ABSTRACTIf war is an inevitable condition of human nature, as David Hume suggests, then what type of societies can best protect us from defeat and conquest? For David Hume, commerce decreases the relative cost of war and promotes technological military advances as well as martial spirit. Commerce therefore makes a country militarily stronger and better equipped to protect itself against attacks than any other kind of society. Hume does not assume commerce would yield a peaceful world nor that commercial societies (...) would be militarily weak, as many contemporary scholars have argued. On the contrary, for him, military might is a beneficial consequence of commerce. (shrink)

This book is about the nature of sensory perception. Contributions focus on five questions, i.e.: (1) What distinguishes sensory perception from other cognitive states? Is it true, for instance, that perceptual content, in contrast to the phenomenal content of sensations like pain, always depends on the perceivers conceptual resources? (2) How do we have to explain the intentionality of perceptual states? (3) What is the nature of perceptual content? (4) In which sense do the objects of sensory perception depend on (...) the constitution of the perceiver? How, for instance, do secondary qualities like colours, sounds and smells depend on the perception of human subjects? (5) How can we account for the intentionality of misperceptions? These questions are addressed through the interpretation of classical historical texts as well as in the context of systematical reflections. With contributions by Margaret Atherton, Michael Ayers, Peter Baumann, Martha Brandt Bolton, Thomas Grundmann, Gary Hatfield, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Andreas Kemmerling, Bertram Kienzle, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Dominik Perler, Jay F. Rosenberg, Katia Saporiti, Ralph Schumacher, Gerald Vision, and Russell Wahl. (shrink)

The desire for founding educational reform on a sound empirical basis has coincided with a period of impressive progress in the field of neuroscience and wide public interest in its findings, leading to an ongoing debate about the potential of neuroscience to inform education reform. But is neuroscience really suited to provide specific instructions for improving learning conditions at school? This paper explores the educational implications of neuroscience.

Theoretical Laws and Normative Rules: Kant and Bolzano's Views on Logic'"1" Anita Von Duhn, Genf Does logic instruct us how to think correctly? ...

Die fünf Bände enthalten die überarbeiteten Fassungen aller Haupt- und Sektionsvorträge des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, der im März 2000 an der Berliner Humboldt-Universität stattfand. Die Beiträge gliedern sich in die folgenden Sektionen: Der vorkritische Kant, Kants Theoretische Philosophie, Kants Praktische Philosophie, Kants Ästhetik, Kants Religionsphilosophie, Kants Geschichtsphilosophie, Kants Rechts-, Staats- und Politische Philosophie, Kants Anthropologie, Kants Naturphilosophie und das Opus postumum, Kants Logik, Kant und die Aufklärung, Kant, Deutscher Idealismus und Neukantianismus, Kant und die Folgen. Zu den Autoren zählen u.a. (...) Manfred Baum, Mario Caimi, Konrad Cramer, Jean Ferrari, Eckhardt Förster, Michael Friedman, Simone Goyard-Fabre, Paul Guyer, Gary Hatfield, Agnes Heller, Dieter Henrich, Otfried Höffe, Wolfgang Kersting, Béatrice Longuenesse, Onora O'Neill, Robert Pippin, Gerold Prauss und Michael Wolff. (shrink)

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after (...) his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this article, we discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf. (shrink)

Although their contributions to the history of economic thought and their scholarly reputations are firmly established, relatively little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of economics, and his son, Karl Menger, the mathematician, geometer, logician, and philosopher of science, whose famous Mathematical Colloquium at the University of Vienna was central to the early literature on the existence of general equilibrium and the concomitant development of mathematical economics. The present paper begins to fill this (...) gap. Karl Menger’s diaries, held in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, offer insight into the intimate relationships within the Menger clan, Karl’s work and study habits, and the development of his uncommonly broad intellect, as well as on life in a vanquished city, Vienna, in the immediate wake of the humiliating defeat of the First World War and the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit steht die Frage, ob sich Aussagen über die Grenzen der Irrationalität von Personen a priori rechtfertigen lassen: Gibt es bestimmte Rationalitätsanforderungen, die mit rein begrifflichen Argumenten als für alle Personen verbindlich ausgewiesen werden können ? Um diese Frage differenziert zu beantworten, wird eine Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Arten von Rationalitätsanforderungen eingeführt: Rationalitätsstandards und Rationalitätsbedingungen. Es wird dafür argumentiert, daß sich unabhängig von der Erfahrung ausschließlich Aussagen über den Umfang der Rationalität von Personen begründen lassen. Personen müssen demnach (...) wenigstens minimal rational sein, damit ihnen propositionale Einstellungen wie Überzeugungen und Absichten zugeschrieben werden können. Hingegen läßt sich anhand rein begrifflicher Argumente nicht entscheiden, welche Rationalitätsstandards von Personen erfüllt werden müssen, um Träger propositionaler Einstellungen sein zu können. Dies ist durchaus damit verträglich, daß sich a priori Rationalitätsbedingungen festlegen lassen, welche die Eingangsbedingungen dafür darstellen, daß Subjekte überhaupt als Kandidaten für rationales oder irrationales Verhalten aufgefaßt werden können. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, (...) phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal qualities. Second, they cannot be intentional properties, since they are not essential properties of visual experiences, and because the content of visual experiences cannot be constituted by contingent properties. (shrink)

Optische Täuschungen ändern ihr Aussehen nicht in Abhängigkeit von unserem Kenntnisstand. Sie sind damit gegenüber unseren Überzeugungen kognitiv undurchdringbar. Wie läßt sich dies erklären, und kann die kognitive Undurchdringbarkeit optischer Täuschungen als Beleg dafür interpretiert werden, dass es völlig theoriefreie Wahrnehmungen gibt? Im folgenden wird dafür argumentiert, dass Berkeleys Wahrnehmungstheorie überzeugendere Antworten auf diese Fragen liefert als Jerry Fodors Theorie der Modularität des Geistes. Berkeleys Ansatz ist deshalb besonders interessant, weil er die Fähigkeit zur visuellen Wahrnehmung geometrischer Eigenschaften als Resultat (...) von Lern- und Assoziationsprozessen darstellt. Wie die Dinge für uns aussehen, hängt demnach davon ab, welche Erfahrungen und Gewohnheiten wir erworben haben. Im Unterschied zu Fodors Theorie ist Berkeleys Ansatz in der Lage, die kognitive Undurchdringbarkeit optischer Täuschungen zu erklären und dabei gleichzeitig ihrem epistemischen Charakter Rechnung zu tragen. (shrink)

One of the main targets of Barry Stroud’s criticism in his recent book ‚The Quest for Reality. Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour’ are eliminativist theories of colour which he regards as a version of the metaphysical project of the unmasking of colours (Stroud, 2000). According to this view, no physical objects have any of the colours we see them or believe them to have. However, although this error theory describes all our colour perceptions as illusory, and all our colour (...) beliefs as false, it cannot deny that we actually perceive colours and that we do believe that physical objects are coloured. Therefore, it has to account for these psychological facts without relying on any assumptions about the colours of things. Thus, the central question for the unmasking project is whether it is possible to acknowledge someone’s perceiving a certain colour or having beliefs about the colours of things without holding that anything anywhere has any colour at all. Contrary to Stroud, this paper defends the view that we can acknowledge that people believe in colours without having ourselves to accept their existence. (shrink)

Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...) cause certain experiences in normal human perceivers. Hence, it seems as if colours as they are experienced by us have no place in the physical world, because they are fundamentally different from the properties which we ascribe to physical objects in scientific accounts of colour perceptions. This special issue on perspectives on colour perception presents new suggestions to solve to this major problem. (shrink)

Während in der Forschungsliteratur zu Berkeleys Theorien bis in die 70er Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts Gesamtdarstellungen dominierten, in denen es wie zum Beispiel in den Monographien von A. A. Luce, Ian Tipton und George Pitcher um die Kritik oder Verteidigung seines Immaterialismus und direkten Realismus geht, konzentriert sich die Diskussion seit den 80er Jahren auf die Untersuchung historischer Entwicklungslinien sowie auf einzelne konzeptuelle und argumentative Beiträge Berkeleys zur Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik. Im folgenden wird anhand von drei zentralen Fragestellungen ein repräsentativer (...) Überblick über die Forschungsliteratur zu Berkeleys Philosophie gegeben: Auf welche Weise kritisiert Berkeley den Repräsentationalismus, und wie verteidigt er seinen Immaterialismus? Wird Berkeley seinem Anspruch gerecht, unserem Alltagsrealismus in wesentlichen Punkten Rechnung zu tragen? Wodurch zeichnet sich Berkeleys direkter Realismus aus? (shrink)