Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. Here we exploited a large sample derived from prospective online surveying to determine whether and how beliefs concerning the nature of reality, consciousness, and free‑will, change after psychedelic use. Results revealed significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism, post use. With the exception of fatalism, these changes endured (...) for at least 6 months, and were positively correlated with the extent of past psychedelic‑use and improved mental‑health outcomes. Path modelling suggested that the belief‑shifts were moderated by impressionability at baseline and mediated by perceived emotional synchrony with others during the psychedelic experience. The observed belief‑shifts post‑psychedelic‑use were consolidated by data from an independent controlled clinical trial. Together, these findings imply that psychedelic‑use may causally influence metaphysical beliefs—shifting them away from ‘hard materialism’. We discuss whether these apparent effects are contextually independent. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question whether some morally normative content is grounded in the dialogical practice that both Apel and Habermas call argumentative discourse, and if so how to demonstrate that it is so grounded. Apel (unlike Habermas) claims that discourse has rationally necessary conceptual presuppositions; that morally normative content is part of such presuppositions; and that this can be ascertained in transcendendal reflection, i.e. by a kind of transcendental argument. I argue that these claims can be charitably interpreted (...) but require clarifications of their key concepts, i.e. “discourse”, “validity claims”, “performative self-contradiction”, and “community of communication”. I argue that discourse as a practice of reason-sensitive agents who are communicatively connected via argumentation can be explained by its normatively constitutive aim, namely fixing the true values of our reasons; that the primary level of validity claims are claims concerning good reasons; that performative self-contradictions are pragmatic-cum-logical inconsistencies that we can know apriori to be incompatible with discourse’s constitutive aim; and finally, that competent discourse participants can know apriori that they would be performatively inconsistent if they flouted a moral kernel that is intrinsic in discourse. (shrink)

A frequently advanced claim in contemporary science policy is that interdisciplinarity is especially well suited for being ‘transformative’ and for bringing about ‘major breakthroughs’. Thus, it is expected that, in contemporary science, major progress will come primarily from interdisciplinary research (IDR). Often in this dis-course, interdisciplinarity is also expected to integrate the involved disciplines or specialties. This chapter will provide a philosophical qualification of this political discourse by examining how interdisciplinary progress can be characterised. I shall argue that in addition (...) to the categories of incremental and transformative progress that are well known from mono-disciplinary science, IDR can sometimes also offer another category of progress that I shall call quasi-transformative. In examining these three kinds of interdisciplinary progresses I shall argue, first, that interdisciplinary progress does not necessarily require a specific type of integration between the involved disciplines or specialties, second, that social relations between scientists with different areas of expertise may play a crucial role in especially transformative progress, and third, that different disciplinary perspectives on what constitutes progress can draw wedges between scientists from different disciplines. (shrink)

This is a response to comments on my book "Praktische Intelligenz und die Zweiteilung des Wissens" by Romy Jaster and Martin Weichold.

Über Jahrhunderte hatten Ärzte die Aufgabe, Krankheiten zu verhindern und zu behandeln. Nun stehen sie immer häufiger im Dienst der Selbstverwirklichung und Lebensplanung gesunder Menschen, besonders in der Fortpflanzungsmedizin und der ästhetischen Chirurgie. Welche Konsequenzen hat dies für die Zukunft der Medizin? Die Autoren beleuchten diesen Wandel von der krankheitsbekämpfenden zur wunscherfüllenden Medizin unter ärztlichen, rechtlichen und ethischen Aspekten.

Definition of the problemStaff and patients in institutions of organized health care experience and express a variety of adverse conditions of these organizations. Within a theoretical framework of institutional pathology we can explain some of these “miserable conditions” as effects of the activities of organizations belonging to the political system (health policy) and to the economic system (health economy). Clinical ethics committees (CECs) cannot effectively handle such adversities or even address them properly. Standard organizational ethics can address them but cannot (...) handle them effectively.ArgumentsI propose to strengthen organizational ethics by a theory of institutional pathology. Basic nosological distinctions such as disease, illness and sickness, whose primary reference is to biological organisms and persons, can be analogically extended to socially constituted entities (e.g. hospitals) in terms of functional deficiency, miserable conditions, and need for reform of such entities. A very promising focus for analysis are organizational disorders of responsibility allocation. This group of institutional pathological disorders engenders, amongst other kinds of miserable conditions, specifically morally relevant miserable conditions.ConclusionThe institutional pathology paradigm, oriented to concrete institutions and organizations, can help “clinical” organizational ethics to considerably expand, in theoretical ethics as well as in ethically guided practice e.g. for members of CECs and organizational ethics advisors, the capacities for observing, evaluating and, if necessary, amending disturbed relations of responsibility. (shrink)

Wir möchten der Charter on Medical Professionalism, die wir für vorbildlich halten, eine durchdachte Anreicherung hinzufügen. Wir beginnen mit einer skeptischen Note gegen das verbreitete theoretische Vorurteil, die wichtigsten Probleme im Gesundheitssystem seien Gerechtigkeitsprobleme und diese seien theoretisch gut beherrschbar. Unter Bezug auf Norman Daniels, der John Rawls’ Theorie der politischen Gerechtigkeit auf die Bewertung und Gestaltung von Gesundheitssystemen anwendet, sowie auf die biomedizinische Ethik, die von Beauchamp und Childress vertreten wird, analysieren wir das komplexe Verhältnis zwischen moralischer Integrität von (...) Strukturen und Organisationen einerseits und natürlichen Personen, die in ihnen arbeiten, andererseits. Anschließend interpretieren wir die Charta als eine Spezifizierung der ärztlichen professionsmoralischen Verantwortung auf mehreren Ebenen, die Tugend- und Organisationsethik verklammern. (shrink)

In everyday life we either express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms or we resort to numerical probabilities: I believe it's going to rain or my chance of winning is one in a million. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that allows us to reason with all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief simultaneously.

Wodurch zeichnet sich menschliches intelligentes Handeln aus und in welcher Beziehung steht dieses Handeln zum Wissen der handelnden Personen? Diesen Fragen wird im vorliegenden Buch nachgegangen. Praktische Intelligenz wird als Fähigkeit verstanden, im Denken, Handeln und Fühlen durch Standards und Normen geleitet zu werden. Aufbauend auf eine Interpretation von Überlegungen Gilbert Ryles entwickelt Hannes Worthmann einen neuartigen Ansatz, praktische Intelligenz und die Unterscheidung zwischen Wissen-wie und Wissen-dass jenseits verbreiteter intellektualistischer und anti-intellektualistischer Auffassungen verständlich zu machen.

This is a personal, incomplete, and very informal take on the role of logic in general philosophy of science, which is aimed at a broader audience. We defend and advertise the application of logical methods in philosophy of science, starting with the beginnings in the Vienna Circle and ending with some more recent logical developments.

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its prequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In the prequel, we made this norm mathematically precise; in this paper, we derive its consequences. We show that the two core tenets of Bayesianism (...) follow from the norm, while the characteristic claim of the Objectivist Bayesian follows from the norm along with an extra assumption. Finally, we consider Richard Jeffrey’s proposed generalization of conditionalization. We show not only that his rule cannot be derived from the norm, unless the requirement of Rigidity is imposed from the start, but further that the norm reveals it to be illegitimate. We end by deriving an alternative updating rule for those cases in which Jeffrey’s is usually supposed to apply. (shrink)

Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there (...) is but one way of determining the extension of the concept of belief that does the job. The qualitative concept of belief is not to be eliminated from scientific or philosophical discourse, rather, by reducing qualitative belief to assignments of resiliently high degrees of belief and a “cautiousness” threshold, qualitative and quantitative belief turn out to be governed by one unified theory that offers the prospects of a huge range of applications. Within that theory, logic and probability theory are not opposed to each other but go hand in hand. (shrink)

This is a review of David Löwenstein’s book "Know-how as Competence. A Rylean Responsibilist Account".

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its sequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In this paper, we make this norm mathematically precise in various ways. We describe three epistemic dilemmas that an agent might face if she attempts (...) to follow Accuracy, and we show that the only inaccuracy measures that do not give rise to such dilemmas are the quadratic inaccuracy measures. In the sequel, we derive the main tenets of Bayesianism from the relevant mathematical versions of Accuracy to which this characterization of the legitimate inaccuracy measures gives rise, but we also show that Jeffrey conditionalization has to be replaced by a different method of update in order for Accuracy to be satisfied. (shrink)

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so) and that the principles (...) are jointly satisfied if and only if rational belief is equivalent to the assignment of a stably high rational degree of belief. Although the logical closure of belief and the Lockean thesis are attractive postulates in themselves, initially this may seem like a formal “curiosity”; however, as will be argued in the rest of the essay, a very reasonable theory of rational belief can be built around these principles that is not ad hoc and that has various philosophical features that are plausible independently. In particular, this essay shows that the theory allows for a solution to the Lottery Paradox, and it has nice applications to formal epistemology. The price that is to be paid for this theory is a strong dependency of belief on the context, where a context involves both the agent's degree of belief function and the partitioning or individuation of the underlying possibilities. But as this essay argues, that price seems to be affordable. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Sport ist ein körperzentriertes Sozialsystem, das als machtvolle Ausdrucks- und Inszenierungsstätte beschrieben wird, in der verschiedene soziale Gruppen um Prestige und symbolische Macht konkurrieren. In diesem Wettbewerb können Vorurteile der Abgrenzung zwischen Gruppen auf der Grundlage von ethnischen, sozialen und kulturellen Kategorisierungen dienen. Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit der Ideologie der Ungleichwertigkeit im vereinsorganisierten Sport. Es wird den Fragen nachgegangen, ob und wie Vorurteile im Sport miteinander zusammenhängen und welche Faktoren ausgewählte Abwertungen beeinflussen. Es zeigt sich, dass (...) Vorurteile im Sport eng miteinander verbunden sind, und es wird diskutiert, weshalb Diversität im Sport eine stärkere Rolle bei Integrationsprozessen spielen sollte. (shrink)

Humans are one of the most cooperative and altruistic species on the planet. At the same time, humans have a long history of violent and deadly intergroup conflicts, i.e. wars. Recently, contemporary evolutionary theorists have revived Charles Darwin’s idea that human in-group altruism and out-group hostility might have co-evolved. Groups with more cooperatively aggressive men, they suggest, were more likely to prevail in the frequent lethal quarrels of human pre-history, and these men, therefore, more likely to have passed on their (...) genes. After a short introduction to evolutionary perspectives on war heroism, we describe selected characteristics of 988 modern war heroes, the US-American Medal of Honor recipients of WWI, WWII, the Korean and the Vietnam War, and discuss whether an evolutionary perspective can help us understand why these men risked their lives ‘beyond the call of duty’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRemote interpreting, where the interpreter communicates with the interlocutors via technological solutions across geographical distance, enhances the availability of trained interpreters in the public sector and institutional discourse in general. In refugee crises, where new unexpected language needs may arise, access to skilled interpreters presents a particular challenge. RI is an apt solution in such cases. Yet, although the professionals who are in need of interpreting services within the legal and health systems embrace the option of RI, the interpreters themselves (...) seem less enthusiastic. They report to experience more challenges and stress in RI than in onsite interpreting. Research suggests that for RI to succeed, the interpreters’ working conditions require special attention and caution. Lending ears to the interpreters is therefore worthwhile in trying to identify what aspects should receive special attention during RI.Approaching RI in an action research mode, this article reports on interpreting students’ reflections on their experiences with RI via Skype in an online classroom setting, as well as their reflections on their real-life experiences with RI in legal and healthcare settings. The qualitative analysis draws on logs from text-only chat sessions, in which the students describe challenges with feedback signals, turn-taking and information overflow, leading to increased stress during RI. However, they also offer suggestions as to what can be done by those in charge of institutional encounters to address these challenges and improve the quality of the Remote interpreting. (shrink)

This book takes a distinctive and innovative approach to a relatively under-explored question, namely: Why do we have human rights? Much political discourse simply proceeds from the idea that humans have rights because they are human without seriously interrogating this notion. Egalitarian Rights Recognition offers an account of how human rights are created and how they may be seen to be legitimate: rights are created through social recognition. By combining readings of 19th Century English philosopher T.H. Green with 20th Century (...) political theorist Hannah Arendt, the author constructs a new theory of the social recognition of rights. He challenges both the standard ‘natural rights’ approach and also the main accounts of the social recognition of rights which tend to portray social recognition as settled norms or established ways of acting. In contrast, Hann puts forward a 10-point account of the dynamic and contingent social recognition of human rights, which emphasises the importance of meaningful socio-economic equality. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of historical references and arguments in the current policy debate on non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in Germany. It analyses major documents and opinion statements, including the recent parliamentary debate (2019). The implementation of NIPT is accompanied by concerns and strong criticism, particularly in Germany. Many perceive the new test to be a problematic step that facilitates selective practices and is reminiscent of eugenics. Analysis of the German policy discourse shows that ‘eugenics’, and even more strongly, (...) ‘selection’, are pivotal terms for rejecting NIPT and its coverage by public health insurance. They touch on a historical dimension in public deliberation, namely the fundamental distancing from the inhuman practices of the National Socialist period and anything that resembles them. However, using these terms to criticize prenatal genetic testing is controversial, and recent discourse demonstrates their avoidance as well, with many supporters of a limited coverage by public health insurance contrasting their approach with more widespread screening. Here, ‘screening’ has a negative connotation, and functions to demarcate the debate in a way that may reflect distance from certain modes of historical reasoning, but still expresses a special need to reconcile prenatal testing with the principles of dignity, inclusion and diversity. This article aims to elucidate the concerns involved in the national debates on prenatal testing and to increase awareness of the historical dimensions of the language and reasoning with which such methods are negotiated today and in future. (shrink)

When do children acquire a propositional attitude folk psychology or theory of mind? The orthodox answer to this central question of developmental ToM research had long been that around age 4 children begin to apply “belief” and other propositional attitude concepts. This orthodoxy has recently come under serious attack, though, from two sides: Scoffers complain that it over-estimates children’s early competence and claim that a proper understanding of propositional attitudes emerges only much later. Boosters criticize the orthodoxy for underestimating early (...) competence and claim that even infants ascribe beliefs. In this paper, the orthodoxy is defended on empirical grounds against these two kinds of attacks. On the basis of new evidence, not only can the two attacks safely be countered, but the orthodox claim can actually be strengthened, corroborated and refined: what emerges around age 4 is an explicit, unified, flexibly conceptual capacity to ascribe propositional attitudes. This unified conceptual capacity contrasts with the less sophisticated, less unified implicit forms of tracking simpler mental states present in ontogeny long before. This refined version of the orthodoxy can thus most plausibly be spelled out in some form of 2-systems-account of theory of mind. (shrink)

Many discussions between realists and non-realists have centered on the issue of reference, especially whether there is referential stability during theory change. In this paper, I shall summarize the debate, sketching the problems that remain within the two opposing positions, and show that both have ended on their own slippery slope, sliding away from their original position toward that of their opponents. In the search for a viable intermediate position, I shall then suggest an account of reference which, to a (...) degree, follows the causal theory in explaining reference as carving the world at its joints. Contrary to the causal theory, however, I submit that this world is a phenomenal world whose variable joints exist only in a historical process in which they are transmitted gradually from one generation to the next. According to this account, the joints of the phenomenal world are constituted by family resemblance, where bundles of features that span bounded areas in perceptual space underlie the joints. Furthermore, the integrity of the cognitive process by which these joints are recognized depends on a transmission process by which new generations are presented with given joints and bundles by the preceding generation. Contrary to a traditional realist account, this heritage from the preceding generation may be transformed into new joints and bundles before transmission to new generations. This permits a continuous process of referential change in which the joints and bundles at different stages in the development of a theory can be connected by chains-of-reasoning. (shrink)

It is well known that aggregating the degree-of-belief functions of different subjects by linear pooling or averaging is subject to a commutativity dilemma: other than in trivial cases, conditionalizing the individual degree-of-belief functions on a piece of evidence E followed by linearly aggregating them does not yield the same result as rst aggregating them linearly and then conditionalizing the resulting social degree- of-belief function on E. In the present paper we suggest a novel way out of this dilemma: adapting the (...) method of update or learning such that linear pooling com- mutes with it. As it turns out, the resulting update scheme – imaging on the evidence – is well-known from areas such as the study of conditionals and cau- sal decision theory, and a formal result from which the required commutativity property is derivable was supplied already by Gärdenfors in a different con- text. We end up determining under which conditions imaging would seem to be right method of update, and under which conditions, therefore, group update would not be affected by the commutativity dilemma. (shrink)

Thomas Reid argued that the geometrical properties of visible figures equal the geometrical properties of their projections on the inside of a sphere centred around the eye. In recent scholarship there are only a few suggestions of which sources might have inspired Reid. I point to a widely ignored body of early eighteenth-century literature – introductions into projective geometry, the use of celestial globes and astronomy – in which the model of the eye in the centre of a sphere was (...) immensely popular. Moreover, I argue that Reid's account results naturally from some astronomical doctrines in conjunction with George Berkeley's theory of vision. (shrink)

We investigate the research programme of dynamic doxastic logic (DDL) and analyze its underlying methodology. The Ramsey test for conditionals is used to characterize the logical and philosophical differences between two paradigmatic systems, AGM and KGM, which we develop and compare axiomatically and semantically. The importance of Gärdenfors’s impossibility result on the Ramsey test is highlighted by a comparison with Arrow’s impossibility result on social choice. We end with an outlook on the prospects and the future of DDL.

Moral norms and values have in most cultures been taken to form a common moral space that is founded in culture. In the Western world this shows itself in etymology: The words ethos, mores, and Sittlichkeit all refer to cultural norms and traditions. The meaning of ‘common moral space’ can be understood in different ways, but in some version it forms the backbone of the views of most moral philosophers and psychologists including Kant and Freud. (I call this consensus ‘classical.’) (...) I mainly address Freud, but I also briefly discuss Kant. The idea that truth, rationality, meaning, language, and morality are essentially common and shared can be articulated in many ways from the Kantian idea of a kingdom of ends of .. (shrink)

As recently stakeholders complain about the use of conflict minerals in consumer products that are often invisible to them in final products, firms across industries implement conflict mineral management practices. Conflict minerals are those, whose systemic exploitation and trade contribute to human right violations in the country of extraction and surrounding areas. Particularly, supply chain managers in the Western world are challenged taking reasonable steps to identify and prevent risks associated with these resources due to the globally dispersed nature of (...) supply chains and the opacity of the origin of commodities. Supply chain due diligence represents a holistic concept to proactively manage supply chains reducing the likelihood of the use of conflict minerals effectively. Based on an exploratory study with 27 semi-structured interviews within five European industries, we provide insights into patterns of implementation, key motivational factors, barriers and enablers, and impacts of SCDD in mineral supply chains. Our results contribute to both theory and practice as we provide first insights to SCDD practices and make recommendations for an industry-wide implementation of SCDD. Altogether, this study provides the basis for future theory testing research in the context of SCDD and conflict mineral management. (shrink)

In discussions about whether the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is compatible with structuralist ontologies of mathematics, it is usually assumed that individual objects are subject to criteria of identity which somehow account for the identity of the individuals. Much of this debate concerns structures that admit of non-trivial automorphisms. We consider cases from graph theory that violate even weak formulations of PII. We argue that (i) the identity or difference of places in a structure is not to be (...) accounted for by anything other than the structure itself and that (ii) mathematical practice provides evidence for this view. We want to thank Leon Horsten, Jeff Ketland, Øystein Linnebo, John Mayberry, Richard Pettigrew, and Philip Welch for valuable comments on drafts of this paper. We are especially grateful to Fraser MacBride for correcting our interpretation of two of his papers and for other helpful comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing stands out among the thinkers of the 18th century for his refusal to synthesize theology and philosophy. But due to his notorious ambivalence about religious questions, even Lessing’s contemporaries remained uncertain whether he ultimately sided with the former or the latter. The short dialogue Hercules and Omphale is, to the detriment of research on this topic, largely unknown. I show that the dialogue offers in a nutshell Lessing’s comprehensive analysis of the intellectual and religious situation of his (...) time. By calling on the mythical travesty of the Asian queen and the Greek hero, Lessing illustrates the mutual attraction that has led astray both Enlightenment philosophy and contemporary Lutheran orthodoxy. Implicitly, his diagnosis of the aberrations of philosophy and theology sheds light on Lessing’s own position. The twofold criticism is an attempt to restore theology as well as philosophy in their genuine forms and to reestablish their proper relationship. Through his twofold restitutio in integrum, Lessing is able to reopen the quarrel between orthodoxy and the Enlightenment and, thus, to radically renew the all but forgotten theologico-philosophical antagonism. (shrink)

This far-reaching study redraws the intellectual map of the Enlightenment and boldly reassesses the legacy of that highly influential period for us today. Peter Hanns Reill argues that in the middle of the eighteenth century, a major shift occurred in the way Enlightenment thinkers conceived of nature that caused many of them to reject the prevailing doctrine of mechanism and turn to a vitalistic model to account for phenomena in natural history, the life sciences, and chemistry. As he traces the (...) ramifications of this new way of thinking through time and across disciplines, Reill provocatively complicates our understanding of the way key Enlightenment thinkers viewed nature. His sophisticated analysis ultimately questions postmodern narratives that have assumed a monolithic Enlightenment—characterized by the dominance of instrumental reason—that has led to many of the disasters of modern life. (shrink)

Am Beispiel des lutherischen Erbauungsschriftstellers Johann Arndt (1555-1621) läßt sich ein naturtheologisches Frömmigkeitsverständnis aufzeigen, das vom Florentiner Neuplatonismus, von Paracelsus, vom Paracelsismus und von der Alchemie Heinrich Khunraths beeinflußt ist. Der Autor vorliegender Studie zeichnet die relevanten Traditionslinien quellennah nach und analysiert deren Einbindung und Interpretation in Arndts Schriften. Eine systematische Darstellung der Kohärenz von Naturphilosophie und Mystik in der frühen Neuzeit beschließt vorliegende Studie.