The correspondence between Richard von Mises and George Pólya of 1919/20 contains reflections on two well-known articles by von Mises on the foundations of probability in the Mathematische Zeitschrift of 1919, and one paper from the Physikalische Zeitschrift of 1918. The topics touched on in the correspondence are: the proof of the central limit theorem of probability theory, von Mises' notion of randomness, and a statistical criterion for integer-valuedness of physical data. The investigation will hint at both the fruitfulness and (...) the limits of several of von Mises' notions such as ``collective'', ``distribution'' and ``complex adjuncts'' (characteristic functions) for further developments in probability theory and in ``directional statistics''. By pointing to the selectiveness of Pólya's criticism, the historical analysis shows the differing expectations of the two men with respect to the further development of the theory of probability and its applications. The paper thus gives a glimpse of the provisional state of the theory around 1920, before others such as P. Lévy (1886–1971) and A. N. Kolmogorov (1903–1987) stepped in and created a new paradigm for probability theory. (shrink)

Hegel's phenomenological method is meant to provide a pathway for a "finite consciousness" to the objective viewpoint of philosophical "science".

TRANSLATORS PREFACE THE PRESENT TRANSLATION OF GEORG SIMMEL'S Schopen- hauer und Nietzsche: Ein Vortragszyklus (1907), ...

"As a distinctive philosophy, religious humanism emphasizes man's place in an unfathomed universe, reason as an instrument for discovering the truth, free inquiry as a condition for discerning meaning and purpose, and happiness as a fundamental value. "Man's uniqueness emerges partly from homo sapiens' capacity to employ symbols effectively. For this reason, Willard's provocative book is not a celebration of controversy but a sophisticated study exploring the grounds of man's knowledge. Drawing upon phenomenologists such as Alfred Schultz, psychologists such as (...) George Kelley, and argumentation philosophers such as Stephen Toulmin, Willard makes a genuine contribution to intellectual inquiry by extending essential consideration about human knowledge. The [author] demonstrates how 'secular sources' provide a fundamental resource in developing religious understanding from argumentative interactions. "Highly insightful and intellectually refreshing... _Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge_ provides thought-provoking reading for humanists concerned with rational inquiry, communication theory, religious philosophy, and liberal education." _--Religious Humanism_. (shrink)

This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.

"As a distinctive philosophy, religious humanism emphasizes man's place in an unfathomed universe, reason as an instrument for discovering the truth, free inquiry as a condition for discerning meaning and purpose, and happiness as a fundamental value. "Man's uniqueness emerges partly from homo sapiens' capacity to employ symbols effectively. For this reason, Willard's provocative book is not a celebration of controversy but a sophisticated study exploring the grounds of man's knowledge. Drawing upon phenomenologists such as Alfred Schultz, psychologists such as (...) George Kelley, and argumentation philosophers such as Stephen Toulmin, Willard makes a genuine contribution to intellectual inquiry by extending essential consideration about human knowledge. The [author] demonstrates how 'secular sources' provide a fundamental resource in developing religious understanding from argumentative interactions. "Highly insightful and intellectually refreshing... _Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge_ provides thought-provoking reading for humanists concerned with rational inquiry, communication theory, religious philosophy, and liberal education." _--Religious Humanism_. (shrink)

Taking Carnap’s classic exposition as a starting point, this paper develops a pragmatic account of the method of explication, defends it against a range of challenges and proposes a detailed recipe for the practice of explicating. It is then argued that confusions are involved in characterizing explications as definitions, and in advocating precising definitions as an alternative to explications. Explication is better characterized as conceptual re-engineering for theoretical purposes, in contrast to conceptual re-engineering for other purposes and improving exactness for (...) purely practical reasons. Finally, three limitations which call for further development of the method of explication are discussed. (shrink)

This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in the philosophy of science - the aristotelian, with its stress on explanation in terms of purpose and intentionality, and the galilean, which takes causal explanation as primary. It then traces the complex history of these competing traditions as they are manifested in such movements as positivism, idealism, Marxism and contemporary linguistic analysis. Hempels's theory of scientific explanation, the claims of cybernetics the rise of an analytic philosophy of action and the revival of (...) hermenuetics are all discussed. The volume also deals with causal explanation, intentionality and teleological explanation, and explanation in history and the social sciences. The author concludes that explanation of human actions cannot be reduced to simple causality, and discusses the implications of this conclusion for the disciplines of history and sociology. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in the realization of liberty. (...) Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

Carnap and Goodman developed methods of conceptual re-engineering known respectively as explication and reflective equilibrium. These methods aim at advancing theories by developing concepts that are simultaneously guided by pre-existing concepts and intended to replace these concepts. This paper shows that Carnap’s and Goodman’s methods are historically closely related, analyses their structural interconnections, and argues that there is great systematic potential in interpreting them as aspects of one method, which ultimately must be conceived as a component of theory development. The (...) main results are: an adequate method of conceptual re-engineering must focus not on individual concepts but on systems of concepts and theories; the linear structure of Carnapian explication must be replaced by a process of mutual adjustments as described by Goodman; Carnap’s condition of similarity can be analysed into two components, one securing a relation to the specific extensions of the pre-existing concepts, one regulating the transition to the new system of concepts; these two criteria of adequacy can be built into Goodman’s account of reflective equilibrium to ensure that the resulting concepts promote theoretical virtues while being sufficiently similar to the concepts we started out with. (shrink)

This book uncovers Kant s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy. The Kant brought out here turns out to be very different from current mainstream appropriations, which erroneously consider him one of the founding fathers of the new cosmopolitanism. Kant s Embedded Cosmopolitanism is a valuable source for students of political philosophy, cosmopolitanism, and Kant s ethics.".

This edition makes available an entirely new version of Hegel's lectures on the development and scope of world history.

Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191). Those processes are the collaborative procedures (“transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members. Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among (...) social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote 2011). But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner’s appeal to group memory should be understood. My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs. This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms. Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter. In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, 2009). Based on my reconstruction of Wegner’s conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation. More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between “wholism” and “nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the “group mind” thesis (Allport 1968). (shrink)

Idealist philosopher Georg Hegel defied the traditional epistemological distinction of objective from subjective and developed his own dialectical alternative. Remarkable for its breadth and profundity, this work combines aspects of psychology, logic, moral philosophy, and history to form a comprehensive view that encompasses all forms of civilization. Its three divisions consist of the subjective mind (dealing with anthropology and psychology), the objective mind (concerning philosophical issues of law and morals), and the absolute mind (covering fine arts, religion, and philosophy). (...) Wide-ranging in its influence, this survey of the evolution of consciousness is essential reading for all students of philosophy and history. (shrink)

Georg Lukács wrote The Theory of the Novel in 1914-1915, a period that also saw the conception of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Letters, Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Spengler's Decline of the West, and Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia. Like many of Lukács's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and (...) Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukács's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism. (shrink)

For Descartes, minds were essentially non-extended things. Contemporary cognitive science prides itself on having exorcised the Cartesian ghost from the biological machine. However, it remains committed to the Cartesian vision of the mental as something purely inner. Against the idea that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the situated and embodied nature of cognition have long stressed the importance of dynamic brain-body-environment couplings, the opportunistic exploitation of bodily morphology, the strategic performance of epistemically potent actions, the generation (...) and use of external representations, and the cognitive scaffolding provided by artifacts and social-cultural practices. According to the “extended mind” thesis, a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and its environment. My goal in this book is to clarify the nature and scope of this thesis, and to defend its central insight that cognition is not confined to the boundaries of the biological individual. (shrink)

Dieses von Hegel als Leitfaden für die Hörer seiner Vorlesungen konzipierte Werk bietet einen programmatischen Aufriß seines gesamten philosophischen Systems. Es umfaßt die drei Teile: Wissenschaft der Logik, Philosophie der Natur und Philosophie des Geistes. Die 8., um ein Literaturverzeichnis erweiterte Auflage bietet den durchgesehenen Text der 6., nach der Originalausgabe neu herausgegebenen Text mit Anmerkungen von F. Nicolin und O. Pöggeler. Beigegeben sind eine Einleitung, Literaturverzeichnis und Personen- und Sachregister.

Das Buch vermittelt methodische Grundlagen für die Arbeit mit Texten in den Wissenschaften, besonders die Fähigkeit, Inhalt und Argumentation komplexer Texte zu erfassen, wiederzugeben und zu beurteilen. Die Einführung entspricht den fachlichen Standards der Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften, ist fachübergreifend konzipiert und setzt kein spezifisches Wissen voraus. Der Band richtet sich an Studierende verschiedener Fachrichtungen sowie an Personen, die sich mit dem Wissen anderer Fachrichtungen auseinandersetzen oder im Dialog mit der Öffentlichkeit stehen. Mit Fallbeispielen aus verschiedenen Wissensbereichen und kommentierten Literaturhinweisen.

This is a much-needed reissue of the standard English translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, originally published in 1970. The Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, all of which is now available in English from OUP (Part I being his Logic, Part III being his Philosophy of Mind). Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who still think of (...) Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science. The Philosophy of Nature is integral to his philosophical system and deserves the most serious attention. Students and scholars of Hegel and the history of European philosophy will welcome the availability of this important text, which also includes a translation of Hegel's Zusatze or lecture notes. (shrink)

In this paper, we approach the idea of group cognition from the perspective of the “extended mind” thesis, as a special case of the more general claim that systems larger than the individual human, but containing that human, are capable of cognition (Clark, 2008; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Instead of deliberating about “the mark of the cognitive” (Adams & Aizawa, 2008), our discussion of group cognition is tied to particular cognitive capacities. We review recent studies of group problem-solving and group (...) memory which reveal that specific cognitive capacities that are commonly ascribed to individuals are also aptly ascribed at the level of groups. These case studies show how dense interactions among people within a group lead to both similarity-inducing and differentiating dynamics that affect the group's ability to solve problems. This supports our claim that groups have organization-dependent cognitive capacities that go beyond the simple aggregation of the cognitive capacities of individuals. Group cognition is thus an emergent phenomenon in the sense of Wimsatt (1986). We further argue that anybody who rejects our strategy for showing that cognitive properties can be instantiated at multiple levels in the organizational hierarchy on a priori grounds is a “demergentist,” and thus incurs the burden of proof for explaining why cognitive properties are “stuck” at a certain level of organizational structure. Finally, we show that our analysis of group cognition escapes the “coupling-constitution” charge that has been leveled against the extended mind thesis (Adams & Aizawa, 2008). (shrink)

In moral epistemology, the method of reflective equilibrium is often characterized in terms of intuitions or understood as a method for justifying intuitions. An analysis of reflective equilibrium and current theories of moral intuitions reveals that this picture is problematic. Reflective equilibrium cannot be adequately characterized in terms of intuitions. Although the method presupposes that we have initially credible commitments, it does not presuppose that they are intuitions. Nonetheless, intuitions can enter the process of developing a reflective equilibrium and, if (...) the process is successful, be justified. Since the method of reflective equilibrium does not essentially involve intuitions, it does not constitute a form of intuitionism in any substantial sense. It may be classified as intuitionist only in the minimal sense of not reducing justification to a matter of inference relations alone. (shrink)

Der finanzielle Druck auf die Krankenhäuser in Deutschland führt zu einer Ökonomisierung medizinischer Entscheidungen, die die Qualität der Patientenversorgung beeinträchtigt und das Gesundheitspersonal erheblich belastet. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht, welche Möglichkeiten ein organisationsethischer Ansatz bietet, den Herausforderungen durch die Ökonomisierung zu begegnen. Ausgewählte empirische Befunde sollen zunächst verdeutlichen, welche Auswirkungen die Ökonomisierung auf die Patientenversorgung und das Personal in den Krankenhäusern hat. Zudem liefern sie erste Hinweise auf mögliche Handlungsspielräume für die Krankenhäuser. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Ökonomisierung einen organisationsethischen (...) Ansatz erfordert, der die Handlungsspielräume auf der Mesoebene, d. h. auf der Ebene der einzelnen Krankenhäuser nutzt. Der organisationsethische Ansatz wird in seinen Grundzügen vorgestellt und dann im Sinne eines Wertemanagements als Lösungsperspektive für die Herausforderungen der Ökonomisierung konkretisiert. Abschließend entwickelt der Beitrag Perspektiven, wie klinische Ethikkomitees mit organisationsethischer Arbeit den negativen Auswirkungen der Ökonomisierung auf die Patientenversorgung und das Personal im Krankenhaus entgegenwirken können. (shrink)

In the final year of his long life, eminent Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain prepared a final book for publication: a collection of previously unpublished writings entitled Approaches san entraves, later translated into English as Untrammeled Approaches. That collection, both in its conversational yet reverent tone and in its weighty topics - faith, love, truth, beauty - gives the reader the sense that she is receiving from a great teacher and friend the most important nuggets of wisdom for the next generation. (...) Throughout the book, Maritain shares with his readers, from his heart as well as his intellect, regarding the things that really matter; that book - and those things - are the primary inspiration for the present volume. This volume, comprised of original essays by twenty English-speaking Thomists on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Untrammeled Approaches' first English appearance, explores several of Maritain's still-untrammeled (or at least less-trammeled) themes. While following his unbeaten paths, the contributing authors find and refine hidden treasures at every turn. They develop some of his more speculative ideas regarding the spiritual world - including the last things, the fate of the fallen angels, and a possible angelic role in evolution. They reflect deeply on a few of Maritain's recurring themes: for example, the nature of beauty and intuition. They analyze the implications - positive and negative - of Maritain's philosophy of love, marriage, and sexuality. And they consider and apply his arguments regarding appropriate roles and interactions of Church and state. The volume concludes with big-picture reflections on Maritain, his thought, and his enduring relevance. The contributors to this volume are: Michael Breidenbach, Romanus Cessario, OP, John Conley, SJ, Mario O. D'Souza, CSB, Travis Dumsday, Heather Erb, Lawrence Feingold, Megan Furman, Marie George, James Hanink, Gregory Kerr, William McCormick, SJ, Matthew Minerd, Mark Moes, Michael Novak, Michael Pakuluk, Alice Ramos, Walter Schultz, Michael Torre, Nikolaj Zunic. (shrink)

We here examine the expressive power of first order logic with generalized quantifiers over finite ordered structures. In particular, we address the following problem: Given a family Q of generalized quantifiers expressing a complexity class C, what is the expressive power of first order logic FO(Q) extended by the quantifiers in Q? From previously studied examples, one would expect that FO(Q) captures L C , i.e., logarithmic space relativized to an oracle in C. We show that this is not always (...) true. However, after studying the problem from a general point of view, we derive sufficient conditions on C such that FO(Q) captures L C . These conditions are fulfilled by a large number of relevant complexity classes, in particular, for example, by NP. As an application of this result, it follows that first order logic extended by Henkin quantifiers captures L NP . This answers a question raised by Blass and Gurevich [Ann. Pure Appl. Logic, vol. 32, 1986]. Furthermore we show that for many families Q of generalized quantifiers (including the family of Henkin quantifiers), each FO(Q)-formula can be replaced by an equivalent FO(Q)-formula with only two occurrences of generalized quantifiers. This generalizes and extends an earlier normal-form result by I. A. Stewart [Fundamenta Inform. vol. 18, 1993]. (shrink)

This innovative study focuses on the Kantian theory of international relations, a subject which has frequently been either ignored or misunderstood. Kant was criticized by contemporaries who asserted that his political ideas were idealistic and impractical. He countered this accusation by evolving a political philosophy which formed a link between the theoretical doctrine of pure law and the actualities of the real world. The author argues that Kant’s theory of international relations can be read as an attempt to bring reason (...) and history together. Kant tries to apply the a priori principles of reason to history in general, and to the political conditions of the late eighteenth century in particular, and this volume examines the way in which he attempts to mediate between theory and practice. In this stimulating and lucid work, Cavallar provides one of the first comprehensive examinations in English of Kant’s theory of international right. (shrink)