Summary The historical development of the non-standard analysis is sketched. With the help of this mathematical branch infinite and infinitesimal quantities are placed in an extension of the real numbers and so find their justification. In this way an old mathematical and philosophical problem is solved in the 20th century, but not in such a manner, mathematicians with classical „standard methods thought of.

We use the normality framework of Goodman and Salow (2018, 2021, 2023b) to investigate of dynamics of rational belief. The guiding idea is that people are entitled to believe that their circumstances aren’t especially abnormal. More precisely, a rational agent’s beliefs rule out all and only those possibilities that are either (i) ruled out by their evidence or (ii) sufficiently less normal than some other possibility not ruled out by their evidence. Working within this framework, we argue that the logic (...) of rational belief revision is much weaker than is usually supposed. We do so by isolating a natural family of orthodox principles about belief revision, describing realistic cases in which these principles seem to fail, and showing how these counterexamples are predicted by independently motivated models of the cases in question. In these models, whether one evidential possibility counts as sufficiently less normal than another is determined by underlying probabilities (together with a contextually determined question). We argue that the resulting probabilistic account of belief compares favorably with other such accounts, including Lockeanism (Foley, 1993), a ‘stability’ account inspired by Leitgeb (2017), the ‘tracking theory’ of Lin and Kelly (2012), and the influential precursor of Levi (1967). We show that all of these accounts yield subtly different but similarly heterodox logics of belief revision. (shrink)

Was tun mit arbeitsunfähigen Zwangsarbeitern? Die Lösungen, die dafür gefunden wurden, reichten von der Betreuung durch Werks-, Lager- oder niedergelassene Ärzte über Krankenstuben, spezielle Ausländerkrankenhäuser bis hin zur Abschiebung „in ihre Heimat“, wobei ungewiss war, ob sie jemals zu Hause ankamen. Im Verlauf des Krieges radikalisierte sich der Umgang mit ihnen. Spätestens 1944 sollten „geisteskranke Ostarbeiter und Polen“ in Heil- und Pflegeanstalten eingeliefert werden, wo über ihr weiteres Schicksal entschieden werden sollte. Dies wurde teilweise als Freibrief für Morde auch an (...) tuberkulösen Ausländern genutzt. Die Anstalt Pfafferode im heutigen Thüringen war ab September 1944 „Sammelstelle“ für die Länder Thüringen-Land und Provinz Sachsen, Anhalt. An ihrem Beispiel wird dargestellt, wie auch osteuropäische Zwangsarbeiter Opfer der dortigen Krankenmorde wurden. Detaillierte Aussagen des Personals belegen den Umgang mit Patienten auf den von Direktor Theodor Steinmeyer persönlich betreuten Stationen 17 und 18, auf denen auffallend viele Patienten ums Leben kamen. (shrink)

PREFACE It is a very small particle of the philosophic and scientific cosmos that bears Aristotle's name, in fact, it is little more than one page of the ...

The accessibility of art in Germany underwent a fundamental change over the course of the 18th century. Aristocratic collectors opened their doors to the general public, and new museums were dedicated exclusively to art. This development parallels the concurrent development of aesthetics in philosophy and the conception of the autonomy of art. Its theoretical foundation was provided by Kant in his third critique with such completeness that the standards of beauty he worked out emerge as constitutive elements of the art (...) museum. The Romantic movement reinforced the trend in what proved to be an ambivalent way. The general accessibility of art was well suited to its transgression of boundaries, but it necessitated a new, less contingent mode of demarcation between the work of art and the observer. That became an occasion for »Romanticization« of both the artwork and its audience, demonstrated here by August Wilhelm Schlegel’s conversation on art Die Gemählde. It is further elucidated by Friedrich Schlegel’s Nachricht von den Gemählden in Paris and its echo in two texts published by Kleist: The novella Die Heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik and the essay on Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Mönch am Meer that was drafted by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim and radically modified by Kleist. (shrink)

Good’s theorem is the apparent platitude that it is always rational to ‘look before you leap’: to gather information before making a decision when doing so is free. We argue that Good’s theorem is not platitudinous and may be false. And we argue that the correct advice is rather to ‘make your act depend on the answer to a question’. Looking before you leap is rational when, but only when, it is a way to do this.

Introduces the phenomenology of the Other, taking into account the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Schutz, and Derrida, but mostly going back to things themselves.

Wiederkehr des Raumes?. Topologisches Paradigmen ; Rückkehr zum gelebten Raum ; Raumkonzepte und Raumpraktiken ; Regionale oder fundamentale Räumlichkeit ; Zweideutigkeiten und Paradoxien der Lebenswelt -- Polarität von Ort und Raum. Phänomenologische Topik ; Wo-Frage im Schatten der Was-Frage ; Ortsbestimmung als Antwort auf eine Wo-Frage ; Fremde und eigene Wo-Frage ; Hier als Standort : Grund und Boden ; Woher und Wohin : Wegstrecken ; Worin : offene und geschlossene Räume ; Ringsum : Umgebung, Umwelt und Welt ; Wie (...) weit : Vermessene Räume -- Leibliches Wohnen im Raum. Vielfalt des Raumes ; Verankerung im Hier ; Raumachsen ; Durchmessung, Dehnung und Schrumpfung des Raumes ; Nähe und Ferne ; Drinnen und Draußen ; Interieur und Exterieur im Blickfield der Malerei ; Raumanlage und Raumbühne ; Raumtechniken und Ortskarten ; Lokale Räume und globaler Raum -- Ortsverschiebungen. Hier und Anderswo ; Aktualität, Habitualität und Virtualität der räumlichen Bewegung ; Spuren der Zeit im Raum ; Zersprengter Raum ; Telepräsenz ; Fremdorte und andere Räume ; Gemeinorte und globaler Raum ; Gastlichkeit ; Coda : Topos : Atopie : Heterotopien -- Zeitverdoppelung und Zeitverschiebung. Zwischen Mythos und Logos ; Frage nach der Zeit ; Zeitverdoppelung in der Rede und Zeitverkörperung ; Zeitverschiebung zwischen Pathos und Respons ; Zeitverschiebung und Reaktionszeit ; Der entrückte Anfang im Roman und auf der Bühne ; Zeit der Sinne ; Jenseits von Erinnerung und Erwartung ; Rhythmen und Tempi ; Zwischen Leere und Erfüllung ; Coda : Anderswo enden -- Die verändernde Kraft der Wiederholung. Wiederholungsexperiment ; Sich wiederholdende Erfahrung ; Widerholung als Rettung aus der Zeit ; Altes und Neues im Widerstreit ; Unwiederholbares in der Zeit -- Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Zukünftigem im Anschluß an Aristoteles. Handlungsperspektive ; Die drohende Seeschlacht ; Wahrscheinlichkeit und Häufigkeit ; Zwischen Gewißheit und Ungewißheit ; Rückzug auf pratische Gewißheit ; Zwischen Entwurf und Erwartung ; Unwahrscheinliche Zukunft -- Kommen und Gehen in der Zeit im Anschluß an Merleau-Ponty. Frühe dialektik der Zeit ; Zeit als bloßes Nacheinander ; Totalität der Zeit : Präsenzfeld ; Riß der Zeit : Selbstaffektion ; Bewegung der Zeit : Vor- und Rückläufigkeit ; Wahrnehmung zwischen Vor- und Rückblick ; Handeln zwischen Vorsatz und Vorschlag ; Kommen und Gehen ; Chiasmus der Zeit -- Epilog : Verquickung von Ort, Raum und Zeit. (shrink)

The essay reexamines the famous scene from Proust’s ›In Search of Lost Time‹ about the death of the writer Bergotte. In pointing out that the notorious ›patch of yellow wall‹ Bergotte claims to have discovered in Vermeer’s ›View of Delft‹ does not exist in the real painting, the article’s aim is to show that the scene is not to be read as an autobiographical recollection, but rather as a reflection on ›mimesis‹, i.e. on the transcendental conditions of perception and representation. (...) As such, it can be considered to have in large measure inspired the reorientation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological oeuvre towards a new ontology. On the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s recently published lecture notes, the essay locates the common concern of the writer and the philosopher in the idea of remembrance not as a derivative phenomenon, but as an originary mode of givenness. (shrink)

This chapter covers the traditional role of responsibility, and the possible connections between response and responsibility. These connections are explored through the advance of trust and the surplus of the extraordinary in relation to the Third Party. The idea of responsibility comes from the sphere of juridical law, and has a theological touch. The classical conception presented suffers from a permanent erosion that is reinforced by systemic constraints. Trust is a natural element of every community that is together applied by (...) common aims in life. The phenomenon of trust refers to the bond, the nexus, which holds together the members of a community, creating the requisite solidarity. The term ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’ should not primarily read as a substantive, but as a verb or as the derivative of a verb. Furthermore, it is noted that the responsive ethics proposed could function as a permanent corrective. (shrink)

Michael Dummett's approach to the metaphysical issue of realism through the philosophy of language, his challenge to realism, and his philosophy of language itself are central topics in contemporary analytic philosophy and have influenced the work of other major figures such as Quine, Putnam, and Davidson. This book offers an accessible and systematic presentation of the main elements of Dummett's philosophy. This book's overarching theme is Dummett's discussion of realism: his characterization of realism, his attack on realism, and his invention (...) and exploration of the anti-realist position. This book begins by examining Dummett's views on language. Only against that setting can one fully appreciate his conception of the realism issue. With this in place, Weiss returns to Dummett's views on the nature of meaning and understanding to unfold his challenge to realism. Weiss devotes the remainder of the book to examining the anti-realist position. He discusses anti-realist theories of meaning and then investigates anti-realism's revisionary consequences. Finally, he engages with Dummett's discussion of two difficult challenges for the anti-realist: the past and mathematics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to introduce cultural techniques to an Anglophone readership. Specifically geared towards an Anglophone readership, the paper relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques (a concept first employed in the 19th century in an agricultural context) to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather (...) than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims at presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. As Siegert points out, this shift recalls certain concurrent developments within the North American posthumanities; the paper therefore also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism. (shrink)

We show that strongly compact cardinals and MM are sensitive to $\lambda$-closed forcings for arbitrarily large $\lambda$. This is done by adding ‘regressive' $\lambda$-Kurepa trees in either case. We argue that the destruction of regressive Kurepa trees requires a non-standard application of MM. As a corollary, we find a consistent example of an $\omega_2$-closed poset that is not forcing equivalent to any $\omega_2$-directed-closed poset.

The paper starts out with a discussion of the difference between mythology and feasible concepts in robotics. Based on a novel brain model and an appropriate formalism, a distinction is made between auto-reflection and hetero-reflection of the robot and self-reflection of its constructor. Whereas conscious robots are able to auto-reflect their mechanical behavior and hetero-reflect the behavior with regard to the environment, the capability of self-reflection must remain within the constructor of the robot. This limitation of the construction of conscious (...) robots is mainly brain-theoretically and philosophically founded. Finally, it is proposed that in addition to a second nature, human technology may succeed in creating a third nature embodied as a society of robots. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the 1860s Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist and one of the foremost popularizers of Darwinism, proposed a natural philosophy called “Monism.” Based on developmental thinking, natural selection, and sound natural laws, the scientific Weltanschauung of Monism was to supersede Christian religion in all its accounts of nature. Haeckel's new scientific religion, this essay argues, fused the religious joys of reveling in the beauty of “mother nature” with the assurance of progress based on scientific certainty. Even though Haeckel and his followers (...) polemicized against dualistic and teleological interpretations of nature, and despite their fierce struggle against the Christian churches, Monism cannot conceal its roots. All central arguments of natural theology reappear – albeit sometimes in causal or reductionist phrasing. Haeckel's aesthetics of nature in particular shows his indebtedness to the concept of a divine economy of nature. His Monism is an evolutionary and pantheistic natural theology. (shrink)

A brain model based on glial-neuronal interactions is proposed. Glial-neuronal synaptic units are interpreted as elementary reflection mechanisms, called proemial synapses. In glial networks (syncytia), cyclic intentional programs are generated, interpreted as auto-reflective intentional programming. Both types of reflection mechanisms are formally described and may be implementable in a robot brain. Based on the logic of acceptance and rejection, the robot is capable of rejecting irrelevant environmental information, showing at least a "touch" of subjective behavior. Since reflective intentional programming generates (...) both relevant and irrelevant structures already within the brain, ontological gaps arise which must be integrated. In the human brain, the act of self-reference may exert a holistic function enabling self-consciousness. However, since the act of self-reference is a mysterious function not experimentally testable in brain research, it cannot be implemented in a robot brain. Therefore, the creation of self-conscious robots may never be possible. Finally, some philosophical implications are discussed. (shrink)

We characterize the tree of functions with finite support in terms of definability. This turns out to have various applications: a new kind of tree dichotomy for ω1 on the one hand. On the other hand, we prove a reflection principle for trees on ω2 under SPFA. This reflection of trees implies stationary reflection.