Biographical note: Bernd Seidensticker, Freie Universität Berlin; Martin Vöhler, Freie Universität Berlin.

In this paper some parts of the model theory for logics based on generalised Kripke semantics are developed. Löwenheim-Skolem theorems and some applications of ultraproduct constructions for generalised Kripke models with variable universe are investigated using similar theorems of the model theory for classical logic. The results are generalizations of the theorems of [4].

It is demonstrated how Kripke models for intuitionistic predicate logic can be applied in order to prove classical theorems. As examples proofs of the independence of the axiom of constructibility, of the omitting types theorem and of Shelah's ultrapower theorem are sketched.

Für Kant spielt die Religion im Hinblick auf die moralische Lebensführung weder in geltungstheoretischer noch in motivationstheoretischer Hinsicht eine wesentliche Rolle. Deshalb ist er auch vom tendenziellen Ende der historischen Religionen überzeugt. Mit schonungsloser Kritik wendet sich Kant gegen den dogmatischen Bestand der Offenbarungsreligionen und gegen religiöse Praktiken, die er als „Afterdienst“ bzw. als „Wahnglauben“ brandmarkt. Aber schon die Zeitgenossen haben mit einiger Irritation zur Kenntnis genommen, dass Kant auf der anderen Seite den historischen Religionen für die Gegenwart noch die (...) nützliche Funktion eines ‚Vehikels‘ für die Etablierung eines moralischen „Religionsglaubens“ zuspricht. Bernd Dörflinger hat sich in seinen richtungsweisenden Studien die Aufgabe gestellt, im Rahmen sorgfältiger Analysen die Komplexität von Kants religionsphilosophischen Überlegungen herauszuarbeiten, zugleich aber zu zeigen, was diese im Kontext einer veränderten historischen Situation bedeuten, ohne theologischen Versuchen der Vereinnahmung anheim zu fallen. (shrink)

A game for testing the equivalence of Kripke models with respect to finitary and infinitary intuitionistic predicate logic is introduced and applied to discuss a concept of categoricity for intuitionistic theories.

A philosophy of information is grounded in a philosophy of documentation. Nunberg’s conception of the phenomenon of information heralds a shift of attention away from the question “What is information?” toward a critical investigation of the sources and legitimation of the question itself. Analogies between Wittgenstein’s deconstruction of philosophical accounts of meaning and a corresponding deconstruction of philosophical accounts of information suggest that because the informativeness of a document depends on certain kinds of practices with it, and because information emerges (...) as an effect of such practices, documentary practices are ontologically primary to information. The informativeness of documents therefore refers us to the properties of documentary practices. These fall into four broad categories: their materiality; their institutional sites; the ways in which they are socially disciplined; and their historical contingency. Two examples from early modern science, which contrast the scholastic documentary practices of continental natural philosophers to those of their peers in Restoration England, illustrate the richness of the factors that must be taken into account to understand how documents become informing. (shrink)

Naturalistic Descriptions and Normative-Intentional Interpretations Normative pragmatists about linguistic meaning such as Sellars and Brandom have to explain how norms can be implicit in practices described in purely naturalistic terms. The explanation of implicit norms usually offered in the literature commits pragmatists to equate actions with naturalistic events. Since this is an unacceptable consequence, I propose an alternative explanation of implicit norms that avoids this identification. To do so, one has to treat the normative-intentional concepts such as "norm", "action", "sanction", (...) "belief", "desire" as a holistic system, in the sense that one has to apply all of them to a given naturalistic practice simultaneously. This result might be taken to imply that the pragmatist strategy of explaining the content of assertions and beliefs in terms of norm-governed use is misguided because it presupposes that one can account for the concept "norm" independently of the concept "belief". I argue that this consequence does not follow. (shrink)

Taking account of Kant's unpublished mss., the author presents a close textual interpretation of Kant's logic of concepts.

The two main challenges of the theory of conceptual content presented by Robert Brandom in Making It Explicit are to account for a referential dimension of conceptual content and to account for the objectivity of conceptual norms. Brandom tries to meet both these challenges in chapter 8 of his book. I argue that the accounts presented there can only be understood if seen against the background of Brandom's theory of communication developed in chapter 7. This theory is motivated by the (...) well-known problem that semantic holism threatens the possibility of communication because it has the consequence that words mean different things in different mouths. Brandom offers a solution to this problem in terms of what he calls recurrence commitments. I show that chapter 8 of Making It Explicit should be understood as arguing that a practice that includes acknowledging interpersonal recurrence commitments institutes both conceptual contents with a referential dimension and objective conceptual norms. I close by raising the objection that Brandom's argument can only show that conceptual norms are communally shared and not that they are objective. I propose an emendation of this argument, having recourse to a practice Brandom refers to as rational rectification in his new book Between Saying and Doing. (shrink)

This article discusses the 2019 Event Horizon Telescope image of a black hole as an ontological question for photography, contrasting its spatially distributed operations as a planetary apparatus against its temporal inscriptions of successive histories of scientific realisms following Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. The 'becoming photographic' of this image, this text argues, hinges on the distance it traverses from its scientific milieu to its vernacular reception, making visible the cultural calibrations that produce a consensually legible image.

The contributors to _Constructing the Pluriverse_ critique the hegemony of the postcolonial Western tradition and its claims to universality by offering a set of “pluriversal” approaches to understanding the coexisting epistemologies and practices of the different worlds and problems we inhabit and encounter. Moving beyond critiques of colonialism, the contributors rethink the relationship between knowledge and power, offering new perspectives on development, democracy, and ideology while providing diverse methodologies for non-Western thought and practice that range from feminist approaches to scientific (...) research to ways of knowing expressed through West African oral traditions. In combination, these wide-ranging approaches and understandings form a new analytical toolbox for those seeking creative solutions for dismantling Westernization throughout the world. Contributors Zaid Ahmad, Manuela Boatcă, Hans-Jürgen Burchardt, Arturo Escobar, Sandra Harding, Ehsan Kashfi, Venu Mehta, Walter D. Mignolo, Ulrich Oslender, Isiaka Ouattara, Manu Samnotra, Aram Ziai. (shrink)

This series of images forms part of the ongoing project Soft Ground, Hard Light, which speculates on a multiscalar spatial ontology of photography emanating from the Arditurri silver mine complex in the Basque Country. Evoking the mountainous massif around Arditurri where silver ore and galena have been extracted since Roman presence in the area, the depicted topographies are, in fact, data transcriptions from atomic force microscopy (AFM) probing the analogue film stock of an early 1930s experiment in 3D cinema, Cine (...) en Relieve, by the Basque cinematographer Teófilo Mingueza. In contrast to optical or electron microscopy, AFM uses a scanning probe to physically touch the specimen, recording its surface undulations at the atomic scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre. As a haptic operation based on direct contact between instrument and sample, between apparatus and referent, AFM is literally a contact print, a ‘blind’ scan that senses not the visual content of the recorded image but ‘feels’ its underlying material substrate of silver nanoparticles within the 35 mm film emulsion. The resulting image assemblies visualize a topography resulting from the intra-action between the silver nanoparticles and the scanning probe as much as its transcription through the particular parameters afforded by the AFM analysis software. Hard Light, Soft Ground was initiated during an artist’s residency at Tabakalera Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia-San Sebastián, and is currently in production as part of the wider research project Esper Syndrome: Archaeotopologies of the Image at the Royal College of Art, funded by the AHRC through the London Arts & Humanities Partnership. With additional thanks to the Basque Film Archive and Gustavo Ariel Schwartz at the Materials Physics Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián. (shrink)

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

Following the publication of 7 letters from Baer to the Frorieps by H.E. Müller-Dietz inNTM N.S. 1 (1993), 2 further letters from Baer and 8 from the Frorieps are published. A curious technical problem in the presentation of the journalNotizen published by Froriep in his Landes-industriecomptoir in Weimar is discussed at length. Froriep recommends his son Robert, to whom Baer sends several enquiries and commissions, which Robert deals with carefully (1831 in Jena, 1849 in Paris). Robert explains in great detail (...) his intention to leave Jena for Berlin in 1831. After his father's death in 1847 he returns to take charge of the Landesindustriecomptoir and begins to cooperate with the newly founded Russian Geographic Society as publisher on behalf of the Society. But about 1850 the cooperation is discontinued by the Russians, and Froriep, who is in economic difficulties, asks Baer (who lives and works in St. Petersburg) urgently (but in vain) to help him with the Society. (shrink)