Newtonian and Machian aspects of the stationary gravitational field are brought into formal analogy with a stationary electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic vector potential equals (up to a factor) the timelike Killing vector field. The current density is given by the contraction of the Killing vector with the Ricci tensor. A coordinate-dependent split in electric and magnetic field vectors is given, and some results of classical electrodynamics are used to illustrate the analogy. In the linearized theory, the usual Maxwell equations are (...) obtained. The analogy also holds from the point of view of particle motion. The geodesic equation is brought into a special form that exhibits an analog to the Lorentz force. Two examples (which have played an important role in the theoretical discovery of Machian effects) are considered. (shrink)

I present a formal theory of the logic and aboutness of imagination. Aboutness is understood as the relation between meaningful items and what they concern, as per Yablo and Fine’s works on the notion. Imagination is understood as per Chalmers’ positive conceivability: the intentional state of a subject who conceives that p by imagining a situation—a configuration of objects and properties—verifying p. So far aboutness theory has been developed mainly for linguistic representation, but it is natural to extend it to (...) intentional states. The proposed framework combines a modal semantics with a mereology of contents: imagination operators are understood as variably strict quantifiers over worlds with a content-preservation constraint. (shrink)

We need to understand the impossible. Francesco Berto and Mark Jago start by considering what the concepts of meaning, information, knowledge, belief, fiction, conditionality, and counterfactual supposition have in common. They are all concepts which divide the world up more finely than logic does. Logically equivalent sentences may carry different meanings and information and may differ in how they're believed. Fictions can be inconsistent yet meaningful. We can suppose impossible things without collapsing into total incoherence. Yet for the leading philosophical (...) theories of meaning, these phenomena are an unfathomable mystery. To understand these concepts, we need a metaphysical, logical, and conceptual grasp of situations that could not possibly exist: Impossible Worlds. This book discusses the metaphysics of impossible worlds and applies the concept to a range of central topics and open issues in logic, semantics, and philosophy. It considers problems in the logic of knowledge, the meaning of alternative logics, models of imagination and mental simulation, the theory of information, truth in fiction, the meaning of conditional statements, and reasoning about the impossible. In all these cases, impossible worlds have an essential role to play. (shrink)

We propose a new account of indicative conditionals, giving acceptability and logical closure conditions for them. We start from Adams’ Thesis: the claim that the acceptability of a simple indicative equals the corresponding conditional probability. The Thesis is widely endorsed, but arguably false and refuted by empirical research. To fix it, we submit, we need a relevance constraint: we accept a simple conditional 'If φ, then ψ' to the extent that (i) the conditional probability p(ψ|φ) is high, provided that (ii) (...) φ is relevant for ψ. How (i) should work is well-understood. It is (ii) that holds the key to improve our understanding of conditionals. Our account has (i) a probabilistic component, using Popper functions; (ii) a relevance component, given via an algebraic structure of topics or subject matters. We present a probabilistic logic for simple indicatives, and argue that its (in)validities are both theoretically desirable and in line with empirical results on how people reason with conditionals. (shrink)

Unification was originally introduced in automated deduction and term rewriting, but has recently also found applications in other fields. In this article, we give a survey of the results on unification obtained in two closely related, yet different, application areas of unification: description logics and modal logics.

Timothy Williamson has defended the claim that the semantics of the indicative ‘if’ is given by the material conditional. Putative counterexamples can be handled by better understanding the role played in our assessment of indicatives by a fallible cognitive heuristic, called the Suppositional Procedure. Williamson’s Suppositional Conjecture has it that the Suppositional Procedure is humans’ primary way of prospectively assessing conditionals. This paper raises some doubts on the Suppositional Procedure and Conjecture.

Tractatus 4.024 inspired the dominant semantics of our time: truth-conditional semantics. Such semantics is focused on possible worlds: the content of p is the set of worlds where p is true. It has become increasingly clear that such an account is, at best, defective: we need an ‘independent factor in meaning, constrained but not determined by truth-conditions’ (Yablo 2014, p. 2), because sentences can be differently true at the same possible worlds. I suggest a missing comment which, had it been (...) included in the Tractatus, would have helped semantics get this right from the start. This is my 4.0241: ‘Knowing what is the case if a sentence is true is knowing its ways of being true’: knowing a sentence’s truth possibilities and what we now call its topic, or subject matter. I show that the famous ‘fundamental thought’ that ‘the “logical constants” do not represent’ (4.0312) can be understood in terms of ways-based views of meaning. Such views also help with puzzling claims like 5.122: ‘If p follows from q, the sense of “p” is contained in the that of “q”’, which are compatible with a conception of entailment combining truth-preservation with the preservation of topicality, or of ways of being true. (shrink)

This essay discusses the difficulty to reconcile two paradigms about beliefs: the binary or categorical paradigm of yes/no beliefs and the probabilistic paradigm of degrees of belief. The possibility for someone to hold both types of belief simultaneously is challenged by the lottery paradox, and more recently by a general impossibility theorem by Dietrich and List (2018, 2021). The nature, relevance, and implications of the tension are explained and assessed.

Modal Meinongianism—the version of Meinongianism invented by Graham Priest—presupposes that we can think about absolute impossibilities. I defend the view that we can, by tidying up a couple of loose ends in Priest’s arguments to this effect from his book Towards Non-Being.

Minimalistische Reduktionen des Textes bis hin zu nur noch einem Satz bieten ästhetische und ethische Differenzierungen, die hier in einem weiten kulturgeschichtlichen Rahmen präsentiert werden. Der Spruch im Alten Testament, die Fragmente Heraklits oder die Aphorismen von Kafka, die Maximen der Moralisten und das japanische Haiku - sie alle sind Experimente knappster Verdichtung, die sich gerade deshalb als zeitresistent erwiesen haben. Gleichwohl setzt die Linguistik die Textgröße oftmals erst oberhalb des Einzelsatzes an. Der Band versammelt ein weites Spektrum von Beiträgen (...) aus Philosophie, Theologie, Soziologie, Sprach-, Literatur- und Musikwissenschaft zu einem interdisziplinären, vielstimmigen Gespräch - über die Grenzen der Kulturen wie der Zeiten hinweg. Gebündelt sind diese Beobachtungen im Stichwort der Nanotextualität, um die Effizienz extremer Konzentration in ästhetischen, ethischen und logischen Konsequenzen zu vergleichen. (shrink)

Das Bose hat Konjunktur - und bleibt doch unberechenbar. Lassen sich dennoch angemessene Strategien des Umgangs entwickeln, die weder die prekare Faktizitat des Bosen noch seine historische Tiefendimension ausblenden? Ausgehend von dieser Leitfrage nahert sich der vorliegende, interdisziplinar breit angelegte Band dem vielschichtigen Phanomen des Bosen in praxeologischer Perspektive. So fokussiert er Moglichkeiten eines - asthetisch wie wissenschaftlich reflektierten -, guten' Umgangs mit dem Bosen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass dies nur unter Beachtung der unaufhebbaren Verwiesenheit von Gut und Bose gelingen (...) kann. Im facherubergreifenden Dialog der Beitrage entstehen so Reflexionen auf Dialektik, Differenz und Paradoxien der Fundamentalkategorien Gut und Bose von wissenschaftsethischer wie grundlagentheoretischer Brisanz.Der Band bietet einen gesonderten Schwerpunkt zu Marcel Beyers 'Kaltenburg', einem Schlusselroman zu Konrad Lorenz, dem Autor von 'Das sogenannte Bose'. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for four theses. First, libertarian and compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility agree that the capability of practical reason is the central feature of moral responsibility. Second, this viewpoint leads to a reasons-focused account of human behavior. Examples of human action discussed in debates about moral responsibility suggest that typical human actions are driven primarily by the agent’s subjective reasons and are sufficiently transparent for the agent. Third, this conception of self-transparent action is a questionable idealization. (...) As shown by psychological research on self-assessment, motivated reasoning, and terror management theory, humans oftentimes have only a limited understanding of their conduct. Self-deception is rather the rule than the exception. Fourth, taking the limited self-transparency of practical reason seriously leads to a socially contextualized conception of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Ce premier tome de Essais et conférences de Franz Brentano comporte seize études qui, pour la plupart, paraissent pour la première fois en traduction française. Ces textes sont regroupés dans quatre sections qui portent respectivement sur l'état de la philosophie et ses principes, sa philosophie de l'histoire et sa théorie des quatre phases, ses réflexions sur les philosophes Auguste Comte, Plotin, Schelling et Thomas d'Aquin, et finalement son débat avec Édouard Zeller, l'auteur de La philosophie des Grecs, autour de (...) l'interprétation de la philosophie d'Aristote. Ce volume comprend en outre une introduction substantielle visant à contextualiser chacune des contributions du philosophe viennois. (shrink)

Ce deuxième tome des Essais et conférences de Franz Brentano comporte dix-neuf études qui, pour la plupart, paraissent pour la première fois en traduction française. Ces textes sont regroupés en quatre sections représentant les deux grands domaines de la philosophie pour Brentano - la métaphysique et la psychologie - ainsi que les disciplines pratiques de la psychologie - la logique, l'éthique et l'esthétique et concluent le projet, inauguré avec le tome 1, de regrouper l'ensemble des essais et conférences de (...) Brentano. Il fait suite au premier tome portant sur l'histoire de la philosophie, dans lequel nous avions regroupé les textes de Brentano sur sa philosophie de l'histoire de la philosophie, ses textes portant sur les philosophes, ainsi que ceux qui défendent son interprétation d'Aristote. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die besonderen Wissenschaften" verfügbar.

Die arabische Geschichtsschreibung des Mittelalters ist im wesentlichen Kompilation - Zusammenstellung von Überlieferungen aus älteren Werken. Anhand eines repräsentativen Korpus von Berichten über einen Sklavenaufstand untersucht Kurt Franz Inhalte und Formen des tätigen Kompilierens, der daraus hervorgehenden kompilatorischen Schriftwerke und ihrer Aufeinanderfolge im Kompilationsprozess. Er entwickelt umfassende Kriterien zu deren Beurteilung und erschließt so der literatur- und geschichtswissenschaftlichen Quellenarbeit ein neues Feld.