But We're American… The presence of American Exceptionalism in the Speeches of George W. Bush This paper defines American exceptionalism as the notion held by Americans that their country is unique and has a specific role to play in the world. The origins of this notion are traced to 17th century Puritan settlers, who used the metaphor of being "a city upon a hill" to highlight their position as a moral example to the rest of the world. This element from (...) a sacral religion was transformed during the founding of the United States into an element of civil religion, and as such the metaphor and concept of American exceptionalism received a political connotation. The rise of America's political power coincided with a more active role in world politics, which was backed with a rhetoric emphasising unity and America's unique role. The clash between the passive and the more active reading of the exceptionalist metaphor and the struggles between sacral and civil religion coincide during the presidency of George W. Bush. The presence of these elements of political rhetoric is surveyed in a corpus of speeches by President Bush. (shrink)

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a complex neonatal disorder with multiple contributing factors. In this paper we have mounted the evidence in support of the proposal that neonatal sepsis meets all requirements for being a cause of ROP (not a condition, mechanism, or even innocent bystander) by means of initiating the early stages of the pathomechanism of ROP occurrence, systemic inflammation. We use the model of etiological explanation, which distinguishes between two overlapping processes in ROP causation. It can be shown (...) that sepsis can initiate the early stages of the pathomechanism via systemic inflammation (causation process) and that systemic inflammation can contribute to growth factor aberrations and the retinal characteristics of ROP (disease process). The combined contribution of these factors with immaturity at birth (as intrinsic risk modifier) and prenatal inflammation (as extrinsic facilitator) seems to provide a cogent functional framework of ROP occurrence. Finally, we apply the Bradford Hill heuristics to the available evidence. Taken together, the above suggests that neonatal sepsis is a causal inducer of ROP. (shrink)

Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that ...

Diese klugen Reaktionen auf mein Buch unterscheiden sich erheblich. Während Susanne Burri mit meiner Grundthese sympathisiert und mir in deren Rahmen zwei knifflige Probleme vorlegt, die sich konstruktiv bearbeiten lassen, geht Christoph Lumers Kritik ans Eingemachte: Im Rahmen des von ihm bevorzugten philosophischen Ansatzes stellt sich meine Herangehensweise als haltlos dar, weil ihr jede Rationalität abgeht.

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than (...) Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdete... (shrink)

In this article the authors focus on the emergence, or disappearance, of notions of responsibility in social dynamic processes. Hence, the starting point in this article is concrete behavior within organisational settings. This article presents a systematic overview of mechanisms related to acting upon a sense of moral responsibility. Some of these mechanisms are based on individual characteristics, others are embedded in the social context wherein responsible behaviour emerges or disappears. In this article, various mechanisms are identified and labelled in (...) order to analyse what types of processes are behind the mechanisms. In this way, the article yields important understandings for the conscious use of these mechanisms to strengthen responsible behavior within organisations. (shrink)

The intention of the article is to offer stakeholders affected by mergers a criterion from which moral arguments may be generated for the organization of each individual case. The criterion: "Any operation causing legitimate interests to suffer vital infringement should be avoided in a merger process." A vital infringement of these interests is assumed when the merger undermines unique positive opportunities or considerable impairment in the future, impossible to overcome for the person affected without an unacceptable level of difficulty. Therefore, (...) we mainly concentrate on implicit contracts – which should be based on the principle pacta sunt servanda as well. These contracts are mandatory to run an economy that produces increasingly more knowledge-based goods. (shrink)

Are we perhaps in the "matrix", or anyway, victims of perfect and permanent computer simulation? No. The most convincing—and shortest—version of Putnam's argument against the possibility of our eternal envattment is due to Crispin Wright (1994). It avoids most of the misunderstandings that have been elicited by Putnam's original presentation of the argument in "Reason, Truth and History" (1981). But it is still open to the charge of question-begging. True enough, the premisses of the argument (disquotation and externalism) can be (...) formulated and defended without presupposing external objects whose existence appears doubtful in the light of the very skeptical scenario which Putnam wants to repudiate. However, the argument is only valid if we add an extra premiss as to the existence of some external objects. In order to avoid circularity, we should run the argument with external objects which must exist even if we are brains in a vat, e.g. with computers rather than with trees. As long as the skeptic is engaged in a discussion of the brain-in-a-vat scenario, she should neither deny the existence of computers nor the existence of causal relations; for if she does, she is in fact denying that we are brains in a vat. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it assumes and what it proposes. Doubtless, some of these misconceptions are due to clumsy writing on our part; perhaps others are due to inattentive reading. And some may be due to an effort to shield us from the apparent implausibility of what we said—and in fact meant. It does not matter much. We focus on those misunderstandings that most matter to us, either because, by (...) repetition, they have ended up being annoying, even if they are not, perhaps, that important; or because they are substantial enough to represent a distortion of the basic picture of Critical Pragmatics and its theoretical foundations, namely, Critical Referentialism—also known as the Reflexive-referential Theory—and, more generally, Perry’s fundamental views on meaning and content(s). (shrink)

Strategische Kommunikation zielt mit ihren kontingenten Wirklichkeitsbeschreibungen seit jeher auf gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle. Wie häufig gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle auf strategische Kommunikationsbemühungen zurückgehen, auf Unwahrhaftigkeit beruhen und damit zumindest zeitweise zu strategischen Wahrheiten werden, zeigen eindrucksvoll zwischenzeitlich geglaubte Wahrheiten, die sich als Lüge entpuppt haben: von Walter Ulbrichts "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten" über Hitlers Tagebücher bis hin zu den Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak. Die erfolgreichen Kampagnen der Brexiteers und von Donald Trump 2016 haben diesem Thema zu neuer und bislang ungeahnter (...) Aufmerksamkeit verholfen. Während die Themen Desinformation und postfaktische Gesellschaft die Journalismus-, politische Kommunikations- und Medienethikforschung aktuell zu dominieren scheinen, ist das Schweigen der deutschsprachigen und internationalen PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung auffällig. Dies ist umso bemerkenswerter, weil die PR-Wissenschaft in der Vergangenheit immer wieder versucht hat, ihren Gegenstand zu schärfen, indem sie sich am Begriff der Propaganda abgearbeitet hat. Daraus müsste eigentlich eine Affinität für das Thema Desinformation resultieren. Aber genau das Gegenteil ist offensichtlich der Fall: Hat sich die PR-Wissenschaft gerade deshalb nicht mit Desinformation beschäftigt, weil sie sich so dezidiert von Propaganda und darin eingeschlossenen desinformierenden und manipulativen Techniken abgrenzen will? Was sind die Gründe hierfür? Glauben wir, bereits alles zum Thema gesagt zu haben? Liegt dies daran, dass sich die PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung seit jeher vor allem für Unternehmen und weniger für politische und Non-Profit-Organisationen interessiert? Oder fühlen wir uns hier schlicht und ergreifend nicht zuständig? Es scheint offenkundig höchste Zeit zu sein, sich wieder eingehend mit Fragen der Desinformation aus der Perspektive der strategischen Kommunikationsforschung zu befassen. Die Beiträge des Tagungsbandes fokussieren hierzu auf neue theoretische Perspektiven, normative Bewertungen und empirische Befunde. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Ted Poston's theory of explanatory coherentism is well-suited as a tool for causal explanation in the health sciences, particularly in epidemiology. Coherence has not only played a role in epidemiology for more than half a century as one of Hill's viewpoints, it can also provide background theory for the development of explanatory systems by integrating epidemiologic evidence with a diversity of other error-independent data. I propose that computational formalization of Hill's viewpoints in an explanatory (...) coherentist framework would provide an excellent starting point for a formal epistemological (knowledge-theoretical) project designed to improve causal explanation in the health sciences. As an example, I briefly introduce Paul Thagard's ECHO system and offer my responses to possible objections to my proposal. (shrink)

Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...) by proposing the etiological stance as a comprehensive approach to identify modifiable causes of illness. (shrink)

A pandemia do Coronavírus (Covid-19) coloca a sociedade em uma situação em que todos os sistemas educacionais, foram paralisados ou tiveram um comprometimento muito drástico com a interrupção de atividades pedagógicas. As universidades e faculdades privadas movimentaram uma operação sem precedentes com aulas remotas e a distância, com o intuito em não parar o calendário acadêmico. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo objetiva discutir a importância da reflexão da Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação (TIC) como mediadora na educação brasileira superior, durante (...) a pandemia do Covid-19. A metodologia empregada foi qualitativa e bibliográfica, por meio de pesquisas em arcabouços teóricos, legislação brasileira, além da observação do cotidiano do ensino superior brasileiro que se dá nos veículos de comunicação de massa. A partir da análise dos resultados obtidos, foi possível concluir que o auxílio das tecnologias, o professor beneficia o aluno no período da pandemia do coronavírus, na medida em que faz uma abordagem mais ampla e o permite fazer associações, através de aulas remotas que podem ser potencializados com as metodologias ativas de ensino. (shrink)

Models of illness causation play a crucial role in medicine and public health. In their recent paper on this topic, Michael Kelly, Rachel Kelly, and Federica Russo state that the integration of social, biological, and behavioral causes in one and the same etiologic mechanism remains to be clarified. In particular, they think that current models of illness causation do not appreciate "the truly integrated nature of bio-social-behavioral pathogenesis". In brief, Kelly, Kelly, and Russo suggest that two levels of explanation are (...) at work in medicine and public health, biological and social; that integration is difficult because of resistance to including social determinants of disease in both the... (shrink)

Rarely does research in the history and philosophy of science lead to new empirical results, but that is exactly what has happened in one of the essays of this special issue: Rang and Grebe-Ellis have developed new experimental techniques to perform measurements Goethe proposed 217 years ago. These measurements fit neatly with Goethe’s idea of polarity—his complementary spectrum is not only an optical, but also a thermodynamical counterpart of Newton’s spectrum. I use the new measurements, firstly, to argue against the (...) asymmetries between light and darkness posited by Lyre and Schreiber; and, secondly, to explicate the alternative theory that Goethe had introduced to urge scientific pluralism. In my replies to exegetical criticism by Böhler, Hampe and Zemplén, I show that the main goal of Goethe’s Farbenlehre was indeed to expose symmetries between light and darkness. Furthermore, I argue that it is worthwhile to focus on the experiments, arguments and hypotheses of the Farbenlehre, and not merely on rhetorical, narrative or stylistical aspects, as Böhler and Hampe would have it. Goethe’s criticism of Newton is often dismissed, but it is in fact surprisingly relevant today. (shrink)

The physician of fifty years ago is barely recognizable today. Rural, autonomous, and isolated, he did everything from mending broken bones to pronouncing people dead. He was responsible for a well-circumscribed community, who came to him for all their medical needs, regardless of the hour.

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this (...) book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice. (shrink)

Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. “Vulcan,” “Jacob Horn,” “Odysseus,” and “Sherlock Holmes,” for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or (...) false. We are basically referentialists about proper names. The ordinary semantic function of a proper name is to refer to an object, and to do it directly, that is, without semantically providing any identifying condition that the object should meet to be the referent. To put it differently, we agree that statements containing proper names express singular propositions, i.e., that their truth-conditions involve the referent of the proper name, if it exists, and not any identifying condition of it. Now, since empty names lack a referent, and therefore would not express such a singular proposition, how do we explain that many, if not all, statements containing them have a truth-value? Answering this question for the case of fictional names, in particular, is the aim of this paper. (shrink)

Bradford Hill (1965) highlighted nine aspects of the complex evidential situation a medical researcher faces when determining whether a causal relation exists between a disease and various conditions associated with it. These aspects are widely cited in the literature on epidemiological inference as justifying an inference to a causal claim, but the epistemological basis of the Hill aspects is not understood. We offer an explanatory coherentist interpretation, explicated by Thagard's ECHO model of explanatory coherence. The ECHO model captures the complexity (...) of epidemiological inference and provides a tractable model for inferring disease causation. We apply this model to three cases: the inference of a causal connection between the Zika virus and birth defects, the classic inference that smoking causes cancer, and John Snow’s inference about the cause of cholera. (shrink)

Wie sind Friedens- und Rechtsverhältnisse innerhalb und zwischen den Staaten zu etablieren? Lange vor Kants Schrift "Zum ewigen Frieden" (1795) wurde in der französischen Aufklärung versucht, sowohl die im Inneren der modernen Nationalstaaten als auch die in der Struktur der internationalen Beziehungen liegenden Gründe für die Dynamik des Krieges und der Herrschaft des Rechts des Stärkeren aufzudecken. Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt, dass Abbé Saint-Pierre und Jean-Jacques Rousseau die historische und systematische Analyse und Kritik der modernen Staatenwelt erstmals auf der Ebene (...) des neuzeitlichen politischen Denkens durchgeführt haben. (shrink)

In vielen Debatten werden spezifische Vorstellungen über die Geschichte, Kultur oder Werteordnung ›Europas‹ für die Erklärung oder Legitimierung politischer Verhältnisse und Projekte herangezogen. Die vorliegende Studie prüft die Berechtigung solcher Konstruktionen, indem sie der Frage nachgeht, seit wann und warum überhaupt von ›Europa‹ gesprochen wird. Die Analyse der historischen Semantik des Europabegriffs muss, um identitätspolitisch motivierte Anachronismen zu vermeiden, seine materiellen, kulturellen und diskursiven Konstitutionsbedingungen einbeziehen. ›Europa‹ verliert dadurch seinen transhistorischen Charakter, den es erhält, wenn man ihm im Bestreben, es (...) als politische und kulturelle Entität auszuzeichnen und fungibel zu machen, eine mythische Geschichte und Struktur zuschreibt. Demgegenüber zeigt die kritische Analyse: Als politische und kulturelle ›Idee‹ wie als gelebte und erfahrene ›Wirklichkeit‹ gründet Europa nicht in Antike oder Mittelalter, sondern ist das Produkt der Entstehung der modernen Welt seit der frühen Neuzeit. (shrink)

Constitutionalism is a typically modernist project in that it seeks to dictate social order by means of institutional design. This project, however, fails in two ways. Empirically, constitutionalism is confronted with the fact that constitutions have limited control over their social environment. Epistemologically, constitutionalism has great difficulty in finding a convincing foundational relation between abstract constitutional provisions and constitutional norms for concrete situations. On the basis of this poor record, it is hard to comprehend how constitutionalism remains such an influential (...) factor in our polity. This article tries to explain our adherence to the philosophy of constitutional ordering by analysing its function in constitutional discourse. (shrink)

Goethe carried out an enormous number of experiments before criticizing Newton's theory of light and colours in the Farbenlehre (1810). He managed to show that Newton's reasoning is based on a rather narrow choice of experiments, in which parameters such as the distance between the prism and the screen are fixed arbitrarily: Newton's famous spectrum (with its green centre) occurs only at a specific distance. Once you reduce the distance, the green centre disappears, and you see the two border spectra (...) instead. Newton can of course explain these border spectra; but things can be explained just as well the other way around: Then you start with a theory based on the two border spectra in order to derive the Newtonian spectrum. Both accounts fit many data (available in Newton and Goethe's days) equally well. Thus by insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by "reason and experiments" alone (as Newton would have it), Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And surprisingly, his theory of the prismatic colours seems no worse off than Newton's, even taking into account additional criteria of theory choice, such as simplicity or elegance. (shrink)

Quine claims that holism (i.e., the Quine-Duhem thesis) prevents us from defining synonymy and analyticity (section 2). In Word and Object, he dismisses a notion of synonymy which works well even if holism is true. The notion goes back to a proposal from Grice and Strawson and runs thus: R and S are synonymous iff for all sentences T we have that the logical conjunction of R and T is stimulus-synonymous to that of S and T. Whereas Grice and Strawson (...) did not attempt to defend this definition, I try to show that it indeed gives us a satisfactory account of synonymy. Contrary to Quine, the notion is tighter than stimulus-synonymy – particularly when applied to sentences with less than critical semantic mass (section 3). Now according to Quine, analyticity could be defined in terms of synonymy, if synonymy were to make sense: A sentence is analytic iff synonymous to self-conditionals. This leads us to the following notion of analyticity: S is analytic iff, for all sentences T, the logical conjunction of S and T is stimulus-synonymous to T; an analytic sentence does not change the semantic mass of any theory to which it may be conjoined (section 4). This notion is tighter than Quine's stimulus-analyticity; unlike stimulus-analyticity, it does not apply to those sentences from the very center of our theories which can be assented to come what may, even though they are not synthetic in the intuitive sense (section 5). Conclusion: We can have well-defined notions of synonymy and analyticity even if we embrace Quine's holism, naturalism, behaviorism, and radical translation. Quine's meaning skepticism is to be repudiated on Quinean grounds. (shrink)

In these short comments, I concentrate mostly on the discussion about belief retention, about Frege’s dilemma concerning sentences containing temporal indexical expressions and about the problems of cognitive significance it raises. I argue that Bozickovic’s interpretation of Perry’s proposals (both of the 70’s proposal and of its later developments) is not accurate. I offer an account of these problems that I take to be congenial with Perry’s own explanation and which I think might complement Bozickovic’s own proposal.

We use quotation marks when we wish to refer to an expression. We can and do so refer even when this expression is composed of characters that do not occur in our alphabet. That's why Tarski, Quine, and Geach's theories of quotation don't work. The proposals of Davidson, Frege, and C. Washington, however, do not provide a plausible account of quotation either. (Section I). The problem is to construct a Tarskian theory of truth for an object language that contains quotation (...) marks, without appealing to quotation marks in the metalanguage. I propose to supply Tarski's truth definition with one axiom that determines the denotation of all expressions containing quotation marks. According to this axiom, quotation marks create a non-extensional context. Since admitting such contexts does not lead to any difficulties in the recursive truth characterization, we may indeed dispense with extensionalism. (Section II). Finally, I argue that we classify and denote expressions in the very same way that we classify and denote extralinguistic entities. Both tokens and types of written signs can be easily incorporated into the naturalist's worldview. (Section III). (shrink)

Quine's early arguments in favor of "Ontological Relativity" depend on wild but interesting alternatives to standard ontology,most apparent when viewing his unusual idea of undetached object parts. In Quine's later philosophy, by contrast, he invokes trivial proxy functions and simple permutations to standard ontology, and in so doing paves the way for his claim of "Inscrutability of Reference". Nevertheless, Quine's more recent alternatives to standard ontology have thus far remained uninteresting for ontological questions, as his later arguments fail to offer (...) any real alternative to our standard identity relation. For this reason, I have chosen to return to Quine's original idea of "Ontological Relativity" and put it to the test. In my investigation, development and subsequent defense of Quine's original presentation, I attempt to show that it is in fact possible to read Quine's ontology of undetached object parts into a large sphere of our language. (shrink)