We introduce the property “F-linked” of subsets of posets for a given free filter F on the natural numbers, and define the properties “μ-F-linked” and “θ-F-Knaster” for posets in a natural way. We show that θ-F-Knaster posets preserve strong types of unbounded families and of maximal almost disjoint families. Concerning iterations of such posets, we develop a general technique to construct θ-Fr-Knaster posets (where Fr is the Frechet ideal) via matrix iterations of <θ-ultrafilter-linked posets (restricted to some level of the (...) matrix). This is applied to prove consistency results about Cichoń's diagram (without using large cardinals) and to prove the consistency of the fact that, for each Yorioka ideal, the four cardinal invariants associated with it are pairwise different. At the end, we show that three strongly compact cardinals are enough to force that Cichoń's diagram can be separated into 10 different values. (shrink)

Contrary to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's theoretical critique of Kant's philosophy, his practical critique has been almost unknown. In my paper, I shall reconstruct Reinhold's practical philosophy after Kant. I will concentrate on the so‐called Reinhold's dilemma, which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions in Kant. Also, I shall explain how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing a new action theory and by sharply distinguishing between reason and will. Finally, I shall evaluate Reinhold's (...) practical significance by relating his conception of individual freedom to recent theories of volitional self‐determination. (shrink)

In this paper, I will shed light on Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s and Friedrich Schiller’s conceptions of practical self-determination after Kant. First, I outline Kant’s conception of freedom as autonomy. I then explain the so-called “Reinhold’s dilemma,” which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions, which arises from Kant’s theory of autonomy. I then show how Reinhold and Schiller tried to escape this dilemma by developing an elaborated theory of individual freedom. I will argue that Reinhold’s (...) and Schiller’s symmetrical account of freedom to act according and against the moral law is not to be confused with freedom of indifference but can be reconstructed in terms of practical self-determination on the basis of first-order desires and second-order volitions. (shrink)

Abstract“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization (...) properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns. (shrink)

The origin of Rudolf Hagelstange’s cycle of sonnets "Venezianisches Credo" was Venice, while he was temporarily stationed in northern Italy in 1944 as a soldier. Twenty-four sonnets were written in the lagoon city, four more in Breganze, the remainder in Verona, where a limited edition was published in spring 1945, after some of the sonnets had already been distributed in military circles over some months. This contribution attempts on the one hand to analyze Hagelstange’s choice of the sonnet–form – a (...) classical type of lyric poetry, guaranteeing tradition and continuity –, claiming that at that time sonnets had become a fashionable form of oppositional poetry; on the other hand, the content of the three dozen sonnets will be analyzed, in which, over long stretches discordance prevails. For the author initially presents a damning indictment of the criminal activities of the NS-regime, until he eventually proclaims – with reference to Schiller – that the contemporary spiritual and moral crisis can yet be overcome by an ‚other Germany‘. In the final analysis, Hagelstange brilliantly succeeded – by means of an interaction of continuity and dissonance – to merge aesthetic and ethical aspects and thereby managed to create one of the most outstanding lyrical documents near the end of World War II. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze Schelling’s compatibilist account of freedom of the will particularly in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I shall argue that against Kant’s transcendental compatibilism Schelling proposes a “volitional compatibilism,” according to which the free will emerges out of nature and is not identical to practical reason as Kant claims. Finally, I will relate Schelling’s volitional compatibilism to more recent accounts of free will in order to better understand what he (...) means by his concept of a “higher necessity.”. (shrink)

This paper discusses under which circumstances grateful responses can become intrinsically bad. It is argued that gratitude should be understood as an appropriate response to value and that it is subject to the so-called recursive account of intrinsic value, according to which appropriate responses to value are intrinsically good, and inappropriate responses to value are intrinsically bad. As a result, gratitude can become intrinsically bad in two cases: i) when gratitude has the wrong object, i.e., is a pro-response to an (...) intrinsically bad act, ii) when the grateful response is grossly disproportionate, i.e., the intensity of the response does not match the goodness of the act that it is a response to. (shrink)

When a conflict of duties arises, a resolution is often sought by use of an ordering of priority or importance. This paper examines how such a conflict resolution works, compares mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature, and gives preference to one developed by Brewka and Nebel. I distinguish between two cases – that some conflicts may remain unresolved, and that a priority ordering can be determined that resolves all – and provide semantics and axiomatic systems for accordingly defined (...) dyadic deontic operators. (shrink)

In his book “Schiller as Philosopher”, Frederick Beiser laments that “contemporary Kant scholars have been intent on ignoring him. If they know anything at all about Schiller, it is only as the author of an epigram satirizing Kant”. Therefore, Beiser calls us “to consider Schiller as a philosopher, to reconstruct and appraise the arguments of his philosophical writings” (Beiser, 2005, p. vii). In this paper, I shall argue that it is Schiller's conception of freedom of the will as “heautonomy” that (...) stands behind his critique and modification of Kant's ethics. However, the systematic significance of Schiller's theory of freedom is not obvious. Its argumentative structure must first be reconstructed—as Beiser has demanded—because it is concealed by an esthetic discourse. A reconstruction of Schiller's theory of freedom shows that he contrasts his concept of heautonomy as individual self‐determination with the Kantian concept of an autonomy or autocracy of reason by the universal moral law. Schiller's own philosophical contribution to the debate on freedom after Kant must therefore not be understood as a mere esthetic balancing and softening of Kant's ethical rigorism. Rather, it shows serious transformations of Kant's approach, which justifies understanding it as a critical step beyond Kant's theory of the autonomy of reason. (shrink)

Social Justice, Health Inequities, and Access to New Age-Related Interventions Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 281-295 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0027-3 Authors Hans-Jörg Ehni, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Baden-Württemberg Germany Georg Marckmann, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Baden-Württemberg Germany Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 3.

Brendle, J., H. Judah and S. Shelah, Combinatorial properties of Hechler forcing, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 59 185–199. Using a notion of rank for Hechler forcing we show: assuming ωV1 = ωL1, there is no real in V[d] which is eventually different from the reals in L[ d], where d is Hechler over V; adding one Hechler real makes the invariants on the left-hand side of Cichoń's diagram equal ω1 and those on the right-hand side equal 2ω and (...) produces a maximal almost disjoint family of subsets of ω of size ω1; there is no perfect set of random reals over V in V[ r][ d], where r is random over V and d Hechler over V[r], thus answering a question of the first and second authors. (shrink)

Analysis of a basic idea of Christian anthropology: that human desire is ultimately a desire of God.

Beim Stichwort ”Kognition“ denken die meisten an das Gehirn, Computermodelle oder Informationsverarbeitung. In der realen Welt treffen wir aber immer nur auf Wesen mit Körpern, die in eine Umwelt eingebunden und in ihr aktiv sind. Kognition findet nicht im Kopf statt, sondern in der Welt. So lautet der Grundgedanke der Philosophie der Verkörperung. Die Hinwendung zu Körper und Umwelt stellt eine der vielleicht weitreichendsten Neuorientierungen der modernen Kognitionswissenschaft und Philosophie dar, die auch unser Verständnis von Wissenschaft und Kultur prägen wird. (...) Der Band versammelt die Grundlagentexte zu diesem Thema zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache. (shrink)

Ultimately this book provides a theory of intergenerational justice that is both intellectually robust and practical with wide applicability to law and policy.

In this chapter, I will address the philosophical ambivalence of the concept of Willkür in and after Kant. The aim of my chapter is to defend it against the charge of irrationality and mere chance, and to rehabilitate it from a historical and analytic point of view. I will analyze Kant’s use of the word “Willkür”, and chronologically follow the semantic and systematic changes in his philosophical work. Finally, I address recent attempts to revitalize the concept of Willkür in the (...) analytic debate by referring to the work of Harry Frankfurt and Robert Kane. I shall argue that we need to distinguish between two kinds of libera arbitria. Whereas the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae can be interpreted in terms of the pejorative sense of “Willkür”—as mere chance—the liberum arbitrium voluntatis equals a reflective kind of Willkür—literal Will-kür —which involves freedom of the will. (shrink)

This article develops an understanding of Luther which runs counter to the classic Roman Catholic image of him as zealotic iconoclast. In Luther's life these discourses mark the zenith of his influence and spiritual authority. The experience of the radical movement in Wittenberg decisively formed Luther's reforming activities; in the area of the reorganization of the Mass, where the safety of conscience and Christian liberty were involved, he became cautious and slowed the development rather than pushed it forward. Furthermore, the (...) pluralistic arrangements of the Lutheran orders of service are ultimately the unavoidable consequence of those theological principles as contained in this series of sermons. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction that is underlying Freedom’s Right undermines Critical Theory’s aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, I demonstrate that (...) abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom’s Right entails no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom’s Right. I show that Honneth’s own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom’s Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments. (shrink)

La crise écologique fait sentir la nécessité d'élaborer une éthique de la nature. Elle provoque l'affrontement, en particulier en Allemagne, d'une tendance philosophique, qui fonde le devoir de l'homme envers la nature sur le propre bien de l'homme, et d'une tendance théologique, qui fonde ce devoir sur l'immanence de Dieu dans la nature. Il semble qu'on puisse trouver chez Simone Weil une autre voie, esthétique, qui éviterait les insuffisances ou les dangers de ces deux tendances: la perception de la beauté (...) du monde, appréhendée comme trace de la présence du Dieu absent. (shrink)

The history of Western metaphysics is being unfold on the basis of nine outstanding philosophers. For ancient philosophy: Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus; for medieval philosophy: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham; for the modern period: Descartes, Kant and Hegel. The final chapter outlines some prominent opponents of metaphysics in the 19th/20th Century (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger). Metaphysics being a fundamental philosophical discipline, this book can also be read as an introduction to philosophy as such.

Periodic orbit quantization requires an analytic continuation of non-convergent semiclassical trace formulae. We propose two different methods for semiclassical quantization. The first method is based upon the harmonic inversion of semiclassical recurrence functions. A band-limited periodic orbit signal is obtained by analytical frequency windowing of the periodic orbit sum. The frequencies of the periodic orbit signal are the semiclassical eigenvalues, and are determined by either linear predictor, Padé approximant, or signal diagonalization. The second method is based upon the direct application (...) of the Padé approximant to the periodic orbit sum. The Padé approximant allows the resummation of the, typically exponentially, divergent periodic orbit terms. Both techniques do not depend on the existence of a symbolic dynamics, and can be applied to bound as well as to open systems. Numerical results are presented for two different systems with chaotic and regular classical dynamics, viz. the three-disk scattering system and the circle billiard. (shrink)

Epistemology, as generally understood by philosophers of science, is rather remote from the history of science and from historical concerns in general. Rheinberger shows that, from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century, a parallel, alternative discourse sought to come to terms with the rather fundamental experience of the thoroughgoing scientific changes brought on by the revolution in physics. Philosophers of science and historians of science alike contributed their share to what this essay describes as an ongoing quest to (...) historicize epistemology. Historical epistemology, in this sense, is not so concerned with the knowing subject and its mental capacities. Rather, it envisages science as an ongoing cultural endeavor and tries to assess the conditions under which the sciences in all their diversity take shape and change over time. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeichnet nach, wie Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) mit der Deutung der Dichtung Hölderlins, Georges, Rilkes und Trakls sein eigenes Denken legitimiert und zugleich grundlegende Positionen eines poetologischen Modells gewinnt. Heidegger setzt sich dabei sowohl von der philosophischen Hermeneutik als auch von der philologischen Interpretation deutlich ab. Er sieht sich in der Rolle eines singulären Sinngebers und begreift seine Deutung als einzig mögliche Antwort auf die Fragen, die Dichtung an das Verstehen richtet. Die sogenannte "Zwiesprache" zwischen Dichter und Denker (...) identifiziert die Untersuchung als hermeneutische Strategie, die eng mit der Wissenschaftskultur ihrer Zeit - vor allem mit den literaturwissenschaftlichen Paradigmen des George-Kreises - verknüpft ist. Heideggers "ungeschriebene" Poetologie ist bis heute noch nicht ansatzweise beschrieben worden. Die vorliegende Arbeit nimmt sich dieser Aufgabe an und nennt zudem die Vorbilder und Konzepte aus der Theoriegeschichte der Interpretation, von denen Heidegger sich leiten läßt. Die Poetologie Heideggers wird literaturwissenschaftlich aufgefaltet und aus verschiedenen Perspektiven im Hinblick auf ihr theoriegeschichtliches Erbgut durchleuchtet. Die intellektuellen Voraussetzungen und die lange verdeckte theoriegeschichtliche Nähe des sich sezessionistisch und antirational gebenden Denkens Heideggers sind damit erstmalig in einer zusammenhängenden Untersuchung vorgestellt. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Kant’s theory of error in theoretical and practical terms, not only from a moral-psychological perspective, but also from the broader perspective of his transcendental philosophy. Kant’s theory of error will be interpreted as a central part of his transcendental philosophy, insofar as it is related to his doctrine of reason. For it is precisely Kant’s theory of dialectic as the »logic of appearance« that deals with the reasons that concern theoretical error as (...) well as moral misconduct and that traces theoretical and practical error back to a common root: the phenomenon of rational self-deception. (shrink)

The article presents Dewey’s own understanding of rationality by reconstructing his criticism of idealism. For Dewey, idealism is an important and valuable expression of the modern idea that both knowledge and values are historical products of human self-determination. Thus, it rightly defends the power of thought against the uncritical claims of mere religious and social authority. Yet idealism, Dewey claims, still misconceives that human power by ultimately treating it as a merely intellectual power, thus following the philosophical tradition. For Dewey, (...) however, human thought and reasoning have to be understood in a much broader way. Dewey decenters thought by arguing that it is a natural, dependent and essentially temporal process, in which the intellectual elements only play a subordinate role. Thought, he claims, does not only have a history; furthermore, thinking only matters to human beings precisely because it is open to reflective change. Dewey’s position, thus, can be seen as an attempt to preserve the existential importance of philosophical self-reflection by binding thought to history and change in a radical way. (shrink)

We investigate some aspects of bounding, splitting, and almost disjointness. In particular, we investigate the relationship between the bounding number, the closed almost disjointness number, the splitting number, and the existence of certain kinds of splitting families.

This paper analyzes responsible human–machine interaction concerning artificial neural networks (ANNs) and large language models (LLMs) by considering the extension of human agency and autonomy by means of artificial intelligence (AI). Thereby, the paper draws on the sociological concept of “interobjectivity,” first introduced by Bruno Latour, and applies it to technologically situated and interconnected agency. Drawing on Don Ihde’s phenomenology of human-technology relations, this interobjective account of AI allows to understand human–machine interaction as embedded in the social lifeworld. Finally, the (...) paper develops a connectionist account of responsible AI, thereby focusing on patterns such as social goals and actions. (shrink)