Resumo: Palavras-chave: : Keywords : Reading. Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura. Reception. Experience.Representation. This article makes an analysis on the role of Jornadinhas Nacionais de Literatura de Passo Fundo, with emphasis on representations of its 4th edition, built by children of 10 years, from the middle class of RS – Ijuí, students of a private school in same municipality. Testimonies of these children are examined at four different times in the light of the Aesthetics of Reception and the Sociology of Reading. (...) The four stages are called placements, a methodology created by Judith Langer and used in this analysis. Thus, this discussion seeks to understand how to make the experience of reading and living of the children mentioned in that moment, in the process of building the 4ª Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura, they intersect and provide representation for the target audience of this work. Leitura. Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura. Recepção. Experiência. Representação. Este artigo faz uma análise do papel das Jornadinhas Nacionais de Literatura de Passo Fundo, com ênfase nas representações da sua 4ª edição, construídas por crianças de 10 anos de idade, provenientes da classe média de Ijuí – RS, estudantes de uma escola particular no mesmo município. São examinados depoimentos dessas crianças em quatro momentos diferentes, à luz da Estética da Recepção e da Sociologia da Leitura. Os quatro momentos são chamados posicionamentos , uma metodologia criada por Judith Langer e utilizada nesta análise. Assim, esta reflexão busca compreender como se dão as experiências de leitura e de vida das crianças mencionadas e em que momento, no processo de construção da 4ª Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura, elas se cruzam e propiciam representações para o público-alvo deste trabalho. (shrink)

This article makes an analysis on the role of Jornadinhas Nacionais de Literatura de Passo Fundo, with emphasis on representations of its 4th edition, built by children of 10 years, from the middle class of RS – Ijuí, students of a private school in same municipality. Testimonies of these children are examined at four different times in the light of the Aesthetics of Reception and the Sociology of Reading. The four stages are called placements, a methodology created by Judith Langer (...) and used in this analysis. Thus, this discussion seeks to understand how to make the experience of reading and living of the children mentioned in that moment, in the process of building the 4ª Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura, they intersect and provide representation for the target audience of this work.Este artigo faz uma análise do papel das Jornadinhas Nacionais de Literatura de Passo Fundo, com ênfase nas representações da sua 4ª edição, construídas por crianças de 10 anos de idade, provenientes da classe média de Ijuí – RS, estudantes de uma escola particular no mesmo município. São examinados depoimentos dessas crianças em quatro momentos diferentes, à luz da Estética da Recepção e da Sociologia da Leitura. Os quatro momentos são chamados posicionamentos, uma metodologia criada por Judith Langer e utilizada nesta análise. Assim, esta reflexão busca compreender como se dão as experiências de leitura e de vida das crianças mencionadas e em que momento, no processo de construção da 4ª Jornadinha Nacional de Literatura, elas se cruzam e propiciam representações para o público-alvo deste trabalho. (shrink)

Martin Heideggers Abendgespräch in einem russischen Kriegsgefangenenlager zwischen einem Jüngeren und einem Älteren ist datiert auf den 8. Mai 1945, den Tag, an dem der Nationalsozialismus besiegt wurde. Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Textes ist ein Zitat aus dem klassischen daoistischen Buch Zhuangzi. Warum wendet sich Heidegger an diesem Tag der chinesischen Philosophie zu? Für den Philosophen und Sinologen Fabian Heubel birgt das Abendgespräch die einzigartige Gelegenheit, Heideggers Öffnung für östliches Denken kritisch zu erörtern. Zugleich zeigt sich die Kommunikationsverweigerung zwischen (...) Heidegger und Adorno in neuem Licht, indem das Buch beide mit Hilfe daoistischen paradoxen Denkens ins Gespräch kommen lässt. Im Kommunizieren dieser drei Momente tritt eine transkulturelle Kritik hervor, die durch geschichtliches Bewusstsein von Nöten gezeichnet ist. Heideggers Kehre nach Osten ist gescheitert. Andererseits gibt es keinen philosophischen Weg nach China, der an seinem Denken vorbeiführt."-- Back cover. (shrink)

I discuss a contemporary solution to the dynamic problem of old evidence (POE), as proposed by Sprenger. Sprenger’s solution combines the Garber–Jeffrey–Niiniluoto (GJN) approach with Howson’s suggestion of counterfactually removing the old evidence from scientists’ belief systems. I argue that in the dynamic POE, the challenge is to explain how an insight under beliefs in which the old evidence E is known increased the credence of a scientific hypothesis. Therefore, Sprenger’s counterfactual solution, in which E has been artificially removed, does (...) not resolve the problem. I consider several potential responses. (shrink)

Sequence learning is fundamental to a wide range of cognitive functions. Explaining how sequences—and the relations between the elements they comprise—are learned is a fundamental challenge to cognitive science. However, although hundreds of articles addressing this question are published each year, the actual learning mechanisms involved in the learning of sequences are rarely investigated. We present three experiments that seek to examine these mechanisms during a typing task. Experiments 1 and 2 tested learning during typing single letters on each trial. (...) Experiment 3 tested for “chunking” of these letters into “words.” The results of these experiments were used to examine the mechanisms that could best account for them, with a focus on two particular proposals: statistical transitional probability learning and discriminative error-driven learning. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that error-driven learning was a better predictor of response latencies than either n-gram frequencies or transitional probabilities. No evidence for chunking was found in Experiment 3, probably due to interspersing visual cues with the motor response. In addition, learning occurred across a greater distance in Experiment 1 than Experiment 2, suggesting that the greater predictability that comes with increased structure leads to greater learnability. These results shed new light on the mechanism responsible for sequence learning. Despite the widely held assumption that transitional probability learning is essential to this process, the present results suggest instead that the sequences are learned through a process of discriminative learning, involving prediction and feedback from prediction error. (shrink)

Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing any moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, (...) conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose any moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

Need-claims are ubiquitous within moral and political theory. However, need-based theories are often criticized for being too narrow in scope and too focused on the material preconditions for leading a decent life for grounding a substantial theory of social justice. The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it will investigate the nature and scope of needs by analysing existing conceptualizations of the idea of needs. In so doing, we will get a better understanding of needs, which will help us (...) to carve out the importance and singularity of basic need claims. Secondly, on the basis of the analysis of needs, it will argue for the concept of a fundamental interest in free social agency, which is much better suited than the idea of basic needs actually to ground a theory of social justice, as it highlights the social and institutional conditions for free agency. Thirdly, using the distinction between basic needs and fundamental interests, it will clarify their respective role in and importance for grounding moral principles. Overall, the paper offers a friendly critique of need-based theories, while arguing for a shift of focus to the idea of fundamental interests. (shrink)

Around the globe, economists affect markets by saying what markets are doing, what they should do, and what they will do. Increasingly, experimental economists are even designing real-world markets. But, despite these facts, economists are still largely thought of as scientists who merely observe markets from the outside, like astronomers look at the stars. Do Economists Make Markets? boldly challenges this view. It is the first book dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative--of whether, in some cases, (...) economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes.The book's case studies--including financial derivatives markets, telecommunications-frequency auctions, and individual transferable quotas in fisheries--give substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way. Some chapters defend the notion; others attack it vigorously. The book ends with an extended chapter in which Michel Callon, the idea's main formulator, reflects upon the debate and asks what it means to say economics is performative.The book's insights and strong claims about the ways economics is entangled with the markets it studies should interest--and provoke--economic sociologists, economists, and other social scientists.In addition to the editors and Callon, the contributors include Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, Francesco Guala, Emmanuel Didier, Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah, Petter Holm, Vincent-Antonin Lépinay, and Timothy Mitchell. (shrink)

A libertarian theory of justice holds that persons are self-owners and have the Hohfeldian moral power to justly acquire property rights in initially unowned external resources. Different variants of libertarianism can be distinguished according to their stance on the famous Lockean proviso. The proviso requires, in Locke’s words, to leave ‘enough and as good’ for others, and thus specifies limits on the acquisition of property. Left-libertarians accept an egalitarian interpretation of the proviso, ‘right-libertarians’ either reject any kind of proviso or (...) accept rather weak versions of it. In be-tween there is room for moderate interpretations of the proviso, and in particular for a sufficientarian interpretation: a ‘sufficiency proviso.’ The resulting theory of justice can be called ‘moderate libertarianism.’ In this article I make a case for moderate libertarianism, so understood. I argue that moderate libertarianism has advantages over both left- and right-libertarianism because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place. (shrink)

Philip Pettit’s republican conception of freedom is presented as an alternative both to negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The basic idea is to conceptualize freedom as non-domination, not as non-interference or self-mastery. When compared to negative freedom, Pettit’s republican conception comprises two controversial claims: the claim that we are unfree if we are dominated without actual interference, and the claim that we are free if we face interference without domination. Because the slave is a widely accepted paradigm of the (...) unfree person, the case of a slave with a non-interfering master is often cited as providing a good argument for the first republican claim and against a negative conception of freedom. One aim of this article is to raise doubts about whether this is true. The other aim of the article is to show that the prisoner—also a paradigm of the unfree person—presents a good argument against the second republican claim and in favour of a negative conception of freedom. This is called the ‘prisoner-argument’. It will be argued that neither Pettit’s distinction between free persons and free choices nor his distinction between compromising and conditioning factors of freedom can help to rebut the charge of the prisoner-argument. (shrink)

Las prácticas de la lectura y la escritura han sufrido, en los últimos años, profundas transformaciones en respuesta al mundo post-industrial cambiante que nos enfrentamos como maestros. La ampliación del objeto literario a nuevos espacios de expresión cultural, está revisando conceptos como el canon, la belleza, el género, el papel del lector, así como la reformulación de lo que significa para leer y escribir literatura en un contexto universitario. En este sentido, consideramos que si la universidad se ha adaptado a (...) estos diversos escenarios culturales e históricos con el fin de ser capaz de formar lectores y escritores eficaces en el nuevo contexto cultural y más específicamente en el literario. Probablemente deberíamos revisar nuestro papel mediador en el aula para que podamos articular productivamente las expectativas de lectura y escritura a cada estudiante tiene y la oferta académica de la universidad. En este artículo vamos a tratar con los principales problemas relacionados con la lectura y la escritura de la literatura en la Universidad; y vamos a elaborar una propuesta para un taller curricular articulando estas dos actividades, mientras que la integración de las contribuciones específicas didácticas en la enseñanza de la literatura y disciplinas como la teoría literaria, la semiótica y la crítica. (shrink)

The extent and mechanisms through which religion intertwines with decision-making processes in family firms remain inadequately understood. Family firm owners, driven by their commitment to ethical business practices and the safeguarding of their socioemotional wealth, actively seek cues to inform their decision-making processes. This research demonstrates that, among these guiding cues, top-level executives’ perceived religiosity emerges as a relevant factor. Building upon the socioemotional wealth perspective and conducting a longitudinal analysis based on listed family firms between 2009 and 2018, our (...) findings reveal a positive association between family voting rights and the presence of board members perceived to be religious. Furthermore, this relationship is less pronounced if family firms operate in industries with high research and development intensity. Our study confirms that boards with high shares of religiously perceived directors are positively associated with the appointment of chief executive officers perceived to be religious during succession events. We thereby present a unique perspective that acknowledges perceived religiosity as a micro-level constituent shaping board membership and successor selection. This investigation captures the intricate interplay between religion and family firms under a socioemotional wealth umbrella, offering important insights to the family business ethics discourse. Our research also offers practical implications for board and leadership diversity management in family firms. (shrink)

Background Thorough information of the patient is an integral part of the process of shared decision making. We aimed to investigate if detailed information about medication may induce nocebo effects. Methods We conducted a randomized, single-blind, pilot-study including n = 51 psychiatric in-patients aged between 18 and 80 years with a depressive disorder and accompanying sleeping disorders. In the intervention group we provided thorough information about adverse effects, while the control group received only a simple consent procedure. In both groups, (...) patients received an open-label placebo pill instead of their sleeping medication. Results No statistically significant differences between the intervention group and the control group were found regarding the main outcome parameter. Conclusion In this study, we were not able detect an effect of informed consent vs. simple consent on the emergence of placebo or nocebo effects. This finding is contrary to most assumptions and publications about this topic. Trial registration Trial registration number: DRKS00017653, registered August 30th 2018. Retrosprectively registered. (shrink)

Introductory text for the CRISPP-special issue and Routledge-book on "Compromising on Justice". Also includes a summary of the articles by Steven Wall, Robert B. Talisse, Sune Lægaard, Daniel Weinstock, Enzo Rossi and Fabian Wendt.

Adorno notoriously asserted that there is no 'right' life in our current social world. This assertion has contributed to the widespread perception that his philosophy has no practical import or coherent ethics, and he is often accused of being too negative. Fabian Freyenhagen reconstructs and defends Adorno's practical philosophy in response to these charges. He argues that Adorno's deep pessimism about the contemporary social world is coupled with a strong optimism about human potential, and that this optimism explains his negative (...) views about the social world, and his demand that we resist and change it. He shows that Adorno holds a substantive ethics, albeit one that is minimalist and based on a pluralist conception of the bad - a guide for living less wrongly. His incisive study does much to advance our understanding of Adorno, and is also an important intervention into current debates in moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain the distinction between syllogisms and subsyllogisms in Stoic logic. Subsyllogisms replace at least one premise in a syllogism with a premise that is, according to Galen and Alexander, equipollent to the respective syllogistic premise. This equipollence is not synonymy of meaning between two linguistic expressions, but obtains between two propositions when they are true or false by the same standard. Subsyllogistic premises are simple propositions that are equipollent to the non-simple premises of the respective syllogisms. (...) For subsyllogistic premises that replace syllogistic premises consist of predicates combining with cases rather than of connectives or negations governing propositions. Because of this difference in their premises, subsyllogisms have a different logical form than syllogisms and are not formally valid. (shrink)

En el parágrafo §7 de Ser y Tiempo Heidegger distingue entre «vulgar», «formal» y «fenomenológico» a propósito del concepto de «fenómeno». El objetivo del presente artículo es mostrar, en primer lugar, que esta diferencia puede entenderse únicamente desde una previa aclaración de los motivos metodológicos del término. Se sostendrá, en segundo lugar, que todo tratamiento temático es al mismo tiempo un tratamiento metodológico, esto es, que la fenomenología hermenéutica de la existencia humana desarrolla y oculta un particular discurso del método.

ZusammenfassungDie Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der (...) Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten. (shrink)

This essay is based on the assumption that any ambition to ask how objects are actually able to appear is bound to a “speculative minimalism”. To be able to thematize “the intentional” as a form of our experience, our experience must not coincide with its intentional structure. The initial indication of this phenomenological finding is a constitutive and specific indeterminacy, which is co-realized in every determinacy within the intentional order. Marc Richir’s concept of a hyperbolic epoché is finally to be (...) brought into play as an approach to a contemporary, systematic integration of speculative minimalism and the transcendental ambition of phenomenology. (shrink)

In Metaphysics Z 5, Aristotle discusses definition by addition and comes to accept it for per se accidents. I aim to explain how Aristotle could allow here certain statements by addition as valid definitions without contravening some relevant rules about repetition he established in the Organon, and also how this definition succeeds in blocking the regress he pointed out at 1030b35–1031a1. I conclude that ‘snub nose’ can be defined by a non-superfluous repetition, which in turn contains an explication of the (...) quality (‘snub’) along the line of the specification of the general property (‘concavity’). (shrink)

Justin Garson has recently argued that proper functions are proximal activities of traits selected by phylogenetic or ontogenetic selection processes, and that traits are dysfunctional only if they cannot perform their proper functions for constitutional reasons. We partially agree with Garson, but reject the view that functions are proximal activities, as well as his account of dysfunctions. Instead, we propose our own theory that biological functions are selected dispositions and that a trait is dysfunctional in virtue of not having the (...) dispositions for which it was selected. This account can explain both defects (or dysfunctions in Garson’s sense) and dysfunctions due to environmental factors. Moreover, it offers a neat way to explain the graduality of dysfunction. (shrink)

One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a semantics for the (...) theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)

Der Artikel zeichnet vier verschiedene Traditionslinien des Liberalismus und ihr Verhältnis zum Kapitalismus nach: Den Naturrechtlichen Liberalismus in der Tradition von John Locke, den Klassischen Liberalismus in der Tradition von Adam Smith und Friedrich Hayek, den Perfektionistischen Liberalismus, wie er unter anderem von T.H. Green vertreten wird, und den Kontraktualistischen Liberalismus von John Rawls.

In the last ten or fifteen years, realism has emerged as a distinct approach in political theory. Realists are skeptical about the merits of abstract theories of justice. They regard peace, order, and stability as the primary goals of politics. One of the more concrete aims of realists is to develop a realist perspective on legitimacy. I argue that realist accounts of legitimacy are unconvincing, because they do not solve what I call the “puzzle of legitimacy”: the puzzle of how (...) some persons can have the right to rule over others, given that all persons are equals. I focus on the realist accounts of legitimacy developed by Bernard Williams and John Horton. (shrink)

We report two experiments which tested whether cognitive capacities are limited to those functions that are computationally tractable (PTIME-Cognition Hypothesis). In particular, we investigated the semantic processing of reciprocal sentences with generalized quantifiers, i.e., sentences of the form Q dots are directly connected to each other, where Q stands for a generalized quantifier, e.g. all or most. Sentences of this type are notoriously ambiguous and it has been claimed in the semantic literature that the logically strongest reading is preferred (Strongest (...) Meaning Hypothesis). Depending on the quantifier, the verification of their strongest interpretations is computationally intractable whereas the verification of the weaker readings is tractable. We conducted a picture completion experiment and a picture verification experiment to investigate whether comprehenders shift from an intractable reading to a tractable reading which should be dispreferred according to the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis. The results from the picture completion experiment suggest that intractable readings occur in language comprehension. Their verification, however, rapidly exceeds cognitive capacities in case the verification problem cannot be solved using simple heuristics. In particular, we argue that during verification, guessing strategies are used to reduce computational complexity. (shrink)

Please send me an email ([email protected]) if you wish to receive a copy of the book. — 'In this highly ambitious, wide ranging, immensely impressive and ground-breaking work Fabian Dorsch surveys just about every account of the imagination that has ever been proposed. He identifies five central types of imagining that any unifying theory must accommodate and sets himself the task of determining whether any theory of what imagining consists in covers these five paradigms. Focussing on what he takes to (...) be the three main theories, and giving them each equal consideration, he faults the first two and embraces the third, which argues that imagining is a special form of mental agency. The scholarship is immaculate, the writing crystal clear and the argumentation always powerful.' (Malcolm Budd). (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 2, Page 166-190, Spring 2023.

The article defends the claim that if some laws are (or would be) widely accepted, this provides pro tanto moral reasons to support these laws and not to support otherwise better laws that are not widely accepted. In that sense the value of having widely accepted laws provides moral reasons to make compromises in politics, and it justifies a modest and qualified status quo bias. Widely accepted laws are valuable because they reduce enforcement costs, have symbolic value, help to maintain (...) peace, and realize the value of non-subjugation. (shrink)

The imagination poses fascinating philosophical questions across a range of subjects including philosophy of mind, aesthetics and epistemology. However, until now it has been a relatively neglected topic. How do acts of imagining differ from other mental episodes, such as perceptions or judgements? What kind of awareness is involved in imagining? Can imagining ground knowledge and if so, how reliable is it? Is there some unity to the various forms of imagining? In this book Fabian Dorsch considers these questions, introducing (...) and assessing all the main issues and arguments concerning imagination, including: episodic imagining imagining objects propositional imagining imagination and epistemology imagination and aesthetics imagination and cognitive science the unity of imagining. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, _Imagination_ is an ideal starting point for anyone studying the philosophy of imagination for the first time as well as more advanced students and researchers in philosophy, psychology and related disciplines. (shrink)

The main concern of this paper is the problem of method in De Caelo, which has been recently invigorated by the supposition of Aristotle’s acceptance of two standards of justification. Whereas the φυσικῶς argument comes close to demonstrative knowledge, the εὐλόγως argument relies on more general assumptions and allegedly points towards argumentative justification. With a view to better understanding how empirical criteria for theories, teleological principles, and the resolution of difficulties are laid down to provide as much causal explanations as (...) possible, we take side here in the debate about the very purpose of Aristotle’s using of justification by argument in scientific contexts. Our main claim is that although only reasonable proofs can be worked out in empirically underdetermined domains, this in no way amounts to endorsing an alternative to the norms of inquiry Aristotle upholds in natural science. (shrink)