Les Eléments de théologie de Proclus constituent un monument philosophique radicalement singulier tant par son architecture propre que par la façon dont la tradition l'a revisité. Ordonnant, sous une forme géométrique, les principes de la métaphysique néoplatonicienne, ils ont à la fois constitué celle-ci en système et opéré comme le principal relais de sa transmission aux pensées byzantine, arabe et occidentale. Ce sont ces effets d'héritage et d'adaptation que les textes ici réunis visent à évaluer. Du Liber de causis à (...) Hegel en passant par Thomas d'Aquin, Dietrich de Freiberg, Giordano Bruno, les Platoniciens de Cambridge et Leibniz, se reconstitue ainsi une a grande chaîne des "êtres", réarticulée par la chaîne des raisons, et à chaque fois revivifiée par celle de la transmission. (shrink)

Engineers fine-tune the design of robot bodies for control purposes, however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent, and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is lagging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or ”soft” bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control—sometimes referred to as ”morphological computation”. In this article, we briefly review different notions of computation by physical systems and (...) propose the dynamical systems framework as the most useful in the context of describing and eventually designing the interactions of controllers and bodies. Then, we look at the pros and cons of simple vs. complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of ”soft” bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We address another key dimension of the design space—whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies. (shrink)

In solving judgment aggregation problems, groups often face constraints. Many decision problems can be modelled in terms the acceptance or rejection of certain propositions in a language, and constraints as propositions that the decisions should be consistent with. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should be consistent with the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability; judgments on how to rank several options in an order of preference with the constraint of transitivity; and judgments on (...) budget items with budgetary constraints. Often more or less demanding constraints on decisions are imaginable. For instance, in preference ranking problems, the transitivity constraint is often contrasted with the weaker acyclicity constraint. In this paper, we make constraints explicit in judgment aggregation by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. We review several general results on judgment aggregation in light of such constraints. (shrink)

Agents are often assumed to have degrees of belief (“credences”) and also binary beliefs (“beliefs simpliciter”). How are these related to each other? A much-discussed answer asserts that it is rational to believe a proposition if and only if one has a high enough degree of belief in it. But this answer runs into the “lottery paradox”: the set of believed propositions may violate the key rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure. In earlier work, we showed that this problem (...) generalizes: there exists no local function from degrees of belief to binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions of rationality and non-triviality. “Locality” means that the binary belief in each proposition depends only on the degree of belief in that proposition, not on the degrees of belief in others. One might think that the impossibility can be avoided by dropping the assumption that binary beliefs are a function of degrees of belief. We prove that, even if we drop the “functionality” restriction, there still exists no local relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs that satisfies some minimal conditions. Thus functionality is not the source of the impossibility; its source is the condition of locality. If there is any non-trivial relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs at all, it must be a “holistic” one. We explore several concrete forms this “holistic” relation could take. (shrink)

Called by Karl Barth the brilliant Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this book is finally being recognized as Bonhoeffers magnum opus and one of the most important works of Christian ethics of the last century.

The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics. The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in (...) Jesus Christ. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God's having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. On the contrary, God's commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capabilities approach focuses on individuals as the (...) locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals. In this article, we ask: to what extent is the capabilities approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on the capabilities approach, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. (shrink)

The widely discussed "discursive dilemma" shows that majority voting in a group of individuals on logically connected propositions may produce irrational collective judgments. We generalize majority voting by considering quota rules, which accept each proposition if and only if the number of individuals accepting it exceeds a given threshold, where different thresholds may be used for different propositions. After characterizing quota rules, we prove necessary and sufficient conditions on the required thresholds for various collective rationality requirements. We also consider sequential (...) quota rules, which ensure collective rationality by adjudicating propositions sequentially and letting earlier judgments constrain later ones. Sequential rules may be path-dependent and strategically manipulable. We characterize path-independence and prove its essential equivalence to strategy-proofness. Our results shed light on the rationality of simple-, super-, and sub-majoritarian decision-making. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

In the theory of judgment aggregation, it is known for which agendas of propositions it is possible to aggregate individual judgments into collective ones in accordance with the Arrow-inspired requirements of universal domain, collective rationality, unanimity preservation, non-dictatorship and propositionwise independence. But it is only partially known (e.g., only in the monotonic case) for which agendas it is possible to respect additional requirements, notably non-oligarchy, anonymity, no individual veto power, or implication preservation. We fully characterize the agendas for which there (...) are such possibilities, thereby answering the most salient open questions about propositionwise judgment aggregation. Our results build on earlier results by Nehring and Puppe (2002), Nehring (2006), Dietrich and List (2007a) and Dokow and Holzman (2010a). (shrink)

Chemical structures are among the trademarks of our profession, as surely chemical as flasks, beakers and distillation columns. When someone sees one of us busily scribbling formulas or structures, he or she has no trouble identifying a chemist. Yet these familiar objects, which accompany our work from start to end, from the initial doodlings (Fig. I) to the final polished artwork in a publication (Fig. II), are deceptively simple. They raise interesting and difficult questions about representation. It is the intent (...) of this article to reflect upon molecular graphics. (shrink)

We introduce a “reason-based” framework for explaining and predicting individual choices. It captures the idea that a decision-maker focuses on some but not all properties of the options and chooses an option whose motivationally salient properties he/she most prefers. Reason-based explanations allow us to distinguish between two kinds of context-dependent choice: the motivationally salient properties may (i) vary across choice contexts, and (ii) include not only “intrinsic” properties of the options, but also “context-related” properties. Our framework can accommodate boundedly rational (...) and sophisticatedly rational choice. Since properties can be recombined in new ways, it also offers resources for predicting choices in unobserved contexts. (shrink)

All existing impossibility theorems on judgment aggregation require individual and collective judgment sets to be consistent and complete, arguably a demanding rationality requirement. They do not carry over to aggregation functions mapping profiles of consistent individual judgment sets to consistent collective ones. We prove that, whenever the agenda of propositions under consideration exhibits mild interconnections, any such aggregation function that is "neutral" between the acceptance and rejection of each proposition is dictatorial. We relate this theorem to the literature.

Which rules for aggregating judgments on logically connected propositions are manipulable and which not? In this paper, we introduce a preference-free concept of non-manipulability and contrast it with a preference-theoretic concept of strategy-proofness. We characterize all non-manipulable and all strategy-proof judgment aggregation rules and prove an impossibility theorem similar to the Gibbard--Satterthwaite theorem. We also discuss weaker forms of non-manipulability and strategy-proofness. Comparing two frequently discussed aggregation rules, we show that “conclusion-based voting” is less vulnerable to manipulation than “premise-based voting”, (...) which is strategy-proof only for “reason-oriented” individuals. Surprisingly, for “outcome-oriented” individuals, the two rules are strategically equivalent, generating identical judgments in equilibrium. Our results introduce game-theoretic considerations into judgment aggregation and have implications for debates on deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers of biology have endorsed views about random drift that, we will argue, rest on an implicit assumption that the meaning of concepts such as drift can be understood through an examination of the mathematical models in which drift appears. They also seem to implicitly assume that ontological questions about the causality of terms appearing in the models can be gleaned from the models alone. We will question these general assumptions by showing how the same equation (...) — the simple 2 = p2 + 2pq + q2 — can be given radically different interpretations, one of which is a physical, causal process and one of which is not. This shows that mathematical models on their own yield neither interpretations nor ontological conclusions. Instead, we argue that these issues can only be resolved by considering the phenomena that the models were originally designed to represent and the phenomena to which the models are currently applied. When one does take those factors into account, starting with the motivation for Sewall Wright’s and R.A. Fisher’s early drift models and ending with contemporary applications, a very different picture of the concept of drift emerges. On this view, drift is a term for a set of physical processes, namely, indiscriminate sampling processes. (shrink)

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with semantics (...) entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators. (shrink)

There are many possible ways to approach the topic of educational theory and critique. One could inquire into the meaning of critical phenomena and subject-matter in practical education and instruction, investigate the various forms of critique with the goal of determining the extent to which they assist in clarifying pedagogical action, or one could ask: ‘What is meant by critical educational research?’ and ‘How do the various approaches to this topic relate to one another?’. This article inquires into the relationship (...) between critique and negativity. Such a distinction is relevant for the practical, theoretical and research-oriented use of the various forms and subject matters of critique. This analysis of their relationship aims to clarify how the structure of human learning connects to that of pedagogical action; and, additionally, how the theoretical guidelines and orientation for pedagogical action relate to scientific analyses and research in education in a way that is productive. Distinctions made in thought, judgement and action are not simply delimiting positive characteristics. Such distinctions are at once mediated by the relations of knowledge and ignorance, ability and inability. Although ignorance and inability can be transformed into positive knowledge and ability, they are not superseded in the process. Ignorance and inability are, on the contrary, constitutive elements of learning. The possibility for transitions from ignorance and inability to knowledge and ability—a possibility that itself presupposes knowledge and ability—point to a form of negativity within the process of education (Bildung). This form of negativity relates to the human ability to learn (Bildsamkeit) and provides the definitive basis of human learning. A form of negativity constitutive of learning processes leads to one that grounds pedagogical processes. Pedagogical efficacy is mediated by a double negativity, comprised of both a universal and a particular form of negativity. The relation of negativity to learning and pedagogical efficacy, with specific reference to educational research studies on teaching and learning processes, is considered. A form of educational research that operates beyond fundamentalist criticisms—that is to say, criticisms based on unshakeable beliefs—and utilises issues arising from a pluralisation of critique to confront the pluralism of critical positions, is considered. The article closes with reflections on the relation between the Critical and the Uncritical. (shrink)

There are many possible ways to approach the topic of educational theory and critique. One could inquire into the meaning of critical phenomena and subject-matter in practical education and instruction, investigate the various forms of critique with the goal of determining the extent to which they assist in clarifying pedagogical action, or one could ask: ‘What is meant by critical educational research?’ and ‘How do the various approaches to this topic relate to one another?’. This article inquires into the relationship (...) between critique and negativity. Such a distinction is relevant for the practical, theoretical and research-oriented use of the various forms and subject matters of critique. This analysis of their relationship aims to clarify how the structure of human learning connects to that of pedagogical action; and, additionally, how the theoretical guidelines and orientation for pedagogical action relate to scientific analyses and research in education in a way that is productive. Distinctions made in thought, judgement and action are not simply delimiting positive characteristics. Such distinctions are at once mediated by the relations of knowledge and ignorance, ability and inability. Although ignorance and inability can be transformed into positive knowledge and ability, they are not superseded in the process. Ignorance and inability are, on the contrary, constitutive elements of learning. The possibility for transitions from ignorance and inability to knowledge and ability—a possibility that itself presupposes knowledge and ability—point to a form of negativity within the process of education (Bildung). This form of negativity relates to the human ability to learn (Bildsamkeit) and provides the definitive basis of human learning. A form of negativity constitutive of learning processes leads to one that grounds pedagogical processes. Pedagogical efficacy is mediated by a double negativity, comprised of both a universal and a particular form of negativity. The relation of negativity to learning and pedagogical efficacy, with specific reference to educational research studies on teaching and learning processes, is considered. A form of educational research that operates beyond fundamentalist criticisms—that is to say, criticisms based on unshakeable beliefs—and utilises issues arising from a pluralisation of critique to confront the pluralism of critical positions, is considered. The article closes with reflections on the relation between the Critical and the Uncritical. (shrink)

In the 1890s Ludwig Mach employed photography for visualizing streamlines in the emerging field of aerodynamic research. Étienne-Jules Marey developed a similar approach at the turn of the century. The two projects can be related to a number of current discussions on the history of scientific photography. The case of Ludwig Mach demonstrates how the collection of numerical data became both the subject and the challenge of a line of research intimately linked to the capacities of photography. At the end (...) of the nineteenth century, the particular potential of scientific photography is very often defined by comparison with the limited power of the human eye. In contrast, the example of streamline photography underlines that the requirements of the research context are critical for successfully employing photography. Marey’s studies point to a tension between his characterization of chronophotography as a method for analyzing the elementary units of processes in nature on the one hand and the necessary summation of single moments in time in his recordings of streamlines on the other. What Marey usually qualified as a cumbersome confusion was here the prerequisite of observation. The ’philosophy in machines’ ultimately limited the success of streamline photography; it aided in debates about qualitative matters, but could hardly provide what most interested scientists and engineers: reliable numbers. (shrink)

Over twenty years have passed since JLME published “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain.” This article revisits the conclusions drawn in that piece and explores what we have learned in the last two decades regarding the experience of men and women who have chronic pain and whether women continue to be treated less aggressively for their pain than men.

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with semantics (...) entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators. (shrink)

Musica Poetica provides an unprecedented examination of the development of Baroque musical thought. The initial chapters, which serve as an introduction to the concept and teachings of musical-rhetorical figures, explore Martin Luther's theology of music, the development of the Baroque concept of musica poetica, the idea of the affections in German Baroque music, and that music's use of the principles and devices of rhetoric. Dietrich Bartel then turns to more detailed considerations of the musical-rhetorical figures that were developed in (...) Baroque treatises and publications. After brief biographical sketches of the major theorists, Bartel examines those theorists' interpretation and classification of the figures. The book concludes with a detailed presentation of the musical-rhetorical figures, in which each theorist's definitions are presented in the original language and in parallel English translations. Bartel's clear, detailed analysis of German Baroque musical-rhetorical figures, combined with his careful translations of interpretations of those figures from a wide range of sources, make this book an indispensable introduction and resource for all students of Baroque music. Dietrich Bartel is an associate professor in the Department of Music at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (affiliated with University of Manitoba). (shrink)

This contribution analyzes the general relation between nature and laboratory with respect to the alternative of a ,,presented" and a ,,self-presenting nature". It is argued that as essentially presented by technological means, ,,nature in the laboratory" has to be considered as a dimensionally reduced nature already incorporated to the objective world of man. The basic precondition of the emergence of laboratory science on the threshold of modern times was the introduction of a concept of an ,,active physics" which itself presupposed (...) the abandonment of a given ,,metaphysical" order of phenomena, especially in the sense of the Aristotelian substance-accidence-scheme. The logic of a suchlike forced ,,presentation of nature", and also the logic of the modern technology-dependent ways of progress in knowledge can precisely be analyzed within the theoretical framework of the Paul-Lorenzen-School (,,Methodological constructivism"). The concept of a ,,self-presenting nature", on the other hand, requires a genuine reflection of a philosophy of nature which is able to focus on the aspects of self-reference and differentiality of the genuine instances of nature. Finally three starting-points of a non-laboratorial way of thinking nature are discussed. German Der Beitrag analysiert das Verhältnis von Natur und Labor unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Alternative von ,,sich zeigender und ,,gezeigter Natur, wobei die im Labor auf dem Wege einer wesentlich technisch-praktischen Erwirkung konkret ,,gezeigte Natur eine der Gegenstandswelt des Menschen immer schon integrierte (und insoweit dimensional verkürzte) Natur ist. Die entscheidende Voraussetzung für die Entstehung der Laborwissenschaft an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit war die Einführung eines Konzepts ,,handelnder Physik, das seinerseits die Preisgabe einer vorgängigen ,,metaphysischen Ordnung der Phänomene (insbesondere im Sinne des Substanz-Akzidens-Gefälles) voraussetzt. Die Logik dieses ,,Zeigens der Natur ebenso wie die des modernen, technologieabhängig gewordenen Erkenntnisfortschritts ist wissenschaftstheoretisch mit den Mitteln des Methodischen Konstruktivismus präzise beschreibbar. Für den alternativen Begriff einer ,,sich zeigenden Natur als wesentlich polydimensionaler, einheitsbegrifflich nicht einholbarer Totalität bedarf es jedoch einer genuin naturphilosophischen Reflexion, die insbesondere die mit dem Natürlichen verbundenen Komponenten der Selbstbezüglichkeit und der Differentialität zu thematisieren vermag. Abschließend werden drei Ansatzpunkte eines ,,nichtlaboratorischen Naturdenkens diskutiert. (shrink)

In der 1968 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Monographien aus den Gebieten der Griechischen und Lateinischen Philologie sowie der Alten Geschichte. Die Bände weisen eine große Vielzahl von Themen auf: neben sprachlichen, textkritischen oder gattungsgeschichtlichen philologischen Untersuchungen stehen sozial-, politik-, finanz- und kulturgeschichtliche Arbeiten aus der Klassischen Antike und der Spätantike. Entscheidend für die Aufnahme ist die Qualität einer Arbeit; besonderen Wert legen die Herausgeber auf eine umfassende Heranziehung der einschlägigen Texte und Quellen und deren sorgfältige kritische Auswertung.

Tomus 1. Schriften zur Intellekttheorie.