According to the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a language influences the mind of its user. This is more or less trivial, but the problems are in the details. It is difficult to make precise what those influences are, be it in general philosophical or in particular empirical-cultural terms. I will give an account of what I take to be basic aesthetic and grammatical features of the Chinese language compared with what we find in Western languages such as Latin or greek. (...) Then I will indicate what I take to be cultural differences and discuss whether these might be the result of differences in language structure. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was (...) Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) denying the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva), we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna (Kumarajiva) with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna (kumarajiva) with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s (Kumarajiva’s) examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.]. (shrink)

From the 1920’s onwards in Yozgat and its vicinity in the interior of Asia Minor field surveys and excavations have been increasingly undertaken. One recent project is an archaeological survey of the whole province of Yozgat which began in 2017 with the participation of many academics from different universities and disciplines. Through this survey, which covers a large area, research in just a few regions has been completed. In this article, seventeen Christian epitaphs discovered at and around the village (...) of Güneşli (east of Tavium), Aydıncık, Basilika Therma (Sarıkaya) and Çayıralan, mostly dating from the Vth–VIth centuries A.D. are presented. Three of them are fragmentary and a few are badly damaged. A carved bilingual Latin/Greek inscription records the «running» metaphor frequently employed by the Apostle Paul, all the other inscriptions introduced are Greek. There are interesting differences and analogies for the motifs on these gravestones and for the formulas employed in the epitaphs within the surrounding region. ****** Yozgat İlinden Yeni Hıristiyan Mezar Yazıtları Yozgat ve çevresindeki arkeoloji yüzey araştırmaları ve kazılar çalışmaları 1920’li yıllardan itibaren artış göstererek devam etmektedir. Bu bağlamda son projelerden bir tanesi de farklı üniversitelerden ve disiplinlerden pek çok akademisyenin katılımıyla 2017 yılında başlatılan ve Yozgat ilinin tamamını kapsayan arkeolojik yüzey araştırmalarıdır. Tüm il sınırlarını kapsayan bu araştırmadaki sistematik çalışmalar bazı bölgelerde tamamlanmış durumdadır. Makalede ise Güneşli Köyü, Aydıncık, Sarıkaya ve Çayıralan’da bulunan ve çoğunluğu MS V.–VI. yüzyıllara tarihlenen Hıristiyan mezar yazıtları tanıtılmaktadır. Yazıtlarının bir kısmı sadece fragman halinde ele geçmişken, bazıları ise oldukça tahrip olmuş durumdadır. Bunlardan birisinin üzerine, Aziz Paulus’un sıkça dile getirdiği «koşmak» metaforu Latince ve Yunanca çift dilli olarak kazınmıştır. Diğer yazıtların tamamı Yunancadır. Söz konusu mezar taşları üzerindeki betimlemelerin ve mezar yazıtlarındaki formüllerin bölgeler arasındaki farklılıkları ise ilgi çekicidir. Anahtar Sözcükler: Yozgat, Tavium, Hıristiyan Mezar Yazıtı, Koşucu, Aziz Paulus, Bizans Epigrafisi. (shrink)

El autor del artículo, tras la revisión de las piedras, reedita —con aparato crítico, traducción española y un extenso comentario— ocho inscripciones cristianas de Císamo en Creta.

As the lyrics to the traditional nineteenth century gospel hymn state, one of the goals of many magical and religious practices is to experience ‘a closer walk with Thee,’ coming into the presence of the holy in both figurative and arguably literal terms. One of the many ways to improve this likelihood of achieving the deep and immersive presence of the holy—described by the scholar of comparative religion Rudolf Otto as the “gentle tide, [the] pervading [of] the mind with a (...) tranquil mood” numinous experience—is through the careful use of various sonic elements. To this point, an exploration of physical worship spaces themselves, a review of the means of creating sounds within worship, and a study of the related uses of sonic technology during worship rituals can help to elucidate just how these sonic elements compare in their utilization between ancient magic and more contemporary magical and religious applications. It is my contention that the overall goal of creating an immersive environment for worship and ritual practice has remained a constant from Ancient Greek and Roman times through to the present, while the technology available to achieve this goal (both in the creation of an immersive physical space and in the use of engaging and relatable musical instruments and instrumental styles) has continually progressed. Put another way, the methods in which we might best utilize various sonic elements to achieve the most numinous experience—the ‘how’— have certainly changed over time, but the underlying ‘why’ and the core goal of using sound to increase this sense of a presence with the holy has remained largely unchanged. (shrink)

In the culture of ancient Greece, the term Paideia (Greek: παιδεία) referred to the upbringing and education of an ideal member of the polis. However, the period from Homer's epic poetry (9th or 8th century BCE) to the Peloponnesian War (5th century BCE) differs notably, concerning the forms of Hellenistic culture after the emergence of Christianity (especially from 2nd to 9th century AD). For that reason, it is necessary to consider what significance Paideia had in different historical periods of (...) Greek culture. In addition, the discussion of Paideia cannot exist in the abstract form of conceptual analysis without taking into account the real historical figures who contributed to the survival of Greek culture in the Roman and early Christian periods. This paper aims to examine the role of Greek culture in the social life of the early Christian Romans. We will try to achieve this through a detailed analysis of the panegyrics (Greek: πανήγυρις). Panegyrics are eulogies that educated pagan thinkers addressed to Roman emperors. Following the panegyrics, we will examine the influence of the Greek tradition on the distribution of the social roles in the upper classes in the Roman Empire. At the same time, by analyzing panegyric, the socio-cultural context of early Rome, and the demands that social betterment placed on pagan thinkers, we will introduce new elements of Christian Paideia concerning her classical predecessor, thus showing what such a transformation essentially entailed. (shrink)

In this second of two essays on the topic of ancient Greek inscriptions, I will briefly explore and discuss the textuality of ritual norms or, 'sacred laws', by looking 1) at the reasons for these ritual norms to have been written down in the first place and 2) how these norms/laws/decrees were able to get their observers to adhere to them. Throughout the essay I have made use of J.L. Austin's Speech Act Theory to better contextualize the meaning of (...) the inscriptions dealt with. (shrink)

This brief, reflective research looks analytically at the impact of Greek philosophy on Christianity from three perspectives. They are: 1) the challenge that it presented to Christianity, 2) the signs of syncretism, and 3) Christian differentiation despite assimilation of aspects of Greek philosophy. Though not exhaustive because of its brevity, the study may help with discussions on the backgrounds of Christianity, and also stimulate an interest in the religion, politics, and history of the Levant in the first (...) century. (shrink)

In this book the author presented the history of the Greek philosophy that extends from the six century BC till the six century AC. He divided the book into three main stages: Philosophy before Socrates: It extended from 6th century BC to mid 5th century BC. This stage began with Thales and his school of Physics; Heraclitus; Pythagoras school; Eleaties School; then Empedocles and Anaxagoras; Democritus and Sophists school. The themes of philosophical contemplation were nature, universe and man. Socratic (...) Method was represented by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as all of them paid much concern to establishing philosophical systems especially Plato and Aristotle. They both presented solutions to the problems raised by philosophers before the time of Socrates. As for Socrates, he was the real founder of Ethics science and approach. The third stage is Hellenistic philosophy which is in its turn divided into two stages. The first is represented by Stoicism school, The Epicureanism School, and Skepticism. The second was represented in the modern Pythagorean and Platonic schools. The researcher focused on two aspects which the Greek philosophy. The first one is the large number of philosophers and philosophical schools in comparison with Islamic, Christian, modern and contemporary philosophies. The second is the diversity and change amongst the philosophers of Greece whether they belong to the same philosophical school or to independent schools in addition to the miracle of the Greek philosophy as mentioned by Aristotle who said that it was created from nothing as well as the opinions by the researcher in this concern. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt a reading of Heidegger’s interpretations of St. Paul’s Epistles in light of the distinction between Eastern and Western thought. To this end, I suggest that Heidegger’s recourse to the Paulinic texts represents his endeavor to gain access to the original structures of life by circumventing the metaphysical framework of Greek (Plato’s and Aristotle’s) thought. Thus, I argue that by doing this, Heidegger actually approaches the Eastern way of thinking, i.e. a non-metaphysical alternative. In order (...) to better understand what defines Eastern thought, I discuss in some detail Zizioulas’s interpretations of temporality in Eastern Christianity. Along the lines of this different understanding of temporality, the proximity of Heideggerian thought can be seen. Finally, I show that the importance of my argument lies in that it can open a possible research path for what Heidegger in his latter works calls “the other beginning.”. (shrink)

This paper traces how the dualism of body and soul, cosmic and human, is bridged in philosophical and religious traditions through appeal to the notion of ‘breath’ (πνεῦμα). It pursues this project by way of a genealogy of pneumatic cosmology and anthropology, covering a wide range of sources, including the Pythagoreans of the fifth century BCE (in particular, Philolaus of Croton); the Stoics of the third and second centuries BCE (especially Posidonius); the Jews writing in Hellenistic Alexandria in the first (...) century BCE (Philo); and the Christians of the first century CE (the gospel writers and Paul). Starting from the early Pythagoreans, ‘breath’ and ‘breathing’ function to draw analogies between cosmogony and anthropogony – a notion ultimately rejected by Plato in the Timaeus and Aristotle in his cosmological works, but taken up by the Posidonius (perhaps following the early Stoa) and expanded into a rich and challenging corporeal metaphysics. Similarly, the Post-Hellenistic philosopher and biblical exegete Philo of Alexandria, who was deeply influenced by both Platonist and Stoic physics, approaches the cosmogony and anthropogony described in Genesis (1:1–3 and 1:7) through Platonist-Stoic philosophy, in his attempt to provide a philosophically rigorous explanation for why Moses employed certain terms or phrases when writing his book of creation. Finally, the chapter sees a determined shift in the direction of rejecting pneumatic cosmology for a revised pneumatic anthropogony in the writings of the New Testament: by appeal to the ‘Holy Spirit’ or ‘Holy Breath’ (πνεῦμα ἅγιον), early Christians effectively adapted the Stoic metaphysics of ‘breath’, with its notions of divine intelligence and bonding, to the prophetic and ecclesiastical project of building a Christian community conceived of as the ‘body of Christ’. Hence, the spiritual cosmogony of the Pythagoreans, Stoics, and Philo is effectively subordinated to the spiritual anthropogony that facilitates the construction of the Christian kosmopolis, only fully realised in the form of New Jerusalem, the ‘bride’ which, in tandem with the Holy Spirit, calls to the anointed. At the end of the Christian worldview, the kosmos of Greek philosophy is supplanted by the pneumatic kosmopolis. (shrink)

I argue that St. Augustine of Hippo was the first in the history of Christian spirituality who expressed a key tendency of Christian mysticism, which implies a gradual intellectual ascent of the human soul to God, consisting of the three main stages: external, internal, and supernal. In this ascent a Christian mystic proceeds from the knowledge of external beings to self-knowledge, and from his inner self to direct mystical contemplation of God. Similar doctrines may be found in (...) the writings of the Greek Fathers. Although there are many similarities in the overall doctrine and in particular details between them, it does not imply the direct impact of Augustine’s theological thought on the Greek Fathers but rather the influence of the Neoplatonic philosophy on both Western and Eastern Christianity, in particular, of Plotinus’ theory of intellectual cognition. (shrink)

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it looks at a recent debate (...) on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book examines the epistemic function of perception and the relation between language and conceptual thought, and provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist defense of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness: namely, that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence.

Concepts of “self” and “right” in three civilizations: primarily Confucian and ancient Greek, with references to Aristotle’s medieval Christian commentators; Uses the classical Greek and Chinese traditions’ common incompatibility with modern liberal notion of “right” to explore the commonalities between them, and on that basis endeavors to connect the East to the West with a “right” that could better harmonize the self with society, right with duty, and negative with positive freedom.

For among most contemporaries, the concept of Eros seems to have nothing to do with Christianity. Sifting through the psychoanalysis of sexual fantasy, theologically it says nothing. Our study gives reasons showing that for theologians since the dawn of the Christian era, Eros-love plays a fundamental role.. The connotations of this concept, however, are different from those of today, when its sensory meaning is more restricted to sexuality. Greek theologians of the first centuries after Christ, taught the concept (...) of Plato enshrined as a unifying enthusiasm, the attraction of inferior to superior states, as “hungry and thirsty” for something continuously higher, developing, and enriching the connotation. The work of Dionysius Areopagite, the Idea of Good, leads us step by step up the ascent of the erotically chaste, and is identified with the One-God, who is the very source of love. Consequently, Eros-love originates from God, Eros- love being not only an ascending but firstly a descending love, which calls for a reciprocal communion. (shrink)

In this paper, the attributes of Jesus as the second person of Trinity in Christianity and Muhammadan Reality in Islamic Theosophy were compared. The term ''Muhammadan Reality'' in Islamic Theosophy refers to transcendental and divine being of Muhammad rather than his human and historic existence. According to this research, both Jesus and Muhammadan Realities have divine attributes. They are lights of God, the Word or the Pen of God, the creators of the word, omniscience, omnipotent, omnibenevolent as well as the (...) intermediaries between God and humans. In this study, it is demonstrated that what happened to Jesus in Christianity, it has also happened to Muhammad in Islamic theosophy with some differences. The influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonic, in ascribing these attributes to Jesus in Christianity and Muhammad in Islamic theosophy is undeniable. There is a strong temptation among the scholars of both religions, Islam and Christianity, to extend Jesus and Muhammad to the level of divinity and godhead. (shrink)

In the article by M. Karpitsky "Repressions against Non-Moscow Orthodox Christians in the Donbass" on concrete facts it is shown how the persecution of separatists and with what motivation are found in the Donbass territory by the faithful of Protestant communities, the Churches of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Greek Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church. It is talked about how they manage to survive in constant persecution and torture.

In a work entitled On the Generation of Animals, Aristotle remarks that “intellect (nous) alone enters from outside (thurathen)”. Interpretations of this passage as dualistic dominate the history of ideas and allow for a joining together of Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine on the soul. This, however, pulls against the well-known Aristotelian position that soul and body are intertwined and interdependent. The most influential interpretations thereby misrepresent Aristotle’s view on soul and lack any real engagement with his embryology. This paper seeks (...) to extract the account of intellect (nous) in Aristotelian embryology from this interpretative background and place it within the context of his mature biological thought. A clear account of the actual import of this statement in its relevant context is given before explaining how it has been misunderstood by various interpretative traditions. The paper finishes by touching on how early commentary by Christian writers, freed as it was from the imperative to synthesise Greek philosophy, differed from those that came after. While realising that Aristotle’s position would not aid them in their explanations of the soul’s survival after death, their engagement with Aristotle’s science allowed for other aspects of theology concerning the fittingness of soul to body. (shrink)

In this paper I will introduce a practical explication for the notion of expertise. At first, I motivate this attempt by taking a look on recent debates which display great disagreement about whether and how to define expertise in the first place. After that I will introduce the methodology of practical explications in the spirit of Edward Craig’s Knowledge and the state of nature along with some conditions of adequacy taken from ordinary and scientific language. This eventually culminates in the (...) respective explication of expertise according to which this term essentially refers to a certain kind of service-relation. This is why expertise should be considered as a predominantly social kind. This article will end up with a discussion of advantages and prima facie plausible objections against my account of expertise. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered in (...) its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

Real human agents, even when they are rational by everyday standards, sometimes assign different credences to objectively equivalent statements, such as “George Orwell is a writer” and “Eric Arthur Blair is a writer”, or credences less than 1 to necessarily true statements, such as not-yet-proven theorems of arithmetic. Anna Mahtani calls this the phenomenon of “opacity” (a form of hyperintensionality). Opaque credences seem probabilistically incoherent, which goes against a key modelling assumption of probability theory. I sketch a modelling strategy for (...) capturing opaque credence assignments without abandoning probabilistic coherence. I draw on ideas from judgment-aggregation theory, where we face similar challenges of defining the “objects of judgment”. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the nascent literature on Moral Uncertainty Theory and explore its application to the criminal law. Moral Uncertainty Theory seeks to address the question of what we ought to do when we are uncertain about what to do because we are torn between rival moral theories. For instance, we may have some credence in one theory that tells us to do A but also in another that tells us to do B. We examine how we might (...) decide whether or not to criminalize some conduct when we are unsure as to whether or not the conduct is morally permitted, and whether or not it is permissible to criminalize the conduct. We also look at how we might make sentencing decisions under moral uncertainty. We argue that Moral Uncertainty Theory can be an illuminating way to address these questions, but find that doing so is a lot more complicated than applying Moral Uncertainty Theory to individual conduct. (shrink)

I argue that free will and determinism are compatible, even when we take free will to require the ability to do otherwise and even when we interpret that ability modally, as the possibility of doing otherwise, and not just conditionally or dispositionally. My argument draws on a distinction between physical and agential possibility. Although in a deterministic world only one future sequence of events is physically possible for each state of the world, the more coarsely defined state of an agent (...) and his or her environment can be consistent with more than one such sequence, and thus different actions can be “agentially possible”. The agential perspective is supported by our best theories of human behaviour, and so we should take it at face value when we refer to what an agent can and cannot do. On the picture I defend, free will is not a physical phenomenon, but a higher-level one on a par with other higher-level phenomena such as agency and intentionality. (shrink)

It is often argued that higher-level special-science properties cannot be causally efficacious since the lower-level physical properties on which they supervene are doing all the causal work. This claim is usually derived from an exclusion principle stating that if a higher-level property F supervenes on a physical property F* that is causally sufficient for a property G, then F cannot cause G. We employ an account of causation as difference-making to show that the truth or falsity of this principle is (...) a contingent matter and derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a version of it holds. We argue that one important instance of the principle, far from undermining non-reductive physicalism, actually supports the causal autonomy of certain higher-level properties. (shrink)

The traditional possible-worlds model of belief describes agents as ‘logically omniscient’ in the sense that they believe all logical consequences of what they believe, including all logical truths. This is widely considered a problem if we want to reason about the epistemic lives of non-ideal agents who—much like ordinary human beings—are logically competent, but not logically omniscient. A popular strategy for avoiding logical omniscience centers around the use of impossible worlds: worlds that, in one way or another, violate the laws (...) of logic. In this paper, we argue that existing impossible-worlds models of belief fail to describe agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. To model such agents, we argue, we need to ‘dynamize’ the impossible-worlds framework in a way that allows us to capture not only what agents believe, but also what they are able to infer from what they believe. In light of this diagnosis, we go on to develop the formal details of a dynamic impossible-worlds framework, and show that it successfully models agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. (shrink)

Suppose that the members of a group each hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, and imagine that the group itself has to form a collective, rational set of judgments on those questions. How should it go about dealing with this task? We argue that the question raised is subject to a difficulty that has recently been noticed in discussion of the doctrinal paradox in jurisprudence. And we show that there is a general impossibility theorem that that (...) difficulty illustrates. Our paper describes this impossibility result and provides an exploration of its significance. The result naturally invites comparison with Kenneth Arrow's famous theorem (Arrow, 1963 and 1984; Sen, 1970) and we elaborate that comparison in a companion paper (List and Pettit, 2002). The paper is in four sections. The first section documents the need for various groups to aggregate its members' judgments; the second presents the discursive paradox; the third gives an informal statement of the more general impossibility result; the formal proof is presented in an appendix. The fourth section, finally, discusses some escape routes from that impossibility. (shrink)

The aim of this exploratory paper is to review an under-appreciated parallel between group agency and artificial intelligence. As both phenomena involve non-human goal-directed agents that can make a difference to the social world, they raise some similar moral and regulatory challenges, which require us to rethink some of our anthropocentric moral assumptions. Are humans always responsible for those entities’ actions, or could the entities bear responsibility themselves? Could the entities engage in normative reasoning? Could they even have rights and (...) a moral status? I will tentatively defend the (increasingly widely held) view that, under certain conditions, artificial intelligent systems, like corporate entities, might qualify as responsible moral agents and as holders of limited rights and legal personhood. I will further suggest that regulators should permit the use of autonomous artificial systems in high-stakes settings only if they are engineered to function as moral (not just intentional) agents and/or there is some liability-transfer arrangement in place. I will finally raise the possibility that if artificial systems ever became phenomenally conscious, there might be a case for extending a stronger moral status to them, but argue that, as of now, this remains very hypothetical. (shrink)

In this discussion paper, I argue that no theory of consciousness can simultaneously respect four initially plausible metaphysical claims – namely, “first-person realism”, “non-solipsism”, “non-fragmentation”, and “one world” – but that any three of the four claims are mutually consistent. So, theories of consciousness face a “quadrilemma”. Since it will be hard to achieve a consensus on which of the four claims to retain and which to give up, we arrive at a landscape of competing theories, all of which have (...) pros and cons. I will briefly indicate which kinds of theories correspond to the four horns of the quadrilemma. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary debate about the nature of expertise often conflates having expertise with either the individual possession of competences or a certain role ascription. In contrast to this, the paper attempts to demonstrate how different dimensions of expertise ascription are inextricably interwoven. As a result, a balanced account of expertise will be proposed that more accurately determines the closer relationship between the expert’s dispositions, their manifestations and the expert’s function. This finally results in an advanced understanding of expertise that views (...) someone as an expert only if she is undefeatedly disposed to fulfill a contextually salient service function adequately at the moment of assessment. (shrink)

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a multilateral trade organization that, at least partially, governs trade relations between its member states. The WTO (2011a) proclaims that its “overriding objective is to help trade flow smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably.” The WTO is a “treaty-based” organization – it has been constituted through an agreed, legally binding treaty made up of more than 30 articles, along with additional commitments by some members in specific areas. At present, 153 states are members of the (...) WTO, which collectively make up over 97 percent of all trade worldwide (WTO 2011b). Together, the WTO treaty specifies the rights and obligations of its member states. To become a member of the WTO, a state must treat the agreement as a “single undertaking.” Members cannot choose à la carte which agreements – for example, regarding tariffs, or trade in services or intellectual property – they want to accede to and which they do not. Instead, they must take on the obligations of the agreement in toto. The WTO is one of the most consequential governance institutions in the world, a lodestar of political debate about globalization (see globalization), attracting increased interest from moral and political philosophers in recent years (James 2006; Moellendorf 2005; Risse 2007; Brock 2009). (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (as in (...) Condorcet's paradox) are in large electorates. (shrink)

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness. In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much-discussed theory of consciousness. I conclude by pointing out an implication (...) of my argument for the normative status of group agents. (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for modelling levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and show that it can accommodate descriptive, explanatory, and ontological notions of levels. I further illustrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some salient philosophical questions: (1) Is there a linear hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the bottom? And (...) what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? (2) Are there emergent properties? (3) Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? (4) Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? Although I use the terminology of “levels”, the proposed framework can also represent “scales”, “domains”, or “subject matters”, where these are not linearly but only partially ordered by relations of supervenience or inclusion. (shrink)

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, (...) individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate whether we can use a world-involving framework to model the epistemic states of non-ideal agents. The standard possible-world framework falters in this respect because of a commitment to logical omniscience. A familiar attempt to overcome this problem centers around the use of impossible worlds where the truths of logic can be false. As we shall see, if we admit impossible worlds where “anything goes” in modal space, it is easy to model extremely non-ideal agents that (...) are incapable of performing even the most elementary logical deductions. A much harder, and considerably less investigated challenge is to ensure that the resulting modal space can also be used to model moderately ideal agents that are not logically omniscient but nevertheless logically competent. Intuitively, while such agents may fail to rule out subtly impossible worlds that verify complex logical falsehoods, they are nevertheless able to rule out blatantly impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. To model moderately ideal agents, I argue, the job is to construct a modal space that contains only possible and non-trivially impossible worlds where it is not the case that “anything goes”. But I prove that it is impossible to develop an impossible-world framework that can do this job and that satisfies certain standard conditions. Effectively, I show that attempts to model moderately ideal agents in a world-involving framework collapse to modeling either logical omniscient agents, or extremely non-ideal agents. (shrink)

We offer a new argument for the claim that there can be non-degenerate objective chance (“true randomness”) in a deterministic world. Using a formal model of the relationship between different levels of description of a system, we show how objective chance at a higher level can coexist with its absence at a lower level. Unlike previous arguments for the level-specificity of chance, our argument shows, in a precise sense, that higher-level chance does not collapse into epistemic probability, despite higher-level properties (...) supervening on lower-level ones. We show that the distinction between objective chance and epistemic probability can be drawn, and operationalized, at every level of description. There is, therefore, not a single distinction between objective and epistemic probability, but a family of such distinctions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a seemingly straightforward argument against physicalism which, despite being implicit in much of the philosophical debate about consciousness, has not received the attention it deserves (compared to other, better-known “epistemic”, “modal”, and “conceivability” arguments). This is the argument from the non-supervenience of the first-personal (and indexical) facts on the third-personal (and non-indexical) ones. This non-supervenience, together with the assumption that the physical facts (as conventionally understood) are third-personal, entails that some facts – (...) namely, first-personal, phenomenal ones – do not supervene on the physical facts. Unlike other arguments against physicalism, the first-personal argument, if successful, refutes not only physicalism but also other third-personal metaphysical pictures, including standard versions of dualism. (shrink)

Much recent philosophical work on social freedom focuses on whether freedom should be understood as non-interference, in the liberal tradition associated with Isaiah Berlin, or as non-domination, in the republican tradition revived by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. We defend a conception of freedom that lies between these two alternatives: freedom as independence. Like republican freedom, it demands the robust absence of relevant constraints on action. Unlike republican, and like liberal freedom, it is not moralized. We show that freedom as (...) independence retains the virtues of its liberal and republican counterparts while shedding their vices. Our aim is to put this conception of freedom more firmly on the map and to offer a novel perspective on the logical space in which different conceptions of freedom are located. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on (...) a classical debate between Dharmakirti and the Indian materialists. The main argument of the paper is that expanding our conception of causality to accommodate phenomenal content can cast new light on the problem of mental causation. A satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation must reject the completeness of the physical principle in favor of conceptions of causality that allow for phenomenal properties to play a causal-explanatory function. (shrink)

The ``doctrinal paradox'' or ``discursive dilemma'' shows that propositionwise majority voting over the judgments held by multiple individuals on some interconnected propositions can lead to inconsistent collective judgments on these propositions. List and Pettit (2002) have proved that this paradox illustrates a more general impossibility theorem showing that there exists no aggregation procedure that generally produces consistent collective judgments and satisfies certain minimal conditions. Although the paradox and the theorem concern the aggregation of judgments rather than preferences, they invite comparison (...) with two established results on the aggregation of preferences: the Condorcet paradox and Arrow's impossibility theorem. We may ask whether the new impossibility theorem is a special case of Arrow's theorem, or whether there are interesting disanalogies between the two results. In this paper, we compare the two theorems, and show that they are not straightforward corollaries of each other. We further suggest that, while the framework of preference aggregation can be mapped into the framework of judgment aggregation, there exists no obvious reverse mapping. Finally, we address one particular minimal condition that is used in both theorems – an independence condition – and suggest that this condition points towards a unifying property underlying both impossibility results. (shrink)

Political theorists have offered many accounts of collective decision-making under pluralism. I discuss a key dimension on which such accounts differ: the importance assigned not only to the choices made but also to the reasons underlying those choices. On that dimension, different accounts lie in between two extremes. The ‘minimal liberal account’ holds that collective decisions should be made only on practical actions or policies and that underlying reasons should be kept private. The ‘comprehensive deliberative account’ stresses the importance of (...) giving reasons for collective decisions, where such reasons should also be collectively decided. I compare these two accounts on the basis of a formal model developed in the growing literature on the ‘discursive dilemma’ and ‘judgment aggregation’ and address several questions: What is the trade-off between the (minimal liberal) demand for reaching agreement on outcomes and the (comprehensive deliberative) demand for reason-giving? How large should the ‘sphere of public reason’ be? When do the decision procedures suggested by the two accounts agree and when not? How good are these procedures at truthtracking on factual matters? What strategic incentives do they generate for decision-makers? My discussion identifies what is at stake in the choice between minimal liberal and comprehensive deliberative accounts of collective decisionmaking, and sheds light not only on these two ideal-typical accounts themselves, but also on many characteristics that intermediate accounts share with them. (shrink)

Im Zentrum dieses Bandes stehen die Beiträge einer Tagung, die im Oktober 2017 an der Universität Konstanz stattgefunden hat. Thema der Tagung war ein den historischen Kontext einbeziehender Blick auf den frühen Rudolf Carnap, vom Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Emigration Ende 1935. Der 1891 in Ronsdorf bei Wuppertal geborene Rudolf Carnap entschloss sich erst relativ spät zu einer Karriere als akademischer Philosoph, nämlich 1920, nachdem er sein durch den Krieg unterbrochenes Studium der Physik und Philosophie in Jena und (...) Freiburg abgeschlossen und kurze Zeit überlegt hatte, als Lehrer in der Schulreform-Bewegung zu arbeiten. Es folgte die philosophische Promotion im Jahr 1921, bei Bruno Bauch in Jena, mit einer Doktorarbeit zum Raumproblem. 1923 organisierte Carnap, gemeinsam mit Hans Reichenbach und anderen, eine für die Entstehung des Logischen Empirismus bedeutsame kleine Tagung in Erlangen. Auf Einladung von Moritz Schlick habilitierte er sich 1926 an der Universität Wien und verbrachte die Zeit bis 1931 zumindest teilweise in Wien, als eines der Kernmitglieder des Wiener Kreises um Moritz Schlick. Seine Habilitationsschrift erschien 1928 unter dem Titel Der logische Aufbau der Welt (hier immer Aufbau). 1931 folgte Carnap einem Ruf an die Deutsche Universität Prag. In den darauffolgenden Jahren blieb aber der enge Kontakt mit Wien und dem Wiener Kreis erhalten. Carnaps hauptsächliche Arbeit in dieser Zeit war seinem zweiten großen Buchprojekt gewidmet, der 1934 publizierten Logischen Syntax der Sprache. Daneben verfasste Carnap in seiner Zeit in Wien und Prag auch zahlreiche Aufsätze, zu unterschiedlichen Aspekten der Logik, der Metaphysikkritik und der Wissenschaftstheorie. Er war Mitautor des Manifests Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis und nahm regen Anteil an den zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Aktivitäten des Logischen Empirismus, von der Gründung der Zeitschrift Erkenntnis bis hin zum Projekt einer Enzyklopädie der Einheitswissenschaft. Spätestens ab 1933 musste Carnap jedoch feststellen, dass an eine weitere wissenschaftliche Karriere in dem von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus geprägten politischen Klima in Kontinentaleuropa nicht zu denken war. Er strebte deshalb die Emigration ins englischsprachige Ausland an, die schließlich Ende 1935 gelang, als Carnap ein Angebot von der Universität Chicago erhielt. Obwohl Carnap nur den kleineren Teil der in diesem Band abgedeckten eineinhalb Jahrzehnte in Wien verbracht hat, widmet sich der Großteil der hier versammelten Beiträge schwerpunktmäßig der für Carnaps philosophische Karriere zentralen Wiener Zeit. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...) end, I develop two simple models for comparing ‘longtermist’ and ‘neartermist’ interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don’t mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these ‘Pascalian’ probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)