In [6] Albert Visser shows that ILP completely axiomatizes all schemata about provability and relative interpretability that are provable in finitely axiomatized theories. In this paper we introduce a system called ILP that completely axiomatizes the arithmetically valid principles of provability in and interpretability over such theories. To prove the arithmetical completeness of ILP we use a suitable kind of tail models; as a byproduct we obtain a somewhat modified proof of Visser's completeness result.

In [6] Albert Visser shows that ILP completely axiomatizes all schemata about provability and relative interpretability that are provable in finitely axiomatized theories. In this paper we introduce a system called $\text{ILP}^{\omega}$ that completely axiomatizes the arithmetically valid principles of provability in and interpretability over such theories. To prove the arithmetical completeness of $\text{ILP}^{\omega}$ we use a suitable kind of tail models; as a byproduct we obtain a somewhat modified proof of Visser's completeness result.

All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In Science Unlimited?, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science (...) and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term scientism in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject—that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence—justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, Science Unlimited? interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue. (shrink)

The reason of faith -- Thought and language -- Truth -- The Monologion arguments for the existence of God -- The Proslogion argument for the existence of God -- The divine attributes -- Thinking and speaking about God -- Creation and the word -- The Trinity -- Modality -- Freedom -- Morality -- Incarnation and atonement -- Original sin, grace, and salvation.

Conceived by Johan van Benthem and Yde Venema, arrow logic started as an attempt to give a general account of the logic of transitions. The generality of the approach provided a wide application area ranging from philosophy to computer science. The book gives a comprehensive survey of logical research within and around arrow logic. Since the natural operations on transitions include composition, inverse and identity, their logic, arrow logic can be studied from two different perspectives, and by two (complementary) methodologies: (...) modal logic and the algebra of relations. Some of the results in this volume can be interpreted as price tags. They show what the prices of desirable properties, such as decidability, (finite) axiomatisability, Craig interpolation property, Beth definability etc. are in terms of semantic properties of the logic. The research program of arrow logic has considerably broadened in the last couple of years and recently also covers the enterprise to explore the border between decidable and undecidable versions of other applied logics. The content of this volume reflects this broadening. The editors included a number of papers which are in the spirit of this generalised research program. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. But given that the pages of history are full of such plots, why are CTs regarded with suspicion? Just like with the traditional demarcation problem, philosophers disagree about where to draw the line between legitimate hypotheses about conspiracies and unfounded ‘conspiracy theories’. Some believe that there is no such demarcation line to be drawn, that each CT (...) should be evaluated on its own merits, and that the bad reputation of CTs is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I intend to rescue the intuition that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs. First, I demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories”. Along the way, my analysis will clarify some epistemological issues surrounding falsifiability, asymmetries between causes and effects, and hypotheses involving intentional agents. Because of their extreme resilience to external criticism and counterevidence, I argue, CTs are the epistemological equivalent of a ‘black hole’, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape again. But this strong attraction of CTs comes at a steep price: their theoretical parameters are essentially arbitrary, making them vulnerable to internal disruption. In essence, because it is so easy to construct a novel CT, it is equally easy to construct many ones about the same historical event. And that is what justifies our suspicion of CTs. (shrink)

In the space of all possible beliefs, conspiracy theories stand out with a special and possibly unique feature: they are the only beliefs that predict an absence of evidence in their favor, and even the discovery of counterevidence. In the traditional, narrow sense of the term, a ‘conspiracy theory’ refers to an alternative explanation of a historical event in terms of a small group of actors working together to achieve some nefarious goal. In a broader sense, however, any theory that (...) involves a form of invisible intentional agency can adopt the contours of a conspiracy theory. In this paper, I adopt a broader and more abstract definition of conspiracy theories, based on a conceptual core that unifies all such theories. By drawing comparisons between conspiracy theories in a range of different domains, we gain more insight into their central epistemological defects, as well as their cultural dynamics. Some belief systems are inherently conspiratorial, in that they posit some form of intelligent agency that deliberately wants to escape detection, while others merely resort to conspiratorial reasoning when threatened with counterevidence. This paper builds on earlier research into the cultural evolution of belief systems. (shrink)

Starting with a discussion of what I call `Koyré's paradox of conceptual novelty', I introduce the ideas of Damerow et al. on the establishment of classical mechanics in Galileo's work. I then argue that although their view on the nature of Galileo's conceptual innovation is convincing, it misses an essential element: Galileo's use of the experiments described in the first day of the Two New Sciences. I describe these experiments and analyze their function. Central to my analysis is the idea (...) that Galileo's pendulum experiments serve to secure the reference of his theoretical models in actually occurring cases of free fall. In this way, Galileo's experiments constitute an essential part of the meaning of the new concepts of classical mechanics. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of moment-to-moment affect dynamics in mental disorder and aims to integrate recent literature on this topic in the context of complex dynamical system theory. First, we will review the relevance of temporal and contextual aspects of affect dynamics in relation to psychopathology. Related to this, we will discuss recent insights resulting from a network view on affect dynamics in psychopathology. Next, we explore how we can reconcile literature findings from a perspective of complex dynamical system (...) theory. Finally, future directions with regard to personalized assessment of risk and diagnostic use are discussed. (shrink)

An immunizing strategy is an argument brought forward in support of a belief system, though independent from that belief system, which makes it more or less invulnerable to rational argumentation and/or empirical evidence. By contrast, an epistemic defense mechanism is defined as a structural feature of a belief system which has the same effect of deflecting arguments and evidence. We discuss the remarkable recurrence of certain patterns of immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms in pseudoscience and other belief systems. Five different (...) types will be distinguished and analyzed, with examples drawn from widely different domains. The difference between immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms is analyzed, and their epistemological status is discussed. Our classification sheds new light on the various ways in which belief systems may achieve invulnerability against empirical evidence and rational criticism, and we propose our analysis as part of an explanation of these belief systems’ enduring appeal and tenacity. (shrink)

In this challenging essay, Maarten Doorman argues that in art, belief in progress is still relevant, if not essential. The radical freedoms of postmodernism, he claims, have had a crippling effect on art, leaving it in danger of becoming meaningless. Art can only acquire meaning through context the concept of progress, then, is ideal as the primary criterion for establishing that context. The history of art, in fact, can be seen as a process of constant accumulation, works of art (...) commenting on one another and enriching one another's meanings. It is these complex interrelationships and the progress they create in both art and its observers that Doorman, in a display of great philosophical erudition, defends. (shrink)

Na meer dan tien jaar komt Maarten Doorman met een nieuwe bundeling van essays. Ze lijken te gaan over van alles en nog wat: van een bedrieglijk stuk steen van de maan tot een dramatische scène in bad, van een romantische boswandeling tot Nipplegate, van Goethe tot David Bowie, van de woede van Schopenhauer tot de karper van Apollinaire en van tekenfilm tot Rijksmuseum. Maar steeds gaat het om het overbruggen van een afstand. Die tussen kunst en maatschappij, filosofie (...) en wereld, verleden en toekomst en afkeer en bewondering. 'Dichtbij en ver weg' is een verzameling goed geschreven opstellen waarin wat ver weg is dichtbij komt, een hartstochtelijk pleidooi voor geschiedenis en kunst. (shrink)

The German philosophical culture of the Middle Ages is inextricable linked to the thought of Albert the Great. This volume brings together 14 papers, which deal with Albert's influence from the points of view of mysticism, philosophy, and the history of universities.

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)

In the past decade, the concept of recognition appears to have acquired an important theoretical position in the work and organization literature. While in principle recognition denotes a positive and social form of freedom, in current-day organizations recognition may be often negative or instrumental. In order to capture this ambivalence in organizational recognitive conditions, the recent work of the American philosopher Judith Butler appears particularly applicable. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically to what extent her views on (...) recognition shed new light on the variety of recognition patterns in current-day organizations. Towards that purpose, this paper first turns to the ‘master-slave’ episode in the work of Hegel and its influential interpretation by Kojève, which are at the heart of Butler’s reading and conception of recognition. As a second step, the ambivalent conception of recognition in the work of Butler is discussed and critically assessed, while in the final section this conception is extended to work and organizations. (shrink)

The ‘European Space of Higher Education’ could be mapped as an infrastructure for entrepreneurship and a place where the distinction between the social and the economic becomes obsolete. Using Foucault's understanding of biopolitics and discussing the analyses of Agamben and Negri/Hardt it is argued that the actual governmental configuration, i.e. the economisation of the social, also has a biopolitical dimension. Focusing on the intersection between a politicisation and economisation of human life allows us to discuss a kind of ‘bio‐economisation’ , (...) a regime of economic terror and learning as investment. Finally it is argued how fostering learning, i.e. fostering life could turn into ‘let die’ and even into ‘make die’. (shrink)

Undergraduate geoscience students are rarely exposed to history and philosophy of science. I will describe the experiences with a short course unfavourably placed in the first year of a bachelor of earth science. Arguments how HPS could enrich their education in many ways are sketched. One useful didactic approach is to develop a broader interest by connecting HPS themes to practical cases throughout the curriculum, and develop learning activities that allow students to reflect on their skills, methods and their field (...) in relation to other disciplines and interactions with society with abilities gained through exposure to HPS. Given support of the teaching staff, the tenets of philosophy of science in practice, of conceptual history of knowledge, and of ethics of science for society can fruitfully and directly be connected to the existing curriculum. This is ideally followed by a capstone HPS course late in the bachelor programme. (shrink)

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their functionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adaptations, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In particular, the (...) analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an opportunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would suggest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to implement novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engineering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engineering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)