The present article provides a mereological analysis of Euclid’s planar geometry as presented in the first two books of his Elements. As a standard of comparison, a brief survey of the basic concepts of planar geometry formulated in a set-theoretic framework is given in Section 2. Section 3.2, then, develops the theories of incidence and order using a blend of mereology and convex geometry. Section 3.3 explains Euclid’s “megethology”, i.e., his theory of magnitudes. In Euclid’s system of geometry, megethology takes (...) over the role played by the theory of congruence in modern accounts of geometry. Mereology and megethology are connected by Euclid’s Axiom 5: “The whole is greater than the part.” Section 4 compares Euclid’s theory of polygonal area, based on his “Whole-Greater-Than-Part” principle, to the account provided by Hilbert in his Grundlagen der Geometrie. An hypothesis is set forth why modern treatments of geometry abandon Euclid’s Axiom 5. Finally, in Section 5, the adequacy of atomistic mereology as a framework for a formal reconstruction of Euclid’s system of geometry is discussed. (shrink)

The present volume collects novel approaches to two classical topics within verbal semantics, namely argument structure and the treatment of time and aspect.

The present article first places Mach’s consideration about space and geometry into the context of the discussion of these issues in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and then proposes three interpretations of Mach’s thesis, put forward in chapter XXI of his Knowledge and Error, that the problem of measuring the volumes of material bodies is the origin of geometry. According to the first of these interpretations, Mach’s thesis is an assertion about the historical origin of the science of geometry. (...) Alternatively, one may understand Mach as suggesting that our geometric theorizing is best understood by relating it to our handling of material bodies and our interest in their volumes. Finally, Mach’s thesis may be conceived as asserting that the most appropriate form of geometry would be a metric geometry of the volumes of solids. The article concludes with a discussion of objections raised by Brentano against both Mach’s thesis of the priority of the measurement of volumes and his conception of bodies as complexes as sensations. (shrink)

In the 1930s Otto Selz developed a novel approach to the psychology of perception which he called “synthetic psychology of wholes”. This “synthetic psychology” is based on a phenomenological description of the structural relationships between elementary items building up integral wholes. The present article deals with Selz’s account of spatial cognition within this general framework. Selz Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 114, 351–362 argues that his approach to spatial cognition delivers answers to the long-discussed question of the epistemological status of the laws (...) of geometry. More specifically he tries to derive the Euclidean axioms from the structural laws valid for phenomenal space. After a brief description of the discussion of the status of geometry in the 1920s/1930, the present article explains Selz’s understanding of “phenomenology”. Section 4 then deals with Selz’s attempt to derive the Euclidean laws from the structural phenomenological laws of space. Selz’s attempted derivation suffers from some formal shortcomings, which however can be repaired. The question arises, though, whether the necessary improvements do not rely upon more intricate geometric intuitions and thus render Selz’s attempt to base geometry upon the phenomenology of spatial cognition circular. (shrink)

Following ideas elaborated by Hering in his celebrated analysis of color, the psychologist and gestalt theorist Otto Selz developed in the 1930s a theory of “natural space”, i.e., space as it is conceived by us. Selz’s thesis is that the geometric laws of natural space describe how the points of this space are related to each other by directions which are ordered in the same way as the points on a sphere. At the end of one of his articles, Selz (...) tries to derive within his framework two of Hilbert’s axioms for Euclidean geometry. Such derivations would, according to Selz, disclose the psychological origin and meaning of the geometric axioms and would thus contribute to a clarification of their epistemological status. In the present article Selz’s theory is explained and analyzed, his basic principles are amended, and implicit assumptions are made explicit. It is shown that the resulting system is one of ordered affine geometry in which all of Hilbert’s axioms except the axioms of congruence and those of continuity are derivable. The primary aim of the present paper is to make explicit the basic principles behind Selz’s geometry of natural space. The question of the logical independence of these principle is not investigated. (shrink)

Papers presented at a workshop held during 17th-18th, January, 2008 at Technische Universit'at Berlin.

Diagnosing emotion disturbances should be informed by current knowledge about normal emotion processes. I identify four major functions of emotion as well as sources for potential dysfunctions and suggest that emotions should only be diagnosed as pathological when they are clearly dysfunctional, which requires considering eliciting events, realistic person-specific appraisal patterns, and adaptive responses or action tendencies. Evidence from actuarial research on the reported length of naturally occurring emotion episodes (including potential determinants) illustrates appropriateness criteria for the clinical evaluation of (...) emotion duration—an essential element in the DSM-5 symptom catalogue for major depression episodes, especially in bereavement. The need for more actuarial evidence on normal emotion responses and its consideration by the clinical community is highlighted. (shrink)

Charles Taylor indicates in A Secular Age his admiration for Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and other Catholic theologians associated with la nouvelle théologie. This essay reads de Lubac and Taylor on the secular, analyzing convergences as well as key differences. In particular, it argues that both underestimate the possibilities of political and liberation theologies. The concluding section puts de Lubac and Taylor in dialogue with forms of political theology that have been in dialogue with their work. The author argues (...) that a stronger political theology can be drawn out of the approach of de Lubac and Taylor despite the trepidations of each toward such a project. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to propose a unified approach to the split scope readings of negative indefinites, comparative quantifiers, and numerals. There are two main observations that justify this approach. First, split scope shows the same kinds of restrictions across these different quantifiers. Second, split scope always involves low existential force. In our approach, following Sauerland, natural language determiner quantifiers are quantifiers over choice functions, of type <<,t>,t>. In split readings, the quantifier over choice functions scopes above other (...) operators (such as intensional verbs like must or can). Determiner quantifiers leave a choice-function trace when they move and this trace combines with the noun restriction, which is interpreted low. That split scope always involves low existential force is derived, without stipulation, from Kratzer’s idea that low existential force can be achieved via binding (into the noun restriction). (shrink)

Affective congruency effects in the evaluation task can be explained by either spreading of activation or response competition. Eliminating effects of response compatibility by using other tasks (semantic categorisation, naming task) typically also eliminates affective congruency effects. However, there is no need for processing the affective information of the stimuli in these tasks either, which could be necessary for an affectively mediated spreading of activation (Spruyt et al., 2007, 2009, 2012). We introduced a new task to further test this hypothesis. (...) The valent/neutral-categorisation task does not confound affective congruency with response compatibility, but still requires a processing of the stimuli's valence. No affective congruency effect was obtained with this task in two experiments, disfavouring a conditional spreading activation account. On the other hand, a significant priming effect was found for associated word pairs in Experiment 1, providing evidence for the sensitivity of the task to detect spreading activation processes. (shrink)

This volume will be of special concern to those involved in experimental research as well as theoretical moorings.

Plato's depiction of the world soul's cognitive activity in Timaeus 37 A 2‐C 5 offers a general account of intellectual cognition. He gives this account by describing the activity of an ideal cognitive agent, involving the very same comparative mechanism that governs human intellectual activity, namely, the active production of a propositional grasp of sameness and difference that things have in relation to each other in several respects. Plato depicts the world soul's intellectual activity as entirely devoid of immediate forms (...) of cognition such as perception and/or intellectual intuition: everything the world soul cognizes is the outcome of its active comparison of things with each other. In particular, there is no direct cognitive grasp of the being of things. The paper ends with a suggestion as to how to understand Plato's account of the world soul's activity as an instance of the ‘like is known by like’ principle of cognition. (shrink)

Emotion is conceptualised as an emergent, dynamic process based on an individual's subjective appraisal of significant events. It is argued that theoretical models of emotion need to propose an architecture that reflects the essential nature and functions of emotion as a psychobiological and cultural adaptation mechanism. One proposal for such a model and its underlying dynamic architecture, the component process model, is briefly sketched and compared with some of its major competitors. Recent empirical evidence in support of the model is (...) reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the dynamic aspect of emotion processes, in particular the sequence of appraisal checks and the synchronisation of response systems, as well as the capacity of the model to predict individual differences in emotional responding. (shrink)

Describes the classicall law theory basics. Translaltion from German.

Social scientists often lament the fact that philosophically trained ethicists pay limited attention to the insights they generate. This paper presents an overview of tendencies in sociological and anthropological studies of morality, ethics and bioethics, and suggests that a lack in philosophical interest might be related to a tendency among social scientists to employ either a deficit model (social science perspectives accommodate the sense of context that philosophical ethics lacks), a replacement model (social scientists have finally found the “right way” (...) of doing ethics), or a dismissal model (ethics should be abandoned all together as a misconstrued veil of power). Increased awareness of differences in styles of reasoning and objects of research interest might help to overcome the hostility, and an anthropological project is presented as an invitation to a dialogue informed by awareness of such differences. (shrink)

Klaus Peter Mortensen; The Double Call: on Bildung in a Literary and Reflective Perspective, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag analysiert auf der Basis theoretischer Überlegungen sowie empirischer Ergebnisse Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer „interkulturellen Öffnung“ von Sportvereinen, worunter Strukturanpassungen verstanden werden, die auf die Inklusion und Integration von Personen mit Migrationshintergrund zielen. Es wird gezeigt, inwiefern eine nachhaltige interkulturelle Öffnung der Vereine von der programmatischen Anbindung an den Vereinszweck, von der kontinuierlichen Behandlung in den Kommunikationswegen, von spezifischen Personalentscheidungen und der Kompatibilität mit der Organisationskultur abhängig ist.

This chapter first argues against the widely accepted “mentalist” interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of the perception of external objects. On that view, the perception of objects results from an act of synthesis of the diverse perceptual input provided by the different sense modalities. I argue that Aristotle’s conception of perception does not require such mental “construction” of external objects. For him, we unfailingly perceive external objects by way of modally specific perception: perception without qualification is primarily of external 3-D objects, (...) while modally specific perception is of perceptual qualities. As the special senses cannot operate in isolation from the perceptual system as a whole, it follows that we see colors, hear sounds, etc., and thereby perceive the objects whose colors and sounds they are. The second part offers a causal interpretation of Aristotle’s definition of perception as “reception of the form without the matter,” according to which the causal history of sensory affection fixes the content of the resulting act of perception: perception is cognitive in virtue of being the matterless presence of external things’ qualities in the perceiver. (shrink)

How do animals make themselves move? Unlike most modern theories, Aristotle answers this question through a general theory of animal movement valid for both humans and animals. This book interprets this theory and analyses its fundamental concepts.