One aim of this article is to explore the connection between the Knobe effect and the epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE). Additionally, we report evidence about a further generalization regarding probability judgments. We demonstrate that all effects can be found within German material, using ‘absichtlich’ [intentionally], ‘wissen’ [know] and ‘wahrscheinlich’ [likely]. As the explanations discussed with regard to the Knobe effect do not suffice to explicate the ESEE, we survey whether the characteristic asymmetry in knowledge judgments is caused by a differing (...) perception of probabilities concerning the occurrence of the side-effects. Our findings show that a negative side-effect is judged more probable, even if the objective probabilities would suggest otherwise. We argue that the best explanation for these results is that the Knobe effect applies to the perception of probabilities as well: a probabilistic side-effect effect. (shrink)

This book takes an exciting perspective on language change, by explaining it in terms of Darwin's evolutionary theory. Looking at a number of developments in the history of sounds and words, Nikolaus Ritt shows how the constituents of language can be regarded as mental patterns, or 'memes', which copy themselves from one brain to another when communication and language acquisition take place. Memes are both stable in that they transmit faithfully from brain to brain, and active in that their (...) success at replicating depends upon their own properties. Ritt uses this controversial approach to challenge established models of linguistic competence, in which speakers acquire, use, and shape language. In Darwinian terms, language evolution is something that happens to, rather than through, speakers, and the interests of linguistic constituents matter more than those of their human 'hosts'. This book will stimulate debate among evolutionary biologists, cognitive scientists and linguists alike. (shrink)

Dit essay van Russische filosoof en cultuurcriticus Berdjajev verscheen in 1937 als een van de eerste essays in de reeks 'Ausblicke' van het Bermann-Fischer Verlag. Het is een van de klassieke teksten over menselijke waardigheid en afgoderij die tijdens het interbellum is geschreven.

E. Brehier: L'historien de la philosophie. A. Bayet: Le moraliste. M. Mauss: Le sociologue. Dr. H. Wallon: L'oeuvre de Lévy-Bruhl et la psychologie comparée. P. Masson Oursel: Disciples ou élèves de Lévy-Bruhl. E. Cassirer: La place de la "Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle" dans l'oeuvre de Descartes. R. Bespaloff: Notes sur les "Etudes kierkegaardiennes" de J. Wahl. P. Guerin: Morale et religion. J. Klanfer: Propagande et morale. Revue critique. P. M. Schuhl: D. Parodi: "En quête d'une philosophie". (...) Analyses et comptes rendus. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion that economic preferences were shaped by the joint action of genetic and cultural evolution. We review the evidence that preferences are partly innate, the output of genetic forces, and partly plastic, the output of cultural forces. A model of how genes and culture might jointly shape preferences is sketched.

Der Hippokratische Eid prägt bis heute die ärztliche Praxis – und das zu Recht. Die Betonung ärztlicher Expertise und die Sorge um das Patientenwohl haben bis heute nichts von ihrer Aktualität eingebüßt. Allerdings fehlen Überlegungen zur Patientenselbstbestimmung und zur Gerechtigkeit im Gesundheitswesen. Heutige Konflikte am Lebensanfang, am Lebensende und im Bereich der Gesundheitsversorgung erfordern daher, den Eid neu zu denken. In diesem Buch, das sich an Studierende der Medizin, aber auch interessierte Laien und Fachkollegen wendet, werden die wichtigsten medizinethischen Konfliktfälle, (...) u.a. Fragen zu Gentechnik, Enhancement, Organspende und Sterbehilfe, behandelt. (shrink)

Although he spoke rarely about them, J.M.Bocheski considered values important.However, as he was little if at all familiarwith metaethics as developed by analyticphilosophers, he was convinced that the bestdiscussion of values is to be found in thewritings of Max Scheler. The paper tries toshow that to defend Scheler's ideas on thesubject is difficult today. Indeed the authorsuggests that to talk about values is to beeasily seduced into a discussion ofpseudo-problems.

Although he spoke rarely about them, J.M.Bochenski considered values important.However, as he was little if at all familiarwith metaethics as developed by analyticphilosophers, he was convinced that the bestdiscussion of values is to be found in thewritings of Max Scheler. The paper tries toshow that to defend Scheler's ideas on thesubject is difficult today. Indeed the authorsuggests that to talk about values is to beeasily seduced into a discussion ofpseudo-problems.

According to Eleonore Stump, Thomas Aquinas rejects a “popular” (roughly, penal substitutionary) account of the atonement. For Stump’s Aquinas, God does not require satisfaction or punishment for human sin, and the function of satisfaction is remedial, not juridical or penal. Naturally, then, Aquinas does not, on this reading, see Christ’s passion as having saving effect in virtue of Christ substitutionally bearing the punishment for human sin that divine justice requires. I argue that Stump is incorrect. For Aquinas, divine justice does (...) require satisfaction; satisfaction involves punishment ( poena) and has a penal function; and one way Christ’s death has saving effect is in virtue of his satisfying that requirement on people’s behalf. Christ saves by “paying our debt,” bearing in the place of humans the penalty or punishment required by divine justice. My argument implies that Aquinas’s account of satisfaction in the atonement significantly resembles key aspects of Stump’s “popular account”—and of the Penal Substitution Theory it represents. (shrink)

Research supporting social and emotional learning in schools demonstrates numerous benefits for students, including increased academic achievement and social and emotional competencies. However, research supporting the adoption of SEL lacks a clear conception of ethical competence. This lack of clarity is problematic for two reasons. First, it contributes to the conflation of social, emotional, and ethical competencies. Second, as a result, insufficient attention is paid to the related, yet distinct, ends of social-emotional and ethical education. While supporting SEL we critique (...) the assumption of uniformity between social-emotional and ethical literacy and argue for the significance of educational programming to support ethical competencies alongside or within SEL, including educating children to develop an autonomous ethical orientation. Doing so would advance the efforts of educators to provide an education for the whole child. (shrink)

Words are processed more easily when they have canonical phonotactic shapes, i.e., shapes that are frequent both in the lexicon and in usage. We explore whether this cognitively grounded constraint or preference implies testable predictions about the implementation of sound change. Specifically, we hypothesise that words with canonical shapes favour, or ‘select for’, sound changes that produce words with the same shapes. To test this, we investigate a Middle English sound change known as Open Syllable Lengthening. OSL lengthened vowels in (...) disyllables such as ME /ma.kə/ make, but more or less only when they became monosyllabic and when their vowels were non-high. We predict that word shapes produced by this implementation pattern should correspond to the shapes that were most common among morphologically simple monosyllables and disyllables at the time when OSL occurred. We test this prediction against Early Middle English corpus data. Our results largely confirm our prediction: monosyllables produced by OSL indeed conformed to the shapes that were most frequent among already existing monosyllables. At the same time, the failure of OSL to affect disyllables prevented them from assuming shapes that were far more typical of morphologically complex word forms than of simple ones. This suggests that the actuation and implementation of sound changes may be even more sensitive to lexical probabilities than hitherto suspected. Also, it demonstrates how diachronic data can be used to test hypotheses about constraints on word recognition and processing. (shrink)

This paper discusses the view that subjectifications are primarily motivated by speakers’ need for self-expression. Approaching the issue from the perspective of animal signalling, we propose that semantic subjectifications are at least equally likely to reflect evaluations and attitudes read into utterances by listeners who attempt to read speakers’ minds. We compare speaker-based and listener-based theories with regard to their predictions, sketch ways in which they can be tested and report findings from first attempts at doing so. First, we report (...) evidence from diachronic corpora. Second, we describe a game-theoretic model that relates listener’s interest in speaker intentions to the average degree of speaker-honesty in a population. Third, we report preliminary results of an experiment in which we tested if listeners were more likely to interpret an utterance as indexing speaker subjectivity when they perceived speakers as more powerful. We conclude that the listener-based hypothesis of subjectification is solid enough to warrant further investigation. (shrink)

My paper focuses on two different ways of relating textuality and asceticism in late medieval vernacular texts. The first part investigates various textual representations of the polyvalent ascetic biography of Elizabeth of Hungary (most of them based on the ‘Vita S. Elyzabeth’ by Dietrich von Apolda), and observes that Elizabeth’s rather modern, worldly ascetic practices did not inhibit monastic reception of their hagiographic representations in the vernacular. Nonetheless, at least one passage of the different versions of the ‘Vita’ questions, in (...) a more or less pronounced manner, the very possibility of representing ascetism. Rutebeuf’s 13th-century French version puts it most clearly: It is not the movement of lips and teeth that leads to salvation, but true compunction. Subsequently, the second part discusses a related question raised by a 14th-century Rhenish Franconian confessional handbook: Does textual ascetism have to be encoded via linguistic form? (shrink)

Charles Peirce claimed that the principal ingredient in assertion is an act of “taking responsibility” for the truth of what is asserted. Some people writing about the Commitment Theory of Assertion have at times construed Peirce’s claim as his espousal of that contemporary theory, but this, I argue, is mistaken. Peirce saw “taking responsibility” as the assumption, not of an obligation, but instead of a liability, a penalty to be incurred if one’s assertion turned out to be false. I then (...) consider how this point connects to other parts of Pierce’s analysis of assertion, specifically his claims that we assert to persuade, that assertion involves an intentional exhibition of our assumption of liability, and that this assumption of liability furnishes evidence for what is asserted. I conclude by sketching on Peirce’s behalf how the assumption of liability could constitute, and be intelligibly offered as, evidence for what is asserted. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit entstand im Auftrag des Osteuropa-Institutes der Universitat FreiburgjSchweiz und wurde in groBziigiger Weise von der Rockefeller Foundation unterstutzt. Ich machte diesen Institutionen hiermit meinen Dank aussprechen; insbesondere aber machte ich dem Herausgeber der Reihe "Sovietica", meinem verehrten Lehrer Prof. Dr. J. M. Bochenski danken, dem ich zahlreiche konkrete Hinweise verdanke. Da uber die marxistisch-Ieninistische Philosophie in der CSR m. W. keine einzige westliche Untersuchung vorliegt - und sei sie noch so bescheiden-, auf eigene Forschung angewiesen. Was allerdings (...) nicht war ich vallig philosophische Fragen betrifft, so konnte ich mich auf zahlreiche Hin weise von Spezialisten stiitzen; in diesem Zusammenhang machte ich mich bei den Herren Dr. H. Dahm von der Redaktion der "Ost-Probleme", Bonn, O. Kostrba yom "Radio Free Europe", Munchen, Dr. Kuhn yom Sudetendeutschen Archiv, Munchen, sowie Dr. R. Urban yom Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut, Marburg, bedanken. Zu besonderem Dank bin ich Dr. H. Slapnicka, Linz, verpfiichtet, von dem ichin wenigen Stunden oft mehr gelernt habe, als ich dureh monate1anges Studium Mtte erfahren kannen. SchlieBlieh machte ieh aueh Herrn O. Sagner von der Buchhandlung Kubon & Sagner, Munchen, danken; seiner oft muhe vollen Sueharbeit verdanke ich fast aIle Zeitschriften und Bucher, die mir zur Verfiigung standen. Der informierte Leser wird vermutlieh zahlreiche Lucken, Ungenauig keiten oder gar Fehler entdecken; ieh muG wohl nieht besonders hervor heben, wie dankbar ieh fUr entsprechende Hinweise bin, die mieh stets uber den Verlag Reidel, Dordrecht, erreichen. (shrink)

Nachfolgend veroffentlichen veröffentlichen wir in deutscher Ubersetzung Übersetzung zwei Berichte tiber über die die im im April April 1958 in Moskau abgehaltene Tagung zur Frage der 'Widersprtiche': 'Widersprüche': 'Konferencija po voprosam protivoreCij' von G. A. Volkov, erschienen in den 'Voprosy Filosofii', Moskau, 1958, 12, 163-173, und 'Konference 0 otazce rozponl rozpon1 ve svetle soudoM soudobe vedy a praxe' von N. V. Karabanov, erschienen im 'Filosoficky casopis', Prag, 1959, 1, 131-133; weiterhin den Originaltext der auf derselben Tagung gehaltenen Vortrage Vorträge von (...) E. Kolman, 'Material'naja suscnost' protivoreCija i ee otrazenie v myslenii', veröffentlicht veroffentlicht im 'Filosoficky casopis', Prag, 1959, 3, 381-391, und von A. A. Zinov'ev, '0 logiceskoj neprotirecivosti istinnych suZdenij ob izmenenijach i svjazach meZdu predmetami', veröffentlicht veroffentlicht in der polnischen Zeitschrift 'Studia Filosoficzne', 1959, 1, 124-133; und schliesslich einen kurzen Abschnitt des neuen offiziellen Lehrbuches des dialektischen und historischen Materialismus 'Osnovy marksistskoj filosofii', Moskau 1958, S. 256f., 259f. (shrink)