Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Suppose we have a persistent disagreement about a particular set of policy options, not because of an underlying moral disagreement, or a mere conflict of interest, but rather because we disagree about a crucial non-normative factual assumption underlying the justification of the policy choices. The main question in the paper is what political legitimacy requires in such cases, or indeed whether there are defensible answers to that question. The problem of political legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements has received almost no (...) attention in political philosophy, which has focused mostly on value disagreements and proposed theories of legitimate coercive legislation in valuedependent disagreements. The paper presents an argument showing that under certain plausible assumptions regarding legitimacy, there are serious difficulties in identifying legitimate choices in fact-dependent policy disagreements. This may be unsurprising to political philosophers preoccupied with value-based disagreements, perhaps because it has been assumed that legitimacy-related concerns are irrelevant to fact-dependent policy disagreements. The paper argues that this response is premature. If we should care about legitimacy et al.l, then it is by no means clear why we should ignore issues of legitimacy in policy-disputes that depend on factual disagreements. The paper ends by defining a set of possibilities that merit further exploration in search of a theory of legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements. (shrink)

Presents translations of five dialogues from Plato, as well as additional notes on history and mythology.

We sometimes disagree not only about facts, but also about how best to acquire evidence or justified beliefs within the domain of facts that we disagree about. And sometimes we have no dispute-independent ways of settling what the best ways of acquiring evidence in these domains are. Following Michael Lynch, I call this phenomenon deep disagreement. In the paper, I outline various forms of deep disagreement, following but also in certain respects revising and expanding Lynch’s exposition in (2010, 2012). As (...) is well known, for the externalist about knowledge and epistemic justification deep disagreements may be nothing more than an unfortunate failure of communication. Yet, though he grants this, Lynch argues that deep disagreement points to a sort of practical problem. I agree. In my paper I propose a revised account of the sort of practical problem that deep disagreement may pose. In short, my claim is that deep disagreement may be a problem due to the role that shared factual beliefs may have in common decision-making. I discuss and assess various reactions to the problem of deep disagreement, including the one proposed by Lynch. I argue that none of the solutions discussed in the paper are satisfactory. (shrink)

_Plato's Thought_ offers an excellent introduction to Plato, guiding the reader through Plato's Theory of Forms, and examining his views on art, education and statecraft. This edition includes an introduction, bibliographic essay, and bibliography by Donald Zeyl.

Epistemic expressivism is the view that epistemic appraisals are basically non-factual valuations. In this paper I consider recent objections pressed by Terrence Cuneo, Michael Lynch and Jonathan Kvanvig to the effect that whatever the problems of expressivism in general, epistemic expressivism faces certain fatal objections due to the fact that the view is applied to the epistemic domain. The most important of these objections state, roughly, that because of the very content of the doctrine, epistemic expressivism cannot be coherently asserted (...) or argued for. Thus, epistemic expressivism is, as I shall say, dialectically incoherent. Another way to put the objection is this: there is no cogent perspective in which epistemic expressivism can be asserted or argued for. Since these arguments all trade on the idea of a perspective in which epistemic expressivism is to be asserted, I shall, following Terence Cuneo's terminology, refer to the arguments as the perspective objections (Cuneo 2007, 170). I argue that the perspective objections fail. Whatever serious objections there might be to epistemic expressivism, the charge that the view is dialectically incoherent is not one of them. (shrink)

Diachronic perceptual atomism is the view that the contents of experience do not involve temporal relations between non-simultaneous events, such as motion, succession, or duration, but only 'snapshots' of the world. Traditionally, atomism has not been a very popular view. Indeed, many philosophers think that it is obviously false and that the main debate about time consciousness takes place between models which reject atomistic commitments. This antiatomistic sentiment can be traced back to William James's slogan that 'a succession of feelings, (...) in and of itself, is not a feeling of succession'. In this paper I argue, first, that the arguments typically launched against atomism in the spirit of James's slogan fail; and second, that the viability of atomism depends on what the conditions for a mental event's being an experience are. In particular, I argue that if a mental event is an experience only if it fulfils certain downstream conditions, which concern the role of the event in the subject's cognitive life, then atomism fails. Otherwise, it is in fact a viable and in many ways attractive view. It follows from my discussion that, contrary to popular belief, atomism is by no means obviously false. Rather, its viability depends on one's further views about the relationship between experience and cognition. (shrink)

Contains the _Poetics _ and the first twelve chapters of the_ Rhetoric_, Book III.

_Plato's Thought_ offers an excellent introduction to Plato, guiding the reader through Plato's Theory of Forms, and examining his views on art, education and statecraft. This edition includes an introduction, bibliographic essay, and bibliography by Donald Zeyl.

To speak of ‘the real subject’ or ‘the primary aim’ of a Platonic dialogue usually means to magnify one aspect of it at the expense of other aspects as important. Such is not my intention. It is quite clear, however, without prejudice to the philosophic value of any of the topics discussed, that the Protagoras is an attack upon the sophists as represented by Protagoras, the greatest of them. Hippias and Prodicus are present and some of the great man's glory (...) is reflected upon them; they are also no doubt to some extent implicated in his defeat, though they seem quite unaware of the fact. (shrink)

In this article, evidentialism is refuted by relying on William James’ article ‘The Will to Believe’. After an introduction into the notion of ‘evidentialism’ and James’ attack on it , I distinguish between two sorts of evidentialisms, truth-oriented evidentialism and quiescent evidentialism . In 2.3–2.5, I criticize these forms of evidentialism on the grounds that the first has very limited applicability and the second leads to absurd consequences when applied in the moral domain. In section 3, the evidentialist challenge to (...) religion is refuted by arguing that, first, truth-oriented evidentialism is of only very limited applicability for criticizing religion and second, that quiescent evidentialism cannot be applied in certain situations , particular religious claims being among them. (shrink)

The lifetime equality view has recently been met with the objection that it does not rule out simultaneous inequality: two persons may lead equally good lives on the whole and yet there may at any time be great differences in their level of well-being. And simultaneous inequality, it is held, ought to be a concern of egalitarians. The paper discusses this and related objections to the lifetime equality view. It is argued that rather than leading to a revision of the (...) lifetime equality view, these objections, if taken seriously, should make us account for our egalitarian concerns in terms of the priority view rather than the equality view. The priority view claims that there is a greater moral value to benefiting the worse off. Several versions of the priority view are also distinguished. (shrink)

El estudio estuvo destinado a determinar la necesidad de formación profesional sindical del representante de los trabajadores en la negociación colectiva. Los resultados principales son los siguientes: la diferencia entre la formación profesional y sindical esta en que la formación sindical es importante debido a que permite dotar a los cuadros sindicales de información general sobre el rol de los sindicatos y su papel en la negociación colectiva, por otro lado la formación profesional es importante ya que es una herramienta (...) que permite mejorar la calidad del empleo, entre otros, se determino que la formación profesional sindical del representante de los trabajadores, influye en su desempeño como negociador en una negociación colectiva. (shrink)

In deep disagreements local disagreements are intertwined with more general basic disagreements about the relevant evidence, standards of argument or proper methods of inquiry in that domain. The paper provides a more specific conception of deep disagreement along these lines and argues that while we should generally conciliate in cases of disagreement, this is not so in deep disagreements. The paper offers a general view of disagreement, holding roughly that one should moderate one’s credence towards uncertainty in so far as (...) disagreement with others provides undefeated higher order evidence that one might have made a mistake in one’s appreciation of the first order evidence. When applying this view to deep disagreement we get that in cases of deep disagreement higher order evidence from disagreement is rebutted or undercut by the nature of the disagreement. So, in cases of deep disagreement one should not moderate one’s credence. I finally argue that this gives a better general view of deep disagreement than views appealing to epistemic peers, personal information or independence. (shrink)

This paper explores in detail an argument for epistemic expressivism, what we call the Argument from Motivation. While the Argument from Motivation has sometimes been anticipated, it has never been set out in detail. The argument has three premises, roughly, that certain judgments expressed in attributions of knowledge are intrinsically motivating in a distinct way (P1); that motivation for action requires desire-like states or conative attitudes (HTM); and that the semantic content of knowledge attributions cannot be specified without reference to (...) the intrinsically motivating judgments that such attributions express (P2). We argue that these premises entail a version of ecumenical expressivism. Since the argument from motivation has not been explicitly stated before, there is no current discussion of the argument. In this paper we therefore consider and reject various objections that one might propose to the argument, including some that stem from the idea that knowledge is factive, or that knowledge involves evidence that rules out relevant alternatives. Other objections to (P1) specifically might be derived from cases of apparent lack of epistemic motivation considered in in Kvanvig (The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003) and Brown (Nous 42(2):167–189, 2008), as well as from general forms of externalism about epistemic motivation. We consider these and find them wanting. Finally, the paper offers some critical remarks about the prospect of denying (P2). (shrink)

It seems obvious that informational privacy has an epistemological component; privacy or lack of privacy concerns certain kinds of epistemic relations between a cogniser and sensitive pieces of information. One striking feature of the fairly substantial philosophical literature on informational privacy is that the nature of this epistemological component of privacy is only sparsely discussed. The main aim of this paper is to shed some light on the epistemological component of informational privacy.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a diagnosis and a resolution to generality problem. I state the generality problem and suggest a distinction between criteria of relevance and what I call a theory of determination. The generality problem may concern either of these. While plausible criteria of relevance would be convenient for the externalist, he does not need them. I discuss various theories of determination, and argue that no existing theory of determination is plausible. This provides a case (...) for the no determination view: there are no facts that determine relevant types. This is the diagnosis of the generality problem. The externalist, however, may embrace the no determination view. This is what provides a resolution to the generality problem. (shrink)

ABSTRACT For a distribution of health care resources to be fair, it should consider the consequences for the whole lives of the affected persons and not just how badly off they are at the present moment. Since, other things being equal, a person is worse off if he dies young than if he dies old, it is fair to give scarce vital health care resources to young rather than to old persons. In the paper this ageist view is restated and (...) defended against a number of objections raised by John Harris. According to Harris' so‐called anti‐ageist argument the only relevant consideration in the distribution of vital health care resources is people's desire to go on living. On reflection, this is highly counterintuitive. Instead, it is argued that both present desires to go on living and possible future happiness should weigh together with considerations of fairness. Both fairness and possible future happiness will in most cases speak in favour of saving the young before the old. A number of other problems for the ageist view are discussed, and solutions are suggested. (shrink)

By way of their genre, inaugural lectures are condensed and rather broad since they are addressed to a mixed audience. The following theses develop and defend my thoughts on the ‘justified religiou...

ABSTRACT For a distribution of health care resources to be fair, it should consider the consequences for the whole lives of the affected persons and not just how badly off they are at the present moment. Since, other things being equal, a person is worse off if he dies young than if he dies old, it is fair to give scarce vital health care resources to young rather than to old persons. In the paper this ageist view is restated and (...) defended against a number of objections raised by John Harris. According to Harris' so‐called anti‐ageist argument the only relevant consideration in the distribution of vital health care resources is people's desire to go on living. On reflection, this is highly counterintuitive. Instead, it is argued that both present desires to go on living and possible future happiness should weigh together with considerations of fairness. Both fairness and possible future happiness will in most cases speak in favour of saving the young before the old. A number of other problems for the ageist view are discussed, and solutions are suggested. (shrink)

This book grew out of an international symposium, organized in September 1986 by the Austrian Cultural Institute in Warsaw in cooperation with the Polish Philosophical Society. The topic was: The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. Since the two phil osophical trends existed in roughly the same time and were close ly related, it was one of the purposes of the symposium to investigate both similarities and thp differences. Some thirty people took part in the symposium, nearly twenty contributions were (...) presented and extensively discussed. The sym posium owed much to the excellent organization and warm hospital ity shown by Dr Georg Jankovic, the Director of the Austrian In stitute. As the person in charge of the scientific programme of the symposium, I take pleasure to acknowledge this debt. It so happened that a month later another symposium of a similar character was held. It took place in the University of Manchester, on the occasion of the centenary of the births of Stanislaw Lesniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiflski and Wladyslaw Tatarkie wicz. Some papers read at the Manchester symposium form a part of the present volume. It was not possible, for technical reasons (the time factor was one of them), to include in this book all the material from the two symposia. Certain contributions have appeared elsewhere (for instance, K. Szaniawski's 'Ajdukiewicz on Non-Deductive Inference' was published in Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 23). On the other hand, certain papers have been written special ly for this volume. (shrink)

This paper investigates the behavior of contestants in the game show “Quiz Taxi” when faced with the decision whether to bet the winnings they have acquired on a final “double or nothing” question. The decision in this natural experiment is made by groups of two or three persons. This setup enables the decision-making process to be studied with regard to group and communication characteristics. The contestants show fairly risk averse behavior. There is also a significant heterogeneity in attitude to risk. (...) In particular, all-female groups are much less likely to go for the risky option. Furthermore, decision-making behavior appears to vary across differently composed groups and prior performance. The study also documents the importance of discussions: The propensity to gamble increases with discussion length, and the correlation between communication content and the final choice is strong, indicating that time and subjective context are important features of decisions made under risk. (shrink)

In an influential article, Simon C. May forcefully argued that, properly understood, there can never be principled reasons for moral compromise. While there may be pragmatic reasons for compromising that involve, for instance, concern for political expediency or for stability, there are properly speaking no principled reasons to compromise. My aim in the article is to show how principled moral compromise in the context of moral disagreements over policy options is possible. I argue that when we disagree, principled reasons favoring (...) compromises or compromising can assume a more significant part of what makes a position all things considered best, and in this way disagreement can ground moral compromise. (shrink)

We all agree that democratic decision-making requires a factual input, and most of us assume that when the pertinent facts are not in plain view they should be furnished by well-functioning scientific institutions. But how should liberal democracy respond when apparently sincere, rational and well-informed citizens object to coercive legislation because it is based on what they consider a misguided trust in certain parts of science? Cases are familiar, the most prominent concerning climate science and evolution, but one may also (...) count GMO-skepticism and vaccine-skepticism, and there are plenty of others. The paper defends what I, borrowing an expression from Badiola, call Science as Public Reason, asserting roughly that some policy-relevant factual proposition P is part of public reason if and only if there is consensus about P among scientific experts in the relevant well-functioning scientific institutions. I defend this view against the controversiality objection claiming that scientific findings cannot in this general way pass as public reason as they are sometimes controversial among reasonable citizens. My preferred line of defense is what I call Dogmatism about Science as Public Reason, which roughly amounts to insisting on Science as Public Reason on the ground that it is a philosophically well-motivated view, while conceding that it may not be acceptable to all minimally rational and well-informed individuals. (shrink)

This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way to moral disagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p. If such higher-order evidence is not defeated, then one rationally ought to reduce one’s confidence with respect (...) to the proposition in question. We term this the higher-order evidence account, and present it as a superior to what we might call standard conciliationism, which holds that when agents A and B disagree about p, and are epistemic peers, they should both suspend judgement about p or adjust their confidence towards the mean of A and B’s prior credences in p. Many have suspected that standard conciliationism is implausible and may have skeptical implications. After presenting the HOE account, we put it to work by applying it to a range of cases of moral disagreement, including those that have feature in recent debates assuming standard conciliationism. We show that the HOE account support reasonable, non-skeptical verdicts in a range of cases. Note that this is a paper on moral disagreement, not on the HOE account, thus the account is merely stated here, while defended more fully elsewhere. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Barth resists the modern “turn to the subject” and that important features of his approach can be explained as being motivated by this resistance. Under the parameters of this “turn”, the human subject occupies a position which should be reserved for God. As an antidote to this turn, Barth suggests an exchange of subjects: The role that the subject occupies under subjectivist parameters should be taken over by a Trinitarian notion of God. This suggestion (...) explains to a great extent the approach he takes since his famous “breakthrough” and explains also his harsh rejection of Brunner. (shrink)

The relationship between religion and contingency is investigated historically and systematically. Its historical part comprises analyses of important philosophers’ interpretation of this relationship, viz. that of Leibniz, Kant, Lessing, Jaspers, and Heidegger. Its systematic part analyses how this relationship should be currently interpreted.

If we tried, all the time, to do the acts which, according to consequentialism, are right, this would be worse, on consequentialist terms, than if we were less ambitious. In this way consequentialism is indirectly self‐defeating, as Parfit says in Reasons and Persons. But, as Parfit also says, this is not an objection to consequentialism. In a recent contribution, Dancy argues that this is a mistake, however. There is, Dancy suggests, a sense in which consequentialism both recommends that we do (...) certain acts, and that the same time says that we should not do them, and no ethical theory can do so. I discuss Dancy's objection, and argue that there is no way to understand it such that it presents a challenge to consequentialism. (shrink)

If we tried, all the time, to do the acts which, according to consequentialism, are right, this would be worse, on consequentialist terms, than if we were less ambitious. In this way consequentialism is indirectly self‐defeating, as Parfit says in Reasons and Persons. But, as Parfit also says, this is not an objection to consequentialism. In a recent contribution, Dancy argues that this is a mistake, however. There is, Dancy suggests, a sense in which consequentialism both recommends that we do (...) certain acts, and that the same time says that we should not do them, and no ethical theory can do so. I discuss Dancy's objection, and argue that there is no way to understand it such that it presents a challenge to consequentialism. (shrink)

What I call hegemonism holds that a satisfactory moral theory must in a fairly direct way guide action. This, the hegemonist believes, provides a constraint on moral theorizing. We should not accept moral theories which cannot in the proper sense guide us. There are two alternatives to hegemonism. One is motivational indirection, which is the idea that while agents remain motivated by a moral theory, they may be only indirectly motivated. The other is non-hegemonism, which holds that a correct moral (...) theory need not in any direct or indirect sense guide or motivate actions. In the main part of the paper I discuss widely endorsed objections to motivational indirection and nonhegemonism, and I argue that these objections all fail. Hence, motivational indirection and non-hegemonism remain viable conceptions of moral theory. (shrink)

Republic is the central work of the Western world's most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. It is also a literary masterpiece: the philosophy is presented for the most part for the ordinary reader, who is carried along by the wit and intensity of the dialogue and by Plato's unforgettable images of the human condition. This new, lucid translation by Robin Waterfield is complemented by full explanatory (...) notes and an up-to-date critical introduction. (shrink)