Von der offenen Ablehnung Bertrand Russells bis zur positiven Einschätzung durch Arthur Danto hat Nietzsche einen schlechten Ruf als Philosoph in der Analytischen Tradition gehabt. Im Wiener Kreis, der eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle in der Geschichte der Analytischen Philosophie spielt, wurde Nietzsche jedoch schon immer zutiefst respektiert als jemand, durch dessen Werk Rolle und Funktion der Analyse historisch verständlich wird. Dies gilt vor allem für Moritz Schlick und Rudolf Carnap, aber auch für Ludwig Wittgenstein und für Otto Neurath, Ludwig (...) von Mises und Kari Popper. Sie alle nehmen Nietzsche als Denker ernst, ohne sich ihm mit analytischem Begriffsinventar zu nähern. (shrink)

Von der offenen Ablehnung Bertrand Russells bis zur positiven Einschätzung durch Arthur Danto hat Nietzsche emen schlechten Ruf als Phüosoph in der Analytischen Tradition gehabt. Im Wiener Kreis, der eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle in der Geschichte der Analytischen Phüosophie spielt, wurde Nietzsche jedoch schon immer zutiefst respektiert als jemand,durch dessen Werk Rolle und Funktion der Analyse historisch verständlich wird. Dies güt vor allem für Moritz Schlick und Rudolf Carnap, aber auch für Ludwig Wittgenstein und für Otto Neurath, Ludwig von (...) Mises und Kari Popper. Sie alle nehmen Nietzsche als Denker ernst, ohne sich ihm mit analytischem Begriffsinventar zu nähern. (shrink)

Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration (...) of Moritz’s aesthetics and mythography, before turning briefly to consider his influence on the authors of Early German Romanticism. An understanding of the role of Moritz’s thought supports a number of recent claims that challenge the conventional reading of Romanticism. At the same time it allows us to see Romanticism’s unconventional realist theological programme, permitting us to overcome the problematic secularising readings of the movement. I would like to thank Kurt Mueller-Vollmer, as well as Fredrick Beiser and Lars Fischer for their help with this project. (shrink)

The paper deals with polymodal languages combined with standard semantics defined by means of some conditions on the frames. So, a notion of "polymodal base" arises which provides various enrichments of the classical modal language. One of these enrichments, viz. the base £(R,-R), with modalities over a relation and over its complement, is the paper's main paradigm. The modal definability (in the spirit of van Benthem's correspondence theory) of arbitrary and ~-elementary classes of frames in this base and in some (...) of its extensions, e.g., £(R,-R,R-1 ,_R-1), £(R,-R,=I=) etc., is described, and numerous examples of conditions definable there, as well as undefinable ones, are adduced. (shrink)

Este estudio analiza el artículo 146 del Código Orgánico Integral Penal (COIP) de Ecuador, esta trata sobre el homicidio culposo por práctica profesional equivocada. La mala praxis médica es un problema grave en el sistema de salud de Ecuador, y la interpretación inadecuada de este artículo ha generado confusión en los procesos legales relacionados. El objeto de la investigación es analizar la normativa del artículo 146 del COIP y las lagunas de interpretación jurídica para determinar la culpabilidad o inocencia de (...) los profesionales de la salud. Para ello, se emplearán métodos comparativos e históricos, que incluyen revisión bibliográfica, análisis de contenido del artículo 146. Los resultados esperados son demostrar las dudas razonables en la prueba del delito de mala praxis, resaltar la importancia de la bioética en los procedimientos legales. Este estudio busca contribuir a una mejor comprensión del marco legal y brindar ideas para la resolución de casos de mala praxis y homicidio culposo en Ecuador. (shrink)

Meaningful social interactions and regular physical activity are inversely associated with loneliness. Using a mixed-methods research design employing quantitative and qualitative research approaches, this research aimed to explore loneliness, physical activity, friendship, and experiences relating to the COVID-19 pandemic both prior to and during the pandemic. Quantitative data of n = 363 first-year university students assessed in 2018/2019 and of n = 175 individuals aged 18–29 years assessed in 2020 were gathered using independent self-administered online surveys. In addition, n = (...) 4 students were recruited for semi-structured, qualitative interviews in 2020 during the onset phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Correlation and regression analyses as well as analyses of variance were conducted. Thematic analysis as a qualitative method was used to explore the role physical activity, friendship, and social interactions played in loneliness, particularly in times of social isolation and social distancing. Results revealed associations of varying strength between physical activity and loneliness in 2018/2019 and 2020. Analyses of qualitative data revealed three main themes: the lack of deep friendships at university, the positive perceived impact of team sports on feelings of loneliness, and the need for real connection in times of crisis. Thus, with regard to feelings of loneliness during the pandemic, being physically active seems to be a small but potentially relevant factor among young individuals. The qualitative study suggests that first-year university students might buffer the lack of deep friendships and meaningful interactions by building social bonds in team sports. In times of physical distancing, young individuals vulnerable to loneliness may therefore require special support such as doing sports with physical distance and perceiving connected with their team for instance by digital devices and emotional coping. (shrink)

This paper empirically raises and examines the question of ‘conceptual control’: To what extent are competent thinkers able to reason properly with new senses of words? This question is crucial for conceptual engineering. This prominently discussed philosophical project seeks to improve our representational devices to help us reason better. It frequently involves giving new senses to familiar words, through normative explanations. Such efforts enhance, rather than reduce, our ability to reason properly, only if competent language users are able to abide (...) by the relevant explanations, in language comprehension and verbal reasoning. This paper examines to what extent we have such ‘conceptual control’ in reasoning with new senses. The paper draws on psycholinguistic findings about polysemy processing to render this question empirically tractable and builds on recent findings from experimental philosophy to address it. The paper identifies a philosophically important gap in thinkers’ control over the key process of stereotypical enrichment and discusses how conceptual engineers can use empirical methods to work around this gap in conceptual control. The paper thus empirically demonstrates the urgency of the question of conceptual control and explains how experimental philosophy can empirically address the question, to render conceptual engineering feasible as an ameliorative enterprise. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects of employing a functional approach in order to improve our concept of actual causation. Claims of actual causation play an important role for a variety of purposes. In particular, they are relevant for identifying suitable targets for intervention, and they are relevant for our practices of ascribing responsibility. I argue that this gives rise to the challenge of purpose. The challenge of purpose arises when different goals demand adjustments of the concept that pull in opposing (...) directions. More specifically, I argue that a common distinction between certain kinds of preempted and preempting factors is difficult to motivate from an interventionist viewpoint. This indicates that an appropriately revised concept of actual causation would not distinguish between these two kinds of factors. From the viewpoint of retributivist responsibility, however, the distinction between preempted and preempting factors sometimes is important, which indicates that the distinction should be retained. (shrink)

The paper begins with the prerequisite assumption that social deprivation is a fragile and porous category. Thus, our hypothesis is, that how people are affected by the restrictions against the spreading of the coronavirus is often discussed in far too general and simplistic terms. It is often taken as a given, that the virus and the restriction measures not only have caused severe difficulties for us all (due to social distancing, fear, affected health, etc.), but that the measures have exacerbated (...) already previously existing forms of social deprivation. Therefore, it is assumed that marginalized groups are particularly affected by these effects of the pandemic. Two major German studies show the alleged effects of the relevant measures on adolescents and emerging adults (COPSY and FIBS) against the backdrop of social and economic deprivation; their results confirmed that social deprivation entails a higher degree of being affected by the pandemic.However, this picture becomes thwarted by considering the results of 10 narrative interviews, that were conducted by us with emerging adults in a German vocational training institute between April and August 2021 and showed variegated forms of experiencing issues related to the pandemic. In our analysis, we used the method of objective hermeneutics. In this paper, we present our considerations by outlining two contrastive experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to highlight the divergent ways in which the pandemic has been experienced even among individuals who previously had been affected by social deprivation – at least at first glance – in similar ways. The conceptual lens through which we interpret these two examples is, firstly, the one of precariousness and precarity (Butler 2009). And secondly, the concept of recognition derived from Honneth’s pertinent theory and Butler’s account of recognizability will play a pivotal role. While Honneth’s approach allows us to emphasize the normative and existential role of the fulfilment of our basic desire for recognition and the detrimental implications of disregard, Butler provides us with the means to thoroughly analyse the socio-historical conditions of misrecognition and social invisibility. Moreover, Butler focuses specifically on the recognizability of precariousness (Honneth’s triad of love, being respected as a rights bearer and solidarity shows a different focus). Combining qualitative research on precarious live circumstances with a theoretical perspective on recognition can also be found in a stunning research on couples in atypical working relations (Wimbauer and Motakef 2019). Proceeding from these theories and ‘applying’ them to our empirical material, we seek to call into question a too generalizing and hegemonic picture of how people were affected by pertinent restrictions. Qualitative interviews are able to point us to significant differences in the experience of the restrictions.In terms of an outlook, we suggest that a sensitization for previously excluded kinds of experiences forms a crucial basis for a less normalizing, that is, more inclusive account of interpreting the affectedness and needs of variegated social groups; the pandemic has influenced and altered structures of the recognition of vulnerability and, by the same token, made them more explicit. It thus is an occasion for a critical engagement with the recognizability of needs, deprivation, discrimination, and related phenomena. (shrink)

The study has two objectives: to introduce grip force recording as a new technique for studying embodied numerical processing; and to demonstrate how three competing accounts of numerical magnitude representation can be tested by using this new technique: the Mental Number Line, A Theory of Magnitude and Embodied Cognition account. While 26 healthy adults processed visually presented single digits in a go/no-go n-back paradigm, their passive holding forces for two small sensors were recorded in both hands. Spontaneous and unconscious grip (...) force changes related to number magnitude occurred in the left hand already 100–140 ms after stimulus presentation and continued systematically. Our results support a two-step model of number processing where an initial stage is related to the automatic activation of all stimulus properties whereas a later stage consists of deeper conscious processing of the stimulus. This interpretation generalizes previous work with linguistic stimuli and elaborates the timeline of embodied cognition. We hope that the use of grip force recording will advance the field of numerical cognition research. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that emotions are characteristically passive. As we ordinarily think of them, emotions are ways in which we are acted upon, that is, moved or affected by aspects of our environment. Moreover, we have no voluntary control over whether we feel them. In this paper, I call attention to a much-neglected respect in which emotions are active, which is no less central to our pretheoretical concept of them. That is, in having emotions, we are engaged with the (...) world insofar as we respond to aspects of our environment. In this context, to say that an emotion is a response to x is tantamount to saying that x is a reason for which we have it. Elaborating this claim in light of a historically prominent conception of the active/passive distinction, I will argue that emotions are a form of spontaneity in virtue of their responsive character and contrast in this respect with perceptions, which are fundamentally receptive. While this proposal is prima facie opposed to the ordinary image of emotions as passive, I will show that it actually allows us to make proper sense of it. (shrink)

We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s :507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we (...) observed emerging themes around self-promotion and evasive tactics. We contribute to existing literature by proposing ‘evasion’ as a novel neutralization technique, particularly in circumstances of corporate responses to accusations of wrongdoing. We argue that evasion occurs when firms refuse to engage in the debate brought forward in an accusation. In addition, we enrich our understanding of neutralization techniques by proposing subneutralization techniques in our analysis to diverge from that of other studies. We conclude by discussing the implications of the predominance of corporate narcissism and evasive neutralization techniques to the business and human rights movement and other international corporate responsibility standards. (shrink)

This article presents the story of S. A. Yanovskaya's epiphany—particularly, her shift from hard-line communist orthodoxy and hostility towards ‘bourgeois minded’ Soviet-Russian mathematicians to vigorous support of mathematical logic. In light of this evidence, S. A. Yanovskaya (1896–1966) may be considered as a spiritual leader and administrative founder of modern mathematical research and education in the USSR/russia.

Intensive animal agriculture wrongs many, many animals. Philosophers have argued, on this basis, that most people in wealthy Western contexts are morally obligated to avoid animal products. This book explains why the author thinks that’s mistaken. He reaches this negative conclusion by contending that the major arguments for veganism fail: they don’t establish the right sort of connection between producing and eating animal-based foods. Moreover, if they didn’t have this problem, then they would have other ones: we wouldn’t be obliged (...) to abstain from all animal products, but to eat strange things instead—e.g., roadkill, insects, and things left in dumpsters. On his view, although we have a collective obligation not to farm animals, there is no specific diet that most individuals ought to have. Nevertheless, he does think that some people are obligated to be vegans, but that’s because they’ve joined a movement, or formed a practical identity, that requires that sacrifice. This book argues that there are good reasons to make such a move, albeit not ones strong enough to show that everyone must do likewise. (shrink)

Several important philosophical problems (including the problems of perception, free will, and scepticism) arise from antinomies that are developed through philosophical paradoxes. The critical strand of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as practiced by J.L. Austin, provides an approach to such ‘antinomic problems’ that proceeds from an examination of ‘ordinary language’ (how people ordinarily talk about the phenomenon of interest) and ‘common sense’ (what they commonly think about it), and deploys findings to show that the problems at issue are artefacts of (...) fallacious reasoning. The approach is capable, and in need of, empirical development. Proceeding from a case-study on Austin’s paradigmatic treatment of the problem of perception, this paper identifies the key empirical assumptions informing the approach, assesses them in the light of empirical findings about default inferences, contextualisation failures, and belief fragmentation, and explores how these findings can be deployed to address the problem of perception. This facilitates a novel resolution of the problem of perception. Proceeding from this paradigm, the paper proposes ‘experimental critical OLP’ as a new research program in experimental philosophy that avoids apparent non-sequiturs of OLP, extends and transforms experimental philosophy’s ‘sources program’, and provides a promising new strategy for deploying empirical findings about how people ordinarily talk and think about phenomena, to address longstanding philosophical problems. (shrink)

We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several (...) distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition-related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, such as to improve and to transform, overlap more with the distributional semantics of add/increase than subtract/decrease, which suggests that change verbs are implicitly biased toward addition. Fourth, addition-related words have more positive connotations than subtraction-related words. Fifth, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art large language models, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), are also biased toward addition. We discuss the implications of our results for research on cognitive biases and decision-making. (shrink)

I argue that we need to distinguish between three concepts of actual causation: total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. I provide two lines of argument in support of this account. First, I address three thought experiments that have been troublesome for unified accounts of actual causation, and I show that my account provides a better explanation of corresponding causal intuitions. Second, I provide a functional argument: if we assume that a key purpose of causal concepts is to guide agency, we (...) are better off making a distinction between three concepts of actual causation. (shrink)

The universal social significance of the phenomena of artistic culture has its own specific features. Often it is something standing alone, an "exception to the rule," which nonetheless gives expression to some important tendency in the evolution of literature and art. This has been the case, in particular, with the works of Vladimir Vysotskii, who only a short time ago still seemed to some as some almost peripheral offshoot of the real artistic process, a kind of "nonsense," having no direct (...) bearing on the social problems and questions bothering us. In light of the lessons of truth, interpreted and experienced by the public under the impact of the recent party congress, the situation is literally changing before our very eyes. (shrink)

Un expert en vin perçoit-il et décrit-il l’odeur d’un vin de façon plus analytique qu’un novice ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous avons demandé à un groupe d’experts et un groupe de novices de décrire des vins à l’aide d’une liste de termes organisée en trois niveaux de catégorisation allant du plus général au plus spécifique. Nous avons ensuite demandé aux mêmes sujets d’apparier les descriptions réalisées par une autre personne avec les vins correspondants. Les résultats montrent que les (...) descriptions effectuées par les experts sont plus précises et conduisent à de meilleures performances d’appariement que celles effectuées par les novices. De plus, la distance entre les descriptions d’experts et celles de novices augmente avec le niveau de précision des termes. (shrink)

“Excited Delirium Syndrome” (ExDS) is a controversial diagnosis. The supposed syndrome is sometimes considered to be a potential cause of death. However, it has been argued that its sole purpose is to cover up excessive police violence because it is mainly used to explain deaths of individuals in custody. In this paper, we examine the epistemic conditions giving rise to the controversial diagnosis by discussing the relation between causal hypotheses, evidence, and data in forensic medicine. We argue that the practitioners’ (...) social context affects causal inquiry through background assumptions that enter inquiry at multiple stages. This analysis serves to better understand the wide usage of the controversial diagnosis of ExDS. (shrink)

The current debate about peer disagreement has so far mainly focused on the question of whether peer disagreements provide genuine counterevidence to which we should respond by revising our credences. By contrast, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the question by which process, if any, such revision should be brought about. The standard assumption is that we update our credences by conditionalizing on the evidence that peer disagreements provide. In this paper, we argue that non-dogmatist views have good reasons (...) to reject conditionalization. Instead, peer disagreements should be understood to call for a revision of our prior conditional probabilities: rather than merely adding to our original evidence, they pose a challenge to the thought that we have properly assessed the probative force of our original evidence. (shrink)

Supersymmetry (SUSY) has long been considered an exceptionally promising theory. A central role for the promise has been played by naturalness arguments. Yet, given the absence of experimental findings it is questionable whether the promise will ever be fulfilled. Here, I provide an analysis of the promises associated with SUSY, employing a concept of pursuitworthiness. A research program like SUSY is pursuitworthy if (1) it has the plausible potential to provide high epistemic gain and (2) that gain can be achieved (...) with manageable research efforts. Naturalness arguments have been employed to support both conditions (1) and (2). First, SUSY has been motivated by way of analogy: the proposed symmetry between fermions and bosons is supposed to 'protect' the small Higgs mass from large quantum corrections just as the electron mass is protected through the chiral symmetry. Thus, SUSY held the promise of solving a major problem of the Standard Model of particle physics. Second, naturalness arguments have been employed to indicate that such gain is achievable at relatively low cost: SUSY discoveries seemed to be well in reach of upcoming high-energy experiments. While the first part of the naturalness argument may have the right form to facilitate considerations of pursuitworthiness, the second part of the argument has been problematically overstated. (shrink)

We conducted a rapid review and quantitative summary of meta-analyses that have examined interventions which can be used by individuals during quarantine and social distancing to manage anxiety, depression, stress and subjective well-being. A literature search yielded 34 meta-analyses (total number of studies k = 1,390, n = 145,744) that were summarized. Overall, self-guided interventions showed small to medium effects in comparison to control groups. In particular, self-guided therapeutic approaches (including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and acceptance-based interventions), selected positive psychology interventions, and (...) multi-component and activity-based interventions (music, physical exercise) showed promising evidence for effectiveness. Overall, self-guided interventions on average did not show the same degree of effectiveness as traditional guided individual or group therapies. There was no consistent evidence of dose effects, baseline differences and differential effectiveness of eHealth interventions. More research on the effectiveness of interventions in diverse cultural settings is needed. (shrink)

This article develops an objection to Kant’s proof of freedom from the Critique of Practical Reason. In his proof — the fact of reason argument — Kant deduces the reality of freedom, understood as the ability to act independently of all inclinations, from our consciousness of the unconditional validity of morality. He calls this consciousness the "fact of reason". After a systematic reconstruction of the argument, I develop an objection that relies on three points: (i) the cultural embeddedness of human (...) beings ("fact of culture"), (ii) an "external" perspective on human deliberative processes, and (iii) an alternative interpretation of the unconditional validity of morality that appears in practical deliberation. Contrary to Kant’s claims, I argue that the reality of freedom cannot be deductively derived from the fact of reason. I then discuss two objections to my argument. The first objection claims that my considerations regarding the "external" perspective misunderstand Kant's methodology. The second objection states that, based on my considerations, the fact of reason ultimately turns out to be an illusion. I discuss both objections and refute them. My ultimate conclusion is that Kant's fact of reason argument is not convincing. (shrink)

Do any nonhuman animals have hedonically valenced experiences not directly caused by stimuli in their current environment? Do they, like us humans, experience anticipated or previously experienced pains and pleasures as respectively painful and pleasurable? We review evidence from comparative neuroscience about hippocampus-dependent simulation in relation to this question. Hippocampal sharp-wave ripples and theta oscillations have been found to instantiate previous and anticipated experiences. These hippocampal activations coordinate with neural reward and fear centers as well as sensory and cortical areas (...) in ways that are associated with conscious episodic mental imagery in humans. Moreover, such hippocampal “re- and preplay” has been found to contribute to instrumental decision making, the learning of value representations, and the delay of rewards in rats. The functional and structural features of hippocampal simulation are highly conserved across mammals. This evidence makes it reasonable to assume that internally triggered experiences of hedonic valence (IHVs) are pervasive across (at least) all mammals. This conclusion has important welfare implications. Most prominently, IHVs act as a kind of “welfare multiplier” through which the welfare impacts of any given experience of pain or pleasure are increased through each future retrieval. However, IHVs also have practical implications for welfare assessment and cause prioritization. (shrink)