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)

This collection of papers from the workshop serves as the initial volume in the new series Texts in Logics and Games—touching on research in logic, mathematics, computer science, and game theory. “A wonderful demonstration of ...

Although 'most contemporary analytic philosophers [endorse] a physicalist picture of the world' (A. Newen; V. Hoffmann; M. Esfeld, 'Preface to Mental Causation, Externalism and Self-Knowledge', Erkenntnis , 67 (2007), p. 147), it is unclear what exactly the physicalist thesis states. The response that physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical does not solve the problem but is a precise statement of the problem because 'the claim is hopelessly vague' (G. Hellman; F. Thompson, 'Physicalism: Ontology, Determination, and Reduction', Journal of (...) Philosophy , 72 (1975), p. 552). I argue that physicalism in fact should be the thesis that every existing particular essentially exemplifies properties the exemplification of which does not conceptually entail the existence of conscious beings. Physicalism thus is a purely philosophical thesis with no intrinsic relation to physics. 1. (shrink)

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause left an impressive oeuvre consisting of 256 books and articles, covering numerous branches of philosophy, the humanities, and science.[1] His Urbild der Menschheit, his Vorlesungen über das System der Philosophie and his Vorlesungen über die Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschaft are of particular pertinence for philosophers today. [1] See: E. M. Ureña and E. Fuchs, “Einführung in das Gesamtwerk”, in Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. Band 1: Entwurf des Systems der Philosophie, ed. T. Bach and O. Breidbach.

We study classes of ultrafilters on ω defined by a natural property of the Loeb measure in the Nonstandard Universe corresponding to the ultrafilter. This class, the Property M ultrafilters, is shown to contain all ultrafilters built up by taking iterated products over collections of pairwise nonisomorphic selective ultrafilters. Results on Property M ultrafilters are applied to the construction of extensions of probability measures, and to the study of measurable reductions between ultrafilters.

We study relations between measure-theoretic classes of ultrafilters, such as the Property M ultrafilters of [4], with other well-known ultrafilter classes. We define several classes of measure theoretic ultrafilters, of which the Property M ultrafilters are the strongest. We show which containments are provable in ZFC between these measure-theoretic ultrafilters and boolean combinations of well-known ultrafilters such as the selective, semi-selective, and P-point ultrafilters. We also list some of the containment results between measure-theoretic ultrafilters and several other ultrafilter classes, such (...) as the Arrow and Property C ultrafilters. (shrink)

Benedikt Stattler was born on January 30, 1728 in Kötzting in Bavaria. In 1745 he entered the Society of Jesus, to which he remained loyal in spirit and in deed until his death, in spite of its suppression in 1773 by Clement XIV From 1760 until 1781 he taught philosophy and theology in Staubing, Solothurn, Innsbruck and Ingolstadt, where the famous J. M. Sailer, Bishop of Regensburg, was his pupil. He died in Munich in 1797. Stattler, then, lived and (...) worked at the very height of the so-called Aufklarungszeit, a fact which had the deepest repercussions on his whole career. He was a zealous man and truly apostolic. Perhaps, if anything he was over-zealous and was in fact carried much too far in his spirit of accommodation and flexibility when faced with the rationalist enemies of the Church and Christianity. He was filled with the idea that they should be met on their own ground in order to win them for the Church. And in order to do that he decided that he must break with tradition. Modern modes of thinking must be used if there is to be even the possibility of discussion with present-day thinkers, was his principle. Accordingly he brushed aside Aristotle, St. Thomas and all the Scholastics and made his own the philosophy of Christian Wolff. For him that was the only way of preserving the Christian and Catholic faith and of safeguarding Christian morality, the Christian way of life. Filled with that idea he wrote indefatigably. Many of his works, however, very early fell foul of the Roman authorities and were put on the Index of forbidden books. And in fact, as Dr. Scholz rightly points out over and over again, Stattler became a victim of the Aufklärung which he sought to Christianize and he himself became a rationalist and, in morals, and out-and-out subjectivist. (shrink)

Affective congruency effects in the evaluation task can be explained by either spreading of activation or response competition. Eliminating effects of response compatibility by using other tasks (semantic categorisation, naming task) typically also eliminates affective congruency effects. However, there is no need for processing the affective information of the stimuli in these tasks either, which could be necessary for an affectively mediated spreading of activation (Spruyt et al., 2007, 2009, 2012). We introduced a new task to further test this hypothesis. (...) The valent/neutral-categorisation task does not confound affective congruency with response compatibility, but still requires a processing of the stimuli's valence. No affective congruency effect was obtained with this task in two experiments, disfavouring a conditional spreading activation account. On the other hand, a significant priming effect was found for associated word pairs in Experiment 1, providing evidence for the sensitivity of the task to detect spreading activation processes. (shrink)

In transformation research of late, accounts on the relation between intentionality and agency on the one hand, and the more routinised and structured side of social co-existence on the other, are increasingly nuanced. However, we observe a deficiency in the way arguments are set up by the interlocutors: both, scholars who grant intentionality a central role and those who emphasise its limitations generally do so at the level of ontology – debating degrees of human capacity for conscious planning versus a (...) largely unconscious reproduction. We wish to shift this question from an ontological to a pedagogical one, exploring possibilities to cultivate and learn intentionality. We do so by developing the concept of consciousness-in-nature that we derive from, and contextualise in, the traditions of deep ecology and (Westernised) Buddhism which both view human beings as inseparable from nature and one another. With consciousness-in-nature we refer to an understanding of humans as a part of nature that has developed the capacity for (self-) reflection and deliberation – a capacity that is not static or firm but can be nurtured and cultivated or clouded over and subdued. From this standpoint, we lay out an understanding of the role of (re)learning consciousness for processes of social change and explore potentials for its nurturing. (shrink)

In climate science, climate models are one of the main tools for understanding phenomena. Here, we develop a framework to assess the fitness of a climate model for providing understanding. The framework is based on three dimensions: representational accuracy, representational depth, and graspability. We show that this framework does justice to the intuition that classical process-based climate models give understanding of phenomena. While simple climate models are characterized by a larger graspability, state-of-the-art models have a higher representational accuracy and representational (...) depth. We then compare the fitness-for-providing understanding of process-based to data-driven models that are built with machine learning. We show that at first glance, data-driven models seem either unnecessary or inadequate for understanding. However, a case study from atmospheric research demonstrates that this is a false dilemma. Data-driven models can be useful tools for understanding , specifically for phenomena for which scientists can argue from the coherence of the models with background knowledge to their representational accuracy and for which the model complexity can be reduced such that they are graspable to a satisfactory extent. When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

The advent of ChatGPT by OpenAI has prompted extensive discourse on its potential implications for science and higher education. While the impact on education has been a primary focus, there is limited empirical research on the effects of large language models (LLMs) and LLM-based chatbots on science and scientific practice. To investigate this further, we conducted a Delphi study involving 72 researchers specializing in AI and digitization. The study focused on applications and limitations of LLMs, their effects on the science (...) system, ethical and legal considerations, and the required competencies for their effective use. Our findings highlight the transformative potential of LLMs in science, particularly in administrative, creative, and analytical tasks. However, risks related to bias, misinformation, and quality assurance need to be addressed through proactive regulation and science education. This research contributes to informed discussions on the impact of generative AI in science and helps identify areas for future action. (shrink)

Philosophy of aesthetics and beauty has traditionally prioritized the sense of vision while deprioritizing the more basic-bodily and thus less “noble” sense of touch. This paper examines bodily aspects of how beauty appears in the experience of visual art and motivates the view that touch is fundamental to such experiences. We appeal to Merleau-Ponty to show the relevance given to touch in his phenomenology of aesthetics, to unfold the meaning of touch as “reversible,” and to understand how vision can be (...) conceptualized as a form of touch. Further, we present four cases of feeling touched by beauty in experiences of visual art collected through interviews with art museum visitors. The descriptions of these experiences show that when people open themselves to an artwork they also open themselves to themselves. Based on the qualitative descriptions, we discuss how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of touch is revelatory of the meaning of feeling “touched” in experiences of beauty. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

C-systems were defined by Cartmell as models of generalized algebraic theories. B-systems were defined by Voevodsky in his quest to formulate and prove an initiality conjecture for type theories. They play a crucial role in Voevodsky’s construction of a syntactic C-system from a term monad. In this work, we construct an equivalence between the category of C-systems and the category of B-systems, thus proving a conjecture by Voevodsky.

On the one hand, arguably, I am neither this nor that. Arguably, neither is God this or that – so, am I God? Otherwise it seems that I must be this and God must be that. On the other hand, the being of the universe is not something of which I could plausibly be construed as the ultimate cause. That is God's creative act. Because I do not create the universe, I am not God. So I am God and I (...) am not God. Here's a solution: God is One but also Three, I am but one. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

In recent years, the ability to gather and store information has increased dramatically, and the ability to make use of these increasing volumes of data has improved. This advent of big data has opened up new opportunities for scientific research, including for research on climate change. These changes are associated with a number of interesting philosophical questions. This chapter provides an introduction to these questions. It starts by first clarifying terminological issues concerning “big data” and related terms and by giving (...) an overview of big data elements that can be found in climate research. Second, it discusses data in climate research with a focus on new developments regarding the increase in the volume and complexity of climate data and on how the uncertainty of climate datasets may be assessed. Finally, the chapter addresses the topic of machine learning in climate research and specifically the use of machine learning for the data-driven modeling of climate phenomena. The focus of this discussion is on the representational accuracy of data-driven models and how it might be assessed and what this implies for their use for predictions and for understanding. (shrink)

U članku se kroz višedisciplinarni pristup kognitivnih znanosti proučava osobito ljudsko iskustvo povezano s religioznim doživljajem stvarnosti, koje se u tradiciji discipline povijesti religija naziva ‘iskustvo svetoga’. U skladu s teorijom emergencije, predlaže se definicija iskustva svetoga kao stanja svijesti sa subjektivnom kvalitetom integracije, specifičnim neurološkim korelatom i funkcionalnim obilježjima. Emergentne teorije svijesti pružaju ontološki ujednačeno tumačenje iskustava svetoga nudeći »naravna« objašnjenja bez odricanja njihove fenomenološke subjektivnosti. Prijenos iskustva svetoga iz unitarnoga, svojevrsnog intencionalno neobojenoga stanja, u izrecivi jezični kôd intencionalno (...) relevantnih pojmova sa sveprožimajućim utjecajima na opojmljivanje svijeta razmatra se pomoću kognitivne jezične teorije u tradiciji Johnsona i Lakoffa. Sposobnost izricanja značenja iskustva svetoga sagledava se kao emergentno svojstvo pojmovnog procesuiranja metaforičkoga razmišljanja uvjetovanoga utjelovljenošću uma i kulturalnim odrednicama. Predloženi pristup omogućuje tumačenje nastanka složenih mitoloških i kulturalnih modela temeljem iskustva svetoga, ali i ukazuje na njegovu kulturalnu neuvjetovanost zadanu nediskurzivnom naravi samog iskustva.In this article a multidisciplinary approach of cognitive sciences is employed for the analysis of a special category of human experience related to the religious understanding of the world, termed according to the History of Religion as the ‘experience of sacred’. The experience of sacred is defined as the state of consciousness with a subjective quality of integration, a specific neural correlate and functional features. Emergentist theory of consciousness provides ontologically consistent perspective offering a “natural” explanation for this type of experience without denying its subjective phenomenology. The linguistic expression of the experience is examined in the light of Johnson’s and Lakoff’s cognitive linguistic theory. The linguistic competence enabling the expression of the sacred experience is defined as the emergent property of conceptual processing of metaphorical thinking shaped by the embodied mind. This approach explains the seminal role of the experience of sacred in the formation of complex mythological and cultural models, but also points to its non discursive nature. (shrink)

Pars 1. Logica -- pars 2. Ontologia -- pars 3. Cosmologia -- pars 4. Psychologia -- pars 5. Theologia naturalis -- pars 6. Physica generalis -- pars 7. Physica particularis corporum totalium huius mundi -- pars 8. Physica particularis corporum partialium telluris nostræ.

ABSTRACTDot-probe studies usually find an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli only in anxious participants, but not in non-anxious participants. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias towards angry faces in unselected samples is moderated by the extent to which the current task requires social processing. In Experiment 1, participants performed a dot-probe task involving classification of either socially meaningful targets or meaningless targets. Targets were preceded by two photographic face cues, one angry and one (...) neutral. Angry face cues only produced significant cueing scores with socially meaningful targets, not with meaningless targets. In Experiment 2, participants classified only meaningful targets, which were either socially meaningful or not. Again, mean cue... (shrink)

We generalize the construction of lattice-valued models of set theory due to Takeuti, Titani, Kozawa and Ozawa to a wider class of algebras and show that this yields a model of a paraconsistent logic that validates all axioms of the negation-free fragment of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory.

The contributions to this collection deal with the fundamental problem of unity, which plays a decisive role in many contemporary debates (even when this role ...

Die vorliegende umfangreiche Untersuchung erschliesst die werkgenetische Entwicklung von Jacques Maritains Personbegriff. Auf differenzierte Weise wird der Zusammenhang von Maritains Leben und Werk dargestellt. Daraus leitet der Autor eine originelle Unterteilung von Maritains Denken in vier Stufen ab, wobei er zugleich die innere Verschrankung von Ontologie, Gnoseologie und Anthropologie erhellt. Demzufolge konzentriert sich Maritain nach einer Phase geistigen Suchens vor allem auf die Erneuerung der scholastischen Erkenntnistheorie, deren konzeptualistische Engfuhrung er allmahlich mit Hilfe eines metaphysischen Existentialismus zu uberwinden versucht. So (...) findet er schliesslich zu einem koharenten Personalismus, d.h. er stellt die Person und die ihr eigene Freiheitsordnung in den Mittelpunkt seiner Uberlegungen.<BR> Die vorliegende Arbeit ist bislang die erste ihrer Art im gesamten deutschsprachigen Raum. Sie erschliesst einen Denker, der den Menschen von seiner Freiheit und nicht mehr von seiner (metaphysischen) Natur her zu bestimmen versucht. Daruber hinaus macht sie deutlich, wie sich Theologie und Philosophie auf dem gemeinsamen Terrain der Anthropologie gegenseitig erganzen und befruchten.". (shrink)

Hippocampal neurogenesis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of and recovery from depression. However, most of the underlying studies were endpoint investigations in experimental animals yielding conflicting results, and it has been under debate to which extent these results could be transferred to human patients. Now, researchers have developed a powerful new tool to address these questions by a non‐invasive method in humans and animals in vivo, using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to detect a biomarker for proliferating progenitor cells that give (...) rise to new neurons.1 This makes it possible to study the role of neural progenitor cells in a wide variety of human brain disorders. BioEssays 30:806–810, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In his last work, Relire le relié, Michel Serres develops a philosophy of religion that circumvents the conventional demarcations of reason and faith, knowledge of the world and knowledge of revelation, or agnosticism and apology. In a structuralistically-informed relecture, he exposes the basic traits of religion. With its narratives and theologoumena, it captures and describes being-in-the-world as an event of universal synthesis. It is – in Serres’ diction – about the basic relatio of energy and information, entropy and negentropy, chaos (...) and order. This relié is described neither as an effort or act of a subject, a system, a language community, nor sufficiently as an emergence effect of evolutionary-natural processes. The recording of this synthesis forbids both any dichotomy of an irresolvable hiatus as well as the construction of a unitary space of any kind. (shrink)