What is the relationship between the world and logic, between intuition and language, between objects and their quantitative determinations? Rationalists, on the one hand, hold that the world is structured in a rational way. Representationalists, on the other hand, assume that language, logic, and mathematics are only the means to order and describe the intuitively given world. In World and Logic, Jens Lemanski takes up three surprising arguments from Arthur Schopenhauer’s hitherto undiscovered Berlin Lectures, which concern the philosophy of (...) language, logic, and mathematics. Based on these arguments, Lemanski develops a new position entitled ‘rational representationalism’: the world is always structured by human beings according to linguistic, logical, and mathematical principles, but the basic vocabulary of these structural descriptions already contains metaphors taken from the world around us. (shrink)

This paper analyses a hitherto unknown technique of using logic diagrams to create argument maps in eristic dialectics. The method was invented in the 1810s and -20s by Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered the originator of modern eristic. This technique of Schopenhauer could be interesting for several branches of research in the field of argumentation: Firstly, for the field of argument mapping, since here a hitherto unknown diagrammatic technique is shown in order to visualise possible situations of arguments in a (...) dialogical controversy. Secondly, the art of controversy or eristic, since the diagrams do not analyse the truth of judgements and the validity of inferences, but the persuasiveness of arguments in a dialogue. (shrink)

Eristic has been studied more and more intensively in recent years in philosophy, law, communication theory, logic, proof theory, and A.I. Nevertheless, the modern origins of eristic, which almost all current researchers see in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, are considered to be a theory of the illegitimate use of logical and rhetorical devices. Thus, eristic seems to violate the norms of discourse ethics. In this paper, I argue that this interpretation of eristic is based on prejudices that contradict the original (...) intention of modern eristic. Eristic is not an art of being right or winning an argument, but an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to gain argumentative acceptance. For this reason, eristic must be seen as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Especially in the age of alternative facts and post-factual politics, this makes eristic a valuable discipline. (shrink)

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is Kant's central contribution to moral philosophy, and has inspired controversy ever since it was first published in 1785. Kant champions the insights of 'common human understanding' against what he sees as the dangerous perversions of ethical theory. Morality is revealed to be a matter of human autonomy: Kant locates the source of the 'categorical imperative' within each and every human will. However, he also portrays everyday morality in a way that many readers (...) find difficult to accept. The Groundwork is a short book, but its argument is dense, intricate and at times treacherous. This commentary explains Kant's arguments paragraph by paragraph, and also contains an introduction, a synopsis of the argument, six short interpretative essays on key topics of the Groundwork, and a glossary of key terms. It will be an indispensable tool for anyone wishing to study the Groundwork in detail. (shrink)

Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this paper we argue for the following two (...) theses: (1) Arthur Schopenhauer has advocated a reistic philosophy of language which says that all concepts must ultimately be based on concrete intuition in order to be meaningful. (2) In his semantics, Schopenhauer developed a theory of logic diagrams that can be interpreted by modern means in order to concretize the abstract position of reism. Thus we are not only enhancing Jan Woleński’s list of well-known reists, but we are also adding a diagrammatic dimension to concretism, represented by Schopenhauer. (shrink)

Section I of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is meant to lead us from our everyday conception of morality to the supreme principle of all moral action, officially christened the ‘categorical imperative’ some twenty Academy pages further into the treatise. It is quite striking that in this first section Kant dispenses with the notorious technical language that pervades not just other parts of the Groundwork but also most of the remaining philosophical writings of the critical period. The mere (...) fact that Groundwork I is comparatively accessible does not, of course, make it straightforward or uncontroversial. Kant's readers are faced with, amongst other things, four unconvincing paragraphs on the natural purpose of practical reason (G IV 394–6), a crucial change of topic from good volition to acting from duty (G IV 397), an unstated ‘first proposition’ about moral value that has baffled generations of interpreters (presumably G IV 397–9), and a contentious shift from an allegedly unproblematic principle of practical universalizability to a substantive moral command (G IV 402). (shrink)

Logic diagrams have been increasingly studied and applied for a few decades, not only in logic, but also in many other fields of science. The history of logic diagrams is an important subject, as many current systems and applications of logic diagrams are based on historical predecessors. While traditional histories of logic diagrams cite pioneers such as Leibniz, Euler, Venn, and Peirce, it is not widely known that Kant and the early Kantians in Germany and England played a crucial role (...) in popularising Euler(-type) diagrams. In this paper, the role of the Kantians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be analysed in more detail. It shows that diagrams (or intuition in general) were a highly contentious topic that depend on the philosophical attitude and went beyond logic to touch on issues of physics, metaphysics, linguistics and, above all, mathematics. (shrink)

The essays in this volume, by international Kant scholars and moral philosophers, discuss Kant's philosophical development and his rejection of earlier moral theories, the role of happiness and inclination in the Groundwork, Kant's moral ...

This paper presents an analysis of Seneca's 58th letter to Lucilius and Porphyry's Isagoge, which were the origin of the tree diagrams that became popular in philosophy and logic from the early Middle Ages onwards. These diagrams visualise the extent to which a concept can be understood as a category, genus, species or individual and what the method of dihairesis (division) means. The paper explores the dissimilarities between Seneca's and Porphyry's tree structures, scrutinising them through the perspective of modern graph (...) theory. Although traditional trees can be interpreted in a modern way, their terms and definitions defy modern standardisation. These distinctions are not only useful for differentiating between Seneca's and Porphyry's trees, but also for comprehending the evolution of this philosophical tradition. Thus the paper highlights the continued significance of these tree diagrams in analysing concepts and categories in philosophy and structuring objects and information in modern fields such as artificial intelligence, computer science, bioinformatics, graph theory, and many more. (shrink)

The traditional possible-worlds model of belief describes agents as ‘logically omniscient’ in the sense that they believe all logical consequences of what they believe, including all logical truths. This is widely considered a problem if we want to reason about the epistemic lives of non-ideal agents who—much like ordinary human beings—are logically competent, but not logically omniscient. A popular strategy for avoiding logical omniscience centers around the use of impossible worlds: worlds that, in one way or another, violate the laws (...) of logic. In this paper, we argue that existing impossible-worlds models of belief fail to describe agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. To model such agents, we argue, we need to ‘dynamize’ the impossible-worlds framework in a way that allows us to capture not only what agents believe, but also what they are able to infer from what they believe. In light of this diagnosis, we go on to develop the formal details of a dynamic impossible-worlds framework, and show that it successfully models agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. (shrink)

Multimodal communication research focuses on how different means of signalling coordinate to communicate effectively. This line of research is traditionally influenced by fields such as cognitive and neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and linguistics. With new technologies becoming available in fields such as natural language processing and computer vision, the field can increasingly avail itself of new ways of analyzing and understanding multimodal communication. As a result, there is a general hope that multimodal research may be at the “precipice of greatness” due (...) to technological advances in computer science and resulting extended empirical coverage. However, for this to come about there must be sufficient guidance on key (theoretical) needs of innovation in the field of multimodal communication. Absent such guidance, the research focus of computer scientists might increasingly diverge from crucial issues in multimodal communication. With this paper, we want to further promote interaction between these fields, which may enormously benefit both communities. The multimodal research community (represented here by a consortium of researchers from the Visual Communication [ViCom] Priority Programme) can engage in the innovation by clearly stating which technological tools are needed to make progress in the field of multimodal communication. In this article, we try to facilitate the establishment of a much needed common ground on feasible expectations (e.g., in terms of terminology and measures to be able to train machine learning algorithms) and to critically reflect possibly idle hopes for technical advances, informed by recent successes and challenges in computer science, social signal processing, and related domains. (shrink)

Drawing together the ideas, practices, and techniques associated with the subject, this book puts them in historical context and demonstrates their relevance to ...

Giambattista Vico gilt als Begründer der Kulturwissenschaft, obwohl er Jurist war und Rhetorik lehrte. Der Autor führt die juristische Provenienz mit Vicos kulturgeschichtlichen Entdeckungen zusammen und begründet diese in Verbindung mit jener. Durch diese Rückbesinnung auf Vicos Theorie kann womöglich auch die Rechtswissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft begriffen werden.

Jens Timmermann provides a detailed philosophical, developmental and historical analysis of Immanuel Kant's 1797 essay 'On a Supposed Right to Lie from Love of Humanity', in which Kant argues that it is criminally wrong to lie to protect a friend from being murdered.

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of (...) dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context. (shrink)

The paper gives an overview of Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of rationality. For Schopenhauer, rationality is a human faculty based on language, which, in addition to language, is primarily concerned with knowledge or philosophy of science and practical action. For Schopenhauer, language is the umbrella term under which he subsumes logic and eristics. This paper will first introduce Schopenhauer's logic and clarify its connection to the philosophy of language. This is followed by eristic dialectics, which reflects on how one can protect (...) oneself from people who argue irrationally in a goal-oriented way. Schopenhauer's philosophy of mathematics belongs to the field of philosophy of science. Unlike many other authors of his time, Schopenhauer does not advocate a rationalist but a representationalist approach, which, however, includes a theory of rationality. Therefore, Schopenhauer's representationalist approach will finally be discussed, emphasizing its relationship to his theory of rationality. (shrink)

Mit dem Begriff der Innenwelt der Ökonomie adressiert der vorliegende Band die vielfältigen Eintrittspunkte von ökonomischem Wissen in die Wirtschaft. Dieses Wissen ist nicht auf die Wirtschaftswissenschaft beschränkt. Vielmehr findet ökonomisch relevante Wissensproduktion auch in der Politik, den Medien, in der Wirtschaft selbst sowie anderen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen statt. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeichnen aus soziologischer, wissenschaftshistorischer, ethnographischer und wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive die Umrisse dieses Forschungsfeldes nach. Ihr gemeinsames Ziel ist eine systematische empirische Untersuchung wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Wissens und dessen Einfluss auf ökonomische Verhältnisse (...) vor einem interdisziplinären Horizont. Ihr Gegenstandsbereich umfasst die Produktion ökonomischen Wissens, die Wirtschaftswissenschaft als Faktor im Spiel um Macht und Legitimität sowie die performative Rolle der Ökonomik. (shrink)

Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times offers a unique and timely reflection of the critical debates around the institutionalisation of feminist and gender-focused ideas and norms into policy. Many states and non-governmental organisations are increasingly invested in 'feminist policymaking' at the domestic and international levels. Yet, this liberal (feminist) agenda is also vastly disputed by critical, intersectional and decolonial voices on the one hand, and by anti-gender movements around the world on the other. Indeed, while opposition to 'gender ideology' is mounting (...) from reactionary, religious and secular forces, feminist policymaking is also being challenged in important ways from within. Thus, this book situates feminist policymaking in a challenging and 'turbulent', global context. This book explores feminist policymaking in multiple areas of policy, examining various gender-focused programmes that states and international organisations have undertaken in the last decade, offering critical interventions and rethinking the relationship between feminism and policy. The book not only reflects on the advances of feminist policymaking globally, but also critically assesses the intersectional challenges embedded within it and lying ahead. It moves the field forward by creating opportunities, based on lived experiences, for re-imagining the transformative potential of the nexus between feminism and policymaking. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing to the fore the voices of both academics and practitioners, the book is the product of an international collaboration, forging links and dialogue that are increasingly necessary to question some of the exclusionary, militaristic and hierarchical assumptions of policymaking which is labelled as feminist. Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times will be of interest to all scholars, students and practitioners interested in the role of gender in policymaking and concerned with contestations around gender-focused projects. (shrink)

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) gehort zu den grossten Geistern, die je auf Erden gelebt haben. Der vorliegende Band versucht eine Verbindungslinie zwischen seiner Rechtsphilosophie und seiner Religionsphilosophie herzustellen, indem er Pascals Gedanken uber die Gerechtigkeit zu seiner beruhmten Lehre von den drei Ordnungen ins Verhaltnis setzt. ".

English summary: How do our perceptions come about? If our ways of forming them is deterministically given, skeptical objections can no longer be warded off. We might as well be calibrated for errors. If, instead, our cognition works unbounded and free, there is no compulsion to fall prey to error. It is therefore advisable to understand cognitive formation as a plurimodal interaction of activities of perception, imagination and verbalization, the course of which is never determined by the conditions under which (...) it currently stands. Further, we should not describe ourselves as mere "res cogitans," no matter what the philosophical intentions: there is no sense in assuming that we are determined to perform activities of cognition only. In dealing with two major historical examples, these assumptions are developed and tested. It is shown why Rene Descartes unexpectedly champions them, and which consequences ensue from John Locke's disregarding them. German description: Wie kommen unsere Erkenntnisse zustande? Ist deterministisch festgelegt, wie wir sie bilden, lassen sich skeptische Einwande nicht mehr abwehren. Wir konnten auf Irrtumer geeicht sein. Verlauft unsere Erkenntnisbildung stattdessen ungebunden und frei, entfallt jeglicher Zwang zum Irrtum. Deshalb empfiehlt es sich, Erkenntnisbildung als plurimodales Zusammenwirken von Tatigkeiten der Wahrnehmung, Imagination und Verbegrifflichung zu verstehen, deren Verlauf nie durch die Bedingungen festgelegt ist, unter denen er gerade steht. Ferner sollten wir uns deshalb nicht als blosse "res cogitans" beschreiben, ganz gleich in welcher philosophischen Absicht: Wir konnen in keiner Hinsicht darauf festgelegt sein, nur Tatigkeiten der Erkenntnisbildung auszuuben. In der Auseinandersetzung mit zwei grossen historischen Beispielen werden diese Thesen entwickelt und erprobt. Es wird gezeigt, warum Rene Descartes sie unerwartet vertritt und mit welchen Folgen John Locke sie ausser Acht lasst. (shrink)

This book marks the inauguration of the Historia Logicae book series, which seeks to publish high-quality monographs, dissertations, textbooks, proceedings, and anthologies on the history of logic in either German or English. Serving as the inaugural volume in this series, the book explores the contemporary interpretation of logic across many centuries and cultures. The first section of the volume comprises a compilation of papers dedicated to ancient and medieval logic, examining prominent thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Porphyry, Proclus, Boethius, (...) Buridan, and Kilwardby. The second section shifts focus towards early-modern and contemporary logics, including the works of Caramuel, Kant, Drobisch, Husserl, and Jaskowski. Topics of discussion encompass the relationship between mathematics and logic, natural deduction, intuitionism, graph theory, categorical judgments, theories of truth, modal logic, opposition relations, logic diagrams, definitions of formal logic, many-sorted logic, model theory, and paraconsistent logic. (shrink)

The subject of this book is an epistemological consideration concerning the nature of knowledge. But other than the most essays on the subject of knowledge, here I am going to deal with a largely overlooked account to try to find an answer to the question of knowledge. This is the mental state account of knowledge. Or to put it into the main question: is knowledge a mental state? Now, the question is: Why is the epistemic thinking of Cook Wilson, Prichard (...) and Austin afflicted with such ignorance in contemporary epistemic discussions? The answer is: an unreflected Platonian heritage during 2000 years of epistemic thinking - a notion which is similar to a point Hetherington has called "epistemic absolutism". So my main conclusion here is: the JTB thesis (knowledge is some aspect of justified true belief) is insufficient in order to give an account of the nature of knowledge. A consequence from this is: all the epistemic theories which are dealing with the JTB thesis are based on deficient assumptions. Hence their results - notably the well-known externalism/internalism debate - are insufficient, too. So, there is a need for a new theory of knowledge based on the MS thesis. (shrink)

Das Buch zeichnet Schopenhauers individualistisches Rechtsdenken nach und verteidigt seinen methodischen Individualismus namentlich gegen Carl Schmitt. Soweit ersichtlich erstmals wird Schopenhauers Idee der ewigen Gerechtigkeit der Kritik Friedrich Nietzsches gegenübergestellt.

Advanced AI systems are rapidly making their way into medical research and practice, and, arguably, it is only a matter of time before they will surpass human practitioners in terms of accuracy, reliability, and knowledge. If this is true, practitioners will have a prima facie epistemic and professional obligation to align their medical verdicts with those of advanced AI systems. However, in light of their complexity, these AI systems will often function as black boxes: the details of their contents, calculations, (...) and procedures cannot be meaningfully understood by human practitioners. When AI systems reach this level of complexity, we can also speak of black-box medicine. In this paper, we want to argue that black-box medicine conflicts with core ideals of patient-centered medicine. In particular, we claim, black-box medicine is not conducive for supporting informed decision-making based on shared information, shared deliberation, and shared mind between practitioner and patient. (shrink)

Wilhelm von Humboldts Rechtsphilosophie ist bei weitem nicht so bekannt wie seine Sprachphilosophie oder gar seine Rolle als Bildungsreformer. Der Autor untersucht zu diesem Zweck Humboldts "Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen".

Why, then, has Anglo-American jurisprudence remained staunchly indifferent to history? How has it been able to maintain its confident assumption that the analytical and the historical can be neatly...

Astonishingly, despite the vast amount of scholarship on Machiavelli, no study exists on his theory of legislation, which runs through his celebrated work The Prince, the three-volume Discourses on Livy, the History of Florence, and many of his shorter writings. Jens Petersen's work fills this gap and applies his insights to contemporary legislation.

This paper argues in favor of a hybrid conception of identity. A common conception of identity in datafied society is a split between a digital self and a real self, which has resulted in concepts such as the data double, algorithmic identity, and data shadows. These data-identity metaphors have played a significant role in the conception of informational privacy as control over information—the control of or restricted access to your digital identity. Through analyses of various data-identity metaphors as well as (...) philosophical accounts of identity, we argue in favor of a hybrid conception of identity that emphasizes the relations between the ‘real’ and the ‘digital’. A hybrid conception of identity—where the digital is an aspect on par with social relations, self-understanding, and values—ultimately calls for an understanding of privacy as the right to influence one’s own identity. (shrink)

Indem Montaigne die Jurisprudenz von Grund auf anzweifelte, hat er ihr zugleich die Grundlagen des Rechts in einer spezifisch neuzeitlichen Weise erschlossen. Obwohl er nichts weniger suchte, entdeckte Montaigne beiläufig die Grundlagen des Rechts in ihrer Gesamtheit.

Die Tiefe Hirnstimulation hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren bei der Behandlung schwer ausgepragter neurologischer Storungen wie dem Morbus Parkinson bewahrt. WEgen dieses Erfolges werden neue therapeutische Anwendungsmoglichkeiten intensiv erforscht. AUssichtsreiche Ergebnisse liefern dabei auch die ersten Studien an Patienten mit verschiedenen psychiatrischen Erkrankungen, bei denen alle anderen Therapieansatze erfolglos geblieben sind. DIe Tiefe Hirnstimulation weckt jedoch auch Angste. DIese beziehen sich zum Teil auf den fur ihre Anwendung erforderlichen neurochirurgischen Eingriff, bei dem Elektroden dauerhaft in das Gehirn implantiert werden, (...) die uber eine ebenfalls implantierte Stimulatoreinheit mit Strom versorgt werden. ALlerdings wirft insbesondere die Moglichkeit, mit einer neurotechnischen Intervention Einfluss auf das Verhalten bzw. Die Psyche von Menschen nehmen zu konnen, neben medizinethischen auch viele Fragen grundsatzlicher philosophischer Natur auf. IN diesem Sachstandsbericht wird der Stand der medizinischen Anwendung und Erforschung der Tiefen Hirnstimulation in einem neurologischen und einem psychiatrischen Teil zusammengefasst, gefolgt von einer ausfuhrlichen Auswertung der philosophischen Literatur zum Thema. (shrink)

The traditional Lewis–Stalnaker semantics treats all counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent as trivially or vacuously true. Many have regarded this as a serious defect of the semantics. For intuitively, it seems, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents—counterpossibles—can be non-trivially true and non-trivially false. Whereas the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised" seems true, "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would (...) have been thrilled" seems false. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis–Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, on the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics, we evaluate a counterfactual of the form "If A had been true, then C would have been true" by going to closest world—whether possible or impossible—in which A is true and check whether C is also true in that world. If the answer is "yes", the counterfactual is true; otherwise it is false. Since there are impossible worlds in which the mathematically impossible happens, there are impossible worlds in which Hobbes manages to square the circle. And intuitively, in the closest such impossible worlds, sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan are not thrilled—they remain sick and unmoved by the mathematical developments in Europe. If so, the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled" comes out false, as desired. In this paper, I will critically investigate the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics for counterpossibles. I will argue that the standard version of the extended semantics, in which impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities, fails to give the correct semantic verdicts for many counterpossibles. In light of the negative arguments, I will then outline a new version of the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics that can avoid these problems. (shrink)

We argue that stereotypes associated with concepts like he-said–she-said, conspiracy theory, sexual harassment, and those expressed by paradigmatic slurs provide “normative inference tickets”: conceptual permissions to automatic, largely unreflective normative conclusions. These “mental shortcuts” are underwritten by associated stereotypes. Because stereotypes admit of exceptions, normative inference tickets are highly flexible and productive, but also liable to create serious epistemic and moral harms. Epistemically, many are unreliable, yielding false beliefs which resist counterexample; morally, many perpetuate bigotry and oppression. Still, some normative (...) inference tickets, like some activated by sexual harassment, constitute genuine moral and hermeneutical advances. For example, our framework helps explain Miranda Fricker’s notion of “hermeneutical lacunae”: what early victims of “sexual harassment” — as well as their harassers — lacked before the term was coined was a communal normative inference ticket — one that could take us, collectively, from “this is happening” to “this is wrong.”. (shrink)

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that, unlike other (...) reference works, the Oxford Handbook has striven to give roughly equal weight to every century, from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook is also unique in that its 30 chapters are work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered, in particular taking advantage of recent new editions and translations that have renewed interest and debate around the Islamic philosophical canon. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy gives both the advanced student and active scholar in Islamic philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, a strong sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like and a deep view of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at stake. Most importantly, it provides an up-to-date portrait of contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy. (shrink)

Possible-worlds accounts of mental or linguistic content are often criticized for being too coarse-grained. To make room for more fine-grained distinctions among contents, several authors have recently proposed extending the space of possible worlds by "impossible worlds". We argue that this strategy comes with serious costs: we would effectively have to abandon most of the features that make the possible-worlds framework attractive. More generally, we argue that while there are intuitive and theoretical considerations against overly coarse-grained notions of content, the (...) same kinds of considerations also prohibit an overly fine-grained individuation of content. An adequate notion of content, it seems, should have intermediate granularity. However, it is hard to construe a notion of content that meets these demands. Any notion of content, we suggest, must be either implausibly coarse-grained or implausibly fine-grained (or both). (shrink)