It is pointed out against the two critics (a) that an identity or partial identity of meanings and facts is logically impossible, (b) that the logical grammar of ?identify? and ?explain? is different from that of ?understand? and that hence understanding can never be an operation of identifying or explaining, and (c) that rational understanding does not involve a ?reproduction? of the subject matter in any controversial sense.

This paper deals with the question of whether and when it is appropriate or inappropriate to say that a social group performs an action. After some remarks on the concept of action three kinds of groups are distinguished, i.e. assemblies, institutions, and classes. It is found that in the first two of these cases predication of action is possible: an assembly can act in that all its members act, or some of them do who are interchangeable with any others; and (...) an institution can act because it has a structure and some individuals can act on its behalf. A class, however, cannot be said to act, for its concept may be freely formed, its members cannot be assembled, and it has no organs through which actions could be performed. (shrink)

Understanding in its widest sense is the aim of all rational knowledge. A distinction can be made between interpretation (leading to the understanding of meanings) and explanation (leading to the understanding of facts). The view that in the social sciences facts and meanings are the same is criticized. In respect of the specific understanding of human and social facts empathetic and rational understanding are distinguished and some of the difficulties pointed out inherent in both, in particular with regard to testability. (...) On the other hand, it is found that a purely behaviouristic approach, although possible, would not be completely satisfactory, so that in spite of all difficulties the social sciences (history included) cannot do without specific understanding, as a heuristic device as well as an aim. (shrink)

Dray: Mandelbaum legislates regarding the historian's "task" in the guise of descriptive analysis. He seems to envisage two fundamental tasks for the historian: explaining, and relating parts to wholes. Contrary to Mandelbaum's implication, there is no more opposition between narration and either of these tasks than there is between the two tasks themselves.Ely: Mandelbaum refutes White and Danto, who both hold that historical writing is essentially narrative; but not Gallie, who asserts that historical writing is necessarily, but never solely, a (...) narrative construction. The claim that history is essentially narrative is fruitful even though false because it recognizes an important characteristic of historical thinking - the historian's conceptual isolation of a series of intentional human actions from the situations with which they were designed to cope.Gruner: Mandelbaurn is correct in his criticism of narrativism, but does not support his criticism by good reasons. Historians offer both static, non-narrative descriptions and kinetic, narrative descriptions. Historical description is therefore not the same as historical narration; the latter is only a species of the former. (shrink)

The paper tries to illustrate the influence of Aristotle's thought upon Brentano by arguing that the view that all psychological phenomena have objects was proably derived from the Aristotelian conception that the mind can know itself only en parergo, and that this knowledge presupposes that some other thing be in the mind "objectively". Brentano's contribution to Aristotle scholarship is illustrated by reviewing some of his arguments against Zeller's claim that Aristotle's God, contemplating only himself, is ignorant of the world. The (...) paper concludes with an attempt to explain the relative neglect into which Brentano's exegetical efforts have fallen. (shrink)

Abduction is considered the most powerful, but also the most controversially discussed type of inference. Based on an analysis of Peirce’s retroduction, Lipton’s Inference to the Best Explanation and other theories, a new theory of abduction is proposed. It considers abduction not as intrinsically explanatory but as intrinsically conditional: for a given fact, abduction allows one to infer a fact that implies it. There are three types of abduction: Selective abduction selects an already known conditional whose consequent is the given (...) fact and infers that its antecedent is true. Conditional-creative abduction creates a new conditional in which the given fact is the consequent and a defined fact is the antecedent that implies the given fact. Propositional-conditional-creative abduction assumes that the given fact is implied by a hitherto undefined fact and thus creates a new conditional with a new proposition as antecedent. The execution of abductive inferences is specified by theory-specific patterns. Each pattern consists of a set of rules for both generating and justifying abductive conclusions and covers the complete inference process. Consequently, abductive inferences can be formalised iff the whole pattern can be formalised. The empirical consistency of the proposed theory is demonstrated by a case study of Semmelweis' research on puerperal fever. (shrink)

This paper develops a model of political consensus in order to explain the missing link between inequality and political redistribution. Political consensus is an implicit agreement not to vote for extreme policy proposals. We show that such an agreement may play an efficiency-enhancing role. Voters anticipate that voting for extremist parties increases policy uncertainty in the future. A political consensus among voters reduces policy uncertainty because self-interested politicians propose non-discriminatory policies. We study how much inequality can be sustained in a (...) democracy and how the limits to redistribution vary with initial inequality. The bounds of the set of political equilibria may react in a fundamentally different manner to changes in exogenous variables than do the policy variables in the one-dimensional, one-shot game. More initial inequality need not lead to more redistribution from the rich to the poor. The maximum amount of redistribution decreases with inequality if (and only if) agents are sufficiently patient. In this case inequality is politically self-sustaining. (shrink)

Gegenstand der Nikomachischen Ethik (ca. 335-323 v. Chr.) ist das >tätige Leben.

Hegel argues that Kant's critical project is analogous to the attempt to learn to swim before getting in the water. Some have taken this to indicate the broadly anti-epistemological nature of Hegel's philosophical system. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the swimming argument which is both (i) compatible with a broadly epistemological conception of his Logic and (ii) more obviously efficacious against its intended target (viz. Kant). Briefly stated, the swimming argument is intended to reveal the reflexive (...) or self-implicating nature of any critical-reflection. (shrink)

We provide first-order axioms for the theories of finite trees with bounded branching and finite trees with arbitrary (finite) branching. The signature is chosen to express, in a natural way, those properties of trees most relevant to linguistic theories. These axioms provide a foundation for results in linguistics that are based on reasoning formally about such properties. We include some observations on the expressive power of these theories relative to traditional language complexity classes.

P3 is the most prominent of the electrical potentials of the human electroencephalogram that are sensitive to psychological variables. According to the most influential current hypothesis about its psychological significance [E. Donchin's], the “context updating” hypothesis, P3 reflects the updating of working memory. This hypothesis cannot account for relevant portions of the available evidence and it entails some basic contradictions. A more general formulation of this hypothesis is that P3 reflects the updating of expectancies. This version implies that P3-evoking stimuli (...) are initially unexpected but later become expected. This contradiction cannot be resolved within this formulation. The alternative “context closure” hypothesis retains the concept of “strategic information processing” emphasized by the context updating hypothesis. P3s are evoked by events that are awaited when subjects deal with repetitive, highly structured tasks; P3s arise from subjects' combining successive stimuli into larger units. The tasks in which P3s are elicited can accordingly be classified in terms of their respective formal sequences of stimuli. P3 may be a physiological indicator of excess activation being released from perceptual control areas. (shrink)

Statements of the form ''Osorno is in Chile'' were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.

The book is based on documentary and biographical materials that have only recently become available.

This experimental study examines individuals’ legitimacy judgments. We develop a model that demonstrates the role of attributed motives and corporate credibility for the evaluation of organizational legitimacy and test this model with an experimental vignette study. Our results show that when a corporate activity creates benefits for the firm—in addition to social benefits—individuals attribute more extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are ascribed when a corporation is perceived as being driven by external rewards as opposed to an altruistic commitment to a social (...) cause. Extrinsic motives negatively affect corporate credibility and organizational legitimacy judgments. This article contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of organizational legitimacy judgment by shedding light on the individual’s perspective and expounding the relationship between attributed motives, corporate credibility, and organizational legitimacy. (shrink)

The book series Linguistische Arbeiten (LA) publishes high-quality work in linguistics that addresses current issues in synchrony and diachrony, theoretically or empirically oriented.