Dem Absurden ins Auge sehen - das ist eine Herausforderung, die mit Entzweiung, Entfremdung und demzufolge mit großer Anspannung und Anstrengung einhergeht. In solchen Momenten entgleitet uns die Welt und wir stehen, so Albert Camus, vor der alles entscheidenden Frage: Selbstmord oder Freiheit. Der vorliegende Band verhandelt Bedrohungen und Gefahren ebenso wie Potenziale und Freiheiten des Absurden. Stimmen aus Philosophie, Erziehungswissenschaft, Literatur, Kunst, Medizin und Wirtschaftswissenschaft machen dabei deutlich: Das Absurde betrifft uns alle.

Translated by Anthony Bower With an Introduction by Oliver Todd 'A conscience with style' V.S. Pritchett The Rebel (1951) is Camus's 'attempt to understand the time I live in' and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Here he makes a daring critique of communism - how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. And he questions two events held sacred by the left wing - the French Revolution of 1789 and the (...) Russian Revolution of 1917 - that had resulted, he believed, in the use of terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt with revolution - a chance to achieve change without losing our freedom. 'The last French intellectual to take the side of humanity and talk its language... a figure of immense moral stature' Sunday Times Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (shrink)

We develop a version of a direct perception account of emotion recognition on the basis of a metaphysical claim that emotions are individuated as patterns of characteristic features. On our account, emotion recognition relies on the same type of pattern recognition as is described for object recognition. The analogy allows us to distinguish two forms of directly perceiving emotions, namely perceiving an emotion in the absence of any top-down processes, and perceiving an emotion in a way that significantly involves some (...) top-down processes ; and, in addition, an inference-based evaluation of an emotion. Our model clarifies the epistemology of emotion recognition. (shrink)

Scott Sturgeon has recently challenged Pollock’s account of undercutting defeaters. The challenge involves three primary contentions: the account is both too strong and too weak, undercutting defeaters exercise their power to defeat only in conjunction with higher-order beliefs about the basis of the lower-order beliefs whose justification they target, and since rebutting defeaters exercise their power to defeat in isolation, rebutting and undercutting defeaters work in fundamentally different ways. My goal is to reject each of these contentions. I maintain that (...) Sturgeon fails to show that Pollock’s account of undercutting defeaters is either too strong or too weak, his own account of how undercutting defeaters exercise their power to defeat is both too strong and too weak, and his claim that rebutting and undercutting defeaters work in fundamentally different ways is mistaken. (shrink)

This article offers comprehensive criticism of the Turing test and develops quality criteria for new artificial general intelligence (AGI) assessment tests. It is shown that the prerequisites A. Turing drew upon when reducing personality and human consciousness to “suitable branches of thought” re-flected the engineering level of his time. In fact, the Turing “imitation game” employed only symbolic communication and ignored the physical world. This paper suggests that by restricting thinking ability to symbolic systems alone Turing unknowingly constructed “the wall” (...) that excludes any possi-bility of transition from a complex observable phenomenon to an abstract image or concept. It is, therefore, sensible to factor in new requirements for AI (artificial intelligence) maturity assessment when approaching the Tu-ring test. Such AI must support all forms of communication with a human being, and it should be able to comprehend abstract images and specify con-cepts as well as participate in social practices. (shrink)

The question “What are cognitive processes?” can be understood variously as meaning “What is the nature of cognitive processes?”, “Can we distinguish epistemically cognitive processes from physical and biochemical processes on the one hand, and from mental or conscious processes on the other?”, and “Can we establish a fruitful notion of cognitive process?” The present aim is to deliver a positive answer to the last question by developing criteria for what would count as a paradigmatic exemplar of a cognitive process, (...) and then to offer the comparator mechanism as a convincing paradigmatic example. Thus, the paper argues, given the current state of science, we can indeed establish a fruitful scientific notion of a cognitive process. Nevertheless, it is left open whether the example-based characterization ends up as merely highlighting a fruitful convention within the early-twentyfirst century interdisciplinary investigation of intelligent behaviour in humans, animals, and robots, or whether the examples determine a natural kind or a property cluster. (shrink)

What has moral theory to do with practical judgment? The practical ethicist can move by analogy from case to case, saying of most new cases, “Oh, I think I've been here before.” Theory, ascending to a broader view, can provide directions when the ethicist finds herself in unfamiliar territory.

This paper contains a careful derivation of principles of Interpretability Logic valid in extensions of I0+1.

In this paper, we characterize the strength of the predicative Frege hierarchy, , introduced by John Burgess in his book [J. Burgess, Fixing frege, in: Princeton Monographs in Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005]. We show that and are mutually interpretable. It follows that is mutually interpretable with Q. This fact was proved earlier by Mihai Ganea in [M. Ganea, Burgess’ PV is Robinson’s Q, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 72 619–624] using a different proof. Another consequence of the our (...) main result is that is mutually interpretable with Kalmar Arithmetic . The fact that interprets EA was proved earlier by Burgess. We provide a different proof. Each of the theories is finitely axiomatizable. Our main result implies that the whole hierarchy taken together, , is not finitely axiomatizable. What is more: no theory that is mutually locally interpretable with is finitely axiomatizable. (shrink)

For the last century, moral philosophy has stressed theory for the analysis of moral argument and concepts. In the last decade, interest in the ethical issues of health care has stimulated attention to cases and particular instances. This has revealed the gap between ethical theory and practice. This article reviews the history and method of casuistry which for many centuries provided an approach to practical ethics. Its strengths and weaknesses are noted and its potential for contemporary use explored.

I distinguish between two conceptually different kinds of physical space: a space of ordinary material bodies, which is the space of points at which I could imaginably place the tip of my finger, or the center of a billiard-ball, and a space of elementary physical determinables, which is the smallest space of points such that stipulating what is happening at each one of those points, at every time, amounts to an exhaustive physical history of the universe. In all classical physical (...) theories, these two spaces happen to coincide – and what we mean by calling a theory “classical”, and all we mean by calling a theory “classical”, is precisely that these two spaces coincide. But once the distinction between these two spaces in on the table, it becomes clear that there is no logical or conceptual reason why they must coincide – and it turns out that a very simple way of pulling them apart from one another gives us quantum mechanics. (shrink)

By building on work by Kit Fine, we develop a sound and complete truthmaker semantics for Lou Goble’s conflict tolerant deontic logic BDL.

In this paper we study local induction w.r.t. Σ1‐formulas over the weak arithmetic. The local induction scheme, which was introduced in, says roughly this: for any virtual class that is progressive, i.e., is closed under zero and successor, and for any non‐empty virtual class that is definable by a Σ1‐formula without parameters, the intersection of and is non‐empty. In other words, we have, for all Σ1‐sentences S, that S implies, whenever is progressive. Since, in the weak context, we have (at (...) least) two definitions of Σ1, we obtain two minimal theories of local induction w.r.t. Σ1‐formulas, which we call Peano Corto and Peano Basso.In the paper we give careful definitions of Peano Corto and Peano Basso. We establish their naturalness both by giving a model theoretic characterization and by providing an equivalent formulation in terms of a sentential reflection scheme.The theories Peano Corto and Peano Basso occupy a salient place among the sequential theories on the boundary between weak and strong theories. They bring together a powerful collection of principles that is locally interpretable in. Moreover, they have an important role as examples of various phenomena in the metamathematics of arithmetical (and, more generally, sequential) theories. We illustrate this by studying their behavior w.r.t. interpretability, model interpretability and local interpretability. In many ways the theories are more like Peano arithmetic or Zermelo Fraenkel set theory, than like finitely axiomatized theories as Elementary Arithmetic, and. On the one hand, Peano Corto and Peano Basso are very weak: they are locally cut‐interpretable in. On the other hand, they behave as if they were strong: they are not contained in any consistent finitely axiomatized arithmetical theory, however strong. Moreover, they extend, the theory of parameter‐free Π1‐induction. (shrink)

Pierce challenges the argument that economic sanctions are always morally preferable to the use of military force. He argues that such sanctions inflict suffering and physical harm on noncombatants and that small-scale military operations are sometimes preferable.

The central result of this paper is the small‐is‐very‐small principle for restricted sequential theories. The principle says roughly that whenever the given theory shows that a definable property has a small witness, i.e., a witness in a sufficiently small definable cut, then it shows that the property has a very small witness: i.e., a witness below a given standard number. Which cuts are sufficiently small will depend on the complexity of the formula defining the property. We draw various consequences from (...) the central result. E.g., roughly speaking, (i) every restricted, recursively enumerable sequential theory has a finitely axiomatized extension that is conservative with respect to formulas of complexity ; (ii) every sequential model has, for any n, an extension that is elementary for formulas of complexity, in which the intersection of all definable cuts is the natural numbers; (iii) we have reflection for ‐sentences with sufficiently small witness in any consistent restricted theory U; (iv) suppose U is recursively enumerable and sequential. Suppose further that every recursively enumerable and sequential V that locally inteprets U, globally interprets U. Then, U is mutually globally interpretable with a finitely axiomatized sequential theory. The paper contains some careful groundwork developing partial satisfaction predicates in sequential theories for the complexity measure depth of quantifier alternations. (shrink)

This article endeavours to contribute to the study of the influence and effect of Deuteronomy in the book of Hebrews. It investigates the possible influence of one of Deuteronomy’s key concepts on Hebrews, namely, the concept of ‘life’. The article starts off by defining the multifaceted concept of ‘life’ in Deuteronomy. This is followed up by combing through the text of Hebrews to identify traces of this concept in the words and arguments that the writer employs. The possible traces found (...) are then investigated intertextually in detail. This includes references to ‘the living God’ (Heb 3:12; 9:14; 10:31; 12:22), God’s ‘living and active’ word (Heb 4:12), ‘the new and living way’ Jesus opened through his death (Heb 10:20) and the command to ‘submit to the Father of spirits and live’ (Heb 12:9). The article concludes by synthesising the findings to discuss whether Hebrews deliberately employs Deuteronomy’s concept of life. (shrink)

The political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls’s a priori specification of the welfare state. An inductively derived specification of ideal-typical welfare states (...) suggests that horizontal redistribution, in line with the principle of social savings, is more important than vertical redistribution. Rawls’s preference for a social dividend or negative income tax scheme can be contrasted with the use of social insurance, but the latter has a claim to instantiate Rawlsian ideals better than a social dividend. There is a potential problem with the pre-emption of private savings in the welfare state, but this turns out not to be troublesome empirically or conceptually. The irony of the discussion is that those who have interpreted Rawlsian theory as justifying the welfare state have the better of the argument, despite Rawls’s own views. (shrink)

Pragmatist approaches to truth have often been judged in light of a caricature of William James’ claim that, “the ‘true’ is only the expedient in our way of thinking”. This unfortunate caricature, where truth is claimed to be ‘whatever it’s useful to believe’, means pragmatist theories of truth are generally seen as non-starters, or unworthy of serious attention. And even leaving aside stalking-horse versions of classical pragmatism, there is also a view that whatever contemporary pragmatists have been doing with ‘truth’ (...) it bears little resemblance to the projects that concern analytic philosophers. For example, Rorty’s frequent exhortations for pragmatists to turn their back on truth and look... (shrink)

Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to (...) vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method. (shrink)

What does it look like when an organization tentatively steps away from an exclusively rules-based regime and begins to attend to both rules and principles? What insights and guidance can ethicists and ethical theory offer? This paper is a case study of an organization that has initiated such a transition. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has begun a turn toward the promotion of ethical principles and best practices by adding a “conceptual framework” to its existing Code of Professional (...) Conduct. This conceptual framework calls upon its members to intentionally increase their awareness of significant threats to their compliance with its rules of conduct and to establish safeguards to offset or eliminate those threats. To this end, each member is required to regard every questionable situation, circumstance, transaction or relationship by attempting to view it through the eyes of an imagined reasonable third party. This paper examines this protocol theoretically and practically. First, we frame this analysis within the principles and ethical concepts that inform the professional ethics of accountants. Second, we critique the AICPA’s long-standing rules-based approach to its Code. Third, we examine the new conceptual framework with a view toward its potential for the promotion of a more principles-based approach to the professional ethics of the accounting profession. Fourth, we give attention to the notion of the “reasonable and informed third party,” which has been embedded in the new conceptual framework, and consider how two schools of thought—Adam Smith’s modernist “impartial spectator” concept and Emmanuel Lévinas’ postmodern phenomenology in regard to “the Other”—may offer theoretical support and clarity for this epistemic exercise. Finally, we point out several ways in which the AICPA’s commitment to its new conceptual framework could be strengthened and enhanced. (shrink)

: In a 2004 article, we argued that bioethics commissions should be assessed in terms of their usefulness as public forums. A 2006 article by Summer Johnson argued that our perspective was not supported by the existing literature on presidential commissions, which had not previously identified commissions as public forums and that we did not properly account for the political functions of commissions as instruments of presidential power. Johnson also argued that there was nothing sufficiently unique about bioethics commissions to (...) make the public forum perspective particularly applicable. We respond by arguing that analysis of commissions' work as public forums fits well within the literature on commissions, especially on their agenda-setting functions, and that the political functions of commissions are often compatible with their functioning as public forums. We also demonstrate how the origins and concerns of bioethics make public forum analysis particularly applicable to bioethics commissions. (shrink)

This paper develops an understanding of the nature of sport fans that helps rebut the charge of nihilism leveled against identity anti-essentialism as represented in the work of Butler, Appiah, and...

This essay explores the nature of the most rudimentary form of empathy, interpersonal affective echoing, and attempts to give a cogent assessment of the roles it may play in human interactions. As an investigative background, it briefly sketches phenomenological findings with respect to feelings, to non-linguistic cognition, and to the analogical apperception of others. It then offers a phenomenological account of the basic structures of the experience of echoing another person’s feelings in a face-to-face situation. It also notes how echoing (...) differs from analogical apperception (while presupposing the latter), as well as from having one’s usual feelings and emotions. The relationship of echoing to sharing, caring, and morality is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores metaphilosophy’s role in pragmatism. It does so particularly in relation to pragmatism’s multiplying and competing forms (e.g. classical pragmatism, neo-pragmatism, analytic pragmatism, third-wave pragmatism, new pragmatism, etc.). Focusing on the most comprehensive treatment of metaphilosophy in pragmatism, that of Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse, I argue their attempt to turn pragmatism into a metaphilosophy is problematic. Using a “metaphilosophical minimalism” to address pragmatism’s tendency toward what they label an inward looking and dogmatic “insularity” and “triumphalism” – a (...) tendency that feeds competition among pragmatists – I charge displays that very tendency (it also leads to a regress). I then pivot to outline what I dub “eclectic pragmatism.” This pragmatism embraces the contemporary zeitgeist of the inclusionary, decentered “more.” It does so by abandoning competition over the singular, right form of pragmatism (and indeed philosophy). It embraces the “more,” but not because it is right (which would be an obvious contradiction). Rather, it embraces the “more” because it is “’satisfying.” Simply put, there is a metaphilosophy at work with eclectic pragmatism. It is a “naturalized metaphilosophy” where the “choice” for pragmatism, especially eclectic pragmatism, is seen to stem from psychological and sociological propensities not the necessity of long exalted “reason.”. (shrink)

Let K be a finite set of finite structures. We give a syntactic characterization of the property: every element of K is injective in ISP(K). We use this result to establish that A is injective in ISP(A) for every two-element algebra A.

Title on spine: Marin Cureau de La Chambre.

A collection of historical and contemporary writings that chronicle the development of the African critical response to attempts to ascribe a peculiar nature to the African character, and the debate in contemporary African philosophy on issues such as magic, witchcraft, aesthetics, and morality. Other topics include contemporary thought in French speaking Africa, and African traditional thought and Western science. Each selection is preceded by a synopsis. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.