An der Schnittstelle zwischen Philosophie, Literatur, Ethik und Ästhetik liegt in derphilosophischen Fach- und Literaturdidaktik ein nicht ausgeschöpftes Potential begraben –insbesondere im Umgang mit der literarischen Romantik. Diesem Potential spürt dievorliegende Arbeit nach, indem sie Schlegels „Lucinde“, Eichendorffs „Taugenichts“ undHoffmanns „Sandmann“ einer kritischen Relektüre unterzieht, um die in der philosophischenPostmoderne viel diskutierten Übergänge zwischen Ethik und Ästhetik sichtbar zu machenund ihre Bedeutung für die Fachdidaktik zu diskutieren.

Was ist die Zeit? Diese Frage erlebt nach Kant eine Blutephase in der Phanomenologie. Eine Verbindung, die hier lange ubersehen wurde, betrifft Levinas' Interesse und Kritik an Kants Moralphilosophie. Der Stein des Anstosses ist die Zeit und ob sie im Sinne Kants eine Anschauungsform ist, in der uns jene Pflicht erscheint, die dem Dasein einen Sinn verleiht. Fur Levinas ist die Zeit weniger die Form einer solchen Erkenntnis als die Kluft, die uns von der Bedeutung unserer Verantwortung trennt. Levinas' gespaltenes (...) Verhaltnis zu Kant in diesem Punkt nachzuzeichnen, ist Ziel dieses Buches. (shrink)

Non-naturalist realists are committed to the belief, famously voiced by Parfit, that if there are no non-natural facts then nothing matters. But it is morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on the question of whether there are non-natural facts. Non-natural facts are causally inefficacious, and so make no difference to the world of our experience. And to be a realist about such facts is to hold that they are mind-independent. It is compatible with our experiences that there are (...) no non-natural facts, or that they are very different from what we think. As Nagel says, realism makes scepticism intelligible. So the non-naturalist must hold that you might be wrong that your partner matters, even if you are correct about every natural, causal fact about your history and relationship. But to hold that conditional attitude to your partner would be a moral betrayal. So believing non-naturalist realism involves doing something immoral. (shrink)

The key idea of the interventionist account of causation is that a variable A causes a variable B if and only if B would change if A were manipulated in the appropriate way. This paper raises two problems for Woodward's (2003) version of interventionism. The first is that the conditions it imposes are not sufficient for causation, because these conditions are also satisfied by non-causal relations of nomological dependence expressed in association laws. Such laws ground a relation of mutual manipulability (...) that is incompatible with the asymmetry of causation. Several ways of defending the interventionist account are examined and found unsatisfying. The second problem is that it often seems to be impossible, in a model that contains variables linked by an association law, to satisfy the conditions imposed on interventions on such variables. Various ways to solve this second problem, most importantly the analysis of manipulability in terms of difference making, are examined. Given that none solves the problem, I conclude that the interventionist conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for causation. It is suggested that they provide an analysis of nomological dependence, which may be supplemented with the notion of a causal process to yield an analysis of causation. (shrink)

Some philosophers, for example David Lewis, have argued for the need to introduce de se contents or centered contents, i.e. contents of thought and speech the correctness of believing which depends not only on the possible world one inhabits, but also on the location one occupies. Independently, philosophers like Robert Stalnaker (and also David Lewis) have developed the conversational score model of linguistic communication. This conversational model usually relies on a more standard conception of content according to which the correctness (...) of believing a content depends merely on the possible world one occupies. The aim of this paper is to develop a modified conversational score model that operates with centered contents. I begin by explaining how in principle centered contents can figure in the transfer of information from one thinker to another. Here I distinguish the local portability approach from the portable surrogate approach. Then I explain how these modes of information transfer can be exploited in a stalnakerian conversational model involving centered contents, proposing a modified update rule for assertion. (shrink)

I distinguish two notions of agreement in belief: believing the same content versus having beliefs that necessarily coincide/diverge in normative status. The second notion of agreement,, is clearly significant for the communication of beliefs amongst thinkers. Thus there would seem to be some prima facie advantage to choosing the conception of content operative in in such a way that the normative status of beliefs supervenes on their content, and this seems to be the prevailing assumption of many semanticists. I shall (...) argue that de se beliefs and assertions provide a motivation to depart from this assumption, and so do beliefs and assertions concerning what is epistemically possible. I conclude by offering two models of assertoric communication that are compatible with the abandonment of the assumption, and suggesting schematically that each model applies to different cases. (shrink)

Many theorists have defended the claim that collective entities can attain genuine agential status. If collectives can be agents, this opens up a further question: can they be conscious? That is, is there something that it is like to be them? Eric Schwitzgebel argues that yes, collective entities, may well be significantly conscious. Others, including Kammerer, Tononi and Koch, and List reject the claim. List does so on the basis of Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. I argue here that (...) List’s rejection is too quick, and that groups can, at least in principle, display the kind of informational integration we might think is necessary for consciousness. However, group consciousness will likely differ substantially from the individual experiences that give rise to it. This requires the defender of group consciousness to face up to a similar combination problem as the panpsychist. (shrink)

I propose an argument for the thesis that laws of nature are necessary in the sense of holding in all worlds sharing the properties of the actual world, on the basis of a principle I propose to call the Causal Criterion of Reality . The CCR says: for an entity to be real it is necessary and sufficient that it is capable to make a difference to causal interactions. The crucial idea here is that the capacity to interact causally - (...) or to contribute to determining causal interactions - is not only the ultimate metaphysical ground for the existence of an entity, but it also provides a criterion for determining the nature of that entity, i.e. its properties. The alternative is to conceive of laws of nature as contingent: they could be different from what they are like in the actual world, where that possibility is understood to be metaphysical, not only epistemic. For the sake of this paper, I shall accept Armstrong's thesis that laws of nature are relations between universals. I also follow Armstrong in the view that both the existence and the properties of particulars are metaphysically independent of the existence and identity of other particular. However, what is controversial and what I shall challenge is his thesis that universals are like particulars in the following respect: according to Armstrong, each universal is a logically distinct entity whose existence and identity is independent of the existence and identity of other universals. My aim in this paper is to show that the identity of a universal is entirely determined by its lawful relations to other universals. The crucial premise I use is the thesis that the CCR is a universal criterion, which applies both to particulars and universals. From the thesis that the identity of a universal is exclusively determined by laws, it follows that laws are necessary in the sense that they cannot differ without the universals they link also being different. This creates a difficulty for those authors who, as Armstrong, accept the CCR but nevertheless defend the view that laws are contingent. (shrink)

This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examines the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both ...

What is personhood? What do we want it to be? Blumenthal-Barby (2024) offers an answer to the first question: personhood is an unhelpful, harmful, and pernicious concept in the bioethical setting....

During the last decades there has been a remarkable renewal of interest in theories of causation which is linked to the decline of the orthodoxy of the Logical empiricist school. A number of alternatives to the traditional covering-law account have been proposed. I shall defend a version of an approach that has been undeservedly neglected: the Transference Theory of causation. Accounts of this type elaborate the intuition that there is a material link between the cause and the effect, consisting of (...) something transmitted between them. (shrink)

La philosophie des sciences de l'empirisme logique avait discredite la causalite comme etant un concept du sens commun irremediablement vague et confus, pour lui substituer le concept d'explication scientifique. Cependant, dans nombre de theories contemporaines, notamment en philosophie de l'esprit et du langage, le concept de causalite continue a jouer un role de premier plan. Ce livre montre qu'il est possible de concevoir la causalite d'une maniere compatible avec des connaissances scientifiques contemporaines. La relation causale fondamentale a lieu entre evenements (...) en fonction de la transmission d'une quantite determinee d'une grandeur conservee; mais ce qui rend vraie une explication causale, ce n'est pas seulement une relation causale entre deux evenements, mais une relation de responsabilite causale. Le concept de loi de la nature qui intervient dans cette analyse s'avere fructueux non seulement dans le cadre de la causalite, mais aussi pour l'eclairage qu'il permet d'apporter a la philosophie des sciences. (shrink)

Philosophers think that there is something fishy about moral deference. The most common explanation of this fishiness is that moral deference doesn’t yield the epistemic states necessary for certain moral achievements. First, I argue that this explanation overgeneralizes. It entails that using many intuitively kosher belief-formation methods should be off-putting. Second, I argue that moral deference is sometimes superior to these other methods because it puts one in a better position to gain the relevant moral achievements.

The study of consciousness in modern science is hampered by deeply ingrained, dualist presuppositions about the nature of consciousness. In particular, conscious experiences are thought to be private and subjective, contrasting with physical phenomena which are public and objective. In the present article, I argue that all observed phenomena are, in a sense, private to a given observer, although there are some events to which there is public access. Phenomena can be objective in the sense of intersubjective, investigators can be (...) objective in the sense of truthful or dispassionate, and procedures can be objective in being well-specified, but observed phenomena cannot be objective in the sense of being observer-free. Phenomena are only repeatable in the sense that they are judged by a community of observers to be tokens of the same type. Stripped of its dualist trappings the empirical method becomes if you carry out these procedures you will observe or experience these results -- which applies as much to a science of consciousness as it does to physics. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel defense of moderate pessimism about moral deference, i.e., the view that we have pro tanto reason to avoid moral deference. I argue that moral deference fails to give us the epistemic credentials to satisfy plausible norms of moral assertion. I then argue that moral assertions made solely on the basis of deferential moral beliefs violate a plausible epistemic and moral norm against withholding information that one knows, has evidence, or ought to believe will (...) importantly affect another person’s deliberation. Finally, I argue that not only does moral deference fail to put the audience in a good epistemic position it also puts the audience in a bad epistemic and moral position. First, there is a tight connection between outright believing something and being disposed to assert it and so deferential moral beliefs often motivate people to assert something that they don’t have the epistemic credentials to properly assertion. Second, there will often be moral reasons to make assertions—even based on deferential moral beliefs. These assertions, while all-things-considered permissible, will be epistemic impermissible and involve violating a moral norm. (shrink)

The practice of medicine—and especially the patient-doctor relationship—has seen exceptional shifts in ethical standards of care over the past few years, which by and large originate in occidental countries and are then extrapolated worldwide. However, this phenomenon is blind to the fact that an ethical practice of medicine remains hugely dependent on prevailing cultural and societal expectations of the community in which it serves. One model aiming to conceptualise the dichotomous efforts for global standardisation of medical care against differing sociocultural (...) expectations is the individualism-collectivism model, with the ‘West’ being seen as individualistic and the ‘East’ being seen as collectivistic. This has been used by many academics to explain differences in approach towards ethical practice on key concepts such as informed consent and patient autonomy. However, I argue that this characterisation is incomplete and lacks nuance into the complexities surrounding cross-cultural ethics in practice, and I propose an alternative model based on the ethics of clinical care in Hong Kong, China. Core ethical principles need not be culture-bound—indeed, their very existence mandates for them to be universal and non-derogable—but instead cultural alignment occurs in the particular implementation of these principles, insofar as they respect the general spirit of contemporary ethical standards. (shrink)

The simple knowledge norm of assertion holds that one may assert that p only if one knows that p. Turri :37–45, 2011) and Williamson both argue that more is required for epistemically permissible assertion. In particular, they both think that the asserter must assert on the basis of her knowledge. Turri calls this the express knowledge norm of assertion. I defend SKNA and argue against EKNA. First, I argue that EKNA faces counterexamples. Second, I argue that EKNA assumes an implausible (...) view of permissibility on which an assertion is epistemically permissible only if it is made for a right reason, i.e., a reason that contributes to making it the case that it is epistemically permissible to make that assertion. However, the analogous view in other normative domains is both controversial and implausible. This is because it doesn’t make it possible for one to act or react rightly for the wrong reason. I suggest that proponents of EKNA have conflated requirements for φ-ing rightly with requirements for φ-ing well. Finally, I argue that proponents of SKNA can explain the intuitive defectiveness of asserting on the basis of an epistemically bad reason, even when the asserters know the content of their assertion, by arguing that the asserters are epistemically blameworthy. (shrink)

Vorlesungen Kants über Metaphysik aus drei Semestern ist ein unveränderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1894. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernährung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitäten erhältlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bücher neu und trägt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch für (...) die Zukunft bei. (shrink)

Theories about the evolution of consciousness relate in an intimate way to theories about the distribution of consciousness, which range from the view that only human beings are conscious to the view that all matter is in some sense conscious. Broadly speaking, such theories can be classified into discontinuity theories and continuity theories. Discontinuity theories propose that consciousness emerged only when material forms reached a given stage of evolution, but propose different criteria for the stage at which this occurred. Continuity (...) theories argue that in some primal form, consciousness always accompanies matter and as matter evolved in form and complexity consciousness co-evolved, for example into the forms that we now recognise in human beings. Given our limited knowledge of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of human consciousness in human brains, all options remain open. On balance however continuity theory appears to be more elegant than discontinuity theory. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic philosophy is in the midst of a vigorous debate on the nature of causation. Each of the main proposals discussed in this chapter faces important problems: the deductive-nomological model, the counterfactual theory, the manipulability theory, the probabilistic theory and the transference theory. After having explored possible solutions to these problems, I conclude that one version of the transference approach is most promising. However, as I show in the last section, it is necessary to supplement this transference approach with (...) the notion of lawful dependency. This gives rise to the notion of causal responsibility. (shrink)

Within psychology and the brain sciences, the study of consciousness and its relation to human information processing is once more a focus for productive research. However, some ancient puzzles about the nature of consciousness appear to be resistant to current empirical investigations, suggesting the need for a fundamentally different approach. In Velmans I have argued that functional accounts of the mind do not `contain' consciousness within their workings. Investigations of information processing are not investigations of consciousness as such. Given this, (...) first-person investigations of experience need to be related nonreductively to third-person investigations of processing. For example, conscious contents may be related to neural/physical representations via a dual-aspect theory of information. Chalmers arrives at similar conclusions. But there are also theoretical differences. Unlike Chalmers I argue for the use of neutral information processing language for functional accounts rather than the term `awareness'. I do not agree that functionalctional equivalence cannot be extricated from phenomenal equivalence, and suggest a hypothetical experiment for doing so - using a cortical implant for blindsight. I argue that not all information has phenomenal accompaniments, and introduce a different form of dual-aspect theory involving `psychological complementarity'. I also suggest that the hard problem posed by `qualia' has its origin in a misdescription of everyday experience implicit in dualism. (shrink)

In this collection of informal reminiscences, first published in 1975, Max Born has written an extraordinarily vivid account of his life and work, originally intended for his family. Ranging from his time at the University of Göttingen, where Born had his first real motivation for a professional career in science, to the period in Berlin as professor extraordinary, when he and his wife became close friends of Einstein, these anecdotes and memories chart the "heroic age of physics" from the perspective (...) of one of its leading characters. In 1954 Born was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his fundamental contributions to the great discovery of that cadre of superlative scientific minds – quantum theory. But his scientific research provides only one strand of this story. Born's varied interests outside science led to many interesting experiences – some of historical importance insofar as they offer a glimpse into German society before and between the wars. (shrink)

The functionalist conception of mental properties, together with their multiple realizability, is often taken to entail their irreducibility. It might seem that the only way to revise that judgement is to weaken the requirements traditionally imposed on reduction. However, Jaegwon Kim has recently argued that we should, on the contrary, strengthen those requirements, and construe reduction as what I propose to call “logical reduction”, a model of reduction inspired by emergentism. Moreover, Kim claims that what he calls “functional reduction” allows (...) one to reduce (at least some) mental properties by these new standards. I argue against both theses. First, I present a counterexample to the emergentist model of reduction: The model judges irreducible certain properties which are clearly reducible. Second, I contestthat functional reduction as construed by Kim satisfies the emergentist constraints. Functional reduction implies, over and above a functional definition of the reduced property, the indication of its realizers. But the latter information corresponding to the discovery of a (local) bridge law, is empirical and not purely logical. (shrink)

The paper defends the view that events are the basic relata of causation, against arguments based on linguistic analysis to the effect that only facts can play that role. According to those arguments, causal contexts let the meaning of the expressions embedded in them shift: even expressions possessing the linguistic form that usually designates an event take a factual meaning.However, defending events as fundamental relata of causation turns out to be possible only by attributing a – different – causal role (...) to facts as well. The role of facts in causation is characterized as «causal responsibility». This relation, and its connection to causation between events, is clarified by way of the analysis of different inference patterns between causal statements of the two sorts: statements linking events and statements linking facts. (shrink)

This article examines the first-century c.e.Laus Pisonis, an anonymous panegyric for a certain Piso that lays particular emphasis on his skill at lyre-playing, ball games and the board game, the ludus latrunculorum. Whereas this focus has often been a cause of consternation among critics, this article argues that play is a crucial element of the poem's poetic and political operations. The first section shows that the poem employs images of poetic maturity and of temporality in order to justify a light (...) or ludic topic for an allegedly young poet. The second section identifies a hitherto unobserved telestich in the passage describing the ludus latrunculorum and argues that this letter game defines a positive period of play within the poem. The third section further demonstrates that this letter game is aimed specifically at the patron Piso as he is represented within the poem. That is, the poet parallels Piso's potential to uncover the telestich in the text and his ability to uncover the poet's hidden talent. The concluding fourth section explores the wider impact of this reinterpretation of the Laus Pisonis for the literary history of the Early Principate. It proposes that the poem's playfulness should not be seen as reflecting the progressive disempowerment of the political elite. Rather, the poem is an early case of Roman political discourse encroaching on the value of the trivial and the boundaries of otium. The Laus Pisonis makes play political. (shrink)

I propose a realist theory of laws formulated in terms of tropes that avoids both the problems of the "best-systems-analysis" and the "inference problem" of realism of universals. I analyze the concept of an exceptional situation, characterized as a situation in which a particular object satisfies the antecedent but not the consequent of the regularity associated with a law, without thereby falsifying that law. To take this possibility into account, the properties linked by a law must be conceived as dispositional (...) and not necessarily manifest. (shrink)

(Runner-up, Royal Institute of Philosophy 2020 Philosophy Essay Prize) Technological developments have led to the digitization of certain sectors of the economy, and this has many authors looking ahead to the prospects of a post-work society. While it is valuable to theorize about this possibility, it is also important to take note of the present state of work. For better or worse, it is what we are currently stuck with, and as the COVID-19 pandemic has ensured, much of that work (...) is now taking place online. Though a ‘return to normalcy’ is on the horizon, part of that normalcy involves online work, which is itself a significant change in the lives of many workers. Here I develop an account of work on which work is teleologically structured. This gives the result that working is something we can fail at doing, even when we try, and we can also be unsure of whether we’ve succeeded or failed. The shift of certain work from in-person to online modes generates a persistent uncertainty for workers in affected professions. Because our ability to work is something we typically value, this uncertainty has significant negative consequences for a worker’s self-conception. Indeed, it is analogous to disorders of agency and generates a kind of alienation. (shrink)

In Kitsch and Art Tomáš Kulka notes that natural landscapes cannot be called kitsch. Kitsch needs to be produced by a human being, he says. I agree with that. Experience-wise it is more complicated, though. Sometimes kitsch affects our experience of landscapes. It is not just that our overwhelming culture of images affects how we see nature, but that also sugared, sentimental and stereotypical kitsch images of nature, that we see in postcards and social media, affect our experience of e.g. (...) sunsets and picturesque landscapes. We might desire to fight back, but at least we need to understand and to some extent accept our situation. Kitsch is in our experience even when there is no kitsch around, and our experiences of nature prove that. (shrink)

Logic and philosophy of logic have increasingly become areas of research and great interest in Latin America and Spain, where significant work has been done and continues to be done in both of these fields. The goal of this volume is to draw attention to this work through a collection of original and unpublished papers by specialists from Latin America and Spain. Some of the papers are of importance for set-theory and model theory. They cover topics such as the foundations (...) of paraconsistency, the use of paraconsistent logic as a basis for set-theory, and the methodological aspects in both the justification of new axioms in set theory and the formalization of pre-theoretic notions. Other papers are related to epistemic logic. They deal with the issues of abduction and the choice of the simplest hypothesis, the definition of group probability, and the nature of explanation and understanding in such logic. There are also papers on logical paradoxes, the semantics of names, and the nature of relations. Max A. Freund is Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the University of Costa Rica and the National University of Costa Rica. He is co-author of the book Modal Logic its syntax and semantics, as well as the author of Judicial Logic, and of a forthcoming book The Logic of Sortals. Max Fernandez de Castro is Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico. He is the author of the book Quine y la Ontologíaa and co-author of the books Lógica Matemática I: lógica proposicional, intuicionista y modal, Lógica Matemática II: clásica, intuicionista y modal, Teoría de Conjuntos, Lógica y Temas Afines I. Marco Ruffino is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Campinas and the editor of Manuscrito, the Brazilian international journal for Analytic Philosophy. He has many publications, in important philosophical journals, in the philosophy of language, of logic, and of mathematics; in the history of analytic philosophy, and on Frege and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed exegesis of Russell’s “Gray’s Elegy Argument”. It holds that the GEA mounts a successful attack on Frege—a thesis that has been widely controverted in the literature. The point of departure for my interpretation is Russell’s charge that it is impossible to speak about Sinne, or “meanings” as Russell calls them. I argue that the charge concerns the construction of an “ideal language.” For Russell, an ideal language is an artificial schema designed to represent the truth-makers (...) for sentences occurring in natural language. Its signs stand for the entities that are constituents of those truth-makers. Russell’s charge can thus be expressed more clearly and completely as follows: an ideal language designed to express Frege’s ontology requires signs for meanings ; however, the signs introduced for that purpose cannot be correlated with the entities they are supposed to represent. Thus, the requirement cannot be met. (shrink)

In 1925-26, the late Max Born gave two sets of lectures at M.I.T., one on the structure of the atom, the other on the lattice theory of rigid bodies. Problems of Atomic Dynamics contains the text of both sets.What gives this volume its remarkable interest is just those dates: 1925-26. This must have been, by all accounts, the headiest period in twentieth-century physics, and Max Born was one of the leaders of the ferment. As Norbert Wiener remembers, "When Professor Born (...) came to the United States [for these lectures in 1925] he was enormously excited about the new basis Heisenberg had just given for the quantum theory of the atom."These lectures represent perhaps the most vivid written record of the transition between the "old" quantum theory of Bohr, and the "new" theory. "At the time I began this course of lectures," Born writes, "Heisenberg's first paper on the new quantum theory had just appeared. Here his masterly treatment gave the quantum theory an entirely new turn. The paper of Jordan and myself, in which we recognized the matrix calculus as the proper formulation of Heisenberg's ideas, was in press, and the manuscript of a third paper by the three of us was almost completed."Even as the lecture series progressed, Born became familiar with new results, which he introduced into his presentation: Pauli's fourth quantum number, Dirac's formalism, his own work on a general operational calculus. And yet, in spite of the conditions of revolutionary changes in physics that year -- in which established ancien regime principles were collapsing almost monthly -- the theory is developed with a cool elegance and with a formal completeness which may be regarded as a "limiting case" of its current state. These lectures represent the foundations of quantum theory, and they have withstood the tests of time -- the tests of more than forty years of experimental evidence. (shrink)

This article owes a lot to Arthur C. Danto's heuristic writings about the Artworld, which have shown us, that the ontological status of works of art is, at least when we discuss some current, maybe even dominating trends in contemporary art, dependent on our more or less philosophical interpretations of them. The effects of the Dantoan atmosphere of theory and art historical consciousness are, still, decisive for just some contemporary art. Danto's interest in the philosophical side of contemporary art makes (...) his philosophy of art exclusive in relation to art which is less philosophically appealing than the readymade tradition, to the extent that Danto did not, for a long time, even try to incorporate problems of beauty, aesthetic experience, and formal qualities, to his theory of the Artworld. (Opening paragraph.). (shrink)