Hume's influential treatment of liberty and necessity has traditionally been understood as a statement of what might be termed the classical compatibilist position. On this view, articulated by empiricists from Hobbes to Schlick, analysis of the concepts of freedom and causal necessity reveals that moral responsibility is consistent with—indeed, requires—the causal determination of voluntary actions. It is not difficult to see why Hume, too, has been counted in this camp: as it appears familiarly in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, "Of (...) Liberty and Necessity" begins by declaring the long-disputed question of free will to be a merely verbal controversy that a few intelligible definitions should put to rest. In this noteworthy and provocative book, Paul Russell rejects the standard interpretation of Hume as a classical compatibilist. (shrink)

The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first (...) aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism. (shrink)

Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest (...) that reasons-first epistemology might have within an evidentialist framework. (shrink)

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

This entry considers the question “What is objectification?” After preliminary remarks about different methodological approaches, several possible answers, or groups of answers, are introduced, separated out in terms of broad themes. Each is situated in relation to historical and more contemporary authors. These themes are: objectification as instrumentalization; objectification as reduction to the body; objectification as negation of subjectivity or agency; objectification as naturalization. Objectification is considered in relation to both sexual and racial contexts. Finally, these themes are discussed in (...) relation to the wider category of “mind suppression,” and its relation to objectification in the familiar context of imagery. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and in ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. Responsibility for Rationality is the first book that connects recent debates on responsibility and on rationality in a unifying dialectic. It achieves four main goals: first, it reinterprets the problem of responsibility (...) for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality; second, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by defending a hybrid view; third, it provides novel support to recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by arguing that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons; fourth, it sets the foundations and the research agenda for an ‘ethics of mind’, including an illustration of how to approach applied issues in epistemology within the presented framework. After spelling out connections between responsibility and rationality (part I), the book engages in debates in normative epistemology (part II) and brings them to bear on the broader field of an ethics of mind (part III). -/- Full draft of current version available on request, comments welcome! (shrink)

Die Analyse von Klangphänomenen und ihrer (inter)kulturellen Funktion ist inzwischen zu einem wichtigen Forschungsfeld avanciert. Grundlage der Aufsätze dieses Bandes ist eine anthropologische Perspektive, die darauf abzielt, auch den naturwissenschaftlich-empirischen Diskurs produktiv einzubeziehen. Die Beiträge gehen dem Verhältnis von Klang und Kognition, Kulturtheorie, Literaturästhetik, Medialität, Kunstpraxis sowie Transzendenz nach.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divine by Alan P.F. SellKathy SquadritoAlan P.F. Sell. John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divine. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997. Pp. xi + 444. Cloth, $75.00.Professor Sell’s goal is to discern the impact of Locke’s thought upon the later divines; Sell’s scope is the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. Most of the text is a detailed descriptive account of various scholars’ reactions (...) to Locke’s epistemology, metaphysics, and views concerning religion. Sell focuses on the question of the relative authority of scripture, reason and revelation. He contends that Locke’s epistemological and political positions are intimately bound up with his Christian faith, that as a conservative empiricist, Locke is “much more the rationalist than he has sometimes been painted” (48). The important question bequeathed by Locke to Christian apologetics is: “can the epistemological starting point be redeemed for Christian apologetic use or is it not viable at all?” (12). Sell addresses this question throughout the following chapters: “Ideas, Knowledge and Truth”; “Reason, Revelation, Faith and Scripture”; “Morality and Liberty”; “Toleration and Government”; and “Christian Doctrine”.Sell notes Locke’s roots in Calvinism, his appreciation of Arminian doctrine and his friendship with a number of prominent Latitudinarians. He argues that most criticisms of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity are misguided. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Locke was charged with scepticism, deism, Socinianism and materialism. Sell presents the objections of numerous scholars, notably Bishop Stillingfleet, William Carroll, John Norris, Richard Bentley, Henry Lee, Richard Price, Bishop Berkeley, and Samuel Johnson. He also covers the views of Locke’s defenders, including Anthony Collins, Catharine Cockburn and Samuel Bold.The reader might be disappointed with Sell’s short presentation of an inordinate number of Lockean critics; there is little analysis or discussion of the merits of the particular objections cited. He does offer an analysis of the general charges against Locke, but rarely quotes Locke sufficiently to justify his conclusion that Locke was not a deist, sceptic, or materialist. Sell simply takes Locke’s word for it. This book is best taken as an excellent reference guide.Sell contends that in spite of Locke’s friendship with deists such as Collins, Locke’s Reasonableness of the Christian Religion was written to dissolve the deist prejudice against Christianity. He dismisses the charge of deism because: (1) Locke argues for revelation and against natural religion, (2) Locke’s God possesses the traditional attributes assigned to him (power, omniscience, providence), (3) Locke grounds morality not exclusively in natural law, as did deists, but in the gospel, (4) the anti-materialist thrust of Book IV, Chapter X of the Essay, and (5) Locke’s argument that there can be truths of revelation which are above reason. Sell concludes that the “main problem posed to Locke by the deists was that of guilt by association” (209), in other words Locke’s work was misused for political reasons.Sell considers the charge of Socinianism more serious than that of deism. Socinianism is defined by its denial of the Trinity, and by the claims that there cannot be an innate idea of God, that there is no original corruption deriving from Adam, that the wicked will not suffer eternal torments, and that some bodies are not raised at general resurrection. Despite Locke’s agreement with most Socinian claims, Sell claims that [End Page 631] Locke cannot be pinned down on the issue of the Trinity. There is no question, he says, that “the Locke of 1662 affirmed both the doctrine of the Trinity and the human divine nature of Christ, whilst recognizing that the human mind could not explain how these things could be so; there is no question that especially from the 1690’s onwards he was actively reviewing the matter; there is no hard evidence that he ever repudiated the doctrine.” (214)According to Stillingfleet, Locke’s sensationalism and his proposal that matter might be capable of thought undermine Christian faith. Sell does not find this charge convincing. He defends Locke’s distinction between “the man” and “the person,” stressing that Locke claims a high degree of probability that the... (shrink)

English summary: The modern age understands justice not only as being an object of jurisprudence. Historical, philosophical, social and cultural studies along with theological approaches each draw near to justice in their own way. This collection devotes itself to the intricate interaction of outside perspectives with the judicial-interdisciplinary thematisation of the law, presenting revised papers delivered at the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research's symposium in honour of Professor Dr. Dres. h.c. Eberhard Schmidt-Aamann. The case studies and basic considerations deal (...) with, among other things, the function of the law in antique city states, the immanence and transcendence of justice from a theological perspective, as well as the relationship between economics and legal study. German description: Das Recht ist in der Moderne langst nicht nur Gegenstand der Rechtswissenschaft. Historische, philosophische, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche wie auch theologische Ansatze nahern sich dem Recht in je eigener Weise. Solche Aussenperspektiven stehen in komplexer Wechselwirkung mit der juristisch-binnendisziplinaren Thematisierung des Rechts. Dieser Sammelband ist dem Wechselspiel von Aussen- und Binnenperspektiven gewidmet. Er vereint die uberarbeiteten Beitrage eines Symposions, das an der Forschungsstatte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft in Heidelberg zu Ehren von Prof. Dr. Dres. h.c. Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann veranstaltet wurde. Die exemplarischen Fallstudien und Grundsatzuberlegungen thematisieren unter anderem die Funktion des Rechts in antiken Stadtstaaten, die Immanenz und Transzendenz des Rechts aus theologischer Perspektive sowie das Verhaltnis von Okonomik und Rechtswissenschaft. Mit Beitragen von: Hans Diefenbacher, Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Klaus Gunther, Christoph Mollers, Thorsten Moos, Michael Moxter, Bernhard Nagel, Martin Ramstedt, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, Magnus Schlette, Eberhard Schmidt-Assmann. (shrink)

Der Monotheismus ist die wohl wichtigste Entdeckung - oder Erfindung? - der Geistesgeschichte. Er entwickelte sich im Verlauf der Bewältigungsversuche komplexer als erwartet. Gottes (vermeintliche) Offenbarung bleibt geheimnisvoll: Sind intellektueller und kultischer Gottesbezug überhaupt möglich oder sind sie ein paradoxes Geschäft, das seinen Gegenstand erst produziert? Wie könnte man sich diesem Gegenstand nähern? Ist es überhaupt ein Gegenstand oder sprengt Gott alle Begrifflichkeit und alle menschliche Vernunft? Ist vielleicht negative Theologie die vernünftigste 'Logie'? Oder solle man die Intellektualität im Bezug (...) auf Gott aufgeben? Kann man vielleicht Gott an Spuren erkennen? Und warum wüsste man, dass es seine Spuren sind? Das Buch stellt Fragen nach dem angemessenen Umgang mit dem Unverfügbaren; und schon das Fragestellen erweist sich als problematisch. Die Fragen bleiben unbeantwortet. Aber sie werden gestellt. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, geb. 1946, Dr. phil., Professor für Philosophie an der Freien Universität Berlin; 1999 Fellow an der University of Pennsylvania, 2004/05 am Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton; 2011 Gastprofessor an der Universität Tel-Aviv; Forschungsschwerpunkte: Religionsphilosophie, Geschichte der Philosophie und Philologie in der Frühen Neuzeit, Geschichtsphilosophie, Geschichte der Metaphysik und Geschichte der politischen Philosophie. (shrink)

In an era of fake news, alternative truths and leaked secrets making constant headlines, we are telling stories about ourselves all the time, and we are telling them in so many different ways. From vlogs and blogs to tweets and posts, from photos and gifs to live streams. From instant updates that disappear to rash words that last for ever and data trails that chart every step we take. While people around her shake their heads and mutter bad things about (...) the new levels of day-to-day deceit, Kathleen Wyatt is busy marvelling at how society manages it. How do we do this extraordinary thing - often under the most ordinary of circumstances? How do we convince each other to suspend disbelief? And why do we do it? In this brilliant, wide-ranging study of lies and lying, Wyatt introduces us to a cast of professionals and professional liars - from scientists to investigators, from double agents to journalists, from toddler specialists to a fallen titan of industry - all to help her prove a remarkable thesis: lies hold us together as much as they push us apart and may be vital in a healthy society"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

When animal ethicists deal with welfare they seem to face a dilemma: On the one hand, they recognize the necessity of welfare concepts for their ethical approaches. On the other hand, many animal ethicists do not want to be considered reformist welfarists. Moreover, animal welfare scientists may feel pressed by moral demands for a fundamental change in our attitude towards animals. The analysis of this conflict from the perspective of animal ethics shows that animal welfare science and animal ethics highly (...) depend on each other. Welfare concepts are indispensable in the whole field of animal ethics. Evidence for this can be found by analyzing the structure of theories of animal ethics and the different ways in which these theories employ welfare concepts. Furthermore, the background of values underneath every welfare theory is essential to pursue animal welfare science. Animal ethics can make important contributions to the clarification of underlying normative assumptions with regard to the value of the animal, with regard to ideas about what is valuable for the animal, and with regard to the actions that should follow from the results of animal welfare science. (shrink)

Thema dieser Studie ist die Philosophie des Geistes bei Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza und Leibniz. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass die Frage nach dem Wesen des Geistes bei diesen Autoren von vorneherein im Kontext einer erkenntnistheoretischen Problematik behandelt wird und erst dadurch ihr eigentümliches Profil erhält. Wie muss der menschliche Geist beschaffen sein, wenn sichere Erkenntnis möglich sein soll? Das ist die zentrale Frage, die im frühneuzeitlichen Rationalismus gestellt wird. Sie wird von den Autoren des klassischen Rationalismus in mehreren monumentalen Anläufen (...) beantwortet, indem der menschliche Geist als etwas beschrieben wird, das wesentlich auf Gott und seine Allwissenheit bezogen ist. In radikalisierender Anknüpfung an die scholastische Philosophie erweist sich die visio beatifica, die es dem endlichen Geist erlaubt, an Gottes Unendlichkeit teilzuhaben, als das zentrale epistemologische Paradigma, das von den genannten Autoren auf je unterschiedliche Weise ausbuchstabiert wird. So zeigt sich, dass die Philosophie des Geistes, weit davon entfernt, eine bloße Subdisziplin der Philosophie zu sein, für die rationalistischen Philosophen des 17. Jahrhunderts ins Zentrum der prima philosophia rückt - als die privilegierte Schnittstelle, an der sich Erkenntnistheorie, Religionsphilosophie und Subjektivitätstheorie treffen und wechselseitig artikulieren. (shrink)

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s...

This paper aims to contribute to the attempts to clarify and classify the vague notion of “technosciences” from a historical perspective. A key question that is raised is as follows: Does Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of the modern age, provide a hitherto largely undiscovered programmatic position, which might facilitate a more profound understanding of technosciences ? The paper argues that nearly everything we need today for an ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works (...) of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real - constructivism. Rather than realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon could contribute to the expanding and critical discussion on technoscience. In the following I will reconstruct the term “technoscience”. My finding is that at least four different understandings or types of the term “technoscience” co-exist. In a second step, I will analyze and elaborate on Bacon’s epistemological position. I will identify central elements of the four different understandings in Bacon’s work. Finally, I will conclude that the epistemology of technoscience is, indeed, very old—it is the epistemological position put forward by Bacon. (shrink)

A popular approach to defining fictive utterance says that, necessarily, it is intended to produce imagining. I shall argue that this is not falsified by the fact that some fictive utterances are intended to be believed, or are non-accidentally true. That this is so becomes apparent given a proper understanding of the relation of what one imagines to one's belief set. In light of this understanding, I shall then argue that being intended to produce imagining is sufficient for fictive utterance (...) as well. (shrink)

We discuss the astronomical underpinning of the improved calendar of 1700. Starting from the astronomical motivation of the Gregorian calendar of 1582 and the rejection of this reform in Protestant states in Europe, we describe how the astronomical Easter reckoning based on Kepler’s Rudolphine tables led to the foundation of Berlin Observatory and enabled the founding of the Electoral Brandenburg Society of Sciences, which had to finance itself through a calendar monopoly.

The ancients were interested in the questions of what love really is, why it exists, and how it is experienced. This book presents the best examples, from Homer to Apuleius, interpreted and analyzed by the author. Through an examination of these selections from Greek and Latin literature, some main themes are revealed: success in love with the help of a god; the pursuit of happiness, unity, and completeness; love and beauty; love as an illness, wound, or suffering; betrayal in love, (...) adultery, murder, and death; love as the creating force of the world; the existence of friendship; the basis of parental love; the meaning of love for oneself; the basis and the results of the gods' love for humans. Also included is a comparison of ancient ideas of love with those in later literature and our own ideas about love today. (shrink)

Behandelt die aktuelle und brennende Debatte der Krise des öffentlichen TheatersZukunftsperspektiven für das Theater in Deutschland Erstes geschlossenes Konzept zur Zukunft des Theatermanagements.