Jörg Baur compares the the entries ‘orthodoxe’, ‘orthodoxie’, ‘l’hérésie’ and ‘l’hérétique’ of the classic ‘Encyclopédie’ with the corresponding articles in the less well-known ‘Encyclopédie Méthodique’ of Abbé Bergier, who was confessor to members of the Royal Household in Paris. With France as the model, the analysis of these short texts serves to cast some light on the complex process which led to the dissolution of the ‘Constantinian’ alliance between the ruling political forces on the one hand and the church (...) and the faith it propagated on the other. The aim of the articles published in 1765 is obvious: No single religious conviction, nor any ecclesiastical institution representing it, should have the support of the ‘King’ in making presumptuous claims of exclusive and universal prevalence. Consequently, any social discrimination or psychological defamation of ‘heretics’ is denounced. Interestingly, this critical approach does not result in a fundamental rejection of Christianity itself. Rather, on the eve of the Revolution, the ecclesiastical texts see traditional religion endangered by the ‘forceful minds’ and their potentially violent, destructive determination. They foresee antireligious pressure, but have nothing to set against it except helpless protestations of the innocence of the true believers. This ecclesiastical impotence compels us today to analyse with an open mind the distortions of the Christian project of ‘orthodoxy’, a project which was originally intended to combine the collective validity of universal truth with the liberating influence of individual insight. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 1 Seiten: 138-154.

Abstract“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization (...) properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whetherbullshitis a reasonable pragmatic category. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the insights of Harry Frankfurt’s seminal essay, bullshit is defined as an act of insincere asserting where the speaker shows a loose concern for the truth, and does not want the addressee to become aware of condition. The author adds to this definition the condition requiring that the bullshitter expresses morecertaintythan is adequate with respect to condition. In the second part of (...) the paper, it is discussed whether the above definition can cope with special types of bullshit considered to be a challenge to Frankfurt’s definition. These areevasive bullshitting,bullshit lies, andbald-faced bullshitting. It is shown that there is hope for establishing a reasonable pragmatic category of bullshitting if it is related to certain levels of pragmatic description, e.g. conversational implicatures, that can explain the putative challenges. (shrink)

In discussing the normative implications of the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics has mostly focused on the duties of doctors to their patients. This focus neglects an important normative dimension of the doctorpatient- relationship, namely the duties of patients to doctors. Only few authors have discussed the content and ground of the moral duties of patients, and each of these accounts are wanting in some way. This paper discusses patients’ duties and argues that patients have a relationship-dependent obligation to cooperate with (...) the doctor, because doctors have a morally justified interest in fulfilling their moral role obligations as doctors, and by not cooperating, patients make it more difficult for doctors to fulfill their moral obligations. In some cases, failing to cooperate might even create an avoidable moral dilemma for the doctor. (shrink)

A widely held view concerning the justification of associative duties is the so-called relationships view, according to which associative duties within personal relationships arise because of the value of those relationships. Against this view, it has been argued that there can be cases of undemanding friendships, that is, genuine friendships with no associative duties. In this article, I argue that undemanding friendships do not show that associative duties are not grounded in the value of the relationship that gives rise to (...) them by providing an interpretivist account of the normativity of friendships. I argue that friendships are complex values that need to be interpreted in order to determine which response to them would be appropriate, and that understanding one's friendship as undemanding is one valid interpretation of the value of friendship. Subsequently, I demonstrate that this solution is not ad hoc, because friendship is not the only complex value that needs to be interpreted. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will address the philosophical ambivalence of the concept of Willkür in and after Kant. The aim of my chapter is to defend it against the charge of irrationality and mere chance, and to rehabilitate it from a historical and analytic point of view. I will analyze Kant’s use of the word “Willkür”, and chronologically follow the semantic and systematic changes in his philosophical work. Finally, I address recent attempts to revitalize the concept of Willkür in the (...) analytic debate by referring to the work of Harry Frankfurt and Robert Kane. I shall argue that we need to distinguish between two kinds of libera arbitria. Whereas the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae can be interpreted in terms of the pejorative sense of “Willkür”—as mere chance—the liberum arbitrium voluntatis equals a reflective kind of Willkür—literal Will-kür —which involves freedom of the will. (shrink)

In my paper, I shall take seriously Kant’s puzzling statements about the moral feeling of respect, which is, according to him, “a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different” from all common feelings. I will focus on the systematic position of the moral feeling of respect within the framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By considering its volitional structure, I argue for a compatibilist account of the moral feeling of respect, according to which both intellectualist and (...) affectivist interpretations are true. As such, respect can be understood in terms of a process of moral self-consciousness and self-formation, which means that the will must be freed from initial empirical motives, and finally be determined only by rational principles. (shrink)

This article explores the elective affinities between Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the sociology of critical capacities. It argues that these two research programmes can be understood as symmetrical twins. We show the extent to which the exchange between Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanski has influenced their respective theoretical developments. Three strong encounters between the twin research programmes may be distinguished. The first encounter concerns explanations for social change. The second encounter focuses on the status of objects and their relationship to (...) places. The third encounter is about the concept of critique. Drawing on their long-term mutual readings, we gain insight into how pleas for symmetrical analysis raised in response to Bourdieu’s theory of fields have evolved within both ANT and the sociology of critical capacity. We conclude by relating the development of the respective research programmes to the issue of disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction that is underlying Freedom’s Right undermines Critical Theory’s aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, I demonstrate that (...) abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom’s Right entails no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom’s Right. I show that Honneth’s own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom’s Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments. (shrink)

Deontic buck-passing aims to analyse deontic properties of acts in terms of reasons. Many authors accept deontic buck-passing, but only few have discussed how to understand the relation between reasons and deontic properties exactly. Justin Snedegar has suggested understanding deontic properties of acts in terms of both reasons and reasons to require: A is required to φ iff A has most reason to φ, and there is most reason to require A to φ. This promising proposal faces two open questions: (...) the question of why there can only be most reason to require A to φ if A has most reason to φ, and the question of what role agent-relative reasons play in generating requirements. In this paper, I address these questions and argue that the key to answering them is to reject evaluative buck-passing and accept a value-based theory of practical reasons instead. The result is a two-level theory of moral explanation: on the first level, practical reasons are explained in terms of appropriate responses to value; on the second level, deontic properties of acts are explained in terms of reasons: reasons to act as well as reasons to require. (shrink)

Martin Buber believed that life's deepest truth lies in human relationships. In this classic work he puts this belief into practice, applying it to the concrete problems of contemporary society.

How can cooperation be achieved between self-interested individuals in commonly-occurring asymmetric interactions where agents have different positions? Should agents use the same strategies that are appropriate for symmetric social situations? We explore these questions through the asymmetric interaction captured in the indefinitely repeated investment game (IG). In every period of this game, the first player decides how much of an endowment he wants to invest, then this amount is tripled and passed to the second player, who finally decides how much (...) of the tripled investment she wants to return to the first player. The results of three evolutionary studies demonstrate that the best-performing strategies for this asymmetric game differ from those for a similar but symmetric game, the indefinitely repeated Prisoner’s dilemma game. The strategies that enable cooperation for the asymmetric IG react more sensitively to exploitation, meaning that cooperation can more easily break down. Furthermore, once cooperation has stopped, it is much more difficult to reestablish than in symmetric situations. Based on these results, the presence of asymmetry in an interaction appears to be an important factor affecting adaptive behavior in these common social situations. (shrink)

Chapter I contains an examination of the criticisms which some philosophers have advanced against Kant concerning the problem of our knowledge of other thinking beings. In the course of this examination the nature and scope of Kant's inquiry is brought into focus: it is a transcendental inquiry which deals with the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience. This means two things: The question whether there are other thinking beings besides myself is for Kant not a philosophical , but (...) an empirical question which can be answered only a posteriori, that is, by actual experience. The a priori conditions must nevertheless be such that they do not preclude but leave room for the experience by which we find out whether there are other thinking beings besides ourselves. Chapter II develops the central thought of the Transcendental Deduction in order to deal with two complementary issues: with Kant's confusions with respect to the 'subjective', and with the notion of an 'object of representations'. It is argued that objectivity in the Critical-transcendental sense ranges equally over the 'outer' and 'inner'. This means that inner experience is objective, i.e., can be expressed in judgments which possess objective validity and necessary universality for everybody. Chapter III deals with the Second Analogy. The main purpose here is to show what types of objects are constituted by means of the categories: the determination of a manifold of sensible intuition by means of the category of cause and effect is its determination as a happening or as an event. In chapter IV, finally, it is shown that and how a particular type of empirical objects, namely thinking beings, can be seen as falling under the objects which are constituted by the categories. (shrink)

Contrary to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's theoretical critique of Kant's philosophy, his practical critique has been almost unknown. In my paper, I shall reconstruct Reinhold's practical philosophy after Kant. I will concentrate on the so‐called Reinhold's dilemma, which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions in Kant. Also, I shall explain how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing a new action theory and by sharply distinguishing between reason and will. Finally, I shall evaluate Reinhold's (...) practical significance by relating his conception of individual freedom to recent theories of volitional self‐determination. (shrink)

In this paper, I will shed light on Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s and Friedrich Schiller’s conceptions of practical self-determination after Kant. First, I outline Kant’s conception of freedom as autonomy. I then explain the so-called “Reinhold’s dilemma,” which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions, which arises from Kant’s theory of autonomy. I then show how Reinhold and Schiller tried to escape this dilemma by developing an elaborated theory of individual freedom. I will argue that Reinhold’s (...) and Schiller’s symmetrical account of freedom to act according and against the moral law is not to be confused with freedom of indifference but can be reconstructed in terms of practical self-determination on the basis of first-order desires and second-order volitions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Kant’s theory of error in theoretical and practical terms, not only from a moral-psychological perspective, but also from the broader perspective of his transcendental philosophy. Kant’s theory of error will be interpreted as a central part of his transcendental philosophy, insofar as it is related to his doctrine of reason. For it is precisely Kant’s theory of dialectic as the »logic of appearance« that deals with the reasons that concern theoretical error as (...) well as moral misconduct and that traces theoretical and practical error back to a common root: the phenomenon of rational self-deception. (shrink)

We introduce the property “F-linked” of subsets of posets for a given free filter F on the natural numbers, and define the properties “μ-F-linked” and “θ-F-Knaster” for posets in a natural way. We show that θ-F-Knaster posets preserve strong types of unbounded families and of maximal almost disjoint families. Concerning iterations of such posets, we develop a general technique to construct θ-Fr-Knaster posets (where Fr is the Frechet ideal) via matrix iterations of <θ-ultrafilter-linked posets (restricted to some level of the (...) matrix). This is applied to prove consistency results about Cichoń's diagram (without using large cardinals) and to prove the consistency of the fact that, for each Yorioka ideal, the four cardinal invariants associated with it are pairwise different. At the end, we show that three strongly compact cardinals are enough to force that Cichoń's diagram can be separated into 10 different values. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Obwohl in nahezu allen Ethiklehrbüchern auf den grundsätzlichen Gegensatz zwischen deontologischen und konsequentialistischen Theorien hingewiesen wird, ist unklar, was eigentlich unter Deontologie zu verstehen ist. Das traditionelle und vielleicht immer noch beliebteste Unterscheidungskriterium zwischen beiden Arten von Theorien ist die moralische Relevanz der Handlungskonsequenzen. Wie ich zeigen will, werden aber gerade mit diesem Kriterium deontologische Theorien meist falsch und als ziemlich unplausible Theorien charakterisiert. Dieses falsche Verständnis deontologischer Theorien, das ich als „absolutistisches Missverständnis der Deontologie“ bezeichnen werde, behandle ich im (...) zweiten Teil des Aufsatzes, nachdem im ersten Teil die Unterscheidung zwischen Deontologie und Konsequentialismus anhand des genannten Kriteriums geklärt worden ist. Im dritten Teil schließlich wird der Einwand entkräftet, dass das Kriterium unbrauchbar sei, weil es eine scharfe Trennung zwischen Handlungen und Konsequenzen voraussetze, die es so nicht gebe. Da dieser Einwand nicht stichhaltig ist, kann das Kriterium beibehalten werden, sofern man das absolutistische Missverständnis vermeidet. (shrink)