The article is a response to Dana Robert’s keynote address “One Christ – Many witnesses: Visions of Mission and Unity, Edinburgh and Beyond” at the Celebration Symposium of the Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series, 4 September 2015 in Oxford. The author wonders whether Dana Robert has sufficiently taken into account the awareness in the World Council of Churches of the diversity in and among Christian traditions. He highlights the more dynamic understanding of unity, which does not find expression in new structures (...) but in a commitment to travel together in a pilgrimage of justice and peace. (shrink)

This paper investigates the structure of lattices of normal mono- and polymodal subframelogics, i.e., those modal logics whose frames are closed under a certain type of substructures. Nearly all basic modal logics belong to this class. The main lattice theoretic tool applied is the notion of a splitting of a complete lattice which turns out to be connected with the “geometry” and “topology” of frames, with Kripke completeness and with axiomatization problems. We investigate in detail subframe logics containing K4, those (...) containing polymodal Altn and subframe logics which are tense logics. (shrink)

We propose a logic for reasoning about metric spaces with the induced topologies. It combines the 'qualitative' interior and closure operators with 'quantitative' operators 'somewhere in the sphere of radius r.' including or excluding the boundary. We supply the logic with both the intended metric space semantics and a natural relational semantics, and show that the latter (i) provides finite partial representations of (in general) infinite metric models and (ii) reduces the standard '∈-definitions' of closure and interior to simple constraints (...) on relations. These features of the relational semantics suggest a finite axiomatisation of the logic and provide means to prove its EXPTIME-completeness (even if the rational numerical parameters are coded in binary). An extension with metric variables satisfying linear rational (in)equalities is proved to be decidable as well. Our logic can be regarded as a 'well-behaved' common denominator of logical systems constructed in temporal, spatial, and similarity-based quantitative and qualitative representation and reasoning. Interpreted on the real line (with its Euclidean metric), it is a natural fragment of decidable temporal logics for specification and verification of real-time systems. On the real plane, it is closely related to quantitative and qualitative formalisms for spatial representation and reasoning, but this time the logic becomes undecidable. (shrink)

Michael Ende’s bestseller/The Neverending Story/is set in a magical world called “Fantastica”. In Fantastica, there are heroes and villains, just as in the world of universities and academies. There is even an entity, or better: a non-entity of shaky existence, das Nichts, the Nothingness – loved by some philosophers like Martin Heidegger. In Fantastica Nothingness is able to create trouble and destruction. The same is true in the land of academic history and philosophy of science – let us call it (...) “HOPOSia”. In HOPOSia, particularly in its Anglophone provinces, Nothingness of knowledge and information has succeeded in building up strong opinions about the topic “Mach and Relativity”, and has created confusion and disinformation. However, you may slightly relax; our story in HOPOSia is less cruel so far and more peaceful than what happens in Fantastica. Sometimes it has even entertaining aspects. There are similarities, though: If there had not been lies and manipulation of believes, our story would have ended years ago. It went on instead and will possibly do so forever. (shrink)

This book examines the role of the EU in ensuring privacy and data protection on the internet. It describes and demonstrates the importance of privacy and data protection for our democracies and how the enjoyment of these rights is challenged by, particularly, big data and mass surveillance. The book takes the perspective of the EU mandate under Article 16 TFEU. It analyses the contributions of the specific actors and roles within the EU framework: the judiciary, the EU legislator, the independent (...) supervisory authorities, the cooperation mechanisms of these authorities, as well as the EU as actor in the external domain. Article 16 TFEU enables the Court of the Justice of the EU to play its role as constitutional court and to set high standards for fundamental rights protection. It obliges the European Parliament and the Council to lay down legislation that encompasses all processing of personal data. It confirms control by independent supervisory authorities as an essential element of data protection and it gives the EU a strong mandate to act in the global arena. The analysis shows that EU powers can be successfully used in a legitimate and effective manner and that this subject could be a success story for the EU, in times of widespread euroskepsis. It demonstrates that the Member States remain important players in ensuring privacy and data protection. In order to be a success story, the key stakeholders should be prepared to go the extra mile, so it is argued in the book. The book is based on academic research for which the author received a double doctorate at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. It builds on a long inside experience within the European institutions, as well as within the community of data protection and data protection authorities. It is a must read in a time where the setting of EU privacy and data protection is changing dramatically, not only as a result of the rapidly evolving information society, but also because of important legal developments such as the entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation. This book will appeal to all those who are in some way involved in making this regulation work. It will also appeal to people interested in the institutional framework of the European Union and in the role of the Union of promoting fundamental rights, also in the wider world.. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie make unnecessary distinctions between vehicle and process theories and neglect empirically based distinctions between conscious and unconscious processing. We argue that phenomenal experience emerges, not just as a byproduct of input-driven parallel distributed processing, but as a result of constructive processing in recurrent neural networks. Stable network states may be necessary, but are not sufficient, for consciousness.

Reflections on the life and works of Scotus -- The early works of Scotus -- Duns Scotus at Oxford -- A Scotistic approach to the ultimate why-question -- God's knowledge : a study in Scotistic methodology -- William of Alnwick on Scotus and divine concurrence -- Scotus on the origin of possibility -- Scotus's lectures on the Immaculate Conception -- Scotus's ethics -- Scotus's eschatology : some reflections -- Scotism -- An Oxford dialogue on language and metaphysics -- Ockham and (...) the textbooks -- Ockham's conception of matter. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate first order common knowledge logics; i.e., modal epistemic logics based on first order logic with common knowledge operators. It is shown that even rather weak fragments of first order common knowledge logics are not recursively axiomatizable. This applies, for example, to fragments which allow to reason about names only; that is to say, fragments the first order part of which is based on constant symbols and the equality symbol only. Then formal properties of "quantifying into" (...) epistemic contexts are investigated. The results are illustrated by means of epistemic representations of Nash Equilibria for finite games with mixed strategies. (shrink)

Conceiving new technologies as social experiments is a means to discuss responsible deployment of technologies that may have unknown and potentially harmful side-effects. Thus far, the uncertain outcomes addressed in the paradigm of new technologies as social experiments have been mostly safety-related, meaning that potential harm is caused by the design plus accidental events in the environment. In some domains, such as cyberspace, adversarial agents may be at least as important when it comes to undesirable effects of deployed technologies. In (...) such cases, conditions for responsible experimentation may need to be implemented differently, as attackers behave strategically rather than probabilistically. In this contribution, we outline how adversarial aspects are already taken into account in technology deployment in the field of cyber security, and what the paradigm of new technologies as social experiments can learn from this. In particular, we show the importance of adversarial roles in social experiments with new technologies. (shrink)

In recent decades, English has become the uncontestable lingua franca of philosophy of science and of most other areas of philosophy and of the humanities. To have a lingua franca produces enormous benefits for the entire scientific community. The price for those benefits, however, is paid almost exclusively by non-native speakers of English. Section 1 identifies three asymmetries that individual NoNES researchers encounter: ‘publication asymmetry’, ‘resources asymmetry’, and ‘team asymmetry’. Section 2 deals with ‘globalized parochialism asymmetry’: thanks to English being (...) a lingua franca, a special perspective, mostly US and British, is being globalized and is replacing European topics and approaches. This has serious consequences for history of philosophy as well as for philosophical theory: thinkers of the past tend to be dealt with on the global level at best only if and insofar they are translated into English. Similarly, the theoretical agenda of globalized philosophy of scien... (shrink)

PurposeThe aim of the research described was to identify reasons for differences between discourses on electronic voting in the UK and The Netherlands, from a qualitative point of view.Design/methodology/approachFrom both countries, eight e‐voting experts were interviewed on their expectations, risk estimations, cooperation and learning experiences. The design was based on the theory of strategic niche management. A qualitative analysis of the data was performed to refine the main variables and identify connections.FindingsThe results show that differences in these variables can partly (...) explain the variations in the embedding of e‐voting in the two countries, from a qualitative point of view. Key differences include the goals of introducing e‐voting, concerns in relation to verifiability and authenticity, the role of the Electoral Commissions and a focus on learning versus a focus on phased introduction.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study was limited to two countries. More empirical data can reveal other relevant subvariables, and contribute to a framework that can improve our understanding of the challenges of electronic voting.Originality/valueThis study shows the context‐dependent character of discussions on information security. It can be informative for actors involved in e‐voting in the UK and The Netherlands, and other countries using or considering electronic voting. (shrink)

We shall describe the set of strongly meet irreducible logics in the lattice ϵLin.t of normal tense logics of weak orderings. Based on this description it is shown that all logics in ϵLin.t are independently axiomatizable. Then the description is used in order to investigate tense logics with respect to decidability, finite axiomatizability, axiomatization problems and completeness with respect to Kripke semantics. The main tool for the investigation is a translation of bimodal formulas into a language talking about partitions of (...) general frames into intervals so that relative to both Kripke frames and descriptive frames the expressive power of both languages coincides. (shrink)

Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the “state of the art” in the philosophy of biology.

Visual search studies have shown that East Asians rely more on information gathered through their extrafoveal (i.e., peripheral) vision than do Western Caucasians, who tend to rely more on information gathered using their foveal (i.e., central) vision. However, the reasons for this remain unclear. Cognitive linguists suggest that the difference is attributable linguistic variation, while cultural psychologists contend it is due to cultural factors. The current study used eye-tracking data collected during a visual search task to compare these explanations by (...) leveraging a semantic difference against a cultural difference to determine which view best explained strategies used on the task. The task was administered to Chinese, American, and Japanese participants with a primary focus on the Chinese participants’ behaviors since the semantic difference aligned the Chinese participants with the Americans, while their cultural affiliation aligned them with the Japanese participants. The results indicated that the Chinese group aligned more closely with the American group on most measures, suggesting that semantic differences were more important than cultural affiliation on this particular task. However, there were some results that could not be accounted for by the semantic differences, suggesting that linguistic and cultural factors might affect visual search strategies concurrently. (shrink)

Žižek’s recent commentaries on the topics of gender identity, sexuality, and consent have provoked outraged reactions from the politically correct neoliberal consensus. This paper argues these reactions emerge in part due to Žižek & Zupančič’s recent explorations into the ontological and political ramifications of Lacan’s thesis ‘ il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel’. Specifically, these explorations pose a threat to the contemporary definition of the subject as the subject of trauma, and the economy of moralistic outrage which sustains this (...) subjectivization. Following the recent commentaries by both Žižek and Zupančič, we argue this economy produces a valorization of affects, in which subjectivity becomes directly expressed in proportion to the subject’s expressed suffering. We argue the properly feminist question today must be how to escape what has become an economy of moralist satisfaction; an economy that seduces the subject into a cycle in which their own suffering becomes a currency – an end in itself – rather than a strategy to overcome the social inequalities that created the conditions for this very exploitation. This paper aims at offering an explanation of the traumatic reactions against Žižek and Zupančič’s recent investigations into sexuality, as well as to continue their investigation in the direction of trauma and subjectivity itself. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Basis und Deduktion" verfügbar.

It is known that even seemingly small fragments of the first-order temporal logic over the natural numbers are not recursively enumerable. In this paper we show that the monodic fragment is an exception by constructing its finite Hilbert-style axiomatization. We also show that the monodic fragment with equality is not recursively axiomatizable.

We construct a normal extension of K4 with the finite model property whose minimal tense extension is not complete with respect to Kripke semantics.

I give a revision (“reload”) of an earlier paper on logico-empiricism’s philosophy of biology by checking its central theses against the background of the international conferences of Prague (1934), Paris (1935), and Copenhagen (1936), so important for the development of logical empiricism and its spread in the western world. My theses are that logical empiricism did not contribute in the same way to the development of philosophy of biology, as it did e.g. to the development of philosophy of mathematics or (...) physics. The reasons for this failure were: (1) logical empiricists were unexperienced in biological science. (2) They concentrated on an unproductive ('ideological') framework (anti-vitalism, reduction) that they took to be philosophy of biology. (3) This prevented them from dealing with actual problems of biological science. Between the various sections of the paper, I insert “intermezzos” that present several conference participants in a wider historical context (Great War, persecution, language). (shrink)

This paper is a comparative study of the propositional intuitionistic (non-modal) and classical modal languages interpreted in the standard way on transitive frames. It shows that, when talking about these frames rather than conventional quasi-orders, the intuitionistic language displays some unusual features: its expressive power becomes weaker than that of the modal language, the induced consequence relation does not have a deduction theorem and is not protoalgebraic. Nevertheless, the paper develops a manageable model theory for this consequence and its extensions (...) which also reveals some unexpected phenomena. The balance between the intuitionistic and modal languages is restored by adding to the former one more implication. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 2 Seiten: 295-331.

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 61-82.

Flow is a gratifying state of deep involvement and absorption that individuals report when facing a challenging activity and they perceive adequate abilities to cope with it. The flow concept was introduced by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, and interest in flow research is growing. However, to our best knowledge, no scoping review exists that takes a systematic look at studies on flow which were published between the years 2000 and 2016. Overall, 252 studies have been included in this review. Our review (...) provides a framework to cluster flow research, gives a systematic overview about existing studies and their findings, and provides an overview about implications for future research. The provided framework consists of three levels of flow research. In the first “Individual” level are the categories for personality, motivation, physiology, emotion, cognition, and behavior. The second “Contextual” level contains the categories for contextual and interindividual factors and the third “Cultural” level contains cultural factors that relate to flow. Using our framework, we systematically present the findings for each category. While flow research has made progress in understanding flow, in the future, more experimental and longitudinal studies are needed to gain deeper insights into the causal structure of flow and its antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Thomas Williams has developed a radical interpretation of Duns Scotus’s voluntarism using an earlier interpretation of my own as a foil. He argues that the goodness of creatures and the rightness of actions are wholly dependent on the divine will, apart from any reference to the divine intellect, human nature, or any principle other than God’s own arbitrary will. I explain how his interpretation fails to account for the roles that essential goodness and divine justice play in divine volition. The (...) unmitigated voluntarism that Williams develops does not conform to the full range of authentic Scotistic texts. Despite the interest Williams’s voluntarism may have if taken as a theoretical position, it does not do justice to the nuance and speculative depth of Scotus’s actual understanding of the divine will, whose creative artistry is repugnant to arbitrary volition. I am grateful to Williams for the provocation to develop further the richness of Scotus’s volutarism. (shrink)

This paper investigates (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic, i.e., the logic which results when the dual of implication (alias coimplication) is added to the language of intuitionistic logic. We first develop matrix as well as Kripke style semantics for those logics. Then, by extending the Gö;del-embedding of intuitionistic logic into S4, it is shown that all (modal) extensions of Heyting-Brouwer logic can be embedded into tense logics (with additional modal operators). An extension of the Blok-Esakia-Theorem is proved for this embedding.

This paper investigates partitions of lattices of modal logics based on superintuitionistic logics which are defined by forming, for each superintuitionistic logic L and classical modal logic , the set L[] of L-companions of . Here L[] consists of those modal logics whose non-modal fragments coincide with L and which axiomatize if the law of excluded middle p V p is added. Questions addressed are, for instance, whether there exist logics with the disjunction property in L[], whether L[] contains a (...) smallest element, and whether L[] contains lower covers of . Positive solutions as concerns the last question show that there are (uncountably many) superclean modal logics based on intuitionistic logic in the sense of Vakarelov [28]. Thus a number of problems stated in [28] are solved. As a technical tool the paper develops the splitting technique for lattices of modal logics based on superintuitionistic logics and ap plies duality theory from [34]. (shrink)

The short answer to this question is a firm and unambiguous “yes and no”. The long answer will take the whole talk. Indeed, it could easily take an entire book. It is therefore unavoidable to take recourse here and there to simplifying shortcuts and polemical exaggerations, in order to get the message clear.

The paper - originally a lecture in the "40th Anniversary Lecture Series 2001-2002" - gives a survey of the development of philosophy of science in Germany and of the role tthe Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science plays in this development. An Italian version was published in 2006: “Un difficile ritorno a casa: la Filosofia della Scienza in Germania”, in: Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana, Nr. 189 n.s. (settembre - dicembra 2006), 37-50.