This volume discusses the origin and structure of the universe in mystical Islam (Sufism) and Islam's civilizational predecessors with special reference to parallel realms of existence and their interaction. Contributors address Sufi ideas about the fate of human beings in this and future life under three rubrics: (1) cosmogony and eschatology ("where do we come from?" and "where do we go?"); (2) conceptualizations of the world of the here-and-now ("where are we now?"); and (3) visualizations of realms of existence, their (...) hierarchy and mutual relationships ("where are we in relation to other times and places?"). Contributors are Christian Lange, Alexander Knysh, Noah Gardiner, Stephen Hirtenstein, Saeko Yazaki, Jean-Jacques Thibon, Leah Kinberg, Sara Sviri, Munjed M. Murad, Simon O'Meara, Pierre Lory, Mathieu Terrier, Michael Ebstein, Binyamin Abrahamov and Frederick Colby. (shrink)

This article offers a typologically-driven and corpus-based analysis of the historical present (HP) “active participle” qātēl in Biblical Aramaic. The authors argue that qātēl instantiates the HP category quite neatly and provide three main arguments. First, qātēl complies with the definition of a progredient/propulsive HP that emerges from crosslinguistic literature: while, in its prototypical use, qātēl expresses some type(s) of present, it may also be employed in narrative to introduce past perfective events. Second, when used as an HP, qātēl exhibits (...) functions that are consistent with tendencies attested across languages: stylistically, the HP qātēl is often associated with expressivity, mirativity, and dramatism, while discourse-pragmatically, it is predominantly related to the progression (rarely, the climax) and atomization of the plot. Third, most other properties exhibited by the HP qātēl also harmonize with the behavior of HPs observed in linguistic typology; these concern types of clauses in which the HP qātēl appears, and subjects and verbs used. Overall, the HP qātēl can be viewed as a highlighting narrative device—subjective although linguistically constrained. (shrink)

Really statistical explanation is a hitherto neglected form of noncausal scientific explanation. Explanations in population biology that appeal to drift are RS explanations. An RS explanation supplies a kind of understanding that a causal explanation of the same result cannot supply. Roughly speaking, an RS explanation shows the result to be mere statistical fallout.

Sober 2011 argues that, contrary to Hume, some causal statements can be known a priori to be true—notably, some ‘would promote’ statements figuring in causal models of natural selection. We find Sober's argument unconvincing. We regard the Humean thesis as denying that causal explanations contain any a priori knowable statements specifying certain features of events to be causally relevant. We argue that not every ‘would promote’ statement is genuinely causal, and we suggest that Sober has not shown that his examples (...) of ‘would promote’ statements manage to achieve a priori status without sacrificing their causal character. (shrink)

Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects of (...) teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy. (shrink)

Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects (...) of teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy. (shrink)

Unter dem Dach der Philosophie gingen empirische Forschung und normative Theorie lange Zeit Hand in Hand, bis sie spätestens um die Zeit der Emanzipation der Einzelwissenschaften in eine schwierige, nicht immer eindeutig bestimmbare Beziehung zueinander traten; dieses unterbestimmte Verhältnis tritt uns vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Debatten wieder entgegen. Das zeigt sich zum Beispiel auch bei Fragen der Ethik: In den letzten Jahrzehnten zeigten verschiedene wissenschaftliche Disziplinen verstärktes Interesse an empirischen Bemühungen um ein deskriptives Verständnis von Moral. Hier gibt es nach (...) wie vor eine starke Trennung zwischen den Bereichen der normativen Theorie einerseits und der empirischen Forschung andererseits, wobei in beiden Bereichen dazu tendiert wird, die jeweils anderen Diskurse zu vernachlässigen, wobei Unklarheit über die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer fruchtbaren Integration herrscht. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es jüngst auch verschiedene Versuche einer Integration beider Domänen. – Dies macht einen Diskurs über die Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von empirischer Forschung und normativer Theorie nötig, was in diesem Band aus verschiedenen historischen sowie systematischen Perspektiven geleistet wird. (shrink)

Laws in the special sciences are usually regarded to be non-universal. A theory of laws in the special sciences faces two challenges. (I) According to Lange's dilemma, laws in the special sciences are either false or trivially true. (II) They have to meet the ?requirement of relevance?, which is a way to require the non-accidentality of special science laws. I argue that both challenges can be met if one distinguishes four dimensions of (non-) universality. The upshot is that I argue (...) for the following explication of special science laws: L is a special science law just if (1) L is a system law, (2) L is quasi-Newtonian, and (3) L is minimally invariant. (shrink)

In this paper I examine and question Marc Lange’s account of laws, and his claim that the law delineating the range of natural kinds of fundamental particle has a lesser grade of necessity that the laws connecting the fundamental properties of those kinds with their derived properties.

What is a law of nature? Traditionally, philosophical discussion of this question has been dominated by two prominent alternatives; David Lewis’s best-systems analysis, according to which a law is a regularity that serves as a theorem in our best axiomatization of the facts about the world, and the Dretske-Armstrong-Tooley analysis, which incorporates universals to distinguish laws from mere accidental generalizations. Marc Lange’s first book presents a provocative alternative to this tradition, providing a novel treatment of natural laws that should be (...) of interest to those philosophers concerned with the analysis of lawhood, physical necessity, causation, inductive confirmation, counterfactual analysis, and explanation. (shrink)

The ancient commentators on Aristotle comprise the last great philosophical tradition in Greek to be translated into a modern language. The series of translations of which this volume is a part is under the general editorship of Richard Sorabji and includes works by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ammonius, Dexippus, and Philoponus as well as Simplicius. The present volume is especially important not only because of the intrinsic interest of its subject, namely place and time, but also because of its philosophic (...) interest both as expressing Neoplatonic views and as a critique of Aristotle. (shrink)

Metaphysics 4 and 5, that is Γ and Δ, comprise two of the most important books in the Aristotelian corpus and, perhaps, in the history of philosophy. Metaphysics 4 opens with the famous line "there is a science of being qua being," while Metaphysics 5 presents Aristotle's "philosophical dictionary." As with so much of Aristotle, the ideas expressed in these books are capable of a wide range of interpretation. In Alexander's commentaries, we possess a relatively early interpretation by a (...) sophisticated philosopher who knew well not only his Aristotle but also Aristotle's opponents and their quarrels. Thus these commentaries are not only intrinsically interesting on their own philosophical terms, but are filled with cross references within the text of Aristotle--cross references that tell us how these texts were being construed within the schools of the time--as well as arguments revealing the background of live substantive issues introduced by Aristotle and his place within late Greek philosophy. Finally, as Madigan points out in his introduction, those interested in Neoplatonism will also find these commentaries of great interest because, as Prophyry reports, they were apparently read at Plotinus's school. Indeed, Alexander himself is often thought of as a Neoplatonic commentator. (shrink)

It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played by laws in scientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) and scientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical and scientific explanation. This relation also resolves a puzzle (...) about scientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered. (shrink)

Buch 1. Geschichte des Materialismus bis auf Kant.--Buch 2. Geschichte des Materialismus seit Kant.

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

Why do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and “transcend” the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this (...) controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defence of the hypothesis that there is a necessarily existing being capable of providing an ultimate foundation for the existence of all things.

Historically, the hypothesis driving emotion research has been that emotion’s data-base—in language, physiology, and behavior— is organized around specific mental states, as reflected in evaluative language. It is suggested that this approach has not greatly advanced a natural science of emotion and that the developing motivational model of emotion defines a better path: emotion is an evolved trait founded on motivational neural circuitry shared by mammalian species, primitively prompting heightened perceptual processing and reflex mobilization for action to appetitive or threatening (...) survival cues. As the field moves forward with increasingly sophisticated measurement technology and assessing more complex affective functioning, scientific understanding of human emotion will proceed best within the framework of this mammalian brain model. (shrink)

Jacobi held a position of unparalleled importance in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century intellectual history. This includes his role in bringing about the close of the Enlightenment, his central part in shaping the reception of Kant's philosophy and German idealism, and his influence on the development of Romanticism and existentialism.

As sophisticated artificial intelligence software becomes more ubiquitously and more intimately integrated within domains of traditionally human endeavor, many are raising questions over how responsibility (be it moral, legal, or causal) can be understood for an AI’s actions or influence on an outcome. So called “responsibility gaps” occur whenever there exists an apparent chasm in the ordinary attribution of moral blame or responsibility when an AI automates physical or cognitive labor otherwise performed by human beings and commits an error. Healthcare (...) administration is an industry ripe for responsibility gaps produced by these kinds of AI. The moral stakes of healthcare are often life and death, and the demand for reducing clinical uncertainty while standardizing care incentivizes the development and integration of AI diagnosticians and prognosticators. In this paper, we argue that (1) responsibility gaps are generated by “black box” healthcare AI, (2) the presence of responsibility gaps (if unaddressed) creates serious moral problems, (3) a suitable solution is for relevant stakeholders to voluntarily responsibilize the gaps, taking on some moral responsibility for things they are not, strictly speaking, blameworthy for, and (4) should this solution be taken, black box healthcare AI will be permissible in the provision of healthcare. (shrink)

Machine learning, and more broadly artificial intelligence (AI), is a fascinating technology and can be considered as the closest approximation to the Cartesian “thinking thing” that humans have ever created. Just as the industrial revolution required a new ethos, the age of intelligent machines will create its own, challenging the established moral, economic, and political presuppositions. This paper discusses the relationship between AI and society; it presents several thought experiments to explore the complexity of the relationship and highlights the insufficiency (...) of the current normative paradigm in addressing technological expansion. I argue that many of the externalities, such as security risks, loss of privacy, and economic instability will result from trying to fit the emerging technologies into the existing frame of efficiency and utility, by redefining the notions of human value, identity, autonomy, purity, and truth, among others. The age of the intelligent machine is elevating alienation to new levels, treating the individual as mere patterns in data—its primary commodity. I further argue that while the possibility of unintended consequences, due to the potential misuse of AI is ever present, the intelligent machine per se is unlikely to engage in a zero-sum game for power on its own initiative. I question whether singularity is at all attainable and argue that technology will forever remain a proxy for human interests. I conclude by posing questions for charting the path forward. Through this analysis, I aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between the AI and humans. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1868 Edition.

A German writer's aphoristic, poetic, and difficult reflections on Heidegger's Being and Time. There is a beyond of reason and unreason. It is the human psyche. —Positive Nihilism Like many German intellectuals, Hartmut Lange has long grappled with Heidegger. Positive Nihilism is the result of a lifetime of reading Being and Time and offers a series of reflections that are aphoristic, poetic, and (appropriately, considering his object of study) difficult. Lange begins with an abyss (“There is an abyss of the (...) finite. It is temporality”) and proceeds almost immediately to extremity: “The twentieth century was governed by psychopaths. They collapsed the boundaries of moral reason and refuted Kant's analysis of consciousness.” He reflects further: “But who shall punish whom? One man's virtue is another man's crime. Thus Hitler could feel unwaveringly, as he wiped out entire populations, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him, as stipulated by Kant.” He considers the concept of civilization (“misleading”; “how should one oppose the remedies of civilization to the egomania, the murderous appetites of such outright psychopaths as Stalin or Pol Pot?”), the act of thinking (a fata morgana), the psyche, and Heidegger's Dasein. Positive Nihilism can be considered a pocket companion to Being and Time. “Heidegger's understanding of Being is nihilistic,” Lange writes, and then explains his assertion. He draws on Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare's Othello for supporting arguments and illustrations. “Everyone is possessed of the courage to have angst about death. The question is whether this courage necessarily secures those vital advantages Heidegger alleges”–that “self-understanding [is] the mental anticipation of death.” Lange wrestles with Heidegger's position, calling on Tolstoy, Georg Trakl, Herman Bang, and Heinrich von Kleist to argue against it. (shrink)

This important philosophical reflection on love and sexuality from a broadly Christian perspective is aimed at philosophers, theologians, and educated Christian readers. Alexander R. Pruss focuses on foundational questions on the nature of romantic love and on controversial questions in sexual ethics on the basis of the fundamental idea that romantic love pursues union of two persons as one body. _One Body_ begins with an account, inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas, of the general nature of love as constituted by (...) components of goodwill, appreciation, and unitiveness. Different forms of love, such as parental, collegial, filial, friendly, fraternal, or romantic, Pruss argues, differ primarily not in terms of goodwill or appreciation but in terms of the kind of union that is sought. Pruss examines romantic love as distinguished from other kinds of love by a focus on a particular kind of union, a deep union as one body achieved through the joint biological striving of the sort involved in reproduction. Taking the account of the union that romantic love seeks as a foundation, the book considers the nature of marriage and applies its account to controversial ethical questions, such as the connection between love, sex, and commitment and the moral issues involving contraception, same-sex activity, and reproductive technology. With philosophical rigor and sophistication, Pruss provides carefully argued answers to controversial questions in Christian sexual ethics. "This is a terrific—really quite extraordinary—work of scholarship. It is quite simply the best work on Christian sexual ethics that I have seen. It will become the text that anyone who ventures into the field will have to grapple with—a kind of touchstone. Moreover, it is filled with arguments with which even secular writers on sexual morality will have to engage and come to terms." —_Robert P. George, Princeton University __ "_One Body_ is an excellent piece of philosophical-theological reflection on the nature of sexuality and marriage. This book has the potential to become a standard go-to text for professors and students working on sex ethics issues, whether in philosophy or theology, both for the richness of its arguments, and the scope of its coverage of cases. " — Christopher Tollefsen, University of South Carolina_ "Alexander Pruss here develops sound and humane answers to the whole range of main questions about human sexual and reproductive choices. His principal argument for the key answers is very different from the one I have articulated over the past fifteen years. But his argumentation is at every point attractively direct, careful, energetic in framing and responding to objections, and admirably attentive to realities and the human goods at stake." —_John Finnis, University of Oxford _. (shrink)

Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 129-147, March 2012.

ORTSBESTIMMUNG DER PHILOSOPHISCHEN GRAMMATIK I. Absicht dieser Arbeit ist es, ein wenig Licht in die teils komischen, teils lebensgefährlichen Aspekte der Aufsplitterung unseres Lebens in h eines vor und in eines nach I7 zu bringen, und zwar anhand des Ent­ wicklungsgangs der Wittgensteinschen Philosophischen Grammatik. Das aufgezeigte Problem kursiert unter vielen Titeln und Etiketten: Theorie und Praxis, Wissen und Glauben, Beruf und Freizeit o. ä. Diese Auf­ zählungen möchten allerdings kein Unvermögen des Verfassers andeuten, sich auf einen Titel festzulegen. Vielmehr (...) ist es ein wichtiges Resultat Wittgensteinschen Philosophierens, dass verschiedene Sinne nicht selbiges vermeinen, insofern sie denselben Gegenstand meinen, sondern sofern sich der Sinn als Sinn durchhält, d. i. als Gebrauch im Umlauf ist. Insofern der Verfasser mit Wittgenstein die Partikel »d. h. «, »d. i. «, »m. a. W. « und ähnliche für das Philosophieren für konstitutiv und eigentümlich hält, also, mithin die Bestimmung »Sinn ist Sinn als Sinn«! zu erfüllen ver­ sucht (trotz der penetranten Häufung in einer derartigen Exposition), können die Untersuchungen zunächst als »subjektiv«, bzw. »transzen­ dental« bezeichnet werden. Die nähere Lokalisierung des Themas wird in drei Zügen vorgenommen: das populäre Gegensatzpaar »Ideologie« lmd »Wissenschaft« führt uns zu den in einer bestimmten philosophischen Tradition fixierten Begriffen »Lebenswelt« und »technische Welt«, deren Widerstreit wiederum von L. Eley auf das ungeklärte Verhältnis von Phänomenologie und Logik zurückgeführt worden ist. Nach dieser Orts­ bestimmung wird hoffentlich einigermassen verständlich, dass die Kenn­ zeichnung Wittgensteins als eines Aufklärers nicht nur nicht logische Untersuchungen verbietet, sondern sie vielmehr notwendig macht. (shrink)

Some mathematical proofs explain why the theorems they prove hold. This paper identifies several challenges for any counterfactual account of explanation in mathematics (that is, any account according to which an explanatory proof reveals how the explanandum would have been different, had facts in the explanans been different). The paper presumes that countermathematicals can be nontrivial. It argues that nevertheless, a counterfactual account portrays explanatory power as too easy to achieve, does not capture explanatory asymmetry, and fails to specify why (...) certain proofs are explanatory and others are not. Greater informativeness about counterfactual dependence can even yield less explanatory power. (shrink)