Die in diesem Band vereinten Aufsätze spiegeln Brentanos späte Ansichten wieder; die Einleitung wurde für den allgemein philosophisch interessierten Leser konzipiert und behandelt Brentanos Theorie des Kontinuums, des Ursprungs des ...

"This book is the first of two volumes on belief and counterfactuals. It consists of six of a total of eleven chapters. The first volume is concerned primarily with questions in epistemology and is expository in parts. Among others, it provides an accessible introduction to belief revision and ranking theory. Ranking theory specifies how conditional beliefs should behave. It does not tell us why they should do so nor what they are. This book fills these two gaps. The consistency argument (...) tells us why conditional beliefs should obey the laws of ranking theory by showing them to be the means to attaining the end of holding true and informative beliefs. The conditional theory of conditional belief tells us what conditional beliefs are by specifying their nature in terms of non-conditional belief and counterfactuals. In addition, the book contains several novel arguments, accounts, and applications. These include an argument for the thesis that there are only hypothetical imperatives and no categorical imperatives; an account of the instrumentalist understanding of normativity, or rationality, according to which one ought to take the means to one's ends; as well as solutions to the problems of conceptual belief change, logical learning, and learning conditionals. A distinctive feature of the book is its unifying methodological approach: means-end philosophy. Means-end philosophy takes serious that philosophy is a normative discipline, and that philosophical problems are entangled with each other. It also explains the importance of logic to philosophy, without being a technical theory itself"--. (shrink)

Growing out of concerns for environment-development interlinkages expressed at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 1972, this volume is a compilation of edited versions of statements made at that conference and at the ...

Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand nebst Abhandlungen über Plotinus, Thomas von Aquin, Kant, Schopenhauer und Auguste Comte. Unveränderter Print-on-Demand-Nachdruck der 2. Auflage von 1968. Inhalt: Einleitung I. Die vier Phasen der Philosophie (1895) II. Plotinus (1876) III. Thomas von Aquin (1908) IV. Über Kants Kritik der Gottesbeweise (1911/12) V. Schopenhauer 1911/12) VI. Auguste Comte (1869) VII. Über voraussetzungslose Forschung (1901) Anmerkungen Brentanos zu den vier Phasen der Philosophie Anmerkungen des Herausgebers zum Gesamtwerk Namen- und Sachregister.

As cause we often specify an event the occurrence of which first guaranteed that of the effect. This notion is explicated in a framework of branching worlds in Sections I to V. VI and VII point out its close relations to the concept of an agent's bringing about an event. The topic of the last two sections is the distinction between causes and necessary circumstances. For this purpose conditionals are used, interpreted with respect to branching worlds without a similarity relation (...) between them. (shrink)

T × W logic is a combination of tense and modal logic for worlds or histories with the same time order. It is the basis for logics of causation, agency and conditionals, and therefore an important tool for philosophical logic. Semantically it has been defined, among others, by R. H. Thomason. Using an operator expressing truth in all worlds, first discussed by C. M. Di Maio and A. Zanardo, an axiomatization is given and its completeness proved via D. Gabbay’s irreflexivity (...) lemma. Given this lemma the proof is more or less straight forward. At the end an alternative axiomatization is sketched in which Di Maio’s and Zanardo’s operator is replaced by a version of “actually”. (shrink)

This paper revisits the main thoughts of the Filipino historian and social critic Renato Constantino on the role of education in the formation of a neocolonial and postcolonial consciousness. It suggests that Constantino’s critical stance towards education embodies a type of philosophizing about education that centers on the problematization of the language of instruction, on the rendering of voice to those in the margins of Philippine society, and on taking a critical stance about education itself. It suggests further that this (...) form of philosophizing about education and its instrumentalities is prospective of a Freirean liberating pedagogy that is inherently nonneutral, critical, dialogical, praxical, and transformative. (shrink)

A naturalistic account of the strengths and limitations of cladistic practice is offered. The success of cladistics is claimed to be largely rooted in the parsimony-implementing congruence test. Cladists may use the congruence test to iteratively refine assessments of homology, and thereby increase the odds of reliable phylogenetic inference under parsimony. This explanation challenges alternative views which tend to ignore the effects of parsimony on the process of character individuation in systematics. In a related theme, the concept of homeostatic property (...) cluster natural kinds is used to explain why cladistics is well suited to provide a traditional, verbal reference system for the evolutionary properties of species and clades. The advantages of more explicitly probabilistic approaches to phylogenetic inference appear to manifest themselves in situations where evolutionary homeostasis has for the most part broken down, and predictive classifications are no longer possible. (shrink)

Dieser Text beinhaltet nichts Neues. Nur hinlänglich Bekanntes, Erinnerungen an Gelesenes und Reflektiertes, vor allem zur Philosophie der Kunst mit ihrer zentrale Frage, was Kunst ist. Und eng damit verknüpft die Frage, was ein Kunstwerk ist und was einen Künstler und eine Künstlerin auszeichnet. In diesem Essay wird es aber nicht um die Kunst im Allgemeinen gehen, sondern um die abstrakte Kunst und die abstrakte Malerei im Besonderen. Was zeichnet sie aus und was ist ihr Wesen? Ist es die Freiheit?

The importance of the economic valuation of nature is frequently emphasised in the argument that more and better economic valuation will prevent the undervaluation and thereby the degradation of nature. The proponents of this ‘economic’ approach assume that rationality, human interaction and the nature of the good remain unchanged. However, the relationship between humans and nature necessarily undergoes change, and the biological and neurophysiological aspects of human nature must be considered to ensure the well-being and survival of humankind. In this (...) paper, I discuss the shortcomings of economic valuation with reference to the above objections, and present scenarios that illustrate the changing relationships between socio-ecological interconnectedness and the integrative capacity of institutions. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent explosion in the use of bottled water, this article—originally written for my NASTS conference presentation—will examine the rhetoric used by the bottled water industry and home purification system providers to affect the public’s idea of clean, pure, dirty, and polluted water. Bottlers argue that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides better regulation of bottled water than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could ever do for tap water, though the EPA and the FDA use basically the (...) same set of guidelines. The EPA and FDA definitions in terms of concentrations of specific substances are very different from the ideas of muddy or “dirty” water. This article will examine the impact of the public’s perception of good drinking water and the perception that if it is off the shelf, it is cleaner and tastier. (shrink)

From the perspective of Catholic moral theology, one of the most important topics in view of the tense relationship between law, ethics and religion is natural law. The first part of the present text tries to defend this type of theory, which goes back to antiquity, against the most important objections and to determine the contours of a contemporary form of natural law thinking. In the second part of the text, their practical importance is indicated using the example of the (...) current debate about the moral evaluation of suicide and suicide assistance as well as dealing with the phenomenon of so-called transgenderness. (shrink)

Democratic decision-making is often defended on grounds of the ‘wisdom of crowds’: decisions are more likely to be correct if they are based on many independent opinions, so a typical argument in social epistemology. But what does it mean to have independent opinions? Opinions can be probabilistically dependent (threatening the ‘wisdom of crowds’) even if individuals form their opinion in causal isolation from each other. We distinguish four probabilistic notions of opinion independence. Which of them holds depends on how individuals (...) are causally affected by environmental factors such as commonly perceived evidence. In a general theorem, we identify causal conditions guaranteeing each kind of opinion independence. These results have implications for whether and how ‘wisdom of crowds’ arguments are possible, and how truth-conducive institutions can be designed. (shrink)

This paper argues that applied ethics can itself be morally problematic. As illustrated by the case of Peter Singer’s criticism of social practice, morally loaded communication by applied ethicists can lead to protests, backlashes, and aggression. By reviewing the psychological literature on self-image, collective identity, and motivated reasoning three categories of morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism by applied ethicists are identified: serious psychological discomfort, moral backfiring, and hostile conflict. The most worrisome is moral backfiring: psychological research suggests that ethical (...) criticism of people’s central moral convictions can reinforce exactly those attitudes. Therefore, applied ethicists unintentionally can contribute to a consolidation of precisely those social circumstances that they condemn to be unethical. Furthermore, I argue that the normative concerns raised in this paper are not dependent on the commitment to one specific paradigm in moral philosophy. Utilitarianism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and Rawlsian contractarianism all provide sound reasons to take morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism seriously. Only the case of deontological ethics is less clear-cut. Finally, I point out that the issues raised in this paper provide an excellent opportunity for further interdisciplinary collaboration between applied ethics and social sciences. I also propose strategies for communicating ethics effectively. (shrink)

There is no question of an alternative between social ethics and "political theology"; we need both a prophetic, eschatological theology and a dynamic, imaginative social doctrine.

RésuméDans ce bref exposé qui sľstématise, complète ou corrige certaines suggestions éparses dans ľœuvre de Freud, le Dr Alexander formule les trois principes dľnamiques fondamentaux qui lui paraissent gouverner le comportement des êtrès vivants:I. Principe de Stabilité visant au maintien de ľéquilibre homéostatique de ľorganisme. Cet équi‐libre est assuré sur le plan Psychologique par ľego intégrant les données des sensations externes et internes de façon à déclencher les actes ?exécution et ?adaptation souhaitables.II. Principe ?Economie et ?Inertie . Les actes ?adaptation (...) au monde externe doivent être appris par essais et erreurs. lis tendent ensuite à se répéter automatiquement au prix de la moindre dépense ?énergie. Ľavantage est évident en cas de conditions extérieures constantes. Si ces conditions viennent à changer, ľautomatisme perd son rôle adaptatif et se cristallise en fixations et régressions, génératrices de troubles névrotiques. La plasticité souhaitable en pareils cas suppose ľintervention ?un troisième principe.III. Principe de ľEnergie de Surplus. Quand ils ont paréà tous leurs besoins, les êtrès vivants disposent ?un surplus ?énergie qu'ils dépensent librement sous forme ?expérimentation ludique et de jeu. Le jeu sert àéprouver et à stabiliser les fonctions, dont il rend possible le déploiement utilitaire ultérieur. II donné au comportement sa plasticité et sa possibilitľé de faire face à des situations neuves. II procure ?autre part un plaisir eArotique qui est fondamentalement de même nature que le plaisir liéà la sexualité. En effet, dans la sexualité adulte, ľorganisme aftecte son surplus ?énergie à la production ?un nouvel être, distinct des géniteurs. Dautre part, les satisfactions érotiques dispersées de ľenfance viennent confluer et s'unir dans le plaisir de ľorgasme. (shrink)

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Unification in description logics has been proposed as a novel inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. The inexpressive description logic EL is of particular interest in this context since, on the one hand, several large biomedical ontologies are defined using EL. On the other hand, unification in EL has been shown to be NP-complete and, thus, of considerably lower complexity than unification in other description logics of similarly restricted expressive power. However, EL allows (...) the use of the top concept, which represents the whole interpretation domain, whereas the large medical ontology SNOMED CT makes no use of this feature. Surprisingly, removing the top concept from EL makes the unification problem considerably harder. More precisely, we will show that unification in EL without the top concept is PSPACE-complete. In addition to the decision problem, we also consider the problem of actually computing EL−⊤-unifiers. (shrink)