More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal set theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a (...) mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to illuminate some core aspects of Leibniz’s conception of judgement and its place in his conception of the mind. In particular, the paper argues for three claims: First, the act of judgement is at the centre of Leibniz’s conception of the mind in that minds strive at actualising innate knowledge concerning derivative truths, where the actualising involves an act of judgement. Second, Leibniz does not hold a judgement account of predication, but a two-component account (...) that distinguishes between predication and alethic evaluation. Third, Leibniz understands the act of affirmative judgement in terms of establishing active dispositions, i.e. strivings, to make reasons available for future reasoning that aims at answering whether-questions. Correspondingly, he understands the act of negative judgement in terms of establishing dispositions to ban propositions from future reasoning that aims at answering whether-questions. In the final analysis, the acts of affirmative as well as of negative judgement turn out to be acts of changing memory dispositions. (shrink)

A journey surveying the land of space, time and motion Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9575-8 Authors Christian Wüthrich, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0119, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Artificial intelligence represents a key technology being inbuilt into evermore products. Research investigating attitudes towards artificial intelligence surprisingly is still scarce, although it becomes apparent that artificial intelligence will shape societies around the globe. To better understand individual differences in attitudes towards artificial intelligence, the present study investigated in n = 351 participants associations between the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) and the Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence framework (ATAI). It could be observed that in particular higher levels of SADNESS were (...) associated with higher negative attitudes towards AI (fearing AI). The findings are discussed in this work from an evolutionary perspective because primary emotional systems—according to Affective Neuroscience Theory—represent tools for survival, which have been homologously conserved across mammalian species including homo sapiens. (shrink)

This is a review of Andrei Marmor's book "Foundations of Institutional Reality", Oxford University Press, 2023.

This essay is a critical assessment of Sellars' interpretation and criticism of Descartes. It argues that Sellars made several mistakes in his view of Descartes, although the general thrust of his critique is sound.

"Mathématicien et philosophe, Jean Cavaillès (1903-1944) a compris en toute clarté que la philosophie n'est ni maîtresse ni servante des mathématiques et des sciences, mais qu'elle peut être leur amie. Elle n'a pas à s'arroger la fonction magistrale de vérifier à leur place la solidité de leurs fondements ni à contrôler ou exploiter leurs résultats pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu ou de la Cause. Elle n'a pas non plus à s'asservir aux mathématiques ou aux sciences comme sources uniques (...) de vérité, justice ou justesse. Une philosophie amie des sciences entretient avec elles un dialogue à bénéfice mutuel : elle s'instruit auprès d'elles et peut, en retour, procurer aux mathématiciens et scientifiques une conscience plus claire de leur propre pratique, s'ouvrant avec eux à l'histoire de cette pratique. Observer la pensée scientifique, dans son travail, ses difficultés et ses succès, et l'aider à s'observer elle-même : tâche aussi libératrice que difficile qui vise l'impérissable idéal aristotélicien de la pensée de la pensée. Voilà la haute et rayonnante ambition de Cavaillès. C'est cet héritage que les cinq auteurs de ce livre ont voulu transmettre et commencer à faire fructifier. Et il fallait pour cela : libérer Cavaillès des interprétations unilatérales, souvent enjeux de pouvoir universitaire, telle celle qui en fait le héraut d'une "science sans cogito" ; retrouver la pluralité de ses inspirations philosophiques. Refusant aussi bien filiation que rupture définitive, il a une lecture critique-productive de Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Brunschvicg... Spinoza, explicitement évoqué par lui à propos de son engagement dans la Résistance, est une de ses références possibles quand il traite de l'auto-développement des mathématiques ; respecter la diversité de ses centres d'intérêt mathématiques. Il s'intéresse, on le sait, à l'axiomatisation et à la formalisation de la théorie des ensembles, mais tout autant ou plus à son surgissement chez Dedekind et Cantor, à la construction des ensembles finis à partir des ensembles infinis, à l'hypothèse du continu, etc. mettre ses catégories emblématiques (paradigme et thématisation) à l'épreuve d'autres moments essentiels de l'histoire des mathématiques que celui de l'essor de la théorie des ensembles ; pratiquer un dialogue amical entre mathématiciens et philosophes dans des études d'"épistémographie" entrelaçant histoire fine et philosophie. Aux lecteurs de juger si l'héritage est entre de bonnes mains."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Teil 1: Entwicklungsgeschichtliche und -- Systematische Aspekte.

O pensamento político-constitucional do Marquês de Caravelas -- Extratos de discursos parlamentares do Marquês de Caravelas.

To study how populist sentiments have increasingly influenced businesses in society, we examine how German and Swedish corporations addressed the refugee situation in their 2015 and 2016 annual reports. We find that corporations changed their communication once refugee migration became subjected to populist political sentiments, but that they did so without subscribing to those sentiments. Although populism is based on such sharp oppositions as welcoming refugees or closing borders, our analysis shows that corporations have found ways to communicate about the (...) refugee migration beyond these oppositions. Rather than taking a political stance, the corporations studied have primarily articulated the refugee situation as it pertains to their business operations. We identify four modes of articulation: the refugee as someone needing international aid, as a factor for economic analysis, as a benefit recipient, or as a potential stakeholder. These findings help nuance our understanding of how corporations navigate contested political issues. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to outline a new account of the virtue of patience. To help build the account, we focus on five important issues pertaining to patience: (i) goals and time, (ii) emotion, (iii) continence versus virtue, (iv) motivation, and (v) good ends. The heart of the resulting account is that patience is a cross-situational and stable disposition to react, both internally and externally, to slower than desired progress toward goal achievement with a reasonable level of calmness. (...) The article ends with an application of the account to better understanding the vices associated with patience. (shrink)

Firms operating in developing economies are increasingly expected to implement CSR practices aligned with recognized global standards. Drawing on extensive field study data in four Latin American countries, we contribute to business ethics scholarship by making visible and explaining firm shortcomings across social, environmental, and governance goals and activities of CSR. Building on and extending sensemaking literature, we find that leaders and managers responsible for their firms’ CSR activities make sense of and justify CSR shortcomings. We specify that justification based (...) on individual, organizational/industry, and macro-environmental influences serves as a mechanism that decouples firms’ actual CSR practices from recognized CSR standards. Further, we propose that detachment, involving disconnection from the local operating environment, underlies the CSR shortcomings of firms. We develop a theoretical multi-level model that specifies justification as a mechanism and detachment as an underlying driver of CSR shortcomings. (shrink)

Kripke and Putnam have convinced most philosophers that we cannot do metaphysics of nature by analysing the senses of natural kind terms -- simply because natural kind terms do not have senses. Neo-descriptivists, especially Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, believe that this view is mistaken. Merging classical descriptivism with a Kaplan-inspired two-dimensional framework, neo-descriptivists devise a semantics for natural kind terms that assigns natural kind terms so-called 'primary intensions'. Since primary intensions are senses by other names, Jackson and Chalmers conclude (...) that we can and should do metaphysics of nature by analysing the natural kind concepts competent speakers possess. I argue that neo-descriptivism does not provide a suitable basis for doing this kind of metaphysics. I first of all give a detailed account of the neo-descriptivist semantics and deflate the intuitive support neo-descriptivists try to draw from their case of the XYZ-world. I then present three arguments -- the Argument from Ignorance, the Argument from Conceptual Analysis, and the Argument from Laziness. Taken together, these arguments undermine the neo-descriptivist analysis of natural kind terms. I conclude that natural kind terms do not have senses, that we cannot do metaphysics of nature by analysing the senses of our kind terms, and that the Kripke-Putnam account still provides the best semantics for natural kind terms we have. (shrink)

We treat the problem of reasoning with ambiguous propositions. Even though ambiguity is obviously problematic for reasoning, it is no less obvious that ambiguous propositions entail other propositions, and are entailed by other propositions. This article gives a formal analysis of the underlying mechanisms, both from an algebraic and a logical point of view. The main result can be summarized as follows: sound reasoning with ambiguity requires a distinction between equivalence on the one and congruence on the other side: the (...) fact that \ entails \ does not imply \ can be substituted for \ in all contexts preserving truth. Without this distinction, we will always run into paradoxical results. We present the sequent calculus \, which we conjecture implements sound and complete propositional reasoning with ambiguity, and provide it with a language-theoretic semantics, where letters represent unambiguous meanings and concatenation represents ambiguity. (shrink)

We live today in the first global system of sovereign states in history, encompassing all of the world's polities, peoples, religions and civilizations. Christian Reus-Smit presents a new account of how this system came to be, one in which struggles for individual rights play a central role. The international system expanded from its original European core in five great waves, each involving the fragmentation of one or more empires into a host of successor sovereign states. In the most important, (...) associated with the Westphalian settlement, the independence of Latin America, and post-1945 decolonization, the mobilization of new ideas about individual rights challenged imperial legitimacy, and when empires failed to recognize these new rights, subject peoples sought sovereign independence. Combining theoretical innovation with detailed historical case studies, this book advances a new understanding of human rights and world politics, with individual rights deeply implicated in the making of the global sovereign order. (shrink)

States and other climate actors now commonly set ‘net zero’ targets – pledging that, by a certain date, they will put no more carbon into the atmosphere than they take out. However, there is controversy over what exactly should count as attaining such targets. The method of emissions accounting that states currently use – territorial emissions accounting – is often criticized as problematic, but a fully satisfactory explanation of the problem is needed. We argue that the key both to understanding (...) the problem and to solving it is that there is a specific kind of cooperative contribution – a mereological contribution – that a national net zero commitment needs to make to global climate action in order to meet the standards that global citizens should hold states to. On this basis, we propose an alternative method – Contributory Value-Chain Accounting – showing how it can be qualified to reflect trade relationships between net-zero-aligned countries, and defending it against the objections that it involves double counting, is infeasible and too informationally demanding, and that it would send the wrong incentive signals. (shrink)

Gott ist schon seit Nietzsche tot? aber was ist mit dem Teufel? Woher kommt er, wie hat er seine bekannte Gestalt angenommen, und warum kann auch er nichts weiter als ein Produkt menschlicher Abstraktion sein? Erstmals in der Historie der Philosophie wird die Vermenschlichung des Teufels umfassend und interdisziplinär aufgeschlüsselt, um ihn als das zu entschleiern, was er ist: eine menschliche Kopfgeburt, die lediglich ein hässliches Abziehbild von uns selbst ist. Diese Erkenntnis mündet in den anthropologischen Adiabolismus, die anthropologische Teufelsverneinung: (...) Der Teufel ist nur die leere Hülle des ausgelagerten menschlich Bösen. Anhand vielfältiger Disziplinen wie Anthropologie, Theologie, Kunstgeschichte, Literatur und Volkskunde wird die riesige Anthropomorphismus-Matrix des Teufels religionsphilosophisch enthüllt. Von Feuerbachs wegweisender Religionskritik ausgehend weitet Matthias Christian Friedel den Blick auf Teufelsbilder der gesamten Religionsgeschichte und gelangt über die grossen Teufelscharaktere der Literatur bis zum Teufelsbild im wörtlichen Sinne: Den Abschluss seiner umfassenden Teufelsstudie bildet ein 57-seitiger Katalog, der mit vielen der bemerkenswertesten Teufelsabbildungen, von Blake und Doré bis Goethe, die Entstehungsgeschichte unserer heutigen Vorstellungswelt illustriert. (shrink)

In his famous monadological metaphysics, Leibniz distinguishes between simple monads, animal monads, and rational monads or minds. This tripartite metaphysical distinction is mirrored by his discrimination between cognitive performances these three types of monads are capable of. Simple monads perceive; animal monads additionally remember, sense, and mimic reasoning by associating mental images; rational monads, furthermore, think, reflect on and know themselves, know eternal truths, and reason logically. This essay will focus on Leibniz's account of the cognitive performances of minds and (...) their relationship to those of animal monads. After Leibniz's notion of perception is introduced in section three, in section four the essay turns to his conception of sensation in animal monads. The following sections five to seven address the mental performances typical of minds and present Leibniz's conceptions of ideas, concepts, thoughts, apperception, sensation in rational monads, and conscientia. While at the beginning of the essay Leibniz's views get situated in the context of early modern philosophy of mind, especially as it relates to Descartes and the Aristotelian tradition, the essay concludes with a summary of the main innovations we find in his conception of cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse Émilie Du Châtelet’s (1706–49) account of causation which, in turn, is crucial for understanding her philosophical main work, the Institutions de physique (1740/1742). So far, the topic of causation in Du Châtelet’s thought has received but little attention despite its importance. I will show that Du Châtelet’s account of physical causation is that of physical influx much in line with the position taken by some of the most prominent eighteenth-century German metaphysicians at the time of (...) the publication of her Institutions: Martin Knutzen (1713–49), Johann Peter Reusch (1691–1758) and the pre-Critical Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). I will argue that physical influx takes place at the level of simple substances or physical monads, and I will defend my interpretation against the main objection to physical influx: that it conflicts with Leibniz’s non-transfer argument. The ultimate metaphysical details regarding how physical influx has to be understood remain an issue, that of understanding the causality of the cause. This, however, is an issue that other causal theories face, too (in their own way). (shrink)

How did Elijah Muhammad's establishment of the Nation of Islam affect the civil rights movement in the United States? Philosophers and Religious Leaders answers that question and others as it presents 200 leaders whose lives and work have greatly influenced the world we live in today. Profiles include: Muhammad Abduh—architect of Islamic modernism. Mary Daly— influential feminist theologian and philosopher. Mary Baker Eddy—founder of Christian Science. Mencius (Meng K'o)—Confucian moral philosopher and interpreter. Shang Yang—Chinese philosopher of legalist school.

In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insufficient as a justification of fairness in competition, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfair even (...) if the usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness, where ‘U’ stands for the ‘usual’ fairness notion, and S-fairness, where ‘S’ stands for the ‘sequential’ aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom: first of all, there is an ‘eclipse’ of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors’ choices always operate in the sense of increased competitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of an increased effort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfair even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect a deeper aspect of unfairness. (shrink)