The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

Publishing a collection of fragments from a classical author is a risky business: the moment the book appears in print, it may already be outdated, as new fragments could have come to light. Or, in the words of Ecclesiasticus 18:7: ‘When a man hath done, then he beginneth; and when he leaveth off, then he shall be doubtful’. The same fate befell me shortly after the publication of my collection of fragments from Rufus of Ephesus' On Melancholy. Manfred Ullmann wrote (...) to me that the late Rainer Degen had discovered a new fragment; in the course of my research, I came across some relevant quotations in the Hippocratic Treatments by the tenth-century author aṭ-Ṭabarī; and recently, Klaus-Dietrich Fischer published two related fragments. The following short note contains these new fragments together with an English translation and commentary. At the end, I also offer some addenda and corrigenda, partly in light of the reviews that have since appeared. (shrink)

The article Memories sung in words – singers’ autobiographies aims at identifying main topics and patterns present in autobiographical writings of classical singers. Discovering of vocal talent and musicality, desire to become a singer, role of voice teachers and mentors, highlights of the career, fears and failures, vocal crises, dealing with criticism and negative judgements, daily routines aimed on vocal fitness, balancing private and professional life, cultural and historical background — all these aspects are discussed here on two remarkable examples:... (...) und ich wäre so gern Primadonna gewesen. Erinnerungen by Christa Ludwig, one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of postwar opera, and Zeit eines Lebens. Auf Fährtensuclie by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, one of the most famous Lieder performers, often called in Germany ‘the voice of the 20th century’. Verbalizing the universe of their artistic and life experience they both express the essence of being a classical singer: ‘The singing profession is slavery! It only looks easy and enviable from the outside. You are showered with bravas and blossoms [...], but from the beginning the sword of Damocles always hangs over your head. After a certain age you no longer have the ease, and your voice is no longer as radiant. Indeed, you must stop singing just at the time when you finally know what singing is all about’. (shrink)

We offer a functional perspective on hate, showing that hate has a unique pattern of appraisals and action tendencies. Hate is based on perceptions of a stable, negative disposition of persons or groups. We hate persons and groups more because of who they are, than because of what they do. Hate has the goal to eliminate its target. Hate is especially significant at the intergroup level, where it turns already devalued groups into victims of hate. When shared among group members, (...) hate can spread fast in conflict zones where people are exposed to hate-based violence, which further feeds their hate. Hate can be reassuring and self-protective, because its message is simple and helps confirming people’s belief in a just world. (shrink)

I discuss van inwagen's "first formal argument" for the incompatibility of causal determinism and freedom to do otherwise. I distinguish different interpretations of the important notion, "s can render p false." I argue that on none of these interpretations is the argument clearly sound. I point to gaps in the argument, Although I do not claim that it is unsound.

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Sprache und Wirklichkeit in Wittgensteins Tractatus" verfügbar.

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises – voter independence – is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, ‘large crowds are fallible but better than small groups’. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation (...) and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (‘indistinguishable’) voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We also prove a more general and simpler such jury theorem. (shrink)

The article addresses the issue of rationing health care services, a topic currently being hotly debated in many countries. The author argues that the aspect of causal responsibility ought to play a decisive role in the allocation of limited medical resources. Starting out from Ronald Dworkin's distinction between option luck and brute luck, the appropriate and meaningful uses of the term causal responsibility are clarified first. A discussion of the conditions which might justify giving lower priority to patients whose illnesses (...) are the result of unhealthy behavior, like e.g. alcohol abuse, follows. Causal responsibility is then viewed in the context of private health insurance and the club model of organ donation. It is argued that individuals themselves are basically responsible for their decisions regarding insurance coverage and membership in organ donors' clubs. Causal responsibility is shown to be a more suitable criterion for rationing scarce medical resources than other criteria which might alternatively be considered, such as patients' age. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Bridgeless Gap? Species Selection The Macroevolution Dispute as a Biological Controversy Postscript: Counterpoint Acknowledgments References.

Bayesian epistemology tells us with great precision how we should move from prior to posterior beliefs in light of new evidence or information, but says little about where our prior beliefs come from. It offers few resources to describe some prior beliefs as rational or well-justified, and others as irrational or unreasonable. A different strand of epistemology takes the central epistemological question to be not how to change one’s beliefs in light of new evidence, but what reasons justify a given (...) set of beliefs in the first place. We offer an account of rational belief formation that closes some of the gap between Bayesianism and its reason-based alternative, formalizing the idea that an agent can have reasons for his or her (prior) beliefs, in addition to evidence or information in the ordinary Bayesian sense. Our analysis of reasons for belief is part of a larger programme of research on the role of reasons in rational agency (Dietrich and List, Nous, 2012a, in press; Int J Game Theory, 2012b, in press). (shrink)

Here we respond to Johansson’s main worry, as laid out in his, “Actual and Counterfactual Attitudes: Reply to Fischer and Brueckner.” We show how our principle BF*(dd*) can be adjusted to address this concern compatibly with our fundamental approach to responding to Lucretius.

Die elf Beiträge dieses Bandes gehen aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln dem Problem der Verkörperung von Sinn nach: phänomenologische, psychoanalytische und sprachwissenschaftliche Ansätze bilden dabei den Schwerpunkt; sie werden aber durch Studien aus der Literaturtheorie, der politischen Theorie und der Filmwissenschaft ergänzt. Was heißt es – das ist die zentrale Frage –, den Körper als leibliches Medium aufzufassen, welches Sinn nicht nur verkörpert, sondern überhaupt erst entstehen lässt? Gibt es bereits eine Sprache des Leibes diesseits der Ebene ausdrücklicher Rede?

English summary: In the 20th century it was the distortions of humanism (third humanism, antihumanism) rather than the actual history of the concept and the idea of humanism and of the authors and texts associated with it, from Plato to Humboldt, which shaped its image. This volume contains a number of individual studies which together create a genealogy of humanistic thought in Europe. German description: Im 20. Jahrhundert haben eher die Entstellungen des Humanismus wie der 'dritte Humanismus' oder der 'Antihumanismus' (...) sein Profil gepragt als die tatsachliche Geschichte seines Begriffs, seiner Idee und die damit verbundenen Autoren und Texte von Platon bis Wilhelm von Humboldt.und Ernst Cassirer. In diesem Band wird in zeitkritischer Absicht anhand einer Reihe von Einzeluntersuchungen eine Genealogie des humanistischen Denkens in Europa vorgenommen. Der Band enthalt Beitrage von: Enno Rudolph, Anne Eusterschulte, Achim Geisenhansluke, Charlotte Schoell-Glass, Wolf-Dietrich Hartwich, Andreas Arndt, Vincent von Wroblewsky, Christoph Schulte, Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Kim Sitzler, Ursula Baatz und Joachim Fischer. (shrink)

It is shown that the Fodor's interpretation of the frame problem is the central indication that his version of the Modularity Thesis is incompatible with computationalism. Since computationalism is far more plausible than this thesis, the latter should be rejected.