Much recent work on natural information has focused on probabilistic theories, which construe natural information as a matter of probabilistic relations between events or states. This paper assesses three variants of probabilistic theories (due to Millikan, Shea, and Scarantino and Piccinini). I distinguish between probabilistic theories as (1) attempts to reveal why probabilistic relations are important for human and non-human animals and as (2) explications of the information concept(s) employed in the sciences. I argue that the strength of probabilistic theories (...) lies in the first project. Probability-raising can enable organisms to draw specific inferences they otherwise could not entertain and I show how exactly they help to explain the behaviour of organisms. In addition, probability-raising warrants inferences by providing incremental inductive support. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely (...) throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

The present contribution argues that transitive reasoning, as exemplified in paradigms of linear order construction in mental space, is associated with spatial effects. Starting from robust findings from the early 70s, research so far has widely discussed the symbolic distance effect. This effect shows that after studying pairs of relations, e.g., “A > B,” “B > C,” and “D > E,” participants are more correct, and faster in correct responding, the wider the “distance” between two elements within the chain A (...) > B > C > D > E. The SDE has often been given spatial interpretations, but alternatively, non-spatial models of the effect are also viable on the empirical basis so far, which means the question about spatial contributions to the construction of analog representations of rank orders is still open. We suggest here that laterality effects can add the necessary additional information to support the idea of spatial processes. We introduce anchoring effects in terms of showing response advantages for congruent versus incongruent pairings of presentation location on a screen on the one hand, and the hypothetical spatial arrangement of the order in mental space, on the other hand. We report pertinent findings and discuss anchoring paradigms with respect to their internal validity as well as their being rooted in basic mechanisms of trained reading/writing direction. (shrink)

If identity is to be taken as a relation, not between any object and itself, nor between expressions , but between "intensions" or Fregean "Sinnen" of individual constants , then not only definite descriptions but also grammatically proper names ought to have intensions. This, however, has been repudiated by J. St. Mill and, more recently and more persuasively, by Saul Kripke. So an attempt will be made to interpret proper names as definite descriptions sui generis, namely, "rigid" descriptions referring to (...) the way the bearer of the name is called, in certain contexts, in the real world. To avoid circularity or a vicious regressus in infinitum, however, one has to do this on the basis of a distinction between "names" and "name-radicals". (shrink)

In their article Beyond Suppressing Testosterone: A Categorical System to Achieve a “Level Playing Field” in Sport, Jennings and Braun (2024) accurately display how the World Athletics’ (WA) restri...

In his memorandum, “The Role of Applied Social Science in the Formation of Policy,” Professor Merton has stated that “… all applied social science involves advice.” While this statement obviously does not mean that the social scientist is limited solely to giving advice, it does imply a frame of reference in which the primary function of the social scientist appears to be obtaining information, analyzing it, and presenting the results to the policy-maker.

Zusammenfassung Im Nachfolgenden wird sich mit Hegels Definition des Guten und Gewissens in seiner Rechtsphilosophie auseinandergesetzt, um von dieser aus Parallelen zum christlichen Gottes- und Glaubensbegriff aufzuzeigen. Dabei steht nicht die Theologie bzw. theologische Philosophie Hegels im Mittelpunkt, sondern sein Postulat einer Wahrheit, woraus sich Ansätze der Argumentation für das des christlichen Glaubens als der einen Wahrheit ableiten lassen. Obwohl Hegels Rechtsphilosophie breit untersucht worden ist, wurden seine Überlegungen zum Guten, Gewissen und Wahren für die theologische Diskussion noch nicht verwendet. (...) Dieser Artikel soll diese Forschungslücke schließen. (shrink)

The paper describes the biblical understanding of God’s commanded law in its indispensable political form, i.e. the law of God’s people. This is distinct from a confinement of God’s commandments to a moral code independent from that political context as it is present as the ‘political worship’ of God’s people.This worship has to be seen as the ground for ethics. From here follow consequences for human laws and legislation concerning human life forms. That disposition of theological ethics has been elaborated (...) in a particular form by the Lutheran-Reformed tradition especially in its concepts of God’s twofold regiment and the estates. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Examining the Role of Re-Presentation in Mathematical Problem Solving: An Application of Ernst von Glasersfeld’s Conceptual Analysis” by Victor V. Cifarelli & Volkan Sevim. Upshot: Cifarelli and Sevim’s analysis of Marie’s problem solving activity raises two questions for me. The first regards what Marie is reflectively abstracting: the use of the generic phrase her solution activity finesses a largely unarticulated disagreement in the mathematics education community about what the nature of actions are in Piaget’s (...) theory. The second question involves the implications that radical constructivist research in mathematics has for day-to-day mathematics instruction. (shrink)

The history of ideas is an interdisciplinary field that began as an offshoot of the history of philosophy and was transformed by notions of perspective and cultural context drawn from the tradition of historical studies. The result is the practice of intellectual history, which has been carried out between the poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist, corresponding to mental phenomena and collective behavior in cultural surroundings. These are not opposed but rather complementary methods, and intellectual history may (...) be seen as the inside of cultural history and cultural history as the outside of intellectual history, the intellectual historian's task being to bring the two into alliance. (shrink)

1. T. Isaak Iselins Leben und Bildungsgang bis 1764.--2. T. Iselins Stellung in der Geistesgeschichte des XVII. Jahrhunderts.

Various researchers have suggested that below 7 years of age children do not recognize that they are the authority on knowledge about themselves, a suggestion that seems counter-intuitive because it raises the possibility that children do not appreciate their privileged first-person access to their own minds. Unlike previous research, children in the current investigation quantified knowledge and even 5-year-olds tended to assign relatively more to themselves than to an adult (Studies 1 and 2). Indeed, children's estimations were different from ratings (...) made by their mothers: Their mothers sometimes rated themselves as knowing more about their child than they rated their child as knowing (Study 2). While previous research seemed to suggest that children shift from viewing their mother to viewing themselves as the authority on knowledge about them (the children), these new findings surprisingly suggest the opposite. (shrink)

Integration of different lines of research concerning grandparental investment appears to be both promising and necessary. However, it must stop short when confronted with incommensurate arguments and hypotheses, either within or between disciplines. Further, some hypotheses have less plausibility and veridicality than others. This point is illustrated with results that conflict previous conclusions from evolutionary psychology about differential grandparental investment.

Words have meaning. Sentences also have meaning, but their meaning is different in kind from any collection of the meanings of the words they contain. I discuss two puzzles related to this difference. The first is how the meanings of the parts of a sentence combine to give rise to a unified sentential meaning, as opposed to a mere collection of disparate meanings (UP1). The second is why the formal ontology of linguistic meaning changes when grammatical structure is built up (...) (UP2). For example, the meaning of a sentence is a proposition evaluable for truth and falsity. In contrast, a collection of the meanings of its parts does not constitute a proposition and is not evaluable for truth. These two puzzles are closely related, since change in formal ontology is the clearest sign of the unity of meaning. The most popular strategy for answering them is taking the meanings of the parts as abstractions from primitive sentence meanings. However, I argue that, given plausible psychological constraints, sentence meanings cannot be taken as explanatory primitives. Drawing on recent work in Generative Grammar and its philosophy, I suggest that the key to both unity questions is to distinguish strictly between lexical and grammatical meaning. The latter is irreducible and determines how lexical content is used in referential acts. I argue that these referential properties determine a formal ontology, which explains why and how formal ontology changes when grammatical structure is built up (UP2). As for UP1, I suggest that, strictly speaking, lexical meanings never combine. Instead, whenever grammar specifies a formal ontology for the lexical meanings entering a grammatical derivation, further lexical (or phrasal) meanings can only specify aspects of this recursive grammatical process. In this way, contemporary grammatical theory can be used to address old philosophical problems. (shrink)

I explore the frame of reference of the multiverse and the universe as point of reference for the meta-philosophical reflection on philosophy and the doing of philosophy. -/- Some of the many topics being dealt with in this frame of reference and from this perspective of the bigger picture are - -/- Determinism, -/- The absence of Free Will, -/- Consequences of this for Law, -/- God and determinism, -/- Embodied Consciousness and Conscious Embodiment, -/- Radical Scepticism, -/- Nihilism, -/- (...) Libertarianism, minarchism and anarchism, -/- Amoralism, -/- Intersubjectivity, -/- Mysticism and the Unity Experience, -/- Theorizing, -/- Philosophizing as part of the processes of theorizing, -/- Contexts, many levels and multi-dimensionality, -/- The Institutionalization of philosophy, -/- The professionalization of philosophy, -/- Philosophy as realization of wisdom, -/- Knowing that, facts, factual information, knowing how, insights and understanding, -/- Art and music as making the invisible visible without the use of words... (shrink)

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was one of the most prominent German philologists of his time and his work is still well regarded. This book, originally published in 1893, is a detailed analysis of the The Constitution of the Athenians, then usually regarded as a work of Aristotle. Wilamowitz accepts Aristotle's authorship of the famous treatise on the history of the constitution that restored democracy after the oligarchy of the Thirty. Volume 1 investigates the historical sources employed by Aristotle, hypothesising that (...) he was using two now lost works in addition to Herodotus and Thucydides, and that these were likely to be chronicles of events in the city. Volume 2 reconstructs Athenian constitutional history on the basis of the work. A number of essays addressing topics on Athenian constitutional history and drawing on such figures as Solon, Peisistratus, Lysias and Isocrates are also included. (shrink)

Philosophizing, aims, methods, purposes. Meta-philosophy. Explorations of life death, religious beliefs, god, Unitarian god , life, death, aging, impermanence, change.

Adopting an ontology of full concreteness , one has to distinguish between human action in the internal view of the actor himself and human action in the external view of a fellow human being, or spectator. As seen from the latter point of view, human action is nothing but observable behavior. As such, it belongs in the objective realm of natural necessity, as does any other macrophysical event . As seen from the former point of view, human action may be (...) characterized as a system of non-indicative subjective traits of the actor's intentional objects, appealing to him, in the light of his motives, in a 'gerundive' way. As such, it does not belong in the objective realm of natural necessity, and is free, moreover, in the positive sense that the actor could have acted otherwise. If these perspectives are commingled - as there is a strong tendency to do by arguing, or construing, from analogy -, the result is confusion. But if they are seen as disjunct alternatives, the result is complementarity in the sense of Bohr. However, we must not misconstrue such complementarity as a dual-aspect-conception, for there seems to be no good sense in saying that action as a system of non-indicative subjective traits and action as objective behavior are but two aspects of one and the same human action 'in itself', i.e., irrespective of the modes of subjective givenness. Auf dem Boden einer Ontologie der vollen Konkretion muß man zwischen dem menschlichen Handeln in der Innensicht des Handelnden selbst und dem menschlichen Handeln in der Außensicht eines Mitmenschen unterscheiden. Vom Standpunkt eines mitmenschlichen Zuschauers aus ist menschliches Handeln nichts anderes als beobachtbares Verhalten; als solches gehört es, genau wie jedes andere makrophysikalische Ereignis, ungeachtet mikrophysikalischer Indeterminismen in den objektiven Bereich der Naturnotwendigkeit. Vom Standpunkt des Handelnden selbst aus läßt sich menschliches Handeln dagegen als ein System motivbedingter 'gerundiver' Charaktere der subjektiven Bezugsgegenstände des jeweils Handelnden kennzeichnen; als solches gehört es nicht in den objektiven Bereich der Naturnotwendigkeit und ist überdies auch in dem positiven Sinne frei, daß der Handelnde auch anders hätte handeln können. Wenn man beide Perspektiven vermengt - und es gibt eine starke Tendenz, dies aufgrund von Analogieschlüssen oder analogisierenden Auffassungen zu tun -, entsteht Konfusion; aber wenn man die beiden Perspektiven als disjunkte Alternativen sieht, ergibt sich Komplementarität im Sinne Bohrs. Wir dürfen solche Komplementarität freilich nicht als eine Zwei-Aspekte-Konzeption mißdeuten; denn man scheint nicht wirklich sinnvoll sagen zu können, Handeln als ein System von gerundiven subjektiven Charakteren und Handeln als objektives Verhalten seien nur zwei Aspekte einer und derselben menschlichen Handlung 'an sich', nämlich ohne Rücksicht auf ihre subjektiven Gegebenheitsweisen. (shrink)

Value is an indispensable category, since persons and things are not only significations, but validities. In order to understand the history of values, the book offers detailed explanations of the philosophical, political and religious traditions behind. New value syntheses can be established by means of concrete analysis of phenomena such as globalization and cultural mixing ("métissage culturel"). Striking is the permanent validity of values such as politeness, responsibility, honesty, helpfulness, allround culture, tolerance, and respect (last not least regarded as ideals (...) of education). (shrink)