Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through information or experience; induction and belief change are one and same topic, after all. The most basic of these rules is simply to conditionalize with respect to the information received; and there are similar and more general rules. 1 Hence, a fundamental reason for the epistemological success of (...) probability theory is that there at all exists a well-behaved concept of conditional probability. Still, people have, and have reasons for, various concerns over probability theory. One of these is my starting point: Intuitively, we have the notion of plain belief; we believe propositions2 to be true (or to be false or neither). Probability theory, however, offers no formal counterpart to this notion. Believing A is not the same as having probability 1 for A, because probability 1 is incorrigible3; but plain belief is clearly corrigible. And believing A is not the same as giving A a probability larger than some 1 - c, because believing A and believing B is usually taken to be equivalent to believing A & B.4 Thus, it seems that the formal representation of plain belief has to take a non-probabilistic route. Indeed, representing plain belief seems easy enough: simply represent an epistemic state by the set of all propositions believed true in it or, since I make the common assumption that plain belief is deductively closed, by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it. But this does not yet provide a theory of induction, i.e. an answer to the question how epistemic states so represented are changed tbrough information or experience. There is a convincing partial answer: if the new information is compatible with the old epistemic state, then the new epistemic state is simply represented by the conjunction of the new information and the old beliefs. This answer is partial because it does not cover the quite common case where the new information is incompatible with the old beliefs. It is, however, important to complete the answer and to cover this case, too; otherwise, we would not represent plain belief as conigible. The crucial problem is that there is no good completion. When epistemic states are represented simply by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it, the answer cannot be completed; and though there is a lot of fruitful work, no other representation of epistemic states has been proposed, as far as I know, which provides a complete solution to this problem. In this paper, I want to suggest such a solution. In [4], I have more fully argued that this is the only solution, if certain plausible desiderata are to be satisfied. Here, in section 2, I will be content with formally defining and intuitively explaining my proposal. I will compare my proposal with probability theory in section 3. It will turn out that the theory I am proposing is structurally homomorphic to probability theory in important respects and that it is thus equally easily implementable, but moreover computationally simpler. Section 4 contains a very brief comparison with various kinds of logics, in particular conditional logic, with Shackle's functions of potential surprise and related theories, and with the Dempster - Shafer theory of belief functions. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Mystik gilt im interreligiösen Dialog als diejenige Dimension von Religion, die gemäß dem Essentialismus den gemeinsamen Kern der Religionen darstellt. In Unterschied dazu vertritt der Kontextualismus die These, dass Mystik nur in spezifischen religiösen Kontexten entsteht und so seine unverwechselbare Eigenheit erhält. Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh vergleicht in seiner Arbeit Meister Eckhart und Rumi methodisch so miteinander, dass er die jeweiligen Stärken des Essentialismus und des Kontextualismus nutzt und ihre Schwächen vermeidet. Auf der Grundlage dieses methodischen Neuansatzes und eines weitgefassten Mystikbegriffs, (...) der Ethik, Praxis, Spekulation und Dogmatik umfasst, kommt er zu neuen Differenzierungen im religionsphänomenologischen Vergleich und legt zugleich erhebliche Differenzen im theologischen Deutehorizont der jeweiligen Mystiker offen. Darüberhinaus arbeitet er mit seiner Interpretation der. (shrink)

The intervention of the divine in human history, more precisely the transition from fiction to incarnation that is peculiar to the origins of Christianity, marks a turning-point in our understanding of the genealogical principle. With a Son of Man who is also Son of God and his Mother's Father, there is no paternity and, more generally, no genealogy that is not reversible. To this questioning of elementary kinship structures we should add the contesting of the hitherto accepted distribution of genders (...) and sexes. The superimposition of the Holy Family and the Trinity created an uncertain sex whose effect is to uncouple sex from its functions, in particular procreation. Hence a circulation and instability of sex. It is from this viewpoint that we should see the notion of an androgynous Christ and the Church Fathers' thinking on the resurrected body. (shrink)

In addition to discussing some philosophical accounts of common sense, this article considers several ways in which common sense can be altered or disturbed in psychopathology. Common sense can be defined as practical understanding, capacity to see and take things in their right light, sound judgment, or ordinary mental capacity. The philosopher Vico described it as the ability to distinguish the probable from the improbable. Goethe understood common sense as an "organ" that is formed in communication for the purpose of (...) communication. Common sense is rooted in the intersubjective constitution of the life-world. Obsessive-compulsive patients show relatively mild disturbances of common sense. Patients with major affective psychoses, in their premorbid personality structure, are overly attached to common sense. In schizophrenia, however, there seems to be a true abdication of common sense involving a loss of "natural self-evidence." Even in premorbid states, such persons often lose both the sense of tact and the ability to "take things in their right light." Although logic, and the ability to engage in theoretical discussion, may be preserved, there is a loss of interpretive skills and the "faculty of judgment"; this results in an inability to cope with everyday practical and social activity. There is also a characteristic sense of perplexity, a sense of amazement before that which would normally seem self-evident and a frequent tendency to reflect upon the conditions of possibility of existence that otherwise remain concealed. The author suggests that the fragility of common sense should not be seen as a mere deficiency state. Rather, it derives from a basic vulnerability inherent in the very structure of being human. (Abstract written by special issue editor: L.A.S.). (shrink)

The paper takes an expressivistic perspective, i.e., it takes conditionals of all sorts to primarily express conditional beliefs. Therefore it is based on what it takes to be the best account of conditional belief, namely ranking theory. It proposes not to start looking at the bewildering linguistic phenomenology, but first to systematically study the various options of expressing features of conditional belief. Those options by far transcend the Ramsey test and include relevancies of various kinds and in particular the so-called (...) “circumstances are such that” reading, under which also all conditionals representing causal relations can be subsumed. In this way a unifying perspective on the many kinds of conditionals is offered. The final section explains the considerable extent to which truth conditions for conditionals, which may seem lost in the expressivistic or epistemic perspective, may be recovered. (shrink)

The paper builds on the basically Humean idea that A is a cause of B iff A and B both occur, A precedes B, and A raises the metaphysical or epistemic status of B given the obtaining circumstances. It argues that in pursuit of a theory of deterministic causation this ‘status raising’ is best explicated not in regularity or counterfactual terms, but in terms of ranking functions. On this basis, it constructs a rigorous theory of deterministic causation that successfully deals (...) with cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. It finally indicates how the account's profound epistemic relativization induced by ranking theory can be undone. Introduction Variables, propositions, time Induction first Causation Redundant causation Objectivization. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the nature of the “I” (or “self”) and whether it is presupposed by the very existence of conscious experiences (as that which “has” them) or whether it is, instead, in some way constituted by them. I argue for the former view and try to show that the very nature of experience implies a non-constituted synchronic and diachronic transcendence of the experiencing “I” with regard to its experiences, an “I” which defies any objective characterization. Finally I (...) suggest that the self, though irreducible to inter-experiential relations, is not a “separately existing entity”, but should be conceived of as a dimension , namely the dimension of first-personal manifestation of the experiences. (shrink)

In this paper two theories of defeasible reasoning, Pollock's account and my theory of ranking functions, are compared, on a strategic level, since a strictly formal comparison would have been unfeasible. A brief summary of the accounts shows their basic difference: Pollock's is a strictly computational one, whereas ranking functions provide a regulative theory. Consequently, I argue that Pollock's theory is normatively defective, unable to provide a theoretical justification for its basic inference rules and thus an independent notion of admissible (...) rules. Conversely, I explain how quite a number of achievements of Pollock's account can be adequately duplicated within ranking theory. The main purpose of the paper, though, is not to settle a dispute with formal epistemology, but rather to emphasize the importance of formal methods to the whole of epistemology. (shrink)

The paper is based on ranking theory, a theory of degrees of disbelief (and hence belief). On this basis, it explains enumerative induction, the confirmation of a law by its positive instances, which may indeed take various schemes. It gives a ranking theoretic explication of a possible law or a nomological hypothesis. It proves, then, that such schemes of enumerative induction uniquely correspond to mixtures of such nomological hypotheses. Thus, it shows that de Finetti's probabilistic representation theorems may be transformed (...) into an account of confirmation of possible laws and that enumerative induction is equivalent to such an account. The paper concludes with some remarks about the apriority of lawfulness or the uniformity of nature. (shrink)

SummaryA simple and precise definition is offered of “term t of theory T being T‐theoretical” which can be applied to any formalized theory. The definition is in line with and emends traditional accounts of theoreticity. Its adequacy is demonstrated by application to three examples: exchange economics, classical mechanics and collision mechanics.

Hermann Grassmann is known to be the founder of modern vector and tensor calculus. Having as a theologian no formal education in mathematics at a university he got his basic ideas for this mathematical innovation at least to some extent from listening to Schleiermacher’s lectures on Dialectics and, together with his brother Robert, reading its publication in 1839. The paper shows how the idea of unity and various levels of reality first formulated in Schleiermacher’s talks about religion in 1799 were (...) transformed by him into a philosophical system in his dialectics and then were picked up by Grassmann and operationalized in his philosophical-mathematical treatise on the extension theory in 1844. (shrink)

How should rational beliefs change over time? The standard Bayesian answer is: by conditionalization (a.k.a. Bayes’ Rule). But conditionalization is not an adequate rule for updating beliefs in “centred” propositions whose truth-value may itself change over time. In response, some have suggested that the objects of belief must be uncentred; others have suggested that beliefs in centred propositions are not subject to diachronic norms. Iargue that these views do not offer a satisfactory account of self-locating beliefs and their dynamics. A (...) third response is to replace conditionalization by a new norm that can deal with centred propositions. I critically survey anumber of new norms that have been proposed, and defend one particular approach. (shrink)

The paper focuses on interpreting ceteris paribus conditions as normal conditions. After discussing six basic problems for the explication of normal conditions and seven interpretations that do not well solve those problems I turn to what I call the epistemic account. According to it the normal is, roughly, the not unexpected. This is developed into a rigorous constructive account of normal conditions, which makes essential use of ranking theory and in particular allows to explain the phenomenon of multiply exceptional conditions. (...) Finally, this static account is extended to a schematic dynamic model of how we may learn about those normal and exceptional conditions. (shrink)

It is shown that the class of reduced matrices of a logic is a 1 st order -class provided the variety associated with has the finite replacement property in the sense of [7]. This applies in particular to all 2-valued logics. For 3-valued logics the class of reduced matrices need not be 1 st order.