Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict, so that there seems to be no adequate representation of the options at all. After reviewing existing proposals (...) for how to construe decision-theoretic options and finding them all wanting, I suggest that our model of rational agents should include a special domain of ‘virtual’ option propositions to serve as formal objects of deliberation and choice. (shrink)

Traditional logic as a part of philosophy is one of the oldest scientific disciplines. Mathematical logic, however, is a relatively young discipline and arose from the endeavors of Peano, Frege, Russell and others to create a logistic foundation for mathematics. It steadily developed during the 20th century into a broad discipline with several sub-areas and numerous applications in mathematics, informatics, linguistics and philosophy. While there are already several well-known textbooks on mathematical logic, this book is unique in that it is (...) much more concise than most others, and the material is treated in a streamlined fashion which allows the professor to cover many important topics in a one semester course. Although the book is intended for use as a graduate text, the first three chapters could be understood by undergraduates interested in mathematical logic. These initial chapters cover just the material for an introductory course on mathematical logic combined with the necessary material from set theory. This material is of a descriptive nature, providing a view towards decision problems, automated theorem proving, non-standard models and other subjects. The remaining chapters contain material on logic programming for computer scientists, model theory, recursion theory, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, and applications of mathematical logic. Philosophical and foundational problems of mathematics are discussed throughout the text. The author has provided exercises for each chapter, as well as hints to selected exercises. About the German edition: …The book can be useful to the student and lecturer who prepares a mathematical logic course at the university. What a pity that the book is not written in a universal scientific language which mankind has not yet created. - A.Nabebin, Zentralblatt. (shrink)

Modal accounts of knowledge, mind, and language, as prominently defended by Lewis, leave no room for enquiry into non-contingent matters. According to Lewis, there is only one necessarily true proposition, and it is vacuously known by everyone. What, then, are we doing when we do metaphysics, which often seems to deal with non-contingent questions? Lewis never gave a satisfactory answer, or even acknowledged the problem. I explore some options. Can we understand the relevant parts of metaphysics as dealing with contingent (...) questions about our concepts? Can we understand them in terms of a hyperintensional conception of “explicit” knowledge? Both options have some promise. Ultimately, however, I don’t think they succeed at squaring Lewis’s empiricist epistemology with his metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Wolfgang Welsch examines global aestheticization phenomena, probes the relationship of aesthetics and ethics, and considers the broad relevance of aesthetics for contemporary thinking. He argues that modes of thought familiar from the aesthetic realm comprise fundamental paradigms for understanding todayÆs reality. The implications for specific and everyday issues are demonstrated in studies of architecture, advertising, the Internet, and our perception of the life world. Surgically precise, innovative, and, above all, relevant, this book is an essential resource, providing the analysis (...) of contemporary culture with philosophical bite. Aesthetics is to transcend itself, address the whole realm of aethesis, and hence enable orientation in the contemporary condition. Undoing aesthetics means releasing it from old cultural binds and giving it new ties with the future. (shrink)

Magnetism in meta-semantics is the view that the meaning of our words is determined in part by their use and in part by the objective naturalness of candidate meanings. This hypothesis is commonly attributed to David Lewis, and has been put to philosophical work by Brian Weatherson, Ted Sider and others. I argue that there is no evidence that Lewis ever endorsed the view, and that his actual account of language reveals good reasons against it.

Die Frage, wie ein Anfang im Denken zu machen sei, oder wie der Anfang von Denken zu denken sei, war Gegenstand der philosophischen Reflexion des Klassischen Deutschen Idealismus. Die Autoren dieses Bandes thematisieren nun für philosophische Konzepte aus der Zeit vor und nach dem Klassischen Idealismus, wie in ihnen das Problem des Anfangs gedacht wird. Betrachtete Autoren sind: Marsilius Ficino, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Giordano Bruno, Christoph Scheibler, Husserl, Meister Eckhard, Nishida und Davidson.

Es existieren unterschiedlichste Antworten auf die Frage, ob Tieren bzw. allgemein nichtmenschlichen Lebewesen ein inhärenter moralischer Wert zukommt. Dieses Buch gelangt auf transzendentalphilosophischem Wege zu der Antwort, daß allen Lebewesen ein solcher Wert zukommt. Hieraus erwächst die eigentliche ethische Herausforderung, da der Mensch notwendig andere Lebewesen nutzen muß, um überleben zu können. Die Lösung des hiermit bezeichneten Dilemmas, so wird gezeigt, erwächst aus der Unterscheidung von das Gute und ein Gut.

This book is about the interrelationship between nature, semiosis, metarepresentation and (self-)consciousness, and the role played by metarepresentation in ...

Während die bisherige Forschung überwiegend auf Rekonstruktion und Analyse des philosophischen und pädagogischen Werkes von Theodor Litt bezogen war, konzentrieren sich gegenwärtige Untersuchungen bedingt durch die Zunahme von ...

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally associated (...) with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

This paper starts out from the idea that semantics is a “special science” whose aim, like that of chemistry or ecology, is to identify systematic, high-level patterns in a fundamentally physical world. I defend an approach to this task on which sentences are associated with with sets of possible worlds (of some kind). These sets of worlds, however, are not postulated for the compositional treatment of intensional contexts; they are not meant to capture what is intuitively asserted or communicated by (...) an utterance; nor are they supposed to shed light on the cognitive processes that underlie out linguistic competence. Instead, their job description is to capture certain regularities in the interactions between subjects using the relevant language. I also raise some questions about how the relevant worlds might be construed. (shrink)

Includes: Gunther Anders, "Victims of Aggression"; Hannah Arendt, "From the Life of the Mind; " Ernst Bloch, "On Fine Arts in the Machine Age, From "The ...

We argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective on Gödel’s most famous theorem is even more radical than has commonly been assumed. Wittgenstein shows in detail that there is no way that the Gödelian construct of a string of signs could be assigned a useful function within (ordinary) mathematics. — The focus is on Appendix III to Part I of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The present reading highlights the exceptional importance of this particular set of remarks and, more specifically, emphasises (...) its refined composition and rigorous internal structure. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Vorbemerkung/Preface. Dagfin FØLLESDAL: Bolzano's Legacy. Jan BERG: Bolzano, the Prescient Encyclopedist. Jan SEBESTIK: Bolzano, Exner and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Paul RUSNOCK: Bolzano and the Traditions of Analysis. Peter SIMONS: Bolzano on Collections. Ali BEHBOUD: Remarks on Bolzano's Collections. Mark SIEBEL: Variation, Derivability and Necessity. Edgar MORSCHER: Bolzano's Method of Variation: Three Puzzles. Rolf GEORGE: Bolzano's Programme andObjects. Mark TEXTOR: Bolzano's Sententialism. Wolfgang KÜNNE: Propositions in Bolzano and Frege. Michael DUMMETT: Comments on Wolfgang Künne's (...) Paper. Carsten Uwe GIESKE: Bolzano's Notion of Testifying. (shrink)

Eine Einfiihrung in die epistemische Logik wurde schon vor unge fahr zwei Jahrzehnten durch Jaakko Hintikka geschrieben, und auf sein "Knowledge and Belief" nimmt das vorliegende Buch nicht nur durch den Titel "Glauben, Wissen und Wahrscheinlichkeit" Bezug. Es diirfte deshalb wohl angebracht sein, wenn der Autor eines Buches, das so deutlich die Nachfolgeschaft eines anderen beansprucht, sich dafiir rechtfertigt und erklart, worin sich sein Werk von dem des Vorgangers unterscheidet. Ein wichtiger Punkt, in dem die zweite iiber die erste Einleitung (...) in die epistemische Logik hinausgeht, wird schon durch die Titel erganzung "... und Wahrscheinlichkeit" signalisiert. Wahrend Hin tikkas erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen sich fast ausschlieB lich auf die Bestimmung einer Wissenslogik ("episteme") konzen trierten, werden hier unter Bezugnahme auf die Theorie subjektiver Wahrscheinlichkeit zusatzlich diverse Glaubenslogiken ("doxa") ent wickelt. Insbesondere wird ein Begriff "schwachen" Glaubens im Sinne des Fiir-wahrscheinlich-Haltens vom "starken" Glaubensbe griff im Sinne festester Oberzeugungen abgegrenzt, eine Unterschei dung, die im angelsachsischen Sprachraum bei der Diskussion der Logik von "belief" straflich vernachlassigt wurde. Die genaue Aus arbeitung dieses Unterschieds, die exakte semantische Charakteri sierung der entsprechenden doxastischen Modaloperatoren, und die Suche nach vollstandigen Axiomatisierungen korrespondierender Logiken fiihrte dabei in (mathematisches) Neuland: zur Theorie klassifikatorischer Wahrscheinlichkeit. Diese erste wesentliche Wei terentwicklung von "Knowledge and Belief" konnte man durch die Formel beschreiben: von rein epistemischer Logik hin zu epistemi scher und doxastischer Logik. (shrink)

This is the basis of the first part of the book.

After briefly considering Plato’s objections to rhetoric—it disregards the truth, aiming only to persuade, and it manipulates our emotions rather than instructing us—I turn to the historical Gorgias. The ‘Encomium of Helen’ ascribes to logos virtually all-powerful capacities for persuasion, seduction, and even bewitchment. Here Gorgias celebrates the very things Plato rejects. Yet in the ‘Defense of Palamedes’ considerable anxieties about whether logos actually does possess such strength are voiced: the weakness, not the power, of logos comes to occupy center (...) stage. Gorgias’ own views thus are likely more complex than Plato allows. (shrink)

Adorno, an important selection by Horkheimer and Adorno (from Dialectic of Enlightenment), as well as works by Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Norbert Elias, and Jurgen Habermas."--BOOK JACKET.