Was sollen wir vernünftigerweise glauben und warum? Dies ist die Hauptfrage der philosophischen Disziplin, die wir heute als Erkenntnistheorie kennen. Dieses Kapitel umreißt die Hauptfragen der modernen Erkenntnistheorie, und führt kurz in die Themen ein, welche in den Folgekapiteln dieses Buches näher behandelt werden. Einerseits umfassen diese Themen klassische Fragen wie die Frage nach dem Wesen des Wissens oder der Berechtigung von skeptischen Einstellungen. Daneben werden aber auch aktuelle Probleme behandelt wie Meinungsverschiedenheiten, Expertendiskussionen, und Gerechtigkeitsüberlegungen über Glaubwürdigkeit in unserer heutigen (...) Lebenswelt. (shrink)

Selbstverständlich, so könnte man meinen, sollten wir uns an der Wahrheit orientieren, wenn wir unsere Meinungen bilden. Das scheint aber nicht so einfach zu sein. Denn erstens ist unser Wissen begrenzt. Skeptiker*innen meinen sogar: sehr eng begrenzt. Zweitens kann man in kontroversen Fragen manchmal den Eindruck bekommen, dass die Wahrheit vom Standpunkt der Betrachtenden abhängt. Dementsprechend behaupten Relativist*innen, dass es oft keine objektive Wahrheit gibt. Derlei Bedenken nehmen bereits jetzt starken Einfluss auf die Meinungsbildungsprozesse in unserer Gesellschaft. Dieser Beitrag soll (...) helfen, skeptische und relativistische Bedenken philosophisch mit dem gebotenen Ernst in der Schule diskutieren zu können. (shrink)

Wir brauchen Expert*innen. Soviel ist uns klar. Denn Laien verfügen bei vielen lebensweltlich relevanten Problemen nicht über das notwendige Fachwissen, um diese Probleme angemessen lösen zu können. Gerade bei schwierigen und wichtigen Problemen wendet man sich daher gerne regelmäßig an Expert*innen, von denen erwartet wird, dass sie uns sagen, was richtig und was falsch ist. Allerdings ist diese zunehmende Abhängigkeit von Expertenurteilen nicht unproblematisch. Denn viele Menschen präsentieren sich als Expert*innen. Aber wem sollen wir glauben? Diese Frage ist besonders dann (...) relevant, wenn sich mutmaßliche Expert*innen uneinig zu sein scheinen. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert einige Vorschläge, wie man auch als Laie Expertenurteile kritisch prüfen kann. (shrink)

Was man vernünftigerweise glauben oder lieber nicht glauben sollte, ist gesellschaftlich eine höchst relevante Frage. Gerade in kontroversen Fragen werfen sich Menschen oft vor „unvernünftig“, „irrational“, oder sogar einfach „dumm“ zu sein. Auch politische Entscheidungen werden oft damit begründet, dass sie die „vernünftigsten“ Lösungen seien. Da wir unsere Handlungen letztendlich nach denjenigen Überzeugungen richten, die wir für vernünftig halten, hängt gesellschaftlich sehr viel davon ab, was unter dieser Vernünftigkeit verstanden wird. Allerdings erklärt nur selten jemand, welche Faktoren eine Überzeugung vernünftig (...) oder unvernünftig machen. Dies ist die philosophische Aufgabe aus der Erkenntnistheorie, für welche dieser Beitrag einige Denkimpulse liefern soll. (shrink)

Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath greifen zentrale Fragen der heutigen Zeit auf: Was ist Glück? Woher kommt Glück? Wie kann man Glück erreichen? Zunächst geht es um klassische philosophische Ansätze – was verstehen antike Denker wie Demokrit, Platon, Aristoteles und Epikur sowie neuzeitliche Philosophen wie Montaigne, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud und Adorno darunter? Es zeigt sich die Historizität der Glückskonzepte und die Notwendigkeit einer Kritik am »falschen« Glück. Psychologische Konzepte von Glück sind ebenso schillernd. Sie untersuchen empirisch, wie subjektive (...) Glücksgefühle zustande kommen, welche emotionalen, kognitiven und handlungsbezogenen Prozesse ihnen zu Grunde liegen und in welchen Situationen sich Menschen glücklich fühlen. Auch hier erscheint ein kritischer Standpunkt notwendig: Kritik an unterschiedlichen Glücksdefinitionen, Kritik an Erhebungsinstrumenten und Kritik an der Instrumentalisierung und Kommerzialisierung von Forschungsergebnissen. Gerade im Blick auf eine neuerdings weit verbreitete Positive Psychologie besteht ein Ideologieverdacht: Könnte es sich hier um kaum einlösbare Versprechungen einer affirmativen psychologischen Glücksforschung handeln? Philipp Mayring und Norbert Rath gehen diesen Fragen im Dialog zwischen Philosophie und Psychologie nach. Trotz der unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen und Perspektiven der beiden Autoren zeigen sich erstaunliche Übereinstimmungen hinsichtlich einer kritischen Theorie des Glücks. (shrink)

Epistemic contradictions are now a well-known and often discussed phenomenon among those who study epistemic modals. These contradictions are expressed by sentences like ‘It is raining and it might not be raining’ whose oddness to the common ear demands an explanation. However, it has turned out to be a rather controversial enterprise to provide such an explanation in a sufficiently precise and general manner. According to pragmatic explanations, epistemic contradictions are semantically consistent but pragmatically defective. According to semantic explanations, one (...) should regard epistemic contradictions as plain semantic inconsistencies. Endorsing such a semantic solution is, however, tantamount to rejecting classical logic, which predicts the consistency of epistemic contradictions. After arguing that all existing solutions to this problem face as yet unmet challenges, I will present a new solution that adequately overcomes these challenges. I will propose to view epistemic contradictions as semantically consistent but epistemically defective sentences. The main thesis emerging will be that we need neither abandon the inference rules of classical logic nor the classical truth-conditional approach to semantics to deal adequately with epistemic contradictions. (shrink)

„Bitte nicht theoretische Philosophie, das ist viel zu abstrakt – wofür brauche ich das später?“ Solche oder ähnliche Gedankengänge sind in der Philosophie- und Ethikausbildung häufig zu hören. Und es liegt zunächst auch nicht auf der Hand, warum es wichtig sein könnte, sich mit den theoretischen Grundlagen von Wissen, Sprache, Denken oder Wissenschaft auseinanderzusetzen, wenn man in diesen Gebieten nicht selbst Akademiker*in werden will. Um Studierenden und Schüler*innen einen nachvollziehbaren Grund zu liefern, warum sie sich für theoretische Philosophie interessieren sollten, (...) braucht es mehr als Verweise auf Traditionen und Lehrpläne. (shrink)

Dürfen wir die Überzeugungen und Erfahrungen anderer einfach ignorieren oder bagatellisieren? In gewissen Fällen mag das plausibel sein. Aber Menschen ignorieren die Überzeugungen gewisser Personen und Gruppen oft ohne nachvollziehbaren Grund, indem sie sie aufgrund von Vorurteilen als Unwissende abstempeln. In solchen Fällen werden Personen ungerechterweise von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis der Wissensproduktion und Wissensweitergabe abgeschnitten. Die Philosophin Miranda Fricker bezeichnet dies als „epistemische Ungerechtigkeit“. In diesem Beitrag wird exemplarisch für das große Feld der sozialen Erkenntnistheorie die gesellschaftliche und philosophische Bedeutung (...) des Phänomens der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit näher erklärt und anhand vieler Beispiele erläutert. Konkrete Unterrichtsimpulse werden in Form von drei Aufgabenblöcken angeboten. (shrink)

The Surprise Exam Paradox is well-known: a teacher announces that there will be a surprise exam the following week; the students argue by an intuitively sound reasoning that this is impossible; and yet they can be surprised by the teacher. We suggest that a solution can be found scattered in the literature, in part anticipated by Wright and Sudbury, informally developed by Sorensen, and more recently discussed, and dismissed, by Williamson. In a nutshell, the solution consists in realising that the (...) teacher's announcement is a blindspot that can only be known if the week is at least 2 days long. Along the way, we criticise Williamson's own treatment of the paradox. In Williamson's view, the Surprise is similar to the Paradox of the Glimpse and, because of their similarities, both these paradoxes ought to receive a uniform treatment-one that involves locating an illicit application of the KK Principle. We argue that there's no deep analogy between the Surprise and the Glimpse and that, even if there were, the Surprise reasoning reaches a paradoxical conclusion before the KK Principle is used. Rather, in both the Surprise and the Glimpse, the blame should be put on other epistemic principles-respectively, a knowledge retention and a margin for error principle. (shrink)

Die globalen Veränderungen fordern unser Wissen über die Welt und über uns selbst heraus. Der Klimawandel, die globale Covid-19-Pandemie und Konflikte um die Bedeutung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse führen uns unweigerlich zu einer Vielzahl komplexer philosophischer Fragen. Dabei rücken verstärkt Themen der theoretischen Philosophie in den Vordergrund: Was ist eigentlich Wissen? Auf welche Informationen können wir uns verlassen? Ist die Wahrheit relativ? Was macht ExpertInnen aus? Was ist gute wissenschaftliche Praxis? Was bedeutet 'evidenzbasiert'? Welchen sozialen und globalen Einflüssen ist unser Wissenserwerb ausgesetzt? (...) In der Ausbildung von Philosophie- und Ethikstudierenden gibt es oft eine große Scheu, Disziplinen wie Erkenntnistheorie und Wissenschaftsphilosophie zu erlernen und zu unterrichten. Zu abstrakt und lebensweltlich irrelevant, sagen viele. Dieses Buch soll diese Berührungsängste beseitigen helfen, indem die theoretischen Grundlagen auf die Probleme der Gegenwart angewendet und mit vielseitigen Methoden erschlossen werden. Zwei Ziele stehen im Vordergrund: Zum einen soll deutlich werden, dass die Beschäftigung mit theoretischer Philosophie für das persönliche und das gesellschaftliche Zusammenleben von zentraler Bedeutung ist. Zum anderen zeigen eine Reihe didaktischer Tools, wie man Lernende dabei aktiv in den Lernprozess miteinbezieht. (shrink)

In the past decade, research on the dark triad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has demonstrated a strong relationship to a number of socially aversive moral judgments such as sacrificial utilitarian decisions in moral dilemmas. This study widens the scope of this research program and investigates the association between dark triad personality traits and anti-natalist views, i.e., views holding that procreation is morally wrong. The results of this study indicate that the dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy (...) are strongly associated with anti-natalist views. Further, depression is found to be both standing independently in a relationship with anti-natalist views as well as functioning as a mediator in the relationships between Machiavellianism/psychopathy and anti-natalist views. This pattern was replicated in a follow-up study. These findings add to the literature on dark triad personality traits and their relationship to moral judgments, suggesting that personality and mood play a substantive part in variation in anti-natalist views in a lay population. (shrink)

Newly edited by Konrad Koerner (University of Ottawa), with an introduction by Clemens Knobloch (Universitat Siegen)The importance of Wegener's Untersuchungen uber die Grundfragen des Sprachlebens can only be compared to that of Karl Buhler's Sprachtheorie. Even now, however, Wegener's work remains virtually unknown to the English speaking world. Wegener's main work was published in 1885. It has its origin in two lectures given in 1883 and 1884 at school teacher meetings held in the Magdeburg area and it still recalls those (...) original occasions and maintains much of the oral style. Part of the volume treats the subject in a systematic and theoretical manner; other sections contain vivid examples and are characterized by a considerable didactic effort. The book is held together by leitmotif-questions, such as 'How do we understand language?' and 'How does language function as a means of everyday communication?'. We witness the experiences of the talented school teacher and the observations of the innovative dialect researcher combined, condensed, and conceptually ordered.In spite of the relatively unsystematic form of presentation, the book remains thoroughly consistent in thought and argument. In the Untersuchungen we have before us the outline of a communicative and functional view of language structure, of the analysis of speech, and of semantics. (shrink)

Much has been written and said about music's time, much less— at least in recent epochs—about time's music. Today this most subtle, yet most powerful form of music finds fewer and fewer listeners. It has become, in fact, harder and harder to listen to. The “congruent melodies,” i.e. “the rhythms of times which were given to us to alleviate our labors” (as the 13th-century music theorist had put it) have long since been silenced and drowned by subsonic noises.* In its (...) organization of time, Western civilization has, to an appallingly large extent, replaced rhythmic aliveness with abstract measures, reducing it to a “functional mechanism” (Baudrillard 1974). The main tools by which these measures are set, the clock as we know it and the modern calendar, are obviously, taken as such, remarkable achievements, but in their impact on our lives they are not so much companions enabling us to be “in harmony with things at the right moment” (see the Chinese shih, Larre 1976) as they are hostile guardians “watching our steps.”. (shrink)

In the tradition of quantified modal logic, it was assumed that significantly different linguistic systems underlie reference to individuals, to times and to ‘possible worlds’. Various results from recent research in formal semantics suggest that this is not so, and that there is in fact apervasive symmetrybetween the linguistic means with which we refer to these three domains. Reference to individuals, times and worlds is uniformly effected through generalized quantifiers, definite descriptions, and pronouns, and in each domain grammatical features situate (...) the reference of terms as near, far or ‘further’ from the actual or from a reported speech act. We outline various directions in which a program ofontological symmetrycould be developed, and we offer in theAppendixa symmetric fragment developed in a logic that can be seen as a compromise between an extensional and an intensional system. (shrink)

In the tradition of quantified modal logic, it was assumed that significantly different linguistic systems underlie reference to individuals, to times and to 'possible worlds'. Various results from recent research in formal semantics suggest that this is not so, and that there is in fact a pervasive symmetry between the linguistic means with which we refer to these three domains. Reference to individuals, times and worlds is uniformly effected through generalized quantifiers, definite descriptions, and pronouns, and in each domain grammatical (...) features situate the reference of terms as near, far or 'further' from the actual or from a reported speech act. We outline various directions in which a program of ontological symmetry could be developed, and we offer in the Appendix a symmetric fragment developed in a logic that can be seen as a compromise between an extensional and an intensional system. (shrink)

Comprehensive evaluation and study of man's theories and knowledge of genetical characteristics and the evolutionary processes.

Explores the development of the ideas of evolutionary biology, particularly as affected by the increasing understanding of genetics and of the chemical basis of inheritance.

Philipp W. Balsiger / Rudolf Kötter Die Kultur moderner Wissenschaft am Beispiel Albert Einstein Für alle, die über den Tellerrand der Physik EInsteins blicken wollen Albert Einstein ist ein wissenschaftshistorisches Musterbeispiel dafür, wie wissenschaftliche Kulturleistungen bei der Entwicklung neuer Theorien, in persönlichen Netzwerken und im Zusammenhand mit philosophischem Denken entstehen. Dieses Buch enthält Beiträge von Physikern, Philosophen und Wissenschaftshistorikern, die überraschend vielseitigen Facetten der physikalischen Kultur am Beispiel Albert Einsteins zusammentragen: von den Paradigmenwechseln des Raum- Zeitverständnisses über die Philosophie (...) in der Physik bis hin zur Bildungs- und Popularisierungskultur, die mit seinem Wirken verbunden ist. (shrink)

This article defends a novel definition of evil. An action is evil if (1) a pro-attitude (or complete indifference) towards severe harm to a sentient being is (2) manifested in the action. The manifestation can take either of two forms: expressing the pro-attitude or attempting to realize its object. In order to exclude cases where the pro-attitude is the result of a positive attitude and the action does therefore not count as evil, the proattitude (3) must be generated from a (...) morally reprehensible attitude such as greed or sadistic pleasure. As an implication of this definition, not every evil action is extremely bad, and some ‘merely’ wrong acts might be worse than some evil acts. (shrink)

1. Signification de la métaphysique.--2. Significations de l'être.

Dumézil’s trifunctional theory applied to the only grail plot in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte du Graal proves to be neither faithful nor worthy of credit. Philological, historical, cultural, cognitive and narratological arguments raise critical objections and question its artificial character. In fact, the incidental episode of the grail functions as a narrative drawer in a plot belonging to the global tale ATU 910B (Good precepts) relating to the part of the work regarding Perceval.

What kinds of norms constrain mechanistic discovery and explanation? In the mechanistic literature, the norms for good explanations are directly derived from answers to the metaphysical question of what explanations are. Prominent mechanistic accounts thus emphasize either ontic (Craver, in: Kaiser, Scholz, Plenge, Hüttemann (eds) Explanation in the special sciences: the case of biology and history, Springer, Dordrecht, pp 27–52, 2014) or epistemic norms (Bechtel in Mental mechanisms: philosophical perspectives on cognitive neuroscience, Routledge, London, 2008). Still, mechanistic philosophers on both (...) sides agree that there is no sharp distinction between the processes of discovery and explanation (Bechtel and Richardson in Discovering complexity. Decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010; Craver and Darden in In search of mechanisms: discoveries across the life sciences, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013). Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that ontic and epistemic accounts of explanation will be accompanied by ontic and epistemic accounts of discovery, respectively. As we will show here, however, recent discovery accounts implicitly rely on both ontic and epistemic norms to characterize the discovery process. In this paper, we develop an account that makes explicit that, and how, ontic and epistemic norms work together throughout the discovery process. By describing mechanism discovery as a process of pattern recognition (Haugeland, in: Having thought. Essays in the metaphysics of mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 267–290, 1998) we demonstrate that scientists have to develop epistemic activities to distinguish a pattern from its background. Furthermore, they have to determine which epistemic activities successfully describe how the pattern is implemented by identifying the pattern’s components. Our approach reveals that ontic and epistemic norms are equally important in mechanism discovery. (shrink)

La naissance du CRI à Grenoble doit être replacée dans le contexte intellectuel de la nouvelle critique des années 1960. Les trois courants dominants du matérialisme historique, de la psychanalyse freudienne et du structuralisme ont alors été dépassés par le CRI au profit d’un « nouvel esprit anthropologique » qui privilégiait la réalité sensible des images au détriment des idéologies réductrices. Les intellectuels des villes ont perdu le lien charnel avec une civilisation rurale et un mode de vie ayant façonné (...) notre langue, nos croyances et nos fêtes, ainsi que des artisanats séculaires. Le médiéviste peut encore retrouver le lien avec cette mémoire du temps. Mais s’il n’a pas conservé une âme païenne et un esprit paysan, il est condamné à la posture post-moderne. Penser la culture occidentale en contournant ou ignorant le Moyen Âge n’est qu’une imposture. Un exemple de longue vie des images montre l’importance des relais culturels qui relativise toute théorie préconçue des archétypes. The birth of the CRI in Grenoble is replaced in the intellectual context of new criticism of the 1960s. The three mainstream have been overtaken by the CRI in favour of a “new anthropological spirit” that emphasizes the sensible reality of images at the expense of reducing ideologies. The modern scholars of the cities have lost the carnal connection with a rural civilization and a way of life that have shaped our language, our ancient beliefs and feasts and also centuries-old handicrafts. The medievalist can find the link with this memory of time. But if he has lost a pagan soul and a spirit of peasant, he is sentenced to a post-modern posture. Thinking Western culture in bypassing or ignoring the middle ages appears like a mere sham. An example of long-life images stresses the importance of cultural relays against all preconceived theory of the archetypes. (shrink)

Provides a philosophical analysis of such biological concepts as natural selection, adaptation, speciation, and evolution.

ArgumentThis paper considers how certain ideas elaborated by the Montpellier vitalists influenced the rise of French alienism, and how those ideas framed the changing view of passions during the eighteenth century. Various kinds of evidence attest that the passions progressively became the focus of medical attention, rather than a theme specific to moralists and philosophers. Vitalism conceived of organisms as animal economies understandable through the transformations of the various modes of their sensibility. This allowed some physicians to define a kind (...) of anthropological program, which viewed human beings as a whole, with no distinction betweenle physiqueandle moral. The passions in this context became a specific alteration of the animal economy. Such an anthropological program was the framework within which Pinel understood the various classes of madness as disease – those troubles being general disturbances of the animal economy, which presupposed a knowledge of the latter, to be addressed and cured. In this view, and departing from the vitalist writers with regard to the specificity of mental illness as such, Pinel proposed another conception of the relations between passions and madness, and elaborated a general view of their status in etiology and therapeutics; those views were taken up and systematized by Esquirol, who finally defined a new kind of continuity between passion and madness, demonstrated by the idea that some kinds of madness that he called “monomania” had as a principle a “ruling passion” that the alienist, this novel medical specialist, had to unveil and address. (shrink)

In the Preface of Animal Species and Evolution (1963), I wrote that it was "an attempt to summarize and review critically what we know about the biology and genetics of animal species and their role in evolution." The result was a volume of XIV ...

We show how to encode context-free string grammars, linear context-free tree grammars, and linear context-free rewriting systems as Abstract Categorial Grammars. These three encodings share the same constructs, the only difference being the interpretation of the composition of the production rules. It is interpreted as a first-order operation in the case of context-free string grammars, as a second-order operation in the case of linear context-free tree grammars, and as a third-order operation in the case of linear context-free rewriting systems. This (...) suggest the possibility of defining an Abstract Categorial Hierarchy. (shrink)

Our self-understanding as human agents includes a commitment to three crucial claims about human agency: that agents must be active, that actions are part of the natural order of the universe, and that intentional actions can be explained by the agent's reasons for acting. While all of these claims are indispensable elements of our view of ourselves as human agents, they are in continuous conflict and tension with one another, especially once one adopts the currently predominant view of what the (...) natural order must be like. One of the central tasks of philosophy of action consists in showing how, despite appearances, these conflicts can be resolved and our self-understanding as agents be vindicated. The mainstream of contemporary philosophy of action holds that this task can only be fulfilled by an event-causal reductive view of human agency, paradigmatically embodied in the so-called 'standard model' developed by Donald Davidson. Erasmus Mayr, in contrast, develops a new agent-causal solution to these conflicts and shows why this solution is superior both to event-causalist accounts and to Von Wright's intentionalism about agency. He offers a comprehensive theory of substance-causation on the basis of a realist conception of powers, which allows one to see how the widespread rejection of agent-causation rests on an unfounded 'Humean' view of nature and of causal processes. At the same time, Mayr addresses the question of the nature of reasons for acting and complements its substance-causal account of activity with a non-causal account of acting for reasons in terms of following a standard of success. (shrink)

This collection of revised and new essays argues that biology is an autonomous science rather than a branch of the physical sciences. Ernst Mayr, widely considered the most eminent evolutionary biologist of the 20th century, offers insights on the history of evolutionary thought, critiques the conditions of philosophy to the science of biology, and comments on several of the major developments in evolutionary theory. Notably, Mayr explains that Darwin's theory of evolution is actually five separate theories, each with (...) its own history, trajectory and impact. Ernst Mayr, commonly referred to as the "Darwin of the 20th century" and listed as one of the top 100 scientists of all-time, is Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. What Makes Biology Unique is the 25th book he has written during his long and prolific career. His recent books include This is Biology: The Science of the Living World (Belknap Press, 1997) and What Evolution Is (Basic Books, 2002). (shrink)

I analyze a number of widespread misconceptions concerning species. The species category, defined by a concept, denotes the rank of a species taxon in the Linnaean hierarchy. Biological species are reproducing isolated from each other, which protects the integrity of their genotypes. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition. Unequal rates of evolution of different characters and lack of information on the mating potential of isolated populations are the major difficulties in the demarcation of species taxa.