It is often held that it is conceptually impossible to distinguish between a pain and a pain experience. In this article I present an argument which concludes that people make this distinction. I have done a web-based statistical analysis which is at the core of this argument. It shows that the intensity of pain has a decisive effect on whether people say that they 'feel a pain'(lower intensities) or 'have a pain' (greater intensities). This 'intensity effect'can be best explained by (...) people's varying confidence about their pain, and indicates that 'feeling pain' can be identified as introspective report and 'having pain' as an objective statement — analogous to the traditional sense modalities. However, if people have the ability to make both introspective and objective statements about pain, then it seems indeed the case that they distinguish the appearance from the reality of pain. (shrink)

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women (...) was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics and a standard interpretation of the awareness of pain have a common feature: Both postulate the existence of an irresolvable duality. Whereas many physicists claim that all particles exhibit particle and wave properties, many philosophers working on pain argue that our awareness of pain is paradoxical, exhibiting both perceptual and introspective characteristics. In this chapter, we offer a pessimistic take on the putative paradox of pain. Specifically, we attempt to resolve the supposed paradox by (...) undermining the reasons offered for accepting the introspective side of the dualism. (shrink)

Vor 200 Jahren erschien Kants Schrift "Zum ewigen Frieden". Zu einer der vordringlichsten, von der Philosophie aber häufig vernachlässigten Aufgaben der Politik stellt sie bis heute den wichtigsten klassischen Text dar. Kant entfaltet in ihm die philosophischen Grundlagen für eine internationale Rechts- und Friedensgemeinschaft. Gleichzeitig stellt er sich aber auch die Frage nach einer Vermittlung von normativer Theorie und politischer Praxis. In 12 Beiträgen wird Kants Text in diesem Band "entschlüsselt": interpretiert, auf seine systematische Überzeugungskraft und auf seine politische Tragweite (...) hin untersucht und in seinen und unseren sozialgeschichtlichen Kontext gestellt. (shrink)

Naturalistic understandings of the mind face certain hurdles. Many authors believe that some such hurdles are even insurmountable. A frequently used but rarely developed and tested argumentative move claims that, because they are made from the so-called observer perspective, naturalization efforts inevitably fail for reasons connected to our first-person perspective. We are not convinced. However, this article primarily attempts to gain a better understanding of the point and scope of this move by discussing an argument by Holm Tetens from which (...) the basic incompleteness of the observer perspective is supposed to follow. Depending on how one interprets the incompleteness in question, one gets different readings of the argument: ontological, semantic, epistemic, or explanatory. First, we will develop two ontological readings of this argument in more detail ‐ mainly because they are the most obvious challenges to naturalism. We will then systematically explore the prospects of the alternative readings. These considerations lead to a more fundamental discussion about the requirements for naturalistic explanations. As it turns out, to defend such an incompleteness argument, you face some inconvenient hurdles yourself. (shrink)

Das Nietzsche-Archiv gilt als eine der einflussreichsten deutschen Kultureinrichtungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Das vorliegende Buch stellt diese kulturpolitische Institution mit all ihren Einflussmöglichkeiten exemplarisch an Hand des Weimar-Jena-Planes vor. Dieses richtungweisende Kulturvorhaben der 1930er Jahre, das heute in Vergessenheit geraten ist, dokumentiert die Kulturpolitik der deutschnationalen sowie der nationalsozialistischen Kreise. Bisher unbekannte Quellen aus dem Nietzsche-Archiv werden in dem vorliegenden Buch erstmals kritisch untersucht und mit der vorhandenen Forschungsliteratur verglichen. Damit eröffnet Reuter die Aufarbeitung der kulturhistorischen Aspekte der Nietzsche-Rezeption (...) und kommt damit einem Desiderat der Forschung zum 20. Jahrhundert nach. (shrink)

Philosophers and linguists currently lack the means to reliably identify evaluative concepts and measure their evaluative intensity. Using a corpus-based approach, we present a new method to distinguish evaluatively thick and thin adjectives like ‘courageous’ and ‘awful’ from descriptive adjectives like ‘narrow,’ and from value-associated adjectives like ‘sunny.’ Our study suggests that the modifiers ‘truly’ and ‘really’ frequently highlight the evaluative dimension of thick and thin adjectives, allowing for them to be uniquely classified. Based on these results, we believe our (...) operationalization may pave the way for a more quantitative approach to the study of thick and thin concepts. (shrink)

The standard view in philosophy treats pains as phenomenally conscious mental states. This view has a number of corollaries, including that it is generally taken to rule out the existence of unfelt pains. The primary argument in support of the standard view is that it supposedly corresponds with the commonsense conception of pain. In this paper, we challenge this doctrine about the commonsense conception of pain, and with it the support offered for the standard view, by presenting the results of (...) a series of new empirical studies that indicate that lay people not only tend to believe that unfelt pains are possible, but actually, quite common. (shrink)

Commitments are crucial for our lives but there is no consensus on how commitments and preferences relate to each other. In this paper, we present three empirical studies that provide evidence that people sometimes choose a less preferred option when they have made a commitment.

Through a series of empirical studies involving native speakers of English, German, and Chinese, this paper reveals that the predicate “true” is inherently ambiguous in the empirical domain. Truth statements such as “It is true that Tom is at the party” seem to be ambivalent between two readings. On the first reading, the statement means “Reality is such that Tom is at the party.” On the second reading, the statement means “According to what X believes, Tom is at the party.” (...) While there appear to exist some cross-cultural differences in the interpretation of the statements, the overall findings robustly indicate that “true” has multiple meanings in the realm of empirical matters. (shrink)

Colleagues are not only an integral part of many people’s lives; empirical research suggests that having a good relationship with one’s colleagues is the single most important factor for being happy at work. However, so far, no one has provided a comprehensive account of what it means to be a colleague. To address this lacuna, we have conducted both an empirical as well as theoretical investigation into the content and structure of the concept ‘colleague.’ Based on the empirical evidence that (...) we present in this paper, we argue that ‘colleague’ is a dual character concept that has both a descriptive and a normative basis for categorization. Its descriptive dimension is characterized by three features, according to which two people are colleagues if they work for the same institution and know each other, or if they work for the same institution and work in the same field. An independent normative dimension is revealed, which shows that, as colleagues, we are expected to fulfill substantial normative expectations. Understanding the expectations that are encoded in the very structure of this concept is crucial to lay the groundwork for an ethics of collegiality. (shrink)

Some of philosophy's most central concepts, including art, friendship, and happiness, have been argued to be dual character concepts. Their main characteristic is that they encode not only a descriptive dimension but also an independent normative dimension for categorization. This article introduces the class of dual character concepts and discusses various accounts of their content and structure. A specific focus will be placed on their relation to two other classes of concepts, thick concepts and natural kind concepts. The study of (...) dual character concepts not only demonstrates that a wide range of concepts is inherently normative, but it also reveals new possibilities for investigating gender biases, generics, and social roles. (shrink)

la morale, le droit et la religion Otfried Höffe. 12 LA RÉVOLUTION KANTIENNE DE LA THÉOLOGIE PHILOSOPHIQUE La question de Dieu fait partie des plus anciens thèmes de la philosophie; elle n'a pourtant pas son origine dans la ...

Konfabulacja to błędnie ugruntowane przekonanie, które jest skutkiem wypełniania luk w systemie poznawczym. Konfabulację należy odróżnić od kłamstwa, gdyż osoby konfabulujące nie mają intencji oszukania odbiorcy. Wyróżniam konfabulacje patologiczne oraz konfabulacje normalne. Przedstawiam dwa podejścia do problematyki konfabulacji: podejście pamięciowe i epistemiczne. Wedle tego pierwszego, wąskiego podejścia, konfabulacje są wynikiem uzupełniania luk w systemie pamięci. Zgodnie z drugim, szerszym podejściem, konfabulacje mogą być związane także z innymi domenami wiedzy, takimi jak np. percepcja wzrokowa czy percepcja ciała. W artykule proponuję, by (...) przyjrzeć się konfabulacjom jako różnego rodzaju trybom pracy umysłu w sytuacji braku dostępu do informacji. Wyróżniam konfabulacje wypełniające, scalające i addytywne. (shrink)

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work found that generics display a unique asymmetry between their acceptance conditions and the implications that are typically drawn from them. This paper presents evidence against the hypothesis that only generics display an asymmetry. Correcting for limitations of previous designs, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics, various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’), and variations in types (...) of predicated properties (striking vs. neutral). We discuss implications of these results for our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and whether and in which ways these effects might introduce biased beliefs into social networks. (shrink)

Most philosophers have largely downplayed any relevance of multiple meanings of the folk concept of truth in the empirical domain. However, confusions about what truth is have surged in political and everyday discourse. In order to resolve these confusions, we argue that we need a more accurate picture of how the term ‘true’ is in fact used. Our experimental studies reveal that the use of ‘true’ shows substantial variance within the empirical domain, indicating that ‘true’ is ambiguous between a correspondence (...) and a coherence reading. We then explore the consequences of these results for the project of re-engineering truth. (shrink)

People seem to perceive and locate pains in bodily locations, but also seem to conceive of pains as mental states that can be introspected. However, pains cannot be both bodily and mental, at least according to most conceptions of these two categories: mental states are not the kind of entities that inhabit body parts. How are we to resolve this paradox of pain? In this paper, I put forward what I call the ‘Developmental Challenge’, tackling the second pillar of this (...) paradox, i.e. the introspectionist view of pain according to which genuine pain reports are introspective reports. This view forms an inconsistent triad with two other widely held positions: young children make genuine pain reports, and young children do not make introspective reports. After introducing the paradox and the introspectionist view of pain in part 1, I present the developmental challenge, and defend both and. I conclude that the inconsistent triad can only be resolved by reconsidering the introspectionist view of pain. In discussing three potential factors that lead to the puzzling intricacies of our concept of pain, I argue that the concept of pain might not be paradoxical after all. (shrink)

Die größte politische Errungenschaft seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, die Europäische Union, sieht sich mit enormen Herausforderungen konfrontiert, die einen erneuten Europadiskurs erforderlich machen. Auf der einen Seite wollen immer mehr Länder der Union beitreten, neuerdings die Ukraine und Moldau. Weitere Länder wie Serbien und Montenegro führen seit bald zehn Jahren Beitrittsgespräche, ohne daß sich der Abschluss abzeichnete. Auf der anderen Seite wird die bestehende Union nicht nur von europafeindlichen Bewegungen bedroht, sondern verstoßen auch einige Länder gegen die europäischen Grundwerte, auf (...) die sie sich mit dem Beitritt zur Union verpflichtet hatten. Nicht zuletzt ist ein so bedeutendes europäisches Land wie das Vereinigte Königreich aus der Union ausgetreten und sind so wichtige Staaten wie Island, Norwegen und die Schweiz der Union erst gar nicht beigetreten. Diese Phänomene mahnen zur Bescheidenheit. Die Union muß einsehen, dass Europa in politischer, auch in wissenschaftlicher und kultureller Hinsicht in weit mehr als lediglich der Union besteht. Die teils gedankenlose, teils durchaus imperialistische Gleichsetzung unseres Kontinents mit der Union ist aufzugeben.Jedenfalls ist es an der Zeit, den Europadiskurs in der nicht bloß wirtschaftlichen, sondern auch gesellschaftlichen, politischen, insbesondere auch in der kulturellen Vielfalt und in jener Gründlichkeit zu erneuern, den die für uns existentiell überragende Sache, Europa, verdient. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of two corpus studies investigating the discourse surrounding conspiracy theories and genuine theories. The results of these studies show that conspiracy theories lack the epistemic and scientific standing characteristic of theories more generally. Instead, our findings indicate that conspiracy theories are spread in a manner that resembles the dissemination of rumors and falsehoods. Based on these empirical results, we argue that it is time for both re-engineering conspiracy theory and for relabeling "conspiracy theory". We propose (...) relabelling conspiracy theories as either "conspiracy stories" or "conspiracy narratives" to more accurately convey their true nature. (shrink)

Assertions are the centre of gravity in social epistemology. They are the vehicles we use to exchange information within scientific groups and society as a whole. It is therefore essential to determine under which conditions we are permitted to make an assertion. In this paper we argue and provide empirical evidence for the view that the norm of assertion is justified belief: truth or even knowledge are not required. Our results challenge the knowledge account advocated by, e.g. Williamson (1996), in (...) general, and more specifically, put into question several studies conducted by Turri (2013, 2016) that support a knowledge norm of assertion. Instead, the justified belief account championed by, e.g. Douven (2006), seems to prevail. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the practice of revising concepts to improve how people talk and think. Its ability to improve talk and thought ultimately hinges on the successful dissemination of desired conceptual changes. Unfortunately, the field has been slow to develop methods to directly test what barriers stand in the way of propagation and what methods will most effectively propagate desired conceptual change. In order to test such questions, this paper introduces the masked time-lagged method. The masked time-lagged method tests people's (...) conceptual understanding at two different points in time without their knowledge of being tested, allowing us to measure conceptual revision in action. Using a masked time-lagged design on a content internalist framework, we attempted to revise PLANET and DINOSAUR in online participants to match experts' concepts. We successfully revised PLANET but not DINOSAUR, demonstrating some of the difficulties conceptual engineers face. Nonetheless, this paper provides conceptual engineers, regardless of framework, with the tools to tackle questions related to implementation empirically and head-on. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of prominent scientists have argued that free will is an illusion, appealing to evidence demonstrating that information about brain activity can be used to predict behavior before people are aware of having made a decision. These scientists claim that the possibility of perfect prediction based on neural information challenges the ordinary understanding of free will. In this paper we provide evidence suggesting that most people do not view the possibility of neuro-prediction as a threat to (...) free will unless it also raises concerns about manipulation of the agent’s behavior. In Experiment 1 two scenarios described future brain imaging technology that allows perfect prediction of decisions and actions based on earlier neural activity, and this possibility did not undermine most people’s attributions of free will or responsibility, except in the scenario that also allowed manipulation. In Experiment 2 the scenarios increased the salience of the physicalist implications of neuro-prediction, while in Experiment 3 the scenarios suggested dualism, with perfect prediction by mindreaders. The patterns of results for these two experiments were similar to the results in Experiment 1, suggesting that participants do not understand free will to require specific metaphysical conditions regarding the mind–body relation. Most people seem to understand free will in a way that is not threatened by perfect prediction based on neural information, suggesting that they believe that just because “my brain made me do it,” that does not mean that I didn’t do it of my own free will. (shrink)

This paper details the content and structure of the folk concept of life, and discusses its relevance for scientific research on life. In four empirical studies, we investigate which features of life are considered salient, universal, central, and necessary. Functionings, such as nutrition and reproduction, but not material composition, turn out to be salient features commonly associated with living beings (Study 1). By contrast, being made of cells is considered a universal feature of living species (Study 2), a central aspect (...) of life (Study 3), and our best candidate for being necessary for life (Study 4). These results are best explained by the hypothesis that people take life to be a natural kind subject to scientific scrutiny. (shrink)

In a series of articles in this journal, Michael Tye (2002) and Paul Noordhof (2001, 2002) have sparred over the correct explanation of the putative invalidity of the following argument: the pain is in my fingertip; the fingertip is in my mouth; therefore, the pain is in my mouth. Whereas Tye explains the failure of the argument by stating that “pain “creates an intensional context, Noordhof maintains that the “in” in ‘the pain is in my fingertip’ is not spatial, but (...) has state-attributing character. In this paper, we offer a third account, explaining the failure of the argument through state-attributing pragmatic implicatures. Empirical evidence is provided in support of this account. (shrink)

This article presents an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's notion of pre-reflective intentionality, explicating the similarities and differences between his and Husserl's understandings of intentionality. The main difference is located in Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl's noesis-noema structure. Merleau-Ponty seems to claim that there can be intentional acts which are not of or about anything specific. He defines intentionality by its ``directedness'', which is described as a bodily, concrete spatial motility. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of intentionality is part of his attempt to rewrite the relation (...) between the universal and the particular. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and impossible to analyse by a distinction between form and matter. Still, Merleau-Ponty's notion of meaning and philosophy is strictly opposed to any naturalized philosophy. This becomes explicated at the end of the article, where his attempt to embody intentionality is compared to Daniel Dennett's corresponding approach. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant hat wie kein anderer Denker die Philosophie der Neuzeit geprägt. Aufgrund seiner überragenden Bedeutung liegen inzwischen auch schon mehrere Bände zu seinen Schriften in der Reihe Klassiker Auslegen vor. Kant ist im wahrsten Sinne ein universeller Denker, der sein Interesse auf nahezu alle Bereiche des menschlichen Lebens richtet. Nach ihm lässt sich dieses Interesse in drei Fragen bündeln: Was kann ich wissen? Wie soll ich handeln? Und: Was darf ich hoffen? Der Antwort auf die dritte Frage geht Kant (...) in seiner Schrift Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft nach. Hier, in seiner Religionsphilosophie, setzt er, gemäß der Grundüberzeugung der Aufklärung, seine Moralphilosophie fort. Gott ist für Kant nicht mehr wie etwa in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, auch noch bei Descartes ein Gegenstand des Wissens, sondern des Hoffens: Der moralisch handelnde Mensch hofft auf eine sinnvolle Ordnung des Weltganzen, auf einen Gott, dessen Existenz zusammen mit der Unsterblichkeit der Seele die notwendige Voraussetzung für das letzte Ziel des praktischen Handelns, für das höchste Gut, ist. Diese originelle Verbindung von zunächst als gegensätzlich Erscheinendem, von einer Moral der Autonomie mit dem Glauben an einen übernatürlichen Gott, bildet jedoch nicht das einzige Thema der Schrift. In ihr entwickelt Kant darüber hinaus eine differenzierte Theorie des moralisch Bösen und erörtert das Verhältnis zwischen einem bloßen Kirchenglauben und dem moralischen Religionsglauben. Dieser thematisch reichhaltige Text wird im von Otfried Höffe herausgegebenen Band in Form eines kooperativen Kommentars von international renommierten Autoren interpretiert und somit aktuell erschlossen. Mit Beiträgen von: Jochen Bojanowski, Johannes Brachtendorf, Andrew Chignell, Katrin Flickschuh, Maximilian Forschner, Otfried Höffe, Christoph Horn, Eberhard Jüngel, Douglas McGaughey, Reza Mosayebi, Burkhard Nonnenmacher, Friedo Ricken, Allen Wood. (shrink)