Kalam cosmological arguments have recently been the subject of criticisms, at least inter alia, by physicists---Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking---and philosophers of science---Adolf Grunbaum. In a series of recent articles, William Craig has attempted to show that these criticisms are “superficial, iII-conceived, and based on misunderstanding.” I argue that, while some of the discussion of Davies and Hawking is not philosophically sophisticated, the points raised by Davies, Hawking and Grunbaum do suffice to undermine the dialectical efficacy of kalam (...) cosmological arguments. (shrink)

This paper begins with a fairly careful and detailed discussion of the conditions under which someone who presents an argument ought to be prepared to concede that the argument is unsuccessful. The conclusions reached in this discussion are then applied to William Lane Craig’s defense of what he calls “the kalam cosmological argument.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the chief contention of the paper is that Craig ought to be prepared to concede that “the kalam cosmological argument” is not a successful argument. The (...) paper pays particular attention to Craig’s recent criticisms of Adolf Grünbaum’s contention that “the kalam cosmological argument” presupposes “the normalcy of nothingness”; and it also addresses some methodological issues raised by Craig’s response to my previous criticisms of his replies to critiques of “the kalam cosmological argument” provided by Grünbaum, Hawking, and Davies. (shrink)

Distinguishes two senses of 'judgment' on the one hand as meaning a state of 'conviction' or 'belief', and on the other hand as meaning an act of 'affirmation' or 'assertion'. Certainly conviction and assertion stand in close relation to each other, but they delineate two heterogeneous logical spheres, and thereby divide the total field of the theory of judgment into two neighbouring but separate sub-fields. Once this is done it is shown to have implications for our understanding especially of the (...) phenomenon of negation, and of the distinction between negation as affirmation of a negative state of affairs, and negation as act of contradicting the judgment someone else has made. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable convergence of Husserlian phenonenology and analytic philosophy of language, and the present volumes provide original and important texts of the phenomenological philosophy of language. Powerfully influenced by the writings of the early Husserl, Reinach fashioned Husserl’s ideas into a rigorous analytical methodology of his own, which he applied in particular to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge, and to the philosophies of law and psychology. The central role of (...) the concept of state of affairs in Reinach’s philosophy will bring to mind immediately the formal ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Reinach’s most significant contribution, however, is contained in his The a priori foundations of civil law (1913), above all in the detailed analysis of the a priori structure of the act of promising. This amounts to an elaborate phenomenological theory of speech acts which anticipates, and in some respects goes beyond, the later theories of Austin and Searle. The present edition is in two volumes. Volume 1, which includes a biographical and thematic introduction by the editors, contains critical editions of those pieces published by Reinach himself. Volume II is a collection of all those items in Reinach’s surviving Nachlass which are in publishable form, including a number of important pieces not hitherto obtainable on such themes as ethical predicates, speech acts (“soziale Akte”), perception and the theory of number, together with a comprehensive sketch of the problems in the theory of knowledge, logic and ethics. Appended to this is a text-critical apparatus which also contains extensive discussions of the origins and sources of the materials in question. (shrink)

Recent studies on mind‐wandering reveal its potential role in goal exploration and planning future actions. How to understand these explorative functions and their impact on planning remains unclear. Given certain conceptions of intentions and beliefs, the explorative functions of mind‐wandering could lead to regular reconsideration of one's intentions. However, this would be in tension with the stability of intentions central to rational planning agency. We analyze the potential issue of excessive reconsideration caused by mind‐wandering. Our response resolves this tension, presenting (...) a model that aligns the roles of mind‐wandering in planning with empirical evidence and the sustained stability of intentions. (shrink)

Regional aspects of science communication represent a potential asset and as such are quite suitable topic for further examination with respect to future social and economic development in Prague based on the city's main development strategies. Closer analysis of SCIP aspects at re- gional level can present a suitable complement for development of suitable measures and projects of the regional innovation and education policies. This study focuses on research questions related to regional dimension of science communication, its impacts and suitable (...) tools. Document analysis and questionnaire distributed among selected experts were chosen as tools for elaboration of the study. Results suggest that regional dimension of science communication policy and initiatives is a relevant one in case of Prague. However, the attention given to this topic by national and regional authorities is unsatisfactory resulting in lack of co-ordination of activities of the respective stakeholders. Impacts of SCIP, as far as causality can be identified, lie in encouraging young people in their interest in science, increasing awareness of general public in science-related issues and explaining role of science in society and problems that science is facing. To maximise effects of science communication there is a space for national and regional authorities to play an integrating role. Given the concentration of SCIP actors, the City of Prague could aspire to develop its science communication policy in order to promote itself as a Central European centre of science. (shrink)

The predictive processing literature contains at least two different versions of the framework with different theoretical resources at their disposal. One version appeals to so-called optimistic priors to explain agents’ motivation to act (call this optimistic predictive processing). A more recent version appeals to expected free energy minimization to explain how agents can decide between different action policies (call this preference predictive processing). The difference between the two versions has not been properly appreciated, and they are not sufficiently separated in (...) the literature. They constitute two different theories with strikingly different accounts of motivation and action. By reducing all desire-like constructs to belief-like constructs, optimistic predictive processing entails a substantial revision of standard accounts of motivation and action in philosophy and cognitive science. By contrast, preference predictive processing introduces desire-like constructs that play Humean motivational roles in the explanation of action. In this Humean iteration, predictive processing resembles other prominent computational frameworks implementing a distinction between beliefs and desires, such as reinforcement learning and Bayesian decision theory. Ultimately, predictive processing faces a dilemma between parsimony of mental constructs and completeness of its explanations of agency and the mind. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the (...) corresponding speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the (...) corresponding speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

Reinach’s essay of 1911 establishes an ontological theory of logic, based on the notion of Sachverhalt or state of affairs. He draws on the theory of meaning and reference advanced in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and at the same time anticipates both Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and later speech act theorists’ ideas on performative utterances. The theory is used by Reinach to draw a distinction between two kinds of negative judgment: the simple negative judgment, which is made true by a negative state of (...) affairs; and the polemical negative judgment, which is a performative utterance in which the truth of some earlier judgment – typically a judgment made by some other person – is denied. (shrink)

This dissertation engages in a critical analysis of the work of Adolf Reinach in the theory of knowledge and legal philosophy. Reinach had trained as a lawyer and brought that perspective and experience to bear in his phenomenological work on problems in evidence and legal philosophy. His contributions to phenomenology in the early 20th century provide a window into the earliest phases of the development of the phenomenological movement, prior to World War I. This dissertation locates this work in (...) the European intellectual context of the era and finds analogies with key philosophical dilemmas and developments in England during the same period, arguably ones with shared intellectual roots. Valued for his talent as an inspiring university lecturer, Reinach was a central figure in the circle of young scholars who practiced phenomenology in the spirit of the "early" "pre-Ideen" phase of phenomenology. The dissertation Appendices include translations of selected excerpts from the Nachlass. My translation of the obituary Edmund Husserl wrote and published following Adolf Reinach's death in WWI is published separately. Professor Raymond Klibansky was my supervisor and mentor throughout. (shrink)

Adolf Loos is one of the few figures that Wittgenstein explicitly named as an influence on his thought. Loos’s influence has been debated in the context of determining Wittgenstein’s relation to modernism, as well as in attempts to come to terms with his work as an architect. This paper looks in a different direction, examining a remark in which Wittgenstein responded to Heidegger’s notorious pronouncement that ‘the Nothing noths’ by reference to Loos’s critique of ornamentation. Wittgenstein draws a parallel (...) between the requirement to start philosophy with an inarticulate sound and the need, in certain cultural periods, to highlight the borders of tablecloths using lace. Paying heed to Wittgenstein’s remark sheds further light on a Loosian influence at work in his thinking about modern civilization, both in his well-known ‘Lectures on Aesthetics’ and in the earlier notes from his 1930 lectures at Cambridge. (shrink)

Historical research has recently made it clear that, prior to Austin and Searle, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1884-1917) developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts under the heading of what he called "social acts". He we consider a second instance of a speech act theory avant la lettre, which is to be found in the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Reid’s s work, in contrast to that of Reinach, lacks both a unified approach and the detailed analyses (...) of pertinent examples. But his writings leave no doubt that he is acutely aware of the very problems concerning language structure and use out of which contemporary speech act theory has evolved and that he goes a good way towards solving these problems in the spirit of the modern theory. (shrink)

Where Humeans rule out the possibility of material or non-logical necessity, and thus of any associated knowledge a priori, the German legal philosopher Adolf Reinach defends the existence of a wide class of material necessities falling within the domain of what can be known a priori, for example in fields such as color and shape, rational psychology, law and economics. Categories such as promise or claim or obligation are, in Reinach’s view, exist as nodes in a system of necessary (...) relations, so that anyone who has experience of relevant instances of these categories is implicitly aware also of a corresponding family of relations to certain other categories – as for example that every promise implies a mutually correlated claim and obligation. Midway between the two extremes of Hume and Reinach stands Searle, who accepts necessary relations of the mentioned sorts, but sees them as human creations, following from ‘constitutive rules’ analogous to the rules of chess. We seek to demonstrate that Searle does not occupy a stable and acceptable half-way house between Hume and Reinach; that he, too, if he is to do justice to the very constitutive rules which form the center of his approach, must on pain of circularity embrace something like the Reinachian position. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the objections of Adolf Reinach to Kant’s transcendental apriorism, shedding light on (1) the speculative distance separating their conceptions of philosophy (namely Reinach’s phenomenology and Kant’s transcendental critique), and (2) the consequential misunderstanding which is at the core of Reinach’s confrontation with Kant. In particular, attention is paid to the issue of the transcendental constitution of objectness, i.e. the question of the givenness of an object with respect to certain functions proper to the subject. In order (...) to illustrate how such a concept is completely absent in Reinach, I will compare his position with those of Husserl, in their relations with Kant’s interpretation of Hume’s philosophy. (shrink)

Provides a survey of the development of speech act theory from Aristotle through Reid and Peirce to Edmund Husserl, Anton Marty, Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach, and finally to Austin and Searle. A special role is played by Husserl's theory of objectifying acts (meaning, roughly, acts of naming or stating) and of the efforts by his followers to extend this theory to cover phenomena such as questioning and commanding. These efforts culminated in the work of Adolf Reinach, who developed (...) the first systematic theory of speech acts in connection with his monograph of 1913 on “The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law”. (shrink)

The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by Brentano’s students (...) Twardowski, Husserl and Meinong, and finally, Adolf Reinach’s addition of a linguistic dimension to the Brentano-Husserlian theory of judgment – an account of judgments as ways of doing things with words in what Reinach called ‘social acts’. (shrink)

The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by Brentano’s students (...) Twardowski, Husserl and Meinong, and finally, Adolf Reinach’s addition of a linguistic dimension to the Brentano-Husserlian theory of judgment – an account of judgments as ways of doing things with words in what Reinach called ‘social acts’. (shrink)

The paper investigates the role played by ethical deliberation and ethical judgment in Wittgenstein's early thought in the light of twentieth?century German legal philosophy. In particular the theories of the phenomenologists Adolf Reinach, Wilhelm Schapp, and Gerhart Husserl are singled out, as resting on ontologies which are structurally similar to that of the Tractatus: in each case it is actual and possible Sachverhalte which constitute the prime ontological category. The study of the relationship between the states of affairs depicted, (...) e.g., in the sentences of a legal trial and prior fact?complexes to which these may correspond suggests one possible connecting link between the logical and ontological sections of the Tractatus and the ethical reflections appearing at the end. It is argued that the latter can best be understood in terms of the idea of a ?last judgment? (with its associated ethical rewards and punishments) which would relate to the world as a whole as a penal trial relates to individual complexes of facts. (shrink)

Both ‘Sachverhalt’ and ‘state of affairs’ seem to have been derived from the juridical ‘status’ in the sense of 'status rerum' meaning: state or constitution of things. ‘Status’ signifies also in an extended sense ‘the way things stand, the condition or peculiarity of a thing in regard to its circumstances, position, order’. We describe the history of usage of ‘Sachverhalt’ from these beginnings, addressing the role of Goclenius, Lotze, Stumpf, Husserl and Adolf Reinach, whose theory of the relations between (...) judgment and Sachverhalt served as one starting point for the development of Reinach’s theory of speech acts in 1913. (shrink)

Provides a survey of the development of speech act theory from Aristotle through Reid and Peirce to Edmund Husserl, Anton Marty, Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach, and finally to Austin and Searle. A special role is played by Husserl's theory of objectifying acts (meaning, roughly, acts of naming or stating) and of the efforts by his followers to extend this theory to cover phenomena such as questioning and commanding. These efforts culminated in the work of Adolf Reinach, who developed (...) the first systematic theory of speech acts in connection with his monograph of 1913 on “The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law”. (shrink)

Autobiographical survey of interactions between the author and Barry Smith, especially as concerns the background and influence of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy and work on the relevance of Adolf Reinach, Roman Ingarden and other Central-European thinkers to contemporary analytic philosophy.

In his recently published posthumous works "Prefiguration" and "The Rigorism of Truth" Hans Blumenberg surprisingly steps into the area of political history that he had left widely unconsidered in "Work on Myth". While "Prefiguration" tackles the “demonic” aspects of Napoleon and Hitler that Blumenberg tries to dismantle and bring into derision, in "Rigorism of Truth" he attacks Hannah Arendt's phrase of the Banality of Evil in relation to the Jerusalem trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In this latter issue (...) Blumenberg defends the demonic he sees culminated in the form of Eichmann to assert what he calls the “mythical dimension“ in the Israeli process of nation-building. To him, Eichmann represents a prototypical demon incarnate that must be slaughtered by the heroic character seen in young state Israel. This obviously turns Blumenberg's criticism of Napoleon and Hitler into an affirmation of political myths that, on the face of it, appears to be a contradiction in terms. The essay focuses on this theoretical tension and tries to point out that significance (“Bedeutsamkeit”) is not only a necessity for individual self-assertion (“Selbstbehauptung”) but also a category of communality that must be handled with care. (shrink)

Adolf Reinach belongs to the Brentanian lineage of Austrian Aristotelianism. His theory of social acts is well known, but his account of ownership has been mostly overlooked. This paper introduces and defends Reinach’s account of ownership. Ownership, for Reinach, is not a bundle of property rights. On the contrary, he argues that ownership is a primitive and indivisible relation between a person and a thing that grounds property rights. Most importantly, Reinach asserts that the nature ownership is not determined (...) by positive law but presupposed by it. Some have objected that such realism raises insuperable difficulties as to the origin of ownership, difficulties that could only be dealt with under a more conventionalist approach. I argue that the independence of the nature ownership from positive law is, in fact, compatible with the claim that its existence is dependent on human conventions. (shrink)

Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research. In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to (...) this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets (...) out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

We examine the influence of word choices on mathematical practice, i.e. in developing definitions, theorems, and proofs. As a case study, we consider Euclid’s and Euler’s word choices in their influential developments of geometry and, in particular, their use of the term ‘polyhedron’. Then, jumping to the twentieth century, we look at word choices surrounding the use of the term ‘polyhedron’ in the work of Coxeter and of Grünbaum. We also consider a recent and explicit conflict of approach between Grünbaum (...) and Shephard on the one hand and that of Hilton and Pedersen on the other, elucidating that the conflict was engendered by disagreement over the proper conceptualization, and so also the appropriate word choices, in the study of polyhedra. (shrink)

In this paper, I relate key features of Adolf Reinach’s abundant ontology of propositional states of affairs of his to Armstrong’s—or an Armstrongian—state of affairs ontology, with special regard to finding out how sparse or abundant the latter is with respect to negative states of affairs. After introducing the issue, I clarify the notion of a propositional state of affairs, paying special attention to the notion of abstract versus concrete. I show how Reinach’s states of affairs are propositional, and (...) how they compare with Chisholm’s well-known propositional states of affairs. In the next section, I outline Reinach’s five roles for states of affairs and show that only one of them is relevant to Armstrongian state of affairs ontology. In the following section, I utilise this role to create a ranking of state of affairs ontologies according to how abundant they are. It is, however, unclear which level Armstrongian state of affairs ontology is at, since it is unclear if, like Reinach’s ontology, it includes negative states of affairs. In the final section, I argue that the answer is a qualified ‘yes’, i.e. it does not occupy the sparsest level. (shrink)

A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.

The term “dictator” may have a strong impression on many of us because it is usually associated with destructive consequences, like the Holocaust directed by Adolf Hitler and the Great Purge ordered by Joseph Stalin. Yet, little is known about how a dictator-to-be can harness the power and rise into power. This chapter proposes a psycho-political mechanism that enables a dictator-to-be to harness the power generated from disinformation-induced hysteria. The conceptual framework is constructed using the mindsponge-based analytical framework and (...) the SM3D theory (Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D). The framework can help examine cases of dictatorship and prospect potential dictators, which gives our societies insights and preparations to reduce the possible rise of dictatorship in the future. This chapter is placed at the end of the book to wrap up the process of describing and discussing the mindsponge thinking approach in the book from simplicity to complexity. (shrink)

Crisis occupies an ambiguous place in the writings of Hannah Arendt. Not only does crisis undermine categories of judgment, but in doing so it eliminates prejudices as well, forcing us to judge without them. Although Arendt never had an opportunity to fully develop her understanding of judgment, we know that she considered it to be ‘the most political of man’s mental abilities,’ and her writings on education reflect this. In her essay, ‘The Crisis in Education’ she draws a connection between (...) judgment and crisis, linking it to the work of the classroom. It is this relationship, between crisis and judgment, that I examine. In doing so, I turn to two figures central to Arendt’s work – Immanuel Kant and Adolf Eichmann – each of whom embody opposing aspects of what it means to judge, epitomized by a conceptual tension between example and cliché. (shrink)

All humans have an equal basic moral status. They possess the same fundamental rights, and the comparable interests of each person should count the same in calculations that determine social policy. Neither supposed racial differences, nor skin color, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, intelligence, nor any other differences among humans negate their fundamental equal worth and dignity. These platitudes are virtually universally affirmed. A white supremacist racist or an admirer of Adolf Hitler who denies them is rightly regarded as beyond (...) the pale of civilized dialogue. However, a very simple line of argument developed by Peter Singer challenges our understanding of these platitudes and forces us to rethink the basis and nature of the moral equality of all humans. What I call the “Singer Problem” arises if one accepts that the morally significant cognitive capacities that are relevant to the determination of the fundamental moral status of a being vary from individual to individual by degree. The problem is to specify a moral principle determining fundamental moral status that assigns a superior status to humans compared to other animals on the basis of the superior cognitive capacities of humans but also assigns all human persons an equal fundamental moral status regardless of their differing cognitive capacities. More broadly posed, the problem is to specify moral principles that yield intuitively satisfactory implications for the treatment of human individuals and other individual animals given that cognitive capacities differ across species and individuals. A search for a resolution of the Singer problem leads to disappointing results. (shrink)

A collection of discussions of possible influences on Wittgenstein when he was writing the Tractatus, includes treatments of Reinach and Meinong.

This paper aims to present and evaluate the (unduly neglected) account of the essence of colours developed by the early phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. Reinach claims that colours, as regards their nature or essence, are physical entities. He is opposed to the idea that colours are “subjective” or “psychic”. It might be the case that the colours we see in the world do not exist but are mere appearances. However, their non-existence would not entail any change in their essence: that (...) is, they would not be psychic, but would just be non-existent physical entities. In Reinach’s view, we can be “ontic-neutral essentialists” about colours: we can remain neutral as to the existence of colours but still make claims about their essence. In the first part of the paper, I present Reinach’s take on the essence of colours. In the second part, I address his existential neutrality about colours; in particular, I argue that Reinach’s ontic-neutral essentialism brings to the fore a seldom noted but crucial distinction to be made in the discussion of colours, that between empirical and metaphysical non-realism about colours. (shrink)

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the (...) motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • banality of evil • Adolf Eichmann • evil • forgiveness • Immanuel Kant • punishment • radical evil. (shrink)

Those who conceive logic as a science have generally favoured one of two alternative conceptions as to what the subject-matter of this science ought to be. On the one hand is the nowadays somewhat old-fashioned-seeming view of logic as the science of judgment, or of thinking or reasoning activities in general. On the other hand is the view of logic as a science of ideal meanings, 'thoughts', or 'propositions in themselves'. There is, however, a third alternative conception, which enjoyed only (...) a brief flowering in the years leading up to the first World War, but whose lingering presence can be detected in the background of more recent ontologising trends in logic, as for example in the 'situation semantics' of Barwise and Perry. This third conception sees logic as a science of special objects called 'Sachverhalte' or 'states of affairs'. A view of this sort is present in simplified form in the works of Meinong, but it received its definitive formulation in the writings of Adolf Reinach, a student of Husserl who is otherwise noteworthy for having anticipated, in a monograph of 1913, large chunks of what later became known as the theory of speech acts.(1). (shrink)

Durante vários anos, Jean Héring (1890-1966) foi professor de teologia na Université de Strasbourg. Um fato pessoal que o marcou definitivamente, foi o privilégio de ter sido discípulo de Husserl, em Göttingen. Nesta oportunidade, também teve contato com outros representantes da fenomenologia, como Edith Stein, Adolf Reinach e Alexandre Koyré. No breve texto a seguir, datado de 1939, um ano antes da morte de Husserl, Héring relembra a sua chegada em Göttingen, no ano de 1909 e o modo como (...) Husserl impressionava os seus discípulos, pelo seu brilhantismo. Fato este que acompanhou Héring durante todo o restante de sua vida, impactando decisivamente em sua obra. (shrink)

Our commonsense understanding of meaning and motive is realized via the semantic encoding of causal role. Appreciating this together with other features of semantic theories enables us to see that methodological critiques of psychoanalysis, such as those by Popper and Grunbaum, systematically fail to take account of empirical data, and if taken seriously would render commonsense understanding of mind and language void. This is particularly problematic if we consider much of what we regard ourselves as knowing is registered in (...) language, or understood through our use of it, since this includes science itself. (shrink)

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the (...) corresponding speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

A fundamental problem in understanding the nature of time is explaining its directionality. This 1990 PhD thesis re-examines the concepts of time flow, the physical directionality of time, and the semantics of tensed language. Several novel results are argued for that contradict the orthodox anti-realist views still dominant in the subject. Specifically, the concept of "metaphysical time flow" is supported as a valid scientific concept, and argued to be intrinsic to the directionality of objective probabilities in quantum mechanics; the common (...) claims that quantum probability theory is time reversible is shown to be based on an analytic error, stemming from a false choice for the criterion for reversibility of probabilistic theories (recognized by Satosi Watanabe in the 1950s but ignored in all philosophical discussions); and a consistent semantics for tensed language (adapted from the tree model of Storrs McCall) is constructed, showing that the common rejection of "time flow" as having no meaningful semantics is false. These debates are still ongoing in almost exactly the same state they were pre-1990, and there is appears to be no visible progress in the subject. Critical points made against errors in the orthodox account (which has been sustained for 70 years by the anti-realist philosophy of time, typified by the "Pittsburg School" of Grunbaum-Earman-Norton-Roberts), are still not recognized in the philosophy of time or physics. Some key technical proofs in this thesis have been published in physics proper. See p.ii-iii for full original abstract. (This pdf is uploaded from the Massey University archive.). (shrink)

This work develops a philosophically credible and psychologically realisable account of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We live, think, and act in an environment of subjective uncertainty and limited information. As a result, our decisions and actions are influenced by factors beyond our control. Our ability to act freely is restricted by uncertainty, ignorance, and luck. Through three articles, I develop a naturalistic theory of control for action as a process of error minimisation that extends over time. Thus (...) conceived, control can serve to minimise the influence of luck on action and enable freedom in uncertainty. -/- In Article 1, Thor Grünbaum and I argue for a psychologically plausible account of the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We begin by establishing the relationship between agentive contribution and responsibility-level control. One way to determine whether one the right kind and degree of control to be morally responsible is to track one’s degree of contribution to an action. However, a psychologically plausible account of control in terms of agentive contribution may seem to contradict the types of functional-mechanistic explanations used in cognitive science. In cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, personal-level capacities are explained by a set of sub-personal mechanisms. Often, such explanations leave no room for a contribution by the agent. By integrating insights from theories of cognitive control and incorporating them into a philosophical account of intentions, we propose a way of thinking about the distribution of cognitive control resources as something the agent does. -/- Article 2 argues that a classic argument concerning luck, originally aimed at libertarianism, generalises beyond any specific theory of free will, and regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true. I call this mental luck. Because we all make decisions under conditions of relative uncertainty and limited information, it is possible for an agent to make decisions that are contrary to their own motivation. In such situations, it may be a matter of luck whether the agent makes the right decision. Mentally lucky decisions are not rationally governed by attitudes within the agent's perspective, and thus, may be indistinguishable from unlucky ones. From the perspective of the agent, such decisions may resemble the outcome of a lottery. Therefore, mental luck poses a challenge to most prominent theories of free action and moral responsibility. -/- Finally, article 3 engages with the issue of resultant luck, namely luck in how things turn out. Resultant luck raises a challenge for theories of moral responsibility because its existence suggests that one may be responsible for factors beyond one’s control. Prominent responses to resultant luck led to a choice between internalism and scepticism. I argue that familiar cases of resultant luck are based on the assumption that actions are events. Instead, I propose an alternative ontology of action as an ongoing goal-directed process with a many-shots structure. Described this way, cases of resultant luck are not representative of ordinary action. The proposal of action as a many-shots process is consistent with predictive coding, a cognitive architecture which centres around error minimisation. Under this framework, cases of resultant more luck are no longer failures of action, but rather anticipated errors to be settled within the ordinary process of action. (shrink)

The “staccato run,” in which a runner stops infinitely often while running from one point to another, is a prototypical “superfeat,” that is, a feat involving the completion in a finite time of an infinite sequence of distinct acts. There is no widely accepted demonstration that superfeats are impossible logically, but I argue here, contra Grunbaüm, that they are impossible dynamically. Specifically, I show that the staccato run is excluded by Newton’s three laws of motion, when those laws are supplemented (...) with a defensible philosophical judgment. (shrink)

While Schelling’s anticipation of Freudian psychoanalysis is well established, it has thus far gone unnoticed that Schelling’s ideas also proved fruitful in the context of a distinctively philosophical theory of the psyche developed by a younger contemporary of Freud. During the 1920s Helmuth Plessner, a key figure of philosophical anthropology, outlined a complex conception of the psyche as an individualized, inner region of reality. Although Plessner did not present his philosophical psychology in a systematic form, its building blocks can be (...) found in The Unity of the Senses, The Limits of Community, and Levels of Organic Life and the Human, among other writings. Moreover, Plessner left a clue as to how these building blocks fit together, which suggests that Plessner viewed his philosophical psychology as structurally analogous to the model of personality outlined in Schelling’s 1809 treatise on human freedom. I propose that Plessner sought to formulate an alternative to both idealism and realism about the psyche that might reconcile the insights motivating these rival positions. Schelling provided Plessner with a workable model for such a reconciliation. After reviewing textual evidence for my hypothesis, I sketch Schelling’s predecessor theory. Based on the Schellingian template, I then reconstruct Plessner’s non-reductively naturalistic theory of the psyche, which aligns the real bodily ground of the psyche with its ideal existence. Highlighting the strengths of Plessner’s philosophical psychology against the foil of Paul Ricoeur’s and John McDowell’s relevant arguments, I argue that the theory reconstructed here deserves contemporary consideration as a plausible contender. –––– NOTE: It was only after publication of this article that I came across an important piece of biographical evidence in support of my claim about the significance of Schelling's Freiheitsschrift for Plessner's philosophical psychology. In 1923, Max Scheler claimed to be powerfully impressed by two of his recent readings, namely, Adolf von Harnack’s major study on the second-century Christian heretic Marcion and Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift (Peter Wust, “Schelers Lehre vom Menschen,” Das Neue Reich 9 [1928–29], 138, quoted in Guido Cusinato, “Schelling come precursore dell’antropologia filosofica del Novecento,” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, 9/2 [2010], 64.). Given that Scheler and Plessner were in constant intense exchange during the relevant period, it seems likely that Plessner’s invocation of Marcion in the concluding passage of Levels of Organic Life and the Human reflects a familiarity with that author that was mediated by Scheler’s reading of Harnack. By the same token, Scheler’s praise for Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift in 1923, along with the textual indications noted in my paper, suggests that the Freiheitsschrift was very much present on Plessner's intellectual horizon when he referred to “the ur-ground character, or better said un-ground character of the psyche” in The Limits of Community, which was published a year later. (Whether it was Scheler who alerted Plessner to the Freiheitsschrift or the other way around is a moot question.). (shrink)

Amongst the entities making up social reality, are there necessary relations whose necessity is not a mere reflection of the logical connections between corresponding concepts? We distinguish three main groups of answers to this question, associated with Hume and Adolf Reinach at opposite extremes, and with Searle who occupies a position somewhere in the middle. We first set forth Reinach’s views on what he calls ‘material necessities’ in the realm of social entities. We then attempt to show that Searle (...) has not identified a sustainable position somewhere between the Humean and the Reinachian extremes. This is because Searle’s position is threatened by circularity, and to steer clear of that danger it must incorporate at least some elements of Reinach’s essentialism. (shrink)