Jahrhunderts. Der Sammelband bietet ausgewählte Beispiele ihrer Rezeption. Näher in Betracht kommen F.H. Jacobi, C. Daub, A. Schopenhauer, J. Müller, S. Kierkegaard, P. Tillich und M. Heidegger."--Publisher's website.

Background In nursing homes, residents’ relatives represent important sources of support for nurses. However, in the heightened stress of emergency situations, interaction between nurses and relatives can raise ethical challenges. Research objectives The present analysis aimed at elaborating a typology of nurses’ experience of ethical support and challenges in their interaction with relatives in emergency situations. Research design Thirty-three semi-structured interviews and six focus groups were conducted with nurses from different nursing homes in Germany. Data were analysed according to Mayring’s (...) method of qualitative content analysis. Participants and research context Participants were licensed nurses working in nursing homes. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was granted by Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences (02.07.2020) and the Ethics Committee of Hannover Medical School (Nr. 8866_BO_K_2020; 27.01.2020). Interviewees were anonymised and focus group were pseudonymised during transcription. All participants provided written consent. Findings/results In emergency situations, relatives can represent important sources of support for nurses. However, they may also give rise to different challenges, relating to four ethical conflicts: (1) the challenge of meeting the information needs of relatives while providing appropriate care to all residents; (2) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for hospitalisation when hospitalisation is not deemed necessary by nurses; (3) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for lifesaving treatment when such treatment contradicts the will of the resident; and (4) the challenge of attempting to initiate hospitalisation when relatives oppose this course of action. Several external factors make these conflicts especially challenging for nurses: fear of legal consequences, a low staffing ratio, and a lack of qualified nursing staff. Conclusions Conflict between nurses and relatives typically revolves around hospitalisation and the initiation of lifesaving treatment. Whether nurses perceive interaction with relatives as supportive or conflictual essentially depends on the quality of the relationship, which may be negatively influenced by a number of external factors. (shrink)

This paper defends the case against (sparse) disjunctive properties by means of four Armstrongian arguments. The first of these is a logical atomist argument from truthmaking, which is, broadly speaking, ‘Armstrongian’ (Armstrong 1997). This argument is strong – although it stands or falls with the relevant notion of truthmaking, as it were. However, three arguments, which are prima facie independent of truthmaking, can be found explicitly early in Armstrong’s middle period. Two of these early arguments face a serious objection put (...) forward forcefully by Louise Antony (2003) and Alan Penczek (1997), respectively. I consider these objections and argue that they fail. Thus, even if the argument from truthmaking is indecisive, disjunctive properties should be rejected. (shrink)

The history of a European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse. A European identity is an abstraction and a fiction without essential proportions. Identity as a fiction does not undermine but rather helps to explain the power that the concept exercises. The concept since its introduction on the political agenda in 1973 has been highly ideologically loaded and in that capacity has been contested. There has been a high degree of agreement on the concept as such, (...) but deep disagreement on its more precise content and meaning. The concept of a European identity is an idea expressing contrived notions of unity rather than an identity in the proper sense of the word and even takes on the proportion of an ideology. In this sense the concept is inscribed in a long history of philosophical and political reflection on the concept of Europe. On these grounds the analytical use of `identity' in social sciences can be questioned. (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 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)

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)

This book addresses the metaphysics of Armstrongian states of affairs, i.e. instantiations of naturalist universals by particulars. The author argues that states of affairs are the best candidate for truthmakers and, in the spirit of logical atomism, that we need no molecular truthmakers for positive truths. In the book's context, this has the pleasing result that there are no molecular states of affairs. Following this account of truthmaking, the author first shows that the particulars in (first-order) states of affairs are (...) bare particulars. He then argues that the properties in states of affairs are simple, non-relational and concrete universals. Next, he argues that (material) relations in states of affairs are external relations. Lastly, he argues that a state of affairs is unified by a distinctive formal relation without giving rise to Bradley’s regress. (shrink)

A 'social trap' is a situation where individuals, groups or organisations are unable to cooperate owing to mutual distrust and lack of social capital, even where cooperation would benefit all. Examples include civil strife, pervasive corruption, ethnic discrimination, depletion of natural resources and misuse of social insurance systems. Much has been written attempting to explain the problem, but rather less material is available on how to escape it. In this book, Bo Rothstein explores how social capital and social trust are (...) generated and what governments can do about it. He argues that it is the existence of universal and impartial political institutions together with public policies which enhance social and economic equality that creates social capital. By introducing the theory of collective memory into the discussion, Rothstein makes an empirical and theoretical claim for how universal institutions can be established. (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)

I väntan på den engelska Festschriften, den definitiva biografin eller de självförhärligande memoarerna kommer här för första gången en samling porträtt av den internationellt mest uppmärksammade svenska statsvetaren, den kontroversielle samhällsdebattören Bo Rothstein. Få samhällsforskare har med sådan intensitet tagit universitetens tredje uppgift till intäkt för att ifrågasätta gängse uppfattningar om sakernas tillstånd i riket. Många är de läsare, tittare eller åhörare som knappast kunnat undgå att beröras av hans synpunkter på allt från metoo till tiggeri, något färre är nog (...) de som på allvar tagit del av hans forskningsresultat om korruption och statsförvaltning. I denna bok tecknar ett tjugotal svenska forskare, författare och vänner sin bild av forskaren, debattören och livsnjutaren Bo Rothstein."--Back cover. (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.

Daniel Dennett is arguably one of the most influential yet radical philosophers in America today. In this volume, Dennett is confronted by colleagues and critics, from philosophy, biology and psychology. His reply constitutes an extensive essay which clarifies, and develops further, central themes in his philosophy. The debate ranges over Dennett's whole corpus, but special attention is given to his major work on consciousness, Consciousness Explained. The volume includes a critical assessement of Dennett's views on behaviouralism and the subjectivity of (...) consciousness, the nature of perception and mental representation, intentional laws and computational psychology, the rationality of thought, culture as a virus, the architecture of mind, and the role of artifacts in thinking. Also included is an introduction to Dennett's philosophy and a full bibliography of his publications. (shrink)

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

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)

Whether the justification at stake is ethical or juridical, all attempts to argue for the welfare principle in Kant’s metaphysics of morals are unsuccessful. This principle cannot be justified a priori in Kant’s context. However, it is not only possible but also necessary to argue for a certain degree of social welfare in politics as the practice of right; otherwise, Kant’s project of political practice, with enlightenment as its core concept, will inevitably fail. Enlightenment requires that the state be committed (...) to reducing the impact of an unequal social structure on individuals so as to preserve the possibility of their enlightenment. However, it also imposes limits on state-sponsored social welfare because excessive social welfare could lead to a general minority. (shrink)

What I call Mellor’s Question is the problem of whether determinables are properties of their determinates or properties of the particulars that possess these determinates. One can distinguish two basic competing theories of determinables that address the issue, implicitly if not explicitly. On the second-order theory, determinables are second-order properties of determinate properties; on the second-level theory, determinables are first-order properties of the particulars with these determinate properties. Higher-order properties are prima facie ontologically uneconomical, and in line with my general (...) view that ontological parsimony is vital to metaphysics, I consider it highly important which of the two theories is true. Firstly, I argue that the second-level theory offers the best explanation of the explananda (though the race is close), including the important but neglected phenomenon of ‘intermediate determinables’. Secondly, by paying attention to intermediate determinables and instantiation of higher-order properties, I argue that the second-level theory also is more ontologically economical. For these two reasons, this theory is preferable. (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 this paper, I relate key features of Adolf Reinach’s abundant ontology of propositional states of affairs of his to Armstrong’s—or an Armstrongian—state of affairs ontology, with special regard to finding out how sparse or abundant the latter is with respect to negative states of affairs. After introducing the issue, I clarify the notion of a propositional state of affairs, paying special attention to the notion of abstract versus concrete. I show how Reinach’s states of affairs are propositional, and how (...) they compare with Chisholm’s well-known propositional states of affairs. In the next section, I outline Reinach’s five roles for states of affairs and show that only one of them is relevant to Armstrongian state of affairs ontology. In the following section, I utilise this role to create a ranking of state of affairs ontologies according to how abundant they are. It is, however, unclear which level Armstrongian state of affairs ontology is at, since it is unclear if, like Reinach’s ontology, it includes negative states of affairs. In the final section, I argue that the answer is a qualified ‘yes’, i.e. it does not occupy the sparsest level. (shrink)

This chapter considers the ‘hosting question’ of how immanent universals, in contrast to transcendent universals, are ‘brought down to earth’ from ‘Plato’s heaven’. It explores the thesis that the hosting amounts to their being constituents of the states of affairs that result from their instantiations. These states of affairs are concrete complexes consisting of particulars and universals, and perhaps something that links them together. The traditional view that immanent universals are concrete is briefly defended against a recent prominent objection. On (...) relationalism, states of affairs are unified by a relation of some sort; on non-relationalism they are unified non-relationally. Roughly, these two conceptions of states of affairs are equivalent to Armstrong’s relational and non-relational versions of immanent realism, respectively. Armstrong mostly criticises the former and defends the latter. It is argued, however, that relationalism, at least potentially, answers the hosting question, whereas non-relationalism realism does not. (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’.

This paper is concerned with what I call the ‘problem of unity’ . This is the puzzle of how Armstrong‐like states of affairs are unified. The general approach is ‘relational internalism’: the unifier of such a state of affairs is a relation of some sort in it. A view commonly associated with relational internalism is that if such a relation satisfies a certain ‘naive’ expectation to a relation – that it is related to its relata – then Bradley's regress results. (...) As I argue, for one very natural species of relational internalism, this is indeed the case. Influential writers on the topic have therefore maintained that this relation is not related to its relata. But, as we shall see, while this ‘classic’ relational internalism obviously avoids Bradley's regress, intuitively, it fails completely to solve the problem of unity. I argue, however, that given the rejection of a natural, but unfounded, assumption of conventional relational internalism, a unique relation can unify states of affairs without leading to Bradley's regress. I consequently propose a novel version of relational internalism on which states of affairs are unified by such an entity. (shrink)

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)

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)