This book, formed as a series of essays in honour of Professor Carl Baudenbacher, addresses the very art of judicial reasoning, and features contributions from many of the foremost current or former national, supranational, or international judges. This unique volume is intended first and foremost for legal scholars, but its approachable style makes it readily accessible for students and for those with a general interest in the application of the law and justice in today's multi-layered world. The collection of essays (...) is rather more philosophical and reflective as opposed to doctrinal. Each contribution focuses on the nature and operation of justice, the independence of the judiciary, and on judicial style primarily from the perspective of the judges themselves. The book provides perspectives on what it means to be accountable and independent as a judge, the role of language and languages in the quest for justice, while other contributions acquaint readers with the some of the structures of courts themselves, or indeed question for whom judgments are written. Each chapter has been written by a presiding judge, or head of an institution and the book is divided into three parts: - Part I Art and Method - Part II Justice and the Judiciary - Part III Reasoning and Language(s). (shrink)

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

As an extension of the well-known Action Description Language A introduced by M. Gelfond and V. Lifschitz [8] C. Baral and M. Gelfond recently defined the diafect AC which supports the description of concurrent actions [1]. Also, a sound but incomplete encoding of AC by means of an extended logic program was presented there. In this paper, we work on interpretations of contradictory inferences from partial action descriptions. Employing an interpretation different from the one implicitly used in AC, we present (...) a new dialect which allows to infer sound information from contradictory descriptions and to describe non-determinism and uncertainty. Furthermore, we give the first sound and complete encoding of AC, using equational logic programming, and extend it to as well. (shrink)

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Bildung and the Thinking of Bildung, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 341–352, https://doi.or.

Fresh look at how Jewish intellectuals thought about Judaism within a German philosophical tradition.

Sven Erik Nordenbo; Pluralism, Relativism and the Neutral Teacher, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 129–139, https://d.

The article analyses some of the central ideas of the Movement Against Education (die Anti-Pädagogik). First the inspiration supplied by ‘anti-psychiatry’ is noted. Secondly, an example of everyday ‘educational interference’ is discussed from the perspective of the Movement's ideas. Thirdly, the elements of education the Movement considers outrageous, and so demands the abolition of all educational activity, are discussed. It is concluded that the Movement still raises questions about the general understanding of educational theory and practice today, in particular about (...) the justification of educational intervention and compulsion in a context of scepticism about natural development, absolute values or the predictability of the future. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Historical Perspective Progressivism: Five Themes Progressivism Today.

A representation theorem is obtained for contraction operators that are based on Levi's recent proposal that selection functions should be applied to the set of saturatable contractions, rather than to maximal subsets as in the AGM framework. Furthermore, it is shown that Levi's proposal to base the selection on a weakly monotonic measure of informational value guarantees the satisfaction of both of Gärdenfors' supplementary postulates for contraction. These results indicate that Levi has succeeded in constructing a well-behaved operation of contraction (...) that does not satisfy the postulate of recovery. (shrink)

We prove that four theses commonly associated with coherentism are incompatible with the representation of a belief state as a logically closed set of sentences. The result is applied to the conventional coherence interpretation of the AGM theory of belief revision, which appears not to be tenable. Our argument also counts against the coherentistic acceptability of a certain form of propositional holism. We argue that the problems arise as an effect of ignoring the distinction between derived and non-derived beliefs, and (...) we suggest that the kind of coherence relevant to epistemic justification is the coherence of non-derived beliefs. (shrink)

Dieses Buch versammelt einige der führenden Köpfe heutiger pragmatischer Philosophie zu einem konstruktiven Gespräch über die Zukunft des Pragmatismus. Robert B. Brandom, dessen Theorie der Bedeutung im Mittelpunkt mehrerer Beiträge des Bandes steht, hat das Einleitungskapitel geschrieben. Sämtliche zentrale Problemstellungen der pragmatischen Tradition werden aus teilweise sehr unterschiedlichen Perspektiven eingehend beleuchtet. Neben den Artikeln von Brandom und den Herausgebern, André Fuhrmann und Erik J. Olsson, enthält das Buch Originalbeiträge von Michael Esfeld, Wolfram Hinzen, Friedrich Kambartel, Isaac Levi, Ulrich Metschl, (...) Cheryl Misak, Jaroslav Peregrin, Sven Rosenkranz, Hans Rott und Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer. (shrink)

How do we ascribe subjective probability? In decision theory, this question is often addressed by representation theorems, going back to Ramsey (1926), which tell us how to define or measure subjective probability by observable preferences. However, standard representation theorems make strong rationality assumptions, in particular expected utility maximization. How do we ascribe subjective probability to agents which do not satisfy these strong rationality assumptions? I present a representation theorem with weak rationality assumptions which can be used to define or measure (...) subjective probability for partly irrational agents. (shrink)

An alarming number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that mind extends beyond the brain and body. This book evaluates these arguments and suggests that, typically, it does not. A timely and relevant study that exposes the need to develop a more sophisticated theory of cognition, while pointing to a bold new direction in exploring the nature of cognition Articulates and defends the “mark of the cognitive”, a common sense theory used to distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive processes Challenges (...) the current popularity of extended cognition theory through critical analysis and by pointing out fallacies and shortcoming in the literature Stimulates discussions that will advance debate about the nature of cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Abstract“Gamification” refers to adding game-like elements to non-game activities so as to encourage participation. Gamification is used in various contexts: apps on phones motivating people to exercise, employers trying to encourage their employees to work harder, social media companies trying to stimulate user engagement, and so on and so forth. Here, I focus on gamification with this property: the game-designer (a company or other organization) creates a “game” in order to encourage the players (the users) to bring about certain outcomes (...) as a side effect of playing the game. The side effect might be good for the user (e.g., improving her health) and/or good for the company or organization behind the game (e.g., advertising their products, increasing their profits, etc.). The “players” of the game may or may not be aware of creating these side effects; and they may or may not approve of/endorse the creation of those side effects. The organizations behind the games, in contrast, are typically directly aiming to create games that have the side effects in question. These aspects of gamification are puzzling and interesting from the point of view of philosophical analyses of agency and responsibility for outcomes. In this paper, I relate these just-mentioned aspects of gamification to some philosophical discussions of responsibility gaps, the ethics of side effects (including the Knobe effect and the doctrine of double effect), and ideas about the relations among different parties’ agency. (shrink)

Chancy modus ponens is the following inference scheme: ‘probably φ’, ‘if φ, then ψ’, therefore, ‘probably ψ’. I argue that Chancy modus ponens is invalid in general. I further argue that the invalidity of Chancy modus ponens sheds new light on the alleged counterexample to modus ponens presented by McGee. I close by observing that, although Chancy modus ponens is invalid in general, we can recover a restricted sense in which this scheme of inference is valid.

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. Most logical pluralists think that logic is normative in the sense that you make a mistake if you accept the premisses of a valid argument but reject its conclusion. Some authors have argued that this combination is self-undermining: Suppose that L1 and L2 are correct logics that coincide except for the argument from Γ to φ, which is valid in L1 but invalid in L2. If you accept (...) all sentences in Γ, then, by normativity, you make a mistake if you reject φ. In order to avoid mistakes, you should accept φ or suspend judgment about φ. Both options are problematic for pluralism. Can pluralists avoid this worry by rejecting the normativity of logic? I argue that they cannot. All else being equal, the argument goes through even if logic is not normative. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis is one of the most beloved Christian apologists of the twentieth century; David Hume and Bertrand Russell are among Christianity’s most important critics. This book puts these three intellectual giants in conversation with one another on various important questions: the existence of God, suffering, morality, reason, joy, miracles, and faith. Alongside irreconcilable differences, surprising areas of agreement emerge. Curious readers will find penetrating insights in the reasoned dialogue of these three great thinkers.

This paper attempts to answer the question of what defines mnemonic confabulation vis-à-vis genuine memory. The two extant accounts of mnemonic confabulation as “false memory” and as ill-grounded memory are shown to be problematic, for they cannot account for the possibility of veridical confabulation, ill-grounded memory, and wellgrounded confabulation. This paper argues that the defining characteristic of mnemonic confabulation is that it lacks the appropriate causal history. In the confabulation case, there is no proper counterfactual dependence of the state of (...) seeming to remember on the corresponding past representation. (shrink)

In everyday life we often act adequately, yet without deliberation. For instance, we immediately obtain and maintain an appropriate distance from others in an elevator. The notion of normativity implied here is a very basic one, namely distinguishing adequate from inadequate, correct from incorrect, or better from worse in the context of a particular situation. In the first part of this paper I investigate such ‘situated normativity’ by focusing on unreflective expert action. More particularly, I use Wittgenstein’s examples of craftsmen (...) (tailors and architects) absorbed in action to introduce situated normativity. Situated normativity can be understood as the normative aspect of embodied cognition in unreflective skillful action. I develop Wittgenstein’s insight that a peculiar type of affective behaviour, ‘directed discontent’, is essential for getting things right without reflection. Directed discontent is a reaction of appreciation in action and is introduced as a paradigmatic expression of situated normativity. In the second part I discuss Wittgenstein’s ideas on the normativity of what he calls ‘blind’ rule-following and the ‘bedrock’ of immediate action. What matters for understanding the normativity of (even ‘blind’) rule-following, is not that one has the capacity for linguistic articulation or reflection but that one is reliably participating in a communal custom. In the third part I further investigate the complex relationships between unreflective skillful action, perception, emotion, and normativity. Part of this entails an account of the link between normativity at the level of the expert’s socio-cultural practice and the individual’s situated and lived normativity. (shrink)

The global method safety account of knowledge states that an agent’s true belief that p is safe and qualifies as knowledge if and only if it is formed by method M, such that her beliefs in p and her beliefs in relevantly similar propositions formed by M in all nearby worlds are true. This paper argues that global method safety is too restrictive. First, the agent may not know relevantly similar propositions via M because the belief that p is the (...) only possible outcome of M. Second, there are cases where there is a fine-grained belief that is unsafe and a relevantly similar coarse-grained belief that is safe and where both beliefs are based on the same method M. Third, the reliability of conditional reasoning, a basic belief-forming method, seems to be sensitive to fine-grained contents, as suggested by the wide variation in success rates for thematic versions of the Wason selection task. (shrink)

According to T. M. Scanlon's 'buck-passing' analysis of value, x is good means that x has properties that provide reasons to take up positive attitudes vis-à-vis x. Some authors have claimed that this idea can be traced back to Franz Brentano, who said in 1889 that the judgement that x is good is the judgement that a positive attitude to x is correct ('richtig'). The most discussed problem in the recent literature on buckpassing is known as the 'wrong kind of (...) reason' problem (the WKR problem): it seems quite possible that there is sometimes reason to favour an object although that object is not good and possibly very evil. The problem is to delineate exactly what distinguishes reasons of the right kind from reasons of the wrong kind. In this paper we offer a Brentano-style solution. We also note that one version of the WKR problem was put forward by G. E. Moore in his review of the English translation of Brentano's Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Before getting to how our Brentano-style approach might offer a way out for Brentano and the buck-passers, we briefly consider and reject an interesting attempt to solve the WKR problem recently proposed by John Skorupski. (shrink)

The concept of ecosystem services is a way of visualizing the instrumental value that nature has for human beings. Most ecosystem services can be performed by more than one species. This fact is sometimes used as an argument against the preservation of species. However, even though substitutability does detract from the instrumental value of a species, it also adds option value to it. The option value cannot make a substitutable species as instrumentally valuable as a non-substitutable species, but in many (...) cases, it can add enough value to make the species more valuable than the projects that threaten its existence. (shrink)

Angesichts der ökologischen Krise und der zunehmenden Zivilisationsprobleme ist es notwendig, einen philosophischen Naturbegriff, der das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Natur aufgrund dieser Tatsache neu bestimmt, zu entwickeln. Der Jesuit, Paläontologe und Philosoph Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) ist ein herausragendes Beispiel einer Vermittlung von Naturwissenschaft und Naturphilosophie. Teilhard entwirft eine Zusammenschau von transzendent-metaphysischer Teleologie, die aus dem christlichen Glauben heraus Gott als einzige Zweckursache des Geschehens sieht, philosophischer Anthropologie und naturwissenschaftlich orientierter kausalmechanischer Evolutionstheorie, dem allmählichen Entwickeln eines höheren Zustands (...) aus einem vorhergehenden. Die in der Ursache gegründeten Seinszusammenhänge ergeben einen vom Ziel her bestimmten Zusammenhang. Gott ist Totum alles wirklich Seienden im Horizont des möglichen Seins. Das für Teilhard so wichtige teleologische Prinzip hat seinen philosophiehistorischen Ursprung bei Aristoteles, der damit eine Denktradition begründete, die im Gegensatz zum kausal-mechanischen Weltbild der Naturwissenschaften steht und die sich über Thomas von Aquin und Hegel bis zu Teilhard als vorläufig letztem Höhepunkt erhält. Der aus Teilhards Naturphilosophie folgende Optimismus kann von großer Bedeutung für die Gegenwart sein. Er resultiert aus der Übernahme von Verantwortung für die Schöpfung und ist die ethische Konsequenz aus Naturfinalität und christlichem Universalismus. Der Autor: Erik Lehnert, geb. 1975 in Berlin. Studium der Philosophie, Geschichte sowie Ur- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin, z. Z. Promotion über die Aktualität der Philosophie von Karl Jaspers. 1995 bis 1997 Mitherausgeber von "Aletheia - Neues kritisches Journal der Philosophie, Theologie, Geschichte und Politik", Veröffentlichungen u.a. zur Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other epistemic sources but also (...) functions as a source of justification and knowledge. According to the causal theory of memory argued for in this book, the dependence of memory states on past representations supports counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a given proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it in the present. The book argues for a version of content externalism whereupon the individuation of memory contents depends on relations the subject bears to his past physical or social environment. Moreover, Bernecker shows that memory doesn't require identity, but only similarity, of past and present attitudes and contents. The notion of content similarity is explicated in terms of the entailment relation. (shrink)

PurposeIn this article, we aim to present and defend a contextual approach to mathematical explanation.MethodTo do this, we introduce an epistemic reading of mathematical explanation.ResultsThe epistemic reading not only clarifies the link between mathematical explanation and mathematical understanding, but also allows us to explicate some contextual factors governing explanation. We then show how several accounts of mathematical explanation can be read in this approach.ConclusionThe contextual approach defended here clears up the notion of explanation and pushes us towards a pluralist vision (...) on mathematical explanation. (shrink)

Marxism: Crisis or Renewal? It has become commonplace nowadays to speak of a crisis— and even of the end— of Marxism. This dire forecast can hardly be ...

How might emerging and future technologies—sex robots, love drugs, anti-love drugs, or algorithms to track, quantify, and ‘gamify’ romantic relationships—change how we understand and value love? We canvass some of the main ethical worries posed by such technologies, while also considering whether there are reasons for “cautious optimism” about their implications for our lives. Along the way, we touch on some key ideas from the philosophies of love and technology.

One can (for the most part) formulate a model of a classical system in either the Lagrangian or the Hamiltonian framework. Though it is often thought that those two formulations are equivalent in all important ways, this is not true: the underlying geometrical structures one uses to formulate each theory are not isomorphic. This raises the question of whether one of the two is a more natural framework for the representation of classical systems. In the event, the answer is yes: (...) I state and sketch proofs of two technical results—inspired by simple physical arguments about the generic properties of classical systems—to the effect that, in a precise sense, classical systems evince exactly the geometric structure Lagrangian mechanics provides for the representation of systems, and none provided by Hamiltonian. The argument not only clarifies the conceptual structure of the two systems of mechanics, but also their relations to each other and their respective mechanisms for representing physical systems. It also shows why naïvely structural approaches to the representational content of physical theories cannot work. [Lagrange] grasped that he had gained a method of stating dynamical truths in a way, which is perfectly indifferent to the particular methods of measurement employed in fixing the positions of the various parts of the system. Accordingly, he went on to deduce equations of motion, which are equally applicable whatever quantitative measurements have been made, provided that they are adequate to fix positions. The beauty and almost divine simplicity of these equations is such that these formulae are worthy to rank with those mysterious symbols which in ancient times were held directly to indicate the Supreme Reason at the base of all things. (Whitehead [1948], p. 63)1. Introduction2.Classical Systems3. The Possible Interactions of a Classical System and the Structure of Its Space of States4. Classical Systems Are Lagrangian5. Classical Systems Are Not Hamiltonian6. How Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics Represent Classical Systems7. The Conceptual Structure of Classical Mechanics. (shrink)

Is more information always better? Or are there some situations in which more information can make us worse off? Good (1967) argues that expected utility maximizers should always accept more information if the information is cost-free and relevant. But Good's argument presupposes that you are certain you will update by conditionalization. If we relax this assumption and allow agents to be uncertain about updating, these agents can be rationally required to reject free and relevant information. Since there are good reasons (...) to be uncertain about updating, rationality can require you to prefer ignorance. (shrink)

In Consequentialism Reconsidered, Carlson strives to find a plausible formulation of the structural part of consequentialism. Key notions are analyzed, such as outcomes, alternatives and performability. Carlson argues that consequentialism should be understood as a maximizing rather than a satisficing theory, and as temporally neutral rather than future oriented. He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent in a situation are taken to comprise all actions that they can perform (...) in the situation. The defense of this idea necessitates certain modifications to the standard consequentialist criteria of obligatoriness, rightness and wrongness. The problem of whether agents should adapt their actions to their own future actions is also addressed. Further, a conditional analysis of performability is suggested, and it is argued that particular actions should in this connection be regarded as `abstract' rather than `concrete'. The final chapter sketches a consequentialist theory for collective agents. (shrink)