In jurisprudential circles the year 1981 might well be dubbed the year of Hans Kelsen, with no fewer than three symposia celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The Association for Legal and Social Philosophy in the United Kingdom held a conference on Kelsen in Edinburgh in April, giving special attention to “legal epistemology” in the Pure Theory of Law. A symposium of the Austrian Association for Legal and Social Philosophy, held in the Schloss Retzhof near Graz in May, was (...) devoted to Kelsen's political theory and critique of ideology. And the Hans Kelsen Institute in Vienna sponsored a symposium in September on Kelsen's posthumously published work, the Allgemeine Theorie der Normen. All three events were marked by significant international participation, and they point to continuing widespread interest in Kelsen and the Pure Theory of Law. (shrink)

This paper argues against two prominent accounts of what it is to "promote a desire," found in the work of Stephen Finlay and Mark Schroeder.

Religious toleration first became legally enshrined in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious toleration led to the practice of more general inter-subjective recognition of members of democratic states which took precedence over differences of conviction and practice. After considering the extent to which a democracy may defend itself against the enemies of democracy and to which it should be prepared to tolerate civil disobedience, the article analyses the contemporary dialectic between the notion of civil inclusion and multiculturalism. Religious (...) toleration is seen as the pacemaker for modern multiculturalism, in which the claims of minorities to civic inclusion are recognized so long as members of all groups understand themselves to be citizens of one and the same political community. Footnotes1 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture, 2003. (shrink)

Promotion is the relation between an act and a desire that obtains when the act advances or serves the desire. Under what conditions does an act promote a desire? Probabilistic accounts of promotion, the most prominent accounts, analyze promotion in terms of an increase in the probability of the desire’s satisfaction. In this paper, we clarify the promotion relation and explain why probabilistic accounts are attractive. Then we identify two questions probabilistic accounts must answer: the Baseline Question and the Interpretation (...) Question. We discuss and reject the three answers to the Baseline Question found in the literature, and explain the challenge future attempts at answering this question will face. Proponents of probabilistic accounts have not adequately addressed the Interpretation Question. We survey three answers to this question, finding each unsatisfactory. We conclude that no satisfactory probabilistic account has yet been offered, and that there are significant hurdles to providing one in the future. (shrink)

In this article, I articulate and respond to an epistemological challenge to meta-normative realism. The challenge has it that, if realism about the normative is correct, and if evolutionary forces have significantly influenced our normative judgments, then it would be a remarkable coincidence if the content of the normative facts and our normative judgments were aligned. I criticize David Enoch's recent attempt to meet this challenge, but provide an alternative response that is structurally similar. I argue that if realism is (...) correct, then it would be remarkable if the content of our normative judgments and the normative facts were not significantly aligned. (shrink)

Source Hybridism about practical reasons is the position that facts that constitute reasons sometimes derive their normative force from external metaphysical grounds, and sometimes from internal. Although historically less popular than either Source Internalism or Source Externalism, hybridism has lately begun to garner more attention. Here, I further the hybridist's cause by defending Source Hybridism from three objections. I argue that we are not warranted in rejecting hybridism for any of the following reasons: that hybridists cannot provide an account of (...) normative weight, that hybridists are committed to implausible results concerning practical deliberation, or that Source Hybridism is objectionably unparsimonious. (shrink)

Varied evidence for a hypothesis confirms it more strongly than less varied evidence, ceteris paribus. This epistemological Variety of Evidence Thesis enjoys long-standing widespread intuitive support. Recent literature has raised serious doubts that the correlational approach of explicating the thesis can vindicate it. By contrast, the eliminative approach due to Horwich vindicates the Variety of Evidence Thesis but only within a relatively narrow domain. I investigate the prospects of extending the eliminative approach to a larger domain by considering a larger (...) class of sensible explications of evidential variety. For a large subclass class of such explications I show how to construct cases in which the less diverse body of evidence for a hypothesis confirms more strongly. I hence argue that these prospects are dire since the eliminative approach widely fails to vindicate the thesis. (shrink)

Internalists about practical reasons maintain that all of an agent’s reasons for action derive their normative force via some relation in which they stand with that agent’s pro-attitudes, or the pro-attitudes that the agent would have in some idealized set of circumstances. One common complaint against internalism is that the view is extensionally inadequate – that it cannot render the correct verdicts about what reasons agents have in a range of important cases. In this paper, I examine that charge of (...) extensional inadequacy, taking as my starting point an argument that Derek Parfit has recently leveled against internalism. Through a close evaluation of that argument and potential replies to it, I attempt to show that internalists cannot accommodate important pre-theoretical intuitions about what reasons we have. However, I also argue that Parfit’s case is importantly overstated; I set out to show that his argument cannot establish, as he thinks it does, that no reasons derive their normative force in the way that internalists believe that all do. In doing so, I draw attention to the possibility of a hybrid position about practical reasons that, surprisingly, receives little attention in the existing literature. If the arguments of the paper succeed, I will have established a modest theoretical advantage for hybridism over internalism – namely, that it is not vulnerable to the charge of extensional inadequacy. My hope is that this goes some way toward establishing hybridism’s credentials as a serious alternative to its “pure” competitors. (shrink)

Ellsberg's (1961) famous paradox shows that decision-makers give events with ‘known’ probabilities a higher weight in their outcome evaluation. In the same article, Ellsberg suggests a preference representation which has intuitive appeal but lacks an axiomatic foundation. Schmeidler (1989) and Gilboa (1987) provide an axiomatisation for expected utility with non-additive probabilities. This paper introduces E-capacities as a representation of beliefs which incorporates objective information about the probability of events. It can be shown that the Choquet integral of an E-capacity is (...) the Ellsberg representation. The paper further explores properties of this representation of beliefs and provides an axiomatisation for them. (shrink)

Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften sind Knoten eines engen Beziehungsgeflechts, in dem Mensch und Gesellschaft, Natur und Kultur weitere Knoten sind. Entwicklungen in diesen beiden Bereichen haben somit stets Auswirkungen sowohl auf die anderen Knoten als auf das Beziehungsgeflecht als Ganzes. Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften sind als ars humana zudem stets eine Form menschlicher Handlung. Damit werden sie zu einem Schlüsselproblem der theoretischen und praktischen Philosophie. Denn der Mensch, seine Handlungen und seine Eingliederung in die Gesellschaft stehen ebenso wie die Natur und die (...) Kultur seit jeher im Zentrum philosophischer Untersuchungen. Die Philosophie vermag diese beiden Wissenschaftsbereiche zu fundieren und kritisch zu begleiten. Philosophie, Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften haben das Vermögen, sich gegenseitig zu befruchten. In Anbetracht der humanen, sozialen und ökologischen Probleme des 21. Jhds. ist die fachbereichsübergreifende und partnerschaftliche Zusammenarbeit dieser drei Schlüsselbereiche unabdingbar. Sie ist eine nicht hintergehbare Grundbedingung aller Entwicklungen, die den Anspruch erheben, nachhaltig zu sein und damit dem normativen Leitziel folgen, heutigen und zukünftigen Generationen bedingungslos ein menschenwürdiges Leben zu ermöglichen. Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler können dabei einen wesentlichen Beitrag leisten. Die folgenden zehn Thesen begründen die Bedeutung einer an Nachhaltigkeit orientierten philosophischen Grundbildung von Ingenieuren und Naturwissenschaftlern. (shrink)

Since the introduction of photography by commercial studio photographers and the colonial state in Kenya, this global medium has been intensely debated and contested among Muslims on the cosmopolitan East African coast. This book does not only explore the making, circulation, and consumption of popular photographs, but also the other side, their rejection and obliteration, an essential aspect of a medium's history that should not be neglected. It deals with various »social spaces of refusal« in the local Muslim milieu and (...) in that of »traditional« spirit mediums in which visibility was contested in various and creative ways. It focuses on the »aesthetics of withdrawal«: the various ways and techniques that process the photographic act as well as the photographic image to theatricalize the surface of the image in new ways by veiling, masking, and concealing. In a fragmented historical perspective, Heike Behrend seeks to complement, decenter, and counter the history of photography as it has been told by the West and to narrate another history beginning with preceding local media such as textiles and spirit possession. (shrink)

Jherings Rechtsdenken ist ein noch nicht ausgeschöpftes Guthaben der deutschen Rechtskultur. Erst in jüngerer Zeit konnte es von schweren Mißverständnissen befreit und in seiner kulturanthropologischen, die menschliche Zivilisation als Ganzes erfassenden Weite deutlich gemacht werden. Okko Behrends beleuchtet Jhering als Schriftsteller, Rechtstheoretiker und Juristen. Er verfolgt die Wirkung seines realistischen, aber an der Idee des rechtsethischen Fortschritts festhaltenden Denkens in Europa (Deutschland, Rußland, Schweden, Italien), Ostasien (Japan und Korea) sowie Nord- und Südamerika.

As illustrated by the famous Ellsberg paradox, many subjects prefer to bet on events with known rather than with unknown probabilities, i.e., they are ambiguity averse. In an experiment, we examine subjects’ choices when there is an additional source of ambiguity, namely, when they do not know how much money they can win. Using a standard assumption on the joint set of priors, we show that ambiguity-averse subjects should continue to strictly prefer the urn with known probabilities. In contrast, our (...) results show that many subjects no longer exhibit such a strict preference. (shrink)

The choice of new technology in a resource-based industry has far-reaching implications for its ethical performance. The kraft pulping industry uses considerable amounts of wood as raw material, and regulatory agencies have been tightening their control limits for effluent, solid waste and air emissions. The technological solutions required to reduce the environmental impact of the industry are shown to have the potential of causing social hardship for the mill's employees, the affected communities, lenders, and owners. In some instances, the technological (...) solutions give rise to new environmental challenges. Forestry practices are influencing the public's perception of the kraft pulping industry, its ethical and environmental performance, its profitability, and the properties of its product, which may increase wood requirements. New forestry practices have the potential to reduce the forest land area required to sustain the kraft pulp production at a given level but ethical problems associated with genetic manipulation, phenodiversity, and biodiversity are identified. This paper analyzes the interface between environmental protection, ethics, and choice of technology. (shrink)

Speaking of mental imagery suggests a similarity between internal mental representations and external pictorial representations, such as drawings, paintings and photographs. This perceived similarity has led some philosophers and cognitive scientists to consider that both types of representations belong to a specific category known as depictive representations. Since the depictive role of external pictures has often been explained in terms of resemblance, the same principle has been applied to mental images. In this article, I start by reviewing some of these (...) attempts. Then, I put forward objections against the core project behind these attempts, particularly emphasizing what I call the ‘homogeneity problem’. Finally, this article proposes an alternative approach to understanding mental imagery by drawing insights from the literature on pictorial representation in artifacts, namely from recognitional accounts of pictorial representation. I argue that one of the merits of this definition is that it does not fall prey to the homogeneity problem and the other objections described previously. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Mit dem Anfang der 1990er Jahre für kommerzielle Zwecke entwickelten World Wide Web hat die Nutzung digitaler Kommunikationsmedien rasant zugenommen; deren Einsatz ist zu einem Massenphänomen geworden. Das hat erhebliche Auswirkungen auf das Gesundheitswesen, die Psychotherapie und nicht zuletzt auch die Psychoanalyse. Neben der grundsätzlichen Frage nach dem gesellschaftlichen Umgang mit Gesundheits- bzw. Krankheitsdaten, dem Persönlichkeitsrecht der Bürger sowie dem Datenschutz bei der Nutzung digitaler Medien stellen sich auch grundlegende ethische Fragen in der Psychotherapie und in der Psychoanalyse. Unabdingbar für (...) die implizite Ethik der Psychoanalyse bzw. der psychoanalytisch begründeten Verfahren ist der geschützte therapeutische Raum, dessen Vorhandensein (nach innen und außen) überhaupt erst ermöglicht, vor- und unbewusstes Material zu untersuchen. Auch wenn die digitale therapeutische Kommunikation geeignet ist, bei Analytiker und Analysand das Phantasma der Omnipräsenz zu befördern, greift die radikale Ablehnung ihres Einsatzes zu kurz. Umgekehrt muss man sich der Frage stellen, ob und wie das, was Psychoanalyse ausmacht, im »Bereich des Virtuellen« bzw. mit den Mitteln digitaler Kommunikationsmedien möglich ist. (shrink)

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The essay deals with the question whether Fichte’s socio-economic model which based both on the experiences and ideas of his time. Additionally, it explores how his socio-economic theorems stood out against cameralistic and feudal-conservative discussions and to what extent they can be described as an early critique of capitalism. Is the essence of Fichte’s socio-economic ideas to be seen in his model of state regulation or rather in his methodological claim of genetically developing the phenomena by showing their mediating links? (...) What is however still relevant today is Fichte’s idea that human beings are not the objects or means of social relations but their subjects and aims. For this purpose, Fichte developed a concept of justice that is constitutive for his notion of society. Democracy aiming at an active use of reason and social justice are the two moments which depend on each other. (shrink)