Inwiefern ist Metaphysik heutzutage noch relevant? Gibt es einen Sinn, in dem Metaphysik fur die Philosophie unverzichtbar ist? Was ist gute Metaphysik, und worin unterscheidet sie sich von schlechter Metaphysik? Was sind Chancen und Probleme genuin metaphysischen Denkens? Die Beitrage des Sammelbandes widmen sich diesen Fragen aus historischer und systematischer Perspektive.

The discovery of “molecular chaperones” has dramatically changed our concept of cellular protein folding. Rather than folding spontaneously, most newly synthesized polypeptide chains seem to acquire their native conformation in a reaction mediated by these versatile helper proteins. Understanding the structure and function of molecular chaperones is likely to yield useful applications for medicine and biotechnology in the future.

The external appearance of a person is an important predictor for his or her social success. This finding has been verified by numerous mostly social psychological oriented empirical studies on physical attractiveness for many phases and areas of life. At the same time, sociological research on social inequality has hardly paid any attention to the social relevance of physical attractiveness. In order to begin to dose this gap, the article provides insight into attractiveness research results and highlights the importance of (...) further research into the impact of attractiveness on causing social inequality. We will first give an overview of the areas of life in which the efficacy of physical attractiveness has already been demonstrated. Then we will discuss the mechanisms through which the external appearance of a person develops its effect, until finally, we will explain how physical attractiveness can be measured. (shrink)

Ethics have Iong been a neglected matter in schalarship on early Christian apologetics. However, a closer Iook at the composition of the texts of Justin Martyr teaches us how important the references to Christi an ethics actually are in the run of his argument. The external reason forthat lies in the fact that Justin wants to prove the legal proceedings against the Christians in the Roman empire to be unjust and absurd. The inner reason is that he interprets Christianity as (...) »true philosophy«: in view of the understanding of »philosophy~< in his pagan environment, this brings about fundamental ethical implications. Both his apologies and the dialogue with Trypho show how Justin employs ethical convictions as a criterio for Christian identity and as a trait of difference between Christianity and Paganism on the one hand, and between Christianity and Judaism on the other. (shrink)

What do Mesoamerica, Greece, Byzantium, Island, Chad, Ethiopia, India, Tibet, China and Japan have in common? Like many other cultures of the world, they share a particular form of cultural heritage: ancient handwritten documents. In 2007, scholars from some 20 countries around the world gathered at the University of Copenhagen for a workshop on manuscripts to compare notes. This event led to the publication of this volume, which brings together 16 articles on philological, cultural, and material aspects of manuscripts in (...) search for a common ground across disciplines and cultures. (shrink)

In the present study, we explored the effects of high arousal on cognitive performance when facing a situation of risk. We also investigated how these effects are moderated by either positive or ne...

"Heimat" ist zutiefst doppeldeutig. Heimat steht zum einen für Sicherheit und Geborgenheit, zum anderen für Enge und Exklusion. Heimat ist zugleich Paradies und Sehnsuchtsort wie auch Hölle. Das Buch lotet diese Spannung aus. Im Fokus steht nicht nur der gegenwärtige politische Gebrauch des Begriffs. Gefragt wird auch, ob es angesichts der Individualität, Pluralität und Heterogenität, die das Lebensgefühl der Menschen prägen, überhaupt noch Sinn macht, den Begriff "Heimat" zu verwenden. Gleichzeitig fordern Migration und Flucht die modernen westlichen Gesellschaften heraus, sich (...) neu mit kulturellen Verortungen auseinanderzusetzen. Mit Beiträgen von Hans-Joachim Höhn, Markus Kotzur, Jürgen Manemann, Ulrich Hemel, Jörg Wächter, Birgit Recki, Christian Starck, Saskia Wendel, Hans Joas und Gerhard Kruip. "Homeland" is full of ambiguity. "Homeland" refers to safety and feelings of security, at the same time it is perceived as narrowness and exclusion. Homeland is experienced as paradise as well as hell. The book fathoms the tension and raises the question how to speak of homeland today. (shrink)

English summary: According to a current prejudice, the God of reason does not have a home in Protestantism. On the basis of model studies on the connection between biblical, Platonic and Aristotelian themes in the development of the Christian concept of God in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the authors of this volume show that the reformers did not at all flatly dismiss the rationality of faith. The articles focus on the modern transformations of the concept of (...) God in the 18th and 19th centuries. The volume, a collection of case studies of the history of the problem of the Christian concept of God, concludes with prominent syntheses of revelation and reason in the 20th century. German description: Einem gangigen Vorurteil zufolge hat der Gott der Vernunft im Protestantismus keine Heimat. Nach exemplarischen Studien zur Verbindung von biblischen mit platonischen und aristotelischen Motiven bei der Entfaltung des christlichen Gottesgedankens in Spatantike, Mittelalter und Renaissance zeigt der vorliegende Band aber, dass die Reformatoren der Vernunft des Glaubens keineswegs pauschal den Abschied gaben. Der Schwerpunkt der Beitrage liegt auf den neuzeitlichen Transformationen des Gottesgedankens im 18. und 19. Jh. Prominente Synthesen von Offenbarung und Vernunft im 20. Jh. schliessen den Band ab, der Fallstudien zu einer Problemgeschichte des christlichen Gottes-Denkens versammelt. Mit Beitragen von: Martin Arneth, Christine Axt-Piscalar, Ulrich Barth, Markus Buntfuss, Jorg Dierken, Douglas Hedley, Thomas Kaufmann, Dietrich Klein, Dietrich Korsch, Martin Laube, Jorg Lauster, Friederike Nussel, Bernd Oberdorfer, Joachim Ringleben, Friedemann Voigt, Dorothea Wendebourg, Gunther Wenz. (shrink)

ExcerptCosmopolitan world society is a successful and widely shared political project. It is shared by decision makers pursuing liberal agendas of democratization and prosperity while prosecuting criminal and terrorist deviance. It is also shared by leading social thinkers, such as Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Francis Fukuyama, David Held, and Niklas Luhmann. Even the proverbial “man on the street” shares the vision of cosmopolitan world society when (s)he refuses to interpret deviance from “universal” values in any terms other than greed (...) or insanity. Overall, the liberal vision of cosmopolitan world society runs somewhat like this. Globalization and global governance lead from…. (shrink)

In einer kühnen Metapher haben einst Hieronymus, Erasmus und Luther die Heilige Schrift als ein Labyrinth bezeichnet, das die Leser bei fortgesetztem Lesen in eine sich sogar steigernde Verwirrung stürze. Beinah im selben Atemzug wird eben dieselbe Heilige Schrift von eben denselben Autoren als der einzige Faden gepriesen, der die Leser aus dem Labyrinth ihres Lebens herausführe. Eines und dasselbe als Labyrinth und als Faden: Diese Figur ist paradigmatisch. Im Labyrinth der Ethik geht es nicht anders zu. Nur wer sich (...) ihm überläßt, findet aus ihm heraus. 24 Beiträge von namhaften Theologen und Theologinnen zur Theologischen Ethik finden sich in den fünf Abschnitten des vorliegenden Buches, das nacheinander "Biblische Grundlagen", "Theologische Systematik", "Ethische Modelle", "Ethische Leitbegriffe" und "Ethik und die Religionen" behandelt: Hans-Dieter Bastian: Zwischen Glauben und Handeln: Bibel-Lesen - Werner H. Schmidt: Glaube und Handeln. Aspekte des Alten Testaments - Wolfgang Schrage: Der 1. Korintherbrief als Paradigma paulinischer Ethik - Michael Wolter: Der Kompromiß bei Paulus - Jörg Haustein: Beobachtungen zum Schriftverständnis ökumenischer Dokumente - Gerhard Sauter: "Schrifttreue" in ethischer Urteilsbildung Günter Bader: Handeln im Namen Gottes - Erich Gräßer: Die ersten und die letzten Dinge. Bemerkungen zur theologischen und ethischen Schöpfungswahrnehmung - Marcin Hintz: Glaube, Tradition, Vernunft: Auf den Spuren theologischer Urteilsbildung im polnischen Protestantismus - Rolf Schäfer: Christliche Glaubens- und Sittenlehre bei Schleiermacher - Karl-Wilhelm Dahm: Herausforderungen für Selbstverständnis und Rolle des protestantischen Pfarrers im Zuge des Modernisierungsprozesses Traugott Jähnichen: Sozialethik auf dem Weg der Ausbildung von Bereichsethiken - Historische Traditionen und perspektivische Herausforderungen - Ulrich Eibach: Christengemeinde und christliches Leben und Handeln in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft - Ludger Honnefelder: Gesundheit unser "höchstes Gut"? Wertentscheidungen im Rahmen der Ressourcenallokation im Gesundheitswesen - Jörg Hübner: Kollektives Handeln im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Perspektiven für eine zukünftige politische Ethik - Gottfried Hütter: Menschenwürde und Menschenrechte für Tiere? - Tobias Schlingensiepen: Adam, wo bist du? Die Entkontextualisierung menschlichen Lebens als Problem u. Herausforderung evangelischer Ethik Edgar Thaidigsmann: "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben". Das Problem der Begründung einer Ethik der Verantwortung für das Lebendige bei Albert Schweitzer und Hans Jonas - Konrad Stock: Laster - der "vielnamige Frevel". Eine theologische Erinnerung an ein vergessenes Problem - Ulrich H. J. Körtner: Bildung und Wertebewußtsein. Anmerkungen zum Wertbegriff in der aktuellen Bildungsdiskussion - Hans G. Ulrich: Güter oder Werte? Zur Aufgabe der Theoriebildung in der evangelischen Sozialethik - Hartmut Kreß: Toleranz als Verpflichtung protestantischer Ethik Hans Waldenfels: Unterwegs zu einer interreligiösen Theologie - Sung-Hee Lee-Linke: Interreligiöse Ethik. Ein Modell für die Zukunft? (shrink)

Gutes und Guter, Leben, Leib, Tugend - in diesem Band werden die Vortrage der ersten vier Symposien der Mainz Moral Meetings aus den Jahren 2009-2011 zu diesen Themen zusammengefasst. Ein interdisziplinarer Zugang durch Bibelwissenschaft, Judaistik, Altphilologie, Philosophie, Patristik, Systematische Theologie und weiteren Disziplinen eroffnet einen Blick auf die ethischen Normen des fruhen Christentums. Die Autoren der Beitrage fragen nach den Moglichkeiten von Norm und Normbegrundung einer fruhchristlichen Ethik in ausgewahlten Bereichen sowohl im Kontext antiker Philosophie als auch in gegenwartiger Verantwortung. (...) Mit Beitragen von: Jochen Althoff, Frederick D. Aquino, Wilhelm Blumer, Maximilian Forschner, Christian Hengstermann, Christoph Horn, Friedrich W. Horn, David Horrell, Manfred Lang, Sebastian Moll, Maren Niehoff, Jorg Roder, Eckart David Schmidt, Nikolaus Schneider, Lorenzo Scornaienchi, Notger Slenczka, Mira Stare, Gerd Theissen, Ulrich Volp, Jan G. van der Watt, Werner Zager, Ruben Zimmermann. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will ed. by Jörg Noller and John WalshDai HeideJörg Noller and John Walsh, editors. Kant’s Early Critics on Freedom of the Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xlvii + 297. Hardback, $105.00; paperback, $32.99.This volume collects new (and in many instances the first) English translations of eighteen works—by Johann Fichte, Salomon Maimon, Karl Reinhold, August Heydenreich, and Hermann Pistorius, among (...) others—that engage with Kant’s critical theory of freedom as it is encountered in his three Critiques and other writings from the late 1780s and early 1790s. The essays were written between 1786 and 1800. Noller and Walsh open the volume with a thorough and penetrating introduction to Kant’s historical context, Kant’s theory of freedom, and the newly translated essays themselves. Given how central Kant’s theory of freedom is to every aspect of his systematic philosophy, and how intensely scholars have focused upon it in recent decades, this volume is a welcome addition to the existing literature. Not only is it important to have these essays translated into English, but it is also helpful to have them collected in a single volume. This volume will thus be an invaluable resource, and not merely for English-speaking scholars of Kant. For considerations of space, I cannot discuss every essay in the volume. Instead, I emphasize those contributions that strike me as especially noteworthy or relevant to contemporary discussion.The standout of the first group of essays, on “Freedom and Determinism,” is the contribution by Hermann Andreas Pistorius (1730–98), which reinforces his status as one of Kant’s most trenchant Leibnizian critics. Pistorius subjects Kant’s account of “the concept of freedom itself, its origin, its content, and its objective validity” to a withering critique, contending that this is “the most obscure aspect of his system” (5). Pistorius raises the now familiar worry that Kant’s relegation of transcendental freedom to things in themselves violates his own epistemic strictures. He goes on to argue that even if this worry can be evaded, we must “assume that the human being’s actually free actions (which likewise are things in themselves) appear as necessary to him, as a thing in itself ” (8). In other words, our representations of deterministic sequences are representations of things in themselves “obscured and distorted by the fog of sensibility,” which renders Kant’s philosophy ultimately a version of “the Leibnizian idealism which the author so strongly rejects” (8). Also of note here is the set of careful objections by Johann August Heinrich Ulrich (1746–1813) to the notion of timeless agency that appears to be required for Kant’s account of transcendental freedom, an issue that remains alive and well in contemporary discussions of transcendental freedom.The section on “Freedom and Imputability” begins with two contributions by Carl Christian Erhard Schmid (1762–1812), who contends that only morally good actions are imputable, a claim he takes to be grounded in the doctrine of intelligible fatalism: “the [End Page 669] assertion of the natural necessity of all actions of a rational being according to laws of the causality of things in themselves” (78). Johann Christoph Schwab (1743–1821) responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism in two essays published in the Philosophisches Archiv. The first essay criticizes Schmid’s endorsement of Kant’s appeal to “a supersensible I in addition to the empirical I” (84, emphasis in original). He contends that this requires Schmid “to attribute predicates to the rational I that elevate it to the rank of the deity” (86). In the second essay, Schwab responds directly to Schmid’s intelligible fatalism, arguing that intelligible fatalism is not superior to ordinary determinism. He concludes by speculating that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is “at bottom identical with Leibnizian-Wolffian determinism” (91). This section of the book concludes with the attack moved by Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823) against intelligible fatalism, which Reinhold sees as incompatible with fundamental aspects of the critical philosophy.Each of the essays in the third section, on “Freedom and Consciousness,” takes up Kant’s discussion of the “fact of reason” in his... (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)

This article explores the elective affinities between Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the sociology of critical capacities. It argues that these two research programmes can be understood as symmetrical twins. We show the extent to which the exchange between Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanski has influenced their respective theoretical developments. Three strong encounters between the twin research programmes may be distinguished. The first encounter concerns explanations for social change. The second encounter focuses on the status of objects and their relationship to (...) places. The third encounter is about the concept of critique. Drawing on their long-term mutual readings, we gain insight into how pleas for symmetrical analysis raised in response to Bourdieu’s theory of fields have evolved within both ANT and the sociology of critical capacity. We conclude by relating the development of the respective research programmes to the issue of disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

Refugee and poverty migration is one of the key challenges developed Western societies are facing. Due to the unstable political situation in many parts of the world and the lasting high differences in development between the economies, these migratory movements will continue to increase in the future. In order to channel immigrants, the authors suggest that migrants must pay an entry premium to obtain a permanent right of residence. We criticize this proposal from both an ethical and an economic perspective. (...) We argue that a pricing system is neither ethically legitimate nor economically sensible. In order to meet the chal- lenges of migration, a fundamental change in economic cooperation between developed and less developed economies is more appropriate. (shrink)

The distinction between agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons is philosophically important, but there is no consensus on how to understand the distinction exactly. In this paper, I discuss several interpretations of the distinction that can be found in the literature: the Motivational Interpretation, the Scope Interpretation, and the Goal Interpretation, and argue that none of these interpretations is entirely convincing. I propose a novel interpretation of the distinction, which I call the Normative Force Interpretation, according to which the distinction between (...) agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons concerns the normative force that these reasons can have for agents. (shrink)

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

Der Körper hat Konjunktur. Als ausgestellter, verfüg- und verführbarer begegnet er uns täglichim Übermaß. Es war nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis im Spiel der sich in den Wissenschafteneinander ablösenden turns auch ein corporeal (oder body) turn ausgerufen würde. Dabeibleibt im genannten turn der Gegenstand der Untersuchung nicht selten reduziert auf das, wasman im deutschen Sprachgebrauch »Körper« nennt: ein physisches Substrat, das wie ein Dingunter Dingen beschreibbar ist. Gegen diese Verkürzung stellt der Begri des »Leibes«,spätestens seit Edmund Husserl, eine präzise (...) theoretische Intervention in die wissenschaftlicheund philosophische Diskussion um Körper und Körperlichkeit dar: Dem objektiv beobachtbaren Körper, den wir haben, wird der lebendige Leib, der wir sind, gegenübergestellt. Diesem »Leib«, seiner Geschichte, seinen Varianten und seinem Versprechen gehen dieAutoren der vorliegenden Beiträge nach. Inhaltsübersicht Emmanuel Alloa/Thomas Bedorf/Christian Grüny/Tobias Nikolaus Klass: Einleitung I. Der Leibbegriff in der Phänomenologie Emmanuel Alloa / Natalie Depraz: Edmund Husserl – „Ein merkwürdig unvollkommenkonstituiertes Ding“ – Stefan Kristensen: Maurice Merleau-Ponty I – Körperschema undleibliche Subjektivität – Emmanuel Alloa: Maurice Merleau-Ponty II – Fleisch und Dierenz – David Espinet: Martin Heidegger – Der leibliche Sinn von Sein – Thomas Bedorf: EmmanuelLevinas – Der Leib des Anderen – Karel Novotný: Körper, Leib, Aektivität in Jan Pato č kasPhänomenologie der natürlichen Welt – Julia Scheidegger: Michel Henry – TranszendentaleLeiblichkeit – Jörg Sternagel: Bernhard Waldenfels – Responsivität des Leibes – Kerstin Andermann: Hermann Schmitz – Leiblichkeit als kommunikatives Selbst- und Weltverhältnis II. Zur Geschichte des Leibbegris Emmanuel Alloa: Archaische Leiblichkeit. Die griechische Antike und die Entdeckung desKörpers – Theresia Heimerl: Der Leib Christi und der Körper des Christen: Körper und Leib alszentrale Problemzonen des Christentums – Marc Rölli: Philosophische Anthropologie im 19. Jahrhundert – Zwischen Leib und Körper – Tobias Nikolaus Klass: Friedrich Nietzsche – Denkenam „Leitfaden des Leibes“ – Andreas Cremonini: Sigmund Freud – Der gelebte vs. derphantasmatische Leib – Uta Noppeney: Kurt Goldstein und Frederik Buytendijk – Der Leib-Begri in der organismischen Biologie – Volker Schürmann: Max Scheler und Helmuth Plessner– Leiblichkeit in der Philosophischen Anthropologie – Marion Lauschke: Ernst Cassirer und AbyWarburg – Kulturanthropologie III. Grenzen und Kritik des Leibbegris Christian Grüny: Theodor W. Adorno – Soma und Sensorium – Ulrich Johannes Schneider: Michel Foucault – Der Körper und die Körper – Burkhard Liebsch: Paul Ricoeur – Das leiblicheSelbst begegnet dem Widerstand des Anderen – Mirjam Schaub: Gilles Deleuze – Was weiß ein„Körper ohne Organe“ vom Leib? – Kathrin Busch: Jean-Luc Nancy – Exposition und Berührung– Shaun Gallagher: Embodiment: Leiblichkeit in den Kognitionswissenschaften – Marie-Luise Angerer: Gender und Performance – Ist leibliche Identität ein Konstrukt? – Thomas Bedorf/Selin Gerlek: Praxistheorien – Leibkörperliche Praktiken im Vollzug. (shrink)

We prove that in many situations it is consistent with ZFC that part of the invariants involved in Cichon's diagram are equal to $\kappa$ while the others are equal to $\lambda$, where $\kappa < \lambda$ are both arbitrary regular uncountable cardinals. We extend some of these results to the case when $\lambda$ is singular. We also show that $\mathrm{cf}) < \kappa_A$ is consistent with ZFC.

This handbook brings together past and current research on all aspects of lying and deception, with chapters contributed by leading international experts in the field. We are confronted daily with cases of lying, deception, bullshitting, and 'fake news', making it imperative to understand how lying works, how it can be defined, and whether it can be detected. A further important issue is whether lying should always be considered a bad thing or if, in some cases, it is simply a useful (...) instrument of human cognition. This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of these and other issues from the combined perspectives of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Chapters offer precise definitions of lying and its subtypes, and outline the range of fields in which lying and deception play a role, from empirical lie detection and the acquisition of lying to its role in fiction, metaphor, and humour. They also describe the tools and approaches that are used by scholars researching lying and deception, such as questionnaire studies, EEG, neuroimaging, and the polygraph. The volume will be an essential reference for students and researchers in a range of fields who are looking to deepen their understanding of all aspects of lying and deception, and will contribute to establishing the vibrant new field of interdisciplinary lying research. (shrink)

In my paper, I shall take seriously Kant’s puzzling statements about the moral feeling of respect, which is, according to him, “a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different” from all common feelings. I will focus on the systematic position of the moral feeling of respect within the framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By considering its volitional structure, I argue for a compatibilist account of the moral feeling of respect, according to which both intellectualist and (...) affectivist interpretations are true. As such, respect can be understood in terms of a process of moral self-consciousness and self-formation, which means that the will must be freed from initial empirical motives, and finally be determined only by rational principles. (shrink)

This article examines the relativistic view according to which the interpretation of texts is a matter of opinion and one interpretation is as good as any other. It clarifies the question by establishing precise understandings of texts and interpretations and by introducing various distinctions between different kinds of interpretations based on their function. It argues that not all kinds of interpretations are relativistic, although all interpretations are relative, and that even those interpretations that are relativistic are not so in the (...) same ways. (shrink)

We investigate which filters onωcan contain towers, that is, a modulo finite descending sequence without any pseudointersection. We prove the following results:Many classical examples of nice tall filters contain no towers.It is consistent that tall analytic P-filters contain towers of arbitrary regular height.It is consistent that all towers generate nonmeager filters, in particular Borel filters do not contain towers.The statement “Every ultrafilter contains towers.” is independent of ZFC.Furthermore, we study many possible logical implications between the existence of towers in filters, (...) inequalities between cardinal invariants of filters $,${\rm{co}}{{\rm{f}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$,${\rm{no}}{{\rm{n}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$, and${\rm{co}}{{\rm{v}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$), and the existence of Luzin type families, that is, if${\cal F}$is a filter then${\cal X} \subseteq {[\omega ]^\omega }$is an${\cal F}$-Luzin family if$\left\{ {X \in {\cal X}:|X \setminus F| = \omega } \right\}$is countable for every$F \in {\cal F}$. (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.

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)

We show that every dominating analytic set in the Baire space has a dominating closed subset. This improves a theorem of Spinas [15] saying that every dominating analytic set contains the branches of a uniform tree, i.e. a superperfect tree with the property that for every splitnode all the successor splitnodes have the same length. In [15], a subset of the Baire space is called u-regular if either it is not dominating or it contains the branches of a uniform tree, (...) and it was proved that Σ21-Kσ-regularity implies Σ21-u-regularity. Here we show that these properties are in fact equivalent. Since the proof of analytic u-regularity uses a game argument it was clear that determinacy implies u-regularity of all sets. Here we show that an inaccessible cardinal is enough to construct a model for projective u-regularity, namely it holds in Solovay's model. Finally we show that forcing with uniform trees is equivalent to Laver forcing. (shrink)

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)

In this paper, I will reconstruct Kant’s theory of illusion from the perspective of his transcendental philosophy. I argue that it is Kant’s theory of dialectic as the “logic of illusion” that grounds both theoretical and practical error and that traces them back to a common root: the operation of rationalizing by theoretical and practical reason. I analyze different kinds of theoretical and practical errors and show how they are grounded in reason’s general propensity to rationalize. The paper exposes this (...) common root and shows which rules Kant develops in order to avoid rationalizing. (shrink)