Religiose Vielfalt ist nicht erst eine Erscheinung der "westlichen Moderne". Vielmehr existierten schon in fruhen Zeiten und an verschiedenen Orten der Welt oft mehrere Religionen nebeneinander, sei es dass diese unterschiedlichen Ursprungs waren oder sich aufgrund divergierender Auffassungen der religiosen Akteure innerhalb einer gemeinsamen Tradition ausdifferenzierten. Nicht immer war und ist diese Koexistenz eine friedliche. Die Religion der anderen wird haufig als "deviant" wahrgenommen oder gar als "nonkonformistisch" stigmatisiert und sanktioniert, bis hin zur physischen Vernichtung der "Devianten". Im vorliegenden Band (...) gehen vierzehn ausgewiesene Wissenschaftler_innen aus den Fachgebieten Religionswissenschaft, Soziologie, Sinologie und Judaistik aus ihrer jeweiligen fachlichen Perspektive und anhand diverser Fallbeispiele aus Geschichte und Gegenwart der Frage nach, unter welchen Umstanden, aus welchen Grunden und mit welchen Folgen religiose Pluralitat als Problem wahrgenommen wird. Das Buch verbindet so systematische Fragestellungen mit empirischen Fallbeispielen und liefert damit eine ausgezeichnete Grundlage fur die Erforschung des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit religioser Pluralitat. (shrink)

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour (...) codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform. (shrink)

Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy is the definitive guide to what's going on in this lively and fascinating subject. Jackson and Smith, themselves (...) two of the world's most eminent philosophers, have assembled more than thirty distinguished scholars to contribute incisive and up-to-date critical surveys of the principal areas of research. The coverage is broad, with sections devoted to moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of the sciences. This Handbook will be a rich source of insight and stimulation for philosophers, students of philosophy, and for people working in other disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, who are interested in the state of philosophy today. (shrink)

The paper considers the set ML 1 of first-order polymodal formulas the modal operators in which can be applied to subformulas of at most one free variable. Using a mosaic technique, we prove a general satisfiability criterion for formulas in ML 1 , which reduces the modal satisfiability to the classical one. The criterion is then used to single out a number of new, in a sense optimal, decidable fragments of various modal predicate logics.

It is known that even seemingly small fragments of the first-order temporal logic over the natural numbers are not recursively enumerable. In this paper we show that the monodic fragment is an exception by constructing its finite Hilbert-style axiomatization. We also show that the monodic fragment with equality is not recursively axiomatizable.

Compositionality is a key design feature of human language: the meaning of complex expressions is, for the most part, systematically constructed from the meanings of its parts and their manner of composition. This paper demonstrates that rudimentary forms of compositional communicative behavior can emerge from a variant of reinforcement learning applied to signaling games. This helps explain how compositionality could have emerged gradually: if unsophisticated agents can evolve prevalent dispositions to communicate compositional-like, there is a direct evolutionary benefit for adaptations (...) that exploit the systematicity in form-meaning mappings more rigorously. (shrink)

In this work, we evaluate the status of both theory and empirical evidence in the field of experimental rest-break research based on a framework that combines mental-chronometry and psychometric-measurement theory. To this end, we provide a taxonomy of rest breaks according to which empirical studies can be classified. Then, we evaluate the theorizing in both the basic and applied fields of research and explain how popular concepts relate to each other in contemporary theoretical debates. Here, we highlight differences between all (...) these models in the light of two symbolic categories, termed the resource-based and satiation-based model, including aspects related to the dynamics and the control mechanisms at work. Based on a critical assessment of existing methodological and theoretical approaches, we finally provide a set of guidelines for both theory building and future empirical approaches to the experimental study of rest breaks. We conclude that a psychometrically advanced and theoretically focused research of rest and recovery has the potential to finally provide a sound scientific basis to eventually mitigate the adverse effects of ever increasing task demands on performance and well-being in a multitasking world at work and leisure. (shrink)

Signalling games are popular models for studying the evolution of meaning, but typical approaches do not incorporate vagueness as a feature of successful signalling. Complementing recent like-minded models, we describe an aggregate population-level dynamic that describes a process of imitation of successful behaviour under imprecise perception and realization of similar stimuli. Applying this new dynamic to a generalization of Lewis’s signalling games, we show that stochastic imprecision leads to vague, yet by-and-large efficient signal use, and, moreover, that it unifies evolutionary (...) outcomes and helps avoid sub-optimal categorization. The upshot of this is that we see ‘as-if’-generalization at an aggregate level, without agents actually generalizing. _1_ Introduction _2_ Background _2.1_ Sim-max games and conceptual spaces _2.2_ Vagueness in sim-max games and conceptual spaces _2.3_ Vagueness, functional pressure, and transmission biases _3_ Imprecise Imitation _3.1_ Replicator dynamic in behavioural strategies _3.2_ Noise-perturbed conditional imitation _4_ Exploring Imprecise Imitation _4.1_ Setting the stage _4.2_ Simulation set-up _4.3_ Measures of interest _4.4_ Results _5_ Discussion _5.1_ Levels of vagueness _5.2_ Evolutionary benefits of imprecision _5.3_ Related work _6_ Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)

rnst Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany, on July 5, 1904, making him, at age 95, the grand old man of evolutionary biology, one of the primary architects of the modem synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theory, and arguably one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His career interests have spanned a remarkable five different fields, including: (1) ornithology, (2) systematics, (3) zoogeography, (4) evolutionary theory, and (5) philosophy and history of science. Such broad research interests grew (...) from his education at a German Gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school, but at that time considerably more demanding), followed by a Candidacy in Medicine at the University of Greifswald in 1925 and a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Berlin in 1926. (shrink)

The paper considers the set $\mathscr{M}\mathscr{L}_1$ of first-order polymodal formulas the modal operators in which can be applied to subformulas of at most one free variable. Using a mosaic technique, we prove a general satisfiability criterion for formulas in $\mathscr{M}\mathscr{L}_1$, which reduces the modal satisfiability to the classical one. The criterion is then used to single out a number of new, in a sense optimal, decidable fragments of various modal predicate logics.

Franke, Dulcinati and Pouscoulous also examine a form of covert lying, by considering to what extent speakers use implicatures to deceive their addressee. The participants in their online signaling game had to describe a card, which a virtual coplayer then had to select. When the goal was to deceive rather than help the coplayer, participants produced more false descriptions (overt lies), but also more uninformative descriptions (covert lies by means of an implicature). [73].

Due to the complexity of research objects, theoretical concepts, and stimuli in media research, researchers in psychology and communications presumably need sophisticated measures beyond self-report scales to answer research questions on media use processes. The present study evaluates stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior as an objective, corroborative measure for the media use phenomenon of spatial presence. To this end, a mixed methods approach is used in an experimental setting to collect, combine, analyze, and interpret data from standardized participant self-report, (...) observation of participant behavior, and content analysis of the media stimulus. T-pattern detection is used to analyze stimulus-dependent blinking behavior, and this structural data is then contrasted with self-report data. The combined results show that behavioral indicators yield the predicted results, while self-report data shows unpredicted results that are not predicted by the underlying theory. The use of a mixed methods approach offered insights that support further theory development and theory testing beyond a traditional, mono-method experimental approach. (shrink)

I discuss whether Michael Tye, in Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1966, holds that phenomenal properties are neurological properties, but that what gives them their phenomenal property names are their highly complex interconnections with other neurological properties and, most especially, subjects' surroundings. Or, alternatively, whether he holds that they are higher-level, wide functional properties in the sense of being properties of having properties that fill some specified wide or distal roles.

We reopen the investigation into the formal and conceptual relationship between bidirectional optimality theory (Blutner in J Semant 15(2):115–162, 1998 , J Semant 17(3):189–216, 2000 ) and game theory. Unlike a likeminded previous endeavor by Dekker and van Rooij (J Semant 17:217–242, 2000 ), we consider signaling games not strategic games, and seek to ground bidirectional optimization once in a model of rational step-by-step reasoning and once in a model of reinforcement learning. We give sufficient conditions for equivalence of bidirectional (...) optimality and the former, and show based on numerical simulations that bidirectional optimization may be thought of as a process of reinforcement learning with lateral inhibition. (shrink)

Language use and interpretation is heavily contingent on context. But human interlocutors need not always agree what the actual context is. In game theoretic approaches to language use and interpretation, interlocutors’ beliefs about the context are the players’ beliefs about the game that they are playing. Together this entails that we need to consider cases in which interlocutors have different subjective conceptualizations of the game they are in. This paper therefore extends iterated best response reasoning, as an established model for (...) pragmatic reasoning, to games with unawareness. This extension not only leads to more plausible context models for many communicative situations, but also to improved predictions for otherwise problematic cases and an extension of the scope of pragmatic phenomena that can be captured by game theoretic analysis. (shrink)

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

Machines that learn and think like people must be able to learn from others. Social learning speeds up the learning process and – in combination with language – is a gateway to abstract and unobservable information. Social learning also facilitates the accumulation of knowledge across generations, helping people and artificial intelligences learn things that no individual could learn in a lifetime.

This special issue of AVANT is all about Cognitive Innovation. It is not about CogNovo, the interdisciplinary and international doctoral training programme that produced three different Off the Lip events. It is not about Off the Lip 2017, the novel symposium format we developed to collaboratively create a publication resulting in this special issue of AVANT. It is not about the seemingly heterogeneous collection of papers that follow this preface. Collaborative Approaches to Cognitive Innovation required something else, something we are (...) starting to capture in the four GIFT principles. While this special issue is not solely about CogNovo, Off the Lip events, or the content of the following submissions, all these aforementioned elements were necessary to shape our current understanding of Cognitive Innovation, the very process which led to numerous publications, exhibitions, and events during the past three years. In a sense, all of our previous endeavours have culminated in this collection of 26 distinct pieces of work, yet we hope and believe that this special issue also marks a beginning. Let us explain. [...]. (shrink)

We propose related algorithms for unification and constraint simplification in }F’&, a refinement of the simply-typed A-calculus with subtypes and bounded intersection types. }F""’ is intended as the basis of a logical framework in order to achieve more succinct and declarative axiomatiza-.

Game theoretic pragmatics is a small but growing part of formal pragmatics, the linguistic subfield studying language use. The general logic of a game theoretic explanation of a pragmatic phenomenon is this: the conversational context is modelled as a game between speaker and hearer; an adequate solution concept then selects the to‐be‐explained behavior in the game model. For such an explanation to be convincing, both components, game model and solution concept, should be formulated and scrutinized as explicitly as possible. The (...) article demonstrates this by a concise overview of both evolutionary and non‐evolutionary approaches to game theoretic pragmatics, arguing for the use of agent‐based micro‐dynamics within evolutionary, and for the use of epistemic game theory within non‐evolutionary approaches. (shrink)

This volume unites various contributions reflecting the intellectual interests exhibited by Professor Herman Parret (Institute of Philosophy, Leuven), who has continued to observe, and often critically assess, ongoing developments in pragmatics throughout his career. In fact, Parret's contributions to philosophical and empirical/linguistic pragmatics present substantive proposals in the epistemics of communication, while simultaneously offering meta-comments on the ideological premises of extant pragmatic analyses. In a lengthy introduction, an overview is provided of his achievements in promoting an integrated, "maximalist" pragmatics, as (...) well as of the links between his own work in philosophy of language and in semiotics and aesthetics. The remaining 12 essays address relevant pragmatic themes or look into the relation between pragmatics and neighboring disciplines. They deal with grammatical deixis (Brisard, Ikegami) and mood (van der Auwera & Schalley), performativity (Harnish, Holdcroft), speech-act types and their praxeological dimensions (Roulet, Van Overbeke), Wittgensteinian language games (Marques, Parisi), cultural and intercultural identities (Vandenabeele, Verschueren), and the visual arts (Wildgen). (shrink)