In the legal domain, ontologies enjoy quite some reputation as a way to model normative knowledge about laws and jurisprudence. This paper describes the methodology followed when developing the ontology used by the second version of the prototype Iuriservice, a web-based intelligent FAQ for judicial use. This modeling methodology has had two important requirements: on the one hand, the ontology needed to be extracted from a repository of professional judicial knowledge (containing nearly 800 questions regarding daily practice). Thus, the construction (...) of ontologies of professional judicial knowledge demanded the description of this knowledge as it is perceived by the judge. On the other hand, due to the distributiveness of the environment, there was a need for controlled discussion and traceability of the arguments used in favor or against the introduction of a concept X as part of the domain ontology. This paper presents the Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge (OPJK), extracted manually from the selection of relevant terms from judicial practice questions and modeled according to the DILIGENT methodology. We will show that DILIGENT has proved to be a methodology that facilitates the ontology engineering in a distributed environment, although appropriate tool support needs to be developed. (shrink)

Chapter 9 - Synthesis: Human Universals and Human Sciences -- Bibliography -- Index.

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism (...) and dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.

[The teaching of logic and psychology at Austrian high schools].

Johannes de Sacroboscos (c. 1195–c. 1256) De sphaera, eine Einführung in die Kosmologie aus dem 13. Jahrhundert, war mit über 320 Drucken das am häufigsten edierte, kommentierte oder adaptierte astronomisch-kosmologische Handbuch der Frühen Neuzeit. Während die Rezeption und Verbreitung dieses Werkes im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert bereits vielfach untersucht wurden ist bisher übersehen worden, dass diese vermeintlich unproblematischen Sphaera-Textbücher auch vielfach Gegenstand der katholischen Zensur wurden, obwohl sie gerade eine Kosmologie enthielten, die Katholiken als Bollwerk gegen den aufkommenden Kopernikanismus betrachteten. (...) Vorliegender Aufsatz untersucht erstmals die Dynamik und Motive der zahlreichen präventiven und posthumen Zensuren der römischen und iberischen Index- und Zensurorgane mit Bezug auf diesen Kosmologietraktat. Von protestantischen Autoren verfasste Kommentare zur Sphaera waren zwar prinzipiell verdächtig, wurden aber selten pauschal verboten. Vielmehr wurden sie aufgrund ihres wissenschaftlichen Wertes meist genehmigt, nachdem geringfügige, theologiebezogene Expurgationen durchgeführt worden waren. Der Kommentar (1550) des katholischen Autors Mauro da Firenze (1493–1556) wurde hingegen wiederholt und prinzipiell verboten, weil er theologisch bedenkliche Gedanken enthielt. Die hier präsentierte Fallstudie soll zum einen die Wissensdynamik der frühneuzeitlichen Sphaera-Tradition aus einem neuen Blickwinkel beleuchten, und zwar dem der Buchzensur. Zum anderen gewährt ein buchbezogener Längsschnitt Einblicke in die Ideologie und Praktiken der katholischen Buchzensur, wodurch auch die bekanntermaßen problematische Beziehung von Wissen und Religion in der vormodernen Zeit im Lichte einer Konfessionalisierung der Wissenschaften erscheint. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 4 Seiten: 463-464.

Process reliabilism -- Virtue reliabilism: justified belief -- Virtue reliabilism: knowledge -- Knowledge first virtue reliabilism -- The competition -- The safety dilemma -- Lottery cases.

We outline a dual systems approach to temporal cognition, which distinguishes between two cognitive systems for dealing with how things unfold over time – a temporal updating system and a temporal reasoning system – of which the former is both phylogenetically and ontogenetically more primitive than the latter, and which are at work alongside each other in adult human cognition. We describe the main features of each of the two systems, the types of behavior the more primitive temporal updating system (...) can support, and the respects in which it is more limited than the temporal reasoning system. We then use the distinction between the two systems to interpret findings in comparative and developmental psychology, arguing that animals operate only with a temporal updating system and that children start out doing so too, before gradually becoming capable of thinking and reasoning about time. After this, we turn to adult human cognition and suggest that our account can also shed light on a specific feature of our everyday thinking about time that has been the subject of debate in the philosophy of time, which consists in a tendency to think about the nature of time itself in a way that appears ultimately self-contradictory. We conclude by considering the topic of intertemporal choice, and argue that drawing the distinction between temporal updating and temporal reasoning is also useful in the context of characterising two distinct mechanisms for delaying gratification. (shrink)

Das 12. Jahrhundert gilt als eine Epoche gro.

A number of recent allegations of scientific misconduct in Germany have led to judicial proceedings. Two examples are analyzed in depth, showing evidence for mutual incompatibilities between the legal system and the scientific system. In particular, it seems doubtful whether basic rules of good scientific practice are adequately and consistently taken into account by the courts when assessing the burden of proof. Strengths and weaknesses of some alternatives to judicial proceedings in such cases are discussed.

This article analyzes how aesthetic experience arises. Referring to Pina Bauschs Kontakthof, I examine the following issues: performance and performativity, Kontakthof as play, comic: disappointed expectations, missing gestures, clothes and objects as actants, music and resonance, gender battle still in old age, repetition and ritualization, rhythm, aesthetic experience through mimetic processes.

Intergenerational justice not only requires the adoption of best practices and policies; but also the prevention and repression of deleterious and morally blameworthy human behaviour which have severe impacts on the long-term health; safety and means of survival of groups of individuals. While many international crimes have indirect consequences on the well-being of present and future generations; it cannot be said that existing international criminal law is currently well-placed to directly and clearly protect intergenerational rights. As such; the development of (...) a new type of international crime; crimes against future generations; may be a promising avenue for implementing intergenerational justice. Such a crime would penalise acts or conduct that amount to serious violations of existing international law regarding economic; social and cultural rights or the environment. (shrink)

Uhland’s poem has found fame as a litmus test in philosophical debates about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Like many works of art, the poem is dynamically produced in its effort to resolve a fundamental conflict. The poem’s conflict arises from the difficulty to connect the count’s life and his daydream. In the end, the poem as a whole serves to embody a critique of the capacity of a daydream to recover memories faithfully. Wittgenstein makes two remarks in a 1917 letter to Paul (...) Engelmann that pertain to the poem. They are to be read in keeping with a resolute reading (James Conant, Cora Diamond) of the Tractatus; Wittgenstein’s first remark imitates the very movement of thought we find in the poem – and in doing so Wittgenstein makes good on his claim to talk about the poem: “the unutterable is, – unutterably – contained in what is uttered.” His second remark has, thus far, played no role in literature – Wittgenstein speaks of Engelmann’s dreams, yet he does not explicitly formulate the poem’s bearing on them. Here, too, he reenacts, in the formulation of his remark, the core conflict of the poem. My interpretation of the poem, finally, distinguishes three interpretive approaches (symbolistic, realistic, critical) in order to capture the understanding of the poem embodied in Wittgenstein's remarks. (shrink)

Guidelines recommend a ‘do-not-resuscitate’ code status for inpatients in which cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempts are considered futile because of low probability of survival with good neurological outcome. We retrospectively assessed the prevalence of DNR code status and its association with presumed CPR futility defined by the Good Outcome Following Attempted Resuscitation score and the Clinical Frailty Scale in patients hospitalised in the Divisions of Internal Medicine and Traumatology/Orthopedics at the University Hospital of Basel between September 2018 and June 2019. The definition (...) of presumed CPR futility was met in 467 of 2889 patients. 866 patients had a DNR code status. In a regression model adjusted for age, gender, main diagnosis, nationality, language and religion, presumed CPR futility was associated with a higher likelihood of a DNR code status. In the subgroup of patients with presumed futile CPR, 144 of 467 had a full code status, which was independently associated with younger age, male gender, non-Christian religion and non-Swiss citizenship. We found a significant proportion of hospitalised patients to have a full code status despite the fact that CPR had to be considered futile according to an established definition. Whether these decisions were based on patient preferences or whether there was a lack of patient involvement in decision-making needs further investigation. (shrink)

The conflict about the fragments of "Apologia or Defense for the Rational Reverers of God" by the Hamburg scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus and the Counter-propositions by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing caused an uproar in the Lutheran theological world of the 18th century. Would this form of Christianity, rooted in the tradition of the Lutheran Reformation, be superseded by the Enlightenment if literary, historical and religious-philosophical criticism of the Bible were now allowed? Lessing presents his solution of the problem in Axioms, which (...) this book places in the context of his overall thought. (shrink)

Both in the fourth book of Cicero’s De signis (Verr. 2,4) and in the fourteenth book of Silius Italicus’ Punica, there are descriptions of the city of Syracuse at important points of the texts. In this paper, both descriptions are combined and for the first time thoroughly related. I discuss form and content of the accounts, show their functions in their oratorical and epic contexts and consider their similarities. The most important facets, where the descriptions coincide in, seem to be (...) their link to Marcellus’ conquest in the Second Punic War, the resulting precarious beauty of the city and the specifically Roman perspective on which these ekphraseis are based. (shrink)

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

In science and philosophy, a relatively demanding notion of understanding is of central interest: an epistemic subject understands a subject matter by means of a theory. This notion can be explicated in a way which resembles JTB analyses of knowledge. The explication requires that the theory answers to the facts, that the subject grasps the theory, that she is committed to the theory and that the theory is justified for her. In this paper, we focus on the justification condition and (...) argue that it can be analyzed with reference to the idea of a reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Autonomy and ethics are related to each other in complex ways. The paper starts by distinguishing and characterizing three basic dimensions of this relation. It proceeds by arguing for the compatibility of moral realism with a due respect for human autonomy. Nevertheless, supernaturalist moral realism seems to pose a special challenge for the autonomy of ethics as a self-standing normative realm. The paper ends with some considerations on the role of divine authority both in metaethics and in the general theory (...) of value. (shrink)