Die erweiterte und komplett überarbeitete 2. Auflage ist ein modernes Lehrbuch für Astrophysik-Vorlesungen. Der Bergmann-Schaefer-Reihe angemessen, stehen experimentelle Methoden und Messungen im Vordergrund; doch die Einbettung der Messergebnisse in die Theorie wird ebenfalls ausführlich dargestellt. Neu hinzugefügt wurden die Kapitel 1 Grundlagen der Astronomie und Kapitel 2 Terrestrische Observatorien. In Kapitel 3 (Extraterrestrische Observatorien) fanden die europäischen Beiträge eine stärkere erücksichtigung. Kapitel 6 Kosmologie wurde völlig neu verfasst. Mit den vielen praktischen Hinweisen zur Nutzung des Internets ist das Buch (...) auch nützlich für Amateur-Astronomen. Leser, die sich allgemeinbildend für die Astrophysik interessieren, finden hier Informationen über alle neuen Entwicklungen. Mit dem ausführlichen Register ist das Buch auch zum Nachschlagen geeignet. Weitere Informationen zum Bergmann/Schaefer finden Sie hier. (shrink)

The question I consider is this: -/- The Question: Can two people–who are, and realize they are, intellectually virtuous to about the same degree–both be rational in continuing knowingly to disagree after full disclosure (by each to the other of all the relevant evidence they can think of) while at the same time thinking that the other may well be rational too? -/- I distinguish two kinds of rationality–internal and external–and argue in section 1 that, whichever kind we have in (...) mind, the answer to The Question is ‘yes’ (though that positive answer is less wholehearted in the case of external rationality). Then, in section 2, I briefly make some more general remarks about when discovering a disagreement provides a defeater and when it doesn't. In the final section, I consider an important objection to the answer given in section 1 to The Question. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Professor Merrie Bergmann presents an accessible introduction to the subject of many-valued and fuzzy logic designed for use on undergraduate and graduate courses in non-classical logic. Bergmann discusses the philosophical issues that give rise to fuzzy logic - problems arising from vague language - and returns to those issues as logical systems are presented. For historical and pedagogical reasons, three-valued logical systems are presented as useful intermediate systems for studying the principles and theory behind fuzzy logic. The major (...) fuzzy logical systems - Lukasiewicz, Gödel, and product logics - are then presented as generalisations of three-valued systems that successfully address the problems of vagueness. A clear presentation of technical concepts, this book includes exercises throughout the text that pose straightforward problems, that ask students to continue proofs begun in the text, and that engage students in the comparison of logical systems. (shrink)

Exploring Nature's Texture brings together a collection of internationally-known group of artists, theologians, anthropologists and philosophers to look at the imaginative possibilities of using the visual arts to address the breakdown of the human relationship with the environment.

Internalists tend to impose on justification higher-level requirements, according to which a belief is justified only if the subject has a higher-level belief (i.e., a belief about the epistemic credentials of a belief). I offer an error theory that explains the appeal of this requirement: analytically, a belief is not justified if we have a defeater for it, but contingently, it is often the case that to avoid having defeaters, our beliefs must satisfy a higher-level requirement. I respond to the (...) objection that externalists who endorse this error theory will be forced to accept a radical form of scepticism. (shrink)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had an enormous influence on twentieth-century philosophy even though only one of his works, the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was published in his lifetime. Beyond this publication the impact of his thought was mainly conveyed to a small circle of students through his lectures at Cambridge University. Fortunately, many of his ideas have survived in both the dictations that were subsequently published, and the notes taken by his students, among them Alice Ambrose and the late Margaret Macdonald, (...) from 1932 to 1935. These notes, now edited by Professor Ambrose, are here published, and they shed much light on Wittgenstein's philosophical development. Among the topics considered are the meaning of a word and its relation to common usage, rules of grammar and their relation to fact, the grammar of first person statements, language games, and the nature of philosophy. This volume is indispensable to any serious discussion of Wittgenstein's work. (shrink)

A three-valued propositional logic is presented, within which the three values are read as ?true?, ?false? and ?nonsense?. A three-valued extended functional calculus, unrestricted by the theory of types, is then developed. Within the latter system, Bochvar analyzes the Russell paradox and the Grelling-Weyl paradox, formally demonstrating the meaninglessness of both.

* Editor’s Note: This paper won the Young Epistemologist Prize for the Rutgers Epistemology conference held in 2003.

Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In the tradition of the 18th century Scottish (...) philosopher, Thomas Reid, Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition joins this discussion by taking up four main tasks. First, it identifies the strongest arguments for radical skepticism, namely, underdetermination arguments, which emphasize the gap between our evidence and our ordinary beliefs based on that evidence. Second, it rejects all inferential or argument-based responses to radical skepticism, which aim to lay out good noncircular reasoning from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs to the conclusion that those beliefs are probably true. Third, it develops a commonsense noninferential response to radical skepticism with two distinctive features: it consciously and extensively relies on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality, and it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Fourth, and finally, it defends this commonsense epistemic-intuition-based response to radical skepticism against a variety of objections, including those connected with underdetermination worries, epistemic circularity, disagreement problems, experimental philosophy, and concerns about whether it engages skepticism in a sufficiently serious way. (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

A sorites argument is a symptom of the vagueness of the predicate with which it is constructed. A vague predicate admits of at least one dimension of variation (and typically more than one) in its intended range along which we are at a loss when to say the predicate ceases to apply, though we start out confident that it does. It is this feature of them that the sorites arguments exploit. Exactly how is part of the subject of this paper. (...) The majority of philosophers writing on vagueness take it to be a kind of semantic phenomenon. If we are right, they are correct in this assumption, which is surely the default position, but they have not so far provided a satisfactory account of the implications of this or a satisfactory diagnosis of the sorites arguments. Other philosophers have urged more exotic responses, which range from the view that the fault lies not in our language, but in the world, which they propose to be populated with vague objects which our semantics precisely reflects, to the view that the world and language are both perfectly in order, but that the fault lies with our knowledge of the properties of the words we use (epistemicism). In contrast to the exotica to which some philosophers have found themselves driven in an attempt to respond to the sorites puzzles, we undertake a defense of the commonsense view that vague terms are semantically vague. Our strategy is to take fresh look at the phenomenon of vagueness. Rather than attempting to adjudicate between different extant theories, we begin with certain pre-theoretic intuitions about vague terms, and a default position on classical logic. The aim is to see whether (i) a natural story can be told which will explain the vagueness phenomenon and the puzzling nature of soritical arguments, and, in the course of this, to see whether (ii) there arises any compelling pressure to give up the natural stance. We conclude that there is a simple and natural story to be told, and we tell it, and that there is no good reason to abandon our intuitively compelling starting point. The importance of the strategy lies in its dialectical structure. Not all positions on vagueness are on a par. Some are so incredible that even their defenders think of them as positions of last resort, positions to which we must be driven by the power of philosophical argument. We aim to show that there is no pressure to adopt these incredible positions, obviating the need to respond to them directly. If we are right, semantic vagueness is neither surprising, nor threatening. It provides no reason to suppose that the logic of natural languages is not classical or to give up any independently plausible principle of bivalence. Properly understood, it provides us with a satisfying diagnosis of the sorites argumentation. It would be rash to claim to have any completely novel view about a topic so well worked as vagueness. But we believe that the subject, though ancient, still retains its power to inform and challenge us. In particular, we will argue that taking seriously the central phenomenon of predicate vagueness—the “boundarylessness” of vague predicates—on the commonsense assumption that vagueness is semantic, leads ineluctably to the view that no sentences containing vague expressions (henceforth ‘vague sentences’) are truth-evaluable. This runs counter to much of the literature on vagueness, which commonly assumes that, though some applications of vague predicates to objects fail to be truth-evaluable, in clear positive and negative cases vague sentences are unproblematically true or false. It is clarity on this, and related points, that removes the puzzles associated with vagueness, and helps us to a satisfying diagnosis of why the sorites arguments both seem compelling and yet so obviously a bit of trickery. We give a proof that semantically vague predicates neither apply nor fail-to-apply to anything, and that consequently it is a mistake to diagnose sorites arguments, as is commonly done, by attempting to locate in them a false premise. Sorites arguments are not sound, but not unsound either. We offer an explanation of their appeal, and defend our position against a variety of worries that might arise about it. The plan of the paper is as follows. We first introduce an important distinction in terms of which we characterize what has gone wrong with vague predicates. We characterize what we believe to be our natural starting point in thinking about the phenomenon of vagueness, from which only a powerful argument should move us, and then trace out the consequences of accepting this starting point. We consider the charge that among the consequences of semantic vagueness are that we must give up classical logic and the principle of bivalence, which has figured prominently in arguments for epistemicism. We argue there are no such consequences of our view: neither the view that the logic of natural languages is classical, nor any plausible principle of bivalence, need be given up. Next, we offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong in sorites arguments on the basis of our account. We then present an argument to show that our account must be accepted on pain of embracing (in one way or another) the epistemic view of “vagueness”, i.e., of denying that there are any semantically vague terms at all. Next, we discuss some worries that may arise about the intelligibility of our linguistic practices if our account is correct. We argue none of these worries should force us from our intuitive starting point. Finally, we cast a quick glance at other forms of semantic incompleteness. (shrink)

Filipe Drapeau Vieira Contim,Pascal Ludwig | : La plupart des théoriciens de l’identité des types souscrivent à un physicalisme a posteriori à l’égard des propriétés phénoménales. Selon cette conception, les énoncés d’identité esprit/cerveau peuvent être justifiés par une inférence à la meilleure explication (IME) partant du fait empirique des corrélations esprit/cerveau. Nous soutenons que la théorie de l’identité ne peut pas s’appuyer sur cette méthodologie abductive. Nous montrons tout d’abord que l’on ne peut pas justifier les énoncés d’identité esprit/cerveau (...) au moyen d’une IME partant des corrélations esprit/cerveau car cette stratégie conduit à un dilemme : ou bien les corrélations ne sont pas des explananda, ou bien les identités esprit/cerveau doivent être admises comme des faits bruts au même titre que les lois dualistes. Nous montrons ensuite que ces énoncés d’identité peuvent être néanmoins justifiés par une IME partant du pouvoir causal des états phénoménaux. Cette seconde stratégie n’est toutefois d’aucune aide pour la forme a posteriori de théorie de l’identité ici discutée dans la mesure où elle débouche sur un physicalisme de type a priori. | : Most type identity theorists endorse a posteriori physicalism about phenomenal properties. On such a view, mind/brain identity statements can be justified by an inference to the best explanation (IBE) starting from the empirical premise of mind/brain correlations. We contend that Identity Theory cannot be based on such an abductive methodology. First, we argue that mind/brain identity statements cannot be justified by an IBE from correlations as it leads to the following dilemma : either correlations are trivial facts that cannot pretend to the status of explananda, or mind/brain identities must be admitted as brute facts, just like dualist laws. Second, we show that these identity statements can still be justified by an IBE starting from the premise of mental causation. However, this strategy is of no help for the a posteriori brand of Identity Theory here challenged since the same premise forces one to embrace a priori physicalism. (shrink)

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had an enormous influence on twentieth-century philosophy even though only one of his works, the famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was published in his lifetime. Beyond this publication the impact of his thought was mainly conveyed to a small circle of students through his lectures at Cambridge University. Fortunately, many of his ideas have survived in both the dictations that were subsequently published, and the notes taken by his students, among them Alice Ambrose and the late Margaret Macdonald, (...) from 1932 to 1935. These notes, now edited by Professor Ambrose, are here published, and they shed much light on Wittgenstein's philosophical development. Among the topics considered are the meaning of a word and its relation to common usage, rules of grammar and their relation to fact, the grammar of first person statements, language games, and the nature of philosophy. This volume is indispensable to any serious discussion of Wittgenstein's work. (shrink)

Skeptical theists endorse the skeptical thesis (which is consistent with the rejection of theism) that we have no good reason for thinking the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are. In his newest formulation of the evidential arguments from evil, William Rowe tries to avoid assuming the falsity of this skeptical thesis, presumably because it seems so plausible. I argue that his new argument fails to avoid doing this. Then I defend that skeptical thesis (...) against objections, thereby supporting my contention that relying on its falsity is a weakness in an argument. (shrink)

The typical rules for truth-trees for first-order logic without functions can fail to generate finite branches for formulas that have finite models–the rule set fails to have the finite tree property. In 1984 Boolos showed that a new rule set proposed by Burgess does have this property. In this paper we address a similar problem with the typical rule set for first-order logic with identity and functions, proposing a new rule set that does have the finite tree property.

Die Pflegequalitätsprüfungen nach § 114 ff SGB XI und die Begehungen der FQA (ehemals Heimaufsicht) wurden mit Abklingen der Pandemie wieder aufgenommen. Trotz der Einführung eines neuen Prüfinstruments führt dies weiterhin zu Irritationen und auch ethisch gerahmten Problemen in der Praxis. Dies war ab Sommer 2021 Gegenstand eines Beratungsprozesses im Ethikbeirat der Hilfe im Alter gGmbH der Inneren Mission München, Diakonie München und Oberbayern und führte zu einer Bearbeitung in der Frühjahrssitzung 2022 mit Vertretern des StMGP (Staatsministerium für Gesundheit und (...) Pflege, heute StMGPP) und des MDB (medizinischer Dienst Bayern, der im Auftrag der gesetzlichen Kranken- und Pflegeversicherung tätige medizinische und pflegerische Beratungs- und Begutachtungsdienst), sowie zu einem konsentierten Papier des Beirats. Die Ziele der Prüfung, die Prozesse dazu in den Einrichtungen und ihre Auswirkungen auf die pflegebedürftigen Menschen und das Pflegepersonal wurden darin unter ethischen Gesichtspunkten thematisiert. Auch wenn die Notwendigkeit einer externen Kontrolle nicht grundsätzlich in Frage gestellt wird, ist der Aufwand für die Indikatorenerhebung, die Herausforderung des Fachgesprächs und die Art und Weise der Ergebnisformulierung weiterhin kritisch zu diskutieren und weiter zu entwickeln. Es zeigt sich die organisationsethische Relevanz der Pflegequalitätsprüfung sowohl hinsichtlich der strukturellen Verankerung im einrichtungseigenen Qualitätsmanagement als auch hinsichtlich der Notwendigkeit einer Beteiligungskultur der Betroffenen. Damit wurde einmal mehr evident, wie wichtig das Anliegen des Ethikbeirats „Betroffene zu Beteiligten zu machen“ für die Mitarbeitenden und die Kultur der Einrichtungen ist, aber auch für alle anderen Ebenen der Versorgung und politischen Willensbildung, die hierfür verantwortlich Entscheidungen treffen. (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

Predication is an indisputable part of our linguistic behavior. By contrast, the metaphysics of predication has been a matter of dispute ever since antiquity. According to Plato—or at least Platonism, the view that goes by Plato’s name in contemporary philosophy—the truths expressed by predications such as “Socrates is wise” are true because there is a subject of predication (e.g., Socrates), there is an abstract property or universal (e.g., wisdom), and the subject exemplifies the property.1 This view is supposed to be (...) general, applying to all predications, whether the subject of predication is a person, a planet, or a property.2 Despite the controversy surrounding the metaphysics of predication, many theistic philosophers—including the majority of contemporary analytic theists—regard Platonism as extremely attractive. At the same time, however, such philosophers are also commonly attracted to a form of traditional theism that has at its core the thesis that God is an absolutely independent.. (shrink)

The most interesting thing about sceptical theism is its sceptical component. When sceptical theists use that component in responding to arguments from evil, they think it is reasonable for their non-theistic interlocutors to accept it, even if they don't expect them to accept their theism. This article focuses on that sceptical component. The first section explains more precisely what the sceptical theist's scepticism amounts to and how it is used in response to various sorts of arguments from evil. The next (...) section considers and responds to objections to sceptical theism. It is shown that just as there are non-theists who accept the sceptical theist's scepticism, so also are there theists who reject it. (shrink)

The so-called "Big Typescript" is Wittgenstein's first attempt to publish in a book his collected thoughts since his return to Cambridge and to philosophical writing, thus correcting the "serious errors" (Wittgenstein) of his early work. Among the texts in Wittgenstein's estate, the "Big Typescript" is the one that, next to the "Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung" (the "Tractatus") of 1918, appears to be the most "finished", with a table of contents structured in chapters and sections. It is, however, a fragment, without either title, (...) motto or conclusion. To Wittgenstein, it was important "that the thoughts in [the book] should progress from one subject to another in well-ordered consecutiveness." It is precisely this structure of the "Big Typescript", though ultimately rejected by Wittgenstein, which constitutes the immeasurable value of the text for the study of and as an introduction to Wittgenstein's thinking. (shrink)

Despite various attempts to rectify matters, the internalism-externalism (I-E) debate in epistemology remains mired in serious confusion. I present a new account of this debate, one which fits well with entrenched views on the I-E distinction and illuminates the fundamental disagreements at the heart of the debate. Roughly speaking, the I-E debate is over whether or not certain of the necessary conditions of positive epistemic status are internal. But what is the sense of internal here? And of which conditions of (...) which positive epistemic status are we speaking? I argue that an adequate answer to these questions requires reference to what I call the no-defeater condition which is satisfied by a subjects belief B just in case she does not believe that B is defeated. I close by stating succinctly the main positions taken in the I-E debate, identifying the basic points of disagreement and suggesting fruitful courses for future discussion. (shrink)

Some evidential arguments from evil rely on an inference of the following sort: ‘If, after thinking hard, we can't think of any God-justifying reason for permitting some horrific evil then it is likely that there is no such reason’. Sceptical theists, us included, say that this inference is not a good one and that evidential arguments from evil that depend on it are, as a result, unsound. Michael Almeida and Graham Oppy have argued (in a previous issue of this journal) (...) that Michael Bergmann's way of developing the sceptical theist response to such arguments fails because it commits those who endorse it to a sort of scepticism that undermines ordinary moral practice. In this paper, we defend Bergmann's sceptical theist response against this charge. (shrink)

Ist wirklich unser ganzes Leben vorausbestimmtes, un entrinnbares Schicksal? Oder gibt es außer der mechanischen naturwissenschaftlichen Vorstellung der Welt noch eine andere Wirklichkeit, ohne daß ein unlösbarer Konflikt beider Anschauungsweisen besteht, die im Grunde jeden Menschen, den naiven wie den gelehrtesten, angehen. Der Widerspruch besteht, daß wir uns in unserem Denken und Handeln frei fühlen und damit eine Verantwortung tragen, auch wenn wir von unserem erbbedingten Charakter und von unserem Erleben beeinflußt sind, aber doch nicht unent rinnbar an diese uns (...) versklavt scheinen. Andererseits lehrt die klassische gesamte Naturwissenschaft, daß ganz wie in der klassischen Physik eine strenge, nirgends durchbrochene Kausalität uns beherrscht. Dieser Widerspruch hat mich seit meiner Jugend nie zur Ruhe kommen lassen. Das Weltbild des Arztes mußte seit dem Altertum an der Heilbestrebung des Organismus festhalten und mußte an die rettende Tat im ärztlichen Berufe glauben. Die klassische Physik schon im Altertum, aber noch weit bewußter seit der Renaissance, lehrt dogmatisch den mechanischen Ablauf allen Geschehens unter der absoluten Herrschaft des Kausal gesetzes. Immer, wenn ich mich wissenschaftlich zu äußern hatte, bin ich dem Weltbild des Arztes gefolgt, das soll gerade diese Schrift aufzeigen. Seit aber einige Physiker von der "klassischen" Physik zu einer "modernen" Physik üb- v gegangen sind, scheint zum erstenmal das fast zweieinhalb Jahrtausende währende Rätsel lösbar. (shrink)

Ludwig deals with the relations between language, thought, and rationality, and, especially, the role and status of assumptions about rationality in interpreting another’s speech and assigning contents to her psychological attitudes—her beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. The chapter is organized around three questions: What is the relation between rationality and thought? What is the relation between rationality and language? What is the relation between thought and language? Ludwig argues that some large degree of rationality is required for (...) thought and consequently that same degree of rationality at least is required for language since language requires thought. Thought, however, does not require language. In answering questions and, Ludwig gives particular attention to Davidson’s arguments for the Principle of Charity, according to which it is constitutive of speakers that they are largely rational and largely right about the world, and to Davidson’s arguments for the thesis that without the power of speech we lack the power of thought. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob «systematische» Philosophie heute noch möglich ist, wird in der Gegenwartsphilosophie kontrovers diskutiert. Sie ist eng verknüpft mit dem Thema «Vernunft und Wirklichkeit». Der Sammelband System der Philosophie? dokumentiert Aspekte dieser Debatte durch Beiträge einer internationalen Autorenschaft.

Actualism is the thesis that necessarily, everything that there is exists. Serious actualism is the thesis that necessarily, no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist. Let's call the claim that actualism entails serious actualism the Entailment Thesis (ET). In this paper I will improve upon a previous argument of mine for (ET). I will then consider the prospects for defending a similar thesis in the temporal realm—the thesis that presentism entails serious presentism.

Actualism is the thesis that necessarily everything that there is exists. Serious actualism is the thesis that necessarily no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist. In this paper I present a new argument from actualism to serious actualism.

The most important work of the famed German philosopher, this 1841 polemic asserts that religion and divinity are outward projections of inner human nature. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — Marx and Engels were particularly influenced. This acclaimed translation is by the celebrated English novelist George Eliot.

Internalists and externalists in epistemology continue to disagree about how best to understand epistemic concepts such as justification or warrant or knowledge. But there has been some movement towards agreement. Two of the most prominent rationales for the internalist position have been subjected to severe criticism by externalists: the idea that justification should be understood deontologically and the thought that justification consists in having a reason in the form of another belief. It would not be accurate to say that all (...) internalists have responded to such criticism by distancing themselves from these rationales for their position. Nevertheless some have. But despite the growing disenchantment with these two motivations for internalism, internalists continue to find the externalist position extremely unattractive. One main reason for this persistent resistance to externalism is a third rationale that is, perhaps, the most influential of the driving forces behind internalism. (shrink)

This article begins by distinguishing force and mood. Then it lays out desiderata on a successful account. It sketches as background the program of truth-theoretic semantics. Next, it surveys assimilation approaches and argues that they are inadequate. Then it shows how the fulfillment-conditional approach can be applied to imperatives, interrogatives, molecular sentences containing them, and quantification into mood markers. Next, it considers briefly the recent set of propositions approach to the semantics of interrogatives and exclamatives. Finally, it shows how to (...) integrate exclamatives and optatives into a framework similar to the fulfillment approach. (shrink)