Autonomy and the folk concept of valid consent.Joanna Demaree-Cotton &RoseannaSommers -2022 -Cognition 224 (C):105065.detailsConsent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that (...) specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights. (shrink)
Forgoing Debriefing in Deceptive Research: Is It Ever Ethical?RoseannaSommers &Franklin G. Miller -2013 -Ethics and Behavior 23 (2):98-116.detailsThe use of deception in research is generally permitted so long as participants are debriefed at the conclusion of their participation. Several authoritative research ethics guidelines allow investigators to omit debriefing under certain circumstances, however. Here we examine various justifications for forgoing debriefing in deceptive research, including concerns about subject pool contamination, the risk that revealing the deception will be harmful or distressing to participants, and issues of practicability. We conclude that, contrary to current practice, omitting debriefing is ethically acceptable (...) only when debriefing is impracticable, the deception is innocuous, and no reasonable person would object to involvement in the research. (shrink)
Reconsidering commonsense consent.Hanna Kim -2025 -Philosophical Psychology 38 (2):397-435.detailsIn the 2020 Yale Law Journal article, “Commonsense Consent,”RoseannaSommers argues that deception is compatible with the layperson’s intuitive sense of consent. That is, unlike the canonical understanding of consent defended by legal scholars and philosophers, the notion of consent defended by the folk is not invalidated by deception. In this study, I find that while respondents do appear to attribute consent to victims of deception, they do so in a limited number of contexts – i.e., they (...) attribute de re consent to victims of de dicto deception and attribute de dicto consent to victims of de re deception. When the two varieties of consent and deception are properly disambiguated and matched type for type however, we see the reverse phenomenon – i.e., participants refrain from attributing de dicto consent to de dicto deception and refrain from attributing de re consent to de re deception. If this is right, rather than saying, asSommers does, that deception generally fails to invalidate commonsense consent, we should refine our understanding of commonsense consent to include two varieties of consent, each of which is in fact invalidated by its own variety of deception. (shrink)
Educating teachers about a code of ethical conduct.Roseanna Bourke &John O’Neill -2010 -Ethics and Education 5 (2):159-172.detailsWorldwide, there is a growing expectation that teachers will act in a ?professional? manner. Professionalism, in this regard, includes identification of a unique body of occupational knowledge, adherence to desirable standards of behaviour, processes to hold members to account and commitment to what the profession regards as morally right or good. In other words, as ethical conduct. Teaching ethically involves making reasoned decisions about what to do in order to achieve the most good for learners. Often, this involves a complex (...) interplay between current context, past experience and personal beliefs and values. However, teacher education and accountability frameworks typically give priority to the ?practical rationality? of planning, delivery and assessment of the official curriculum, not the ?value rationality? involved in exploring the ethics of teaching in difficult practical circumstances. An aspirational code of ethics for teachers was recently developed by the New Zealand Teachers Council. The authors were part of a group commissioned to design and deliver a single professional development workshop for teachers to raise awareness about the code. This article focuses on the challenges of developing a workshop that both informs and educates teachers about ethics. (shrink)
Historicismo ayer y hoy.Carla Cordua Sommer -2015 -Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 6:7-17.detailsThe aim of this paper is to examine the philosophical sources of some of the criticisms made in the second half of the 20th century to the practices and the main assumptions of historiography. In particular, the influence of the writings by Nietzsche dedicated to European Historicism on the renewed concept of history which is imposed in the twentieth century from the thought of Heidegger and Foucault. The divergent concepts of historical time and existential temporality, as well as those of (...) narrative unity and continuity of historical events, are the concepts that mainly fall under the critical scrutiny of these thinkers. Archaeological investigations that Foucault devotes to institutions and procedures of the European past are mentioned as examples of the critical review of traditional historiography. (shrink)
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Problems Regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls.A. Dupont-Sommer &Elaine P. Halperin -1958 -Diogenes 6 (22):75-102.detailsOur knowledge of ancient history has been tremendously enlarged in the last hundred years. Ancient civilizations, formerly scarcely glimpsed or completely unknown, have emerged from the obscurity in which they were buried. In other domains, already more or less well known, the discovery of documents year after year has shed a clearer—sometimes even a harsh—light upon the great pages of the human past. These discoveries, which reveal to us what the man of earlier days was like and which enable us (...) to achieve a better understanding of the man of today, have at times been due to the purest chance. The manuscripts we are discussing here as well as many others belong in this category. (shrink)
Lebenswelt und Zeitbewusstsein.Manfred Sommer -1990 - Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.detailsPräsenz und Distanz: von diesem Verhältnis handelt die Phänomenologie, wenn sie sich, behutsam beschreibend, der Lebenswelt und dem Zeitbewußtsein zuwendet. Lebensweltliches Leben ist unmittelbare Anschauung am Anfang des Übergangs zu begrifflichem Denken und symbolischen Repräsentanten, ist ursprüngliche Einheit und beginnendes Auseinander von subjektivem Erlebnis und objektiver Realität. All unsere Erlebnisse aber kommen und gehen in der Zeit des Bewußtseins. Sie ist die Form eines Fließens, in dem uns der Augenblick der Gegenwart erst nachträglich faßbar wird; er erweist sich als der (...) immer schon vergangene Anfang einer Nah-Erinnerung, die beides zugleich ist: Noch-Gegenwart und Schon-Vergangenheit: Präsenz gibt es erst im Abstand von ihr. - Mit dem, was unser bewußtes Leben zuunterst trägt und zuinnerst hält, befassen sich die Beschreibungen und Interpretationen dieses Buches: mit dem lebensweltlichen Grund und der zeitlichen Form. (shrink)
The Deliberative Duty and Other Individual Antidiscrimination Duties in the Dating Sphere.Simone Sommer Degn -2024 -Moral Philosophy and Politics 11 (2):297-317.detailsWhat does morality require of individuals in their dating and sex life? In this article I challenge recent outlines of antidiscrimination duties in the dating sphere and present a plausible alternative: the deliberative duty. This duty avoids the risks and limitations of earlier outlines: it is time-sensitive regarding the malleability of intimate preferences, it avoids being too demanding on the duty-bearer and minimizes the risk of generating mere dutiful attraction behavior towards right-holders. In addition, it is better suited for universal (...) action guidance in the dating sphere than earlier outlines of individual antidiscrimination duties. (shrink)
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Was bleibt von Nietzsches Philosophie?Andreas Urs Sommer -2018 - Berlin: Duncker Und Humblot.detailsSo geschaftig die internationale Nietzsche-Forschung auch ist, bleibt doch weithin unklar, was eigentlich gemeint ist, wenn wir von Nietzsches Philosophie sprechen. Handelt es sich um ein Gefuge von Lehrsatzen Wille zur Macht, Ewige Wiederkunft des Gleichen, Ubermensch? Wie sollen philosophisch interessierte Leserinnen und Leser damit umgehen, dass Nietzsche sich offensichtlich unentwegt selbst ins Wort fallt und jede doktrinale Festlegung verweigert? Ist das nur eine billige literarische Strategie, um das eigene Gefuge von Lehrsatzen interessanter zu machen? Oder handelt es sich vielmehr (...) um den Versuch, den Glauben an Philosophie als Gefuge von Lehrsatzen grundsatzlich zu problematisieren? Vielleicht ist Nietzsches Philosophie etwas vollig Anderes: eine andere Praxis. Der bekannte Nietzsche-Forscher Andreas Urs Sommer stellt und beantwortet in diesem Band grundlegende Fragen zum Umgang mit Nietzsches Texten, die so ganz anders zu funktionieren scheinen als landlaufige philosophische Texte. Die dafur erforderliche philosophische Hermeneutik muss auf einem sicheren philologisch-historischen Fundament stehen. (shrink)
Werte: warum Man sie braucht, obwohl es sie nicht gibt.Andreas Urs Sommer -2016 - Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag.detailsWerte sind selbstverständlich. Über sie redet jeder. Und jeder nimmt sie für sich in Anspruch. Häufig für Widersprüchliches: beispielsweise ebenso dafür, sich für Flüchtlinge einzusetzen, wie dafür, sie abzuweisen. Werte scheinen allgegenwärtig und alternativlos. Und doch sind Werte eine moderne Erfindung und näher besehen gar nicht selbstverständlich. Dieses Buch fragt, worüber wir reden, wenn wir über Werte reden und sie in Anspruch nehmen. Vielleicht gibt es keine Werte. Vielleicht sind Werte Fiktionen. Vielleicht aber nützliche Fiktionen.
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¿El Estado como Dios o como monstruo? El «Zaratustra» de Nietzsche, presupuestos, entorno, consecuencias.Andreas Urs Sommer -2022 -Enrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 68:241-247.detailsNietzsche no perdió la ocasión de menospreciar a Mill como el típico inglés de mentalidad pasiva, en cambio los intérpretes actuales de Nietzsche son cautelosos en este aspecto, pues el filósofo alemán leyó muy minuciosamente a Mill, en particular su obra Sobre la libertad. Cuando él propicia que Zaratustra hable acerca de «el más frío de todos los monstruos fríos», lo hace con una promesa de futuro: «Allí, donde el Estado acaba, ahí comienza el ser humano que no es superfluo (...) […]. Allí, donde el Estado acaba, — ¡miradme de este modo hacia allá hermanos míos! ¿No los veis, al arcoíris y los puentes del suprahumano?». El presente trabajo establece una comparativa entre la visión de Dios y del Estado en la época moderna y la reflexión que hace Friedrich Nietzsche en Así habló Zaratustra acerca del Estado como algo monstruoso. Para este propósito se utilizarán respectivamente pasajes de la obra de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Arthur Schonpenhauer, Friedrich Leopold Stolberg, Karl Marx, Max Sterner, Wilhelm von Humboldt y John Stuart Mill. (shrink)
In the shadow of the tree: The diagrammatics of relatedness in genealogy, anthropology, and genetics as epistemic, cultural, and political practice.Marianne Sommer,Caroline Arni,Staffan Müller-Wille &Simon Teuscher -2024 -History of the Human Sciences 37 (3-4):3-15.detailsThe preferred tool for conceptualizing, determining, and claiming relations of kinship, ancestry, and descent among humans are diagrams. For this reason, and at the same time to avoid a reduction to biology as transported by terms such as kinship, ancestry, and descent, we introduce the expression diagrammatics of relatedness. We seek to understand the enormous influence that especially tree diagrams have had as a way to express and engage with human relatedness, but hold that this success can only be adequately (...) understood by attending to what in fact are broader diagrammatic practices. These practices bring to light that diagrams of relatedness do not simply make visible natural connections, but create or deny relations in particular ways and for particular reasons. In this special section, contributors investigate diagrams of relatedness in genealogy, heredity, as well as biological and social anthropology. Conceiving of diagrams as techniques that transcend such binaries as ‘thought and action’ and ‘image and text’, we aim at an understanding of how they were constructed and how they functioned in particular epistemic, cultural, and political contexts. (shrink)
The Intellectually Modest Criminal.TamlerSommers -unknowndetailsMichael Smith’s The Moral Problem gives an admirably straightforward condition for moral rightness: an act is morally right in circumstance C only if under conditions of full rationality we would all want to perform that act. I will assume that this condition, if met, would make acts objectively right and therefore vindicate a robust form of metaethical realism. There remains the question, however, of whether this condition can be met. Smith considers several arguments that it cannot, and this paper will (...) argue that his response to one of them— Gilbert Harman’s “successful criminal” argument—is inadequate. Clear and straightforward as it is, Smith’s condition for moral rightness is deceptively strong for it requires a full convergence of desires. It appears that moral facts can exist only if there is unanimous agreement about how we would want to behave if we were fully rational. The unanimity requirement leaves Smith vulnerable to sensible knave style objections. If someone can be fully rational yet not desire to perform acts in accordance with morality, then according to Smith’s account, we should be skeptical about the existence of moral facts. Harman presents such an objection in the form of a successful criminal who does not observe the alleged requirement not to harm or injure people outside of his criminal organization. Most importantly, the criminal’s disregard of outsiders is not due to inattention, failure to consider or appreciate certain arguments, ignorance of relevant evidence, errors in reasoning, irrationality, unreasonableness, or weakness of will. If this criminal is truly rational and still desires to steal.. (shrink)
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Nouvelles phénoménologies en France: actes des journées d'étude autour de Hans-Dieter Gondek et László Tengelyi, Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich.Christian Sommer (ed.) -2014 - Paris: Hermann.detailsLa "cause de la phénoménologie" s'est trouvée défendue et illustrée en France par de multiples oeuvres, qui, au-delà même de la réception des pensées de Husserl et de Heidegger, ont aujourd'hui des effets en retour sur les pays germaniques d'où la phénoménologie est originaire. Organisées par Christian Sommer et Jean-Claude Monod, deux journées d'étude ont réuni aux Archives Husserl de Paris les principaux représentants de la "nouvelle phénoménologie" en France. Les textes du présent volume évoquent et réévaluent les évolutions, les (...) thèmes et les débats qui ont marqué le champ phénoménologique français depuis le début des années 1980. (shrink)
Of zombies, color scientists, and floating iron bars.TamlerSommers -2002 -PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 8.detailsIn this paper I challenge the core of David Chalmers' argument against materialism-the claim that "there is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness do not hold." First, I analyze the move from conceivability to logical possibility. Following George Seddon, I consider the case of a floating iron bar and argue that even this seemingly conceivable event has implicit logical contradictions in its description. I then show that the distinctions Chalmers employs between (...) primary and secondary intensions, and a priori and a posteriori entailment, break down upon close examination-with iron bars and with consciousness it is impossible to know where primary intensions end and secondary intensions begin. I extend this analysis of logical possibility to the famous zombie thought experiment and conclude not that a zombie world is logically impossible, but rather that, at present, the question is open. Finally, I show how a similar line of argument may be used to undermine the "Mary the color scientist" thought experiment as well. (shrink)
Friedrich Nietzsches "Der Antichrist": ein philosophisch-historischer Kommentar.Andreas Urs Sommer -2000 - Basel: Schwabe.detailsSlightly revised version of the author's dissertation--Universiteat Basel, 1998.
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. An Overview.Andreas Urs Sommer -2022 -Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg 51:49-83.detailsCet article offre une vue d’ensemble sur les Éléments pour la généalogie de la morale de Nietzsche. La genèse de l’œuvre est d’abord présentée, puis les sources que Nietzsche a exploitées pour ses réflexions sont examinées. Cet examen des sources est suivi d’une analyse de la conception, de la structure et du contenu de l’« écrit polémique » de Nietzsche. Les sections du livre sont présentées et commentées dans leur succession.
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Religion as belief, a realist theory: a commentary onReligion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity.Joseph Sommer -forthcoming -Philosophical Psychology.detailsVan Leeuwen’s Religion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity argues that religious and political beliefs are fundamentally different from mundane, factual beliefs and represent a cognitive attitude more akin to imagining. To ground this difference, Van Leeuwen proposes four principles defining factual beliefs: ‘involuntariness’ mandates that people cannot choose what they believe; ‘no compartmentalization’ says that factual – but not religious – beliefs guide behavior in all domains; ‘cognitive governance’ requires that inferences be readily drawn from (...) factual beliefs; ‘evidential vulnerability' entails that beliefs are revised given contradictory evidence. While factual beliefs are supposed to meet these standards, Van Leeuwen marshals evidence that religious and tribal beliefs – or “credences” – fail to obey these four principles. In this commentary, I argue that beliefs – both factual and religious – are often much more complicated than Van Leeuwen assumes. This complexity makes perfect conformity to the four principles unlikely, even for factual beliefs. I review Van Leeuwen’s evidence for credences and suggest that this evidence is compatible with the null hypothesis: that religious beliefs are simply beliefs. (shrink)
Kultur und Möglichkeiten.Andreas Urs Sommer -2023 -Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 2023 (1):104-112.detailsCultural philosophy must always fathom anew what it means to live in a reflexive, self-reflexive culture of relativisation - in a culture that not only allows but forces the most diverse points of view. A culture in which nothing and no one secures the ultimate truth, the ultimate objectivity. Modern culture is a great possibility-generating enterprise. Cultural philosophy can conceptually express and bring to light the cultural potential for self-relativisation, the potential for self-reflection.
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Wozu Geschichte(n)?: Geschichtswissenschaft und Geschichtsphilosophie im Widerstreit.Volker Depkat,Matthias Müller &Andreas Urs Sommer (eds.) -2004 - Stuttgart: Steiner.detailsDie Frage nach dem aWozuo der Geschichte(n) eroffnet ein weites Feld von eng miteinander verschlungenen Problemkomplexen, das durch die Begriffe Geschichtsbewusstsein und Identitat, Geschichtsphilosophie und Historik in seinen Grenzen ...