Are communicators perceived as committed to what they actually say (what is explicit), or to what they mean (including what is implicit)? Some research claims that explicit communication leads to a higher attribution of commitment and more accountability than implicit communication. Here we present theoretical arguments and experimental data to the contrary. We present three studies exploring whether the saying–meaning distinction affects commitment attribution in promises, and, crucially, whether commitment attribution is further modulated by the degree to which the hearer (...) will actually rely on the promise. Our results support the conclusion that people perceive communicators to be committed to ‘what is meant’, and not simply to ‘what is said’. Our findings add to the experimental literature showing that the saying–meaning distinction is not as pivotal to social relations as often assumed, and that its role in commitment attribution might be overestimated. The attribution of commitment is strongly dependent on the (mutually known) relevance of ‘what is meant’. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the linguistic structure to the extent that it can be understood in relation to linguistic activity. In order to arrive at an adequate, non‐formal concept of structure, the author and his colleagues oriented themselves on Frege's thought as the most plausible starting point. Wittgenstein's considerations is then taken into account, without endangering the systematic and comprehensive character of the picture as painted by Frege. The chapter highlights two central statements with which Wittgenstein contradicts Frege. First is (...) his thesis that there is no justification in the philosophy of language for isolating just one “fundamental relation” for the representation of all truth‐relevant contents. Second is the thesis that it is typical of natural languages that one and the same kind of composition of expressions can have various meanings. (shrink)

Theodor Geigers Studie ist eine gesellschafts- und geistesgeschichtliche Einführung in einen zentralen philosophischen und soziologischen Grundbegriff. Sie gibt eine höchst originelle Antwort auf die alte Grundfrage der Gesellschaft: Welchen sozialen Normen und Werten sollte das menschliche Zusammenleben und Zusammenarbeiten unterliegen?

Liebe Grete Herrmann, besten Dank für Ihren Brief vom 19.5! Auch ich freue mich, Sie auf dem Pariser Kongreß zu sehen; wahrscheinlich werde ich auch an der vorangehenden Positivistentagung teilnehmen, also schon am 29.7. in Paris sein. Es interessiert mich, diese antimetaphysischen Metaphysiker einmal aus der Nähe zu beobachten. Ich werde sehen, es so einzurichten, daß ich eventuell auch nach dem Hauptkongreß noch einige Tage in Paris sein kann, um die von Ihnen angeregten Diskussionen mitzuführen. Jedenfalls hoffe ich auf einige (...) gründliche Gespräche mit Ihnen. (shrink)

Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Bedeutung der Juden im Mittelalter.--John Spencer's Erklärung der biblischen Gesetze in ihrer Beziehung zu Maimonides.--Max Webers Soziologie des antiken Judentums.--Zu Gabirols allegorischer Deutung der Erzählung vom Paradies.--Das Problem der Willensfreiheit bei Ḥasdai Crescas und den islamschen Aristotelikern.--Religion und Wissenschaft im mittelalterlichen und im modernen Denken.--Zur Kritik der Offenbarungsreligion in der islamischen und jüdischen Philosophie.--[Le-ḥeḳer ha-meḳorot shel Sefer ha-ʻiḳarim].--Die Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums.--Die religiösen Motive in der Philosophie des Maimonides.--Das Problem der Kontingenz in der Philosophie (...) des Maimonides.--Die Normierung des Glaubensinhalts im Judentum.--Hermann Cohens Ethik. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the relationship between trust and inquiry to argue for the view that A trusts B to act in some way only if A believes, in a way that she cannot distinguish from knowledge, for reasons of trust, that B will (or has) act(ed) in this way. Call such beliefs ‘outright trusting beliefs’. To support this view, I shall argue, by way of various examples, that the conditions under which inquiry erodes trust are the same as the conditions (...) under which inquiry erodes outright trusting belief. This congruence is easily explained abductively if we take trust to involve such a belief constitutively. While philosophers have sometimes thought that the relationship between trust and inquiry threatens or complicates the doxastic account of trust, the argument presented here suggests, surprisingly, that this relationship supports and even strengthens this account. (shrink)

Speakers frequently perform representational gestures to depict concepts in an iconic fashion. For example, a speaker may hold her index finger and thumb apart to indicate the size of a matchstick. However, the process by which a physical handshape is mentally transformed into abstract spatial information is not well understood. We present a series of experiments that investigate how people decode the physical form of an articulator to derive imaginary geometrical constructs, which we call “gesture form.” We provide quantitative evidence (...) for several key properties that play a role in this process. First, “profiling,” the ability to focus on a structural subunit within the complex form of the physical hand. Second, “perspective,” for which we show that one and the same handshape seen from different perspectives can lead to different spatial interpretations. Third, “selectivity,” the fact that gestures focus on specific spatial features at the expense of others. Our results provide a first step toward mapping out the process of how representational gestures make the communication of spatial information possible. (shrink)

Plato and Platonism reviews the natures and limits of Platonic interpretation. Students, academics and researchers will find that Moravcsik's careful and rigorous analysis offers an understanding of what Platonism in our times would have been like. The book leads us to an appreciation of genuine Platonism, rarely discussed today.

Each of two mutually recognising persons knows herself to be capable of and responsible for acting toward the other in ways that presuppose the other’s capability and responsibility for doing the same. The lecture brings out some egalitarian, libertarian and solidaristic aspects of an interpersonal ideal of mutual recognition, and it considers conversation, friendship and respect for right as three main examples of the syndrome.

Morality is often thought of as non-rational or sub-rational. In Moral Notions, first published in 1967, Julius Kovesi argues that the rationality of morality is built into the way we construct moral concepts. In showing this he also resolves the old Humean conundrum of the relation between 'facts' and 'values'. And he puts forward a method of reasoning that might make 'applied ethics' (at present largely a hodge-podge of opinions) into a constructive discipline. Kovesi's general theory of concepts - (...) important in its own right - is indebted to his interpretation of Plato, and his three papers on Plato, first published here, explain this debt. This new edition of Moral Notions also includes a foreward by Philippa Foot, a biography of the author, and a substantial afterword in which the editors, Robert Ewin and Alan Tapper, explain the signficance of Kovesi's work. (shrink)

The increasing prevalence of ecologically sustainable products in consumer markets, such as organic produce, are generally assumed to curtail anthropogenic impacts on the environment. Here I intend to present an alternative perspective on sustainable production by interpreting the relationship between recent rises in organic agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production. I construct two time series fixed-effects panel regressions to estimate how increases in organic farmland impact greenhouse gas emissions derived from agricultural production. My analysis finds that the rise (...) of certified organic production in the United States is not correlated with declines in greenhouse gas emissions derived specifically from agricultural production, and on the contrary is associated positively overall agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. To make sense of this finding, I embed my research within the conventionalization thesis. As a result I argue that the recent USDA certification of organic farming has generated a bifurcated organic market, where one form of organic farming works as a sustainable counterforce to conventional agriculture and the other works to increase the economic accessibility of organic farming through weakening practice standards most conducive to reducing agricultural greenhouse gas output. Additionally, I construct my own theoretical framework known as the displacement paradox to further interpret my findings. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

ExcerptWhen a student at the well-known Berlin art school Universität der Künste (UdK) used psychoanalytic terms to question her teacher’s assertion that we should listen to the “trees talking” more, she was attacked for her “colonial racist thinking,” using concepts of the white man, Sigmund Freud, to delegitimize “indigenous knowledge.”.

Njega wa Gioko was one of the pioneer Chiefs in Kirinyaga county of Kenya. The other pioneer Chief in Kirinyaga county was Gutu wa Kibetu who reigned in the Eastern part of Kirinyaga county. Gioko reigned in the western part of Kirinyaga county that extended to some geographical parts of the present-day Nyeri county and the present-day Embu county. Njega also became the first paramount Chief of Embu district, which refers to the present-day Embu and Kirinyaga counties. As colonial hegemony (...) and the protestant missionary enterprises, and its resultant evangelical theology, began to shape up in the present-day Kirinyaga county and the surrounding areas between 1904 and 1906, it found Gioko and Kibetu as the Athamaki. The evangelical European missionaries who were comfortable with the colonial expansion, as it provided western governance structures that favoured their enterprises, employed Calvinistic theology in their dealings with the colonial government, and they dealt with the local leaders, who were eventually ‘promoted’ to the post of Chiefs in 1908 by the new rulers. Nevertheless, the missionary’s emphasis on unrealised eschatology differed sharply with those of Athamaki who were the custodians of African indigenous religion and its resultant emphasis on realised eschatology. As an agent of African religion, how did Gioko relate with the early 20th-century evangelical European missionaries and their Calvinistic tendencies that favoured the Church–State relationship as the way of God? The data for this research article are gathered through oral interviews, archival sources and extensive review of the relevant literature.Contribution: This article contributes to the journal’s vision and scope with its focus on the early protestant theologies of the European Missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries, and their resultant clashes with the theologies of African indigenous religion. As a multidisciplinary article that builds on a theo-historical design, the article contributes to the ongoing discourses on gospel and culture. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in philosophical work on the rationality of grief. Much of this research is premised on the idea that people tend to grieve much less than would be appropriate or, as it is often called, fitting. My goal in this paper is diagnostic, that is, to articulate two never properly distinguished, and indeed often conflated, arguments in favour of the purported discrepancy between experienced and fitting grief: a metaphysical and a psychological argument. According to the (...) former, grief is rationalized entirely by facts about the past. And because the past is unchangeable, grief can be said to remain forever fitting. According to the latter argument, humans’ emotional resilience causes grief to diminish at a faster rate than would be fitting. Which of these problems we end up facing depends on relatively subtle variations in the characterization of the losses that render grief appropriate. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In their recent efforts to protect the Southern Resident killer whale population in the Salish Sea and bring ‘Lolita’ home, the Lummi Nation exposed significant limitations to species and habitats as values in Western conservation models. Where Indigenous conservation falls outside this scope, it is often invisible to or actively suppressed by the settler state. The conservation practices of NOAA, in accordance with the federal policy of the ESA, have amounted to extractive colonial enterprises, treating the whales as educational, (...) economic, and environmental possessions while degrading the relationship of the Lummi to the whales as relatives and attacking Lummi sovereignty. (shrink)

I first characterize a moral mistake in coercion. The principle of independence with which I criticize coercion seems also to condemn exchange. I propose an account of exchange from which it follows that exchange upholds independence after all. In support of that account I argue that, of the accounts of exchange that occur to me, only this one has the consequence that, on general assumptions, a person can take part in exchange while acting, intending, and believing with sufficient reason. I (...) argue that the hiring of very poor people by very rich people for labor from which the rich draw a substantial surplus does not give rise to an exchange of this kind. These instances of the wage labor relation resemble coercion insofar as they violate independence. (shrink)