Even his peers called Locke's political philosophy “The ABC of Politics“: not only does he clarify why one should exit the state of nature (government guarantees protection of life, freedom, and wealth) but also what a good government has to provide. A government should protect individuals from assaults of fellow citizens, other countries, and itself. Locke also shows how to put limits to the power of political institutions: by division of powers, by law, by neutral judges, and by making people (...) trust their government -- and having the right to revolt when their trust is betrayed. This book provides a cooperative commentary to all important topics of Locke's "Two Treatises". With entries by Wolfgang von Leyden, Bernd Ludwig, Peter Niesen, Francis Oakley, Birger P. Priddat, Michaela Rehm, Michael Schefczyk, Ludwig Siep, A. John Simmons, und Simone Zurbuchen. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Little is known about the origins of the Brown Book of Ludwig Wittgenstein. One of his better-known texts, it was first published in print in 1958 and is based on notes that Wittgenstein had dictated to two of his pupils, Francis Skinner and Alice Ambrose, at Cambridge University during the academic year of 1934 – 35. The present paper examines some of the few extant remarks by Wittgenstein and others about the circumstances from which the text emerged against (...) the backdrop of various source materials, including a set of handwritten and typed notes that belong to a collection of Ambrose’s papers at Cambridge University Library. (shrink)

Representative for contemporary attempts to establish a science of consciousness we examine Chalmers' statement and resolution of the 'hard problem of consciousness'. Agreeing with him that in order to account for subjectivity it is necessary to expand the ontology of the natural sciences, we argue that it is not sufficient to just add conscious experience to the list of fundamental features of the world. Instead, we turn to phenomenology as the philosophy of conscious experience and give an outline of Merleau-Ponty's (...) critique of the objectivist ontology underlying science which excludes subjectivity from the world. We reconstruct his proposal for a revised ontology in The Visible and the Invisible aiming at an extended understanding of Being including subjectivity, which takes on the form of a constellation of new ontological terms centered around the concept of the 'flesh of the world'. Trying to spell out the consequences of Merleau-Ponty's ontological considerations for scientific practice and especially the science of consciousness, we notice that his philosophy of subjectivity-in-the-world on its part is unable to connect to the insights of the natural sciences. The phenomenological critique of the 'hard problem' reveals a deeper disparity which, at present, limits its practical implications. (shrink)

When experimental philosophers carry out studies on thought experiments, some participants are excluded based on certain exclusion criteria, mirroring standard social science vignette methodology. This involves excluding people that do not pay attention or who miscomprehend the scenario presented in thought experiments. However, experimental philosophy studies sometimes exclude an alarmingly high number of participants. We argue that this threatens the external and internal validity of the conclusions being drawn and we show how a simple visualization of thought experiments can reduce (...) exclusion rates significantly. Furthermore, we argue that focus should not merely be on how many are excluded, but also why they are excluded, and we highlight the role of comprehension questions in this regard. Philosophical thought experiments often rely on the acceptance of certain key premises that may be regarded contestable, and asking comprehension questions involving such key assumptions could be problematic as that may result in some participants being inadvertently excluded from the study, potentially creating a selection bias. (shrink)

Self-fulfillment of theories is argued to be a threat to social science in at least two ways. First, a realist might worry that self-fulfillment constitutes a threat to the idea that social science is a proper science consistent with a realist approach that develops true and successful statements about the world. Second, one might argue that the potential self-fulfilling nature of social science theories potentially undermines the ethical integrity of social scientists. We argue that if one accepts that social science (...) theories are not based on laws akin to those that govern natural reality or acknowledges that if one can predict self-fulfillment via a meta-theory that explains the underlying regularities of the self-fulfilling change, the threat to realism is dismantled. Furthermore, on the basis of these arguments, we show that if one is unable to predict the consequences of a theory, it is difficult to ascribe moral responsibility at the individual level. It is, therefore, not the potential self-fulfillment of theories per se that poses an ethical challenge, in contrast to claims in the literature. (shrink)

In this study the relationship of religiosity and value priorities is differentiated, based on a multidimensional measurement of different contents of religiosity. The structure of values is conceptualized using Schwartz' two orthogonal dimensions of Self-transcendence vs. Self-enhancement and Openness to change vs. Conservation. The relations between these two dimensions and eight religious contents, ranging from open-minded to more close-minded forms of religiosity, were tested in a sample of church attenders , gathered in Germany. The results show, that depending on the (...) content of religiosity, different values are preferred . The results indicate the importance of the content of religiosity for predicting value-loaded behaviors. (shrink)

Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaçoet al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by Colaçoet (...) al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers. (shrink)

Studies in experimental philosophy claim to document intuition variation. Some studies focus on demographic group-variation; Colaço et al., for example, claim that age generates intuition variation regarding knowledge attribution in a fake-barn scenario. Other studies claim to show intuition variation when comparing the intuition of philosophers to that of non-philosophers. The main focus has been on documenting intuition variation rather than uncovering what underlying factor(s) may prompt such a phenomenon. We explore a number of suggested explanatory hypotheses put forth by (...) Colaço et al., as well as an attempt to test Sosa's claim that intuition variance is a result of people ‘filling in the details’ of a thought experiment differently from one another. We show (i) that people respond consistently across conditions aimed at ‘filling in the details’ of thought experiments, (ii) that risk attitude does not seem relevant to knowledge ascription, (iii) that people's knowledge ascriptions do not vary due to views about defeasibility of knowledge. Yet, (iv) we find no grounds to reject that a large proportion of people appear to adhere to so-called subjectivism about knowledge, which may explain why they generally have intuitions about the fake-barn scenario that vary from those of philosophers. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bradley, who was a life fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. His work is considered to have been important to the (...) formation of analytic philosophy. In metaphysics, he rejected pluralism and realism, and believed that English philosophy needed to deal systematically with first principles. This work, first published in 1893, is divided into two parts: 'Appearance' deals with exposing the contradictions that Bradley believed are hidden in our everyday conceptions of the world; and in 'Reality', he builds his positive account of reality and considers possible objections to it. (shrink)

Weite Teile der katholischen Dogmatik und Fundamentaltheologie dieser Tage sind in nicht unerheblichem Maße von dem geprägt, was man”Letztbegründung“nennen könnte. Diese Denkrichtung sucht in der Tradition der Aufklärung und des deutschen Idealismus nach letzten, philosophisch ausweisbaren Gründen für die Glaubensinhalte der katholischen Theologie. Der Autor zeichnet Thomas Pröppers, Hansjürgen Verweyens und Klaus Müllers Angänge nach und prüft, ob ihr Anspruch auf einen letztgültigen Sinn gelingen kann. Die Lektüre ausgewählter Texten von Emmanuel Levinas und Jacques Derrida lässt erhebliche Zweifel am Erfolg (...) einer Letztbegründung aufkommen. Darüber hinaus gibt ein Durchgang durch lehramtliche und biblische Texte zu bedenken, ob ein solcher Anspruch theologisch überhaupt erhoben werden muss. Gilt nicht auch und gerade nach der philosophischen Aufklärung: "Mein Angesicht kannst Du nicht sehen. Nicht sieht mich der Mensch und lebt."? (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

By a classifying topos for a first-order theory , we mean a topos such that, for any topos models of in correspond exactly to open geometric morphisms → . We show that not every first-order theory has a classifying topos in this sense, but we characterize those which do by an appropriate ‘smallness condition’, and we show that every Grothendieck topos arises as the classifying topos of such a theory. We also show that every first-order theory has a conservative extension (...) to one which possesses a classifying topos, and we obtain a Heyting-valued completeness theorem for infinitary first-order logic. (shrink)

The most important work of the famed German philosopher, this 1841 polemic asserts that religion and divinity are outward projections of inner human nature. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — Marx and Engels were particularly influenced. This acclaimed translation is by the celebrated English novelist George Eliot.

While early optimists have seen online discussions as potential spaces for deliberation, the reality of many online spaces is characterized by incivility and irrationality. Increasingly, AI tools are considered as a solution to foster deliberative discourse. Against the backdrop of previous research, we show that AI tools for online discussions heavily focus on the deliberative norms of rationality and civility. In the operationalization of those norms for AI tools, the complex deliberative dimensions are simplified, and the focus lies on the (...) detection of argumentative structures in argument mining or verbal markers of supposedly uncivil comments. If the fairness of such tools is considered, the focus lies on data bias and an input–output frame of the problem. We argue that looking beyond bias and analyzing such applications through a sociotechnical frame reveals how they interact with social hierarchies and inequalities, reproducing patterns of exclusion. The current focus on verbal markers of incivility and argument mining risks excluding minority voices and privileges those who have more access to education. Finally, we present a normative argument why examining AI tools for online discourses through a sociotechnical frame is ethically preferable, as ignoring the predicable negative effects we describe would present a form of objectionable indifference. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition since the nineteenth century of Bacon's principal philosophical work in English, The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and humane - traditionally known as The Advancement of Learning.

Flickering light induces visual hallucinations in human observers. Despite a long history of the phenomenon, little is known about the dependence of flicker-induced subjective impressions on the flicker frequency. We investigate this question using Ganzfeld stimulation and an experimental paradigm combining a continuous frequency scan with a focus on re-occurring, whole percepts. On the single-subject level, we find a high degree of frequency stability of percepts. To generalize across subjects, we apply two rating systems, a set of complex percept classes (...) derived from subjects’ reports and an enumeration of elementary percept features, and determine distributions of occurrences over flicker frequency. We observe a stronger frequency specificity for complex percept classes than elementary percept features. Comparing the similarity relations among percept categories to those among frequency profiles, we observe that though percepts are preferentially induced by particular frequencies, the frequency does not unambiguously determine the experienced percept. (shrink)

We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as Zeus and the planet Vulcan, but also “perceptual inexistents,” (...) e.g., Kanizsa figures, rainbows, words and phonemes, as well as hosts of at best metaphysically problematic “objects,” such as properties, numbers, ceremonies, contracts, symphonies, “the sky,” “the rain.” Indeed, reflection on what seems to be the boundless diversity of “things” about which we seem to be able to have singular thoughts strongly suggests that there may be no general metaphysics of objects, much less “acquaintance” and “epistemically rewarding” relations that would distinguish singular from non-singular thought. We recommend that Recanati and other mental file theorists confine the theory to a metaphysically neutral account of singular thought as specific kind of internally “focused” computational state, and not seek any general account of the relation of thought to reality. (shrink)

1. Auf den Spuren von Nietzsche, Bataille, Adorno und Benjamin -- 2. Vom Willen nicht regiert zu werden in 10 Variationen -- 3. Der tragische und der rauschhafte Ton in der Musik.