It is well known that Ernest Gellner made substantial use of his knowledge of the social sciences in philosophy. Here I discuss how he used it on the basis of a few examples taken from Gellner’s philosophical output. It is argued that he made a number of highly original “translations”, or re-interpretations, of philosophical theories and problems using his knowledge of the social sciences. While this method is endorsed, it is also argued that some of Gellner’s translations crossed the line (...) between the original and the idiosyncratic. (shrink)

Across eight experiments (N = 2310), we studied whether people would prioritize rescuing individuals who may be thought to contribute more to society. We found that participants were generally dismissive of general rules that prioritize more socially beneficial individuals, such as doctors instead of unemployed people. By contrast, participants were more supportive of one-off decisions to save the life of a more socially beneficial individual, even when such cases were the same as those covered by the rule. This generality effect (...) occurred robustly even when controlling for various factors. It occurred when the decision-maker was the same in both cases, when the pairs of people differing in the extent of their indirect social utility was varied, when the scenarios were varied, when the participant samples came from different countries, and when the general rule only covered cases that are exactly the same as the situation described in the one-off condition. The effect occurred even when the general rule was introduced via a concrete precedent case. Participants' tendency to be more supportive of the one-off proposal than the general rule was significantly reduced when they evaluated the two proposals jointly as opposed to separately. Finally, the effect also occurred in sacrificial moral dilemmas, a general phenomenon occurring in multiple moral contexts. We discuss possible explanations of the effect, including concerns about negative consequences of the rule and a deontological aversion against making difficult trade-off decisions unless they are absolutely necessary. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood that the witnesses are reliable. Recently, it has been proved that several coherence measures proposed in the literature are reliability conducive in a restricted scenario (Olsson and Schubert 2007, Synthese 157:297–308). My aim is to investigate which coherence measures turn out to be reliability conducive in the more general scenario where it is any (...) finite number of witnesses that give equivalent reports. It is shown that only the so-called Shogenji measure is reliability conducive in this scenario. I take that to be an argument for the Shogenji measure being a fruitful explication of coherence. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) among testimonies implies a higher probability that the witnesses are reliable. Recently, it has been proved that several coherence measures proposed in the literature are reliability conducive in scenarios of equivalent testimonies (Olsson and Schubert 2007; Schubert, to appear). My aim is to investigate which coherence measures turn out to be reliability conducive in the more general scenario (...) where the testimonies do not have to be equivalent. It is shown that four measures are reliability conducive in the present scenario, all of which are ordinally equivalent to the Shogenji measure. I take that to be an argument for the Shogenji measure being a fruitful explication of coherence. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (asmeasured) of a set of testimonies implies a higher probability that the witnesses are reliable. Recently, it has been proved that the Shogenji measure of coherence is reliability conducive in restricted scenarios (e.g., Olsson and Schubert, Synthese, 157:297–308, 2007). In this article, I investigate whether the Shogenji measure, or any other coherence measure, is reliability conducive in general. An impossibility theorem (...) is proved to the effect that this is not the case. I conclude that coherence is not reliability conducive. (shrink)

Let us by ‘first-order beliefs’ mean beliefs about the world, such as the belief that it will rain tomorrow, and by ‘second-order beliefs’ let us mean beliefs about the reliability of first-order, belief-forming processes. In formal epistemology, coherence has been studied, with much ingenuity and precision, for sets of first-order beliefs. However, to the best of our knowledge, sets including second-order beliefs have not yet received serious attention in that literature. In informal epistemology, by contrast, sets of the latter kind (...) play an important role in some respectable coherence theories of knowledge and justification. In this paper, we extend the formal treatment of coherence to second-order beliefs. Our main conclusion is that while extending the framework to second-order beliefs sheds doubt on the generality of the notorious impossibility results for coherentism, another problem crops up that might be no less damaging to the coherentist project: facts of coherence turn out to be epistemically accessible only to agents who have a good deal of insight into matters external to their own belief states. (shrink)

In this thesis the connection between coherence and reliability is investigated. The question may be phrased as follows: does the fact that a set of testimonies is coherent imply that the witnesses who have reported these testimonies are reliable? The same question may also be expressed in terms of beliefs: does the fact that a set of beliefs is coherent imply that the beliefs were reliably produced? Traditionally, coherence theorists have thought that coherence is connected to truth, but in this (...) dissertation the thesis is that it is rather connected to reliability. The investigation proceeds within a probabilistic framework, the so-called witness scenario, where a number of partially reliable witnesses give independent reports. Hence it is primarily coherent sets of testimonies that are discussed, but coherence of beliefs is taken to function similarly, and thus the results acquired using the witness scenario are, it is argued, relevant for the traditional discussion which mostly concerns coherence of beliefs. Using this scenario a notion of reliability-conduciveness, similar to the much-discussed notion of truth-conducivenes, is formally defined. This definition says, roughly, that a measure of coherence C is reliability-conducive if and only if the more coherent a set of testimonies is, as measured by C, the higher is the probability that a witness who has given one of these testimonies is reliable. In Papers I and II it is tested whether a number of coherence measures proposed in the literature are reliability-conducive in various salient scenarios. It is shown that the only coherence measure that is reliability-conducive in all of those scenarios is the so-called Shogenji measure. This observation is then used to argue that the Shogenji measure is a fruitful explication of the notion of coherence. However, in Paper III it is shown that in the most general scenario neither the Shogenji measure nor any other measure of coherence is reliability-conducive. In Paper IV, the use of coherence reasoning in court is investigated. It is shown that we often use the notion of coherence in judicial reasoning, for example to find out whether certain witnesses are reliable or not. Using the results from Papers I and II, as well as additional formal results that strengthen the connection between coherence and reliability, it is argued that this line of reasoning is valid. Also, it is argued in the introductory chapter that these findings show that coherence is indeed closely connected to reliability, even though it is not generally reliability-conducive, and that this connection is much closer than that between coherence and truth. In Paper V, coherent sets of so-called higher order testimonies are examined, where a higher order testimony is defined as a testimony concerning some other witness’s reliability . Such sets have hitherto not been examined within formal coherence theory. It is shown that coherence must be defined in a non-standard way to account for all our intuitions regarding sets involving higher order testimonies. It is then argued that this shows that in order to correctly estimate the degree of coherence of a set of beliefs, the believer must have a firm grasp of her own reliability; a fact that in turn is taken to be problematic for the coherence theory of justification. (shrink)

This article considers how Ernest Gellner used sociology and anthropology to attack ordinary language philosophy in Words and Things. It argues that this attack can be seen as a part of the movement to make philosophy more empirical or “naturalized,” something that has not been generally noted. It also discusses what general lessons to draw from Words and Things regarding how empirical knowledge should be used in philosophy. Among other things, the article argues that one important lesson is that empirical (...) philosophers should make more use of “soft” social sciences, such as sociology and anthropology, and not focus exclusively on “harder” disciplines, such as physics and experimental psychology. Another upshot of the discussion is that philosophers should draw on empirical knowledge not only when they solve problems but also when they formulate them. (shrink)

SummaryErnest Gellner was, by all accounts, one of the most unconventional thinkers of the twentieth century. Not only was the content of his theories often strikingly original, but he also arrived at them by use of a singularly personal thought-style. The article describes the most salient features of this thought-style: his quest for overviews, on the one hand, and for penetrating and unexpected insights, on the other, his opposition to what he perceived as humanistic complacency, his academic elitism, and much (...) else. In the final section, an assessment of the most conspicuous feature of Gellner's thought-style—his tendency to downplay the importance of detail and to focus on high-level theory—is given. It is argued that this characteristic served Gellner better in philosophy and the history of ideas than in the social sciences. (shrink)

Foucault's theory of power and subjectification challenges common concepts of freedom in social philosophy and expands them through the concept of 'freedom as critique': Freedom can be defined as the capability to critically reflect one's own subjectification, and the conditions of possibility for this critical capacity lie in political and social institutions. The article develops this concept through a critical discussion of the standard response by Foucault interpreters to the standard objection that Foucault's thinking obscures freedom. The standard response interprets (...) Fou-cault's later works, especially The Subject and Power, as a solution to the problem of freedom. It is mistaken, because it conflates different concepts of freedom that are present in Foucault's work. By differentiating these concepts, this paper proposes a new institutionalist approach to solve the problem of freedom that breaks with the partly anarchist underpinnings of Foucault scholarship: As freedom as critique is not given, but itself a result of subjectification, it entails a demand for 'modal robustness' and must therefore be institutionalized. This approach helps to draw out the consequences of Foucault's thinking on freedom for postfoundationalist democratic theory and the general social-philosophical discussion on freedom. (shrink)

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

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Karsten Schubert liefert die erste systematische Rekonstruktion der sozialphilosophischen Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault und eine neue Lösung für das Freiheitsproblem: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eigenen Subjektivierung - kurz: Freiheit als Kritik - ist das Resultat von freiheitlicher Subjektivierung in politischen Institutionen. Der Band zeigt so die Konsequenzen von Foucaults Freiheitsdenken für die Demokratietheorie und die allgemeine sozialphilosophische Freiheitsdiskussion auf.

Als kulturgeschichtlich bedeutsame Phänomene entstammen Masken der Ritual- und Theaterpraxis und traten schon in der Antike als Metapher in den Sprachgebrauch über. Kaum ein Philosoph hat den Masken so viel Raum gegeben wie Friedrich Nietzsche: Sie sind ihm Hilfsmittel der Erkenntnis und conditio humana, sie ermöglichen Höflichkeit und Selbstschutz, fungieren aber auch als Darstellungsform. Corinna Schubert führt zentrale Themen seines Denkens unter einem neuen Gesichtspunkt zusammen und erschließt sie als Philosophie der Masken. Dabei geht es nicht nur darum, was (...) Nietzsche über Masken denkt, sondern auch, wie er mit und in Masken denkt. (shrink)

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

Diese Studie bietet eine pragmatistische Deutung von Erkenntnis. Durch eine detaillierte Analyse im Kontext von Sprachphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes legt der Autor dar, warum Wissen seinen Ursprung im Konnen hat. Denn bei genauer Betrachtung beschreiben die Bedingungen fur Wissen letztlich eine praktische Kompetenz. Durch die Verknupfung einer normativen Pragmatik mit einer inferentiellen Semantik macht der Autor deutlich, warum es einer solchen Kompetenz bedarf, um Uberzeugungen uberhaupt erst haben und rechtfertigen zu konnen. Im Rahmen eines Deflationismus zeigt er dagegen, dass (...) Wahrheit keine notwendige Bedingung fur Wissen, sondern vielmehr ein Mittel der Zustimmung und der Verallgemeinerung ist.". (shrink)

Platon ist nach Homer der antike Autor mit der reichhaltigsten Rezeption vom Altertum über das Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit. Gleichwohl und gerade aus diesem Grund ist diese bisher allenfalls bruchstückhaft aufgearbeitet worden. Die Autoren versuchen, diesem alten Ziel geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung auf neuen Wegen näherzukommen, indem sie eine informationswissenschaftliche Perspektive auf Platon und seine Rezeption anwenden. Dazu sind innovative Methoden der Paraphrasensuche entwickelt worden, um diese auch als Methode altertumswissenschaftlich und kulturwissenschaftlich interessierter Forschung zu etablieren.

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)

Social order and social change is based on social action. All sociological theories of action agree on this assumption. Beyond that insight action theories disagree on basic notions of how action can be explained, on basic principles clarifying the selection of action and on basic motivations of action as starting point to construct theories of social order and social change. Contemporary sociology accepts the multidimensionality of theoretical approaches. Open are questions of how action theories can be differentiated, related or combined (...) to offer analytical instruments for empirical research. The idea this essay brings forward is that the classical dualism between utilitarism (homo oeconomicus) and normativism (homo sociologicus) is transcended in support of action theories concentrating on the meaning of culture (cultural turn), communication (linguistic turn), and on creativity (dialogical turn). Integrated as a new typology these five action theories provide an analytical framework to research social order and social conflicts of modern societies. (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 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)

Die Fuhrung von Streitkraften in Einsatzen ist eine verantwortungsvolle Aufgabe. Militarische Fuhrer benotigen dafur eine ausgepragte moralische Urteilskraft. Was ist aber damit gemeint? Wie konnen ethische Reflexionen bei der Fuhrung von Streitkraften im Einsatz helfen? Hartwig von Schubert bietet neben einer Klarung ethischer Begriffe praxisnahe Kriterien fur einen ethischen Entscheidungs-Check an, die er anhand einer komplexen militarischen Lage einem Praxistest unterzieht. Er pladiert fur eine integrative Militarethik, die sich aus den Ethiken verschiedenster Berufsgruppen speist und die interdisziplinar und international (...) vermittelbar ist.". (shrink)

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)

If one knows everything there is to know about a person's state while playing BioShock, if one could describe the exact neurons firing, the synapses responding, and so on, one still wouldn't know what it is like to play BioShock. This is precisely what phenomenology is interested in. Some philosophers would argue that there are a great number of phenomenological methods, but the author thinks they basically fall into two categories: the phenomenological tradition and art as phenomenology. Infinite is phenomenologically (...) interesting because the game's designers have poured phenomenological ideas into Columbia and Elizabeth, which one can then read as if they were books containing a phenomenological analysis of reality. Once the player is comfortable in the role of protagonist, one is easily absorbed by the worlds of Rapture and Columbia. The phenomenological relevance of these insights is that they reveal something about oneself. (shrink)

La sensation d'être soumis à une contrainte implacable peut déclencher une souffrance intense, une activité délirante, ou bien une créativité irrépressible. Elle peut prendre la forme d'une "machine" à influencer. Cette figure majeure de la maladie psychique depuis deux cents ans est le point de départ et le fil conducteur pour éclairer la structure complexe et paradoxale de la subjectivité. Loin d'être un outil technique, elle est un enjeu d'abord existentiel et esthétique. De Tausk à Szondi et Maldiney, de Merleau-Ponty (...) à Guattari et Deleuze, de Deligny à Nauman et Duchamp, de Sobchack à Epstein et Godard, et enfin, à nouveau, de Merleau-Ponty à Guattari, on voit émerger les contours d'une subjectivité en tension,toujours déjà habitée d'une altérité qui la garde en mouvement. Et l'ontologie de la chair apparaît finalement comme un champ essentiellement politique. (shrink)

Wie gehen wir mit Gewordenem um, wie bedingt das Gewordene unser Handeln? Wie interagieren das Gewordene und wir? Das sind grundlegende Fragen unseres Alltags, die in diesem Buch zum Prinzip einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Methode - der Signifikanten-Interaktionsanalyse - erhoben werden. Die Analyseobjekte der Signifikanten-Interaktionsanalyse (SIA) werden als Formation verstanden, die aus materiellen, perzeptiven, emotionalen, sprachlichen Signifikanten bestehen. SIgnifikanten verweisen aufeinander und bedingen sich relational, so dass fur sich stehende, eigentlich bedeutungslose Signifikanten in ihrem relationalen Verbund Aussagekraft entfalten. JEde Aussage beruht auf (...) einer Interaktion mehreren Signifikanten. JEder Signifikant wird als potentieller Aktant verstanden. MIt der SIA lassen sich die Interaktionen zwischen Signifikanten auf formalisierte Aussagen reduzieren. DIes geschiet mittels dreier Interaktionsmodi - Belassen, Anpassen oder Beseitigen -, die aus dem Umgang mit Gewordenem abgeleitet werden. DIe formalisierten Aussagen konnen Werthaltung, Wertschopfung, Wertvernichtung, identitat, Integritat, Einzigartigkeit und Differenz von Signifikanten erfassen. (shrink)

Pythagoras created the notion of philosophy, which literally means love of wisdom, and wisdom has traditionally been related to values and notions of the good. Not surprisingly, the central idea in Plato's philosophy was the concept of the good. Nietzsche saw philosophers as inventors of values, and this understanding of philosophy remains valid today. It is the methodology by means of which values are derived or created that changes from time to time. Today, it is important for giving a comprehensive (...) account of one's philosophical method to clarify the relationship between skepticism, the natural sciences, naturalism, and pragmatism. In this chapter, I develop three pillars of a philosophical method for plausible investigation concerning philosophical insights. I stress the relevance of widely spread intuitions, scientific insights, and respect for the norm of negative freedom. My own approach of a Nietzschean transhumanism combines these elements with a specific version of perspectivism. (shrink)