ABSTRACTIs lying in a different language easier or more difficult? The Emotional Distance and the Cognitive Load hypothesis give competing answers. Suchotzki and Gamer measured the time native German speakers needed to initiate honest and deceptive answers to German and English questions. Lie-truth differences in RTs were much smaller for the foreign compared to the native language. In our preregistered replication study in native Dutch speakers, we found that lie-truth differences in RTs were moderately smaller when participants were tested in (...) English than when tested in Dutch. These findings indicate that people struggle with quickly retrieving the truth in another language, and that foreign language use may diminish lie-truth differences. (shrink)

Logical and Spiritual Reflections is a collection of six shorter philosophical works, including: Hume’s Problems with Induction; A Short Critique of Kant’s Unreason; In Defense of Aristotle’s Laws of Thought; More Meditations; Zen Judaism; No to Sodom. Of these works, the first set of three constitutes the Logical Reflections, and the second set constitutes the Spiritual Reflections. Hume’s Problems with Induction, which is intended to describe and refute some of the main doubts and objections David Hume raised with regard to (...) inductive reasoning. It replaces the so-called problem of induction with a principle of induction. David Hume’s notorious skepticism was based on errors of observation and reasoning, with regard to induction, causation, necessity, the self and freewill. These are here pointed out and critically analyzed in detail – and more accurate and logical theories are proposed. The present work also includes refutations of Hempel’s and Goodman’s alleged paradoxes of induction. A Short Critique of Kant’s Unreason, which is a brief critical analysis of some of the salient epistemological and ontological ideas and theses in Immanuel Kant’s famous Critique of Pure Reason. It shows that Kant was in no position to criticize reason, because he neither sufficiently understood its workings nor had the logical tools needed for the task. Kant’s transcendental reality, his analytic-synthetic dichotomy, his views on experience and concept formation, and on the forms of sensibility (space and time) and understanding (his twelve categories), are here all subjected to rigorous logical evaluation and found deeply flawed – and more coherent theories are proposed in their stead. In Defense of Aristotle’s Laws of Thought, which addresses, from a phenomenological standpoint, numerous modern and Buddhist objections and misconceptions regarding the basic principles of Aristotelian logic. Many people seem to be attacking Aristotle’s Laws of Thought nowadays, some coming from the West and some from the East. It is important to review and refute such ideas as they arise. More Meditations, which is a sequel to the author’s earlier work, Meditations. It proposes additional practical methods and theoretical insights relating to meditation and Buddhism. It also discusses certain often glossed over issues relating to Buddhism – notably, historicity, idolatry, messianism, importation to the West. Zen Judaism, which is a frank reflection on the tensions between reason and faith in today’s context of knowledge, and on the need to inject Zen-like meditation into Judaism. This work also treats some issues in ethics and theodicy. No to Sodom, which is an essay against homosexuality, using biological, psychological, spiritual, ethical and political arguments. (shrink)

We investigate the problem of how nonnatural entities are represented by examining university students’ concepts of God, both professed theological beliefs and concepts used in comprehension of narratives. In three story processing tasks, subjects often used an anthropomorphic God concept that is inconsistent with stated theological beliefs; and drastically distorted the narratives without any awareness of doing so. By heightening subjects’ awareness of their theological beliefs, we were able to manipulate the degree of anthropomorphization. This tendency to anthropomorphize may be (...) generalizable to other agents. God (and possibly other agents) is unintentionally anthropomorphized in some contexts, perhaps as a means of representing poorly understood.. (shrink)

We study hyperdefinable groups, the most general kind of groups interpretable in a simple theory. After developing their basic theory, we prove the appropriate versions of Hrushovski's group quotient theorem and the Weil–Hrushovski group chunk theorem. We also study locally modular hyperdefinable groups and prove that they are bounded-by-Abelian-by-bounded. Finally, we analyze hyperdefinable groups in supersimple theories.

A theory is usually said to be time reversible if whenever a sequence of states S 1, S 2, S 3 is possible according to that theory, then the reverse sequence of time reversed states S 3 T, S 2 T, S 1 T is also possible according to that theory; i.e., one normally not only inverts the sequence of states, but also operates on the states with a time reversal operator T. David Albert and Paul Horwich have suggested that (...) one should not allow such time reversal operations T on states. I will argue that time reversal operations on fundamental states should be allowed. I will furthermore argue that the form that time reversal operations take is determined by the type of fundamental geometric quantities that occur in nature and that we have good reason to believe that the fundamental geometric quantities that occur in nature correspond to irreducible representations of the Lorentz transformations. Finally, I will argue that we have good reason to believe that space-time has a temporal orientation. (shrink)

This paper investigates (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic, i.e., the logic which results when the dual of implication (alias coimplication) is added to the language of intuitionistic logic. We first develop matrix as well as Kripke style semantics for those logics. Then, by extending the Gö;del-embedding of intuitionistic logic into S4, it is shown that all (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic can be embedded into tense logics (with additional modal operators). An extension of the Blok-Esakia-Theorem is proved for this embedding.

Though the geographic dimensions of philosophical history were always, in principle at least, the whole globe, for the last two thousand years the ...

This essay discusses the role of the notions of reference, truth, and meaning in historical representation. Four major claims will be argued. First, conditional for all meaningful discussion of historical representation is that one radically discards from one's mind the paradigm of the true statement and all the epistemological and ontological problems occasioned by it. Second, representation is not a two-place, but a three-place operator: in representation a represented reality is represented by a representation focusing on certain aspects of represented (...) reality . Third, applying the notions of reference, truth, and meaning to historical representations compels us to give them a content basically different from the ones they have in contemporary philosophy of language and science. Fourth, it will be shown that in representation, meaning precedes truth—and not the other way around as in most of contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

What is history? From Thucydides to Toynbee historians and nonhistorians alike have wondered how to answer this question. A New Philosophy of History reflects on developments over the last two decades in historical writing, not least the renewed interest in the status of narrative itself and the presence of the authorial "voice." Subjects include the problems of Grand Narrative, multiple voices and the personal presence of the historian in his text, the ambitions of the French Annales school and the so-called (...) "Grand Chronicler," and the relevance of non-literary models--museum presentations and picturings--regarding historical discourse. The range of approaches found in A New Philosophy of History ensures that this book will establish itself as required reading not only for historians, but for everyone interested in literary theory, philosophy, or cultural studies. This volume presents essays by Hans Kellner, Nancy F. Partner, Richard T. Vann, Arthur C. Danto, Linda Orr, Philippe Carrard, Ann Rigney, Allan Megill, Robert Berkhofer, Stephen Bann, and Frank Ankersmit. (shrink)

Historicism -- Time -- Interpretation -- Representation -- Reference -- Truth -- Meaning -- Presence -- Experience (I) -- Experience (II) -- Subjectivity -- Politics.

Die Rede von Gott ist eine Weise, Wirklichkeit zu erschliessen. Diese Aussage erscheint in einer Zeit verwunderlich, in der die Naturwissenschaften zu der massgebenden Autoritat der Wirklichkeitsdeutung avanciert sind. In weit verbreiteten Reaktionen auf deren Erfolg wird der Aussagebereich einer Rede von Gott eher auf ein unspezifisches Jenseits oder auf das subjektive Empfinden und moralische Handeln von Individuen eingeschrankt. Die phanomenologische Analyse weist aber auf, dass die Wirklichkeit, mit der der leiblich existierende Mensch immer schon verbunden ist, weiter ist als (...) das, was objektivierende Darstellungen zeigen konnen. Narrative Formen und metaphorische Ausdrucke erschliessen die Wirklichkeit in einer gegenuber den Naturwissenschaften eigenstandigen Erscheinungsweise. Die Auslegung von Texten mittels hermeneutischer Methoden zeigt fragile und von Spannungen gekennzeichnete Ordnungen einer kontingenten und geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit. Dazu gehort auch die christliche Rede von Gott, die an die Erzahlungen des biblischen Kanons anknupft. Daruber hinaus gibt es eine Erscheinungsweise der Wirklichkeit mit nur indirekt beschreibbaren Phanomenen, die aber eine grosse Relevanz fur das Wirklichkeitsverstandnis hat. Die Rede von Gott erhoht mit Hilfe einer Vielzahl von Grenzausdrucken die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Phanomene dieser Erscheinungsweise. Einige Grenzausdrucke wie "Reich Gottes", "Gott der Vater", "In Christus sein" sollen mit phanomenologischen Methoden interpretiert werden. (shrink)

In this paper, we shall survey results about the group-theoretic properties of stable groups. These can be classified into three main categories, according to the strength of the assumptions needed: chain conditions, generic types, and some form of rank. Each category has its typical application: Chain conditions often allow us to deduce global properties from local ones, generic properties are used to get definable groups from undefinable ones, and rank is necessary to interpret fields in certain group actions. While originally (...) the main input came from algebraic group theory, founded on the similarities between rank and dimension, increasingly methods borrowed from finite group theory have come to play a rôle, emphasizing the study of characteristic subgroups and characteristic families of subgroups. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt Journal of Philosophy, 66, 829–39 famously attacked what he called the principle of alternate possibilities. PAP states that being able to do otherwise is necessary for moral responsibility. He gave counterexamples to PAP known since then as “Frankfurt cases.” This paper sidesteps the enormous literature on Frankfurt cases while preserving some of our salient pretheoretical intuitions about the relation between alternate possibilities and moral responsibility. In particular, I introduce, explain, and defend a principle that has so far been (...) overlooked, namely, “the principle of doxastic moral asymmetry” : a rational agent, S, is morally responsible for an action that S performed, E, only if, when S did E, S justifiably believed either that E was closer to S’s most praiseworthy alternate possibility than it was to S’s most blameworthy alternate possibility, or that E was closer to S’s most blameworthy alternate possibility than it was to S’s most praiseworthy alternate possibility. (shrink)

We shall define a general notion of dimension, and study groups and rings whose interpretable sets carry such a dimension. In particular, we deduce chain conditions for groups, definability results for fields and domains, and show that a pseudofinite$\widetilde {\mathfrak M}_c$-group of finite positive dimension contains a finite-by-abelian subgroup of positive dimension, and a pseudofinite group of dimension 2 contains a soluble subgroup of dimension 2.

The following theorems are proved about the Frattini-free componentG Φ of a soluble stable ℜ-group: a) If it has a normal subgroupN with nilpotent quotientG Φ/N, then there is a nilpotent subgroupH ofG Φ withG Φ=NH. b) It has Carter subgroups; if the group is small, they are all conjugate. c) Nilpotency modulo a suitable Frattini-subgroup (to be defined) implies nilpotency. The last result makes use of a new structure theorem for the centre of the derivative of the Frattini-free component (...) of a centreless soluble ℜ-group. (shrink)

In a recent book, Michael Tye argues that we have reason to attribute phenomenal consciousness to functionally similar robots like commander Data of Star Trek. He relies on a kind of inference to the best explanation – ‘Newton’s Rule’, as he calls it. I will argue that Tye’s liberal view of consciousness attribution fails for two reasons. First, it leads into an inconsistency in consciousness attributions. Second, and even more importantly, it fails because ceteris is not paribus. The big, categorical (...) difference in history between Data-like robots on the one hand and human beings on the other hand defeats the ceteris paribus assumption, which can be seen by various considerations. So the inference rule cannot be applied. We should not attribute phenomenal consciousness to robots like Data. (shrink)

Like many governments in this COVID-19 pandemic, the Nigerian government imposed a lockdown on the country. As a consequence of the lockdown, many businesses shutdown and effectively had no source of revenue. Yet, without receiving any bailout or palliatives from the government, these businesses are required to meet their tax obligations to the government. Bearing in mind that this time (COVID-19 era) is different, one wonders what is required of businesses in view of the taxation problem and the social contract (...) between the businesspersons and the government. In view of social contract obligations, in this COVID-19 pandemic should businesses pay tax to a government that seems to have delegitimised itself by its exploitative actions in terms of taxation and delinquent omission in terms of the provision of public goods and social services? The Nigerian government at all tiers (federal, state and local) seldom respect the essence of taxation. Therefore, businesses often pay tax for nothing. For many businesses, as far as taxation is concerned, to pay or not to pay? that is the question. This article is aimed at teasing out this taxation problem that may or may not be a moral dilemma. In view of certain ethical considerations, this article shows why in spite of social contract obligations, there is no consensus or canonical agreement on whether, as law-abiding citizens and juridical persons (legal entities), businesspersons and businesses ought to or ought not to pay tax to the Nigerian government in this COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The world is littered with wars in which innocent individual human beings, helpless groups of persons and harmless institutions are casualties because they are directly or indirectly targeted and attacked. The nature or composition of such casualties calls for a revision of, or at least leads one to question, the dominant approach to the principle of non-combatant immunity. In the just war theory, moral and political philosophers mostly approach the theorisation about the principle of the immunity of non-combatants from what (...) may be termed the individualist approach. In this approach, combatants and non-combatants are conventionally conceived as individual human beings only, or groups of persons. Consequently, the approach cannot show us how institutions cause or participate in war, and it cannot tell us how institutions should be treated in war, whether they should be treated as combatants or non-combatants, and when they should be treated as combatants or non-combatants. For this reason, the individualist approach is insufficient. However, in what may be referred to as the institutional approach, combatants and non-combatants can also be conceived as institutions rather than individuals or groups of persons. If this is the case, then arguments for and against the immunity of non-combatants can be proffered based on this institutional conception. This article contends that we need to supplement the individualist approach with the institutional approach to be able to: (i) ascertain the causal, constitutive, contributory and participatory roles of certain institutions in a particular war; and (ii) determine whether they are legitimate targets of attack. (shrink)

Danto's Analytical Philosopy of History is one of the undisputed classics of post-war reflection on the nature of historical writing. Upon its publication in 1965 it was immediately recognized to be a major contribution to contemporary historical thought. Strangely enough, however, little effort was made by philosophers of history to penetrate into the depth of Danto's argument. The explanation is, perhaps, that there was more than a hint of historicism in Danto's conception of historical writing and for which philosophers of (...) history at that time were not yet prepared. This explanation is all the more plausible since German philosophers of history - most notably Hans Michael Baumgartner - were far more sensitive to the book's message than their Anglo-Saxon colleagues. The result is, however, that the book still awaits its proper reception in contemporary philosophy of history. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the historical text as a whole. It does so by conceiving of the historical text as representation - in the way the we may say of a photo or a painting that it represents the person depicted on it. It is argued that representation cannot be properly understood by modelling it on true description. So all the central questions asked since the days of Frege with regard to how the true statement relates to the world must (...) be asked anew, if we wish to understand how a historical representation relates to what it is about. Three claims are made. In the first place, representation is not a two-place but a three-place operator: apart from a representation (say, a book on Napoleon) and what the representation represents (Napoleon himself), a representation also indicates an aspect of represented reality (an aspect of Napoleon). The second claim is that this notion of the aspect is crucial for a proper understanding of (historical) representation. Thirdly, it is argued that traditional theories of reference cannot account for the relationship between a representation and the aspect indicated by it. (shrink)

Holbein produced a drawing of Sir Thomas More and his Family which was a preparatory sketch for a larger painting. The painting was acquired by Karl von Liechtenstein-Kastelkron, Archbishop of Olomouc, Moravia, and was last recorded in 1691 as being kept in the episcopal residence in Olomouc; it is generally assumed that the painting was lost in the 1752 fire at the Archbishop's château in Kroměřiž. There are, however, five extant versions of the Family Group. The three main versions are (...) the full-sized oil on canvas, The Family of Sir Thomas More, now at Nostell Priory, and two paintings of Sir Thomas More, his Household, and Descendants: one kept at the National Portrait Gallery, the other at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. There has been much discussion about the transformation from a family at prayer—as portrayed in the original drawing—to a conversation on Seneca. Based on editions of Oedipus prior to the Nostell painting, the history of More's descendants, and a cameo that belonged to More's family, this paper argues that the Elizabethan transformation is a story of conformity and non-conformity. (shrink)

This volume analyses, from a computational point of view, how culture may arise, develop and evolve through time. The four sections in this book examine and analyse the modelling of culture, group and organisation culture, culture simulation, and culture-sensitive technology design. Different research disciplines have different perspectives on culture, making it difficult to compare and integrate different concepts and models of culture. By taking a computational perspective this book nevertheless enables the integration of concepts that play a role in culture, (...) even though they might originate from different disciplines. Culture is usually regarded as something vague and qualitative and thus difficult to deal with in a computational and formal setting. Taking a computational approach to culture thus encompasses a twofold risk: taking a too simplistic approach to cultural influence on behaviour; or trying to capture too much, hence not leading to useful computational tools. However, the approaches and insights in this collection show how different perspectives by leading researchers described in thirteen chapters still can form a coherent picture. The book thus illustrates the potential of using computing systems to better understand culture. By describing methods, theories and concrete application results about the integration of cultural aspects into computer systems, this book provides inspiration to researchers of all disciplines alike and presents the start of an interdisciplinary dialogue on culture. (shrink)

This volume deals with the human desire to live the good life, defined as seeking that which "is good, optimal, or ultimately desirable.

Although risk and uncertainty are inevitable aspects of the sustainability problem, they are often neglected in the sustainability discourse, especially in the economic analysis of sustainable development. We argue that this deprives the sustainability discourse of interesting connections to risk management. We show that defining sustainability as the obligation to limit the risk of harming future individuals provides a framework in which tools from risk management, like mean-variance analysis, can be employed to analyze planning decisions and to calculate a risk-minimizing (...) policy mix. Furthermore, we discuss whether such a notion of sustainability can be an ethically tenable sustainability concept and how a positive probability of harming future individuals might be defended. (shrink)