Drawing together the ideas, practices, and techniques associated with the subject, this book puts them in historical context and demonstrates their relevance to ...

One of the significant roles performed by the higher degree research supervisor is to assist students to prepare their dissertations for examination. At a time when there is increasing interest in how the academy manages the transition of creative arts HDR candidates from apprentice to peer, there is also concern about the processes, practices, and policies associated with this largely under-researched area of research training. In a recent national Office of Learning and Teaching funded project, we investigated the policy expectations, (...) expert and peer beliefs and expectations, and examiners’ practice around HDR examination, and canvassed the creative arts academic community for their recommendations on best practice in the examination of creative arts doctorates. An unexpected finding was the role of the HDR supervisor in relation to these key areas, and the impact of supervisors upon the examination of students’ theses. This article presents our findings with special reference to the role, understandings, and aspirations of HDR supervisors in the context, and process, of preparing their students for creative arts HDR examination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics and Economies of Inquiry: Certeau, Theory, and the Art of PracticeTony Schirato (bio) and Jen Webb (bio)In this paper we will look at what Certeau, in The Practice of Everyday Life, calls “Theories of the Art of Practice.” Certeau is perhaps best known as a theorist of the ways in which everyday practices inhabit the institutions and sites of power and official culture, while not being (...) in any sense recuperable or explicable to these “proper places.” In “Theories of the Art of Practice” he concerns himself not with cultural practices themselves but, rather, with the specific relationship between theoretical discourse and the object of that discourse. In order to do this he takes as examples certain cultural theorists—most obviously Foucault and Bourdieu—whose work is strongly underpinned by an emphasis on the relation between discourse and practice. He offers a detailed consideration and critique of their theories of practice and the tactics those theorists use to escape the theory/practice dichotomy.In the first two paragraphs of “Theories of the Art of Practice,” Certeau identifies the two points which, taken together, constitute the broad narrative of this section of Practice. The first relates to the theoretical basis from which we can approach practice. “Everyday practices,” he writes:depend on a vast ensemble which is difficult to delimit but which we may provisionally designate as an ensemble of procedures. The latter are schemas of operations and of technical manipulations. On the basis of some recent and fundamental analyses (those of Foucault, Bourdieu, Vernant and Détienne, and others) it is possible, if not to define them, at least to clarify their functioning relative to discourse (or to “ideology,” as Foucault puts it), to the acquired (Bourdieu’s habitus), and to the form of time we call an occasion (the kairos discussed by Vernant and Détienne). These are different ways of locating a technicity of a certain type and at the same time situating the study of this technicity with respect to current trends in research.[43]An important issue here is Certeau’s critique of the extent to which each theorist applies a specific technicity (Foucault’s disciplinary procedures, Bourdieu’s habitus) in an attempt to delimit the field, to reduce the multiplicity of practice—or the theorizing of practice—to a singularity. As he points out in his essay on Nicholas of Cusa [“The Gaze” 6], such “ways of proceeding are subject to a common problematics,” because they inscribe a particular way of thinking and seeing and, in that process, risk excluding other ways of understanding. However, Cusa’s praxis: [End Page 86]does not presuppose a language proper to theory, an autonomous metalanguage that would provide a distinct linguistic space for speculation.... A task related to each singularity liberates, as it were, and develops... the “impulsion” which is integral to each and which is revealed to be infinite by the very impossibility of finding a hierarchical unity among singularities.[“The Gaze” 7]What Certeau looks for in the work of Bourdieu and Foucault is the moment, or the “impulsion,” which allows a theoretical engagement with practice. If practice can’t be called up, defined, or finally explicated, what can be done is to plot the relationships between power and its structures, logics, places, and discourse and the objects of power (practices) it seeks to identify and regulate. This allows us to identify both how power seeks to exclude the heterogeneity that is practice and the ways in which practice, despite these acts of exclusion and regulation, leaves its mark on official places (discourses, institutions, the objective structures of cultural fields). What Certeau does is to explore how others (Foucault and Bourdieu in particular, Vernant and Détienne) have explored this terrain.The second move Certeau makes is to contextualize those theories of practice, not so much as metadiscourses or generalized maps but as practices themselves, specific to a time and place and informed both by their theoretical antecedents and by the politics, logics, and discourses of the field(s) within which they operate. This allows Certeau to exemplify both how bodies of theory (as well as intellectual fields) come about and develop and... (shrink)

What is the relationship between the world and logic, between intuition and language, between objects and their quantitative determinations? Rationalists, on the one hand, hold that the world is structured in a rational way. Representationalists, on the other hand, assume that language, logic, and mathematics are only the means to order and describe the intuitively given world. In World and Logic, Jens Lemanski takes up three surprising arguments from Arthur Schopenhauer’s hitherto undiscovered Berlin Lectures, which concern the philosophy of language, (...) logic, and mathematics. Based on these arguments, Lemanski develops a new position entitled ‘rational representationalism’: the world is always structured by human beings according to linguistic, logical, and mathematical principles, but the basic vocabulary of these structural descriptions already contains metaphors taken from the world around us. (shrink)

En général, une personne sait ce qu’elle pense, veut, ou ressent, sans avoir besoin pour cela de s’appuyer sur des observations d’elle-même. En ce sens, la connaissance de soi semble bénéficier d’un privilège par rapport à la connaissance d’autrui, celui de pouvoir apparaître comme vraie sans être fondée sur l’observation et l’inférence. Ce privilège se nomme, après Wittgenstein, l’« autorité de la première personne ». Pour expliquer ce phénomène, la métaphysique traditionnelle a postulé, à l’instar du cogito cartésien, que le (...) sujet aurait une sorte d’accès direct à son intériorité que ne peut avoir autrui. Or, la plupart des philosophes contemporains rejettent l’idée d’intériorité « privée », mais ils ne s’accordent cependant pas sur l’explication qui devrait la remplacer. Ce chapitre se concentre sur la solution que Richard Moran apporte à ce problème. Moran reprend la thèse sartrienne selon laquelle pour savoir et dire ce que je pense, veux, ou vais faire, je suis obligé de me décider, de m’engager plutôt que de m’observer. En ce sens, soutient Moran, le trait distinctif de la connaissance de soi en première personne n’est pas tant un privilège qu’une responsabilité à assumer. Mais pour s’engager de façon responsable, ne faut-il pas chercher d’abord à se connaître ? Nous considérons la force de cette objection, soulevée par Ferdinand Alquié contre Sartre, et tâchons d’y répondre. Ce faisant, notre but est de montrer en quoi l’engagement d’une personne exige un rapport à soi sans équivalent dans ses rapports à autrui. (shrink)

This paper analyses a hitherto unknown technique of using logic diagrams to create argument maps in eristic dialectics. The method was invented in the 1810s and -20s by Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered the originator of modern eristic. This technique of Schopenhauer could be interesting for several branches of research in the field of argumentation: Firstly, for the field of argument mapping, since here a hitherto unknown diagrammatic technique is shown in order to visualise possible situations of arguments in a (...) dialogical controversy. Secondly, the art of controversy or eristic, since the diagrams do not analyse the truth of judgements and the validity of inferences, but the persuasiveness of arguments in a dialogue. (shrink)

Eristic has been studied more and more intensively in recent years in philosophy, law, communication theory, logic, proof theory, and A.I. Nevertheless, the modern origins of eristic, which almost all current researchers see in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, are considered to be a theory of the illegitimate use of logical and rhetorical devices. Thus, eristic seems to violate the norms of discourse ethics. In this paper, I argue that this interpretation of eristic is based on prejudices that contradict the original (...) intention of modern eristic. Eristic is not an art of being right or winning an argument, but an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to gain argumentative acceptance. For this reason, eristic must be seen as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Especially in the age of alternative facts and post-factual politics, this makes eristic a valuable discipline. (shrink)

The question of how gender might inflect and affect philosophy as a way of life has been somewhat neglected, as has the role of philosophical modes of living for historical female philosophers. This essay draws on Michel Foucault’s multifaceted, Hadot‐inspired conception of philosophy to show how transformative philosophical practices of the self function as feminist praxis in the work of the early modern feminist philosopher Mary Astell. Philosophy in Astell’s texts, the essay argues, is a spiritual practice of the self (...) that at the same time functions as a feminist critique both of sexist social structures and of the self that undertakes the practice. It facilitates women in achieving internal freedom. Finally, the essay discusses potential feminist concerns about Astell’s proposed philosophical way of living, before suggesting that it may have value for women today. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of Seneca's 58th letter to Lucilius and Porphyry's Isagoge, which were the origin of the tree diagrams that became popular in philosophy and logic from the early Middle Ages onwards. These diagrams visualise the extent to which a concept can be understood as a category, genus, species or individual and what the method of dihairesis (division) means. The paper explores the dissimilarities between Seneca's and Porphyry's tree structures, scrutinising them through the perspective of modern graph (...) theory. Although traditional trees can be interpreted in a modern way, their terms and definitions defy modern standardisation. These distinctions are not only useful for differentiating between Seneca's and Porphyry's trees, but also for comprehending the evolution of this philosophical tradition. Thus the paper highlights the continued significance of these tree diagrams in analysing concepts and categories in philosophy and structuring objects and information in modern fields such as artificial intelligence, computer science, bioinformatics, graph theory, and many more. (shrink)

Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this paper we argue for the following two (...) theses: (1) Arthur Schopenhauer has advocated a reistic philosophy of language which says that all concepts must ultimately be based on concrete intuition in order to be meaningful. (2) In his semantics, Schopenhauer developed a theory of logic diagrams that can be interpreted by modern means in order to concretize the abstract position of reism. Thus we are not only enhancing Jan Woleński’s list of well-known reists, but we are also adding a diagrammatic dimension to concretism, represented by Schopenhauer. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate whether we can use a world-involving framework to model the epistemic states of non-ideal agents. The standard possible-world framework falters in this respect because of a commitment to logical omniscience. A familiar attempt to overcome this problem centers around the use of impossible worlds where the truths of logic can be false. As we shall see, if we admit impossible worlds where “anything goes” in modal space, it is easy to model extremely non-ideal agents that (...) are incapable of performing even the most elementary logical deductions. A much harder, and considerably less investigated challenge is to ensure that the resulting modal space can also be used to model moderately ideal agents that are not logically omniscient but nevertheless logically competent. Intuitively, while such agents may fail to rule out subtly impossible worlds that verify complex logical falsehoods, they are nevertheless able to rule out blatantly impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. To model moderately ideal agents, I argue, the job is to construct a modal space that contains only possible and non-trivially impossible worlds where it is not the case that “anything goes”. But I prove that it is impossible to develop an impossible-world framework that can do this job and that satisfies certain standard conditions. Effectively, I show that attempts to model moderately ideal agents in a world-involving framework collapse to modeling either logical omniscient agents, or extremely non-ideal agents. (shrink)

This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical (...) and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal 'law on lawyering'. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this collection offers not just critical insights into the authors' chosen texts, but a thought-provoking commentary on the current state of legal ethics scholarship and its future directions. In addition to being an essential resource for scholars and students of legal ethics theory, it will also be of interest to academics and researchers in legal theory, the philosophy of law, and applied ethics. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a dramatically expanding area of activity for managers and academics. Consumer demand for responsibly produced and fair trade goods is swelling, resulting in increased demands for CSR activity and information. Assets under professional management and invested with a social responsibility focus have also grown dramatically over the last 10 years. Investors choosing social responsibility investment strategies require access to information not provided through traditional financial statements and analyses. At the same time, a group of mainstream (...) institutional investors has encouraged a movement to incorporate environmental, social, and governance information into equity analysis, and multi-stakeholder groups have supported enhanced business reporting on these issues. The majority of research in this area has been performed on European and Australian firms. We expand on this literature by exploring the CSR disclosure practices of a size- and industry-stratified sample of 50 publicly traded U.S. firms, performing a content analysis on the complete identifiable public information portfolio provided by these firms during 2004. CSR activity was disclosed by most firms in the sample, and was included in nearly half of public disclosures made during that year by the sample firms. Areas of particular emphasis are community matters, health and safety, diversity and human resources (HR) matters, and environmental programs. The primary venues of disclosure are mass media releases such as corporate websites and press releases, followed closely by disclosures contained in mandatory filings. Consistent with prior research, we identify industry effects in terms of content, emphasis, and reporting format choices. Unlike prior research, we can offer only mixed evidence on the existence of a size effect. The disclosure frequency and emphasis is significantly different for the largest one-fifth of the firms, but no identifiable trends are present within the rest of the sample. There are, however, identifiable size effects with respect to reporting format choice. Use of websites is positively related to firm size, while the use of mandatory filings is negatively related to firm size. Finally, and also consistent with prior literature, we document a generally self-laudatory tone in the content of CSR disclosures for the sample firms. (shrink)

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics (...) arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history--and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others."--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

The ability to generate diverse ideas is valuable in solving creative problems ; yet, however advantageous, this ability is insufficient to solve the problem alone and requires the ability to logically deduce an assessment of correctness of each solution. Positive schizotypy may help isolate the aspects of divergent thinking prevalent in insight problem solving. Participants were presented with a measure of schizotypy, divergent and convergent thinking tasks, insight problems, and non-insight problems. We found no evidence for a relationship between schizotypy (...) and insight problem solving. Relationships between divergent thinking and insight problem solving were also surprisingly weak; however, measures of convergent thinking had a stronger relationship with problem solving. These results suggest that convergent thinking is more important than divergent thinking in problem solving. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of (...) dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context. (shrink)

The counterfactual comparative account of harm has counterintuitive implications in cases involving overdetermination and preemption. A popular strategy for dealing with these problems appeals to plural harm—several events being jointly harmful. Björn Petersson criticizes this strategy on the grounds that it conflicts with a strong intuition that helps to motivate the counterfactual comparative account, namely, that harming someone essentially involves making a difference for the worse for her. In this paper, I argue that Petersson’s argument is unconvincing.

Logic diagrams have been increasingly studied and applied for a few decades, not only in logic, but also in many other fields of science. The history of logic diagrams is an important subject, as many current systems and applications of logic diagrams are based on historical predecessors. While traditional histories of logic diagrams cite pioneers such as Leibniz, Euler, Venn, and Peirce, it is not widely known that Kant and the early Kantians in Germany and England played a crucial role (...) in popularising Euler(-type) diagrams. In this paper, the role of the Kantians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be analysed in more detail. It shows that diagrams (or intuition in general) were a highly contentious topic that depend on the philosophical attitude and went beyond logic to touch on issues of physics, metaphysics, linguistics and, above all, mathematics. (shrink)

Plotinus (204-70) is the founder of Neoplatonism and its most significant thinker. He shaped late antique philosophy and significantly influenced the entire metaphysical tradition of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and German Idealism. In this volume, Jens Halfwassen presents Plotinus' life and work, as well as the most important aspects of his historical influence. Issues of key importance for the Neoplatonists-such as the interaction between Being and Thought, the ascent of the soul, and the interpretation of Plato's theory of principles-are explained (...) in detail in the course of outlining the Neoplatonic metaphysical system. The introduction outlines Halfwassen's significant contribution to the study of Plotinus, paying particular attention to the differences between the current German and Anglophone approaches to the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

No thinker in the modern world has laid the way for the development of philosophy so influentially as Immanuel Kant, and it is hard to think of the philosophy of education without some sense of Kant in the background. Yet simplified exegeses and synoptic accounts abound, making for a' picture that readily succumbs to caricature. Interpreting Kant for Education exposes the errors in this picture. Through a spiralling series of arguments, Sheila Webb dismantles the sclerotic dualisms of fact and (...) value, subject and object, and body and mind that have done so much to hamper appreciation of Kant and to harm education. This ground-breaking work in the philosophy of education allows a reappraisal of Kant; it plays its part in the reengagement with Kant in the wider analytic tradition and provides a secure footing for better research and practice in education. (shrink)

The paper gives an overview of Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of rationality. For Schopenhauer, rationality is a human faculty based on language, which, in addition to language, is primarily concerned with knowledge or philosophy of science and practical action. For Schopenhauer, language is the umbrella term under which he subsumes logic and eristics. This paper will first introduce Schopenhauer's logic and clarify its connection to the philosophy of language. This is followed by eristic dialectics, which reflects on how one can protect (...) oneself from people who argue irrationally in a goal-oriented way. Schopenhauer's philosophy of mathematics belongs to the field of philosophy of science. Unlike many other authors of his time, Schopenhauer does not advocate a rationalist but a representationalist approach, which, however, includes a theory of rationality. Therefore, Schopenhauer's representationalist approach will finally be discussed, emphasizing its relationship to his theory of rationality. (shrink)

Incredible discoveries from the fringes of the universe to the inner workings of our mindsÑall from nothing! It turns out that almost nothing is as curiousÑor as enlighteningÑas, well, nothing. What is nothingness? Where can it be found? The writers of the world's top-selling science magazine investigateÑfrom the big bang, dark energy, and the void to superconductors, vestigial organs, hypnosis, and the placebo effectÑand discover that understanding nothing may be the key to understanding everything: What came before the big bang, (...) and will our universe end? How might cooling matter down almost to absolute zero help solve our energy crisis? How can someone suffer from a false diagnosis as though it were true? Does nothingness even exist? Recent experiments suggest that squeezing a perfect vacuum somehow creates light. Why is it unfair to accuse slothsÑanimals who do nothingÑof being lazy? And more! Contributors Paul Davies, Jo Marchant, and Ian Stewart, along with two former editors of Nature and 16 other leading writers and scientists, marshal up-to-the-minute research to make one of the most perplexing realms in science dazzlingly clear. Prepare to be amazed at how much more there is to nothing than you ever realized. (shrink)

Science, Truth, and Meaning presents a scientific and philosophical examination of our place in the world. It also celebrates how diverse, scientific knowledge is interconnected and reducible to common foundations.The book focuses on aspects of scientific truth that relate to our understanding of reality, and confronts whether truth is absolute or relative to what we are. Hence, it assesses the meaning of the scientific deductions we have made and how they have profoundly influenced our conception of life and existence.The subtitle (...) is 'From Wonder to Understanding', which is a paraphrased quote from Einstein, who said that the search for scientific truth is '... a continual flight from wonder to understanding'.In addressing the goal of advancing our understanding of our place in the world, this book also reveals the development and details of diverse sciences, their connections and achievements, and that while perhaps the same fundamental questions exist, they are seen in the light of an ever-refined scientific perspective on reality.Why the book is needed: many popular science books have been written, aimed at different levels of subject expertise, and nearly all treat their specific subject in isolation. Few attempt to link different sciences to their common foundations, and those that do are written by physicists. Since human knowledge is derived by, and relates to, the biological organism that human beings are, then such a book written from a biological perspective represents a novel perspective on the integration of science, and addresses new questions. This is such a book.Impressive aspects: the depth, breadth, consistency, and clarity of the work. (shrink)

The article deals with the following: Three brain imaging studies on athletes are evaluated. What do these neuroscientific studies tell us about the brain and mind of the athlete? Empirical investigations will need a neuro-theory of mind if they are to make the leap from neural activity to the mental. The article looks at such a theory, Gerald Edelman's?Neural Darwinism?. What are the implications of such a theory for sport science and philosophy of sport? The article appreciates some of the (...) neurosciences applications, but questions the hope of giving a complete theory of mind. (shrink)

Advanced AI systems are rapidly making their way into medical research and practice, and, arguably, it is only a matter of time before they will surpass human practitioners in terms of accuracy, reliability, and knowledge. If this is true, practitioners will have a prima facie epistemic and professional obligation to align their medical verdicts with those of advanced AI systems. However, in light of their complexity, these AI systems will often function as black boxes: the details of their contents, calculations, (...) and procedures cannot be meaningfully understood by human practitioners. When AI systems reach this level of complexity, we can also speak of black-box medicine. In this paper, we want to argue that black-box medicine conflicts with core ideals of patient-centered medicine. In particular, we claim, black-box medicine is not conducive for supporting informed decision-making based on shared information, shared deliberation, and shared mind between practitioner and patient. (shrink)

Recent years have featured a spate of regulatory action pertaining to the development and/or disclosure of corporate governance structures in response to financial scandals resulting in part from governance failures. During the same period, corporate governance activists and institutional investors increasingly have called for increased voluntary governance disclosure. Despite this attention, there have been relatively few comprehensive studies of governance disclosure practices and response to the regulation. In this study, we examine a sample of 50 U.S. firms and their public (...) disclosure packages from 2004. We find a high degree of variability in the presentation and reporting format choices for many elements of the governance structure. This variability includes several items for which disclosure is mandated by regulators or legislative action. In particular, smaller firms offer fewer disclosures pertaining to independence, board selection procedures, and oversight of management (including whistleblowing procedures). There are also trends associated with board characteristics: boards that are less independent offer fewer disclosures of independence and management oversight matters. Moreover, large firms provide more disclosures of independence standards, board selection procedures, audit committee matters, management control systems, other committee matters, and whistleblowing procedures but do not appear to have a strictly superior information environment when compared to smaller firms. The findings raise questions about compliance with regulatory requirements and the degree to which conflicts of interest between managers and directors are being controlled. While there have been notable improvements in the information environment of governance disclosures, there remain structural issues that may possess negative ramifications for stakeholders. (shrink)

Multimodal communication research focuses on how different means of signalling coordinate to communicate effectively. This line of research is traditionally influenced by fields such as cognitive and neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and linguistics. With new technologies becoming available in fields such as natural language processing and computer vision, the field can increasingly avail itself of new ways of analyzing and understanding multimodal communication. As a result, there is a general hope that multimodal research may be at the “precipice of greatness” due (...) to technological advances in computer science and resulting extended empirical coverage. However, for this to come about there must be sufficient guidance on key (theoretical) needs of innovation in the field of multimodal communication. Absent such guidance, the research focus of computer scientists might increasingly diverge from crucial issues in multimodal communication. With this paper, we want to further promote interaction between these fields, which may enormously benefit both communities. The multimodal research community (represented here by a consortium of researchers from the Visual Communication [ViCom] Priority Programme) can engage in the innovation by clearly stating which technological tools are needed to make progress in the field of multimodal communication. In this article, we try to facilitate the establishment of a much needed common ground on feasible expectations (e.g., in terms of terminology and measures to be able to train machine learning algorithms) and to critically reflect possibly idle hopes for technical advances, informed by recent successes and challenges in computer science, social signal processing, and related domains. (shrink)

This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist's' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims (...) to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation. (shrink)

Wilhelm von Humboldts Rechtsphilosophie ist bei weitem nicht so bekannt wie seine Sprachphilosophie oder gar seine Rolle als Bildungsreformer. Der Autor untersucht zu diesem Zweck Humboldts "Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen".

This book marks the inauguration of the Historia Logicae book series, which seeks to publish high-quality monographs, dissertations, textbooks, proceedings, and anthologies on the history of logic in either German or English. Serving as the inaugural volume in this series, the book explores the contemporary interpretation of logic across many centuries and cultures. The first section of the volume comprises a compilation of papers dedicated to ancient and medieval logic, examining prominent thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Porphyry, Proclus, Boethius, (...) Buridan, and Kilwardby. The second section shifts focus towards early-modern and contemporary logics, including the works of Caramuel, Kant, Drobisch, Husserl, and Jaskowski. Topics of discussion encompass the relationship between mathematics and logic, natural deduction, intuitionism, graph theory, categorical judgments, theories of truth, modal logic, opposition relations, logic diagrams, definitions of formal logic, many-sorted logic, model theory, and paraconsistent logic. (shrink)

Nowadays, the forms assumed by knowledge indicate an unhinging of traditional structures conceived on the model of discipline. Consequently, what was once strictly disciplinary becomes interdisciplinary, what was homogeneous becomes heterogeneous and what was hierarchical becomes heterarchical. When we look for a matrix of interdisciplinarity, that is to say, a primary basis or an essential dimension of all the complex phenomena we are surrounded by, we see the need to break with the disciplinary self-restraint in which, often completely inadvertently, many (...) of us lock ourselves up, remaining anchored to our own competences, ignoring what goes beyond our own sphere of reference. However, interdisciplinarity is still a vague concept and a much demanding practice. It presupposes the continuous search for convergent theoretical perspectives and methodologies, and the definition of common spaces and languages, as well as a true dialogical and open mind of several scholars. From ethics to science, from communication to medicine, from climate change to human evolution the volume Controversies and Interdisciplinarity offers a series of original insights beyond disciplinary fragmentation for a new knowledge model. (shrink)

Why, then, has Anglo-American jurisprudence remained staunchly indifferent to history? How has it been able to maintain its confident assumption that the analytical and the historical can be neatly...