Three facts are widely thought to be key to the characterization of human cognitive uniqueness (though a number of other factors are often cited as well): (a) humans are sophisticated cultural learners; (b) humans often rely on mental states with rich representational contents; and (c) humans have the ability and disposition to make and use tools. This article argues that (a)–(c) create a positive feedback loop: Sophisticated cultural learning makes possible the manufacture of tools that increase the sophistication of representational (...) decision-making, which in turn allows for yet further increases in the sophistication of cultural learning and tool manufacture. (shrink)

This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally. The author divides work in evolutionary economics into three distinct, albeit related, forms: a structural form, an evidential form, and a heuristic form. He then analyzes five examples of work in evolutionary economics falling under these three forms. For the structural form, (...) he examines the parallelism between natural selection and economic decision making, and the parallelism between natural selection and market competition. For the evidential form, he looks at the relationship between animal and human economic decision making, and the evolutionary explanation of diversity in human economic decision making. Finally, for the heuristic form, he focuses on the plausibility of equilibrium modeling in evolutionary ecology and economics. In this way, he shows that linking evolutionary biology and economics can make for a powerful methodological tool that can enable progress in our understanding of various economics questions. Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, evolutionary biology, and economics. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Summary The paper deals with selected problems of the verbalization of the concepts “place”, “space” and “direction”, with a special consideration of their successive development in language and in language acquisition. The theoretical background are assumptions concerning the genesis of the concept of place and movement. Some of them claim that movement and direction precede the conceptualization of place and space. However, numerous linguistic phenomena seem to prove the opposite hypothesis, namely that the concept of place and, thus, its verbalization (...) by means of stative verbs, local adverbs and prepositional phrases is original, whereas the concepts of movement, especially of controlled, caused movement denoted by transitive, regular verbs is derived from the concept of locum encoded by irregular verbs. (shrink)

Abstract“Poems That Kill” examines the connection between poetry and revolution in Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art” (1965) and in general. The article tracks how Baraka uses poetry to start or advance a revolution in his own life, in the lives of his contemporaries, in poetry, in our present moment, and in the future. The article also discusses poetic address (how poems address readers), sincerity, ambiguity, and hate speech.

Recent research has detailed the use of neuroscience in several jurisdictions, but Australia remains a notable omission. To fill this substantial void we performed a systematic review of neuroscience in Australian criminal cases. The first section of this article reports the results of our review by detailing the purposes for which neuroscience is admitted into Australian criminal courts. We found that neuroscience is being admitted pre-trial, at trial, and during sentencing. In the second section, we evaluate these applications. We generally (...) found that courts admit neuroscience cautiously, and to supplement more well-established forms of evidence. Still, we found some instances in which the court seemed to misunderstand the neuroscience. These cases ranged from interpreting neuroscience as “objective” evidence to admitting neuroscience when the same non-neuroscientific psychiatric evidence would be inadmissible for being common sense. Furthermore, in some cases, neuroscientific evidence presents a double-edged sword; it may serve to either aggravate or mitigate a sentence. Thus, the decision about whether or not to tender this evidence is risky. (shrink)

This paper defends the communitarian account of meaning against Boghossian’s (Wittgensteinian) arguments. Boghossian argues that whilst such an account might be able to accommodate the infinitary characteristic of meaning, it cannot account for its normativity: he claims that, since the dispositions of a group must mirror those of its members, the former cannot be used to evaluate the latter. However, as this paper aims to make clear, this reasoning is fallacious. Modelling the issue with four (justifiable) assumptions, it shows that (...) Condorcet’s ‘Jury Theorem’ can be used to prove that the dispositions of the majority of the members of a group can differ from those of any individual member in a way that makes it possible to use communal dispositions as a standard with which individual dispositions can be assessed. Moreover, the argument of the paper is also shown to have general implications for the use of formal methods in the explanation of the nature of certain fallacious inferences. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to present and evaluate Bolzano's theory of grounding, that is, his theory of the concept expressed and the relation brought into play by 'because'. In the first part of the paper (Sections 1-4) the concept of grounding is distinguished from and related to three other concepts: the concept of an epistemic reason}, the concept of causality, and the concept of deducibility (i.e., logical consequence). In its second part (Sections 5-7) Bolzano's positive account of grounding (...) is reconstructed in axiomatic form and critically discussed. (shrink)

Dynamic stability of the knee and weakness of the extensor muscles are considered to be the most important functional limitations after anterior cruciate ligament injury, probably due to changes at the central level of motor control rather than at the peripheral level. Despite general technological advances, fewer contraindicative surgical procedures, and extensive postoperative rehabilitation, up to 65% of patients fail to return to their preinjury level of sports, and only half were able to return to competitive sport. Later, it becomes (...) clear that current rehabilitation after knee surgery is not sufficient to address the functional limitations after ACL reconstruction even years after surgery. Therefore, new therapeutic tools targeting the central neural system, i.e., the higher centers of motor control, should be investigated and integrated into current rehabilitation practice. To improve motor performance when overt movement cannot be fully performed, several techniques have been developed to increase physical and mental activation without the need to perform overt movements. Among the most popular cognitive techniques used to increase physical performance are motor imagery and action observation practices. This review, which examines the available evidence, presents the underlying mechanisms of the efficacy of cognitive interventions and provides guidelines for their use at home. (shrink)

We present a model of computation for string functions over single-sorted, total algebraic structures and study some basic features of a general theory of computability within this framework. Our concept generalizes the Blum-Shub-Smale setting of computability over the reals and other rings. By dealing with strings of arbitrary length instead of tuples of fixed length, some suppositions of deeper results within former approaches to generalized recursion theory become superfluous. Moreover, this gives the basis for introducing computational complexity in a BSS-like (...) manner. Relationships both to classical computability and to Friedman's concept of eds computability are established. Two kinds of nondeterminism as well as several variants of recognizability are investigated with respect to interdependencies on each other and on properties of the underlying structures. For structures of finite signatures, there are universal programs with the usual characteristics. For the general case of not necessarily finite signature, this subject will be studied in a separate, forthcoming paper. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci - mit diesem Namen assoziieren wir zunächst ein philosophisches Modell, sprach- und kulturtheoretische Analysen, Gesellschaftskritik, emanzipatorische Politikvorstellungen. Weniger bekannt ist die pädagogische Grundlinie, die sich durch die gesamte theoretische und praktische Tätigkeit des italienischen Philosophen zieht. Die vorliegende Studie erschließt die pädagogische Vorstellungswelt und die Bildungsmodelle Gramscis sowohl im Sinne einer geschichtlichen Rekonstruktion, als auch im Hinblick auf ihre Gegenwarts- und Zukunftsrelevanz. Analysiert werden Gramscis pädagogische und bildungspolitische Überlegungen vor der Inhaftierung sowie die in den Gefängnisschriften und -heften (...) vorgenommenen erziehungs- und bildungstheoretischen Reflexionen. Zugleich wird die Frage aufgegriffen, wie Gramscis Bildungs- und Erziehungsvorstellungen heute weiterzudenken wären und welche Bereicherung in seinem Denken für eine emanzipative Erziehungswissenschaft liegt. - Armin Bernhard, Jg. 1957, ist Professor für Allgemeine Pädagogik am Fachbereich Bildungswissenschaften der Universität Duisburg-Essen, Standort Essen. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Allgemeine Pädagogik, Erziehungs- und Bildungstheorie, Geschichte der Pädagogik. (shrink)

Notions of democracy and nationhood constitute the pivotal legacy of the American Revolution, but to understand their development one must move beyond a purely American context. Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland explores the simultaneous emergence of modern concepts of democracy and the nation on both sides of the Atlantic during the age of revolutions. Armin Mattes argues that in their origin the two concepts were indistinguishable because they arose from a common revolutionary impulse directed against the prevailing hierarchical political (...) and social order. The author shows how the reconceptualization of democracy and the nation, which resulted from this revolutionary impulse, received its decisive form from the French Revolution. Although the French Revolution was instrumental in redefining the two terms, however, neither were these changes confined to France, nor did the new meanings merely radiate from France to other countries. To illustrate the transatlantic emergence of these ideas, Mattes considers the works of pairs of prominent intellectual contemporaries--one in America and the other in Europe--each writing on a common topic. The thinkers and topics include Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke on the transatlantic revolutions, John Adams and Friedrich von Gentz on the mixed constitution, James Madison and Immanuel Kant on perpetual peace, and Thomas Jefferson and Destutt de Tracy on the nation. Mattes's approach highlights the significant impact that the French Revolution had on the evolution of thought in the period, demonstrating that the emergence and early development of modern concepts of democracy and the nation in America were intimately tied to revolutionary events and processes in the larger Atlantic world. Preparation of this volume has been supported by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Jeffersonian America. (shrink)

Confabulations are memories of events and experiences that have never actually happened. Such false memories have fascinated scientists for over a century, and in recent years been the subject of much debate. This is the first book to provide an in-depth analysis of an extraordinary and controversial subject.

Western societies today are marked by a broad liberal consensus in favor of toleration. Yet, some philosophers have charged that political toleration as a liberal ideal is incoherent. Some have argued that toleration is incompatible with liberal political orders due to egalitarian considerations. Others have suggested that in a truly liberal society, where the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference are the most appropriate response to diversity, political toleration is practically redundant. This article defends political toleration against the above allegations. My (...) goal is twofold: first of all, to formulate a coherent conception of toleration that is fully consistent with the egalitarian spirit of our times and then to demonstrate that, contrary to critics’ claims, political toleration is not an obsolete ideal that belongs to a bygone era. And all this because, I believe, in a liberal constitutional order, political toleration’s specific role is not identical with, and cannot be reduced to, the state’s justice-based duties of non-interference. Accordingly, I argue that political toleration belongs to a specific mode of politics: the extraordinary politics. When the rules of justice are not available, or their application is not feasible, the extraordinary politics, in which toleration plays a role, emerges as the persistent residue of the ordinary politics. Therefore, political toleration and justice-based duties of non-interference should be seen as accompanying practices that represent two modes of politics. (shrink)

In their book Unto Others, Sober and Wilson argue that various evolutionary considerations (based on the logic of natural selection) lend support to the truth of psychological altruism. However, recently, Stephen Stich has raised a number of challenges to their reasoning: in particular, he claims that three out of the four evolutionary arguments they give are internally unconvincing, and that the one that is initially plausible fails to take into account recent findings from cognitive science and thus leaves open a (...) number of egoistic responses. These challenges make it necessary to reassess the plausibility of Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary account—which is what I aim to do in this paper. In particular, I try to show that, as a matter of fact, Sober & Wilson’s case remains compelling, as some of Stich’s concerns rest on a confusion, and those that do not are not sufficiently strong to establish all the conclusions he is after. The upshot is that no reason has been given to abandon the view that evolutionary theory has advanced the debate surrounding psychological altruism. (shrink)

The origin of novel traits is what draws many to evolutionary biology, yet our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the genesis of novelty remains limited. Here I review definitions of novelty including its relationship to homology. I then discuss how ontogenetic perspectives may allow us to move beyond current roadblocks in our understanding of the mechanics of innovation. Specifically, I explore the roles of canalization, plasticity and threshold responses during development in generating a reservoir of cryptic genetic variation free (...) to drift and accumulate in natural populations. Environmental or genetic perturbations that exceed the buffering capacity of development can then release this variation, and, through evolution by genetic accommodation, result in rapid diversification, recurrence of lost phenotypes as well as the origins of novel features. I conclude that, in our quest to understand the nature of innovation, the nature of development deserves to take center stage. BioEssays 30:432–447, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Der Band gibt erstmals einen umfassenden Überblick über den lyrischen Nachlass des jungen Nietzsche aus den 1850er und -60er Jahren. Zusätzlich präsentiert Armin Thomas Müller eine Beispiel-Edition und historisch kontextualisierende Analyse des Manuskripthefts Mp I 22 von 1858. Somit trägt der Band grundlegend zur literatur-, philosophie- wie kulturgeschichtlichen Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche bei. Armin Thomas Müllers Arbeit nimmt den bislang in der literaturwissenschaftlichen wie auch philosophischen Auseinandersetzung mit Friedrich Nietzsche vernachlässigten lyrischen Nachlass aus der Zeit zwischen 1850 und 1869 in den (...) Blick. Anschließend an eine grundlegende Einführung in das Thema wird Nietzsches Jugendlyrik überblicksartig vorgestellt mit Schwerpunkten zur Editions- und Forschungsgeschichte, zu literaturgeschichtlichen Kontexten sowie zu den autoreflexiven Aufzeichnungen des jungen Nietzsche, die das Thema (lyrischer) Dichtung umkreisen. Die vorliegende Publikation enthält zudem eines heutigen materialorientierten Standards entsprechende Faksimile-Edition mit diplomatischer Transkription des Manuskripthefts Mp I 22 von 1858. Das kulturgeschichtliche Erkenntnispotenzial in Nietzsches Jugendgedichten wird abschließend in einer textgenetischen und historisch kontextualisierenden Analyse der edierten lyrischen Texte aus Mp I 22 deutlich. Auf dieser Grundlagenforschung werden weiterführende Auseinandersetzungen mit Nietzsche aufbauen können. (shrink)

Kaum ein anderer Begriff wird unterschiedlicher, ja gegensätzlicher verwendet als der Gottesbegriff. Nicht immer behaupten Gläubige, was Atheisten leugnen, und nicht immer bestreiten Atheisten, wozu sich Gläubige bekennen. Diese radikale Umstrittenheit des Gottesbegriffs stellt die Frage nach dem "wahren Antlitz Gottes", nach dem Verständnis dessen, was das Wort "Gott" wirklich bedeutet. Laesst sich überhaupt nachvollziehbar benennen, was dieses Wort meint, oder entzieht sich seine Bedeutung nicht jedem menschlichen Verstäendnis? Was heisst es denn, wenn wir sagen, Gott sei Person, allmächtig, allwissend, (...) gätig, dreifaltig? Worauf müssen wir achten, wenn wir über Gott reden, damit wir uns nichts vormachen? Das Buch hilft zu erkennen, auf welchen Gottesbegriff Verlass ist, so dass wir unser Leben darauf setzen können. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 1-2, Page 53-80, January-March 2022. Although it is clear that many of the major contemporary social problems center on the extent to which social institutions do or do not function as they are meant to do, it is still unclear exactly what the function of a social institution is—and thus when this function is undermined. This paper presents and defends a novel theory of social functionalism—presentist social functionalism—to answer these questions. According to (...) this theory, the function of social institutions is grounded in those of their features that, in the current cultural environment, increase their chances to survive or reproduce. To bring out the fruitfulness of this account, the paper analyzes the question of the function of corporations, and shows that present social functionalism points to the kinds of data that would be helpful to determine this function, brings up hitherto overlooked theoretical possibilities, and allows for the clearer assessment and handling of corporate corruption. (shrink)

A number of scholars have recently defended the claim that there is a close connection between the evolutionary biological notion of fitness and the economic notion of utility: both are said to refer to an organism’s success in dealing with its environment, and both are said to play the same theoretical roles in their respective sciences. However, an analysis of two seemingly disparate but in fact structurally related phenomena—‘niche construction’ (the case where organisms change their environment to make it fit (...) to their needs) and ‘adaptive preferences’ (the case where agents change their wants to make them fit to what the world has given them)—shows that one needs to be very careful about the postulation of this sort of fitness–utility connection. Specifically, I here use the analysis of these two phenomena to establish when connecting fitness and utility is and is not possible. (shrink)

Finding out why we have beliefs and desires is important for a thorough understanding of the nature of our minds (and those of other animals). It is therefore unsurprising that several accounts have been presented that are meant to answer this question. At least in the philosophical literature, the most widely accepted of these are due to Kim Sterelny and Peter Godfrey-Smith, who argue that beliefs and desires evolved due to their enabling us to be behaviourally flexible in a way (...) that reflexes do not—which, they claim, is beneficial in epistemically complex environments. However, as I try to make clear in this paper, upon closer consideration, this kind of account turns out to be theoretically implausible. In the main, this is because it fails to give due credit to the powers of reflex-driven organisms, which can in fact be just as flexible in their behaviour as ones that are belief/desire-driven. In order to improve on this account, I therefore propose that beliefs and desires evolved, not due to their enabling us to do something completely different from what reflexive organisms can do, but rather due to their enabling us to do the same things better. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and desires evolved for making the generation of behaviour more efficient, since they can simplify the necessary cognitive labour considerably. I end by considering various implications of this account. (shrink)

Several authors have recently argued that the excessive focus on equilibrium models in mainstream economic analysis prevents economists from providing accurate representations of the complex and dynamic nature of real economic systems. In response, this paper argues the following. Many economic systems are the products of deliberate and centralized human design. People can and do build and support structures, such as social institutions, aiming to enhance the predictability of economic systems, and thus to move them toward being equilibrium systems. This (...) provides a reason to think that many economic systems can be represented by equilibrium models. (shrink)

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene‐focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into accountbiological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in (...) their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs. (shrink)

Vorbemerkung: Das Staunen -- Die Scholastik -- Héloïse (um 1099-1164): Die Logik der Liebe -- Mystik als Schau göttlicher Weisheit -- Hildegard von Bingen (1998-1179): "Scivias--Wisse die Wege" -- Die "Querelle du Roman de la Rose" -- Christine de Pizan (um 1364-um 1430): "die Stadt der Frauen" -- Die Aufklärung -- Émilie du Châtlet (1706-1749): "Rede vom Glück" -- Romantik und Neuromantik -- Ricarda Huch (1864-1947): Der Mensch der Zukunft aus dem Geiste der Romantik -- Die Phänomenologie -- Edith Stein (...) (1891-1942): Philosophin der Phänomenologie, Märtyrerin, Heilige -- Philosophie der Pflichten dem Menschen gegenüber -- Simone Weil (1909-1943): Sozialistische Aktivistin, Philosophin, Mystikerin -- Philosophie des Politischen -- Hannah Arendt (1906-1975): Philosophisches Engagement im Zeitalter des Totalitarismus -- Der Existenzialismus -- Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986): Freiheit und Emanzipation -- Philosophie der Verantwortung in einer globalisierten Welt -- Jeanne Hersch (1910-2000): Freiheit und Verantwortung. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universiteat Mainz, 1992, under the title: Die Kohearenztheorie der Wahrheit und der Kunst im Speatwerk von Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The ‘argument from design’ plays a pivotal role in Carruthers’ recent defence of the massive modularity thesis. However, as this paper seeks to show, there are major flaws in its structure. If construed deductively, it is unsound: modular mental architecture is not necessarily the best architecture, and even if it were, this alone would not show that this architecture evolved. If construed inductively, it is not much more convincing, as it then appears to be too weak to support the kind (...) of modularity Carruthers is concerned with. The upshot of this is that whatever reason we might have for believing that the mind is massively modular, it is not based on the argument from design. (shrink)

Recent anthropological, archaeological, and psychological findings support the view that humans have long been driven by a deep sense of curiosity that needs little if any special external material reward. Apart from being inherently interesting, these findings also turn out to have some wide-ranging consequences for central debates in other social sciences—such as economics. In particular, it is still often thought that, without extensive patent protections, economic actors lack the incentive to engage in innovative activity. However, as this chapter makes (...) clear, the recent anthropological, archaeological, and psychological findings concerning human curiosity provide compelling reasons for thinking that this material interest-based view of innovative activity is unconvincing. In this manner, the chapter has two key upshots: first and most importantly, it shows how and why paying attention to anthropological, archaeological, and psychological findings can have wide-ranging implications throughout the social sciences. Second, it develops reasons for being skeptical about the need for the kinds of extensive patent regimes seen in many countries. (shrink)

Schon seit ihrer Gründung in den 1970er-Jahren ist die Reihe Germanistische Linguistik (RGL) exponiertes Forum des Faches, dessen Namen sie im Titel führt. Hinsichtlich der thematischen Breite (Sprachebenen, Varietäten, Kommunikationsformen, Epochen), der Forschungsperspektiven (Theorie und Empirie, Grundlagenforschung und Anwendung, Inter- und Transdisziplinarität) und des methodologischen Spektrums ist die Reihe offen angelegt. Das Aufgreifen neuer Trends hat in ihr ebenso Platz wie das Fortführen von Bewährtem. Die Publikationsformen reichen von Monographien und Sammelbänden bis zu Wörterbüchern. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat (ab November 2011): Prof. (...) Dr. Karin Donhauser (Berlin) Prof. Dr. Stephan Elspaß (Augsburg) Prof. Dr. Helmuth Feilke (Gießen) Prof. Dr. Jürg Fleischer (Marburg) Prof. Dr. Stephan Habscheid (Siegen) Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Harnisch (Passau). (shrink)