1,720,983 research outputs found
Lying, Deception and Dishonesty: Kant and the Contemporary Debate on the Definition of Lying
No full textAlthough Kant is one of the very few classical writers referred to in the current literature on lying, hardly any attention is paid to how his views relate to the contemporary discussion on the definition of lying. I argue that, in Kant’s account, deception is not the defining feature of lying. Furthermore, his view is able to acknowledge non-deceptive lies. Kant thus holds, I suggest, a version of what is currently labelled Intrinsic Anti-Deceptionism. In his specific version of such a view, furthermore, dishonesty is the distinctive feature of lying. Finally, I highlight the important methodological differences between Kant’s normatively minded account and the primarily descriptive contemporary discussion, with regard to the role of intuitions and definitions in building a moral theory: In contrast to the current debate, Kant does not rely on intuitions, but defines lying in terms of the obligation it violates
Spielraum: Narrow and Wide Duties and their Consequences
No full textKant deals early on with the distinction between narrow and wide duties and with the associated further distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. The relationship between these two pairs of concepts is particularly problematic. If these pairs of concepts are related such that they at least imply each other, this results in an inconsistency: the concept of ethical and perfect duties seems to be contradictory. The article will point the way toward a new way of considering the problem, in which two dimensions of our moral life are at the stake: one, in which rules of action determine with precision what one morally ought to do; the other, in which moral agents have a certain amount of “leeway” (Spielraum) in which they can and should consider different options
Kant as ante litteram Theorist and Critic of the Moral Enhancement
No full textIn this chapter, I shall present the result of a tentative conjunction of two
research paths that I have been developing throughout many years: the first
one concerning Kant and practical philosophy (with a specific focus on a
communitarian interpretation of the categorical imperative doctrine) and the
second one pertaining to ethics and emerging technologies (with a specific
reference to human enhancement and roboethics).1 Accordingly, this is the
first attempt to orient my research agenda on Kant towards issues related to
human enhancement and to the ethics of emerging technologies. The argumentative
path here proposed is the following: after a preliminary framing
of the issue, which makes reference to the most relevant and correlative
key points within Kantian moral theory, I shall introduce a comprehensive
two-fold argument in order to first consider what we could call “the internal
enhancement” towards the asymptotic full adequacy to the moral law
and then to discuss the “external-internal” help or integration to our moral
adequacy and its alleged eligibility. Finally, I will consider two intrinsically
problematic areas related to the same rationale in order to conclude by raising
some correlative issues within and beyond the Kantian perspective
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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