Upon separation of the protein from the nucleic acid component of tobacco mosaic virus by phenol, using a fast and gentle procedure, the nucleic acid is infective in assays on tobacco leaves. A series of qualitative and quantitative control experiments demonstrates that the biological activity cannot depend on residual proteins in the preparation, but is a property of isolated nucleic acid which is thus the genetic material of the virus.

Edmund Gettier (1963) argued that there can be justified true belief (JTB) that is not knowledge. I question the correctness of his argument by showing that Smith of Gettier’s famous examples does not earn justification for his incidentally true beliefs, while a doxastically more conscientious person S would come to hold justified but false beliefs. So, Gettier’s (and analogous) cases do not result in justified _and_ true belief. This is due to a tension between deductive closure of justification and evidential (...) support. For being justified, any believing, disbelieving, or withholding of deductively inferred propositions must be distributed proportionally to given evidential support. This proportionality principle has primacy over deductive closure in case of conflict. My argument does not save the JTB-account. But, instead of merely referring to an intuition, it explains why subjects in Gettier situations do not earn knowledge. (shrink)

Extant literature on Goodman’s ‘New Riddle of Induction’ deals mainly with two versions. I consider both of them, starting from the (‘epistemic’) version of Goodman’s classic of 1954. It turns out that it belongs to the realm of applications of inductive logic, and that it can be resolved by admitting only significant evidence (as I call it) for confirmations of hypotheses. Sect. 1 prepares some ground for the argument. As much of it depends on the notion of evidential significance, this (...) concept is defined and its introduction motivated. Further, I introduce and explain the distinction between support and confirmation: put in a slogan, ‘confirmation is support by significant evidence’. The second section deals with the Riddle itself. I demonstrate that, given the provisions of the first section, not ‘anything confirms anything’: significant green-evidence confirms only green-hypotheses (and no grue-hypotheses), and significant grue-evidence confirms only grue-hypotheses (and no green-hypotheses), whichever terms we use for expressing these evidences or hypotheses. The third section rounds off my treatment. First I show that Frank Jackson’s use of his counterfactual condition is unsuccessful. Further, I argue that no unwanted consequences result, if one starts from the other, ‘objective’, definition of ‘grue’, as it constitutes no more than a mere fact of logic that cannot do any harm. Finally, I present a grue-case involving both kinds of definition, where the exclusive confirmation of either the green- or the grue-hypothesis is shown. (shrink)

Freitag (2015) and Schramm (2014) have proposed different, although converging, solutions of Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction. Answering their proposals, Dorst (2016 and 2018) has used the fictitious character of a ‘grue-speaker’ as his principal device for criticizing counterfactual-based treatments of the Riddle. In this paper, I argue that Dorst’s arguments fail: On the observation of no other than green emeralds, the ‘grue-speaker’ cannot use the symmetry between the ‘green’- and ‘grue’-languages for claiming ‘grue’- instead of ‘green’-evidence, and the (...) counterfactuals involved (explicitly by Schramm and implicitly by Freitag) remain unaffected by Dorst’s proposal for how to evaluate them. (shrink)

This paper constitutes one extended argument, which touches on various topics of Critical Rationalism as it was initiated by Karl Popper and further developed in his aftermath. The result of the argument will be that critical rationalism either offers no solution to the problem of induction at all, or that it amounts, in the last resort, to a kind of Critical Rationalist Inductivism as it were, a version of what I call Good Old Induction. One may think of David Miller (...) as a contemporary representative of what I consider as the ‘no solution’ version of critical rationalism, while Alan Musgrave stands for the version of ‘critical rationalist induction’. Popper’s own writings admit of either interpretation. (shrink)

In einer früheren Arbeit habe ich neben anderem auch Poppers Theorie der rationalen Präferabilität der bestbewährten Theorie kritisiert und festgestellt, daß sie weder als Theorie der theoretischen Rationalität (d.i. die Rationalität des bloßen, an keinem anderen Zweck als dem des an der wissenschaftlichen Neugierde orientierten Glaubens, Meinens oder Führwahrhaltens)noch als Theorie der praktischen Rationalität (d.i. die Rationalität der auch an sonstigen Zwecken orientierten Handlungen bzw. Handlungsentscheidungen)tauglich sei. Im wesentlichen habe ich argumentiert, daß es bei der Verfolgung des Zieles, sich der (...) Wahrheit anzunähern, um nichts rationaler sei, die jeweils bestbewährte Theorie zu präferieren als sie nicht zu präferieren (und anstelle dessen die Präferenz z.B. vom Ergebnis eines Münzwurfes abhängig zu machen). Allerdings habe ich im Rahmen dieser Kritik „rational“ mit „begründet“ i.S. von „gute Gründe haben“ gleichgesetzt (und ich halte dies auch nach wie vor für richtig). Da nun aber David Miller behauptet, daß Rationalität durchaus ohne Bezugnahme auf gute Gründe auskomme (abgesehen davon, daß gute Gründe gar nicht beizubringen und – selbst wenn es sie gäbe – völlig unnütz wären), werde ich meine Argumentation entsprechend erweitern. (shrink)

Keith Lehrer describes in his Theory of Knowledge a Justification Game which is played by a Claimant who tries to establish his justification for some contingent claim and a rather harmless Skeptic who tries to stop the Claimant. The doubts of a serious philosophical skeptic are - in opposition to Lehrer - analyzed as doubts concerning the justification of our beliefs and not their contents. Making the reglementations for a solid philosophical argumentation more precise the setting of a Serious Justification (...) Game is defined and thus replaying the game it tums out that the philosophical skeptic succeeds in providing a profound philosophical argumentation for his denial of Lehrer's positive claim for justification. (shrink)

Chisholm definiert seine ''Begriffe der epistemischen Bewertung" (z.B. "gewiß", "evident") mithilfe der Undefinierten Relation "vernünftiger als". Diese Relation ist zweideutig und es wird gezeigt, daß sich, wenn man die beiden Bedeutungen sorgfältig auseinanderhält, in jedem Fall die Chisholmschen Begriffe der epistemischen Bewertung als nicht adäquat definiert herausstellen.

Chisholm definiert seine ''Begriffe der epistemischen Bewertung" (z.B. "gewiß", "evident") mithilfe der Undefinierten Relation "vernünftiger als". Diese Relation ist zweideutig und es wird gezeigt, daß sich, wenn man die beiden Bedeutungen sorgfältig auseinanderhält, in jedem Fall die Chisholmschen Begriffe der epistemischen Bewertung als nicht adäquat definiert herausstellen.

Es wird ein System von Postulaten entwickelt, welches unter Interpretation durch epistemische Wörter (Glauben, Wissen, gerechtfertigtes Glauben etc.) eine Explikation der einschlägigen Begriffe liefert. Die solcherart explizierten Begriffe ergeben, daß nur noch die Wahl zwischen Totalskepsis oder fundamentalistischer Erkenntnistheorie offen bleibt: kein gerechtfertigtes Glauben ist möglich ohne ein zugrundeHegendes Wissen vorauszusetzen. Der traditionellen Wissensdefinition (wahres gerechtfertigtes Glauben) wird ein guter Sinn unterlegt bei gleichzeitiger Vermeidung der bekannten Schwierigkeiten (z.B. Gettiers Problem).

Starting from the question of whether Ernst Mach's well-known notion of "Elemente" (elements) must lead to the verdict that the arch-anti-metaphysician himself may be justly accused of holding an essantially metaphysical position, the idea of metaphysical neutrality is explained in Section I. Section II deals with Quine's verdict on abstract entities, among which Mach's elements would have to be counted if there were no way out of the Quinean test. Such a way out, it is proposed in section III, is (...) Carnap's Remedy: the distinction of external and internal questions. Finally, in Section IV, the empirical meaning of Mach's notion of elements is explained, from whence it's argued that Mach's "philosophy" is good, non-metaphysical, empirical science. (shrink)

Der erste Band der Meinong Studien vereinigt historische Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung im engeren Sinn mit solchen, die Meinongsche Themen und Gedanken in systematischer Absicht wieder aufnehmen. Die angestellten Untersuchungen widmen sich der vor-gegenstandstheoretischen Periode Meinongs (Chrudzimski), seinen frühen erkenntnistheoretischen Untersuchungen (Manotta), seinen Theorien der Vorstellungsproduktion (Raspa) und der Annahmen (Dölling), konfrontieren seine Lehren mit jenen Franz Brentanos (Rollinger), Sartres und Russells (Hochberg) und analysieren die Fragen der Konsistenz des Meinong.

Im Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, aus einem externen Blickwinkel dem Gehalt jener Wahrscheinlichkeitskonzeptionen nachzugehen, die von Meinong in Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit dargelegt sind. Meinong befaßt sich darin zunächst mit der „objektiven" Wahrscheinlichkeit, die als Grade oder Abstufungen von Möglichkeit Objektiven in „unsubjektiver" Weise zukommt, und stellt ihr dann die eigentliche oder „Vermutungswahrscheinlichkeit" gegenüber, die in Meinongs Sinn insofern subjektiv ist, als sie in der Eigenschaft von Objektiven besteht, durch berechtigte Vermutungen erfaßt werden zu können.Meinongs Reihung folgend wird zunächst (...) die objektive, sodann die subjektive Theorie diskutiert. In beiden Fällen wird zu fragen sein, ob es sich auch nach heutiger Sicht um Wahrscheinlichkeiten im formalen Sinne handelt , weiters, welche Rechtfertigung für die Verteilung von Anfangswahrscheinlichkeiten angeboten wird, wie das Problem der Einzelfallswahrscheinlichkeit behandelt wird etc. Schließlich wird den Fragen nachgegangen, welche Parallelen bzw. welche auffälligen Unterschiede zu den heute üblicherweise besprochenen Interpretationen des Wahrscheinlichkeitskalküls vorliegen und ob Meinong mit seiner Konzeption der Wahrscheinlichkeiten den von ihm selbst bezweckten Zielen gerecht zu werden vermag. (shrink)

Im Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen, aus einem externen Blickwinkel dem Gehalt jener Wahrscheinlichkeitskonzeptionen nachzugehen, die von Meinong in Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit dargelegt sind. Meinong befaßt sich darin zunächst mit der „objektiven" Wahrscheinlichkeit, die als Grade oder Abstufungen von Möglichkeit Objektiven in „unsubjektiver" Weise zukommt, und stellt ihr dann die eigentliche oder „Vermutungswahrscheinlichkeit" gegenüber, die in Meinongs Sinn insofern subjektiv ist, als sie in der Eigenschaft von Objektiven besteht, durch berechtigte Vermutungen erfaßt werden zu können.Meinongs Reihung folgend wird zunächst (...) die objektive, sodann die subjektive Theorie diskutiert. In beiden Fällen wird zu fragen sein, ob es sich auch nach heutiger Sicht um Wahrscheinlichkeiten im formalen Sinne handelt (was über Repräsentationstheoreme untersucht werden kann), weiters, welche Rechtfertigung für die Verteilung von Anfangswahrscheinlichkeiten angeboten wird, wie das Problem der Einzelfallswahrscheinlichkeit behandelt wird etc. Schließlich wird den Fragen nachgegangen, welche Parallelen bzw. welche auffälligen Unterschiede zu den heute üblicherweise besprochenen Interpretationen des Wahrscheinlichkeitskalküls vorliegen und ob Meinong mit seiner Konzeption der Wahrscheinlichkeiten den von ihm selbst bezweckten Zielen gerecht zu werden vermag. (shrink)

Dieser Sammelband von Vorträgen des IV. Kongesses der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Philosophie (1996) bietet einen hervorragenden Überblick über das breite Spektrum der gegenwärtig in Österreich betriebenen Philosophie. Ergänzende Aufsätze von amerikanischen, englischen, deutschen, ungarischen und kroatischen Autoren machen den Band zu einem repräsentativen Querschnitt der vorherrschenden Forschungsbestrebungen in der Gegenwartsphilosophie.

Lehrer Semantics, as it was devised by Adrienne and Keith Lehrer, is imbedded in a comprehensive web of thought and observations of language use and development, communication, and social interaction, all these as empirical phenomena. Rather than for a theory, I take it for a ‘‘model’’ of the kind which gives us guidance in how to organize linguistic and language-related phenomena. My comments on it are restricted to three aspects: In 2 I deal with the question of how Lehrerian sense (...) can be empirically distinguished from Lehrerian reference as a precondition for the claim that sense relationships are in general more stable than reference relations. It seems that this very claim must already be presupposed for doing the respective empirical investigation. But in 3, I argue for the option to interpret the Lehrers’ concept of sense resp. sense vectors as intension concepts, by which move one may gain a generalized concept, so-to-say ‘‘graded analyticity’’, containing Carnapian strict analyticity for language systems as the extreme case of sense vectors with maximum value. Such graded sense may also be empirically investigated in the case of normal languages. In 4, I plead for my view that what the Lehrers take for communal languages are really collections of family-resembling idiolects of individual speakers and hypotheses of individual speakers about the idiolects of their fellow speakers. This move should free us from the fiction of, and sterile discussions about, the ‘‘true’’ meanings of words, but nevertheless keep normal language communication possible. As a concluding remark I propose in 5 to have both: normal languages from an empirical point of view, and codified languages from a logical reconstructionist one. (shrink)

Psychopathy has been the subject of investigations in both philosophy and psychiatry and yet the conceptual issues remain largely unresolved. This volume approaches psychopathy by considering the question of what psychopaths lack. The contributors investigate specific moral dysfunctions or deficits, shedding light on the capacities people need to be moral by examining cases of real people who seem to lack those capacities. -/- The volume proceeds from the basic assumption that psychopathy is not characterized by a single deficit--for example, the (...) lack of empathy, as some philosophers have proposed—but by a range of them. Thus contributors address specific deficits that include impairments in rationality, language, fellow-feeling, volition, evaluation, and sympathy. They also consider such issues in moral psychology as moral motivation, moral emotions, and moral character; and they examine social aspects of psychopathic behavior, including ascriptions of moral responsibility, justification of moral blame, and social and legal responses to people perceived to be dangerous. -/- As this volume demonstrates, philosophers will be better equipped to determine what they mean by “the moral point of view” when they connect debates in moral philosophy to the psychiatric notion of psychopathy, which provides some guidance on what humans need in order be able to feel the normative pull of morality. And the empirical work done by psychiatrists and researchers in psychopathy can benefit from the conceptual clarifications offered by philosophy. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity or mental competence is one of the most intensively discussed concepts in contemporary bioethics and medical ethics. In this paper I argue that anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder primarily afflicting adolescent girls and young women, seriously challenges what I label the traditional account of decision-making capacity. In light of these results, it may in addition be necessary to rethink a certain popular type of paternalistic argumentation that grounds the justification of compulsory treatment, for example of anorexic persons who (...) refuse treatment, on a lack of decision-making capacity. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on cases of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia in relation to the rarely discussed notion of indirect paternalism. Indirect paternalism involves not just a paternalistic intervener and a person whose welfare is supposed to be protected, but also another party, whom I call “assistant.” Indirect paternalism interferes with an assistant in order to prevent harm to another person. I will introduce a strategy that paternalists can pursue to justify indirect paternalism. It specifically targets an element of assistance (...) cases, namely the fact that people do not necessarily have a justified claim or entitlement to demand such assistance. To prevent people from providing assistance seems normatively different from preventing a person to do something to herself by her own means. I critically discuss arguments from the goals of medicine and from the conscientious objection. These aspects are not deemed decisive when considering the case of indirect paternalistic intervention. Finally, I argue against the rationale of indirect paternalism by showing that there are at least two situations where it does not succeed. One such situation that undermines the justification of indirect paternalism is present when the offered service is itself harmless, another pertinent situation consists of a person necessarily requiring assistance to be really free. At least in some cases, these very conditions are given when contemplating assistance to die. (shrink)

In his widely read earlier dissertation, "Treasury of names and poetic language," the author explained that the structural form of the two-part Germanic first name dates back to a distant Indo-German past. Thus, the Germanic examples (of the type "Wolfram," which means "wolf raven") emerge from composed designations of men in epic poetry, that is, from the poetic vocabulary for princes and warriors. He argues that the same is probably true for a much earlier treasury of names (one that goes (...) back to the 2nd millennium B.C.) as a specific legacy from the Indo-Aryan war chariot culture. From there, it went on to be disseminated to the rest of Indo-Germania, including the Celts and the Germanic peoples. In his new book, the author subjects his theory to testing, revision, and extension. Thus, the volume will be an indispensable resource for name researchers as well as academic experts in medieval and Nordic literature, and for students of the social history of the medieval world. (shrink)

Self-deception raises complex questions about the nature of belief and the structure of the human mind. In this book, Alfred Mele addresses four of the most critical of these questions: What is it to deceive oneself? How do we deceive ourselves? Why do we deceive ourselves? Is self-deception really possible? -/- Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research on everyday reasoning and biases, Mele takes issue with commonplace attempts to equate the processes of self-deception with those of stereotypical interpersonal deception. Such (...) attempts, he demonstrates, are fundamentally misguided, particularly in the assumption that self-deception is intentional. In their place, Mele proposes a compelling, empirically informed account of the motivational causes of biased beliefs. At the heart of this theory is an appreciation of how emotion and motivation may, without our knowing it, bias our assessment of evidence for beliefs. Highlighting motivation and emotion, Mele develops a pair of approaches for explaining the two forms of self-deception: the "straight" form, in which we believe what we want to be true, and the "twisted" form, in which we believe what we wish to be false. -/- Underlying Mele's work is an abiding interest in understanding and explaining the behavior of real human beings. The result is a comprehensive, elegant, empirically grounded theory of everyday self-deception that should engage philosophers and social scientists alike. (shrink)

The author demonstrates that certain forms of irrationality - incontinent action and self-deception - which many philosophers have rejected as being logically or psychologically impossible, are indeed possible.

Each of the following claims has been defended in the scientific literature on free will and consciousness: your brain routinely decides what you will do before you become conscious of its decision; there is only a 100 millisecond window of opportunity for free will, and all it can do is veto conscious decisions, intentions, or urges; intentions never play a role in producing corresponding actions; and free will is an illusion. In Effective Intentions Alfred Mele shows that the evidence (...) offered to support these claims is sorely deficient. He also shows that there is strong empirical support for the thesis that some conscious decisions and intentions have a genuine place in causal explanations of corresponding actions. In short, there is weighty evidence of the existence of effective conscious intentions or the power of conscious will. Mele examines the accuracy of subjects' reports about when they first became aware of decisions or intentions in laboratory settings and develops some implications of warranted skepticism about the accuracy of these reports. In addition, he explores such questions as whether we must be conscious of all of our intentions and why scientists disagree about this. Mele's final chapter closes with a discussion of imaginary scientific findings that would warrant bold claims about free will and consciousness of the sort he examines in this book. (shrink)

Mit dem Ausdruck ‚sympathy‘ bezeichnet Mill die menschliche Fähigkeit, zu fühlen, was andere fühlen; oder allgemeiner, Zugang zum subjektiven Erleben Anderer zu erlangen. Sowohl Einfühlung als auch Mitfühlen sind in dieser Idee integriert. Für Mill ist ‚sympathy‘ eine wesentliche Voraussetzung der menschlichen Moralität. Allerdings gilt es, ‚sympathy‘ zur Fähigkeit auszubilden, genuin moralische Empfindungen zu zeigen. Erst dann sind stabile Moraldispositionen zu erwarten und damit letztlich die Realisierbarkeit des utilitaristischen Moralprinzips ermöglicht.

This is the first wide-ranging, multi-authored handbook in the field of philosophy of medicine, covering the underlying conceptual issues of many important social, political and ethical issues in health care. It introduces and develops over 70 topics, concepts, and issues in the field. It is written by distinguished specialists from multiple disciplines, including philosophy, health sciences, nursing, sociology, political theory, and medicine. Many difficult social and ethical issues in health care are based on conceptual problems, most prominently on the definitions (...) of health and disease, or on epistemological issues regarding causality or diagnosis. Philosophy is the discipline that deals with such conceptual, metaphysical, epistemological, methodological, and axiological matters. (shrink)

Individualität stellt für Mill eine Quelle und gleichzeitig ein Ziel individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Fortschritts dar. Individualität ist ein Element des Wohlergehens, wie die Überschrift des dritten Kapitels seiner Freiheitsschrift festhält. Individualität ist somit ein vorrangiges Ziel der Erziehung, Bildung und guten Regierung. Zudem kann Individualität, ausgedrückt in verschiedensten Lebensexperimenten, die Entwicklung einer Gesellschaft voranbringen. Es sollte insofern nicht überraschen, dass Individualität ein zentrales Konzept des Mill’schen. Denkens darstellt. Schließlich war sein Denken insgesamt auf die Verbesserung der Menschheit und der Lebensverhältnisse (...) gerichtet. (shrink)