We respond to Jack Vromen’s critique of our discussion of the missing micro-foundations of work on routines and capabilities in economics and management research. Contrary to Vromen, we argue that inter-level relations can be causal, and that inter-level causal relations may also obtain between routines and actions and interactions; there are no macro-level causal mechanisms; and on certain readings of the notion of routines and capabilities, these may be macro causes.

The paper explores the concept of a Narrative which is defined as a connected structure on a set of constrained actions and forbearances. Explanation via Narratives is compared with explanation through variable centred methodology and an interpretation of correlations in terms of Narratives is also outlined.

We study the Iterated Bilateral Reciprocity game in which the need for help arises randomly. Players are heterogeneous with respect to ‘neediness’ i.e. probability of needing help. We find bounds on the amount of heterogeneity which can be tolerated for cooperation (all players help when asked to help) to be sustainable in a collectivity. We introduce the notion of Generalised Reciprocity. Individuals make a costly first move to benefit another under the reasonable expectation that either the other or somebody else (...) will reciprocate. We hope that these tentative attempts at extending Axelrod’s seminal work on cooperation will inspire future efforts in the field of organisational culture and social theory more generally. (shrink)

The paper considers some of the implications of Coleman Diagrams in the context of the study of social interaction at the microlevel. Such studies cannot be adequately modeled without improved theoretical rigor. The Theory of Comparative Narratives is advanced as one possible analytical framework of the modeling of interactions.

Conceptions of self? management and the labor managed firm have not been well received by economists. They have, however, proved to be a continuing interest in the socialist movement from Marx onwards. Prychitko claims that by examining the humanist side of Marx, a socialist case can be made both for the LMF and markets in a postmodern world. Such a case rests upon an assumption that self? management confers competitive advantage by enhancing information sharing. The case, though interesting, is not (...) yet made. (shrink)

Today, “scientism“ is a concept with a negative connotation in every language. Although many definitions are circulating, they have the assessment in common that scientism implicates a blind faith in science, which is wrong, simple-minded and even dangerous. However, the question is, who actually is defending that kind of position? Is scientism not just a ghost, a projection, an intellectual scarecrow in order to use many people’s fear of science in order to bash rationalistic opinions? This article develops the argument (...) that scientism is a real historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It starts by outlining the history of the French word “scientisme” and the debates around it and discovers that the word is not at all of recent invention, but goes back to the 1840s and received its negative emphasis in the late nineteenth century when “scientific spiritism” on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science. A polemical counter-concept was therefore needed. Soon afterward some scientists and philosophers emerge, like Félix Le Dantec, Abel Rey or Marcel Boll, who turn around the invective in order to describe their own optimistic and rationalistic conception of science. In conclusion the article argues that scientism has to be understood as an intellectual project and as an optimistic thought-style in science that does not at all correspond to the prejudices of the amoral scientist or the power-hungry technocrat, but is represented mostly by outsiders and nonconformists. (shrink)

This first quotation already calls into question many of the most often repeated and best known theses about Dilthey's position on the social and historiographical sciences. For example, what I quoted is not compatible with the widespread opinion that Dilthey made subjective empathy the foundation of interpretation, that he was psychologizing the "operation called Verstehen," or that he thought all historiography and social science must be based on psychology and must, in the last resort, rely on introspection or the so (...) called "subjective experience". This mistaken opinion has influenced Max Weber and has dominated one side of the whole dispute about the methodological character of historiography, psychology, and the social sciences even up to the present writings of men like T. Abel and P. Winch. A quite different picture of Dilthey's position will have emerged at the end of this paper. (shrink)

These specialised and annotated papers closely examine a number of Platonic texts including the Republic, Symposium and Gorgias. Extracts are in English translation.

Peter Abell's review of Marxism and Workers’ Self‐Management misses the mark. Contrary to Abell's assertions, my book neither champions a postmodern case for self‐management, nor does it try to salvage a socialist case for self‐management by focusing on Marx's humanism. Self‐managed firms require markets. It may be interesting to ask if that saves Marx, or if that also requires postmodernity, but these were not the concerns or arguments of the book.

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

The paper introduces a special issue of the journal Philosophical Problems in Science (ZFN) on the topic of the nature and norms of scientific explanation.

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a far from perfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs to the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett :27–51, 1991), that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and formally more perspicuous than other proposals previously defended in (...) the literature. It also successfully enforces a non-redundancy principle, suggested by Ladyman and Ross, that aims to exclude from real-patternhood those patterns that can be ignored without loss of information about the target dataset, and which their own account fails to enforce. (shrink)

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

Abstract:I defend that the distinctive object of our aesthetic evaluation of films is the full emotional experience, taken as a unified whole, that we go through as we watch a film and that I call the viewer's film emotional life. The aesthetic value itself—the positive quality we perceive in the experience of having had a certain film emotional life—is in the significance we experience in that film emotional life insofar as it contributes to the discovery and the exploration of the (...) viewer's human and individual emotional nature. I finally suggest that the explanation of the positive felt quality of such experience is in the progress it represents regarding our resourcefulness as emotional subjects toward the realization of our individual ideal of life. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The book (...) series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

The debate between the amodal and the grounded views of cognition seems to be stuck. Their only substantial disagreement is about the vehicle or format of concepts. Amodal theorists reject the grounded claim that concepts are couched in the same modality-specific format as representations in sensory systems. The problem is that there is no clear characterization of format or its neural correlate. In order to make the disagreement empirically meaningful and move forward in the discussion we need a neurocognitive criterion (...) for representational format. I argue that efficient coding models in computational neuroscience can be used to characterize modal codes: These are codes which satisfy special informational demands imposed by sensory tasks. Additionally, I examine recent studies on neural coding and argue that although they do not provide conclusive evidence for either the grounded or the amodal views, they can be used to determine what predictions these approaches can make and what experimental and theoretical developments would be required to settle the debate. (shrink)

Frontmatter -- Vorwort zur 2. Auflage -- Vorwort -- Inhaltsverzeichnis -- Erster Teil. Die Willen-zur-Macht-Prozesse -- Zweiter Teil. Der Gedanke der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen -- Dritter Teil. Wiederkunftslehre und neuzeitliches Denken -- Literaturverzeichnis -- Personenregister -- Sachregister.

This textbook is a flexible and affordable collection of classic and contemporary primary sources in philosophy. The readings cover seven basic topics of Western Philosophy. The selections are long enough to present a self-contained argument but not so lengthy that students lose track of the main point. The book includes a glossary and an appendix on logic and argumentation.

In this incisive study of the biological and cultural origins of the human self, the author challenges readers to re-think ideas about the self and consciousness as being exclusive to humans. In their place, he expounds a metatheoretical approach to the self as a purposeful system of extended cognition common to animal life: the invisible medium maintaining mind, body and environment as an integrated 'field of being'. Supported by recent research in evolutionary and developmental studies together with related discoveries in (...) animal behavior and the neurosciences, the author examines the factors that have shaped the evolution of the animal self across widely different species and times, through to the modern, technologically enmeshed human self; the differences between which are presented as relations of degree rather than absolute differences. Much like our primitive ancestors, he contends, routine human behaviour is governed more by unconscious instinct than self-conscious rationality, and is generally resistant to any major changes in customary habits of life, until compelled in time to do so. However, in extreme and rapidly evolving circumstances, as with climate change, tardy responses may become so detached from reality as to constitute an actual threat to survival. (shrink)

Lewis Carroll: Logic Charles L. Dodgson, 1832-1898, was a British mathematician, logician, and the author of the ‘Alice’ books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. His fame derives principally from his literary works, but in the twentieth century some of his mathematical … Continue reading Lewis Carroll: Logic →.

Lewis Carroll: Logic Charles L. Dodgson, 1832-1898, was a British mathematician, logician, and the author of the ‘Alice’ books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. His fame derives principally from his literary works, but in the twentieth century some of his mathematical … Continue reading Lewis Carroll: Logic →.

"Verzeichnis der Schriften Hans Posers": p. [463]-480.

I defend Christopher Peacocke's and Robert Hopkins's experienced resemblance accounts of depiction against criticisms put forward by Gavin McIntosh in a recent article in this journal. I argue that, while there may be reasons for rejecting Peacocke's and Hopkins's accounts, McIntosh fails to provide any.

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

I argue that our everyday evaluations of architecture are primarily evaluations of spaces and, in particular, of their inhabitability— that is, whether they serve or can serve to the realization of our individual ideal of life. Inhabitability is not only a functional criterion but an aesthetic one as well. It is aesthetic insofar as the evaluations about inhabitability include evaluations about the quality of the experience of actually doing something in —or simply occupying—a particular space. This aesthetic aspect of our (...) everyday evaluations explains, on one hand, the distinctive features of our everyday preferences for some architectonic spaces over others—namely, their very personal nature; their noticeable value in our daily lives; their inseparability from the activities we plan to realize in those spaces; and the importance of the spaces which are contiguous to the one we are evaluating. And on the other, it both reveals architecture’s significance for the quality of our daily life and serves as a guide for us to choose spaces that improve that quality. (shrink)

One of the most prominent ethical concerns regarding emerging neurotechnologies is mental privacy. This is the idea that we should have control over access to our neural data and to the information about our mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. A key issue is whether this information needs more stringent protection than other kinds of personal information. I will articulate and support the view, underlying recent regulatory frameworks, that mental privacy requires a special treatment because (...) of its relation to relevant aspects of personal identity. It has been suggested that this approach could be supported by the idea that mental privacy constitutes a fundamental psychological dimension of privacy. The connection between this psychological view of privacy and identity can be traced back to Irwin Altman’s idea that privacy is an interpersonal boundary regulation process. However, it is not clear whether this notion of privacy can be associated with a conception of identity that is relevant in contemporary neuroethics. I will suggest that the narrative and relational approach to identity, a prominent view in recent ethical discussions of neurotechnology, lines up with key aspects of Altman’s proposal. I suggest that if mental privacy is an essential component of identity, the latter could be affected by technological mind-reading. (shrink)

John Venn and Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) created systems of logic diagrams capable of representing classes (sets) and their relations in the form of propositions. Each is a proof method for syllogisms, and Carroll's is a sound and complete system. For a large number of sets, Carroll diagrams are easier to draw because of their self-similarity and algorithmic construction. This regularity makes it easier to locate and thereby to erase cells corresponding with classes destroyed by the premises of an (...) argument, a particularly difficult task in Venn diagrams for more than four sets. Carroll diagrams can represent existential propositions easily, so they are capable of clearly representing more complex problems than Venn's system can. Finally, both Carroll and Venn diagrams are maximal, in the sense that no additional logic information like inclusive disjunctions is able to be represented by them. Carroll's logic diagrams and logic trees constitute his visual logic system. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza los aspectos fundamentales de la teoría del conocimiento expuestos en el curso dictado por fray Juan de Fuica (OFM), en 1689, en el Colegio San Diego de Alcalá (Santiago de Chile). Presentamos primero una breve descripción de los Comentarios filosóficos del fraile, volumen en el que se incluyen los Comentarios Acerca del alma sobre el que centraremos nuestro estudio. Luego, analizamos la doctrina del conocimiento ad mentem Scoti expuesta en este manuscrito inédito, testimonio exclusivo de la enseñanza (...) filosófica de la época. El principal aporte de este trabajo es visibilizar parte del patrimonio filosófico colonial del país, lo que permitirá futuras investigaciones en esta área de la disciplina. (shrink)

El artículo ofrece, en un inicio, algunos aspectos biográficos novedosos de la vida de Manuel Antonio Talavera, un teólogo paraguayo y abogado de la Real Audiencia que enseñó filosofía en Chile a finales del siglo XVIII. Luego, se presenta la transcripción de parte del curso de filosofía natural (De corporibus coelestibus) preparado para los alumnos del Real Convictorio Carolino de Santiago de Chile. Hasta ahora, Talavera es conocido sobre todo como el primer cronista de la Independencia de Chile. Por ello, (...) hacemos público por primera vez de manera íntegra un trabajo suyo relativo a su actividad docente en aulas santiaguinas, con lo que descubrimos también su condición de filósofo en Chile durante el fin del período colonial. (shrink)