TEST is a novel taxonomy of knowledge representations based on three distinct hierarchically organized representational features: Tropism, Embodiment, and Situatedness. Tropic representational features reflect constraints of the physical world on the agent's ability to form, reactivate, and enrich embodied (i.e., resulting from the agent's bodily constraints) conceptual representations embedded in situated contexts. The proposed hierarchy entails that representations can, in principle, have tropic features without necessarily having situated and/or embodied features. On the other hand, representations that are situated and/or embodied (...) are likely to be simultaneously tropic. Hence, although we propose tropism as the most general term, the hierarchical relationship between embodiment and situatedness is more on a par, such that the dominance of one component over the other relies on the distinction between offline storage versus online generation as well as on representation-specific properties. (shrink)

We have evolved to become who we are, at least in part, due to our general drive to create new things and ideas. When seeking to improve our creations, ideas, or situations, we systematically overlook opportunities to perform subtractive changes. For example, when tasked with giving feedback on an academic paper, reviewers will tend to suggest additional explanations and analyses rather than delete existing ones. Here, we show that this addition bias is systematically reflected in English language statistics along several (...) distinct dimensions. First, we show that words associated with an increase in quantity or number (e.g., add, addition, more, most) are more frequent than words associated with a decrease in quantity or number (e.g., subtract, subtraction, less, least). Second, we show that in binomial expressions, addition-related words are mentioned first, that is, add and subtract rather than subtract and add. Third, we show that the distributional semantics of verbs of change, such as to improve and to transform, overlap more with the distributional semantics of add/increase than subtract/decrease, which suggests that change verbs are implicitly biased toward addition. Fourth, addition-related words have more positive connotations than subtraction-related words. Fifth, we demonstrate that state-of-the-art large language models, such as the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), are also biased toward addition. We discuss the implications of our results for research on cognitive biases and decision-making. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen famously promotes the unusual claim that there are no such things as material artifacts. In order to make his claim plausible, he presents a number of arguments, three of which will be subject to discussion in this paper: We argue that these arguments fail to make a convincing case for the denial of material artifacts. In addition, we reveal the benefits of the belief in the existence of material artifacts. We conclude that, contrary to van Inwagen’s suggestion, (...) it would not be better not to believe in material artifacts, as there are a number of good reasons for holding on to this belief. (shrink)

Emotion dysregulation has been implicated in a variety of psychopathologies including depression. However, few empirical studies with depressed samples have been completed, particularly involving negative emotions such as anger. The current study explored two aspects of emotion regulation by testing dysphoric individuals' emotional reactivity and ability to tolerate distress. Specifically, stably dysphoric (n=28) and non-dysphoric (n=35) individuals participated in two distressing laboratory tasks, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) and the Mirror Tracing Persistence Task (MTPT). The dysphoric group reported (...) greater anger following each task and displayed less distress tolerance on the MTPT than the non-dysphoric group. Findings suggest that sad mood can potentiate anger and reduce distress tolerance. Results are consistent with the idea that difficulty regulating negative emotional states may contribute to the maintenance of dysphoria. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

The manipulation argument poses a significant challenge for any adequate compatibilist theory of agency. The argument maintains that there is no relevant difference between actions or pro-attitudes that are induced by nefarious neurosurgeons, God, or (and this is the important point) natural causes. Therefore, if manipulation is thought to undermine moral responsibility, then so also ought causal determinism. In this paper, I will attempt to bolster the plausibility of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s semicompatibilist theory of moral responsibility (...) by demonstrating how their account provides a distinctive line of response to three important types of manipulation. (shrink)

Commercial success of big data has led to speculation that big-data-like reasoning could partly replace theory-based approaches in science. Big data typically has been applied to ‘small problems’, which are well-structured cases characterized by repeated evaluation of predictions. Here, we show that in climate research, intermediate categories exist between classical domain science and big data, and that big-data elements have also been applied without the possibility of repeated evaluation. Big-data elements can be useful for climate research beyond small problems if (...) combined with more traditional approaches based on domain-specific knowledge. The biggest potential for big-data elements, we argue, lies in socioeconomic climate research. (shrink)

In his critical review of Recht und Gewalt Andreas Fischer-Lescano has suggested that the critical insight into the paradoxical entwinement of law and violence should lead towards the utopian idea of a “transcendence” of law. The response to Fischer-Lescano rejects this idea as a false leveling of the - decisive normative - difference between law and society. This difference is the condition of possibility of law’s critical and hence transformative relation to society. The response thus defends the idea, (...) brought forward in Recht und Gewalt by way of an interpretation of Benjamin’s formula of the Entsetzung of law, that the break with law’s fateful violence cannot consist in the “transcendence” but rather the “depotenciation” of law. (shrink)

Seemingly one of the most prominent issues that divide theorists about free will and moral responsibility concerns whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. I defend two claims in this paper. First, that this appearance is illusory: everyone thinks an ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility. The central issue is not whether the ability to do otherwise is necessary for freedom and responsibility but which abilities to do otherwise are necessary. Second, (...) I argue that we cannot determine which abilities are necessary until we have determined the nature and justification of moral responsibility. Thus, theorizing about moral responsibility ought to take pride of place in theorizing about free will. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinism is not even consistent is unsuccessful as well, (...) since it employs a transfer principle about causal inaccessibility that Molina rightfully rejects. (shrink)

Which is more important, tragedy or treatise? This question, which was posed as early as in antiquity, cannot easily be answered since tragedy has reflective passages on existential issues, just as philosophy uses tragedy for argumentation or takes the dramatic form itself. This is particularly evident in the work of the ‘philosophus scaenicus’ Euripides, in Plato, whose understanding of tragedy as expressed in the Symposium and the Laws is discussed here, and with Cicero and Seneca, who were both authors of (...) treatises and verses of tragedy. They constitute the focus of this volume, which also examines the function of the poetry quotations in Chrysippus and finally the significance of tragedy for Hannah Arendt’s political analysis. With contributions by Sandra Erker, Susanna Fischer, Thomas Gärtner, Andreas Heil, Argyri Karanasiou, Giovanni Panno, Robert C. Pirro, Tobias Riedl and Petra Schierl. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s core project in Our Fate is to develop and defend Pike-style arguments for theological incompatibilism, i. e., for the view that divine omniscience is incompatible with human free will. Against Ockhamist attacks on such arguments, Fischer maintains that divine forebeliefs constitute so-called hard facts about the times at which they occur, or at least facts with hard ‘kernel elements’. I reconstruct Fischer’s argument and outline its structural analogies with an argument for logical fatalism. I (...) then point out some of the costs of Fischer’s reasoning that come into focus once we notice that the set of hard facts is closed under entailment. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Christopher Taylor has greatly clarified my thinking on this topic and shown me how to launch a deeper and more radical campaign in support of my earlier claims to this effect, and our coauthored paper (Taylor and Dennett 2001) provides more technical detail than is needed here. Here I will attempt a gentler version of our argument, highlighting the main points so that non-philosophers can at least see what the points of contention are, and how we propose to settle (...) them, while leaving out almost all the logical formulae. Philosophers should consult the full-dress version, of course, to see if we have actually tied off the loose ends, and closed the loopholes that are passed by without mention in this telling. (Dennett. (shrink)

Understanding the relationship of law and violence is one of the most important tasks for a postmodern critical legal theory. In his recent book Recht und Gewalt Christoph Menke explores the thesis that violence is not something external to law but an essential part of its constitution. While his concise analysis reveals the fundamental conflict of autonomy and societal responsivity of law, I suggest that we have to radicalize his concept in three ways. First, I propose to reconsider the belief (...) that law requires a polity . Second, I will argue that reflexivity of law needs to be conceived of as a process of fundamental democratization of law . Third, I propose that we not only need to depotentiate and displace the law, but that we have to transcend the law . For only transcending the law enables us to appeal to the utopian notion of a justice to come. (shrink)

Die Zuschreibung von Verantwortung für unsere Handlungen ist ein zentraler Bestandteil unserer moralischen Praxis. Aber sie wirft schwierige philosophische Fragen auf. Müssen wir beispielsweise über einen freien Willen verfügen, um für unsere Handlungen verantwortlich zu sein? Ist Verantwortung ein einheitliches Phänomen oder gibt es verschiedene Arten von Verantwortung? Und können wir nur für unsere Taten verantwortlich sein oder beispielsweise auch für unsere Überzeugungen? Der Band versammelt – zum Teil erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung – die zentralen Texte der philosophischen Debatte über (...) Verantwortung, u. a. von Harry G. Frankfurt, Thomas Nagel, Peter Strawson und Susan Wolf. -/- Inhaltsverzeichnis: Philipp Schwind: Moralische Verantwortung in der analytischen Philosophie -/- I. Moralischer Zufall und Skeptizismus Galen Strawson: Die Unmöglichkeit moralischer Verantwortung Thomas Nagel: Moralischer Zufall -/- II. Moralische Verantwortung und freier Wille Alfred J. Ayer: Freiheit und Notwendigkeit Roderick M. Chisholm: Die menschliche Freiheit und das Selbst Harry G. Frankfurt: Alternative Möglichkeiten und moralische Verantwortung -/- III. Verantwortung und rationale Selbstkontrolle Harry G. Frankfurt: Willensfreiheit und der Begriff der Person Susan Wolf: Mentale Gesundheit und die Metaphysik der Verantwortung John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza: Moralische Verantwortung für Handlungen. Schwache Empfänglichkeit für Gründe -/- IV. Reaktive Einstellungen und Verantwortung Peter F. Strawson: Freiheit und Übelnehmen R. Jay Wallace: Emotionen, Erwartungen und Verantwortung Michael McKenna: Eine dialogorientierte Theorie moralischer Verantwortung -/- V. Die Wissensbedingung Holly Smith: Schuldhafte Unwissenheit Gideon Rosen: Skeptizismus bezüglich moralischer Verantwortung Elizabeth Harman: Entschuldigt moralische Unwissenheit? -/- VI. Verschiedene Formen der Verantwortung Gary Watson: Zwei Seiten von Verantwortung Angela M. Smith: Verantwortung für Einstellungen: Aktivität und Passivität im mentalen Leben. (shrink)

Introduction to Philosophy, Fourth Edition, is the most comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary philosophy available. Building on the exceptionally successful tradition of previous editions, this edition for the first time incorporates the insights of a new coeditor, John Martin Fischer, and has been updated and revised to make it more accessible. Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, the text includes sections on the meaning of life, God and evil, knowledge and reality, the philosophy of science, the mind/body (...) problem, freedom of will, consciousness, ethics, and philosophical puzzles and paradoxes. It presents seventy substantial--and in some cases complete--selections from the best and most influential works in philosophy, offering a unique balance between classical and contemporary material. An extensive glossary of philosophical terms is also included. The fourth edition features fifteen new readings, including work by Albert Camus, Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel Dennett, Harry G. Frankfurt, William Paley, Derek Parfit, John Perry, Richard Taylor, Peter Van Inwagen, Bernard Williams, and Susan Wolf. Part III, Knowledge and Reality, has been restructured and now includes Plato's Thaetetus, selections by Edmund L. Gettier and Robert Nozick, and an essay by Christopher Grau that explores the philosophical concepts presented in the popular film The Matrix. Two new ethics puzzles--"The Trolley Problem" and "Ducking Harm and Sacrificing Others"--are also included. This edition incorporates Study Questions after each reading and is accompanied by an Instructor's CD and a Student Companion Website, both containing helpful resources. (shrink)

One way to defend humane animal agriculture is to insist that the deaths of animals aren’t bad for them. Christopher Belshaw has argued for this position in the most detail, maintaining that death is only bad when it frustrates categorical desires, which he thinks animals lack. We are prepared to grant his account of the badness of death, but we are skeptical of the claim that animals don’t have categorical desires. We contend that Belshaw’s argument against the badness of (...) animal death relies on overly simplistic thought experiments and isn’t sufficiently careful in how it attributes mental states to animals. We present some cases of animal behavior from recent work on animal cognition that are most plausibly understood as spurred by categorical desires and we show how an independently plausible account of mental content—Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantics—supports our attribution of categorical desires in those cases. We end by arguing that even if you’re wary of our reliance on teleosemantics, you should still accept it due to considerations about moral risk. (shrink)

Utilizing two cases (_Family Policy_ and _Manipulated Family Policy_), this chapter provides additional arguments to earlier work by the author of this chapter “Moderate Reasons-Responsiveness, Moral Responsibility, and Manipulation,” for the conclusion that we can be morally responsible for our actions even if the information we rely on has been manipulated so severely that we would not have performed the actions if the manipulation had not occurred. It defends this view from broadly epistemic objections to the previous work made by (...) John Martin Fischer, Christopher Franklin, and James Steadman. These objections claim either that information manipulation precludes moral responsibility because (i) information manipulation results in practical reasoning on the basis of _false information_, or (ii) information manipulation _reduces the epistemic control_ one has over one’s practical reasoning. In explaining why the objections fail, the essay addresses the problem of relying on “intuitions” about moral responsibility: because “morally responsible” is a term of art, theorists should provide theoretical reasons for its use. (shrink)

Pessimism is, roughly, the view that life is not worth living. In chapter 46 of the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer provides an oft-neglected argument for this view. The argument is that a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living. The now standard interpretation of this argument (endorsed by Kuno Fischer and (...) Christopher Janaway) proceeds from the claim that the value—or rather valuelessness—of life’s goods makes compensation impossible. But this interpretation is neither philosophically attractive nor faithful to the text. In this paper, I develop and defend an alternative interpretation (suggested by Wilhelm Windelband and Mark Migotti) according to which it is instead the actual temporal arrangement of life’s goods and evils that makes compensation impossible. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is open to semicompatibilists to maintain that no ability to do otherwise is required for moral responsibility. This is significant for two reasons. First, it undermines Christopher Evan Franklin’s recent claim that everyone thinks that an ability to do otherwise is necessary for free will and moral responsibility. Second, it reveals an important difference between John Martin Fischer’s semicompatibilism and Kadri Vihvelin’s version of classical compatibilism, which shows that the dispute between (...) them is not merely a verbal dispute. Along the way, I give special attention to the notion of general abilities, and, though I defend the distinctiveness of Fischer’s semicompatibilism against the verbal dispute charge, I also use the discussion of the nature of general abilities to argue for the falsity of a certain claim that Fischer and coauthor Mark Ravizza have made about their account. (shrink)

Die sog. "Schwarzen Hefte" haben umfassender und deutlicher als je zuvor die Verbindungen zwischen Philosophie und Politik bei Heidegger sichtbar werden lassen und damit eine neue Debatte uber den Rang dieses Denkens entfacht. DEnn die dort enthaltenen Texte demonstrieren, dass Philosophie, Metapolitik und Politik bei Heidegger eine Einheit bilden, zu der die Befurwortung des Nationalsozialismus und der Antisemitismus gehoren. INs Zentrum der kritischen Revision ruckt das erste Hauptwerk von 1927, "Sein und Zeit", das nahezu unangefochten als epochaler Beitrag zur Philosophie (...) des 20. JAhrhunderts gilt. DIe "Schwarzen Hefte" fordern eine "Destruktion" dieses Werks auch insofern heraus, als die dort prasentierten Selbstinterpretationen das philosophische Profil dieses Denkens scharfen und neue Gesichtspunkte fur die Diskussion seiner Substanz im philosophischen und ideologischen Kontext des 20. JAhrhunderts eroffnen. 90 Jahre nach seinem Erscheinen stellt sich der philosophischen Forschung die kritische Auseinandersetzung mit "Sein und Zeit" als unabweisbare Aufgabe. IM Vordergrund stehen hierbei zwei Fragen: Wie ist das Unternehmen einer in der "Fundamentalontologie" des Daseins begrundeten temporalen Ontologie der systematischen Intention und Durchfuhrung fachphilosophisch zu beurteilen? Beinhalten die ausgearbeiteten Teile bereits gedankliche Prafigurationen oder Grundlagen fur Heideggers Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus? Der Band behandelt diese Problemstellungen aus unterschiedlichen philosophischen, aber auch disziplinaren Perspektiven; er enthalt Beitrage von Charles Bambach, William Blattner, Christoph Demmerling, Emmanuel Faye, Anton M. FIscher, Johannes Fritsche, Hassan Givsan, Marion Heinz, Christoph Jamme, Sidonie Kellerer, Rainer Marten, Daniel Meyer, Livia Profeti, Tom Rockmore und Dieter Thoma. (shrink)

_Redrawing the Lines _was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Since 1970 literary theory has experienced a period of rich interaction with both Anglo-American analytic and Continental philosophy, particularly deconstruction. Yet these two philosophical schools have regarded each other with hostility, if at all, as in the 1977 exchange between John Searle and Jacques Derrida over the work (...) of J. L. Austin. Since then, the two philosophical traditions have begun to interact as each has influenced literary theory, and some suggest that they are not diametrically opposed. _Redrawing the Lines_,the first book to focus on that interaction, brings together ten essays by key figures who have worked to connect literary theory and philosophy and to reassess the relationship between analytic and Continental philosophy. The editor's introduction establishes the debate's historical context, and his annotated bibliography directs the interested reader to virtually everything written on this issue. The contributors: Reed Way Dasenbrock, Henry Staten, Michael Fischer, Charles Altieri, Richard Shusterman, Samuel C. Wheeler III, Jules David Law, Steven Winspur, Christopher Norris, Richard Rorty, and Anthony J. Cascardi. Reed Way Dasenbrock is associate professor of English at New Mexico State University. He is the author of _The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis: Toward the Condition of Painting_. (shrink)

Fischer here defends the contention that moral responsibility is associated with "deep control", which is "in-between" two untenable extreme positions: "superficial control" and "total control". He defends this "middle way" against the proponents of more--and less--robust notions of the freedom required for moral responsibility. Fischer offers a new solution to the Luck Problem, as well as providing a defense of the compatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility.

Diese Festschrift für Michael Fischer ist ein Patchwork und eine wunderbare Mischung aus Wissenschaft, Persönlichem, Freundschaft und Genuss. Sie setzt sich aus unterschiedlichen und vielseitigen Texten, Zeichnungen und Bildern zusammen, von Menschen, die ihn begleitet haben, manche viele Jahre, manche nur eine kurze, aber entscheidende Zeit. Studentinnen und Studenten, die von ihm gelernt haben, Kolleginnen und Kollegen, die mit ihm Ideen entwickelt, Projekte initiiert und geforscht haben, Freunden aus Kunst und Kultur, Theater, Oper und den Bühnen des Lebens, nämlich: (...) Eric Hobsbawm, Claudio Magris, André Glucksmann, Wolf Singer, Johannes Hahn, Volker Gerhardt, Thomas Fischer, Rudolf (+) und Gundl Hradil, Helga Rabl-Stadler, Gerard Mortier, Jürgen Flimm, Brita Steinwendtner, Veit Heinichen, Peter Ruzicka, André Tubeuf, Thomas Oberender, Stefan Zweifel, Hermann Lübbe, Eduardo Chitas, Wilhelm Donner, Hans Eichhorn, Reinhard Kacianka, Tina Perisutti, Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Markus Hengstschläger, Henriette und Conrad Ulrich-Hürlimann, Michael Hagner, Thomas Macho, Johann Weyringer, Birgit Recki, Walther Ch. Zimmerli, Andreas Cesana, Kurt Seelmann. (shrink)

This is a selection of essays on moral responsibility that represent the major components of John Martin Fischer's overall approach to freedom of the will and moral responsibility. The collection exhibits the overall structure of Fischer's view and shows how the various elements fit together to form a comprehensive framework for analyzing free will and moral responsibility. The topics include deliberation and practical reasoning, freedom of the will, freedom of action, various notions of control, and moral accountability. The (...) essays seek to provide a foundation for our practices of holding each other (and ourselves) morally and legally accountable for our behavior. A crucial move is the distinction between two kinds of control. According to Fischer, "regulative control" involves freedom to choose and do otherwise ("alternative possibilities"), whereas "guidance control" does not. Fischer contends that guidance control is all the freedom we need to be morally responsible agents. Further, he contends that such control is fully compatible with causal determinism. Additionally, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alternative possibilities in order for there to be a legitimate point to practical reasoning. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that guidance control, and not regulative control, is associated with moral responsibility, a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility (that ties together responsibility for actions, omissions, consequences, and character), and an account of the value of moral responsibility. On this account, the value of exhibiting freedom (of the relevant sort) and thus being morally responsible for one's behavior is a species of the value of artistic self-expression. (shrink)

Our Fate is a collection of John Martin Fischer's previously published articles on the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human freedom. The book contains a new introductory essay that places all of the chapters in the book into a cohesive framework. The introductory essay also provides some new views about the issues treated in the book, including a bold and original account of God's foreknowledge of free actions in a causally indeterministic world. The focus of the book is a (...) powerful traditional argument for the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise. Fischer presents this argument and defends it against some of the most salient criticisms, especially Ockhamism.The incompatibilist's argument is driven by the fixity of the past, and, in particular, the fixity of God's prior beliefs about our current behavior. The author gives special attention to Ockhamism, which contends that God's prior beliefs are not "over-and-done-with" in the past, and are thus not subject to the intuitive idea of the fixity of the past. In the end, Fischer defends the argument for the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human freedom to do otherwise, but he further argues that this incompatibility need not entail the incompatibility of God's foreknowledge and human moral responsibility. Thus, through this collection of essays, Fischer develops a "semicompatibilist" view--the belief that God's foreknowledge is entirely compatible with human moral responsibility, even if God's foreknowledge rules out freedom to do otherwise. (shrink)

Die Einordnung der Rechtsphilosophie als akademische Disziplin reicht vom reinen Grundlagenfach mit «Service-Funktion» für die praktischen Rechtswissenschaften über ein interdisziplinäres Verständnis, das die Bezüge zu anderen ...

Die Diskussion der Beziehungen zwischen Europa und dem Nahen Osten wird zunehmend von einem Denken in Gegensätzen und mangelnder Kenntnis der historischen und zeitgenössischen Kontexte geprägt. Dabei sind die Geschichte und die Gesellschaften Europas und des Nahen Ostens seit der Antike eng miteinander verflochten. In Europa wie im Nahen Osten sind die Deutungen und Bilder einer geteilten Beziehungsgeschichte und Gegenwart oft von unvereinbar erscheinenden Stereotypen und Zuschreibungen geprägt. Die Voraussetzung für gegenseitiges Verstehen in von Globalisierungs- und Übersetzungsprozessen geprägten Gesellschaften ist (...) eine kritische Hinterfragung der scheinbaren Einheitlichkeit, Ursprünglichkeit, Kontinuität und Unveränderlichkeit von Traditionen, auch der eigenen europäischen. Wissenschaft kann dazu beitragen, durch Bewusstmachung der Analoga und durch Verzicht auf triumphalistische Gesten westlichen und östlichen Phänomenen den gleichen Rang zuzuweisen, um einen Ausweg aus Polemik und Apologetik zu eröffnen. Der Band versammelt eine Auswahl an Vorträgen, die im Rahmen des Jahresthemas 2007/8 der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften stattfanden. Die Wahl des Jahresthemas "Europa im Nahen Osten - Der Nahe Osten in Europa" entstand in Verbindung mit dem gleichnamigen Forschungsprogramm, das von der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, dem Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin und der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften gemeinsam getragen wird. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes hinterfragen gängige Grenzziehungen, Ursprungserzählungen, Identitätsvorstellungen und werfen Schlaglichter auf eine europäisch-nahöstliche Beziehungsgeschichte. Mit Beiträgen von Aziz Al-Azmeh, Michael Borgolte, Vera von Falkenhausen, Joschka Fischer, Malte Fuhrmann, Kader Konuk, Gudrun Krämer, Wolf Lepenies, Christoph Markschies, Christian Meier, Angelika Neuwirth, Heinz Schilling, Stephan Johannes Seidlmayer, Viola Shafik, El Hassan bin Talal, Maria Todorova, Stefan Wild und Zafer Yenal. (shrink)

In Our Stories, John Martin Fischer offers readers a characteristically thoughtful and engaging presentation of his views on a variety of topics, most notably death, immortality and self-expression. Having come to this collection familiar primarily with Fischer's work on freedom and responsibility, I was impressed with the range of issues treated in this latest volume. While each essay is independently appealing, perhaps the most compelling aspect of Our Stories is its cohesiveness. Fischer discerns a variety of subtle (...) connections among the diverse array of subjects he treats; this imbues his work with a degree of continuity that is remarkable in light of the extensiveness of his subject matter. Here, I focus mainly on self-expression, and discuss other topics covered in Our Stories principally in relation to this central concept.According to Fischer, the value of self-expression is ‘the value of acting freely, or acting in such a way as to be morally responsible … this value is a kind of aesthetic value, or akin to an aesthetic value’. The sense of freedom at issue here does not require alternative possibilities; rather, it involves guidance control, which agents possess when their behaviour is appropriately responsive to reasons and they take ‘ownership’ of the causal mechanism that produces this behaviour. While the value of free action is, …. (shrink)

We cannot create the personal history that causes us to act. Yet that self-creation is required for responsibility for action. So goes Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument, crystallizing centuries of prior thought and prompting a host of replies. All replies argue that personal history is irrelevant to responsibility or relevant in a less-demanding way than the argument requires. But in my view, personal history may be as relevant as the argument claims. The fl aw, I argue, is that it confl ates (...) what we can do with what we do. It assumes that, if the way I am causes my act, and if I cannot create the way I am, then I lack alternate possibilities and control. My objection enriches an idea central to accounts from Susan Wolf, John Martin Fischer, Kadri Vihvelin, Dana Nelkin, Gary Watson, and others: we may be responsible for what we do even if we are not responsible for things on which our acts depend. My objection also supports features of Robert Kane, Christopher Franklin, and Laura Ekstrom’s incompatibilisms. In short, my focus is on the freedom in ‘can.’. (shrink)