Der Essay zur Natur der Sprache entwickelt eine neue und unvoreingenommene Sicht auf Sprache, die die wichtigsten Sprachbegriffe zunachst dekonstruiert, um daraufhin nach moglichen Rekonstruktionen zu suchen. Dabei werden nicht nur die aktuellen Diskurse der Bewusstseinsphilosophie, Sprachphilosophie und Allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft, sondern auch der evolutionaren Anthropologie und Kognitionspsychologie neu bewertet und zusammengefuhrt. Denn den einen Sprachbegriff gibt es nicht und ihn stets schon vorauszusetzen, wenn wir uber Sprache diskutieren, bedeutet, bei der Suche nach der Sprache und den Antworten auf die Fragen, (...) die von ihr abhangen, im Kreis zu gehen.". (shrink)

I consider how Christian philosophers should decide which questions are worth asking. I provide an interpretation and defense of Alvin Plantinga’s claim that Christian philosophers should strive for autonomy, and argue that this rules out some ways of settling on our questions. I then argue that the questions in which Christian philosophers should take an interest are those arising from or continuous with a distinctively Christian way of life.

Jonathan Ebel has long been interested in how religion helps individuals and communities render meaningful the traumatic experiences of violence and war. In this new work, he examines cases from the Great War to the present day and argues that our notions of what it means to be an American soldier are not just strongly religious, but strongly Christian. Drawing on a vast array of sources, he further reveals the effects of soldier veneration on the men and women so (...) often cast as heroes. Imagined as the embodiments of American ideals, described as redeemers of the nation, adored as the ones willing to suffer and die that we, the nation, may live—soldiers have often lived in subtle but significant tension with civil religious expectations of them. With chapters on prominent soldiers past and present, Ebel recovers and re-narrates the stories of the common American men and women that live and die at both the center and edges of public consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are the fruit of (...) a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)

Gerhard Ebeling on faith. Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), not only the foremost Luther researcher of the previous century but also one of the most prominent contributors to protestant theology during that period, wrote extensively about faith throughout his long and productive life as a professional theologian. He learnt from Luther that discerning judgement in the differentiation of related matters forms the basis of all sound theology. Applying this insight to his own thought, he reflects on the development of the (...) phenomenon of faith in the Old Testament community and early Christianity and the formalisation of the concept for use in the domain of religious studies. He defends the argument that Christian faith is not only faith in Jesus as the Christ and Lord but also that Jesus, and He only, is the founder and perfecter of faith. The concept of faith is also explored by Ebeling in relation to love, life and reason. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of Ebeling’s contribution in guiding us to witness authentically about our own faith in Jesus Christ within our own situation and against the background of the problems it poses for believing in Christ. (shrink)

Rudolf Bultmann -- Gerhard Ebeling -- Hans-Georg Gadamer -- Paul Ricoeur -- David Tracy.

English summary: Hermeneutical theology is the abridged form of a theological agenda which is closely linked to the names of Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Fuchs, Gerhard Ebeling and Eberhard Jungel. The authors of this volume analyze the origins, problems, similarities and differences within this theological movement, examine their arguments and question their significance for the present. In doing so, they trace the connection to the theology of the word of God and 20th century existential hermeneutics as well as to present (...) day event hermeneutics. German description: Hermeneutische Theologie ist die Kurzformel eines theologischen Programms, das eng mit den Namen Rudolf Bultmann, Ernst Fuchs, Gerhard Ebeling und Eberhard Jungel verbunden ist. Die Autoren dieses Bandes analysieren die Herkunfte, Aufgabenstellungen, Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen innerhalb dieser theologischen Bewegung, prufen ihre Argumente und fragen nach ihrer Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart. Dabei wird den Verbindungslinien zur Wort-Gottes-Theologie und existentialen Hermeneutik des 20. Jahrhunderts ebenso nachgegangen wie denen zur Ereignishermeneutik der Gegenwart. (shrink)

Defining ‘presentism’ in a way that saves it from being trivially false yet metaphysically substantively distinct from eternalism is no mean feat, as the first part of this collection testifies. In Wuthrich (forthcoming), I have offered an attempt to achieve just this, arguing that this is best done in the context of modern spacetime theories. Here, I shall refrain from going through all the motions again and simply state the characterization of an ersatzist version of presentism as it has emerged (...) from considerations there. Any acceptable formulation of presentism should remain neutral among competing spacetime theories in order to enable the present project of assessing the compatibility of presentism with various theories of modern physics, including both spacetime theories and theories of physical processes situated in a spatiotemporal setting. (shrink)

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to (...) gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e. as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ALISTER McGRATH ON CROSS AND JUSTIFICATION MICHAEL RooT Imtitute for liloumenical Research Strasbourg, France Ay REGULAR reader of theological book advertisements has encountered the name of Alister McGrath. Since 1984, he has published a two volume history of the doctrine of justification, a study of Luther's theofogy of the cross, a general introduction to the thought of the Reformation, a study of the late medieval background of the Reformation, (...) a history of German Protestant Christology from the Enlightenment through the present, and popular books on the cross, the Trinity, and Christology. All the while he has lectured in Christian doctrine and ethics at Oxford. What is McGrath saying in this amazing flow of publications? Here I wiH look at three representative works. Iustitia Dei, which traces the understanding of the doctrine of justification from the Bible to Gerhard Ebeling, must be considered the centerpiece of his work to date.1 Luther's Theology of the Cross can be taken as typical of his more monographic work.2 Fina;lly, The Mys.tery of the Cross can exemplify his popular writings.3 I. lustitia Dei has an obvious claim on our attention. As McGrath notes in the first sentence of the Preface, this has 1[ustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doct1·ine of Justification, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 2 Luther's Theology of the Gross: Martin Luther's Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985). a The Mystery of the Gross (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988). 705 706 MICHAEL ROOT been a history waiting to be written (except perhaps for the first volume of Ritschl's The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation). The Reformers stated that the docrtrine of justification was the root of their movement. McGrath has chosen an ecumenically decisive topic to survey. Although the length of McGrath's history (378 pages of text) may not justify its separation into two volumes, the division of the volumes follows a clear structural division of the work, a division McGrath finds in the history of the doctrine. After a definition of the subject and a six page discussion.of the pre~Augustinian tradition, the first volume rapidly comes to Augustine, the " fountainhead '' of the Western discussion of justification. The tradition from Augustine to the Reformation is sufficiently unitary that it can be discussed topically under such headings as " the righteousness of God," " the concept of merit,'' and " the relation between predestination and justification." In fact, the topics are so arranged that something of a chronological progression is produced, with the problems that dominated the late medieval period coming last. While the first volume deals with continuity, the second is structured by the major discontinuities of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. A major contention of McGrath is that the Reformation constitutes a break with a relatively continuous tradition. Another, even more radical break comes with the Enlightenment. Thus, the second volume is arranged chronologically and discusses developments from the Reformation through recent hermeneutically oriented interpretations of the doctrine. This outline of the structme of McGrath's hisrtory should make clear its most important characteristic. lt is a history of the discussion of justification in the West on the terms set by Augustine. After a six page leap from the New Testament to the late fourth century, the East is quickly dismissed, never to appear again. Even within the West, the history is selective. The six eenturies between Augustine and Anselm are passed over with only brief mention of the Semi-Pdagian disputes ON ALISTER MC GRATH 707 following Augustine's death and the controversies surrounding Gottschalk rGodescalc] of Orbais. Well over half the book deals with the period between 1050 and 1600 in the West. Following the Reformation, attention is given only to selected figures from the German and English Enlightenment, to Kant and Schleiermacher as critics of the Enlightenment (though Schleiermacher's own doctrine of justification, which in important ways recaptures that of the Reformation, is ignored), to Newman, and to the most prominent German Protestant theologians of recent times (Ritschl, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Ebeling). Except for Newman, who is treated in the context of Anglicanism, no Roman Catholic is mentioned after the condemnation of Jansenism... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ALISTER McGRATH ON CROSS AND JUSTIFICATION MICHAEL RooT Imtitute for liloumenical Research Strasbourg, France Ay REGULAR reader of theological book advertisements has encountered the name of Alister McGrath. Since 1984, he has published a two volume history of the doctrine of justification, a study of Luther's theofogy of the cross, a general introduction to the thought of the Reformation, a study of the late medieval background of the Reformation, (...) a history of German Protestant Christology from the Enlightenment through the present, and popular books on the cross, the Trinity, and Christology. All the while he has lectured in Christian doctrine and ethics at Oxford. What is McGrath saying in this amazing flow of publications? Here I wiH look at three representative works. Iustitia Dei, which traces the understanding of the doctrine of justification from the Bible to Gerhard Ebeling, must be considered the centerpiece of his work to date.1 Luther's Theology of the Cross can be taken as typical of his more monographic work.2 Fina;lly, The Mys.tery of the Cross can exemplify his popular writings.3 I. lustitia Dei has an obvious claim on our attention. As McGrath notes in the first sentence of the Preface, this has 1[ustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doct1·ine of Justification, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 2 Luther's Theology of the Gross: Martin Luther's Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985). a The Mystery of the Gross (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988). 705 706 MICHAEL ROOT been a history waiting to be written (except perhaps for the first volume of Ritschl's The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation). The Reformers stated that the docrtrine of justification was the root of their movement. McGrath has chosen an ecumenically decisive topic to survey. Although the length of McGrath's history (378 pages of text) may not justify its separation into two volumes, the division of the volumes follows a clear structural division of the work, a division McGrath finds in the history of the doctrine. After a definition of the subject and a six page discussion.of the pre~Augustinian tradition, the first volume rapidly comes to Augustine, the " fountainhead '' of the Western discussion of justification. The tradition from Augustine to the Reformation is sufficiently unitary that it can be discussed topically under such headings as " the righteousness of God," " the concept of merit,'' and " the relation between predestination and justification." In fact, the topics are so arranged that something of a chronological progression is produced, with the problems that dominated the late medieval period coming last. While the first volume deals with continuity, the second is structured by the major discontinuities of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. A major contention of McGrath is that the Reformation constitutes a break with a relatively continuous tradition. Another, even more radical break comes with the Enlightenment. Thus, the second volume is arranged chronologically and discusses developments from the Reformation through recent hermeneutically oriented interpretations of the doctrine. This outline of the structme of McGrath's hisrtory should make clear its most important characteristic. lt is a history of the discussion of justification in the West on the terms set by Augustine. After a six page leap from the New Testament to the late fourth century, the East is quickly dismissed, never to appear again. Even within the West, the history is selective. The six eenturies between Augustine and Anselm are passed over with only brief mention of the Semi-Pdagian disputes ON ALISTER MC GRATH 707 following Augustine's death and the controversies surrounding Gottschalk rGodescalc] of Orbais. Well over half the book deals with the period between 1050 and 1600 in the West. Following the Reformation, attention is given only to selected figures from the German and English Enlightenment, to Kant and Schleiermacher as critics of the Enlightenment (though Schleiermacher's own doctrine of justification, which in important ways recaptures that of the Reformation, is ignored), to Newman, and to the most prominent German Protestant theologians of recent times (Ritschl, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Ebeling). Except for Newman, who is treated in the context of Anglicanism, no Roman Catholic is mentioned after the condemnation of Jansenism... (shrink)

A journey surveying the land of space, time and motion Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9575-8 Authors Christian Wüthrich, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0119, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam has argued that from a realist perspective, quantum mechanics stands in need of an interpretation. Ironically, this hypothesis may appear vulnerable against arguments drawing on Putnam's own work. Nancy Cartwright has urged that his 1962 essay on the meaning of theoretical terms suggests that quantum mechanics needs no interpretation and thus stands in tension with his claim of three years later. She furthermore contends that this conflict should be resolved in favour of the earlier work, as quantum mechanics, (...) like all successful theories, does not need an interpretation. The first part of this essay deflates both of these objections. The second part addresses and evaluates Putnam's own assessments of the main interpretative options available in 1965 and 2005. Although we may disagree on some aspects, his pessimistic conclusion will come out largely unscathed, and, in fact, enhanced. I will close by briefly stating the historical relevance of this work. (shrink)

Within a German sample, the current cross-sectional questionnaire study conducts interreligious and interdenominational comparisons between Catholics, Protestants, free-church Protestants, Bahá’ís, Muslims, Spiritualists, i.e., religiously unaffiliated persons who label themselves as “spiritual,” and religious/spiritual “nones.” The comparisons refer to self-ratings of religiosity and spirituality, centrality of religiosity, as assessed by the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, and God concepts. The study is largely exploratory in nature, but also aims at identifying contexts of faith in which the term “spiritual” is typically used as (...) a self-description. The results show that only Spiritualists and free-church Protestants substantially label themselves as “spiritual.” However, they differ in many respects from each other, thus representing two distinct contexts of faith. The results further reveal a medium position of Catholics and Protestants in between the other subgroups, commonalities as well as specific differences between free-church Protestants, Bahá’ís, and Muslims, and some religious/spiritual approaches even within the “nones.”. (shrink)

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in our liking or disliking of a stimulus due to its pairing with other positive or negative stimuli. In addition to stimulus-based mechanisms, recent research has shown that action-based mechanisms can also lead to EC effects. Research, based on action control theories, has shown that pairing a positive or negative action with a neutral stimulus results in EC effects (Stimulus-Response binding). Similarly, research studies using Operant Conditioning (OC) approaches have also observed EC effects. The (...) aim of the present study is to directly compare EC effects elicited by two different response-based approaches – S-R bindings and OC. To this end, participants were randomly assigned to an S-R binding procedure and an OC procedure. EC effects were measured in conditions and compared. Implications for EC theory are discussed. (shrink)

In this book, Christian Barry and Sanjay G. Reddy propose ways in which the international trading system can support poor countries in promoting the well-being of their peoples.

This study is aimed at evaluating the influence of the god of iron on ironworking communities in Ǹsúkkā cultural area. In the study area, the Supreme God – Chúkwú Òkìkè, Chínēkè or Chúkwú Ábíàmà is believed to control the affairs of humanity. He is worshipped through intermediaries such as Ányánwù [Sun God], Àmádíòhà, Áhàjīōkù [fertility goddess], Àlà [earth goddess] and the god of iron, which is called by different names in the study area such as Ékwéñsū-Úzù, Òkóró-Údùmè, Chíkèrè Àgùrù and (...) Áshéné. But, how effective is the god of iron in the study area? To provide answers to this question, ethnographic research method, involving in-depth structured interviews, field observation and photographic documentations, was used to gather data on the subject matter while data collected were analysed descriptively. This article is of the view that the influence of the god of iron in the study area is whittling down as a result of Westernisation and Christianity.Contribution: The study indicates an increasing resistance to the Euro-centrism, which has suppressed beliefs in the god of iron and the associated practices. (shrink)

This book explores Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism in its historical context, showing that his position is best understood against the background of encounters between neo-Kantianism and the life sciences in the nineteenth century. Analyzing most of Nietzsche's writings from the late 1860s onwards, Christian J. Emden reconstructs Nietzsche's naturalism and argues for a new understanding of his account of nature and normativity. Emden proposes historical reasons why Nietzsche came to adopt the position he did; his genealogy of values and his (...) account of a will to power are as much influenced by Kantian thought as they are by nineteenth-century debates on teleology, biological functions, and theories of evolution. This rich and wide-ranging study will be of interest to scholars and students of Nietzsche, the history of modern philosophy, intellectual history, and history of science. (shrink)

Unternehmen sind nicht nur wirtschaftliche, sondern auch politische Akteure. Vor allem aber sind sie entgegen verbreiteter Ansichten auch moralische Akteure, das heißt, sie sind grundsätzlich fähig, den moralischen Standpunkt einzunehmen, auch wenn sie dies in der Praxis selten tun. Daraus erwächst eine politische und moralische Verpflichtung: Auch für Unternehmen gelten die Menschenrechte als moralischer und rechtlicher Maßstab, daran müssen sich ihr Handeln und erst recht ihr Unterlassen messen lassen. Christian Neuhäuser zeigt mit beeindruckenden philosophischen Mitteln und anhand exponierter Beispiele (...) unternehmerischen Handelns, inwiefern und inwieweit Unternehmen moralisch zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden können. Dies hat weitreichende philosophische, ethische und nicht zuletzt politische Konsequenzen. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets nested counterfactuals right.

Spacetime as we know and love it is lost in most approaches to quantum gravity. For many of these approaches, as inchoate and incomplete as they may be, one of the main challenges is to relate what they take to be the fundamental non-spatiotemporal structure of the world back to the classical spacetime of GR. The present essay investigates how spacetime is lost and how it may be regained in one major approach to quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity.

Relational views of equality put forward a social and political ideal of equality that aims at being a better interpretation of what social justice requires than the prevailing distributive conceptions of equality, especially luck egalitarian views. Yet it is unclear what social justice as relational equality demands in distributive terms; Elizabeth Anderson's view seems to vacate a large part of the terrain of distributive justice in favor of a minimalist, sufficiency view. Against that, this paper argues that relational equality, properly (...) understood, requires setting stringent limits to distributive inequality, for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. First, the relational egalitarian conception of society as a cooperative enterprise among equals gives rise to a presumption of equality in socially produced goods (and bads); inequalities in these goods have to be justified by justice-relevant reasons. Second, relational egalitarianism also delivers instrumental reasons to limit inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunities, because such inequalities may generate both opportunities for domination and inegalitarian status norms that threaten the social bases of self-respect of the worse off. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

In _An Introduction to Kant’s Aesthetics_, Christian Wenzel discusses and demystifies Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, guiding the reader each step of the way and placing key points of discussion in the context of Kant’s other work. Explains difficult concepts in plain language, using numerous examples and a helpful glossary. Proceeds in the same order as Kant’s text for ease of reference and comprehension. Includes an illuminating foreword by Henry E. Allison. Offers twenty-six further-reading sections, commenting briefly (...) on books and articles from the English, German, and French, that are relevant for each topic Provides an extensive bibliography and a chapter summarizing Kant's main points. (shrink)

Legal theorists have proposed several theories to justify statutes of limitations in the criminal law, but none of these normative theories is generally accepted. This chapter investigates the related descriptive question as to whether ordinary people have the intuition that legal punishment becomes less appropriate as time passes from the date of the offense and, if they do, what factors play a role in these intuitions. Five studies demonstrate that there is an intuitive statute of limitations on both legal punishment (...) and moral criticism, and that these intuitions arise, in part, from judgments about changes in psychological connectedness over time. (shrink)

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may (...) maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread belief, this book establishes that ontological and epistemological reductionism stand or fall together.

What justifies holding the person that we are today morally responsible for something we did a year ago? And why are we justified in showing prudential concern for the future welfare of the person we will be a year from now? These questions cannot be systematically pursued without addressing the problem of personal identity. This essay considers whether Buddhist Reductionism, a philosophical project grounded on the idea that persons reduce to a set of bodily, sensory, perceptual, dispositional, and conscious elements, (...) provides support for Parfit’s psychological criterion for personal identity. It examines the role that self-consciousness plays in mediating both self-concern and concern for others, and offers an argument for how reductionism about substantive or enduring selves may be reconciled with the seemingly irreducible character of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Christian Georg Martin offers an argumentative reconstruction of the whole work, reading it as a critical ontology, namely as the attempt to abstract from all presuppositions and to immanently unfold conceptual determinations characterizing ...

This paper poses a problem for Lewis’ Principal Principle in a subjective Bayesian framework: we show that, where chances inform degrees of belief, subjective Bayesianism fails to validate normal informal standards of what is reasonable. This problem points to a tension between the Principal Principle and the claim that conditional degrees of belief are conditional probabilities. However, one version of objective Bayesianism has a straightforward resolution to this problem, because it avoids this latter claim. The problem, then, offers some support (...) to this version of objective Bayesianism. (shrink)

When are we responsible for addressing the acute deprivations of others beyond state borders? One widely held view is that we are responsible for addressing or preventing acute deprivations insofar as we have contributed to them or are contributing to bringing them about. But how should agents who endorse this “contribution principle” of allocating responsibility yet are uncertain whether or how much they have contributed to some problem conceive of their responsibilities with respect to it? Legal systems adopt formal norms (...) that set the burden of proof, the standard of proof, and the constraints on admissible evidence, which help courts to apply liability rules in cases where there are significant evidential uncertainties. Applying principles for determining ethical responsibilities, too, require such norms. Their content, however, should be much different from that found in criminal and even civil legal settings, where the moral costs of falsely holding those responsible for bringing about some harm are more worrisome. Instead of demanding that an agent be shown to have contributed to some deprivation “beyond a reasonable doubt,” we should express a willingness to err in favor of the acutely deprived subjects, demanding that even those agents who merely suspect that they may have substantially contributed to these deprivations undertake efforts to address them. (shrink)

Practical reasoning is a process of reasoning that concludes in an intention. One example is reasoning from intending an end to intending what you believe is a necessary means: 'I will leave the next buoy to port; in order to do that I must tack; so I'll tack', where the first and third sentences express intentions and the second sentence a belief. This sort of practical reasoning is supported by a valid logical derivation, and therefore seems uncontrovertible. A more contentious (...) example is normative practical reasoning of the form 'I ought to φ, so I'll φ', where 'I ought to φ' expresses a normative belief and 'I'll φ' an intention. This has at least some characteristics of reasoning, but there are also grounds for doubting that it is genuine reasoning. One objection is that it seems inappropriate to derive an intention to φ from a belief that you ought to φ, rather than a belief that you ought to intend to φ. Another is that you may not be able to go through this putative process of reasoning, and this inability might disqualify it from being reasoning. A third objection is that it violates the Humean doctrine that reason alone cannot motivate any action of the will. This paper investigates these objections. (shrink)

Scholars have debated the role that altruistic considerations play—and should play—in recruitment and decision-making processes for clinical trials. Little empirical data are available to support their various perspectives. We analyzed 140 audiotaped pediatric informed consent sessions, of which 95 (68%) included at least one discussion of how participation in a cancer clinical trial might benefit: 1) the pursuit of scientific knowledge generally; 2) other children with cancer specifically; and 3) “the future” and other vaguely defined recipients. Clinicians initiated most (80%) (...) of these discussions of altruism. The enrollment rate of children in the clinical trial was high (83%) overall, but not higher among children whose parents were involved in an altruism-oriented discussion. These findings suggest that: (1) clinicians invoke a spectrum of altruistic considerations rather than a single monothematic notion of altruism, and (2) the effect of altruistic considerations on subsequent enrollment decisions is marginal. While further research on this topic is warranted, bioethical debate should strive to reflect the diversity of altruistic discourse in clinical research encounters and to place this discourse in the context of other, including nonaltruistic, considerations. (shrink)

Cette étude formule l'hypothèse critique d'une opération de remythologisation par une réactualisation théologico-politique de la tragédie chez Heidegger. Cette opération ne saurait simplement coïncider avec une revalorisation " irrationnelle " du mythe, car elle procède d'abord d'une mise en question, non moins problématique, de la dualité supposée entre muthos et logos pour culminer dans ce qu'une note des années 1950 appellera la " mytho-logie de l'événement ". La réélaboration de la notion de mythe s'accomplit à partir du poème de Hölderlin (...) qui doit préfigurer les dieux de l'" autre commencement " post-judéo-chrétien, selon le projet spéculatif d'une " religion " censée relier le peuple à ses dieux nouveaux via l'être comme événement. L'hypothèse d'une remythologisation théologico-politique doit ainsi permettre d'éclairer non seulement le rôle matriciel de Hölderlin pour la pensée de l'être, mais aussi le surinvestissement illusoire du national-socialisme censé donner lieu au " peuple de Hölderlin ". Pour interroger cette réactualisation théologico-politique du mythe, l'étude se concentre sur les cours que Heidegger consacra à Hölderlin, tout en sollicitant l'intégralité du corpus des années 1933-1945, c'est-à-dire les cours fribourgeois, les traités inédits rédigés dans le sillage des Contributions (Beiträge) et les Cahiers noirs (Schwarze Hefte). (shrink)

This paper poses a problem for Lewis’ Principal Principle in a subjective Bayesian framework: we show that, where chances inform degrees of belief, subjective Bayesianism fails to validate normal informal standards of what is reasonable. This problem points to a tension between the Principal Principle and the claim that conditional degrees of belief are conditional probabilities. However, one version of objective Bayesianism has a straightforward resolution to this problem, because it avoids this latter claim. The problem, then, offers some support (...) to this version of objective Bayesianism. (shrink)

Christian Marazzi's first book: a post-Fordist classic on the roots to economic crises in the contemporary age. Communication as work: we have recently experienced a profound transformation in the processes of production. While the assembly line excluded any form of linguistic productivity, today, there is no production without communication. The new technologies are linguistic machines. This revolution has produced a new kind of worker who is not a specialist but is versatile and infinitely adaptable. If standardized mass production was (...) dominant in the past, today we produce an array of different goods corresponding to specific consumer niches. This is the post-Fordist model described by Christian Marazzi in Capital and Affects. Tracing the development of this new model of labor from Toyota plants in Japan to the most recent innovations, Marazzi's critique goes beyond political economy to encompass issues related to social life, political engagement, democratic institutions, interpersonal relations, and the role of language in liberal democracies. This translation at long last makes Marazzi's first book available to English readers. Capital and Affects stands not only as the foundation to Marazzi's subsequent work, but as foundational work in post-Fordist literature, with an analysis startlingly relevant to today's troubled economic times. This Semiotext edition includes the afterword Marazzi wrote for the 1999 Italian edition. (shrink)

Our aim in this brief essay is not to defend a particular policy or attitude toward lockdown measures in the United States or elsewhere, but to consider the scope and limits of different types of arguments that can be offered for them. Understanding the complexity of these issues will, we hope, go some way to helping us understand each other and our attitudes toward state responses to the pandemic.

Unlike the relativity theory it seeks to replace, causal set theory has been interpreted to leave space for a substantive, though perhaps ‘localized’, form of ‘becoming’. The possibility of fundamental becoming is nourished by the fact that the analogue of Stein’s theorem from special relativity does not hold in causal set theory. Despite this, we find that in many ways, the debate concerning becoming parallels the well-rehearsed lines it follows in the domain of relativity. We present, however, some new twists (...) and challenges. In particular, we show that a novel and exotic notion of becoming is compatible with causal sets. In contrast to the ‘localized’ becoming considered compatible with the dynamics of causal set theory by its advocates, our novel kind of becoming, while not answering to the typical A-theoretic demands, is ‘global’ and objective. (shrink)

In a case study of the growth of cognitive science, we analyzed the activities of the Cognitive Science Society with a particular emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of the field. Analyses of departmental affiliations, training back‐grounds, research methodology, and paper citations suggest that the journal Cognitive Science and the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society are dominated by cognitive psychology and computer science, rather than being an equal division among the constituent disciplines of cognitive science. However, at many levels, (...) a growing percentage of work was found to involve a conjunction of multiple disciplines, such that approximately 30–50% of recent work in the Cognitive Science Society is multidisciplinary. In a questionnaire study of cognitive scientists involved in collaborative research, multidisciplinarity was found to shape the research process and affect the factors associated with successful research. (shrink)