Should decision-making algorithms be held to higher standards of transparency than human beings? The way we answer this question directly impacts what we demand from explainable algorithms, how we govern them via regulatory proposals, and how explainable algorithms may help resolve the social problems associated with decision making supported by artificial intelligence. Some argue that algorithms and humans should be held to the same standards of transparency and that a double standard of transparency is hardly justified. We give two arguments (...) to the contrary and specify two kinds of situations for which higher standards of transparency are required from algorithmic decisions as compared to humans. Our arguments have direct implications on the demands from explainable algorithms in decision-making contexts such as automated transportation. (shrink)

"In der Philosophie der Gegenwart fehlt es an einem systematischen Lehrbuche uber die verwickelten Strukturverhaltnisse, die unseren alltaglichen und wissenschaftlichen Wirklichkeitsbegriffen zu Grunde liegen. Das vorliegende Buch versucht, diese Lucke auszufullen. Dem umfassenden Feld seiner Aufgabe entsprechend wendet es sich nicht nur an den engeren Kreis der Fachphilosophen, sondern zugleich an den weiteren Kreis aller derjenigen, denen der Wirklichkeitsbegriff ihres Arbeitsgebietes ein Problem ist." "(Aus dem Vorwort zu Band I)" Der Greifswalder Philosophieprofessor Gunther Jacoby (1889-1969) gilt neben Nicolai Hartmann (...) als Begrunder einer neuen, beschreibendenden Ontologie, die zu Beginn dieses Jahrhunderts als Gegenbewegung zum Neukantianismus entstand und die in ihren Raum- und Zeitanalysen die Ergebnisse der Relativitatstheorie Albert Einsteins verarbeitete. Jacobys Hauptwerk "Allgemeine Ontologie der Wirklichkeit" (der erste Band erschien 1925, der zweite Band in 2 Teilen 1955), das seit langerem vergriffen ist, wird jetzt als Reprint wieder aufgelegt, erganzt durch eine Einleitung und ein Verzeichnis seiner Publikationen.". (shrink)

We propose a method of learning indicative conditional information. An agent learns conditional information by Jeffrey imaging on the minimally informative proposition expressed by a Stalnaker conditional. We show that the predictions of the proposed method align with the intuitions in Douven, 239–263 2012)’s benchmark examples. Jeffrey imaging on Stalnaker conditionals can also capture the learning of uncertain conditional information, which we illustrate by generating predictions for the Judy Benjamin Problem.

We put forth an account for when to believe causal and evidential conditionals. The basic idea is to embed a causal model in an agent’s belief state. For the evaluation of conditionals seems to be relative to beliefs about both particular facts and causal relations. Unlike other attempts using causal models, we show that ours can account rather well not only for various causal but also evidential conditionals.

AusƯgewählt wurden für dieses Buch 34 Fotografien von Malerei-Installationen Andreas Karl Schulzes aus den ƯJahren 1998 bis 2016. Der Text von Günther Kebeck geht der Frage nach, wie sich mithilfe der Gliederungs- und Gruppierungsprozesse Ambiguitäten Ưreduzieren lassen und schrittweise die Ordnung der visuellen Welt aufbaut. Wie Teile so zu einem Ganzen zusammengefügt werden, dass daraus schliesslich eine Übersummativität resultiert: Das Ganze mehr ist als die Summe seiner Teile. Die Überlegungen zur Produktivität der menschlichen Wahrnehmung sind Ausgangspunkt für Fragen der Ästhetik. (...) Warum empfinden wir Dinge als schön? Was ist das Besondere an der Wahrnehmung von Kunstwerken? Auf den ersten Blick könnte der Gegensatz zwischen dem wissenschaftlichen Text und den künstlerischen Arbeiten grösser nicht sein: Lesen versus Betrachten, Reflexion versus Anschauung. Text und Bilder bleiben autonom. Gemeinsam ist ihnen die Konzentration auf das Sehen als grundlegenden Erkenntnisakt. (shrink)

Pannenberg war nach eigenem Bekunden kein Hegelianer. Doch gibt es bemerkenswerte strukturelle und inhaltliche Parallelen zwischen seiner 'Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive' und Hegels 'Philosophie des sujektiven Geistes', deren Wahrnehmung für eine aktuelle Lehre vom Menschen in hohem Masse bedeutsam sein kann.

Between 1650 and 1664, a giant globe was created in Gottorf under Duke Friedrich III, which was widely known and marvelled at by many contemporaries as a wonder of the world. The scientific management of the project was the responsibility of the court mathematician and librarian Adam Olearius. The Gottorf Globe and its counterpart (a “Sphaera Copernicana”) presented the astronomical knowledge of the time in a pictorial form. The image of the earth and the cosmos was also intended to show (...) the Creator and his omnipotence. Erhard Weigel, professor of mathematics at the University of Jena from 1653, also constructed monumental globes. These baroque world models, as well as Robert Long’s 18th-century sphere, can be considered the precursors of today’s planetariums. (shrink)

Bringing together leading figures in the study of international relations, this collection explores praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. It builds on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil to reveal the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing.

Vorwort - Einleitung Erster Teil. Hegels philosophische Kritik. Kapitel 1. Der Skeptizismus als Vorstufe und Moment der Hegelschen Dialektik. 1 Der systemtheoretische Gesichtspunkt der Hegelschen Skeptizismus-Rezeption - 2 Die Grundprinzipien des Schulzeschen Skeptizismus - 3 Hegels Kritik an Schulzes Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie - 4 Hegels Stellungnahme zum antiken Skeptizismus - Kapitel 2. Platonische und Hegelsche Dialektik. 5 Der Platonische Parmenides in Hegels Sicht - 6 Die Differenz der Platonischen und der Hegelschen Dialektik - Kapitel 3. Die Stellung des Spinozismus (...) in Hegels Dialektik - 7 Allgemeine Charakteristik der Hegelschen Widerlegung der Philosophie Spinozas - 8 Die Kategorie der Substanz in der Jenenser Logik - 9 Die Spinozistische Philosophie des Absoluten als Organon der Kritik an der Reflexionsphilosophie - 10 Die berwindung des Spinozismus in der Wissenschaft der Logik - Kapitel 4. Kants transzendentale Apperzeption und Hege. (shrink)

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

The article investigates one of the key contributions to modern structural mathematics, namely Hilbert’sFoundations of Geometry and its mathematical roots in nineteenth-century projective geometry. A central innovation of Hilbert’s book was to provide semantically minded independence proofs for various fragments of Euclidean geometry, thereby contributing to the development of the model-theoretic point of view in logical theory. Though it is generally acknowledged that the development of model theory is intimately bound up with innovations in 19th century geometry, so far, little (...) has been said about how exactly model-theoretic concepts grew out of methodological investigations within projective geometry. This article is supposed to fill this lacuna and investigates this geometrical prehistory of modern model theory, eventually leading up to Hilbert’sFoundations. (shrink)

Recent work by philosophers of mind and psychology on nonconceptual content.

ZusammenfassungDer finale Dialog zwischen Kriemhild und Hagen in der Schlussszene der 39. Aventiure im Nibelungenlied – von der Forschung bis heute irreführend als »2. Hortforderungsszene« bezeichnet – wird als eine psychologisch basierte Finte Hagens gedeutet, die nicht nur eine individuelle Innensphäre der Figur Kriemhilds verifiziert, sondern zugleich das furiose Ende der burgundischen Nibelungen kohärent motiviert. Das Nibelungenlied erscheint in diesem Kontext als literarisches Zeugnis eines zeitgenössischen Ringens um politische Stabilität und traditionelle Wertvorstellungen, das besonders über die Figurenrolle Dietrichs im Spannungsfeld (...) heroischer Gewaltverherrlichung und höfischer Interessenwahrung problematisiert ist.The final dialogue between Kriemhild and Hagen in the closing scene of the Nibelungenlied’s 39th Aventiure – to date falsely designated as the second »Hortforderungsszene« – is here interpreted as a psychological feint of Hagen, which not only verifies the individual interior life of Kriemhild but also provides a coherent motivation for the stirring end of the Burgundian Nibelungen. In this context, the Nibelungenlied appears as a literary testimony of a contemporary struggle about politically stability and traditional moral concepts, which is problematized, first and foremost, via the figure of Dietrich, caught in a conflict between the heroic glorification of violence and the protection of courtly interests. (shrink)

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with Quine's substitutional account of logical truth. The critique of Quine's definition tends to focus on miscellaneous odds and ends, such as problems with identity. However, in an appendix to his influential article On Second Order Logic, George Boolos offered an ingenious argument that seems to diminish Quine's account of logical truth on a deeper level. In the article he shows that Quine's substitutional account of logical truth cannot be generalized properly to the general concept of (...) logical consequence. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce the reader to the metamathematics of Quine's substitutional definition of logical truth; second, to make Boolos' result accessible to a broader audience by giving a detailed and self-contained presentation of his proof; and, finally, to discuss some of the possible implications and how a defender of the Quinean concepts might react to the challenge posed by Boolos' result. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Die Idee und ihre philosophischen Voraussetzungen.

Die Veröffentlichung dieser Arbeit wurde durch mißliche Umstände ver­ zögert; sie wird durch die Übernahme in den Verlag Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn nunmehr ermöglicht. Trotzdem braucht im Augenblick nichts hinzugefügt werden. Eine soeben erschienene Arbeit von O. Heckmann, P. Jordan 1 und W. Fricke ) stellt erst den ersten Teil einer noch im Fluß befindlichen Diskussion von Lösungen der in diesem Büchlein aufgestellten allgemeinen Feldgleichungen dar. In dieser Darstellung wird ein kurzer Überblick über die neueren Ergeb­ nisse der projektiven Relativitätstheorie (...) seit dem Erscheinen der schönen 2 Zusammenfassung von O. Veblen ) im Jahre 1933 gegeben. Der wesent­ lichste Schritt in dieser Weiterentwicklung wurde von P. Jordan im Jahre 1944 getan. Die allgemeine affine (Einsteinsehe) Relativitätstheorie wird als be­ kannt vorausgesetzt. Die projektive Theorie wird aber von Grund· auf mit Einschluß der Jordansehen Erweiterung entwickelt. Eine eingehendere Übersicht über den Inhalt, der die Ergebnisse einiger Arbeiten von P. J or­ dan, Cl. Müll e r und dem Verfasser sowie noch unveröffentlichte Ergeb­ nisse enthält, findet der Leser im ersten einleitenden Abschnitt. Ganz besonders herzlich möchte ich Herrn P. Jordan danken für die Anregung zu diesen Untersuchungen, für das große Interesse, mit dem er den Fortgang der Arbeiten verfolgte, und für die Förderung durch wert­ volle Diskussionen und Anregungen zu interessanten Fragestellungen. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

I confront Feyerabend's position and critical rationalism in order to have a foundation or starting point for my (historical) investigation. The main difference of his position towards falsificationism is the belief that different theories cannot be discussed rationally. Feyerabend is convinced that Galilei's observations with the telescope in the historical context of the Copernican revolution supports his criticism. In particular, he argues that the Copernican theory was supported by deficient hypotheses, and falsifications were disposed by ad hoc hypotheses and propaganda. (...) Furthermore, he claims that his philosophy of science reconstructs Galilei's defence of the Copernican theory. He introduces a central principle of his position (the principle of tenacity) in order to justify a research strategy of not eliminating falsified theories. He tries to show that the tenacious defence of a theory corresponds to Galilei's defence of the Copernican theory. Remarkably, Feyerabend's approach to explain the development of science earns an important support from his interpretation of Galilei's observations. On this basis I give a falsificationist interpretation of Galilei's observations with the telescope, and oppose this interpretation to Feyerabend's. From a falsificationist perspective, auxiliary hypotheses compete during the Copernican revolution which can (with some effort) be critically discussed. Then I analyse the historical case in order to test Feyerabend's interpretation of the Copernican revolution. Inter alias I investigate thoroughly whether Galilei, as Feyerabend claims, immunised falsifications of the Copernican theory by the introduction of ad hoc hypotheses. The investigation considers Galilei's explanation of Venus' phases, his establishment of the irradiation hypothesis, the explanation of the telescope's functionality, and the role of the reproducibility of the observations with the telescope. Finally I provide a rational reconstruction of Galilei's falsification of the Ptolemaic theory. The formalisation shows that Galilei was not a cautious critical rationalist, but a very confident scientist using the method of falsification. (shrink)

In recent years, several scholars have been investigating Frege’s mathematical background, especially in geometry, in order to put his general views on mathematics and logic into proper perspective. In this article I want to continue this line of research and study Frege’s views on geometry in their own right by focussing on his views on a field which occupied center stage in nineteenth century geometry, namely, projective geometry.