Ist in der Rechtswissenschaft eine strengen wissenschaftlichen Maßstäben genügende Theoriebildung möglich, und, falls ja, wie kann sie aussehen? Diese Frage beantwortet Jan C. Schuhr in der vorliegenden Untersuchung. Dabei geht es nicht um akademische Stellungnahmen zu Einzelfragen, die man in der Rechtswissenschaft oft "Theorie" nennt, sondern um strukturierte, widerspruchsfreie Betrachtungen komplexer Sachverhalte: Es geht um Theorien, wie sie die philosophische Wissenschaftstheorie behandelt - indes mit normativem Inhalt.Welchen Gegenstand hat die Rechtswissenschaft? Die Untersuchung beginnt damit, die gängige Antwort "das Recht" (...) als ungenügend zu erweisen und eine wesentlich präzisere zu geben. Dies führt zu einer Analyse der Methode rechtlicher Theoriebildung sowie der Anwendung rechtlicher Theorien. Dabei ergibt sich insbesondere, daß rechtliche Theorien zwar regelmäßig an geltendes Recht anknüpfen, aber sowohl der Gesetzgebung als auch der Rechtsanwendung logisch (und sinnvollerweise auch praktisch) voranzugehen statt ihnen nachzufolgen haben.Das Kernstück der Untersuchung bilden die Darstellung der formalen Struktur rechtlicher Theorien und die Klassifikation ihrer Sätze. Dabei ist das Konzept der Modellbildung zentral. Die Entwicklung eines Modellbegriffs für die Rechtswissenschaft und die Analyse, wie in Theorien auf Modelle Bezug genommen wird, führt schließlich zu einer differenzierenden Antwort auf die Ausgangsfrage. Strenge Theoriebildung und exakte Aussagen sind auch in der Rechtswissenschaft möglich. Zugleich wird gezeigt, welcher Teil der Rechtsanwendung prinzipiell nicht exakt erfolgen kann. Schuhr schließt seine Untersuchung mit einer Erörterung materieller Eigenschaften rechtlicher Theorien, insbesondere von Qualitätskriterien.Ausgezeichnet mit dem Promotionspreis der Juristischen Fakultät der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg 2006, dem Förderpreis der Schmitz-Nüchterlein-Stiftung 2006 sowie dem Staedtler-Promotionspreis 2005. (shrink)

In view of the philosophical problems that vex the debate on situated affectivity, it can seem wise to focus on simple cases. Accordingly, theorists often single out scenarios in which an individual employs a device in order to enhance their emotional experience, or to achieve new kinds of experience altogether, such as playing an instrument, going to the movies or sporting a fancy handbag. I argue that this narrow focus on cases that fit a ‘user/resource model’ tends to channel attention (...) away from more complex and also more problematic instances of situated affectivity. Among these are scenarios in which a social domain draws individuals into certain modes of affective interaction, often by way of attunement and habituation to affective styles and interaction patterns that are normative in the domain in question. This can lead to a phenomenon that is not so much ‘mind extension’ than ‘mind invasion’: affectivity is dynamically framed and modulated from without, often contrary to the prior orientations of the individuals in question. As an example, I discuss affective patterns prevalent in today’s corporate workplace. I claim that workplace affect sometimes contributes to what is effectively a ‘hack’ of employees’ subjectivity. (shrink)

According to a common opinion, the word ‘semantics’ , derived from the Greek word semantikos , appeared for the first time, at least in modern times, in the book Essai de semantique, science de significations by M. J. A. Bréal . However, Quine says in his lectures on Carnap:As used by C. S. Peirce, “semantic” is the study of the modes of denotation of signs: whether a sign denotes its object through causal or symptomatic connection, or through imagery, or through (...) arbitrary convention and so on. This sense of semantic, namely a theory of meaning, is used also in empirical philology: empirical semantic is the study of historical changes of meanings of words.1For Bréal, semantics was a branch of general linguistics. In particular, semantics was occupied with so-called lexical meaning and its changes through time. Thus, semantics in this sense belonged to what was called “the diachronic treatment of language”. This tradition is fairly alive in contemporary linguistic theory. Quine’s description of the word ‘semantic’ in Peirce corresponds, which Quine explicitly states, to its use in philology. However, some linguists ascribe a more theoretical role to lingustic semantics. Karl Bühler is an example. In his Sprachtheorie he says that a theory of semantic functions of language is a part of theory of language.2 This account is to be found also among philosophers. It is also rather obvious that Peirce did not limit his semantic only to empirical studies. Linguists also use the word ‘semasiology’ instead of ‘semantics’; Bühler proposed the term ‘sematology’ for a general theory of symbols. (shrink)

In this text, I discuss the role that a range of habits in affluent societies play in upholding as well as masking an unsustainable status quo. I show that enactivism, as a philosophical approach to the embodied and embedded mind, offers resources for bringing into focus and critically interrogating suchhabits of affluenceand the environments enabling them. I do this in the context of a critical theory ofthe unfelt in society: the systematic production of lacunae of emotive concern in social collectives. (...) The lack of proportionate affective and practical responses to the ecological crisis epitomizes this. The article starts with considerations on societal unfeeling, then reviews key elements of enactive approaches to habit, before a fuller picture of habits of affluence is developed, informed by Brand’s and Wissen’s concept of theimperial mode of living. Finally, two dimensions of habits of affluence are discussed in some detail, which will help flesh out a thematically expanded, politically engaged version of enactivism. (shrink)

Over the past four decades - and most especially in recent years as issues of identity continue to play out across the public stage - identity theory has developed into one of the most fascinating and active research programs within the spheres of sociological social psychology. Having emerged out of a landmark 2014 national conference that sought to integrate various research programs and to honor the groundbreaking work of Dr. Peter J. Burke, New Directions in Identity Theory and Research brings (...) together the pioneers, scholars, and researchers of identity theory as they present the important theoretical, methodological, and substantive work in identity theory today.Edited by Dr. Jan E. Stets and Dr. Richard T. Serpe, this volume asserts that researchers and scholars can no longer rely on using samples, measures, concepts, and mechanisms that limit the overall advancement of identity theory and research. Instead, as Stets and Serpe contend in their introductory chapter. (shrink)

We generalize a well-known theorem binding the elementary equivalence relation on the level of PAC fields and the isomorphism type of their absolute Galois groups. Our results concern two cases: saturated PAC structures and nonsaturated PAC structures.

We extend stit logic by adding a spatial dimension. This enables us to distinguish between powers and opportunities of agents. Powers are agent-specific and do not depend on an agent’s location. Opportunities do depend on locations, and are the same for every agent. The central idea is to define the real possibility to see to the truth of a condition in space and time as the combination of the power and the opportunity to do so. The focus on agent-relative powers (...) and space-relative opportunities firmly roots effectivity of an autonomous choice making agent in a space–time picture. Our space–time view will be classically Newtonian, since we will assume relativistic phenomena do not play a role in agentive effectivity. We show how our semantics naturally distinguishes between different kinds of histories; histories that reflect real possibilities and histories that reflect counterfactual possibilities. Furthermore, we discuss how the spatial picture sheds light on conceptual problems plaguing the central stit property of ‘independence of agency’. At several points in the article we will emphasise and defend the differences with Belnap’s theory of agency in relativistic branching space–times. (shrink)

A common opinion is that power has shifted from states to companies. This article discusses quantitative and qualitative aspects of power possessed by companies and by states. A more adequate comparison than that between company sales and gross national product is the one between company value added and GNP. Also more adequate is the comparison between the public sector and company net profit. These rival measures take down company power to about a tenth of the sales measure. Also in qualitative (...) terms the "exit power" of the company gives a low impact compared to governmental action and the article concludes that company power by common measures is overestimated. However, the aggregated long-term effect of the market economy on the development of society is most significant. But it is a mistake to use that judgment as an argument for the opinion that business executives are the major power holders in modern societies. Perceptions of power also have an impact on which expectations and commitments that can be judged as realistic and therefore the issue of power is central for the normative discussion about corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

La recherche récente a régulièrement remis en cause la catégorie moderne de « lois sacrées » désignant des inscriptions grecques qui forment un ensemble mal défini. Cet article entend dépasser le corpus traditionnel des « lois sacrées » en présentant un projet de recueil alternatif de « Normes rituelles grecques » (CGRN pour l’acronyme anglais), qui s’appuie sur des critères plus sélectifs et sera publié en ligne.

As corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance, governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command-and-control policies to support it. As such, it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as New Governance policies, where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter-organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders. However, such (...) policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of CSR and its related issues, strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change. We explore New Governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context CSR and discuss the experiences with these methods in the European Union. (shrink)

Conceiving of nuclear energy as a social experiment gives rise to the question of what to do when the experiment is no longer responsible or desirable. To be able to appropriately respond to such a situation, the nuclear energy technology in question should be reversible, i.e. it must be possible to stop its further development and implementation in society, and it must be possible to undo its undesirable consequences. This paper explores these two conditions by applying them to geological disposal (...) of high-level radioactive waste. Despite the fact that considerations of reversibility and retrievability have received increased attention in GD, the analysis in this paper concludes that GD cannot be considered reversible. Firstly, it would be difficult to stop its further development and implementation, since its historical development has led to a point where GD is significantly locked-in. Secondly, the strategy it employs for undoing undesirable consequences is less-than-ideal: it relies on containment of severely radiotoxic waste rather than attempting to eliminate this waste or its radioactivity. And while it may currently be technologically impossible to turn high-level waste into benign substances, GD’s containment strategy makes it difficult to eliminate this waste’s radioactivity when the possibility would arise. In all, GD should be critically reconsidered if the inclusion of reversibility considerations in radioactive waste management has indeed become as important as is sometimes claimed. (shrink)

This papers discuss the place, if any, of Convention T (the condition of material adequacy of the proper definition of truth formulated by Tarski) in the truth-makers account offered by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. It is argued that although Tarski’s requirement seems entirely acceptable in the frameworks of truth-makers theories for the first-sight, several doubts arise under a closer inspection. In particular, T-biconditionals have no clear meaning as sentences about truth-makers. Thus, truth-makers theory cannot be considered as (...) the semantic theory of truth enriched by metaphysical (ontological) data. The problem of truth-makers for sentences about future events is discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Mind-body problemet analyseras i ett reduktionistiskt perspektiv. Genom att kombinera emergensbegreppet med algoritmisk informationsteori visas i ett tankeexperiment att ett starkt epistemiskt emergent system kan konstrueras utifrån en relativt enkel, ickelinjär process. En jämförelse med hjärnans avsevärt mer komplexa neurala nätverk visar att även medvetandet kan karakteriseras som starkt epistemiskt emergent. Därmed är reduktionistisk förståelse av medvetandet inte möjlig; mind-body problemet har alltså inte en reduktionistisk lösning. Medvetandets ontologiskt emergenta karaktär kan därefter konstateras utifrån en kombinatorisk analys; det är därmed (...) principiellt oreducerbart till lägre-nivå-fenomen. I perspektivet av en modifierad definition av fri vilja diskuteras den fysiska växelverkan som äger rum i hjärnans neurala system. Trots att enskilda neurala lägre-nivå-processer är deterministiska, kan globala processer visas vara icke- deterministiska i ontologisk mening. Vi argumenterar för att detta leder till viljans frihet. (shrink)

Although a considerable degree of precision has been introduced both into the formulation and the discussion of ontological theories by the use of formal methods there is still a remarkable indefiniteness about foundational issues. In particular it is not clear what an ontological category is and why we regard something as an ontological category. This is amazing given that the notion of ontological category is in fact the most basic of the whole of ontology: it is what this discipline is (...) about. (shrink)

Jan G. Michel argues that we need a philosophy of scientific discovery. Before turning to the question of what such a philosophy might look like, he addresses two questions: Don’t we have a philosophy of scientific discovery yet? And do we need one at all? To answer the first question, he takes a closer look at history and finds that we have not had a systematic philosophy of scientific discovery worthy of the name for over 150 years. To answer the (...) second question, Michel puts forward three arguments that show the importance of a philosophy of scientific discovery. Briefly, he arrives at the following answers: No, we don’t yet have a philosophy of scientific discovery, and yes, we definitely need one. To remedy this shortcoming, Michel analyzes the concept of discovery, leading him to the insight that scientific discoveries have an underlying structure with certain structural features. Some of these features may be important but not indispensable to scientific discovery processes; these include eureka moments, serendipities, joint discoveries, special science funding, and others. In addition, Michel identifies three indispensable structural features which he examines in detail and which he places in a picture with a certain dynamics according to which the process of making scientific discoveries can be seen as a path, leading us from finding and acceptance to knowledge. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of genesis of logic in the light of naturalism as a philosophical view about the nature of knowledge and reality. The main difficulty of naturalism as far as applied to logic consists in reconciling genetic empiricism (all cognition starts with experience) and abstract nature of logic. Anti-naturalism (Platonism, for example) maintains than empiricism is not able to explain how logical theorems as a priori assertions are accumulated. To defend naturalism one should note that experiential character (...) of knowledge can be understood phylogenetically or ontogenetically. The former account is more suitable for naturalism and allows us to investigate genesis of logic by glasses of evolutionary theory. This way can be supplemented by an appeal to genetics. Both theories can explain how logical competence, that is ability to use deduction, arose in humans. The author claims that the structure of the genetic coded has some properties that became transformed into logical rule. Some analogies between consequence operation and topological closure are employed in analysis. (shrink)

This paper outlines the history of logic in Poland in the years 1918–1939 . The disciplinary and social history of logical investigations in Poland is widely described. The author stresses topics characteristic for Polish logic, namely prepositional calculus, many-valued logic, Lezśniewski's systems, Chwistek's systems and the works in the history of logic.

We present a formal theory of propositions and combinator terms, and in this theory we give an interpretation of Martin-Löf's type theory. The construction of the interpretation is inspired by the semantics for type theory, but it can also be viewed as a formalized realizability interpretation.

Several areas of expanding corporate responsibilities are evident from current practices. This article penetrates one such field, economic compensation through litigation, and discusses the possibility and desirability of reversing the trend. In court, companies are fined increasing amounts for an ever wider range of faults, or they settle out of court under this legal threat. This is not a local American problem, but European companies are increasingly involved because of globalization. The development in Europe is also driven by the same (...) factors as in America – the mechanics of litigation and conventional ethics. The greed of plaintiffs and lawyers can mobilize the perceived virtue of sympathizing with a victim. Therefore it seems likely that a precondition for tort reform is an ethical reevaluation. Is it desirable and politically possible to make the individual more responsible for his own fate? (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility that the human mind underwent substantial changes in recent history. Assuming that consciousness is a substantial trait of the mind, the paper focuses on the suggestion made by Julian Jaynes that the Mycenean Greeks had a "bicameral" mind instead of a conscious one. The suggestion is commonly dismissed as patently absurd, for instance by critics such as Ned Block. A closer examination of the intuitions involved, considered from different theoretical angles , reveals that the idea (...) of 'Greek zombies' should be taken more seriously than is commonly assumed. (shrink)

Men's passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory This paper presents a theoretical analysis of men's experiences of pregnancy, birth and early fatherhood. It does so using a framework of ritual transition theory and argues that despite its earlier structural‐functionalist roots, transition theory remains a valuable framework, illuminating contemporary transitions across the life course. The paper discusses the historical development of transition or ritual theory and, drawing upon data generated during longitudinal ethnographic interviews with men (...) undergoing the transition to fatherhood, analyses its relevance in understanding contemporary experiences of fatherhood. (shrink)

This engaging book examines the origins and first effects of the concept ‘legal semiotics’, focusing on the inventor of the term, Roberta Kevelson. It highlights the importance of her ideas and works which have contributed to legal theory, legal interpretation and philosophy of language. Kevelson’s work is particularly relevant today, in our world of global electronic communication networks which rely so much on language, signs, signals and shortcuts. Kevelson could not have foreseen the 21st century, yet the story of her (...) work and influence deserves more attention as it is key to our understanding of modern legal discourse and why law fascinates and is accepted in modern society. The authors draw on Kevelson’s hitherto unknown Office Papers and Notes, and a biographical examination points to key influences in her work such as the early feminist movements of the US East Coast, the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semiotics of Thomas Sebeok. This forms the basis for a more encompassing research of Kevelson’s position, work and philosophical background, which the authors call for. A quick and enlightening read, this book interests a wide range of readers with an interest in legal history and the fields which Kevelson both drew on and influenced, including lawyers, students and scholars. (shrink)

People can be treated unjustly with respect to the level of credibility others accord to their testimony. This is the core idea of the philosophical idea of epistemic justice. It should be of utmost interest to criminal law which extensively deals with normative issues of evidence and testimony. It may reconstruct some of the long-standing criticisms of criminal law regarding credibility assessments and the treatment of witnesses, especially in sexual assault cases. However, philosophical discussions often overlook the intricate complexities of (...) real procedural law and its underlying considerations. In its present form, the philosophical notion of epistemic injustice provides limited insights into legal discourse; it necessitates translation and adaptation. This study contributes to this endeavor by examining the contentious issue of testimony from witnesses who have undergone trauma-focused psychotherapy. Since the 1980s, courts worldwide were troubled with cases of false accusations based on false memories generated by suggestive therapeutic interventions. As a result, such post-therapy testimonies are discounted in one way or another in many jurisdictions. However, courts are still confronted with such testimonies, and the modi vivendi legal systems have established to deal with them continue to give rise to concerns about unjust treatment of witnesses. The question is thus whether legal rules or established practices of evaluating testimony based on memories which resurfaced after psychotherapy are epistemically and legally just. The paper presents seven ways in which courts may assess such testimonies and examines them in light of epistemic and procedural justice. Some of them prima facie constitute a form of epistemic injustice because they discount testimonies to an unwarranted degree. But these injustices might be justified by overriding principles favoring defendants. Nonetheless, the idea of epistemic justice, more broadly understood, inspires two principles that may serve as a foundation for a future conception of epistemic justice adapted to the law. (shrink)