The concept of hope—as used in ordinary language in assertions of (for example) the form ›Person S hopes that p‹—can be analysed in terms of belief, desire, and, as I claim, affective quality. According to my analysis, one feature of hope is that what S hopes for has some subjective probability for S. Hope thus has an epistemic component on which demands of rationality can be (and, as a matter of fact, are) placed. Ordinary language distinguishes various types of deficient (...) hoping. On the basis of my explication of ›hope‹, it can be shown that types of deficient hope differ in the way in which they violate rationality. A particularly interesting type of deficient hoping is self-deceptive hope. Self-deception centrally involves the formation or retention of beliefs under the influence of biasing motivational factors. And hope, through its conative component, contains just such a motivation for self-deception. Hope is thus closely, if only contingently, connected with self-deception: not all hope is self-deceptive, but it is natural and presumably rather common for hopes to involve self-deception. Hope’s susceptibility to self-deception is one of the primary reasons why hope has been the subject of ambivalent or even negative valuation, the main conflict being the one between (important) benefits of hoping and the value of truth. (shrink)

The experimental philosophy movement advocates the use of empirical methods in philosophy. The methods most often discussed and in fact employed in experimental philosophy are appropriated from the experimental paradigm in psychology. But there is a variety of other (at least partly) empirical methods from various disciplines that are and others that could be used in philosophy. The paper explores the application of corpus analysis to philosophical issues. Although the method is well established in linguistics, there are only a few (...) tentative attempts of philosophers to utilise it. Examples are introduced and the merit of corpus analysis is compared to that of using general internet search engines and questionnaires for similar purposes. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

The volume contains a selection of papers read in the sections of GAP.5, the Fifth International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, which took place 22–26 September 2003 at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. The overall theme of the congress was “Philosophy – Science – Scientific Philosophy, but the papers address a wide variety of topics from various fields of philosophy.

In this chapter, we outline the range of argument forms involving causation that can be found in everyday discourse. We also survey empirical work concerned with the generation and evaluation of such arguments. This survey makes clear that there is presently no unified body of research concerned with causal argument. We highlight the benefits of a unified treatment both for those interested in causal cognition and those interested in argumentation, and identify the key challenges that must be met for a (...) full understanding of causal argumentation. (shrink)

Translation exercises are useful for teaching philosophical writing in higher education, but are not commonly used for this purpose. The article details the benefits such exercises may have for the motivation of students and for the improvement of their writing skills, particularly the kind of linguistic scrutiny required in much, if not all of philosophy. By way of example, some experiences with teaching J. L. Austin’s "How to Do Things With Words" in this way are discussed.

Utopien beschreiben andere Verhältnisse, um reale Gesellschaften zu kritisieren oder Alternativen zu ihnen zu entwerfen. Sie können ernst sein oder spielerisch. Alle Formen und Realitätsbezüge des Utopischen haben ihren Ort. Aber wir möchten für eine bestimmte Spielart plädieren: Angewandten Utopismus.

The paper aims at characterising self-deceptive hope, a certain kind of ir-rational hoping. The focus is on ordinary, intentional hope exclusively, i. e. on acts of hoping with a definite object (in contrast to dispositional forms of hope such as hopefulness). If a person S hopes in this way that p, she desires that p, she has a belief about the probability of p, and she affec-tively evaluates this probability in one of two ways: We can distinguish between anxious and (...) confident hope. Both may involve self-deception. In self-deception, desire tampers with belief, such that S’s belief that q is based on reasons which in turn are based on a distorted perception or mis-interpretation of evidence available to S. Self-deceptive hopes, I argue, are based on self-deceptive probability beliefs. We are particularly prone to such hoping when we attach great importance to what we hope for but are confronted with evidence which would give us reason to think that our hope cannot be fulfilled. Although even under these conditions there is no necessary but only a contingent connection between self-deception and hope, it is a very natural one. (shrink)

Report on the workshop "Empirical Methods of Linguistics in Philosophy", which took place at TU Dortmund University, Germany, on March 13–14, 2014.

Lässt sich Kunst definieren? Von vielen analytischen Kunstphilosophen wird das bezweifelt. Für sie ist der Kunstbegriff ein “offener Begriff”, der auf unterschiedlichste Phänomene angewandt werden kann, selbst wenn diese keine gemeinsame Eigenschaft miteinander verbindet. Wer danach fragt, was Kunst denn eigentlich sei, verkennt in ihren Augen das Wesen des Kunstbegriffs. Träfe diese Auffassung zu, wären philosophische Theorien über das Wesen der Kunst bloße Spekulation. Der Streit um den Kunstbegriff, der bis heute nicht beigelegt ist, ist deshalb ein Streit um die (...) Grundlagen und die Möglichkeit einer Ästhetik der Kunst. Der Band stellt die wichtigsten Protagonisten dieses Streits in Aufsätzen vor, die hier größtenteils zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung vorliegen. Er enthält Beiträge von Berys Gaut, William E. Kennick, Maurice Mandelbaum, Robert J. Matthews, Robert Stecker, Morris Weitz und Paul Ziff. (shrink)

Quine ist ein Klassiker der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Doch Quine erläutert nichts und erklärt wenig. Der von ihm angenommene Leser etwa seiner berühmten Aufsatz-Sammlung From a Logical Point of View ist der Fachkollege, der ebenso wie Quine die jeweilige aktuelle Debatte genau kennt. Die vorliegende zweisprachige und vor allem vollständig durchkommentierte Ausgabe legt drei seiner wichtigsten Aufsätze aus dieser Sammlung (On What There Is / Über was es gibt, Two Dogmas of Empiricism / Zwei Dogmen des Empirismus und Reference and Modality / (...) Referenz und Modalität) vor. Auf diese Weise kann sich jeder Leser mit diesen gedanklich faszinierenden Texten beschäftigen. (shrink)

The glamour and misery of mankind are at the heart of this book, but it also addresses the tradition and the renewal of the human image. Significant photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries engage in a sometimes surprising dialogue with Masters of European painting from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century.

The 2015 Disneyland outbreak of measles in the US unequivocally brought to light what had been brewing below the surface for a while: a slow but steady decline in vaccination rates resulting in a rising number of outbreaks. This can be traced back to an increasing public questioning of vaccines by an emerging anti-vaccination movement. This article argues that, in the face of diminishing vaccination rates, childhood vaccinations should not be seen as part of the domain of parental choice but, (...) instead, as a non-negotiable legal obligation. The first part of the article formulates and defends two arguments in favour of unqualified mandatory childhood vaccination laws. First, government should not permit parents to put their children at avoidable risk of death and suffering; second, government should guard the common good of herd immunity to protect vulnerable persons. The second part rejects legal and pragmatic objections against such mandatory vaccination laws. (shrink)

This article undertakes a dual task. The first is to argue that the various positions of major Marxist thinkers on revolution may be gathered under the common framework of kairós, understood as a resolutely temporal term relating to the critical time, the opportune moment that appears unexpectedly and must be seized. The second task is to question the nature of kairós in terms of its biblical, class and economic residues. An investigation of the use of the term in classical Greece (...) reveals that it refers to both time and place, designating primarily what is in the right time and correct place. Given the class identifications of the Greek writers who deal with kairós and their subtle defences of their propertied, ruling class status, the term becomes problematic in light of these associations that trail behind it. In response, I seek to develop the political implications of the true opposite of kairós, namely ákairos, what is ill-timed and in the wrong place. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Contemporary bioethics as an academic discipline mainly focuses on moral questions – according to its articulated self-concept and the explicit arguments in most areas of bioethical reflection. Concepts and theories of the good life are hardly considered. Arguments: In reality the ‘good life’ plays a much more important role than it is assumed, but mostly only in an implicit way. The article demonstrates this by referencing three selected fields of bioethical discussion. Hence the article argues that (...) bioethics should turn the ‘good life’ into an issue of intense, explicit and systematic consideration. Furthermore, the article provides an initial answer to the questions as to why the ‘good life’ has been marginalized within bioethics up to this point and which function it can assume in future bioethical reflection. Conclusion: The ‘good life’ is the blind spot of bioethics. A more intensive and systematic consideration of the ‘good life’ is a challenge for contemporary and future bioethics. (shrink)

The primary meaning of the Song would then have to do with human sexual love—the experience of it, its delights, its fidelity, and its power.

The Book of Psalms is a school of prayer in which we are taught language that grasps the reality of God and given models that encourage us to present ourselves to God with honest realism.

Considering the organization’s ethical context as a framework to investigate workplace phenomena, this field study of military reserve personnel examines the relationships among perceptions of psychosocial group variables, such as cohesiveness, helping behavior and peer leadership, employee job attitudes, and the likelihood of individuals’ withholding on-the-job effort, a form of organizational misbehavior. Hypotheses were tested with a sample of 290 individuals using structural equation modeling, and support for negative relationships between perceptions of positive group context and withholding effort by individual (...) employees was found. In addition, individual effort-performance expectancy and individual job satisfaction were negatively related to withholding effort. The findings provide evidence that individual perceptions of positive group context play a key role in the presence of misbehavior at work. The results indicate that positive group context might be an important element of ethical climate that should be managed to temper occurrence of such adverse work behavior. (shrink)