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.

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)

Improved control of agency is likely to be a prior and more important function of episodic memory than the epistemic-communicative role pinpointed by Mahr and Csibra. Taking the memory trace upon which scenario construction is based to be a stored internal model produced in past perceptual processing promises to provide a better account of autonoetic character than metarepresentational embedding.

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 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)

Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) is generally conceived of as being the failed manifesto of logical positivism. In this paper we will consider the following question: How much of the Aufbau can actually be saved? We will argue that there is an adaptation of the old system which satisfies many of the demands of the original programme. In order to defend this thesis, we have to show how a new 'Aufbau-like' programme may (...) solve or circumvent the problems that affected the original Aufbau project. In particular, we are going to focus on how a new system may address the well-known difficulties in Carnap's Aufbau concerning abstraction, dimensionality, and theoretical terms. (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)

Supervision is widely acknowledged as influencing the quality of postgraduate theses, and thus, by implication, of postgraduates. Despite this, the literature on conducting research offers little guidance in respect of managing the supervision relationship. This paper opens a window onto the relationship – and particularly the power relationship – between a particular supervisor of postgraduate research, Howard, and his Master’s student, Ray. It draws on research that explores how contemporary influences in the university domain intersect with individual agency and with (...) power relations to produce knowledge on two levels: the thesis as an extrinsic product of processes of education, and the person as an intrinsic product of processes of learning.Selections of Michel Foucault’s insights are used to explore the notion of power and how it operates through rules of discourse to construct knowledge and identity. Accordingly, the research describes and tracks the functioning of two discourses pivotal to Howard and Ray’s experience of supervision: anarchic educational leadership discourse, and humanistic discourse. The research on which the paper is based is constructivist, and as such it is underpinned by the assumption, or rather belief, that the discursive construction of reality is mediated by individual agency. In order to analyse how power operates between individuals, and between them and their broader educational contexts, a conceptual tool capable of accommodating manifest strategic processes – identified along a positional continuum as ‘push’,’ allow’ and ‘pull’ – was devised.The case study yields several thematic correlations in interpersonal and institutional power. These are: the significance of supervisor-student matching; links between expectations, abilities, the way participants negotiate power, and the quality of professional and pastoral care they experience; the impact of personal affinity on supervision; and the influence of ontology on thesis-as-product and person-as-product. (shrink)

Conceptual understanding of representations and fluency in using representations are important aspects of expertise. However, little is known about how these competencies interact: does representational understanding facilitate learning of fluency, or does fluency enhance learning of representational understanding? We analyze log data obtained from an experiment that investigates the effects of intelligent tutoring systems support for understanding and fluency in connection-making between fractions representations. The experiment shows that instructional support for both representational understanding and fluency are needed for students to (...) benefit from the ITS. In analyzing the ITS log data, we contrast the understanding-first hypothesis and the fluency-first hypothesis, testing whether errors made during the learning phase mediate the effect of experimental condition. Finding that a simple statistical model does not the fit data, we searched over all plausible causal path analysis models. Our results support the understanding-first hypothesis but not the fluency-first hypothesis. (shrink)

Ein christlich-religiöses Verständnis des Lebens ist eng verbunden mit dem Bewusstsein der Grenzen eigener Möglichkeiten bzw. einer spezifischen Verarbeitung des Scheiterns am Vollkommenheitsideal. Dieses Wissen ist nicht nur eine Überzeugung, sondern es wird in der Gestalt vielfältiger Praktiken inkorporiert und verinnerlicht. Der Aufsatz entfaltet diesen Zusammenhang am Beispiel der protestantischen Bestattungskultur in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

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)

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)

In this article we try to give a philosophically reflected introductory overview of the current theoretical developments in the field of evolutionary aesthetics. Our aim is not completeness. Rather, we try to depict some of the central assumptions and explanatory tools frequently used in evolutionary accounts of human aesthetical preferences and address a number of currently debated, open research questions.

The Many-Interacting-Worlds (MIW) approach to a quantum theory without wave functions proposed in [8] leads naturally to numerical integrators of the Schrödinger equation on comoving grids. As yet, little is known about concrete MIW models for more than one spatial dimension and/or more than one particle. In honour of Detlef Dürr, we report on a further development of the MIW approach to treat arbitrary degrees of freedom and provide a numerical proof of concept for ground states in 2d. The latter (...) is part of a systematic numerical study [22] that includes also 1d ground and excited states. With this step towards the treatment of higher degrees of freedom we hope to stimulate their further study. (shrink)

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)

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.

Pindar's victory songs teem with divinity. By exploring them within the lived religious landscapes of the fifth century BCE, Hanne Eisenfeld demonstrates that they are in fact engaged in theological work. Focusing on a set of mythical figures whose identities blur the boundaries between mortality and immortality, she newly interprets the value of immortality in the epinician corpus. Pindar's depiction of these figures responds to and shapes contemporary religious experience and revalues mortality as a prerequisite for the glory found in (...) victory. The book combines close reading and philological analysis with religious historical approaches to Pindar's songs and his world. It highlights the inextricability of Greek literature and Greek religion, and models a novel approach to Greek lyric poetry at the intersection of these fields. (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)

ABSTRACTProponents of the linguistic analogy suggest that methodologies originally developed for investigating linguistic grammar can also be fruitfully applied to the empirical study of moral grammar: the causal and intentional representations of moral events which – according to the linguistic analogy – drive moral judgements. In the current study, we put this claim to the empirical test. Participants were presented with moral dilemmas which previously have been shown to implement a central principle in moral judgements: the principle of double effect. (...) Participants responded to by and in order to probes to assess causal and intentional representations of this principle. Results show that these linguistic probes do not relate to moral judgement in the manner predicted by proponents of the linguistic analogy and moral grammar. Although the linguistic analogy is a theoretically rich framework, the procedures posited to give it empirical traction require revision. (shrink)

Las cinco investigaciones que se incluyen en este libro se relacionan con la variacion lexica y conceptual de diferentes estratos sociales de Mexico. Sin duda, un mayor acervo conceptual de mayores posibilidades de comprender y modificar el mundo. A pesar de su importancia, este tipo de diferencias ha sido muy poco estudiado, mas especificamente, la semantica social puede considerarse como un campo nuevo en la linguistica. Mexico es un pais con diferencias economicas bastante notables, y los intereses de la gente (...) se relacionan con este hecho. Mientras unos se preocupan por la educacion y la cultura, los valores y las ideas, otros piensan fundamentalmente en el alimento y en el vestido. Las diferencias que encuentra el autor lo llevan a proponer que, en Mexico al parecer, la riqueza lexica y conceptual esta tan mal distribuida como la economica. (shrink)

What is the status of the reduction in realistic phenomenology? Approaching this question presupposes understanding what realistic phenomenology is. Five ways of defining realistic phenomenology are delineated: 1) lineage definitions, 2) locality definitions, 3) thematic definitions, 4) definitions from the essence of philosophy, and 5) methodological definitions. The question of reduction’s status concerns mostly a combination of 4) and 5) but also draws on historical considerations. An overview of the realists’ critiques of the phenomenological reduction reveals that this method was (...) not unilaterally rejected and, thus, demonstrates that there is not only methodological epochism but indeed also methodological reductionism within realistic phenomenology. The common denominator of these critiques is that the reductive method in transcendental phenomenology depends on a phenomenological theory of reality. An indepth discussion of Scheler’s philosophical anthropology shows that it hinges on a principled revision and systematic completion of the reduction. Reduction is no longer viewed as a scientific method but as a technique of inner acting. From the vantage point of his voluntative realism, Scheler’s technological reductionism is spelled out in terms of a stratified scheme relating reality experiences as resistance to the levels of the vital-psychic sphere: 1) primary resistance, 2) ecologically bound resistance, 3) internalized resistance, 4) ego-dystonic resistance and 5) (dis-)inhibition and objectification of drive impulses. Drawing on Celms’s distinction between 1) reducendum, 2) reductive base, 3) reduction as an epistemic act, and 4) result of the reduction, a new and systematic interpretation of Schelerian reductions is developed for the scientific, phenomenological/Apollonian, Dionysian, and cathartic reductions. Each reductive technique cultivates man’s facultative dispositions (intellect, will, feeling). Only their concerted cooperation unlocks man’s full cognitive and ethical potential. (shrink)

It is well known that aggregating the degree-of-belief functions of different subjects by linear pooling or averaging is subject to a commutativity dilemma: other than in trivial cases, conditionalizing the individual degree-of-belief functions on a piece of evidence E followed by linearly aggregating them does not yield the same result as rst aggregating them linearly and then conditionalizing the resulting social degree- of-belief function on E. In the present paper we suggest a novel way out of this dilemma: adapting the (...) method of update or learning such that linear pooling com- mutes with it. As it turns out, the resulting update scheme – imaging on the evidence – is well-known from areas such as the study of conditionals and cau- sal decision theory, and a formal result from which the required commutativity property is derivable was supplied already by Gärdenfors in a different con- text. We end up determining under which conditions imaging would seem to be right method of update, and under which conditions, therefore, group update would not be affected by the commutativity dilemma. (shrink)

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)