Im antiken Athen und Rom war moralkonformes Verhalten eine Ressource von Ansehen. Aber welche konkrete Relevanz hatte Moral in diesem Sinne als soziales Kapital? Welchen Stellenwert hatte sie in den sozialen Zusammenhängen des gegenseitigen Kennens und Anerkennens? Und in welchen Foren, durch welche Medien und in welchen Textgattungen wurden Verhaltensnormen definiert oder ausgehandelt und kommuniziert? 0Die Autorinnen und Autoren zeigen in ihren Beiträgen die nachweisbaren sozialen Konsequenzen eines guten oder schlechten Rufes auf und stellen verschiedene Moraldiskurse vor: von Majestätsprozessen und (...) aristokratischer Moral in der frühen Kaiserzeit über Freizeitbeschäftigungen als Spiegel moralischen Wandels im spätklassischen Athen bis hin zu Klatsch, Gerüchten und fama als moralischem Kapital im spätrepublikanischen und frühkaiserzeitlichen Rom. (shrink)

Suppose that we acquire various items of information from various sources and that our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is sufficiently high to believe the information. Now a new item of information is being presented by a new information source. Are we justified to add this new item of information to what we already believe? Consider the following parable: “I go to a lecture about wildlife in Greenland which was supposed to be delivered by an (...) expert in the field. When I arrive I notice that the expert has excused himself and that the biology department has sent a newcomer to fill in for him. I have no beliefs about wildlife in Greenland, but I do have some beliefs about Greenland’s climate and about the kinds of climate conditions that various types of wildlife favor. Suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of elk roam in a particular valley on the southern tip of Greenland. Then I would certainly be willing to accept this item of information. But suppose that he proclaims that large colonies of armadillos roam in the same valley. Then I would not be willing to accept this item of information. Why do I accept the former but not the latter item of information? Let us suppose that neither item of information is logically inconsistent with what I already believe. Clearly, the former item of information is not inconsistent. But also the latter item is not: after all, there may be small pockets of Greenland with special climatological conditions and some Texan sailors may have set loose a pair of armadillos as a practical joke. But whereas the former item of information is quite plausible given my previous beliefs, the latter item of information is not. And this is what makes for the difference. Now suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of wild boars roam this valley in Greenland. I am not that sure anymore. Given everything I believe, I find wild boars in Greenland more plausible than armadillos in Greenland, but certainly less plausible than elk in Greenland. Had our expert presented the lecture and provided precisely the 2 same information, then I would have been willing to adopt the belief that there are wild boars in Greenland, but, with our newcomer delivering the lecture, I am not willing to do so. It is not that I would believe anything out of the expert’s mouth: also he could not have convinced me that there are armadillos in Greenland. But when it comes to wild boars, the difference between the expert’s and the newcomer’s credentials simply makes for the difference.” What we learn from this story is that the question of belief expansion has something to do with the reliability of the information source as well as with the plausibility of the new information, given what I already believe. The more reliable the information source is, the less plausible the new information needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to our belief set. The more plausible the new information is given what I already believe, the less reliable the information source needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to my belief set. The challenge is: can a precise account of this relationship be provided? (shrink)

Suppose that we acquire various items of information from various sources and that our degree of confidence in the content of the information set is sufficiently high to believe the information. Now a new item of information is being presented by a new information source. Are we justified to add this new item of information to what we already believe? Consider the following parable: “I go to a lecture about wildlife in Greenland which was supposed to be delivered by an (...) expert in the field. When I arrive I notice that the expert has excused himself and that the biology department has sent a newcomer to fill in for him. I have no beliefs about wildlife in Greenland, but I do have some beliefs about Greenland’s climate and about the kinds of climate conditions that various types of wildlife favor. Suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of elk roam in a particular valley on the southern tip of Greenland. Then I would certainly be willing to accept this item of information. But suppose that he proclaims that large colonies of armadillos roam in the same valley. Then I would not be willing to accept this item of information. Why do I accept the former but not the latter item of information? Let us suppose that neither item of information is logically inconsistent with what I already believe. Clearly, the former item of information is not inconsistent. But also the latter item is not: after all, there may be small pockets of Greenland with special climatological conditions and some Texan sailors may have set loose a pair of armadillos as a practical joke. But whereas the former item of information is quite plausible given my previous beliefs, the latter item of information is not. And this is what makes for the difference. Now suppose that our newcomer proclaims that large colonies of wild boars roam this valley in Greenland. I am not that sure anymore. Given everything I believe, I find wild boars in Greenland more plausible than armadillos in Greenland, but certainly less plausible than elk in Greenland. Had our expert presented the lecture and provided precisely the 2 same information, then I would have been willing to adopt the belief that there are wild boars in Greenland, but, with our newcomer delivering the lecture, I am not willing to do so. It is not that I would believe anything out of the expert’s mouth: also he could not have convinced me that there are armadillos in Greenland. But when it comes to wild boars, the difference between the expert’s and the newcomer’s credentials simply makes for the difference.” What we learn from this story is that the question of belief expansion has something to do with the reliability of the information source as well as with the plausibility of the new information, given what I already believe. The more reliable the information source is, the less plausible the new information needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to our belief set. The more plausible the new information is given what I already believe, the less reliable the information source needs to be given what I already believe, for me to be justified to add the belief to my belief set. The challenge is: can a precise account of this relationship be provided? (shrink)

À des « antiquisants » séduits par les publications de K. J. Dover, de P. Veyne et de E. Cantarella, à un lectorat pétri des travaux de M. Foucault, l’ouvrage de J. D. Davidson propose une autre « histoire des plaisirs » dans la démocratique Athènes, une approche plus complexe et plus souple parce qu’elle entend se dégager de l’opposition prégnante entre sexualité active et sexualité passive. Sa lecture est d’autant plus passionnante que l’ouvrage plus récent de F. Dupont et (...) T. Eloy - L’Érotisme masculin dans la Rome antique - invite, lui aussi, à réfléchir sur ce que l’auteur appelle « la théorie du phallus ». (shrink)

Nietzsche calls himself a “psychologist [Psychologe]” in a few passages of his published works. Furthermore—and mainly due to his intense interest in the scientific debates of his time, which involved figures such as Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Gerber, Helmholtz, and Zöllner—Nietzsche’s early philosophical thought can be regarded as clearly “permeated” by his concern with the unconscious. The combination of psychology and this concern with the unconscious..

Some naturalistic philosophers of mind subscribing to the predictive processing theory of mind have adopted a realist attitude towards the results of Bayesian cognitive science. In this paper, we argue that this realist attitude is unwarranted. The Bayesian research program in cognitive science does not possess special epistemic virtues over alternative approaches for explaining mental phenomena involving uncertainty. In particular, the Bayesian approach is not simpler, more unifying, or more rational than alternatives. It is also contentious that the Bayesian approach (...) is overall better supported by the empirical evidence. So, to develop philosophical theories of mind on the basis of a realist interpretation of results from Bayesian cognitive science is unwarranted. Naturalistic philosophers of mind should instead adopt an anti-realist attitude towards these results and remain agnostic as to whether Bayesian models are true. For continuing on with an exclusive focus and praise of Bayes within debates about the predictive processing theory will impede progress in philosophical understanding of scientific practice in computational cognitive science as well as of the architecture of the mind. (shrink)

We present a Bayesian analysis of the epistemology of analogue experiments with particular reference to Hawking radiation. Provided such experiments can be externally validated via universality arguments, we prove that they are confirmatory in Bayesian terms. We then provide a formal model for the scaling behaviour of the confirmation measure for multiple distinct realisations of the analogue system and isolate a generic saturation feature. Finally, we demonstrate that different potential analogue realisations could provide different levels of confirmation. Our results thus (...) provide a basis both to formalise the epistemic value of analogue experiments that have been conducted and to advise scientists as to the respective epistemic value of future analogue experiments. (shrink)

There is a long philosophical tradition of addressing questions in philosophy of science and epistemology by means of the tools of Bayesian probability theory (see Earman (1992) and Howson and Urbach (1993)). In the late '70s, an axiomatic approach to conditional independence was developed within a Bayesian framework. This approach in conjunction with developments in graph theory are the two pillars of the theory of Bayesian Networks, which is a theory of probabilistic reasoning in artificial intelligence. The theory has been (...) very successful over the last two decades and has found a wide array of applications ranging from medical diagnosis to safety systems for hazardous industries. Aside from some excellent work in the theory of causation (see Pearl (2000) and Spirtes et al. (2001)), philosophers have been sadly absent in reaping the fruits from these new developments in artificial intelligence. This is unfortunate, since there are some long-standing questions in philosophy of science and epistemology in which the route to progress has been blocked by a type of complexity that is precisely the type of complexity that Bayesian Networks are designed to deal with: questions in which there are multiple variables in play and the conditional independences between these variables can be clearly identified. Integrating Bayesian Networks into philosophical research leads to theoretical advances on long-standing questions in philosophy and has a potential for practical applications. (shrink)

The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on those propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. The literature on judgment aggregation refers to that problem as the discursive dilemma. In this paper, we motivate that many groups do not only want to reach a factually right conclusion, but also want to correctly evaluate the reasons for that conclusion. In (...) other words, we address the problem of tracking the true situation instead of merely selecting the right outcome. We set up a probabilistic model analogous to Bovens and Rabinowicz (2006) and compare several aggregation procedures by means of theoretical results, numerical simulations and practical considerations. Among them are the premise-based, the situation-based and the distance-based procedure. Our findings confirm the conjecture in Hartmann, Pigozzi and Sprenger (2008) that the premise-based procedure is a crude, but reliable and sometimes even optimal form of judgment aggregation. (shrink)

The technique of imaging was first introduced by Lewis, in order to provide a novel account of the probability of conditional propositions. In the intervening years, imaging has been the object of significant interest in both AI and philosophy, and has come to be seen as a philosophically important approach to probabilistic updating and belief revision. In this paper, we consider the possibility of generalising imaging to deal with uncertain evidence and partial belief revision. In particular, we introduce a new (...) logical criterion that any update rule should satisfy, and use it to evaluate a range of different approaches to generalising imaging to situations involving uncertain evidence. We show that none of the currently prevalent approaches to imaging allow for such a generalisation, although a lesser known version of imaging, introduced by Joyce, can be generalised in a way that mitigates these problems. (shrink)

As one approach to examining the way ethical decisions are made, we asked experts and novices to review a set of scenarios that depict some important ethical tensions in research. The method employed was “protocol analysis,” a talk-aloud technique pioneered by cognitive scientists for the analysis of expert performance. The participants were asked to verbalize their normally unexpressed thought processes as they responded to the scenarios, and to make recommendations for courses of action. We found that experts spent more time (...) working through the decision-making process than novices and also raised substantially more concerns than novices. Differences also exist among the three groups of experts. (shrink)

It is no exaggeration to say that of the early 20th century German philosophers who claimed to establish a new ontology, former neo-Kantian turned realist Nicolai Hartmann is the only one to have actually followed through. "Ontology: Laying the Foundations" deals with "what is insofar as it is," and its four parts tackle traditional ontological assumptions and prejudices and traditional categories such as substance, thing, individual, whole, object, and phenomenon; a novel redefinition of existence and essence in terms of (...) the ontological factors Dasein and Sosein and their interrelations; an analysis of modes of "givenness" and the ontological embeddedness of cognition in affective transcendent acts; and a discussion of the status of ideal being, including mathematical being, phenomenological essences, logical laws, values, and the interconnections between the ideal and real spheres. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. (shrink)

The Problem of Old Evidence has troubled Bayesians ever since Clark Glymour first presented it in 1980. Several solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none of them is considered to be the definite solution. In this article, I propose a new solution which combines several old ideas with a new one. It circumvents the crucial omniscience problem in an elegant way and leads to a considerable confirmation of the hypothesis in question.

How does a predecessor theory relate to its successor? According to Heinz Post’s General Correspondence Principle, the successor theory has to account for the em- pirical success of its predecessor. After a critical discussion of this principle, I outline and discuss various kinds of correspondence relations that hold between successive scientific theories. I then look in some detail at a case study from contemporary physics: the various proposals for a theory of high-temperature superconductivity. The aim of this case study is (...) to understand better the prospects and the place of a methodological principle such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle. Generalizing from the case study, I will then argue that some such principle has to be considered, at best, as one tool that might guide scientists in their theoriz- ing. Finally I present a tentative account of why principles such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle work so often and why there is so much continuity in scientific theorizing. (shrink)

THIS PAPER is not a piece of "research"; it simply offers a series of reflections on the transcendental method. It is occasioned by the realization that, while this method is interesting and important in the opinion of some, it can count on little familiarity in the United States. And where philosophers and students of philosophy make the effort, they have great difficulty appreciating transcendental philosophy or understanding its proposals. This difficulty is, as I say, largely circumstantial and due to a (...) lack of familiarity with the relevant works, but, viewed less superficially, it is motivated by a positive affiliation to another philosophical tradition. In fact, the positions of this other tradition are, if largely in a modern guise, the very ones against which transcendental philosophy reacted. This historical relationship has also systematic relevance. In many ways, pre-transcendental positions seem to have priority: we need only think of formal logic, certain basic stances in empiricist epistemology, common sense. Accordingly, the subjective difficulty of philosophers and students of such persuasions can be treated "objectively," as the difficulty of ever establishing arguments for the transcendental turn or for what Kant calls the "Copernican revolution." Transcendental philosophy must provide arguments, so it seems, on the pre-transcendental level to establish the transcendental position. Further, supposing this problem can be overcome, there is the genuine difficulty of understanding what the transcendental theory actually says and in what way it does its job. And lastly, supposing we find that it lives up to its program, there may still be difficulty with certain implications such that philosophers and students take refuge in non-transcendental positions rather than calling for improvements of transcendental philosophy. In this paper we cannot, of course, fully discuss to what extent the transcendental position can take care of its critics. The paper is mainly concerned with the difficulty of access or introductory argument to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-10.

How does a predecessor theory relate to its successor? According to Heinz Post's General Correspondence Principle, the successor theory has to account for the empirical success of its predecessor. After a critical discussion of this principle, I outline and discuss various kinds of correspondence relations that hold between successive scientific theories. I then look in some detail at a case study from contemporary physics: the various proposals for a theory of high-temperature superconductivity. The aim of this case study is to (...) understand better the prospects and the place of a methodological principle such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle. Generalizing from the case study, I will then argue that some such principle has to be considered, at best, as one tool that might guide scientists in their theorizing. Finally I present a tentative account of why principles such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle work so often and why there is so much continuity in scientific theorizing. (shrink)

In accordance with the general title, Ricœur's main concern is to develop a philosophy of the will. The overall character of this philosophy is quickly ascertained: as the Introduction makes abundantly clear, Ricœur's thought is firmly rooted in phenomenology. Indeed one might wish to regard this partisanship as Ricœur's motive for choosing the will as his central topic: could his work be an attempt to cope with a problem that has to date resisted satisfactory phenomenological treatment? Husserl's phenomenology is geared (...) to a theoretical, receptive, and perceptual type of subject, and doubts arise as to the practicability of his methodological devices when extended to the will. Although, for a philosopher like Ricœur, Husserl's phenomenological discipline of inspection and description remains an indispensable asset of philosophical method, it seems that, in studying the will, we cannot practice phenomenological reduction, since this would eliminate what is constitutive for willing: an Other opposed to me, something not reducible to mere meaning as posited by consciousness. When Husserl tries to account for willing, he accordingly transforms the phenomenon into an account of value predicates correlated to acts of the subject. (shrink)