Public reason as a political ideal aims to reconcile reasonable disagreement; however, is public reason itself the object of reasonable disagreement? Jonathan Quong, David Estlund, Andrew Lister, and some other philosophers maintain that public reason is beyond reasonable disagreement. I argue this view is untenable. In addition, I consider briefly whether or not two main versions of the public reason principle, namely, the consensus version and the convergence version, need to satisfy their own requirements. My discussion has several important implications (...) for the debate on public reason. (shrink)

Much of contemporary political philosophy revolves around debates over perfectionism, which is the view that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. Collis Tahzib has recently proposed a unique theory of perfectionism. I examine two central aspects of his theory: the amalgamation of public reason and perfectionism, and the employment of the Rawlsian lexical priority. I argue that Tahzib’s idea of perfectionist public reason has certain serious problems. (...) Additionally, Tahzib, like many other perfectionists, has neglected that many excellences are at once personal and civic. I sketch a perfectionist account of civic virtue, with the hope of opening up space for defending and justifying perfectionism. (shrink)

Confucian scholars should satisfy two conditions insofar as they think their theories enable Confucianism to make contributions to liberal politics and social policy. The liberal accommodation condition stipulates that the theory in question should accommodate as many reasonable conceptions of the good and religious doctrines as possible while the intelligibility condition stipulates that the theory must have a recognizable Confucian character. By and large, Joseph Chan’s Confucian perfectionism is able to satisfy the above two conditions. However, contrary to Chan and (...) many other Confucian scholars, I argue that any active promotion of Confucianism will violate the liberal accommodation condition. I propose the “wide view of moderate perfectionism,” which enables Confucianism to shed light on a wide range of political and social issues without promoting Confucianism actively. Thus, I present a new approach to the long-standing question of how Confucianism may improve political and social development in a liberal society. (shrink)

Some Confucian scholars have recently claimed that Confucian political meritocracy is superior to Western democracy. I have great reservations about such a view. . . .

(Winner of The Res Publica Essay Prize) This article defends a moderate version of state perfectionism by using Gerald Gaus’s argument for liberal neutrality as a starting point of discussion. Many liberal neutralists reject perfectionism on the grounds of respect for persons, but Gaus has explained more clearly than most neutralists how respect for persons justifies neutrality. Against neutralists, I first argue that the state may promote the good life by appealing to what can be called “the qualified judgments about (...) the good life,” which have not been considered by liberal perfectionists including Joseph Chan and Steven Wall. Then I clear up several possible misunderstandings of these judgments, and argue that: (a) moderate perfectionism does not rely on controversial rankings of values and is committed to promoting different valuable ways of life by pluralistic promotion; and (b) moderate perfectionism requires only an indirect form of coercion in using tax money to support certain moderate perfectionist measures, which is justifiable on the grounds of citizens’ welfare. Thus, I maintain that moderate perfectionism does not disrespect citizens, and is not necessarily unfair to any particular group of people. It is, in fact, plausible and morally important. The defence of moderate perfectionism has practical implications for the state’s policies regarding art development, drug abuse, public education, and so on. (shrink)

In Public Reason Confucianism, Sungmoon Kim presents an important Confucian political theory that seeks to combine a specific conception of Confucianism and the ideal of public reason. My article examines this theory and identifies some of the theoretical complications with Rawlsian public reason.

What role, if any, should Confucianism play in the politics of our time? In some of my previous works, I claimed that modern liberal states are not permitted to promote Confucian values on the basis of their intrinsic merits. Yet, drawing insights from Joseph Chan’s moderate state perfectionism and John Rawls’s wide view of public political culture, I proposed the “wide view of moderate perfectionism.” According to this view, in public political discussion, citizens should be allowed to deliberate whether and (...) how Confucianism, among other reasonable moral doctrines, can make positive contributions to their social and political thinking and public policymaking, provided that certain conditions are met. This view has been criticized by some scholars, in particular Zhuoyao Li. Li argues that the practice of the wide view of moderate perfectionism would inevitably harm civility. In this article, I clarify and develop the wide view and respond to Li’s criticisms. (shrink)

In contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, perfectionism is widely understood as the idea that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. As such, debates over perfectionism occupy a central place in contemporary political philosophy because political philosophers are deeply concerned about whether or not a liberal state is permitted to promote any particular ethical or religious doctrine or impose it on its citizens. -/- In general, contemporary perfectionists do (...) not argue for the state’s pursuit of any religious doctrine. They only maintain that the state is permitted to make a wide range of public policies with the aim of promoting the good life. These policies, commonly found in liberal democratic societies, may include subsidizing museums and art galleries, preserving cultural heritage, setting up public libraries and providing free access to reading materials, encouraging athletic excellence, conserving nature and biodiversity, and educating citizens about the harm of recreational drugs. Nevertheless, perfectionism remains controversial among philosophers and political scientists. -/- It might be beneficial to take a sympathetic view of perfectionism and consider how perfectionists might defend their position against some of the common objections. These objections mainly include: (a) that the state does not possess legitimate authority to make decisions about the good life and seek to promote it; (b) that perfectionist policies are generally illiberal and paternalistic; and (c) that conceptions of the good life are objects of reasonable disagreement and hence cannot legitimately be promoted by the state. In addition, the nature and importance of perfectionist policies and politics will be discussed. (shrink)

The Philosophical Forum, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 5-16, Spring 2021.

Popular sovereignty is one of the most widespread but poorly understood notions in modern politics. Exalted as the highest principle of democratic legitimacy, the idea of popular sovereignty has been given various but broadly similar formulations. . . .

Jury theorems are mathematical theorems about the ability of collectives to make correct decisions. Several jury theorems carry the optimistic message that, in suitable circumstances, ‘crowds are wise’: many individuals together (using, for instance, majority voting) tend to make good decisions, outperforming fewer or just one individual. Jury theorems form the technical core of epistemic arguments for democracy, and provide probabilistic tools for reasoning about the epistemic quality of collective decisions. The popularity of jury theorems spans across various disciplines such (...) as economics, political science, philosophy, and computer science. This entry reviews and critically assesses a variety of jury theorems. It first discusses Condorcet's initial jury theorem, and then progressively introduces jury theorems with more appropriate premises and conclusions. It explains the philosophical foundations, and relates jury theorems to diversity, deliberation, shared evidence, shared perspectives, and other phenomena. It finally connects jury theorems to their historical background and to democratic theory, social epistemology, and social choice theory. (shrink)

Various theories try to give accounts of how measures of this confidence do or ought to behave, both as far as the internal mental consistency of the agent as ...

Degrees of belief are familiar to all of us. Our confidence in the truth of some propositions is higher than our confidence in the truth of other propositions. We are pretty confident that our computers will boot when we push their power button, but we are much more confident that the sun will rise tomorrow. Degrees of belief formally represent the strength with which we believe the truth of various propositions. The higher an agent’s degree of belief for a particular (...) proposition, the higher her confidence in the truth of that proposition. For instance, Sophia’s degree of belief that it will be sunny in Vienna tomorrow might be .52, whereas her degree of belief that the train will leave on time might be .23. The precise meaning of these statements depends, of course, on the underlying theory of degrees of belief. These theories offer a formal tool to measure degrees of belief, to investigate the relations between various degrees of belief in different propositions, and to normatively evaluate degrees of belief. (shrink)

Suppose several individuals (e.g., experts on a panel) each assign probabilities to some events. How can these individual probability assignments be aggregated into a single collective probability assignment? This article reviews several proposed solutions to this problem. We focus on three salient proposals: linear pooling (the weighted or unweighted linear averaging of probabilities), geometric pooling (the weighted or unweighted geometric averaging of probabilities), and multiplicative pooling (where probabilities are multiplied rather than averaged). We present axiomatic characterisations of each class of (...) pooling functions (most of them classic, but one new) and argue that linear pooling can be justified procedurally, but not epistemically, while the other two pooling methods can be justified epistemically. The choice between them, in turn, depends on whether the individuals' probability assignments are based on shared information or on private information. We conclude by mentioning a number of other pooling methods. (shrink)

Jenseits von Gut und Böse? - Ein provozierendes Plädoyer für einen realistischen Moralkodex - Eine Autopsie der menschlichen Moralfähigkeit - Argumente wider eine Diktatur der Moral Finanzkrise, Doping-Skandale, Wissenschaftsbetrug, Kriege, Mord und Totschlag - ist es wirklich so, dass die Moral schwindet? Oder ist der Mensch überfordert, weil er möglicherweise weniger Moral verträgt, als er sich selbst verordnet? Wie alle anderen Lebewesen sind Menschen Egoisten, die in erster Linie das Problem des Überlebens zu lösen haben. Dazu benötigt der Mensch Ressourcen, (...) um die er mit anderen im Wettbewerb steht. Von Natur aus ist der Mensch also weder gut noch böse, sondern er macht nur, was ihm sein biologischer Imperativ gebietet. Als soziales Lebewesen ist nun der Mensch auf ein Miteinander mit Artgenossen angewiesen und kann obendrein sein Verhalten und Handeln kritisch reflektieren, was zur Schaffung eines Wertesystems geführt hat. Franz M. Wuketits untersucht Herkunft und Zweck moralischen Verhaltens und macht Vorschläge für eine Werteordnung, die an die Bedürfnisse des Individuums angepasst sein muss, wenn sie in der Realität unserer gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse eine Chance haben soll. (shrink)

Menschen überschätzen ihre Rationalität erheblich. Psychologische Informiertheit kann die Ethik davor bewahren, diese Selbstüberschätzung unhinterfragt aufzugreifen. Wir Menschen halten zumindest uns selbst im Grossen und Ganzen für rational. Wir glauben zu wissen, warum wir uns auf eine bestimmte Weise verhalten, und wir können auf Nachfrage viele Gründe für unsere Einstellungen und Handlungen angeben. Die psychologische Forschung zeigt jedoch die Unzulänglichkeit dieses rationalistischen Selbstverständnisses auf. Gerade in Bezug auf tiefsitzende Einstellungen und wertebezogene Handlungen sind Selbsttäuschungen eher der Regelfall als die Ausnahme. (...) Eine psychologisch informierte Ethik versucht, diese beschränkte menschliche Selbsttransparenz umfassend zu berücksichtigen. Dadurch kann sie nicht nur philosophisch-psychologische Grenzfragen beantworten, sie überzeugt vor allem durch ein realitätsnahes Menschenbild."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

A probability aggregation rule assigns to each profile of probability functions across a group of individuals (representing their individual probability assignments to some propositions) a collective probability function (representing the group's probability assignment). The rule is “non-manipulable” if no group member can manipulate the collective probability for any proposition in the direction of his or her own probability by misrepresenting his or her probability function (“strategic voting”). We show that, except in trivial cases, no probability aggregation rule satisfying two mild (...) conditions (non-dictatorship and consensus preservation) is non-manipulable. (shrink)

Die 1990 gegründete Reihe, die auf eine Anregung von Mazzino Montinari zurückgeht, publiziert Quellenmaterialien zu Nietzsches Leben, seinem Umkreis und seiner Wirkung. Die Supplementa stellen somit eine Ergänzung zu den Kritischen Ausgaben von Nietzsches Werken (KGW) und Briefen (KGB) dar.

Franz Overbeck war Nietzsches bester Freund. Er blieb es über dessen geistigen Zusammenbruch im Januar 1889 hinaus, weil er Nietzsches bedingungslose Ansprüche an seine Apostel stets ablehnte. Den Freund betrachtet er in diesen Erinnerungen nicht als Genie, sondern als einen sensiblen, vielfach gebrochenen Menschen.Nietzsche erscheint hier nicht als Ausnahmemensch, sondern als Zeitgenosse, weniger seiner Zeit voraus als vielmehr ganz und gar ein Teil von ihr. Neben den Erinnerungen stehen hier auch die erschütternden Briefe, die Overbeck zur Zeit von Nietzsches (...) Zusammenbruch an dessen ergebenen Jünger Heinrich Köselitz, alias Peter Gast schrieb. Sie erscheinen hier, ebenso wie die Erinnerungen, zum ersten Mal als Buch. Franz Overbeck, geboren 1837, gestorben 1905, war Professor für Neues Testament und Alte Kirchengeschichte an der Universität Basel, wo er zu den Freunden von Jacob Burckhardt gehörte. Seine scharfe Kritik moderner Theologie und insbesondere der religiös begründeten Selbstlegitimation des Bismarck-Reichs machten ihn an den deutschen Universitäten zur persona non grata. (shrink)

Das Buch stellt eine Alternative zur gängigen Sicht der Entstehungsgeschichte des Deutschen Idealismus vor, indem eine spezielle Rezeption des Platonismus, wie sie in Tübingen am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts möglich war, als Ausgangspunkt der prinzipiellen Überlegungen der Tübinger Freunde nachgewiesen wird. Im Gegensatz zu den bewußtseins- und wissenschaftstheoretischen Rekonstruktionen der System-Sukzessionen (von Kant über Reinhold und Fichte zu Schelling und Hegel) wird hier der philosophische Ansatz der drei Tübinger aus dem Versuch erklärt, die platonische Prinzipienlehre (in ihrer neuplatonisch überarbeiteten Form) (...) unter den Bedingungen der transzendentalen Wende Kants zu reformulieren. (shrink)

Das Bose hat Konjunktur - und bleibt doch unberechenbar. Lassen sich dennoch angemessene Strategien des Umgangs entwickeln, die weder die prekare Faktizitat des Bosen noch seine historische Tiefendimension ausblenden? Ausgehend von dieser Leitfrage nahert sich der vorliegende, interdisziplinar breit angelegte Band dem vielschichtigen Phanomen des Bosen in praxeologischer Perspektive. So fokussiert er Moglichkeiten eines - asthetisch wie wissenschaftlich reflektierten -, guten' Umgangs mit dem Bosen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass dies nur unter Beachtung der unaufhebbaren Verwiesenheit von Gut und Bose gelingen (...) kann. Im facherubergreifenden Dialog der Beitrage entstehen so Reflexionen auf Dialektik, Differenz und Paradoxien der Fundamentalkategorien Gut und Bose von wissenschaftsethischer wie grundlagentheoretischer Brisanz.Der Band bietet einen gesonderten Schwerpunkt zu Marcel Beyers 'Kaltenburg', einem Schlusselroman zu Konrad Lorenz, dem Autor von 'Das sogenannte Bose'. (shrink)

Pets are truly great companions. Some individuals feel that owning a pet can help them prepare for a growing family by giving them a taste of what it would be like to have children. This study also looks into the psychological well-being and life experiences of LGBT fur parents. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) With the presence of fur babies, participants had the ease to overcome stressful events, especially the ones that affect their (...) mental health. With these, they have the desire to take care of their fur babies under all circumstances because they see their fur babies as family members. Fur babies are excellent sources of motivation, confidence, and happiness for fur parents. They are treated as family members because they contribute to the mental and emotional aspects of fur parents. Moreover, the majority of respondents valued their pets far more than their actual family members, however, some didn't spend as much time with their relatives and friends. This study comes to the conclusion that a stronger bond with one's dog was also linked to higher anxiety about being unloved and rejected by family members and people surrounding us, which was linked to a heavier impact on one's psychological well-being. In reality, fur parents, especially LGBT parents, offer their fur babies a lot of love and attention compared to other things. (shrink)

I present a formal theory of the logic and aboutness of imagination. Aboutness is understood as the relation between meaningful items and what they concern, as per Yablo and Fine’s works on the notion. Imagination is understood as per Chalmers’ positive conceivability: the intentional state of a subject who conceives that p by imagining a situation—a configuration of objects and properties—verifying p. So far aboutness theory has been developed mainly for linguistic representation, but it is natural to extend it to (...) intentional states. The proposed framework combines a modal semantics with a mereology of contents: imagination operators are understood as variably strict quantifiers over worlds with a content-preservation constraint. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464) – ein Technikphilosoph? Nimmt man die cusanische Philosophie genau unter die Lupe, entdeckt man Erstaunliches: Ohne es explizit so zu nennen, hat sich Nikolaus von Kues durchaus technischen Fragestellungen gewidmet und seine Gedanken sind obendrein erstaunlich modern. Jürgen H. Franz hat die Schriften analysiert und aus ihnen neben einer Technikphilosophie, eine moderne Technikethik, einen Ethikkodex für Ingenieure und Techniker sowie Reflexionen über Nachhaltigkeit entwickelt. Sein Buch lädt ein, historisch einen Schritt zurückzutreten und den Blickwinkel auf (...) die gegenwärtigen Fragen und Probleme in den Bereichen Technik und Nachhaltigkeit um Cusanus’ Perspektive zu erweitern. Dadurch treten Antworten und Lösungen zutage, die bislang verdeckt oder in Vergessenheit geraten waren. (shrink)

We introduce a “reason-based” framework for explaining and predicting individual choices. It captures the idea that a decision-maker focuses on some but not all properties of the options and chooses an option whose motivationally salient properties he/she most prefers. Reason-based explanations allow us to distinguish between two kinds of context-dependent choice: the motivationally salient properties may (i) vary across choice contexts, and (ii) include not only “intrinsic” properties of the options, but also “context-related” properties. Our framework can accommodate boundedly rational (...) and sophisticatedly rational choice. Since properties can be recombined in new ways, it also offers resources for predicting choices in unobserved contexts. (shrink)

Minimalistische Reduktionen des Textes bis hin zu nur noch einem Satz bieten ästhetische und ethische Differenzierungen, die hier in einem weiten kulturgeschichtlichen Rahmen präsentiert werden. Der Spruch im Alten Testament, die Fragmente Heraklits oder die Aphorismen von Kafka, die Maximen der Moralisten und das japanische Haiku - sie alle sind Experimente knappster Verdichtung, die sich gerade deshalb als zeitresistent erwiesen haben. Gleichwohl setzt die Linguistik die Textgröße oftmals erst oberhalb des Einzelsatzes an. Der Band versammelt ein weites Spektrum von Beiträgen (...) aus Philosophie, Theologie, Soziologie, Sprach-, Literatur- und Musikwissenschaft zu einem interdisziplinären, vielstimmigen Gespräch - über die Grenzen der Kulturen wie der Zeiten hinweg. Gebündelt sind diese Beobachtungen im Stichwort der Nanotextualität, um die Effizienz extremer Konzentration in ästhetischen, ethischen und logischen Konsequenzen zu vergleichen. (shrink)