<p>“What characterizes an acceptable theory of self-realization?” The thrust of the present dissertation is towards seeking an answer to this central problem, which stems from the fundamental human experience that life involves change, and that in a modern society such change is often expected to be towards a realization of potentials and the good life for the individual. </p><p>The dissertation has a three-fold purpose. The first is to clarify the content of five modern theories of self-realization from three academic fields. The theories are those of the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alan Gewirth, and the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Bernard Lonergan. These are methodologically studied by the help of seven analytical questions. The second purpose is to perform a lengthwise comparatative analysis of the five theories, the results of which lead to the third; namely to critically discuss several elements of the reality of human life which have proven to be missing or supressed in much of the material.</p><p>The theoretical framework for the dissertation runs along two axes: one concerns what is developed as a distinction between internalism and relationalism, and the other is to cast a critical light on the lack of attention paid by the the theories of self-realization to experiences which run counter to optimistic ideas of individual development, such as death, loss and dependence. </p><p>The dissertation concludes with an outline for a constructive position based on the necessity of a theory’s closeness to experience, and on the need for reconcilitation of what may seem to be unabridgeble in human life. A theory of self-realization must do more than formulate positive conditions for change. It must also take into consideration conditions that are not directly related to, and sometimes even run contrary to, realization of the self.</p>

The notion of the organism has a somewhat ambiguous status in Kant’s philosophy. On the one hand it belongs to natural science, on the other hand it is based on an analogy with the structure of reason. Biology therefore has a peculiar place among the sciences according to Kant: it is a natural science constituted by the use of a regulative maxim. The present study places Kant’s views on biological teleology in the larger context of transcendental idealism. It consists of five essays. The first one treats the notions of things in themselves and appearances, arguing for an interpretation in terms of two aspects or perspectives rather than two worlds. The importance of the discursivity of our cognitive capacity is stressed, as well as the need to separate Kant’s various reflective perspectives. In the second essay this interpretation is applied to the third section of the Groundwork, arguing that this text does not belong to theoretical metaphysics, but rather to the articulation of a specifically practical perspective. The third essay discusses similarities and differences between Kant’s a priori conditions for cognition and conceptions of innate ideas in the rationalist tradition. Kant’s comparison of the system of categories with the biological theory of epigenesis is considered in connection to eighteenth century theories of generation. The comparison is viewed as an analogy rather than as a naturalistic theory of the a priori. In the fourth essay Kant’s account of functional attribution in biology is explicated in the context of the present day debate of the issue. It is claimed that Kant’s neo-Aristotelian approach avoids some of the difficulties in the dominant naturalistic accounts of today. Kant’s view differs from the Aristotelian in that it involves a distinction of levels, making it possible to take functional attributions on the one hand as objective from the standpoint of biology but on the other hand as having a merely regulative status from a philosophical point of view. In the fifth essay an interpretation of the antinomy of teleological judgment in the Critique of Judgment is offered. The antinomy is taken to consist in the dialectical tendency to treat the regulative maxims of teleology and mechanism as constitutive principles. The difference between the discursivity of the human understanding and the idea of a non-discursive understanding, an important theme in Kant’s solution of the antinomy, puts the question of biological teleology in relation to central tenets of transcendental idealism.

With an estimated 250 ethnic groups, Nigeria, no doubt, has been grappling with the problem of pluralism of ethnic nationalities. It is not news in Nigeria that extreme ethnic consciousness of its citizens has led to the victimization of one ethnic group by another. This victimization has come in the form of exclusions in the distribution of both wealth and power in the country. Amidst all the exclusions, the unity of the country has been ironically regarded as sacrosanct, and should not be negotiated. It is often said that fate brought all the ethnic nationalities in order to form one great country. I subscribe to this belief that fate brought us together for the above purpose, especially now that several countries around the world are merging in one way or the other to form a formidable force to reckon with both politically and economically. Hence, “(ethnic integration) is the integration of capabilities. It develops the capabilities of the workforce… it offers opportunities for better synergy of skills”. However, it would be ethically unhealthy for the unity of the country not to be compromised under the present dispensation, which has been compromising in turn the basic moral principle of social justice. There cannot be any moral basis for the continued existence of a country like Nigeria, which as it were, has thrown equality of all citizens to the dogs. Should the country remain united, it must do so by imbibing the culture of regarding all citizens, as well as, all ethnic nationalities as equal, and none should have more privileges than the others. Therefore, how can a plural society like Nigeria remain united as one indivisible country? Rawls has offered some solutions to the problem of stability engendered by the pluralism of ethnic groups in Nigeria. His idea of ‘overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines’ in his Political Liberalism is capable of bringing back the country to the state of stability. There will be stability, if all forms of exclusion seize to exist in the Nigerian polity.

Growing up as a child, we had a Dog. To us, it was like a means to an end. That is, hunting other animals for food and for protection, with no special care and treatment given to this animal. Butas days passed by I began to witness a wind of change against such actions. I was made to understand that we were committing two crimes-: using the Dog as a means to an end (for hunting and for eating animals). Today almost every newspaper has something to say about the treatment of animals by humans, especially in their use as experimentation subjects. This has led to the wide spread arguments about “Animal right” and “Animal equality” Advocates of the above arguments hold that just like humans, animals too have rights and are in many ways like humans. There also exist animal right groups. Organisations and countries now have laws regulating animal used in the laboratory. If I may be permitted, I will want to say that the world is in a state of dilemma regarding animal experimentation. While some argue against it, based on the claim that these animals have no right and are not equal to humans, others argue in favour of it on claims that animals have moral rights, feel pain and suffer just like humans and should not be subjected to painful experiments. I then begin to wander how research on animals to improve human health should not be undertaken just because it is claimed that these animals have rights and are in many ways equal to humans. It is the contention of this paper to find out the extent to which animal rights and animal equality justifies the fight against animal experimentation.

Are agency and responsibility solely ascribable to humans? The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), including the development of so-called “affective computing,” appears to be chipping away at the traditional building blocks of moral agency and responsibility. Spurred by the realization that fully autonomous, self-aware, even rational and emotionally-intelligent computer systems may emerge in the future, professionals in engineering and computer science have historically been the most vocal to warn of the ways in which such systems may alter our understanding of computer ethics. Despite the increasing attention of many philosophers and ethicists to the development of AI, there continues to exist a fair amount of conceptual muddiness on the conditions for assigning agency and responsibility to such systems, from both an ethical and a legal perspective. Moral and legal philosophies may overlap to a high degree, but are neither interchangeable nor identical. This paper attempts to clarify the actual and hypothetical ethical and legal situations governing a very particular type of advanced, or “intelligent,” computer system: medical decision support systems (MDSS) that feature AI in their system design. While it is well-recognized that MDSS can be categorized by type and function, further categorization of their mediating effects on users and patients is needed in order to even begin ascribing some level of moral or legal responsibility. I conclude that various doctrines of Anglo legal systems appear to allow for the possibility of assigning specific types of agency – and thus specific types of legal responsibility – to some types of MDSS. Strong arguments for assigning moral agency and responsibility are still lacking, however.

The focus of this study is the opposition of Ludwik Fleck to the logical positivism. The main interest focuses on the mutability of knowledge and the inherent problems of incommensura-bility, as well as on Fleck´s notion of reality. Fleck emphasizes a rational and continuous de-velopment of knowledge, in contrast to Thomas Kuhn´s discontinuous and irrational devel-opment, and rejects all forms of reality independent of human beings. Fleck´s monograph Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Tatsache is a rich and multifac-eted inquiry into the nature of knowledge, emphasizing the social and historical aspects of the epistemology of science at the expense of certain logical precepts. With his concepts thought style and thought collective, Fleck is generally acknowledged as a precursor to Kuhn´s con-cepts of paradigm and scientific community. Fleck maintains a relativistic view of science and develops a comparative epistemology which challenges the logical positivists in many re-spects. He dismisses every form of reality and has therefore been regarded as an idealist, al-though there are certain aspects to his epistemology which point toward an implicit ontology based upon his idea of the passive components of knowledge. The chief epistemological works of Fleck and his contemporary Karl Popper were published within a year of each other, 1934 and 1935, respectively, by which Popper had left the Continent to eventually become one of the leading British philosophers, while Fleck spent several years during the Second World War as a prisoner in Nazi camps. Both were firmly opposed to the logical positivism, one as a critical rationalist, the other as a sceptical relativist. Fleck was also a forerunner to the constructivist ideas and the Strong Programme. The word ”incommensurability” has been ascribed Kuhn but the term had already been used by Fleck in 1927. The ”incommensurability thesis” dominates Kuhn´s notion of scientific revolutions and is accordingly the reason why scientific progress is considered an irrational process. The debate on the incommensurability thesis has continued to interest epistemologists and philosophers of science and many solutions have been suggested, some in line with the one proposed by Fleck.

“What characterizes an acceptable theory of self-realization?” The thrust of the present dissertation is towards seeking an answer to this central problem, which stems from the fundamental human experience that life involves change, and that in a modern society such change is often expected to be towards a realization of potentials and the good life for the individual. The dissertation has a three-fold purpose. The first is to clarify the content of five modern theories of self-realization from three academic fields. The theories are those of the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alan Gewirth, and the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Bernard Lonergan. These are methodologically studied by the help of seven analytical questions. The second purpose is to perform a lengthwise comparatative analysis of the five theories, the results of which lead to the third; namely to critically discuss several elements of the reality of human life which have proven to be missing or supressed in much of the material. The theoretical framework for the dissertation runs along two axes: one concerns what is developed as a distinction between internalism and relationalism, and the other is to cast a critical light on the lack of attention paid by the the theories of self-realization to experiences which run counter to optimistic ideas of individual development, such as death, loss and dependence. The dissertation concludes with an outline for a constructive position based on the necessity of a theory’s closeness to experience, and on the need for reconcilitation of what may seem to be unabridgeble in human life. A theory of self-realization must do more than formulate positive conditions for change. It must also take into consideration conditions that are not directly related to, and sometimes even run contrary to, realization of the self.

This thesis deals with the concepts of individual and individuation as defined by Leibniz and Spinoza. I go through the use and definition of the concept of individual in four stages. First I discuss the individual as conceived by Spinoza as a relation formed by a composition of parts and the individual as conceived by Leibniz as a complete notion consisting of all the events in the life of a subject. Next is the roll of perception in Leibniz discussed, likewise individuation through different perception with varying distinctness, and the affinity of perception with affection. The discussions concerning the individual concludes in a section about the essence of the individual as being the desire of the individual. In the last stage, I discuss the multitude as being an own individual. / Den här uppsatsen handlar om individ och individuation som det definieras hos Leibniz och Spinoza. Jag följer användandet och definitionen av individ i fyra etapper. Först diskuterar jag Spinozas individ som relationen av en sammansättning av delar och Leibniz individ som en fullständig notion bestående av alla händelser i ett subjekts liv. Därefter diskuteras perceptionens roll hos Leibniz, liksom individuation genom olika tydliga perceptioner, samt perceptionens affinitet med affektionen. För individens del mynnar diskussionerna ut i en del om individens essens i form av dess begär. Den sista etappen diskuterar mångfalden såsom en egen individ.

The thesis investigates the role of technology in the formation of the artistic avant-garde, along with various forms of philosophical reflection on this development, with a particular emphasis on Heidegger. Setting out from an analysis of three paradigmatic cases in the interplay between art and technology—the invention of photography, the shift from Futurism to Constructivism, and the interpretation of technology in debates on architectural theory in the 1920s and ’30s—it proceeds to a discussion of three philosophical responses to this development, those found in Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Ernst Jünger, all of which share a certain avant-garde sensibility and a notion of art as a response to nihilism. In Heidegger’s postwar writings we see a retreat from the positions of the mid 1930s, and in his reflections on technology a different answer emerges to the question of whether “great art” is still possible: great art is an art that exists precisely by making the founding of a world into something problematic. The fourth part confronts Heidegger’s analysis of technology with the work of an individual artist, the architect Mies van der Rohe, and asks how the “silence”—the withdrawal of language, sense, aesthetic perception, etc.—that is often understood as a precondition for the critical potential of his work should in fact be understood. By examining interpretations that draw on Heidegger via comparisons with other types of critical theory, a different understanding emerges of the relation among nihilism, art, and technology. They form a field of constant modulation, which implies that the concepts that have been the foundation of critical theory, nature, subjectivity, experience, even “being” in Heidegger’s sense, must be subjected to a historical analysis that acknowledges them as ongoing processes of construction, and that also accounts for the capacity of technologies and artistic practices to intervene in the formation of philosophical concepts. / The chapters 5, 6 and 7 in the monograph Essays, Lectures for a part of the Ph.D.thesis.

Since the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was discovered in the 1980s, the condom has scientifically proven to be the only technological device that can prevent transmission of the virus during sexual intercourse. This technical approach to the HIV has strongly emphasized that prevention is only possible if the condom is properly used. However, as a technological artifact the condom has shown that its use is laden with values. The question of values on condoms has brought in a heated debate on the moral justifications of its use. In Malawi, just as in other African countries, the Faith Community has rejected the Governmentsplea to promote condoms as the preventive measure against the virus.The Faith Community has emphasized on abstinence and mutual faithfulness as the only reliable means to the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The main argument from the Faith Community is that condoms promote promiscuity. Nevertheless, the Government agrees with the Faith Community on abstinence and mutual faithfulness, but still insists on condom use as a preventive measure against the virus. The Government argues that the condom is the only proven technical approach to the HIV prevention and therefore it should be promoted. T he main purpose of this study is to attempt an ethical analysis of the arguments for and againstcondom use as the preventive measure against HIV. In this case, the study tries to analyse the Government and Faith Community stands on condoms. In relation to the arguments for and againstcondom use, the study also touches such areas as: the concept of rights and condom use, ethics of condom advertisement, African cultural values versus condom use and the implications of condom use on behaviour change. From the study, it has been argued that condoms should be promoted. The argument comes from that understanding that AIDS has plundered Africa than any war or disease in human history, and therefore, it needs to be stopped. In this case, such theories as, Utility, Love, Autonomy, Rights and umunthu moral conscience have been used to support the argument.