This paper aims to address the lack of critique of the linear model in geoengineering governance discourse, and to illustrate different considerations for a geoengineering governance framework that is not based on a linear model of technology innovation. Finally, we set to explore a particular approach to geoengineering governance based on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s notion of ‘technology accompaniment’.

Geoengineering is typically defined as a techno-scientific response to climate change that differs from mitigation and adaptation, and that includes diverse individual technologies, which can be classified as either solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal. We analyse the representation of geoengineering on Wikipedia as a way of opening up this dominating, if contested, model for further debate. We achieve this by contrasting the dominating model as presented in the encyclopaedic article texts with the patterns of hyper-link associations between the (...) articles. Two datasets were created tracing the geoengineering construct on Wikipedia, shedding light on its boundary with its context, as well as on its internal structure. The analysis shows that the geoengineering category tends to be associated on Wikipedia primarily with atmospheric solar radiation management rather than land-based carbon dioxide removal type technologies. The results support the notion that the dominant model of defining and classifying geoengineering technology has been beneficial for solar radiation management type technologies more than for land-based carbon dioxide removal ones. The article also demonstrates that controversy mapping with Wikipedia data affords analysis that can open up dominating definitions and classifications of technologies, and offer resistance to their frequent naturalising and decontextualising tendencies. This work is in line with recent work on digital sociology, but the article contributes a new methodology and reports on the first empirical application of controversy mapping using Wikipedia data to a technology. (shrink)

Rumfitt has given two arguments that in unilateralist verificationist theories of meaning, truth collapses into correct assertibility. In the present paper I give similar arguments that show that in unilateral falsificationist theories of meaning, falsehood collapses into correct deniability. According to bilateralism, meanings are determined by assertion and denial conditions, so the question arises whether it succumbs to similar arguments. I show that this is not the case. The final section considers the question whether a principle central to Rumfitt's first (...) argument, ‘It is assertible that if and only if it is assertible that it is assertible that ’, is one that bilateralists can reject, and concludes that they cannot. It follows that the logic of assertibility and deniability, according to a result by Williamson, is the little known modal logic K4 studied by Sobociński. The paper ends with a plaidoyer for bilateralists to adopt this logic. (shrink)

The archive of the Nobel Assembly for Physiology or Medicine in Solna, Sweden, is a remarkable repository that contains reports and dossiers of the Nobel Prize nominations of senior and junior physicians from around the world. Although this archive has begun to be used more by scholars, it has been insufficiently examined by historians of surgery. No other German surgeon was nominated as often as Ferdinand Sauerbruch for the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in the first half of the (...) 20th century. This contribution reconstructs why and by whom Sauerbruch was nominated, and discusses the Nobel committee evaluations of his work. Political factors did not play an obvious role in the Nobel committee discussions, in spite of the fact that Adolf Hitler in 1937 had prohibited all German citizens to accept the Nobel Prize. The main reasons why Sauerbruch ultimately was not considered prize-worthy were that Sauerbruch’s achievements were marked by scientific priority disputes, and that his work was not seen as original enough. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENT MEMES AND SUSPICIOUS MINDS: GIRARD'S SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION AND MEMETICS Guömundur Ingi Markússon Reykjavik, Iceland The present article is an attempt to bring mimetic theory into dialogue with certain evolutionary approaches to human culture, i.e., evolutionarypsychology and memetics. That which immediately suggests a consonance between these approaches is a shared concern for the fundamental aspects ofhuman culture, or "fundamental anthropology." My discussion aims at (...) reconsidering Girard's startling insight concerning the significance of scapegoating in the formation of human culture, ritual and myth—or, in short, his concept of the scapegoat mechanism. Two alternative approaches will be explored: (1) On the basis of evolutionary psychology, scapegoating is considered as a cognitive side-effect; (2) with reference to memetics, it is suggested that the scapegoat mechanism is a memetic parasite. The former account is an interpretation ofPascal Boyer's ideas about group mentality and fundamentalist violence in his recent book ReligionExplained(2001). The latter consideration is inspired byTerrence W. Deacon's concept of language evolution and symbolic reference in his book The Symbolic Species (1997). It should be emphasized at the outset that neither Boyer nor Deacon are concerned with scapegoating and, needless to say, the application and interpretation oftheir ideas is entirely my own. 1. The Scapegoat Mechanism as a Cognitive Side Effect The following is an attempt to formulate a cognitive account of scapegoating based on Pascal Boyer's ideas about fundamentalism (2001, 292ff). Guömundur Ingi Markússon89 1.1. The Coalitional Reasoning ofthe Social Mind Boyer's theory of religion is firmly rooted in evolutionary psychology (2001, 118, passim)} A key concept in evolutionary psychology is the environment ofevolutionary adapteäness (EEA) which is centered around the claim that our cognitive apparatus evolved in response to ecological problems faced by our ancestors in the Pleistocene period (which lasted from ca. 2 million-10,000 years ago). In other words, the cognition of modern humans is geared to the ancestral environments of our huntergatherer past. The key issue in evolutionary psychology is to gain insight into the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors, and figure out the necessary cognitive capabilities needed to solve them. The resulting models of how the mind works can then be tested experimentally. Evolutionary psychologists also emphasize the áomain specificity of our psychological mechanisms, i.e., in simple terms, that our mind is a collection of specialized mechanisms wrought by natural selection to deal with specific features of our environment, such as detecting predators, keeping track of social relations, etc. In Boyer's account, the mixed stock of our evolutionary heritage includes a complex array of psychological mechanisms for keeping track ofa wide spectrum ofsocial relations, the social mina (2001, 122). An essential aspect of our social intelligence is "intuitive psychology" or a "theory of mind," i.e., seeing others as intentional agents, realizing what they are up to, what their beliefs and desires are, being able to predict their behavior, etc. According to evolutionary psychologists we are adapted for social exchange. We easily calculate the costs and benefits of our interactions with others. Experiments have shown that logical problems are much more transparent to people when presented as social exchange problems. In such cases, the logical rule in question is restated as a "check for cheaters" rule, i.e., the problem is to figure out whether people respect social conventions or not. Evolutionary psychologists interpretthese results to the effect that our cognition is geared to evaluate social exchange, and we have evolved a disposition to check for cheaters in social exchange situations (2001, 124f; Cosmides 1989; Cosmides & Tooby 1992).2 1 On evolutionary psychology, see Barkow et al. and Laland and Brown (ch. 5). 2 Cosmides, one of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, characterizes "check for cheaters" thus: "cheating can be defined as the violation of a rule established, explicitly or implicitly, by acceptance ofa social contract. A social contract relatesperceived benefits to 90Violent Mêmes and Suspicious Minds Evaluation oftrust is essential to human interaction: "That humans depend on cooperation creates strategic problems, where the value (the expected benefit) of a particular move depends on whether someone else makes a particular move...." (2001, 125... (shrink)

Unesco and the International Council of Music have begun work on a musicological project of considerable extent, since it is a universal history of music in ten volumes. At present, the provisional title is Music as a Language of Man: A World History of Music.

Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with conceptual questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in applied phenomenology has seen the study of political phenomenology move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally. The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology is the first major collection on this important topic. Comprising 35 chapters by an international team of expert contributors, the Handbook is organised into six clear parts, each with its own Introduction (...) by the editors: Founders of Phenomenology Existentialist Phenomenology Phenomenology of the Social and Political World Phenomenology of Alterity Phenomenology in Debate Contemporary Developments. Full attention is given to central figures in the phenomenological movement, including Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas as well as those whose contribution to political phenomenology is more distinctive, such as Arendt, De Beauvoir and Fanon. Also included are chapters on gender, race and intersectionality, disability, and technology. Ideal for those studying phenomenology, continental philosophy and political theory, The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology bridges an important gap between a major philosophical movement and contemporary political issues and concepts. (shrink)

This print textbook is available for students to rent for their classes. The Pearson print rental program provides students with affordable access to learning materials, so they come to class ready to succeed. For courses in Introductory Philosophy An active approach to philosophy While most introduction to philosophy courses focus on reading philosophical texts, Ultimate Questions: Thinking about Philosophy pushes students toward an active learning approach. The text is designed to instigate meaningful discussions between students and instructors, relying on more (...) than 100 "Food for Thought" exercises throughout. These exercises are based on the author's own experience engaging students in lecture environments and are designed to help students discover how well they understand philosophical concepts and how to apply them to real-life scenarios. The 4th Edition has been extensively updated with a new chapter, chapter expansions, and more. (shrink)

This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecological education: the peasant-to-peasant horizontal method that disseminated across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean beginning in the 1970s, and the political-agroecological training schools of combined consciousness-building and skill-formation that have been at the heart of the educational processes of member organizations of La Via Campesina since the 1990s. Applying a theoretical framework that incorporates territorial struggle, agroecology and popular education, we examine spatial and organizational aspects of each of these (...) models for peasant education and movement-building. Recognizing that the models, their respective contexts, and the dialectical relationships therein have been in constant evolution, we share findings on the movement-place as a territorial system with socio-historical subjectivity, that is, peasant movements as territorially-embedded, collective historical actors. This leads to some conclusions in moving past educational theory that has centered upon individual subjects, and approaching a conception of territory as a subject of learning processes. (shrink)

The focus of this paper are Dummett's meaning-theoretical arguments against classical logic based on consideration about the meaning of negation. Using Dummettian principles, I shall outline three such arguments, of increasing strength, and show that they are unsuccessful by giving responses to each argument on behalf of the classical logician. What is crucial is that in responding to these arguments a classicist need not challenge any of the basic assumptions of Dummett's outlook on the theory of meaning. In particular, I (...) shall grant Dummett his general bias towards verificationism, encapsulated in the slogan 'meaning is use'. The second general assumption I see no need to question is Dummett's particular breed of molecularism. Some of Dummett's assumptions will have to be given up, if classical logic is to be vindicated in his meaning-theoretical framework. A major result of this paper will be that the meaning of negation cannot be defined by rules of inference in the Dummettian framework. (shrink)

This note corrects an error in my paper 'Normalisation and Subformula Property for a System of Classical Logic with Tarski's Rule' (Archive for Mathematical Logic 61 (2022): 105-129, DOI 10.1007/s00153-021-00775-6): Theorem 2 is mistaken, and so is a corollary drawn from it as well as a corollary that was concluded by the same mistake. Luckily this does not affect the main result of the paper.

What beliefs are, what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and (...) we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples. But so are theories about astrology, alien abduction, guardian angels, and reincarnation. All are products (with varying degrees of credibility) of fertile minds trying to find explanations for observed phenomena. In this book, Nils Nilsson examines beliefs: what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. We should evaluate our beliefs carefully, Nilsson points out, because they influence so many of our actions and decisions. Some of our beliefs are more strongly held than others, but all should be considered tentative and changeable. Nilsson shows that beliefs can be quantified by probability, and he describes networks of beliefs in which the probabilities of some beliefs affect the probabilities of others. He argues that we can evaluate our beliefs by adapting some of the practices of the scientific method and by consulting expert opinion. And he warns us about “belief traps”—holding onto beliefs that wouldn't survive critical evaluation. The best way to escape belief traps, he writes, is to expose our beliefs to the reasoned criticism of others. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative aesthetic discourse communicates that the speaker has had first-hand experience of what is talked about. If you call a book bewitching, it will be assumed that you have read the book. If you say that a building is beautiful, it will be assumed that you have had some visual experience with it. According to an influential view, this is because knowledge is a norm for assertion, and aesthetic knowledge requires first-hand experience. This paper criticizes this view and argues for (...) an alternative view, according to which aesthetic discourse expresses affective states of mind, analogously to how assertions express beliefs. It is because these affective states require first-hand experience that aesthetic discourse communicates that such acquaintance is at hand. The paper furthermore argues that the lack of an experience requirement for aesthetic belief ascriptions constitutes a problem for the kind of expressivist who claims that evaluative belief states are covert non-cognitive states. (shrink)

This chapter examines autonomism. Autonomism is roughly the view that an artwork’s ethical properties do not bear on its aesthetic or artistic value. The author sketches some of the view’s history before describing various versions of it defended over the last quarter-century. These are divided into ‘radical’, ‘robust’, and ‘moderate’ forms of autonomism. The author considers the strengths and weaknesses of each. The author also devotes some space to the ‘interactionist’ views against which contemporary autonomism is typically opposed. In doing (...) so, he considers the so-called ‘qua problem’ at some length, as well its bearing on these various autonomist positions. (shrink)

Within contemporary metaethics, it is widely held that there is a “presumption of realism” in moral thought and discourse. Anti-realist views, like error theory and expressivism, may have certain theoretical considerations speaking in their favor, but our pretheoretical stance with respect to morality clearly favors objectivist metaethical views. This article argues against this widely held view. It does so by drawing from recent discussions about so-called “subjective attitude verbs” in linguistics and philosophy of language. Unlike pretheoretically objective predicates (e.g., “is (...) made of wood”, “is 185 cm tall”), moral predicates embed felicitously under subjective attitude verbs like the English “find”. Moreover, it is argued that the widespread notion that moral discourse bears all the marks of fact-stating discourse is rooted in a blinkered focus on examples from English. Cross-linguistic considerations suggest that subjective attitude verbs are actually the default terms by which we ascribe moral views to people. Impressions to the contrary in English have to do with some unfortunate quirks of the term “think”. (shrink)

It is widely held within contemporary metaethics that there is a lack of linguistic support for evaluative expressivism. On the contrary, it seems that the predictions that expressivists make about evaluative discourse are not borne out. An instance of this is the so-called problem of missing Moorean infelicity. Expressivists maintain that evaluative statements express non-cognitive states of mind in a similar manner to how ordinary descriptive language expresses beliefs. Conjoining an ordinary assertion that p with the denial of being in (...) the corresponding belief state famously gives rise to Moorean infelicity:?? It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining. If expressivists are right, then conjoining evaluative statements with the denial of being in the relevant non-cognitive state of mind should give rise to similar infelicity. However, as several theorists have pointed out, this does not seem to be the case. Statements like the following are not infelicitous: Murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it. In this paper, I argue that evaluative statements express the kind of states that are attributed by ‘find’-constructions in English and that these states are non-cognitive in nature. This addresses the problem of missing Moorean infelicity and, more generally, goes to show that there are linguistic facts which support expressivism about evaluative discourse. (shrink)

Wer ist der existenzielle Republikaner? Er ist ein exemplarisches Beispiel für jemanden, der das »Wagnis der Öffentlichkeit« (Karl Jaspers) eingeht - das beste Beispiel eines Citoyens. Getrieben von einer Liebe zur Welt, die er allerdings nur durch seine Freiheit und in seinem Handeln ausdrücken kann. Gerade diese liebende Handlung ist heute gefordert - egal ob auf Demonstrationen gegen Donald Trump oder für eine gerechtere Welt, egal ob durch Parteibeitritte oder dem Schreiben von Essays für Zeitungen. Es ist Zeit, sich für (...) eine bessere Welt einzusetzen. Nils Heisterhagen muntert zur republikanischen Freiheit auf. (shrink)

In bilateral logic formulas are signed by + and –, indicating the speech acts assertion and denial. I argue that making an assumption is also speech act. Speech acts cannot be embedded within other speech acts. Hence we cannot make sense of the notion of making an assumption in bilateral logic. Attempts to solve this problem are considered and rejected.

The human genome project's lasting legacies are the emerging insights into human physiology and disease, and the ascendance of biology as the dominant science of the 21st century. Sequencing revealed that >90% of the human genome is not coding for proteins, as originally thought, but rather is overwhelmingly transcribed into non‐protein coding, or non‐coding, RNAs (ncRNAs). This discovery initially led to the hypothesis that most genomic DNA is “junk”, a term still championed by some geneticists and evolutionary biologists. In contrast, (...) molecular biologists and biochemists studying the vast number of transcripts produced from most of this genome “junk” often surmise that these ncRNAs have biological significance. What gives? This essay contrasts the two opposing, extant viewpoints, aiming to explain their bases, which arise from distinct reference frames of the underlying scientific disciplines. Finally, it aims to reconcile these divergent mindsets in hopes of stimulating synergy between scientific fields. (shrink)

Kampf, Gewalt und Subjekt sind in der modernen Philosophie seit langem verbunden. Dies zeigt sich auch in anderen kulturellen Reflexionsräumen wie dem Boxkampf. Wenn Menschen kämpfen, lenken sie Aggression und Gewalt in regelgeleitete, gesellschaftskonforme Bahnen. Die Kontrahenten müssen sich gegenseitig anerkennen und machen sich selbst als eigenständige Subjekte anerkennbar. Das Buch diskutiert, inwiefern der Boxkampf als exemplarische Aufführung des Entstehens von Subjektivität in und durch einen Kampf in Bezug auf Hegel und Nietzsche verstanden werden kann. Bei beiden Denkern findet sich (...) eine agonale Essenz. Im Gegeneinander sollen Subjekte eigenständige Individuen werden. Zugleich gilt die Agonalität sozialen Lebens beiden als Grundlage sozialer Entwicklung. Die Idee der fundamentalen Bedeutung von Kämpfen entwickelt sich in der Philosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts zu einem Leitgedanken, der auch über die Philosophie hinaus bedeutsam wird und im Boxkampf eine besondere Aufführungsform findet. (shrink)

Empathy facilitates everyday social interactions and has often been linked in the literature to prosocial behavior. Robust evidence has been found for a positive relationship between experiencing empathy and behaving prosocially. However, empathy, and the empathy–prosocial behavior relationship in particular, has been studied mostly in combination with negative emotions. Less research has been conducted on empathy for positive emotions, and the link between positive empathy and displayed prosocial behavior has not been intensively investigated so far. The purpose of the present (...) article is thus twofold: first, we review and summarize research evidence on empathy for positive emotions, and second, we propose that people’s motivation to maintain an experienced positive affect is a viable mechanism linking positive empathy and prosocial behavior. (shrink)

Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' develops a theory of facts, entities in which universals are combined with universals or particulars, as the foundation of his metaphysics. While Hossack argues at length that there must be negative facts, facts in which the universal 'negation' is combined with universals or particulars, his conclusion that there are also general facts, facts in which the universal 'generality' is combined with universals, is reached rather more swiftly. In this paper I present Hossack with three arguments (...) for his conclusion. They all draw, as does Hossack's theory of facts, on views Russell expressed in various writings. Two arguments are based on Russell's explanation of universals as aspects of resemblance; the third on Russell's observation that general propositions do not follow logically from exclusively particular premises. Comparison with other metaphysics of generality show them to be wanting and Russell's and Hossack's accounts superior. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

In this paper, we consider a few actual cases of mnemonic strategies among older subjects (older than 65). The cases are taken from an ethnographic study, examining how elderly adults cope with cognitive decline. We believe that these cases illustrate that the process of remembering in many cases involve a complex distributed web of processes involving both internal or intracranial and external sources. Our cases illustrate that the nature of distributed remembering is shaped by and subordinated to the dynamic characteristics (...) of the on-going activity and to our minds suggest that research on memory and distributed cognition should focus on the process of remembering through detailed descriptions and analysis of naturally occurring situations. (shrink)

The right to health is enshrined in the constitution of the World Health Organization and numerous other international agreements. Yet today, an estimated 5.7 million people die each year from treatable infectious diseases, most of which are susceptible to existing antimicrobials if they were accessible. These deaths occur predominantly among populations living in poverty in low- and middle-income countries, and they greatly exceed the estimated 700,000 annual deaths worldwide currently attributed to antimicrobial resistance. Ensuring universal appropriate access to antimicrobials is (...) not only a critical part of realizing the right to health, it is necessary for mobilizing effective collective action against the development and spread of AMR. (shrink)

Ian Rumfitt has proposed systems of bilateral logic for primitive speech acts of assertion and denial, with the purpose of ‘exploring the possibility of specifying the classically intended senses for the connectives in terms of their deductive use’ : 810f). Rumfitt formalises two systems of bilateral logic and gives two arguments for their classical nature. I assess both arguments and conclude that only one system satisfies the meaning-theoretical requirements Rumfitt imposes in his arguments. I then formalise an intuitionist system of (...) bilateral logic which also meets those requirements. Thus Rumfitt cannot claim that only classical bilateral rules of inference succeed in imparting a coherent sense onto the connectives. My system can be extended to classical logic by adding the intuitionistically unacceptable half of a structural rule Rumfitt uses to codify the relation between assertion and denial. Thus there is a clear sense in which, in the bilateral framework, the difference between classicism and intuitionism is not one of the rules of inference governing negation, but rather one of the relation between assertion and denial. (shrink)

The Introduction to "Knowledge, Number and Reality. Encounters with the Work of Keith Hossack" provides an overview over Hossack's work and the contributions to the volume.

Ethicism is the most comprehensively defended answer to the question regarding whether ethical properties determine aesthetic properties in artworks. According to ethicism, aesthetically relevant ethical flaws in artworks count as aesthetic flaws and aesthetically relevant ethical merits count as aesthetic merits. In this paper, I argue that ethicism’s most significant argument, the Merited Response Argument suffers from an ambiguity that makes it either unsound or uninteresting. Specifically, the notion of an artwork’s ‘prescribing’ a response, central to MRA, is ambiguous between (...) merely attempting to elicit a response from appreciators as appropriate to a work, and endorsing a response as appropriate to relevant parts of the actual world. While the first sense of ‘prescribe’ does the aesthetic work, the second does the ethical. (shrink)

Am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts sind die gesellschaftlichen Konsequenzen neuer Formen der Sammlung, Verwendung und Vernetzung von Daten zur Überwachung und Beeinflussung von Menschen und Gruppen noch nicht vollends absehbar. Mit den Surveillance Studies können die Bedingungen und Diskurse von Sicherheit, Überwachung und Kontrolle im Rahmen einer interdisziplinären Forschungsinitiative analysiert werden. Verschiedene Pespektiven werden hier einführend dargestellt. Beiträge aus der Rechtswissenschaft, der Kriminologie, der Geographie, Soziologie und Kunstgeschichte zeigen, welche unterschiedlichen Perspektiven es gibt, um die komplexen und folgenreichen Zusammenhänge der (...) Surveillance zu verstehen oder zukünftige Entwicklungen einzuschätzen. Die verschiedenen Perspektiven ergänzen sich zu einem Gesamtbild, welches die Strukturen und Feinheiten dieser Entwicklungen deutlich macht. Die Beiträge gehen dabei auf grundsätzliche Probleme bei der Analyse von Überwachung aus ihrer jeweiligen Sicht ein und bieten so eine kompakte Übersicht über ein spezifisches, in dieser Hinsicht neues Forschungsfeld. Weiterhin zeigen sie, wie vielschichtig der Einfluss der von Überwachungtechnologien und Kontrolldiskursen auf unser tägliches Leben tatsächlich ist. Als einführende Texte bieten die versammelten Beiträge einen Ausgangspunkt für weitere Analysen und Diskussionen – vor allem jenseits aller akademischen Debatten. (shrink)

Mobile health devices pose novel questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology. Many such applications not only collect sensitive data, but also aim at persuading users to change their lifestyle for the better. A major concern is that persuasion is paternalistic as it intentionally aims at changing the agent’s actions, chipping away at their autonomy. This worry roots in the philosophical conviction that perhaps the most salient feature of living autonomous lives is displayed via agency as opposed to patiency—our (...) lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens to us. Being persuaded by a device telling us how to conduct our lives seemingly renders the agent passive, an inert recipient of technological commands. This agential bias, however, has led to a marginalization of patiential characteristics that are just as much part of our lives as are agential characteristics. To appreciate the inherent interlocking of acting and being acted upon, it is vital to acknowledge that agency and patiency are correlates, not mutually exclusive opposites. Furthermore, it is unclear whether an action can only count as agential so long as its causes are internal. Drawing on the extended mind and extended will framework, I argue that mHealth applications merely serve as volitional aids to the agent’s internal cognition. Autonomously set goals can be achieved more effectively via technology. To be persuaded by an mHealth device does not mainly—let alone exclusively—emphasize patiency; on the contrary, it can be an effective tool for technologically enhancing agency. (shrink)

This book argues that the meaning of negation, perhaps the most important logical constant, cannot be defined within the framework of the most comprehensive theory of proof-theoretic semantics, as formulated in the influential work of Michael Dummett and Dag Prawitz. Nils Kürbis examines three approaches that have attempted to solve the problem - defining negation in terms of metaphysical incompatibility; treating negation as an undefinable primitive; and defining negation in terms of a speech act of denial - and concludes (...) that they cannot adequately do so. He argues that whereas proof-theoretic semantics usually only appeals to a notion of truth, it also needs to appeal to a notion of falsity, and proposes a system of natural deduction in which both are incorporated. Offering new perspectives on negation, denial and falsity, his book will be important for readers working on logic, metaphysics and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This paper discusses proof-theoretic semantics, the project of specifying the meanings of the logical constants in terms of rules of inference governing them. I concentrate on Michael Dummett’s and Dag Prawitz’ philosophical motivations and give precise characterisations of the crucial notions of harmony and stability, placed in the context of proving normalisation results in systems of natural deduction. I point out a problem for defining the meaning of negation in this framework and prospects for an account of the meanings of (...) modal operators in terms of rules of inference. (shrink)