Bringing together leading figures in the study of international relations, this collection explores praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. It builds on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil to reveal the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing.

The notion of 'the West' is commonly used in politics, the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of 'the West' has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in detail from a theoretical perspective. Uses of 'the West' combines a range of original and topical approaches to evaluate what 'the West' really does, and how the idea is being used in everyday political practice. This book examines a range of uses of 'the West', (...) and traces how 'the West' works in a broad array of conceptual and empirical contexts, ranging from the return of geopolitics - via a critical review of the debates surrounding Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization thesis - to the question of the future of 'the West'. Analysis extends further to the repercussions of the war on terror on Western democracy and the processes of delineating the Western from the non-Western, as well as observations of the institutional transformations of Western order. (shrink)

Der Band setzt sich mit den Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten internationalen oder globalen Regierens in einer sozialen Umwelt (Weltgesellschaft) unter drei Perspektiven auseinander: der Perspektive von Theorien globaler Ordnung, der Perspektive spezifischer Formen globaler Ordnungsbildung und der Perspektive die Normativität globaler Ordnung. Die Beiträge des Bandes besetzen Schnittstellen in einer Reihe von Diskussionen, die in den Internationalen Beziehungen zu Ordnung und Ordnungsbildung in der internationalen Politik, zum Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates, sowie zur Stellung internationaler Politik in der Weltgesellschaft geführt werden.

Ethical dilemmas in critical care may cause healthcare practitioners to experience moral distress: incoherence between what one believes to be best and what occurs. Given that paediatric decision-making typically involves parents, we propose that parents can also experience moral distress when faced with making value-laden decisions in the neonatal intensive care unit. We propose a new concept—that parents may experience “moral schism”—a genuine uncertainty regarding a value-based decision that is accompanied by emotional distress. Schism, unlike moral distress, is not caused (...) by barriers to making and executing a decision that is deemed to be best by the decision-makers but rather an encounter of significant internal struggle. We explore factors that appear to contribute to both moral distress and “moral schism” for parents: the degree of available support, a sense of coherence of the situation, and a sense of responsibility. We propose that moral schism is an underappreciated concept that needs to be explicated and may be more prevalent than moral distress when exploring decision-making experiences for parents. We also suggest actions of healthcare providers that may help minimize parental “moral schism” and moral distress. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context-dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular biocommunication (...) between soil microorganisms. This includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

The article investigates one of the key contributions to modern structural mathematics, namely Hilbert’sFoundations of Geometry and its mathematical roots in nineteenth-century projective geometry. A central innovation of Hilbert’s book was to provide semantically minded independence proofs for various fragments of Euclidean geometry, thereby contributing to the development of the model-theoretic point of view in logical theory. Though it is generally acknowledged that the development of model theory is intimately bound up with innovations in 19th century geometry, so far, little (...) has been said about how exactly model-theoretic concepts grew out of methodological investigations within projective geometry. This article is supposed to fill this lacuna and investigates this geometrical prehistory of modern model theory, eventually leading up to Hilbert’sFoundations. (shrink)

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with Quine's substitutional account of logical truth. The critique of Quine's definition tends to focus on miscellaneous odds and ends, such as problems with identity. However, in an appendix to his influential article On Second Order Logic, George Boolos offered an ingenious argument that seems to diminish Quine's account of logical truth on a deeper level. In the article he shows that Quine's substitutional account of logical truth cannot be generalized properly to the general concept of (...) logical consequence. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce the reader to the metamathematics of Quine's substitutional definition of logical truth; second, to make Boolos' result accessible to a broader audience by giving a detailed and self-contained presentation of his proof; and, finally, to discuss some of the possible implications and how a defender of the Quinean concepts might react to the challenge posed by Boolos' result. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a unified account of conditionals inspired by Frank Ramsey. Most contemporary philosophers agree that Ramsey’s account applies to indicative conditionals only. We observe against this orthodoxy that his account covers subjunctive conditionals as well—including counterfactuals. In light of this observation, we argue that Ramsey’s account of conditionals resembles Robert Stalnaker’s possible worlds semantics supplemented by a model of belief. The resemblance suggests to reinterpret the notion of conditional degree of belief in order to overcome a (...) tension in Ramsey’s account. The result of the reinterpretation is a tenable account of conditionals that covers indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals. (shrink)

In recent years, several scholars have been investigating Frege’s mathematical background, especially in geometry, in order to put his general views on mathematics and logic into proper perspective. In this article I want to continue this line of research and study Frege’s views on geometry in their own right by focussing on his views on a field which occupied center stage in nineteenth century geometry, namely, projective geometry.

Recent work by philosophers of mind and psychology on nonconceptual content.

In this paper, we argue that, contra Strevens (2013), understanding in the sciences is sometimes partially constituted by the possession of abilities; hence, it is not (in such cases) exhausted by the understander’s bearing a particular psychological or epistemic relationship to some set of structured propositions. Specifically, the case will be made that one does not really understand why a modeled phenomenon occurred unless one has the ability to actually work through (meaning run and grasp at each step) a model (...) simulation of the underlying dynamic. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of Frege’s views on semantics and metatheory by looking at his take on several themes in nineteenth century geometry that were significant for the development of modern model-theoretic semantics. I will focus on three issues in which a central semantic idea, the idea of reinterpreting non-logical terms, gradually came to play a substantial role: the introduction of elements at infinity in projective geometry; the study of transfer principles, especially (...) the principle of duality; and the use of counterexamples in independence arguments. Based on a discussion of these issues and how nineteenth century geometers reflected about them, I will then look into Frege’s take on these matters. I conclude with a discussion of Frege’s views and what they entail for the debate about his stance towards semantics and metatheory more generally. (shrink)

The present book is the English version of a monograph 'Die aristotelische Syllogistik', which first appeared ten years ago in the series of Abhand 1 lungen edited by the Academy of Sciences in Gottingen. In the preface to the English edition, I would first like to express my indebtedness to Mr. J. Barnes, now fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He not only translated what must have been a difficult text with exemplary precision and ingenuity, but followed critically every argument and (...) check ed every reference. While translating it, he has improved the book. Of those changes which I have made on Mr. Barnes' suggestion I note only the more important ones on pages 4, 12, 24sq, 32, 39, 6lsq, and 158. Since the second edition of the German text appeared in 1963 some further reviews have been published, or come to my notice, which I have 2 been able to make use of in improving the text of this new edition. I must mention here especially the detailed critical discussions of my results and arguments published by Professor W. Wieland in the Philosophische Rundschau 14 (1966), 1-27 and by Professor E. Scheibe in Gnomon 39 (1967), 454-64. Both scholars, while agreeing with the main drift and method of my interpretation, criticise some of my results and disagree with some of my arguments. It would not be possible to discuss these technical matters here with the necessary thoroughness. (shrink)

In a series of articles dating from 1903 to 1906, Frege criticizes Hilbert’s methodology of proving the independence and consistency of various fragments of Euclidean geometry in his Foundations of Geometry. In the final part of the last article, Frege makes his own proposal as to how the independence of genuine axioms should be proved. Frege contends that independence proofs require the development of a ‘new science’ with its own basic truths. This paper aims to provide a reconstruction of this (...) New Science that meets modern standards and to examine possible problems surrounding Frege’s original proposal. The paper is organized as follows: the first two sections summarize the main points of the Frege–Hilbert controversy and discuss some issues surrounding the problem of independence proofs. Section 3 contains an informal presentation of Frege’s proposal. In section 4 a more detailed reconstruction of Frege’s New Science is set out while section 5 examines what is left out. The concluding section is devoted to a discussion of Frege’s strategy and its significance from a broader perspective. (shrink)

Should decision-making algorithms be held to higher standards of transparency than human beings? The way we answer this question directly impacts what we demand from explainable algorithms, how we govern them via regulatory proposals, and how explainable algorithms may help resolve the social problems associated with decision making supported by artificial intelligence. Some argue that algorithms and humans should be held to the same standards of transparency and that a double standard of transparency is hardly justified. We give two arguments (...) to the contrary and specify two kinds of situations for which higher standards of transparency are required from algorithmic decisions as compared to humans. Our arguments have direct implications on the demands from explainable algorithms in decision-making contexts such as automated transportation. (shrink)

In the twenty-second series of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze references a remarkable essay by Günther (Stern) Anders. Anders’ essay, translated here as ‘The Pathology of Freedom’, addresses the sickness and health of our negotiation with the negative anthropological condition of ‘not being cut out for the world’.

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance Prize (other notable (...) recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

Any satisfactory model of the emotions must at once recognize their place within intentional psychology and acknowledge their uniqueness as mental causes. In the first half of the century, the James-Lange model had considerable influence on reinforcing the idea that emotions are non-intentional (see Lange 1885 and James 1890). The uniqueness of emotions was therefore acknowledged at the price of denying them a place within intentional psychology proper. More recently, cognitive reductionists (including identity theorists) like Robert Solomon and Joel Marks (...) recognize that emotions are intentional but, by reducing them to judgments, beliefs, desires, etc., fail to capture their distinctiveness as mental causes (see Solomon 1976 and Marks 1982). In other words, their place within intentional psychology is acknowledged at the price of denying them their uniqueness. (shrink)

We investigate how the selection of assurance topics and the format of their communication influence the credibility perception of sustainability report readers. This is important because misleading communication may discredit ethical sustainability assurance practices. Based on signaling theory and using an experimental approach, we are the first to examine false credibility signals in the context of sustainability assurance. We find that two variables related to sustainability assurance, reference explicitness and assurance depth, jointly influence the assurance signal and the perceived credibility (...) of a sustainability report. Our findings indicate that readers are not at risk of false signaling but can make incorrect interpretations of the assurance signal and might respond negatively to well-intentioned signals. The main implications of our findings are that firms should refrain from increasing reference explicitness and should select only the most material topics. Taken together, our results provide new insights on the unethical practice of false signaling and provide an example of an incorrect signal interpretation by readers. (shrink)

The _Companion to Bonaventure_ provides an invaluable guide to understanding this great 13th century scholastic luminary. Together the essays will deliver a critical overview of the current research, the major themes in Bonaventure’s life and writings, and how they are being reinterpreted at the start of the twenty-first century.

Günther Buck legt in dieser Studie eine phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Theorie des Lernens, des Beispiels und der Analogie vor, die für Pädagogik sowie für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften von grundlegender Bedeutung ist. Der Prozess der Erfahrung im Lernen wird in drei Momenten entfaltet: der epagogischen Gangstruktur, der antizipatorischen Horizonthaftigkeit und der dialektischen, „negativen“ Umwendung auf sich selbst. Lernen wird als Lernen aus Erfahrung und als Erfahrung kenntlich. Im zweiten und dritten Teil gelingt Buck eine Neubestimmung des Beispiels in seinen hermeneutischen, bildenden und didaktischen (...) Funktionen. Unterschiedliche Typen der Analogie werden identifiziert und deren Funktionsweisen differenziert. Mit dieser Neuausgabe kann nach 30 Jahren das bekannteste und wirkungsmächtigste Buch von Günther Buck wieder zugänglich gemacht werden. (shrink)

La correspondance de Spinoza comprend six lettres remarquables sur le thème des spectres. On se demande s’ils existent et si on peut reconnaître à certains d’entre eux un sexe féminin. Cet échange qui s’est noué à l’instigation de Hugo Boxel est une curiosité dans cette correspondance mais pas dans son contexte historique, et cela même si, aux Pays-Bas, les procès en sorcellerie avaient moins de succès qu’ailleurs. C’est alors dans l’éclairage de la littérature qui s’est développée autour des choses superstitieuses (...) que ces lettres peuvent être placées. À cet égard, l’œuvre maîtresse de Balthasar Bekker De Betoverde Wereld (Le Monde enchanté), est une référence importante. Cet ouvrage qui cherche à purifier la foi en combattant la superstition avec des arguments cartésiens permet d’établir les deux points suivants. Boxel est plus du côté de la superstition que de la raison, malgré les nombreuses autorités qu’il cite. Spinoza, lui, a avec Bekker des positions communes, mais ceci ne peut faire oublier qu’il défend au sujet d’une question d’actualité une position unique qui peut l’en éloigner en raison de son identité de philosophe. (shrink)

La correspondance de Spinoza comprend six lettres remarquables sur le thème des spectres. On se demande s’ils existent et si on peut reconnaître à certains d’entre eux un sexe féminin. Cet échange qui s’est noué à l’instigation de Hugo Boxel est une curiosité dans cette correspondance mais pas dans son contexte historique, et cela même si, aux Pays-Bas, les procès en sorcellerie avaient moins de succès qu’ailleurs. C’est alors dans l’éclairage de la littérature qui s’est développée autour des choses superstitieuses (...) que ces lettres peuvent être placées. À cet égard, l’œuvre maîtresse de Balthasar Bekker De Betoverde Wereld (Le Monde enchanté), est une référence importante. Cet ouvrage qui cherche à purifier la foi en combattant la superstition avec des arguments cartésiens permet d’établir les deux points suivants. Boxel est plus du côté de la superstition que de la raison, malgré les nombreuses autorités qu’il cite. Spinoza, lui, a avec Bekker des positions communes, mais ceci ne peut faire oublier qu’il défend au sujet d’une question d’actualité une position unique qui peut l’en éloigner en raison de son identité de philosophe. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that the action system is responsible for creating an immediate sense of self by determining whether certain sensations and perceptions are the result of one's own actions. In addition, it is assumed that declarative, episodic, or autobiographical memories create a temporally extended sense of self or some form of identity. In the present article, we review recent evidence suggesting that action (procedural) knowledge also forms part of a person's identity, an action identity, so to speak. Experiments that (...) addressed self-recognition of past actions, prediction, and coordination provide ample evidence for this assumption. The phenomena observed in these experiments can be explained by the assumption that observing an action results in the activation of action representations, the more so, when the action observed corresponds to the way in which the observer would produce it. (shrink)

Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida start with a common assumption in their analyses of the law and the economy - the foundational paradox of social institutions. But then autopoiesis and deconstruction move into opposite directions. Luhmann pursues the question of how de-paradoxification constructs the immanence of social institutions and builds a world of autopoietic social systems. By contrast, Derrida's thought aims at the transcendence of social institutions through their re-paradoxification. However, there is a hidden supplementarity of autopoiesis and deconstruction which (...) makes it worthwhile to relate the theories to each other. Derrida's distinction of writing/speech is necessarily blind toward Luhmann's distinction of consciousness/communication, but is, at the same time, continuously provoked by it. On another level, the opposite happens. Luhmann's autopoiesis is permanently irritated by Derrida's différance but is at the same time unable to conceptualize it. This complementary blindness of their distinctions directrices is a permanent source of mutual irritation which requires a reformulation of the social and of the possibility of justice. (shrink)