Following Richard M. Hare1 I think that we use practical sentences as decision criteria. We understand their meaning if we know what decision to take according to them. But it is not clear, how exactly decision criteria are related to decisions and how they function as criteria. To fully understand this role, we need a formal semantics of practical sentences. For this I have to introduce a formal language and give an interpretation of it. This language has to be constructed (...) in such a way that a translation into ordinary language is always possible in principle. Thus, we make sure that our semantics and logic will have an impact on the solution of concrete practical problems. According to this program I will first introduce the formal language ‘LP1’. To give an interpretation of it I will then clarify what a decision is and show how practical sentences function as decision criteria. On this basis I give an interpretation of the primitive two-place operator ‘PT p,q’ and the one-place operator ‘VTp’. I further argue that we make meta-decisions concerning the application of first-order decision-criteria. This allows me to introduce a new concept of practical validity, which differs radically from the concept of truth. Using this concept, I then give an interpretation of the deontic operators ‘OTp’, ‘FTp’, ‘ATp’ and ‘ITp’. The concept of practical validity makes it also possible to introduce practical logical connectors and mixed logical connectors on the basis of practical or mixed value tables. These connectors are used – among others – in bridge-principles, which play an important role in ethical and juridical theories. Finally, I shortly explain the semantics of the main kinds of practical sentences, i.e. value judgments, imperatives, norms and intentions, and I argue that we need a deontic logic in order to use practical sentences in a correct way. (shrink)

C. G. Carus was the last and perhaps—besides G. H. Schubert—the most important representative of late Romantic philosophical anthropology. The present book is a welcome reprint of his most popular writing, a fascinating, imaginative, more speculative than experimental treatise on the different psychic functions. Carus' main thesis—avowedly inspired by the Schellingian Naturphilosophie—is the living unity of the body and the soul, which is itself, however, only a superior manifestation of a life-penetrated Universe. Like the other Romantic "scientists" gravitating around Schelling, (...) Carus was entirely forgotten during the second half of the nineteenth century; but he is now being read again.—M. J. V. (shrink)

In this "contribution to philosophical anthropology" the author offers a competent examination of the body-soul relationship which represents primarily a phenomenological characterization of various psycho-somatic relations. The essential difference of the two substances of body and "personal spiritual soul" is to be established as "the indispensable presupposition" of "the wonderful and intimate unity" of man,, and this unique unity is systematically to be defended against all forms of exaggerated dualism and monism. In order to secure this fundamental philosophical truth about (...) the constitution of man against any sceptical questioning, the nature of philosophical knowledge is determined in a long introduction which summarizes an earlier epistemological publication of the author and utilizes its recognitions to manifest possibility and need of an independent philosophical discussion of psycho-somatic relations. Philosophical knowledge is described as a kind of cognition of its own, differing in method and contents from scientific efforts. While science studies contingent facts and conditions in empirical observation and by way of inductive reasoning, essential structures, necessary relations, and strictly deduced states of affairs constitute the object of philosophical knowledge. The latter uses the intuition of essences discovered in the Phenomenological School of Munich as the main method of its endeavors and as the foundation of demonstrative procedures. (shrink)

This chapter considers conceptions of the self in three early phenomenological thinkers: Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Edith Stein, and Gerda Walther. Although colleagues or students of Husserl and influenced by his phenomenology, they developed their own phenomenology of the human person in explicit opposition to Husserl’s more “idealist” turn. They remain, however, virtually unknown today in philosophical circles. This chapter seeks to retrieve their philosophies of the human being and suggests that their particular phenomenological approach still has much to teach us, especially (...) in the context of the conversation about the “self after the subject” and the question of inter-subjectivity. (shrink)

Die Frage nach der Seele der Tiere ist so alt wie die Frage nach der Seele des Menschen und die nach der Welt. Die 18 Beitrage des Bandes geben einen Uberblick von der Antike bis in das 20. Jahrhundert, beschreiben den Stand der Forschung zu philosophischen sowie rechtsphilosophischen Fragen nachder Seele der Tiere und werfen zugleich die Frage nach dem Recht der Tiere auf.Aus dem InhaltJ.-C. Wolf, Haben Tiere Rechte?J.-H. Michel, Le droit romain et les animauxH. Schmidt-Glintzer, "Seid freundlich zu (...) den Tieren." Tier, Mensch und Individualitat in ChinaE. Hornung, Die Vieldeutigkeit der Tiere im alten AgyptenE. Nicolay, Homere et l'ame des betesC. Frenzel, Tier, Mensch und Seele bei den VorsokratikernU. Perez-Paoli, Porphyrios' Gedanken zur Gerechtigkeit gegenuber TierenA. Giese, "Vier Tieren auch verheissen war, ins Paradies zu kommen" - Betrachtungen zur Seele der Tiere im islamischen MittelalterWeitere Beitrage von: D. Arendt, H. Breger, G. Boros, J.-L. Seban, G. Frank, M. Kowalewicz, H.W. Ingensiep, H. Baranzke, M. Linnemann, R. D. Precht. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Contingency is the presence of non-actualized possibility in the world. Fatalism is a view of reality on which there is no contingency. Since it is contingency that permits agency, there has traditionally been much interest in contingency. This interest has long been embarrassed by the contention that simple and plausible assumptions about the world lead to fatalism. I begin with an Aristotelian argument as presented by Richard Taylor. Appreciation of this argument has been stultified by a question pertaining to the (...) source of necessity and possibility and a closely related one regarding the nature of metaphysics itself. Answering these questions reveals the crucial issue here, to wit, necessity and possibility in a temporal world. This issue is investigated through an important later criticism of Taylor by David Foster Wallace. Wallace’s critique is significant because it brings to the fore the pivotal notion for understanding contingency in a temporal world, that of synchronic possibility, the idea that incompatible states of affairs are possible at a single moment. This notion provides the basis of distinguishing two systematic accounts of truth, modality and time: two metaphysics of contingency. On one account, Taylor’s Aristotelian argument is straightforwardly valid and compelling; on the other, it is fallacious. In closing, I present reasons why the former account, supporting the Aristotelian views of time and truth, is correct and make some comments to ameliorate this conclusion. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

The X-ray and bulk densities of PdIn alloys have been determined at ambient temperature on samples annealed at 1273 and 1373 K and quenched in water-ice mixtures. From these measurements the vacancy concentrations in this intermetallic phase have been obtained as a function of In concentration at these two temperatures. In addition, a generalized thermodynamic model is presented which considers the existence of antisite and vacancy defects on both sublattices without any dilute solution approximations. This model uses three energy parameters, (...) whose values have been obtained for PdIn using the measured vacancy concentrations and the chemical potentials of In. This model is able to describe all the available vacancy data and is suitable for calculating these values at compositions and temperatures when such data are not available. In addition, the model permits the calculation of the concentrations of the minority point defects. It is shown that dilute-solution approximations, which have invariably been used in this kind of modelling, are unsatisfactory. The present results and their analysis confirm that PdIn is a near-triple-defect type of intermetallic and not a near-Schottky type, as has been claimed recently. (shrink)

Reprint of paper first published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1984.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, SETLcoin, Ether, Solar Coin, or Liberty Reserve exist since 2009. Because of their decentralized control, they are often considered a threat or alternative to the conventional centralized banking system. While the technological implication of some such currencies, especially of Bitcoin, has attracted much attention, so far there is little discussion about the entire field of cryptocurrencies and very little academic literature addressing its ethical significance. In this article, we thus address the impact of “blockchain technology” on (...) the nature of financial transactions from a business ethics perspective. We begin with a survey on relevant literature from neighboring disciplines. Next, we work towards a 3 × 3 framework for current debates on the ethics of cryptocurrencies : we combine the micro, meso, and macro levels of business and society with assessments of the potential ethical impact of cryptocurrencies as morally beneficial, detrimental, and ambiguous. In addition, we highlight possible avenues for future research, such as the changing roles of the miners and regulators, the prosocial use of cryptocurrencies, the antisocial use for shadow banking and transactions in the ‘dark net’ and cryptocurrencies’ effect on inflation and deflation. (shrink)

This article proposes a conceptual mapping to outline salient properties and relations that allow for a knowledge transfer from the well-established greenwashing phenomenon to the more recent machinewashing. We account for relevant dissimilarities, indicating where conceptual boundaries may be drawn. Guided by a “reasoning by analogy” approach, the article addresses the structural analogy and machinewashing idiosyncrasies leading to a novel and theoretically informed model of machinewashing. Consequently, machinewashing is defined as a strategy that organizations adopt to engage in misleading behavior (...) about ethical Artificial Intelligence /algorithmic systems. Machinewashing involves misleading information about ethical AI communicated or omitted via words, visuals, or the underlying algorithm of AI itself. Furthermore, and going beyond greenwashing, machinewashing may be used for symbolic actions such as lobbying and prevention of stricter regulation. By outlining diverse theoretical foundations of the established greenwashing domain and their relation to specific research questions, the article proposes a machinewashing model and a set of theory-related research questions on the macro, meso, and micro-level for future machinewashing research. We conclude by stressing limitations and by outlining practical implications for organizations and policymakers. (shrink)

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)