In following paper an attempt will be made to analyse the statistical relationships between variables as the functions of causal relations existing between them. Our basic assumption here is that statistical relationships between traits, events, or characteristics of objects, may be logically derived from the pattern of their mutual causal connections, if this pattern is described by appropriate concepts and with sufficient precision. The first part of the paper presents basic concepts, which according to author's view may serve for the (...) description of different patterns of causal relations in such a way, that statistical relationships corresponding to each pattern may be derived. It gives also examples of such a derivation for some less complicated cases. The second part of the paper is an attempt of application of proposed method to the understanding and critical consideration of some standard techniques of statistical analysis, especially those mostly used in social sciences. (shrink)

Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to make money in order to justify getting more money.

How does affectivity contribute to moral judgment making? -- Normative dissonance vs. the order of argumentation -- Facing otherness as an ethical experiment -- The concepts of respect revisited -- What is universal? Between subjectivity and intersubjectivity -- Experimenting with values in legal contexts : Hegel and Radbruch -- Democracy begins in the mind. Developing democratic personality.

Do technologies advance our self-identities, as they do our bodies or cognitive skills? Are doomed to disintegration and an episodic self? This book examines how technologies affect our selves from the perspective of health humanities (e.g., transplantology, bionics, disability studies), phenomenology, philosophy of mind and posthumanism.

Examines widespread myths about transhumanism and explores the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.

In 2017, Michael Nair-Collins formulated his Transitivity Argument which claimed that brain-dead patients are alive according to a concept that defines death in terms of the loss of moral status. This article challenges Nair-Collins’ view in three steps. First, I elaborate on the concept of moral status, claiming that to understand this notion appropriately, one must grasp the distinction between direct and indirect duties. Second, I argue that his understanding of moral status implicit in the Transitivity Argument is faulty since (...) it is not based on a distinction between direct and indirect duties. Third, I show how this flaw in Nair-Collins’ argument is grounded in the more general problems between preference utilitarianism and desire fulfillment theory. Finally, I present the constructivist theory of moral status and the associated moral concept of death and explain how this concept challenges the Transitivity Argument. According to my view, brain death constitutes a valid criterion of death since brain death is incompatible with the preserved capacity to have affective attitudes and to value anything. (shrink)

The paper begins with a proposal for a reconstruction of three major statements of the traditional Marxian version of historical materialism. The general concept of an adaptive mechanism is introduced to explain how, in the Marxian sense, several parts of the superstructure are to be thought of as determined by the economic base. The paper proceeds by asking whether the classical type of economic determination is valid not only for precapitalist and capitalist societies, but for socialist societies as well. An (...) answer in the negative is given. The author tries to outline a type of historical materialism which takes into account the autonomous role of political institutions and social relations as determinants in socialist societies. (shrink)

"Der vorliegende Band geht auf logikbezogene Spurensuche und vereinigt durchdachte, hochintelligente und zahlreiche neue Einsichten versprechende Texte. Wer sich ernsthaft mit Musik beschäftigt, sollte sich diesen Band nicht entgehen lassen." (bs, Musica sacra 4/2015) Texte zur Praxis, Theorie und Ästhetik der Musik beanspruchen den Begriff ›musikalische Logik‹, wobei die Vorstellungen über Geltung, Inhalt und Umfang dieses Begriffes weit divergieren. Im vorliegenden Buch wird eine problemgeschichtliche Klärung unternommen. Musikalische Logik erweist sich als Inbegriff der Bedingungen, unter welchen Musik als in sich (...) selbst begründeter Prozess erscheinen kann. Sie besteht in einem musikalischen Denken, dessen Zusammenhang generiert wird durch Differenzierung von Klangrelationen und Zeitmaßen, durch Bildung von Verknüpfungsweisen und Verlaufsformen, durch den variativen Gebrauch der resultierenden Modelle sowie durch Aufhebung und Neubildung der Konstituenten; als produktives Denken lässt sich das musikalische Denken die Wege nicht festlegen, die sich für seine Ausdrucks- und Kommunikationsweise bewährt haben. Musikalische Logik kann sich in voraushörbarer Konsequenz zeigen, aber auch und besonders in der Art, wie sich ein nicht zu antizipierender Prozess als in sich begründet erweist. Die Vielfalt der Möglichkeiten spricht nicht gegen die Erwartung von Logik in der Musik, sondern erfüllt die Eigenart des Logischen im Bereich des Schaffens gegenüber dem Logischen im Bereich des Erkennens. Die historische Darstellung führt von der Spätantike bis in die Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Texts on the practice, theory and aesthetics of music make use of the term ‘musical logic’, although conceptions of the application, content and scope of the term differ greatly. This book attempts to solve this historical problem. Musical logic proves to be the embodiment of the conditions under which music can appear as a process founded in itself. It consists of musical thinking with ist context generated by the differentiation of relationships between sounds and of tempi, by the creation of forms of connection and progression, by the variational use of the resulting models and the suspension and re-creation of the constituent parts; as a form of productive thinking, music cannot define proven means for ist own expression and communication. Musical logic can manifest itself in consequences that can be aurally predicted, but also, and especially, in the ways in which a process that cannot be anticipated proves to be founded in itself. The range of possibilities does not contradict the expectation of logic in music but conforms to the peculiarity of logic in the sphere of creation as opposed to logic in the sphere of cognition. The historical presentation ranges from late antiquity to the mid 20th century. (shrink)

t. 1. Dialektyka.--t. 2. Ontologia i epistemologia.

"Provides translations of Bolzano's most important work on grounding, including previously untranslated material"--.

In this chapter we deal with the challenge to the existence of free will and moral responsibility that is raised by the threat of determinism from a Wittgensteinian perspective. Our argument starts by briefly recapitulating Wittgenstein’s analysis of the practice of doubt in On Certainty. We subsequently turn to the problem of free will. We argue that the existence of free will is a basic certainty and that the thesis of determinism fails to cast doubt on it. We thereby make (...) use of – but also try to go beyond – Wittgenstein’s own remarks in his “Lectures on Freedom of the Will”. In the final section we focus more explicitly on moral responsibility. Inspired by P.F. Strawson’s work on free will and moral responsibility, which we take to be deeply Wittgensteinian, we argue that our practices of holding each other responsible manifest basic human certainties which cannot be meaningfully challenged by invoking the thesis of determinism. (shrink)

This text is a presentation of the notion of ontological imagination. It constitutes an attempt to merge two traditions: critical sociology and science and technology studies - STS. By contrasting these two intellectual traditions, I attempt to bring together: a humanist ethical-political sensitivity and a posthumanist ontological insight. My starting point is the premise that contemporary world needs new social ontology and new critical theory based on it in order to overcome the unconsciously adapted, “slice-based” modernist vision of social ontology. (...) I am convinced that we need new ontological frameworks of the social combined with a research disposition which I refer to as ontological imagination. (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)

How ought you to evaluate your options if you’re uncertain about which axiology is true? One prominent response is Expected Moral Value Maximisation, the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected moral value across axiologies. EMVM raises two fundamental questions. First, there’s a question about what it should even mean. In particular, it presupposes that we can compare moral value across axiologies. So to even understand EMVM, we (...) need to explain what it is for such comparisons to hold. Second, assuming that we understand it, there’s a question about whether EMVM is true. Since there are many plausible rivals, we need an argument to defend it. In this paper, I’ll introduce a representation theorem for axiological uncertainty to answer these two questions. Roughly, the theorem shows that if all our axiologies satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, and if the facts about which options are better than which in light of your uncertainty also satisfy these axioms as well as a Pareto condition, then these facts have a relevantly unique expected utility representation. If I’m right, this theorem at once affords us a compelling way to understand EMVM—and specifically intertheoretic comparisons—and a systematic argument for its truth. (shrink)

Intuitively, we lack the standing to blame others in light of moral norms that we ourselves don't take seriously: if Adam is unrepentantly aggressive, say, he lacks the standing to blame Celia for her aggressiveness. But why does blame have this feature? Existing proposals try to explain this by reference to specific principles of normative ethics – e.g. to rule‐consequentialist considerations, to the wrongness of hypocritical blame, or principles of rights‐forfeiture based on this wrongness. In this paper, I suggest a (...) fundamentally different approach. Employing Timothy Williamson's idea of ‘constitutive rules’ of speech acts, I argue that this feature of blame is simply constitutive of any essentially moral form of disapproval. So if Adam had the standing to disapprove of Celia's aggressiveness in some form, necessarily, this disapproval couldn't be blame. If I'm right, this proposal thus not only answers our main question, but also sheds an interesting novel light on the very nature of blame. If we didn't have a form of disapproval with that feature, we wouldn't have our practice of holding each other to moral norms. (shrink)

The main aim of the text is to show how a game of Go (Weiqi, baduk, Igo) can serve as a model representation of the ontological-metaphysical aspect of the actor–network theory (ANT). An additional objective is to demonstrate in return that this ontological-metaphys⁠ical aspect of ANT represented on Go/Weiqi game model is able to highlight the key aspect of this theory—onto-methodological praxis.

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)

In this annotated critical edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda Stefan Alexandru draws upon many hitherto unexplored sources of the direct and indirect tradition, inter alia upon an independent Greek manuscript he has discovered in the Vatican Library.

Organisationsidentität ist ein bedeutender Faktor für die Erklärung der Stabilität und des Wandels von Organisationen. Stefan Kirchner leistet einen grundlegenden Beitrag zur aktuellen Organisationsforschung, indem er mit dem Konzept der Organisationsidentität Ansätze des soziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus und der Pfadabhängigkeitstheorie zusammenführt.

Wenn digitale Technologien wie künstliche Intelligenz, Blockchain und Robotik auf die Medizin treffen, entstehen zwangsläufig ethische Fragestellungen. Diese lassen sich nicht ohne Weiteres mit medizinisch-technologischen, rechtlichen oder ökonomischen Argumenten allein beantworten. Neue Themenfelder wie die sich wandelnde Rolle der Patienten, die neue Verantwortung von Ärzten und Pflegenden, neue digitale Möglichkeiten in der Medizin, Smart Hospitals im Klinikalltag, die gesellschaftliche Legitimität eines möglichen dritten Datengesundheitsmarktes, eine zukunftsfeste Ausbildungslandschaft für den Gesundheits-/Medizinbereich sowie die Grenzen der digitalen Forschung bedürfen einer kritischen und gleichzeitig (...) thematisch breiten Auseinandersetzung mit ethischen Aspekten in der digitalen Gesundheitswirtschaft und Medizin. (shrink)

PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE AND ITS COGNITIVE FUNCTION Among the features marking a mystical experience facilitated by certain kind of psychedelic substances researchers singled out the so-called noetic quality, which indicates that mystical experiences can have a cognitive significance. The main goal of my article is then to address the question, whether this cognitive capacity of mystical experience has only a subjective/psychological value, or it should be rather treated as a legitimate kind of cognition. The philosophical aspect of this issue enters the (...) domain of ontology and epistemology, since it concerns the question, whether an object of any cognitive experience has to belong to the physical reality, or a proper cognition can be realized in the reality of symbols. In order to deal with these questions I will refer to the philosophy of H.-G. Gadamer. Even though Gadamer did not investigate altered states of consciousness, I believe his hermeneutics can support a hypothesis that altered states of consciousness provide recognition of reality of symbols. (shrink)