In everyday life we either express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms or we resort to numerical probabilities: I believe it's going to rain or my chance of winning is one in a million. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that allows us to reason with all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief simultaneously.

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its sequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In this paper, we make this norm mathematically precise in various ways. We describe three epistemic dilemmas that an agent might face if she attempts (...) to follow Accuracy, and we show that the only inaccuracy measures that do not give rise to such dilemmas are the quadratic inaccuracy measures. In the sequel, we derive the main tenets of Bayesianism from the relevant mathematical versions of Accuracy to which this characterization of the legitimate inaccuracy measures gives rise, but we also show that Jeffrey conditionalization has to be replaced by a different method of update in order for Accuracy to be satisfied. (shrink)

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so) and that the principles (...) are jointly satisfied if and only if rational belief is equivalent to the assignment of a stably high rational degree of belief. Although the logical closure of belief and the Lockean thesis are attractive postulates in themselves, initially this may seem like a formal “curiosity”; however, as will be argued in the rest of the essay, a very reasonable theory of rational belief can be built around these principles that is not ad hoc and that has various philosophical features that are plausible independently. In particular, this essay shows that the theory allows for a solution to the Lottery Paradox, and it has nice applications to formal epistemology. The price that is to be paid for this theory is a strong dependency of belief on the context, where a context involves both the agent's degree of belief function and the partitioning or individuation of the underlying possibilities. But as this essay argues, that price seems to be affordable. (shrink)

Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint (...) acceptance with analyses of distributed cognition. To sketch how this can be done, I shall present a detailed case study, and on the basis of the case, analyze the process through which a group of scientists jointly accept a new scientific claim and at a later stage jointly accept to revise previously accepted claims. I shall argue that joint acceptance in science can be established in situations where an overall conceptual structure is jointly accepted by a group of scientists while detailed parts of it are distributed among group members with different areas of expertise, a condition that I shall call a heterogeneous conceptual consensus. Finally, I shall show how a heterogeneous conceptual consensus can work as a constraint against scientific change and address the question how changes may nevertheless occur. (shrink)

Business scholars have recently proposed that the virtue of personal wisdom may predict leadership behaviors and the quality of leader–follower relationships. This study investigated relationships among leaders’ personal wisdom—defined as the integration of advanced cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics (Ardelt, Hum Dev 47:257–285, 2004)—transformational leadership behaviors, and leader–member exchange (LMX) quality. It was hypothesized that leaders’ personal wisdom positively predicts LMX quality and that intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, two dimensions of transformational leadership, mediate this relationship. Data came from (...) 75 religious leaders and 1–3 employees of each leader (N = 158). Results showed that leaders’ personal wisdom had a positive indirect effect on follower ratings of LMX quality through individualized consideration, even after controlling for Big Five personality traits, emotional intelligence, and narcissism. In contrast, intellectual stimulation and the other two dimensions of transformational leadership (idealized influence and inspirational motivation) did not mediate the positive relationship between leaders’ personal wisdom and LMX quality. Implications for future research on personal wisdom and leadership are discussed, and some tentative suggestions for leadership development are outlined. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue for a revised and precisified version of the infamous Verifiability Criterion for the meaningfulness of declarative sentences. The argument is based on independently plausible premises concerning probabilistic confirmation and meaning as context-change potential, it is shown to be logically valid, and its ramifications for potential applications of the criterion are being discussed. Although the paper is not historical but systematic, the criterion thus vindicated will resemble the original one(s) in some important ways. (...) At the same time, it will also be more modest insofar as meaningfulness will turn out to be relativized linguistically and probabilistically, and different choices of the linguistic and probabilistic parameters may lead to different verdicts on meaningfulness. (shrink)

Significant claims about science education form an integral part of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy. Since the late 1950s, when Kuhn started wrestling with the ideas of ‘normal research’ and ‘convergent thought’, the nature of science education has played an important role in his argument. Hence, the nature of science education is an essential aspect of the phase-model of scientific development developed in his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, just as his later work on categories and conceptual structures takes its starting (...) point in the transmission rather than the creation of concepts and categories. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation into the relation between mind and language from different perspectives, split up into three interrelated but still, for the most part, self-standing parts. Parts I and II are concerned with the question how thought is affected by language while Part III investigates the scope covered by mind and language respectively. Part I provides a reconstruction of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous Private Language Argument in order to apply the rationale behind this line of argument to the relation (...) between mind and language. This argumentative strategy yields the conclusion that reasoning – an important type of thought – is constitutively dependent on language possession and is therefore not available to non-linguistic creatures. This result is achieved by considering the preconditions for reasoning – given that it is a rule-governed activity – and eliminating competitors to language for providing reasoners with what it takes to reason. Part II provides a critical outlook on the wide and highly heterogeneous field of linguistic relativity theories. It is argued that no kind of linguistic relativity whatsoever follows from the conclusion of Part I – i.e., the claim that reasoning is constitutively dependent on having a language. While Part II does not provide a conclusive argument against the linguistic relativity hypothesis, it is argued that endorsement of linguistic relativity theories often rests on a mistaken assumption to the effect that language and culture are interwoven in a way which makes it impossible to separate culture and language, as well as their respective studies. This assumption is undermined by providing examples of languages which clearly predate their culture or do not even have a culture at all. So, the assumption that language and culture are inextricably intertwined is refuted by way of counterexample. Part III provides an in-depth examination of the Principle of Expressibility – prominently endorsed and formulated by John Searle – which claims that whatever can be thought can also be said. The domains of what can be thought and of what can be said are considered in set theoretic terms in order to determine whether one is contained in the other, so that everything we can think can also be adequately communicated. After thorough study of interpretative issues regarding the Principle of Expressibility and consideration of the most pressing potential counterexamples to the principle, we can conclude that we have good reason to believe in the truth of the Principle of Expressibility. In conclusion, the achieved results are related back to prominent positions in the discussion about thought and language which already make their appearance in the very beginning of this investigation. The final chapter of this dissertation reminds us that eminent figures in philosophy have often taken a wrongheaded perspective on the relation between language and thought, so that language has frequently appeared to be an impediment to thought. We can, however, confidently conclude that language, on the contrary, is by far our most apt means for thought and that reasoning would not even be possible without the resources language provides. (shrink)

In discussions about whether the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is compatible with structuralist ontologies of mathematics, it is usually assumed that individual objects are subject to criteria of identity which somehow account for the identity of the individuals. Much of this debate concerns structures that admit of non-trivial automorphisms. We consider cases from graph theory that violate even weak formulations of PII. We argue that (i) the identity or difference of places in a structure is not to be (...) accounted for by anything other than the structure itself and that (ii) mathematical practice provides evidence for this view. We want to thank Leon Horsten, Jeff Ketland, Øystein Linnebo, John Mayberry, Richard Pettigrew, and Philip Welch for valuable comments on drafts of this paper. We are especially grateful to Fraser MacBride for correcting our interpretation of two of his papers and for other helpful comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article introduces, studies, and applies a new system of logic which is called ‘HYPE’. In HYPE, formulas are evaluated at states that may exhibit truth value gaps and truth value gluts. Simple and natural semantic rules for negation and the conditional operator are formulated based on an incompatibility relation and a partial fusion operation on states. The semantics is worked out in formal and philosophical detail, and a sound and complete axiomatization is provided both for the propositional and the (...) predicate logic of the system. The propositional logic of HYPE is shown to contain first-degree entailment, to have the Finite Model Property, to be decidable, to have the Disjunction Property, and to extend intuitionistic propositional logic conservatively when intuitionistic negation is defined appropriately by HYPE’s logical connectives. Furthermore, HYPE’s first-order logic is a conservative extension of intuitionistic logic with the Constant Domain Axiom, when intuitionistic negation is again defined appropriately. The system allows for simple model constructions and intuitive Euler-Venn-like diagrams, and its logical structure matches structures well-known from ordinary mathematics, such as from optimization theory, combinatorics, and graph theory. HYPE may also be used as a general logical framework in which different systems of logic can be studied, compared, and combined. In particular, HYPE is found to relate in interesting ways to classical logic and various systems of relevance and paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and truthmaker semantics. On the philosophical side, if used as a logic for theories of type-free truth, HYPE is shown to address semantic paradoxes such as the Liar Paradox by extending non-classical fixed-point interpretations of truth by a conditional as well-behaved as that of intuitionistic logic. Finally, HYPE may be used as a background system for modal operators that create hyperintensional contexts, though the details of this application need to be left to follow-up work. (shrink)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing stands out among the thinkers of the 18th century for his refusal to synthesize theology and philosophy. But due to his notorious ambivalence about religious questions, even Lessing’s contemporaries remained uncertain whether he ultimately sided with the former or the latter. The short dialogue Hercules and Omphale is, to the detriment of research on this topic, largely unknown. I show that the dialogue offers in a nutshell Lessing’s comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and religious situation of his (...) time. By calling on the mythical travesty of the Asian queen and the Greek hero, Lessing illustrates the mutual attraction that has led astray both Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary Lutheran orthodoxy. Implicitly, his diagnosis of the aberrations of philosophy and theology sheds light on Lessing’s own position. The twofold criticism is an attempt to restore theology as well as philosophy in their genuine forms and to reestablish their proper relationship. Through his twofold restitutio in integrum, Lessing is able to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment and, thus, to radically renew the all but forgotten theologico-philosophical antagonism. (shrink)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing stands out among the thinkers of the 18th century for his refusal to synthesize theology and philosophy. But due to his notorious ambivalence about religious questions, even Lessing’s contemporaries remained uncertain whether he ultimately sided with the former or the latter. The short dialogue Hercules and Omphale is, to the detriment of research on this topic, largely unknown. I show that the dialogue offers in a nutshell Lessing’s comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and religious situation of his (...) time. By calling on the mythical travesty of the Asian queen and the Greek hero, Lessing illustrates the mutual attraction that has led astray both Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary Lutheran orthodoxy. Implicitly, his diagnosis of the aberrations of philosophy and theology sheds light on Lessing’s own position. The twofold criticism is an attempt to restore theology as well as philosophy in their genuine forms and to reestablish their proper relationship. Through his twofold restitutio in integrum, Lessing is able to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment and, thus, to radically renew the all but forgotten theologico-philosophical antagonism. (shrink)

This article outlines what a formal theory of truth should be like, at least at first glance. As not all of the stated constraints can be satisfied at the same time, in view of notorious semantic paradoxes such as the Liar paradox, we consider the maximal consistent combinations of these desiderata and compare their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, (...) the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability. (shrink)

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its prequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In the prequel, we made this norm mathematically precise; in this paper, we derive its consequences. We show that the two core tenets of Bayesianism (...) follow from the norm, while the characteristic claim of the Objectivist Bayesian follows from the norm along with an extra assumption. Finally, we consider Richard Jeffrey’s proposed generalization of conditionalization. We show not only that his rule cannot be derived from the norm, unless the requirement of Rigidity is imposed from the start, but further that the norm reveals it to be illegitimate. We end by deriving an alternative updating rule for those cases in which Jeffrey’s is usually supposed to apply. (shrink)

This monograph provides a new account of justified inference as a cognitive process. In contrast to the prevailing tradition in epistemology, the focus is on low-level inferences, i.e., those inferences that we are usually not consciously aware of and that we share with the cat nearby which infers that the bird which she sees picking grains from the dirt, is able to fly. Presumably, such inferences are not generated by explicit logical reasoning, but logical methods can be used to describe (...) and analyze such inferences. Part 1 gives a purely system-theoretic explication of belief and inference. Part 2 adds a reliabilist theory of justification for inference, with a qualitative notion of reliability being employed. Part 3 recalls and extends various systems of deductive and nonmonotonic logic and thereby explains the semantics of absolute and high reliability. In Part 4 it is proven that qualitative neural networks are able to draw justified deductive and nonmonotonic inferences on the basis of distributed representations. This is derived from a soundness/completeness theorem with regard to cognitive semantics of nonmonotonic reasoning. The appendix extends the theory both logically and ontologically, and relates it to A. Goldman's reliability account of justified belief. This text will be of interest to epistemologists and logicians, to all computer scientists who work on nonmonotonic reasoning and neural networks, and to cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cognitive resources among collaborators and (...) the epistemic dependence that this distribution implies. On this background I shall describe different ideal types of research activities and analyze how they differ. Finally, analyzing values that drive science towards different kinds of research activities, I shall sketch the main mechanisms underlying the perceived tension between disciplines and interdisciplinarity and argue for a redefinition of accountability and quality control for interdisciplinary and collaborative science. (shrink)

It has recently been proposed that the evolution of human cooperativeness might, at least in part, have started as the cooptation of behavioral strategies evolved for solving problems of coordination to solve problems with higher incentives to defect, i.e. problems of cooperation. Following this line of thought, we systematically tested human subjects for spillover effects from simple coordination tasks (2x2 Stag Hunt games, SH) to problems of cooperation (2x2 Prisoner’s Dilemma games, PD) in a laboratory experiment with rigorous controls to (...) rule out subject confusion or habituation. Supporting the hypothesis that decision mechanisms for cooperation problems are linked with decision mechanisms for coordination, our main finding is that cooperation levels in PD games embedded in a sequence of SH games were significantly increased compared to a baseline sequence consisting only of PDs when subjects played in fixed pairs. No such effects could be found when players were randomly rematched each round. Additional findings include that this spillover effect cannot prevent a decay of cooperation over time, that there is no indication of a reversed effect, i.e. no signs of negative spillovers from failed cooperation to miscoordination, and that subjects self-reported preferences in SH games are prosocial. (shrink)

We report three studies which test a sexual selection hypothesis for male war heroism. Based on evolutionary theories of mate choice we hypothesize that men signal their fitness through displaying heroism in combat. First, we report the results of an archival study on US-American soldiers who fought in World War II. We compare proxies for reproductive success between a control sample of 449 regular veterans and 123 surviving Medal of Honor recipients of WWII. Results suggest that the heroes sired more (...) offspring than the regular veterans. Supporting a causal link between war heroism and mating success, we then report the results of two experimental studies. We find evidence that female participants specifically regard men more sexually attractive if they are war heroes. This effect is absent for male participants judging female war heroes, suggesting that bravery in war is a gender specific signal. Finally, we discuss possible implications of our results. (shrink)

If Wittgenstein's later account of language is applied to music, what seems to follow is a version of musical formalism. This is to say that the meaning of music is constituted by the rules of a given system of music, and the understanding of music is the ability to follow these rules. I argue that, while this view may seem unattractive at the outset, Wittgenstein actually held this view. Moreover, his later notion of a rule gives us resources to answer (...) some of the traditional criticisms directed against formalism. (shrink)

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory. Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation (...) of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today. On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general. (shrink)

This chapter discusses future directions which the current developments within philosophy might take. It does so on the background of historical parallels to the controversy around experimental philosophy. Historical debates in psychology and economics contain astonishing similarities to today’s discussions in philosophy. After a brief historical overview, four central criticisms which experimental philosophy is subject to are systematically reviewed. It is shown that three of these are not specifically philosophical. Rather, they neccessarily accompany and drive every introduction of experimental methods (...) to a discipline. Only the question if experimental methods can actually capture the objects of philosophical research remains as a – weak – candidate for a specifically philosophical problem. This question is discussed separately. Finally, a constructively critical pluralism of methods is advocated and more serenity demanded: Introducing experimental methods to philosophy is an experiment itself. We will simply have to wait and see if it succeeds. (shrink)

This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins likewise draws on (...) Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (shrink)

Drawing on an idea proposed by Darwin, it has recently been hypothesised that violent intergroup conflict might have played a substantial role in the evolution of human cooperativeness and altruism. The central notion of this argument, dubbed ‘parochial altruism’, is that the two genetic or cultural traits, aggressiveness against out-groups and cooperativeness towards the in-group, including self-sacrificial altruistic behaviour, might have coevolved in humans. This review assesses the explanatory power of current theories of ‘parochial altruism’. After a brief synopsis of (...) the existing literature, two pitfalls in the interpretation of the most widely used models are discussed: potential direct benefits and high relatedness between group members implicitly induced by assumptions about conflict structure and frequency. Then, a number of simplifying assumptions made in the construction of these models are pointed out which currently limit their explanatory power. Next, relevant empirical evidence from several disciplines which could guide future theoretical extensions is reviewed. Finally, selected alternative accounts of evolutionary links between intergroup conflict and intragroup cooperation are briefly discussed which could be integrated with parochial altruism in the future. (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

This is part A of a paper in which we defend a semantics for counterfactuals which is probabilistic in the sense that the truth condition for counterfactuals refers to a probability measure. Because of its probabilistic nature, it allows a counterfactual ‘ifAthenB’ to be true even in the presence of relevant ‘Aand notB’-worlds, as long such exceptions are not too widely spread. The semantics is made precise and studied in different versions which are related to each other by representation theorems. (...) Despite its probabilistic nature, we show that the semantics and the resulting system of logic may be regarded as a naturalistically vindicated variant of David Lewis’ truth-conditional semantics and logic of counterfactuals. At the same time, the semantics overlaps in various ways with the non-truth-conditional suppositional theory for conditionals that derives from Ernest Adams’ work. We argue that counterfactuals have two kinds of pragmatic meanings and come attached with two types of degrees of acceptability or belief, one being suppositional, the other one being truth based as determined by our probabilistic semantics; these degrees could not always coincide due to a new triviality result for counterfactuals, and they should not be identified in the light of their different interpretation and pragmatic purpose. However, for plain assertability the difference between them does not matter. Hence, if the suppositional theory of counterfactuals is formulated with sufficient care, our truth-conditional theory of counterfactuals is consistent with it. The results of our investigation are used to assess a claim considered by Hawthorne and Hájek, that is, the thesis that most ordinary counterfactuals are false. (shrink)

The article recapitulates what logic is about traditionally and works out two roles it has been playing in philosophy: the role of an instrument and of a philosophical discipline in its own right. Using Tarski’s philosophical-logical work as case study, it develops a logical reconstructionist methodology of philosophical logic that extends and refines Rudolf Carnap’s account of explication and rational reconstruction. The methodology overlaps with, but also partially diverges from, contemporary anti-exceptionalism about logic.

What kinds of sentences with truth predicate may be inserted plausibly and consistently into the T-scheme? We state an answer in terms of dependence: those sentences which depend directly or indirectly on non-semantic states of affairs (only). In order to make this precise we introduce a theory of dependence according to which a sentence φ is said to depend on a set Φ of sentences iff the truth value of φ supervenes on the presence or absence of the sentences of (...) Φ in/from the extension of the truth predicate. Both φ and the members of Φ are allowed to contain the truth predicate. On that basis we are able define notions such as ungroundedness or self-referentiality within a classical semantics, and we can show that there is an adequate definition of truth for the class of sentences which depend on non-semantic states of affairs. (shrink)

The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This volume explores the benefits and challenges of (...) an empirical philosophy of science and addresses questions such as: What do philosophers gain from empirical work? How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts? How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research? What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach? What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work? Nine experts discuss their thoughts and empirical results in the chapters of this book with the aim of providing readers with an answer to these questions. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of historical references and arguments in the current policy debate on non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Germany. It analyses major documents and opinion statements, including the recent parliamentary debate (2019). The implementation of NIPT is accompanied by concerns and strong criticism, particularly in Germany. Many perceive the new test to be a problematic step that facilitates selective practices and is reminiscent of eugenics. Analysis of the German policy discourse shows that ‘eugenics’, and even more strongly, (...) ‘selection’, are pivotal terms for rejecting NIPT and its coverage by public health insurance. They touch on a historical dimension in public deliberation, namely the fundamental distancing from the inhuman practices of the National Socialist period and anything that resembles them. However, using these terms to criticize prenatal genetic testing is controversial, and recent discourse demonstrates their avoidance as well, with many supporters of a limited coverage by public health insurance contrasting their approach with more widespread screening. Here, ‘screening’ has a negative connotation, and functions to demarcate the debate in a way that may reflect distance from certain modes of historical reasoning, but still expresses a special need to reconcile prenatal testing with the principles of dignity, inclusion and diversity. This article aims to elucidate the concerns involved in the national debates on prenatal testing and to increase awareness of the historical dimensions of the language and reasoning with which such methods are negotiated today and in future. (shrink)

We give an overview of the role of equicontinuity of sequences of real-valued functions on [0,1] and related notions in classical mathematics, intuitionistic mathematics, Bishop’s constructive mathematics, and Russian recursive mathematics. We then study the logical strength of theorems concerning these notions within the programme of Constructive Reverse Mathematics. It appears that many of these theorems, like a version of Ascoli’s Lemma, are equivalent to fan-theoretic principles.

When do children acquire a propositional attitude folk psychology or theory of mind? The orthodox answer to this central question of developmental ToM research had long been that around age 4 children begin to apply “belief” and other propositional attitude concepts. This orthodoxy has recently come under serious attack, though, from two sides: Scoffers complain that it over-estimates children’s early competence and claim that a proper understanding of propositional attitudes emerges only much later. Boosters criticize the orthodoxy for underestimating early (...) competence and claim that even infants ascribe beliefs. In this paper, the orthodoxy is defended on empirical grounds against these two kinds of attacks. On the basis of new evidence, not only can the two attacks safely be countered, but the orthodox claim can actually be strengthened, corroborated and refined: what emerges around age 4 is an explicit, unified, flexibly conceptual capacity to ascribe propositional attitudes. This unified conceptual capacity contrasts with the less sophisticated, less unified implicit forms of tracking simpler mental states present in ontogeny long before. This refined version of the orthodoxy can thus most plausibly be spelled out in some form of 2-systems-account of theory of mind. (shrink)

Building on and partially refining previous theoretical work, this paper presents an extended simulation model of ancestral warfare. This model (1) disentangles attack and defense, (2) tries to differentiate more strictly between selfish and altruistic efforts during war, (3) incorporates risk aversion and deterrence, and (4) pays special attention to the role of brutality. Modeling refinements and simulation results yield a differentiated picture of possible evolutionary dynamics. The main observations are: (i) Altruism in this model is more likely to evolve (...) for defenses than for attacks. (ii) Risk aversion, deterrence and the interplay of migration levels and brutality can change evolutionary dynamics substantially. (iii) Unexpectedly, one occasional simulation outcome is a dynamically stable state of ‘tolerated intergroup theft’, raising the question if corresponding patterns also exist in real intergroup conflicts. Finally, possible implications for theories of the co-evolution of bellicosity and altruism in humans are discussed. (shrink)

Bankers have a reputation for deviating from standard morals. It is an open question, though, if this claim can be substantiated. Here, it is tested directly if bankers respond differently to moral dilemmas. Evaluations of the moral acceptableness of behavioural options in two trolley cases by bankers (n = 23) are compared to those of ordinary people (n = 274). An apparent difference in response behaviour between the groups can be fully explained by a difference in the response behaviour of (...) men and women. When controlling for gender, no differences between bankers and other people remain. (shrink)