This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue for a revised and precisified version of the infamous Verifiability Criterion for the meaningfulness of declarative sentences. The argument is based on independently plausible premises concerning probabilistic confirmation and meaning as context-change potential, it is shown to be logically valid, and its ramifications for potential applications of the criterion are being discussed. Although the paper is not historical but systematic, the criterion thus vindicated will resemble the original one(s) in some important ways. (...) At the same time, it will also be more modest insofar as meaningfulness will turn out to be relativized linguistically and probabilistically, and different choices of the linguistic and probabilistic parameters may lead to different verdicts on meaningfulness. (shrink)

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so) and that the principles (...) are jointly satisfied if and only if rational belief is equivalent to the assignment of a stably high rational degree of belief. Although the logical closure of belief and the Lockean thesis are attractive postulates in themselves, initially this may seem like a formal “curiosity”; however, as will be argued in the rest of the essay, a very reasonable theory of rational belief can be built around these principles that is not ad hoc and that has various philosophical features that are plausible independently. In particular, this essay shows that the theory allows for a solution to the Lottery Paradox, and it has nice applications to formal epistemology. The price that is to be paid for this theory is a strong dependency of belief on the context, where a context involves both the agent's degree of belief function and the partitioning or individuation of the underlying possibilities. But as this essay argues, that price seems to be affordable. (shrink)

This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins likewise draws on (...) Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (shrink)

Is it possible to maintain classical logic, stay close to classical semantics, and yet accept that language might be semantically indeterminate? The article gives an affirmative answer by Ramsifying classical semantics, which yields a new semantic theory that remains much closer to classical semantics than supervaluationism but which at the same time avoids the problematic classical presupposition of semantic determinacy. The resulting Ramsey semantics is developed in detail, it is shown to supply a classical concept of truth and to fully (...) support the rules and metarules of classical logic, and it is applied to vague terms as well as to theoretical or open-ended terms from mathematics and science. The theory also demonstrates how diachronic or synchronic interpretational continuity across languages is compatible with semantic indeterminacy. (shrink)

We investigate the research programme of dynamic doxastic logic (DDL) and analyze its underlying methodology. The Ramsey test for conditionals is used to characterize the logical and philosophical differences between two paradigmatic systems, AGM and KGM, which we develop and compare axiomatically and semantically. The importance of Gärdenfors’s impossibility result on the Ramsey test is highlighted by a comparison with Arrow’s impossibility result on social choice. We end with an outlook on the prospects and the future of DDL.

In everyday life we either express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms or we resort to numerical probabilities: I believe it's going to rain or my chance of winning is one in a million. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that allows us to reason with all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief simultaneously.

This paper aims to explain the distinction between syllogisms and subsyllogisms in Stoic logic. Subsyllogisms replace at least one premise in a syllogism with a premise that is, according to Galen and Alexander, equipollent to the respective syllogistic premise. This equipollence is not synonymy of meaning between two linguistic expressions, but obtains between two propositions when they are true or false by the same standard. Subsyllogistic premises are simple propositions that are equipollent to the non-simple premises of the respective syllogisms. (...) For subsyllogistic premises that replace syllogistic premises consist of predicates combining with cases rather than of connectives or negations governing propositions. Because of this difference in their premises, subsyllogisms have a different logical form than syllogisms and are not formally valid. (shrink)

This article introduces, studies, and applies a new system of logic which is called ‘HYPE’. In HYPE, formulas are evaluated at states that may exhibit truth value gaps and truth value gluts. Simple and natural semantic rules for negation and the conditional operator are formulated based on an incompatibility relation and a partial fusion operation on states. The semantics is worked out in formal and philosophical detail, and a sound and complete axiomatization is provided both for the propositional and the (...) predicate logic of the system. The propositional logic of HYPE is shown to contain first-degree entailment, to have the Finite Model Property, to be decidable, to have the Disjunction Property, and to extend intuitionistic propositional logic conservatively when intuitionistic negation is defined appropriately by HYPE’s logical connectives. Furthermore, HYPE’s first-order logic is a conservative extension of intuitionistic logic with the Constant Domain Axiom, when intuitionistic negation is again defined appropriately. The system allows for simple model constructions and intuitive Euler-Venn-like diagrams, and its logical structure matches structures well-known from ordinary mathematics, such as from optimization theory, combinatorics, and graph theory. HYPE may also be used as a general logical framework in which different systems of logic can be studied, compared, and combined. In particular, HYPE is found to relate in interesting ways to classical logic and various systems of relevance and paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and truthmaker semantics. On the philosophical side, if used as a logic for theories of type-free truth, HYPE is shown to address semantic paradoxes such as the Liar Paradox by extending non-classical fixed-point interpretations of truth by a conditional as well-behaved as that of intuitionistic logic. Finally, HYPE may be used as a background system for modal operators that create hyperintensional contexts, though the details of this application need to be left to follow-up work. (shrink)

At APr 2.4 57a36–13, Aristotle presents a notorious reductio argument in which he derives the claim ‘If B is not large, B is large’ and calls that result impossible. Aristotle is thus committed to some form of connexivity and this paper argues that his commitment is to a strong form of connexivity which excludes even cases in which ‘B is large’ is necessary. It is further argued that Aristotle’s view of connexivity is best understood as arising from his analysis of (...) affirmation and negation in terms of combination and separation: a proposition that separates two terms cannot entail a proposition that combines the same two terms. In order to motivate this account of connexivity, this paper interprets Aristotle as emphasising the predicative structure, especially the copulae, of the argument’s component propositions. The arguments for this are based on a consideration of the larger context of APr 2.2–4. A reconstruction of the argument using propositional variables does not fully capture Aristotle’s intentions. (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint (...) acceptance with analyses of distributed cognition. To sketch how this can be done, I shall present a detailed case study, and on the basis of the case, analyze the process through which a group of scientists jointly accept a new scientific claim and at a later stage jointly accept to revise previously accepted claims. I shall argue that joint acceptance in science can be established in situations where an overall conceptual structure is jointly accepted by a group of scientists while detailed parts of it are distributed among group members with different areas of expertise, a condition that I shall call a heterogeneous conceptual consensus. Finally, I shall show how a heterogeneous conceptual consensus can work as a constraint against scientific change and address the question how changes may nevertheless occur. (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of the redistributive models of democracy advanced by Carles Boix, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, their reception within the democratization literature, and the subsequent trajectories of their authors. Contrary to the existing literature, which commonly envisions RMDs as a unified framework, this article argues that Boix and Acemoglu and Robinson’s models should be understood as divergent theories of democratic transitions. In the aftermath of numerous criticisms, both authors have developed sharply different (...) understandings of democratization. We argue that Acemoglu and Robinson have backtracked from their original formulation toward a “Whiggish” history of the rise of liberty, while Boix has increasingly reverted to the core propositions of classical modernization theory. In the process, this article argues that RMDs have lost, and reneged on, much of their apparent explanatory power regarding transitions to and reversions from democracy. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

What is the status of the reduction in realistic phenomenology? Approaching this question presupposes understanding what realistic phenomenology is. Five ways of defining realistic phenomenology are delineated: 1) lineage definitions, 2) locality definitions, 3) thematic definitions, 4) definitions from the essence of philosophy, and 5) methodological definitions. The question of reduction’s status concerns mostly a combination of 4) and 5) but also draws on historical considerations. An overview of the realists’ critiques of the phenomenological reduction reveals that this method was (...) not unilaterally rejected and, thus, demonstrates that there is not only methodological epochism but indeed also methodological reductionism within realistic phenomenology. The common denominator of these critiques is that the reductive method in transcendental phenomenology depends on a phenomenological theory of reality. An indepth discussion of Scheler’s philosophical anthropology shows that it hinges on a principled revision and systematic completion of the reduction. Reduction is no longer viewed as a scientific method but as a technique of inner acting. From the vantage point of his voluntative realism, Scheler’s technological reductionism is spelled out in terms of a stratified scheme relating reality experiences as resistance to the levels of the vital-psychic sphere: 1) primary resistance, 2) ecologically bound resistance, 3) internalized resistance, 4) ego-dystonic resistance and 5) (dis-)inhibition and objectification of drive impulses. Drawing on Celms’s distinction between 1) reducendum, 2) reductive base, 3) reduction as an epistemic act, and 4) result of the reduction, a new and systematic interpretation of Schelerian reductions is developed for the scientific, phenomenological/Apollonian, Dionysian, and cathartic reductions. Each reductive technique cultivates man’s facultative dispositions (intellect, will, feeling). Only their concerted cooperation unlocks man’s full cognitive and ethical potential. (shrink)

This paper spells out Husserl’s account of the exercise of rationality and shows how it is tied to the capacity for critical reflection. I first discuss Husserl’s views on what rationally constrains our intentionality. Then I localize the exercise of rationality in the positing that characterizes attentive forms of intentionality and argue that, on Husserl’s account, when we are attentive to something we are also pre-reflectively aware of what speaks for and against our taking something to be a certain way. (...) After discussing the conditions under which this pre-reflective awareness gives way to reflective deliberation, I contrast this account to a compelling Kantian-inspired account of the activity of reason that has recently been developed by Matthew Boyle. In particular, I argue that Husserl delimits the scope of the exercise of rationality differently than Boyle, and I show how this implies different accounts of the self. (shrink)

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its prequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In the prequel, we made this norm mathematically precise; in this paper, we derive its consequences. We show that the two core tenets of Bayesianism (...) follow from the norm, while the characteristic claim of the Objectivist Bayesian follows from the norm along with an extra assumption. Finally, we consider Richard Jeffrey’s proposed generalization of conditionalization. We show not only that his rule cannot be derived from the norm, unless the requirement of Rigidity is imposed from the start, but further that the norm reveals it to be illegitimate. We end by deriving an alternative updating rule for those cases in which Jeffrey’s is usually supposed to apply. (shrink)

Business scholars have recently proposed that the virtue of personal wisdom may predict leadership behaviors and the quality of leader–follower relationships. This study investigated relationships among leaders’ personal wisdom—defined as the integration of advanced cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics (Ardelt, Hum Dev 47:257–285, 2004)—transformational leadership behaviors, and leader–member exchange (LMX) quality. It was hypothesized that leaders’ personal wisdom positively predicts LMX quality and that intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, two dimensions of transformational leadership, mediate this relationship. Data came from (...) 75 religious leaders and 1–3 employees of each leader (N = 158). Results showed that leaders’ personal wisdom had a positive indirect effect on follower ratings of LMX quality through individualized consideration, even after controlling for Big Five personality traits, emotional intelligence, and narcissism. In contrast, intellectual stimulation and the other two dimensions of transformational leadership (idealized influence and inspirational motivation) did not mediate the positive relationship between leaders’ personal wisdom and LMX quality. Implications for future research on personal wisdom and leadership are discussed, and some tentative suggestions for leadership development are outlined. (shrink)

This article analyses Eric Rohmer’s film theory in the light of the Platonic triad of truth, beauty and goodness, as embodied by the aesthetic philosophy of Kant, Hegel and Schiller. Although his film theory shows affinity with Kant’s ideal of art as a form of natural beauty, I will argue that a broader look at Rohmer’s philosophical foundations is necessary. The point where Rohmer’s film theory deviates from Kant’s triadic philosophy is exactly the point where he approaches the aesthetics of (...) Hegel and Schiller. Turning towards their idealistic philosophy creates a new understanding of Rohmer’s film theory. His ideas on cinema’s ontology and value mirror both Hegel’s emphasis on beauty as the artistic and immediate manifestation of trans-historical truth and Schiller’s belief in beauty as the condition for morality and freedom. Plato’s conceptual and intertwined triad of truth, beauty and goodness lies at the basis of his affinity to 18th century aesthetic philosophy. This close affinity raises the question of the relation between film theory and philosophy, and Rohmer’s position in this debate. He enriches his own thoughts with those of philosophers that inspired him, and enriches their legacy with his cinema-related conclusions. (shrink)

Impaired performance in verbal fluency tasks is a frequent observation in Parkinson’s disease. As to the nature of the underlying cognitive deficit, it is commonly attributed to a frontal-type dysexecutive syndrome due to nigrostriatal dopamine depletion. Whereas dopaminergic medication typically improves VF performance in PD, e.g., by ameliorating impaired lexical switching, its effect on semantic network activation is unclear. Data from priming studies suggest that dopamine causes a faster decay of semantic activation spread. The aim of the current study was (...) to examine the impact of dopaminergic medication on the dynamic change of word frequency during VF performance as a measure of semantic spreading activation. To this end, we performed a median split analysis of word frequency during phonemic and semantic VF task performance in a PD group tested while receiving dopaminergic medication as well as after drug withdrawal, and in a sample of age-matched healthy volunteers. Dopaminergic medication in the PD group significantly affected phonemic VF with improved word production as well as increased error-rates. The expected decrease of word frequency during VF task performance was significantly smaller in the PD group ON medication than in healthy volunteers across semantic and phonemic VF. No significant group-difference emerged between controls and the PD group in the OFF condition. The comparison between both treatment conditions within the PD group did not reach statistical significance. The observed pattern of results indicates a faster decay of semantic network activation during lexical access in PD patients on dopaminergic medication. In view of improved word generation, this finding is consistent with a concept of more focused neural activity by an increased signal-to-noise ratio due to dopaminergic neuromodulation. However, the effect of dopaminergic stimulation on VF output suggests a trade-off between these beneficial effects and increased error-rates. (shrink)

A rarely considered variety of objectivism in ethics takes the claim to objectivity of scientific and ethical judgments to be completely analogous. I show that this position is challenged by the socalled relativism of distance: Although we can make claims to objectivity in both areas, it is possible that agreement within each area extends to different degrees. A proper understanding of this challenge paves the way for us to make sense of two widely held assumptions: first, that there is objectivity (...) in ethics, and second, that the claim to objectivity in ethics reaches a limit that the sciences can transcend. (shrink)

George Berkeley argues that vision is a language of God, that the immediate objects of vision are arbitrary signs for tactile objects and that there is no necessary connection between what we see and what we touch. Thomas Reid, on the other hand, aims to establish a geometrical connection between visible and tactile figures. Consequently, although Reid and Berkeley's theories of vision share important elements, Reid explicitly rejects Berkeley's idea that visible figures are merely arbitrary signs for tangible bodies. But (...) is he right in doing so? I show that many passages in Berkeley's work on vision suggest that he acknowledges a geometrical connection between visibles and tangibles. So the opposition between the arbitrariness Berkeley defends and a geometrical connection cannot be as universal as Reid thinks. This paper seeks to offer a plausible reading of Berkeley's theory of vision in this regard and an explanation of why Reid interprets Berkeley differently. (shrink)

The growing use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems in the public sector and the need to control these has raised many legal questions in academic research and in policymaking. One of the timely means of legal control is accountability, which traditionally includes the ability to impose sanctions on the violator as one dimension. Even though many risks regarding the use of ADM have been noted and there is a common will to promote the safety of these systems, the relevance of (...) the safety research has been discussed little in this context. In this article, I evaluate regulating accountability over the use of ADM in the public sector in relation to the findings of safety research. I conducted the study by focusing on ongoing regulatory projects regarding ADM, the Finnish ADM legislation draft and the EU proposal for the AI Act. The critical question raised in the article is what the role of sanctions is. I ask if official accountability could mean more of an opportunity to learn from mistakes, share knowledge and compensate for harm instead of control via sanctions. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, (...) the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability. (shrink)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing stands out among the thinkers of the 18th century for his refusal to synthesize theology and philosophy. But due to his notorious ambivalence about religious questions, even Lessing’s contemporaries remained uncertain whether he ultimately sided with the former or the latter. The short dialogue Hercules and Omphale is, to the detriment of research on this topic, largely unknown. I show that the dialogue offers in a nutshell Lessing’s comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and religious situation of his (...) time. By calling on the mythical travesty of the Asian queen and the Greek hero, Lessing illustrates the mutual attraction that has led astray both Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary Lutheran orthodoxy. Implicitly, his diagnosis of the aberrations of philosophy and theology sheds light on Lessing’s own position. The twofold criticism is an attempt to restore theology as well as philosophy in their genuine forms and to reestablish their proper relationship. Through his twofold restitutio in integrum, Lessing is able to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment and, thus, to radically renew the all but forgotten theologico-philosophical antagonism. (shrink)

Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cognitive resources among collaborators and (...) the epistemic dependence that this distribution implies. On this background I shall describe different ideal types of research activities and analyze how they differ. Finally, analyzing values that drive science towards different kinds of research activities, I shall sketch the main mechanisms underlying the perceived tension between disciplines and interdisciplinarity and argue for a redefinition of accountability and quality control for interdisciplinary and collaborative science. (shrink)

This article investigates the deep-rooted logical structures underlying our thinking about other animals with a particular focus on topics relevant for cognitive primate research. We begin with a philosophical propaedeutic that makes perspicuous how we are to differentiate ontological from epistemological considerations regarding primates, while also accounting for the many perplexities that will undoubtedly be encountered upon applying this difference to concrete phenomena. Following this, we give an account of what is to be understood by the assertion of a thesis (...) of anthropological difference, identifying, inter alia, a property that fulfils the exclusivity, universality, and constitution criteria and demarcates the differentia specifica between humans and other animals. Also, we systematically develop how such theses can be formulated more moderately. Furthermore, we account for different theoretical frameworks, argumentative schemes, and sociological factors whose employment is associated with theses as such. This endeavor is carried out under the guise of anthropomorphism and anthropodenial. Doing so, we show that both are favored by the logic of cognitive primate research. Put briefly, concepts like cladistic parsimony and arguments by analogy favor anthropomorphism whereas concepts like traditional parsimony and Morgan’s canon favor anthropodenial. We close by framing these topics in the light of the self-other category mistake that lies in ascribing exclusive self-properties to some other. Lastly, we probe this category mistake for potency and scope of implications and find it to be central to and unavoidably ingrained in our thinking about other animals. (shrink)

Pure mathematical truths are commonly thought to be metaphysically necessary. Assuming the truth of pure mathematics as currently pursued, and presupposing that set theory serves as a foundation of pure mathematics, this article aims to provide a metaphysical explanation of why pure mathematics is metaphysically necessary.