Der Band versammelt 29 Aufsätze, die Walter Haug in seinen letzten Lebensjahren geschrieben hat. In ihnen entwickelt er die großen Themen seines Lebenswerkes - insbesondere seine Beschäftigung mit dem höfischen Roman und der Mystik - weiter und führt sie zusammen unter dem titelgebenden Aspekt der Negativität, d.h. des Scheiterns, des Verlustes, der Trennung. Die erotische Liebe wie die mystische Gottesbegegnung, deren absoluten Anspruch die Wirklichkeit nie ganz zu erfüllen vermag, können durch Literatur in ihrem Scheitern dargestellt und gerade dadurch erfahrbar (...) gemacht werden. Literaturtheoretische und philosophiegeschichtliche Überlegungen bilden einen Schwerpunkt des Bandes, dessen Themenkreis über den höfischen Roman und die Mystik hinaus Heldenepik, Märendichtung, Lyrik und anderes mehr umfasst. Der Band spiegelt die Lebendigkeit und Vielseitigkeit von Haugs Denken und erlaubt zuletzt, über sechs Reden und Nachrufe, einen sehr persönlichen Blick auf diesen herausragenden Wissenschaftler und Menschen. (shrink)

John Barton is convinced that in many areas of ethical enquiry the Old Testament has much to teach us, and he argues his case in this new book, which developed out of lectures given both in Canada and in Oxford. During it he looks again at the Ten Commandments; the narrative about David and his children; the ethical issues of ecology, sexual morality and property; human morality as the express command of God; and the motivation for moral conduct. By (...) the end of the book it is clear that although the Old Testament comes to us from a remote, alien and apparently unsophisticated context, the powerful minds who worked on its books still have things to say which remain evocative and suggestive for our own moral enquiries. (shrink)

In this article, I survey some philosophical attitudes to talk concerning `the' universe of sets. I separate out four different strands of the debate, namely: (i) Universism, (ii) Multiversism, (iii) Potentialism, and (iv) Pluralism. I discuss standard arguments and counterarguments concerning the positions and some of the natural mathematical programmes that are suggested by the various views.

Let mathematical justification be the kind of justification obtained when a mathematician provides a proof of a theorem. Are Gettier cases possible for this kind of justification? At first sight we might think not: The standard for mathematical justification is proof and, since proof is bound at the hip with truth, there is no possibility of having an epistemically lucky justification of a true mathematical proposition. In this paper, I argue that Gettier cases are possible (and indeed actual) in mathematical (...) reasoning. By analysing these cases, I suggest that the Gettier phenomenon indicates some upshots for actual mathematical practice. (shrink)

This book documents Szilard's energetic attempts to influence public policy on arms control and disarmament issues, both through open political processes and statements and through behindthe-scenes contacts with Washington power sources and a remarkable exercise in personal diplomacy with Nikita Khrushchev. Leo Szilard conceived of the possibility of nuclear fission sustained by a chain reaction years before it was achieved in the laboratory. He was also one of the initiators of the atomic bomb project in the United States. Yet he (...) dedicated his final years to the causes of understanding and sustaining life. The eminent physicist became a biologist and a vital force calling, for the control of nuclear and other weapons. This book documents Szilard's energetic attempts to influence public policy on arms control and disarmament issues, both through open political processes and statements and through behindthe-scenes contacts with Washington power sources and a remarkable exercise in personal diplomacy with Nikita Khrushchev. Many of the issues Szilard deals with in this valuable record of the years 1947-1963 are still crucial today. His opposition to antiballistic missile systems, his proposal for a Washington-Moscow "hot line," his work on the Pugwash conferences that brought together scientists from the East and the West, his pivotal role in the creation of the Council for a Livable World, his advocacy of a nuclear policy of no-first-use and restricted retaliation, and his support of "minimum deterrence" in place of an overwhelming counterforce capability - all these matters are as important in the 1980s as they were in the 1950s and 1960s. (shrink)

One of the most lasting contributions of Marr's posthumous book is his articulation of the different “levels of analysis” that are needed to understand vision. Although a variety of work has examined how these different levels are related, there is comparatively little examination of the assumptions on which his proposed levels rest, or the plausibility of the approach Marr articulated given those assumptions. Marr placed particular significance on computational level theory, which specifies the “goal” of a computation, its appropriateness for (...) solving a particular problem, and the logic by which it can be carried out. The structure of computational level theory is inherently teleological: What the brain does is described in terms of its purpose. I argue that computational level theory, and the reverse-engineering approach it inspires, requires understanding the historical trajectory that gave rise to functional capacities that can be meaningfully attributed with some sense of purpose or goal, that is, a reconstruction of the fitness function on which natural selection acted in shaping our visual abilities. I argue that this reconstruction is required to distinguish abilities shaped by natural selection—“natural tasks” —from evolutionary “by-products”, rather than merely demonstrating that computational goals can be embedded in a Bayesian model that renders a particular behavior or process rational. (shrink)

Many philosophers are aware of the paradoxes of set theory (e.g. Russell's paradox). For many people, these were solved by the iterative conception of set which holds that sets are formed in stages by collecting sets available at previous stages. This Element will examine possibilities for articulating this solution. In particular, the author argues that there are different kinds of iterative conception, and it's open which of them (if any) is the best. Along the way, the author hopes to make (...) some of the underlying mathematical and philosophical ideas behind tricky bits of the philosophy of set theory clear for philosophers more widely and make their relationships to some other questions in philosophy perspicuous. (shrink)

Although written consent forms are standard in clinical research, there is little regulatory or empirical guidance regarding how to most effectively review consent forms with potential participants. We developed an algorithm for embedding five questions with corrective feedback while reading consent forms with potential participants, and then applied it in the context of seven clinical research studies. A substantial proportion of participants within each protocol displayed initially inadequate responses to at least one question, but after the protocol elements were explained (...) again, most people demonstrated adequate understanding of them. These data illustrate the need for more attention not just to the content of consent forms, but also to the manner in which the forms are incorporated into the consent process. Embedding explicit inquiries about key protocol elements during consent form review and giving corrective feedback appears to be a simple yet effective way to foster better understanding of disclosed information. (shrink)

Today’s fast-moving, media lifeworld embodies many of the metaphors of its analog predecessors – including those of warfare and conflict. The metaphor of warfare is used to describe everything from corporate marketing strategies to political campaigns, often with harmful consequences. In one way of exploring the front lines of the resulting war on truth, we describe some lessons learned from the experience of military veterans who have actually endured the liminality of combat, and who emerge with what is increasingly termed (...) moral injuries. We use their experience as an analogy for competing narratives in cyberspace, where objective standards of truth and facticity are apparent casualties, and where fake news is emerging as victorious. We then apply models of social construction, specifically the practical theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning, and the metaphor of jazz improvisation in the context of Schutz’s lifeworld phenomenology as possibly useful, helpful, and hopeful ways of acting into the complexity of truth together. (shrink)

Near the end of the Amherst Cofloquium on “Nietzsche Today: The Reception of his Work after 1968,” Geoff Waite challenged the underlying historical assumption: “Is 1968 chosen because it marks the approximate date of the publication of the first volume of the splendid critical edition of Nietzsche's work by Colli and Montinari, or rather the approximate date of the until recently wholly apolitical appropriation of Nietzsche by post-structuralism? Do we wish to allude to die year of the Zagreb meeting on (...) Nietzsche of “creative Marxists” trying, as they said, to locate “the theme of human freedom in Nietzsche,” or rather to the year that Jiirgen Habermas delivered himself of the opinion that “Nietzsche is no longer contagious?” For some of us, however, 1968 has to mean also and mainly May '68.”. (shrink)

Cimino's The Deer Hunter is a mass culture product that sells. It is a conventional, manipulative Hollywood movie that moves large U.S. audiences. In trying to identify the ideological function of this film, Leibowitz has compared The Deer Hunter to Nazi ideology or German Romantic nationalist aesthetics. This comparison, however, says little about the film itself. To invoke this German tradition is to do little more than to invoke the roots of the modern culture industry in general. The Nazis are (...) only unique in that they succeeded early in blending propaganda, violence, pornography, religion and a consumer mentality in a mechanism of cultural manipulation. (shrink)

The concept of constituent power plays a major part in modern political and legal theory- in how we think about the political. This book tackles the twofold issue of public authority and public autonomy in the modern conception of the political by analysing the notion of constituent power, its function in the modern political apparatus, and debates about its meaning and function in our own context. Focusing on contemporary debates on constitutionalism "beyond" the state, Geneviève Nootens assesses the prospects for (...) recasting the notion of constituent power in a polycentric setting that challenges state sovereignty as embodying the autonomy of the political. In doing so, she argues that constituent power belongs with the conceptual apparatus of a theory of government peculiar to a statist way of knowing, and being into, the world, and that it is too much dependent upon the statist framework for it to have critical purchase on new mappings of public authority. Nootens stresses the critical need to frame public authority appropriately if we are to conceptualize a conception of collective political agency that can sustain public autonomy in the current era. Constituent Power Beyond the State will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, democratic theory, law, and constitutionalism. (shrink)

I extend Jones & Love's (J&L's) critique of Bayesian models and evaluate the conceptual foundations on which they are built. I argue that: (1) the part of Bayesian models is scientifically trivial; (2) theory is a fiction that arises from an inappropriate programming metaphor; and (3) the real scientific problems lie outside Bayesian theorizing.

Everyone agrees that testing hypotheses is important, but Bowers et al. provide scant details about where hypotheses about perception and brain function should come from. We suggest that the answer lies in considering how information about the outside world could be acquired – that is, learned – over the course of evolution and development. Deep neural networks (DNNs) provide one tool to address this question.