E. W. Ch. Sartorius , a forgotten lutheran theologian of the 19th century, provides a comprehensive understandig of God as love in the three volumes of his dogmatics . He sees love as the intentional relative property of the surrrender of one self-conscious particular being to another. In applying this concept to the being of God, Sartorius develops the trinity of three divine persons from the statement ‘God is love’. However, this conception seems to fail because this particular concept of (...) love implicitly presupposes a concept of individual self-consciousness. Consequently, God is “loving selfconsciousness” – three times. The main problem consists in the fact, that Sartorius, although he is able to develop the trinity from the concept of love, he is unable to show how the persons are constituted by love. However, the relationship of the notions of ordo amoris and surrender, the concept of faith as trusting in being loved and his concept of a specific relationship of the doctrine of the trinity to soteriology in order to avoid forms of “panentheism” could provide interesting suggestions for the present discussion of the doctrine of God. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...) organization give way to more well-defined and fundamental notions, such as scale and composition. (shrink)

Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are justified (...) in believing that things studied by science are real insofar as we have robust evidence for them. I develop and analyze this idea in detail, and based on concrete examples show that it plays an important role in science. Finally, I demonstrate how robustness can be used to clarify the debate on scientific realism and to formulate new arguments. (shrink)

I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Craver and Bechtel is unsatisfactory since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Craver and Bechtel’s account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well-defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that (...) apparent cases of downward causation can be analyzed away. (shrink)

The relationship between psychological states and the brain remains an unresolved issue in philosophy of psychology. One appealing solution that has been influential both in science and in philosophy is Dennett’s concept of the intentional stance, according to which beliefs and desires are real and objective phenomena, but not necessarily states of the brain. A fundamental shortcoming of this approach is that it does not seem to leave any causal role for beliefs and desires in influencing behavior. In this paper, (...) I show that intentional states ascribed from the intentional stance should be seen as real causes, develop this to an independently plausible ontological position, and present a response to the latest interventionist causal exclusion worries. (shrink)

Levels of organization are structures in nature, usually defined by part-whole relationships, with things at higher levels being composed of things at the next lower level. Typical levels of organization that one finds in the literature include the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organismal, group, population, community, ecosystem, landscape, and biosphere levels. References to levels of organization and related hierarchical depictions of nature are prominent in the life sciences and their philosophical study, and appear not only in introductory textbooks and (...) lectures, but also in cutting-edge research articles and reviews. In philosophy, perennial debates such as reduction, emergence, mechanistic explanation, interdisciplinary relations, natural selection, and many other topics, also rely substantially on the notion. -/- Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the notion, levels of organization have received little explicit attention in biology or its philosophy. Usually they appear in the background as an implicit conceptual framework that is associated with vague intuitions. Attempts at providing general and broadly applicable definitions of levels of organization have not met wide acceptance. In recent years, several authors have put forward localized and minimalistic accounts of levels, and others have raised doubts about the usefulness of the notion as a whole. -/- There are many kinds of ‘levels’ that one may find in philosophy, science, and everyday life—the term is notoriously ambiguous. Besides levels of organization, there are levels of abstraction, realization, being, analysis, processing, theory, science, complexity, and many others. In this article, the focus will be on levels of organization and debates associated with them, and other kinds of levels will only be discussed when they are relevant to this main topic. (shrink)

The notion of reduction continues to play a key role in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Supporters of reductionism claim that psychological properties or explanations reduce to neural properties or explanations, while antireductionists claim that such reductions are not possible. In this book, I apply recent developments in philosophy of science, particularly the mechanistic explanation paradigm and the interventionist theory of causation, to reassess the traditional approaches to reduction in philosophy of mind. I then elaborate and defend (...) a pluralistic framework for philosophy of mind, and show how reductionist ideas can be incorporated into it. This leads to a novel synthesis of pluralism and reductionism that I call pluralistic physicalism. (shrink)

The levels of selection debate is generally taken to be a debate about how natural selection can occur at the various levels of biological organization. In this paper, we argue that questions about levels of selection should be analyzed separately from questions about levels of organization. In the deflationary proposal we defend, all that is necessary for multilevel selection is that there are cases in which particles are nested in collectives, and that both the collectives and the particles that compose (...) them each separately undergo natural selection. We argue that adopting this deflationary account helps to disentangle the levels of selection and the levels of organization, and thereby contributes to advancing the levels of selection debate. (shrink)

How can we ever find out whether our psychological processes are reliable? According to many reliabilists—e.g. Alston, Goldman, Papineau, and Van Cleve —there is no problem: We just use our psychological processes and then arrive at the belief that these very same processes are reliable. If our psychological processes are actually reliable, we can arrive in this way at a justified belief. And, indeed, we can even come to know that they are reliable.

ZusammenfassungIm Kommentar zum Text von Tatiana Tarkian werden zwei Argumente der Verfasserin einer kritischen Prüfung unterzogen: Zum einen das Argument, dass parentale Tugenden einer Auswahl künftiger Kinder nicht entgegenstehen würde; zum anderen das Argument, dass eine negative Selektion aufgrund von Behinderung keinen diskriminierenden Charakter gegenüber Behinderten habe, wenn die negative Selektion ledgilich aufgrund verbreiteter diskriminierender Urteile in der Gesellschaft erfolge.

The conditional analysis of dispositions is widely rejected, mainly due to counterexamples in which dispositions are either “finkish” or “masked.” David Lewis proposed a reformed conditional analysis. This view avoids the problem of finkish dispositions, but it fails to solve the problem of masking. I will propose a reformulation of Lewis’ analysis, and I will argue that this reformulation can easily be modified so that it avoids the problem of masking. In the final section, I will address the challenge that (...) some dispositions appear to lack any stimulus condition, and I will briefly turn to the issue of reductionism. (shrink)

The paper defends Cartesian skepticism by an argument relying on internalism and infallibilism. It argues that this sort of skepticism gives the best explanation of our intuitions and ordinary epistemic practices.

Exactitude. The Genesis of an Epistemic Virtue in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’. The article examines the genesis of exactitude as an epistemic virtue in both scholarly and scientific contexts in the 19th century, mainly in Prussia. Starting with an influential historiographic work on ancient metrology three semantic fields of accuracy, exactitude and precision are differentiated and pursued in their etymologies as well as applications. The historic situation between 1790 and 1860 is identified as the crucial period when the exactness of (...) the exact sciences as well as the notion of accuracy in the humanities start to diverge from one another in order to develop an epistemic virtue each on its own. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to conceptualize and evaluate the transhumanist movement by applying a Nietzschean critique to its techno-progressive agenda of human enhancement. The investigation itself is divided into three distinctive, yet methodologically intertwined steps: first, I will present an exegetical approach by circumscribing the discussion concerning the alleged similarities and disparities between the transhumanist notion of transforming the human into a posthuman being and Nietzsche’s concept of education, understood as self-overcoming; secondly, in a more practical and future-oriented (...) manner, I will consider some of the major aporias for conceptualizing a ‘Nietzschean transhumanism’ by confronting the techno-progressive idea of morphological freedom with Nietzsche’s critical approach to the commerce- and consumer-oriented mentality of the non-creative modern individual; finally, I will employ Nietzsche’s complex treatment of nihilism in order to formulate a critical evaluation of transhumanism’s cultural implications. My fundamental conclusion will be that the techno-progressive agenda does not strive to overcome human limitations by coping with the tragic nature of life in a Nietzschean sense, but merely promotes the nihilistic dream of Zarathustra’s ‘last human’ to establish a common happiness by eradicating the Dionysian reality of all existence. (shrink)

Reliabilists have often noticed a kind of circularity in their reasoning, but they have insisted that the circularity in question is not vicious. On the contrary, they think typically that reliabilism resolves even the traditional problems of circularity. It is argued in the paper that there is a real problem of circularity that relates to the method by which we are supposed arrive at our epistemology. Different methods are considered, including methodism and particularism that Roderick Chisholm distinguishes as possible responses (...) to the problem of the criterion and the method of reflective equilibrium due to Nelson Goodman and John Rawls. It is argued that only the method of wide reflective equilibrium (WRE) doesn't cause serious problems for reliabilism. Then it is argued that the method of WRE can actually be seen as the method of epistemology of which the approaches discussed earlier are just different versions. Finally, it is pointed out that the source of the troubles with circularity lies actually in certain non-epistemic background assumptions, that are therefore discarded. This brings reliabilism closer to the commonsense tradition and its characteristic anti-skepticism. (shrink)

Recently, several philosophers have defended an explanatory argument that supposedly provides novel empirical grounds for accepting the type identity theory of phenomenal consciousness. They claim that we are justified in believing that the type identity thesis is true because it provides the best explanation for the correlations between physical properties and phenomenal properties. In this paper, I examine the actual role identities play in science and point out crucial shortcomings in the explanatory argument. I show that the supporters of the (...) argument have failed to show that the identity thesis provides a satisfactory explanation for the correlations between physical and phenomenal properties. Hence, the explanatory argument, as it stands, does not provide new grounds for accepting the type identity theory. (shrink)

Das allgemeine Thema des Artikels besteht darin, zwei Diskussionskreise miteinander zu verbinden, die in Isolation betrachtet gut erforscht sind, aber selten zusammengebracht werden: die Diskussion um das sogenannte Human Enhancement und die Debatte um das sinnvolle Leben. Hierbei wird insbesondere die Behauptung ins Blickfeld gerückt, dass Techniken des Human Enhancement einen negativen Einfluss auf den Sinn haben könnten. Ist diese These plausibel? In diesem Artikel wird die These verteidigt, dass diese Frage verneint werden muss. Methodisch werden hierfür drei Varianten untersucht, (...) in denen die Behauptung des negativen Einflusses vorgetragen werden können. Dabei wird aufgezeigt, dass entweder die Annahme eines negativen Einflusses aus empirischen Gründen wenig wahrscheinlich ist oder dass sie durch Modifikationen der Enhancement Techniken abgeschwächt werden können. (shrink)

The world around 1900 -- The unity of diversity : Wilhelm Ostwald's world formations -- World history of technology : Dr. Franz Maria Feldhaus -- Systems economy : Walther Rathenau, man of the world -- As for the rest : in search of the world's remains.

William Alston argues that there is no way to show that any of our basic sources of belief is reliable without falling into epistemic circularity, i.e. relying at some point on premises that are themselves derived from the very same source. His appeal to practical rationality is an attempt to evaluate our sources of belief without relying on beliefs that are based on the sources under scrutiny and thus without just presupposing their reliability. I argue that this attempt fails and (...) that Ernest Sosa’s appeal to the coherence theory of justification fails, too, if it is understood as an attempt to find a similar external evaluation of our sources of belief that does not just assume their reliability. I concluded that there is no alternative to taking an internal view to our own reliability and embracing epistemic circularity. (shrink)

Review of: Sudhir Anand, Paul Segal and Joseph E. Stiglitz : Debates on the Measurement of Global Poverty.

An important and long over-due study of the significance of Hegel's dialectic.

New developments in modern medicine and biotechnology put long time certitudes about the meaning of ähealth and äillness more and more into question. Also, these concepts increasingly assume the role of normative concepts, which separate legitimate from illegitimate actions in many contexts of medical ethics, as in the case of äenhancement. This volume brings together the theoretical controversy on the concepts of ähealth and äillness and ethical reflections on the normative consequences of our understandig of these crucial concepts.

BackgroundApproximately 7% of the general population is affected by an orphan disease, which, in the United States, is defined as affecting fewer than 1 in 1500 people. Disease awareness is often low and time-to-diagnosis delayed. Different legislations worldwide have created incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for orphan diseases. A journalistic article in Bloomberg Businessweek has claimed that pharmaceutical companies have tried marketing orphan drugs by placing a specific disease into the popular television series “House, M.D.” which features diagnostic (...) journeys and was produced between 2004 and 2012. This study aimed to describe the presentation of orphan diseases in the television series “House, M.D.”, to test in an exploratory fashion the hypothesis that treatable orphan conditions are overrepresented in “House, M.D.” and to discuss whether such marketing practices may or may not be ethical.MethodsA list of all medical cases depicted in the television series “House, M.D.” was obtained and classified as orphan or non-orphan according to the Orphanet database. The ratios of orphan diseases among all diseases, such with an orphan drug designation and such with an orphan drug approval by the FDA were then compared with conservative approximations of real world conditions (chi-squared tests for equality of proportions). STROBE criteria were respected.ResultsOut of a total of n = 181 different medical diagnoses, n = 42 (23.2%) were orphan diseases. The difference in percentages in between “House, M.D.” and reality was not statistically significant for orphan diseases overall (p = 0.96), yet was statistically significantly higher for both orphan diseases with one or more orphan drug designations (p = 0.0192) and such with one or more approved orphan drugs (p < 0.0001).ConclusionsOrphan diseases with a designated and/or approved orphan drug were overrepresented in the television series “House, M.D.” with statistical significance while orphan diseases overall were not. This may be explained by (so far) undocumented efforts of pharmaceutical companies to place their orphan drugs in the television series, as described in the article in Bloomberg Businessweek. Further research is needed into marketing practices in popular and emerging media formats. (shrink)