In this paper, I am going to offer a reconstruction of a challenge to intuition-based armchair philosophy that has been put forward by experimental philosophers of a restrictionist stripe, which I will call the 'master argument'. I will then discuss a number of popular objections to this argument and explain why they either fail to cast doubt on its first, empirical premise or do not go deep enough to make for a lasting rebuttal. Next, I will consider two more promising (...) objections, the grounding objection and the expertise objection, which aim at the second, epistemic premise of the argument. Against this background, I will then suggest what I call 'conservative restrictionism' as the most reasonable default reaction to the experimentalist challenge, which is a combination of the two views of local restrictionism and methodological conservativism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction What is Chemistry about? Is Chemistry Reducible to Physics? Are There Fundamental Limits to Chemical Knowledge? Is Chemical Research Ethically Neutral? Conclusion References.

Experimental philosophy is one of the most recent and controversial developments in philosophy. Its basic idea is rather simple: to test philosophical thought experiments and philosophers’ intuitions about them with scientific methods, mostly taken from psychology and the social sciences. The ensuing experimental results, such as the cultural relativity of certain philosophical intuitions, has engaged – and at times infuriated – many more traditionally minded "armchair" philosophers since then. In this volume, the metaphilosophical reflection on experimental philosophy is brought yet (...) another step forward by engaging some of its most renowned proponents and critics in a lively and controversial debate. In addition to that, the volume also contains original experimental research on personal identity and philosophical temperament, as well as state-of-the-art essays on central metaphilosophical issues, like thought experiments, the nature of intuitions, or the status of philosophical expertise. -/- This book was originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Psychology. (shrink)

Eine philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit der Chemie ist so neu,1 daß die meisten Philosophen gegenwärtig Schwierigkeiten haben dürften, überhaupt eine thematische Verbindung zwischen beiden Fächern herstellen zu können, was auf ähnliche Weise übrigens auch auf Chemiker zutrifft. Daß dies nicht immer so war, wird sofort einsichtig, wenn man bedenkt, daß die chemische Frage nach der substantiellen Verschiedenartigkeit von Stoffen und ihren gegenseitigen Umwandlungsmöglichkeiten bereits zu den Grundfragen aller antiken Naturphilosophen gehörte. Es dürfte insbesondere dem theoretischen Ungenügen des Konzepts stofflicher Qualitäten nach (...) über 2000 Jahren zuzuschreiben sein, daß sich die neuzeitliche mechanische (Natur-)Philosophie gegen Ende des 17. Jahrhundert in nahezu konkurrenzloser Weise durchzusetzen vermochte, so daß jeder, der sich aufs moderne Philosophieren verstehen wollte, der Doktrin der primären (mechanischen) Qualitäten einschließlich der Reduktion jeder Veränderung auf Ortsveränderung anhängen mußte.2 Dieser Ansatz versprach auf einer theoretischen Ebene, mit einem Schlage alle Möglichkeiten stofflich substantieller Verschiedenheit und Veränderung in einen überschaubaren quantitativen Rahmen einzufangen. Diese Abwendung der Philosophie von den ursprünglichen chemischen Fragen beinhaltet drei für den vorliegenden Zusammenhang wichtige Kategorienverschiebungen. (1) Die Kategorie der substantiellen Verschiedenheit verliert ihre Bedeutung in bezug auf Stoffe.. (shrink)

Unlike other branches of science, the scientific products of synthetic chemistry are not only ideas but also new substances that change our material world, for the benefit or harm of living beings. This paper provides for the first time a systematical analysis of moral issues arising from chemical synthesis, based on concepts of responsibility and general morality. Topics include the questioning of moral neutrality of chemical synthesis as an end in itself, chemical weapons research, moral objections against improving material conditions (...) of life by chemical means, and freedom of research. The paper aims at providing both a sound basis for moral judgements of chemistry in a public discourse and a framework for chemists to reflect on the moral relevance of their activity. (shrink)

Welcker was the first to develop the concept "Rechtsstaat" . Kant's concept of freedom, however, provides the background for Welcker's concept of the Rechtsstaat. This article investigates the question of how the concept "respect toward others" is related to the concepts "Rechtsstaat" and "right of freedom". According to Kant, "respect" is not a duty of law but rather a duty of virtue. Still we owe others fulfillment of this duty in a manner that is similar to the way we owe (...) them the fulfillment of a duty of law. Furthermore this duty of virtue corresponds to a moral right of others to respect. Although mutual respect among citizens is not constitutive of a Rechtsstaat, still it is in fact necessary for the survival of a Rechtsstaat. (shrink)

National governments have failed spectacularly to mitigate anthropogenic climate change and a sustainable approach to mitigation remains out of sight. This circumstance alone demonstrates t...

The aim of this paper is to show that Graham Priest's dialetheic account of semantic paradoxes and the paraconsistent logics employed cannot achieve semantic universality. Dialetheism therefore fails as a solution to semantic paradoxes for the same reason that consistent approaches did. It will be demonstrated that if dialetheism can express its own semantic principles, a strengthened liar paradox will result, which renders dialetheism trivial. In particular, the argument is not invalidated by relational valuations, which were brought into paraconsistent logic (...) in order to avoid strengthened liar paradoxes. (shrink)

When natural time sequences were replaced by clocks, time became a measurable commodity and the ‘speedy use of time’ a virtue. In medical practice shorter consultations allow more patients to be seen, whereas longer consultations result in a better understanding of the patient and her problems. Crossing the line of time-efficiency and time-effectiveness compromises the balance between short-term turnover and long-term outcomes. The consultation has all the hallmarks of a complex adaptive system whose characteristics are not determined by the characteristics (...) of the components, but by the patterns of interaction among the components. Systems are dynamic and change over time; the dynamic nature is not incidental, but necessary as complex systems operate at conditions far from equilibrium. The central notion when we talk of time and complexity is that of ‘memory’. Memory is carrying something from the past over into the future. Memory is filtered/interpreted, separating noise from information. Memory therefore is not an instantaneous thing, it takes time to develop; it is slow. The dynamics between the participating agents in the consultation will create shared memories that live on to shape future interactions. Shared memories are stronger and contain more relevant knowledge if they are based on frequent interactions and ongoing doctor–patient relationships, leading to a better understanding of the whole person – a process that takes time. Sufficient time, that is, ‘a certain slowness’, is an essential element of the healing relationship in the consultation. It creates a sufficiently stable, but adaptive, environment that can withstand changing demands. Hence a more complete understanding of the consultation and its time demands will not only lead to more effective treatment, it will also humanize a situation which has become to a large extent purely instrumental. This process of humanization is important not only for the patient, but also for the doctor. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Kunst als Lehre vom "Begriff" und von der "Neuen Unmittelbarkeit".

We study the monoid of primitive recursive functions and investigate a onestep construction of a kind of exact completion, which resembles that of the familiar category of modest sets, except that the partial equivalence relations which serve as objects are recursively enumerable. As usual, these constructions involve the splitting of symmetric idempotents.

We study a real-effort environment, where a delegator has to decide if and to whom to delegate a task. Applicants send cheap-talk messages about their past performance before the delegator decides. We experimentally test the theoretical prediction that information transmission does not occur in equilibrium. In our experiment, we vary the message space available to the applicants and compare the information transmitted as well as the level of efficiency achieved. Depending on the treatment, applicants can either submit a Number indicating (...) past performance, an Interval in which past performance falls, or a free Text message. We observe that messages contain information in all treatments. Interestingly, information transmission occurs only in the treatments where messages are intervals or free text. Social welfare is higher if messages are intervals or free text than precise numbers. Gender and ethnicity stereotypes only influence delegation in the Number treatment, where no information transmission takes place. (shrink)

I think that our concepts of past and future are so basic and so all-pervasive that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could even begin to make it appear plausible that one could dislodge them from their accustomed habitats. But Michael Dummett, in his paper Bringing about the past, while leaving no doubt about the fact that we are well-advised to leave the past where it belongs, arrives at the conclusion that under very special circumstances one might consider (...) it not completely impossible to regard a situation as one in which the past has been brought about. In spite of Dummett’s very sophisticated arguments I continue to have doubts about this. But before going into these doubts, I shall try to remind you of the substance of Dummett’s paper. (shrink)

The question of who or what the happy man mentioned in Wittgenstein's Tractatus really is leads to a discussion of connected issues, e.g. the question of the Schopenhauerian origins of certain key notions of Wittgenstein's early philosophy, the import of the concept of a world-soul, the topic of solipsism, and the puzzling question of what is involved in the self's identification with the world.