A portrait of scholastic approaches to a qualified disagreement of opinions, focusing on the antagonism of scholastic probabilism and anti-probabilism in the early modern era.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

What impact should sufficientarianism have on the measurement of inequality? Like other theories of justice, sufficientarianism influences how economic inequality is conceived. For the purpose of measurement, its standards of justice can be approximated by income-based thresholds of sufficiency. At which income level could a threshold of having enough be pegged in OECD countries? What would it imply for standard indicators of inequality, such as decile comparisons of cumulated income, income spreads, or the Gini coefficient? This paper suggests some answers (...) to these questions, showing that sufficientarian ideas could make a difference with respect to the measurement of inequality in a society. (shrink)

In a familiar interpretation, the Non-Identity Problem claims that persons whose existence depends on a seemingly harmful action cannot in fact be harmed through such an action. It is often objected that the persons in question can nevertheless be wronged through a violation of their rights. However, this objection seems to fail because these persons would readily waive any violated right in order to come into existence. The present article will analyze this Waiver Counter Argument in detail and show why (...) it does not succeed. First, it is necessary to distinguish between a prospective and a retrospective waiver scenario. In the prospective scenario an imagined person must consider whether she wants to waive a right in order to come into existence. In the retrospective scenario a person is asked whether she would prefer a wronged existence to never having been born. In both scenarios the conditions of a legitimate waiver of rights are not met, but for different reasons. On this basis, an argument against NIP can be developed. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, SJ (1607–67), conceived a procedure for determining natural moral laws by voting under a veil of ignorance. Behind this veil, imagined possible people who are ignorant of their social position, personal characteristics, nation, and the historical period in which they live vote as equals. These possible people are asked to establish a moral law in pursuit of their own and collective happiness, which they are obligated by God to follow. This article discusses Pallavicino's innovative approach to natural (...) law and examines its reception in Southern Germany and (what is now) Austria. (shrink)

The comment focusses on O'Neill's advocacy of Classical Institutionalism (CI) and the problems of the ideal-regarding approach to the construction of institutions. It maintains that CI shows no signs of progress which would justify a renewed exclusive interest in this paradigm and that the ideal-regarding approach needs some consequentialist balancing to avoid obvious risks of totalitarian denaturation.

Social epistemology existed in the scholastic tradition in the shape of doctrines on the legitimate use of probable opinions. Medieval scholasticism had developed sophisticated approaches in this respect, but the apogee of scholastic theoretical reflection on social epistemology occurred in the Baroque era and its Catholic moral theology. The huge debate on probable opinions at that time produced the most far-reaching and deepest investigations into the moral and epistemological foundations and limitations of opinion-based, reasonable discourse prior to the late twentieth (...) century. It is time to recover the arguments and claims of Baroque scholastic social epistemology, not only to fill a lacuna in intellectual history but also to see whether some of its challenges are still with us today. (shrink)

How should a crisis sparked by migration of the poor be dealt with? How should tax evasion be addressed? What is the appropriate response to manipulation of elections? Daniel Schwartz's book illustrates that moralists, lawyers, political decision makers, and society at large already contended with these issues some four hundred years ago. The underlying problems and their normative implications were thoroughly analyzed by scholastic authors at the time, many of whom wrote with an eye on influencing the emerging interested public, (...) or doubled as advisors for political decision makers. Political morality, the moral analysis of political decisions, is a particular field of applied ethics (undoubtedly, an important... (shrink)

Deontologists often assume that ethical constraints hold ‘come what may’ but that violations of the constraints can be excused or pardoned. Vinit Haksar has argued for pardon as deontologically appropriate mitigation for the violation of deontological constraints. However, the reasons he adduces against excuse are inconclusive. In this paper, I show how complex the question of excuse versus pardon for deontological transgressions is. Liability for the development of character traits and the assumption of agent-centered responsibility have to be taken into (...) account before the possibility of pardon can be identified as appropriate deontological softener for strict constraints. (shrink)

This paper claims that deontological and consequentialist ethics are best distinguished with reference to different assumptions concerning moral accountability and accounting. Deontological ethics can thereby be defended against the accusation of inordinate concern with the moral purity of agents. Moreover, deontological ethics can and should reject being based on the concept of agent-relative value. Even under the assumption that deontological ethics can be consequentialized, agent-relative value need not play a fundamental role. This is not the same as denying agent-relativity a (...) key role in deontological ethics. Deontological moral accounting of universal value should be regarded as agent-relative, whereas consequentialist accounting assumes a shared moral account of all moral agents. (shrink)

In the history of scholastic philosophy, the fifteenth century is traditionally regarded as a period of decay, a downturn between the heights of fourteenth-century nominalism and the Spanish revival of scholasticism in the sixteenth century. This paper sets out to challenge this received view. First, however, the received view is confirmed on the basis of sixteenth-century lists of ecclesiastical writers containing very few notable scholastic philosopher-theologians for the fifteenth century. On the other hand, the same lists show a significant increase (...) in notable scholastics in the fields of practical ethics and jurisprudence. The overall picture signals a shift of philosophical and theological activity from theoretical towards practical concerns. If practical philosophy is not considered to be of lesser rank than theoretical philosophy, there was thus no downturn of scholastic philosophy in the fifteenth century. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here is the Rudolf Carnap's famous principle of tolerance by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of ...

"Ist der Mensch in seinem Denken und Handeln ein geistig freies Wesen oder steht er unter dem Zwange einer rein naturgesetzlichen ehernen Notwendigkeit? Auf wenige Fragen ist so viel Scharfsinn gewendet worden als auf diese. Die Idee der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens hat warme Anhänger wie hartnäckige Gegner in reicher Zahl gefunden. Ein und dasselbe Ding wird hier gleich oft für das kostbarste Gut der Menschheit wie für die ärgste Illusion erklärt." Rudolf Steiner (Gröls-Klassiker - Edition Werke der Weltliteratur).

Relying on Husserl as well as on the reflections by Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne, Henry on Kandinsky and Deleuze on Bacon, this essay sketches some basic problems that arise in a phenomenological account of non-figurative painting. An investigation of the distinction between phenomenological and pictorial perception, of the transposition of the painter’s mode of perception into a painted image, and of the expressive force of paintings inevitably confronts one with the enigma of the appearing of something invisible. The essay proceeds in (...) three steps. The first step describes pictorial perception in terms of a ‘seeing according to’. Such a mode of perception pays attention to visual ambiguities, to the ‘gaze of things’ and to the conditions of visibility that are ordinarily overlooked. The second step moves on to the issue of the transposition of a pictorial perception in a painted image. Deleuze’s account of “manipulated chance” proves to be very helpful here. In the final step, Henry’s and Deleuze’s emphasis on the painting’s expression of totally invisible ‘forces’ is discussed. (shrink)

APA PsycNET abstract: This is the first volume of a two-volume work on Probability and Induction. Because the writer holds that probability logic is identical with inductive logic, this work is devoted to philosophical problems concerning the nature of probability and inductive reasoning. The author rejects a statistical frequency basis for probability in favor of a logical relation between two statements or propositions. Probability "is the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis (or conclusion) on the basis of some given evidence (...) (or premises)." Furthermore, all principles and theorems of inductive logic are analytic, and the entire system is to be constructed by means of symbolic logic and semantic methods. This means that the author confines himself to the formalistic procedures of word and symbol systems. The resulting sentence or language structures are presumed to separate off logic from all subjectivist or psychological elements. Despite the abstractionism, the claim is made that if an inductive probability system of logic can be constructed it will have its practical application in mathematical statistics, and in various sciences. 16-page bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this illuminating study of Kant's theory of imagination and its role in interpretation, Rudolf A. Makkreel argues against the commonly held notion that Kant's transcendental philosophy is incompatible with hermeneutics. The charge that Kant's foundational philosophy is inadequate to the task of interpretation can be rebutted, explains Makkreel, if we fully understand the role of imagination in his work. In identifying this role, Makkreel also reevaluates the relationship among Kant's discussions of the feeling of life, common sense, and (...) the purposiveness of history. (shrink)

This is identical with the first edition (see 21: 2716) except for the addition of a Supplement containing 5 previously published articles and the bringing of the bibliography (now 73 items) up to date. The 5 added articles present clarifications or modifications of views expressed in the first edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.

From the contents: Philosophie, Politik und Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: zur Frage der Philosophie in Osterreich und Deutschland (B. Smith). - Facts, truths and the ontology of logical realism (H. Hochberg). - Franz Brentano und die Wiederentdeckung der Intentionalitat Richtigstellung herkommlicher Missverstandnisse und Missdeutungen (M. Antonelli). - Erneuerung der Philosophia Perennis: uber die ersten vier Habilitationsthesen Brentanos (W. Sauer). - Confessions of a Meinongian logician (D. Jacquette). - Lewis and Sylvan on noneism (A. Witherall). - What is it to compose a musical (...) work (M.E. Reicher).". (shrink)

This volume provides a valuable discussion of Husserl's lifelong project of the critique of science which makes no attempt to conflate the pre-World War I ...

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

Knapp sechs Jahre nach Rudolf Heinz' sechzigstem Geburtstag und dem auf dieses Ereignis ausgerichteten Erscheinen der Festschrift "Kontiguitäten. Texte-Festival für Rudolf Heinz" (Christoph Weismüller [Hg.] unter Mitarbeit von Ralf Bohn, Wien: Passagen 1997) folgt die Nachbearbeitung der "Kontiguitäten" und deren Produktion. Die Post-Skripts zum Texte-Festival für Rudolf Heinz setzen ein mit den Dokumenten der Feierlichkeit der Festschriftüberreichung: Laudatio, Geburtstagskomposition - inklusive Audio-CD -, Photographien der Festschriftübergabe. Unter dem topos Festschrift-Mechané folgt diesen Initialien die Korrespondenz von Heide Heinz (...) und Christoph Weismüller nebst notwendigen Paraphrasen und Hinweisen. Die Après nehmen einschlägige Kontiguitäts-Effekte auf, die mit der Fertigstellung der Festschrift, der Feierlichkeit der Übergabe, ihrer Distribution und ersten Nachbearbeitungen ihrer Konstitution einhergingen oder diesen folgten. Die Katamnese von Heide Heinz und Rudolf Heinz sowie weitere Korrespondenzen - Heide Heinz mit Ralf Bohn, Doris Dorner, Axel Schünemann; Rudolf Heinz mit Manfred Pohlen - finden sich als Zuträge ein. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

Rudolf Arnheim has been known, since the publication of his groundbreaking _Art and Visual Perception_ in 1974, as an authority on the psychological interpretation of the visual arts. Two anniversary volumes celebrate the landmark anniversaries of his works in 2009. In _The Power of the Center_, Arnheim uses a wealth of examples to consider the factors that determine the overall organization of visual form in works of painting, sculpture, and architecture. _The Dynamics of Architectural Form_ explores the unexpected perceptual (...) consequences of architecture with Arnheim's customary clarity and precision. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)

'My endeavour in these pages is to explain the main features of the method of philosophizing which we, the Vienna Circle, use, and by using try to develop further. It is the method of the logical analysis of science, or more precisely, of the syntactical analysis of scientific language.... The purpose of the book -- as of the lectures -- is to give a first impression of our method and of the direction of our questions and investigations to those who (...) are not yet acquainted with them.' -- From the Preface. (shrink)

A basic system of inductive logic; An axiomatic foundation for the logic of inductive generalization; A survey of inductive systems; On the condition of partial exchangeability; Representation theorems of the de finetti type; De finetti's generalizations of excahngeability; The structure of probabilities defined on first-order languages; A subjectivit's guide to objective chance.

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

Clear, comprehensive, intermediate introduction to logical languages, applications of symbolic logic to physics, mathematics, biology.