In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 304-305 [Access article in PDF] Wildfeuer, Armin G. Praktische Vernunft und System. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur ursprünglichen Kant-Rezeption Johann Gottlieb Fichtes. Stuttgart-Bad/Cannstatt : Frommann-Holzboog, 1999. Pp. 596. Cloth, DM 168. The subtitle of this book, a slightly revised dissertation from the University of Bonn (1994), reads: "Investigations into the developmental history of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's original reception of Kant." The work comes (...) to almost 600 pages. The main text is heavily overlaid with detailed footnotes, extensive quotations and supplementary material in smaller print and narrow line spacing. To the reader who is patient enough to face this scholastic mode of presentation, there emerges behind it a valuable contribution to our overall understanding of Fichte's philosophical work in general and its core discipline, the Wissenschaftslehre or first, transcendental philosophy, in particular.In the grand narrative about the development of German idealism Fichte is placed between Kant and Schelling. More precisely, he is typically portrayed as continuing but also revising Kant's work under the double influence of the leading early post-Kantian, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758-1823), and the skeptical anti-Kantian and anti-Reinholdian, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), called "Aenesidemus" after the title of his anonymous main work.Wildfeuer's investigations supplement this picture with a detailed consideration of what could be called "Fichte before Fichte": the early development of Fichte's thought, prior to his encounter with Reinhold and prior even to his encounter with Kant (1790). To be sure, Wildfeuer also deals with Fichte's continued philosophical development up through 1794, and he has many interesting things to say about the lasting presence of Fichte's earliest concerns in his more mature work. But the chief merit of the book is the sustained attention it pays to the very beginnings of Fichte's thought.Much of the prehistory of Fichtean philosophy has to be conjectured, given the scarcity of documents about Fichte's years of study (1780-84) and of his work as itinerant tutor (1785-1793). From Fichte's own testimony in his correspondence it is clear that prior to encountering Kant's three Critiques he held a determinist position regarding nature as well as human conduct. Based on some indications in Fichte's later works, Wildfeuer identifies as the chief source of Fichte's determinism the work of Karl Ferdinand Hommel (1722-1781), a professor of law at Leipzig, whom Fichte could have heard as a student and whose pseudonymous treatise Alexander von Joch... On Reward and Punishment According to Turkish Laws (1770) Fichte cites. Hommel (alias von Joch) maintains a deterministic view of human action, while justifying the social practice of punishment and reward. In particular, he maintains the dependence of the will on the intellect and of the latter on sensations or sensory impressions. Wildfeuer refers to this position, as it was temporarily adopted by Fichte, as that of the primacy of the understanding over the will.But Wildfeuer also shows that from early on Fichte's determinist leanings in speculation were counterbalanced by the conviction that feeling, especially feeling in religious matters, is an equally valid source of truth. For Wildfeuer, this early duality of speculation and feeling is the lasting basis of Fichte's life-long concern with reconciling the competing demands of head and heart. In particular this pre-Kantian key concern [End Page 304] in Fichte informs the latter's central systematic occupation with the unity of the mind amidst its differentiation into faculties or kinds of mental activity.Further texts which Wildfeuer examines in pursuit of the pre-Kantian Fichte are his Latin Valedictory Address, given upon graduating from one of Germany's finest secondary schools at the time, the Princely College of Pforta (1780), and the "Aphorisms on Religion and Deism" (1790).On the basis of this material Wildfeuer goes on to reconstruct the distinct reception that each of Kant's three Critiques received by Fichte. According to Wildfeuer, the Critique of Pure Reason originally was read by... (shrink)

Regularity is the thesis that all contingent propositions should be assigned probabilities strictly between zero and one. I will prove on cardinality grounds that if the domain is large enough, a regular probability assignment is impossible, even if we expand the range of values that probabilities can take, including, for instance, hyperreal values, and significantly weaken the axioms of probability.

(2013). Incompatibilism proved. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. ???aop.label???

One of the problems that Bayesian regularity, the thesis that all contingent propositions should be given probabilities strictly between zero and one, faces is the possibility of random processes that randomly and uniformly choose a number between zero and one. According to classical probability theory, the probability that such a process picks a particular number in the range is zero, but of course any number in the range can indeed be picked. There is a solution to this particular problem on (...) the books: a measure that assigns the same infinitesimal probability to each number between zero and one. I will show that such a measure, while mathematically interesting, is pathological for use in confirmation theory, for the same reason that a measure that assigns an infinitesimal probability to each possible outcome in a countably infinite lottery is pathological. The pathology is that one can force someone to assign a probability within an infinitesimal of one to an unlikely event. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Two Interrelated Problems Lewis's Solution Inductive Paradox Identity versus Counterpart Theory Platonism: The Main Realist Alternative to Lewis An Aristotelian Alternative Leibniz's Account A Combined Account.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veritas Filia Temporis: Experience and Belief in Early Modern Culture *Brendan DooleyFew observers in the seventeenth century had any illusions about the reliability of political information imparted by the sources newly minted or voluminously increased during the course of the century. The newsletters appeared to be concocted from malicious gossip. 1The newspapers seemed to be published at the bidding of powerful political interests with little inclination to tell the (...) truth, 2and histories of recent events seemed to be based on faulty sources even when the writers endeavored to procure faithful accounts. “Truth is by nature elusive and slippery,” history theorist Agostino Mascardi admitted. All he could recommend as a defense for the inaccurate historian was the injunction against throwing the first stone: “Omnis homo mendax,” said David the holy king; and those who are such harsh critics of historians’ involuntary lies may well be astute trammelers of perfidy and deceit in their own lives.” 3He had no answer about historians who deliberately distorted the truth. In fact just when readers might have desired it most, from the earliest episodes of the Thirty-Years War to the last episodes of the Turkish Wars at the end of the century, the possibility of [End Page 487]gaining a realistic picture of the contemporary world seemed to be getting more and more remote.The argument of this article centers around a discussion of the cultural consequences of this late seventeenth-century trend. To some of the readers, writers, thinkers, and theorists in this period, the unreliability of information about their own time or about the past, however compounded by contemporary political and social circumstances, was nothing but a minor nuisance. To others it was a hint about the bad faith of the governments who influenced writers. To still others, this same unreliability raised deeply troubling questions about human nature and existence. It provided social and political reasons for historical skepticism, quite apart from one’s familiarity with Sextus Empiricus or the elite intellectual trends of the time. It placed everyday social and political reality in a new light, thus adding a more mundane element to the uneasy feeling produced by the new science and cosmology—the feeling, that is, of being borne along in uncontrollable currents whose exact nature the best minds nonetheless seemed incapable of understanding. It added to the disquiet produced by confessional disputes, suggesting that truth might be beyond human capacity to grasp. 4Not only in Italy but throughout Europe in the late seventeenth century this discussion will show, existing methods of ascertaining facts in political and military affairs both in the present and in past times came under a new sort of scrutiny as part of what some scholarship has regarded as no less than a wide-ranging “crisis of consciousness” at the threshold of the Enlightenment. 5The conclusion opens briefly onto the sequel of these episodes. The crisis was resolved at least in part by a corresponding movement for methodological change as well as by a reform of ideas about the proper place for intellectual improvisation in the formation of narrative in order to make historical writing persuasive as well as civically useful again. If the product of error and fraud was skepticism, the product of skepticism was modern historiography. 6 [End Page 488]History and ExperienceObviously, the elusiveness of political truth that helped touch off the late seventeenth-century crisis was no novelty of the age. Deliberate misinformation was a fully-recognized political strategy at least by the time that Machiavelli made it an explicit part of prudence by recommending the cultivation of good appearances and expressing his admiration for Pope Alexander VI and Ferdinand I of Spain as being the best liars of their time. 7In the late sixteenth century theorists all over Europe sought to join Machiavelli’s insights about the inner workings of state power to those of Tacitus in the light of conventional morality. 8In Italy it was the Piedmontese writer Giovanni Botero who, exploring these Tacitist perspectives in his Reason of State, expressed the fewest reservations about insisting on the propriety of a policy of state secrecy and misinformation. 9Florentine political theorist... (shrink)

Assuming S₅, the main controversial premise in modal ontological arguments is the possibility premise, such as that possibly a maximally great being exists. I shall offer a new way of arguing that the possibility premise is probably true.

The paper examines the political ideas of founding figures of West German political science by engaging with formative texts from the post-war period of neo-Aristotelian (Dolf Sternberger and Siegfried Landshut), Critical Theory (Arcadius R.L. Gurland and Franz L. Neumann), ordoliberal (Alexander Rüstow) and catholic (Ferdinand Hermens) perspective. It is argued that these early German political scientists coincided in the diagnosis of living in a thoroughly politicized post-liberal age. They rejected the separation between empirical and normative political science and (...) devised heterogeneous disciplinary approaches that can be classified as republican, power-realist, and expertocratic. Although democracy was an important point of reference for some of them, it is not tenable, contrary to older historiography and contemporary self-image, to describe early West-German political science as a Demokratiewissenschaft (science of democracy) in overall terms. (shrink)

According to David Lewis's extreme modal realism, every waythat a world could be is a way that some concretely existingphysical world really is. But if the worlds are physicalentities, then there should be a set of all worlds, whereasI show that in fact the collection of all possible worlds is nota set. The latter conclusion remains true even outside of theLewisian framework.

Gödel's ontological argument is a formal argument for a being defined in terms of the concept of a positive property. I shall defend several versions of Gödel's argument, using weaker premises than Anderson's (1990) version, and avoiding Oppy's (1996 and 2000) parody refutations.

The term theodicy was coined by the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and is inherent in the question of how evil can exist if an intrinsically good God guides everything. The publication of this oeuvre initiated intense philosophical and theological discourse in the subsequent centuries, during which many issues that bare upon human well-being were articulated. Also, Leibniz’s rational approach to the relationship between God and evil raised a number of issues related to the topic of belief. This topic has (...) entangled discourses on theodicy with a long-lasting debate on beliefs, which goes back to Antiquity. Recently, a paradigm-shift shed new light on the understanding of belief. Science has begun to address the neurophysiological mechanisms of the processes that underpin belief formation, modulation, and change. The term credition was coined in order to capture and reflect this new and innovative understanding of the fluidity of beliefs and believing. This paper presents various features of a pattern of interrelationships between well-being, theodicy, and credition. (shrink)

The essence and basic methods of the pure theory -- The state and the law -- Law and its "others" : natural law, morality and social policy -- Constitution and normative hierarchy -- The basic norm and efficacy of the legal system -- The rule of law -- Conclusion -- Index.

This paper argues that if creatures are to have significant free will, then God's essential omni-benevolence and essential omnipotence cannot logically preclude Him from creating a world containing a moral evil. The paper maintains that this traditional conclusion does not need to rest on reliance on subjunctive conditionals of free will. It can be grounded in several independent ways based on premises that many will accept.

Die Untersuchung analysiert deswegen nach einem einleitenden Vorschlag zur Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Logik und Metaphysik im Anschluss an Leibniz Baumgartens Erkenntnistheorie in ihrer charakteristischen Komplementarität von Ästhetik und Logik, die das gesamte Feld aller möglichen Gewissheit, d. h. des Bewusstseins der Wahrheit der verschiedensten Erkenntnisse, abdecken. Darüber hinaus erörtert sie auch deren mögliche Gegenstände, nämlich die Beschaffenheit der Dinge, wie sie das Wissen Gottes als eine ideale Metaphysik enthielte. Auf der Grundlage einer Ontologie teilweise unbestimmer aktualer Existenz kommt Baumgarten (...) zu einer kosmologischen Theorie monadischer Bewegtheit aller körperlichen Dinge. Sie führt zu einer Psychologie des Erkennens und Handelns, aus der ein indeterministischer Begriff menschlicher Willensfreiheit folgt, die auch von Gottes Allwissen nicht beschränkt wird. (shrink)

The role of possible worlds in philosophy is hard to overestimate. Nevertheless, their nature and existence is very controversial. This is particularly serious, since their standard applications depend on there being sufficiently many of them. The paper develops an account of possible worlds on which it is particularly easy to believe in their existence: an account of possible worlds as pleonastic entities. Pleonastic entities are entities whose existence can be validly inferred from statements that neither refer to nor quantify over (...) them as a matter of conceptual necessity. Definitions are proposed that ensure that this is the case for possible worlds. (shrink)

There are frequent claims that the regulation of international law is uncertain, vague, ambiguous, or indeterminate, which does not support the desired stability, transparency, or predictability of international legal relations. This monograph examines the framework of interpretation in international law based on the premise of the effectiveness and determinacy of international legal regulation, which is a necessary pre-requisite for international law to be viewed as law. This study examines this problem for the first time since these questions were introduced and (...) identified as the basic premises of the international legal analysis, in the works of JL Brierly and Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. Addressing different aspects of the effectiveness of legal regulation, this monograph examines the structural limits on, and threshold of, legal regulation, and the relationship between established legal regulation and non-law. Once the limits of legal regulation are ascertained, the analysis proceeds to examine the legal framework of interpretation that serves to maintain and preserve the object and aims of existing legal regulation. The final stage of analysis is the interpretation of those treaty provisions that embody the indeterminate conditions of non-law. Given that the generalist element of international legal doctrine has been virtually silent on the problem and implications of the effectiveness and determinacy of international legal regulation, this study examines the material accumulated in doctrine and practice for the past several decades, including the relevant jurisprudence of all major international tribunals. (shrink)

Call a term ‘pseudo-singular’ if it is syntactically singular but semantically plural. ‘The pair who wrote Principia’ is a good example, standing as it does for the two individuals, Whitehead and Russell. In this journal (2021), Eric Snyder and Stewart Shapiro launched an attack on the idea, calling it ‘linguistically and logically untenable.’ In this reply we rebut every one of their criticisms.

Mill predicted that “[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written … because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief.” Indeed, _On Liberty_ is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and (...) social issues. In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society. (shrink)

This volume answers the question: Why do we believe what we believe? It examines current research on the concept of beliefs, and the development in our understanding of the process of believing. It takes into account empirical findings in the field of neuroscience regarding the processes that underlie beliefs, and discusses the notion that beyond the interactive exploratory analysis of sensory information from the complex outside world, humans engage in an evaluative analysis by which they attribute personal meaning and relevance (...) to the probabilistic representations of objects and events. Beliefs exert a strong influence on behaviour, decision-making, and identifying and solving problems. Despite their importance, beliefs have until recently not been at the centre of scientific interest. In fact, "belief" is an ill-defined phenomenon. From a transdisciplinary perspective the actual approaches to understanding belief seem incompatible as they attempt to highlight such different topics as "belief - religion", "belief - spirituality", "belief - faith", "belief - knowledge", "belief - attitude", "belief - disbelief", "belief - illusion", and "believing - brain function". This situation contradicts the idea that belief is close to pathological phenomena and that it should be eliminated from scientific discussions. Rather, believing is fundamental for understanding the many problems of every-day life. In fact, the book shows that beliefs are relevant for politics, international affairs, economy, law, or religions also in modern societies. This book presents the increasing scientific interest in beliefs and believing, and reflects the change in focus from the content aspect of belief towards the fluid nature of believing. (shrink)

Biopolitics, originally interpreted as the subfield of political science focusing on biological (evolutionary) factors involved in political behavior, has faced conceptual and organizational differences during the forty-year period of its development. It has recently been redefined as the totality of all applications of biology to social and political concepts, problems and practical issues and concerns. In these new terms, biopolitics represents a promising interdisciplinary area of research, whose potential with respect to political philosophy and political science is exemplified by its (...) application to the following issues: (i) Collective violence (war, terrorism, etc.); (ii) Ethnocentrism; (iii) Hierarchies and networks: and (iv) Neurochemical factors of social behavior. The prerequisite for the successof biopolitics is its collaboration with the humanities and social sciences in investigating the multi-level “Homo politicus”. (shrink)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many Latin American intellectuals adapted the philosophy of positivism to address the pressing problems of nation-building and respond to the demands of their own social and political contexts, making positivism the second most influential tradition in the history of Latin American philosophy, after scholasticism. Since a comprehensive survey of positivism’s role across Latin American and Latinx philosophy would require multiple books, this chapter presents the history of positivism and its transformations in Mexican (...) and Chicanx philosophies, proceeding chronologically and focusing on these representative thinkers: Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Gabino Barreda (1818-1881), Justo Sierra (1848-1912), José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Antonio Caso (1883-1946), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004). We pay special attention to how positivism was used to build the Mexican nation and reconstruct Mexican identity through education, creating philosophical debates about the relationships among science, religion, morality, education, race, economic progress, and national development. These debates continue to resonate as we think critically about the respective roles of scientific education—then called “positive” education, now “STEM” education—and moral education in the curricula used to educate a country’s youth while reconstructing their ethnoracial and national identities. (shrink)

This essay narrates what I have learned from Søren Kierkegaard & John Dewey about teaching philosophy. It consists of three sections: 1) a Deweyan pragmatist’s translation of Kierkegaard’s religious insights on Christianity, as a way of life, into ethical insights on philosophy, as a way of life; 2) a brief description of the introductory course that I teach most frequently: Ethics, Happiness, & The Good Life; and 3) an exploration of three spiritual exercises from the course: a) self-cultivation by means (...) of writing in an Ethics Notebook, b) an “existential experiment” in which we practice one of Aristotle’s virtues for a week, and c) a 15-hour service-learning component. (shrink)

Der Jenenser Philosoph Heinrich Köhler versucht in seinen Exercitationes Juris Naturalis, eiusque cumprimis cogentis, methodo systematica propositi eine rationalistische Begründung des Naturrechts auf der Basis der Metaphysik von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Die Rekonstruktion dieser metaphysischen Begründung, die mit dem Aufweiß der Erkennbarkeit des obersten Prinzips des Naturrechts rein aus der Vernunft zusammenfällt, ist Gegenstand der vorliegenden Studie. Ausgehend von der Identifikation jenes Erkenntnisgrundes mit der Natur des Menschen zeigt sich vermittels einer Analyse der von Köhler in Anschlag gebrachten Methode, daß (...) diese Begründung unter Ausschluß bloßer empirischer Erkenntnis auf einen metaphysisch fundierten teleologischen Begriff der menschlichen Natur führt. Der verpflichtende Charakter des Naturrechtsprinzips erwächst demnach daraus, daß seine Achtung dem Menschen eine artgemäße Existenz aller erst ermöglicht. Vor diesem Hintergrund erweist sich auch die Schwäche einer solchen Theorie bei der Beurteilung einzelner Handlungen als moralisch, auf die Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in seinem Ius Naturae indirekt und kritisch aufmerksam macht. In his Exercitationes Juris Naturalis, eiusque cumprimis cogentis, methodo systematica propositi , the Jena philosopher Heinrich Köhler attempts to provide a rational foundation for natural law based on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's metaphysics. This paper examines a reconstruction of this metaphysical foundation, which coincides with demonstrating that pure reason can recognize the supreme principle of natural law. Assuming that this recognition can be identified with human nature, an analysis of Köhler's methodology shows that if mere empirical recognition is excluded his foundation leads to a metaphysically based teleological concept of human nature. The principle of natural law imposes obligations because only through respecting it can a human being live in a manner adequate for his species. Against this background, the weakness of this type of theory for determining whether an act is moral becomes apparent, which Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten indirectly and critically notes in his Ius Naturae. (shrink)

This book makes trouble: it explores the reality that digital culture is largely an extension of an older coloniality of power of the global north. It suggests a line of inquiry for the social sciences to reflect on their own imperial role and develop a contemporary critical and pragmatic scope, shifting their gaze from problems to opportunities.