Between 1819 and 1832 Friedrich Schleiermacher was giving lectures on the life of Jesus at the University of Berlin. The following article includes two partial editions, which document the introductory parts of the lectures from 1819/20 and 1829/30. Both are based on manuscripts written by Schleiermacher’s listeners. Especially to explore the development of Schleiermacher’s conceptual considerations this two partial editions should be a useful addition to the new critical edition of Schleiermacher’s Vorlesungen über das Leben Jesu published in 2018 by (...) Walter Jaeschke (KGA II/15). (shrink)

Until the eighteenth century, Latin was the uncontested language of academic discourse, including theology. Regardless of their denominational affiliation, scholars all across Europe made use of Latin in both their publications and lectures. Then, due to the influence of various strands of post-Kantian philosophy, a change took place, at least in the German-speaking area. With recourse to classical German philosophy, many Catholic systematic theologians switched to their mother-tounge and adopted the newly coined terms in order to express the same faith. (...) In reaction to this transformative work the neo-scholastic movement came into existence. Its adherents stressed the Church’s tradition and, especially its indebtedness to medieval thought. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, partly supported by the Magisterium, various attempts were made to re-introduce Latin into dogmatics. This project was unsuccessful, however, because of changes to the Catholic world ushered in by the Second Vatican Council and also because of developments in German educational policy, which served to lower the status of Latin in schools. (shrink)

Scale is hopefully not all you need.My personal AI mission: Productionizing Graph Neural Networks – a set of models with strong inductive bias that require less data and are easier to interpret.

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)

In der Studie geht Matthias Neuber der Frage nach, in welchem Verhältnis das Konzept des Realismus und der logische Empirismus des Wiener Kreises, eine der dominanten Strömungen der deutschsprachigen theoretischen Philosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, zueinander stehen. Diese Fragestellung ist in der philosophiehistorischen Forschung bislang nur am Rande behandelt worden. Das ist umso erstaunlicher, als die neuere wissenschaftsphilosophische Realismusdebatte gerade durch den logischen Empirismus maßgeblich mitbestimmt worden ist. Der Autor geht aber noch einen Schritt weiter: Er begründet in dem (...) Band die These, dass es innerhalb des logischen Empirismus selbst Strömungen gab, die mit dem wissenschaftlichen Realismus kompatibel sind. Damit bezieht er eine Gegenposition zum Mainstream in der Deutung der wissenschaftsphilosophischen Realismusdebatte des 20. Jahrhunderts, denn der versteht den wissenschaftlichen Realismus als Gegenprogramm zum logischen Empirismus. Neuber liefert mit seiner philosophiehistorischen Studie nicht weniger als eine Neubewertung des Verhältnisses von Realismus und logischem Empirismus. Ein Werk, das sich insbesondere an Wissenschaftler, aber auch an fortgeschrittene Studierende auf dem Gebiet der Geschichte der Wissenschaftsphilosophie richtet. (shrink)

Mind and Rights combines historical, philosophical, and legal perspectives with research from psychology and the cognitive sciences to probe the justification of human rights in ethics, politics and law. Chapters critically examine the growth of the human rights culture, its roots in history and current human rights theories. They engage with the so-called cognitive revolution and investigate the relationship between human cognition and human rights to determine how insights gained from modern theories of the mind can deepen our understanding of (...) the foundations of human rights. Mind and Rights argues that the pursuit of the human rights idea, with its achievements and tragic failures, is key to understand what kind of beings humans are. Amidst ongoing debate on the universality and legitimacy of human rights, this book provides a uniquely comprehensive analysis of great practical and political importance for a culture of legal justice undergirded by rights. Matthias Mahlmann is University Professor, Chair of Philosophy and Theory of Law, Legal Sociology and International Public Law at the University of Zurich. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's (...) approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

Epistemic deontology is the view that the concept of epistemic justification is deontological: a justified belief is, by definition, an epistemically permissible belief. I defend this view against the argument from doxastic involuntarism, according to which our doxastic attitudes are not under our voluntary control, and thus are not proper objects for deontological evaluation. I argue that, in order to assess this argument, we must distinguish between a compatibilist and a libertarian construal of the concept of voluntary control. If we (...) endorse a compatibilist construal, it turns out that we enjoy voluntary control over our doxastic attitudes after all. If, on the other hand, we endorse a libertarian construal, the result is that, for our doxastic attitudes to be suitable objects of deontological evaluation, they need not be under our voluntary control. (shrink)

English summary: Ordinary, unmethodical experience forms our lives. It accumulates when we interact with our environment as living beings, and combines cognitive, affective and volitional elements. In it, questions of meaning and value and issues of knowledge become strongly interdependent. In a normative sense, modern culture has tremendously upgraded the status of ordinary people's experience. However, at the same time, our world is increasingly determined by the methodological experience of the (natural) sciences and by the technology they have made possible. (...) Will scientific experience now replace ordinary experience, or will it complement and regulate it? How do facts and values relate to one another and what does this mean for our understanding of democracy? Matthias Jung starts by developing an integrated approach to ordinary experience, taking into account insights from areas including hermeneutics, phenomenology, pragmatism and cognitive science. As a result, three main areas of discussion emerge: knowledge, values and ideology, all of which are covered in their respective individual chapters. German description: Gewohnliche, unmethodische Erfahrung formt unser Leben. Sie vollzieht sich, wenn wir als lebendige Wesen mit unserer Umwelt interagieren, und verbindet jeweils kognitive, affektive und willentliche Dimensionen. Fragen nach Sinn und Wert und Wissensfragen sind in ihr eng aufeinander bezogen. Normativ hat die Kultur der Moderne die Erfahrung gewohnlicher Menschen enorm aufgewertet, doch gleichzeitig wird unsere Welt immer starker von der methodischen Erfahrung der (Natur-)Wissenschaften und der von ihr ermoglichten Technik bestimmt. Ersetzt nun wissenschaftliche die gewohnliche Erfahrung oder erganzt und korrigiert sie diese? Wie verhalten sich Fakten und Werte zueinander und was ergibt sich daraus fur unser Verstandnis von Demokratie? Matthias Jung entwickelt zunachst ein integriertes Konzept gewohnlicher Erfahrung und nimmt dabei Einsichten u.a. aus Hermeneutik, Phanomenologie, Pragmatismus und Kognitionswissenschaften auf. Daraus ergeben sich drei exemplarische Problemfelder: Wissen, Werte und Weltanschauung. Ihnen sind jeweils eigene Kapitel gewidmet. (shrink)

This volume gathers eleven new and three previously unpublished essays that take on questions of epistemic justification, responsibility, and virtue. It contains the best recent work in this area by major figures such as Ernest Sosa, Robert Audi, Alvin Goldman, and Susan Haak.

In this paper, I argue that the rejection of doxastic voluntarism is not as straightforward as its opponents take it to be. I begin with a critical examination of William Alston's defense of involuntarism and then focus on the question of whether belief is intentional.

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Alston's arguments for doxastic involuntarism. Alston fails to distinguish (i) between volitional and executional lack of control, and (ii) between compatibilist and libertarian control. As a result, he fails to notice that, if one endorses a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, the outcome is a straightforward and compelling case for doxastic voluntarism. Advocates of involuntarism have recently argued that the compatibilist case for doxastic voluntarism can be blocked by pointing out that belief is never intentional. (...) In response to this strategy, I distinguish between two types of intentionality and argue that belief is no less intentional than action is. (shrink)

After briefly discussing the relevance of the notions computation and implementation for cognitive science, I summarize some of the problems that have been found in their most common interpretations. In particular, I argue that standard notions of computation together with a state-to-state correspondence view of implementation cannot overcome difficulties posed by Putnam's Realization Theorem and that, therefore, a different approach to implementation is required. The notion realization of a function, developed out of physical theories, is then introduced as a replacement (...) for the notional pair computation-implementation. After gradual refinement, taking practical constraints into account, this notion gives rise to the notion digital system which singles out physical systems that could be actually used, and possibly even built. (shrink)

When I take a sip from the coffee in my cup, I can taste that it is sweet. When I hold the cup with my hands, I can feel that it is hot. Why does the experience of feeling that the cup is hot give me justification for believing that the cup is hot?And why does the experience of tasting that the coffee is sweet give me justification for believing that the coffee is sweet?In general terms: Why is it that (...) a sense experience that P is a source of justification—a reason—for believing that P? Call this the Question. I will discuss various answers to the Question, and defend the one I myself favor. (shrink)

A new computationalist view of the mind that takes into account real-world issues of embodiment, interaction, physical implementation, and semantics.

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

Information on the factors influencing parents’ decision-making process following a lethal, life-limiting or severely debilitating prenatal diagnosis remains deficient. A comprehensive systematic review and meta-synthesis was conducted to explore the influencing factors for parents considering termination or continuation of pregnancy following identification of lethal, life-limiting or severely debilitating fetal abnormalities. Electronic searches of 13 databases were conducted. These searches were supplemented by hand-searching Google Scholar and bibliographies and citation tracing. Thomas and Harden’s thematic synthesis method was used to synthesise data (...) from identified studies. Twenty-four papers were identified and reviewed, but two papers were removed following quality assessment. Three main themes were identified through systematic synthesis. Theme 1, entitled ‘all life is precious’, described parents’ perception of the importance of the fetus’ life, a fatalistic view of their situation alongside moral implications as well as the implications decisions would have on their own life, in consideration of previous life experiences. Theme 2 contained two sub-themes which considered the parent’s own imagined future and the influence of other people’s experiences. Finally, Theme 3 presented three sub-themes which may influence their parental decision-making: These described parental consideration of the quality of life for their unborn child, the possibility of waiting to try for another pregnancy, and their own responsibilities and commitments. The first review to fully explore parental decision-making process following lethal, life-limiting, or severely debilitating prenatal diagnosis provided novel findings and insight into which factors influenced parents’ decision-making process. This comprehensive and systematic review provides greater understanding of the factors influential on decision-making, such as hope, morality and potential implications on their own and other’s quality of life, will enable professionals to facilitate supported decision-making, including greater knowledge of the variables likely to influence parental choices. (shrink)

Conditional structures lie at the heart of the sciences, humanities, and everyday reasoning. It is hence not surprising that conditional logics – logics specifically designed to account for natural language conditionals – are an active and interdisciplinary area. The present book gives a formal and a philosophical account of indicative and counterfactual conditionals in terms of Chellas-Segerberg semantics. For that purpose a range of topics are discussed such as Bennett’s arguments against truth value based semantics for indicative conditionals.

I re-examine Coherence Arguments (Dutch Book Arguments, No Arbitrage Arguments) for diachronic constraints on Bayesian reasoning. I suggest to replace the usual game–theoretic coherence condition with a new decision–theoretic condition ('Diachronic Sure Thing Principle'). The new condition meets a large part of the standard objections against the Coherence Argument and frees it, in particular, from a commitment to additive utilities. It also facilitates the proof of the Converse Dutch Book Theorem. I first apply the improved Coherence Argument to van Fraassen's (...) (1984) Reflection principle. I then point out the failure of a Coherence Argument that is intended to support Conditionalization as a naive, universal, update rule. I also point out that Reflection is incompatible with the universal use of Conditionalization thus interpreted. The Coherence Argument therefore defeats the naive view on Bayesian learning that it was originally designed to justify. (shrink)

This volume gathers leading figures from legal philosophy and constitutional theory to offer a critical examination of the work of Robert Alexy.

The core feature that distinguishes moods from emotions is that moods, in contrast to emotions, are diffuse and global. This article outlines a dispositional theory of moods (DTM) that accounts for this and other features of mood experience. DTM holds that moods are temporary dispositions to have or to generate particular kinds of emotion-relevant appraisals. Furthermore, DTM assumes that the cognitions and appraisals one is disposed to have in a given mood partly constitute the experience of mood. This article outlines (...) a number of implications of DTM (e.g., regarding the noncognitive causation and rationality of moods) and summarizes empirical results supporting the theory. (shrink)

We investigate a lattice of conditional logics described by a Kripke type semantics, which was suggested by Chellas and Segerberg – Chellas–Segerberg (CS) semantics – plus 30 further principles. We (i) present a non-trivial frame-based completeness result, (ii) a translation procedure which gives one corresponding trivial frame conditions for arbitrary formula schemata, and (iii) non-trivial frame conditions in CS semantics which correspond to the 30 principles.

This volume commemorates the life, work, and foundational views of Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), most famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency - with the other widely accepted axioms of set theory - of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. It explores current research, advances, and ideas for future directions not only in the foundations of mathematics and logic, but also in the fields of computer (...) science, artificial intelligence, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology, and the history of science. The discussion is supplemented by personal reflections from several scholars who knew Gödel personally, providing some interesting insights into his life. By putting his ideas and life's work into the context of current thinking and perceptions, this book will extend the impact of Gödel's fundamental work in mathematics, logic, philosophy, and other disciplines for future generations of researchers. (shrink)

Über Jahrhunderte hatten Ärzte die Aufgabe, Krankheiten zu verhindern und zu behandeln. Nun stehen sie immer häufiger im Dienst der Selbstverwirklichung und Lebensplanung gesunder Menschen, besonders in der Fortpflanzungsmedizin und der ästhetischen Chirurgie. Welche Konsequenzen hat dies für die Zukunft der Medizin? Die Autoren beleuchten diesen Wandel von der krankheitsbekämpfenden zur wunscherfüllenden Medizin unter ärztlichen, rechtlichen und ethischen Aspekten.

While scientific realism generally assumes that successful scientific explanations yield information about reality, realists also have to admit that not all information acquired in this way is equally well warranted. Some versions of scientific realism do this by saying that explanatory posits with which we have established some kind of causal contact are better warranted than those that merely appear in theoretical hypotheses. I first explicate this distinction by considering some general criteria that permit us to distinguish causal warrant from (...) theoretical warrant. I then apply these criteria to a specific case from particle physics, claiming that scientific realism has to incorporate the distinction between causal and theoretical warrant if it is to be an adequate stance in the philosophy of particle physics. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the new Tweety puzzle. The original Tweety puzzle was addressed by approaches in non-monotonic logic, which aim to adequately represent the Tweety case, namely that Tweety is a penguin and, thus, an exceptional bird, which cannot fly, although in general birds can fly. The new Tweety puzzle is intended as a challenge for probabilistic theories of epistemic states. In the first part of the paper we argue against monistic Bayesians, who assume that epistemic states can (...) at any given time be adequately described by a single subjective probability function. We show that monistic Bayesians cannot provide an adequate solution to the new Tweety puzzle, because this requires one to refer to a frequency-based probability function. We conclude that monistic Bayesianism cannot be a fully adequate theory of epistemic states. In the second part we describe an empirical study, which provides support for the thesis that monistic Bayesianism is also inadequate as a descriptive theory of cognitive states. In the final part of the paper we criticize Bayesian approaches in cognitive science, insofar as their monistic tendency cannot adequately address the new Tweety puzzle. We, further, argue against monistic Bayesianism in cognitive science by means of a case study. In this case study we show that Oaksford and Chater’s (2007, 2008) model of conditional inference—contrary to the authors’ theoretical position—has to refer also to a frequency-based probability function. (shrink)

A general class of labeled sequent calculi is investigated, and necessary and sufficient conditions are given for when such a calculus is sound and complete for a finite -valued logic if the labels are interpreted as sets of truth values. Furthermore, it is shown that any finite -valued logic can be given an axiomatization by such a labeled calculus using arbitrary "systems of signs," i.e., of sets of truth values, as labels. The number of labels needed is logarithmic in the (...) number of truth values, and it is shown that this bound is tight. (shrink)

The main claim of this paper is that notions of implementation based on an isomorphic correspondence between physical and computational states are not tenable. Rather, ``implementation'' has to be based on the notion of ``bisimulation'' in order to be able to block unwanted implementation results and incorporate intuitions from computational practice. A formal definition of implementation is suggested, which satisfies theoretical and practical requirements and may also be used to make the functionalist notion of ``physical realization'' precise. The upshot of (...) this new definition of implementation is that implementation cannot distinguish isomorphic bisimilar from non-isomporphic bisimilar systems anymore, thus driving a wedge between the notions of causal and computational complexity. While computationalism does not seem to be affected by this result, the consequences for functionalism are not clear and need further investigations. (shrink)