Dr. Willem Meijer [van W. G. van der Tak]--Lijst der in druk verschenen geschriften van dr. W. Meijer. [Door E. E. Eckstein]--Benedicti de Spinoza philosophiæ brevis commentatio.--Extracten uit de jaarverslagen van den secretaris der vereeniging Het Spinozahuis over het tijdvak 1897-1922.--Lijst der in de verslagen van de vereeniging Het Spinozahuis besproken boeken en tijdschriftartikels.

Willen de lidstaten kunnen beantwoorden aan de politieke, rechtsstatelijke en sociale ambities van de Europese Unie, dan moet er iets gaan veranderen bij de overheidsstructuur in Brussel, Straatsburg en Luxemburg. Dan moet er weer aandacht komen voor de ‘ziel van Europa’. Vormen de Europese Gemeenschappen, begonnen om oorlog te voorkomen, alleen maar een vrije markt? Is de Europese Unie slechts een geografisch afgebakende ruimte voortgedreven door het grootkapitaal, of is het ook iets meer? Wat delen de burgers van Europa (...) eigenlijk met elkaar? In de EU is het besef doorgedrongen dat het in een club van vijfentwintig lidstaten, die nog onvoldoende is doordrongen van de ‘idee Europa’, belangrijk is om te praten over gemeenschappelijke waarden. (shrink)

Een poging om de geschiedenis van een denkwijze door de eeuwen heen, in dit geval die van het schema van “het midden- en middellijkheidsdenken” , resp. het “denken in termen van ‘midden’ en ‘bemiddeling’” , kritisch in kaart te brengen valt op het eerste gezicht onder het genre Ideengeschichte of history of ideas. Zeker wanneer men ideeëngeschiedenis enerzijds enger, maar anderzijds daarbinnen weer breder opvat dan de invulling die Arthur Lovejoy daaraan gaf in zijn bekende The Great Chain of (...) Being .Het enerzijds betreft de inperking tot het terrein van de filosofie. Het anderzijds raakt hetgeen als idea wordt geaccepteerd. Lovejoy spreekt over ideeën vaak als “unit ideas” en vergt dat deze eenvoudig en ook enkelvoudig zijn. Ik zou in de ideeëngeschiedenis ook ruimte willen maken voor meer complexe filosofische noties, schema’s en zelfs filosofische theorieën. Wel lijkt me dat moet worden vastgehouden aan de eis dat deze ideeën naspeurbaar zijn door filosofische stromingen heen en dat zij bij voorkeur een zekere breedheid vertonen, ook in de zin van toepassing blijken te vinden in meerdere deelgebieden van de filosofie. En hier zij alvast maar genoteerd dat ook Van der Hoeven Lovejoy en diens studie noemt. (shrink)

Niettegenstaande de tendens van het failliet van het multiculturalisme is multiculturele dialoog niet weg te denken in een zich globaliserende wereld. Taylor, Gadamer, Honneth en Kymlicka hebben een bijdrage geleverd op het vlak van de erkenning van identiteit, respect en waardering van verschil. Wij voeren het argument aan dat bovenstaande auteurs niet ontsnappen aan het postmodernistisch dilemma van zelfautonomie en slachtofferschap. Dit komt doordat zij in hun rationale vertrekken van het afzonderlijke subject en deze situeren in een ruimte-tijd waarin de (...) tijd slechts een historische rol heeft en de ruimte geen actieve rol speelt. Tegenover deze uitvloeisels van het postmodern denken stellen wij het eco-communau-tarisme. Vanuit de vaststelling dat het individu denkt, spreek en handelt in de context van zijn taal en cultuur en dus vanuit zijn gemeenschap, situeren wij dit subject en de gemeenschap tevens in een particulier territorium of het ecotoop. Door middel van Hacking’s sociaal constructivisme, het Leibniziaanse meerwereldenbeeld en het biologische paradigma als nieuw denkkader, structureren wij de gemeenschap volgens een cyclisch en een lineair tijdverloop. Het cyclische waarborgt de traditie van een gemeenschap, het lineaire doet de gemeenschap evolueren naar een moreel betere toekomst en heeft een transcendent statuut. Het eco-communautarisme biedt het kader voor een kwalitatieve evolutie van individuen en gemeenschappen. Het normerend aspect hiervan is de pluriforme en multiculturele dialoog. (shrink)

Grenzen van dialoog -/- De universalismegedachte van de Verlichting heeft een -postmodernistische maatschappij van slachtoffers geschapen. Het geloofsverlies in de grote verhalen en de universalisering van het individu zorgen ervoor, dat zijn schreeuw naar verontwaardiging geen toehoorders meer vindt. Zijn roep in de woestijn gaat verloren in het chaotisch geschreeuw van de anderen. Tegenover dit koude, steriele postmodernisme stellen wij het eco-communautarisme. Vanuit de vaststelling dat het individu denkt, spreekt en handelt in de context van zijn taal en cultuur, dus (...) vanuit zijn gemeenschap, voegen wij aan Kants transcendentale ideeën 'Ik', 'Wereld' en 'God', een vierde idee toe: het 'Wij' of het principe van inclusiviteit. De Kantiaanse burgermoraal is Copernicaans geïnspireerd en steunt op de Newtoniaanse ruimte-tijdstructuur. Door middel van Hackings sociaal constructivisme, het Leibniziaanse meer-werelden-beeld en het biologische paradigma als nieuw denkkader, structureren wij de -gemeenschap volgens een cyclisch en een lineair tijdsverloop. Het cyclische waarborgt de traditie van een gemeenschap, het lineaire doet de gemeenschap evolueren naar een moreel betere toekomst. Het eco-communautarisme biedt het kader voor een kwalitatieve evolutie van individuen en gemeenschappen. Het normerend aspect hiervan is de pluriforme en multi-culturele dialoog. Een dialoog met grenzen. (shrink)

Iedereen zoekt geborgenheid in een eigenhuis, een plek onder de zon. Het vinden van een thuisplek is nochtans niet zo idyllisch als René Froger bezingt. Vooral in een multiculturele samenleving is de drang naar een thuisplek hevig. Op die plek exclusieve rechten uitoefenen wars van elke vorm van diversiteit, is een nieuw adagio. Wat voor de ene gemeenschap geborgenheid betekent, vormt voor een andere een regelrechte bedreiging. Hiertegen formuleren de auteurs een alternatieve landethiek in het spoor van Aldo Leopold. Deze (...) landethiek bouwen zij uit tot een fundamentele filosofie die radicaal breekt met de klassieke opvattingen van de Verlichting. De Leibniziaanse ruimte-tijd wordt de fundamentele basis voor de thuisplek. Cultuur, taal en landschap creeren de geborgenheid. Alle participanten van de thuisplek worden door diversiteit en het vreemde uitgenodigd tot openheid. Een ecologische ágape'verschijnt als een hernieuwde horizon. De onherbergzaamheid van de postmoderne samenleving heeft afgedaan. Steden transformeren tot multiculturele thuisplekken. Kunstwerken creeren landschappen tot plekken van identificatie. Thuisplekken worden plekken van geborgenheid waarmee men verbonden is, zoals een schildpad met haar schild... (shrink)

Het Leids-Haags Allegorieënlexicon toont nieuwe perspectieven op de maatschappelijke werkelijkheid met een actuele duiding van vijftig kernthema’s uit de wetenschap. De auteurs zijn de duale promovendi en hun promotores van Leiden University Dual PhD Centre The Hague. Ze worden daarbij geïnspireerd door de metafoor van de grot van Plato: Waar ben ik? Waar sta ik? Welk beeld zie ik? Hoe kan ik dat begrijpen? Er ontstaan beeldende voorstellingen van begrippen waarin op zoek wordt gegaan naar de centrale gedachten die (...) ten grondslag liggen aan die begrippen. Zo wordt de veranderende wereld waargenomen met het besef dat we nooit kunnen weten of we de gehele werkelijkheid kunnen zien of begrijpen. De waarneming is afhankelijk van de zichtpositie die de waarnemer inneemt. Zo ontstaan verbeeldingen van waarnemingen van ons menselijk bestaan. Zoals: assimilatie, creativiteit, gender, kunstenaarschap, magistraat, participatie, regels, tragedie en verzorgingsstaat. Eerst wordt actuele literatuur besproken. Daarna volgt discussie. Tenslotte neemt de auteur positie in. Met bijdragen van promotores Wilfried Admiraal, Ingrid van Biezen, Hans Borgman, Paul Cliteur, Jaap van den Herik, Rikki Holtmaat, Willem Otterspeer, Jos Raadschelders, Robert Tijssen, Wim Willems en promovendi. (shrink)

Where the possibility of metaphysics as a science is concerned, Kant assigns the exact sciences the function of an exemplar; for these disciplines have long been well established on "the secure path of a science." Accordingly, in the Prolegomena Kant explicitly addresses the question "How is metaphysics possible as a science?" by way of the questions "How is pure mathematics possible?" and "How is pure natural science possible?" Moreover, all these questions arise directly out of the main transcendental question: "How (...) are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" The deplorable situation of the metaphysics of the day would have been entirely attributable to misappraisal of this central transcendental question. (shrink)

According to Vallicella's 'Relations, Monism, and the Vindication of Bradley's Regress' (2002), if relations are to relate their relata, some special operator must do the relating. No other options will do. In this paper we reject Vallicella's conclusion by considering an important option that becomes visible only if we hold onto a precise distinction between the following three feature-pairs of relations: internality/externality, universality/particularity, relata-specificity/relata-unspecificity. The conclusion we reach is that if external relations are to relate their relata, they must be (...) relata-specific (and no special operator is needed). As it eschews unmereological complexes, this outcome is of relevance to defenders of the extensionality of composition. (shrink)

Why act when the effects of one’s act are negligible? For example, why boycott sweatshop or animal products if doing so makes no difference for the better? According to recent proposals, one may still have a reason to boycott in order to avoid complicity or participation in harm. Julia Nefsky has argued that accounts of this kind suffer from the so-called “superfluity problem,” basically the question of why agents can be said to participate in harm if they make no difference (...) to it. This paper develops and responds to Nefsky’s challenge. (shrink)

The concept of well-being is increasingly gaining acceptance as an object of science, and many different types of well-being measures have been developed. A debate has emerged about which measures are able to capture well-being successfully. An important underlying problem is that there is no unified conceptual framework about the nature of well-being—a hotly debated topic of philosophical discussion. I argue that while there is little agreement about the nature of well-being in philosophy, there is an important agreement on some (...) important principles relevant for its measurement. I argue that well-being science has good reasons to accommodate these principles, but currently fails to do so. (shrink)

One widespread argument against the efficacy of subjective well-being as a measure of well-being is the adaptation problem as formulated by Sen and Nussbaum: the phenomenon that people may adapt to deprivation and find satisfaction or happiness in objectively bad circumstances. It is not generally noticed that there are two distinct arguments for why the phenomenon of adaptation is a problem for subjective well-being as a measure of well-being. The Axiological Adaptation Argument is a counter-example to theories of well-being that (...) rely on mental states. The Epistemic Adaptation Argument illustrates that levels of happiness or satisfaction cannot be measured well when people have adapted. I argue that the most serious threat to subjective well-being measures is not the Axiological Argument, but the Epistemic Argument. I reflect on the implications the epistemic problem has for the empirical literature in general, and for research on the phenomenon of adaptation in particular. (shrink)

This article aims to explore a ‘lived discipleship’ by determining whether and how contemporary communities of faith could implement the norms and principles reflected in the Emmaus narrative of Luke 24:13–35 within a plausible epistemological framework that might facilitate a fresh understanding of Christian followership as discipleship. This was done through an empirical case study using two focus groups as co-researchers, in order to actively listen to their respective understandings of lived theology in their unique South African contexts. The two (...) focus groups consisted of (1) a contemporary Christian grouping of Afrikaans-speaking, active churchgoers situated in Hazeldean, a suburb in Pretoria East, Tshwane, Gauteng and (2) a contemporary Christian grouping of African, active churchgoers situated in Ivory Park, a suburb in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. This article concluded that Luke 24:13–35 nudged the co-researchers to re-evaluate their contemporary understanding of discipleship and moved them to additional and new perspectives in terms of practical expressions thereof that can be best described as ‘lived followership’. A shift from perceiving Jesus in terms of an ‘act to follow’ by gaining the correct knowledge, to following Jesus as ‘a performative act’, a shift from ‘theoretical knowledge’ to ‘heart knowledge’. Contribution: This article is a part of the Festschrift for Prof. Stephan Joubert. This article plays into similar creative interdisciplinary relationship as seen in the work of Prof. Joubert, by looking at the relationship between New Testament and Practical Theology in order to improve practices of faith that is rooted in a biblical understanding of Jesus. (shrink)

Quine's well-known ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951) plays a key role in the debate about the analytic-synthetic distinction. Taking to task the ideas of Carnap in particular, Quine shows that logical positivism works with a concept of scientific rationality that is based dogmatically on, among other things, the opposition analytic-synthetic.

W. de Sitter, „On the relativity of inertia. Remarks concerning Einstein’s latest hypothesis”, Proceedings of the Section of Sciences. Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Vol. XIX, No. 9 i 10, Johannes Müller, Amsterdam, September 1917, pp. 1217–1225. Translated to Polish by Robert Janusz.

Much of present-day epistemology is divided between internalists and externalists. Different as these views are, they have in common that they strip justification from its dialectical component in order to block the skeptic’s argument from disagreement. That is, they allow that one may have justified beliefs even if one is not able to defend it against challenges and resolve the disagreements about them. Lammenranta (2008, 2011a) recently argued that neither internalism nor externalism convinces if we consider the argument in its (...) most interesting format. In this paper I zoom in on this debate, and fix further details of Lammenranta’s lead. Specifically, I will side with skepticism that justification is dialectical, yet only if certain conditions are in place. (shrink)

People cannot understand intentions behind observed actions by direct simulation, because goal inference is highly context dependent. Context dependency is a major source of computational intractability in traditional information-processing models. An embodied embedded view of cognition may be able to overcome this problem, but then the problem needs recognition and explication within the context of the new, layered cognitive architecture.

We present a test of a revised version of the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model, a computational model of the acquisition of second language (L2) speech perception and recognition. The model draws on phonetic, phonological and psycholinguistic constructs to explain a number of L2 learning scenarios. However, a recent computational implementation failed to validate a theoretical proposal for a learning scenario where the L2 has less phonemic categories than the native language (L1) along a given acoustic continuum. According to (...) the L2LP, learners faced with this learning scenario must not only shift their old L1 phoneme boundaries but also reduce the number of categories employed in perception. Our proposed revision to L2LP successfully accounts for this updating in the number of perceptual categories as a process driven by the meaning of lexical items, rather than by the learners’ awareness of the number and type of phonemes that are relevant in their new language, as the previous version of L2LP assumed. Results of our simulations show that meaning-driven learning correctly predicts the developmental path of L2 phoneme perception seen in empirical studies. Additionally, and to contribute to a long-standing debate in psycholinguistics, we test two versions of the model, with the stages of phonemic perception and lexical recognition being either sequential or interactive. Both versions succeed in learning to recognize minimal pairs in the new L2, but make diverging predictions on learners' resulting phonological representations. In sum, the proposed revision to the L2LP model contributes to our understanding of L2 acquisition, with implications for speech processing in general. (shrink)

This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that (...) discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this dissertation provides the Failure Theory with the same tools. (shrink)

In the literature, regress arguments often take one of two different forms: either they conclude that a given solution fails to solve any problem of a certain kind (the strong conclusion), or they conclude that a given solution fails to solve all problems of a certain kind (the weaker conclusion). This gives rise to a logical problem: do regresses entail the strong or the weaker conclusion, or none? In this paper I demonstrate that regress arguments can in fact take both (...) forms, and clearly set out the logical difference between them. Throughout the paper, I confine myself to metaphysical examples from the early Russell. Only now that we know they are valid can we start to discuss whether they are sound. (shrink)

The Access principle places an epistemic restriction on our obligations. This principle falls prey to the ‘Shirker Problem’, namely that shirkers could evade their obligations by evading certain epistemic circumstances. To block this problem, it has been suggested that shirkers have the obligation to learn their obligations. This solution yields a regress, yet it is controversial what the moral of the regress actually is. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, I spell out this intricate dispute. Second, on the (...) basis of my analyses I propose solutions to the Shirker Problem. (shrink)

Many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (SWB) understand SWB as a concept that is close to Bentham’s notion of happiness. This conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. I analyze an important deviation from Bentham in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and its relevance for SWB research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. I argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences are compared, Mill’s qualitative perspective is incompatible with an important assumption in the (...) SWB literature: that happiness can be meaningfully rated by people on a scale. I illustrate the problem by means of the question of whether becoming a parent makes people happier. I analyze whether the problem can be avoided on alternative views of happiness, but argue that on all plausible accounts of happiness, the problem persists. I conclude that the problem it poses for self-reported happiness is genuine and should be acknowledged by SWB researchers. I end by discussing the ways in which this conclusion can help the study of happiness move forward. (shrink)

There is much discussion in sports on whether certain behavior should be considered Fair Play. This moral judgment on Fair Play is influenced by the conceptualization of the term Fair Play as either “respect for the rules” or “respect for the spirit of the game,” as well as by other determinants. To uncover the moral judgment of athletes and which conceptualization of Fair Play dominates in practice, a factorial survey approach is used. The act and the level of the match (...) played a role in the judgment, as well as the gender of the athlete. Our results showed that both conceptualizations “respect for the rules” and “respect for the spirit of the game” were important in this judgment, with the spirit conceptualization being more dominant. (shrink)

We model three examples of beliefs that agents may have about other agents' beliefs, and provide motivation for this conceptualization from the theory of mind literature. We assume a modal logical framework for modelling degrees of belief by partially ordered preference relations. In this setting, we describe that agents believe that other agents do not distinguish among their beliefs ('no preferences'), that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are in part as their own ('my preferences'), and the special (...) case that agents believe that the beliefs of other agents are exactly as their own ('preference refinement'). This multi-agent belief interaction is frame characterizable. We provide examples for introspective agents. We investigate which of these forms of belief interaction are preserved under three common forms of belief revision. (shrink)

This paper presents the progicnet programme. It proposes a general framework for probabilistic logic that can guide inference based on both logical and probabilistic input. After an introduction to the framework as such, it is illustrated by means of a toy example from psychometrics. It is shown that the framework can accommodate a number of approaches to probabilistic reasoning: Bayesian statistical inference, evidential probability, probabilistic argumentation, and objective Bayesianism. The framework thus provides insight into the relations between these approaches, it (...) illustrates how the results of different approaches can be combined, and it provides a basis for doing efficient inference in each of the approaches. (shrink)

Does willful ignorance mitigate blameworthiness? In many legal systems, willfully ignorant wrongdoers are considered as blameworthy as knowing wrongdoers. This is called the ‘equal culpability thesis’. Given that legal practice depends on it, the issue has obvious importance. Interestingly enough, however, there exists hardly any philosophical reflection on ECT. A recent exception is Alexander Sarch, who defends a restricted version of ECT. On Sarch’s view, ECT is true whenever willfully ignorant agents incur additional blameworthiness for their ignorance. In this paper, (...) I defend an alternative view, according to which ECT is true whenever the motives of willfully ignorant and knowing wrongdoers are equally bad. (shrink)

This article considers the importance of a spatial dimension for witchcraft research, which has so far been largely neglected. In twentieth-century Europe people in certain regions still considered their world in terms of witchcraft; they attributed misfortune to bewitchments and usually blamed their neighbors. Here a part of Flemish-speaking Belgium is investigated with the help of legend texts collected in the 1960s. The witchcraft discourse that informed these texts did not just contain formulations of space; sometimes it also determined how (...) people negotiated space. In this part of Flanders, witchcraft was embedded in Roman Catholicism; monasteries were the favored destinations of all those who considered themselves or their family members bewitched. In order to find cures for bewitchments people undertook hazardous journeys of considerable distance and found their efforts hindered by the witch they sought to counteract. The measures against evil influences that they were given were meant to consolidate the boundaries between their own space and the space where witches roamed. Bewitchments were generally blamed on women. In the contemporary patriarchal social order, both public and domestic spaces were nearly always under men's control. This is why bewitchment was caused less by transgressions of male-defined boundaries than by infringements of bodily spaces such as by eying or touching somebody else's children. This suggests a different approach to female space based on notions of proximity. (shrink)

Notwithstanding its overwhelming descriptive power for existing data, it is not clear whether the kinematic theory of Plamondon & Alimi could generate new insights into biomechanical constraints and psychological processes underlying the way organisms trade off speed for accuracy. The kinematic model should elaborate on the role of neuromotor noise and on biomechanical strategies for reducing endpoint variability related to such noise.