It is well known that the process of scientific inquiry, according to Peirce, is drivenby three types of inference, namely abduction, deduction, and induction. What isbehind these labels is, however, not so clear. In particular, the common identificationof “abduction” with “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE) begs the question,since IBE appears to be covered by Peirce's concept of induction, not that of abduction.Consequently, abduction ought to be distinguished from IBE, at least on Peirce's account. The main aim of the paper, (...) however, is to show that this distinction is most relevant with respect to current problems in philosophy of science and epistemology (like attempts to supply suitable notions of realism and truth as well as related concepts like coherence and unification). In particular, I also try to show that (and in what way) Peirce's inferential triad can function as a method that ensures both coherence and correspondence. It is in this respect that his careful distinction between abduction and induction (or IBE) ought to be heeded. (shrink)

It is well known that the process of scientific inquiry, according to Peirce, is drivenby three types of inference, namely abduction, deduction, and induction. What isbehind these labels is, however, not so clear. In particular, the common identificationof abduction with Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) begs the question,since IBE appears to be covered by Peirce's concept of induction, not that of abduction.Consequently, abduction ought to be distinguished from IBE, at least on Peirce's account. The main aim of the paper, (...) however, is to show that this distinction is most relevant with respect to current problems in philosophy of science and epistemology (like attempts to supply suitable notions of realism and truth as well as related concepts like coherence and unification). In particular, I also try to show that (and in what way) Peirce's inferential triad can function as a method that ensures both coherence and correspondence. It is in this respect that his careful distinction between abduction and induction (or IBE) ought to be heeded. (shrink)

This paper reviews an ongoing debate about moral standards for vocational education in German speaking countries. At the centre of the controversy is the question of universalistic versus domain‐specific moral orientations, namely the question of whether business people ought to develop different moral points of view in different situations (such as ‘private’ versus ‘professional’). Of pivotal importance in this context is also a prominent ethical approach (by Karl Homann, a philosopher in the tradition of liberal economists) which serves as a (...) foundation for those who advocate domain specificity and which is strongly criticized by their counterparts. This approach is also presented, since the author believes that it does not entail all of what its protagonists claim. Moreover, as argued in the last section, the purported dichotomy of universalism versus domain specificity may even be entirely overcome. The point is that Homann's ethics perhaps do not fit into the framework of Kohlberg's six stages and might therefore be reconstructed as entailing moral segmentation. However, it is well accommodated by a more comprehensive stage taxonomy suggested by the author. (shrink)

Kohlberg basamakları çerçevesine uymayan ahlâkî yargı sıklıkla geçiş basamaklarında değerlendirilmektedir. Bu konuların bir denge basamağında olmayıp, daha çok iç çatışma düzeyinde oldukları farz edilmektedir. Bu makalede, sözü edilen görüşe karşı çıkılmakta, 4 1/2 yargısının diğer herhangi bir ahlakî yargı tipinden daha tutarsız olmadığı ve Basamak 4 1/2'un ayrı bir basamak olarak kabulü gerektiği savunulmaktadır. Bu kabul ancak; ahlakî biliş mimarisinde ayrı bir köşe taşı olarak Basamak 4 1/2' u içine alan yeni bir basamak sınışandırması çerçevesi içinde mümkün olacaktır.

“Selective abduction” is a notion coined by L. Magnani, who contrasts it with the more common notion of “creative abduction”. However, selective abduction may easily be confused with inference to the best explanation. This constitutes a problem, if IBE is reconstructed as an inductive inference. For on the one hand, abduction and induction must be distinct. On the other hand, Gabbay and Woods, but also Hintikka and Kapitan, even include hypothesis selection as part and parcel of the abductive inference per (...) se. Consequently, there seems to be a riddle about what selective abduction clearly means and how it could be distinguished from other forms of reasoning. The contribution tries to solve this problem by explicating selective abduction and embedding it in an overall taxonomy of inferences. (shrink)

A new approach to Hume's problem of induction that justifies the optimality of induction at the level of meta-induction. Hume's problem of justifying induction has been among epistemology's greatest challenges for centuries. In this book, Gerhard Schurz proposes a new approach to Hume's problem. Acknowledging the force of Hume's arguments against the possibility of a noncircular justification of the reliability of induction, Schurz demonstrates instead the possibility of a noncircular justification of the optimality of induction, or, more precisely, of (...) meta-induction (the application of induction to competing prediction models). Drawing on discoveries in computational learning theory, Schurz demonstrates that a regret-based learning strategy, attractivity-weighted meta-induction, is predictively optimal in all possible worlds among all prediction methods accessible to the epistemic agent. Moreover, the a priori justification of meta-induction generates a noncircular a posteriori justification of object induction. Taken together, these two results provide a noncircular solution to Hume's problem. Schurz discusses the philosophical debate on the problem of induction, addressing all major attempts at a solution to Hume's problem and describing their shortcomings; presents a series of theorems, accompanied by a description of computer simulations illustrating the content of these theorems (with proofs presented in a mathematical appendix); and defends, refines, and applies core insights regarding the optimality of meta-induction, explaining applications in neighboring disciplines including forecasting sciences, cognitive science, social epistemology, and generalized evolution theory. Finally, Schurz generalizes the method of optimality-based justification to a new strategy of justification in epistemology, arguing that optimality justifications can avoid the problems of justificatory circularity and regress. (shrink)

This chapter offers a close reading of a passage from the literary and philosophical work Minima Moralia that enacts Theodor W. Adorno's radical concept of nonpropositional truth content in philosophical aesthetics after Auschwitz. Readers of Adorno's texts, especially those devoted to philosophical aesthetics, can hardly fail to be struck by their chiastic structure. The aesthetic theory that Adorno develops constitutes not only a theory of the aesthetic but also a theory that is itself aesthetic, hence a theory of literature that (...) exhibits qualities associated with literary texts, and a theory of music that harbors within itself traces of musical composition. The rhetorically self-conscious tropes of his posthumous Aesthetic Theory, the stylized literary studies of his Notes to Literature, his musically inflected meditations on musicological questions from Ludwig van Beethoven to Arnold Schönberg, and so many of his other texts perform this provocative inversion in a variety of registers and conceptual modulations. (shrink)

During a conference entitled “Un logicien consciencieux. La philosophie de Evert Willem Beth,” held in Nancy in 1998 and published in this journal, volume 3, cahier 4 [Barth, Heinzmann et al. 1998-1999], the participants regretted that a reasoned biography of Beth was not available. In view of the efforts made since then in this direction, in particular by Paul van Ulsen in his PhD thesis in Dutch [2000], this article attempts to provide an overview of Beth’s work for a broader (...) community of philosophers of science. However, my focus is not so much on Beth’s widely discussed and important contributions to mathematical logic, where his most creative merits reside. My aim is to emphasize Beth’s philosophical and cultural background. Both are also discussed in the first two chapters of Ulsen’s thesis, which globally focuses on Beth’s work in logic. Of course, philosophical and scientific aspects cannot be systematically separated, but Beth’s influence on the philosophy of mathematics between the 1950s and 1960s seems to me large enough to highlight it here. Beth is one of the very few philosophers who also presented highly technically relevant results in logic, or one of the few logicians who also wrote philosophical papers, not only in his youth or old age, but throughout his career. In his 741-page magnum opus The Foundations of Mathematics [1959], he combines the treatment of philosophical and logico-mathematical problems under the perspective that the traditional deductive procedure is an essential and not merely incidental element in mathematical proof so that “logic must play the principal role in a philosophical examination of mathematical thought” [1959, XI]. By 1937, Beth was “convinced that the only possibility of founding mathematics in a truly satisfactory way is to apply intuitive and formal methods simultaneously in such a way that they can control and verify each other” (“L’évidence intuitive dans les mathématiques modernes” [1937, 165]). In 1956, he still justified the emphasis on the intuitive element of proof by “certain complications that the development of these [formalist] tendencies would later give rise to” (“Poincaré et la philosophie” [1956b, 238, transl. G. H.]). (shrink)

Statistical mechanics attempts to explain the behaviour of macroscopic physical systems in terms of the mechanical properties of their constituents. Although it is one of the fundamental theories of physics, it has received little attention from philosophers of science. Nevertheless, it raises philosophical questions of fundamental importance on the nature of time, chance and reduction. Most philosophical issues in this domain relate to the question of the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. This book addresses issues inherent in this reduction: (...) the time-asymmetry of thermodynamics and its absence in statistical mechanics; the role and essential nature of chance and probability in this reduction when thermodynamics is non-probabilistic; and how, if at all, the reduction is possible. Compiling contributions on current research by experts in the field, this is an invaluable survey of the philosophy of statistical mechanics for academic researchers and graduate students interested in the foundations of physics. (shrink)

The volume contains the written versions of all papers given at the workshop, divided into five chapters and followed by Alvin Goldman's replies in the sixth.

Max Weber ist ein Klassiker der Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Sein Werk gehört weltweit zum Kernbestand von Forschung und Lehre, und dies gilt besonders für seine methodologischen Schriften, denen auch 100 Jahre nach ihrer Publikation nachhaltige Aufmerksamkeit beschieden ist. Allerdings gibt es immer noch kein einvernehmliches Verständnis von Webers Position. Der Grund dafür liegt in der mangelnden Aufarbeitung der Quellen. Viele wichtige Autoren, deren Werke Weber rezipierte, sind in Vergessenheit geraten. Sie in Erinnerung zu rufen, ist dringend notwendig, um seine Wissenschaftslehre (...) in ihrer ganzen Komplexität zu verstehen. 0Das vorliegende Sammelwerk leistet einen Beitrag zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke. Es rekonstruiert den Denkraum des späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, in dem sich Weber bewegte, und zeigt anhand von Studien zu ausgewählten Autoren, wie umfassend und interdisziplinär sein Denken tatsächlich war. Dabei werden nicht nur Autoren aus den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften berücksichtigt, sondern auch solche aus den Naturwissenschaften, denn Weber war mit dem Fortschritt dieser Disziplinen ebenfalls vertraut. (shrink)

Wer hat sich nicht schon gefragt, was es mit unseren moralischen Überzeugungen auf sich hat: Spiegeln diese die Wahrheit in Sachen Moral wieder? Gibt es eine solche Wahrheit überhaupt? Oder sind moralische Überzeugungen eher das Produkt unserer Interessen und Neigungen, Ausdruck unserer Wünsche oder Mittel der Machtausübung, das bloße Ergebnis unserer Erziehung, unseres sozialen Umfelds oder gar eine List der Evolution? Ist es eine Illusion, wenn man glaubt, echte moralische Erkenntnisse gewinnen zu können? Kurzum: Kann die Moral Objektivität beanspruchen? Die (...) vorliegende Arbeit versucht, eine Antwort auf diese zentrale Frage der Metaethik zu geben. Dazu wird zunächst gezeigt, dass uns der Status der Moral ein Rätsel ist, weil wir dazu neigen, drei Thesen für wahr zu halten, die nicht zugleich wahr sein können. Die drei prinzipiell möglichen Strategien zur Auflösung dieses Trilemmas geraten jedoch in Schwierigkeiten, weil es bisher nicht gelungen ist, ein passendes Vergleichsobjekt für die Moral zu finden. In dieser Arbeit wird dafür argumentiert, dass die Moral in genau der gleichen Weise wie die Wissenschaft Objektivität beanspruchen kann. (shrink)

This volume offers a reappraisal of Donald Davidson's influential philosophy of thought, meaning, and language, Twelve specially written essays by leading philosophers in the field illuminate a range of themes and problems relating to these ...

The account of meta-induction (G. Schurz, Hume’s problem solved: the optimality of meta-induction, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2019) proposes a two-step solution to the problem of induction. Step 1 consists in a mathematical a priori justification of the predictive optimality of meta-induction, upon which step 2 builds a meta-inductive a posteriori justification of object-induction based on its superior track record (Sect. 1). Sterkenburg (Br J Philos Sci, forthcoming. 10.1086/717068/) challenged this account by arguing that meta-induction can only provide a (non-circular) justification (...) of inductive predictions for now and for the next future, but not a justification of inductive generalizations (Sect. 2). This paper develops a meta-inductive method that does provide an a posteriori justification of inductive generalizations, in the form of exchangeability conditions (Sect. 3). In Sect. 4, a limitation of the proposed method is worked out: while the method can justify weakly lawlike generalizations, the justification of strongly lawlike generalizations (claimed to hold for all eternity) requires epistemic principles going beyond meta-induction based on predictive success. (shrink)

In this article I argue that contractarian theory is a fruitful approach for dealing with questions of legitimacy in light of globalisation. I try to point out that impaired conditions for providing collective goods in nation-states do not call the legitimacy of globalisation into question, even if the provision of such goods meets with consent amongst the citizens of the nation-state. The need to raise taxes as a consequence of the transfer of mobile resources to other countries can indicate the (...) existence of state activities which lack legitimacy from the contractarian perspective. However, the impossibility of applying the exclusion principle in providing collective goods indeed entails legitimatory problems of globalisation. In this respect, a need for international agreements exists. Nevertheless, unilateral attempts by nation-states to withraw the domestic economy from global influences can interfere with the welfare of other collectives and they therefore lack legitimacy, a moral consequence which is in danger of being neglected even from a contractarian approach. (shrink)

Das Buch bietet einen hervorragenden Einstieg in die Theorie von Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Es werden die zentralen Theorieannahmen dargestellt und die Bedeutung für die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften der Gegenwart aufgezeigt.

Das Buch bietet einen hervorragenden Einstieg in die Theorie von Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Es werden die zentralen Theorieannahmen dargestellt und die Bedeutung für die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften der Gegenwart aufgezeigt.

Theodor W. Adorno's multifaceted work has exerted a profound impact on far-ranging discourses and critical practices in late modernity. His analysis of the fate of art following its alleged end, of ethical imperatives "after Auschwitz," of the negative dialectic of myth and freedom from superstition, of the manipulation of consciousness by the unequal siblings of fascism and the culture industry, and of the narrowly-conceived concept of reason that has given rise to an unprecedented exploitation of nature and needless human suffering, (...) all speak to central concerns of our time. The essays collected here analyze the full range of implications emanating from Adorno's demand that the task of critical thinking be to imagine a mode of being in the world that occurs in and through a language that has liberated itself from the spell of an alleged historical and political inevitability, what he once tellingly called a "language without soil." Adorno' s finely chiseled sentences perform a ceaseless gesture of thoughtful vigilance, a vigilance understood not in the sense of moralizing or ethical normativity but of a rigorous attention to the presuppositions of thinking itself. The volume's fresh readings conspire to yield a refractory and unorthodox Adorno, a suggestive and at times infuriating thinker of the first order, whose intellectual gestures sponsor politically conscious modes of theoretical speculation in a late modernity that may still have a future because its language and aspirations are without soil. Also included is an annotated translation of a seminal interview Adorno gave in 1969 concerning the relationship of Critical Theory to political activism. In it, the dialectical interplay between thought and action forcefully emerges. (shrink)

Der Begriff einer weisen Entscheidung ist methodisch leichter zugänglich als der allgemeine Begriff der Weisheit. Wenn wir wissen, was weise Entscheidungen ausmacht, dann öffnet sich uns auch ein Zugang zu den entsprechenden Eigenschaften und Fähigkeiten einer Person. Die Abhandlung soll zeigen, dass sich eine Analyse weiser Entscheidungen nicht auf eine attributive Lesart: „S entscheidet weise“ beschränken kann, sondern die adverbiale Lesart: „S entscheidet sich auf eine weise Art“ berücksichtigen muss. Die externalistische Perspektive der ersten Lesart führt zwar zu einer notwendigen (...) qualitativen Bedingung, der jede weise Entscheidung im Resultat gerecht werden muss. Erst die internalistische Perspektive der zweiten Lesart entspricht unseren Intuitionen, dass ein solches Resultat nicht zufällig zustande gekommen sein darf, sondern sich bestimmten epistemischen Leistungen des Akteurs verdankt, wie seiner Urteilskompetenz und Reflexionsfähigkeit der Gründe für die Entscheidung. Diese Leistungen schließen insbesondere die Meta-Fähigkeit, erststufige Gründe von zweitstufigen Gründen zu trennen ein, die sich nicht auf den Wert, den das Objekt der Entscheidung hat beziehen, sondern auf den Wert der Einstellung, die der Entscheidung zugrunde liegt. (shrink)

David Hume gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Denker des 18. Jahrhunderts. Als radikaler Empirist wandte er sich kritisch gegen den Rationalismus und die metaphysischen Spekulationen seiner Zeitgenossen und plädierte stattdessen für eine "experimentelle", allein auf Beobachtung und Erfahrung gegründete Methode. Detailliert und anschaulich zeichnet Streminger Humes Werdegang nach und entwirft zugleich das politische, gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Panorama einer ganzen Epoche. Er verknüpft die Lebenserzählung mit ebenso fundierten wie verständlichen Einführungen in sämtliche Schriften Humes, macht deutlich, warum seine Fragestellungen noch heute (...) herausfordern, und richtet sein besonderes Augenmerk auf Humes weitreichende Religionskritik. (shrink)

Gerhard Kruger (1902-1972) konnte seine philosophiegeschichtlichen Untersuchungen nicht zum Abschluss bringen. Dieses Manuskript uas dem Nachlass stellt radikal die Frage nach der Geschichtlichkeit, die nach Kruger in dem Satz gipfelt: Wir leben in einer Zeit totaler Geschichtlichkeit. Ein Vorwort von Richard Schaeffler eroffnet den Zugang zu Gerhard Krugers Denken.