The eminent 20th-century Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981) is the author of a novatory philosophy of combating global suffering. Kotarbiński’s theory states that although humans are by nature rational, and additionally endowed with goodwill, human life nonetheless offers an endless stream of pain and suffering. Some of this suffering results from the essence of the human condition and can not be helped, mostly, however, it is the effect of the meanderings of the human mind and can be eliminated by education. (...) More than by anything else, the human mind is brought to err by so-called phantasmats, or emotion-laden intellectual mirages, mainly of a religious, national and political nature. Such phantasmats are the source and fundament of humanity’s divisions into hostile cultures, nations and political systems, which in turn gives rise to conflict between civilizations, countries and ideologies, inadvertently accompaniedby mounting mistrust, suspiciousness, xenophobia, hatred, armaments—and ultimately war. All this means an ocean of suffering for countless individuals. Both in philosophy and praxis Kotarbiński strove to eliminate all sources of suffering, including that stemming from differences in culture, development, nationality, and politics. He believed in the motivating powers of reason and the creative powers of persuasion, and consequently sought to attain his goal by rationalization, or focusing solely on the logic-driven and common experiencing of the human fate in a bid to eradicate cultural, national and political difference. Thus united, humanity would melt into one big human state devoted to lingering inevitable suffering. Today similar views are promoted as “global humanism”—which makes Kotarbiński a pioneer of the Humanistic Manifesto 2000. An Appeal for New Global Humanism brochure. (shrink)

Henryk Elzenberg is one of the most prominent Polish philosophers of this century. His main publications are: the brilliant Foundations of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of 1917; a philosophical diary published in 1963 as Trouble with Being; and a collection of papers Man and Value. Elzenberg’s principal field of inquiry was axiology, in which he put forward a deep and original conception of his own. That, however, remains still mostly in the form of manuscripts and lecture notes, of which we publish two (...) pieces above: a critique of the utilitarian concept of value, and an analysis of Meinong’s position on the same topic. (shrink)

Das Buch weist die Fruchtbarkeit einer strukturgenetisch fundierten Rekonstruktionsperspektive für die Analyse der historisch und kulturell differenten Weltbilder nach. Anhand der für die Geschichte der Denksysteme zentralen Vorstellungen über die Natur-Kultur-Differenz und die physikalische Kausalität werden Reichweite und Grenzen der These einer universalen Entwicklungslogik kritische geprüft. Die historischen Studien bieten dabei einen neuartigen Blick auf die Aristotelische Physik und ihre mittelalterlichen Fortentwicklungen. Schließlich werden die materialen Ergebnisse in Richtung einer differenztheoretisch orientierten Theorie der Entstehung des Neuen in der Entwicklung ausgedeutet.

Die politische Ideengeschichte kennt nicht viele Autoren, die derart umstritten sind, wie der Abbé Sieyés: Für manche Interpreten ist er Wegbereiter des Jakobiner-Terrors, für andere dagegen der Vater des parlamentarischen Regierungssystems unserer Zeit. Der vorliegende Band unterzieht diese und ähnliche Klischees einer kritischen Prüfung.

This paper defends three theses: that presentism is either trivial or untenable; that the debate between tensed and tenseless theories of time is not about the status of presentism; and that there is no temporal analogue of the modal thesis of actualism.

The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches (...) the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research. (shrink)

Much recent work on natural information has focused on probabilistic theories, which construe natural information as a matter of probabilistic relations between events or states. This paper assesses three variants of probabilistic theories (due to Millikan, Shea, and Scarantino and Piccinini). I distinguish between probabilistic theories as (1) attempts to reveal why probabilistic relations are important for human and non-human animals and as (2) explications of the information concept(s) employed in the sciences. I argue that the strength of probabilistic theories (...) lies in the first project. Probability-raising can enable organisms to draw specific inferences they otherwise could not entertain and I show how exactly they help to explain the behaviour of organisms. In addition, probability-raising warrants inferences by providing incremental inductive support. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to establish a general perspective on approaching the philosophy of philology historically. Part I examines the problem of relating history to philosophy of philology, with a view to stressing the importance of historical intuitions about the discipline. It is asserted that such intuitions do not exist for the whole range of philological activities but only for a certain kind. Part II gives a brief survey on the beginnings of philology in the Hellenistic Age in order (...) to make plausible a distinction between two types of philological research: working within a ‘grammatical’ framework on the one hand, and working within a ‘critical’ framework on the other. Part III includes a list of some strong historical intuitions about progressive developments in philology of the ‘grammatical’ kind, that could function as touchstones for appraising philosophical models. In the sequel, attention is drawn to the most important types of viewing progress in science. None of them is regarded as the philosophy of philology in question, but they all appear more in tune with our historical intuitions than the prevailing relativism. (shrink)

By assembling authors with a wide range of different disciplinary backgrounds, from philosophy, literature, political science, sociology to medical anthropology ...

Als eine wesentliche Schwäche des strukturalistischen Theorienkonzepts musste die Vagheit erscheinen, mit der die Unterscheidung zwischen bezüglich einer Theorie theoretischen und nichttheoretischen Funktionen bisher belastet war. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird ein formal präzises, pragmatisch nichtrelativiertes Kriterium für T-Theoretizität vorgestellt. Erste Schritte zur Klärung seiner Bedeutung für die holistische Sichtweise erfahrungswissenschaftlicher Theorien werden unternommen.

In the following article, we propose an analytical framework for the analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Standards based on the paradigmatic nexus of voice and entitlement. We follow the theory of decentration and present the concept of Transnational Norm-Building Networks (TNNs), which — as we argue — comprise a new nexus of voice and entitlement beyond the nation—state level. Furthermore, we apply the analytical framework to the ISO 26000 initiative and the Global Compact. We conclude the article with remarks (...) on the legitimacy and the effectiveness of norms generated by TNNs. Through this, we aim to contribute a new theoretical foundation to the analysis of CSR standards, which enables us to undertake a more differentiated description of TNN structures which have hitherto been ignored in academic literature. Secondly, we will contribute to the practical debate on ISO 26000 and the Global Compact by proposing new perspectives on the conditions of their legitimacy and effectiveness based on the voice-entitlement nexus. (shrink)

In [15], [16] G. Kreisel introduced the no-counterexample interpretation (n.c.i.) of Peano arithmetic. In particular he proved, using a complicated ε-substitution method (due to W. Ackermann), that for every theorem A (A prenex) of first-order Peano arithmetic PA one can find ordinal recursive functionals Φ A of order type 0 which realize the Herbrand normal form A H of A. Subsequently more perspicuous proofs of this fact via functional interpretation (combined with normalization) and cut-elimination were found. These proofs however do (...) not carry out the no-counterexample interpretation as a local proof interpretation and don't respect the modus ponens on the level of the no-counterexample interpretation of formulas A and A → B. Closely related to this phenomenon is the fact that both proofs do not establish the condition (δ) and--at least not constructively-- (γ) which are part of the definition of an 'interpretation of a formal system' as formulated in [15]. In this paper we determine the complexity of the no-counterexample interpretation of the modus ponens rule for (i) PA-provable sentences, (ii) for arbitrary sentences A, B ∈ L(PA) uniformly in functionals satisfying the no-counterexample interpretation of (prenex normal forms of) A and A → B, and (iii) for arbitrary A, B ∈ L(PA) pointwise in given α( 0 ) -recursive functionals satisfying the no-counterexample interpretation of A and A → B. This yields in particular perspicuous proofs of new uniform versions of the conditions (γ), (δ). Finally we discuss a variant of the concept of an interpretation presented in [17] and show that it is incomparable with the concept studied in [15], [16]. In particular we show that the no-counterexample interpretation of PA n by α( n (ω))-recursive functionals (n ≥ 1) is an interpretation in the sense of [17] but not in the sense of [15] since it violates the condition (δ). (shrink)

Fara and Williamson (Mind, 2005) argue that counterpart theory is unable to account for modal claims that use an actuality operator. This paper argues otherwise. Rather than provide a different counterpart translation of the actuality operator itself, the solution presented here starts out with a quantified modal logic in which the actuality operator is redundant, and then translates the sentences of this logic into claims of counterpart theory.

In [15], [16] G. Kreisel introduced the no-counterexample interpretation (n.c.i.) of Peano arithmetic. In particular he proved, using a complicated ε-substitution method (due to W. Ackermann), that for every theoremA(Aprenex) of first-order Peano arithmeticPAone can find ordinal recursive functionalsof order type < ε0which realize the Herbrand normal formAHofA.Subsequently more perspicuous proofs of this fact via functional interpretation (combined with normalization) and cut-elimination were found. These proofs however do not carry out the no-counterexample interpretation as alocalproof interpretation and don't respect the (...) modus ponens on the level of the nocounterexample interpretation of formulasAandA → B. Closely related to this phenomenon is the fact that both proofs do not establish the condition (δ) and—at least not constructively—(γ) which are part of the definition of an ‘interpretation of a formal system’ as formulated in [15]. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...