Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue (...) that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail. (shrink)

Introduction : facets of the alien -- The human as a liminal being -- Between pathos and response -- Response to the alien -- Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness -- Thresholds of attention -- Between cultures.

This chapter investigates the idea of collective epistemic commonality suggested by Charles Taylor's example, and contrasts it with a distributive notion of epistemic commonality. It describes a number of accounts of collective epistemic commonality, and then argues that, contrary to what Taylor suggests, conversation is not constitutive of collective epistemic commonality as such, but rather presupposes basic forms of collective epistemic commonality. Taylor's remarks indicate that understanding the consensus is insufficient as whatever proposition people rationally and openly accept in conversation. (...) It is suggested that joint attitudes are irreducible, relational, and pre-reflective, and that such attitudes are joint, in the respect that the participants are aware of themselves as a ‘we’. Highly inferential beliefs need some form of communication, and are probably really some form of joint commitment. (shrink)

In his critique of rational choice theory, Amartya Sen claims that committed agents do not (or not exclusively) pursue their own goals. This claim appears to be nonsensical since even strongly heteronomous or altruistic agents cannot pursue other people's goals without making them their own. It seems that self-goal choice is constitutive of any kind of agency. In this paper, Sen's radical claim is defended. It is argued that the objection raised against Sen's claim holds only with respect to individual (...) goals. Not all goals, however, are individual goals; there are shared goals, too. Shared goals are irreducible to individual goals, as the argument from we-derivativeness and the argument from normativity show. It is further claimed that an adequate account of committed action defies both internalism and externalism about practical reason. (shrink)

We discuss conceptual change and progress within mathematics, in particular how tools, structural concepts and representations are transferred between fields that appear to be unconnected or remote from each other. The theoretical background is provided by the frame concept, which is used in linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence to model how explicitly given information is combined with expectations deriving from background knowledge. In mathematical proofs, we distinguish two kinds of frames, namely structural frames and ontological frames. The interaction between (...) both kinds of frames can drive mathematical interpretation. We first discuss two examples where structural frames (formulaic notation) drive ontological development (the discovery or exploration of mathematical objects). The development of Boole’s Boolean algebra may at first appear as a metaphorical treatment of the (then) new area of logic. In the analysis, we discuss how different (aspects of) certain algebraic frames change in the transfer, how arising difficulties are solved and overall argue that Boole uses the numerical algebra frame as a research template for the discovery of a system for calculations in logic. Following Ifrah, we analyse the discovery of zero as an extension to the number ontology as driven by the development of notation. Both structural and ontological frames are extended and simplified as notation progresses. Finally, we discuss two examples from infinite combinatorics, viz. topological graph theory, and one foundational issue. In both examples, the two simultaneous frames about one object are maintained independently. They motivate different research questions, but may also fruitfully interact: shifting between multiple synchronously maintained perspectives acts as a motor of innovation. The analysis shows how a frame-based approach allows to model how different perspectives drive mathematical innovation because they highlight different aspects, questions and heuristics. (shrink)

Kritisiert wird gegenwärtig viel - und auch Kritik wird kritisiert. In dieser Situation sucht dieser Sammelband auszuweisen, wie in einer christlichen Sozialethik Kritik betrieben wird: Sie zielt auf die Kritik der Unvernunft der die Menschen bestimmenden, zugleich von Menschen geschaffenen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft- und dies im Interesse an vernünftigeren Ordnungen ihres Zusammenlebens. Gesellschaftskritik als Vollzug praktischer Rationalität gibt es freilich nicht ohne Herrschaftskritik und nicht ohne Kritik von Ausschluss und Subalternität. Ausdrücklich wird in diesem Band der neutrale Vollzug »der Vernunft« (...) ausgeschlossen; stattdessen wird die in der eigenen Gesellschaftskritik vollzogene praktische Rationalität normativ grundiert.Mit Beiträgen vonMichelle Becka, Bernhard Emunds, Johannes Eurich, Gisela Kubon-Gilke, Torsten Meireis, Matthias Möhring-Hesse. (shrink)

Die Beiträge zur Altertumskunde enthalten Monographien, Sammelbände, Editionen, Übersetzungen und Kommentare zu Themen aus den Bereichen Klassische, Mittel- und Neulateinische Philologie, Alte Geschichte, Archäologie, Antike Philosophie sowie Nachwirken der Antike bis in die Neuzeit. Dadurch leistet die Reihe einen umfassenden Beitrag zur Erschließung klassischer Literatur und zur Forschung im gesamten Gebiet der Altertumswissenschaften.

We show when and how the principles of efficiency and equality might come together and develop a fairness compensation test. A simple graphical analysis is applied. If the faimess compensation test fails, efficiency and justice cannot be fully connected and a wedge between econornic and faimess principles remains. We discuss how important this wedge might be and argue that there does not exist a principle of systematic antinomy between efficiency and faimess.

Models are one of the main instruments in scientific research. Disciplines have developed a different understanding of the notion, function and purpose of models. We thus need a systematic approach in order to understand, to build and to use models. This book gives an insight into the disciplinary modelling know-howand is a starting point to develop a general model approach that generalises and combines for an interdisciplinary use.

Creative association is inherent and essential to creativity and insight. Here we utilised a Chinese compound Remote Associates Task (cRAT) to identify the potential impact of word order (i.e., solution position hereinafter) and word frequency on creative association across two behavioural experiments. Experiment 1 identified the effects of (a) word order and word frequency on cRAT-induced association without considering the specific strategies used during solving such problems and (b) their interaction not only on performance in solving the cRAT, including solution (...) time and accuracy, but also on difficulty rating. Following a coarse-to-fine approach, Experiment 2 examined the effect of both factors on creative association determined according to each participant’s trial-by-trial reports regarding insight solution strategies. Main effects of word order and word frequency, and a two-way interaction, were found on the accuracy and self-rated difficulty. These findings shed light on creative association, multiply-constrained problem solving and constructing compounds. (shrink)

"Im Rahmen der technikphilosophischen, ethnologischen wie auch medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte über die Handlungsmacht der Dinge ist es zu einer Konjunktur von Ontologien gekommen, die jedoch das traditionelle Konzept der Ontologie dekonstruiert bzw. verschiebt. Der Beitrag folgt dieser Verschiebung der Ontologie, die Medien und mediale Artefakte nicht mehr als Substanzen denkt, sondern als Verkettungen von Praktiken und Operationen, die diese Medien-Dinge allererst generieren. Nach ›operativen Ontologien‹ zu fragen bedeutet, nach den konkreten ontischen Operationen zu fragen, die allererst ontologische Unterscheidungen hervorbringen (...) – z. B. zwischen Form und Materie, Bild und Gegenstand, Ding und Prozess, Figur und Grund. Diese ontischen Operationen bilden den Kern dessen, was man Kulturtechniken nennt. Anhand von beispielhaften Hybridobjekten aus dem Bereich der material culture des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit zeigt der Beitrag, wie dies konkret zu verstehen ist. The debate on the agency of objects, lead by philosophy, ethnology as well as cultural and media studies, has triggered a boom of ontologies, deconstructing the traditional concept of ontology. The contribution follows this shift of ontology, which no longer conceives of the media and media artifacts as substances, but as concatenations of practices and operations that are generated by media objects in the first place. To ask for ‘operational ontologies’ means to ask for the concrete ontical operations which first of all produce onto- logical distinctions – e. g. between form and matter, image and object, thing and process, figure and background. These ontical operations form the core of what we call cultural techniques. The contribution illustrates and explains this thesis with reference to hybrid objects from the material culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. ". (shrink)

Joining insights from social science and philosophy, this book offers a nuanced view on the discourse of evil, which has been on the rise in the West in recent years. Exploring the famous 'Pear Theft' episode in St Augustine's Confessions, it looks beyond the theological implications of the event to focus instead on the secular insights that it offers when the event is placed in the context of social thought. With attention to Augustine's lengthy reflections on a seemingly marginal episode, (...) the author contends that it is possible to discern the elements of a convincing account of intentional evil action, the Pear Theft representing a case of joint radical improvisation that lacks collective deliberation. As such, a new perspective emerges on familiar and more intuitive forms of evil in joint action that involve group identification and institutional action. Evil in Joint Action will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in ethics, collective action and concepts of evil. (shrink)

Bands -- Stripes -- Ripples -- Circles -- Spots -- Grains -- Forks -- Branches -- Webs -- Curves -- Ribbons -- Swirls -- Spikes -- Grids -- Cracks.

We further develop a previously introduced method of constructing forcing notions with the help of morasses. There are two new results: (1) If there is a simplified (ω 1 , 1)-morass, then there exists a ccc forcing of size ω 1 that adds an ω 2 -Suslin tree. (2) If there is a simplified (ω 1 , 2)-morass, then there exists a ccc forcing of size ω 1 that adds a 0-dimensional Hausdorff topology τ on ω 3 which has spread (...) s(τ) = ω 1 . While (2) is the main result of the paper, (1) is only an improvement of a previous result, which is based on a simple observation. Both forcings preserve GCH. To show that the method can be changed to produce models where CH fails, we give an alternative construction of Koszmider's model in which there is a chain 〈X α | α < ω 2 〉 such that X α ⊆ ω 1 , X β — X α is finite and X α — X β has size ω 1 for all β < α < ω 2. (shrink)

O presente artigo parte da ideia de que o conceito conservativo-conservador de sustentabilidade (das florestas, por exemplo) deve ser combinado com a ideia inovadora do ponto de vista tecnológico-económico de desenvolvimento sustentável de modo a formar uma ideia reguladora de desenvolvimento sustentável de acordo com um modelo aberto. O artigo defende que o desenvolvimento tecnológico pode do ponto de vista cultural e institucional ser organizado de uma forma mais sustentável, muito embora a sustentabilidade não tenha ainda sido alcançada tanto do (...) ponto de vista global como do regional Para o autor do artigo, o conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável não é umo ideologia, muito embora a mera consideração anti-capitalista do problema da protecção do ambiente seja passivel de ser considerada ideológica. Segundo o artigo, a protecção da sobrevivencia não deve ser vista em oposição ao desenvolvimento sustentável, antes sim como um ponto de partida para a busca de estratégias e caminhos de sustentabilidade no desenvolvimento. Uma ética do futuro tampouco constitui modelo unilateral relativo às questões de etica ambiental. Segundo o autor, porém, todos os componentes do modelo de desenvolvimento sustentdvel tornados em conjunto resultam numa heuristica de busca pragmáticamente suficiente e adequada para todo e qualquer processo de desenvolvimento sustentável. /// The conservative-conserving concepts of sustainability (offorestry, f. e.) should be combined with the innovative technological-economical idea of sustainable development to a regulative idea of sustainable development according to an open model. Technological development could institutionally-culturally be organised in a more sustainable way, even though sustainability has neither globally nor regionally been reached yet. The concept of sustainability is no ideology, while a simple anticapitalistic view of the conservation problem appears to be ideological itself. Protection of survival is not to be seen as an opposition to sustainable development, but as a starting point of search-strategies for paths of sustainable development. Future-Ethics is also not an explicit search-pattern for questions of ecological ethics. The combined components of the model of sustainable development result in a pragmatically sufficient Search-Heuristics for sustainable development. (shrink)

Las grandes religiones monoteístas –Judaísmo, Cristianismo e Islam– coinciden en anunciar el amor de Dios a los hombres, y reclaman el amor de los hombres a Dios y al prójimo. Sin embargo, una breve mirada a la praxis de estas religiones hace dudar de si este amor no es una mera afirmación, mientras que en la historia y en el presente se impusieron y se imponen las pretensiones exclusivas de verdad mediante el ejercicio de la violencia en contra de los (...) adeptos de la propia religión (“internamente”) y, en especial, en contra de los seguidores de otras religiones (“externamente”) para así alcanzar el poder político. Ahora bien, hay que distinguir entre el justo poder soberano de Dios y la violencia lesiva, además de que el poder soberano de Dios, al igual que el concepto de Dios, no es el mismo en las tres grandes religiones monoteístas. En el Judaísmo domina Dios con amor y como rey; en el Cristianismo, con amor y como servidor; en el Islam, con amor y majestad. Aunque siempre el poder soberano es exclusivo de Dios y nunca se desea la violencia lesiva entre los hombres. Solo así el poder es constitutivo de la naturaleza interna de la religión, mas no de la relación entre las religiones o de las religiones con el mundo: “No hay coacción en la religión”. (shrink)

In this paper I consider metaphysical positions which I label as ‘perspectival’. A perspectivalist believes that some portion of reality cannot extend beyond what an appropriately characterised investigator or investigators can (in some sense) reveal about it. So a perspectivalist will be drawn to claim that a portion of reality is, in some sense, knowable. Many such positions appear to founder on the paradox of knowability. I aim to offer a solution to that paradox which can be adopted by any (...) perspectivalist, which involves no restriction on the claim of knowability and which allows certain sentences to be unknowable. The solution hinges on recognising that what is meant by ‘knowable’ will vary from one type of proposition to another and thus that characterising the modality involved in the notion in terms of possible worlds will be impossible. I thus offer a subjunctive conditional reading of that modality, a reading which, I claim, has the virtues just recounted. (shrink)

The article delineates the program of a praxeology of truth that allows for studying the dynamics and variability of truth in the sense of situated _doing truth_. It proposes a heuristic differentiation between »truth scenes« and »truth figures« that helps to analyze the emergence of theories of truth as well as that of specific truth cultures.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Rationalität der Metapher" verfügbar.

Neuf textes sur différents sujets philosophiques (la pensée de Diderot, Introduction à la philosophie de l'art, etc.) sont regroupés dans cet ouvrage et accompagnés d'une introduction d'une cinquantaine de pages sur ce philosophe et d'une bibliographie de ses oeuvres et des études sur ses oeuvres. [SDM].