In einer Zeit, in der die Menschheit in einem bisher ungekannten Ausmaß nutzend wie zerstörend in die sie umgebende und tragende Natur eingreift, erhält die Frage nach der Stellung des Menschen zu ihr und damit auch nach der menschlichen Natur neue Aktualität. Anlässlich des achtzigsten Geburtstags von Friedrich Tomberg haben sich Vertreter und Vertreterinnen verschiedener Fachdisziplinen im Rahmen eines Kolloquiums zusammengefunden, um sowohl über die gegenwärtigen Gefährdungen zu diskutieren als auch sich der kreativen Potenzen zu besinnen, die den Menschen von (...) Natur aus gegeben sind und die sie zu konstruktiven Antworten auf die epochalen Herausforderungen befähigen könnten. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge bieten aus unterschiedlichen, ja gegensätzlichen Sichtweisen heraus Anregungen, die Problematik gegenwärtiger conditio humana deutlicher und differenzierter ins Bewusstsein zu heben. (shrink)

The question of truth is one of the oldest philosophical topics, but perhaps it concerns the world today more than ever. Der Beitrag geht auf einen Vortrag zurück, der 2018 in verschiedenen Fassungen beim Nietzsche-Forum München e.V., beim Nietzsche-Forum der Tongji-Universität Shanghai und beim Nietzsche-Kolloquium der Stiftung Nietzsche-Haus in Sils-Maria und 2019 in Machatschkala, Dagestan, gehalten wurde. Nietzsche was a realist about truth and he sought to criticize and reject the idealizations and moralizations that continue to dominate philosophical thinking: (...) he wanted to see how truth really stands. Following Nietzsche we can recognize more clearly that we need illusions in order to live, but that these illusions also endanger the very lives they support. We demand a final truth on which we can rely at all times, and which allows us to live together, such as the truth of God, the truth of reason, or the truth of being. But searching for such a final truth, we face “nothing,” or what Nietzsche described as “nihilism.” At the same time, however, we keep on speaking about truth and truths. How to speak—after Nietzsche—about truth without succumbing to illusion? Starting from Nietzsche’s critique of truth and Heidegger’s metaphysical account of Nietzsche’s position, this article examines how Nietzsche, in contrast to Heidegger’s ontological commitments, allows us to decide about truth on the grounds of perspectivism. While Nietzsche’s position thus seems compatible with that of Niklas Luhmann’s constructivism, Nietzsche still holds on to his truth as the truth of “an evangelist the like of which there has never been” (EH, Destiny 1). (shrink)

Die von Karl Menger und seinen Mitarbeitern (darunter Kurt Gödel) herausgegebenen "Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums" zählen zu den wichtigsten Quellenwerken der Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit, mit bahnbrechenden Beiträgen von Menger, Gödel, Tarski, Wald, John von Neumann und vielen anderen. In diesem Band liegt der Inhalt erstmals gesammelt vor. Der Nobelpreisträger Gerard Debreu schrieb die Einleitung, die Kommentare wurden vom Logiker und Gödel-Biographen John Dawson jr., dem Topologen Ryszard Engelking und dem Wirtschaftstheoretiker Werner Hildenbrand verfasst. Außerdem enthält der Band (...) einen biographischen Aufsatz über Karl Menger sowie einen von Menger verfassten Überblick über die wichtigsten topologischen und geometrischen Arbeiten des Kolloquiums. (shrink)

Almost all philosophers agree that a necessary condition on lying is that one says what one believes to be false. But, philosophers haven’t considered the possibility that the true requirement on lying concerns, rather, one’s degree-of-belief. Liars impose a risk on their audience. The greater the liar’s confidence that what she asserts is false, the greater the risk she’ll think she’s imposing on the dupe, and, therefore, the greater her blameworthiness. From this, I arrive at a dilemma: either the belief (...) requirement is wrong, or lying isn’t interesting. I suggest an alternative necessary condition for lying on a degree-of-belief framework. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the rise and fall of Wilhelm Wundt’s fortunes, focusing for the first time on the role of Richard Avenarius as catalyst for the so-called “positivist repudiation of Wundt.” Krauss specifically looks at the progressive disavowal of Wundtian ideas in the world of scientific psychology, and especially by his former pupils. This book provides important historical context and a critical discussion of the current state of research, in addition to a detailed consideration of Wundt’s and Avenarius’ systems (...) of thought, as well as on their personal relationship. The author outlines the reception of Avenarius’ conceptions among Wundt’s pupils, such as Külpe, Münsterberg and Titchener, and among other psychologists of the time, such as Ward, James and Ebbinghaus. Finally, this book presents Wundt’s two-fold attempt to respond to the new trend through a criticism of the “materialistic” psychology, and a reformulation of his own ideas. (shrink)

An award-winning theoretical physicist and best-selling author of A Universe from Nothing traces the dramatic discovery of the counterintuitive world of reality, explaining how readers can shift their perspectives to gain greater understandings of our individual roles in the universe.

This book offers an up-to-date insight into the early philosophical debate on Einsteinian relativity. The essays explore the reception and interpretation of Einstein’s ideas by some of the most important philosophical schools of the time, such as logical positivism (Reichenbach), neo-Kantianism (Cassirer, Natorp), critical realism (Sellars), and radical empiricism (Mach). The book is aimed at physicists and historians of science researching the epistemological implications of the theory of relativity, as well as to scholars in philosophy interested in understanding how leading (...) philosophical figures of the early twentieth century reacted to the relativistic revolution. (shrink)

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished (...) via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism. (shrink)

Big data biology—bioinformatics, computational biology, systems biology (including ‘omics’), and synthetic biology—raises a number of issues for the philosophy of science. This article deals with several such: Is data-intensive biology a new kind of science, presumably post-reductionistic? To what extent is big data biology data-driven? Can data ‘speak for themselves?’ I discuss these issues by way of a reflection on Carl Woese’s worry that “a society that permits biology to become an engineering discipline, that allows that science to slip into (...) the role of changing the living world without trying to understand it, is a danger to itself.” And I argue that scientific perspectivism, a philosophical stance represented prominently by Giere, Van Fraassen, and Wimsatt, according to which science cannot as a matter of principle transcend our human perspective, provides the best resources currently at our disposal to tackle many of the philosophical issues implied in the modeling of complex, multilevel/multiscale phenomena. (shrink)

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized (...) conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science. (shrink)

Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in the lorazepam (...) than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity (the extent to which volunteering of answers is affected by the confidence judgments). While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired (calibration scores), both the discriminative aspect (the ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect answers) and the response criterion setting (the confidence threshold set for volunteering a report) were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in the lorazepam (...) than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity . While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired , both the discriminative aspect and the response criterion setting were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

According to an optimistic view, affective empathy is a route to knowledge of what it is like to be in the target person’s state (“phenomenal knowledge”). Roughly, the idea is that the empathizer gains this knowledge by means of empathically experiencing the target’s emotional state. The literature on affective empathy, however, often draws a simplified picture according to which the target feels only a single emotion at a time. Co-occurring emotions (“concurrent emotions”) are rarely considered. This is problematic, because concurring (...) emotions seem to support a sceptical view according to which we cannot gain phenomenal knowledge of the target person’s state by means of affective empathy. The sceptic concludes that attaining the epistemic goal of affective empathy is difficult, in practice often impossible. I accept the sceptic’s premises, but reject the conclusion, because of the argument’s unjustified, hidden premise: that the epistemic goal of affective empathy is phenomenal knowledge. I argue that the epistemic goal of affective empathy is phenomenal understanding, not knowledge. Attention to the under-explored phenomenon of concurring emotions clarifies why this is important. I argue that this is the decisive epistemic progress in everyday cases of phenomenal understanding of another person. (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)

Der Band vereinigt 20 Studien zu Nietzsche von Werner Stegmaier, der in den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten der internationalen Nietzsche-Forschung starke Impulse gegeben und zuletzt achtzehn Jahre lang, zusammen mit Günter Abel, die Nietzsche-Studien, das international führende Organ der Nietzsche-Forschung, geleitet und die Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung herausgegeben hat. Die Studien handeln von Grundfragen der Philosophie Nietzsches. Sie setzen ein (I) mit seiner Neubestimmung der Wahrheit und der Philosophie und (II) seiner Verzeitlichung des Denkens unter (III) Verzicht auf, die (...) Vernunft' bei der Bestimmung des Menschen, interpretieren von hier aus (IV) die Anti-Lehren von Nietzsches Zarathustra, umreissen (V) Nietzsches Ethik für, gute Europäer' und schliessen (VI) mit der Interpretation von Nietzsches Selbsteinschätzung als Schicksal der Philosophie und der Menschheit (Ecce homo, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 1) und einer Einschätzung von Nietzsches Zukunft, die schon seit über einem Jahrhundert begonnen hat. Werner Stegmaier, Jahrgang 1946, war Gründungsdirektor des Instituts für Philosophie der Universität Greifswald nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion und baute das Nord- und osteuropäische Forum für Philosophie auf, das Institute für Philosophie rund um die Ostsee neu miteinander ins Gespräch brachte und dort zu philosophischen Neuorientierungen beitrug. Er hat auf vielfältigen Gebieten gearbeitet, unter anderem zur Metaphysik und ihrem Grundbegriff der Substanz, zu grossen Philosophen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, zur philosophischen Aktualität der jüdischen Tradition, vor allem aber zur Philosophie Nietzsches. Dabei ging es ihm stets um Fragen der Ersten Philosophie, insbesondere die, was unsere Realität ausmacht, wie sie durch Zeichen und Kommunikation vermittelt wird, wie Begriffe in der Zeit existieren und womit man es beim Denken zu tun hat. Er führte den Begriff der Orientierung als elementaren Begriff der Philosophie ein und entwickelte eine umfassende Philosophie der Orientierung."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Proponents of impure moral perception claim that, while there are perceptual moral experiences, these experiences epistemically depend on a priori moral knowledge. Proponents of pure moral perception claim that moral experiences can justify independently of substantive a priori moral knowledge. Some philosophers, most notably David Faraci, have argued that the pure view is mistaken, since moral perception requires previous moral background knowledge, and such knowledge could not itself be perceptual. I defend pure moral perception against this objection. I consider two (...) ways to understand the notion of “background knowledge” that is crucial to the objection. On a reading, the claim that background knowledge is necessary for moral perception is likely false. On a second and weaker reading, the claim is true, but the background knowledge in question could be perceptual, and thus compatible with pure moral perception. Thus, the objection fails. (shrink)

The differential activation hypothesis (DAH; Teasdale, 1988) proposes that individuals who are vulnerable to depression can be distinguished from non-vulnerable individuals by the degree to which negative thoughts and maladaptive cognitive processes are activated during sad mood. While retrieval of negative autobiographical memories is noted as one such process, the model does not articulate a role for deficits in recalling positive memories. Two studies were conducted to compare the autobiographical memory characteristics of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals following a sad (...) mood induction. In Study 1, features of negative memories of never-depressed and formerly depressed individuals did not differ, either in neutral or sad mood. For positive memories, groups did not differ in neutral mood, but following a sad mood induction, formerly depressed individuals rated their positive memories as less vivid than their never-depressed counterparts. Study 2 examined positive autobiographical memory features more comprehensively and replicated the finding that in a sad mood formerly depressed individuals recalled less vivid positive memories than never-depressed controls. These findings suggest that the phenomenological features of positive memories could represent an important factor in depressive vulnerability, and, more broadly, that depression may be associated with a deficit in the processing of positive material. (shrink)

This work argues that at populism's core is a rejection of pluralism. Populists will always claim that they and they alone represent the people and their true interests. Müller also shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, populists can govern on the basis of their claim to exclusive moral representation of the people: if populists have enough power, they will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes all those not considered part of the proper "people." The book proposes a number (...) of concrete strategies for how liberal democrats should best deal with populists and, in particular, how to counter their claims to speak exclusively for "the silent majority" or "the real people." - Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

We performed a qualitative analysis of the Thesaurus in order to assess its conformity with principles of good practice in terminology and ontology design. We used both the on-line browsable version of the Thesaurus and its OWL-representation (version 04.08b, released on August 2, 2004), measuring each in light of the requirements put forward in relevant ISO terminology standards and in light of ontological principles advanced in the recent literature. Version 04.08b of the NCI Thesaurus suffers from the same broad range (...) of problems that have been observed in other biomedical terminologies. For its further development, we recommend the use of a more principled approach that allows the Thesaurus to be tested not just for internal consistency but also for its degree of correspondence to that part of reality which it is designed to represent. (shrink)

The seminal work by one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, Physics and Philosophy is Werner Heisenberg's concise and accessible narrative of the revolution in modern physics, in which he played a towering role. The outgrowth of a celebrated lecture series, this book remains as relevant, provocative, and fascinating as when it was first published in 1958. A brilliant scientist whose ideas altered our perception of the universe, Heisenberg is considered the father of quantum physics; he (...) is most famous for the Uncertainty Principle, which states that quantum particles do not occupy a fixed, measurable position. His contributions remain a cornerstone of contemporary physics theory and application. (shrink)

This Festschrift in honour of Werner G. Jeanrond, currently Master of St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, UK, investigates the challenge of alterity for Christianity, exploring and elaborating on this core concern in Jeanrond's hermeneutical theology. Blurring disciplinary boundaries, more than thirty of Jeanrond's colleagues and companions from ten countries track the dynamics of difference driven by the encounter with the self as other, the other as other, and God as the radical other. Who is my other? What do (...) I encounter when I encounter my other? And what responses and responsibilities does the encounter with my other evoke? Grappling with questions like these, the contributions to this compilation analyse alterity in the Bible, alterity in philosophy, alterity in theology, alterity in interreligious dialogues, and the radical alterity of God. Tying in with Jeanrond's explorations of the many faces and facets of the other, this Festschrift ultimately aims to advocate openness to the other as a necessity for both religion and reflections on religion. (shrink)

For more than 20 years, research has proven the beneficial effect of natural frequencies when it comes to solving Bayesian reasoning tasks (Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995). In a recent meta-analysis, McDowell & Jacobs (2017) showed that presenting a task in natural frequency format increases performance rates to 24% compared to only 4% when the same task is presented in probability format. Nevertheless, on average three quarters of participants in their meta-analysis failed to obtain the correct solution for such a task (...) in frequency format. In this paper, we present an empirical study on what participants typically do wrong when confronted with natural frequencies. We found that many of them did not actually use natural frequencies for their calculations, but translated them back into complicated probabilities instead. This switch from the intuitive presentation format to a less intuitive calculation format will be discussed within the framework of psychological theories (e.g., the Einstellung effect). (shrink)

Nietzsche ist mit dem 1887 erschienenen V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft sein reifstes Aphorismen-Werk gelungen. Es handelt von der Heiterkeit der Zwischenzeit, in der die Befreiung des Geistes von jahrtausendealten Vorurteilen gelingt, bis die von der Tragödie des Nihilismus erreicht werden, die zu ihrer Orientierung weiterhin feste Bindungen nötig haben. Viele der 40 + 1 Aphorismen gehören zu den prominentesten in Nietzsches Werk. Hier werden sie methodisch in ihren internen und externen Kontexten und ihrer stets aussagekräftigen schriftstellerischen Form erschlossen. Dabei (...) werden neue Tiefen in Nietzsches Philosophie sichtbar. (shrink)

In teaching statistics in secondary schools and at university, two visualizations are primarily used when situations with two dichotomous characteristics are represented: 2×2 tables and tree diagrams. Both visualizations can be depicted either with probabilities or with frequencies. Visualizations with frequencies have been shown to help students significantly more in Bayesian reasoning problems than probability visualizations do. Because tree diagrams or double-trees (which are largely unknown in school) are node-branch-structures, these two visualizations (compared to the 2×2 table) can even simultaneously (...) display probabilities on branches and frequencies inside the nodes. This is a teaching advantage as it allows the frequency concept to be used to better understand probabilities. However, 2×2 tables and (double-) trees have a decisive disadvantage: While joint probabilities (e.g., P(AB)) are represented in 2×2 tables but no conditional probabilities (e.g., P(A|B)), it is exactly the other way around with (double-) trees. Therefore, a visualization that is equally suitable for the representation of joint probabilities and conditional probabilities is desirable. In this article, we present a new visualization—the frequency net—in which all absolute frequencies and all types of probabilities can be depicted. In addition to a detailed theoretical analysis of the frequency net, we report the results of a study with 249 university students that shows that “net diagrams” can improve reasoning without previous instruction to a similar extent as 2×2 tables and double-trees. Regarding questions about conditional probabilities, frequency visualizations (2×2 table, double-tree, or net diagram with natural frequencies) are consistently superior to probability visualizations. The frequency net performs as well as the frequency double-tree. Only the 2×2 table with frequencies—the only visualization that participants were already familiar with —led to higher performance rates. If, on the other hand, a question about a joint probability had to be answered, all implemented visualizations clearly supported participants’ performance, and no uniform format effect becomes visible. Participants reached the highest performance in the versions with probability 2×2 tables and probability net diagrams. Furthermore, after conducting a detailed error analysis, we report interesting error shifts between the two information formats and the different visualizations and give recommendations for teaching probability. (shrink)

While Adorno has tended to be read as a critic of the administered world and the consumer industry rather than a Marxist, Adorno and Marx establishes Adorno's negative dialectics as fundamental for understanding Marx's critique of political economy. This conception of the critique of political economy as a critical theory marks both a radical departure from traditional Marxist scholarship and from traditional readings of Adorno's work and warns against identifying Adorno with Marx or Marx with Adorno. Rather, it highlights the (...) intersection between Adorno's critical theory and Marx's critique of political economy that produces a critical theory of economic objectivity that moves beyond Marxian economics and Adornonian social theory. Adorno and Marx offers an ingenious account of critical social theory. Its subversion of the economic categories of political economy contributes to the cutting-edge of contemporary social theory and its critique of social practice. (shrink)