The purpose of Key Approaches to Biblical Ethics is to address fundamental as well as practical questions of methodology in examining the ethical material of the Bible. Sixteen scholars of international reputation, most of them leaders in the field of biblical ethics, discuss questions of biblical interpretation from the perspectives of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament ethics in close dialogue with one another. In the present volume both established and new approaches to biblical ethics are presented and discussed. The (...) result is a volume of unprecedented scholarly interaction that provides key insights into issues of biblical ethics that play a significant role both for biblical interpretation as well as for methodological questions in Jewish and Christian ethics today. (shrink)

This contribution attempts to define the relation between phenomenology and philosophy of practice by considering their respective conceptions of philosophy and especially the consequences of modern critiques of metaphysics. The two characteristic perspectives of performative metaphysics and of meaning analysis are used for further critical inquiry into the standpoints of phenomenology and philosophy of practice. As a conclusion, this inquiry is continued in a common area of interest of both standpoints, that is, the relation between personality and embodied being.

Some monothematic types of delusions may arise because subjects have unusual experiences. The role of this experiential component in the pathogenesis of delusion is still not understood. Focussing on delusions of alien control, we outline a model for reality testing competence on unusual experiences. We propose that nascent delusions arise when there are local failures of reality testing performance, and that monothematic delusions arise as normal responses to these. In the course of this we address questions concerning the tenacity with (...) which delusions are maintained, their often bizarre content, the patients' inability to dismiss them, and their often circumscribed character. (shrink)

Der Band dokumentiert Beiträge zum 18. Symposium des Mediävistenverbandes, das im Frühjahr 2019 in Tübingen stattgefunden hat. Das Thema greift aktuelle Debatten über Autorschaft, Urheberrecht, Originalität und Plagiat auf, die anzeigen, dass diese Konzepte neuerdings in Bewegung geraten sind. Die Beiträge des Bandes fragen aus unterschiedlichen Fachperspektiven, ob und inwiefern die Verfahren des Umgangs mit Autorschaft zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne am Ende stärker vergleichbar sind als gemeinhin angenommen. So werden die aus der Moderne gebildeten Kategorien von Kreativität hinterfragt und unterlaufen. (...) Zugleich zeigt sich, dass eben diejenigen Kreativitätsprozesse der Moderne, die den hohen normativen Ansprüchen einer Geniekultur nicht entsprechen, nicht einfach Defizienzerscheinungen sind, sondern Variationen vielfach geübter Techniken, zu deren Verständnis die mittelalterliche Produktivität dient. Schaffen und Nachahmen sind nicht in einen "künstlerischen" Bereich der Kultur sektorierbar, sondern sie erweisen sich als Grundstruktur menschlichen Handelns auch im wissenschaftlichen, ethischen oder religiösen Feld. So liegt mit diesem Band ein starkes Plädoyer für die Anerkennung der kreativen Kraft der Nachahmung vor. (shrink)

Some monothematic types of delusions may arise because subjects have unusual experiences. The role of this experiential component in the pathogenesis of delusion is still not understood. Focussing on delusions of alien control, we outline a model for reality testing competence on unusual experiences. We propose that nascent delusions arise when there are local failures of reality testing performance, and that monothematic delusions arise as normal responses to these. In the course of this we address questions concerning the tenacity with (...) which delusions are maintained, their often bizarre content, the patients’ inability to dismiss them, and their often circumscribed character. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures contains previously unpublished notes from lectures given by Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1938 and 1941. The volume offers new insight into the development of Wittgenstein’s thought and includes some of the finest examples of Wittgenstein’s lectures in regard to both content and reliability.

At the centre of the traditional discussion of truth is the question of how truth is defined. Recent research, especially with the development of deflationist accounts of truth, has tended to take truth as an undefined primitive notion governed by axioms, while the liar paradox and cognate paradoxes pose problems for certain seemingly natural axioms for truth. In this book, Volker Halbach examines the most important axiomatizations of truth, explores their properties and shows how the logical results impinge on (...) the philosophical topics related to truth. In particular, he shows that the discussion on topics such as deflationism about truth depends on the solution of the paradoxes. His book is an invaluable survey of the logical background to the philosophical discussion of truth, and will be indispensable reading for any graduate or professional philosopher in theories of truth. (shrink)

We investigate axiomatizations of Kripke's theory of truth based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme for treating sentences lacking a truth value. Feferman's axiomatization KF formulated in classical logic is an indirect approach, because it is not sound with respect to Kripke's semantics in the straightforward sense: only the sentences that can be proved to be true in KF are valid in Kripke's partial models. Reinhardt proposed to focus just on the sentences that can be proved to be true in (...) KF and conjectured that the detour through classical logic in KF is dispensable. We refute Reinhardt's Conjecture, and provide a direct axiomatization PKF of Kripke's theory in partial logic. We argue that any natural axiomatization of Kripke's theory in Strong Kleene logic has the same proof-theoretic strength as PKF, namely the strength of the system RA< ωω ramified analysis or a system of Tarskian ramified truth up to ωω. Thus any such axiomatization is much weaker than Feferman's axiomatization KF in classical logic, which is equivalent to the system RA<ε₀ of ramified analysis up to ε₀. (shrink)

Cognitive neuropsychiatry attempts to understand psychiatric disorders as disturbances to the normal function of human cognitive organisation, and it attempts to link this functional framework to relevant brain structures and their pathology. This recent scientific discipline is the natural extension of cognitive neuroscience into the domain of psychiatry. We present two examples of recent research in cognitive neuropsychiatry: delusions of control in schizophrenia, and affective disorders. The examples demonstrate how the cognitive approach is a fruitful and necessary supplement to the (...) otherwise successful biological psychiatry paradigm, which tend to bypass the cognitive level. Philosophy concerns some of the core concepts involved in psychiatric illness, particularly concerning rationality, thought and action, reality testing, and the self. We present concrete examples that illustrate how philosophical conceptual tools can be particularly important for the construction and interpretation of the cognitive models relevant to the understanding of psychiatric illness. We conclude that cognitive neuropsychiatry is a fruitful and necessary supplement to biological psychiatry. Furthermore, cognitive neuropsychiatry itself may benefit significantly from employing philosophical conceptual tools in the interpretation and construction of its cognitive models. The cognitive and philosophical approaches may thus be further steps towards a scientific psychopathology. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 6-29.

This article—mainly referring to the situation in Germany—consists of three parts. In a first section the current presence of neurosciences in the public discourse will be described in order to illuminate the background which is relevant for contemporary educational thinking. The prefix ‘neuro-’ is ubiquitous today and therefore concepts like ‘neuropedagogy’ or ‘neurodidactics’ seem to be in the mainstream of modern thinking. In the second part of the article the perspective changes from the public discourse to the disciplinary discourse; a (...) brief excursus into developmental psychiatry, neuropsychology and modern psychoanalysis will be made in order to demonstrate how the results of neuroscientific research are integrated in their theoretical frameworks. These three disciplines have no difficulty in integrating neuroscientific findings because each of them possesses a systematic core composed of ‘native concepts’. In contrast to them, educational theory has much more difficulty with such integration, as will be shown in the third part of the essay. On the one hand, neuroscientific thinking seems to be able to dominate education rather easily and without great resistance, especially in the fields of early childhood education, instruction and learning—mainly by simplifying educational processes and by reducing the complexity of the educational task to a mere ‘relationship problem’. On the other hand, this attraction of neuroscience in education might be understood as the reflection of a theoretical deficit in educational theory itself, with the significance of affect and emotion not receiving proper attention. (shrink)

To the axioms of Peano arithmetic formulated in a language with an additional unary predicate symbol T we add the rules of necessitation and conecessitation T and axioms stating that T commutes with the logical connectives and quantifiers. By a result of McGee this theory is -inconsistent, but it can be approximated by models obtained by a kind of rule-of-revision semantics. Furthermore we prove that FS is equivalent to a system already studied by Friedman and Sheard and give an analysis (...) of its proof theory. (shrink)

ArgumentIt is well known that the development of a diphtheria anti-toxin serum evolved in a competitive race between two groups of researchers, one affiliated with Emil Behring in Berlin and Marburg, and another affiliated with Émile Roux in Paris. Proceeding on the basis of different theoretical assumptions and experimental practices, the two groups developed a therapeutic serum almost simultaneously. But the standardized substance they developed took on very different forms in the two countries. In Germany the new serum was marketed (...) in the private sphere and subjected to state regulations, becoming a kind of prototype of industrial medications. In France, however, the same substance was marketed as a gift of science to humanity and distributed through the communal health care system. This article demonstrates how a new medication emerged from the efforts to produce, market, regulate, distribute, and apply it in the two respective countries. It attributes the difference to the negotiations between the respective actors (scientists, industrialists, politicians, officers, and the public) and institutions (firms, academies, private and public institutes, legislative bodies, professional corporations). I develop this argument on three different levels: First, I stress the importance of the institutional foundations of serum production; second, I illustrate the decisive role played by existing “ways of regulating” in the rapid development of new legal statutes; and third, I describe the consequences that flowed from the respective administrative organization of marketing and dissemination. In sum, I explore how an experimental object was transformed into an object of the public health system and stabilized by administrative means. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the potential contribution of Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition to empirical and normative debates on global justice. I first present, very briefly, an overview of recent theories of global distributive justice. I argue that theorists of distributive justice do not pay enough attention to sources of self-respect and conditions for identity formation, and that they are blind toward the danger of harming people's sense of self even by well-intentioned redistributive policies. Honneth's (...) theory suffers from complementary shortcomings; it is anti-technocratic but largely oblivious to the global nature of many contemporary justice claims. Given this situation, I seek to broaden the theory's scope by outlining transnational extensions of the recognition principles of love, rights and solidarity identified by Honneth. In conclusion, I show how utilizing a broadened conceptualization of the struggle for recognition allows us to better understand the changing logic of justice-oriented foreign policies. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the likely failure in the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation, and also intends to offer perspectives on the new role of competition in a steady state or a degrowth economy. The analysis is based on five different scenarios, and uses the European Union as an example. It is concluded that we must prepare ourselves for a potential incompatibility between sustainability and economic growth. In this respect one can say that (...) the current EU situation is in some ways already quite close to an economic system without growth, although far from sustainable as yet. Two of the four perspectives developed, regarding the new role of competition in an economy without growth, indicate an increase of direct and indirect competition over resources. The other two perspectives point out that regulatory public intervention as well as financial intervention will increase in order to ensure that - despite the revised role of competition - the poorest are still given a chance to develop (e.g. through basic minimum incomes), even in a degrowth economy. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGViele Christen tragen Bedenken, die Aussage »geboren von der Jungfrau Maria« zu bekennen. Dabei ist es – diesem Essay zufolge – nicht primär das biologische Wunder, sondern sind es vielmehr dessen Ausdeutungen, die problematisch sind. Es gibt weder fundamentaltheologische noch christologische Glaubenssätze, die durch das »natus ex Maria virgine« angemessen zur Sprache gebracht werden. Wohl aber steht die Rede von der Jungfrauengeburt für zwei ethische Einsichten, nämlich erstens Respekt vor der Privatsphäre Marias und zweitens Begrenzung einer religiösen Deutungssucht. Daher steht (...) sie mit gutem Grund im Bekenntnis der Kirche.SUMMARYMany Christians have reservations in confessing the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. This essay argues that the interpretations of the virgin birth are the problematic elements and not the biological miracle. Although there are neither theological fundamentals nor christological creeds dependent upon natus ex Maria virgine, it nevertheless has two valuable ethical meanings: first it claims respect for the privacy of Mary, and secondly it restricts the religious desire to find meaning in every inherited conviction. Therefore, the creed remains for good reasons in the doctrine of the church. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the complex conditions for the emergence of 19th-century symbolic logic. The main scope will be on the mathematical motives leading to the interest in logic; the philosophical context will be dealt with only in passing. The main object of study will be the algebra of logic in its British and German versions. Special emphasis will be laid on the systems of George Boole and above all of his German follower Ernst Schröder.

Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations (...) on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science–society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get entangled. This article discusses the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that in the development of modern logic towards its actual shape at least two directions or traditions have to be distinguished. These traditions may be called, following the mo...

The book provides a thematic account of the changing political thought of critical theorists from Adorno to Habermas and Honneth. Its purpose is to establish the relevance of this tradition for contemporary political theory and philosophy.

The article addresses the following question: if an extensive period of globalization and also democratization after the fall of the Berlin Wall has been followed by populism, does this mean that there is something wrong with liberalism itself? Must liberalism be substituted by alternative economic and political concepts? The article presents three alternatives to liberalism that are supposed to counter populism: a new communitarianism, a renewal of the democratic project as much as novel conceptions of social justice. However, it takes (...) also into account positions that address the current crisis from within the liberal framework itself. (shrink)

Against competing political theories of the integration of immigrants, we propose to reframe the relationship between the populations of host countries and arriving refugees in terms of a neo-Maussian theory of gift exchange. Using the example of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the welcoming attitude of significant parts of German civil society, we argue that this particular situation should be understood as epitomizing the trend toward internal transnationalism. Increasingly, the “international” is becoming part and parcel of the “domestic” (...) sphere. Since Marcel Mauss was concerned with the question of how separate, culturally different communities can establish ties of solidarity and cooperation between each other, we use his work to answer key questions about the relations between international refugees and native citizens in their home countries: What are the expectations underlying gift-giving in the context of welcoming refugees? Should refugees feel obliged to repay the arrival gifts? How sh... (shrink)

Definitional and axiomatic theories of truth -- Objects of truth -- Tarski -- Truth and set theory -- Technical preliminaries -- Comparing axiomatic theories of truth -- Disquotation -- Classical compositional truth -- Hierarchies -- Typed and type-free theories of truth -- Reasons against typing -- Axioms and rules -- Axioms for type-free truth -- Classical symmetric truth -- Kripke-Feferman -- Axiomatizing Kripke's theory in partial logic -- Grounded truth -- Alternative evaluation schemata -- Disquotation -- Classical logic -- Deflationism (...) -- Reflection -- Ontological reduction -- Applying theories of truth. (shrink)

The attempts to mitigate the unprecedented health, economic, and social disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are largely dependent on establishing compliance to behavioral guidelines and rules that reduce the risk of infection. Here, by conducting an online survey that tested participants’ knowledge about the disease and measured demographic, attitudinal, and cognitive variables, we identify predictors of self-reported social distancing and hygiene behavior. To investigate the cognitive processes underlying health-prevention behavior in the pandemic, we co-opted the dual-process model of thinking (...) to measure participants’ propensities for automatic and intuitive thinking vs. controlled and reflective thinking. Self-reports of 17 precautionary behaviors, including regular hand washing, social distancing, and wearing a face mask, served as a dependent measure. The results of hierarchical regressions showed that age, risk-taking propensity, and concern about the pandemic predicted adoption of precautionary behavior. Variance in cognitive processes also predicted precautionary behavior: participants with higher scores for controlled thinking (measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test) reported less adherence to specific guidelines, as did respondents with a poor understanding of the infection and transmission mechanism of the COVID-19 virus. The predictive power of this model was comparable to an approach (Theory of Planned Behavior) based on attitudes to health behavior. Given these results, we propose the inclusion of measures of cognitive reflection and mental model variables in predictive models of compliance, and future studies of precautionary behavior to establish how cognitive variables are linked with people’s information processing and social norms. (shrink)

In many fields of contemporary thought and scholarship, the classical construct of a clean division between “emotion” and “reason” has been revised. As a result, politics is no longer seen as a sphere in need of protection against the dark forces of emotion that might creep in where they do not belong. Against the backdrop of this conceptual shift the article examines the theme of emotion in the political thought of Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. The aim is to gauge (...) the extent to which these thinkers can be read as having prepared the ground for a reassessment of the role of emotion in public life that moves beyond the classical European dichotomy of reason vs. passion. Two claims are being made. Both thinkers were still immersed in a conceptual world in which emotions were irrational, disruptive of appropriate ways of reasoning and as such closely linked to the dark powers of the masses. Yet both also held subtler positions on the relationship between reason, emotion, and democracy, and these positions are less well understood. (shrink)

This article suggests reading Theodor Adorno not as a notoriously pessimistic sociologist but as a committed public educator. Partly drawing on still unpublished transcripts of lectures, public talks and radio broadcasts from the 1950s and ’60s, the article offers an account of Adorno’s concept and practice of a ‘democratic pedagogy’. The key question is how we should understand the difference between Adorno the social philosopher, on the one hand, and Adorno the educator, on the other. It is argued that Adorno’s (...) pedagogical interventions are not a footnote to his social theory, but a key to understanding his entire oeuvre. (shrink)

As show the partly violent clashes between liberal secularists and Islamists in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the two factions certainly defend two diametrically opposite political points of view. For liberals, politics finds its ultimate justification in the protection of individual freedom. For Islamists, only the application of the moral code and religious law codified in the shariah can justify politics. Contrary to what is sustained by a theory of situated agency, there is no easy and definite reconciliation between (...) the two positions. And this depends precisely upon the fact that both political models are based upon the very same idealist conception of the individual, namely the assumption that we, as persons, have a free will and are not determined by the law of causality. Paradoxical as it might sound, it is our freedom that gives rise to the problem of identity and lends force to the Islamist argumentation. If freedom as such cannot bring about practical reason and also liberals recognize that the ultimate source of normativity is identity, there is a point in the Islamist and, more general, communitarian claim that we are not free to choose our identity. In order that identity does the normative work it is supposed to do, it must be given and not chosen. What remains, however, unclear in the communitarian picture is how the norms of our community can come to constitute our will without a process of active identification. If we cannot identify voluntarily with our community’s norms, then only emotional attachment to our community can explain identification and the normative grip communitarian norms have upon us. Yet, attachment is conditioned by the effective satisfaction of our psychological and physical needs. The problem is that our need for freedom and liberty can become overshadowed by our more immediate needs based, for example, upon resentment and revenge and that today makes Muslims in particular to be so hostile towards liberal ideas. I suggest that conciliatory trust-building measures can help to surmount the anger, fear, mistrust and suspicion Muslims feel vis-à-vis the West and that are at the origin of today’s conflict between freedom and identity in the Muslim world. (shrink)

Zermelos Zeit in Göttingen (1897?1910) kann als wissenschaftlich fruchtbarste Periode in seiner Karriere angesehen werden. Gleichwohl stehen bisher Untersuchungen aus. die eine Einbettung von Zermelos Werk in den biographischen und sozialen Kontext ermöglichen Die vorliegende Studie will diese Lücke unter Konzentration auf zwei Gegenstandsbereiche teileweise ausfüllen: (1) den historischen Entstehungskontext von Zermelos ersten Arbeiten über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre; (2) die Vorgeschichte und näheren Umstände des 1907 an Zermelo verliehenen Lehrauftrages für mathematische Logik und verwandte Gegenstände. mit dem ein erster (...) Schritt zur Institutionalisierung dieses Faches als mathematischer Teildisziplin gemacht wurde. Beides wird in enger Verbindung zur ersten Phase des Hilbertschen Programms zur Grundlegung der Mathematik gesehen. Es wird aber auch gezeigt, daß für die Erteilung des Lehrauftrages neben diesen systematischen und forschungspolitischen Motiven auch persönliche und institutspolitische Rücksichten ausschlaggebend waren. Im Anhang werden Teile eines Briefwechsels zwischen Ernst Zermelo und dem Göttinger Philosophen Leonard Nelson ediert sowie die Anträge der Direktoren des Göttinger mathematisch-physikalischen Seminars auf Erteilung des Lehrauftrags und auf Ernennung Zermelos zum außerordentlichen Professor. Zermelo's Göttingen period (1897?1910) can be regarded as the most fruitful period in his scientific career. Nevertheless, up till now there have been no investigations which enable us to embed his work in its biographical and social contexts. This study tries to partially fill the gap, concentrating on two major themes: (I) the historical context of the development of Zermelo's early work on the foundations of set theory; (2) the prehistory and particulars of his lectureship for mathematical logic and related topics, this lectureship, which he was awarded in 1907, being the first step taken in Germany towards the establishment of this subject as a separate mathematical discipline. Both will be seen in close connection with the first phase of Hilbert's programme of founding mathematics. It is shown, however, that this lectureship was not only created to further the aims of Hilbert's research programme but that personal and institutional motives also played a role. In the appendices, parts of a correspondence between Ernst Zermelo and the Göttingen Philosopher Leonard Nelson are edited, as well as the applications of the directors of the Göttingen Mathematisch-physikalisches Seminar for awarding the lectureship to Zermelo in 1907, and for appointing Zermelo to an extraordinary professorship in 1910. (shrink)

Is a Muslim still a Muslim when he crashes airplanes into the twin towers? Any serious theory of multiculturalism has to deny that Islam could ever come to justify suicide bombing and terrorism. My thesis is that none of the contemporary multicultural theories manages to do so, or at least not without collapsing into a Kantian conception of personal autonomy and, consequently, into some standard version of liberalism. Communitarianism, trying to demonstrate that fundamentalism has nothing to do with the true (...) and authentic Islam and that it does not take into account the pluralism prevailing in Islam, has to moralize Islam. A Humean position, which takes Islamic fundamentalism to be merely a pathology, the product of resentment and western neocolonialism, eventually could come to the conclusion that good and upright Muslims today cannot help but become suicide bombers. Liberal multiculturalism, considering identity to be a matter of choice, must suppose that an active agent with self-knowledge is by definition a responsible person with a moral identity. In conclusion, multiculturalism, in its effort to make the good identities prevail over the bad and the ugly identities, risks adopting some of the same righteous attitudes towards Islam as traditional liberalism. (shrink)

This compilation refers to the springs, prehistory, foundation and effectiveness of the oldest surgical school in Saxony. This institute for second-rate physicians, surgeons and barbers was necessary because especially the military medicine and the medical practice turned out to be a weak spot. The „Collegium medico-chirurgicum (1748–1813) in Dresden had disposed of the first clinical hospital with lessons at the sickbed, the first maternity ward and the first dental-surgery lectureship in Saxony. it was an exemplary and guiding educational establishment which (...) did not belong to the university but connected theory and practice sometimes better than the universities. (shrink)