In transformation research of late, accounts on the relation between intentionality and agency on the one hand, and the more routinised and structured side of social co-existence on the other, are increasingly nuanced. However, we observe a deficiency in the way arguments are set up by the interlocutors: both, scholars who grant intentionality a central role and those who emphasise its limitations generally do so at the level of ontology – debating degrees of human capacity for conscious planning versus a (...) largely unconscious reproduction. We wish to shift this question from an ontological to a pedagogical one, exploring possibilities to cultivate and learn intentionality. We do so by developing the concept of consciousness-in-nature that we derive from, and contextualise in, the traditions of deep ecology and (Westernised) Buddhism which both view human beings as inseparable from nature and one another. With consciousness-in-nature we refer to an understanding of humans as a part of nature that has developed the capacity for (self-) reflection and deliberation – a capacity that is not static or firm but can be nurtured and cultivated or clouded over and subdued. From this standpoint, we lay out an understanding of the role of (re)learning consciousness for processes of social change and explore potentials for its nurturing. (shrink)

Affective congruency effects in the evaluation task can be explained by either spreading of activation or response competition. Eliminating effects of response compatibility by using other tasks (semantic categorisation, naming task) typically also eliminates affective congruency effects. However, there is no need for processing the affective information of the stimuli in these tasks either, which could be necessary for an affectively mediated spreading of activation (Spruyt et al., 2007, 2009, 2012). We introduced a new task to further test this hypothesis. (...) The valent/neutral-categorisation task does not confound affective congruency with response compatibility, but still requires a processing of the stimuli's valence. No affective congruency effect was obtained with this task in two experiments, disfavouring a conditional spreading activation account. On the other hand, a significant priming effect was found for associated word pairs in Experiment 1, providing evidence for the sensitivity of the task to detect spreading activation processes. (shrink)

We generalize the construction of lattice-valued models of set theory due to Takeuti, Titani, Kozawa and Ozawa to a wider class of algebras and show that this yields a model of a paraconsistent logic that validates all axioms of the negation-free fragment of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory.

In climate science, climate models are one of the main tools for understanding phenomena. Here, we develop a framework to assess the fitness of a climate model for providing understanding. The framework is based on three dimensions: representational accuracy, representational depth, and graspability. We show that this framework does justice to the intuition that classical process-based climate models give understanding of phenomena. While simple climate models are characterized by a larger graspability, state-of-the-art models have a higher representational accuracy and representational (...) depth. We then compare the fitness-for-providing understanding of process-based to data-driven models that are built with machine learning. We show that at first glance, data-driven models seem either unnecessary or inadequate for understanding. However, a case study from atmospheric research demonstrates that this is a false dilemma. Data-driven models can be useful tools for understanding , specifically for phenomena for which scientists can argue from the coherence of the models with background knowledge to their representational accuracy and for which the model complexity can be reduced such that they are graspable to a satisfactory extent. When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 769-773.

Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East (the former: Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Orients) are published as supplement to Der Islam founded in 1910 by Carl Heinrich Becker, an early practitioner of the modern study of Islam. Following Becker's lead, the mission of the series is the study of past societies of the Middle East, their belief systems, and their underlying social and economic relations, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia, and from the (...) Ukrainian steppes to the highlands of Yemen. Publications in the series draw on the philological groundwork generated by the literary tradition, but in their aim to cover the entire spectrum of the historically oriented humanities and social sciences, also utilize textual sources as well as archival, material, and archaeological evidence. Its editors are Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg, editor-in-chief), Gottfried Hagen (University of Michigan), Andreas Kaplony (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), and Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware). (shrink)

This article describes what it is like to experience beauty in visual art. Our phenomenological analysis of interviews with visual art museum visitors shows that beauty appears as the relationship between two different experiential modes. Initially, the perceiver feels herself affectively and bodily immersed in the perceived while awareness of herself pulls back. Self-awareness eventually returns, allowing for a subtle yet distinct mode of reflection in which the viewer looks back at the initial moment of felt connection with the perceived. (...) Our analysis suggests that beauty experience arises when a slight perceptual distance allows for a subtle mode of reflection on the involvement with the artwork that took place in the immediate past. The initial moment returns as an affectively charged memory, which the perceiver longs to restore or repeat. The article relates beauty’s apparent two-fold nature to the question of how the fundamental capacity for aesthetic experience psychologically develops. It concludes that beauty experience originates from the combined capacity of self-forgetful immersion and self-contemplative distance. (shrink)

The contributions to this collection deal with the fundamental problem of unity, which plays a decisive role in many contemporary debates (even when this role ...

We argue that mathematical knowledge is context dependent. Our main argument is that on pain of distorting mathematical practice, one must analyse the notion of having available a proof, which supplies justification in mathematics, in a context dependent way.

Background: Although fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, qualitative research exploring clinicians’ considerations in clinical prioritisation within this field is scarce. Objectives: To explore how clinicians understand their professional role in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for old patients. Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was employed to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis. Participants: 20 physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes (...) in different parts of Norway. Results and interpretations: The clinicians struggle with not being able to attend to the comprehensive needs of older patients, and being unfaithful to professional ideals and expectations. There is a tendency towards lowering the standards and narrowing the role of the clinician. This is done in order to secure the vital needs of the patient, but is at the expense of good practice and holistic role modelling. Increased specialisation, advances and increase in medical interventions, economical incentives, organisational structures, and biomedical paradigms, may all contribute to a narrowing of the clinicians’ role. Conclusion: Distributing healthcare services in a fair way is generally not described as integral to the clinicians’ role in clinical prioritisations. If considerations of justice are not included in clinicians’ role, it is likely that others will shape major parts of their roles and responsibilities in clinical prioritisations. Fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is possible only if clinicians accept responsibility in these questions. (shrink)

We look at bimodal logics interpreted by cartesian products of topological spaces and discuss the validity of certain bimodal formulae in products of so-called cardinal spaces. This solves an open problem of van Benthem et al.

We investigate the possibility of arguing for or against the philosophical position that mathematics is an _epistemic exception_ on the basis of agreement data from the mathematical peer review process and argue that Cohen’s \(\kappa \), the standard agreement measure used for inter-rater agreement, is unable to detect epistemic exceptionality from peer review data.

Review by: Michael Benedikt The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 112-115, March 2013.

We describe the solution of the Limit Rule Problem of Revision Theory and discuss the philosophical consequences of the fact that the truth set of Revision Theory is a complete 1/2 set.

There is a variety of concepts of the divine in the eastern and western theological and philosophical traditions. There is, however, not enough reflection on the logic behind concepts of God and their justification. I clarify some necessary and sufficient conditions any attempt to explicate a concept of God has to take into account. I argue that each concept of God is a cypher for a particular worldview and distinguishes three types of justification frequently used to bestow content on particular (...) concepts of God: philosophical, theological, and scientific. I turn to four fundamental models of the God–world relation and argue that the most promising concept of God is panentheistic, on which the universe is essentially divine but is not exhaustive of the divine being. (shrink)

Commercial success of big data has led to speculation that big-data-like reasoning could partly replace theory-based approaches in science. Big data typically has been applied to ‘small problems’, which are well-structured cases characterized by repeated evaluation of predictions. Here, we show that in climate research, intermediate categories exist between classical domain science and big data, and that big-data elements have also been applied without the possibility of repeated evaluation. Big-data elements can be useful for climate research beyond small problems if (...) combined with more traditional approaches based on domain-specific knowledge. The biggest potential for big-data elements, we argue, lies in socioeconomic climate research. (shrink)

The advent of ChatGPT by OpenAI has prompted extensive discourse on its potential implications for science and higher education. While the impact on education has been a primary focus, there is limited empirical research on the effects of large language models (LLMs) and LLM-based chatbots on science and scientific practice. To investigate this further, we conducted a Delphi study involving 72 researchers specializing in AI and digitization. The study focused on applications and limitations of LLMs, their effects on the science (...) system, ethical and legal considerations, and the required competencies for their effective use. Our findings highlight the transformative potential of LLMs in science, particularly in administrative, creative, and analytical tasks. However, risks related to bias, misinformation, and quality assurance need to be addressed through proactive regulation and science education. This research contributes to informed discussions on the impact of generative AI in science and helps identify areas for future action. (shrink)

The present paper deals with a syntactic ambiguity in Numenius’ Fr. 30, 9 and proposes a new reading. According to most scholars, in this fragment Numenius tries to identify Egyptian gods and human souls descending into generation. Instead, I argue that, since theology and psychology are different topics in Fr. 3, Numenius is rather talking about the interrelation of gods and souls in the process of metempsychosis.

In 1983, two philosophers, Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk, engaged with ancient Cynicism and the outspokenness and laughter of Diogenes as a critical practice. Foucault and Sloterdijk did so to position themselves ‘after’ critique: ‘after’ a period of and ‘beyond’ a certain style of dogmatism and theoretical deadlocks that troubled left thinking in the early 1980s (and continue to do so today). I show how Foucault and Sloterdijk, while differing in their critical politics, both read Diogenes’ politics of truth as (...) radical subversive otherness. While Diogenes performed this antagonizing critique from a subaltern position, his politics nevertheless risked ending up in a self-righteous intransigence to know the truth. As an alternative, I turn to another politics of laughter in Hellenistic philosophy, that of the Thracian Maid, and its sceptical impulse that is situated ‘before’, ‘beyond’ and ‘after’ critique in the space of what Hans Blumenberg calls Nachdenklichkeit (pensiveness). (shrink)

Maddy's notion of restrictiveness has many problematic aspects, one of them being that it is almost impossible to show that a theory is not restrictive. In this note the author addresses a crucial question of Martin Goldstern (Vienna) and points to some directions of future research.

We investigate Turing cones as sets of reals, and look at the relationship between Turing cones, measures, Baire category and special sets of reals, using these methods to show that Martin's proof of Turing Determinacy (every determined Turing closed set contains a Turing cone or is disjoint from one) does not work when you replace “determined” with “Blackwell determined”. This answers a question of Tony Martin.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 49-56, January 2022.

Panentheism seems to be an attractive alternative to classical theism. It is not clear, though, what exactly panentheism asserts and how it relates to classical theism. By way of clarifying the thesis of panentheism, I argue that panentheism and classical theism differ only as regards the modal status of the world. According to panentheism, the world is an intrinsic property of God – necessarily there is a world – and according to classical theism the world is an extrinsic property of (...) God – it is only contingently true that there is a world. Therefore, as long as we do not have an argument showing that necessarily there is a world, panentheism is not an attractive alternative to classical theism. (shrink)

A common assumption within the migration ethics literature is that it is only states that have the power to admit foreigners to their territory. However, this assumption misses something important. While it is true that it is states that have the ultimate power to admit, other actors can possess a derivative power from the laws that states put in place. By establishing a system of work visas, for instance, states lend private corporations, and other employers, the power to nominate foreigners (...) for admission by making job offers. For many foreigners, a job offer is what they require to start a new life in a new country. The question then arises how corporations should use this derivative power? One might assume that they should use it as they typically do: to pursue their business interests and by doing so (we hope) benefit their stakeholders including the state and its citizens. However, could there not be other reasons, besides profit seeking, to offer refugees a visa-conferring job? If hiring refugees does not greatly harm their business, it is arguable that corporations could be obliged to use their derivative power to do so on humanitarian grounds. Moreover, some corporations also seem to be obliged to use this power on grounds of corrective justice. This paper advances these possibilities. It has three sections. First, I will look at how much discretion corporations have in terms of employment and migration laws in some European countries. Second, I will present an argument for why corporations are morally permitted to facilitate admission for refugees by offering them a visa-conferring job. In the final section, I will then defend a stronger claim, namely that corporations are possibly obliged to do so on humanitarian grounds or on grounds of corrective justice. (shrink)