Ein „truth teller sentence" (kurz: TT) ist ein Satz, der seine eigene Wahrheit behauptet. Bei der lebhaften Diskussion über die Wahrheitstheorie für Systeme, in denen die Lügnerparadoxie darstellbar ist, sind auch selbstreferentielle Sätze der Form eines TT intensiver untersucht worden. In der Regel wurden sie „symmetrisch" aufgefaßt: Wahrheits- und Falschheitsannahmen für einen TT schienen gleichermaßen (und aus völlig analogen Gründen) akzeptabel oder inakzeptabel. Die metatheoretischen Einsichten über TTs waren in gängigen paradoxietheoretischen Systemen jedoch nicht objektsprachlich darstellbar. Eine quotations- und reflexionslogische (...) Analyse ertaubt eine derartige objektsprachliche Repräsentation der Semantik von TTs und führt zu einer asymmetrischen Auffassung vom TT: der TT behauptet etwas (schließlich) Falsches. (shrink)

Ein „truth teller sentence" (kurz: TT) ist ein Satz, der seine eigene Wahrheit behauptet. Bei der lebhaften Diskussion über die Wahrheitstheorie für Systeme, in denen die Lügnerparadoxie darstellbar ist, sind auch selbstreferentielle Sätze der Form eines TT intensiver untersucht worden. In der Regel wurden sie „symmetrisch" aufgefaßt: Wahrheits- und Falschheitsannahmen für einen TT schienen gleichermaßen (und aus völlig analogen Gründen) akzeptabel oder inakzeptabel. Die metatheoretischen Einsichten über TTs waren in gängigen paradoxietheoretischen Systemen jedoch nicht objektsprachlich darstellbar. Eine quotations- und reflexionslogische (...) Analyse ertaubt eine derartige objektsprachliche Repräsentation der Semantik von TTs und führt zu einer asymmetrischen Auffassung vom TT: der TT behauptet etwas (schließlich) Falsches. (shrink)

Preventive solutions for the paradoxes lead to the inexpressability of the adequacy conditions for the representation of truth within the system. Davidsonian theories of truth presuppose an understood language (for the background theory) which should permit the expression of the solutional principles for the paradoxes. The suitability of languages for this aim is tested by inferential validity paradoxes. They necessitate the introduction of an inner and an outer truthpredicate. For the paradoxes, two different types of circularity, often wrongly identified, have (...) to be distinguished. For Davidsonian theories of truth, non-two-valuedness, different versions of convention T and "principled openess" of the background theory have to be postulated. (shrink)

Preventive solutions for the paradoxes lead to the inexpressability of the adequacy conditions for the representation of truth within the system. Davidsonian theories of truth presuppose an understood language (for the background theory) which should permit the expression of the solutional principles for the paradoxes. The suitability of languages for this aim is tested by inferential validity paradoxes. They necessitate the introduction of an inner and an outer truthpredicate. For the paradoxes, two different types of circularity, often wrongly identified, have (...) to be distinguished. For Davidsonian theories of truth, non-two-valuedness, different versions of convention T and "principled openess" of the background theory have to be postulated. (shrink)

Unter den griechischen exegetischen Werken zu den Schriften des Aristoteles kommt dem von um 200 n. Chr. wirkenden Alexander von Aphrodisias (Bücher 1-5) und einem byzantinischen Gelehrten des 13. Jahrhunderts, bekannt als Pseudo-Alexander, (Bücher 6--?14) stammenden Kommentar zur Metaphysik des Aristoteles eine überragende Bedeutung zu. Der Wert des durch fundierte Kenntnisse der Philosophie des Aristoteles ausgezeichneten Kommentars ist sowohl für die denkerische Durchdringung der aristotelischen Metaphysik als auch für die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie nicht genug hochzuschätzen. Den Denkern (...) des Mittelalters lag der Text aber nicht vor. Erst im Jahre 1527 machte der berühmte spanische Humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490?-1573) der breiten Öffentlichkeit den Kommentar zur Metaphysik erst zugänglich. Seine immer noch geschätzte, in gewissem Sinne auch unentbehrliche Übersetzung des Kommentars zu den ersten zwölf Büchern erstellte er aufgrund der Kollationierung der ihm zu Gebote stehenden Handschriften mit philologischer Gewissenhaftigkeit und ermöglichte auf diese Weise die immer noch nicht erforschte Rezeption des Textes in den folgenden drei Jahrhunderten bis zur ersten Edition des vollständigen griechischen Originals durch Hermann Bonitz 1847. Ein Nachdruck der 'editio princeps' dieser lateinischen Übersetzung, die 1561 zum fünften und letzten Mal erschienen ist, ist nicht nur ein Akt der antiquarischen Pietät, sondern kommt gerade im digitalen Zeitalter einer Forderung der Forschung nach. (shrink)

In its own contemporary context, Kant’s views on the relationship between reason and religion played a crucial role in debates about the nature of the Enlightenment. The terms of that debate, as they were most sharply formulated by F. H. Jacobi, posed an either/or choice of reason or faith, between which Kant offered a third option that would synthesize reason and faith. A newly published collection of essays, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, not only echoes this debate in current terms (...) but also suggests that the unfinished business of the Enlightenment in regard to morality, religion, and the historicity of reason is still with us. (shrink)

This study of Schopenhauer the metaphysician is a "companion work" to the author's portrayal of the moral philosopher in Schopenhauer: The Human Character. Conjointly, these works provide a "reasonably complete picture" of Schopenhauer. The author's erudition will, I suspect, force almost any reader to revise his conception of this philosopher.

In Cultivating Citizens Dwight Allman and Michael Beaty bring together some of America's leading social and political thinkers to address the question of civic vitality in contemporary American society. The resulting volume is a serious reflection on the history of civil society and a rich and rewarding conversation about the future American civic order.

Critic, poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829) was a leading figure of German Romanticism. In the two years before his untimely death, he wrote three cycles of lectures intended as part of a larger project to lay the foundations of a new general philosophy. Two of these cycles, 'Philosophie des Lebens' (given in 1827, published 1828) and 'Philosophie des Sprache und des Wortes' (given in December 1828 and published posthumously), are reissued here in an 1847 English translation. The first (...) presents Schlegel's understanding of philosophy as independent of theology or politics, concerned with the 'inner spiritual life' of humankind. The second explores the nature of communication through language and art. Schlegel argues that full human consciousness cannot be restored by Enlightenment science, but only by divine revelation and redemption. He offers no ready-made solutions, but encourages his listeners to develop their own responses to these questions. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence (...) moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

This study explored LaRose and Eastin's model of media attendance, within a European context. It extended the uses and gratifications paradigm within the framework of social cognitive theory by instituting new operational measures of gratifications sought, reconstructed as outcome expectations. Although the model of media attendance offers some promising steps forward in measuring media selectivity and usage, and to some extent is applicable to another context of media use, the relative importance of outcome expectancies in explaining media usage and selectivity (...) is not fully supported. (shrink)

Precarious Matters. The Radium Economy, Episteme of Risk and the Emergence of Tracer Technique in National SocialismFollowing the traces of radioactive material is – as scholars have recently shown – a valuable historical approach in order to evaluate the material ’factor’ of science in action. Even though the origins of materials like radium and artificial isotopes are quite different, their circulation is interconnected. A material pathway can be drawn from the radium industry to the scientific rise of artificial isotopes as (...) indicator substances in the 1930s, continuing to the building of networks by German scientists working for the war efforts. Also, this pathway reveals the role of radiation protection in establishing that material culture. Finally, the dynamics of material traces and institutional linkages is shown by the tracer work of biophysicists and radiation biologists working at the Genetic Department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin and at the Institut de Chimie Nucléaire at Paris, which at that time was occupied by German troops. (shrink)