The purpose of this paper is to examine the methodical status of phenomenological reduction in Heidegger's early Freiburg lectures (1919-1923). Starting from the assumption that the traditional interpretation of reduction focused mainly on Heidegger’s interpretation of its ontological possibility (by explaining reduction from the phenomenon of anxiety), we propose a reading conducted from a methodical perspective. First, we follow the Heideggerian appropriation of reduction as the epoché of the objectivations of life and determine its “phenomenological residue” as essentially evental and (...) “noematic”. Then, by broadening the meaning of reduction understood now as reconduction to the origin, we highlight its essentially interpretative, performative and rearticulatory character. As the “hermeneutical reduction” is accomplished as a critical destruction, the phenomenological seeing is essentially mediated in an interpretative and historical way. (shrink)

According to a suggestion by Williamson, outright belief comes in degrees: one has a high/low degree of belief iff one is willing to rely on the content of one’s belief in high/low-stakes practical reasoning. This paper develops an epistemic norm for degrees of outright belief so construed. Starting from the assumption that outright belief aims at knowledge, it is argued that degrees of belief aim at various levels of strong knowledge, that is, knowledge which satisfies particularly high epistemic standards. This (...) account is contrasted with and shown to be superior to an alternative proposal according to which higher degrees of outright belief aim at higher-order knowledge. In an “Appendix”, it is indicated that the logic of degrees of outright belief is closely linked to ranking theory. (shrink)

The so-called Principle of Plenitude was ascribed to Leibniz by A. O. Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Its temporal version states that what holds always, holds necessarily. This temporal formulation is the subject of the current paper. Lovejoy’s idea was criticised by Hintikka. The latter supported his criticisms by referring to specific Leibnizian notions of absolute and hypothetical necessities interpreted in a possible-worlds semantics. In the paper, Hintikka’s interpretative suggestions are (...) developed and enriched with a temporal component that is present in the characteristics of the real world given by Leibniz. We use in our approach the Leibnizian idea that change is primary to time and the idea that there are possible laws that characterize worlds other than the real one. We formulate a modal propositional logic with three primitive operators for change, temporal constancy, and possible lawlikeness. We give its axiomatics and show that our logic is complete with respect to the given semantics of possible worlds. Finally, we show that the counterparts of the considered versions of the Principle of Plenitude are falsified in this semantics and the same applies to the counterpart of Leibnizian necessarianism. (shrink)

This article aims to propagate Logic Programming as a formal tool to deal with non-monotonic reasoning. In philosophy and linguistics non-monotonic reasoning is modelled using Minimal Models as standard, i.e., by imposing an order (or selection function) on the class of all models and then by defining entailment as only caring about the minimal models of the premises with respect to the order. In this article we investigate the question whether instead of minimal models we should use logic programming to (...) model non-monotonic reasoning. Logic programming is an attractive alternative to a minimal models approach in that it makes concrete predictions in an efficient and transparent way. We study this question by focusing on one particular phenomenon that gives rise to non-monotonic inferences: conditional sentences. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band bietet eine Sammlung teils andernorts publizierter, teils bislang unveröffentlichter Arbeiten zur Philosophie und Theologie Søren Kierkegaards. Das Spektrum der Texte und Themen reicht von systematischen Einführungsartikeln über wissenschafts- und erkenntnistheoretische Grundlegungsfragen bis hin zu begriffsanalytischen, ontologischen und theologischen Spezialuntersuchungen. Die Beiträge sind durchweg von einem doppelten, genetisch-rekonstruktiven und geltungstheoretisch-konstruktiven Interesse geleitet. Zum einen wollen sie zur Lösung hermeneutischer Probleme beitragen, die Kierkegaards Texte en détail und/oder als Ganzes aufwerfen. Auf der Basis einer kritischen Plausibilitätstaxierung der behandelten Aussagezusammenhänge (...) wird zweitens der Versuch unternommen, deren religionsphilosophisch und/oder theologisch prinzipielles Potential abzuschätzen, aufzunehmen und weiter zu entwickeln. Die Dialektik von Aneignung und Reflexion erweist sich in der Umsetzung beider Teilziele als bestimmend: Kein restlos Reflektiertes kann angeeignet, kein Angeeignetes restlos reflektiert sein. (shrink)

Patients often make their own decisions about managing their medications. Pharmacists could usefully serve as patient advocates, providing information that permits patients to assess risk and enhance their autonomy.

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit (...) to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible. (shrink)

A recent trend in economics has been to appeal to evolutionary theory when addressing various open questions in the subject. I here further investigate one particular such appeal to evolutionary biology: the argument that, since markets select firms as coherent units, firms should be seen to be genuine economic agents. To assess this argument, I present a model of firm/office selection in a competitive market, and show that there are cases where markets can select for firms/offices as collective units – (...) and thus, as agents of their own – but also that there are cases where they do not. In this way, I try to make the evolutionary argument for the agency-based view of the firm more precise. (shrink)

SNOMED CT is a clinical terminology that uses logical axioms to provide terms with meaning. This enforces precise agreements about the ontological nature of the entities denoted by the terms, commo...

In this paper we investigate whether timing in monolingual acquisition interacts with age of onset and input effects in child bilingualism. Six different morpho-syntactic and semantic phenomena acquired early, late or very late are considered, with their timing in L1 acquisition varying between age 3 (subject-verb agreement) and after age 6 (case marking). Data from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) whose mean age of onset to German was three months are compared with data from early second language learners of German (eL2) (...) whose mean age of onset to German was 35 months as well as with data from monolingual children. To explore change over time, children were tested twice at the ages of 4;4 years and 5;8 years. The main findings were that 2L1 children had an advantage over their eL2 peers in early acquired phenomena, which disappeared with time, whereas in late acquired phenomena 2L1 and eL2 children did not differ. Moreover, 2L1 children performed like monolingual children in early acquired phenomena but had a disadvantage in the late acquired phenomena with the amount of delay decreasing with time. We conclude that age of onset effects are modulated by effects of timing in monolingual acquisition. Contrary to expectation, input in terms of language dominance, measured as the dominant language used at home, did not affect simultaneous bilingual children’s performance in any of the phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hypothesis that acquisition of late phenomena is determined by input alone and suggest an alternative concept: the learner’s internal need for time to master a phenomenon, which is determined by its complexity and cross-linguistic robustness. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the reasons why sometimes good arguments in health communication leaflets fail to convince the targeted audience. As an illustrative example it uses the age-dependent eligibility of women in the Netherlands to receive routine breast cancer screening examinations: according to Dutch regulations women under 50 are ineligible for them. The present qualitative study rests on and complements three experimental studies on the persuasiveness of mammography information leaflets; it uses interviews to elucidate reasons why the arguments in (...) the health communication leaflets for the exclusion of women under 50 from routine mammographic screenings do not work. (shrink)

The article draws a conceptual distinction the (French) structuralism of the 50’s–60’s and the post-structuralism of the 70’s, which are discussed as overlapping in their intellectual paths; their mutual dynamics is defined as a reaction of the intelligence to the pressure of depersonalized unified schemes within the logic of structuralism against free improvisation and loose interpretation instead of total explanations in the post-structuralism interpretation. The article establishes a conceptual identity of the paradoxical nature between post-structuralism (and deconstructionism, which is homogeneous (...) and identical thereto in a number of aspects), on the one hand, and constructionism with its specific process of language dismantling – social/ideological languages, social group dialects, on the other hand, which naturally leads the authors to the analysis of the paradoxicality principles, defined by post-structuralism (five principles of paradoxicality of Gilles Deleuze – paradox of regress, paradox of sterile reiteration, paradox of neutrality, paradox of absurd, paradox of Levi-Strauss); poststructuralists’ paralogisms are examined through paradoxical denotation; the late Roland Barthes’ phenomenon of paradoxicality, becoming a plot-forming principle of narration, is analyzed. Poststructuralism is conceptualized in the article as the first decisive step of post-modernism; the affinity of post-structuralist and postmodernist commitment to parody, game and irony is stated; the theory of language games in post-modern interpretation is explored; one of those games – a game of carnival – is explored within the diachronic retrospective; the affinity of parody and carnival tradition of post-structuralism and post-modernism to the romantic irony of the XIXth century and its inconsistency with the popular culture of laugh is established. The genesis of poststructuralism and post-modernism is connected with the ideological restart of the Western society before the “very end” of the Resistance ideas and the disappointment of the left European intellectuals in the “great legends” and illusions of Marxism. The blurred concepts of relativism are connected with the mutual disproportion of different layers of historical experience. (shrink)

This article holds that ability to support one’s opinions with arguments, awareness of the arguments for other opinions, and insight into the superiority of some arguments are basic requirements for rational discourse. Based on a content analysis of Swiss Italian newspaper coverage of a controversy over a smoke-free law introduced and finally implemented in the canton of Ticino in 2007 and on a five-wave panel survey of public opinion on the issue, the article describes elements of the argumentative structure of (...) news coverage of this issue and relates them to rationality requirements. It finds that the newspapers offered a wide variety of arguments to readers (articulation function) when political activity to introduce a ban intensified, and especially when arguments mattered as a referendum approached. Papers displayed a reasonable and differentiated picture of arguments, contributing to a unique pattern of weighting and evaluating them. Neither newspaper coverage nor public opinion showed much sign of change, which speaks against a reaction to superior arguments. Finally, the newspaper bias towards arguments for the ban and their inclination to publish objections to arguments against may have contributed to a widespread lack of awareness of arguments against the ban among people favouring it. Thus, evidence of the rationality of argumentative structures is mixed, and further enquiry into this subject is encouraged. (shrink)

The paper argues for the viability and indispensibility of the so-called golden rule as a principle of moral reasoning. Drawing mostly on prior research by Hans Reiner an initial morphological analysis shows that the rule historically appears in three different, albeit irreducible forms: first as a rule of empathy, secondly as a rule of autonomy, finally as a rule of reciprocity. Pointing out and eliminating the ambivalences of its factual variants the paper then tries to reestablish the rule in its (...) ethical ideality. The analysis Ieads to the conclusion that the golden rule is not and cannot be a principle of a genuinely Christian, but only and exclusively of a purely philosophical ethics. (shrink)

A partir de las reflexiones del filósofo peruano Fidel Tubino sobre una hermenéutica diatópica, este artículo aborda el problema intercultural de los derechos humanos; se deben desarrollar estos derechos conjuntamente en un diálogo intercultural; no pueden ser implantados en otras culturas a partir de la cultura occidental. La hermenéutica diatópica evita tanto el relativismo cultural como el imperialismo cultural; está al servicio de la reconciliación de las culturas.

The human being is an important subject in Edith Stein's work, not only in her first writings but also in her later work. Edith Stein's own contribution comes about as a result of the particular way she relates the classical metaphysics of being to the phenomenological philosophy of consciousness.

Key Terms in Logic offers the ideal introduction to this core area in the study of philosophy, providing detailed summaries of the important concepts in the study of logic and the application of logic to the rest of philosophy. A brief introduction provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers and lists of key texts. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no (...) prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to Logic for the first time. (shrink)