Dieser Sammelband hat zum Ziel, moderne atheistische Richtungen kritisch und wissenschaftlich zu betrachten. Mit diesen modernen atheistischen Richtungen ist vor allem der in Oxford unterrichtende Biologe und Religionskritiker Richard Dawkins verknüpft, bekennender Gegner von Kreationismus, Intelligent Design und Theologie, der schon 1976 mit der Veröffentlichung seines Buches "Der Gotteswahn" in der breiten Öffentlichkeit auf sich aufmerksam machte. Auch in jüngerer Vergangenheit, und zwar im Jahr 2006, war Dawkins mit seinem Buch (Dawkins 2006) an einem erneuten Aufflammen einer vor allem (...) in den USA geführten Diskussion rund um die Vereinbarkeit oder Unvereinbarkeit von theologischen und evolutionstheoretischen Ansätzen beteiligt. Beim Durchblättern dieses Buches wird spätestens beim Entdecken des vierten Kapitels, das den provokanten Titel "Warum es mit ziemlicher Sicherheit keinen Gott gibt" trägt, klar, dass Dawkins damit keine Brücke zwischen Evolutionsbiologie und Schöpfungstheologie schlagen möchte. Auch Dawkins selbst hält dieses Kapitel für das wichtigste seines Buches: "This chapter has contained the central argument of my book" (cf. Dawkins 2006, p. 187). -/- Dies ist Grund genug, uns dieses Kapitel aus Dawkins' Buch näher anzusehen. Schließlich verbindet Dawkins damit hohe Ansprüche: "If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist. This is the main conclusion of the book so far" (cf. Dawkins 2006, p.189). Sein Argument, im englischen Original "main argument" (hier: "Hauptargument") genannt, verdient also genauere Betrachtung und soll in diesem Artikel wissenschaftstheoretisch beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

Physicist J. Richard Gott uses the Copernican principle that “we are not special” to make predictions about the future lifetime of the human race, based on how long the human race has been in existence so far. We show that the predictions which can be derived from Gott’s argument are less strong than one might be inclined to believe, that Gott’s argument illegitimately assumes that the human race will not last forever, that certain versions of (...) class='Hi'>Gott’s argument are incompatible with Bayesian conditionalization, and that Gott’s argument is self-refuting. -/- *****Note: For Bradley Monton's up-to-date thoughts on Gott's argument, see his _Philosophical Quarterly_ paper co-authored with Brian Kierland, "How To Predict Future Duration from Present Age".*****. (shrink)

Im Folgenden werde ich die These darlegen, dass die Idee von der ‚Verantwortung für das Ganze‘ fast zwangsläufig Gewalt hervorbringt. Die Wirklichkeit lässt sich nicht auf diese Weise einfangen. Richard Schaeffler hat es zutreffend gesagt: „Der ‚je größere‘ Anspruch des Wirklichen wird sich dadurch geltend machen, dass keine Weise des Anschauens, des Wahrnehmens, des Erfahrens und Begreifens ihm endgültig Genüge tut.“.

This essay surveys varieties of the luck egalitarian project in an exploratory spirit, seeking to identify lines of thought that are worth developing further and that might ultimately prove morally acceptable. I do not attend directly to the critics and assess their concerns; I have done that in other essays. 7 I do seek to identify some large fault lines, divisions in ways of approaching the task of constructing a theory of justice or of conceiving its substance. These are controversial (...) in the sense that in the present state of discussion it is unclear how best to view them or to which side it is better to scramble. But in the end of course I’m not a moral geographer and map-maker, just an involved spectator/tourist offering yet another view of the cathedral. (shrink)

The repertory grid method was used to determine what terminology respondents use to distinguish between different applications of genetic engineering drawn from food- related, agricultural, and medical applications. Respondents were asked to react to fifteen applications phrased in general terms, and results compared with a second study where fifteen more specific applications were used as stimuli. Both sets of data were submitted to generalized Procrustes analysis. Applications associated with animals or human genetic material were described as causing ethical concern, being (...) unnatural, harmful, and dangerous. Those involving plants or microorganisms were described as beneficial, progressive, and necessary. The results were validated in survey research, which indicated that general applications ofgenetic engineering were perceived as either positive or negative, whereas specific applications were more highly differentiated in perceptual terms. The results imply that the public debate about genetic engineering must take due account of the complexity of public concerns. (shrink)

From the Introduction: This inquiry is concerned with the themes of praxis and action in four philosophic movements: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. It is rare that these four movements are considered in a single inquiry, for there are profound differences of emphasis, focus, terminology, and approach represented by these styles of thought. Many philosophers believe that similarities among these movements are superficial and that a close examination of them will reveal only hopelessly unbridgeable cleavages. While respecting the genuine (...) fundamental differences of these movements, this inquiry is undertaken in the spirit of showing that there are important common themes and motifs in what first appears to be a chaotic babble of voices. I intend to show that the concern with man as an agent has been a primary focal point of each of these movements and further that each contributes something permanent and important to our understanding of the nature and context of human activity. (shrink)

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent (...) person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it? (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

The more than 40 readings in this anthology cover the most important developments of the past six decades, charting the rise and decline of logical positivism ...

This article presents a plan of action to begin the process of halting proliferation of long-range ballistic missiles. These missiles are deemed particularly dangerous due to their ability to deliver weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads) over intercontinental distances. Two treaties are proposed to help control the proliferation of these missiles. They are a Ballistic Missile Non-Proliferation Treaty and a Test Ban Treaty for Long-Range Ballistic Missiles. Provision is made for peaceful launches of satellites and space missions.

In the conclusion of the last section, we suggested that it is illuminating to compare Sellars' philosophy with that of Kant. This can clearly be seen with reference to his attack on the "myth of the given," his positive analysis of concepts, and his classification of the manifest image as phenomenal. But the analogy with Kant is also helpful in clarifying two further notions that are essential for completing the sketch of Sellars' system: persons and reality. Although Sellars has written (...) a number of papers that delineate and defend the logic of intentions, which is the heart of what is distinctive about persons, one topic that he has not explored in great detail is the "unity of the persons." The category of persons which is the fundamental category of the manifest image and which must be joined with the scientific image if we are to achieve a true synoptic vision of man-in-the-universe presents a central difficulty for Sellars' systematic edifice. For he attempts to show the compatibility of what at first seem to be contradictory claims. On the one hand he maintains that a reconstruction of the category of persons in terms of the fundamental concepts of the scientific image "is in principle impossible, the impossibility in question being a strictly logical one". On the other hand, he claims that persons can in principle be exhaustively described and explained in terms of the scientific image. A person is nothing more than a multiplicity of logical subjects and the precise nature of these subjects can eventually be revealed in the development of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

In the context of the contemporary emergence of a “postmodern Kierkegaard,” I take issue with the idea that Kierkegaardian thought involves an anti-essentialist rejection of ontology. I argue that Kierkegaard’s keynote existential analysis is paralleled by, if not tacitly set within, a less developed yet explicit ontology of human being. This “subjective ontology” is at once an ontology of the existing subject and a subjectization of ontology. Thus, the essay has two aims. First, I seek to revive and advance debate (...) concerning the structure of the Kierkegaardian self by tracing something of its dynamic three-fold relational structure and various metaphysical polarities. Spirit, anxiety, and despair need to be understood in their ontological dimensions and not just as existential possibilities. Second, I propose a way of bringing together Kierkegaardian existentiality (the three stages) with his ontology (the three relations). Despite important asymmetries between these two structures, the unity of Kierkegaard’s approach can only be appreciated through viewing them synoptically. (shrink)

J. Richard Gott III (1993) has used the “Copernican principle” to derive a probability density function for the total longevity of any phenomenon, based solely on the phenomenon’s past longevity. John Leslie (1996) and others have used an apparently similar probabilistic argument, the “Doomsday Argument,” to claim that conventional predictions of longevity must be adjusted, based on Bayes’ Theorem, in favor of shorter longevities. Here I show that Gott’s arguments are flawed and contradictory, but that one of (...) his conclusions—his delta t formula—is mathematically equivalent to Laplace’s famous (and notorious) ‘rule of succession’; moreover, Gott’s delta t formula is a plausible worst-case (if one favors greater longevity) bound in some contexts. On the other hand, the Doomsday Argument is fallacious: the argument’s Bayesian formalism is stated in terms of total duration, but all attempted real-life applications of the argument—with one exception, an application by Gott 1994—actually plug in prior probabilities for future duration; moreover, the Self-Sampling Assumption, an essential premise of the Doomsday Argument, is contradicted by the prior information in all known real-life cases. But rejecting the Doomsday Argument does not entail rejecting the possibility of learning about the future from the past. Applying the work of Bruce M. Hill (1968, 1988, 1993) and Frank P.A. Coolen (1998, 2006) in the field of non-parametric predictive inference, I propose and defend an alternative methodology for quantifying how past longevity of any phenomenon does provide evidence for future longevity. In so doing, I identify an objective standard by which to choose among counting time intervals, counting population, or counting any other measure of past longevity in predicting future longevity. This methodology forms the basis of a calculus of induction. (shrink)

I defend mereological nihilism, the view that there are no composite objects, against a challenge from ontological emergence, the view that some things have properties that are ‘something over and above’ the properties of their parts. As the nihilist does not believe in composite wholes, there is nothing in the nihilist's ontology to instantiate emergent properties – or so the challenge goes. However, I argue that some simples can collectively instantiate an emergent property, so the nihilist's ontology can in fact (...) accommodate emergent properties. Furthermore, I show that employing plural instantiation does not bloat the nihilist's ontology or ideology. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two key issues in Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs . It argues that Wolterstorff's theistic grounding of inherent rights is not successful. It also argues that Wolterstorff does not provide adequate criteria for determining what exactly these natural inherent rights are or criteria that can help us to evaluate competing and contradictory claims about these rights. However, most of Wolterstorff's book is not concerned with the theistic grounding of inherent rights. Instead, it is devoted to (...) a detailed and rigorous articulation of the meaning and defense of a theory of justice as consisting of inherent rights and with showing why this theory of justice is superior to the alternative right order theories that Wolterstorff criticizes. The paper concludes that these accomplishments are not diminished even if Wolterstorff has failed to provide us with a satisfactory theistic grounding of his theory. (shrink)

Research in attitudes and social cognition exemplifies van Gelder's distinction between the computational and dynamical approaches. The former emphasizes linear measurement and rational decision-making. The latter considers processes of associative memory and self-organization in attitude formation and social influence. The study of dynamical processes in social cognition has been facilitated by connectionist approaches to computation.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a deeply enigmatic psychiatric condition associated with immense suffering worldwide. Efficacious therapies for OCD, like exposure and response prevention (ERP) are sometimes poorly tolerated by patients. As many as 25 percent of patients refuse to initiate ERP mainly because they are too anxious to follow exposure procedures. Accordingly, we proposed a simple and tolerable (immersive yet indirect) low-cost technique for treating OCD that we call “multisensory stimulation therapy.” This method involves contaminating a rubber hand during the (...) so-called “rubber hand illusion” (RHI) in which tactile sensations may be perceived as arising from a fake hand. Notably, Jalal and Ramachandran (2015), showed that such fake hand contamination during the RHI provokes powerful disgust reactions in healthy volunteers. In the current study, we explored the therapeutic potential of this novel approach. OCD patients (n = 29) watched as their hidden real hand was being stroked together with a visible fake hand; either synchronously (inducing the RHI) (i.e., the experimental condition; n = 16) or asynchronously (i.e., the control condition; n = 13). After 5 minutes of tactile stimulation, the rubber hand was contaminated with fake feces, simulating conventional exposure therapy. Intriguingly, results suggested sensory assimilation of contamination sensations into the body image via the RHI: patients undergoing synchronous stimulation did not report greater contamination sensations when the fake hand was initially contaminated relative to asynchronous stroking. But contrary to expectations, they did so after the rubber hand had been contaminated for 5 minutes; as assessed via disgust facial expressions (a secondary outcome) and in vivo exposure (upon discontinuing the illusion). Further to our surprise, synchronous and asynchronous stroking induced an equally vivid and fast emerging illusion, which helps explain why both conditions initially (5 minutes after initiating tactile stimulation) provoked contamination reactions of equal magnitude. This study is the first to suggest heightened malleability of body image in OCD. Importantly, it may pave the way for a tolerable technique for the treatment of OCD—highly suitable for poorly resourced and emergency settings, including low-income and developing countries with minimal access to high-tech solutions like virtual reality. (shrink)

Let be a relational system whereby D is a nonempty set and P1 is an m1-ary relation on D. With we associate the (weak) monadic second-order theory consisting of the first-order predicate calculus with individual variables ranging over D; monadic predicate variables ranging over (finite) subsets of D; monadic predicate quantifiers; and constants corresponding to P1, P2, …. We will often use ambiguously to mean also the set of true sentences of.

Rose erroneously believes that the sciences of human behavior are being swept with a wave of genetic determinism. Actually, sociologists and psychologists remain predominantly hostile to any genetic influence on behavior. They will love Rose. The few behavior geneticists and sociobiologists in these disciplines are marginalized and looking for a little respect. Rose impugns their motives and ridicules their science.