Das Gluck bildet seit den Anfangen abendlandischen Denkens das thematische Zentrum der praktischen Philosophie. Die Realisierung des grosstmoglichen Glucks der grossten Zahl, die sich die Aufklarung auf ihre Fahne geschrieben hat, gehort zu den theoretischen praktischen Herausforderungen der Gegenwart. Dieser ungebrochenen Aktualitat verdankt die Aufklarung vielfaltige Bemuhungen zu ihrer Erforschung, in die sich die vorliegenden Untersuchungen einreihen. Indem sie ihr Augenmerk auf die expliziten wie impliziten philosophischen Aufklarungsdenker richten und durch eine philosophisch geleitete Lekture ihrer Texte das komplexe philosophische Profil (...) des Illuminismo zwischen Mailand und Florenz herausarbeiten, beheben sie speziell im Bereich der Philosophiegeschichte bestehende Defizite in der Aufklarungsforschung. Sie bieten die erste umfassendere Darstellung der nord- und mittelitalienischen Philosophie der Aufklarung. (shrink)

Le volume intitulé Philosophie der Lust. Studien zum Hedonismus, édité par M. Erler et W. Rother, s’inscrit dans le prolongement du congrès « Lust-Freude-Begierde. Der Hedonismus von den Anfängen bis zur Neuzeit » qui s’est tenu du 15 au 17 avril 2010 à Würzburg. L’ouvrage a pour finalité d’aborder les discours philosophiques sur le plaisir, de l’Antiquité à la période moderne. Le choix du titre du recueil, cependant, la volonté, en outre, de mettre en évidence l’existence, au cours des (...) siècl... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 3 Seiten: 349-352.

Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through information or experience; induction and belief change are one and same topic, after all. The most basic of these rules is simply to conditionalize with respect to the information received; and there are similar and more general rules. 1 Hence, a fundamental reason for the epistemological success of (...) probability theory is that there at all exists a well-behaved concept of conditional probability. Still, people have, and have reasons for, various concerns over probability theory. One of these is my starting point: Intuitively, we have the notion of plain belief; we believe propositions2 to be true (or to be false or neither). Probability theory, however, offers no formal counterpart to this notion. Believing A is not the same as having probability 1 for A, because probability 1 is incorrigible3; but plain belief is clearly corrigible. And believing A is not the same as giving A a probability larger than some 1 - c, because believing A and believing B is usually taken to be equivalent to believing A & B.4 Thus, it seems that the formal representation of plain belief has to take a non-probabilistic route. Indeed, representing plain belief seems easy enough: simply represent an epistemic state by the set of all propositions believed true in it or, since I make the common assumption that plain belief is deductively closed, by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it. But this does not yet provide a theory of induction, i.e. an answer to the question how epistemic states so represented are changed tbrough information or experience. There is a convincing partial answer: if the new information is compatible with the old epistemic state, then the new epistemic state is simply represented by the conjunction of the new information and the old beliefs. This answer is partial because it does not cover the quite common case where the new information is incompatible with the old beliefs. It is, however, important to complete the answer and to cover this case, too; otherwise, we would not represent plain belief as conigible. The crucial problem is that there is no good completion. When epistemic states are represented simply by the conjunction of all propositions believed true in it, the answer cannot be completed; and though there is a lot of fruitful work, no other representation of epistemic states has been proposed, as far as I know, which provides a complete solution to this problem. In this paper, I want to suggest such a solution. In [4], I have more fully argued that this is the only solution, if certain plausible desiderata are to be satisfied. Here, in section 2, I will be content with formally defining and intuitively explaining my proposal. I will compare my proposal with probability theory in section 3. It will turn out that the theory I am proposing is structurally homomorphic to probability theory in important respects and that it is thus equally easily implementable, but moreover computationally simpler. Section 4 contains a very brief comparison with various kinds of logics, in particular conditional logic, with Shackle's functions of potential surprise and related theories, and with the Dempster - Shafer theory of belief functions. (shrink)

The intervention of the divine in human history, more precisely the transition from fiction to incarnation that is peculiar to the origins of Christianity, marks a turning-point in our understanding of the genealogical principle. With a Son of Man who is also Son of God and his Mother's Father, there is no paternity and, more generally, no genealogy that is not reversible. To this questioning of elementary kinship structures we should add the contesting of the hitherto accepted distribution of genders (...) and sexes. The superimposition of the Holy Family and the Trinity created an uncertain sex whose effect is to uncouple sex from its functions, in particular procreation. Hence a circulation and instability of sex. It is from this viewpoint that we should see the notion of an androgynous Christ and the Church Fathers' thinking on the resurrected body. (shrink)

Concentrating upon applications that are most relevant to modern physics, this valuable book surveys variational principles and examines their relationship to dynamics and quantum theory. Stressing the history and theory of these mathematical concepts rather than the mechanics, the authors provide many insights into the development of quantum mechanics and present much hard-to-find material in a remarkably lucid, compact form. After summarizing the historical background from Pythagoras to Francis Bacon, Professors Yourgrau and Mandelstram cover Fermat's principle of least time, the (...) principle of least action of Maupertuis, development of this principle by Euler and Lagrange, and the equations of Lagrange and Hamilton. Equipped by this thorough preparation to treat variational principles in general, they proceed to derive Hamilton's principle, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and Hamilton's canonical equations. An investigation of electrodynamics in Hamiltonian form covers next, followed by a resume of variational principles in classical dynamics. The authors then launch into an analysis of their most significant topics: the relation between variational principles and wave mechanics, and the principles of Feynman and Schwinger in quantum mechanics. Two concluding chapters extend the discussion to hydrodynamics and natural philosophy. Professional physicists, mathematicians, and advanced students with a strong mathematical background will find this stimulating volume invaluable reading. Extremely popular in its hardcover edition, this volume will find even wider appreciation in its first fine inexpensive paperbound edition. (shrink)

In this paper two theories of defeasible reasoning, Pollock's account and my theory of ranking functions, are compared, on a strategic level, since a strictly formal comparison would have been unfeasible. A brief summary of the accounts shows their basic difference: Pollock's is a strictly computational one, whereas ranking functions provide a regulative theory. Consequently, I argue that Pollock's theory is normatively defective, unable to provide a theoretical justification for its basic inference rules and thus an independent notion of admissible (...) rules. Conversely, I explain how quite a number of achievements of Pollock's account can be adequately duplicated within ranking theory. The main purpose of the paper, though, is not to settle a dispute with formal epistemology, but rather to emphasize the importance of formal methods to the whole of epistemology. (shrink)

We define classes Φnof formulae of first-order arithmetic with the following properties:(i) Everyφϵ Φnis classically equivalent to a Πn-formula (n≠ 1, Φ1:= Σ1).(ii)(iii)IΠnandiΦn(i.e., Heyting arithmetic with induction schema restricted to Φn-formulae) prove the same Π2-formulae.We further generalize a result by Visser and Wehmeier. namely that prenex induction within intuitionistic arithmetic is rather weak: After closing Φnboth under existential and universal quantification (we call these classes Θn) the corresponding theoriesiΘnstill prove the same Π2-formulae. In a second part we consideriΔ0plus collection-principles. We (...) show that both the provably recursive functions and the provably total functions ofare polynomially bounded. Furthermore we show that the contrapositive of the collection-schema gives rise to instances of the law of excluded middle and hence. (shrink)

SummaryA simple and precise definition is offered of “term t of theory T being T‐theoretical” which can be applied to any formalized theory. The definition is in line with and emends traditional accounts of theoreticity. Its adequacy is demonstrated by application to three examples: exchange economics, classical mechanics and collision mechanics.