Der Schwerpunkt der Reihe liegt auf thematisch fokussierten Auseinandersetzungen mit Nietzsches Werken, seinen Quellen und seiner Rezeption. Die gehen meist auf Veranstaltungen der Nietzsche-Forschungsstelle Freiburg sowie der Friedrich-Nietzsche-Stiftung Naumburg zurück. Die Reihe ist ideen-, kultur-, literatur- und philosophiegeschichtlich orientiert und - bei Offenheit für disziplinäre Vielfalt - dem Ideal genauer Textlektüren verpflichtet.

Im Mittelpunkt des Bandes steht mit Nietzsches Nachlass derjenige Teil seines Schaffens, von dem seit jeher eine besondere Faszination ausging. Sein Status ist bis heute höchst umstritten. Handelt es sich bei den nachgelassenen Aufzeichnungen um Skizzen und Vorstufen, um Bausteine für neue Werke oder gar – wie etwa Martin Heidegger meinte – um das ‚eigentliche‘ Werk Nietzsches? Außer Frage steht, dass der Nachlass besondere editorische und interpretatorische Schwierigkeiten aufwirft. Zugleich herrscht aber weitgehender Konsens darüber, dass er für das Verständnis von (...) Nietzsches Denken und Schreiben unverzichtbar ist, denn viele seiner zentralen Gedanken sind im Nachlass anders, mitunter scheinbar deutlicher, bisweilen überhaupt nur hier formuliert. Die Beiträge gehen diesen Spannungsverhältnissen nach, indem sie sowohl am Beispiel konkreter Einzelfälle als auch grundsätzlich den angemessenen Umgang mit Nietzsches nachgelassenen Schriften diskutieren. (shrink)

Is Plato’s philosophy still relevant for current issues in politics and political science? In order to answer this question, the contributions to this volume endeavour to re-read the Platonic dialogues and to interpret them in terms of textual hermeneutics on the one hand. On the other hand, they refer to Plato from a systematic point of view and apply his philosophy, in particular the method of Socratic dialogue, to discussions on contemporary political issues. The volume is dedicated to Barbara (...) Zehnpfennig, whose works aim at making Socratic–Platonic philosophy fruitful for the present on the basis of a new interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. With contributions by Anke Adamik, Sarah Al-Taher, Viktoria Bachmann, Philip Breuer, Johanna Falk-Seifert, Bettina Fröhlich, Benjamin A. Hahn, Hendrik Hansen, Thomas Haslböck, Raul Heimann, Johannes Frank Hoerlin, Vanessa Jansche, Peter Kainz, Christina Kast, Eva-Maria Kaufmann, Ulrich Kühn, Laura Martena, Julian Obenauer, Victor Peneff und Thomas Wimmer. (shrink)

Dispositions are modal properties. The standard conception of dispositions holds that each disposition is individuated by its stimulus condition(s) and its manifestation(s), and that their modality is best captured by some conditional construction that relates stimulus to manifestation as antecedent to consequent. I propose an alternative conception of dispositions: each disposition is individuated by its manifestation alone, and its modality is closest to that of possibility — a fragile vase, for instance, is one that can break easily. The view is (...) expounded in some detail and defended against the major objections. (shrink)

Abilities are in many ways central to what being an agent means, and they are appealed to in philosophical accounts of a great many different phenomena. It is often assumed that abilities are some kind of dispositional property, but it is rarely made explicit exactly which dispositional properties are our abilities. Two recent debates provide two different answers to that question: the new dispositionalism in the debate about free will, and virtue reliabilism in epistemology. This paper argues that both answers (...) fail as general accounts of abilities, and discusses the ramifications of this result. (shrink)

Williamsonian modal epistemology is characterized by two commitments: realism about modality, and anti-exceptionalism about our modal knowledge. Williamson’s own counterfactual-based modal epistemology is the best known implementation of WME, but not the only option that is available. I sketch and defend an alternative implementation which takes our knowledge of metaphysical modality to arise, not from knowledge of counterfactuals, but from our knowledge of ordinary possibility statements of the form ‘x can F’. I defend this view against a criticism indicated in (...) Williamson’s own work, and argue that it is better connected to the semantics of modal language. (shrink)

According to essentialism, metaphysical modality is founded in the essences of things, where the essence of a thing is roughly akin to its real definition. According to potentialism (also known as dispositionalism), metaphysical modality is founded in the potentialities of things, where a potentiality is roughly the generalized notion of a disposition. Essentialism and potentialism have much in common, but little has been written about their relation to each other. The aim of this paper is to understand better the relations (...) between essence and potentiality, on the one hand, and between essentialism and potentialism, on the other. It is argued, first, that essence and potentiality are not duals but interestingly linked by a weaker relation dubbed ‘semi-duality’; second, that given this weaker relation, essentialism and potentialism are not natural allies but rather natural competitors; and third, that the semi-duality of essence and potentiality allows the potentialist to respond to an important explanatory challenge by using essentialist resources without thereby committing to essentialism. (shrink)

According to ecological psychology, animals perceive not just the qualities of things in their environment, but their affordances: in James Gibson’s words, ’what things furnish, for good or ill’. I propose a metaphysics for affordances that fits into a contemporary anti-Humean metaphysics of powers or potentialities. The goal is to connect two debates, one in the philosophy of perception and one in metaphysics, that stand to gain much from each other.

My aim in this paper is to sketch, with a broad brush and in bare outlines, an approach to modal epistemology that is characterized by three distinctive features. First, the approach is agency-based: it locates the roots of our modal thought and knowledge in our experience of our own agency. Second, the approach is ambitious in that it takes the experience of certain modal properties in agency to be the sole distinctive feature of specifically modal thought and knowledge; everything that (...) we know about modality beyond the experience of agency is a matter of applying standard methods of inquiry such as deduction, induction and abductive methods for choosing between theories. Third, the account holds that modal thought and knowledge is, first and foremost, about modal properties that are sufficiently like those encountered in agency. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalism is the view that possibilities are a matter of the dispositions of individual objects: it is possible that p if and only if something has a disposition for p to be the case. We raise a problem for modal dispositionalism: nothing within the theory rules out that there could be necessary, perfect masks, which make the manifestation of a disposition impossible. Unless such necessary perfect masks are ruled out, modal dispositionalism runs the risk of failing to provide a (...) sufficient condition for possibility, and indeed of engendering contradictions. But to rule them out, modal dispositionalism would have to revise a crucial tenet of the view, its localism. (shrink)

Dispositionalists try to provide an account of modality—possibility, necessity, and the counterfactual conditional—in terms of dispositions. But there may be a tension between dispositionalist accounts of possibility on the one hand, and of counterfactuals on the other. Dispositionalists about possibility must hold that there are no impossible dispositions, i.e., dispositions with metaphysically impossible stimulus and/or manifestation conditions; dispositionalist accounts of counterfactuals, if they allow for non-vacuous counterpossibles, require that there are such impossible dispositions. I argue, first, that there are in (...) fact no impossible dispositions; and second, that the dispositionalist can nevertheless acknowledge the non-vacuity of some counterpossibles. The strategy in the second part is one of ‘divide and conquer’ that is not confined to the dispositionalist: it consists in arguing that counterpossibles, when non-vacuous, are read epistemically and are therefore outside the purview of a dispositional account. (shrink)

This paper surveys recent "new actualist" approaches to modality that do without possible worlds and locate modality squarely in the actual world. New actualist theories include essentialism and dispositionalism about modality, each of which can come in different varieties. The commonalities and differences between these views, as well as their shared motivations, are layed out.

This paper explores the prospects for dispositional accounts of abilities. According to so-called new dispositionalists, an agent has the ability to Φ iff they have a disposition to Φ when trying to Φ. We show that the new dispositionalism is beset by some problems that also beset its predecessor, the conditional analysis of abilities, and bring up some further problems. We then turn to a different approach, which links abilities not to motivational states but to the notion of success, and (...) consider ways of implementing that approach. Our results suggest that there are principled disanalogies between abilities and disposition which prevent any dispositional account of abilities from succeeding. (shrink)

Inspired both by our ordinary understanding of the world and by reflection on science, anti-Humeanism is a growing trend in metaphysics. Anti-Humeans reject the Lewisian doctrine of Humean supervenience that the world is “just one little thing and then another”, and argue instead that dispositions, powers, or capacities provide connection and activity in nature. But how exactly are we to understand the shared commitment of this anti-Humean movement? I argue that this kind of anti-Humeanism, at its most general level, is (...) to be understood neither as a view about ontology nor about fundamentality, but rather as a specific claim about what explains what. (shrink)

According to the variety of evidence thesis items of evidence from independent lines of investigation are more confirmatory, ceteris paribus, than, for example, replications of analogous studies. This thesis is known to fail (Bovens and Hartmann; Claveau). However, the results obtained by Bovens and Hartmann only concern instruments whose evidence is either fully random or perfectly reliable; instead, for Claveau, unreliability is modelled as deterministic bias. In both cases, the unreliable instrument delivers totally irrelevant information. We present a model that (...) formalizes both reliability and unreliability differently. Our instruments either are reliable, but affected by random error, or are biased but not deterministically so.Bovens and Hartmann’s results are counter-intuitive in that in their model a long series of consistent reports from the same instrument does not raise suspicion of ‘too-good-to-be-true’ evidence. This happens precisely because they contemplate neither the role of systematic bias, nor unavoidable random error of reliable instruments. In our model, the variety of evidence thesis fails as well, but the area of failure is considerably smaller than for Bovens and Hartmann and Claveau, and holds for (the majority of) realistic cases (that is, where biased instruments are very biased). The essential mechanism that triggers variety of evidence thesis failure is the rate of false to true positives for the two kinds of instruments. Our emphasis is on modelling beliefs about sources of knowledge and their role in hypothesis confirmation in interaction with dimensions of evidence, such as variety and consistency. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, modal epistemology has turned its attention to ordinary modal knowledge. This paper brings to the fore a neglected but central form of ordinary modal knowledge: knowledge of agentive modality, and in particular of our own abilities, which I call ‘ability knowledge’. I argue that modal epistemology as it is does not account for ability knowledge, by looking at the most promising candidate theories: perception-based, counterfactual-based, and similarity-based modal epistemologies. I then outline a more promising epistemology (...) for our ability knowledge, which relies on the experience of our own agency, and draw out some lessons for modal epistemology in general. (shrink)

Male aggression against females in primates, including humans, often functions to control female sexuality to the male’s reproductive advantage. A comparative, evolutionary perspective is used to generate several hypotheses to help to explain cross-cultural variation in the frequency of male aggression against women. Variables considered include protection of women by kin, male-male alliances and male strategies for guarding mates and obtaining adulterous matings, and male resource control. The relationships between male aggression against women and gender ideologies, male domination of women, (...) and female sexuality are also considered. (shrink)

Dispositionalism about modality is the view that metaphysical modality is a matter of the dispositions possessed by actual objects. In a recent paper, David Yates has raised an important worry about the formal adequacy of dispositionalism. This paper responds to Yates’s worry by developing a reply that Yates discusses briefly but dismisses as ad hoc: an appeal to a ’plenitude of powers’ including such powers as the necessarily always manifested power for 2+2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} (...) \begin{document}$$2+2$$\end{document} to be 4. I argue that the reply is not ad hoc at all, by defending the metaphysics of dispositions that should underly it. I then argue, first, that a proper understanding of dispositions’ degrees provides us with an argument for such necessarily always manifested dispositions; second, that all the natural attempts to block that argument can be resisted without being ad hoc; and third, that pragmatic considerations explain our intuitive resistance to the ascription of necessarily always manifested dispositions. Dispositionalism can be formally adequate after all. (shrink)

Manley and Wasserman (2008) have provided a convincing case against analyses of dispositions in terms of one conditional, and a very interesting positive proposal that links any disposition to a ‘suitable proportion’ of a particular set of precise conditionals. I focus on their positive proposal and ask just how precise those conditionals are to be. I argue that, contrary to what Manley and Wasserman imply in their paper, they must be maximally specific, describing in their antecedents complete centred worlds. This (...) suggests a natural semantics for dispositional expressions, which I briefly explore to argue that it lacks uniformity. I end by suggesting a variation on Manley and Wasserman's view which would preserve uniformity, though at the cost of some new puzzling questions. (shrink)

Alexander Bird puts forward a modest version of anti-Humeanism about the non-fundamental, by providing an argument for the existence of a certain select class of non-fundamental but sparse dispositions: those that have an evolutionary function. I argue that his argument over-generates, so much so that the sparse–abundant distinction, and with it the tenet of his anti-Humean view, becomes obsolete. I suggest an alternative way of understanding anti-Humeanism in the non-fundamental realm, one which is not concerned with the existence of sparse (...) properties but with explanatory relations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Amidst trends that emphasize languishing patterns in teen mental health, there is a bright spot: social science research indicates that adolescents who develop relationships with adult mentors demonstrate increased signs of flourishing. This social science research on mentors, though limited to school performance outcome goals, offers a lifeline to character educators. I offer a theoretical framework based on Aristotelian principles, informed by anecdotal case studies of authentic moral dilemmas that emerged from the direct experiences of mentees, to suggest a (...) framework to explain why adolescents with adult mentors have an advantage. Patterns of conversation in trusted mentoring relationships developed over time, and in a school context that provides sufficient professional development for mentors, support the youth: (1) to advance in practical wisdom (phronesis) by honing skills for emotional regulation as well as cognitive skills to recognize goods in conflict and (2) to learn how to engage in civic friendship through these friendships of inequality with mentors. (shrink)

How should biological behaviour be modelled? A relatively new approach is to investigate problems in neuroethology by building physical robot models of biological sensorimotor systems. The explication and justification of this approach are here placed within a framework for describing and comparing models in the behavioural and biological sciences. First, simulation models – the representation of a hypothesis about a target system – are distinguished from several other relationships also termed “modelling” in discussions of scientific explanation. Seven dimensions on which (...) simulation models can differ are defined and distinctions between them discussed: 1. Relevance: whether the model tests and generates hypotheses applicable to biology. 2. Level: the elemental units of the model in the hierarchy from atoms to societies. 3. Generality: the range of biological systems the model can represent. 4. Abstraction: the complexity, relative to the target, or amount of detail included in the model. 5. Structural accuracy: how well the model represents the actual mechanisms underlying the behaviour. 6. Performance match: to what extent the model behaviour matches the target behaviour. 7. Medium: the physical basis by which the model is implemented. No specific position in the space of models thus defined is the only correct one, but a good modelling methodology should be explicit about its position and the justification for that position. It is argued that in building robot models biological relevance is more effective than loose biological inspiration; multiple levels can be integrated; that generality cannot be assumed but might emerge from studying specific instances; abstraction is better done by simplification than idealisation; accuracy can be approached through iterations of complete systems; that the model should be able to match and predict target behaviour; and that a physical medium can have significant advantages. These arguments reflect the view that biological behaviour needs to be studied and modelled in context, that is, in terms of the real problems faced by real animals in real environments. Key Words: animal behaviour; levels; models; neuroethology; realism; robotics; simulation. (shrink)

Essays by Jurgen Habermas on truth, objectivity, normativity, naturalism, and realism after the linguistic turn.

In this thesis, I develop a nonreductive and general conception of potentiality, and explore the prospects of a realist account of possibility based on this account of potentiality. Potentialities are properties of individual objects; they include dispositions such as fragility and abilities such as the ability to play the piano. Potentialities are individuated by their manifestation alone. In order to provide a unified account of potentialities, I argue in chapter 2 that dispositions, contrary to philosophical orthodoxy, are best understood in (...) terms only of their manifestations (as disposi- tions to ...), rather than in terms of a stimulus and a manifestation condition (as dispositions to ... if ...). Chapter 3 provides some preliminary motivation for a nonreductive and gen- eral account of potentiality, and chapter 4 develops such an account. The guiding question is how far the notion of potentiality can be extended from the initial ex- amples of familiar dispositions and abilities, and it is argued that it can be extended very far. Various features of potentialities are explored, among them extrinsicality, iterations of potentiality, and the behaviour of potentiality with regard to logical equivalence. In chapter 5, the account is set to work in providing the outlines and a defense of a potentiality-based account of possibility. The basic idea of such an account is that it is possible that p just in case some thing has a potentiality for p. The account is defended against the objection that there may not be enough potential- ities to ground all the possibilities that there are. Finally, in chapter 6, a logic of potentiality is formulated and the logic of possibility derived from it, showing that the potentiality-based account of possibility is formally adequate: it provides pos- sibility with the formal features that modal logicians have studied. I conclude that the proposed account of possibility is a promising research programme. (shrink)

: The main threads of Emmanuel Levinas's theory of ethics, developed in his philosophical works, Totality and Infinity (1969), and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1998), instruct that ethics require transcendence of being and nature, which he describes in terms of a transcendence of animality to the human. This apparent devaluation of the nonhuman would seem to preclude the development of Levinasian environmental ethics. However, a deconstructive reading of Levinas recognizes a subtext that interrupts the main threads of his (...) argument running against the inclusion of nonhuman others in ethics. Through a critical reconstructive reading of Levinas, I develop an ethic extraneous to Levinas's transcendent ethics, an ethic outside his "otherwise than being.". (shrink)

This paper responds to the contributions by Alexander Bird, Nathan Wildman, David Yates, Jennifer McKitrick, Giacomo Giannini & Matthew Tugby, and Jennifer Wang. I react to their comments on my 2015 book Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality, and in doing so expands on some of the arguments and ideas of the book.

Against the background of recent developments in neuroscience, the paper shows how, for Hegel, the theoretical, practical and evaluative functions of the mind are grounded in something like a natural normativity, based on the interaction of the body's inner world with the outer world. These forms of organic homeostasis are the basis for further kinds and levels of norms, and deviations from these norms, which result in mental pathologies, provide insights into the complexity of spirit.

A consideration of efforts to explain religion naturalistically, including a range of recent cognitive-evolutionary approaches. The book also examines recent efforts to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious teachings.

Steven French proposes a vindication of “scientifically disinterested” metaphysics that leaves little room to its original ambitions. He claims that as a discipline that looks to find out truths about the world, it is untenable; and that rather, its vindication lies in its use as a “toolbox” of concepts for a philosophical discipline that does have a claim at getting us closer to truth—the philosophy of science, and more specifically of physics. I respond to both his main claims. The first (...) claim, I argue, neglects what I call “archaeological” metaphysics, which tries to impose some order on phenomena by “digging deeper” from the less to the more fundamental, or from the less to the more abstract questions. The second claim imposes a hierarchical relation between metaphysics and philosophy of science which should, I argue, be replaced with a more egalitarian picture of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that trust is an important aspect of social reality, one that realist social theory has paid little attention to but which clearly resonates with a realist social ontology. Furthermore, the emergence of an interest in trust in specific subject fields such as organization theory indicates the growing significance of issues of trust as market liberalism has developed. As such, the emergence of an interest in trust provides support for Archer's characterisation of late modernity in The (...) Reflexive Imperative as a period of heterogeneity and greater incongruity. Commenting on this provides an opportunity to discuss the issue of habit in relation to trust and also the importance of the analysis of integration as a means to explain problems of trust. The commentary draws on examples from finance. (shrink)

Company directors and executives seek legal advice outside the company on a regular basis. This advice is meant to be given within the context of the lawyers’ professional obligations and ethical practise. What clients may not appreciate is there is often a conflict of interest between the lawyers’ professional and ethical concerns and the legal advice business. If lawyers follow their business interests, their advice may be incomplete especially in relation to the ethical consequences of that advice. This could lead (...) to a compromise of the clients’ commercial interests and even raise doubts in relation to the legality of the clients’ proposed course of action. (shrink)

Background: Reliance on moral principles and professional codes has given nurses direction for ethical decision-making. However, rational models do not capture the emotion and reality of human choice. Intuitive response must be considered. Research purpose: Supporting intuition as an important ethical decision-making tool for nurses, the aim of this study was to determine relationships between intuition, years of worked nursing experience, and perceived ethical decision-making ability. A secondary aim explored the relationships between rational thought to years of worked nursing experience (...) and perceived ethical decision-making ability. Research design and context: A non-experimental, correlational research design was used. The Rational Experiential Inventory measured intuition and rational thought. The Clinical Decision Making in Nursing Scale measured perceived ethical decision-making ability. Pearson’s r was the statistical method used to analyze three primary and two secondary research questions. Participants: A sample of 182 emergency nurses was recruited electronically through the Emergency Nurses Association. Participants were self-selected. Ethical considerations: Approval to conduct this study was obtained by the Adelphi University Institutional Review Board. Findings: A relationship between intuition and perceived ethical decision-making ability ( r =.252, p =.001) was a significant finding in this study. Discussion: This study is one of the first of this nature to make a connection between intuition and nurses’ ethical decision-making ability. Conclusion: This investigation contributes to a broader understanding of the different thought processes used by emergency nurses to make ethical decisions. (shrink)

The paper considers the legal tools that have been developed in German pharmaceutical regulation as a result of the precautionary attitude inaugurated by the Contergan decision. These tools are the notion of “well-founded suspicion”, which attenuates the requirements for safety intervention by relaxing the requirement of a proved causal connection between danger and source, and the introduction of the reversal of proof burden in liability norms. The paper focuses on the first and proposes seeing the precautionary principle as an instance (...) of the requirement that one should maximise expected utility. In order to maximise expected utility certain probabilities are required and it is argued that objective Bayesianism offers the most plausible means to determine the optimal decision in cases where evidence supports diverging choices. (shrink)

Artificial insemination and other fertilization techniques are today considered central to the history of reproductive medicine. The medical treatment of infertile couples, however, constitutes just a small part of the whole story of artificial fertilization. Lazzaro Spallanzani in particular, said to have been the inventor of artificial insemination, did not develop this method for medical purposes. He belonged to a generation of naturalists to whom artificial insemination was part of a heterogeneous series of investigations that were undertaken to explore the (...) natural history of animal generation. Questions concerning conception, the role of the gametes, the definition of species, the production of hybrids or livestock breeding were all included in these investigations. Thus, no one strain of thought, nor single set of ideas or interests, entirely shaped the development of artificial fertilization. (shrink)

In 1971 Jürgen Habermas delivered the Gauss Lectures at Princeton University. These pivotal lectures, entitled "Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociology," anticipate The Theory of Communicative Action and offer an excellent introduction to it. They show why Habermas considers the linguistic turn in social philosophy to be necessary and contain the first formulation of formal pragmatics, including an important discussion of truth.In these lectures and two additional essays, Habermas outlines an intersubjective approach to social theory that takes the concepts (...) of meaning and communication to be central. In doing so, he situates his project relative to other influential accounts of how meaning is constituted, in particular those of Edmund Husserl, Wilfrid Sellars, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He examines the nature of social interaction and its connection to communication, developing a linguistic conception of convention and intentionality. He also offers an account of social and individual pathologies using the concept of systematically distorted communication. Taken together, these analyses contribute significantly to current debates in the philosophy of action and language. (shrink)