Normative economics and a hermeneutic approach to interpretation of legal norms are only compatible if - and this is the exception - such legal norms have the goal of accomplishing economic efficiency. But economic analysis of law as a positive approach may be used in the legal interpretation process in order to evaluate different options of norm interpretations. In fields of law where economic issues are at stake such a methodological evaluation of interpretative variants are superior to common sense analysis (...) and should be applied. But even in fields where non-economic issues play a major role an economic analysis is a helpful tool in order to get aware of the opportunity costs of economically sub-optimal solutions. Economic analysis of law thus becomes an integral part of the norm interpretation process without colliding with the autonomy of the legal decision enhancing the rationality of the endeavour. (shrink)

In this paper, I enquire whether there are Kuhnian paradigms in medicine, by way of analysing a case study from the history of medicine—the discovery of the germ theory of disease in the nineteenth century. I investigate the Kuhnian aspects of this event by comparing the work of the famous school of microbiology founded by Robert Koch with a rival school, powerful in the nineteenth century, but now almost forgotten, founded by Carl Nageli. Through my case study, I show (...) that medical science possesses some Kuhnian features. Within each school, scientists used similar exemplars and shared the same assumptions. Moreover, their research was resistant to novelty, and the results of one party were disregarded by the other. In other words, in a moderate sense, the Koch and Nageli groups worked within distinct paradigms. However, I reject the stronger Kuhnian claim that the terms used within the two paradigms were mutually unintelligible. Focusing on the semantic aspects, I argue that no account of incommensurability of reference can be given in this case, although, for sociological reasons, the two parties talked past each other. I suggest in addition that the rival scientists could have understood each other more easily if their theoretical commitments had not been so deeply ingrained, and I use the example of Pasteur to indicate that the causal account of meaning might have avoided the communication breakdown. (shrink)

Mythen dienen der Bewaltigung praktischer gesellschaftlicher Probleme, sie bieten Anleitungen zum poietischen und praktisch-politischen Handeln - dies bildet das einigende Band der im vorliegenden Buch versammelten Beitrage. Aus dem Inhalt: Jan Assmann: Tod, Staat, Kosmos: Dimensionen des Mythos im Alten Agypten Stefan Breuer: Das Dritte Reich Michael Friedrich: Chinesische Mythen Bodo Guthmuller: Europa - Kontinent und antiker Mythos Joachim Heinzle: Unsterblicher Heldengesang. Die Nibelungen als nationaler Mythos der Deutschen Klaus Koch: Vom Mythos zum Monotheismus im alten Israel Jurgen (...) Leonhardt/Katharina Krause: Poesie und Bild: Die Actaeon-Geschichte in Ovids Metamorphosen. Stefan M. Maul: Altorientalische Schopfungsmythen Herfried Munkler: Der Antifaschismus als Grundungsmythos der DDR Reimar Schefold: Die mehrstimmige Botschaft: Manner- und Frauenperspektiven in indonesischen Mythen Renate Schlesier: Freuds Dionysos Arbogast Schmitt: Mythos bei Platon". (shrink)

Das Nichtwissen ist in aller Munde. Von Nichtwissenskulturen in der zweiten oder reflexiven Moderne ist die Rede, von Agnotologie als neuem Forschungszweig, von wicked problems und ihren clumsy solutions. Wo Nichtwissen sich durch Komplexitäts­steigerung unwiderruflich im zu Wissenden einnistet, fordert es als Grenze, Schranke und Kehrseite des Wissens die sogenannte Wissensgesellschaft heraus. Vor allem Risiko­poten­ziale und Gefahren kommen hier in den Blick, von denen wir gerade genug wissen, um Wissensansprüche zu formulieren, die sich womöglich nie einlösen lassen. Das klassisch erkenntnistheoretische (...) Problem: „Was können wir wissen?“ steht heute in einem Spannungsverhältnis zu der wissenspolitischen Frage: „Was müssen wir wissen?“ Was wir wissen müssen, ist einerseits so viel wie nötig, wenn es um Fragen von Sicherheit und Gesundheit geht – andererseits aber so wenig wie möglich, wenn es in Alltag, Wirtschaft oder Wissen­schaft darauf ankommt, Wissen an technische Systeme oder Expertenkulturen zu delegieren. Bezeichnet politisch handlungsorientiertes und wissenschaftliches Nichtwissen zunächst ein Defizit, ist technisches Nichtwissen gleichermaßen erstrebenswert und problematisch. Einige, die Technik für angewandtes Wissen halten, mögen darin eine contradictio in adjecto sehen, manche sich um eine dem technischen Nichtwissen geschuldeten Technik­feindlichkeit sorgen, andere daraus die nötige Demut gegen verstiegene Allmachts­fantasien beziehen, während ihre Gegenspieler von Maschinen träumen, die über den Horizont intellektueller Nachvollziehbarkeit immer weiter hinauseilen. Mit Beiträgen von: Suzana Alpsancar, Lars Bullmann, Marcus Burkhardt, Eoin Carney, Pelle Ehn, Stefan Frisch, Gerhard Gamm, Petra Gehring, Till Greite, Hans Hasse, Andreas Kaminski, Gregor Kanitz, Matthias Koch, Christian Köhler, Johannes Lenhard, Alexandre Métraux, Alfred Nordmann, Tanja Paulitz, Tom Poljanšek, Sandra Pravica, Katrin Solhdju, Werner Sombart, Florian Sprenger, Sebastian Vehlken und Rüdiger Zill. (shrink)

Der enorme Erfolg der Naturwissenschaften fuhrte zugleich zu der vorherrschenden Auffassung, dass alles Wesentliche in der Welt naturwissenschaftlich erfasst werden kann. Auch lebensweltliche Phanomene sollen sich in dieser Perspektive prinzipiell auf kausal-funktionale Strukturen der Natur zuruckfuhren lassen. Die Beitrager dieses Bandes diskutieren diese reduktionistische Auffassung kritisch und zeigen, wie differenziert das Verhaltnis von Lebenswelt und naturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive ist. Mit Beitragen von Stefan Bauberger, Wolf-Jurgen Cramm, Thomas Fuchs, Stephan Gratzel, Michael Hampe, Matthias Jung, Anton Friedrich Koch, Uwe Meixner, Tobias (...) Muller, Hans-Dieter Mutschler und Gregor Schiemann. (shrink)

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that (...) the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency. (shrink)

Process reliabilist accounts claim that a belief is justified when it is the result of a reliable belief-forming process. Yet over what range of possible token processes is this reliability calculated? I argue against the idea that _all_ possible token processes (in the actual world, or some other subset of possible worlds) are to be considered using the case of a user acquiring beliefs based on the output of an AI system, which is typically reliable for a substantial local range (...) but unreliable when all possible inputs are considered. I show that existing solutions to the generality problem imply that these cases cannot be solved by a more fine-grained typing of the belief-forming process. Instead, I suggest that reliability is evaluated over a range restricted by the content of the actual belief and by the similarity of the input to the actual input. (shrink)

How do we get out knowledge of the natural numbers? Various philosophical accounts exist, but there has been comparatively little attention to psychological data on how the learning process actually takes place. I work through the psychological literature on number acquisition with the aim of characterising the acquisition stages in formal terms. In doing so, I argue that we need a combination of current neologicist accounts and accounts such as that of Parsons. In particular, I argue that we learn the (...) initial segment of the natural numbers on the basis of the Fregean definitions, but do not learn the natural number structure as a whole on the basis of Hume's principle. Therefore, we need to account for some of the consistency of our number concepts with the Dedekind-Peano axioms in other terms. (shrink)

By using the notions of exact truth and exact falsity, one can give 16 distinct definitions of classical consequence. This paper studies the class of relations that results from these definitions in settings that are paracomplete, paraconsistent or both and that are governed by the Strong Kleene schema. Besides familiar logics such as Strong Kleene logic, the Logic of Paradox and First Degree Entailment, the resulting class of all Strong Kleene generalizations of classical logic also contains a host of unfamiliar (...) logics. We first study the members of our class semantically, after which we present a uniform sequent calculus that is sound and complete with respect to all of them. Two further sequent calculi and \ calculus) will be considered, which serve the same purpose and which are obtained by applying general methods to construct sequent calculi for many-valued logics. Rules and proofs in the SK calculus are much simpler and shorter than those of the \ and the \ calculus, which is one of the reasons to prefer the SK calculus over the latter two. Besides favourably comparing the SK calculus to both the \ and the \ calculus, we also hint at its philosophical significance. (shrink)

The rise of causality and the attendant graph-theoretic modeling tools in the study of counterfactual reasoning has had resounding effects in many areas of cognitive science, but it has thus far not permeated the mainstream in linguistic theory to a comparable degree. In this study I show that a version of the predominant framework for the formal semantic analysis of conditionals, Kratzer-style premise semantics, allows for a straightforward implementation of the crucial ideas and insights of Pearl-style causal networks. I spell (...) out the details of such an implementation, focusing especially on the notions of intervention on a network and backtracking interpretations of counterfactuals. (shrink)

Philosophers investigating the interpretation and use of conditional sentences have long been intrigued by the intuitive correspondence between the probability of a conditional `if A, then C' and the conditional probability of C, given A. Attempts to account for this intuition within a general probabilistic theory of belief, meaning and use have been plagued by a danger of trivialization, which has proven to be remarkably recalcitrant and absorbed much of the creative effort in the area. But there is a strategy (...) for avoiding triviality that has been known for almost as long as the triviality results themselves. What is lacking is a straightforward integration of this approach in a larger framework of belief representation and dynamics. This paper discusses some of the issues involved and proposes an account of belief update by conditionalization. (shrink)

The Approximate Number System (ANS) is a system that allows us to distinguish between collections based on the number of items, though only if the ratio between numbers is high enough. One of the questions that has been raised is what the representations involved in this system represent. I point to two important constraints for any account: (a) it doesn’t involve numbers, and (b) it can account for the approximate nature of the ANS. Furthermore, I argue that representations of pure (...) magnitude with vehicles that have an imprecision in the value of the unit of measurement (further clarified through a formal model from measurement theory) fit both these requirements. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that the innate versus acquired distinction is a false dichotomy. Yet many scientists continue to describe certain traits as “innate” and take this to imply that those traits are not acquired, or “unlearned.” This article asks what cognitive role, if any, the concept of innateness should play in the psychological and behavioural sciences. I consider three arguments for eliminating innateness from scientific discourse. First, the classification of a trait as innate is thought to discourage empirical research (...) into its developmental origin. Second, this concept lumps together a number of different biological properties that ought to be treated as distinct. Third, innateness is associated with the outmoded folk biological theory of essentialism. In response to these objections, I consider two attempts to revise the concept of innateness which aim to make it more suitable for scientific explanation and research. One proposal is that innateness can be defined in terms of the biological property of environmental canalization. On this view, a trait is innate to the extent that it is developmentally buffered against a range of different environments. Another proposal is that innateness serves as an explanatory primitive for cognitive science. This view holds that there exist a sharp boundary between psychological and biological explanations and that to identify a trait as innate means that it falls into the latter explanatory domain. This essay ends with some questions for future research. (shrink)

This paper critically compares a deliberative system based on parliamentary elections (an electoral system) and a deliberative system based on sortition (a lottocratic system). Both systems are analyzed in three dimensions. The epistemic dimension concerns the rational quality of the democratic process. The power dimension concerns the distribution of power and the extent to which citizens genuinely control all decisions. The motivational dimension, finally, concerns citizens’ identification with the decision-making process and their willingness to abide by its outcomes. We argue (...) that an electoral system is, in all three dimensions, normatively superior to a sortition-based system. Most prominently, we claim that electoral mechanisms provide visibility to the decision-making process. This enables a form of interactive representation in which citizens and their representatives engage in a joint process of opinion and will formation. Sortition, in contrast, is characterized by a democratically much poorer form of descriptive representation. The selected citizens are a representative sample of the wider citizenry, but they deliberate in a forum that remains mostly disconnected from that wider citizenry and therefore cannot shoulder the process of collective self-government. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How do non-experts single out numbers for reference? Linnebo has argued that they do so using a criterion of identity based on the ordinal properties of numerals. Neo-logicists, on the other hand, claim that cardinal properties are the basis of individuation, when they invoke Hume’s Principle. I discuss empirical data from cognitive science and linguistics to answer how non-experts individuate numbers better in practice. I use those findings to develop an alternative account that mixes ordinal and cardinal properties to (...) provide a detailed answer to the question: how do we in fact semantically individuate numbers? (shrink)

The distinction between causal role and selected effect functions is typically framed in terms of their respective explanatory roles. However, much of the controversy over functions in genomics takes place in an investigative, not an explanatory context. Specifically, the process of component-driven functional investigation begins with the designation of some genetic or epigenetic element as functional —i.e. not junk— because it possesses properties that, arguably, suggest some biologically interesting organismal effect. The investigative process then proceeds, in a bottom-up fashion, to (...) search for those effects. I argue that this process encounters a problem reminiscent of one that Gould and Lewontin associated with the adaptationist program. Just as their stereotypical adaptationst became trapped in the myopic pursuit of one selectionist hypothesis after another, so can the investigation of CR functions in genomics lead to an unending series putative organism-level CR functions for junk DNA. This is an acute problem for genomics, because eukaryotic genomes are littered with transposable elements and their deactivated descendants which often masquerade as interesting CR-functional components and it is experimentally onerous to determine whether they lack such a function. I further argue that selectionist reasoning about TE-host coevolutionary dynamics can greatly streamline the investigative process. Importantly, selectionist hypotheses need not be well confirmed to be illuminating in this context. Informed selectionist reasoning about the strategic roles of TEs in the genome offers a corrective to the idea that most of our DNA is somehow CR functional for the organism. (shrink)

In der Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Kritik der Menschenwürde nimmt dieses Buch zugleich Stellung zur aktuellen Diskussion. Wie ist die gegenwärtige Norm der Menschenwürde, wie sie auch im Grundgesetz enthalten ist, vor dem Hintergrund der Theorien des vehementen Moralkritikers Nietzsche einzuschätzen? Welchen Stellenwert hat die Würde des Menschen im Zeitalter des Posthumanismus überhaupt? Im ersten Teil skizziert der Autor zunächst die wichtigsten philosophischen Konzeptionen der Menschenwürde von Cicero bis Kant. Dabei macht er deutlich, welche Probleme die gegenwärtige Rezeption historischer Konzeptionen aufwirft. (...) Der zweite Teil ist der ausführlichen Darstellung von Nietzsches Kritik der Menschenwürde gewidmet. Daraus ergeben sich wichtige Impulse für die gegenwärtige Diskussion und konkrete Hinweise, wie ein tragbarer Begriff der Menschenwürde für die Zukunft aussehen könnte. (shrink)

Landgrebe and Smith provide an argument for the impossibility of Artificial General Intelligence based on the limits of simulating complex systems. However, their argument presupposes a very contemporary vision of artificial intelligence as a model trained on data to produce an algorithm executable in a modern digital computing system. The present contribution explores what it means to be artificial. Current artificial intelligence approaches on modern computing systems are not the only conceivable way in which artificial intelligence technology might be created. (...) If there are conceivable routes by which an artificial intelligence might be developed that are not constrained in the same way as the current generation of artificial neural networks, then these might be plausible routes towards the engineered generation of artificial general intelligence that are not precluded by the Landgrebe and Smith argument against the possibility of artificial general intelligence. (shrink)

Most accounts of our knowledge of the successor axiom claim that this is based on the procedure of adding one. While they usually don’t claim to provide an account of how children actually acquire this knowledge, one may well think that this is how they get that knowledge. I argue that when we look at children’s responses in interviews, the time when they learn the successor axiom and the intermediate learning stages they find themselves in, that there is an empirically (...) viable alternative. I argue that they could also learn it on the basis of a method that has to do with the structure of the numeral system. Specifically, that they (1) use the syntactic structure of the numeral system and (2) attend to the leftmost digits, the one with the highest place-value. Children can learn that this is a reliable method of forming larger numbers by combining two elements. First, a grasp of the syntactic structure of the numeral system. That way they know that the leftmost digit receives the highest value. Second, an interpretation of numerals as designating cardinal values, so that they also realise that increasing or adding digits on the lefthand side of a numeral produces a larger number. There are thus two, currently equally well-supported, ways in which children might learn that there are infinitely many natural numbers. (shrink)

Lawton’s contingency thesis states that there are no useful generalizations at the level of ecological communities because these systems are especially prone to contingent historical events. I argue that this influential thesis has been grounded on the wrong kind of evidence. CT is best understood in Woodward’s terms as a claim about the instability of certain causal dependencies across different background conditions. A recent distinction between evolution and ecology reveals what an adequate test of Lawton’s thesis would look like. To (...) date, CT remains untested. But developments in genome and molecular ecology point in a promising direction. (shrink)

In their recent paper Bi-facial truth: a case for generalized truth values Zaitsev and Shramko [7] distinguish between an ontological and an epistemic interpretation of classical truth values. By taking the Cartesian product of the two disjoint sets of values thus obtained, they arrive at four generalized truth values and consider two “semi-classical negations” on them. The resulting semantics is used to define three novel logics which are closely related to Belnap’s well-known four valued logic. A syntactic characterization of these (...) logics is left for further work. In this paper, based on our previous work on a functionally complete extension of Belnap’s logic, we present a sound and complete tableau calculus for these logics. It crucially exploits the Cartesian nature of the four values, which is reflected in the fact that each proof consists of two tableaux. The bi-facial notion of truth of Z&S is thus augmented with a bi-facial notion of proof. We also provide translations between the logics for semi-classical negation and classical logic and show that an argument is valid in a logic for semi-classical negation just in case its translation is valid in classical logic. (shrink)

Mathematical cognition has become an interesting case study for wider theories of cognition. Menary :1–20, 2015) argues that arithmetical cognition not only shows that internalist theories of cognition are wrong, but that it also shows that the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition is right. I examine this argument in more detail, to see if arithmetical cognition can support such conclusions. Specifically, I look at how the use of numerals extends our arithmetical abilities from quantity-related innate systems to systems that can deal (...) with exact numbers of arbitrary size. I then argue that the system underlying our grasp of small numbers is an unhelpful case study for Menary; it doesn’t support an argument for externalism over internalism. The system for large numbers, on the other hand, clearly displays important interactions between public numeral systems and our cognitive processes. I argue that the large number system supports an argument against internalist theories of arithmetical cognition, but that one cannot conclude that the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition is correct. In other words, the large number case doesn’t decide between the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition and the Hypothesis of EMbedded Cognition. (shrink)

The dissertation provides a reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano's theory of grounding (both in early and late works) against the background of a classical conception of science and scientific explanation.

Kant wird oft als einer derjenigen großen Philosophen angesehen, dessen Werk wesentlich zum jetzigen Verständnis der Menschenrechte und Menschenwürde beigetragen hat. Kant scheint, wenn man in seine Schriften schaut, jedoch keine Theorie der Menschenrechte im modernen Sinne gehabt zu haben. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich folgender Grund: Kant unterscheidet zwischen dem bloß privaten Recht, das dem positiven Recht untergeordnet ist, und dem öffentlichen Recht, das die begrifflichen Bedingungen einer jeden legitimen, legalen Ordnung darstellt. Der Inhalt des öffentlichen Rechts wird bei (...) ihm weder direkt aus einer freistehenden Moraltheorie abgeleitet, noch aus vertraglichen Übereinkünften oder dem positiven Recht. Stattdessen soll es aus den Ermöglichungsbedingungen einer rechtmäßigen Verfassung expliziert werden, unter der allein Ansprüchen auf (ein) „Recht“ irgendeine verbindliche Autorität zukommt. Wenn man diesen Ansatz ernst nimmt, kann man kaum eine Lesart bei Kant finden, die sich mit der modernen Auffassung von Menschenrechten vereinbaren lässt. Warum aber denken dann manche, dass Kant etwas zum modernen Verständnis der Menschenrechte beizutragen hätte? So lauten denn die Leitfragen der Erörterung: Welche Auffassungen in Kants Werk kommen einem zeitgenössischen Verständnis von Menschenrechten am nächsten? Warum jedoch können diese menschrechtlich vielleicht ähnlich klingenden Auffassungen Kants den heutigen Befürwortern der Menschenrechte doch keine Quelle oder Stütze bieten? (shrink)

The Anthropocene concept allows human history to be imagined within the temporal framework of planetary processes. Accordingly, some environmentalists increasingly favour massively lengthening the temporal horizons of moral concern. Whilst there are defensible reasons for doing so, I wish to take issue with the ‘secular time’ perspective underlying some such approaches. To make my case, I present, in the first section, two recent manifestations of the long view perspective: a) ‘deep future’ narratives in popular climate science and futurism; b) the (...) ideas behind the Long Now Foundation. In the second section, I apply a critical lens to these perspectives via classic analyses of secular time by Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. I conclude by suggesting that these post-secular critiques should be considered alongside recent approaches to the Anthropocene and the ‘geological turn’ from new materialist perspectives. (shrink)

Das Werk entkräftet das Vorurteil, Kants Philosophie sei für eine Reflexion der kulturellen Welt unzureichend. Klingner entwickelt die Option einer Kulturphilosophie als Theorie technischer Vernunft mit Bezug auf den kantischen Kulturbegriff und auf seinen Philosophiebegriff. Damit erweist sich zugleich, dass eine kantische Kulturphilosophie rekonstruierbar und in ihrem Gehalt auch heute noch diskussionswürdig ist.

Sensory augmentation challenges current societal norms and views of what is conceived as a “normal” human being. Beginning with self reflections of a bodyhacker, the author proposes an extended view onto the human or respectively cyborg body. Based on cognitive theories, it is argumented that we are already mental cyborgs. Our brains plastically restructure themselves in order to meet new requirements of the technological extended human.

In order to explain that sentences containing empty definite descriptions are nevertheless true or false, Russell famously analyzes sentences of the form ‘The F is G’ as ‘There is exactly one F and it is G’. Against this it has been objected that Russell’s analysis provides the wrong truth-conditions when it comes to non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. For example, according to Heim, Kripke, and Elbourne (HKE), there are circumstances in which (1) is true and (2) is false. Hans wants the ghost (...) in his attic to be quiet tonight.Hans wants there to be exactly one ghost in his attic and for it to be quiet tonight. After all, the argument goes, unlike (2), (1) can be true without Hans wanting there to be exactly one ghost in his attic. Kaplan and Neale famously reply that the HKE objection presupposes that non-doxastic attitudes are closed under entailment, which they are not. For Rostworowski, on the other hand, the problematic principle used by the HKE objection is a substitutivity principle for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions. This is further supported by the fact that, as Elbourne points out, Russell’s analysis already leads to a problem similar to the HKE objection together with substitutivity alone. By questioning substitutivity for non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, Rostworowski tries to block both the HKE objection and Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection. In this paper, I will argue that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions leads to a variant of the HKE objection even in the context of doxastic attitude ascriptions. Since, as we will see, doxastic attitude ascriptions do not seem to suffer from the substitutivity problems discussed by Rostworowski in the context of non-doxastic attitude ascriptions, this will further exacerbate the problem for Russell’s analysis. I will then discuss the possibility to reject substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions using a contextualist analysis of attitude ascriptions. However, we will see that, independent of whether we accept substitutivity for doxastic attitude ascriptions, a complete solution of the doxastic problem has to reject Russell’s analysis of the truth-conditions of sentences of the form ‘The F is G’. Concluding, I will show that, unlike Russell’s analysis, the Frege–Strawson analysis of definite descriptions, according to which a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’ presupposes that there is exactly one F, rather than asserting it, provides an explanation of the HKE objection, Elbourne’s variant of the HKE objection, and the doxastic problem presented in this paper. This will speak not only in favor of a Fregean analysis of definite descriptions, but also of a Fregean conception of propositions. (shrink)

One of the important discussions in the philosophy of mathematics, is that centered on Benacerraf’s Dilemma. Benacerraf’s dilemma challenges theorists to provide an epistemology and semantics for mathematics, based on their favourite ontology. This challenge is the point on which all philosophies of mathematics are judged, and clarifying how we might acquire mathematical knowledge is one of the main occupations of philosophers of mathematics. In this thesis I argue that this discussion has overlooked an important part of mathematics, namely mathematics (...) as it is exercised by ordinary people. I do so by looking at the different theories that have been put forward in the recent debate, and showing for each of these that they are unable to account for the mathematical practices of ordinary people. In order to show that these practices do need to be accounted for, I also argue that ordinary people are doing mathematics, i.e. that they engage in properly mathematical practices. Because these practices are properly mathematical, they should be accounted for by any philosophy of mathematics. The conclusion of my thesis, then, is that current theories fail to do something that they should do, while remaining neutral on how well they perform when it comes to accounting for the practices of professional mathematicians. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some of the central theoretical perspectives on culture and cultural practices implied in Pragmatism and interactive constructivism. The first part of the chapter highlights three major perspectives on cultural theory to be found in Dewey's thought: culture and experience, culture and habit, and culture and communication. The chapter then compares basic conceptual tools and interpretive approaches and shows that Dewey's work continues to provide fundamental resources in this field. Through this connection, it presents a brief introduction to (...) theories of discourse and power and discusses some implications for current controversies regarding multiculturalism. It argues that Dewey's Pragmatism and the Cologne program of interactive constructivism share a robust interest in culture and cultural diversity. (shrink)

This essay develops a new interpretation of Moses Mendelssohn’s ontological argument in the Morning Hours: Lectures on God’s Existence. At the beginning, Immanuel Kant’s famous criticism of the ontological proof of God’s existence in the Critique of Pure Reason is presented. Then I offer an in-depth analysis of Mendelssohn’s original ontological argument in the Morning Hours. It is shown that with Mendelssohn’s new proof of God, Kant’s objections are answered. Finally, it is explained why Mendelssohn does not succeed in completely (...) refuting Kant’s objections. (shrink)

Die Verfassung von Ecuador enthält als weltweit erste Rechte der Natur. Natur wird neben Menschen und Körperschaften als Rechtsträger benannt. Ihr wird ein Recht auf Existenz und Regeneration zugesprochen, das unabhängig von menschlichen Rechten gilt und von allen Menschen weltweit eingeklagt werden darf. Die Verfassung stützt sich auf den indigenen Naturbegriff Pachamama und erläutert deren Schutzanspruch durch das andine Konzept des Guten Lebens. Die Umweltethik bezeichnet ein holisitisches Naturverständnis als „Ökozentrismus“, wenn der Natur als überindividueller Ganzheit ein irreduzibler Schutzstatus zugesprochen (...) wird. Der umweltethische Ökozentrismus der Verfassung von Ecuador lässt sich erfolgreich gegen drei Kritiken verteidigen. Ökozentrische Positionen seien, 1) unvereinbar mit dem methodischen Individualismus der Menschenrechte. Ökosysteme selbst seien 2) „bloß“ vom menschlichen Beobachter abhängige Entitäten, die 3) über kein inhärentes Kriterium für Schädigungen verfügten. Die Konkretisierung des Ökozentrismus in Bezug auf die Verfassung von Ecuador erlaubt drei Thesen: 1) Der Schutz der Natur als überindividueller Ganzheit darf nicht als alleiniges ethisches Prinzip missverstanden werden. Innerhalb eines pluralistischen Holismus besitzt der Ökozentrismus nicht per se Vorrang gegenüber den Interessen individueller Naturwesen und juristischer Personen. 2) Da Ökosysteme im Gegensatz zu individuellen Naturwesen keine ontologisch selbstständigen Entitäten sind, lassen sich deren Rechte nicht analog zu denen natürlicher Personen begründen. Die Environmental Personhood ist gemäß der Association Theory der Rechtspersönlichkeit als ein menschliches Konstrukt zu verstehen. 3) Der Maßstab für die Schädigung von Ökosystemen kann nicht als ein der Natur inhärentes, objektives Kriterium „aufgefunden“ werden. Ökologische Schäden an der „Integrität, Stabilität und Schönheit“ der Natur sind vielmehr Schäden an menschlichen Werten. Als solche entspringen sie im Falle der ecuadorianischen Verfassung vor allem nichtinstrumentellen menschlichen Bezugnahmen auf die Natur. Der Natur wird hierbei eudaimonistischer Wert und moralischer Selbstwert zugeschrieben. (shrink)

Throughout his philosophical work, Schelling came to increasingly emphasize his conviction that the ultimate principles of philosophy are essentially practical: the ego formally conceived as act in early philosophy, creation as the unfolding of structurally rich action in late philosophy. It remained unclear, however, exactly what constituted the practicality of these principles, namely which concept of action Schelling used and how it is being integrated into the totality of his system. The task this study sets itself is to investigate into (...) these issues in respect to his middle and late philosophy. With the doctrine of potencies serving as point of departure, spirit is first reconstructed as practical consciousness. Creation as an ontotheological original act with the historical world as the space of human action is then systematically developed. Freedom, foresight, purposefulness, intentionality and futurity prove to be the central practical attributes of both human and divine action. Their connection is manifested in the religious consciousness of man and instantiated metaphysically in the relationship of time and eternity. Schelling's positive philosophy shows that these practical aspects are the irreducable prerequisites to render the historical world process intelligible. (shrink)

This study defends the legitimacy of the Enlightenment project by way of its different realizations in the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Today, Enlightenment as a cosmopolitan project with a global claim is often considered synonymous with Western chauvinism. The assertion of a universally binding reason is all too obviously inconsistent with the much-cited recognition of cultural differences. In contrast, it is the conviction brought forward in this book that an adequately understood Enlightenment is an unconditional right (...) of every person taking an active interest in a self-determined way of life. Only the realization of this conception of Enlightenment can provide the required space for the reciprocal recognition of human differences to freely unfold. (shrink)

Artykuł przedstawia historię sporów i polemik naukowych na temat teorii ewolucji oraz publikacji Karola Darwina, jakie miały miejsce w w Polsce w drugiej połowie XIX wieku.

In a recent paper, Philip Kremer proposes a formal and theory-relative desideratum for theories of truth that is spelled out in terms of the notion of ‘no vicious reference’. Kremer’s Modified Gupta-Belnap Desideratum (MGBD) reads as follows: if theory of truth T dictates that there is no vicious reference in ground model M, then T should dictate that truth behaves like a classical concept in M. In this paper, we suggest an alternative desideratum (AD): if theory of truth T dictates (...) that there is no vicious reference in ground model M, then T should dictate that all T-biconditionals are (strongly) assertible in M. We illustrate that MGBD and AD are not equivalent by means of a Generalized Strong Kleene theory of truth and we argue that AD is preferable over MGBD as a desideratum for theories of truth. (shrink)

We discuss four distinct semantic consequence relations which are based on Strong Kleene theories of truth and which generalize the notion of classical consequence to 3-valued logics. Then we set up a uniform signed tableau calculus, which we show to be sound and complete with respect to each of the four semantic consequence relations. The signs employed by our calculus are,, and, which indicate a strict assertion, strict denial, tolerant assertion and tolerant denial respectively. Recently, Ripley applied the strict–tolerant account (...) of assertion and denial to develop a new approach to truth and alethic paradox, which we call the Strict–Tolerant Conceptionof Truth. The paper aims to contribute to our understanding of STCT in at least three ways. First, by developing the strict–tolerant calculus.Second, by developing a semantic version of the strict–tolerant calculus, which informs us about the assertoric possibilities relative to a fixed ground model. Third, by showing that the strict–tolerant calculus and assertoric semantics jointly suggest that STCT's claim that the strict and tolerant can be understood in terms of one another has to be reconsidered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article wants to expose some central contributions for a critical theory from the Americas, made first of all from the Ecuadorian-Mexican philosopher Bolívar Echeverría and also by the Spanish-Mexican philosopher Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, bringing them to an imaginary discussion with Alfred Schmidt, Karl Marx, and some concepts of the original critical theory from the now one-hundred-year-old Frankfurt school. The relationship between use value and value, the critique of some Eurocentric “philosophical” ideas inside nonmainstream theories are some of the (...) departing points. A critical theory from the Americas could be a first step toward the necessary philosophical contributions for a postcapitalist society that may exist without the Today’s self-destructive impulse. It helps not only to understand the world outside the so-called First World in a more exact way, but it helps also to understand the centers of global power in a better way, as their self-consciousness is now probably on the lowest level ever. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Robert Nozick and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the author argues that human self-consciousness cannot be explained in naturalistic terms. Instead, it is a spontaneous phenomenon.

Research on language evolution is an established subject area yet permeated by terminological controversies about which topics should be considered pertinent to the field and which not. By consequence, scholars focusing on language evolution struggle in providing precise demarcations of the discipline, where even the very central notions of evolution and language are elusive. We aimed at providing a data-driven characterisation of language evolution as a field of research by relying on quantitative analysis of data drawn from 697 reviews on (...) 255 submissions from the Joint Conference on Language Evolution 2022 (Kanazawa, Japan). Our results delineate a field characterized by a core of main research topics such as iconicity, sign language, multimodality. Despite being explored within the framework of language evolution research, only very recently these topics became popular in linguistics. As a result, language evolution has the potential to emerge as a forefront of linguistic research, bringing innovation to the study of language. We also see the emergence of more recent topics like rhythm, music, and vocal learning. Furthermore, the community identifies cognitive science, primatology, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, and genetics as key areas, encouraging empirical rather than theoretical work. With new themes, models, and methodologies emerging, our results depict an intrinsically multidisciplinary and evolving research field, likely adapting as language itself. (shrink)

The now classical idea that programmed cell death contributes to a plethora of developmental processes still has lost nothing of its impact. It is, therefore, important to establish effective three-dimensional reconstruction as well as simulation techniques to decipher the exact patterns and functions of such apoptotic events. The present study focuses on the question whether and how apoptosis promotes neurulation-associated processes in the spinal cord of Tupaia belangeri. Our 3D reconstructions demonstrate that at least two craniocaudal waves of apoptosis consecutively (...) pass through the dorsal spinal cord. The first wave appears to be involved in neural fold fusion and/or in selection processes among premigratory neural crest cells. The second one seems to assist in establishing the dorsal signaling center known as the roof plate. In the hindbrain, in contrast, apoptosis among premigratory neural crest cells progresses craniocaudally but discontinuously, in a segment-specific manner. Unlike apoptosis in the spinal cord, these segment-specific apoptotic events, however, precede later ones that seemingly support neural fold fusion and/or postfusion remodeling. Arguing with Whitehead that biological patterns and rhythms differ in that biological rhythms depend “upon the differences involved in each exhibition of the pattern” we show that 3D reconstruction and simulation techniques can contribute to distinguish between patterns and rhythms of apoptosis. By deciphering novel patterns and rhythms of developmental apoptosis, our reconstructions help to reconcile seemingly inconsistent earlier findings in chick and mouse embryos, and to create rules for computer simulations. (shrink)

Herbrand’s theorem is one of the most fundamental results about first-order logic. In the context of proof analysis, Herbrand-disjunctions are used for describing the constructive content of cut-free proofs. However, given a proof with cuts, the computation of a Herbrand-disjunction is of significant computational complexity, as the cuts in the proof have to be eliminated first.In this paper we prove a generalization of Herbrand’s theorem: From a proof with cuts, one can read off a small tautology composed of instances of (...) the end-sequent and the cut formulas. This tautology describes the proof in the following way: Each cut induces a formula stating that a disjunction of instances of the cut formula implies a conjunction of instances of the cut formula. All these cut-implications together then imply the already existing instances of the end-sequent. The proof that this formula is a tautology is carried out by transforming the instances in the proof to normal forms and using characteristic clause sets to relate them. These clause sets have first been studied in the context of cut-elimination.This extended Herbrand theorem is then applied to cut-elimination sequences in order to show that, for the computation of an Herbrand-disjunction, the knowledge of only the term substitutions performed during cut-elimination is already sufficient. (shrink)

Nietzscheho myšlienka večného návratu toho istého nadobúda nový rozmer zvlášť po publikovaní štúdie P. S. Loeba, v ktorej sa usiluje preukázať časovú identitu večného návratu toho istého. Po viac ako storočí konsenzu v tom, že predmetná myšlienka myšlienok, ako ju charakterizoval samotný Nietzsche, je nekoherentná a logicky nesúvislá, sa vytvára priestor pre rozšírenú výmenu názorov, lebo k jej akceptovaniu – alebo zavrhnutiu – je potrebný ešte aj výskum možností jej overenie skúsenosťou. Loeb v predmetnej štúdii predkladá svoj koncept skúsenosti večného (...) návratu toho istého, s ktorým nesúhlasím. Do diskusie predkladám návrh, v ktorom rozlišujem medzi všeobecne overiteľnou skúsenosťou a skúsenosťou základnej epochálnej nálady (naladenosti), pričom touto diferenciou sa snažím poukázať, že každá epocha je generovaná prekognitívnym povedomím takej alebo onakej podoby pojmu večnosti. Následne formulujem otázku singulárnej skúsenosti okamihu, ktorá nevyplýva z otázky všeobecnej skúsenosti okamihu ako predelu času v jeho pohybe z minulosti do budúcnosti a ktorá je so všeobecnou skúsenosťou neporovnateľná. (shrink)