We have lost one of the giants of the twentieth century physics when Yoichiro Nambu passed away in July, 2015, at the age of 94. Today's Standard Model, though still incomplete in many respects, is the culmination of the most successful theory of the Universe to date, and it is built upon foundations provided by discoveries made by Nambu in the 1960s: the mechanism of spontaneously broken symmetry in Nature (with G Jona-Lasinio) and the hidden new SU(3) symmetry of quarks (...) and gluons (with M-Y Han). In this volume honoring Nambu's memory, World Scientific Publishing presents a unique collection of papers written by his former colleagues, collaborating researchers and former students and associates, not only citing Nambu's great contributions in physics but also many personal and private reminiscences, some never told before. This book is a volume for all who benefited not only from Nambu's contributions toward understanding the Universe but also his warm and kind persona. It is a great addition to the history of contemporary physics. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of the External World, taking its point of departure in Peter Zinkernagel's Conditions for Description. In the first section I try to give an outline of the theses contained in that book. In the second I raise a main objection against it, pointing out that Zinkernagel, in one respect, has not sufficiently sharpened the argumentation between phenomenalism and realism. In the third section I turn realism and phenomenalism sharply against each other, presenting the latter (...) in a radical, yet consistent form; the section is an attempt to show how phenomenalism can be rejected. (shrink)

Religionspsychologie wird in Deutschland zumeist im Bereich der Praktischen Theologie und Religionspädagogik betrieben und stellt kein eigenständiges psychologisches Teilfach dar. Theorien der religiösen Entwicklung sind daher häufig von ihrem theologischen Kontext beeinflusst. Gängige Modelle religiöser Entwicklung nimmt Allolio-Näcke in diesem Band aus psychologischer Perspektive in den Blick und entwirft erstmals seit 30 Jahren eine eigene kulturpsychologische Theorie religiöser Entwicklung. Ein historischer Rahmen, der die Entstehung der Religionspsychologie nachzeichnet und sie im wissenschaftlichen Kanon verortet, rundet den Band ab.

Perfectionism is an underexplored tradition, perhaps because of doubts about the grounds, content, and implications of perfectionist ideals. Aristotle, J.S. Mill, and T.H. Green are normative perfectionists, grounding perfectionist ideals in a normative conception of human nature involving personality or agency. This essay explores the prospects of normative perfectionism by examining Kant’s criticisms of the perfectionist tradition. First, Kant claims that the perfectionist can generate only hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives. But insofar as the normative perfectionist appeals to the normative category (...) of personality or agency, rather than a biological category of humanity, it can represent perfectionist demands as categorical imperatives. Second, Kant accepts a moral asymmetry in which we aim at our own perfection but at the happiness, rather than the perfection, of others. However, the importance of autonomy in normative perfection explains why the perfectionist should recognize a self/other asymmetry. Indeed, when we see how the normative perfectionist can answer Kant’s criticisms while respecting Kant’s own claims about the connection between rational nature and moral requirements, we can see the basis for a normative perfectionist interpretation of Kant’s own ethical theory. Insofar as Kantians and normative perfectionists both base ethical demands on an appeal to rational nature, they face a common worry that the appeal to rational nature is empty or incomplete. Normative perfectionists have more and less concessive responses to this worry, providing perfectionist explanations of various apparently non-perfectionist goods. Even if we end up being pluralists about the good, perfectionist elements play an important role. Finally, because the normative perfectionist, like the Kantian, grounds its ideals and requirements in a conception of persons as rational agents, it provides a promising account of the rational authority of perfectionist demands. This comparison of normative perfectionist and Kantian essentials gives us reason to take the normative perfectionist tradition seriously. (shrink)

The situationist literature in psychology claims that conduct is not determined by character and reflects the operation of the agent's situation or environment. For instance, due to situational factors, compassionate behavior is much less common than we might have expected from people we believe to be compassionate. This article focuses on whether situationism should revise our beliefs about moral responsibility. It assesses the implications of situationism against the backdrop of a conception of responsibility that is grounded in norms about the (...) fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing that require that agents to be normatively competent and possess situational control. Despite the low incidence of compassionate behavior revealed in situationist studies, situationism threatens neither situational control nor normative competence. Nonetheless situationism may force revision of our views about responsibility in particular contexts, such as wartime wrongdoing. Whereas a good case can be made that the heat of battle can create situational pressures that significantly impair normative competence and thus sometimes provide a full or partial excuse, there is reason to be skeptical of attempts to generalize this excuse to other contexts of wartime wrongdoing. If so, moral responsibility can take situationism on board without capsizing the boat. (shrink)

This essay situates some recent empirical research on the origin, nature, role, and reliability of moral intuitions against the background of nineteenth-century debates between ethical naturalism and rational intuitionism. The legitimate heir to Millian naturalism is the contemporary method of reflective equilibrium and its defeasible reliance on moral intuitions. Recent doubts about moral intuitions—worries that they reflect the operation of imperfect cognitive heuristics, are resistant to undermining evidence, are subject to framing effects, and are variable—are best addressed by ethical naturalism (...) as part of a broad dialectical equilibrium. (shrink)

Since his article, ‘Outline for a Decision Procedure in Ethics,’ John Rawls has advocated a coherentist moral epistemology according to which moral and political theories are justified on the basis of their coherence with our other beliefs, both moral and nonmoral. A moral theory which is maximally coherent with our other beliefs is in a state which Rawls calls ‘reflective equilibrium’. In A Theory of Justice Rawls advanced two principles of justice and claimed that they are in reflective equilibrium. He (...) defended this claim by appeal to a hypothetical contract; he argued that parties in a position satisfying certain informational and motivational criteria, which he called ‘the original position,’ would choose the following two principles of justice to govern the basic structure of their society. (shrink)

We study first-order concatenation theory with bounded quantifiers. We give axiomatizations with interesting properties, and we prove some normal-form results. Finally, we prove a number of decidability and undecidability results.

V pričujočem prispevku bom kritično presodil dva splošno sprejeta pristopa k umetnosti in estetiki, ki nakazujeta, da filozofska estetika ni več mogoča. Tako sociologija umetnosti kot tudi številni poststrukturalistični pristopi k umetnosti trdijo, da so pokazali, da sta tradicionalna umetnostna zgodovina in filozofija umetnosti nelegitimni. Sociologija umetnosti in poststrukturalistična teorija sta obe prišli - po povsem različnih poteh -do podobnega sklepa: estetika je v osnovi ideološki diskurz, ki mora biti demaskiran. Poskušal bom pokazati, da Bourdieujev pristop - čeprav razjasni nekatere (...) aspekte umetnostne presoje -resno napačno razlaga naravo sodobne filozofske estetike. Zdi se mi, da so mnogi poststrukturalistični misleci zagrešili isto napako, kot jo je Bourdieu: nagnjeni so k temu, da tradicionalno umetnostno in literarno zgodovino itd. razumejo kot neizpodbitno »logocentrično« in »esencialistično«. To je tako, kot da bi hoteli povedati, da mrrabiti vsaka, svojega imena vredna estetika esencialistična, nezgodovinska in zatorej ideološka. Trdim, daje koncept umetnosti, kot ga mi poznamo in ki seje izoblikoval v sedanjo obliko konec 18. stoletja, zgodovinski koncept. Umetnost, kot jo mi poznamo, ni večna, čeprav presega naše življenje. To pa ne pomeni, da umetniškega vzgiba, kije soroden simbolnemu in kije lahko uresničen na mnogo načinov v različnih zgodovinskih in kulturnih pogojih, ne moremo legitimno obravnavati kot stalno odliko človeške narave. Človek ni samo zoon politikon, temveč tudi zoon symbolikon. Estetika je med drugim racionalni odraz naše potrebe po simbolih ter naše zmožnosti simbolizacije. (shrink)

Kritika okularocentrizma, prevladujoče težnje privilegirati vid na račun drugih čutnih modalnosti v zahodnem mišljenju, je pred nedavnim postala predmet napada poststrukturalističnih in postfenomenoloških mislecev. Kritika okularo-centrizma naj bi okrepila in dopolnila kritiko logo-centrizma in metafizike navzočnosti. Povedano drugače, ta kritika tvori del kritike razsvetljenske racionalnosti. V članku zagovarjam mnenje, da kritika razsvetljenstva pogosto cilja višje kot pa leži njena tarča. Heideggrova kritika »skopične« racionalnosti naše kulture naj bi služila kot radikalna alternativa okularocentričnemu mišljenju. Pokazati skušam, da Heideggrova kritika razsvetljenske racionalnosti (...) in modernosti ni radikalno antiesencialistična in antifundacionalistična, kot trdijo njegovi učenci. Pokazati tudi skušam, da je Heidegger, zaradi svoje problematične politične preteklosti in kritike modernosti, v najboljšem primeru dvomljiv zaveznik v boju proti zatiralski »skopični« racionalnosti. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 131-139.

A model of ZFC is constructed in which the distributivity cardinal h is 2 ℵ 0 = ℵ 2 , and in which there are no ω 2 -towers in [ω] ω . As an immediate corollary, it follows that any base-matrix tree in this model has no cofinal branches. The model is constructed via a form of iterated Mathias forcing, in which a mixture of finite and countable supports is used.

Utilitarianism, as well as many other political and moral doctrines, presupposes that the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons can be solved. Otto Neurath gave a comparatively early (1912) and explicit statement of this problem, and he suggested that it cannot be solved. This may still be the dominant view. It is argued that recent attempts to solve the problem (by e.g. Schick, Rescher, Harsanyi, Brandt, Jeffrey, Arrow, and Hare) are unsatisfactory, but that the oldest suggestion - i.e. the method of (...) minimal units or just-noticeable differences - is acceptable from the point of view of utilitarianism. (shrink)

Moral realism is defined here as the ontological view that there are moral facts. This is compared with traditional views in moral philosophy, such as naturalism, nonnaturalism, and noncognitivism. It is argued that we have no good reasons to avoid inconsistencies among our moral views unless (we believe that) moral realism is true. Various counter-arguments to this claim are criticized. Moreover, it is argued that, since we do not want to give up the practice of moral reasoning, we have a (...) good reason to believe that moral realism is true. (shrink)

Presumably, most scientists believe that scientific knowledge is intrinsically good, i.e. good in itself, apart from consequences. This doctrine should be rejected. The arguments which are usually given for it — e.g. by philosophers like W.D. Ross, R. Brandt, and W. Frankena — are quite inconclusive. In particular, it may be doubted whether knowledge is in fact desired for its own sake, and even i f it is, this would not support the doctrine. However, the doctrine is open to counter-examples. (...) The main counter-argument is that the doctrine has implications which are morally unacceptable. (shrink)

Why did Marx declare the revolution permanent? A careful examination of the celebrated passages from March 1850 in their immediate rhetorical context shows that he intended to affirm the tactical principles laid down earlier in the Communist Manifesto – as opposed to standard ‘anti-stagist’ interpretations that present the Permanenz locution of 1850 as a break with these principles. Among such principles: keeping eyes firmly fixed on the prize – the permanent final goal of a complete overhaul of society – is (...) essential to maintaining a proper perspective on history’s way-stations, that is, the necessary but subordinate revolutionary tasks and allies; and public declaration of the permanent goal is essential for preserving the independence of the workers’ movement and thus for carrying out the proletariat’s world-historical mission of creating a classless society. (shrink)