Understanding the changing role of central banks and their recent novel policies is essential for analysing many economic and financial issues, ranging from financial regulation and crisis, to exchange rate dynamics and regime changes, and QE and prolonged low interest rates. This book features contributions by the world's leading experts on central banking, providing in accessible essays a fascinating review of today's key issues for central banks. Luminaries including Stephen Cecchetti, Takatoshi Ito, Anil Kashyap, Mervyn King, Donald Kohn, Otmar (...) Issing and Hyun Shin are joined by Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics and Political Science, whose many achievements in the field of central banking are honoured as the inspiration for this book. The Changing Fortunes of Central Banking discusses the developing role of central banks in seeking monetary and financial stabilisation, while also giving suggestions for model strategies. This comprehensive review will appeal to central bankers, financial supervisors and academics. (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

A comprehensive reassessment of the concept of mimesis in the history of ancient Greek aesthetics and philosophy of art, with particular attention to Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, and neoplatonism. There is also a wide-ranging review of arguments pro and contra the idea of artistic mimesis from the Renaissance to modern literar theory. The book challenges standard accounts in numerous respects and builds a new dialectical model with which to make sense of the entire history of mimeticist thinking in aesthetics.

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anything does. Aboutness is the first book to examine through (...) a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth-conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection--about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. Stephen Yablo maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results--directed content--is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Aboutness represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as inflationary models in cosmology, general-circulation models of the global climate, the double-helix model of DNA, evolutionary models in biology, agent-based models in the social sciences, and general-equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains is a case in point (the Other Internet Resources section at the end of this entry contains links to online resources that discuss these models). Scientists spend significant amounts of time building, (...) testing, comparing, and revising models, and much journal space is dedicated to interpreting and discussing the implications of models. In short, models are one of the principal instruments of modern science. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of ...

Stephen Hetherington's prominent career within epistemology has been a series of distinctive, bold, varied and provocative arguments and ideas. Bringing together Hetherington's unique body of writing for the first time, this collection features previously published as well as new material that link his approaches to key issues including knowledge, justification, fallibility, scepticism and the Gettier Problem. Advancing our understanding of the systemic nature of Hetherington's thinking, Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology presents his distinctive perspective on some of philosophy's central (...) questions about knowledge - an inviting blend of forensic detail and 'big picture' proposals. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the question of how to resolve disagreement and uses the Lehrer-Wagner model as a formal tool for investigating consensual decision-making. The main result consists in a general definition of when agents treat each other as epistemic peers (Kelly 2005; Elga 2007), and a theorem vindicating the “equal weight view” to resolve disagreement among epistemic peers. We apply our findings to an analysis of the impact of social network structures on group deliberation processes, and we demonstrate their (...) stability with the help of numerical simulations. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis" verfügbar.

Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology (or what I call practicalism) need to address two main problems. First, the view seems to imply, absurdly, that knowledge can come and go quite easily—in particular, that it might come and go along with our variable practical interests. We can call this the stability problem. Second, there seems to be no fully satisfying way of explaining whose practical interests matter. We can call this the “whose stakes?” problem. I argue that both problems can (...) be addressed in roughly the same terms. More exactly, I argue that by first clarifying the whose stakes? problem an answer to the stability problem naturally falls out. (shrink)

Exploring the concepts of Freezing: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. Theoretical advancement. Ur Shlonsky and Luigi Rizzi: Criterial Freezing in small clauses and the cartography of copular constructions -- Angel J. Gallego: Freezing Effects in a free-Merge System -- Gereon Maller: Freezing in complex prefields. Empirical domains. Norbert Corver: The Freezing points of the (Dutch) adjectival system -- Jutta M. Hartmann: Freezing in it-clefts: Movement and focus -- Josef Bayer: Criterial Freezing in the syntax of particles -- Michael S. Rochemont: (...) Only syntax -- Maria Polinsky: Freezing and phi-feature agreement: On the role of [PERSON] -- BalÃízs SurÃínyi and Gerg Turi: Freezing, Topic Opacity and Phase-based Cyclicity in Subject Islands. Interface extensions. Peter W. Culicover and Susanne Winkler: Freezing: Between grammar and processing -- Andreas Konietzko: Heavy NP shift in context: On the interaction of information structure and subextraction from shifted constituents -- Rui P. Chaves: Freezing as a probabilistic phenomenon -- Marion Jaeger: An experimental study on freezing and topicalization in English. (shrink)

Bayesian epistemology addresses epistemological problems with the help of the mathematical theory of probability. It turns out that the probability calculus is especially suited to represent degrees of belief (credences) and to deal with questions of belief change, confirmation, evidence, justification, and coherence. Compared to the informal discussions in traditional epistemology, Bayesian epis- temology allows for a more precise and fine-grained analysis which takes the gradual aspects of these central epistemological notions into account. Bayesian epistemology therefore complements traditional epistemology; it (...) does not re- place it or aim at replacing it. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Abhandlungen zur systematischen Philosophie.--Bd. 2. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie-Geschichte.--Bd. 3. Vom Neukantianismus zur Ontologie.

A sentence of first-order logic is satisfiable if it is true in some structure, and finitely satisfiable if it is true in some finite structure. The question arises as to whether there exists an algorithm for determining whether a given formula of first-order logic is satisfiable, or indeed finitely satisfiable. This question was answered negatively in 1936 by Church and Turing (for satisfiability) and in 1950 by Trakhtenbrot (for finite satisfiability).In contrast, the satisfiability and finite satisfiability problems are algorithmically solvable (...) for restricted subsets---or, as we say, fragments---of first-order logic, a fact which is today of considerable interest in Computer Science. This book provides an up-to-date survey of the principal axes of research, charting the limits of decision in first-order logic and exploring the trade-off between expressive power and complexity of reasoning. Divided into three parts, the book considers for which fragments of first-order logic there is an effective method for determining satisfiability or finite satisfiability. Furthermore, if these problems are decidable for some fragment, what is their computational complexity? Part I focusses on fragments defined by restricting the set of available formulas. Topics covered include the Aristotelian syllogistic and its relatives, the two-variable fragment, the guarded fragment, the quantifier-prefix fragments and the fluted fragment. Part II investigates logics with counting quantifiers. Starting with De Morgan's numerical generalization of the Aristotelian syllogistic, we proceed to the two-variable fragment with counting quantifiers and its guarded subfragment, explaining the applications of the latter to the problem of query answering in structured data. Part III concerns logics characterized by semantic constraints, limiting the available interpretations of certain predicates. Taking propositional modal logic and graded modal logic as our cue, we return to the satisfiability problem for two-variable first-order logic and its relatives, but this time with certain distinguished binary predicates constrained to be interpreted as equivalence relations or transitive relations. The work finishes, slightly breaching the bounds of first-order logic proper, with a chapter on logics interpreted over trees. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe famously argued that "modern moral philosophy" centrally involved unsupported notions of obligation and culpability. Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant exhibits, for the first time, resources that modern moral philosophers had to respond to Anscombe's challenge, also enhancing our own philosophical grasp of morality and its foundations.

In this paper I elucidate various ways in which understanding can be seen as an excellence of the mind or intellectual virtue. Along the way, I take up the neglected issue of what it might mean to be an “understanding person”—by which I mean not a person who understands a number of things about the natural world, but a person who steers clear of things like judgmentalism in her evaluation of other people, and thus is better able to take up (...) different perspectives and view them with a sympathetic eye. Being an understanding person in this sense seems to be a character-level virtue that interestingly combines moral and epistemic elements; it also seems to be a virtue particularly needed in our age of deep political division, where it is commonly said that failures of mutual understanding are partly to blame for this problem. (shrink)

Keith Augustine’s critical evaluation of the essay contest sponsored by the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) is an interesting but problematic review. It mixes reasonable and detailed criticisms of the contest and many of the winning essays with a disappointing reliance on some of the most trite and superficial criticisms of parapsychological research. Ironically, Augustine criticizes the winning essays for using straw-man arguments and cherry-picked evidence even though many of his own arguments commit these same errors.

Can hybridism about moral claims be made to work? I argue it can if we accept the conventional implicature approach developed in Barker (Analysis 2000). However, this kind of hybrid expressivism is only acceptable if we can make sense of conventional implicature, the kind of meaning carried by operators like ‘even’, ‘but’, etc. Conventional implictures are a form of pragmatic presupposition, which involves an unsaid mode of delivery of content. I argue that we can make sense of conventional implicatures, but (...) doing so requires we embrace a form of pure, non-hybrid expressivism. This is a cognitivist expressivism I have developed elsewhere. We need cognitivist expressivism to make sense of how we evaluate—judge as correct or incorrect—implicature-bearing sentences. Once we embraced the possibility of this pure expressivism, we might as well be pure expressivists about normative discourse too. I show how we can do that. The motivations for a specifically hybrid theory are dialectically undercut. (shrink)

The Aristotelian syllogistic cannot account for the validity of certain inferences involving relational facts. In this paper, we investigate the prospects for providing a relational syllogistic. We identify several fragments based on (a) whether negation is permitted on all nouns, including those in the subject of a sentence; and (b) whether the subject noun phrase may contain a relative clause. The logics we present are extensions of the classical syllogistic, and we pay special attention to the question of whether reductio (...) ad absurdum is needed. Thus our main goal is to derive results on the existence (or nonexistence) of syllogistic proof systems for relational fragments. We also determine the computational complexity of all our fragments. (shrink)

Many experimental philosophers are philosophers by training and professional affiliation, but some best work in experimental philosophy has been done by people who do not have advanced degrees in philosophy and do not teach in philosophy departments. This chapter explains that the experimental philosophy is the empirical investigation of philosophical intuitions, the factors that affect them, and the psychological and neurological mechanisms that underlie them. It explores what are philosophical intuitions, and why do experimental philosophers want to study them using (...) the methods of empirical science. The positive program in experimental philosophy shares the goal of the substantial part of traditional philosophy that is concerned with the analysis of important philosophical concepts. The negative program has implications for philosophical projects whose goal is conceptual analysis. There have been a number of responses to the challenge posed by experimental philosophy's negative program. The chapter also focuses on the expertise defense. (shrink)

Philosophical Perspectives on Art presents a series of essays devoted to two of the most fundamental topics in the philosophy of art: the distinctive character of artworks and what is involved in understanding them as art. In Part I, Stephen Davies considers a wide range of questions about the nature and definition of art. Can art be defined, and if so, which definitions are the most plausible? Do we make and consume art because there are evolutionary advantages to doing (...) so? Has art completed the mission that guided its earlier historical development, and if so, what is to become of it now? Should architecture be classified as an art form? -/- Part II turns to the interpretation and appreciation of art. What is the target and purpose of the critic's interpretation? Is interpretation primarily directed at uncovering artists' intended meanings? Can apparently contradictory interpretations of a given piece both be true? Are interpretative evaluations entailed by descriptions of a work's aesthetic and artistic characteristics? In addition to providing fresh answers to these and other central questions in aesthetics, Davies considers the nature and content of metaphor, and the relation between the expressive qualities of a work of art and the emotions of its creator. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis" verfügbar.

In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, an incredibly sophisticated chatbot. Its capability is astonishing: as well as conversing with human interlocutors, it can answer questions about history, explain almost anything you might think to ask it, and write poetry. This level of achievement has provoked interest in questions about whether a chatbot might have something similar to human intelligence or even consciousness. Given that the function of a chatbot is to process linguistic input and produce linguistic output, we consider the (...) question whether a sophisticated chatbot might have inner speech. That is: Might it talk to itself, internally? We explored this via a conversation with ‘Playground’, a chatbot which is very similar to ChatGPT but more flexible in certain respects. We asked it questions which, plausibly, can only be answered if one first produces some inner speech. Here, we present our findings and discuss their philosophical significance. (shrink)

Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? This question often serves as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question—couched in such stark, general terms—as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I argue, not because it’s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is ill-posed and hence has no answer in the first place. In any form in which it (...) is well-posed, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. (shrink)

Volume IV (which comprises two half-volumes) focuses on the life sciences, whose object of research is life itself, that which (necessarily) mediates between the physical and the psyche. Typical philosophical questions in this context include: What is “life” in the sense of the term relevant to the life sciences? How do we know that life has not “always existed” but must have arisen in the course of abiogenesis from inanimate nature? And how is it possible to know something about how (...) evolution has occurred? These are explored in the first half-volume. In its second half-volume, the book first deals with methodological and conceptual questions regarding the concrete natural history of mankind. Examples for pertinent questions in this context are: "What would be adequate criteria for singling out autapomorphic traits defining the genus "homo"?" and "Has the concept of "race" biological meaning and reality?" (Spoiler: The answer to the latter question is "no".) In the context of that question, a considerable part of the second half-volume deals with the history of "scientific" theories of race from the 17th century up until the 1990ies. In particular, Kant's theory of race and his racism (as well as his sexism) are discussed thoroughly. Pertinent questions are: "Did Kant invent the concept of race?", "Was Kant the founder of "scientific racism"?", "Did Kant invent and promote a concept of "racial purity"?" and "Did Kant endorse slave trade?". Furthermore, for anyone whose own philosophical positions rest on Kantian premises, the following questions will be of special importance: "Is Kant's racism implied by his transcendental philosophy?" and "Is Kant's racism implied by his ethics?" Regarding all these questions, the contributions of important authors like Eze, Bernasconi, Kleingeld and Mills are discussed and critically examined. Finally, the second half-volume closes with a thorough exploration of the methodological foundations of neuroscience and its limitations as a contribution to philosophy of mind (which as such will have its say in Volume VI). (shrink)