Since the turn of the millennium, the major development agencies have been promoting “knowledge for development,” “ICT for development,” or the “knowledge economy” as new paradigms to prompt development in less-developed countries. These paradigms display an unconditional trust in the power of Western technology and scientific knowledge to trigger development—they taste of epistemic and technological determinism. This article probes, by means of a genealogy, how and when development cooperation began adhering to epistemic and technological determinism, and which forms this adhesion (...) has taken over time. The genealogy shows, first, that knowledge and technology have always been integrally part of the very “development” idea since this idea was shaped during enlightenment. Second, while the genealogy reveals that epistemic and technological determinism were embedded in the development idea from the very beginning, it also illustrates that the determinism has always been challenged by critical voices. (shrink)

Research from the social and behavioral sciences shows that the drivers and impacts of climate change, as well as society’s responsiveness to it, are all profoundly governed by social and behavioral dynamics. Nevertheless, scientometric and research funding data from the United States and the European Union suggest that the social and behavioral sciences are noticeably underrepresented in mainstream climate research. We argue that a better understanding of social and behavioral dynamics, especially those that temper society’s response to the scientific evidence, (...) is fundamental for climate policies to be successfully adopted. (shrink)

Marx’s vision of unalienated production is often thought to be subject to decisive objections. This article argues that these objections rely on a misinterpretation of Marx’s position. It provides a new interpretation of Marx’s vision of unalienated production. Unlike another well-known account, it suggests that unalienated production involves realizing oneself through providing others with the goods and services they need for their self-realization. It argues that this view is appealing and that it offers a more successful response to objections than (...) previous interpretations. In doing so, it hopes to put Marx’s concern with alienation and nonalienation back on the table. (shrink)

We introduce the working concept of “affective arrangement.” This concept is the centerpiece of a perspective on situated affectivity that emphasizes relationality, dynamics, and performativity. Our proposal relates to work in cultural studies and continental philosophy in the Spinoza–Deleuze lineage, yet it is equally geared to the terms of recent work in the philosophy of emotion. Our aim is to devise a framework that can help flesh out how affectivity unfolds dynamically in a relational setting by which it is at (...) the same time modulated in recurring ways. With this orientation, this article contributes to the interdisciplinary study of situated affectivity and to the theoretical and conceptual unification of distinct strands of research from several disciplines. (shrink)

This paper presents a critique of left republican writings from a non-republican socialist standpoint. It examines three claims that have been advanced by left republican authors: that workers are dominated 1) by their lack of access to the means of production; 2) by the market; and 3) by their employer. With regard to 1) and 2), it argues that alternative conceptions of freedom can identify the unfreedom in question, and that there are good reasons for pressing these complaints on the (...) basis of these alternative conceptions. With regard to 3), it argues that, while alternative conceptions of freedom may be able to identify the unfreedom in question, republican freedom provides a more suitable basis for pressing this claim. It concludes that while left republicans have shown that socialists have reason to care about republican freedom, they have not shown that socialists should adopt republican freedom at the expense of other conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

In the Critique of Gotha Programme, Karl Marx famously argues that a communist society will be characterised by the principle, ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’ I take up a question about this principle that was originally posed by G.A. Cohen, namely: what makes communism (so conceived) possible for Marx? In reply to this question, Cohen interprets Marx as saying that communism is possible because of limitless abundance, a view that Cohen takes to be (...) implausible for ecological reasons. I develop a new interpretation of Marx's position. On this interpretation, people in communist society achieve self-realisation through providing others with the goods and services required for their self-realisation. Coupled with a reasonably high (but not immense) development of productive power, self-realisation generates conditions in which people can produce according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. I defend this view as an interpretation of Marx and I argue that it represents a more plausible account of what makes communism possible than Cohen's interpretation in which technological advance and limitless abundance play the predominant role. (shrink)

Genesis: The Evolution of Biology presents a history of the past two centuries of biology, suitable for use in courses, but of interest more broadly to evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biomedical scientists, as well as general readers interested in the history of science. The book covers the early evolutionary biologists-Lamarck, Cuvier, Darwin and Wallace through Mayr and the neodarwinian synthesis, in much the same way as other histories of evolution have done, bringing in also the social implications, the struggles with (...) our religious understanding, and the interweaving of genetics into evolutionary theory. What is novel about Sapp's account is a real integration of the cytological tradition, from Schwann, Boveri, and the other early cell biologists and embryologists, and the coverage of symbiosis, microbial evolutionary phylogenies, and the new understanding of the diversification of life coming from comparative analyses of complete microbial genomes. The book is a history of theories about evolution, genes and organisms from Lamarck and Darwin to the present day. This is the first book on the general history of evolutionary biology to include the history of research and theories about symbiosis in evolution, and first to include research on microbial evolution which were excluded from the classical neo-Darwinian synthesis. Bacterial evolution, and symbiosis in evolution are also excluded from virtually every book on the history of biology. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is generally regarded as the physical theory that is our best candidate for a fundamental and universal description of the physical world. The conceptual framework employed by this theory differs drastically from that of classical physics. Indeed, the transition from classical to quantum physics marks a genuine revolution in our understanding of the physical world.

This paper provides an analysis of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, as applied both to properties and to relations. In contrast to other accounts, the approach taken here locates the source of a property’s intrinsicality or extrinsicality in the manner in which that property is ‘logically constituted’, and thus – plausibly – in its nature or essence, rather than in e.g. its modal profile. Another respect in which the present proposal differs from many extant analyses lies in the fact that it does (...) not seek to analyse the ‘global’ distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties on the basis of the ‘local’ distinction between having a property intrinsically and having it extrinsically. Instead, the latter distinction is explicated on the basis of the former. (shrink)

There is unanimous agreement that Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 AD) is the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself and one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of Indian philosophy. His philosophy of the “middle way” (madhyamaka) based around the central notion of “emptiness” (śūnyatā) influenced the Indian philosophical debate for a thousand years after his death; with the spread of Buddhism to Tibet, China, Japan and other Asian countries the writings of Nāgārjuna became an (...) indispensable point of reference for their own philosophical inquiries. A specific reading of Nāgārjuna's thought, called Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka, became the official philosophical position of Tibetan Buddhism which regards it as the pinnacle of philosophical sophistication up to the present day. (shrink)

Background The ownership status of individual-level health data affects the manner in which it is used. In this paper we analyze two competing models of the ownership status of the data discussed in the literature recently: private ownership and public ownership. Main body In this paper we describe the limitations of these two models of data ownership with respect to individual-level health data, in particular in terms of ethical principles of justice and autonomy, risk mitigation, as well as technological, economic, (...) and conceptual issues. We argue that undifferentiated application of neither private ownership nor public ownership will allow us to resolve all the problems associated with effective, equitable, and ethical use of data. We suggest that, instead of focusing on data ownership, we should focus on the institutional and procedural aspects of data governance, such as using Data Access Committees (DACs) or equivalent managed access processes, which can balance the elements of these two ownership frameworks. Conclusion Undifferentiated application of the ownership concept (private or public) is not helpful in resolving problems associated with sharing individual-level health data. DACs or equivalent managed access processes should be an integral part of data governance. They can approve or disapprove data access requests after considering the potential benefits and harms to data subjects, their communities, primary researchers, and the wider society. (shrink)

Hypothetico-deductive (H-D) confirmation builds on the idea that confirming evidence consists of successful predictions that deductively follow from the hypothesis under test. This article reviews scope, history and recent development of the venerable H-D account: First, we motivate the approach and clarify its relationship to Bayesian confirmation theory. Second, we explain and discuss the tacking paradoxes which exploit the fact that H-D confirmation gives no account of evidential relevance. Third, we review several recent proposals that aim at a sounder and (...) more comprehensive formulation of H-D confirmation. Finally, we conclude that the reputation of hypothetico-deductive confirmation as outdated and hopeless is undeserved: not only can the technical problems be addressed satisfactorily, the hypothetico-deductive method is also highly relevant for scientific practice. (shrink)

This paper concerns exchangeable analogical predictions based on similarity relations between predicates, and deals with a restricted class of such relations. It describes a system of Carnapian λγ rules on underlying predicate families to model the analogical predictions for this restricted class. Instead of the usual axiomatic definition, the system is characterized with a Bayesian model that employs certain statistical hypotheses. Finally the paper argues that the Bayesian model can be generalized to cover cases outside the restricted class of similarity (...) relations. (shrink)

This essay proposes to view networks as sociocultural structures. Following authors from Leopold von Wiese and Norbert Elias to Gary Alan Fine and Harrison White, networks are configurations of social relationships interwoven with meaning. Social relationships as the basic building blocks of networks are conceived of as dynamic structures of reciprocal (but not necessarily symmetric) expectations between alter and ego. Through their transactions, alter and ego construct an idiosyncratic "relationship culture" comprising symbols, narratives, and relational identities. The coupling of social (...) relationships to networks, too, is heavily laden with meaning. The symbolic construction of persons is one instance of this coupling. Another instance is the application of social categories (like race or gender), which both map and structure social networks. The conclusion offers an agenda for research on this "meaning structure of social networks.". (shrink)

In this text, I discuss the role that a range of habits in affluent societies play in upholding as well as masking an unsustainable status quo. I show that enactivism, as a philosophical approach to the embodied and embedded mind, offers resources for bringing into focus and critically interrogating suchhabits of affluenceand the environments enabling them. I do this in the context of a critical theory ofthe unfelt in society: the systematic production of lacunae of emotive concern in social collectives. (...) The lack of proportionate affective and practical responses to the ecological crisis epitomizes this. The article starts with considerations on societal unfeeling, then reviews key elements of enactive approaches to habit, before a fuller picture of habits of affluence is developed, informed by Brand’s and Wissen’s concept of theimperial mode of living. Finally, two dimensions of habits of affluence are discussed in some detail, which will help flesh out a thematically expanded, politically engaged version of enactivism. (shrink)

Representing the thinking of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, coaches, and sports writers, these essays bring together a wide range of approaches to ...

This brief paper is a general treatment of war – its morality and its political and social effects. Accordingly, we discuss primarily those armed interactions between nations, or, in “civil” wars, those aimed at securing the reins of government. These must, we contend, be inherently immoral on one side – the one which “starts” the war in question – and inherently moral on the other, who after all are defending their lives against the first. To say this requires a moral (...) theory, which we briefly develop. It proceeds on Hobbesian-contractarian lines: if mankind occupies a “state of nature,” then we will all be worse off than if we join with each other in adopting the restrictions of morality – fundamentally, and primarily, of nonviolence, of living at peace with each other. This raises a question about the very rationality of war, to be sure. And yet, war we have, in considerable and unfortunate abundance. How can this be? Some tentative answers are suggested. (shrink)

This article argues that Robert Brandom's work can be used to develop ideas in the area of social epistemology. It suggests that this work, precisely because it was influenced by Hegel, can make a significant contribution with philosophical anthropology at its centre. The argument is developed using illustrations from education: the first, from the now classic replication of Piaget's ‘three mountains task’ by Margaret Donaldson and her colleagues; the second, from contemporary debates about the questions of knowledge and epistemic access. (...) This leads to a series of questions concerning the relation of concepts to each other and to objects of knowledge and to the social dimension of epistemology as it is involved in the development of human capacities. (shrink)

rationality has increasingly been a target of attack in contemporary educational research and practice and in its place practical reason and situated thinking have become a focus of interest. The argument here is that something is lost in this. In illustrating how we might think about the issue, this paper makes a response to the charge that as a result of his commitment to the ‘Enlightenment project’ Vygotsky holds abstract rationality as the pinnacle of thought. Against this it is argued (...) that Vygotsky had a far more sophisticated appreciation of reason and of its remit. The paper proceeds first by examining the picture of Vygotsky that is presented in the work of James Wertsch, and especially his claim that Vygotsky was an ambivalent rationalist, goes on to provide an account of Vygotsky that corrects this picture, and develops this in the light of the work of Robert Brandom, who shares Vygotsky’s inheritance of Hegel. The conclusion towards which this piece points is that the philosophical underpinnings of Vygotsky’s work provide a radically different idea of rationality and epistemology from that characterised as abstract rationality and that this has significance for education studies. (shrink)

We consider the problem about the length of proofs of the sentences $\operatorname{Con}_S(\underline{n})$ saying that there is no proof of contradiction in S whose length is ≤ n. We show the relation of this problem to some problems about propositional proof systems.

_Vygotsky Philosophy and Education_ reassesses the works of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky work by arguing that his central ideas about the nature of rationality and knowledge were informed by the philosophic tradition of Spinoza and Hegel. Presents a reassessment of the works of Lev Vygotsky in light of the tradition of Spinoza and Hegel informing his work Reveals Vygotsky’s connection with the work of contemporary philosophers such as Brandom and McDowell Draws on discussions in contemporary philosophy to revise prominent readings (...) of Vygotskian psychology and revisits educational debates where Vygotsky’s ideas were central Reveals the limitations of appropriations of Vygotsky which fail to recognize the Hegelian provenance of his work Shows the relevance of Brandom’s inferentialism for contemporary educational theory and practice. (shrink)

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

How should we construe the unity, in affective experience, of felt bodily changes on the one hand and intentionality on the other, without forcing affective phenomena into a one-sided theoretical framework such as cognitivism? To answer this question, I will consider the specific kind of self-awareness implicit in affectivity. In particular, I will explore the idea that a bodily sense of ability is crucial for affective self-awareness. Describing the affective ways of “grasping oneself” manifest in a person’s felt sense of (...) ability will help us understand the intimate connection between bodily feelings and intentionality in affective processes. In order to illustrate these experiential structures in a concrete case, I will discuss experiential changes often reported by sufferers of depression. (shrink)

This article argues that there is no sound basis for thinking that we have a general and strong duty to rectify disparities of wealth around the world, apart from the special case where some become wealthy by theft or fraud. The nearest thing we have to a rational morality for all has to be built on the interests of all, and they include substantial freedoms, but not substantial entitlements to others' assistance. It is also pointed out that the situation of (...) the world's poor is not that of victims of disasters, but simply of less-developed technology, which can be repaired by full and free trade relations with others. The true savior of the world's poor is the businessman, not the missionary. What we do need to do is strike down barriers to commerce, rather than requisition "aid.". (shrink)

This article reconsiders Husserl’s concept of Leib in light of Merleau‐Ponty’s interpretation of the human body as an ontologically significant phenomenon. I first analyze Husserl’s account of the body as a “two‐fold unity” and demonstrate the problematic nature of its four implications, namely, the ambiguous ontological status of the body as subject‐object, the view of “my body” as “my object,” the preconstitutive character of the unity of the body, and the restriction of the constitution of the body to touch alone. (...) Building on this analysis, I explain how Merleau‐Ponty resolves the difficulties raised by Husserl’s account by reversing it. According to Merleau‐Ponty, “flesh” is not a two‐fold reality comprising subjective and objective aspects, but an ontological dimension from which these aspects can be abstracted through specific cognitive operations. Consequently, all subjective and objective aspects, even beyond the boundaries of one’s body, must be understood as founded in the indivisible unity of flesh. I argue that a thorough phenomenological description of the human body requires abandoning Husserl’s concept of Leib because it contributes to perpetuating subject‐object dualism. In contrast, Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of flesh reveals the circularity between subject and object and its general ontological significance. (shrink)

The interpretation of tests of a point null hypothesis against an unspecified alternative is a classical and yet unresolved issue in statistical methodology. This paper approaches the problem from the perspective of Lindley's Paradox: the divergence of Bayesian and frequentist inference in hypothesis tests with large sample size. I contend that the standard approaches in both frameworks fail to resolve the paradox. As an alternative, I suggest the Bayesian Reference Criterion: it targets the predictive performance of the null hypothesis in (...) future experiments; it provides a proper decision-theoretic model for testing a point null hypothesis and it convincingly accounts for Lindley's Paradox. (shrink)

In this paper, I assess Žižek ’s article “No Sex, Please, We’re Post-human!” as a provocative injunction to signal the posthuman ecstasy and deterrence. I seek to expose, rather than express, Žižek ’s posthumanist perspective as a paradoxical intertwining of different aspects of perspectivizing a post-human being from the view of the end of sexuality – the background that informs a posthuman future. Žižek ’s eluding the subject’s confrontation with the question of sexual difference to the apex of the genome (...) project touches the delicate coalescing of the notions of ‘objectivity and subjectivity’ and ‘virtuality and reality’ in the fate of the body. Ultimately, he renders this inception of this tarrying as a traumatic encounter that informs us of the existential birthright of a true posthuman. (shrink)

A platitude questioned by many Buddhist thinkers in India and Tibet is the existence of the world. We might be tempted to insert some modifier here, such as “substantial,” “self-existent,” or “intrinsically existent,” for, one might argue, these thinkers did not want to question the existence of the world tout court but only that of a substantial, self-existent, or otherwise suitably qualified world. But perhaps these modifiers are not as important as is generally thought, for the understanding of the world (...) questioned is very much the understanding of the world everybody has. It is the understanding that there is a world out there —independent of our minds — and that when we speak and think about this world we mostly get it right. But the Madhyamaka thinkers under discussion here deny that there is a world out there and claim that our opinions about it are to the greatest part fundamentally and dangerously wrong. (shrink)

A number of well-developed theories shed light on the question, under what circumstances our beliefs enjoy epistemic justification. Yet, comparatively little is known about epistemic defeat--when new information causes the loss of epistemic justification. This book proposes and defends a detailed account of epistemic defeaters. The main kinds of defeaters are analyzed in detail and integrated into a general framework that aims to explain how beliefs lose justification. It is argued that defeaters introduce incompatibilities into a noetic system and thereby (...) prompt a structured re-evaluation process that makes a justified reinstatement of the defeated belief impossible. The account is then applied to the topic of disagreement, where it is used in an argument for conciliationism, as well as a new explanation for higher-order defeat. Throughout the book, the notion of defeat is the center of attention, while a number of new issues are discussed at the intersections of defeat and justification. Specifically, new problems are raised for broadly internalist accounts of defeat, a fully descriptive reliabilist account of defeat is provided, and the case for normative defeat is revisited. (shrink)

The subject of this article is Modal-Epistemic Arithmetic (MEA), a theory introduced by Horsten to interpret Epistemic Arithmetic (EA), which in turn was introduced by Shapiro to interpret Heyting Arithmetic. I will show how to interpret MEA in EA such that one can prove that the interpretation of EA is MEA is faithful. Moreover, I will show that one can get rid of a particular Platonist assumption. Then I will discuss models for MEA in light of the problems of logical (...) omniscience and logical competence. Awareness models, impossible worlds models and syntactical models have been introduced to deal with the first problem. Certain conditions on the accessibility relations are needed to deal with the second problem. I go on to argue that those models are subject to the problem of quantifying in, for which I will provide a solution. (shrink)

Franz Brentano was a systematic philosopher, in the sense that he presented his views in an orderly manner and considered it important to work out the significant regularities, where the significance was to be seen in relation to the whole of the problem considered at the moment, and ultimately, in relation to the entire field in which the problem arose. He was not a system-builder, in that he did not seek to produce an all-embracing philosophical answer. He was concerned with (...) truth rather than with elegance, and he distrusted philosophical flights of fancy. According to him, philosophy ought to be built up by collective, carefully considered and checked labours of a number of researchers. In an age when philosophy was largely characterised by imaginative systems of poetic appeal and based on bold armchair theorising, he was concerned with making it scientific and dependable. -/- The intention in this book is to re-interpret and re-emphasise some aspects of Brentano's philosophy. Another purpose is to provide a contemporary introduction to Brentano for the English-speaking reader. The third, and perhaps the most important, is to present, to analyse and to learn something from Brentano's analysis of truth. (shrink)

This is a paper about The Causal Self-Referential Theory of Perception. According to The Causal Self-Referential Theory as developed by above all John Searle and David Woodruff Smith, perceptual content is satisfied by an object only if the object in question has caused the perceptual experience. I argue initially that Searle's account cannot explain the distinction between hallucination and illusion since it requires that the state of affairs that is presented in the perceptual experience must exist in order for the (...) perception to be veridical. Smith's account is interestingly different in that the descriptive content, i.e. the content that presents the perceptual object as having certain properties, does not determine the object of the experience. His account consequently does not require that the state of affairs that is presented in perception exists in order for the perception to have an object. Smith argues instead that perceptual reference is determined by a specific kind of demonstrative content. In this paper it is argued that Smith's account of demonstrative content is too indeterminate and in certain circumstances prescribes the wrong object. It is subsequently argued that the theory of demonstrative content can be modified so as to avoid these consequences. This modification involves deriving the conditions of satisfaction of seeing an object from the conditions of satisfaction of seeing the shape of the object, where the shape of the object is conceived of as a particularized property, what is also called a ‘trope’. (shrink)

The issues that Paul Standish alerts us to are significant since they situate McDowell's argument in reference to works lying outside the mainstream tradition o.

The intention of this article is to make an educational analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of experience in order to see what it implicates for educational practice as well as educational research. In this way, we can attain an understanding what embodied experience might mean both in schools and other educational settings and in researching educational activities. The analysis will take its point of departure in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis and criticism of empiricist and neokantian theories of experience. This will be followed up (...) by an introduction of some central concepts in Merleau-Ponty’s own understanding of experience with emphasis on their relevance for educational analysis. This way of presenting the theory of embodied experience has the advantage of being able to indicate the difference it makes in the field of theories of experience. (shrink)

In this paper we prove some results about the complexity of proofs. We consider proofs in Hilbert-style formal systems such as in [17]. Thus a proof is a sequence offormulas satisfying certain conditions. We can view the formulas as being strings of symbols; hence the whole proof is a string too. We consider the following measures of complexity of proofs: length , depth and number of steps For a particular formal system and a given formula A we consider the shortest (...) length of a proof of A , the minimal depth of a proof of A and the minimal number of steps in a proof of A . The main results are the following: a bound on the depth in terms of the number of steps: Theorem 2.2, a bound on the depth in terms of the length: Theorem 2.3, a bound on the length in terms of the number of steps for restricted systems: Theorem 3.1. These results are applied to obtain several corollaries. In particular we show: a bound on the number of steps in a cut-free proof, some speed-up results, bounds on the number of steps in proofs of Paris-Harrington sentences. Some papers related to our research are listed in the references. We were especially influenced by Parikh's paper [17] on the famous conjecture of Kreisel . Many important problems in this field remain open. We hope that our paper will contribute to progress in this area. It should be noted that some results of this paper can be equally well obtained using unification theory , by translating a complexity-of-proof problem into a unification problem. A unification algorithm solving the unification problem can then be constructed and the complexity of the unification algorithm analyzed. As pointed out by the referee this method can be used to solve the problem stated in Section 3 for some non-simple schematic systems. (shrink)

This paper synthesizes confirmation by instances and confirmation by successful predictions, and thereby the Hempelian and the hypothetico-deductive traditions in confirmation theory. The merger of these two approaches is subsequently extended to the piecemeal confirmation of entire theories. It is then argued that this synthetic account makes a useful contribution from both a historical and a systematic perspective.

ABSTRACTBased on an overview of the ways in which politics and the political have been thought in critical discourse analysis, the author calls for a focus on the metapolitical dimension of discourse. The author develops his notion of metapolitics on the basis of post-foundational insights into politics, the political and processes of politicization. Metapolitics refers to projects and struggles where conflicting modes and models of politics clash. Metapolitical debates potentially reshape the structure of the public realm as well as the (...) entities, borders and processes that constitute it. The author differentiates his descriptive and analytic use of the term from the way this signifier has been used programmatically by the anti-democratic New Right and its heirs. He demonstrates that metapolitical projects can be democratic as well as anti-democratic. In order to facilitate discourse analyses of metapolitical projects, debates and struggles, the author suggests that the metapolitical dimension of contemporary debates can be explored further by integrating insights from governmentality studies, studies of political rationality and the discourse theoretical logics approach with CDA. Moreover, a further exploration of the linguistic and textual underpinnings of metapolitics constitutes a promising pathway for future investigation. The study of metapolitics should be part and parcel of the transdisciplinary domain of critical discourse studies so that our understanding of the linguistic and non-linguistic features of metapolitical projects can be developed in equal measure at multiple levels of abstraction. (shrink)

This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that (...) discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this dissertation provides the Failure Theory with the same tools. (shrink)

Meetings differ from ordinary conversation in that they have an agenda that specifies in advance the topics to be addressed during the meeting. However, the introduction of these topics needs to be locally accomplished and recognized by the participants as agenda items. This article presents some characteristic practices used for introducing agenda-based topics. It shows that they rely on the known-in-advance status of the items, and are presented by the chair as unilateral announcements. They exploit and invoke the written agenda (...) in several ways. The announcements are often short phrasal constructions, just citing the written title of the agenda point. Furthermore, a gaze down at the written document is used as a public display that the introduction is related to the agenda. In contrast to this practice of introducing agenda items, topics not specified by the agenda are introduced by suggestions and questions that present the introduction as contingent on acceptance by the co-participants. The analysis sheds light on the ways in which institutional talk-in-interaction is permeated by the formulations and logic of written documents. (shrink)

V i 2 ⊢A iff for some term t :S i 2 ⊢ “2 i exists→ A”, a bounded first-order formula, i ≥1. V i 2 is not Π b 1 -conservative over S i 2 . Any model of V 2 not satisfying Exp satisfies the collection scheme BΣ 0 1 . V 1 3 is not Π b 1 -conservative over S 2.

In recent years, the use of historical cases in philosophy of science has become a proper topic of reflection. In this article I will contribute to this research by means of a discussion of one very famous example of case-based philosophy of science, namely the debate on the London & London model of superconductivity between Cartwright, Suárez and Shomar on the one hand, and French, Ladyman, Bueno and Da Costa on the other. This debate has been going on for years, (...) without any satisfactory resolution. I will argue here that this is because both sides impose on the historical case a particular philosophical conception of scientific representation that does not do justice to the historical facts. Both sides assume, more specifically, that the case concerns the discovery of a representational connection between a given experimental insight – the Meissner effect – and the diamagnetic meaning of London and London’s new equations of superconductivity. I will show, however, that at the time of the Londons’ publication, neither the experimental insight nor the meaning of the new equations was established: both were open for discussion and they were stabilized only later. On the basis of this historical discussion, I will then propose an alternative approach to the case study: the case should not be seen as a site of confrontation between pre-existing philosophical accounts, but rather as a way to historically elaborate and develop philosophical concepts. I will then show how approaching the historical episode in this way suggests an alternative approach to the philosophical study of representation, according to which it involves the establishment, over time, of a stable connection between constellations of different elements that, through discussion and engagement with alternative views and approaches, come to constitute phenomenon and meaning. (shrink)

We live in a world in which scientific expertise and its epistemic authority become more important. On the other hand, the financial interests in research, which could potentially corrupt science, are increasing. Due to these two tendencies, a concern for the integrity of scientific research becomes increasingly vital. This concern is, however, hollow if we do not have a clear account of research integrity. Therefore, it is important that we explicate this concept. Following Rudolf Carnap’s characterization of the task of (...) explication, this means that we should develop a concept that is similar to our common sense notion of research integrity, exact, fruitful, and as simple as possible. Since existing concepts do not meet these four requirements, we develop a new concept in this article. We describe a concept of epistemic integrity that is based on the property of deceptiveness, and argue that this concept does meet Carnap’s four requirements of explication. To illustrate and support our claims we use several examples from scientific practice, mainly from biomedical research. (shrink)

Precaution is a relevant and much-invoked value in environmental risk analysis, as witnessed by the ongoing vivid discussion about the precautionary principle (PP). This article argues (i) against purely decision-theoretic explications of PP; (ii) that the construction, evaluation, and use of scientific models falls under the scope of PP; and (iii) that epistemic and decision-theoretic robustness are essential for precautionary policy making. These claims are elaborated and defended by means of case studies from climate science and conservation biology.

The article expands the traditional system of concepts used in deontic logic, in order to allow the inclusion of supererogatory behaviour. This requires the development of a deontic decagon. In addition, it is shown how this decagon can be used to interpret deontic terms, e.g. in Islamic Law.