Journalists differ in the degree to which they have adopted the Internet professionally. While earlier studies were predominantly descriptive, this study explains why journalists differ in the amount and nature of their use of the Internet. Based on a random sample of members of the Dutch Association of Journalists, results indicate that the digital divide in terms of demographic characteristics is absent. The perceived functionality of the Internet as a professional tool is the most important explanatory factor for the use (...) of the Internet. Surprisingly, professional attitudes towards journalistic quality are not reflected in journalists' use of the Internet. (shrink)

This volume unites various contributions reflecting the intellectual interests exhibited by Professor Herman Parret, who has continued to observe, and often critically assess, ongoing developments in pragmatics throughout his career. In fact, Parret's contributions to philosophical and empirical/linguistic pragmatics present substantive proposals in the epistemics of communication, while simultaneously offering meta-comments on the ideological premises of extant pragmatic analyses. In a lengthy introduction, an overview is provided of his achievements in promoting an integrated, "maximalist" pragmatics, as well as of the (...) links between his own work in philosophy of language and in semiotics and aesthetics. The remaining 12 essays address relevant pragmatic themes or look into the relation between pragmatics and neighboring disciplines. They deal with grammatical deixis and mood, performativity, speech-act types and their praxeological dimensions, Wittgensteinian language games, cultural and intercultural identities, and the visual arts. (shrink)

Herman Cappelen investigates how language and other representational devices can go wrong, and how to fix them. We use language to understand and talk about the world, but what if our language has deficiencies that prevent it from playing that role? How can we revise our concepts, and what are the limits on revision?

The standard view of philosophical methodology is that philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence. Herman Cappelen argues that this claim is false: it is not true that philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence. At worst, analytic philosophers are guilty of engaging in somewhat irresponsible use of 'intuition'-vocabulary. While this irresponsibility has had little effect on first order philosophy, it has fundamentally misled meta-philosophers: it has encouraged meta-philosophical pseudo-problems and misleading pictures of what philosophy is.

Cappelen and Hawthorne present a powerful critique of fashionable relativist accounts of truth, and the foundational ideas in semantics on which the new relativism draws. They argue compellingly that the contents of thought and talk are propositions that instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth and falsity.

Many social situations require a mental model of the knowledge, beliefs, goals, and intentions of others: a Theory of Mind (ToM). If a person can reason about other people’s beliefs about his own beliefs or intentions, he is demonstrating second-order ToM reasoning. A standard task to test second-order ToM reasoning is the second-order false belief task. A different approach to investigating ToM reasoning is through its application in a strategic game. Another task that is believed to involve the application of (...) second-order ToM is the comprehension of sentences that the hearer can only understand by considering the speaker’s alternatives. In this study we tested 40 children between 8 and 10 years old and 27 adult controls on (adaptations of) the three tasks mentioned above: the false belief task, a strategic game, and a sentence comprehension task. The results show interesting differences between adults and children, between the three tasks, and between this study and previous research. (shrink)

The Moral Habitat offers a new and systematic interpretation of Kant's moral and political philosophy. Herman introduces the idea of a moral habitat to examines the dynamic system of duties that exists between individuals and civic institutions.

Cappelen and Hawthorne present a powerful critique of fashionable relativist accounts of truth, and the foundational ideas in semantics on which the new relativism draws. They argue compellingly that the contents of thought and talk are propositions that instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth and falsity.

Conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics are branches of philosophy concerned with questions about how to assess and ameliorate our representational devices (such as concepts and words). It's a part of philosophy concerned with questions about which concepts we should use (and why), how concepts can be improved, when concepts should be abandoned, and how proposals for amelioration can be implemented. Central parts of the history of philosophy have engaged with these issues, but the focus of this volume is on applications (...) to work in contemporary philosophy of language and mind, epistemology, gender and race theory, ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophical logic. This is the first volume devoted entirely to conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics. The volume explores the possibilities, benefits, problems, and applications of conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics. It consists of twenty chapters written by leading philosophers. (shrink)

Herman Philipse puts forward a powerful new critique of belief in God. He examines the strategies that have been used for the philosophical defence of religious belief, and by careful reasoning casts doubt on the legitimacy of relying on faith instead of evidence, and on probabilistic arguments for the existence of God.

Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? Making AI Intelligible shows that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they illustrate ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved. The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. (...) Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (for example, creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants). If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. This ground-breaking study offers insight into how to take some first steps towards achieving Interpretable AI. (shrink)

In der niederländischen Kultur werden komplexe moralische Probleme oftmals mit einem pragmatischen und prozeduralen Verfahren statt mit einem prinzipiellen Zugang angegangen. Die Debatte um Entscheidungen am Lebensende, die dem Sterbehilfegesetz von 2002 vorausging, ist ein Beispiel für diese Praxis. Auch die Befassung der Niederlande mit der „terminalen Sedierung“, die als neue Phase in der Diskussion um Entscheidungen am Lebensende betrachtet werden kann, folgt den Prinzipien des „Poldermodells“. Gesellschaftliche und politische Gruppierungen kooperieren, um eine gemeinsame Lösung zu finden angesichts der Tatsache, (...) dass terminale Sedierung unterschiedliche Praktiken und entsprechend unterschiedliche moralische Implikationen beinhaltet. (shrink)

Bad Language is the first textbook on an emerging area in the study of language: non-idealized language use, the linguistic behaviour of people who exploit language for malign purposes. This lively, accessible introduction offers theoretical frameworks for thinking about such topics as lies and bullshit, slurs and insults, coercion and silencing.

The study of complexity in chronic care is an emergent discipline that has not yet developed a consistent theoretical framework. Thinking in the field of complexity encompasses complexity science and complexity theories, which represent a convergence of different types of ideas and theories that focus on the interactions of individual parts that make up a complex system. In this context, an important distinction is to be made between "complex" and "complicated." If a system—despite the fact that it may consist of (...) a huge number of components— can be given a complete description in terms of its individual constituents, such a system is merely complicated. An example could be computers. In a complex system, on the .. (shrink)

God in the Age of Science? is a critical examination of strategies for the philosophical defence of religious belief. Herman Philipse argues that the most promising for believers who want to be justified in accepting their creed in our scientific age is the Bayesian cumulative case strategy developed by Richard Swinburne, and goes on to present an in-depth analysis of this case for theism. Using a 'strategy of subsidiary arguments', Philipse concludes that theism cannot be stated meaningfully; that if theism (...) were meaningful, it would have no predictive power concerning existing evidence, so that Bayesian arguments cannot get started; and that if the Bayesian cumulative case strategy did work, one should conclude that atheism is more probable than theism. Philipse provides a careful, rigorous, and original critique of atheism in the world today. (shrink)

Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk, and write about language are habitual users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices are invoked, one thing is (...) clear: they present theorists of language with a complex data pattern. Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore show that the study of these devices and patterns not only represents an interesting and neglected project in the philosophy of language, but also carries important consequences for other parts of philosophy. Part I is devoted to presenting data about various aspects of our metalinguistic practices. In Part II, the authors examine and reject the four leading metalinguistic theories, and offer a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts. But the primary goal of this book is not to promote one theory over another. Rather, it is to present a deeply puzzling set of problems and explain their significance. (shrink)

_Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive (...) and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has firmly established the similarities between Arendt and Foucault, in particular with regard to the dangers of late-modern social processes. Yet, few have compared their accounts of resistance. This paper argues that although Foucault offers the more comprehensive account, it omits the encounter with the other as unique and unfathomable, which is central to Arendt’s. This omission is particularly striking given the authors’ shared belief that the danger of ‘the social’ and ‘governmentality’ lies in atomizing individuals and barring (...) the development of a singular style of being, and their allusion to friendship and solidarity as sites of resistance. Drawing on Arendt, I show how Foucault restricts his thematization of solidarity and friendship to a reflexive praxis of the subject on her own limits, and argue instead for the relational dimension of resistance. I start by reconstructing their converging analysis of biological racism. I then continue with a discussion of resistance in Arendt, which she develops in response to the Shoah. More specifically, she provides a concept of solidarity and friendship that I draw on to extend Foucault’s analysis of the transnational solidarity among the governed in fighting for their rights vis-à-vis their governments; and of friendship in the context of his interrogation of the LGBT-movement. (shrink)

This essay aims to correct the widely-held view that Arendt is hostile to the body due to its physical needs. By focusing on two modes of corporeality that are distinguished by the production of bodily substances—the digestive body and the crying body—I argue that Arendt deployed various notions of corporeality that thematize, in different ways, the uncontrollability our bodies; and argues for the affirmation of this unmasterablity because it corresponds to the conditioned nature of human existence. Firstly, Arendt criticized the (...) Greek, narcissistic aspiration toward physical beauty, exemplified in the figure of Achilles, for its attempt to subjugate the digestive body to a preconceived end—a criticism that equally applies to Connolly’s plea for strategically altering our affects. Secondly, Arendt’s appreciation of Homer’s description of a crying Odysseus shows that the acknowledgment of events constitutive of one’s life consists in a publicly visible somatic reaction. (shrink)

It is a fundamental feature of language that words refer to things. Much attention has been devoted to the nature of reference, both in philosophy and in linguistics. Puzzles of Reference is the first book to give a comprehensive accessible survey of the fascinating work on this topic from the 1970s to the present day. -/- Written by two eminent philosophers of language, Puzzles of Reference offers an up-to-date introduction to reference in philosophy and linguistics, summarizing ideas such as Kripke's (...) revolutionary theory and presenting the various challenges in a clear and accessible manner. As the text does not assume prior training in philosophy or linguistics, it is ideal for use as part of a philosophy of language course for philosophy students or for linguistics students. -/- Puzzles of Reference belongs to the series Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy of Language, in which each book provides an introduction to an important area of the philosophy of language, suitable for students at any level. (shrink)

In a time when our understanding of nationalism is critically important, Herman Rapaport brings together an original analysis of philosophical nationalism via Derrida's vital lecture series on the subject. Taking society as the core entry point from which all meaningful social relations emerge, enables an explication of Derrida on race, gender, sex, and family. Key 20th century philosophers' writings on nationalism are revisited through Derrida and reveal themselves anew in light of current polarising debates between universalism and tribalism.

This paper discusses the empirical, Application Programming Interface -based analysis of very large Facebook Pages. Looking in detail at the technical characteristics, conventions, and peculiarities of Facebook’s architecture and data interface, we argue that such technical fieldwork is essential to data-driven research, both as a crucial form of data critique and as a way to identify analytical opportunities. Using the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Page, which hosted the activities of nearly 1.9 million users during the Egyptian Revolution and (...) beyond, as empirical example, we show how Facebook’s API raises important questions about data detail, completeness, consistency over time, and architectural complexity. We then outline an exploratory approach and a number of analytical techniques that take the API and its idiosyncrasies as a starting point for the concrete investigation of a large dataset. Our goal is to close the gap between Big Data research and research about Big Data by showing that the critical investigation of technicity is essential for empirical research and that attention to the particularities of empirical work can provide a deeper understanding of the various issues Big Data research is entangled with. (shrink)

I call the activity of assessing and developing improvements of our representational devices ‘conceptual engineering’.¹ The aim of this chapter is to present an argument for why conceptual engineering is important for all parts of philosophy (and, more generally, all inquiry). Section I of the chapter provides some background and defines key terms. Section II presents the argument. Section III responds to seven objections. The replies also serve to develop the argument and clarify what conceptual engineering is.

This scrupulously researched and rigorously argued book is the first to interpret and evaluate the central topic of Martin Heidegger's philosophy--his celebrated "Question of Being"--in the context of the full range of Heidegger's thought. With this comprehensive approach, Herman Philipse distinguishes in unprecedented ways the center from the periphery, the essential from the incidental in Heidegger's philosophy. Among other achievements, this allows him to shed new light on the controversial relationship between Heidegger's life and thought--in particular the connections between his (...) philosophy and his involvement with Nazism.Philipse begins by explaining which problems an interpretation of Heidegger's question of being should solve, and he specifies which type of interpretation is the best basis for an evaluation of Heidegger's thought. He then identifies various strands or leitmotifs in Heidegger's idea of being, and shows how these strands hang together in the philosopher's work. In doing so, Philipse offers new insights into Heidegger's views on such subjects as human existence, authenticity, logic, and language, and into his readings of such philosophers as Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. Philipse then integrates into his interpretation of Heidegger's overall theory the latest scholarship about the philosopher's engagement with Nazism. Finally, Philipse examines the fundamental structures of Heidegger's philosophy and assesses whether Heidegger's views are true, probable, or possess some other epistemic or existential value.As the most thorough interpretation of Heidegger's theory of being now available, this work represents a new phase in the vigorous debate about the philosopher's life and works. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, authority is the shape educational responsibility assumes. In our time, authority in Arendt’s sense is under pressure. The figure of Greta Thunberg shows the failure of adult generations, taken collectively, to take responsibility for the world and present and future generations of newcomers. However, in reflecting on Arendt’s use of authority, we argue that her account of authority also requires amendments. Arendt’s situating of educational authority in-between past and future adequately captures its temporal dimension. We make explicit (...) another, spatial, dimension: authority in-between world and earth. Arendt’s neglect of the material earth also has implications for the relational dimension of authority. Arendt’s authority depends on a dichotomy between the private and the public sphere. This is problematic. First, we agree with Arendt’s feminist critics that the personal can be made into the site of the political. Second, we point once more to Thunberg, the child, taking the public stage, thereby contesting the division between public and private. In response, we situate the relational dimension of authority in-between private and public. The three dimensions of educational authority taken together imply that it is situated in-between domains that cannot be reduced to each other or taken as absolutes: past and future, world and earth, and the private and public sphere. This brings us to our concept of ambiguous authority, which expresses the Arendtian nature of our reflections and the ways in which we seek to renew her original insights on educational authority. (shrink)

Cappelen and Dever present a forceful challenge to the standard view that perspective, and in particular the perspective of the first person, is a philosophically deep aspect of the world. Their goal is not to show that we need to explain indexical and other perspectival phenomena in different ways, but to show that the entire topic is an illusion.

De theoloog Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was van 1883-1902 aan de Theologische School te Kampen niet alleen verantwoordelijk voor het onderwijs in de dogmatiek, maar ook in dat van de ethiek. In deze uitgave worden drie niet eerder gepubliceerde manuscripten van Bavinck uitgegeven, die geheel of gedeeltelijk aan de filosofische ethiek zijn gewijd. In combinatie met Bavincks in 2019 verschenen Gereformeerde Ethiek biedt dit boek een representatief (en wellicht zelfs compleet) overzicht van de wijze waarop theologiestudenten in de laatste twee decennia (...) van de negentiende eeuw in Kampen wegwijs werden gemaakt in de ethiek. (shrink)

This is the first book devoted to the question of how language can be used to talk about language. Cappelen and Lepore examine the semantics, the pragmatics, and the syntax of linguistic devices that can be used in this way, and present a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts.

Herman J. Saatkamp’s _A Life of Scholarship with Santayana: Essays and Reflections_ gathers together his work of a lifetime. There are twenty-three pieces, in three sections: “Santayana and Philosophy,” “Editorship,” and “Genetic Concerns and the Future of Philosophy.”.

This review confirms Herman’s work as a praiseworthy contribution to East-West and comparative philosophical literature. Due credit is given to Herman for providing English readers with access to Buber’s commentary on, a personal translation of, the Chuang-Tzu; Herman’s insight into the later influence of I and Thou on Buber’s understanding of Chuang-Tzu and Taoism is also appropriately commended. In latter half of this review, constructive criticisms of Herman’s work are put forward, such as formatting inconsistencies, a tendency toward verbosity and (...) jargon, and a neglect of seemingly important hermeneutical issues. Such issues, seemingly substantive but neglected by Herman, are the influence of Buber’s prior familiarity with Hasidic teachings on his encounter with Chuang-Tzu, as well as the prevalence of Hasidic and Taoist thought in Buber’s conception of good and evil. (shrink)

The present paper studies the general implications of theprinciple of compositionality for the organization of grammar.It will be argued that Janssen''s (1986) requirement that syntax andsemantics be similar algebras is too strong, and that the moreliberal requirement that syntax be interpretable into semanticsleads to a formalization that can be motivated and applied more easily,while it avoids the complications that encumber Janssen''s formalization.Moreover, it will be shown that this alternative formalization evenallows one to further complete the formal theory of compositionality, inthat (...) it is capable of clarifying the role played by translation,model-theoretic interpretation and meaning postulates,of which the latter two aspects received little or no attention inMontague (1970) and Janssen (1986). (shrink)

This volume collects ten essays investigating some fundamental aspects of Kant's ethics, drawing wider conclusions for moral philosophy. Herman aims to undermine some received ideas about how Kantian ethics works and what it means in practice.

A penetrating and illuminating exchange of views between Richard Rorty, a highly influential and sometimes controversial philosopher, and seven of his most thoughtful critics, providing new insights into the impact of his work on contemporary American philosophy.

A scheme of analysis for separatism is proposed. Its purpose is twofold: to indicate the essential factors in a separatist process, and to explain the waves of active and « dead » separatist activity.The central idea is the distinction between three dimensions in the separatist process : conflict, mobilization and collective action. Both dimension on its own is determined by certain factors. Conflict depends on contradictions of identity and interest structure between people and nation. Mobilization is primarily a function of (...) the social, economic and political opportunities of the people as against the nation. Collective action is the result of the presence, strength and behaviour of the elite and social movement in people and nation.Evolution from one dimension to the next one depends upon the factors of the dimensions involved and on a) the policy of the nation and b) the societal changes caused by the modernization process.Finally one can explain inactive and active periods by verifying the presence or absence of these nine factors. It seems then that there are false and real « dead » periods, and that some separatist activity has a sound basis white other has not. (shrink)

Despite major institutional and political changes in the Belgian political system in the last 25 years, the electoral organization has been very stable.The adaptations of the electoral organization have even been less in the province of Brabant, although the politica! developments have caused there additional problems. Brabant's electoral constituencies contain a rather strange mixture of heterogeneous electorates : a constituency, which consists of the bilingual capital Brussels as welt as several Flemish communes, a unilingual Walloon constituency, a unilingual Flemish constituency. (...) The proposed solutions for Brabant's complex situation can be summarized into six alternative systems of electoral organization, concentrating either on the functioning of the system of provincial allotment, or on a radical redrawing of the boundaries of the electoral constituencies.The impact of the six alternatives on the seats distribution among the political parties is rather restricted. The shifts of seats inside the parties are more striking than between the parties. Alternatives IV and VI cause the largest reallocation of seats between the parties, whereas alternatives II, III and V result in only minor changes. (shrink)