Gender Stereotyping of Robotic Systems in Eldercare: An Exploratory Analysis of Ethical Problems and Possible Solutions

Socio psychological studies show that gender stereotypes play an important role in human-robot interaction. However, they may have various morally problematic implications and consequences that need ethical consideration, especially in a sensitive field like eldercare. Against this backdrop, we conduct an exploratory ethical analysis of moral issues of gender stereotyping in robotics for eldercare. The leading question is what moral problems and conflicts can arise from gender stereotypes in care robots for older people and how we should deal with them. We first provide an overview on the state of empirical research regarding gender stereotyping in human-robot interaction and the special field of care robotics for older people. Starting from a principlist approach, we then map possible moral problems and conflicts with regard to common ethical principles of autonomy, care, and justice. We subsequently consider possible solutions for the development and implementation of morally acceptable robots for eldercare, focusing on three different strategies: explanation, neutralization, and queering of care robots. Finally, we discuss potentials and problems associated with these three strategies and conclude that especially the queering of robotics and the idea of a gender-fluid robot offers an innovative outlook that deserves closer ethical, social, and technological examination.

Neighborhoods Matter: Assessing the Evidence for Place Effects

How does one's place of residence affect individual behavior and long-run outcomes? Understanding neighborhood and place effects has been a leading question for social scientists during the past half-century. Recent empirical studies using experimental and quasi-experimental research designs have generated new insights on the importance of residential neighborhoods in childhood and adulthood. This paper summarizes the recent neighborhood effects literature and interprets the findings. Childhood neighborhoods affect long-run economic and educational outcomes in a manner consistent with exposure models of neighborhood effects. For adults, neighborhood environments matter for their health and well-being but have more ambiguous impacts on labor market outcomes. We discuss the evidence on the mechanisms behind the observed patterns and conclude by highlighting directions for future research.

Main (Grundfrage) and leading (Leitfrage) questions about being: Claim for ancient understanding

The article is devoted to the question of being in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, namely, his claim to understand the ancient idea of being. In his work “Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)”, Heidegger distinguishes between the understanding of being as the being of everything that exists and his own understanding of being as such, out of connection with things. He calls the first point the “leading question” and attributes its authorship to Aristotle, the second one – “the main question”. The article discusses the relationship of these issues, the possibility of their formal coincidence and discrepancy between them. The first part of the article introduces the context of Heidegger’s thought. It deals with the “ontological difference” that Heidegger introduces in the framework of “Being and Time”, as well as with what transformation this difference undergoes in his later works, after the “turn” (“Kehre”). In the second part of the article, attention is drawn to the convergence and divergence of the “leading question” from the “main one” by clarifying the ontology of Aristotle. Particular attention is paid to various ways of understanding existence, in particular – an incidental and accidental existence. At the end of the article, the attempt will be made to reconstruct the direction of Heidegger's thought, based on the results of consideration achieved earlier.

“This Nothing of a Voice”: Kafka’s Josefine Narrative as a Modern Reflection on Revelation and Language

In reference to the paradoxical classification of art in Kafka’s Josefine story, religious aspects of the artist’s performances and their effect on the audience are scrutinized. The leading question is to what extent it evokes an allusion to the primal scene of divine revelation, following Stéphane Mosès’ commentary in his readings of the Bible. Josefine’s singing with a “nothing of a voice”, reduced to “the slightest of nullities”, the zero-point of signification, nevertheless affects an experience of presence and community that touches the listeners’ entire being. From the perspective of the artist, her song recitals are manifestations of supreme art of which she claims a soteriological significance in respect of her audience who belongs in Kafka’s portrayal obviously to the Jewish people. Around such a tension between maximal restraint of an utterance (the voice onset of the aleph of the word anokhi/I) and all-encompassing meaning (the name of God and all Commandments whose acceptance is constitutive for the Jewish people) circle the theological exegeses of the Sinai-scene (esp. Ex. 20,1) in the tradition of Rashi and Maimonides, in modernity e.g. of Gershom Scholem in dispute with Walter Benjamin on Kafka. It will be shown that the depicted paradoxes of Josefine’s art performances unfold the mentioned tension as an original literary reflection on revelation and language under the conditions of modernity.

“This Nothing of a Voice”: Kafka’s Josefine Narrative as a Modern Reflection on Revelation and Language

In reference to the paradoxical classification of art in Kafka’s Josefine story, religious aspects of the artist’s performances and their effect on the audience are scrutinized. The leading question is to what extent it evokes an allusion to the primal scene of divine revelation, following Stéphane Mosès’ commentary in his readings of the Bible. Josefine’s singing with a “nothing of a voice”, reduced to “the slightest of nullities”, the zero-point of signification, nevertheless affects an experience of presence and community that touches the listeners’ entire being. From the perspective of the artist, her song recitals are manifestations of supreme art of which she claims a soteriological significance in respect of her audience who belongs in Kafka’s portrayal obviously to the Jewish people. Around such a tension between maximal restraint of an utterance (the voice onset of the aleph of the word anokhi/I) and all-encompassing meaning (the name of God and all Commandments whose acceptance is constitutive for the Jewish people) circle the theological exegeses of the Sinai-scene (esp. Ex. 20,1) in the tradition of Rashi and Maimonides, in modernity e.g. of Gershom Scholem in dispute with Walter Benjamin on Kafka. It will be shown that the depicted paradoxes of Josefine’s art performances unfold the mentioned tension as an original literary reflection on revelation and language under the conditions of modernity.

Young for old—old for young? Ethical perspectives on intergenerational solidarity and responsibility in public discourses on COVID-19

In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, intergenerational solidarity and responsibility have become central points of reference in public discourses. However, the use of these concepts is often unclear and ambivalent: On one hand, older people are described as a vulnerable group whose protection requires sacrifices on the part of younger generations, e.g., regarding individual freedom and economic welfare. On the other, they appear as dispensable individuals that should relinquish their claims for the sake of the young and their future prospects. Our contribution offers an analysis of intergenerational solidarity and responsibility in public discourses on COVID-19. The leading question is how both concepts are used and how the corresponding claims can be justified or criticized. We first give an overview of notions of intergenerational solidarity and responsibility in current debates. In the next step, we provide a moral philosophical clarification of both concepts and their normative presuppositions. We then conduct a descriptive ethical discourse analysis of pertinent cases from three areas of European discourse: politics, civil society, and mass media. The analysis focuses on politico-moral claims and their normative premises, ambiguities, and biases. We argue that the discourse involves assumptions about old age and generational relations that need further clarification and justification. An analysis of intergenerational solidarity and responsibility in times of COVID-19 can help understand the dynamics of social cohesion in late-modern societies.

The primacy of the noematic. On the methodological relevance of art for phenomenology

As Husserl already noticed, artworks themselves have a phenomenological character. This means, however, that to experience artworks as phenomena no “epoché” and no “phenomenological reduction” is necessary. The leading question of my essay is whether, and possibly how, this observation can be methodologically generalized for understanding phenomena. I discuss if, and possibly how, a phenomenological reflection on art allows and even demands a general conception of phenomenology that nevertheless does not confuse artworks with phenomena in general. My intention is to show that and how phenomenality can be clarified with reference to its spatial character. Accordingly, works of architecture that are artworks will play a decisive role in my argument.

Religious Non-Affiliation and Objections of Conscience

This chapter is concerned with the implications of growing religious non-affiliation for objections of conscience, which have proliferated lately in the culture wars of Western democracies. Through the eighteenth century, when the U.S. Constitution was framed, the concept of conscience was tightly bound to religion. This chapter’s leading question is: what force do claims of conscientious objection have in the context of growing religious non-affiliation? Underlying this question is a subtler one: what else might we lose when we lose religion? The chapter’s thesis is twofold. First, the public conception of conscience has changed under the pressure of both growing religious non-affiliation and growing religious pluralism. Second, the appeal to conscience is now much less powerful than it was when God figured more prominently in the picture. The buffer between citizen and state has become thinner, and the reasons to accommodate objections of conscience have become weaker.

The extraordinary and changing role of women in Dutch language history

Since the second half of the sixteenth century, there has been a tradition of publishing grammars, dictionaries, and linguistic treatises, composed by male authors of various professions. Although women do not seem to have played a visible role in language codification and language studies in the Netherlands, at least two extraordinary femmes savantes stand out. The first of these from the seventeenth century was Anna Maria van Schurman, a highly admired scholar and polyglot who maintained an international network of correspondence and was familiar with a wide range of languages. Her eighteenth-century counterpart, Johanna Corleva, was interested in rational grammar, translated the Grammaire générale et raisonnée (1660) into Dutch, and compiled a Dutch dictionary according to particular explicit principles. Attention will also be paid to female activities in education, from elementary schools to academia. Throughout this chapter, the leading question will be why, despite the activities described, Dutch ‘linguistics’ was such a predominantly male enterprise for more than three centuries.

O novo espírito do capitalismo e a construção da universidade empreendedora no contexto brasileiro

O presente artigo se propõe a analisar, à luz da teoria do novo espírito do capitalismo, dos sociólogos Luc Boltanski e Éve Chiapello, o documento “Universidades Empreendedoras”, o qual foi elaborado em 2016 pela Confederação Brasileira de Empresas Júnior em conjunto com outras instituições representativas. Este documento aborda o índice das universidades mais empreendedoras do Brasil. Logo, a questão norteadora deste artigo é: o discurso presente no documento “Universidades Empreendedoras” reflete a lógica social inspirada pelo novo espírito do capitalismo? Mais especificamente, se intentou identificar, no documento proposto para a análise, argumentos, valores, justificações e características que possam remeter ao aparato ideológico típico do novo espírito do capitalismo. Como conclusão, pode-se dizer que o discurso presente no documento analisado apresenta argumentos que refletem, ao mesmo tempo em que fortalecem, os novos imperativos advindos da instauração de um novo espírito do capitalismo, conforme proposto por Boltanski e Chiapello. Palavras-chave: Educação Superior; Empreendedorismo; Universidade empreendedora; Novo espírito; Capitalismo. Abstract The objective of the present study was to analyze, in view of Luc Boltanski’ and Éve Chiapello’s theory of the new spirit of capitalism, the statement “Entrepreneurial Universities”, elaborated in 2016 by the Brazilian Confederation of Junior Enterprises along with other representative institutions. This document addresses the index of the most entrepreneurial universities in Brazil. Thus, the leading question of this paper is: The discourse of the statement “Entrepreneurial Universities” reflects the social logic characteristic of the new spirit of capitalism? Precisely, the study aimed to identify in the statement the assertions, values, arguments and traits which could consign to the ideological apparatus of the new spirit of capitalism. In conclusion, it is possible to say that the discourse of the statement presents arguments that reflect, as well as strengthen, the new demands derived from the establishment of a new spirit of capitalism, as proposed by Boltanski and Chiapello. Keywords: Higher Education; Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurial University; New Spirit; Capitalism. Resumen Este artículo propone analizar, a partir de la teoría del nuevo espíritu del capitalismo de los sociólogos Luc Boltanski y Éve Chiapello, el documento “Universidades Empreendedoras”, que fue preparado en 2016 por la Confederación Brasileña de Compañías Junior junto con otras instituciones representativas Este documento resalta el índice de las universidades más emprendedoras de Brasil. Por lo tanto, la pregunta guía de este artículo es: ¿el discurso presente en el documento "Universidades Empreendedoras" refleja la lógica social inspirada en el nuevo espíritu del capitalismo? Más específicamente, se intentó identificar, en el documento propuesto para el análisis, argumentos, valores, justificaciones y características que pueden referirse al aparato ideológico típico del nuevo espíritu del capitalismo. Como conclusión, se puede decir que el discurso presente en el documento analizado presenta argumentos que reflejan, al mismo tiempo que fortalecen, los nuevos imperativos que surgen del establecimiento de un nuevo espíritu de capitalismo, según lo propuesto por Boltanski y Chiapello. Palabras clave: Educación superior; Emprendimiento; Universidad emprendedora; Nuevo espíritu; Capitalismo.