Im Medizin- und Care-Diskurs zielt die Frage, wie mit Patientinnen zu kommunizieren sei, oft auf eine normativ-ethische Ebene. Dementgegen soll hier eine eher auf die epistemologische Ebene gerichtete Untersuchung der Gesprächssituation in der Diagnosestellung geleistet werden. Die Erörterung verläuft entlang der existenziellen Philosophien von Gabriel Marcel und Martin Buber. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es drei Ebenen gibt, die das Arztgespräch bestimmen. Auf der ersten Ebene befindet sich die meist asymmetrische sachliche Kommunikationssituation über medizinische und biochemische Zusammenhänge. Hier tritt die Ärztin (...) als Expertin auf. Als zweite Ebene kann man die existenziell-dialogische Situation der Begegnung zweier Menschen ausmachen. Hier besteht eine völlige Symmetrie, da die Begegnung bei Buber und Marcel nicht an besondere Einrichtungen, wie zum Beispiel Fürsorge, gebunden ist. Die dritte Ebene kehrt das ‚Machtverhältnis‘ – so man diesen Begriff nutzen will – um: Die Patientin hat, indem sie sich in einer Grenzsituation befindet, einen Wissens- und Handlungsraum, der dem der Ärztin überlegen ist. Als Betroffene kann sie beispielsweise eine mögliche Therapie ablehnen, während die Ärztin eine indizierte Therapie nicht verweigern darf. Die genaueren Lektüren Marcels und Bubers lassen weiterhin deutlich werden, wie tiefgreifend die Vorbehalte der Dialogphilosophie gegenüber Institutionen und deren Normen sind. Die Idee des informierten Einverständnisses, welche die medizinethische Debatte dominiert, erweist sich aus Bubers Perspektive als brüchig, wo affektive Innerlichkeit lediglich ein Spiegel der äußerlichen Einrichtungen ist. Der Begriff der Hoffnung wird schließlich herangezogen, um den besonderen Handlungsraum der Ärztin aus der Perspektive der Dialogphilosophie zu konkretisieren. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag baut auf Niklas Luhmanns Unterscheidung zwischen verschiedenen Typen sozialer Systeme auf, nämlich Interaktionen, Organisationen und einer durch funktionale Teilsysteme strukturierten Gesellschaft. Auf dieser Basis wird der Fall zweier Schüler in einer Schweizer Sekundarschule analysiert, die ihren Lehrerinnen mit religiöser Begründung den Handschlag verweigerten. Gezeigt wird, wie dieses Ereignis von verschiedenen Systemtypen als Problem bearbeitet und jeweils unterschiedlich beobachtet wurde, wobei speziell auch die Frage nach dem Stellenwert des Teilsystems Religion gestellt wird. Insbesondere der Zeitbedarf und der Stellenwert schriftlicher (...) Kommunikation der verschiedenen Systeme erweisen sich als Faktoren, über die sich die unterschiedliche Rolle verschiedener Systemtypen in der Affäre verstehen lässt. Religion beeinflusste zunächst zwar die Interaktion im Klassenzimmer, schließlich fungierte sie aber eher als Thema von Recht, Politik und Massenmedien, als dass sich religiöse Kommunikation über den ursprünglichen Interaktionszusammenhang hinaus als einflussreich erwiesen hätte. (shrink)

Dieser Essay möchte Kants Recht nach dem Krieg kritisch analysieren und untersuchen, welchen Beitrag es für die gegenwärtige Debatte um das ius post bellum leisten kann. Es wird dabei davon ausgegangen, dass Kants Konzeption des Naturzustands den Schlüssel zum Verständnis von Kants Kriegsrecht insgesamt darstellt. Zunächst wird die Struktur des ius post bellum durch seine systematische Stellung in Kants Völkerrecht rekonstruiert. Die einzelnen Bestimmungen des Rechts nach dem Krieg werden in zwei Gruppen geteilt und für sich erläutert. Dabei wird gelegentlich (...) auf Begrenzungen von Kants Perspektive hingewiesen. Die identifizierten Grundsätze von Kants Kriegsrecht werden schließlich dazu verwendet, weitere, nicht im Recht nach dem Krieg genannte Bestimmungen zu diskutieren, die die Nachkonfliktphase betreffen.This essay tries to critically analyze Kant’s right after war. It examines the contribution of Kant’s right after war to the contemporary debate about jus post bellum. It starts with the assumption that the key to the understanding of Kant’s law of war is his conception of the state of nature. The structure of the right after war will be reconstructed by analyzing the place of the right within Kant’s law of peoples. The features of the right after war will be divided into two groups and examined. Certain limitations of Kant’s perspective will be identified. The underlying principles of Kant’s law of war will be used to discuss other, not in the right after war included features, which are related to the post bellum phase. (shrink)

Relevant to, and drawing from, a range of disciplines, the chapters in this collection show the diversity, and applicability, of research in Bayesian argumentation.

_Language, Names, and Information_ is an important contribution to philosophy of language by one of its foremost scholars, challenging the pervasive view that the description theory of proper names is dead in the water, and defending a version of the description theory from a perspective on language that sees words as a wonderful source of information about the nature of the world we live in. Challenges current pervasive view that the description theory of reference for proper names has been refuted (...) Discusses several topics at the center of current debates, including representation and information, two-dimensionalism, possible worlds, and broad vs. narrow content Maintains the conversational and somewhat informal tone of the original lectures upon which the book is based. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to show how the theory of conceptual spaces can be useful in describing diachronic changes to conceptual frameworks, and thus useful in understanding conceptual change in the empirical sciences. We also compare the conceptual space approach to Moulines’s typology of intertheoretical relations in the structuralist tradition. Unlike structuralist reconstructions, those based on conceptual spaces yield a natural way of modeling the changes of a conceptual framework, including noncumulative changes, by tracing the changes to the (...) dimensions that reconstitute a conceptual framework. As a consequence, the incommensurability of empirical theories need not be viewed as a matter of conceptual representation. (shrink)

This article provides a brief selective overview and discussion of recent research into natural language argumentation that may inform the study of human reasoning on the assumption that an episode of argumentation issues an invitation to accept a corresponding inference. As this research shows, arguers typically seek to establish new consequences based on prior information. And they typically do so vis-à-vis a real or an imagined opponent, or an opponent-position, in ways that remain sensitive to considerations of context, audiences, and (...) goals. Deductively valid inferences remain a limiting case of such reasoning. In view of these insights, it may appear less surprising that allegedly “irrational” behavior can regularly be produced in experimental settings that expose subjects to standardized reasoning tasks. (shrink)

We shall describe the set of strongly meet irreducible logics in the lattice ϵLin.t of normal tense logics of weak orderings. Based on this description it is shown that all logics in ϵLin.t are independently axiomatizable. Then the description is used in order to investigate tense logics with respect to decidability, finite axiomatizability, axiomatization problems and completeness with respect to Kripke semantics. The main tool for the investigation is a translation of bimodal formulas into a language talking about partitions of (...) general frames into intervals so that relative to both Kripke frames and descriptive frames the expressive power of both languages coincides. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of the rational abilities that make our decisions free. Following the lead of new dispositionalists, a leeway account of free decisions is developed, and the rational abilities that ground our abilities to decide otherwise are described in detail. A main result will be that the best account of the relevant rational abilities makes them two-way abilities: abilities to decide to do or not to do x in accordance with one’s apparent reasons. Dispositionalism about (...) rational abilities will be vindicated, since it helps to see why and how these two-way abilities entail an ability to decide otherwise and, thus, free will. (shrink)

Does the practice of psychology make a significant and positive contribution to human welfare and the struggle for a good society? This book presents a reinvigorating look at psychology and its societal purpose, offering a bold new philosophical foundation from which professionals in the field can deeply examine their work.

The article attempts to develop a diagonal towards classical readings of the humanism of early Marx. Traditionally, referring to early Marx meant to either affirm a substantialist conception of human beings or to criticize the same conception by insisting on a break between early and late Marx. By presenting a lecture badiousienne of early Marxian texts, the article shows how an affirmative reference to man as species-being and as part of a ‘generic humanity’ can be thought without falling back into (...) the substantialist traps of classical humanism. In a systematic and forced construction of the Marxian idea of the evental character of actual communist action and of universal production, the article shows how Marx’s concept of human species life can be understood as the central source of a transformed thinking of humanism. Consequently, neither Badiou nor Marx will be rendered as classical humanists or pure anti-humanists, rather the early Marxian thought will be presented as a philosophical armoury of in-humanism that is still of great use for sharpening one’s conceptual tools. (shrink)

Accordingly, this book will be of great interest and benefit to anyone working in the fields of phenomenology, hermeneutics, or Heidegger studies.

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law-like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question whether this is possible and what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” (...) that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life. (shrink)

This paper explores the consequences of applying two natural ideas from epistemology to decision theory: (1) that knowledge should guide our actions, and (2) that we know a lot of non-trivial things. In particular, we explore the consequences of these ideas as they are applied to standard decision theoretic puzzles such as the St. Petersburg Paradox. In doing so, we develop a “knowledge-first” decision theory and we will see how it can help us avoid fanaticism with regard to the St. (...) Petersburg puzzle and related puzzles. The result will be a decision theory that gives a novel, but well-motivated, reason for discounting small probabilities when making decisions. We examine the merits and demerits of such a decision theory. (shrink)

Identity, is the distinguishing characteristic of a person or being. African identity is “being-with” as opposed to the Western individualism, communalism as oppose to collectivism. African “self” is rooted in the family-hood. The West battered African World view and cultural heritage, with the racialism, slave trade, colonization and other Western ideologies. They considered Africans inferiors and influenced most Africans to see themselves as such. Thus Africans are backward and without integral development and independence, although it was quite certain that pre-colonial (...) Africa was not static or dead. However, the essence of philosophy is to inquire critically into the marvels and problematic that confronts one in his world in view of producing systematic explanation and sustained response to them. Therefore, Contemporary African Philosophy focuses on these marvels and problematic confronting the Africa World. The essence of philosophical paradigm of African identity and development is to reason out the way people think with the aim of rediscovering and situating them on the right track, which is, being original and authentic with the view of arriving at a desired goal. It is also for emancipating Africa from bartered African image and European conditioning, slavery and neo-colonization. African ontology is anthropocentric; any serious minded development paradigm must take manmmaduasits point of departure and the point of arrival. It must be peoples’ oriented, relevant to the peoples’ needs and aspirations. (shrink)

Ein Homunkulus im philosophischen Sprachgebrauch ist eine postulierte menschenähnliche Instanz, die ausdrücklich oder unausdrücklich zur Erklärung der Arbeitsweise des menschlichen Geistes herangezogen wird. Als Homunkulus-Fehlschluß wird die Praxis bezeichnet, Prädikate, die auf kognitive oder perzeptive Leistungen einer ganzen Person zutreffen, auch auf Teile von Personen oder auf subpersonale Vorgänge anzuwenden, was typischerweise zu einem Regreß führt. Der vorliegende Beitrag erörtert den Homunkulus-Fehlschluß zunächst in argumentationstheoretischer Hinsicht und stellt dabei ein Diagnoseschema auf. Dann werden zwei Anwendungsfelder erörtert: Instanzenmodelle der Psyche (Platon, (...) Freud) sind ihrer Natur nach homunkulusgefährdet, denn es ist aufgrund der holistischen Zuschreibungsbedingungen mentaler Fähigkeiten schwer plausibel zu machen, wie eine innerpsychische Instanz den ihr zugedachten Beitrag leisten soll, ohne über eine eigene Psyche zu verfügen. Der zweite Anwendungsfall ist das Problem des invertierten Netzhautbildes in der Philosophie der Wahrnehmung, das wissenschafts- und philosophiegeschichtlich eingebettet und unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Descartes diskutiert wird. Schließlich werden offensive Rechtfertigungen homunkularer Redeweisen erörtert und größtenteils zurückgewiesen. -- The homunculus fallacy is committed when someone tries to explain how the human mind works by postulating a little man within the mind or the brain. Homunculi are rarely posited with one’s eyes open. Rather, the fallacy occurs when predicates that properly apply to cognitive or perceptual achievements of persons get applied to subpersonal processes or to parts of persons (e.g., brains). The paper suggests a pattern for diagnosing homunculus fallacies. After taking a look at Freud’s and Platon’s homuncular metapsychologies, a case study is discussed in detail: the problem of the inverted retinal image which plagued the philosophy of perception since Kepler formulated it in 1604. It is argued that the irradiation patterns on the retina are not images, on pain of committing the homunculus fallacy. The paper closes with the repudiation of some frank apologies of homuncular explanations. (shrink)

Debates in animal ethics are largely characterized by ethical monism, the search for a single, timeless, and essential trait in which the moral standing of animals can be grounded. In this paper, we argue that a monistic approach towards animal ethics hampers and oversimplifies the moral debate. The value pluralism present in our contemporary societies requires a more open and flexible approach to moral inquiry. This paper advocates the turn to a pragmatic, pluralistic approach to animal ethics. It contributes to (...) the development of such an approach in two ways. It offers a pragmatist critique of ethical monism in animal ethics and presents the results of a qualitative study into the value diversity present in the different ways of thinking about animals in the Netherlands. Carefully arranged group discussions resulted in the reconstruction of four distinctive moral value frameworks that may serve as instruments in the future process of moral inquiry and deliberation in the reflection on animal use. (shrink)

It is known that even seemingly small fragments of the first-order temporal logic over the natural numbers are not recursively enumerable. In this paper we show that the monodic fragment is an exception by constructing its finite Hilbert-style axiomatization. We also show that the monodic fragment with equality is not recursively axiomatizable.

In The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, Alessandro Ferrara seeks a philosophical breakthrough from what looks like it could be a pending dead-end for democracy. The best hope, Ferrara superbly maintains, lies through an extension or updating – a “renewal,” as he calls it – of lines of thought bequeathed to us, by John Rawls and others, under the name of political liberalism. Somewhere near the crux of Ferrara’s reflection stands a class of institutional fixtures whose (...) name is missing from his title. I mean the class “constitution.” I use that word to name a country’s scriptural basic law, its publicly cognizable corpus of canonically worded sentences ordaining the country’s basic institutional framework. My suggestion will be that it is no less tellingly a “constitutional” than a “democratic” horizon that Ferrara’s work, in conjunction with Rawls’s, shows us to be facing. (shrink)

John Rawls proposed, as what he called “the liberal principle of legitimacy,” that coercive exercises of political power can be justified to free and equal dissenters when “in accordance with a constitution (written or unwritten) the essentials of which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can endorse.” Does “unwritten constitution” there refer to norms of constitutional import, but that subsist only as custom, not as law? To norms that subsist as common law but not as code law? To empirical regularities (...) of political practice, as opposed to normative rules and standards? Which interpretation is best? (shrink)

Der in Leipzig lehrende Philosoph und Theologe Christian August Crusius (1715-1775) ist bisher vorwiegend im Rahmen der Kant-Forschung berücksichtigt worden. Dabei war Crusius einer der ersten ernstzunehmenden Kritiker der Philosophie von Christian Wolff, der entscheidende Impulse von Christian Thomasius aufgriff, philosophisch vertiefte und bis in die zweite Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts wirkungsvoll tradierte. Der Sammelband nimmt die unterschiedlichen Aspekte des philosophischen und theologischen Schaffens von Crusius in den Blick und rekonstruiert die eigenständige Kontur eines Denkers, der einerseits auf allen Gebieten (...) der Philosophie tätig war und andererseits nach seiner Berufung zum Professor der Theologie ausschließlich an seinem theologischen OEuvre arbeitete. Auf der damit greifbaren Spannung zwischen Philosophie und Theologie liegt ein Hauptaugenmerk des interdisziplinären Sammelbandes. (shrink)

An infinite field with only countably many pure types is algebraically closed.

Der Übergang vom Verhältnisbewußtsein zum Selbstbewußtsein kann unmöglich nur vom Verhältnisbewußtsein aus gedacht werden, weil wir uns eine Welt, in der das Bewubtsein unserer selbst verteilt ist auf die Dimensionen der Handlung vor deren Zentrierung in uns, gar nicht vorstellen können. Jedes Tableau der Handlungsmöglichkeiten, so abstrakt es auch abgefaßt sein mag, ist gebunden an Vorstellungen möglicher Handlungssubjekte, denen wir Handlungsmöglichkeiten zuschreiben. Handlungstheorie ist daher notwendig Reflexion unserer Praxis, in der wir uns selbst als Selbstbewußtsein erfahren, das seinem Verhältnisbewubtsein enthoben (...) ist, ohne dieses dadurch selbst schon aufzuheben zu können. Daß uns Freiheit im Handeln unaufhebbar prekär und problematisch bleiben mub, ist die Grundvoraussetzung dafür, dab wir Handlungstheorien historisch und bereichsbezogen ständig neu entwerfen müssen. Das Verhältnis von Handlungsphilosophie zu Handlungstheorien kann daher so gefaßt werden, daß Handlungsphilosophie die Grundbegrifflichkeit in kritischer Absicht bereitstellt, die den bereichsorientierten, mehr oder weniger deskriptiven Handlungstheorien abgehen muß. Dazu muß die ontologische Differenz von Handlung und Interpretation methodologisch ernst genommen werden. Die radikale Andersheit der hier zu begründenden Konzeption liegt vor allem in der Ansicht, daß Handlungen nicht als isolierbare Ereignis-Entitäten aufgefaßt werden können, die gegenüber der »Welt der Tatsachen des Bewußtseins« eine kausale, d.h. von der Welt des Bewußtseins abgetrennte Rolle übernehmen. (shrink)

We give a brief introduction to the Bayesian approach to natural language argumentation, mainly oriented to readers more familiar with classical logic. Subsequently, we summarize the gist of each of the chapters so as to provide readers with an overview of the book&s content.

According to the expression account, assertion is the linguistic expression of belief. Given the knowledge rule of belief, this entails that knowledge is a normative requirement of sincere assertions. On this account, which is defended in Hindriks, knowledge can be a normative requirement of sincere assertions even though there is no knowledge rule that is constitutive of assertion. Ball criticizes this claim arguing that the derivation of the knowledge rule equivocates between epistemic and moral senses of obligation. In response, we (...) resist the charge of equivocation. Ball does not, after all, demonstrate that the distinction matters in the context at issue. In addition to this, we argue that it is a virtue of the account that the knowledge rule is restricted in application to sincere assertions. The case we present to illustrate this is that of the virtuous liar who knows what he believes, and is insincere because that is the right thing to do in the situation. It makes no sense, we suggest, to criticize the liar for not knowing that which he asserts. After all, it is his moral duty to assert what he knows to be false. Furthermore, his epistemic standing is impeccable, as he knows what he believes. (shrink)

The question of what means-and-ends structure our epistemic endeavors have is an important issue in recent epistemology, and is fundamental for understanding epistemic matters in principle. Crispin Sartwell has proposed arguments for the view that knowledge is our only ultimate goal, and justification is no part of it. An important argument is his instrumentality argument which is concerned with the conditions under which something could belong to our ultimate epistemic goal. Recently, this argument has been reconstructed and criticized by Pierre (...) Le Morvan in a clear and helpful way. It will be shown, however, that Le Morvan’s criticism is not adequate, since it misconstrues the real instrumentality argument that can be found in Sartwell’s writings. (shrink)

A new hypothesis is proposed to explain the perennially enlarged breasts of human females. The nubility hypothesis proposes that hominid females evolved protruding breasts because the size and shape of breasts function as an honest signal of residual reproductive value. Hominid females with greater residual reproductive value were preferred by males once reliable cues to ovulation were lost and long-term bonding evolved. This adaptation was favored because female-female competition for investing males increased once hominid males began to provide valuable resources.