Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology (...) of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a shift in epistemological studies of intellectual self-trust or epistemic self-trust: intellectual self-trust is not merely epistemologists’ tool for silencing epistemic skepticism or doubt, it is recognized as a disposition of individuals and collectives interesting in its own rights. In this exploratory article I focus on a particular type of intellectual self-trust—collective intellectual self-trust—and I examine which features make for valuable or pernicious collective intellectual self-trust. From accounts of the value of individual intellectual self-trust I take (...) three frameworks for evaluating collective intellectual self-trust: an epistemically consequentialist, a virtue-theoretic and a prudential/pragmatic framework (§2). Then I introduce collective intellectual self-trust (§3). Against this background I explain what is distinctive of valuable collective intellectual self-trust (§4) and pernicious collective intellectual self-trust (§5) within the three frameworks. I close by discussing the relation between the three frameworks and argue that evaluating intellectual self-trust requires a multi-perspectival approach constituted by the three frameworks. (shrink)

Legal wiretapping has gained importance in law enforcement along with the development of information and communication technology. Understanding the language of intercepted persons is essential for the success of a police investigation. Hence, intercept interpreters, as we suggest calling them in this article, are hired. Little is known about this specific work at the interface between language and law. With this article, we desire to contribute to closing this gap by focussing particularly on the translational activity. Our study identifies a (...) fragmented field of research due to the difficulty in accessing workers in this specific field who interpret in a highly confidential phase of criminal investigations. The findings, which are drawn from scarce studies and our empirical data derived from an online questionnaire for a pilot study in Switzerland, demonstrate the wide range of the performed activity intercept interpreting. This article is the first to present translational activity from the perspective of intercept interpreters. The activity differs in many ways from interpretation in court hearings or police interviews. Hence, we suggest categorising interlingual intercept interpretation as a translational activity sui generis and—since previous research has not done justice to the ethical and deontological questions that intercept interpretation raises—advocate for further transdisciplinary research in this field of translation. (shrink)

This study, regarding the problems surrounding 'time' during the 9th to 11th centuries, offers new insights into the scientific interests and rationality of the quadrivium, and argues for the existence of a 'discovery of nature' prior to the 12th century.

O texto aborda o modo como Gadamer articulou o pensamento de Platão na elabo-ração da hermenêutica filosófica, em especial o papel da dialética e do diálogo platônico.

O artigo propõe uma análise multidisciplinar sobre o pensamento jurídico, tendo como objetivo a reflexão crítica sobre os saberes e práticas jurídicos na sociedade brasileira. O artigo elabora inicialmente uma análise crítico-conceitual de trabalhos de Guillermo O´Donnell sobre estado de direito e democracia na América Latina. Em seguida, adota a noção de agregados jurídicos para apresentar distintas dimensões de pesquisas sócio-jurídicas sobre o direito. Enfim, usa a metáfora da nebulosa de imunidades para a proposta de discernir os atributos positivos do (...) estado de direito no pensamento jurídico brasileiro e suas consequências para a democracia. (shrink)

Bringing together such thinkers as Ulrich Beck, Bruno Latour, Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, this important book discusses critical themes in the development ...

Numerical magnitude information is assumed to be spatially represented in the form of a mental number line defined with respect to a body-centred, egocentric frame of reference. In this context, spatial language skills such as mastery of verbal descriptions of spatial position have been proposed to be relevant for grasping spatial relations between numerical magnitudes on the mental number line. We examined 4- to 5-year-old’s spatial language skills in tasks that allow responses in egocentric and allocentric frames of reference, as (...) well as their relative understanding of numerical magnitude. In addition, we evaluated influences of children’s absolute understanding of numerical magnitude assessed by their number word comprehension and of their knowledge on numerical sequences. Results indicated that when considering responses that corresponded to the egocentric perspective, children’s spatial language was associated significantly with their relative numerical magnitude understanding, even after controlling for covariates, such as children’s SES, mental rotation skills, and also absolute magnitude understanding or knowledge on numerical sequences. This suggests that the use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language may facilitate spatial representation of numbers along a mental number line and thus seem important for preschoolers’ relative understanding of numerical magnitude. (shrink)

This paper examines the potential pitfalls for academic research associated with goal displacements in the implementation of goals and indicators of research commercialization. We ask why patenting has come to serve as the key policy indicator of innovative capacity and what consequences this has for the organization of academic research. To address these questions, the paper presents a case study from Denmark on, firstly, why and how the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ introduced patenting as a central instrument to Danish (...) science policy and, secondly, the effects the Act has had on Danish university organization and research practices. We trace why and how commercialization was introduced as an important objective in Danish science policy since the 1980s. The increased focus on patents is explained as an isomorphic adjustment to an international ‘science policy field,’ manifested in particular through OECD statistics, where patenting has come to serve as a key metric in international rankings. In a second step, we examine what effects the patenting requirements have had on organization and research practice at a Danish university. We show that in practice ‘number of patents’ changed from serving as an indicator of innovative capacity to being a policy goal in itself, thus in effect producing a goal displacement that is potentially damaging for both academic research and innovation capacity of the surrounding society. As a consequence of this goal displacement, active scientists now increasingly engage in patenting primarily as a means to fulfill organizational targets and to increase their ‘fundability,’ rather than to promote commercial applications of their research. In conclusion, we discuss how these unfulfilled policy ambitions have led to a retrospective redefinition of policy goals rather than an adjustment of the actual policy tools. (shrink)

What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality? Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal (...) theorists, and theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics, to name but a few – fields of research that are pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which, probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of ideas more generally. (shrink)

This article is focused on the concept of logic in Avicenna’s Isagoge, a text which had great impact both on Arabic and Western thought. Its main section is devoted to an investigation of Avicenna’s clarification of the nature of logic, its proper subject matter as well as its place within the canon of the philosophical sciences. In this connection, special attention is given to Avicenna’s use of the concepts ‘art’ and ‘science’. Significantly, he regards logic as both a science and (...) an art, and argues that in the latter sense, logic is an instrument for the philosophical sciences. Because Avicenna’s Isagoge was read in the Latin West for several centuries, his ideas on the nature of logic played a prominent role in the debates at medieval universities and hence were a likely source of the distinction between ‘logica utens’ and ‘logica docens’. (shrink)

Divisions of the sciences have been popular objects of study ever since antiquity. One reason for this esteem might be their potential to reveal in a succinct manner how scholars, schools or entire societies thought about the body of knowledge available at their time and its specific structure. However, what do classifications tell us about the pleasures of knowledge? Occasionally, quite a lot, particularly in a setting where the acquisition of knowledge is considered to be the only path leading to (...) the pleasures of ultimate happiness. This is the case for al-Fārābī, who is at the center of this paper. He is particularly interesting for a study such as this because he actually does believe that humanity’s final goal consists in the attainment of happiness through the acquisition of knowledge; and he wrote several treatises, not only on the classification of the sciences as such, but also on the underlying epistemological reasons for this division. Thus he offers excellent insight into a 10th-centu... (shrink)

This article focuses on the notion of philosophy in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. In the prologue to his work, Ibn Ṭufayl promises to reveal the «secrets» of Avicenna’s Eastern Philosophy — a book already lost at that time and only referred to by Avicenna in his Book of the Healing. Since Ibn Ṭufayl identifies these «secrets» with the «truth» he himself has attained, and contrasts them with the views of the philosophers of his day, the question arises as to (...) what concept of philosophy he supports. The article will argue that he generally agrees with the prevailing philosophical curriculum of his time. Moreover, he subscribes to the traditional conviction that man strives for the good, and that this good must be sought in noetic perfection. As will become clear, however, Ibn Ṭufayl amplifies these common notions by integrating into them a peculiar concept of immediate vision of God and its concomitant, namely enjoyment. Therefore, in contrast to his most important predecessors, al-Fārābī and Avicenna, for Ibn Ṭufayl philosophy has an unambiguously practical character, as it places great practical demands upon humans for the achievement of perfect knowledge. (shrink)

Les architectures médiévales du savoir conçues dans le monde islamique, constituent un cas particulier : elles reflètent parfaitement la compétition entre les différentes traditions et approches intellectuelles. D’une part, certaines des classifications sont centrées sur ce qui était perçu comme sciences indigènes durant leur période de formation, c’est-à-dire ces sciences qui émergent en connexion avec la nouvelle religion qu’est l’Islam et la langue de sa révélation, l’arabe. D’autre part, les savants ont repris avec empressement et adapté les disciplines dérivant de (...) cultures non-arabes et non-musulmanes, principalement la science et la philosophie grecques. Cependant, ces traditions transmettent leurs propres conceptions de la connaissance, en partie en conflit avec les idées arabes/islamiques. Dans cet article, je propose un aperçu des approches diverses puis me concentre sur Fārābī et Avicenne, afin de retracer un développement remarquable : la dissolution graduelle des frontières aussi bien au sein qu’entre les différentes sphères et paradigmes scientifiques et ce sur des bases épistémologiques. (shrink)

A study of the work of three monumental artists living during different historical periods, providing a rich understanding of the role of images created in dangerous times.

The paper discusses the practice of genetic counseling and elective abortion in the German Democratic Republic. Keywords: elective abortion, embryo transfer, in vitro fertilization, protection of human life, reproductive ethics, German Democratic Republic, bioethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Recommandations have been formulated in 1985 with reference to socialist morality and law and as a result of interdisciplinary discussion by the IAME (Interdisciplinary Working Party on Medical Ethics at the GDR Academy of Postgraduate Medical Education) for clinical application of in vitro fertilization and for the use of human oocytes and early embryonic stages.

Human fluid intelligence is closely linked to the sequential solving of complex problems. It has been associated with a distributed cognitive control or multiple-demand network, comprising regions of lateral frontal, insular, dorsomedial frontal, and parietal cortex. Previous neuroimaging research suggests that the MD network may orchestrate the allocation of attentional resources to individual parts of a complex task: in a complex target detection task with multiple independent rules, applied one at a time, reduced response to rule-critical events across the MD (...) network in lower fluid intelligence was observed. This was in particular the case with increasing task complexity, and was accompanied by impairment in performance. Here, we examined the early spatiotemporal neural dynamics of this process in electroencephalography source analyses using a similar task paradigm. Levels of fluid intelligence specifically predicted early neural responses in a left inferiorparietal MD region around 200–300 ms post stimulus onset. Evoked source amplitudes in left parietal cortex within this early time window also correlated with behavioural performance measures. Like in previous research, we observed impaired performance in lower fluid intelligence with increasing number of task rules. This links fluid intelligence to a process of attentional focus on those parts of a task that are most critical for the current behaviour. Within the MD system, our time re-resolved measures suggest that the left parietal cortex specifically impacts on early processes of attentional focus on task critical features. This is novel evidence on the neurocognitive correlates of fluid intelligence suggesting that individual differences are critically linked to an early process of attentional focus on task-relevant information, which is supported by left parietal MD regions. (shrink)

This essay finds its departure point in a title page that Aby Warburg (1866 – 1929) drafted for his lecture on the Pueblo Indians. Through the labyrinthine thought pathways evidenced by this much-amended and overwritten typescript, it explores the relation between reason and mania in Warburg's thought specifically and in humanistic scholarship more generally. Composed in 1923 while Warburg was committed to the Bellevue mental sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, the title page, and the lecture that it attempts to name, belong (...) to their author's profound and influential meditations on the defensive function of rituals and symbols. More practically, the lecture was intended, by its successful drafting and delivery before an audience of inmates, doctors, and professional colleagues, to prove Warburg's sanity and secure his release. Through an investigation of the outbreak and symptoms of Warburg's psychosis, which uncannily prefigure real historical terrors, this article represents the lecture as (in Warburg's words) a powerful “seismograph” of the European soul. Placing us at Warburg's writing desk at the pivotal moment of the author's cure-by-writing, the title page also illuminates the legacy of Warburg's Library, today at the core of the Warburg Institute in London, since the crisis that the page documents — larger than Warburg's personal one — still lies at the heart of humanistic scholarship as it attempts to grasp the essence of what it means to be human. (shrink)

Despite sharing Catholic Social Teaching as their system of morals and both being confronted with marketisation pressures, working conditions at German and Belgian Catholic social service providers of elderly care differ. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach is needed to understand such differences, as interpretation of CST is mediated by local contexts. Working conditions result from interactions shaped by each country’s respective religious, legal and socio-economic contexts, providing players with different levels of discretion and power resources. In Belgium, working conditions (...) at Catholic elderly care providers tend to be better due to a strong Catholic trade union, encompassing labour market regulation and a universal legal system applying to all care providers. Moreover, there is strong interaction between these Catholic care providers and other Catholic institutions. By contrast, German CSSPs, operating as faith-based organisations with their own legal framework in a relatively liberalised and decentralised labour market, are able to use various flexibility practices which put pressure on working conditions. Using such practices is partially justified by the Catholic discourse on charity and altruism, stressing the particular nature of work in the Catholic care sector. Overall, the article demonstrates differences in the local application of CST. It also shows how transnational differences in working conditions at Catholic social service providers are the product of more than just local differences in the interpretation and application of CST principles, being shaped by interactions between a country’s specific religious, legal and socio-economic contexts. (shrink)