The main purpose of this work is to provide a semiotic ontology for redescription of active cognitive externalism, recently developed by the paradigm 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended cognition). In our approach, distributed cognitive systems (DCSs) are described as semiosis, signs in action. We explored the relationship between semiosis and cognition, as conceived by C. S. Peirce, in association with the notion of distributed cognitive system (DCS). We introduce Peircean externalist approach with an emphasis on the notion of temporal distribution (...) of semiosis, and describe DCSs, and their elements, as “sign in action”. To develop this argument, we describe an example of DCS -- verbal-musical improvisation of repente, repentismo, or viola singing. It is a phenomenon of verbal-musical improvisation that takes the form of a challenge in versified oral poetry. We describe the phenomenon as the embodiment of the formal structure of a cognitive task and an inferential process. This embodiment corresponds to a semiotization of the repente performances as DCSs. The temporally distributed tendency of repentismo organizes the DCS as a system that performs metasemiotic experiments on the action of signs. (shrink)

Turkish Epistemoloji rasyonel inançların felsefi analizini konu edinmesi nedeniyle gerekçelendirme edimine merkezi bir önem atfeder. Gerekçelendirme kişinin bir önermeye inanmak için gerekçeye sahip olunmasını sağlayan koşul veya koşullar dizisinin tespit edilmesini içerir. İnançlarımızın birçoğunun çıkarımsal olmayan gerekçelerinin bulunduğu şeklindeki ılımlı/yanılırcı temelci perspektifle uyum sağlayan bir gerekçelendirme teorisi olarak Michael Huemer tarafından ortaya konan görüngüsel muhafazakarlık ilkesi, bu türden bir koşulu tanımlar. GM formülasyonuna göre eğer S’ye p olarak görünüyorsa, çürütücü etmenlerin yokluğunda S’nin p’ye inanmak için en azından bir dereceye kadar (...) gerekçesi vardır. Görüngüler ise rasyonel inanç oluşturmanın olanağına referans veren, inanç ve inanma eğilimlerinden farklı, sui generis deneyimlerdir. Bu makalede görüngülerin doğasından hareketle GM’yi tanıttım ve GM’ye yöneltilen eleştirilerin bir bölümünü tartıştım. Yer verdiğim eleştiriler, GM’nin irrasyonel/tehlikeli görüngüler ve bilişsel nüfuzdan kaynaklanan inançları dahi gerekçelendirilmiş kabul ettiği, GM teorisyenlerinin görüngülere gerekçelendirme edimi özelinde biçtiği başat rolün ve inanç ve görüngüler arasında öngörülen farklılıkların abartılı olduğu itirazlarını içerir. Bana göre sözü edilen eleştirilerin hiçbiri, GM’nin reddedilmesini gerektiren argümanlar içermez. Görüngülerin epistemik gerekçelendirmedeki rolünü tesis eden GM veya benzeri bir ilkeyi kabul etmek için temel neden ise bunun şüphecilik haricindeki olası alternatiflerinin belirsizliğidir. Çünkü eğer görüngüler, inanç oluşturmada epistemik faile rehberlik edecek göstergeler ise bu, failin ilgili göstergelerden yoksun olduğunda herhangi bir şeye rasyonel olarak inanmasının olanaksızlaşacağı anlamına gelir. English Because epistemology deals with the philosophical analysis of rational beliefs, it assigns central importance to justification. Justification involves identifying the condition or set of conditions that enables one to have grounds for believing a proposition. The principle of phenomenal conservatism, put forward by Michael Huemer as a justification theory that accords with the moderate/fallibilist foundationalist perspective that many of our beliefs have non- inferential justifications, is a principle that defines such a condition. According to the PC formulation, if it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. Seemings/appearances are sui generis experiences that refer to the possibility of rational belief formation and are different from beliefs and dispositions to believe. In this article, I introduce PC based on the nature of seemings and evaluate some of the criticisms directed at PC. The criticisms I discuss include objections that PC even justifies beliefs stemming from irrational/dangerous seemings and cognitive penetration, and that the dominant role that PC theorists assign to seemings in the act of justification and the differences envisaged between beliefs and seemings are exaggerated. In my opinion, none of these criticisms contain arguments that would lead to the rejection of PC. The main reason to accept PC or a similar principle that establishes the role of seemings in epistemic justification is the vagueness of its possible alternatives other than skepticism. For, if seemings are indicators that guide the epistemic agent in forming beliefs, this means that it is impossible for the agent to believe anything rationally when she lacks the relevant indicators. (shrink)

We explore Peirce’s pragmatic conception of sign action, as a distributed and emergent view of cognition and exemplify with the emergence of classical ballet. In our approach, semiosis is a temporally distributed process in which a regular tendency towards certain future outcomes emerges out of a history of sign actions. Semiosis self-organizes in time, in a process that continuously entails the production of more signs. Emergence is a ubiquitous condition in this process: the translation of signs into signs cannot be (...) inferred from the properties of the components of a semiotic triad alone, but has to take into account a complex interaction between a micro-semiotic and macro-semiotic level of description. This interaction can be understood as an interplay of potentialities and tendencies, or upward constitutive determinative relations and downward selective determinative relations. According to this view, emergence is a central defining condition of processes of meaning. Ballet is a sign in action. The emergence of classical ballet is a self-regulatory process, in which a system of different kinds of cognitive artifacts (musical, bodily/motor, spatial/architectonic) and agents obtained a stable semiotic relation throughout many phases of development between the 16th and the 19th Century. One case is the development of the verticality of dance in classical ballet as a semiotic relation connecting proscenium arch stages, dancing bodies, and audiences. This development is micro-semiotically determined by the spatial constraints of the proscenium arch stage, and macro-semiotically determined by a historical construction of the dancing body as a sign within a network of semiotic chains, such as the intersemiotic regulation of body of the dancer by principles coming from painting. This is not only the emergence of actual meaning, but also the emergence of an open-ended field of potential and general meanings, an autonomous tendency of development. To say that ballet, as sign action, emerges, is to say that cognitive artifacts such as dancer’s bodies, stages and audience’s point of view, musical compositions, costumes, all sorts of supporting institutions, etc, constitute a niche for sign action, interacting according to tendencies of development that didn’t exist before. (shrink)

Treatise on Nyaya philosophy with special reference to inference.

Supercommentary on Tattvacintāmaṇi, classical work on Navya Nyaya philosophy by Gaṅgeśa, active 13th century and its commentaries Didhiti by Raghunātha Śiromaṇi and Tattvacintāmaṇidīdhitiprakāśa by Bhavānanda Siddhāntavāgīśa with complete text.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The translation process from Arabic to Hebrew, which started in the XIth century and accelerated in the first quarter of the XIIth century, continued until the end of the XVIth century. In this period, the philosophical and theological works of prominent Muslim philosophers such as Fārābī, Avicenna, Ghazālī, and Averroes were translated directly or through intermediary languages into Hebrew. In this translation process, Jewish scholars and translators who knew Arabic, on the one hand, translated the works they chose from different (...) fields into Hebrew; on the other hand, they played a facilitating role in meeting the Jewish scholars with the heritage of Islamic thought with the Hebrew works they wrote using Arabic works. Because of the limited number of works translated into Hebrew, the prevalence and influence of Avicenna's philosophical views among Jewish scholars are more limited than that of the Latin translation process, yet his impact on Jewish scholars on different philosophical issues is undisputed. It would not be correct to limit Avicenna's influence and prevalence among Jewish scholars to only the translation of his works into Hebrew, mentioning his name directly in the works of Jewish thinkers and quoting directly from his related works. Considering the similarity of views, concepts, and styles between Jewish thinkers and Avicenna on philosophical and theological issues, it can be argued that a movement called Jewish Avicennaism emerged. However, this movement is not as strong and widespread as Latin Avicennaism. Avicenna's influence among Jewish thinkers was in the form of criticism and rejection as well as adopting the philosopher's views to their philosophical system, similar to those of the Latin thinkers. In this study, I will discuss Avicenna’s role in and contribution to the development of Jewish philosophical and theological thought between the XII-XIVth centuries, a topic that has not been sufficiently addressed in Turkish. After giving general information about the translation process of Avicenna's works into Hebrew, I will try to find the answer to why all or at least essential works of Avicenna were not translated into Hebrew. Then, I will try to determine the impact of Avicenna's intellectual legacy on Jewish thinkers by dividing them into three different periods through concrete examples. The study revealed that although Jewish scholars defend similar teachings to Avicenna's views, they do not mention Avicenna's name and works in their works due to different reasons and concerns, making it difficult to determine the source of their opinions. In addition, the wrong attribution of some Avicenna’s philosophical teachings to Aristotle, negatively affected the recognition and spread of the philosopher's views. Based on these, it is not correct to conclude that his philosophical views were not known, adopted or influenced by Jewish thinkers. On the contrary, when the course of Avicenna's thoughts among Jewish thinkers is examined, it can be said that there are two types of Avicenna understanding in general. The first of these is those who read Avicenna’s works and adopt his philosophical views and make direct references to his work. Quoting Avicenna's views directly in their works revealed that the views among Jewish thinkers, whose belonging is unknown, belong to Avicenna. Secondly, they are Jewish thinkers with eclecticist approaches, who quote and use some of Avicenna's views on issues that they see as compatible and consistent with their philosophical views. They used the arguments and doctrines of Avicenna, whose views they partially knew, as an alternative or starting point against the opinions of the scholars they wanted to criticize or reject. (shrink)

The feminist philosopher and social scientist shows how "gendering" has affected the social and natural sciences as she reconciles the long-standing dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative methods and demonstrates the tandem use of both experimental and intuitive approaches.

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents, which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, the article argues that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents must comply with (...) high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him- or herself. It is argued that accidentally but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, can unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently using. (shrink)

WINNER BEST SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY BOOK IN 2021 / NASSP BOOK AWARD 2022 -/- Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by herself. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral (...) agents hold jointly, but not as unified collective agents. To think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of “massively shared obligations” to large-scale moral problems such as global poverty. (shrink)

A fallibilist theory of knowledge is employed to make sense of the idea that agents know what they are doing 'without observation' (as on Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge).

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

Together we can achieve things that we could never do on our own. In fact, there are sheer endless opportunities for producing morally desirable outcomes together with others. Unsurprisingly, scholars have been finding the idea of collective moral obligations intriguing. Yet, there is little agreement among scholars on the nature of such obligations and on the extent to which their existence might force us to adjust existing theories of moral obligation. What interests me in this paper is the perspective of (...) the moral deliberating agent who faces a collective action problem, i.e. the type of reasoning she employs when deciding how to act. I hope to show that agents have collective obligations precisely when they are required to employ ‘we-reasoning’, a type of reasoning that differs from I-mode, best response reasoning, as I shall explain below. More precisely, two (or more) individual agents have a collective moral obligation to do x if x is an option for action that is only collectively available (more on that later) and each has sufficient reason to rank x highest out of the options available to them. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

Theories of perception have traditionally dismissed the sense of smell as a notoriously variable and highly subjective sense, mainly because it does not easily fit into accounts of perception based on visual experience. So far, philosophical questions about the objects of olfactory perception have started by considering the nature of olfactory experience. However, there is no philosophically neutral or agreed conception of olfactory experience: it all depends on what one thinks odors are. We examine the existing philosophical methodology for addressing (...) our sense of smell: on the one hand appeals to phenomenology that focus on the experiential dimensions of odor perception and on the other approaches that look at odor sources and their material dimensions. We show that neither strategy provides enough information to account for the human sense of smell and argue that the inclusion of the missing dimension of biology, with its concern for the function (or functions) of olfaction, provides the means to develop a satisfactory and empirically informed philosophy of smell. (shrink)

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our epistemic obligations (...) concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods. (shrink)

Local opposition to infrastructure projects implementing renewable energy (RE) such as wind farms is often strong even if state-wide support for RE is strikingly high. The slogan “Not In My BackYard” (NIMBY) has become synonymous for this kind of protest. This paper revisits the question of what is wrong with NIMBYs about RE projects and how to best address them. I will argue that local opponents to wind farm (and other RE) developments do not necessarily fail to contribute their fair (...) share to producing a desirable public good (clean energy). In fact, with landscape concerns being at the heart of much protest, the question of fair burden distribution becomes sidelined: landscape impacts cannot be distributed nor compensated for. Protests may be attempts to express a true conflict of (incommensurable) values. Understanding them as such will help us better address NIMBY concerns and overcome such opposition through ensuring procedural justice. (shrink)

This article explores the themes of trust and ethical conduct in social research, with particular attention to the trust that can develop between the members of a research team as well as between researchers and the researched. The authors draw upon a three-year empirical study of destinations and outcomes for young people excluded from alternative educational provision. They also make reference to a contemporary exposition of Aristotle's writing on friendship in order to explore two sets of relevant distinctions that have (...) a bearing upon our understanding of relationships that emerge in the context of social research projects. These distinctions are between impartiality and selectivity on the one hand, and between universality and particularity on the other. The authors attempt to demonstrate that these distinctions influence the development of trust and the conduct of ethical research, arguing that the latter is not synonymous with compliance to ethical guidelines. (shrink)

It is often argued that our obligations to address structural injustice are collective in character. But what exactly does it mean for ‘ordinary citizens’ to have collective obligations visà- vis large-scale injustice? In this paper, I propose to pay closer attention to the different kinds of collective action needed in addressing some of these structural injustices and the extent to which these are available to large, unorganised groups of people. I argue that large, dispersed and unorganised groups of people are (...) often in a position to perform distributive collective actions. As such, ordinary citizens can have massively shared obligations to address structural injustice through distributive action, but, ultimately, such obligations are ‘collective’ only in a fairly weak sense. (shrink)

"Deleuze plonge la critique kantienne transcendantale dans le bain dissolvant d'un empirisme renouvelé. Ce livre se propose de restituer cette entreprise, et d'analyser l'étonnante création de ce concept, que Deleuze mène depuis ses premières monographies jusqu'à Différence et Répétition dans un dialogue fécond avec l'histoire de la philosophie. Par quelles opérations de distorsion et de collage, Deleuze compose-t-il l'empirisme de Hume, la théorie du signe comme force de Nietzsche, le virtuel et les multiplicités de Bergson, les modes de Spinoza, les (...) individualisations impersonnelles de Simondon pour renouveler la théorie kantienne du transcendantal? C'est tout l'objet de cette enquête, qui permet d'entrer dans le laboratoire du penseur, pour saisir la philosophie se faisant, mais qui permet également d'expliquer l'insistance du transcendantal dans toute son oeuvre"--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level introduction to the topic of propaganda. We survey a number of the most influential accounts of propaganda, from the earliest institutional studies in the 1920s to contemporary academic work. We propose that these accounts, as well as the various examples of propaganda which we discuss, all converge around a key feature: persuasion which bypasses audiences’ rational faculties. In practice, propaganda can take different forms, serve various interests, and produce a variety of effects. Propaganda can aim (...) to affect not only audiences’ beliefs and attitudes, but also their emotions and moods, and in turn how audiences subsequently reason or act. While propaganda is often thought of as false or misinformation, it can instead involve framing effects (“The war on drugs”), covert messaging (“There are Muslims among us”), emotionally charged slogans (“Make America Great Again”), or myths (“The American dream”). These forms of propaganda mislead audiences, not by introducing false information, but by making some beliefs and values, rather than others, salient. In fact, propaganda can even employ straightforwardly true claims (again, as in “There are Muslims among us”) and seemingly objective bureaucratic reports (“Crime has risen 4.2%”). To understand how these and other mechanisms enable propaganda to persuade by arational means, further study is needed. To that end, throughout the chapter we identify a number of places where the study of meaning and communication can help elucidate propaganda, as well as the places where propaganda issues challenges for the study of meaning. (shrink)

What is it that makes us as citizens liable for the actions – including the wrongdoings – of our state? Answering this question is part of the larger debate on the nature of complicity and collective action. When are we connected to joint endeavours and collective outcomes in a way that makes us (on some level) responsible for them? -/- Of particular interest within this debate is the normative relationship of citizens to their state. For instance, when states pay reparations (...) for past crimes the costs are – one way or another – borne by their citizens. In Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States (OUP 2021), Avia Pasternak examines with admirable clarity and circumspection if states are justified in imposing the cost of their past wrongdoings on all of their citizens, including those who played no obvious part in those crimes. (shrink)

The challenges facing us today require practical wisdom to allow us to react appropriately. In this paper, we argue that at a group level, we will make better decisions if we respect and take into account the moral judgment of agents with diverse styles of cognition and moral reasoning. We show this by focusing on the example of autism, highlighting different strengths and weaknesses of moral reasoning found in autistic and non-autistic persons respectively.

In early China, was it correct for a woman to disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the public policy of a son who ruled over a dynasty or state? According to the _Lienü zhuan_, or_ Categorized Biographies of Women_, it was not only appropriate but necessary for women to step in with wise counsel when fathers, husbands, or rulers strayed from the path of virtue. Compiled toward the end of the Former Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE) by Liu (...) Xiang (79-8 BCE), the _Lienü zhuan_ is the earliest extant book in the Chinese tradition solely devoted to the education of women. Far from providing a unified vision of women's roles, the text promotes a diverse and sometimes contradictory range of practices. At one extreme are exemplars resorting to suicide and self-mutilation as a means to preserve chastity and ritual orthodoxy. At the other are bold and outspoken women whose rhetorical mastery helps correct erring rulers, sons, and husbands. The text provides a fascinating overview of the representation of women's roles in early legends, formal speeches on statecraft, and highly fictionalized historical accounts during this foundational period of Chinese history. Over time, the biographies of women became a regular feature of dynastic and local histories and a vehicle for expressing and transmitting concerns about women's social, political, and domestic roles. The _Lienü zhuan_ is also rich in information about the daily life, rituals, and domestic concerns of early China. Inspired by its accounts, artists across the millennia have depicted its stories on screens, paintings, lacquer ware, murals, and stone relief sculpture, extending its reach to literate and illiterate audiences alike. (shrink)

How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.

The term cognitive framework has appeared in modern theories of cognitive psychology. In theories of cognitive linguistics, the theory of metonymy, metaphors and conceptual amalgams, is a fundamental structure that makes it possible to understand the meaning. However, the nature of the cognitive framework understood as the limitations of our cognition is a universal reflection tool that can be used in other fields, especially in philosophy. The article deals with issues related to the origin of the term, the construction material (...) of the cognitive framework, the diversity of their occurrence and the possibilities of their transformation based on selected issues from epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of culture. (shrink)

In this article, I will consider whether, and in what way, doxastic states can harm. I’ll first consider whether, and in what way, a person’s doxastic state can harm her, before turning to the question of whether, and in what way, it can harm someone else.

Die vorliegende Schrift unternimmt eine Revision des vorherrschenden Bildes der Rolle und der Konzeptionen von Moral und Ethik im Wiener Kreis. Dieses Bild wird als zu einseitig und undifferenziert zurückgewiesen. Die Ansicht, die Mitglieder des Wiener Kreises hätten kein Interesse an Moral und Ethik gezeigt, wird widerlegt. Viele Mitglieder waren nicht nur moralisch und politisch interessiert, sondern auch engagiert. Des Weiteren vertraten nicht alle die Standardauffassung logisch-empiristischer Ethik, die neben der Anerkennung deskriptiv-empirischer Untersuchungen durch die Ablehnung jeglicher normativer und inhaltlicher (...) Ethik und der Verfechtung eines extremen Nonkognitivismus geprägt ist. Am meisten entspricht die Standardauffassung den Ansichten Rudolf Carnaps, weniger bereits jenen Karl Mengers, Otto Neuraths oder Philipp Franks. Am weitesten weichen Moritz Schlick, Victor Kraft sowie Herbert Feigl von der Standardauffassung ab. Entgegen dem herkömmlichen Bild weltabgewandter Logiker und Metaethiker wurde im Wiener Kreis sogar Angewandte Ethik betrieben, und dies bereits unter diesem Namen. Neben den ethischen Hauptthemen und Ansichten der jeweiligen Philosophen in ihrer Entwicklung im Rahmen ihres persönlichen und kulturellen Kontextes zeigt die Untersuchung, dass allen Ansätzen eine aufgeklärte und humanistische Version von Moral und Ethik gemeinsam ist. Dieser wissenschaftliche Humanismus, der sich schon in der Programmschrift Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis findet, liegt jedoch in verschiedenen Ausprägungen vor. Was die Abweichungen von der Standardauffassung wesentlich betrifft, ist ihre unterschiedliche Auffassung von Moral als gemeinsames oder individuelles Unternehmen. Carnap führt ein extremer Individualismus zu einem extremen Nonkognitivismus, in dem ihm Menger folgt. Bei Schlick ist die Lage zweideutig, was sich in unterschiedlichen Moralbegriffen widerspiegelt. Bei Kraft und Feigl tritt das Verständnis von Moral als gemeinschaftlich geteilte Praxisform klar hervor. Auf der Basis eines gemeinsamen Begriffs des moralisch Guten, der auch eine Sachkomponente enthält, ist eine Verständigung über moralische Fragen möglich. Von einem extremen Nonkognitivismus kann dort nicht mehr die Rede sein. Mit diesen Ergebnissen verbietet es sich, dem Wiener Kreis allgemein eine Ablehnung normativer Ethik und einen extremen Nonkognitivismus zuzuschreiben. Eine systematische Ethik, die Moral als Gemeinschaftspraxis begreift, steht einigen im Wiener Kreis näher, als das vorherrschende Bild suggerieren möge. Wer meint, mit engem Bezug zur Tradition des Wiener Kreises nur Carnap folgen zu können und Ethik als suspektes Unternehmen betrachten zu müssen, irrt. Ethik war in der Tradition Analytischer Philosophie nicht immer so marginalisiert, wie sie es in manchen ihrer Teilrichtungen heute noch ist und Gegner(innen) der Analytischen Philosophie vorwerfen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung liefert die nötige Revision einer verfänglichen Fehlentwicklung. (shrink)

The book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective.

This book explores the way in which, working within the investigative tradition associated with the Royal Society, the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) used ...

Many philosophers have defended the view that we are subject to the following evidential ought: “One ought to believe in accordance with one's evidence.” Although they agree on this, a more fundamental question keeps dividing them: from where does the evidential ought derive its normative force? The instrinsicalist answer to this question is sometimes described as the claim that "there is a brute epistemic value in believing in accordance with one's evidence" (Cowie, 2014, 4005). But what does this really mean? (...) Intrinsicalists' negative claim is that the normative source of the evidential ought has nothing to do with the fulfilment of our epistemic purposes. But what is their positive claim exactly? This paper aims at improving our understanding of intrinsicalism. Its conclusion is that there is only one possible way of being an intrinsicalist. Intrinsicalists need to be constitutivists. (shrink)

This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)

In international law, ‘humanitarian intervention’ refers to the use of military force by one nation or group of nations to stop genocide or other gross human rights violations in another sovereign nation. If humanitarian intervention is conceived as military in nature, it makes sense that only the most horrible, massive, and violent violations of human rights can justify intervention. Yet, that leaves many serious evils beyond the scope of legal intervention. In particular, violations of women's rights and freedoms often go (...) unchecked. To address this problem, I begin from two basic questions: When are violations of human rights sufficiently serious to require an international response of some sort? What should that response be? By re-orienting the aim and justification of international law to focus on individual autonomy rather than on peace between nations, I argue that women's rights violations other than genocide and mass rape can warrant intervention. Military intervention is often counter-productive to the aim of achieving autonomy, however. I suggest a range of responses to human rights violations that includes military intervention as one end of the spectrum, and combine this with a greater understanding of the scope of human rights violations that require international response. (shrink)

Why do people read novels, go to the theater, or listen to beautiful music? Do we seek out aesthetic experiences simply because we enjoy them--or is there another, deeper, reason we spend our leisure time viewing or experiencing works of art? Aesthetics, the first short introduction to the contemporary philosophy of aesthetics, examines not just the nature of the aesthetic experience, but the definition of art, and its moral and intrinsic value in our lives. Anne Sheppard divides her work (...) into two parts: In the first, she summarizes the major theories defining art and beauty; in the second, she explores the nature of aesthetic evaluation and appreciation. As Sheppard explains, there are three main approaches to defining art, all focused on what art objects share. One proposes that all art imitates something in life, another that it expresses something (such as anger or ecstasy), still another suggests that all art has formal qualities. There is also a fourth which offers that all art shares the quality of beauty. In the second part, which concentrates on literary art, Sheppard explores such philosophic topics as critical judgment, meaning and truth in literature, and the relationship between art and morals. She raises such questions as whether there is one correct interpretation of a work of art and whether art has a moral effect on its audience and, citing specific examples, explores the views that have been put forth. A wide-ranging, intriguing book, which assumes no formal knowledge on the part of its readers, Aesthetics opens the door to a greater understanding and appreciation of art. (shrink)

In _Opposition to Philosophy in Safavid Iran_ Ata Anzali and S.M. Hadi Gerami offer a critical edition of what is arguably the most erudite and extensive critique of philosophy from the Safavid period. The editors’ extensive introduction offers an in-depth analysis that places the work within the broader framework of Safavid intellectual and social history.

Institutional economics and discourse theory stand unconnected next to each other, in spite of the fact that they both ask for the legitimacy of institutions (normative) and the functioning and effectiveness of institutions (positive). Both use as theoretical constructions rational individuals and the concept of consensus for legitimacy. Whereas discourse theory emphasizes the conditions of a legitimate consensus and could thus enable institutional economics to escape the infinite regress of judging a consensus legitimate, institutional economics has a tested social science (...) paradigm (rational choice) of explaining and predicting the functioning of institutions. The article outlines a theoretical synthesis of the two theories by finding points in common and possibilities of fruitful combinations concerning the problem of legitimacy, institutional design and effectiveness of legal norms. (shrink)