According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings suggesting that intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy that largely tell against this assumption. To advance the debate, we present the most comprehensive experimental study of intuitive expertise in ethics to date, which tests five well- known biases of (...) judgment and decision-making among expert ethicists and laypeople. We found that even expert ethicists are affected by some of these biases, but also that they enjoy a slight advantage over laypeople in some cases. We discuss the implications of these results for the expertise defence, and conclude that they still do not support the defence as it is typically presented in (moral) philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to offer a reconstruction of a challenge to intuition-based armchair philosophy that has been put forward by experimental philosophers of a restrictionist stripe, which I will call the 'master argument'. I will then discuss a number of popular objections to this argument and explain why they either fail to cast doubt on its first, empirical premise or do not go deep enough to make for a lasting rebuttal. Next, I will consider two more promising (...) objections, the grounding objection and the expertise objection, which aim at the second, epistemic premise of the argument. Against this background, I will then suggest what I call 'conservative restrictionism' as the most reasonable default reaction to the experimentalist challenge, which is a combination of the two views of local restrictionism and methodological conservativism. (shrink)

Experimental restrictionists have challenged philosophers’ reliance on intuitions about thought experiment cases based on experimental findings. According to the expertise defense, only the intuitions of philosophical experts count—yet the bulk of experimental philosophy consists in studies with lay people. In this paper, we argue that direct strategies for assessing the expertise defense are preferable to indirect strategies. A direct argument in support of the expertise defense would have to show: first, that there is a significant difference between expert and lay (...) intuitions; second, that expert intuitions are superior to lay intuitions; and third, that expert intuitions accord with the relevant philosophical consensus. At present, there is only little experimental evidence that bears on these issues. To advance the debate, we conducted two new experiments on intuitions about knowledge with experts and lay people. Our results suggest that the intuitions of epistemological experts are superior in some respects, but they also pose an unexpected challenge to the expertise defense. Most strikingly, we found that even epistemological experts tend to ascribe knowledge in fake-barn-style cases. This suggests that philosophy, as a discipline, might fail to adequately map the intuitions of its expert practitioners onto a disciplinary consensus. (shrink)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear. According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional (...) that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions. I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis. According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear. (shrink)

In recent work, E. J. Lowe presents an essence-based account of our knowledge of metaphysical modality that he claims to be superior to its main competitors. I argue that knowledge of essences alone, without knowledge of a suitable bridge principle, is insufficient for knowing that something is metaphysically necessary or metaphysically possible. Yet given Lowe's other theoretical commitments, he cannot account for our knowledge of the needed bridge principle, and so his essence-based modal epistemology remains incomplete. In addition to that, (...) Lowe's account implies a psychologically unrealistic reconstruction of how we ordinarily acquire knowledge of metaphysical modalities. The discussion of Lowe's suggestive essence-based account is also intended as a case study that illustrates a more general problem in the epistemology of modality: the great difficulty of explaining our modal knowledge in terms of a single overtly nonmodal kind of knowledge. The failure of Lowe's account suggests that such a sweeping reductive explanation of our modal knowledge might simply not be available. This should be good news for those philosophers who champion less reductive or more pluralistic accounts of our modal knowledge. (shrink)

Descriptions of Gettier cases can be interpreted in ways that are incompatible with the standard judgment that they are cases of justified true belief without knowledge. Timothy Williamson claims that this problem cannot be avoided by adding further stipulations to the case descriptions. To the contrary, we argue that there is a fairly simple way to amend the Ford case, a standard description of a Gettier case, in such a manner that all deviant interpretations are ruled out. This removes one (...) major objection to interpreting our judgments about Gettier cases as strict conditionals. (shrink)

The traditional epistemological approach towards judgments like BACHELORS ARE UNMARRIED or ALL KNOWLEDGE IS TRUE is that they are justified or known on the basis of understanding alone. In this paper, I develop an understanding-based account which takes understanding to be a sufficient source of epistemic justification for the relevant judgments. Understanding-based accounts face the problem of the rational revisability of almost all human judgments. Williamson has recently developed a reinforced version of this problem: the challenge from expert revisability. This (...) is the problem that even the best candidate judgments for understanding-based justification can be rationally rejected by the relevant experts, who may not even have any disposition or inclination to accept these judgments. However, I argue that expert revisability is fully compatible with the proposed understanding-based epistemology, because expert revisability is true of sufficient sources of epistemic justification in general. A remaining metaphysical worry is that understanding might end up being ‘too thin’ to play the envisaged epistemological role. This worry can be countered with a novel metaphysics of understanding involving second-order dispositions. (shrink)

Erratum to: Philos Stud DOI 10.1007/s11098-013-0226-3Dear Reader, due to production systems the following changes could not be made to this article:In the paragraph immediately preceding the case description (ford-iii), the sentenceHere we explicitly state that Smith’s inference is based only on his belief that Jones owns a Ford, and that this logical inference provides Smith’s only justification for believing that someone in his office owns a Ford (to make things fully precise, we also add a time index).should be replaced withHere (...) we explicitly state that Smith’s inference is based only on his belief that Jones owns a Ford (plus the justified background belief that Jones is in his office), and that this logical inference provides Smith’s only justification for believing that someone in his office owns a Ford (to make things fully precise, we also add a time index).The added part is highlighted in boldface.And within the case description (ford-iii), the sentenceFrom this belief alone. (shrink)

We investigate the impact of informal arguments on judgments about thought experiment cases in light of Deutsch and Cappelen’s mischaracterization view, which claims that philosophers’ case judgments are primarily based on arguments and not intuitions. If arguments had no influence on case judgments, this would seriously challenge whether they are, or should be, based on arguments at all—and not on other cognitive sources instead, such as intuition. In Experiment 1, we replicated Wysocki’s (Rev Philos Psychol 8(2):477–499, 2017) pioneering study on (...) a Gettier-style case, and we confirmed that the informal arguments used by him had no significant effect. However, we also included an improved argument for ascribing knowledge, which did have a significant effect even in Wysocki’s original design. We therefore followed up with Experiment 2 on three Gettier-style cases, where we used a more natural dialogical format for presenting both case descriptions and informal arguments. Overall, we found a clear impact of prima facie good pro and con arguments on case judgments. The issue of argument impact is thus no obstacle to arguing about thought experiments. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); further evidence was then found in two studies by Wright (Cognition 115(3):491–503, 2010) and Weinberg et al. (Monist 95(2):200–222, (...) 2012). These empirical results have been quite influential in the recent metaphilosophical debate about the method of cases. However, none of Swain et al.’s ( 2008 ) predictions concerning order effects with Truetemp cases could be consistently and robustly replicated in our three experiments, and it is thus at best unclear whether Truetemp intuitions are in fact unstable. So, if proponents of the negative program in experimental philosophy still want to use order effects to challenge the reliability of philosophical case judgments, they would be well advised to look elsewhere instead. In any case, given the more robust empirical evidence that we present in this paper, the metaphilosophical flurry created by Swain et al. ( 2008 ) and Wright’s ( 2010 ) influential studies looks like mere alarmism in hindsight. (shrink)

There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s argument from the causal–explanatory indispensability of knowledge to the natural kindhood of knowledge. I then criticize the argument from the natural kindhood of knowledge against the method (...) of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. A natural motivation for this argument is the following seemingly plausible principle: if knowledge is a natural kind, then the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept. Since this principle lacks adequate support, the crucial semantic claim that the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept must be defended in some more direct way. However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept of knowledge and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that militate against this semantic claim. Conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by total error, and the proponents of such analyses are not subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness. I conclude that the argument from natural kindhood does not succeed in undermining the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a general constraint on theories of knowledge that we call ‘normalism’. Normalism is a view about the epistemic threshold that separates knowledge from mere true belief; its basic claim is that one knows only if one has at least a normal amount of epistemic support for one’s belief. We argue that something like normalism is required to do full justice to the normative role of knowledge in many key everyday practices, such as assertion, inquiry, and (...) testimony. The view of normality we employ to flesh out this claim is inspired by experimental work on the folk notion of normality, which suggests that folk judgments of what is ‘normal’ are based upon both statistical averages as well as normative ideals within the relevant target domain. Adopting this notion of normality to set the threshold for knowledge results in a view upon which knowledge is routinely available on an everyday basis without being a merely trivial achievement. We explore several interesting consequences of this view, including the implication that the threshold for knowing may change as, e.g., the ease of availability of information in an epistemic community changes over time. The result is a ‘shifty’ view of knowledge which nonetheless retains more stability than standard contextualist or pragmatic encroachment approaches. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is one of the most recent and controversial developments in philosophy. Its basic idea is rather simple: to test philosophical thought experiments and philosophers’ intuitions about them with scientific methods, mostly taken from psychology and the social sciences. The ensuing experimental results, such as the cultural relativity of certain philosophical intuitions, has engaged – and at times infuriated – many more traditionally minded "armchair" philosophers since then. In this volume, the metaphilosophical reflection on experimental philosophy is brought yet (...) another step forward by engaging some of its most renowned proponents and critics in a lively and controversial debate. In addition to that, the volume also contains original experimental research on personal identity and philosophical temperament, as well as state-of-the-art essays on central metaphilosophical issues, like thought experiments, the nature of intuitions, or the status of philosophical expertise. -/- This book was originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Psychology. (shrink)

Philosophen berufen sich in Gedankenexperimenten oft auf Intuitionen. Doch werden diese Intuitionen auch von anderen Philosophen oder von philosophischen Laien geteilt? Und durch welche Faktoren werden sie eigentlich bestimmt? Experimentelle Philosophen gehen solchen Fragen seit einigen Jahren mit empirischen Methoden auf den Grund. Ihre Ergebnisse sind mitunter verblüffend und haben für Aufsehen gesorgt. Der vorliegende Band lässt führende Vertreter und Gegner dieser wachsenden Bewegung zu Wort kommen und will die bislang überwiegend englischsprachige Debatte verstärkt in die deutsche Philosophie hineintragen.

The Swamping Problem is one of the standard objections to reliabilism. If one assumes, as reliabilism does, that truth is the only non-instrumental epistemic value, then the worry is that the additional value of knowledge over true belief cannot be adequately explained, for reliability only has instrumental value relative to the non-instrumental value of truth. Goldman and Olsson reply to this objection that reliabilist knowledge raises the objective probability of future true beliefs and is thus more valuable than mere true (...) belief. I argue against their proposed solution to the Swamping Problem that the conditional probability of future true beliefs given knowledge is not clearly higher than given mere true belief. (shrink)

This chapter proceeds from the standard picture of the relation between intuitions and experimental philosophy: the alleged evidential role of intuitions about hypothetical cases, and experimental philosophy’s challenge to these judgments, based on their variation with philosophically irrelevant factors. I will survey some of the main defenses of this standard picture against the x-phi challenge, most of which fail. Concerning the most popular defense, the expertise defense, I will draw the bleak conclusion that intuitive expertise of the envisaged kind is (...) largely a myth. Next, I will consider the mischaracterization objection, which has mainly been developed by Deutsch and Cappelen on the basis of textual evidence: that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions as evidence for their case judgments, but instead argue for them. This would render the x-phi challenge mostly irrelevant, due to its focus on intuitions about hypothetical cases. I will then consider a few instructive replies to the mischaracterization objection, which are all unconvincing on further inspection. Finally, I will discuss some potential normative consequences of the mischaracterization objection, and I will argue that it recommends a shift away from the excessive focus on intuitions about cases in metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy, towards more work on the role of argumentation in the method of cases. More speculatively, I claim that philosophers should always argue for their case judgments, even if they have strong intuitions about them, because an argument-based methodology would be more transparent and philosophically fruitful than one that mainly relies on intuition. (shrink)

Kant famously argued that, from experience, we can only learn how something actually is, but not that it must be so. In this paper, I defend an improved version of Kant's argument for the existence of a priori knowledge, the Modal Argument , against recent objections by Casullo and Kitcher. For the sake of the argument, I concede Casullo's claim that we may know certain counterfactuals in an empirical way and thereby gain epistemic access to some nearby, nomologically possible worlds. (...) But I maintain that our beliefs about metaphysical necessities still cannot be justified empirically. Furthermore, I reject Casullo's deflationary thesis about the significance of such justification. Kitcher's most troublesome objection is that we can gain any modal justification whatsoever through testimony , i.e. in an experiential way. This can be countered by distinguishing between productive sources of justification, like perception, and merely reproductive sources, like testimony. Thus, some productive a priori source will always be needed somewhere. (shrink)

In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

Introduction to a special issue with the keynote papers of the GAP.10 congress 2018 in Cologne.

In his “On the Metaphysics of Knowledge” (this volume), Sven Bernecker presents a novel ‘identificationist’ account of knowledge. In this paper, I will not directly address the epistemological adequacy of Bernecker’s identificationism. Rather, I want to focus on its substantial metaphysical commitments, especially on the problematic idea that our epistemic reasons identify the truthmaker of our respective belief when we know something. My conclusion will be that being a truthmaker for p is metaphysically more demanding than being an epistemic reason (...) for p. A truthmaker for p must necessitate the truth of p, while an epistemic reason for p must merely indicate the truth of p. Thus, we should not expect that epistemic reasons identify the truthmakers of our knowledge-constituting beliefs in the way Bernecker suggests. (shrink)

Most philosophers believe that testimony is not a fundamental source of knowledge, but merely a way to transmit already existing knowledge. However, Jennifer Lackey has presented some counterexamples which show that one can actually come to know something through testimony that no one ever knew before. Yet, the intuitive idea can be preserved by the weaker claim that someone in a knowledge-constituting testimonial chain has to have access to some non-testimonial source of knowledge with regard to what is testified. But (...) even this weaker claim has a counterexample which I develop in close connection with a safety-account of knowledge. Thus, testimonial statements can sometimes enable us to know something for which none of our informants has any source of knowledge available. I conclude that my counterexample nevertheless does not affect the core of our intuitions about testimony, although it establishes that testimony can indeed be a fundamental source of knowledge. (shrink)

Forthcoming guide with brief introductions on methods in analytic philosophy by experts on the relevant topics. With sections on: formal methods, argumentation, inferential methods, thought experiments, intuition, ordinary language philosophy, conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering, naturalism, analytic feminism, experimental philosophy, and progress and disagreement in philosophy.

This paper provides new tools for philosophical argument analysis and fresh empirical foundations for ‘critical’ ordinary language philosophy. Language comprehension routinely involves stereotypical inferences with contextual defeaters. J.L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia first mooted the idea that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from verbal case-descriptions drive some philosophical paradoxes; these engender philosophical problems that can be resolved by exposing the underlying fallacies. We build on psycholinguistic research on salience effects to explain when and why even perfectly competent speakers cannot help making (...) stereotypical inferences which are contextually inappropriate. We analyse a classical paradox about perception, suggest it relies on contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance-verbs, and show that the conditions we identified as leading to contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are met in formulations of the paradox. Three experiments use a forced-choice plausibility-ranking task to document the predicted inappropriate inferences, in English, German, and Japanese. The cross-linguistic study allows us to assess the wider relevance of the proposed analysis. Our findings open up new perspectives for ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy. (shrink)

According to the so-called metaphysical conception of analyticity, analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning (or content) alone and independently of (extralinguistic) facts. Quine and Boghossian have tried to present a conclusive argument against the metaphysical conception of analyticity. In effect, they tried to show that the metaphysical conception inevitably leads into a highly implausible view about the truthmakers of analytic truths. We would like to show that their argument fails, since it relies on an ambiguity of the notion (...) of 'independence of (extralinguistic) facts'. If one distinguishes between variation independence and existence independence, the unwelcome view about the truthmakers of analytic truths no longer follows. Thus, there is at best a challenge, but no conclusive argument. The door to the metaphysical conception of analyticity is still open. (shrink)

This book extends the contemporary concept of the minimal self by introducing the affective core self. The overall aim is to integrate certain psychoanalytical ideas into the phenomenological investigation of passivity and reformulate the idea of the phenomenological unconscious. This volume contributes to the multidimensional analysis of the self by positioning the affective core self between the layers of the more minimal and the less minimal self. It underscores the importance of the unconscious in the constitution of the affective core (...) self by providing the comparative analysis of the phenomenological and the psychoanalytical unconscious. Furthermore, comparisons are drawn between Freud’s conception of the afterwardsness of trauma and the phenomenological notion of retroactive sense-constitution. The book concludes that retroactive sense-making is a double-sided phenomenon and differentiates between implicit-bodily and conscious-narrative retroactive sense-constitution. In order to bolster the idea of implicit-bodily sense-constitution the volume also examines and utilizes contemporary insights on the nature of body memory. The conclusion claims that the affective core self is constituted in time by means of the underlying processes of the two-sided retroactive sense-constitution. This text appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This article argues that Pulcinella, a figure of classical Italian commedia dell’arte, could also be considered as emblematic for the reordering of politics in the early-modern and modern periods. By placing emphasis on the common underlying theatrical aspects of ‘representation’, it effectively connects the absolutist and democratic periods and helps us to understand why actors and acting came to play such a prominent role in contemporary politics, whether as politicians imitating actors, or as actors actually becoming politicians. The article also (...) shows that this sublimation of theatre into politics is not even a contemporary phenomenon but can be traced back to the ancient mime, following the origins of Pulcinella, and the first crisis of democracy, in classical Athens, in the footsteps of Plato. (shrink)

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

It is now—at least loosely—acknowledged that most health and clinical outcomes are influenced by different interacting causes. Surprisingly, medical research studies are nearly universally designed to study—usually in a binary way—the effect of a single cause. Recent experiences during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic brought to the forefront that most of our challenges in medicine and healthcare deal with systemic, that is, interdependent and interconnected problems. Understanding these problems defy simplistic dichotomous research methodologies. These insights demand a shift in our (...) thinking from ‘cause and effect’ to ‘causes and effects’ since this transcends the classical way of Cartesian reductionist thinking. We require a shift to a ‘causes and effects’ frame so we can choose the research methodology that reflects the relationships between variables of interest—one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one or many-to-many. One-to-one (or cause and effect) relationships are amenable to the traditional randomized control trial design, while all others require systemic designs to understand ‘causes and effects’. Researchers urgently need to re-evaluate their science models and embrace research designs that allow an exploration of the clinically obvious multiple ‘causes and effects’ on health and disease. Clinical examples highlight the application of various systemic research methodologies and demonstrate how ‘causes and effects’ explain the heterogeneity of clinical outcomes. This shift in scientific thinking will allow us to find the necessary personalized or precise clinical interventions that address the underlying reasons for the variability of clinical outcomes and will contribute to greater health equity. (shrink)

Family relations between Greek eponymous heroes almost certainly reflect political or commonly agreed ethnic relationships between the communities concerned. Pelops and his proverbially numerous descendants are investigated here from this perspective and it is argued that the creation of eponymous Pelopids was primarily due to political motivations. Pelops as one of the most remote ancestors of Sparta was used, already by the 5th century BC, to establish connections on a mythological level with those cities which became the allies of the (...) Lakedaimonians and are commonly known as the members of the Peloponnesian League. It is also suggested that after the battle of Plataea, these poleis erected a victory monument at Olympia on their own, which is commonly referred to as the “Achaean monument”. (shrink)

The Historical Dictionary of Philosophy, the _Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie,_ is distinguished by its particular presentation of philosophical terms, ideas and concepts. Rather than providing mere defintions or descriptive and analytical explanantions the _HWPh_ strictly applies the critical method of history of concepts developed by the eminent German scholar and philosopher Joachim Ritter. By means of precise and detailed references it documents the origin, first occurrence, the historical evolution and the changes of meaning of each concept, from Ancient Greek (...) to contemporary philosophy. For the reader this presentation is of unique value: it makes traceable the importance of terms and concepts at certain periods or for a particular philosopher, as well as its changes and development of meaning. Voulmes 1–12 of the _HWPh_ comprises more than 17.000 text columns on 3.670 philosophical terms. The dictionary does not include articles on persons. Volume 13 includes, besides of a comprehensive introductory essay, three different indexes: - the Subject Index classifies the articles by disciplinary and systematic categories - the Main Index includes all philosophical keywords with more than 30.000 references to their occurrences in other articles and contexts - the Author Index lists all authors and their contributions The included CD-ROM allows full text research of the _HWPh's_ entire content. (shrink)

What are consequential world problems? As “grand societal challenges”, one might define them as problems that affect a large number of people, perhaps even the entire planet, including problems such as climate change, distributive justice, world peace, world nutrition, clean air and clean water, access to education, and many more. The “Sustainable Development Goals”, compiled by the United Nations, represent a collection of such global problems. From my point of view, these problems can be seen as complex. Such complex problems (...) are characterized by the complexity, connectivity, dynamics, intransparency, and polytely of their underlying systems. These attributes require special competencies for dealing with the uncertainties of the given domains, e.g., critical thinking. My position is that it is not IQ, but complex problem-solving competencies for dealing with complex and dynamic situations, that is important for handling consequential global problems. These problems require system competencies, i.e., competencies that go beyond analytical intelligence, and comprise systems understanding as well as systems control. Complex problem-solving is more than analytic intelligence. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction What is Chemistry about? Is Chemistry Reducible to Physics? Are There Fundamental Limits to Chemical Knowledge? Is Chemical Research Ethically Neutral? Conclusion References.

The discussion in Perspectives on Psychological Science about criteria for scholarly merit shows a potential bias of quantitative measurements compared with informed judgments of scholarly merits. This comment argues for a selection procedure that is open for qualitative arguments.

This article presents and discusses different kinds of data documents, including data sets, data studies, data papers and data journals. It provides descriptive and bibliometric data on different kinds of data documents and discusses the theoretical and philosophical problems by classifying documents according to the DIKW model (data documents, information documents, knowl­edge documents and wisdom documents). Data documents are, on the one hand, an established category today, even with its own data citation index (DCI). On the other hand, data documents (...) have blurred boundaries in relation to other kinds of documents and seem sometimes to be understood from the problematic philosophical assumption that a datum can be understood as “a single, fixed truth, valid for everyone, everywhere, at all times”. (shrink)

Complex problem solving (CPS) emerged in the last 30 years in Europe as a new part of the psychology of thinking and problem solving. This paper introduces into the field and provides a personal view. Also, related concepts like macrocognition or operative intelligence will be explained in this context. Two examples for the assessment of CPS, Tailorshop and MicroDYN, are presented to illustrate the concept by means of their measurement devices. Also, the relation of complex cognition and emotion in the (...) CPS context is discussed. The question if CPS requires complex cognition is answered with a tentative “yes.”. (shrink)

In "Literary Forms of Argument in Early China," Gentz and Meyer explore a new analytical approach to the study of written thinking by focusing on the argumentative function of literary patterns in early Chinese texts.