Social Facts and Collective Intentionality is a combination of terms that refers to a new field of basic research. Written mainly in the mood and by means of analytical philosophy, at the very heart of this new approach is conceptual explication of all the various versions of social facts and collective intentionality and its ramifications. This approach tackles the topics of traditional social philosophy using new conceptual methods, including techniques of formal logic, computer simulations, and artificial intelligence. Such research also (...) addresses careful research relating to ontological, epistemological, normative and--last but not least-- methodological questions. This volume represents the state of the art in this new field. The volume and its contributors tackle a series of vexing issues in the social sciences: (1) the sense of affiliation to large in contrast to small groups, (2) whether collective membership is the same as common knowledge, (3) the worth of information exchange based on faulty data, (4) the difference between standards of information and transfer of information, and (5) whether reliability is grounded in personal experience or as members in epistemic communities or networks. Contributors to this volume have a strong commitment to the social or collective character and mutual interplay of scientific information. "Collective Intentionality" is the term chosen by researchers working in this cross-disciplinary field. The group is currently conducting research in areas such as artificial intelligence, linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Its work is distinguished by issues of collective behavior such as jointness, groupness, we and us. The present volume covers the state of the art of collective analysis, while fully appreciating that it is a stepping stone, albeit an important one, in redirecting the attention of basic philosophy away from the individual to the collective mode of exact analysis. Georg Meggle is professor for philosophical foundations of anthropology and of cognitive sciences at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He is a key contributor to Realism in Action with a study of Common Belief and Common Knowledge, and author of an earlier study of theoretical foundations of semantics. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume result from discussions on and with John R. Searle, containing Searle's own latest views - including his seminal ideas on Rationality in Action. The collection provides a good basis for advanced seminar debates in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy, and will also stimulate some further research on all of the three main topics.

There is a long tradition in the philosophy of explaining the concept of meaning in terms of reference of the thing that our sign signifies. At the latest since Wittgenstein, meaning has been explained with the formula meaning=use, where one distinguishes between how one uses something and for what purpose one uses something. The author shows that this dichotomy between the how and the purpose of use can be unified. He does this by first investigating the concept of the purpose (...) of use and then reconstructs the use-how by means of the concept of convention. Finally, the author demonstrates how to traditional referential semantics can be justified on the basis of the theory developed here.". (shrink)

And, much worse, nearly nobody cares about this conceptual disaster -- the main thing being, whether or not you are taking sides with the good guys. This volume is an analytical attempt to end this disaster. What is Terrorism?

Dient Kunst der Erkenntnis? Vermittelt sie Einsichten oder Wissen? Und wenn ja: auf welche Weise? Sind ästhetische Urteile wahr oder falsch? Beruht unsere Wertschätzung von Kunst auf ihren kognitiven Funktionen? Zu diesen Fragen, die zu den klassischen Themen der Kunstphilosophie gehören, beziehen zehn Philosophen aus dem deutschen Sprachraum in Originalbeiträgen Position. Der Band dokumentiert den gegenwärtigen Stand der Kontroversen zwischen kognitivistischen und nichtkognitivistischen Theorien der Kunst und der Kunstbewertung. Mit Beiträgen von Rüdiger Bittner, Sabine A. Döring, Christoph Jäger, Bernd Kleimann, (...) Dirk Koppelberg, Jens Kulenkampff, Franz von Kutschera, Alexander Piecha, Jakob Steinbrenner und Henning Tegtmeyer. (shrink)

v. 1. Logic, epistemology, philosophy of science -- v. 2. Philosophy of language, metaphysics -- v. 3. Philosophy of mind, practical philosophy, miscellanea.

Ausgewahlte Beitrage zum 1. KOngreSS der Gesellschaft fur Analytische Philosophie (GAP); Saarbrucken, 9-12. OKtober 1991 Aus dem Inhalt: 1. ERkenntnistheorie 2. WIssenschaftstheorie - historisch und systematisch 3. SPrachphilosophie 4. PHilosophie des Geistes 5. PRaktische Philosophie 6. OFfene Sektion.

Bd. 1. Handlungsbeschreibungen.--Bd. 2. Handlungserklärungen.

Proceedings of the von Wright conference at the Center for Intedisciplinary Studies in Bielefeld, April 26 to 27, 1996. Georg Henrik von Wright, born 1916, is an important analytical philosopher of the 20th century.

Communication can mean many different things. As far as Communicative Action is concerned, here we distinguish between Communication Attempts, Successful Communicative Action and Understood but Unsuccessful Communicative Action, as well as whether the respective actions already have a regular meaning. What are the respective rationality presuppositions? This is resolved for all the above concepts of Communicative Action. As is the case for all actions, Communicative Actions also require us to differentiate between various rationality types: action rationality, the reasons behind an (...) action, and situation-relative personal rationality. (shrink)

Moral judgements have to be universalizable. There are many problems with this thesis (U). The problems to be dealt with here, are: (i) What is the connection between U and justifiablility? (ii) Is U a logical thesis? (iii) Is U analytically true? (iv) Is U adaquate? (v) Is utilitarianism a logical consequence of U?

These are the questions proposed in this book; therefore, it is concerned with problems of semantics (part 1), problems of moral assessment (part 2) and with the moral, legal and political conclusions we draw from our experiences with the ...

Ist Euthanasie moralisch erlaubt? Drei Rückfragen sind hier notwendig: Welche Art vonEuthanasie? (Frei willige/unfreiwillige/nicht-frei willige?) Und: Nach Maßgabe welcher moralischer Prinzipien? (Heiligkeit des Lebens oder Lebensqualität?) Und: Wonach soll sich der Euthanasie-relevante Wert eines Lebens bemessen? (Eigen- oder Fremdperspektive?).

Ist Euthanasie moralisch erlaubt? Drei Rückfragen sind hier notwendig: Welche Art vonEuthanasie? (Frei willige/unfreiwillige/nicht-frei willige?) Und: Nach Maßgabe welcher moralischer Prinzipien? (Heiligkeit des Lebens oder Lebensqualität?) Und: Wonach soll sich der Euthanasie-relevante Wert eines Lebens bemessen? (Eigen- oder Fremdperspektive?).

This paper takes up again Grice’s Basic Model (GBM) for analysing communicative acts. We draw attention to a ’new’ fault in GBM, i.e. a fault not yet noticed in the literature: Grice’s deflniens for CA (= communicative attempt) is not only too weak (as it is not satisfying the reflexivity-condition according to which any CA implies the speaker’s intention of CA’s being understood by the hearer); it is also too strong - and just for the same reason.

Was macht eine Intervention zu einer Humanitären? Was sind die moralischen Bewertungskriterien für eine solche Intervention? Welche Kraft haben diese Kriterien im Vergleich zu den völkerrechtlichen Regelungen? Was sind die speziellen moralischen Probleme Humanitärer Interventionen bzw. Humanitärer Interventions-Kriege verglichen mit den gängigen Problemen zwischenstaatlicher Gewalt? Und welche Lehren ziehen wir heute aus dem Kosovokrieg von 1999, der einen Großteil ehemaliger Pazifisten zu dezidierten Kriegsbefürwortern werden ließ? Der Band präsentiert eine Auswahl von Beiträgen zur gleichnamigen Internationalen Konferenz am ZiF / Uni (...) Bielefeld. (shrink)