This article discusses three rather neglected issues concerning Varro’s Hebdomades : 1. The basis of Varro’s fascination with the number seven, leading him to his eventual concept of such an exceptional work; 2. An attempt to find out as much as possible about the nature of the work, described by Pliny as the first illustrated book in Rome, and 3. A discussion of its reception and impact in Rome.

Kant announces that the Critique of the Power of Judgment will bring his entire critical enterprise to an end. But it is by no means agreed upon that it in fact does so and, if it does, how. In this book, Ido Geiger argues that a principal concern of the third Critique is completing the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. This includes both Kant's analysis of natural beauty and his discussion of teleological judgments of (...) organisms and of nature generally. Geiger's original reading of the third Critique shows that it forms a unified whole - and that it does in fact deliver the final part of Kant's transcendental undertaking. His book will be valuable to all who are interested in Kant's theory of the aesthetic and conceptual purposiveness of nature. (shrink)

In the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant claims that the Critique of Pure Reason accounted for the necessary conditions of experience and knowledge in general, but that it was not a complete transcendental account of the possibility of a particular empirical experience of objects and knowledge of empirical laws of nature. To fill this gap the third Critique puts forward, as an additional transcendental condition, the regulative principle of the purposiveness of nature. In this paper, (...) I will attempt to show how Kant’s account of pure aesthetic judgment can be read as articulating an aesthetic non-conceptual condition of the search for the conceptual order of nature and so as constituting an essential part of the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. (shrink)

Kant's conception of moral agency is often charged with attributing no role to feelings. I suggest that respect is the effective force driving moral action. I then argue that four additional types of rational feelings are necessary conditions of moral agency: The affective inner life of moral agents deliberating how to act and reflecting on their deeds is rich and complex . To act morally we must turn our affective moral perception towards the ends of moral action: the welfare of (...) others ; and our own moral being . Feelings shape our particular moral acts . I tentatively suggest that the diversity of moral feelings might be as great as the range of our duties. (shrink)

According to Korsgaard’s very influential interpretation, moral normativity follows from a commonly accepted conception of rational agency, namely, the capacity to set ends and pursue them or humanity. The paper argues that humanity is not the source of moral normativity. Taking the exercise of your freedom in pursuit of your ends to be justified commits you to acknowledging the equal claim of others to see themselves as justified in the pursuit of their ends. This entails the equal restriction of the (...) freedom of each to ensure maximal freedom for all. But this is precisely what Kant thinks of as the state of right. In contrast, the paper claims that the second formula of the categorical imperative commands making the humanity of rational beings who are assumed to possess the capacity to act morally or personality, into our end, precisely because they are assumed to possess this distinct rational capacity. (shrink)

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social–technical environment. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage (...) and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. These bots, scripts, tools, plugins, and dashboards make Wikipedia more efficient for those who know how to work with them, but like all organizational culture, newcomers must learn them if they want to fully participate. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I present thick descriptions of how governance and gatekeeping practices are articulated through and in alignment with these automated infrastructures. Over the past 15 years, Wikipedian veterans and administrators have made specific decisions to support administrative and editorial workflows with automation in particular ways and not others. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning—most principally arguing that scholarship and practice must go beyond trying to “open up the black box” of such systems and also examine sociocultural processes like newcomer socialization. (shrink)

Abstract‘Skolem arithmetic’ is the complete theory T of the multiplicative monoid. We give a full characterization of the ‐definable stably embedded sets of T, showing in particular that, up to the relation of having the same definable closure, there is only one non‐trivial one: the set of squarefree elements. We then prove that T has weak elimination of imaginaries but not elimination of finite imaginaries.

The article defends three claims regarding the relation between the different formulas of the categorical imperative. On its prevailing reading, FUL gives different moral guidance than FH; left answered, this problem is an argument for adopting a competing perspective on FUL. The prohibitions and commands of the formulas should be taken to be extensionally the same; but FKE adds a dimension missing from the others, gained by uniting their perspectives, namely, bringing the variety of moral laws into systematic unity. The (...) grammatically ambiguous phrase inGMS, 4: 436.9–10 claims that FA alone unites the other formulas in itself. (shrink)

The paper presents an example of unified theory bearing interest from both a historical and systematic point of view. The example is chosen from evolutionary population genetics (neo-Darwinian synthetic theory). It exhibits various aspects of theoretical change in science that have been shown in Part I (Geiger, 1988) to be characteristic of syntheses of theories.

The notion of aesthetic ideas is of great importance to Kant's thinking about art. Despite its importance, he says little about it. He characterizes aesthetic ideas as representations of the imagination and says that the gift of artistic genius is the inscrutable capacity to envision them. Furthermore, they are counterparts of rational ideas. Works of art thus sensibly present rational ideas; the pleasure they occasion is a consequence of the enriching process of reflection upon the wealth of content they sensibly (...) present. The purpose of this article is to ask whether all rational ideas have aesthetic ideas as counterparts, and so can be presented in art, or whether only some do and which. The answer should reveal what, for Kant, is the subject-matter of art. I argue that for Kant art is concerned with the range and variety of human freedom as well as with its highest fulfillment in morality. (shrink)

Martin Sticker's discussion of the common moral agent contains much that I find insightful, true and significant. As a response to his paper, I focus on two important issues that nevertheless separate us: Sticker claims that knowing our duty can be mere passive awareness and that it indeed is passive as awareness of the special status of humanity. I deny that knowing our duty is ever passive. He further claims that the common universalization test is the paradigmatic way active agents (...) acquire moral knowledge. I argue that Sticker appears to construe universalization as a formal test that presupposes no moral knowledge and that so construed the test cannot serve for acquiring moral knowledge. (shrink)

Summary The concept of unified theory is defined in logical and abstract semantic terms, and employed in the analysis of relations between empirical scientific theories. The conceptual framework of the approach applies to binary relations such as the reduction or replacement of one theory by another, and to multiple intertheory relations. Historically, unified theories tend to arise within the contexts of scientific conflicts which they may show susceptible of solution even in the most controversial cases of the logical incompatibility or (...) conceptual incommensurability of competing theories. These conclusions are exemplified by the Planck-Einstein quantum theory of thermal radiation. The analysis shows in which sense it can, and in which it cannot, be said that this theory unifies Wien's law and the Rayleigh-Jeans law of black-body radiation. (shrink)

Philsophers interested in comprehending the nature of truth and knowledge have studied reference, as have psychologists and linguists interested in uncovering the relations between thought and language, and other scholars trying to describe the role of reference in literature, culture and society.

Theodor Geigers Studie ist eine gesellschafts- und geistesgeschichtliche Einführung in einen zentralen philosophischen und soziologischen Grundbegriff. Sie gibt eine höchst originelle Antwort auf die alte Grundfrage der Gesellschaft: Welchen sozialen Normen und Werten sollte das menschliche Zusammenleben und Zusammenarbeiten unterliegen?

In this second part of his lecture, Geiger deals with the question of empathy for non-human entities, like various kinds of objects. Again, Geiger differentiates between various questions that are usually mixed together in the relevant literature. Thus, he distinguishes the question of fact from the psychological theories about possible mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon. In the last part there is an interesting debate showing how different is the approach between experimenters and philosophers. In his conclusion, Geiger (...) stresses again that conceptual clarification is needed in order to avoid confusion in research designs. Finally, two commentaries emphasize how much empathy could be important in the context of psychiatry. (shrink)

Mit der Begründung dieser Schriftenreihe im Jahre 1966 ging es dem Berliner Handels- und Wirtschaftsrechtler Ernst E. Hirsch, wie er damals schrieb, um den Nachweis, »daß die Wiederaufnahme der durch die nationalsozialistische Herrschaft unterbundenen Bemühungen von Arthur Nussbaum um Erforschung der Rechtstatsachen für eine Rechtswissenschaft stricto sensu ebenso unentbehrlich ist wie die im deutschen Rechtskreis von Eugen Ehrlich begründete, aber noch immer vor allem von Juristen teils abgelehnte, teils beargwöhnte Rechtssoziologie.« Entsprechend dieser (unveränderten) Aufgabenstellung ist die Schriftenreihe zum einen der (...) Beschäftigung mit den Klassikern der Vergangenheit und ihrer Relevanz für das Heute und zum anderen aktuellen Fragestellungen der Gegenwart gewidmet. (shrink)

The distinction between sociology of science on the one hand and methodology and systematics on the other, is an established historical fact. Thus, even in modern methodologically orientated philosophy, epistemological analyses still tend to disregard the pragmatic contexts within which scientific knowledge is produced, processed and applied. This situation also reflects the well-known fact that philosophy of science has largely ignored the conceptual and methodological foundations of technology, that is, those disciplines directly and explicitly linked to the practical implications and (...) intended applications of scientific research. The following considerations suggest that the methodology of technology provides useful and generally applicable criteria of the evaluation and acceptance of the hypotheses and theories of empirical science. (shrink)

This article argues that a group of fourteen female statues seen in the Theatre of Pompey in Rome by Tatian belonged to Greek female poets. This group, along with the statues representing the fourteen nationes vanquished by Pompey, and certain groups of statues in the Forum of Augustus should all be ascribed to the influence of the Hebdomades of Pompey's familiaris Varro.

Kant claims that empirical laws of nature “carry with them an expression of necessity” (Kant, 1998 ; A159/B198). What precisely is this “expression of necessity” and what grounds it? The metaphysical necessitation approach asks “What are laws of nature for Kant?” It answers that, for Kant, empirical laws possess necessity and are grounded in the properties and causal powers essential to natural kinds. The epistemological systematization approach claims that empirical natures, kinds and causal laws are rightly viewed as necessitating in (...) virtue of the place they ideally take within an ultimate systematic conception of nature. The paper defends a hybrid transcendental-idealist approach to empirical necessity. It argues that Kant offers a transcendental deduction of the a priori principle of the systematic conceptual purposiveness of nature. In contrast to the systematization approach, this builds necessity into our most fundamental, conceptually articulated experience of nature. The approach can furthermore complement metaphysical necessitation accounts by showing that the commitment to necessitation follows from the metaphysical doctrine of transcendental idealism and the critical project of articulating the a priori transcendental conditions of experience. Recognizing the transcendental status of the principle of the systematic conceptual purposiveness of nature thus allows us to merge valuable insights of both the epistemological systematization and the metaphysical necessitation views. (shrink)

Using the mathematical frameworks of economic preference ranking, subjective probability, and rational learning through empirical evidence, the epistemological implications of teleological ethical intuitionism are pointed out to the extent to which the latter is based on cognitivist and objectivist concepts of value. The notions of objective value and objective norm are critically analysed with reference to epistemological criteria of intersubjectively shared valuative experience. It is concluded that one cannot meaningfully postulate general material theories of morality that could be tested, confirmed (...) or refuted by intersubjective empirical evidence of preferences and values, however loosely the empirical evidence of values may be interpreted. This situation is explained with reference to the ways in which preceived values become systematically influenced by the concomitants of individual valuative experience, but which have nothing to do with contingent subjective interests. (shrink)