A vast and interesting family of natural semantics for belief revision is defined. Suppose one is given a distance d between any two models. One may then define the revision of a theory K by a formula α as the theory defined by the set of all those models of α that are closest, by d, to the set of models of K. This family is characterized by a set of rationality postulates that extends the AGM postulates. The new postulates (...) describe properties of iterated revisions. (shrink)

In this contemporary classic originally published in 1963, Paul Lehmann answers the central question posed time and again to Christians throughout the ages: what am I as a believer in Jesus Christ and a member of his church to do? Lehmann argues that while principles for moral action can be rules of thumb, there are no absolute moral norms beyond the general norm of love. Lehmann contends that Christians are to act in every situation in ways that (...) are consistent with God's humanizing purposes, but what that means changes from context to context and requires strong, faith-shaped discernment.The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field. (shrink)

The paper examines the significance of embarrassment for a concept of political publicity. It is critical of how the common interpretation of this apparently social phenomenon as a “milder form of shame” leads to a functionalist interpretation. According to this interpretation, embarrassment regulates given normative structures by initiating or even motivating self-criticism. In contrast, the article shows, first, that embarrassment cannot occur at all in a public sphere that is thought of exclusively in normative terms, and second, that the phenomenon (...) is primordially not reflexive. In embarrassment, one is not immediately “thrown back on oneself” but tries to find a relation to one’s public figure. A philosophical reflection on this pursuit reveals the constitution of normative structures. In this light, embarrassment presents itself as a genuinely political phenomenon. (shrink)

By a free logic is generally meant a variant of classical first-order logic in which constant terms may, under interpretation, fail to refer to individuals in the domain D over which the bound variables range, either because they do not refer at all or because they refer to individuals outside D. If D is identified with what is assumed by the given interpretation to exist, in accord with Quine’s dictum that “to be is to be the value of a [bound] (...) variable,” then a free variation on classical semantics does not require that all constant terms refer to existents, and in this sense such terms lack existential import. (shrink)

This volume presents, for the first time, an assemblage of contributions on the philosophical dimensions of the impersonal, the multiplicity of its linguistic, social, scientific, religious and artistic perspectives, as well as initial approaches to its unified definition. Linguistic and logical impersonality The “It" in K. Kraus “Impersonality” in the subject and in events The impersonal ontology of H. Rombach Levinas on the “Il y a” Organisation in non-egological consciousness The witness of consciousness in the Vedānta traditions Anonymous self-consciousness G. (...) Deleuzes figures of the impersonal The impersonal in G. Agamben's Philosophy Formal and collective thought in Spinoza Cusanus and the person as stake in the game of life Impersonal subjectivity and the comedy of solipsism Dimensions of the impersonal in T. Nagel, E. Husserl and H. Plessner On the figure of the impersonal in the Anthropocene Language and mask in F. Nietzsche Theodoros Terzopoulos on impersonality and theatre With contributions by Michael Astroh, Eric Ebner, Eric Eggert, Rolf Elberfeld, Katrin Felgenhauer, Ralf Gisinger, Annika Hand, Stefan Lang, Robert Lehmann, Enrico Müller, Daniel Neumann, Frank Raddatz, Christian Rößner, Thomas Schmaus, Fabian Strobel and Theodoros Terzopoulos. (shrink)

Die Studie untersucht die Entstehung der modernen Philosophiegeschichte, wie sie sich im Übergang vom Barock zur Aufklärung als philosophische Disziplin innerhalb des gelehrten Diskurses der historia literaria konstituierte. Die Auffassung, daß Philosophie ein Produkt menschlicher Verstandestätigkeit sei und mit dem Denken der Griechen beginne, erweist sich dabei als Resultat eines Traditionsbruchs, mit dem die entstehende Aufklärung sich vom christlichen Aristotelismus der Schulphilosophie sowie von den platonisch-hermetischen Spekulationen der Schwärmer und Pansophen absetzte. In der Umbruchphase zwischen Barock und Aufklärung entsteht so (...) der moderne philosophiegeschichtliche Kanon, der sich fundamental von der zuvor gültigen historischen Logik der Wissenschaftsgeschichte unterscheidet. Die Geschichte der Philosophie wird nun nicht länger als Sammelbecken unterschiedlich perfekter Ausformulierungen einer archetypischen Weisheit verstanden, sondern im Kontext der 'Entdeckung der geschichtlichen Welt' als ein kontingenter temporaler Prozeß menschlicher Wissenschaftsentwicklung begriffen. Wie es zu dieser Entdeckung der Philosophiegeschichte kam und worin ihre wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Implikationen bestehen, ist Gegenstand der Darstellung, die gegenüber der bisherigen Forschung verstärkt die Interdependenzen zwischen theologischem, philosophischem, rechts- und literärgeschichtlichem Diskurs berücksichtigt. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Beiträge zur Geschichte und Interpretation der Philosophie Kants" verfügbar.

This article proposes that the `renewal' of Dewey might contributeto filling the gap between the pedagogical commitment tocontingency and plurality and the fact that the pedagogicaltradition, until now, has neutralized contingency and deniedits systematic meaning for education. Therefore, the maintraits of the `renewal of Dewey' are shown in thework of some Dewey scholars who, critically and creatively,reconstruct Dewey in the mirror of poststructural, communicational and constructive theory developments.Following Dewey, these researches balance the objectiveevaluation of Dewey's work by a deliberate and (...) overtpursuit of their own intentions and (pre-)selections by the scholars.Intersubjectivity and communication are key concepts in thisrenewal of pragmatism rejecting the subject-centered philosophy of consciousness, the traditional westernepistemology and metaphysics. The turn to the philosophicalpriority of the unforeseeable also leads to anunderstanding of action as an essentialfocus. In this context Dewey's pragmatistic view of radical democracy is received as a non-foundationaltheory and the concept of consensus is criticized.The scholars clarify that the boundaries of the subjectare broadened by communicative destabilization.At the end of the article it is asked what the renewal-dimensions mean for education locatedin the public sphere. (shrink)

Individual-as-maximizing agent analogies result in a simple understanding of the functioning of the biological world. Identifying the conditions under which individuals can be regarded as fitness maximizing agents is thus of considerable interest to biologists. Here, we compare different concepts of fitness maximization, and discuss within a single framework the relationship between Hamilton’s (J Theor Biol 7:1–16, 1964) model of social interactions, Grafen’s (J Evol Biol 20:1243–1254, 2007a) formal Darwinism project, and the idea of evolutionary stable strategies. We distinguish cases (...) where phenotypic effects are additive separable or not, the latter not being covered by Grafen’s analysis. In both cases it is possible to define a maximand, in the form of an objective function ϕ(z), whose argument is the phenotype of an individual and whose derivative is proportional to Hamilton’s inclusive fitness effect. However, this maximand can be identified with the expression for fecundity or fitness only in the case of additive separable phenotypic effects, making individual-as-maximizing agent analogies unattractive (although formally correct) under general situations of social interactions. We also feel that there is an inconsistency in Grafen’s characterization of the solution of his maximization program by use of inclusive fitness arguments. His results are in conflict with those on evolutionary stable strategies obtained by applying inclusive fitness theory, and can be repaired only by changing the definition of the problem. (shrink)

Computational machineries dedicated to the attribution of legal responsibility should be based on (or, make use of) a stack of definitions relating the notion of legal responsibility to a number of suitably chosen causal notions. This paper presents a general analysis of legal responsibility and of causation in fact based on Hart and Honoré’s work. Some physical aspects of causation in fact are then treated within the “lite” version of DOLCE foundational ontology written in OWL-DL, a standard description logic for (...) the Semantic Web. (shrink)

Reasoning about causation in fact is an essential element of attributing legal responsibility. Therefore, the automation of the attribution of legal responsibility requires a modelling effort aimed at the following: a thorough understanding of the relation between the legal concepts of responsibility and of causation in fact; a thorough understanding of the relation between causation in fact and the common sense concept of causation; and, finally, the specification of an ontology of the concepts that are minimally required for (automatic) common (...) sense reasoning about causation. This article offers a worked-out example of the indicated analysis. Such example consists of: a definition of the legal concept of responsibility (in terms of liability and accountability); a definition of the legal concept of causation in fact (in terms of the initiation of physical processes by an agent and of the provision of reasons and/or opportunities to other agents); CausatiOnt, an AI-like ontology of the common sense (causal) concepts that are minimally needed for reasoning about the legal concept of causation in fact (in particular, the concepts of category, dimension, object, agent, process, event and act). (shrink)

This study investigates how background music influences learning with respect to three different theoretical approaches. Both the Mozart effect as well as the arousal-mood-hypothesis indicate that background music can potentially benefit learning outcomes. While the Mozart effect assumes a direct influence of background music on cognitive abilities, the arousal-mood-hypothesis assumes a mediation effect over arousal and mood. However, the seductive detail effect indicates that seductive details such as background music worsen learning. Moreover, as working memory capacity has a crucial influence (...) on learning with seductive details, we also included the learner’s working memory capacity as a factor in our study. We tested 81 college students using a between-subject design with half of the sample listening to two pop songs while learning a visual text and the other half learning in silence. We included working memory capacity in the design as a continuous organism variable. Arousal and mood scores before and after learning were collected as potential mediating variables. To measure learning outcomes we tested recall and comprehension. We did not find a mediation effect between background music and arousal or mood on learning outcomes. In addition, for recall performance there were no main effects of background music or working memory capacity, nor an interaction effect of these factors. However, when considering comprehension we did find an interaction between background music and working memory capacity: the higher the learners’ working memory capacity, the better they learned with background music. This is in line with the seductive detail assumption. (shrink)

Seit beinahe einem halben Jahrhundert bestimmen Theorien der ästhetischen Erfahrung den Ästhetikdiskurs in Deutschland. Harry Lehmann zeigt in seiner Diskursanalyse, wie diese Diskussion in Abgrenzung zu Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie und im Rückgriff auf Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft ihre Diskursregeln definiert hat. Der Autor diskutiert, wie sich in diesem vorgegebenen Theorierahmen anschließend die prominentesten Erfahrungsästhetiken ausdifferenziert haben und wie dieser Diskurs zuletzt seine eigenen, konstitutiven Prämissen in Frage zu stellen beginnt. Problematisch ist nicht nur, dass etwa die Konzeptkunst in diesem (...) Diskurs >ästhetisch. (shrink)

Zu den Gründungsmythen der Postmoderne gehört, dass sich die Kunst vom Neuheitsanspruch der Moderne verabschiedet habe. Tatsächlich wurde dieser Anspruch aber nicht preisgegeben, sondern nur reformuliert. Folgte die avancierte Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert weithin einer Materialästhetik, wie sie sich zum Beispiel im Kubismus oder in der seriellen Musik manifestierte, lässt sich heute eine Hinwendung zur Gehaltsästhetik beobachten. Neuheit wird von Künstlern wie Ai Weiwei oder Damien Hirst nicht länger im ästhetischen Material gesucht, sondern in dem durch ein Werk artikulierten neuen (...) ästhetischen Gehalt. Diese gehaltsästhetische Wende der Künste ist die Quintessenz von Harry Lehmanns Kunstphilosophie. Auf der Grundlage einer Theorie der ästhetischen Eigenwerte, zu denen Schönheit, Erhabenheit, Ereignis und Ambivalenz gehören, erzählt er die europäische Kunstgeschichte neu als eine Geschichte der ästhetischen Erfahrung. Zahlreiche Beispiele aus den Bildenden Künsten, der Dichtung und der Musik, aber auch aus Werbung, Mode und Design machen diesen Paradigmenwechsel in den Künsten anschaulich und evident. (shrink)

In the 1920s, London was a city on the cusp of change. Just as dance halls and jazz-age decadence displaced wartime austerity, a new generation of artists and designers sought to enliven the city's architecture, erecting dazzling buildings in the emerging art deco style. In contrast with the aging Victorian structures that dotted the city, these bright and colorful buildings--from the Hoover factory to the Ideal House by Raymond Hood, who later designed New York's Rockefeller Center--communicated the city's aspirations as (...) a thriving, modern metropolis. In the decades since, London's art deco buildings have lost none of their appeal. Millions of visitors gaze up at the headquarters of the Daily Telegraph and the nearby Daily Express, take in the elegance of Eltham Palace, or sip a martini at the Savoy. The city's most popular art deco attraction, however, is the London Underground, which boasts a series of art deco and modernist stations, designed throughout the 1920s and '30s by noted architect Charles Holden. In Modernism London Style, architectural historian Christoph Rauhut, with the help of three hundred photographs by Niels Lehmann, captures the architectural art deco heritage of London in a thrilling photographic tour. A portrait of the city during the interwar years, it chronicles the creativity of the artists and designers of the period--and the currents in the city's culture that helped shape their work. Insightful essays and an introduction by architecture scholar Adam Caruso shed light on some of the key features that characterize art deco, from floral and animal motifs to Egyptian themes. For readers planning a trip to London and hoping to place these striking buildings, the book also includes a detailed register and maps. (shrink)

Sounding Fragilities enacts a polyphony of writing on contemporary composition, music and performing arts in relation to music theatre. Co-edited by a theatre and performance scholar and by a composer and artistic researcher, this anthology considers its field of investigation through the lens of positionalities. Irene Lehmann and Pia Palme invite readers into intimate encounters with an artist's practice, feminist and queer perspectives, and personal explorations into aspects of musicology, theatre studies, technology and ecology. By presenting female* composers who (...) write with/through/about their own practice, Sounding Fragilities is a remarkable contribution to an interdisciplinary debate around the agency of artistic research. With this synthesis, the editors evaluate how moving beyond the binary of art and science reveals the rich yet fragile territories of artistic knowledge-production and literacy in music theatre. Sounding Fragilities: An Anthology brings together essays, discussions and interventions on contemporary music, dance and music theatre to offer a polyphony of new approaches to listening, watching, composing and performing. Artistic and academic researchers present reflections and insights into the fragilities of artistic materials, collaborations and the communities that build around live performances. Challenging the idea of isolated composers, choreographers, audience members and academic researchers, they stress instead the interconnectedness of these positions as indispensable elements of thriving performance and research. This feature of all live performance is envisaged by several of the book's contributors as linked to political, democratic thought and ecological or feminist thinking. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die deutschsprachige Religionswissenschaft setzt sich zunehmend mit den Grenzen des religiösen Feldes auseinander. Vor diesem Hintergrund möchte der vorliegende Artikel Religionswissenschaftlerinnen und Religionswissenschaftler dazu einladen, die Beschäftigung mit Meso-Phänomenen an den Grenzen des religiösen Feldes weiter zu systematisieren. In Auseinandersetzung mit Pierre Bourdieu schlägt der Autor dabei vor, Grenzen nicht als einfach Demarkationslinien zwischen ‚dem Religiösen‘ und ‚dem Säkularen‘ zu greifen, sondern als komplexe und dynamische Grenzstreifen zwischen unterschiedlichen Feldern. Am Beispiel des Menschenrechtsdiskurses in der religiös affiliierten Nichtregierungsorganisation Pax (...) Romana entwickelt der Artikel ein komplexes Konzept von Grenzstreifen, welches das Augenmerk auf die vielfältigen empirischen Prozesse auf den Grenzstreifen des religiösen Feldes lenkt. Besonders richtet er den Blick auf Sedimentierungsprozesse und ihre Konsequenzen für die kulturellen Tiefenstrukturen des religiösen Feldes. (shrink)

To celebrate the 270th anniversary of the De Gruyter publishing house, the company is providing permanent open access to 270 selected treasures from the De Gruyter Book Archive. Titles will be made available to anyone, anywhere at any time that might be interested. The DGBA project seeks to digitize the entire backlist of titles published since 1749 to ensure that future generations have digital access to the high-quality primary sources that De Gruyter has published over the centuries.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Ein Reinschriftfragment zu Kants Abhandlung vom ewigen Frieden" verfügbar.

Although Weber's path-breaking work on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has received much attention ever since it first appeared in 1904-5, recent research has uncovered important new aspects. This volume, the result of an international, interdisciplinary effort, throws new light on the intellectual and cultural background of Weber's work, debates recent criticism of Weber's thesis, and confronts new historical insight on the seventeenth century with Weber's interpretation. Revisiting Weber's thesis serves to deepen our understanding of Weber as (...) much as it will stimulate further research. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Aktuell entstehen zunehmend Studien, die sich dezidiert mit den Lebenswelten ‚muslimischer Jugendlicher‘ auseinandersetzen. Nur wenige dieser Studien folgen einem vergleichenden Forschungsdesign, welches ihre Ergebnisse in einem weiteren Kontext verortet. Der Artikel trägt zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke bei. Auf der Basis qualitativer Fallanalysen beschäftigt er sich mit den Religionskonstruktionen sunnitischer Jugendlicher, die ihren Lebensmittelpunkt in ländlichen Regionen Österreichs haben und in Moscheegemeinden aktiv sind. Diese Religionskonstruktionen werden mit denen von Jugendlichen verglichen, deren Interviews in protestantischen und römisch-katholischen Kontexten geführt wurden. (...) So können zwei dominante Typen von Religionskonstruktionen unterschieden werden: „Religion im Rahmen von Freizeitaktivitäten“ und „Religion im Rahmen der lokalen Kultur“. Diese Typen finden sich in unterschiedlicher Ausformung in allen Interviews. Die Religionskonstruktionen sind dabei ähnlich, aber unterschiedlich. Die zwei dominanten Typen prägen die Religionskonstruktionen in unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen. (shrink)

Although preservationists sometimes allege a right of wild areas to remain wild, their arguments do not warrant the ascription of such a right. It is hard to see how any argument to this conclusion could be persuasive, for (1) X having a right to Y requires that depriving X of Y injure X (other things being equal), and (2) the only X we have reason to think can be injured is an X which possesses consciousness. On the other hand, rights (...) are problematic creatures, and the individualistic moral view they presuppose does not accord well with the holistic perspective of many preservationists. While it might be possible to develop this perspective into a moral theory that gives wildemess intrinsic value, there seems a greater need for clarifying the policy implications of accepted moral principles. (shrink)

This paper reports a case study on a family of American English constructions that will be called the family of approximate comparison constructions. This family has three members, all of which follow the syntactic pattern about as X as Y with X being an adjective, but which allow three related functions: literal comparison, simile and irony. Two cognitive frameworks concern themselves with irony, the cognitive modelling approach and viewpoint approach, and the paper will show that, while the ironic approximate comparison (...) construction calls central assumptions of the cognitive modelling approach to question, the viewpoint account can be refined to handle these cases. In doing so, it furthers our understanding of the cognitive underpinning of irony. The paper provides a corpus-based analysis on the Y slot as well as collostructional analyses on the adjectival X slot in the family of approximate comparison constructions. The results thereof suggest that the ironic approximate comparison construction, in comparison to its literal counterpart, prefers adjectives that convey positively connotated, nuanced attitudes and is formally less variable in the Y slot. The preference for particular adjectives lends further support to the assumption that hearers understand the construction as ironic or literal before speakers complete their utterance. Given that, it is argued that the ironic approximate comparison construction communicates an inherent viewpoint. (shrink)

The continuous ongoing mentation is experienced as dreams in some functional states. Mentation occurs with high speed, is driven by individual memory, and uses state-dependent processing strategies, context material, storage options, and retrieval access. Retrieval deserves more attention. Multiple state-shifts owing to individual meaning as extracted also during sleep concatenate dream narratives and define access to segments for awake recall. [Hobson et al.; Nielson; Solms].