Max Weber claims that human behavior can be explained equally well as „natural“ phenomena. This claim has not gained widespread empirical realization in social research so that the question is still of eminent actuality in what way research can profit from Weber’s thought. The article therefore discusses the development of Weber’s theory of causality. It introduces his juridical view of causality which Weber develops in his methodological writings up to his theory of meaningful and causal adequacy. In this development, Weber (...) stresses more and more the need to understand human behavior from a participant’s point of view. The article re-describes this change in the language of causality in order to show that explaining and understanding are not rival forms of knowledge. In order to prove that this train of thought has fundamental consequences for the interpretation of data in social research, the article discusses research results on meritocracy and society. Weber’s theory of meaningful and causal adequacy could be applied in research if it is conceptualized as combining two sorts of causal attributions. To Weber, meaningful causal attributions are at the basis of practical behavior from a participant’s point of view which must be understood whereas causal attributions devoid of meaning (sinnfremd) characterize an observer’s and scientific point of view which reveals additional causal influences on human behavior. (shrink)

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart invites readers to embark on a new journey into a land of rationality that differs from the familiar territory of cognitive science and economics. Traditional views of rationality tend to see decision makers as possessing superhuman powers of reason, limitless knowledge, and all of eternity in which to ponder choices. To understand decisions in the real world, we need a different, more psychologically plausible notion of rationality, and this book provides it. It is about (...) fast and frugal heuristics--simple rules for making decisions when time is pressing and deep thought an unaffordable luxury. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? Can judgments based simply on one good reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? Simple Heuristics explores these questions, developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analyses. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can produce adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop out rates, and playing the stock market. As an interdisciplinary work that is both useful and engaging, this book will appeal to a wide audience. It is ideal for researchers in cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science, as well as in economics and artificial intelligence. It will also inspire anyone interested in simply making good decisions. (shrink)

The essays in this collection have been written for Gerd Buchdahl, by colleagues, students and friends, and are self-standing pieces of original research which have as their main concern the metaphysics and philosophy of science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They focus on issues about the development of philosophical and scientific thought which are raised by or in the work of such as Bernoulli, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, Leibniz, Maclaurin, Priestly, Schelling, Vico. Apart from the initial bio-bibliographical piece and (...) those by Robert Butts and Michael Power, they do not discuss Buchdahl or his ideas in any systematic, lengthy, or detailed way. But they are collected under a title which alludes to the book, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins, Descartes to Kant (1969), which is central in the corpus of his work, and deal with the period and some of the topics with which that book deals. (shrink)

The Empire of Chance tells how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Themes recur - determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, the shifting meaning of probability - but (...) in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists in the history and philosophy of science, but also at the general reader and scholars in other disciplines. (shrink)

Together, these collected papers develop the idea that human thinking - from scientific creativity to simply understanding what a positive HIV test means - "happens" partly outside the mind.".

This volume collects Gigerenzer's recent articles on the psychology of rationality. This volume should appeal, like the earlier volumes, to a broad mixture of cognitive psychologists, philosophers, economists, and others who study decision making.

“This is surely the ultimate expression of the top-down approach to consciousness, written with Sommerhoff's characteristic clarity and precision. It says far more than other books four times the size of this admirably concise volume. This book is destined to become a pillar of the subject.” —Rodney Cotterill, Technical University of Denmark The problem of consciousness has been described as a mystery about which we are still in a terrible muddle and in Understanding Consciousness: Its Function and Brain Processes, the (...) author attempts to unravel this mystery by offering a clarification of the main concepts related to consciousness, and positing a comprehensive biological explanation. Consequently, this book will be ideal for a wide-range of upper level undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The author interprets consciousness as a property that can be possessed by many creatures lacking a language faculty and comprises all of the following: awareness of the surrounding world; awareness of the self as an entity; and awareness of such things as thoughts and feelings. He argues that a biological approach can achieve both the necessary conceptual clarifications and a joint explanation of these divisions of awareness in terms of just two accurately defined concepts of 'internal representation' and two empirically supported assumptions about the functional architecture of a specific set of brain processes. Despite this striking simplicity, his model covers these divisions of awareness both as objective faculties of the brain and as subjective experience. These conclusions are applied to a broad range of fundamental questions, including the biological rationale of subjective experience and where consciousness resides in the neural networks. (shrink)

This volume summarizes the ethical, social and cultural contexts of interfacing brains and computers. It is intended for the interdisciplinary community of BCI stakeholders. Insofar, engineers, neuroscientists, psychologists, physicians, care-givers and also users and their relatives are concerned. For about the last twenty years brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) have been investigated with increasing intensity and have in principle shown their potential to be useful tools in diagnostics, rehabilitation and assistive technology. The central promise of BCI technology is enabling severely impaired people in (...) mobility, grasping, communication, and entertainment. Successful applications are for instance communication devices enabling locked-in patients in staying in contact with their environment, or prostheses enabling paralysed people in reaching and grasping. In addition to this, it serves as an introduction to the whole field of BCI for any interested reader. (shrink)

In this volume the author tackles this problem in a rigorous analysis which begins with the general dynamics of living systems and leads the reader step-by-step ...

In "Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzen­ dentale Phänomenologie", dem zuletzt vom Husserl-Archiv in Löwen veröffentlichten Werk Husserls erscheint deutlich, welche Stellung und welche Aufgabe für ihn seine Phänomenologie in der Geschichte hat. "Menschentum überhaupt ist wesensmässig Menschsein in ge­ nerativ und sozial verbundenen Menschheiten, und ist der Mensch Vernunftwesen (animal rationale), so ist er es nur, sofern seine ganze Menschheit Vernunftmenschheit ist -latent auf Ver­ nunft ausgerichtet oder offen ausgerichtet auf die zu sich selbst gekommene, für sich selbst (...) offenbar gewordene und nunmehr in Wesensnotwendigkeit das menschheitliche Werden bewusst lei t end e Entelechie. Philosophie, Wissenschaft wäre demnach die historische Bewegung der Offenbarung der universalen, dem Menschentum als solchem 'ein­ geborenen' Vern unft". 1 Das Wesentliche des Menschen ist für Husserl im europä­ ischen Menschentum zum Durchbruch gekommen. Es ist das ihm mit der Geburt der griechischen Philosophie zugewachsene Telos, Mensch aus Vernunft sein zu wollen und nur als solcher sein zu können, "... in der unendlichen Bewegung von latenter zu offenbarer Vernunft und im unendlichen Bestreben der Selbst­ normierung durch diese seine menschheitliche Wahrheit und 2 Echtheit". Im vorläufigen Scheitern dieser Bewegung liegt für Husserl der Grund der sich in unzähligen Symptomen äussernden "Krisis 3 des europäischen Daseins". Mit dieser Erkenntnis aber ist diese Krisis kein dunkles Schicksal, kein undurchdringliches Verhält­ nis mehr, sondern wird verständlich und durchschaubar. (shrink)

In "Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzen­ dentale Phänomenologie", dem zuletzt vom Husserl-Archiv in Löwen veröffentlichten Werk Husserls erscheint deutlich, welche Stellung und welche Aufgabe für ihn seine Phänomenologie in der Geschichte hat. "Menschentum überhaupt ist wesensmässig Menschsein in ge­ nerativ und sozial verbundenen Menschheiten, und ist der Mensch Vernunftwesen (animal rationale), so ist er es nur, sofern seine ganze Menschheit Vernunftmenschheit ist -latent auf Ver­ nunft ausgerichtet oder offen ausgerichtet auf die zu sich selbst gekommene, für sich selbst (...) offenbar gewordene und nunmehr in Wesensnotwendigkeit das menschheitliche Werden bewusst lei t end e Entelechie. Philosophie, Wissenschaft wäre demnach die historische Bewegung der Offenbarung der universalen, dem Menschentum als solchem 'ein­ geborenen' Vern unft". 1 Das Wesentliche des Menschen ist für Husserl im europä­ ischen Menschentum zum Durchbruch gekommen. Es ist das ihm mit der Geburt der griechischen Philosophie zugewachsene Telos, Mensch aus Vernunft sein zu wollen und nur als solcher sein zu können, "... in der unendlichen Bewegung von latenter zu offenbarer Vernunft und im unendlichen Bestreben der Selbst­ normierung durch diese seine menschheitliche Wahrheit und 2 Echtheit". Im vorläufigen Scheitern dieser Bewegung liegt für Husserl der Grund der sich in unzähligen Symptomen äussernden "Krisis 3 des europäischen Daseins". Mit dieser Erkenntnis aber ist diese Krisis kein dunkles Schicksal, kein undurchdringliches Verhält­ nis mehr, sondern wird verständlich und durchschaubar. (shrink)

Die alte Frage, wie Menschen zusammen leben wollen, muss nach Kopernikus neu gestellt werden. Anthropologie und Kosmologie verweisen aufeinander, und doch fügen sie sich nicht in einen gemeinsamen Erklärungsrahmen. Das zeigt sich unter anderem an den Erörterungen über den freien Willen und der daran hängenden Möglichkeit der Moral. In der Überzeugung, dass wahrheitsfähiges Wissen nur in den Naturwissenschaften zu erlangen sei, überschreitet man deren Grenzen. Dieses Buch will, anknüpfend an Kants Kritik der dogmatischen Denkungsart, einen Beitrag dazu leisten, diese einengenden (...) Vorgaben zu überwinden. (shrink)