Can Kitcher Avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy?
Co-authored with Simon Derpmann, Tim Rojek and Konstantin Schnieder
Paper given at "Münster Lectures in Philosophy"
http://www.uni-muenster.de/PhilSem/veranstaltungen/mvph/kitcher/kitche
To be published as a chapter in a book series
http://www.ontosverlag.de/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=2&opt
In his article Four Ways of ‘Biologicizing’ Ethics, Philip Kitcher presses a forceful criticism against attempts to... more
In his article Four Ways of ‘Biologicizing’ Ethics, Philip Kitcher presses a forceful criticism against attempts to remove ethics from the hands of philosophy and to turn it over to the
natural sciences. According to Kitcher, some of these attempts “slide from uncontroversial truisms to provocative falsehoods” (FBE, 575). Without denying that scientific knowledge, as
for example insights from sociobiology, can be of importance in answering ethical questions, Kitcher diagnoses that some of the most prominent attempts in this field “are deeply confused
through failure to distinguish a number of quite different projects” (FBE, 575). This failure is in part a consequence of neglecting the distinction between is and ought (FBE, 582) and of justifying prescriptive judgments on the basis of purely descriptive premises alone. Yet, in 'The Ethical Project' Kitcher himself bases his account of metaethics and normative ethics on the findings of biology and evolutionary theory. So, from looking at his own critique it seems that Kitcher himself has to be careful to avoid those mistakes that other attempts to naturalize
ethics supposedly run into.
The arguments made in this article show that Kitcher’s project is either threatened by inconsistency or by carrying open burdens of proof. This leaves him two options. On the one hand, Kitcher could confine himself to merely offering a plausible story of the evolution of ethical practices, which is not meant to provide readers with any normative guidance. The Ethical Project would then neither be inconsistent nor incomplete. But if, on the other hand, Kitcher wants to offer a genuinely ethical account, i.e. an account of normative ethics, it would have to be based on resources, the inclusion of which exceeds the core concepts deployed in the description of the history of the ethical project.
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Seen by:APPLICATION OF THE “TRIANGULAR ECO-KINEMATICS THEORY” (TEKT) (PART I) - THE PARADIGM OF ECOLOGY, PUBLIC HEALTH AND ECONOMY AS A SYNERGISTIC EFFECT UPON HUMAN RIGHTS
Presented at the International Conference "Human Ecology: Health, Culture and Quality of Life, Oct. 26-27, 2011, Moscow, Russian Federation and Published in the "Herald of the International Academy of Science, Russian Section", 2011, Vol 1, ISSN 2221-7479 Full article [22 pages] in English with a Russian abstract and English abstract. Free download at http://www.heraldrsias.org/online/2011/1/203/
Upcoming updates on TEKT are on the way. Introductory presentation made during conference excerpts at http://youtu.be/kZkGKkbnGKE Comments and collaboration proposals are welcome. Thank you!
The laws governing natural economic flow are recommended to be used as model for a sustainable anthropogenic economy.... more
The laws governing natural economic flow are recommended to be used as model for a sustainable anthropogenic economy. Life can't be monopolized. Biodiversity has a paramount importance to sustainable development. This article is intended to be the first in a series of applicative works based on the Triangular Eco-Kinematics Theory «TEKT» proposed here as foundation for global cooperation mechanisms. It is an urgent call for global anthropogenic economic reforms. Planet Earth can sustain a maximum population load if it's properly managed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights needs to be revised. A Life Equivalent Etalon [LEE] as currency reference is proposed. Key words: natural rights, Life Equivalent Etalon, LEE, gold, energy, protein, organization equilibrium theory, monetary system, entropy, antientropy, negentropy, syntropy, UNESCO, intangible commodities, economics, religion, protein, amino acids, seed germination, carbon dioxide, oxigen, dinitrogen, nitrogen, air, global warming, occupy wall street, occupy movement, evolution, macroeconomics.
Introduction.
Ecological issues should not be separated from economic issues or from public health concerns as they correlate. The global crises have their beginnings back in the history of mankind. Lately they are acutely identified and discussed as our natural resources are depleting visibly. Furthermore, the strong polarization of wealth, abusive exploitation of natural resources and excessive material accumulation do not just hinder the free economic flow, but are also unethical. It conducts to social segregation and conflicts; the expanding “occupy movement” is just one of the latest examples. With this paper, I am also calling for an urgent and closer look at Human Rights principles. Human Rights need to be a section of a future Universal Declaration of Natural Rights.
This paper (as part 1) is an attempt to address several interconnected issues in a fashion such as an overture to an upcoming series of work (work is in progress) with the belief that readers have a fairly strong natural inducement to co-operate [20] with the author in order to build and consolidate the proposed model, the presently included applications and the upcoming ones as well.
Fighting Nature is a historical human endeavor for which we just recently started to see the beginning of its outcome. Public health, ecological systems and global economics, being intimately interconnected, undergo a cycle of crises that I take the freedom to call “The Bermuda Triangle of Human Endeavors”. Planet Earth offers us as Humanity the means to support our very material existence. Health and ecology together are the primary life supporting elements that form the structures of a sustainable social and economic development.
Deprivation of proper living conditions represents an acute denial of Human Rights. No one has the right to deprive others from the inherited Natural Rights, the rights to exist. The economic principles need to be brought up to date and restructured such as to observe the non-monetary values going beyond Human Rights. For the economic system to be sustainable it needs to use a currency that has a sustainable etalon as reference. Life Equivalent Etalons (LEE) can assure economic and international stability as they are fixed and indispensable.
Each one of us is responsible for the global economy as it is an expression of human endeavor and its dynamics, more so in the context of globalization. I’ll tailor my work in a way to make it accessible to most people. It does not matter how good are whatever ideas one may have if they are not well understood by the intended audience, in this particular case, Humanity at large.The M.A.Sholokhov Moscow State University of Humanities is a great place to present this paper addressing ecological issues; such subjects are only about Humanity and concerns Humanity at large. What can be more human than human activity and its overall outcome?
Primary conclusions – Life’s properties and limitations
1) Acute and severely disastrous possible outcomes are due, a total collapse of the system is expected if one living entity is lowering its entropy (increasing anti-entropy) and comes too close to exhausting its own life support, regardless of the energy that may be available. Outgrowing life’s support capacity induces the destruction of the entire system, its entire collapse to decay possibly into lifeless while keeping the energy tightly locked into a stinky slime form of existence.
2) If our planet was to be populated only by forests and plants, cyanobacteria and green algae, Earth could have exhausted its life support and its destiny would have been limited to a continuous energy and structural accumulation up to the point when a total decay would have follow, perhaps a slimy world. Strange as it may appear my statement, we’ve seen in the above experimental example that as long as there are living entities consuming oxygen, ready synthesized sugars and proteins, having CO2 as waste on which the plants can feed on, the cycle of life can continue as long as the relative organizational equilibrium is being kept to a sustainable level or why not a sustainable rapport as represented by TEKT.
3) Based on the above, the biological classifications are forming two major groups:
a) The self-sustaining, food independent living entities (i.e. cyanobacteria, plantae),
b) The by-sustaining, food dependent living entities (i.e. animalia, etc.)
4) Thermodynamically, utilization of energy is not a mere “emerging property” of life, it is Life itself. Utilization of energy by living forms of existence is a self organizing and a conducting mechanism that “knows” to use energy efficiently. It knows when and how to accumulate the dissipated free energy, to “pump it” in the re-assembled structures. It concentrates energy reserves; it creates protective resistant ergonomic structures. The Life forms of material existence have as main property (as opposed to emerging property) the thermo-dynamical ability to act as heat energy pumps; Life forms of material existence are structures of concentrated energy ready to be used. A small seed has the ability to act as a heat energy pump concentrating dissipated free energy into a chemical structure with energy ready to use (i.e. burning wood producing heat).
5) The minerals and vitamins play a key roll in the kinematics of the Life phenomena, the energy, the dynamics of it, but the mother of all dynamics is the mystery of Life, the low entropy or high anti-entropy of information encoded in the DNA folds confers the ability to use and further concentrate more energy into a structural body, into the high anti-entropy of the newly grown living entity, the plants, the trees with their fruits and byproducts holding enormous incorporated energy as well. The high anti-entropy of information has the ability to concentrate low negentropy (high entropy) into high anti-entropy, ready to use concentrated forms of energy, a real gift of Life.
The ability to self-acquiring, holding, using and transmitting information we can also identify it as being a main property of Life.
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See the full article [ free PDF DOWNLOAD ] from
http://www.heraldrsias.org/online/2011/1/203/
Comments and contributions are welcome.
Oliver Kress - A new approach to cognitive development: ontogenesis and the process of initiation
by Oliver Kress
Evolution and Cognition (1993) 2:319 - 332. Springer Verlag
In the current models of cognitive development some phenomena cannot be categorized: self-actualizing people (Maslow),... more In the current models of cognitive development some phenomena cannot be categorized: self-actualizing people (Maslow), Buddhism and Taoism. Using Piaget´s genetic epistemology we can argue that the human cognitive system is not flexible enough to cope with the fundamental changes in structure of the need-satisfying actions (infant/adult) without adaption delays. In this article the process of cognitive new-adaptation with all related effects is described as the initiation process. Four thought-forms are introduced and derived from the hypothesis, with which it is possible to categorize the phenomena mentioned above. The initiation process is an independent side effect of onotgenesis and therefore requires a new definition for intelligence.

