In an article published thirteen years ago, I tried to break new ground by showing that the texts transmitted under the titleCataleptonas the work of Virgil can be seen to form an elaborately arranged and highly allusive book of verse written by a single author. This latter, I argued, was identical with the anonymous poet who, in an epilogue, represents the preceding poems as the juvenilia of the author later known for hisBucolics,GeorgicsandAeneidand, consequently, is himself speaking in the alleged early (...) works asVirgil impersonator. This anonymous poet, however, cannot rightly be labelled a literary forger, since he repeatedly and quite unmistakably recalls each of Virgil's threeoperaas well as other texts written after the year 19b.c. Evidently, then, he is inviting his readers to take part in a literarylusus, one in which they are expected to be familiar not only with the texts ofBucolics,GeorgicsandAeneidbut also with the life of the man who wrote them. The fiction of a young Virgil is created, one who wrote his first poems—the verses referred to in the epilogue aselementaandrudis Calliope—primarily under the influence of Catullus, the said poems being, with the exception ofCatal.12 and 16, epigrams. My interpretation has borne fruit, with Irene Peirano and Markus Stachon each devoting, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, a monograph to this approach and offering what are often very thorough analytical readings of the poems as the creations of aVirgil impersonator. However, neither of these two Latinists has considered one particular interpretative aspect, which I myself had only been able to introduce very briefly into my paper: the recognition that, as many more recent studies have now further corroborated, Roman poetry books were designed for linear, sequential reading, that they have, as it were, a story to tell. Peirano, moreover, disregards in her study the threePriapeapositioned in editions before the other fifteen epigrams and shown there with their own separate numbering. In the manuscripts, however, the titleCataleptonrefers without exception to a unit comprising the threePriapeaand the fifteen epigrams. The titlePriapea, found in the catalogue of the Murbach manuscripts and in some codices, is always attached solely to the poemQuid hoc noui est?In theVita Suetoniana-Donatiana, the termsCatalepton,PriapeaandEpigrammatawere evidently used as three different titles; the author may not have seen thatCataleptonis the title of all the poems. Furthermore, I should like to point out that, counted together, ‘Virgil's’Priapeaand epigrams come to a total of seventeen poems and so match precisely both the total of seventeen books in the real Virgil's three works and the total number of Horace's epodes, of the poems, that is, which the not-so-real Virgil quite conspicuously evokes in his own penultimate poem. More significantly, however, a sequential reading of thePriapea et Epigrammatacan in fact build a watertight case for taking the texts to be, as it were, a composite whole, and that is what I intend to argue in the rest of the article. (shrink)

This paper proposes and defends an account of what it is to act for reasons. In the first part, I will discuss the desire-belief and the deliberative model of acting for reasons. I will argue that we can avoid the weaknesses and retain the strengths of both views, if we pursue an alternative according to which acting for reasons involves taking something as a reason. In the main part, I will develop an account of what it is to take something (...) as a reason for action. On the basis of this, I will then offer a new account of what it is to act for reasons. (shrink)

Leading linguists and philosophers report on all aspects of compositionality, the notion that the meaning of an expression can be derived from its parts. This book explores every dimension of this field, reporting critically on different lines of research, revealing connections between them, and highlighting current problems and opportunities.

J.L. Schellenberg’s Argument from Divine Hiddenness maintains that if a perfectly loving God exists, then there is no non-resistant non-belief. Given that such nonbelief exists, however, it follows that there is no perfectly loving God. To support the conditional claim, Schellenberg presents conceptual and analogical considerations, which we subject to critical scrutiny. We also evaluate Schellenberg’s claim that the belief that God exists is logically necessary for entering into a relationship with the Divine. Finally, we turn to possible variants of (...) Schellenberg’s case, and argue that the modifications necessary to accommodate our criticismas leave those variants with much less of a sting than originally suggested by his provocative formulation. (shrink)

Empirical evidence challenges many of the assumptions that underlie traditional philosophical and commonsense conceptions of human agency. It has been suggested that this evidence threatens also to undermine free will and moral responsibility. In this paper, I will focus on the purported threat to moral responsibility. The evidence challenges assumptions concerning the ability to exercise conscious control and to act for reasons. This raises an apparent challenge to moral responsibility as these abilities appear to be necessary for morally responsible agency. (...) I will argue that this challenge collapses once the underlying conditions on moral responsibility are specified in sufficient detail. I will argue, in other words, that the empirical evidence does not support a challenge to the assumption that we are, in general, morally responsible agents. In the final section, I will suggest that empirical research on human agency is nevertheless relevant to various questions about moral responsibility. (shrink)

Michel Foucault entwickelt sich gegenwartig zweifellos zu einer der neuen Bezugsgrossen des padagogischen Diskurses: Nach einer langen Phase grosser Widerstande innerhalb der deutschsprachigen Erziehungswissenschaft werden jetzt die ...

One of the most fundamental questions in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the relation between truth and formal proof. The position according to which the two concepts are the same is called deflationism, and the opposing viewpoint substantialism. In an important result of mathematical logic, Kurt Gödel proved in his first incompleteness theorem that all consistent formal systems containing arithmetic include sentences that can neither be proved nor disproved within that system. However, such undecidable Gödel sentences can be established to (...) be true once we expand the formal system with Alfred Tarski s semantical theory of truth, as shown by Stewart Shapiro and Jeffrey Ketland in their semantical arguments for the substantiality of truth. According to them, in Gödel sentences we have an explicit case of true but unprovable sentences, and hence deflationism is refuted. -/- Against that, Neil Tennant has shown that instead of Tarskian truth we can expand the formal system with a soundness principle, according to which all provable sentences are assertable, and the assertability of Gödel sentences follows. This way, the relevant question is not whether we can establish the truth of Gödel sentences, but whether Tarskian truth is a more plausible expansion than a soundness principle. In this work I will argue that this problem is best approached once we think of mathematics as the full human phenomenon, and not just consisting of formal systems. When pre-formal mathematical thinking is included in our account, we see that Tarskian truth is in fact not an expansion at all. I claim that what proof is to formal mathematics, truth is to pre-formal thinking, and the Tarskian account of semantical truth mirrors this relation accurately. -/- However, the introduction of pre-formal mathematics is vulnerable to the deflationist counterargument that while existing in practice, pre-formal thinking could still be philosophically superfluous if it does not refer to anything objective. Against this, I argue that all truly deflationist philosophical theories lead to arbitrariness of mathematics. In all other philosophical accounts of mathematics there is room for a reference of the pre-formal mathematics, and the expansion of Tarkian truth can be made naturally. Hence, if we reject the arbitrariness of mathematics, I argue in this work, we must accept the substantiality of truth. Related subjects such as neo-Fregeanism will also be covered, and shown not to change the need for Tarskian truth. -/- The only remaining route for the deflationist is to change the underlying logic so that our formal languages can include their own truth predicates, which Tarski showed to be impossible for classical first-order languages. With such logics we would have no need to expand the formal systems, and the above argument would fail. From the alternative approaches, in this work I focus mostly on the Independence Friendly (IF) logic of Jaakko Hintikka and Gabriel Sandu. Hintikka has claimed that an IF language can include its own adequate truth predicate. I argue that while this is indeed the case, we cannot recognize the truth predicate as such within the same IF language, and the need for Tarskian truth remains. In addition to IF logic, also second-order logic and Saul Kripke s approach using Kleenean logic will be shown to fail in a similar fashion. (shrink)

Empirical evidence, it has often been argued, undermines our commonsense assumptions concerning the efficacy of conscious intentions. One of the most influential advocates of this challenge has been Daniel Wegner, who has presented an impressive amount of evidence in support of a model of "apparent mental causation". According to Wegner, this model provides the best explanation of numerous curious and pathological cases of behavior. Further, it seems that Benjamin Libet's classic experiment on the initiation of action and the empirical evidence (...) concerning the confabulation of reason explanations provide further support for this view. In response, I will propose an alternative model of "real mental causation" that can accommodate the empirical evidence just as well as Wegner's. Further, we will see that there is plenty of evidence in support of the assumption that intentions are causally efficacious. This will provide us with ample reason to endorse the model of real mental causation. (shrink)

Since its first delivery in 1993, J.L. Schellenberg’s atheistic argument from divine hiddenness keeps generating lively debate in various quarters in the philosophy of religion. Over time, the author has responded to many criticisms of his argument, both in its original evidentialist version and in its subsequent conceptualist version. One central problem that has gone undetected in these exchanges to date, we argue, is how Schellenberg’s explicit-recognition criterion for revelation contains discriminatory tendencies against mentally handicapped persons. Viewed from this angle, (...) our present critique imparts Schellenberg’s position with a philosophical dilemma: (1) endorsing divine discrimination to the effect that God does not love ‘cognitive-affective outsiders’ or (2) giving up on explicit recognition. Either way, the hiddenness argument does not succeed. (shrink)

Creating Shared Value ist ein prominenter strategischer Ansatz, welcher Unternehmen unterstützen soll, gesellschaftliche und ökologische Themen zu adressieren und gleichzeitig Profite zu generieren. In diesem Beitrag wird der CSV-Ansatz zunächst vorgestellt und anschließend kritisch diskutiert. Darauf aufbauend wird eine Weiterentwicklung von CSV unter dem Namen CSV+ skizziert.

It is a common intuition that at least in some cases disagreement has skeptical consequences: the participants are not justified in persisting in their beliefs. I will argue that the currently popular non-dialectical and individualistic accounts of justification, such as evidentialism and reliabilism, cannot explain this intuition and defend the dialectical conception of justification that can explain it. I will also argue that this sort of justification is a necessary condition of knowledge by relying on Craig's genealogy of the concept (...) of knowledge. I will then respond to the accusation that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism. My response is partly concessive. It does lead to skepticism in areas where controversy prevails, such as philosophy, politics and religion, but this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive. Finally, I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philosophy is self-refuting. (shrink)

Este breve artigo traz em seu bojo a articulaçáo da compreensáo physiologica do corpo-carne em Epicuro com a Techne he Ietrike (Medicina Antiga), com vistas a mostrar o ethos (carater) comum à medicina e a filosofia na antiguidade.

Against the backdrop of an aging world population increasingly affected by a diverse range of abilities and disabilities as well as the rise of ubiquitous computing and digital app cultures, this paper questions how mobile technologies mediate between heterogeneous environments and sensing beings. To approach the current technological manufacturing of the senses, two lines of thought are of importance: First, there is a need to critically reflect upon the concept of assistive technologies as artifacts providing tangible solutions for a specific (...) disability. Second, the conventional distinction between user and environment requires a differentiated consideration. This contribution will first review James Gibson’s concept of “affordances” and modify this approach by introducing theories and methods of Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory. Then, we present two case studies where we explore the relations between recent “assistive” app technologies and human sensory perception. As hearing and seeing are key in this regard, we concentrate on two specific media technologies: ReSound LINX2, a hearing aid which allows for direct connect with iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and Camassia, an IOS app for sonic wayfinding for blind people. We emphasize the significance of dis-/abling practices for manufacturing novel forms of hearing and seeing and drawing on sources like promotional materials by manufacturers, ads, or user testimonials and reviews. Our analysis is interested in the reciprocal relationships between users and their socio-technical and media environments. By and large, this contribution will provide crucial insights into the contemporary entanglement of algorithm-driven technologies, daily practices, and sensing subjects: the production of techno-sensory arrangements. (shrink)

This volume explores the human-technology relations that both shape modern educational settings and have a decisive influence on what education is and will be in the future. The contributors present empirical evidence to challenge and reframe the goal of education in relation to technology.

Einer Welt ohne letzte Gründe bleibt, so scheint es, nur die Alternative zwischen Fundamentalismus und pragmatischer Indifferenz. Beides wird weder der Komplexität noch der ungebrochenen Notwendigkeit der Begründungssuche gerecht. Die Autoren denken Begründung konsequent als ein stets prekäres Unternehmen: Den Ungründen in Philosophie und Kunst nachzugehen meint nicht eine bloße Ablehnung von Gründen oder einen existenziell aufgeladenen Nihilismus. Im Unheimlichen, Unbegrifflichen oder Unbestimmten schwingt der Versuch (wie das Scheitern) der Entbergung, Konzeptionalisierung und Bestimmung immer mit. Genauso zeichnen sich Ungründe dadurch (...) aus, dass das Negierte als Negiertes stets mitgeführt wird und wirksam bleibt. Ungründe sind immer noch Gründe - aber es sind prekäre, prozessuale, endliche Gründe, die den Anspruch, einen "guten Grund" zu liefern, auf je spezifische Weise einlösen. (shrink)

This article aims to achieve two goals: to show that probability is not the only way of dealing with uncertainty ; and to provide evidence that logic-based methods can well support reasoning with uncertainty. For the latter claim, two paradigmatic examples are presented: logic programming with Kleene semantics for modelling reasoning from information in a discourse, to an interpretation of the state of affairs of the intended model, and a neural-symbolic implementation of input/output logic for dealing with uncertainty in dynamic (...) normative contexts. (shrink)

Güss, Tuason, and Devine (2020) recently provide an opinion concerning problems with police reports as data source from a researchers' perspective. Based on their research project using police reports, they report their experiences with research using this data type.According to the authors, the first problem concerns the limited access to police reports and second problem arises from poor the quality of police reports. Their experiences stem from the United States of America, and it seems that police reports as a data (...) source did not meet the researcher's expectations. At first glance, one might assume that researchers would find a comparable situation regarding police reports in Germany as well (and probably everywhere).The first problem highlighted by Güss et al. derives, not surprisingly, from the access to police data in general. Most recently, Geujges and Terizakis (2022) report experiences from their own research project in several federal states of Germany comparable to those of Güss et al. (2020). Similarly to the United States, Germany is federally organized. By constitution (Art. 30 GG), the sixteen federal states execute governmental authority by sixteen state polices and release different police laws and specific regulations that determine practical police work and consequently the access to police data. Moreover, the willingness of police organizations to support external (independent) research seems to differ both between federal states and within federal sta... (shrink)

In “How Art Teaches: A Lesson from Goodman”, Markus Lammenranta inquires if and how artworks can convey propositional knowledge about the world. Lammenranta argues that the cognitive role of art can be explained by revising Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbols. According to Lammenranta, the problem of Goodman’s theory is that, despite providing an account of art’s symbolic function, it denies art the possibility of mediating propositional knowledge. Lammenranta claims that Goodman’s theory can be augmented by enlarging it with an (...) account of direct reference developed by Bertrand Russell and contemporary philosophy of language. On this basis, an expanded version of Goodman’s theory can explain how artworks can express propositions even without being linguistic, representational, or non-fictive. Lammenranta explicates his theory by explaining how abstract paintings and literary fictions can mediate propositional claims about the actual, everyday world. (shrink)

Recently, several philosophers have defended an explanatory argument that supposedly provides novel empirical grounds for accepting the type identity theory of phenomenal consciousness. They claim that we are justified in believing that the type identity thesis is true because it provides the best explanation for the correlations between physical properties and phenomenal properties. In this paper, I examine the actual role identities play in science and point out crucial shortcomings in the explanatory argument. I show that the supporters of the (...) argument have failed to show that the identity thesis provides a satisfactory explanation for the correlations between physical and phenomenal properties. Hence, the explanatory argument, as it stands, does not provide new grounds for accepting the type identity theory. (shrink)

Adorno’s extended conception of ‘culture industry’ renders the usual criticism of his views as ‘elitist’ meaningless. The same expansion creates, however, logical strains and contradictions in his analysis of the character and function of the culture industry: a strain in its ‘psychosocial’ and ‘status compulsion’ interpretation. In his late work Adorno attempts to solve this contradiction, but at a heavy price, by creating a conceptual barrier between pleasure and happiness.

This volume provides the reader with exclusive insights into Ernest Sosa’s latest ideas as well as main aspects of his philosophical work of the last 50 years. Ernest Sosa, one of the most distinguished contemporary philosophers, is best known for his ground-breaking work in epistemology, and has also contributed greatly to metaphysics, metaphilosophy and philosophy of language.

In 1922, Cartan introduced in differential geometry, besides the Riemannian curvature, the new concept of torsion. He visualized a homogeneous and isotropic distribution of torsion in three dimensions (3d) by the “helical staircase”, which he constructed by starting from a 3d Euclidean space and by defining a new connection via helical motions. We describe this geometric procedure in detail and define the corresponding connection and the torsion. The interdisciplinary nature of this subject is already evident from Cartan’s discussion, since he (...) argued—but never proved—that the helical staircase should correspond to a continuum with constant pressure and constant internal torque. We discuss where in physics the helical staircase is realized: (i) In the continuum mechanics of Cosserat media, (ii) in (fairly speculative) 3d theories of gravity, namely (a) in 3d Einstein-Cartan gravity—this is Cartan’s case of constant pressure and constant intrinsic torque—and (b) in 3d Poincaré gauge theory with the Mielke-Baekler Lagrangian, and, eventually, (iii) in the gauge field theory of dislocations of Lazar et al., as we prove for the first time by arranging a suitable distribution of screw dislocations. Our main emphasis is on the discussion of dislocation field theory. (shrink)

This article evaluates alternative models for explaining human behavior. In particular, it compares the resourceful, evaluative, maximizing model (REMM) with the economic (or money maximizing) model of human behavior. The theoretical framework is developed to enhance our understanding of "individual value creation" and to seek an economically rational explanation to: Why Warren Buffett is giving his money away to charity? The article develops a framework of biological, material, and immaterial sources of value. The article additionally extends the existing REMM and (...) finds several economically rational reasons for him to give away his money including the present value of help and goodwill, gained control, and lowered transaction costs. (shrink)

Japanese rank among the least likely to intervene to help a stranger in a non-emergency situation while Americans rank among the most likely. Across four studies, we demonstrate that Japanese are less likely to offer help to strangers because their decisions rely more heavily on the assessment of the needs of others. Accordingly, when there is uncertainty about the need for help, Japanese are less likely to intervene than Americans because without an understanding of the needs of recipient, the impact (...) of intervention may also be harmful. When the situation is unambiguous, Japanese and Americans are equally likely to help. This divergence in readiness to help strangers elaborates the understanding of why people in Japanese contexts are more likely than those in United States contexts to attend to the situation and to avoid uncertain situations. It also illuminates cultural differences in models of agency—implicit understandings of when and why a person should act to aid another. (shrink)

Advanced old age has been characterized as a biologically highly vulnerable life phase. Biological, morbidity-, and cognitive impairment-related factors play an important role as mortality predictors among very old adults. However, it is largely unknown whether previous findings confirming the role of different wellbeing domains for mortality translate to survival among the oldest-old individuals. Moreover, the distinction established in the wellbeing literature between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing as well as the consideration of within-person variability of potentially relevant mortality predictors has (...) not sufficiently been addressed in prior mortality research. In this study, we examined a broad set of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing indicators, including their levels, their changes, as well as their within-person variability, as predictors of all-cause mortality in a sample of very old individuals. We used data from the LateLine study, a 7-year longitudinal study based on a sample of n = 124 individuals who were living alone and who were aged 87–97 years at baseline. Study participants provided up to 16 measurement occasions between 2009 and 2016. Dates of death were available for 118 individuals who had deceased between 2009 and 2021. We ran longitudinal multilevel structural equation models and specified between-person level differences, within-person long-term linear change trends, as well as the “detrended” within-person variability in three indicators of hedonic and four indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing as all-cause mortality predictors. Controlling for age, gender, education, and physical condition and testing our sets of hedonic and eudaimonic indictors separately in terms of their mortality impact, solely one eudaimonic wellbeing indicator, namely, autonomy, showed significant effects on survival. Surprisingly, autonomy appeared “paradoxically” related with mortality, with high individual levels and intraindividual highly stable perceptions of autonomy being associated with a shorter residual lifetime. Thus, it seems plausible that accepting dependency and changing perceptions of autonomy over time in accordance with objectively remaining capabilities might become adaptive for survival in very old age. (shrink)