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.

Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear. According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional (...) that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions. I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis. According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear. (shrink)

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)

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)

Excusable ignorance not only undermines moral culpability but also agent-responsibility. Therefore, excusable ignorance absolves of liability for costs. Specifically, it defeats liability that is meant to be derived from causal responsibility wherever strict liability cannot be justified. To establish these claims this paper assesses the potential of arguments for liability of excusably ignorant agents and thereby demarcates the proper domain of strict liability and traces the intuition that seemingly supports strict liability accounts to more general principles. The paper concludes that (...) liability cannot be justified in cases of excusable ignorance. Finally, it stresses that although excusable ignorance defeats the link from causal responsibility to liability for costs this does not imply that victims are left to fend for themselves. (shrink)

The group selection controversy largely focuses on altruism (e.g., Wilson 1983; Lloyd 2001; Shavit 2004; Okasha 2006, 173ff; Borrello 2010; Leigh 2010; Rosas 2010; Hamilton and Dimond in press). Multilevel selection theory is a resolution of this controversy. Whereas kin selection partitions inclusive fitness into direct and indirect components (via influencing the replication of copies of genes in other individuals), multilevel selection considers within-group and between-group components of fitness (Gardner et al. 2011; Lion et al. 2011). Two scenarios of multilevel (...) selection are often distinguished (Damuth and Heisler 1988; Okasha 2006; Pigliucci 2010): (1) group structure only divides individual fitnesses into within- and between-group components (MLS1); and, (2) groups get their own component of fitness and also, in most definitions, a group-level adaptation (MLS2). (shrink)

Abstract.In this paper we show that the theory of fields together with an integrally closed subring, the theory of formally real fields with a real holomorphy ring and the theory of formally \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic fields with a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic holomorphy ring have no model companions in the language of fields augmented by a unary predicate for the corresponding ring.

This paper is an attempt at presenting a convincing reading of the first sentences of PI § 109, especially of its third sentence. There Wittgenstein mentions what he calls "the pneumatic conception of thought", which by Miss Anscombe is translated as "the conception of thought as a gaseous medium". By comparing the relevant sentences with their sources in Wittgenstein's manuscripts and additional parallels it is found that Anscombe's rendering is liable to be misleading. Wittgenstein's notion of "pneuma" is likely to (...) be inspired by a conception of the kind elucidated by Oswald Spengler, for instance, according to whose account pneuma is to be understood as a sort of body (Seelenkörper). If you take this as your central image, the pneumatic conception alluded to in PI § 109 is one which can be tracked down in Wittgenstein's early as well as in his middle-period work. In this remark (PI § 109), Wittgenstein tries to mention both helpful and misleading features of his earlier ways of thinking, and what he now calls the "pneumatic conception" can be seen to be the foil for both sorts of features. The central idea is that the core of language contains a scaffolding of rules whose ("pneumatic") substance is the same as that of our thought. In accordance with this view the logical structure of thought is held to be identical with that of language and reality—a notion which fits parts of the Tractatus as well as parts of the original "grammatical" conception developed in the early 1930ies. (shrink)

In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 341-352.

Medizinethik wie auch Pflegeethik werden allgemein als Disziplinen verstanden, die das Handeln von Menschen auf die Geltung seiner Ziele, Motivationen und Resultate hin untersucht. Ausgangspunkt solcher Formen der Ethik bildet die zum Problem gewordene Situation, in der vermeintlich eindeutige Grundziele, wie zum Beispiel Lebensverlängerung einerseits und Leidensverminderung andererseits, miteinander in Konflikt geraten. Es stellen sich dann Fragen, deren praxisanleitende Beantwortungen von einer Pflegeethik gefordert werden. In der theoretisch fundierten Beantwortung dieser Fragen jedoch entfernen sich Medizin- und Pflegeethik von dem, was (...) Menschen tun und erleiden. Mit Hilfe der seinsgeschichtlichen Hermeneutik Heideggers und des amerikanischen Pragmatismus, vertreten durch John Dewey und Richard Rorty, entwickeln die Autoren eine Methode, die - jenseits sogenannter Grundfragen einer medizinischen Ethik - alltägliche Krisen des heutigen klinischen Miteinanders im Spannungsfeld technischer Medizin und individueller Situation lösungsorientiert neu verstehen lässt. Jene werden - derart als Fragen von Mitgefühl und Selbstbestimmung neu verstanden - zu Chancen einer verantwortungsvollen klinischen Praxis. Die Krankenpflege bildet dabei als neu belebter metaphorischer Fundus den poietischen Horizont dieser Praxis, deren methodischer Vollzug von der Ausbildung bis zum beruflichen Handeln ärztlichen und pflegenden Klinikpersonals reicht. Die kulturellen, sprachlichen, rechtlichen und institutionellen Bedingungen des Handelns in Kliniken werden auf den Prüfstand gestellt und neu bewertet. Schließlich wird die Methode eines Klinischen Pragmatismus, als neue Ethik der Pflege, anhand von einschlägigen Fallbeispielen aus der Praxis beispielhaft angewandt. (shrink)

Simmel never finished his book on Hegel. Simmel rarely mentions Hegel throughout his collected works. But when he does, it is often with praise. However, Simmel explicitly distances himself from Hegel in those places where, as readers, we find Hegelian traits. What should we make of this complex relationship? With the aim of contributing to understanding Simmel’s systematic thought, I assess the extent to which Simmel was and was not influenced by Hegel. I refer to two lesser-known writings, in which (...) Simmel addresses Hegel’s philosophy at length, along with some of the more incidental mentions of Hegel that Simmel makes throughout his oeuvre. I show that Simmel adopts Hegel’s conception of philosophy while rejecting its system building. I then argue that what most scholars consider to be Hegelian in Simmel’s philosophy, namely dialectics, in fact represents his weakest, or most general, form of Hegelianism. Moreover, I show that given Simmel’s aesthetic focus, he may have been more influenced by Schiller than by Hegel in this regard. Finally, among other Hegelian features that are often overlooked, I consider Simmel’s conceptual relationality of individual–society as well as his critique of Kantian ethics. (shrink)

Starting from a political controversy and a wide-ranging media-discussion, the article examines the evolution of German national holidays from the "Kaiserreich" to the reunited Federal Republic. The author lists the dates and attributes of the national festivities and asks to what extent national days can contribute to a collective identification with the given state and its political system. In the process of change one identifies a long run from emotional festivity towards a rather rational attitude in celebrating the National Day. (...) The future of the current German national holiday in the frame of a 'democratic culture' is far away from being settled. (shrink)

Grammar can be formulated as a kind of substructural propositional logic. In support of this claim, we survey bare Gentzen style deductive systems and two kinds of non-commutative linear logic: intuitionistic and compact bilinear logic. We also glance at their categorical refinements.

Michael Levin challenges the methodological soundness of Robert Nozick’s argument for the minimal state, but supports his final result: The exclusive aims of the state must be the “protection against force, theft, fraud, [and the] enforcement of contracts”. To replace Nozick’s, Levin builds a Hobbesian defense of the minimal state. He claims that the hypothetical rational choice of the less extensive bargain by the individuals in the state of nature morally justifies a minimal, but no other state. I analyze and (...) seek to improve upon this Hobbesian defense of the minimal state. While Levin’s arguments can support the claim that any justified state has to be at least as extensive as the ultraminimal state, they also provide ground, contrary to his intention, upon which to build more extensive states. (shrink)