Political theorists tend to dismiss the concept of constitutional patriotism for two main reasons. On the one hand, constitutional patriotism — understood as a post-national, universalist form of democratic political allegiance — is rejected on account of its abstract quality. On the otherhand, it is argued that constitutional patriotism, while apprearing universalist, is in fact particular through and through. According to this genealogical critique, it is held that constitutional patriotism might have been appropriate in the context when it originated — (...) namely West Germany, a half-nation with a deeply compromised sense of nationality on account of the Nazi past — but it is not universally applicable. This article reconstructs the origins of constitutional patriotism arguing that both the ‘protective’ and state-centred patriotism of Dolf Sternberger, and the ‘purifying’ patriotism of Jurgen Habermas — focused mainly on the public sphere — can indeed be understood as relying on ‘supplements of particularily’. However, there are also normative connections between universalist constitutional morality and militant democracy on the one hand, and universalist constitutionalist morality and an imperative to remember on the other. Thus, the genealogical critique by itself is insufficient to invalidate the idea of constitutional patriotism. (shrink)

This paper assesses the relationship between corporate social responsibility and downside equity tail risk, a field of research that is underdeveloped at this moment. Using global equities data over the period of January 2003 to December 2011, inclusive, the downside tail risk of each company is estimated using techniques of extreme value theory and CSR is approached using stakeholder theory. Our findings show a significant relationship between certain aspects of CSR and downside tail risk. The nature of the relationship differs (...) across region, stakeholder and time. Furthermore, the relationships we found are sequential, which makes a causal link between CSR and tail risk plausible. (shrink)

Die moderne Poesie, als deren Begrunder Baudelaire gilt, enthalt eine geschichtliche Substanz, von der man bis zu Walter Benjamin kaum etwas ahnte. AN ihrem Anfang steht die nicht mehr bloSS asthetische Auseinandersetzung mit der Prosa der Bourgeoiswelt. DIe zu Beginn der Julimonarchie von Heine, Daumier u. A. Begrundete, von Baudelaire 1846 dann programmatisch formulierte postromantische Asthetik nimmt jene Prosa in ihrer widerspruchlichen Bewegung in sich auf, um sie in revolutionarem Sinne zu transformieren. DIe Verfahrensweisen dieser antibourgeoisen Asthetik, ihre historischen und (...) asthetischen Voraussetzungen, ihre Strategien und Aporien werden deutlich nur in der konkreten Konfrontation der Werke mit dem historisch-ideologischen "Text", auf den sie sich beziehen. OEhlers Buch will den Blick offnen fur den Traditionszusammenhang von "realistischer" und "esoterischer" Avantgarde. (shrink)

The predicate view on proper names opts for a uniform semantic representation of proper nouns like ‘Alfred’ as predicates on the level of logical form. Early defences of this view can be found in Sloat (Language, vol. 45, pp. 26–30, 1969) and Burge (J. Philos. 70: 425–439, 1973), but there is an increasing more recent interest in this view on proper names. My paper aims to provide a reconstruction and critique of Burge’s main argument for the predicate view on proper (...) names, which is still used by several current philosophers in defence of this view. I have called this argument the unification argument. I will present a stepwise interpretation and reconstruction of this argument, consider several possible responses to it and defend a specific response to it in detail. (shrink)

In this essay I will defend a novel version of the indexical view on proper names. According to this version, proper names have a relatively sparse truth-conditional meaning that is represented by their rigid content and indexical character, but a relatively rich use-conditional meaning, which I call the (contextual) constraint of a proper name. Firstly, I will provide a brief outline of my favoured indexical view on names in contrast to other indexical views proposed in the relevant literature. Secondly, two (...) general motivations for an indexical view on names will be introduced and defended. Thirdly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on names: formal variable accounts and salience-based formal constant accounts. In the fourth and final section, I will develop my own use-conditional indexical view on names in three different steps by confronting an initial version of this view with three different challenges. (shrink)

In this essay I will defend the thesis that proper nouns are primarily used as proper names—as atomic singular referring expressions—and different possible predicative uses of proper nouns are derived from this primary use or an already derived secondary predicative use of proper nouns. There is a general linguistic phenomenon of the derivation of new meanings from already existing meanings of an expression. This phenomenon has different manifestations and different linguistic mechanisms can be used to establish derived meanings of different (...) kinds of expressions. One prominent variation of these mechanisms was dubbed in Nunberg. In the essay I will distinguish two different sub-varieties of this mechanism: occurrent and lexical meaning transfer. Nunberg conceives of meaning transfer as a mechanism that allows us to derive a new truth-conditional meaning of an expression from an already existing truth-conditional meaning of this expression. I will argue that most predicative uses of proper nouns can be captured by the mentioned two varieties of truth-conditional meaning transfer. But there are also important exceptions like the predicative use of the proper noun ‘Alfred’ in as sentence like ‘Every Alfred that I met was a nice guy’. I will try to show that we cannot make use of truth-conditional meaning transfer to account for such uses and I will argue for a the existence of second variant of meaning transfer that I will call use-conditional meaning transfer and that allows us also to capture these derived meanings of proper nouns. Furthermore, I will try to show that the proposed explanation of multiple uses of proper nouns is superior to the view supported by defenders of a predicative view on proper names. (shrink)

In this paper, I will show that typical formal semantic reconstructions of the rigidity of proper names neglect the important aspect that the rigidity of names is determined by our ordinary use of a name relative to the actual world. This fact was clearly pointed out by Kripke, but overlooked by the subsequent discussion concerning this topic. Based on this diagnosis, I will distinguish three different actualized notions of rigidity. Firstly, I will introduce two different new varieties of known versions (...) of rigidity; namely, actualized persistent and actualized obstinate rigidity. Secondly, I will make use of the tools provided by free logic and introduce a new and overlooked version of rigidity, which I will call actually restricted rigidity. Against this background, I will argue that we have different options to formally model the rigidity of proper names in natural languages. Which option we choose, mainly depends on our philosophical background assumptions. For someone who believes in non-existent objects and the possibility of naming such objects, it is the best choice to hold that proper names are actually obstinately rigid designators. For someone who rejects non-existent objects and the possibility of naming such objects, actually restricted rigidity is a better choice than actualized persistent rigidity. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend a new compositional semantics for single-domain free logic. This semantics makes use of a distinction between the semantic value of a singular term and its semantic referent. The semantic value of a singular term is conceived of as a set that either contains the semantic referent or no element at all. The semantic referent is the object that the term designates. Before I will introduce this new semantics for single-domain predicate and an S5-type modal (...) logic in detail, I will present five related problems of compositionality of the standard semantics for these logical systems. After that I will show in detail how my new proposed alternative semantics can be used to solve nearly all of the outlined five problems. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to defend a version of the view that ‘exist’ expresses primarily a property of individual objects, a property that each of them has. In the first section, I will distinguish the three main types of rival conceptions concerning the semantic status of ‘exist’ that will define the subsequent discussion. In the second section it will be shown that the best explanation of our overall use of ‘exist’ in natural language requires the treatment of ‘exist’ as (...) a predicate that can be applied to individual objects. The third section will be concerned with the problem of the semantic analysis of negative singular existential sentences that contain proper names. I will briefly defend a specific solution to this problem that makes use of a single-domain free logic. In the following sections, I will try to defend this view of existence in more detail. That is, I will deal with three different specific challenges that prima facie seem to speak against the proposed view and for some rival alternatives; and I will show how these challenges can be met. (shrink)

We define the term ⌜\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\ulcorner $$\end{document}a set T of sentential-logical formulae grounds a sentential-logical formula A from a syntactic point of view⌝\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\urcorner $$\end{document} in such a way that A is a syntactic sentential-logical consequence of T, and specific additional syntactic requirements regarding T and A are fulfilled. These additional requirements are developed strictly within the syntactics of sentential-logical languages, the three most important (...) being new, namely: to be atomically minimal, to be minimal in degree, and not to be conjunction-like. Our approach is independent of any specific sentential-logical calculus. (shrink)

We define the term \a set T of sentential-logical formulae grounds a sentential-logical formula A from a syntactic point of view\ in such a way that A is a syntactic sentential-logical consequence of T, and specific additional syntactic requirements regarding T and A are fulfilled. These additional requirements are developed strictly within the syntactics of sentential-logical languages, the three most important being new, namely: to be atomically minimal, to be minimal in degree, and not to be conjunction-like. Our approach is (...) independent of any specific sentential-logical calculus. (shrink)

Freges Konzeption der Existenz zählt zu seinen einflussreichsten und originellsten Beiträgen zur Philosophie. In diesem Buch wird Freges Konzeption neu interpretiert, historisch eingeordnet, mit den wichtigsten verwandten Konzeptionen verglichen und einer detaillierten systematischen Kritik unterzogen.

This is an expanded version of a lecture originally given at the Colloquim on ‘The Modern State’ of the Institut International de Philosophie Politique, held at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, in the summer of 1981. The article is published here for the first time. Translations from German sources, both in the text and the notes, are those of the author.

In this paper I am concerned with an analysis of negative existential sentences that contain proper names only by using negative or neutral free logic. I will compare different versions of neutral free logic with the standard system of negative free logic (Burge, Sainsbury) and aim to defend my version of neutral free logic that I have labeled non-standard neutral free logic.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 4 Seiten: 657-688.

In this paper, I aim to present the main components of my non-standard interpretation of Frege’s views on existence to the English-speaking public. First, I will outline the standard interpretation and show how to a great but not full extent the standard interpretation can be justified on the basis of Frege’s writings. Second, I show that the main error of the standard interpretation consists in the assimilation of the contents of the ordinary language expressions “exist” and “there is” according to (...) Frege. Third, I evaluate possible sources for this unfounded assimilation. After that, I outline my alternative interpretation that distinguishes in opposition to other non-standard interpretations between a substantive and a deflationary part of Frege’s complete conception of existence in analogy to Frege’s analysis of truth and negation. Fifthly, I justify my interpretation by the reconstruction of a so far overlooked master argument of Frege against the above-mentioned assimilation. In the last section, I introduce and discuss five objections against my interpretation that came to my attention. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to defend a first‐order non‐discriminating property view concerning existence. The version of this view that I prefer is based on negative (or a specific neutral) free logic that treats the existence predicate as first‐order logical predicate. I will provide reasons why such a view is more plausible than a second‐order discriminating property view concerning existence and I will also discuss four challenges for the proposed view and provide solutions to them.

In this paper I am concerned with the semantic analysis of sentences of the form 'It is true that p'. I will compare different proposals that have been made to analyse such sentences and will defend a view that treats this sentences as a mere sytactic variation of sentences of the form 'That p is true'.

Es geht um Carnaps Konstitution der Qualitätsklassen (qual) mittels der Methode der Quasianalyse. Diese Konstitutionsmethode hat Carnap in seinem Werk Der logische Außau der Welt verwendet. Es wird gezeigt, daß Carnaps Qualitätsdefinition sowohl an technischen als auch an grundsätzlichen Mängeln scheitert. Des weiteren werden Verbesserungsvorschläge der Camapschen Methode, die von Brockhaus, Goodman, Moulines und Eberle gemacht worden sind, untersucht und als inadäquat nachgewiesen.

Dolf Rami contributes to contemporary debates about the meaning and reference of proper names by providing an overview of the main challenges and developing a new contextualist account of names. Questions about the use and semantic features of proper names are at the centre of philosophy of language. How does a single proper name refer to the same thing in different contexts of use? What makes a thing a bearer of a proper name? What is their meaning? Guided by (...) these questions, Rami discusses Saul Kripke's main contributions to the debate and introduces two new ways to capture the rigidity of names, proposing a pluralist version of the causal chain picture. Covering popular contextualist accounts of names, both indexical and variabilist, he presents a use-sensitive alternative based on a semantic comparison between names, pronouns and demonstratives. Extending and applying his approach to a wide variety of uses, including names in fiction, this is a comprehensive explanation of why we should interpret proper names as use-sensitive expressions. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz möchte ich mich mit dem Verhältnis von Existenz und Quantifikationen beschäftigen. Oft wird die Bestimmung dieses Verhältnis auf die Frage heruntergebrochen, ob der partikuläre Quantor als ein Existenzquantor interpretiert werden soll oder nicht, der im Anschluss an Frege, Russell und Quine für eine Eigenschaft der Existenz von Begriffen von Dingen steht. De facto ist diese Betrachtungsweise aber viel zu kurz gegriffen. Ich werde vier Positionen gegenüberstellen, die das Verhältnis von Existenz und Quantifikation in unterschiedlicher Weise bestimmen. Daran (...) anschließend werde ich mich mit den Vor- und Nachteilen dieser Auffassungen auseinandersetzen und für eine Auffassung stark machen, die von sogenannten adaptiven Quantoren Gebrauch macht. (shrink)

Proper names play an important role in our understanding of linguistic ‘aboutness’ or reference. For instance, the name-bearer relation is a good candidate for the paradigm of the reference relation: it provides us with our initial grip on this relation and controls our thinking about it. For this and other reasons proper names have been at the center of philosophical attention. However, proper names are as controversial as they are conceptually fundamental. Since Kripke’s seminal lectures Naming and Necessity the controversy (...) about proper names has taken the form of a debate between two main camps, descriptivists and non-descriptivists like Kripke himself.The lectures were given in Princeton in 1970 and published in book form as Naming and Necessity .Descriptivists hold that there is a close connection between proper names and definite descriptions: the meaning or sense of a proper name can be given by a definite description. Th .. (shrink)

Im folgenden Beitrag wird ein neuartiger Vorschlag zur Lösung des Antinomienproblems untersucht. Die Untersuchung ergibt, daß der Vorschlag in toto untauglich ist. Weiterhin wird die Unhaltbarkeit gewisser Argumente gegen den Beweis des ersten Gödelschen Unvollständigkeitstheorems nachgewiesen.

Es geht um Carnaps Konstitution der Qualitätsklassen (qual) mittels der Methode der Quasianalyse. Diese Konstitutionsmethode hat Carnap in seinem Werk Der logische Außau der Welt verwendet. Es wird gezeigt, daß Carnaps Qualitätsdefinition sowohl an technischen als auch an grundsätzlichen Mängeln scheitert. Des weiteren werden Verbesserungsvorschläge der Camapschen Methode, die von Brockhaus, Goodman, Moulines und Eberle gemacht worden sind, untersucht und als inadäquat nachgewiesen.

In many of his writings Russell developed a theory of time, highly interesting both from a philosophical and from a logical point of view. Strangely enough, this has not acquired general attention. The most important relational properties of the duration and points of time will be presented. In addition, Russell's considerations on the existence and density of time points will be critically analysed and systematically reconstructed. A. G. Walker's explication of the concept of time point is unlike that of Russell. (...) His theory of time reflects the Dedekindian concept of cut. Walker's constructions will be modified in a suitable way and supplemented so that it becomes possible to prove the continuity of the temporal series. (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.