation with human perception about the others, give support to the theory of discourse ethics in the first step ‒perception‒ as a moral theory?

Joel Feinberg's Offense to Others is the most comprehensive contemporary work on the significance of offense in a liberal legal system. Feinberg argues that being offended can impair a person's liberty, much like a nuisance, and that it is therefore legitimate in principle to regulate conduct because of its offensiveness. In this paper I discuss some overlooked considerations that give us reason to resist Feinberg's conclusion, even while granting this premise. My key claim is that the regulation of offense can inadvertently increase the incidence of offense, by nurturing offense-taking sensibilities. In the course of defending this claim and spelling out its implications , I explain why concerns about the inadvertent nurturing of offense are now more pressing, given the identity-political character of contemporary offense-based social conflicts, and I discuss why a reluctance to legally regulate offensive conduct need not be insensitive to the identity-political issues that animate those conflicts .

Drawing upon two case studies - regarding hearing the voice of prisoners and community activists - this short paper explores the limitations of discourse ethics and the importance of engaging in non-reciprocal dialogue for abolitionist activist scholars.  I

Eine Theorie der globalen Verantwortung Was wir Menschen in extremer Armut schulden © Suhrkamp Verlag suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft 2173 978-3-518-29773-5 suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft 2173 Auch zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts lebt ein großer Teil der Menschheit in bitterer Armut. Daraus ergibt sich die brennende Frage, was die Bürgerinnen und Bürger wohlhabender Länder extrem armen Menschen moralisch schulden. Valentin Beck beantwortet sie im Rahmen einer umfassenden Theorie der globalen Verantwortung. In seinem glänzend geschriebenen Buch behandelt er zentrale Fragen der Theorie globaler Gerechtigkeit, unterzieht unsere Verflechtung in globale soziale Strukturen einer detaillierten Analyse und wirft so ein neues Licht auf eine der größten moralischen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit. Wir müssen mit Blick auf den politischen und individuellen Umgang mit der Weltarmut umdenken, so lautet die zentrale Forderung dieser Studie.

En este trabajo se analiza el problema del “idealismo lingüístico” en la pragmática formal (Habermas) y la pragmática trascendental (Apel). El hilo conductor de tal discusión consiste en determinar si efectivamente ambos autores pueden ser comprendidos bajo esa categorización. En la primera parte me ocuparé brevemente de la concepción del realismo post-giro lingüístico tal como lo presenta Habermas en la introducción de Verdad y justificación. Luego, analizaré las críticas de C. Lafont a la presunta concepción hermenéutica del lenguaje en Habermas, y en consecuencia su “caída” en el idealismo lingüístico. En tercer lugar, intentaré transpolar tales críticas a la concepción apeliana del lenguaje y el significado. En cuarto lugar, analizaré la posible adscripción al idealismo lingüístico de Apel, a partir de algunas reflexiones planteas por A. Crelier. Finalmente, realizaré un análisis del texto de Apel “Falibilismo…” (Apel, 1991) para ofrecer un marco al problema de la realidad, del “idealismo lingüístico”.

On ground shared by environmental hermeneutics, critical social theory, and environmentally minded feminism, this article attempts to conciliate between the nearly antithetical ethical viewpoints of environmental philosophers David Abram and Steven Vogel. It will demonstrate first that Abram's linguistic arguments for extending ethical considerability to nonhuman nature succumb to two of Vogel's debilitating critiques, which it labels the social constructivist critique and the discourse ethics critique, and secondly that Abram fails to guard against the problem of human-human oppression. The article also points out, on the other hand, that while Vogel evades the problem of human-human oppression, his view fails to protect against the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. Operating within the boundaries that Vogel establishes, it will seek to avoid the pitfalls of Abram's view, to address the underlying ideology that leads to both types of oppression, and to eliminate the problem of dangerous anthropocentrism. To do so it draws upon the arguments of Trish Glazebrook, contending that Abram's appeals to the "speech" of nature can be more effectively conceptualized as erotic appeals, and that engaging in this call-and-response eros promotes the development of virtues that undermine our current ideology and extend to both the human and the nonhuman.

This essay briefly presents the theory of dediscoursification as a theory of one of the major causes of war. Its key claim reads that discursive attitudes, such as lying, self-contradicting, and promise-breaking, ought to be theorized as causes directly contributory to the emergence of the state of war. The essay also explains the sense in which the theory implies a view of language as a generator of the virtual collective body. Thirdly, the essay draws on the Peloponnesian war as an empirical evidence in support of the dediscoursification theory and explains why the theory cannot be reconciled with the just war tradition of theorizing on war. Lastly, some ethical, epistemological, and political implications are spelled out to clarify here the theory's wider commitments to the extent possible.