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An Analysis of Right-Libertarian Principles and Their Implications
The book derives the welfare state from right-libertarian principles and, therefore, arrives at policy prescriptions of the political left based on the philosophical principles of the political right. For that purpose the book offers a detailed analysis of right-libertarianism with a particular focus on the work of Robert Nozick. Further, it engages economic and sociological theory and addresses questions of transgenerational compensation, causation, historical wrongs, and collective responsibility. The discussion of transgenerational compensation includes an in-depth treatment of the non-identity problem. The final chapters spell out the arguments’ specific implications for public policy and philosophical theory.
Daß ein kulturhistorisches Werk wie Jacob Burckhardts Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, 1860 erschienen, eine ganze Epoche entscheidend beeinflussen konnte, war ein einmaliges Phänomen; zur ungewöhnlichen Wirkung dieses Werkes gehört, daß es überall Spuren hinterließ. Die Neorenaissance war um 1900 allgegenwärtig: in der Architektur und der Malerei, in der Philosophie und in der Theologie, in der Literatur und der Musik, in der Festkultur und in der Handwerkskunst. Nietzsche und Wagner haben sich mit der Renaissance auseinandergesetzt, Paracelsus und Hutten wurden als Repräsentanten der Renaissance diskutiert. Besonders stark war der Niederschlag in der Literatur: für Rilke war die Beschäftigung mit der Renaissance eine Form der Selbsterfahrung, Heinrich und Thomas Mann waren Vertreter der Neorenaissance und zugleich deren Kritiker. Aber Burckhardts Buch beeinflußte auch Ezra Pound und seine Deutung der amerikanischen Architektur um 1900. In Deutschland findet sich die Neorenaissance in den Staatsbauten und den Banken, Hotels und Palästen des Großbürgertums. Später gab Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus der Diskussion über die sogenannte deutsche „Eigenrenaissance“ wichtige Anstöße; das Syndrom aus deutschem „Sonderweg“, lutherischer Reformation, Musik und Nietzsche bestimmte wesentlich seinen Deutschland-Roman mit. Hanns Eislers Johann Faust schließlich führte in der DDR zu einer heftigen kulturpolitischen Debatte. Der Renaissancismus um 1900 und seine Folgen, die bis in den Kult der Gewalt und deren Deutung als eines kulturfördernden Phänomens reichen, sind wenig erforscht; die hier versammelten Beiträge zeigen das Vielgestaltige der Neorenaissance und liefern in Abbreviaturen ein Stück Kulturgeschichte, das in Vergessenheit zu geraten droht.
The purpose of this collection of eleven essays on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl is not to offer a comprehensive overview of Husserl’s philosophy. Of his many themes, only a selection is covered in this volume. But the collection is of interest for anyone in touch with the current philosophy of mind – which has undergone a remarkable broadening of its perspective: now, not only the causal and functional, but also the, broadly speaking, phenomenological and intentional aspects of the mind are being given what is due to them. Accompanying this broadening, there is a rediscovery – which for many philosophers from the analytic tradition means: a first discovery – of Husserlian phenomenology. The centre of this collection is formed by the five essays on Husserl’s views on perceptual experience and perceptual justification. These central essays are preceded by an essay on apprehension and an essay on motivation (both important Husserlian notions), and are followed by an essay on empathy and an essay on emotions (two Husserlian topics that are all too often neglected). The first essay of the collection presents, in a comprehensive and detailed way, complementarism as an alternative to Husserl’s classical phenomenological approach, transcendental reduction. The last essay concerns the issue of collective unity in Kant and Husserl, an ontological issue that is crucial for all transcendental philosophy. All of the eleven essays are new and have undergone a peer-review process. The authors: Audrey L. Anton, Carleton B. Christensen, Jasper Doomen, John J. Drummond, Richard Foley, Stamatios Gerogiorgakis, Michael Groneberg, George Heffernan, Hans-Ulrich Hoche, Burt C. Hopkins, Ansten Klev, Helga Meier, Manuel Lechthaler, Sophie Loidolt, Filip Mattens, Verena Mayer, Sean McAleer, Tommaso Piazza, Alexander Reutlinger, Adriane A. Rini, Sara L. Uckelman, Philip J. Walsh, Christian Wirrwitz, Kristina Zuelicke
Modal Epistemology and Scepticism
Scepticism, the view that knowledge is impossible, threatens our conception of ourselves as epistemic subjects as much as it endangers our conception of the external world. The book develops a modal account of knowledge and provides an answer to scepticism based on a detailed examination of the main sceptical argument. It discusses prominent contemporary theories of knowledge, in particular safety and sensitivity theories, and shows that they cannot handle Gettier-type examples of a new kind. An alternative analysis of knowledge in terms of relevantly normal possibilities is developed. The sceptical argument addressed aims to show that we cannot know ordinary things because we cannot rule out that we are in a sceptical scenario. Classical responses, like dogmatism, non-closure theories, and epistemic contextualism, are explored and rejected as unnecessary for a refutation of the sceptical argument. A detailed investigation reveals, first, that the failure to know that we are not in a sceptical scenario does not conflict with ordinary knowledge, but only with knowledge that we know, and, second, that we can indeed know that we are not in a sceptical scenario. It is therefore claimed not only that we know, but also that we know that we know.
Special Issue
The central aim of this volume is to foster a new understanding of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and thereby to enrich our knowledge of the beginnings of logical analysis. An important service for the scientific community to support this aim is the edition of a new translation of Aristotle’s work into English. The contributions discussing the original work were inspired by a onference in 2009 in Berlin which was the first one exclusively dedicated to Sophistical Refutations of Aristotle and brought together nearly everyone working on the main topics Aristotle deals with in that work. In Aristotle we see the onset of systematic theorizing about argumentation, including an account of the ways in which arguments, despite of being incorrect, may appear to be correct and of the relations between different types of argumentation (in science, in discussions with various purposes, in everyday life), but also of the connections with more general philosophical issues, like the meaning of words and the ontological status of universals. Fallacious Arguments in Ancient Philosophy It is, however, primarily because of its account of argumentation that Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, together with the Topics, has caught the attention of those working in the field of argumentation theory. This collection shows that the study of argumentation theory in Ancient Philosophy, and with Aristotle in particular, is in good shape. At least some of the points made in the articles brought together here will withstand scrutiny and will advance our understanding of the beginnings of logical analysis. The authors: Jonathan Adler (†), Susanne Bobzien, Robert Bolton, Luca Castagnoli, Louis-André Dorion, Paolo Fait, Adrian Frey, Pieter Sjoerd Hasper, Wolfgang Kienzler, Colin Guthrie King, Raina Kirchhoff, Ermelinda Valentina di Lascio, Yakir Levin, Christof Rapp, Carrie Swanson - the first translation of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations (transl. by P.S. Hasper)
Reductive Explanation for Limited Beings
Is our mind explainable in terms of neural mechanisms? How we concieve of ourselves seems strongly to depend on how we respond to this question. In the present work an attempt at an affirmative answer is made. Currently, there are good reasons to believe that we can give a neural-mechanical explanation of how our mind works. In order to show this, first, a concept of mechanistic explanation is developed that is applicable to biological cognitive systems. This accomodates the fact that biological systems are usually complex, integrated systems that cannot be decomposed into a relatively small number of working parts like a clockwork. Complex biological mechanisms exhibit emergent behavior. The complexity of biological systems can be tackled with the aid of a number of methods of analysis. Models of a whole human brain are, for instance, well in reach that can be used to find integrated mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities. Mind would thus be qualitatively reducible to neural mechanisms.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of John Perry
The essays in this volume introduce John Perry’s distinguished work on subject as diverse as indexicality, semantics, personal identity, self-knowledge, and consciousness. Perry’s great body of work centers around the question: What is constitutive for having and expressing a thought about oneself and how can self-conscious beliefs be part of a world that is basically physical in nature? Identity, Language, and Mind is not only an introduction to the work of John Perry, but also to questions at the core of analytic philosophy for almost half a century, and that still dominates the debate at the forefront of the philosophical enterprise
Knowledge and Meaning in Literature
The book addresses the questions how literature can convey knowledge and how literary meaning can arise in the face of the fact that fictional texts waive the usual claim to truth. Based on the interdisciplinary cooperation of literary scholars and analytic philosophers, the present anthology attempts a) to analyze the possibility and conditions of gaining know - ledge through literature, and b) to apply, in a fruitful way, philosophical theories of meaning and interpretation to the constitution of meaning within the language of literature. The project is guided by the hypothesis that the cognitive function of literature cannot be understood without such fundamental modelings of the complex interaction of meaning, truth and knowledge.
An Enquiriy Concerning Economic Modelling
Deichsel attempts to justify a normative role for methodology by sketching a pragmatic way out of the dichotomy between two major strands in economic methodology: empiricism and postmodernism. It is important to understand that this book is about methodology and this means that it does not add another recipe with prescriptions as to how economics needs to change in order to become a 'better' or 'proper' science. Instead, several methodological approaches are discussed and assessed concerning their aptness for theory appraisal in economics. The book starts with presenting the most common views on methodology (i.e. empiricism and postmodernism) and provides reasons why they are each ill-suited for giving methodological prescriptions to economics. Finally, a pragmatic approach that can do this is sketched out.
Eternal facts in an Ageing Universe
As Time Goes By offers an overview of different versions of tense realism, or A-theories of time, critically assesses those that have found supporters in the extant literature, and finally explicates and defends a hitherto neglected A-theory of time that combines many of the virtues that the B-theory claims for itself, while avoiding many of the vices that afflict more standard A-theories. Proceeding from certain general assumptions about time and its structure, the authors first provide an exhaustive classification of mutually exclusive realist views of tense in terms of precise criteria. They then critically review the more familiar of these views, such as presentism and relativism, in the light of desiderata any A-theory should satisfy, before showing how their favourite A-theory can satisfy all of these desiderata and how it escapes the McTaggartian trilemma recently expounded by Kit Fine. In the last part, the authors devise a systematic metaphysics for that view, give a reduction of times, and of the temporal order, in its terms, and provide a full semantics, statable exclusively in tensed terms, for both tensed and untensed language. The book closes by addressing and defusing the challenge that the authors’ favourite A-theory is a B-theory in disguise.