Composer, conductor, educator, jazz critic, and horn virtuoso, Gunther Schuller here brings together his writings on music. There are numerous articles about jazz, dealing with his favourite figures like Duke Ellington and Ornette Coleman, and also Schuller's concept of the 'Third Stream', the area where jazz and concert music intersect. Other sections deal with the composition and performance of contemporary music, musical education, and musical aesthetics.

Should decision-making algorithms be held to higher standards of transparency than human beings? The way we answer this question directly impacts what we demand from explainable algorithms, how we govern them via regulatory proposals, and how explainable algorithms may help resolve the social problems associated with decision making supported by artificial intelligence. Some argue that algorithms and humans should be held to the same standards of transparency and that a double standard of transparency is hardly justified. We give two arguments (...) to the contrary and specify two kinds of situations for which higher standards of transparency are required from algorithmic decisions as compared to humans. Our arguments have direct implications on the demands from explainable algorithms in decision-making contexts such as automated transportation. (shrink)

Recent work by philosophers of mind and psychology on nonconceptual content.

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

In the third and fourth parts of the book, Günther shows--in debate with Hare, Dworkin, and others--how argumentation on the appropriate application of norms and principles in morality and law is possible.

Any satisfactory model of the emotions must at once recognize their place within intentional psychology and acknowledge their uniqueness as mental causes. In the first half of the century, the James-Lange model had considerable influence on reinforcing the idea that emotions are non-intentional (see Lange 1885 and James 1890). The uniqueness of emotions was therefore acknowledged at the price of denying them a place within intentional psychology proper. More recently, cognitive reductionists (including identity theorists) like Robert Solomon and Joel Marks (...) recognize that emotions are intentional but, by reducing them to judgments, beliefs, desires, etc., fail to capture their distinctiveness as mental causes (see Solomon 1976 and Marks 1982). In other words, their place within intentional psychology is acknowledged at the price of denying them their uniqueness. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991 (the full essay consists of 38 sections). The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third (unrealised) volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in (...) the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of (nuclear) science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the (undemocratic) decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by (weapons) scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

Günther Buck legt in dieser Studie eine phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Theorie des Lernens, des Beispiels und der Analogie vor, die für Pädagogik sowie für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften von grundlegender Bedeutung ist. Der Prozess der Erfahrung im Lernen wird in drei Momenten entfaltet: der epagogischen Gangstruktur, der antizipatorischen Horizonthaftigkeit und der dialektischen, „negativen“ Umwendung auf sich selbst. Lernen wird als Lernen aus Erfahrung und als Erfahrung kenntlich. Im zweiten und dritten Teil gelingt Buck eine Neubestimmung des Beispiels in seinen hermeneutischen, bildenden und didaktischen (...) Funktionen. Unterschiedliche Typen der Analogie werden identifiziert und deren Funktionsweisen differenziert. Mit dieser Neuausgabe kann nach 30 Jahren das bekannteste und wirkungsmächtigste Buch von Günther Buck wieder zugänglich gemacht werden. (shrink)

Mit seinem epochalen Werk »Idee und Grundriß einer nicht-Aristotelischen Logik« (1959) legte Gotthard Günther (1900–1984) den Grundstein für eine radikal neue Form der philosophischen Betrachtung der ontologischen Einheit des Universums, deren Richtigkeit heute (auch unabhängig von Günther und in der Regel auf ungleich niedrigerem Niveau) von den Wissenschaften bestätigt wird (so z.B. in der Chaos-Forschung). Gegen die klassische (aristotelische) Logik, die nur zweiwertige Entscheidungen für verbindlich hält (eine Behauptung ist entweder wahr oder falsch), zeigt Günther auf, daß die – mathematisch (...) widerspruchsfrei formulierbare – mehrwertige Logik auch auf dem Gebiet der Ontologie, d.i. der Erfassung der Grundstrukturen des natürlichen Universums und des gesellschaftlichen Dialogs zwischen dem Ich und dem Du, Erkenntnismöglichkeiten eröffnet, die das Limit des klassischen Denkens rational überwinden. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forth an analysis of sensitivity which aims to discern individual from merely statistical evidence. We argue that sensitivity is not to be understood as a factive concept, but as a purely epistemic one. Our resulting analysis of epistemic sensitivity gives rise to an account of legal proof on which a defendant is only found liable based on epistemically sensitive evidence.

The article investigates one of the key contributions to modern structural mathematics, namely Hilbert’sFoundations of Geometry(1899) and its mathematical roots in nineteenth-century projective geometry. A central innovation of Hilbert’s book was to provide semantically minded independence proofs for various fragments of Euclidean geometry, thereby contributing to the development of the model-theoretic point of view in logical theory. Though it is generally acknowledged that the development of model theory is intimately bound up with innovations in 19th century geometry (in particular, the (...) development of non-Euclidean geometries), so far, little has been said about how exactly model-theoretic concepts grew out of methodological investigations within projective geometry. This article is supposed to fill this lacuna and investigates this geometrical prehistory of modern model theory, eventually leading up to Hilbert’sFoundations. (shrink)

We propose a semantics for a connexive conditional based on the Lewis-Stalnaker conditional. It is a connexive semantics that is both classical and intuitive.

We put forth an account for when to believe causal and evidential conditionals. The basic idea is to embed a causal model in an agent’s belief state. For the evaluation of conditionals seems to be relative to beliefs about both particular facts and causal relations. Unlike other attempts using causal models, we show that ours can account rather well not only for various causal but also evidential conditionals.

In the twenty-second series of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze references a remarkable essay by Günther (Stern) Anders. Anders’ essay, translated here as ‘The Pathology of Freedom’, addresses the sickness and health of our negotiation with the negative anthropological condition of ‘not being cut out for the world’.

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that (...) addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it. (shrink)

Manfred Eigen extended Erwin Schroedinger’s concept of “life is physics and chemistry” through the introduction of information theory and cybernetic systems theory into “life is physics and chemistry and information.” Based on this assumption, Eigen developed the concepts of quasispecies and hypercycles, which have been dominant in molecular biology and virology ever since. He insisted that the genetic code is not just used metaphorically: it represents a real natural language.However, the basics of scientific knowledge changed dramatically within the second half (...) of the 20th century.Unfortunately, Eigen ignored the results of the philosophy of science discourse on essential features of natural languages and codes: a natural language or code emerges from populations of living agents that communicate. This contribution will look at some of the highlights of this historical development and the results relevant for biological theories about life. (shrink)

We propose a method of learning indicative conditional information. An agent learns conditional information by Jeffrey imaging on the minimally informative proposition expressed by a Stalnaker conditional. We show that the predictions of the proposed method align with the intuitions in Douven, 239–263 2012)’s benchmark examples. Jeffrey imaging on Stalnaker conditionals can also capture the learning of uncertain conditional information, which we illustrate by generating predictions for the Judy Benjamin Problem.

One of the open questions in Bayesian epistemology is how to rationally learn from indicative conditionals (Douven, 2016). Eva et al. (Mind 129(514):461–508, 2020) propose a strategy to resolve this question. They claim that their strategy provides a “uniquely rational response to any given learning scenario”. We show that their updating strategy is neither very general nor always rational. Even worse, we generalize their strategy and show that it still fails. Bad news for the Bayesians.

In this paper, we propose a unified account of conditionals inspired by Frank Ramsey. Most contemporary philosophers agree that Ramsey’s account applies to indicative conditionals only. We observe against this orthodoxy that his account covers subjunctive conditionals as well—including counterfactuals. In light of this observation, we argue that Ramsey’s account of conditionals resembles Robert Stalnaker’s possible worlds semantics supplemented by a model of belief. The resemblance suggests to reinterpret the notion of conditional degree of belief in order to overcome a (...) tension in Ramsey’s account. The result of the reinterpretation is a tenable account of conditionals that covers indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with Quine's substitutional account of logical truth. The critique of Quine's definition tends to focus on miscellaneous odds and ends, such as problems with identity. However, in an appendix to his influential article On Second Order Logic, George Boolos offered an ingenious argument that seems to diminish Quine's account of logical truth on a deeper level. In the article he shows that Quine's substitutional account of logical truth cannot be generalized properly to the general concept of (...) logical consequence. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce the reader to the metamathematics of Quine's substitutional definition of logical truth; second, to make Boolos' result accessible to a broader audience by giving a detailed and self-contained presentation of his proof; and, finally, to discuss some of the possible implications and how a defender of the Quinean concepts might react to the challenge posed by Boolos' result. (shrink)

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance Prize (other notable (...) recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

This article argues that legal proof should be tantamount to justified belief of guilt. A defendant should be found guilty just in case it is justified to believe that the defendant is guilty. My notion of justified belief implies a threshold view on which justified belief requires high credence, but mere statistical evidence does not give rise to justified belief.

The Bernays-Müller debate was a dispute in the early 1920s between Paul Bernays and Aloys Müller regarding various philosophical issues related to “Hilbert’s program.” The debate is sometimes mentioned as a sidenote in discussions of Hilbert’s program, but there is little or no discussion of the debate itself in the secondary literature. This article aims to fill this gap and to provide a detailed analysis of the background of the debate, its contents, and the impact on its protagonists.

In recent years, several scholars have been investigating Frege’s mathematical background, especially in geometry, in order to put his general views on mathematics and logic into proper perspective. In this article I want to continue this line of research and study Frege’s views on geometry in their own right by focussing on his views on a field which occupied center stage in nineteenth century geometry, namely, projective geometry.

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of Frege’s views on semantics and metatheory by looking at his take on several themes in nineteenth century geometry that were significant for the development of modern model-theoretic semantics. I will focus on three issues in which a central semantic idea, the idea of reinterpreting non-logical terms, gradually came to play a substantial role: the introduction of elements at infinity in projective geometry; the study of transfer principles, especially (...) the principle of duality; and the use of counterexamples in independence arguments. Based on a discussion of these issues and how nineteenth century geometers reflected about them, I will then look into Frege’s take on these matters. I conclude with a discussion of Frege’s views and what they entail for the debate about his stance towards semantics and metatheory more generally. (shrink)

In a series of articles dating from 1903 to 1906, Frege criticizes Hilbert’s methodology of proving the independence and consistency of various fragments of Euclidean geometry in his Foundations of Geometry. In the final part of the last article, Frege makes his own proposal as to how the independence of genuine axioms should be proved. Frege contends that independence proofs require the development of a ‘new science’ with its own basic truths. This paper aims to provide a reconstruction of this (...) New Science that meets modern standards and to examine possible problems surrounding Frege’s original proposal. The paper is organized as follows: the first two sections summarize the main points of the Frege–Hilbert controversy and discuss some issues surrounding the problem of independence proofs. Section 3 contains an informal presentation of Frege’s proposal. In section 4 a more detailed reconstruction of Frege’s New Science is set out while section 5 examines what is left out. The concluding section is devoted to a discussion of Frege’s strategy and its significance from a broader perspective. (shrink)

Theories of embodied cognition assume that concepts are grounded in non-linguistic, sensorimotor experience. In support of this assumption, previous studies have shown that upwards response movements are faster than downwards movements after participants have been presented with words whose referents are typically located in the upper vertical space. This is taken as evidence that processing these words reactivates sensorimotor experiential traces. This congruency effect was also found for novel words, after participants learned these words as labels for novel objects that (...) they encountered either in their upper or lower visual field. While this indicates that direct experience with a word's referent is sufficient to evoke said congruency effects, the present study investigates whether this direct experience is also a necessary condition. To this end, we conducted five experiments in which participants learned novel words from purely linguistic input: Novel words were presented in pairs with real up- or down-words ; they were presented in natural sentences where they replaced these real words ; they were presented as new labels for these real words ; and they were presented as labels for novel combined concepts based on these real words. In all five experiments, we did not find any congruency effects elicited by the novel words; however, participants were always able to make correct explicit judgements about the vertical dimension associated to the novel words. These results suggest that direct experience is necessary for reactivating experiential traces, but this reactivation is not a necessary condition for understanding the corresponding aspects of word meaning. (shrink)