Die Kontroversen um Imre Lakatos' "Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme" haben zu der Frage geführt, ob auf Basis der von Lakatos entwickelten Standards für die Bewertung von konkurrierenden Theorien und Forschungsprogrammen auch heuristische Empfehlungen begründet werden können, die die von Wissenschaftlern auszuführenden Handlungen im Interesse der Maximierung von Erkenntnisfortschritt normieren. Eine solche Frage steht im Zusammenhang mit einem zentralen Anliegen der Popperschen Wissenschaftstheorie: "Wir wollen die Regeln, oder, wenn man will, die Normen aufstellen, nach denen sich der Forscher richtet, wenn er Wissenschaft (...) treibt, wie wir es uns denken". Ob die Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme, die Lakatos als Weiterentwicklung des kritisch-rationalistischen Falsifikationismus verstanden wissen will, diesen Ansprüchen genügt, wurde zuerst von Paul K. Feyerabend und Thomas S. Kuhn bezweifelt. Im folgenden werden zunächst deren Kritiken, die Antworten von Lakatos sowie Analysen von J. J. C. Smart, Wolfgang Stegmüller und Philip Quinn diskutiert. Anschließend wird ein neuer Versuch Alan Musgraves kritisch überprüft, unter Rückgriff auf die Bewertungskriterien der Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme heuristische Empfehlungen zu begründen. (shrink)

Self-deception entails apparent conceptual paradoxes and poses the dilemma between two competing needs: the need for stability of the self-concept, on the one hand, and the need to accept reality, on the other. It is argued, first, that conceptual difficulties can be avoided by distinguishing two levels of explanation. Whereas, in a personal language, “the person” deceives him- or her-self, a cognitive approach explains this self-deception by reference to the interplay of cognitive processes of which the person is not aware. (...) Second, the tension between stability and adjustment of the self can be resolved by self-immunization, which maintains the stability of central self-conceptions by adjusting peripheral aspects and their diagnostic value for the central concepts. Processes of self-immunization were investigated in a series of studies operating on both levels of explanation. Implications for psychological explanations of personal phenomena such as self-images and self-insight are discussed. (shrink)

Die biomedizinische Forschung hat ein Kommunikationsproblem. Um die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit darzustellen, greifen einzelne Forschergruppen auf unterschiedliche und oft inkompatible Terminologien zurück. Für den Fortschritt der modernen Biomedizin ist die Integration dieser Ergebnisse jedoch unabdingbar.

Im Zuge der Studie wurden u. a. 40 Gruppendiskussionen mit ehemaligen Kriegsgefangenen seitens des IfS durchgeführt, die auf Tonband aufgenommen und anschließend zur Auswertung transkribiert wurden. Der nachfolgende Ausschnitt ist der Beginn der Diskussion 16 ; es handelt sich um die ersten elf von insgesamt 58 Seiten. Diese Diskussion ist nicht gut dokumentiert, so fehlt etwa die Protokollierung von Zeit, Ort, Anzahl der Teilnehmer und der Name des Diskussionsleiters. Aufgrund der Einordnung der Vorlage im Archiv ist aber mit sehr großer (...) Wahrscheinlichkeit davon auszugehen, dass die Diskussion Anfang 1957 in Bad Godesberg unter der Leitung von Werner Mangold stattfand. (shrink)

In this paper, three problems that have hardly been noticed or even gone unnoticed in the available literature in the cosmology of Philolaus are addressed. They have to do with the interrelationships of the orbits of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon around the Central Fire and all three of them constitute potentially insurmountable obstacles within the context of the Philolaic system. The first difficulty is Werner Ekschmitt’s claim that the Philolaic system cannot account for the length of (...) the day (νυχϑήμερον). It is shown that this problem can be solved with the help of the distinction between the synodic day and the sidereal day. The other two problems discussed in this paper are concerned with two hitherto unnoticed deficiencies in the explanation of lunar eclipses in the Philolaic system. The Philolaic system cannot account for long-lasting lunar eclipses and according to the internal logic of the system, during lunar eclipses the Moon enters the shadow of the Earth from the wrong side. It is almost unbelievable that nobody, from the Pythagoreans themselves up to recent authors, has noticed these two serious deficiencies, and especially the latter, in the cosmology of Philolaus the Pythagorean. (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)

On the Brink begins with a consideration of Kant's treatment of time as representation and of Hegel's treatment of the writing of history and the end of art, all while taking up other key figures in the history of philosophy. The book then moves to an exploration of language in a variety of manifestations, from translation to complaint and greeting. It concludes by analyzing political and social questions that continue to haunt us today--the conception of work, not least in National (...) Socialism, and our relationship to democracy. Taken together, Werner Hamacher's essays offer trenchant historical, political, and rhetorical interventions into the history of philosophy, literature, and our contemporary political situation. (shrink)

Bezüglich Lehre und Praxis der Kirche empfindet man vielfach einen Mangel an Barmherzigkeit, vor allem da, wo ein Handeln gemäss der traditionellen Lehre für die Betroffenen eine erhebliche Belastung bedeutet. Im Brennpunkt stehen dabei besonders wiederverheiratete und homosexuelle Menschen, denen sexuelle Enthaltsamkeit zugemutet wird. Da es für solche Zumutung aber starke Argumente geben müsste, sind die vor allem mit Rekurs auf die Bibel vorgebrachten Gründe zu überprüfen. Falls diese aber der Überprüfung nicht standhalten, geht es nicht um Barmherzigkeit, sondern um (...) Gerechtigkeit für die Betroffenen. In anderem Kontext kann der Ruf nach Barmherzigkeit der Bagatellisierung von Unrecht und Schuld dienen. Im Fall der kalabrischen Mafiosi hat Papst Franziskus diese für exkommuniziert erklärt, gegen Plädoyers für Barmherzigkeit von anderer Seite. Dabei umfasst die Rede von der Barmherzigkeit durchaus unterschiedliche Handlungsweisen, die jeweils einer gesonderten ethischen Beurteilung bedürfen. Auch das neuerdings vielfach bemühte Gesetz der Gradualität versucht, ethischen Rigorismus abzumildern und so auf diese Weise eine Art Barmherzigkeit zu ermöglichen, ohne eine 'Gradualität des Gesetzes' zu proklamieren. Sollte dieser Versuch freilich misslingen, ginge es auch hier eher um Gerechtigkeit"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, Nietzsche became famous but remained infamous. No matter how popular his catchwords became, his thinking never acquired the status of a common philosophical ground like that of Aristotle, Descartes, or Kant. Most of our academic colleagues outside of Nietzsche research still hesitate to accept his ideas, not to mention adopting them. Our philosophical colleagues are primarily—and now more than ever—looking for secure logical and ontological, sometimes even metaphysical reasons, which Nietzsche impedes, if not entirely refuses. As (...) far as he was philosophically adopted and further developed—which happened primarily in France for a long time—such attempts were again reduced to narrow “-isms,”... (shrink)

Es wird versucht, einige Aspekte von Carnaps Werk Der logische Auflyau der Welt vor dem Hintergrund des Kantianismus zu betrachten, insbesondere die Strukturalismusthese, das Verhältnis von Gegebenem und Konstruiertem und den Wirklichkeitsbegriff; das Ergebnis geht dahin, daß sich mehr Gemeinsamkeiten mit der kantianischen Tradition zeigen als es von einem klassischen Werk des Neopositivismus zu erwarten wäre.

In a posthumous text written in 1915, Frege makes some puzzling remarks about the essence of logic, arguing that the essence of logic is indicated, properly speaking, not by the word ‘true’, but by the assertoric force. William Taschek has recently shown that these remarks, which have received only little attention, are very important for understanding Frege's conception of logic. On Taschek's reconstruction, Frege characterizes logic in terms of assertoric force in order to stress the normative role that the logical (...) laws play vis-à-vis judgement, assertion and inference. My aim in this paper is to develop and defend an alternative reconstruction according to which Frege stresses that logic is not only concerned with ‘how thoughts follow from other thoughts’, but also with the ‘step from thought to truth-value’. Frege considers logic as a branch of the theory of justification. To justify a conclusion by means of a logical inference, the ‘step from thought to truth-value’ must be taken, that is, the premis.. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the conception of truth defended by Frege in his mature period is characterized by the view that truth is not the property denoted by the predicate 'is true', but the object named by true sentences. In the present paper, I wish to make plausible an alternative interpretation according to which Frege's conception is characterized by the view that truth is what is expressed in natural language by the "form of the assertoric sentence". So construed, truth (...) is neither an object (like the True) nor a property (like the Bedeutung of the predicate 'is true') but something of a very special kind that belongs to the same logical category as the logical relations (like subsumption). The main argument justifying this interpretation is that Frege's explication of truth does not hold of the True, but only of truth, considered as what is expressed by the form of the assertoric sentence. (shrink)

Joan Weiner has recently claimed that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth-predicate in his justification of the logical laws. She argues that because of the assimilation of sentences to proper names in his system, Frege does not need to make use of the Quinean device of semantic ascent in order to formulate the logical laws, and that the predicate ‘is the True’, which is used in Frege's justification, is not to be considered as a truth-predicate, (...) because it does not apply to true sentences or true thoughts. The present paper aims to show that Frege needs to use, and does use, a truth-predicate in this context. It is argued, first, that Frege needs to use a truthpredicate in order to show that the truth of the logical laws is evident from the senses of the sentences by means of which they are formulated, and second, that the predicate that he actually uses, ‘is the True’, must be considered as a truth-predicate in the relevant sense, because it can be used and is actually used by Frege to explain the truth-conditions of thoughts. To defend this interpretation, it is discussed whether the explanatory use of ‘is the True’ in Frege's system is compatible with his deflationary analysis of ‘true’. The paper's conclusion is that there is indeed a conflict here; but, from Frege's point of view, this conflict is due merely to the logical imperfection of natural language and does not affect the proper system but only its propaedeutic. (shrink)

What is Europe, if it is not a geographical unit and still is not an economic and political unit? What is this Europe that has indulged in the excesses of war and mass murder up to the end of the 20th century, but wants to see itself as incorporating the ideals of justice and goodness? Europe was never simply 'Europe', it always questioned itself, it had to understand itself as Europe and thus found its unity in its philosophy. This book (...) looks forward to Europe's future with a new reading of key texts in Europe's modern philosophical reflection on itself. (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)