In proof-theoretic semantics, meaning is based on inference. It may seen as the mathematical expression of the inferentialist interpretation of logic. Much recent work has focused on base-extension semantics, in which the validity of formulas is given by an inductive definition generated by provability in a ‘base’ of atomic rules. Base-extension semantics for classical and intuitionistic propositional logic have been explored by several authors. In this paper, we develop base-extension semantics for the classical propositional modal systems |$K$|⁠, |$KT$|⁠, |$K4$| and (...) |$S4$|⁠, with |$\square $| as the primary modal operator. We establish appropriate soundness and completeness theorems and establish the duality between |$\square $| and a natural presentation of |$\lozenge $|⁠. We also show that our semantics is in its current form not complete with respect to euclidean modal logics. Our formulation makes essential use of relational structures on bases. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce and explain display calculi for a variety of logics. We provide a survey of key results concerning such calculi, though we focus mainly on the global cut elimination theorem. Propositional, first-order, and modal display calculi are considered and their properties detailed.

The theory of the organism-environment system starts with the proposition that in any functional sense organism and environment are inseparable and form only one unitary system. The organism cannot exist without the environment and the environment has descriptive properties only if it is connected to the organism. Although for practical purposes we do separate organism and environment, this common-sense starting point leads in psychological theory to problems which cannot be solved. Therefore, separation of organism and environment cannot be the basis (...) of any scientific explanation of human behavior. The theory leads to a reinterpretation of basic problems in many fields of inquiry and makes possible the definition of mental phenomena without their reduction either to neural or biological activity or to separate mental functions. According to the theory, mental activity is activity of the whole organism-environment system, and the traditional psychological concepts describe only different aspects of organisation of this system. Therefore, mental activity cannot be separated from the nervous system, but the nervous system is only one part of the organism­environment system. This problem will be dealt with in detail in the second part of the article. (shrink)

ArgumentEighteenth-century Montpellerian vitalism and contemporaneous French “vitalist” materialism, exemplified by the medical and biological materialism of La Mettrie and Diderot, differ in some essential aspects from some later forms of vitalism that tended to postulate immaterial vital principles or forces. This article examines the arguments defending the existence of vital properties in living organisms presented in the context of eighteenth-century French materialism. These arguments had recourse to technological metaphors and analogies, mainly clockworks, in order to claim that just as machines (...) can have functional properties which its parts do not possess, so living organisms can, as material entities, also have organic or vital properties which its material parts do not possess. Such arguments, with the help of a healthy dose of epistemological scepticism, tend to strike a balance between two positions concerning the ontology of life which we now tend to label “vitalism” and “emergentism.” Although there is nothing inconsistent in viewing vital properties as emergent, some ambiguity results if one does not draw a clear distinction between properties and functions. The philosophical problems related to these ambiguities are revealed in Diderot's apparent hesitation concerning sentience as “a general property of matter or the product of organization.”. (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory opens new perspectives for understanding animal extinction. The umwelt is interpreted here as a sum of structural correspondences between an animal’s subjective experience, ecosystem, physiology, and behaviour. The global environmental crisis disturbs these meaning-connections. From the umwelt perspective, we may describe extinction as umwelt collapse: The disintegration of an animal’s umwelt resulting from the cumulative errors in semiotic processes that mediate an organism and ecosystem. The loss of umwelt-ecosystem integration disturbs “ecological memory,” which provides the (...) ecosystem with adaptive modelling and self-design capacities. Making a distinction between core and mediated umwelts, and describing different types of umwelt collapse, are suitable methods for more detailed analysis. The concept of umwelt collapse enables the reinterpretation of extinction, from an internal perspective, as a semiotic breakdown. Such an approach may help us map scenarios of animal extinction, and may lead to successful compensation strategies in adapting to environmental change. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose social relations (...) are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

This study investigated the effects of the 6 Minutes Journal, a commercial diary combining several positive psychology interventions, including gratitude, goal-setting, and self-affirmation exercises, on several mental health outcome measures. In a randomized controlled trial, university students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: 6MT and a wait list control group. Participants in the intervention group were instructed to follow the instructions of the 6MT for 4 weeks. Participants in both groups completed measures of perceived stress, positive and negative (...) affect, self-efficacy and resilience at baseline, after 2, and 4 weeks. We used path-analyses with autoregressive and cross-lagged effects to test our hypotheses of the effects of the 6MT. Participants in the intervention group reported decreased levels of perceived stress and negative affect, as well as increased levels of resilience and self-efficacy compared to the control group. Positive affect was not statistically significantly influenced. The data showed a statistically significant increased levels of self-efficacy and resilience only after 4 weeks, suggesting that changing these constructs needs more time. The 6-minute diary does not appear to make individuals fundamentally more positive. However, the intervention may have a protective function against negative influences on well-being. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Adorno's metacritique of freedom in Negative Dialectics and related texts remains fruitful today. I begin with some background on Adorno's conception of ‘metacritique’ and on Kant's conception of freedom, as I understand it. Next, I discuss Adorno's analysis of the experiential content of Kantian freedom, according to which Kant has reified the particular social experience of the early modern bourgeoisie in his conception of unconditioned freedom. Adorno argues against this conception of freedom and suggests (...) that freedom is always conditioned by our embodiment and by our social and historical situation. Finally, I turn to Adorno's criticism of Kant's discussion of freedom and determinism in the Critique of Pure Reason and argue that while his philosophical argument against Kant fails, his metacritical argument remains suggestive. Scepticism about freedom arises when the standpoint of theoretical reason encroaches upon the standpoint of practical reason and assimilates persons to things. (shrink)

In this paper I criticise Axel Honneth's reactualization of reification as a concept in critical theory in his 2005 Tanner Lectures and argue that he ultimately fails on his own terms. His account is based on two premises: (1) reification is to be taken literally rather than metaphorically, and (2) it is not conceived of as a moral injury but as a social pathology. Honneth concludes that reification is ?forgetfulness of recognition?, more specifically, of antecedent recognition, an emphatic and engaged (...) relationship with oneself, others and the world, which precedes any more concrete relationship both genetically and categorially. I argue against this conception of reification on two grounds. (1) The two premises of Honneth's account cannot be squared with one another. It is not possible to literally take a person as a thing without this being a recognisable moral injury, and, therefore, I suggest that there are no cases of literal reification. (2) Honneth's account is essentially ahistorical, because it is based on an anthropological model of recognition that tacitly equates reification with autism. In conclusion, I suggest that any successful account of reification must (i) take reification metaphorically and (ii) offer a social-historical account of the origin(s) of reification. (shrink)

John Leslie has published an argument that our own birth rank among all who have lived can be used to make inferences about all who will ever live, and hence about the expected survival time for the human race. It is found to be shorter than usually supposed. The assumptions underpinning the argument are criticized, especially the unwarranted one that the argument's sampling is equiprobable from among all who ever live. A mathematical derivation shows that Leslie's argument is correct only (...) if there exists a correlation of our birth rank to the event of doomsday. Such correlation is highly improbable. (shrink)

Intonation plays an integral role in comprehending spoken language. Listeners can rapidly integrate intonational information to predictively map a given pitch accent onto the speaker's likely referential intentions. We use mouse tracking to investigate two questions: (a) how listeners draw predictive inferences based on information from intonation? and (b) how listeners adapt their online interpretation of intonational cues when these are reliable or unreliable? We formulate a novel Bayesian model of rational predictive cue integration and explore predictions derived under a (...) concrete linking hypothesis relating a quantitative notion of evidential strength of a cue to the moment in time, relative to the unfolding speech signal, at which mouse trajectories turn towards the eventually selected option. In order to capture rational belief updates after concrete observations of a speaker's behavior, we formulate and explore an extension of this model that includes the listener's hierarchical beliefs about the speaker's likely production behavior. Our results are compatible with the assumption that listeners rapidly and rationally integrate all available intonational information, that they expect reliable intonational information initially, and that they adapt these initial expectations gradually during exposition to unreliable input. All materials, data, and scripts can be retrieved here: https://osf.io/dnbuk/. (shrink)

According to Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. I argue that this instrumentalization account fails to capture the distinctive harms and wrongs of sexual objectification, because it does not explain the relationship between instrumentalization and the processes of social stereotyping that make it possible. I develop an imposition account of sexual objectification that provides such an explanation and, therefore, should be preferred over the instrumentalization account. It draws on a contrast between imposition and self-presentation and (...) explains why sexual objectification, understood as the imposition of sex object status on women, is harmful and wrong. (shrink)

The same method that creates adversarial examples to fool image-classifiers can be used to generate counterfactual explanations that explain algorithmic decisions. This observation has led researchers to consider CEs as AEs by another name. We argue that the relationship to the true label and the tolerance with respect to proximity are two properties that formally distinguish CEs and AEs. Based on these arguments, we introduce CEs, AEs, and related concepts mathematically in a common framework. Furthermore, we show connections between current (...) methods for generating CEs and AEs, and estimate that the fields will merge more and more as the number of common use-cases grows. (shrink)

Sigmund Freuds »Jenseits des Lustprinzips« und die darin entwickelte Todestriebhypothese werden seit 100 Jahren kontrovers diskutiert, wobei die »zaudernde« Rezeption den im Text beschriebenen und vorgeführten »Zauderrhythmus« des Freud’schen Denkens abbildet. Die vorliegende Arbeit nimmt ausgehend von einer Skizze der Freud’schen Kernannahmen zum Todestrieb eine werkgeschichtliche Einordnung vor und stellt dann die Rezeptionsgeschichte einschließlich der Vorschläge zur Modifikationen in verschiedenen psychoanalytischen Denklinien vor (Klein-Bion, Lacan und andere französische Autoren, Bedeutung der Aggression). Neuere Ansätze werden unter dem Blickwinkel dialektischen Denkens und (...) des Einbezugs von Objektverlust betrachtet und Bezüge zur Sozialpsychologie und Kulturphilosophie dargestellt. Geendet wird in einer Diskussion der Konzeptualisierung »jenseits« des Lustprinzips, des Status des Todestriebs als Trieb sowie der Frage nach einem Triebmonismus. (shrink)

Environmental signs as physically manifested signs that we and other animals perceive and interpret in the natural environment are seldom focused on in contemporary semiotics. The aim of the present paper is to highlight the diversity of environmental signs and to propose a typology for analysing them. Combining ecosemiotics and the pragmatist semiotics of C. Peirce and C. Morris, the proposed typology draws its criteria from the properties of the object and the representamen of the sign, and of their relationships. (...) The analysis distinguishes eight basic types of environmental signs and provides examples of these from the natural environment. The typology also integrates existing concepts of environmental affordances, ecofields, phonetic syntax, sign fields, ecological codes, meta-signs and others. In addition to basic types of environmental signs, compound environmental signs are discussed with three types of these distinguished: environmental meta-signs; ecological codes; and environmental-cultural hybrid signs. Further study of compound environmental signs could lead to reconceptualising relations between linguistic and pre-linguistic semiosis. (shrink)

Growing ecological problems have raised the need for conceptual tools dedicated to studying semiotic processes in cultural-ecological systems. Departing from both ecosemiotics and cultural semiotics, the concept of an ecosemiosphere is proposed to denote the entire complex of semiosis in an ecosystem, including the involvement of human cultural semiosis. More specifically, the ecosemiosphere is a semiotic system comprising all species and their umwelts, alongside the diverse semiotic relations (including humans with their culture) that they have in the given ecosystem, and (...) also the material supporting structures that enable the ecosemiosphere to thrive. Drawing parallels with Juri Lotman’s semiosphere concept, the ecosemiosphere is characterized by its heterogeneity, asymmetry, and boundedness. But unlike Lotman’s concept, the ecosemiosphere is not characterized by an overall boundedness, that is, by the presence of external binary boundaries and the shared identity arising from this unity. The involvement of human culture in the ecosemiosphere manifests in interspecies dialogues and semiotic engagements. We need to scrutinize what affordances and semiotic resources culture could offer to nonhuman species and how culture could, by semiotic means, raise the integrity, stability, and resiliency of the ecosystem. The ecosemiosphere is a grounded semiosphere. (shrink)

George Berkeley (1685-1753) is, with John Locke and David Hume, one of the three major figures in the British empiricist school of philosophy. He has been the centre of much attention recently and his philosophical profile has gradually changed. In the 20th century he was almost exclusively known for his denial of the existence of matter (as this term was defined in those days), but today it is no longer reasonable to confine an account of Berkeley to the challenging philosophical (...) inventions that he published when he was a young fellow at Trinity College in Dublin. This is a welcome trend. It shows Berkeley as a contributor not only to epistemology, metaphysics and moral and social philosophy, but also to a wide range of subjects including mathematics, philosophy of science, empirical psychology, political economy and monetary policy. The present collection aims at meeting this new trend by presenting a broad and comprehensive picture of Berkeley's works in their historical context. The contributors are some of the finest international experts in the field. The editors hope that this collection will show George Berkeley as he was: a wide-ranging, widely influential and courageous philosophical innovator. This volume has been published to celebrate the 300th anniversary of George Berkeley's Principles. (shrink)

According to necessitarianism, all truths are logically necessary, and the modal doctrine of anecessitarian philosopher is in a sharp contrast with something that seems manifest—the view that thereare contingent truths. At least on the face of it, then, necessitarianism is highly implausible. RenéDescartes is usually not regarded as a necessitarian philosopher, but some of his philosophical viewsraise the worry as to whether he is committed to the necessity of all truths. This paper is an appraisal ofthis worry.

In Reinhart Koselleck's history of concepts, the general orientation that concepts are to be understood in their proper contexts is intertwined with the assumption that they are manifestations of particular political conflicts. The essay shows that the dense compound of context and conflict in Koselleck's thought springs from Carl Schmitt's political theory and also forms an important point of continuity between Koselleck's early work and his later methodological writings. The formalized assumption of conflict, somewhat problematically, binds Koselleckian conceptual history to (...) a particular conception of politics, one that sees politics ultimately as struggle and conflict. Once the historical-theoretical contingency of this conception is recognized, it becomes both possible and necessary to reassess the role of conflict in the methodology of conceptual history. (shrink)

To learn about real world phenomena, scientists have traditionally used models with clearly interpretable elements. However, modern machine learning (ML) models, while powerful predictors, lack this direct elementwise interpretability (e.g. neural network weights). Interpretable machine learning (IML) offers a solution by analyzing models holistically to derive interpretations. Yet, current IML research is focused on auditing ML models rather than leveraging them for scientific inference. Our work bridges this gap, presenting a framework for designing IML methods—termed ’property descriptors’—that illuminate not just (...) the model, but also the phenomenon it represents. We demonstrate that property descriptors, grounded in statistical learning theory, can effectively reveal relevant properties of the joint probability distribution of the observational data. We identify existing IML methods suited for scientific inference and provide a guide for developing new descriptors with quantified epistemic uncertainty. Our framework empowers scientists to harness ML models for inference, and provides directions for future IML research to support scientific understanding. (shrink)

The most serious objection to Beall and Restall’s case-based logical pluralism is the so-called collapse argument. According to the collapse argument, logical pluralism is not genuinely pluralistic and collapses into a single privileged relation of logical consequence. In response, Caret offered an account of logical contextualism that supposedly maintains the merits of Beall and Restall’s case-based logical pluralism while circumventing the collapse argument. In this paper, I first point out a gap in the collapse argument in that it does not (...) affect pluralists who assume that there is no uniquely strongest admissible consequence relation. This gap, then, is closed by an improved version of the collapse argument, which makes use of Eklund’s classification of types of pluralism. Finally, I discuss how Caret’s logical contextualism cannot hold up against this new formulation of the collapse argument unless implausible assumptions about the contents of normative operators are made. Moreover, by reformulating the collapse argument, I determine the extent to which logical monism and pluralism oppose each other, paving the way for fruitful future discussion. (shrink)

The article analyzes the work of Hanno Kesting, Reinhart Koselleck, Roman Schnur, and Nicolaus Sombart—four young followers of Carl Schmitt in postwar Germany. Their “intellectual Schmittianism” was less than a full commitment to Schmitt’s political positions, yet had more than an arbitrary similarity with them: it pertained to assumptions, categories, and modes of thought. Drawing on Pocock’s terminology, I identify a particular “language” of intellectual Schmittianism, introduce its key components, and analyze their interaction. I focus on six categories derived from (...) Schmitt’s narrative of European political modernity: discrimination, historical parallels, secularization, global civil war, open/latent civil war, and category blurs. The analysis shows that these categories were interlinked argumentative devices rather than mere rhetoric and that they systematically upheld the postwar scholars’ arguments. While the Schmittian language enabled the young scholars to express their political skepticis... (shrink)

In his topical article, Andrew Cling claims that the best extant formulation of the so-called epistemic regress problem rests on five assumptions that are too strong. Cling offers an improved version that rests on a different set of three core epistemic assumptions, each of which he argues for. Despite of owing a great deal to Cling’s ideas, I argue that the epistemic regress problem surfaces from more fundamental assumptions than those offered by Cling. There are ultimately two core assumptions—in fact (...) two contradictory strands within the concept of epistemic support—which jointly create a powerful challenge for our pursuit of paramount epistemic values. (shrink)

According to Husserl’s self-description, his phenomenological project was “completely apolitical.” Husserl’s phenomenology did not provide a political philosophy in the classical sense, a normative description of a functioning social order and its respective institutional structures. Nor did Husserl have much to say about the day-to-day politics of his time. Yet his reflections on community and culture were not completely without political implications. This article deals with an often-neglected strand of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his critique of liberalism. In this article, liberalism (...) is understood in the manner of Leo Strauss, as a tradition of individualist philosophy emerging from Hobbes’s political thought. As the article shows, Husserl followed many of his contemporaries in criticizing Hobbes’s abstract individualism, which could provide only a preventative function for political institutions. More importantly, Husserl’s engagement with Hobbes can be understood as a kind of ethical counterpart to his analysis of Galileo in the Crisis, as a critique of formal apriorism in the political domain. What Galileo did for physical nature with his “garb of ideas,” Hobbes did for human nature, reducing human sociality to interactions between atomistic individuals. In doing so, Hobbes ended up presenting a “mathematics of sociality” in an empirical garb. Going against the liberal view of the human person, Husserl presented his theory of social ethics founded on an original co-existence of subjects and a theory of human renewal. (shrink)