Der hier erstmals ver]ffentlichte Briefwechsel zwischen dem Psychiater C.G. Jung und dem Nobelpreistr{ger der Physik Wolfgang Pauli ist ein geistesgeschichtliches Dokument ersten Ranges. Ein privates Schicksal hat sie zusammengef}hrt, und daraus ist ein vorwissenschaftlicher Dialog erwachsen, in dem versucht wird, naturwissenschaftliches und psychologischesDenken zu vereinheitlichen. Die Briefe verdeutlichen, da~ es weder f}r den Psychologen zul{ssig ist, die methodischen Einsichten der Physik, noch f}r den Physiker, die Erfahrungen im Umgang mit dem Psychischenzu vernachl{ssigen.

Wolfgang Spohn presents the first full account of the dynamic laws of belief, by means of ranking theory. This book is his long-awaited presentation of ranking theory and its ramifications.

This is one of a pair of discussion notes comparing some features of the account of causation in Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief with the “interventionist” account in James Woodward’s Making Things Happen. This note locates the core difference of the accounts in the fact that Woodward’s account follows an epistemological order, while Spohn’s follows a conceptual order. This unfolds in five further differences: type- versus token-level causation, reference to time, actual/counterfactual intervention versus epistemic/suppositional wiggling, a circular versus a (...) circle-free conception of the circumstances of a direct causal relation, and absolute versus model-relative causation. (shrink)

This collection includes twenty original philosophical essays in honour of Wolfgang Spohn. The contributions mirror the scope of Wolfgang Spohn’s work. They address topics from epistemology (e.g., the theory of ranking functions, belief revision, and the nature of knowledge and belief), philosophy of science (e.g., causation, induction, and laws of nature), the philosophy of language (e.g., the theory of meaning and the semantics of counterfactuals), and the philosophy of mind (e.g., intentionality and free will), as well as problems (...) of ontology, logic, the theory of practical rationality, and meta-philosophy. ― Contributors: Ansgar Beckermann, Wolfgang Benkewitz, Bernd Buldt, Ralf Busse, Christoph Fehige, Wolfgang Freitag, Gordian Haas, Volker Halbach, Franz Huber, Andreas Kemmerling, Manfred Kupffer, Hannes Leitgeb, Godehard Link, Arthur Merin, Thomas Müller, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Hans Rott, Holger Sturm, Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Alexandra Zinke. (shrink)

1992 haben die Verfasser eine Reihe von Gesprächen geführt, um die Entdeckung einer doppeltgerichteten Zeit, die Wolfgang Kaempfer in Zusammenarbeit mit Friedrich Cramer zu einem plausiblen Modell entwickelt hat, auf Reichweite und Konsequenz hin zu prüfen. Die nun sorgfältig ausgearbeiteten acht Gespräche, in denen Dietmar Kamper aus seiner Erfahrung der Zeit als 'paradoxer Wiederholung' die Fragen stellt und Wolfgang Kaempfer seine Antworten mit spekulativer Kraft immer aufs Neue vorantreibt, zeigen ein weites Spektrum von möglichen Fällen der Anwendung des (...) Modells; hauptsächlich in den historischen Wissenschaften, aber auch in der Ästhetik, der Philosophie und der Religion! Sie zeigen aber auch, daß die Gesprächsform einer solchen Entdeckung, die über das Modell hinaus weiterentwickelt werden soll, eher entspricht als die Abhandlung. Es geht nämlich nicht um gerichtetes Wissen, sondern um eine intensive Weise des experimentellen Fragens und Antwortens, die in der momentanen Verwirrung der Kriterien auf eine neue Orientierung abhebt. (shrink)

My vision is that we align the AI developments with technological, scientific, interdisciplinary, and societal discussions about what is it we want and do not want. If we cannot agree, let us talk, hoping that, with help of this dialogue, we are better equipped for the task. And let us work hard on the alignment of trust and trustworthiness.My personal AI mission: To contribute to methods where we use AI in the context of program development, such that the resulting programs (...) are trustworthy even if we do not rely on the trustworthiness of the used AI. Neuro-symbolic methods should help us with that mission. (shrink)

In 1932, Wolfgang Pauli was a world-renowned physicist and had already done the work that would win him the 1945 Nobel Prize. He was also in pain. His mother had poisoned herself after his father's involvement in an affair. Emerging from a brief marriage with a cabaret performer, Pauli drank heavily, quarreled frequently and sometimes publicly, and was disturbed by powerful dreams. He turned for help to C. G. Jung, setting a standing appointment for Mondays at noon. Thus bloomed (...) an extraordinary intellectual conjunction not just between a physicist and a psychologist but between physics and psychology. Eighty letters, written over twenty-six years, record that friendship. This artful translation presents them in English for the first time. Though Jung never analyzed Pauli formally, he interpreted more than 400 of his dreams--work that bore fruit later in Psychology and Alchemy and The Analysis of Dreams. As their acquaintance developed, Jung and Pauli exchanged views on the content of their work and the ideas of the day. They discussed the nature of dreams and their relation to reality, finding surprising common ground between depth psychology and quantum physics. Their collaboration resulted in the combined publication of Jung's treatise on synchronicity and Pauli's essay on archetypal ideas influencing Kepler's writings in The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Over time, their correspondence shaped and reshaped their understanding of the principle they called synchronicity, a term Jung had suggested earlier. Through the association of these two pioneering thinkers, developments in physics profoundly influenced the evolution of Jungian psychology. And many of Jung's abiding themes shaped how Pauli--and, through him, other physicists--understood the physical world. Of clear appeal to historians of science and anyone investigating the life and work of Pauli or Jung, this portrait of an incredible friendship will also draw readers interested in human creativity as well as those who merely like to be present when great minds meet. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

It is natural and important to have a formal representation of plain belief, according to which propositions are held true, or held false, or neither. (In the paper this is called a deterministic representation of epistemic states). And it is of great philosophical importance to have a dynamic account of plain belief. AGM belief revision theory seems to provide such an account, but it founders at the problem of iterated belief revision, since it can generally account only for one step (...) of revision. The paper discusses and rejects two solutions within the confines of AGM theory. It then introduces ranking functions (as I prefer to call them now; in the paper they are still called ordinal conditional functions) as the proper (and, I find, still the best) solution of the problem, proves that conditional independence w.r.t. ranking functions satisfies the so-called graphoid axioms, and proposes general rules of belief change (in close analogy to Jeffrey's generalized probabilistic conditionalization) that encompass revision and contraction as conceived in AGM theory. Indeed, the parallel to probability theory is amazing. Probability theory can profit from ranking theory as well since it is also plagued by the problem of iterated belief revision even if probability measures are conceived as Popper measures (see No. 11). Finally, the theory is compared with predecessors which are numerous and impressive, but somehow failed to explain the all-important conditional ranks in the appropriate way. (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)

Nobel Laureate's brilliant early treatise on Einstein's theory consists of his original 1921 text plus retrospective comments 35 years later.

Contents: Foreword. Wolfgang BALZER and C. ULISES MOULINES: Introduction. José A. DÍEZ CALZADA: Structuralist Analysis of Theories of Fundamental Measurement. Adolfo GARCÍA DE LA SIENRA and Pedro REYES: The Theory of Finite Games in Extensive Form. Hans Joachim BURSCHEID und Horst STRUVE: The Theory of Stochastic Fairness - its Historical Development, Formulation and Justification. Wolfgang BALZER and Richard MATTESSICH: Formalizing the Basis of Accounting. Werner DIEDERICH: A Reconstruction of Marxian Economics. Bert HAMMINGA and Wolfgang BALZER: The Basic (...) Structure of Neoclassical General Equilibrium Theory. Klaus MANHART: Balance Theories: Two Reconstructions and the Problem of Intended Applications. Rainer WESTERMANN: Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Structuralist Theory-Net. Rainer REISENZEIN: Wundt's Three-Dimensional Theory of Emotion. Pablo LORENZANO: Classical Genetics and the Theory-Net of Genetics. Hinne HETTEMA and Theo A.F. KUIPERS: The Formalisation of the Periodic Table. C. ULISES MOULINES: The Basic Core of Simple Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Thomas BARTELBORTH: An Axiomatization of Classical Electrodynamics. Author's Index. Subject Index. (shrink)

Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle.The author's argument consists of (...) two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement.Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas. (shrink)

"A Survey of Ranking Theory": The paper gives an up-to-date survey of ranking theory. It carefully explains the basics. It elaborates on the ranking theoretic explication of reasons and their balance. It explains the dynamics of belief statable in ranking terms and indicates how the ranks can thereby be measured. It suggests how the theory of Bayesian nets can be carried over to ranking theory. It indicates what it might mean to objectify ranks. It discusses the formal and the philosophical (...) aspects of the tight relation and the complementarity of ranks and probabilities. It closes with comparative remarks on predecessors and other philosophical proposals as well as formal models developed in AI. (shrink)

The first English translation of a classic work in vision science from 1936 by a leading figure in the Gestalt movement, covering topics that continue to be major issues in vision research today. This classic work in vision science, written by a leading figure in Germany's Gestalt movement in psychology and first published in 1936, addresses topics that remain of major interest to vision researchers today. Wolfgang Metzger's main argument, drawn from Gestalt theory, is that the objects we perceive (...) in visual experience are not the objects themselves but perceptual effigies of those objects constructed by our brain according to natural rules. Gestalt concepts are currently being increasingly integrated into mainstream neuroscience by researchers proposing network processing beyond the classical receptive field. Metzger's discussion of such topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings will interest anyone working in the field of vision and perception, including psychologists, biologists, neurophysiologists, and researchers in computational vision—and artists, designers, and philosophers. Each chapter is accompanied by compelling visual demonstrations of the phenomena described; the book includes 194 illustrations, drawn from visual science, art, and everyday experience, that invite readers to verify Metzger's observations for themselves. Today's researchers may find themselves pondering the intriguing question of what effect Metzger's theories might have had on vision research if Laws of Seeing and its treasure trove of perceptual observations had been available to the English-speaking world at the time of its writing. (shrink)

The paper builds on the basically Humean idea that A is a cause of B iff A and B both occur, A precedes B, and A raises the metaphysical or epistemic status of B given the obtaining circumstances. It argues that in pursuit of a theory of deterministic causation this ‘status raising’ is best explicated not in regularity or counterfactual terms, but in terms of ranking functions. On this basis, it constructs a rigorous theory of deterministic causation that successfully deals (...) with cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. It finally indicates how the account's profound epistemic relativization induced by ranking theory can be undone. Introduction Variables, propositions, time Induction first Causation Redundant causation Objectivization. (shrink)

Info in English (book is in German): The book "Schöpferische Freiheit" ("Creative Freedom") is considered the third major work of Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979) - along with his "Psychology" and the "Laws of Seeing". According to Michael Stadler and Wolfgang Crabus, Metzger's real achievement in the further development of Gestalt theory is expressed in this book: "Metzger develops here, on the basis of Köhler's natural philosophical ideas of 'physical Gestalten' (1920) and incorporating the teachings of Zen Buddhism (...) ... a theory of education for creative thought and action. ... This book perhaps most clearly expresses the ethic of free self-determination of human thought and action inherent in Gestalt theory." "Creative Freedom" has lost none of its relevance since its last edition in 1962. It can be considered a foundational work of a Gestalt theory of the living. Jürgen Kriz writes in his preface to the now new edition: "It is extremely gratifying that this central work not only of Gestalt psychology, but (at least from my point of view) also of humanistic psychology and psychotherapy is being reissued. It is currently available only in (all too few) libraries and single antiquarian copies. Yet the central messages and insights of Wolfgang Metzger's 'Creative Freedom' are more relevant than ever: as a necessary warning against the aberrations of an increasing functionalization, medicalization, and progress-believing optimization (for whatever purposes) of the human being in our time." The new edition is accompanied by comments on the topicality and relevance of the work for education and teaching (Marianne Soff) as well as for psychotherapy (Gerhard Stemberger). Buchinformation: Die „Schöpferische Freiheit“ gilt als das dritte Hauptwerk des Gestaltpsychologen Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979) – neben seiner „Psychologie“ und den „Gesetzen des Sehens“. Nach Michael Stadler und Wolfgang Crabus kommt in diesem Buch Metzgers eigentliche Leistung der Weiterentwicklung der Gestalttheorie zum Ausdruck: „Metzger entwickelt hier auf der Grundlage von Köhlers naturphilosophischen Ideen der ‚physischen Gestalten‘ (1920) und unter Einbeziehung der Lehren des Zen-Buddhismus … eine Theorie der Erziehung zum schöpferischen Denken und Handeln. … Dieses Buch drückt vielleicht am deutlichsten die der Gestalttheorie inhärente Ethik der freien Selbstbestimmung menschlichen Denkens und Handelns aus.“. (shrink)

The analysis of disposition concepts in terms of conditionals has recently been challenged by C.B. Martin's electro‐fink examples, by means of which Martin tries to refute the project of a conditional analysis of dispositions in general, and to defend thereby a realistic account of dispositions. In replying to Martin, D. Lewis has presented a new and complex conditional analysis not subject to Martin's counter‐examples. However, according to Lewis' analysis, dispositions are second‐order properties and thus not efficacious. I argue that dispositions (...) are efficacious properties, and therefore deserve a different analysis, in terms of counterfactual conditionals; this is not subject to Martin's counter‐examples. I show that my analysis is not anti‐realistic. On the contrary, my conceptual analysis of dispositions does not imply any ontological reduction that would deprive dispositions of their status as real properties of things. (shrink)

Im Schatten der Lebenswissenschaft: Kants Ästhetik und Goethes Poetik des Anorganischen. Wolfgang Hottners Studie rückt zum ersten Mal einen zentralen Bestandteil der Ästhetik, Wissenschaft und Poetik am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in den Blick: das Anorganische. Vor dessen diskursiver Marginalisierung durch eine vitalistisch-biopolitische Vernunft, die an der Schwelle zur Moderne primär das 'Leben' zu denken versucht, spielt es insbesondere in den Werken Kants und Goethes eine entscheidende Rolle. In deren je spezifischer Faszination für kristalline Formen und Formwerdungsprozesse werden nicht (...) nur die Prämissen und Aporien einer Ästhetik der Lebendigkeit neu vermessbar, sondern auch die unabgegoltene Widerständigkeit anorganischer Materie ersichtlich, an der sich die Kunst der Romantik und der Moderne abarbeiten wird. Hottners wissensgeschichtlich angelegte Archäologie anorganischer Ästhetik und Poetik zeigt insbesondere anhand kristalliner Formen und Figuren, dass diese für den ästhetischen, poetologischen und prototechnischen Form- und Formwerdungsdiskurs um 1800 mindestens genauso wichtig waren, wie die Rede von Bildungstrieb, Zeugung und Metamorphose. Damit wird eine bisher latente Episode in der Geschichte der modernen Literatur und Ästhetik sichtbar, die die Kant- und Goethe-Forschung vor neue Herausforderungen stellt. (shrink)

To Wolfgang Schirmacher philosophy is about reading in the spirit of, so that we may follow the logic of the phenomenon that shows itself to us. It is in this spirit of phenomenology Schirmacher asks whether Martin Heidegger's diagnosis of our age – that we live under a Gestell, or fix, of technology – is sufficient. Should we not consider the supplementary notion of technology as an event (Ereignis) of becoming into our own existence? We have an inborn character (...) that is unassailable and yet unknown to us until the day we perish, and from such an ethical perspective – and in distinction to deontological views – Schirmacher rejects science's promise never to clone humans. He regards such a declaration as “only valid until it’s possible.” Rather, he regards our future as one in which humans will be allowed to procreate for as long as it doesn't interfere unambiguously with the functioning of the machines, “and during that interim the poor humans living there will still have hope.”. (shrink)

The characteristic difference between laws and accidental generalizations lies in our epistemic or inductive attitude towards them. This idea has taken various forms and dominated the discussion about lawlikeness in the last decades. Likewise, the issue about ceteris paribus conditions is essentially about how we epistemically deal with exceptions. Hence, ranking theory with its resources of defeasible reasoning seems ideally suited to explicate these points in a formal way. This is what the paper attempts to do. Thus it will turn (...) out that a law is simply the deterministic analogue of a sequence of independent, identically distributed random variables. This entails that de Finetti's representation theorems can be directly transformed into an account of confirmation of laws thus conceived. (shrink)

Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through information or experience; induction and belief change are one and same topic, after all. The most basic of these rules is simply to conditionalize with respect to the information received; and there are similar and more general rules. 1 Hence, a fundamental reason for the epistemological success of (...) probability theory is that there at all exists a well-behaved concept of conditional probability. Still, people have, and have reasons for, various concerns over probability theory. One of these is my starting point: Intuitively, we have the notion of plain belief; we believe propositions2 to be true (or to be false or neither). Probability theory, however, offers no formal counterpart to this notion. Believing A is not the same as having probability 1 for A, because probability 1 is incorrigible3; but plain belief is clearly corrigible. And believing A is not the same as giving A a probability larger than some 1 - c, because believing A and believing B is usually taken to be equivalent to believing A & B.4 Thus, it seems that the formal representation of plain belief has to take a non-probabilistic route. Indeed, representing plain belief seems easy enough: simply represent an epistemic state by the set of all propositions believed true in it or, since I make the common assumption that plain belief is deductively closed, by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it. But this does not yet provide a theory of induction, i.e. an answer to the question how epistemic states so represented are changed tbrough information or experience. There is a convincing partial answer: if the new information is compatible with the old epistemic state, then the new epistemic state is simply represented by the conjunction of the new information and the old beliefs. This answer is partial because it does not cover the quite common case where the new information is incompatible with the old beliefs. It is, however, important to complete the answer and to cover this case, too; otherwise, we would not represent plain belief as conigible. The crucial problem is that there is no good completion. When epistemic states are represented simply by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it, the answer cannot be completed; and though there is a lot of fruitful work, no other representation of epistemic states has been proposed, as far as I know, which provides a complete solution to this problem. In this paper, I want to suggest such a solution. In [4], I have more fully argued that this is the only solution, if certain plausible desiderata are to be satisfied. Here, in section 2, I will be content with formally defining and intuitively explaining my proposal. I will compare my proposal with probability theory in section 3. It will turn out that the theory I am proposing is structurally homomorphic to probability theory in important respects and that it is thus equally easily implementable, but moreover computationally simpler. Section 4 contains a very brief comparison with various kinds of logics, in particular conditional logic, with Shackle's functions of potential surprise and related theories, and with the Dempster - Shafer theory of belief functions. (shrink)

Fast 25 Jahre nach seinem Bestseller „Unsere postmoderne Moderne“ legt Wolfgang Welsch eine neuartige und tiefer gehende Infragestellung der Moderne vor. Als zentral für die Moder-ne sieht er das anthropische Prinzip an: in allem ist vom Menschen auszugehen, alles ist auf den Menschen zu beziehen; der Mensch ist das Maß der Welt, die Welt ist Menschenwelt – und nichts sonst, nichts darüber hinaus. Dem stellt er kritisch eine Reihe von Phänomenanalysen und die Skizze einer Anthropologie auf evolutionärer Grundlage entgegen. (...) Indem nicht die Welt vom Menschen her, sondern zu-erst einmal der Mensch von der Welt her zu begreifen ist, ist den anthropischen Spiegelspie-len der Moderne der Boden entzogen, und eine neue Denklandschaft zeichnet sich ab. (shrink)