Die Abhandlung betrachtet “Verantwortlichkeit für menschliches Handeln” als die quintessentielle Forderung der Aufklärung, welche Herder, nicht weniger als Thomasius und Kant, befürwortete. Was Herder, und diese Abhandlung, in Frage stellen, ist die enge Identifizierung des Aufklärungsbegriffes “Mündigkeit” mit Rationalität, Sittlichkeit, und Politik schlechthin.

Jarrett has demonstrated that "strong locality," one of the conditions used by Bell to derive his well known inequality, is equivalent to the conjunction of two other conditions which he calls "hidden locality" and "completeness." He has also demonstrated that if it is possible to control the hidden states of the measured system, then violations of hidden locality can be used to transmit information superluminally; and that this is not so with respect to violations of completeness. This he has taken (...) to mean that it is not possible to use violations of completeness to do so under any circumstances. In this essay, it is argued that such violations can be used to do so, if one other condition is satisfied. (shrink)

(343) There have appeared in opposition to The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner the three following great treatises: A critique by Szeliga in the March issue of the Norddeutschen Blatter . "On The Essence of Christianity in Relation to The Ego and Its Own in the last issue of Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift . A brochure: The Last Philosophers by Moses Hess.

In a recent article Humphreys has developed an intriguing proposal for making sense of emergence. The crucial notion for this purpose is what he calls "fusion" and his paradigm for it is quantum nonseparability. In what follows, we will develop this position in more detail, and then discuss its ramifications and limitations. Its ramifications are quite radical; its limitations are substantial. An alternative approach to emergence that involves quantum physics is then proposed.

If Martin Heidegger was a philosopher who poetized, Wallace Stevens was a poet who philosophized. In "The Sail of Ulysses," one of his later poems, Stevens speaks enigmatically of a "right to be." The phrase is straightforward, if taken to indicate the right to life. But Stevens is rarely, if ever, straightforward. The poem is much more understandable if we take "being" in a Heideggerian sense, as an understanding of what it means to be.

The 21st century, otherwise unremarkable after the Great Climate Change Scare of its early decades was revealed to be a hoax, is remembered for its solution to an age-old problem.

This is a critical discussion of the argument that since intentions are "logically connected" with their objects, Intentional actions cannot include intentions as their causes. Various versions of the argument are discussed, And it is argued that none of them shows the causal theory of intention to be inconsistent. It is argued that the causal theory is nevertheless wrong since intentions must be understood teleologically and as being, Therefore, Non-Contingently linked with actions.

This paper involves one crucial assumption; namely, that the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics for Bell's variant of the EPR experiment will continue to be verified as detector efficiencies are improved and the need for coincidence counters is eliminated. This assumption entails that any hidden-variables theory for quantum mechanics must violate Bell's inequality--the inequality derived in Bell (1964). It is shown here that four locality conditions are involved in the derivation of Bell's inequality; and that a violation of any of (...) the four locality conditions will either entail the existence of superluminal influences or the existence of superluminal signals (superluminal influences that can be used to transmit information), if conspiratorial theories can be ruled out. The attempts so far to rule out conspiratorial theories are all found to be rather dubious, but there are other considerations developed here that rule them out convincingly. Finally, it is demonstrated that violations of each of the four locality conditions can be used to transmit information superluminally, if certain auxiliary conditions are satisfied. This is of particular interest because one of these conditions corresponds to a condition dubbed "completeness" by Jon Jarrett. Jarrett and others have suggested that violations of completeness cannot be used to send information superluminally. Demonstrating otherwise is, perhaps, the most significant result obtained in this paper. (shrink)

Barnard argues that Western democracy, if it is to continue to exist as a legitimate political system, must maintain the integrity of its application of performative principles. Consequently, if both social and political democracy are legitimate goals, limitations designed to curb excessive political power may also be applicable in containing excessive economic power. Barnard stresses that whatever steps are taken to augment civic reciprocity, the observance and self-imposition of publicly recognized standards is vital. Democratic Legitimacy will appeal to political scientists (...) and philosophers, as well as specialists in democratic theory. (shrink)

_Abhiniveśa_ appears in _Yogasūtras_ (YS) 2.9 as the designation of the last of the five _kleśa_s or afflictions listed in YS 2.3. This paper will examine four questions: What is the deep history of the word _abhiniveśa_? What were the historical sources of Patañjali’s term? Does it have a meaning in the YS distinct from the explanation given by Vyāsa in his commentary on this _sūtra_, which is followed with very little deviation by legions of translators? And, does looking at (...) this _sūtra_ in the context of its historical sources help us to determine the relationship between Patañjali and Vyāsa, a highly contested topic in present-day study of the _Yogasūtras_? The history of _abhiniveśa_ will be examined as it appears in Indian classical literature, in Āyurveda, in the Upaniṣads, classical Vedānta, the _Mahābhārata_, and in Buddhist texts, especially and most tellingly in Yogācāra. This general history of the early semantics of _abhniveśa_ will conclude with a more exact signification of the parameters of this elusive term in the YS. (shrink)

Two notions of evidence are focused on in this essay, Carnap's positive-relevance notion of evidence (1962, pp. 462 ff.), and Achinstein's notion of potential evidence (1978; and 1983, pp. 322–350). Achinstein creates several interesting examples in his attempt to find faults in Carnap's notion of evidence; his motive, ultimately, is to impel us towards potential evidence. The purpose of this essay is to show that positive relevance is significantly more promising than potential evidence with respect to capturing the scientific sense (...) of the term evidence. This is accomplished by finding faults in the notion of potential evidence, and by defending positive relevance against Achinstein's examples. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that chaotic behavior is either strongly suppressed or absent in quantum models. Indeed, some researchers have concluded that these considerations serve to undermine the correspondence principle, thereby raising serious doubts about the adequacy of quantum mechanics. Thus, the quantum chaos question is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. The most significant reasons given for the absence or suppression of chaotic behavior in quantum models are the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation and the unitarity of the time-evolution described (...) by that equation. Both are shown in this essay to be irrelevant by demonstrating that the crucial feature for chaos is the nonseparability of the Hamiltonian. That demonstration indicates that quantum chaos is likely to be exhibited in models of open quantum systems. A measure for probing such models for chaotic behavior is developed, and then used to show that quantum mechanics has chaotic models for systems having a continuous energy spectrum. The prospects of this result for vindicating the correspondence principle (or the motivation behind it, at least) are then briefly examined. (shrink)

This is a sophisticated, nontechnical introduction to the main issues in the philosophy of physics. It is exceptionally well-written. The issues are well-chosen, the prose are clear and concise, the text is organized into manageable sections arranged in a logical manner, and the treatment of various positions on the main issues is evenhanded. Also, each of the three central chapters is supplemented by an annotated bibliography that will serve well as a selective guide for motivated readers.

The core of J.G. Herder's philosophy of nationalism lies in the conviction that human creativity must be embedded in the particular culture of a communal language. While he acknowledged that this cultural particular must be integrated into a more universal humanity, he insisted that each culture should preserve its incommensurable distinctiveness. He also called for a new method of enquiry regarding history, one that demands empathetic sensitivity toward the uniquely individual while realizing that there are few gains without losses. F.M. (...) Barnard demonstrates that Herder, despite his innovative work on the idea of nationality, was fully aware of the dangers of ethnic fanaticism, but also of the hazards of what is now known as globalization, recognizing that these must be tempered by a sense of universal humanity. Barnard shows that Herder anticipated modern theories of the dynamics of cultures and traditions through the problematic interplay of persistence and change and that his speculations on cultural and political pluralism, on language as a democratic bond, and on the possible fusion of communitarian and liberal dimensions of public life remain relevant to contemporary debates. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of a recent article by Bas van Fraassen in which he suggests the following view: we should admit that we have no explanation of the EPR correlations, but refuse to consider the correlations as mysterious nevertheless. We shall focus on just three of the claims made by van Fraassen in support of this view. The three claims are these:The EPR correlations cannot be explained by signals being transmitted from one component of an EPR compound (...) to the other.There is, in the EPR situation, no empirically verifiable action at a distance.The demand for an explanation of the EPR correlations is similar to the Aristotelian demand of the post-Newtonian proponents of the law of inertia to explain what keeps a body moving if there are no forces impressed on it. (shrink)

I defend the projection postulate against two of Margenau's criticisms. One involves two types of nonideal measurements, measurements that disturb and measurements that annihilate. Such measurements cannot be characterized using the original version of the projection postulate. This is one of the most interesting and powerful objections to the projection postulate since most realistic measurements are nonideal, in Margenau's sense. I show that a straightforward generalization of the projection postulate is capable of handling the more realistic kinds of measurements considered (...) by Margenau. His other objection involves the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) situation. He suggests that there is a significant potential for violations of the no-superluminalsignals requirement of the special theory of relativity, if projections occur in this situation and others like it. He also suggests that what is paradoxical about this situation disappears if the projection postulate is rejected. I show that it is not possible to use measurements on pairs of spatially-separated systems whose states are entangled to transmit information superluminally, and generalize this result to include nonideal measurements. I also show that EPR's dilemma does not really depend on the projection postulate. (shrink)