Die Posttraumatische Belastungsstörung (PTBS) ist ein schwerwiegendes psychisches Krankheitsbild, das Betroffene nach dem Erleben traumatisierender Situationen entwickeln. Im Zusammenhang mit den Auslandseinsätzen der Bundeswehr ist die PTBS bei Soldaten in den letzten Jahren verstärkt in den Fokus der deutschen Öffentlichkeit gerückt. Auch zivile Traumata bergen ein großes PTBS-Risiko. Seit einigen Jahren werden Methoden zur medikamentösen Prävention der PTBS erforscht. Die beiden wichtigsten Ansätze, die Prävention mit zentralnervös wirkenden Betablockern und Glukokortikoiden, basieren auf der Idee, durch den Eingriff in neuroendokrine Stressachsen (...) Einfluss auf die Art und Weise zu nehmen, in der die Erinnerung im Gedächtnis konsolidiert wird. Durch eine Entemotionalisierung und Abschwächung entsprechender Gedächtnisspuren soll das spätere Auftreten einer PTBS verhindert werden. Beide Ansätze zeigen in Pilotstudien vielversprechende Ergebnisse. Angesichts der herausragenden Bedeutung des Gedächtnisses für Individuum und Gesellschaft sollten Ansätze zur medikamentösen Gedächtnismodifikation (MGM) unter neuroethischen Gesichtspunkten diskutiert und bewertet werden. Der Text beleuchtet die MGM zur PTBS-Prävention entlang von fünf Problemachsen: 1) der Einflussnahme von MGM auf den Prozess der normalen psychischen Verarbeitung traumatischer Erlebnisse, 2) der Gefahr einer Entkopplung von Erinnerung und Realität, 3) der Bedeutung von emotionaler Erinnerung für die Moral, 4) der sozialen, juristischen und historischen Relevanz einer wahrhaftigen Erinnerungskultur und 5) der potenziellen Förderung eines gesellschaftlichen Medikalisierungsprozesses. Trotz ernsthaft zu diskutierender ethischer Bedenken ist – vor dem Hintergrund der Schwere des Krankheitsbilds – aus unserer Sicht eine MGM zur PTBS-Prävention grundsätzlich begrüßenswert, sollte jedoch derzeit nur im Rahmen klinischer Studien erfolgen. Hierfür stellen wir acht forschungsethische Aspekte zur Diskussion, die bei solchen Studien zu berücksichtigen sind. (shrink)

Rational drug design is a method for developing new pharmaceuticals that typically involves the elucidation of fundamental physiological mechanisms. It thus combines the quest for a scientific understanding of natural phenomena with the design of useful technology and hence integrates epistemic and practical aims of research and development. Case studies of the rational design of the cardiovascular drugs propranolol, captopril and losartan provide insights into characteristics and conditions of this integration. Rational drug design became possible in the 1950s when theoretical (...) knowledge of drug-target interaction and experimental drug testing could interlock in cycles of mutual advancement. The integration does not, however, diminish the importance of basic research for pharmaceutical development. Rather, it can be shown that still in the 1990s, linear processes of innovation and the close combination of practical and epistemic work were interdependent. (shrink)

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

The core feature that distinguishes moods from emotions is that moods, in contrast to emotions, are diffuse and global. This article outlines a dispositional theory of moods (DTM) that accounts for this and other features of mood experience. DTM holds that moods are temporary dispositions to have or to generate particular kinds of emotion-relevant appraisals. Furthermore, DTM assumes that the cognitions and appraisals one is disposed to have in a given mood partly constitute the experience of mood. This article outlines (...) a number of implications of DTM (e.g., regarding the noncognitive causation and rationality of moods) and summarizes empirical results supporting the theory. (shrink)

There are two bodies of literature, one offering theories of the legitimacy of domestic institutions like states, another offering theories of the legitimacy of international institutions like the IMF. Accounts of domestic legitimacy stress the importance of democratic procedure, while few to no theorists make democracy a necessary condition for the legitimacy of international institutions. In this paper, I ask whether this asymmetry can be defended. Is there a unified higher-order theory which can explain why legitimacy requires democracy in the (...) domestic context, but not in the international context? I argue that no proceduralist higher-order theory succeeds, and that we need to look for other solutions. (shrink)

Some authors have argued that legitimacy without authority is possible, though their work has not found much uptake in mainstream political philosophy. I provide an improved model how legitimate political institutions without authority are possible, the Transmission Model, which I couple with a thin substantive position, the Moral Value View. I defend the model against three common objections.

One of the most common arguments in favour of the state's authority is that without the coordinating hand of political institutions, we could not achieve important moral benefits. I argue that if we understand authority correctly, then coordination cannot even in principle establish that coordinators have political authority.

We investigate interpolation properties of many-valued propositional logics related to continuous t-norms. In case of failure of interpolation, we characterize the minimal interpolating extensions of the languages. For finite-valued logics, we count the number of interpolating extensions by Fibonacci sequences.

All conceptions of equal opportunity draw on some distinction between morally justified and unjustified inequalities. We discuss how this distinction varies across a range of philosophical positions. We find that these positions often advance equality of opportunity in tandem with distributive principles based on merit, desert, consequentialist criteria or individuals' responsibility for outcomes. The result of this amalgam of principles is a festering controversy that unnecessarily diminishes the widespread acceptability of opportunity concerns. We therefore propose to restore the conceptual separation (...) of opportunity principles concerning unjustified inequalities from distributive principles concerning justifiable inequalities. On this view, equal opportunity implies that that morally irrelevant factors should engender no differences in individuals' attainment, while remaining silent on inequalities due to morally relevant factors. We examine this idea by introducing the principle of ‘opportunity dominance' and explore in a simple application to what extent this principle may help us arbitrate between opposing distributive principles. We also compare this principle to the selection rules developed by John Roemer and Dirk Van de Gaer. (shrink)

Das Gerucht, Gott sei tot, scheint ubertrieben gewesen zu sein. An dessen Verbreitung haben die Naturwissenschaften einen wesentlichen Anteil gehabt. Gegenwartig fuhren dagegen gerade sie Gott wieder im Munde. Massgeblichen Anteil daran hat die Entdeckung des Phanomens der Feinabstimmung Wenn Naturkonstanten, die die Gestalt unseres Universums bestimmen, nur wenig andere Werte angenommen hatten, hatte es bewusstes Leben nie gegeben. Matthias Schleiff entwickelt daraus das teleologische Feinabstimmungsargument. In der Nachfolge traditioneller Gottesbeweise, aber mit den wissenschaftlichen Einsichten unserer Zeit, argumentiert er (...) dafur, dass sich die Annahme eines kosmischen Schopfers auf rationale Grunde stutzen kann. Er setzt sich dabei intensiv mit alternativen Erklarungshypothesen auseinander - etwa der Erklarung durch den Zufall, das Anthropische Prinzip oder die Theorie des Multiversums - und bringt so Naturwissenschaften, Philosophie und Theologie wieder in ein Gesprach uber den Anfang der Welt. (shrink)

In today’s world, Artificial Intelligence plays a central role in many decision-making processes. However, its use can lead to structural and epistemic injustices—especially in the context of healt...

We consider the following problem: Given a proof of the Skolemization of a formula F, what is the length of the shortest proof of F? For the restriction of this question to cut-free proofs we prove corresponding exponential upper and lower bounds.

A t-tautology is a propositional formula which is a tautology in all fuzzy logics defined by continuous triangular norms. In this paper we show that the problem of recognizing t-tautologies is coNP complete, and thus decidable.

Phänomenologie der Normativität ist der Versuch zu zeigen, wie Normativität in der menschlichen Natur gründet. Im Anschluss an die phänomenologische Anthropologie Max Schelers und Helmuth Plessners stellt der Autor die Strukturen menschlichen Lebens heraus, die alle menschlichen Lebensformen fundieren. Menschen sind Lebewesen, die einen Leib haben, und dieses Phänomen ist ursprünglicher als die Unterscheidung von Körper und Geist. Hält man sich dies vor Augen, werden bestimmte Formen menschlicher Normativität verständlich: Die menschliche Lebensweise ist auf ein Gleichgewicht verschiedener Formen des Miteinanders (...) angelegt, das nur möglich ist, weil es leiblich vermitteltes Ausdrucksverstehen gibt. Mitfühlen mit dem anderen und Liebe zu ihm fundiert das Erkennen, und was menschliche Würde ist, verstehen wir, weil wir wissen, wie die Integrität des Leibes geschützt, aber auch verletzt werden kann. (shrink)

Statman and Orevkov independently proved that cut-elimination is of nonelementary complexity. Although their worst-case sequences are mathematically different the syntax of the corresponding cut formulas is of striking similarity. This leads to the main question of this paper: to what extent is it possible to restrict the syntax of formulas and — at the same time—keep their power as cut formulas in a proof? We give a detailed analysis of this problem for negation normal form , prenex normal form and (...) monotone formulas. We show that proof reduction to NNF is quadratic, while PNF behaves differently: although there exists a quadratic transformation into a proof in PNF too, additional cuts are needed; the elimination of these cuts requires nonelementary expense in general. By restricting the logical operators to {,,,}, we obtain the type of monotone formulas. We prove that the elimination of monotone cuts can be of nonelementary complexity . On the other hand, we define a large class of problems where cut-elimination of monotone cuts is only exponential and show that this bound is tight. This implies that the elimination of monotone cuts in equational theories is at most exponential. Particularly, there are no short proofs of Statman's sequence with monotone cuts. (shrink)

In the article ‘Represent Me: Please! Towards an Ethics of Digital Twins in Medicine’, I analysed and tried to better understand the main ethical challenges associated with Digital Twins. For those who are just entering the debate with this article: DT is a metaphor for a bundle of artificial intelligence driven simulation technologies that constantly, in real time and ad personam simulate single or multiple parts of the body and make predictions about future health states based on these simulations. My (...) argument addresses the need to look at the breadth of challenges through a perspective of representation. From such a take, key consequences can be drawn for the further development of such technologies, the required means of control and not least the way to think about the interaction between humans and ‘their’ simulations. I am very grateful for the subsequent suggestions, criticisms and further arguments, which have helped me to elaborate my arguments more clearly and have led to a substantial advancement of the debate and the discussion about ethical questions in dealing with DT. Jenny Blumenthal-Barby,1 Deborah Lupton,2 Jenny Krutzinna,3 Janina Loh,4 Brent Mittelstadt,5 Sven Nyholm,6 Daniel Tigard7 and Max Tretter8 have made excellent points, which, in the following, I will not be able to reply to individually and in detail. In this response, I will try to bundle the open points and questions along the comments and considerations mentioned above and attempt to outline their significance for an ethics of DT. Four challenges seem to be central. A first point addresses anthropological issues. It is concerned …. (shrink)

In this paper an alternative Skolemization method is introduced that, for a large class of formulas, is sound and complete with respect to intuitionistic logic. This class extends the class of formulas for which standard Skolemization is sound and complete and includes all formulas in which all strong quantifiers are existential. The method makes use of an existence predicate first introduced by Dana Scott.

The paper is devoted to a certain way of thinking of the action of another. The posture of mind is characteristically expressed by a specific use of what G. E. M. Anscombe calls stopping modals. On this use, the sentence, “You can’t do that; it is mine,” registers the necessity of justice. My question is: what is the relation between the status of a person, a bearer of rights, the recognition of others as persons, and the practice of addressing the (...) demands of justice to one another? According to a certain strand in the tradition, the answer is: in the sphere of justice, a special union arises among language, mind, and world such that there is a sense in which addressing, recognizing, and being a person are one reality. The paper articulates the relevant sense of ‘one reality’ and offers an argument in support of the formula. In the course of the argument I suggest that this issue is central to understanding the philosophical significance of the second person and appreciating that it marks an irreducible and fundamental form of thought. (shrink)

In this essay, I critically discuss Dale Jacquette's new English translation of Frege's work Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik as well as his Introduction and Critical Commentary (Frege, G. 2007. The Foundations of Arithmetic. A Logical-Mathematical Investigation into the Concept of Number . Translated with an Introduction and Critical Commentary by Dale Jacquette. New York: Longman. xxxii + 112 pp.). I begin with a short assessment of Frege's book. In sections 2 and 3, I examine several claims that Jacquette makes in (...) his Introduction and Critical Commentary and put matters in the right perspective. In sections 4-7, I analyse errors and shortcomings in Jacquette's (and Austin's) translation(s) and show how they can be avoided. In this context, I consider several issues of interest for Frege's logic and philosophy of arithmetic. I conclude with general remarks. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a re-interpretation of qualitative and quantitative modeling from a representationalist perspective. In this view, both approaches attempt to construct abstract representations of empirical relational structures. Whereas quantitative research uses variable-based models that abstract from individual cases, qualitative research favors case-based models that abstract from individual characteristics. Variable-based models are usually stated in the form of quantified sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about individual cases are derived using deductive reasoning. In contrast, case-based models are (...) usually stated using context-dependent existential sentences. This syntactic structure implies that sentences about other cases are justifiable by inductive reasoning. We apply this representationalist perspective to the problems of generalization and replication. Using the analytical framework of modal logic, we argue that the modes of reasoning are often not only applied to the context that has been studied empirically, but also on a between-contexts level. Consequently, quantitative researchers mostly adhere to a top-down strategy of generalization, whereas qualitative researchers usually follow a bottom-up strategy of generalization. Depending on which strategy is employed, the role of replication attempts is very different. In deductive reasoning, replication attempts serve as empirical tests of the underlying theory. Therefore, failed replications imply a faulty theory. From an inductive perspective, however, replication attempts serve to explore the scope of the theory. Consequently, failed replications do not question the theory per se, but help to shape its boundary conditions. We conclude that quantitative research may benefit from a bottom-up generalization strategy as it is employed in most qualitative research programs. Inductive reasoning forces us to think about the boundary conditions of our theories and provides a framework for generalization beyond statistical testing. In this perspective, failed replications are just as informative as successful replications, because they help to explore the scope of our theories. (shrink)

The New Testament, while rejecting any superficial connection between illness and sin, does not reject a possible connection between illness and a person's relationship with God. An example can be seen in the story of the young blind man who was healed. His blindness does not result from any fault he or his parents had committed but apparently from God's wish to reveal his own healing power. The inner blindness of the Pharisees is a different type of blindness far more (...) difficult to heal. The blind young man was actually healed, not only in body but also in soul. Such miraculous healings are rare nowadays. However, if one takes a closer look at modern genetics and psycho-neuro-immunological findings, one may come to a better understanding of how miracle healings are linked to man's inner life and therefore also to his religiousness. Many diseases have genetic backgrounds. Defective genes, however, do not necessarily lead to subsequent illness. Genes have to be switched on or off. Only activated genes trigger pathological change. The human brain and all of man's thinking and feeling are intimately connected with such activations. We may thus conclude that both inner life and religious outlook on life are relevant to the origin and development of diseases. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall discuss several topics related to Frege's paradigms of second-order abstraction principles and his logicism. The discussion includes a critical examination of some controversial views put forward mainly by Robin Jeshion, Tyler Burge, Crispin Wright, Richard Heck and John MacFarlane. In the introductory section, I try to shed light on the connection between logical abstraction and logical objects. The second section contains a critical appraisal of Frege's notion of evidence and its interpretation by Jeshion, the introduction (...) of the course-of-values operator and Frege's attitude towards Axiom V, in the expression of which this operator occurs as the key primitive term. Axiom V says that the course-of-values of the function f is identical with the course-of-values of the function g if and only if f and g are coextensional. In the third section, I intend to show that in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik Frege hardly could have construed Hume's Principle as a primitive truth of logic and used it as an axiom governing the cardinality operator as a primitive sign. HP expresses that the number of Fs is identical with the number of Gs if and only if F and G are equinumerous. In the fourth section, I argue that Wright falls short of making a convincing case for the alleged analyticity of HP. In the final section, I canvass Heck's arguments for his contention that Frege knew he could deduce the simplest laws of arithmetic from HP without invoking Axiom V. I argue that they do not carry conviction. I conclude this section by rejecting an interpretation concerning HP suggested by MacFarlane. (shrink)

We study cut-elimination in first-order classical logic. We construct a sequence of polynomial-length proofs having a non-elementary number of different cut-free normal forms. These normal forms are different in a strong sense: they not only represent different Herbrand-disjunctions but also differ in their propositional structure. This result illustrates that the constructive content of a proof in classical logic is not uniquely determined but rather depends on the chosen method for extracting it.

Freges Kontextprinzip "Nur im Zusammenhange eines Satzes bedeuten die Wörter etwas" hat auch nach der von ihm vollzogenen Angleichung von Behauptungssätzen an Eigennamen Gültigkeit für die formale Sprache der "Grundgesetze". Der Bedeutungsvollständigkcitsbeweis, den er für sein Logiksystem anstrebt, schließt eine unmittelbare Anwendung dieses Prinzips nicht nur auf die unvollständigen Funktionsausdrücke, sondern auch auf die leerstellenfreien Wertverlaufsnamen ein. Wahrheitsnamen (Sätze) zeichnen sich vor anderen symbolsprachlichen Eigennamen in mehrfacher Hinsicht, insbesondere durch ihre semantische Selbständigkeit aus. Wertverlaufsnamen haben nur im Zusammenhang eines Wahrheitswertnamens (...) eine Bedeutung. Ihre Bedeutung besteht in ihrem Beitrag zur Bestimmung der Bedeutung von Wahrheitswertnamen, in denen sie vorkommen. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Importance and Legacy".

Neo-logicism is, not least in the light of Frege’s logicist programme, an important topic in the current philosophy of mathematics. In this essay, I critically discuss a number of issues that I consider to be relevant for both Frege’s logicism and neo-logicism. I begin with a brief introduction into Wright’s neo-Fregean project and mention the main objections that he faces. In Sect. 2, I discuss the Julius Caesar problem and its possible Fregean and neo-Fregean solution. In Sect. 3, I raise (...) what I take to be a central objection to the position of neo-logicism. In Sect. 4, I attempt to clarify how we should understand Frege’s stipulation that the two sides of an abstraction principle qua contextual definition of a term-forming operator shall be “gleichbedeutend”. In Sect. 5, I consider the options that Frege might have had to establish the analyticity of Hume’s Principle: The number that belongs to the concept F is equal to the number that belongs to the concept G if and only if F and G are equinumerous. Section 6 is devoted to Frege’s two criteria of thought identity. In Sects. 7 and 8, I defend the position of the neo-logicist against an alleged “knock-down argument”. In Sect. 9, I comment on Frege’s description of abstraction in Grundlagen, §64 and the use of the terms “recarving” and “reconceptualization” in the relevant literature on Fregean abstraction and neo-logicism. I argue that Fregean abstraction has nothing to do with the recarving of a sentence content or its decomposition in different ways. I conclude with remarks on global logicism versus local logicisms. (shrink)

In this paper a method for the replacement, in formulas, of strong quantifiers by functions is introduced that can be considered as an alternative to Skolemization in the setting of constructive theories. A constructive extension of intuitionistic predicate logic that captures the notions of preorder and existence is introduced and the method, orderization, is shown to be sound and complete with respect to this logic. This implies an analogue of Herbrand's theorem for intuitionistic logic. The orderization method is applied to (...) the constructive theories of equality and groups. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 110 Heft: 1 Seiten: 74-125.

We construct a faithful interpretation of ukasiewicz's logic in product logic (both propositional and predicate). Using known facts it follows that the product predicate logic is not recursively axiomatizable.We prove a completeness theorem for product logic extended by a unary connective of Baaz [1]. We show that Gödel's logic is a sublogic of this extended product logic.

This volume commemorates the life, work, and foundational views of Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), most famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency - with the other widely accepted axioms of set theory - of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. It explores current research, advances, and ideas for future directions not only in the foundations of mathematics and logic, but also in the fields of computer (...) science, artificial intelligence, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology, and the history of science. The discussion is supplemented by personal reflections from several scholars who knew Gödel personally, providing some interesting insights into his life. By putting his ideas and life's work into the context of current thinking and perceptions, this book will extend the impact of Gödel's fundamental work in mathematics, logic, philosophy, and other disciplines for future generations of researchers. (shrink)