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The author or concept searched is found in the following 42 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analogies | Lévi-Strauss | I 49 Analogy/Bricolage/Lévi-Strauss: there is undoubtedly something paradoxical in the notion of logic, whose terms stand in waste and fragments, traces of psychological and historical processes that as such lack every necessity. >Bricolage/Lévi-Strauss, >Order/Lévi-Strauss. As far as form is concerned, there is an analogy in them. This consists in the fact that their form itself is permeated by a certain quantity of content, which is approximately the same for all. The significant images of the myth are, like the materials of the hobbyist, elements that can be defined according to two criteria: they have served as words of a formed speech that is "dismantled" by the mythical reflection; and they can still serve, for the same use or another use, provided that they are stripped of their first function. >Myth/Lévi-Strauss. I 138 Order/Nature/Culture/Lévi-Strauss: if nature and culture are perceived as two systems of differences between which there is a formal analogy, then the systematic character of each area is brought to the fore. The social groups are different from each other, but as part of the same whole, they remain solidary and the law of exogamy offers the means to reconcile this balanced contrast of diversity and unity. |
LevSt I Claude Lévi-Strauss La pensée sauvage, Paris 1962 German Edition: Das Wilde Denken Frankfurt/M. 1973 LevSt II C. Levi-Strauss The Savage Mind (The Nature of Human Society Series) Chicago 1966 |
| Antiphon the Sophist | Taureck | I 19 Antiphon/Sophist/Taureck: (~ 480-441). Thesis: Antiphon questioned the laws made by human beings. In contrast to these (Nomoi), which limit the humans, the laws of nature (physique) are necessary. Whether the sophist Antiphon is identical with the speaker and politician of the same name is still controversial. >Justice/Antiphon, >Laws/Antiphon, >Physis/Antiphon, >Sophists. Additional literature on Antiphon: Gerard Pendrick, Antiphon the Sophist: The Fragments, Cambridge University Press 2002 Additional literature on the Sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Callicles | Taureck | I 20 Callicles/Sophist/Taureck: figure from Plato's Gorgias. You do not know if he is a real person. Thesis: Justice is the right of individuals to assert themselves at the expense of others. >Nomos/Callicles, >Sophists. Additional literature on Callicles: George B. Kerferd, Hellmut Flashar: Kallikles aus Acharnai, in: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Die Philosophie der Antike, Band 2/1, Schwabe, Basel 1998. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Collective Intelligence | Lanier | I 79 Collective Intelligence/Swarm Intelligence/Lanier: James Surowiecki(1): For example, when it comes to estimating the weight of an ox, the average of many people's estimates is more reliable than the estimate of any one individual. According to popular belief, this works, a) because the errors of the individual estimators cancel each other out b) because many estimates are based on at least a certain degree of correct logic and assumptions as to content, so that they converge to the right answer. According to the latter formulation, individual intelligence remains the core of the collective phenomenon. >J. Surowiecki. I 80 The reason why the collective can be valuable is that the peaks of intelligence and stupidity in the collective are not the same as those of the individual. Collective: can be useful in determining a price. This corresponds to the market. On the other hand, the collective is inferior when it comes to designing a product. I 81 Swarm Intelligence/LanierVsSurowiecki: Swarm Intelligence can compensate for different incompetencies when signal processing is built into the loop. I 82 In this way, a slowdown in a feedback process can prevent chaos. Such a slowdown can be compared to filters in music editing. Frequent corrections to individual Wikipedia entries have been reduced by a setting that corresponds to a low-pass filter. In the meantime, the frequency with which a single person can remove text fragments from another contributor has been limited. >Social networks, >Social media, >Internet, >Wikipedia. I 83 Swarm intelligence/Lanier: we should understand the "wisdom of the many" as a tool, i.e. we should relate it to a specific purpose. I 84 Surowiecki: proposes four principles, one of which is to limit the ability of its members to obtain knowledge of the other members' decisions in order to ensure the independence of decisions. Lanier: in addition, such collectives should be prevented from formulating the questions themselves. The answers should always be a simple yes or no or a multiple choice list. Nassim Nicholas Taleb: has recently suggested that applications based on the wisdom of many be divided into four quadrants. The dangerous "Fourth Quadrant" contains questions with complex answers according to his classification, in which the distribution of the answers is still unknown. In his opinion, this quadrant should be taboo for swarm intelligence. Cf. >Intelligence, >Decisions, >Decision Theory. 1. J. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, NY 2005. |
Lanier I Jaron Lanier You are not a Gadget. A Manifesto, New York 2010 German Edition: Gadget: Warum die Zukunft uns noch braucht Frankfurt/M. 2012 |
| Computer Programming | Lanier | I 71 Programming/computer programming/Lanier: in the early days of computer science there was a saying: "Whoever enters garbage gets garbage". It is not to be expected that a greater wisdom would have to result from a multiplicity of fragments. (> Swarm intelligence, LanierVsShirky, Clay.) I 100 The binary character at the core of software production returns at higher levels. It is much easier to tell a program to run or not to run than to tell it to run reasonably well. It is also easier to install a rigid representation of human relationships in digital networks. A reduced version of life then circulates continually between friends. >Software, >Computers, >Computer languages, >Computer science, >Human machine communication, >Formalization, cf. >Artificial intelligence. |
Lanier I Jaron Lanier You are not a Gadget. A Manifesto, New York 2010 German Edition: Gadget: Warum die Zukunft uns noch braucht Frankfurt/M. 2012 |
| Critias | Taureck | I 19 Critias/Sophist/Taureck: (~ 455 - 403). Critias was an uncle of Plato and student of Socrates and Gorgias. Thesis: The fear of the gods has been invented by the humans themselves, to prevent others from doing something evil in secret. He departed from the other Sophists. >Religious belief/Ancient Philosophy. I 20 Biography: Critias was leader of the "30 tyrants" (8 months of reign of terror). He was the son of an aristocratic family, he was responsible for condemning some 1500 democratically-minded citizens of Athens to be killed by poison. Critias occurs in different dialogues by Plato. Cf. >Plato, >Socrates, >Gorgias, >Sophists. Additional literture on Critias: Kathleen Freeman (1948). Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (1949). "The Family of Critias". In: American Journal of Philology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 70 (4): 404–410. doi:10.2307/291107. JSTOR 291107. Additional literture on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Darwinism | Nietzsche | Pfotenhauer I 5 Darwinism/Evolution/Nietzsche/NietzscheVsDarwinism/Pfotenhauer: Darwin's theory of evolution, which makes selection into a principle according to the measure (...) of selection performances to external conditions, is not liked by Nietzsche; he even hates it: "[...]this is the moral.... the middle ones are worth more than the exceptions"..."I am appalled by the formulation [of this] moral." Added Fragments, Spring 1888, KGW VIII, p. 95ff). --- Danto III 197 Darwinism/NietzscheVsDarwinism/Nietzsche/DantoVsNietzsche/Danto: Nietzsche falls too often into the stupidest misconceptions of Darwinism by equating survival with excellence. He overlooks what Th. H. Huxley has already noticed: Evolution/Darwinism/Huxley, T. H.: the slightest change in the chemical composition of our atmosphere is enough to ensure that perhaps only a few lichens survive and thus become the masters of the world. Danto III 268 Darwinism/NietzscheVsDarwinism/Nietzsche/Danto: Nietzsche was convinced VsDarwin that the disabled survive and the abled ones perish. Danto: apart from this tenacious belief, which is as easily attacked by Huxley's famous refutation as its flip side (See Darwinism/Huxley, Th. H.), it is difficult to see why Nietzsche wanted people to see him as an anti-Darwinist. Danto III 269 Survival/Nietzsche: According to Nietzsche, whether you preserve yourself or not has nothing to do with the blind exercise of the will to power, which characterizes every thing at every moment. Something survives, insofar as it emerges victoriously from the struggle of the will; but it does not fight to survive - if so, it would be exactly the other way round: above all, something alive wants to omit its power - life itself is the will to power: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it.(1) >Will/Nietzsche. 1. F. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, KGW VI. 2, S. 21. |
Nie I Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe Berlin 2009 Nie V F. Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil 2014 Pfot I Helmut Pfotenhauer Die Kunst als Physiologie. Nietzsches ästhetische Theorie und literarische Produktion. Stuttgart 1985 Danto I A. C. Danto Connections to the World - The Basic Concepts of Philosophy, New York 1989 German Edition: Wege zur Welt München 1999 Danto III Arthur C. Danto Nietzsche as Philosopher: An Original Study, New York 1965 German Edition: Nietzsche als Philosoph München 1998 Danto VII A. C. Danto The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (Columbia Classics in Philosophy) New York 2005 |
| Decidability | Cresswell | I HC 120 Decidability/propositional calculus/Hughes/Cresswell: although it is possible to give a clear view of the validity of the propositional calculus, the propositional calculus is still not a decidable system. - But there are a number of decidable fragments of the propositional calculus. The same goes for the modal expansion of the propositional calculus. >Predicate calculus, >Expansion, >Validity, >Systems. |
Cr I M. J. Cresswell Semantical Essays (Possible worlds and their rivals) Dordrecht Boston 1988 Cr II M. J. Cresswell Structured Meanings Cambridge Mass. 1984 |
| Definitions | Minsky | I 131 Definitions/bridge-definitions/Minsky: Problem: Purposeful definitions are usually too loose. They include many things we do not intend. Structural definitions are usually too tight. They reject many things we want to include. Our best ideas are often those that bridge between two different worlds! Learning definitions: To learn to use a new or unfamiliar word, you start by taking it to be a sign that there exists, inside some other person's mind, a structure you could use. But no matter how carefully it is explained, you must still rebuild that thought yourself, from materials already in your own mind. Meaning: What people call meanings do not usually correspond to particular and definite structures, but to connections among and across fragments of the great interlocking networks of connections and constraints among our agencies. >Rules/Minsky, >Learning/Minsky, >Meaning/Philosophical theories, >Description/Minsky. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |
| Enlightenment | MacIntyre | Brocker I 659 Enlightenment/Moral/Ethics/MacIntyre: For MacIntyre, Enlightenment represents a failed attempt to overcome post-medieval pluralism and eclecticism with the help of universal moral based on reason.(1) >Pluralism, >Universalism, >Morality. The Enlightenment had wanted to take "incoherent fragments of a once coherent system of thought and action"(2) as a basis. Problem: there are breaks between a de-teleologization of the moral system and a simultaneous dependence on a teleological framework. >Teleology. MacIntyreVsEnlightenment: the search for a moral standpoint that pretends to be independent of social order is an illusion. Obligations, rules and laws have replaced goods, traditions and social conditions. >Duty, >Laws, >Rules. MacIntyreVsKant: in his moral writings the "thought that moral is something other than following rules Brocker I 660 got almost, if not completely out of sight".(3) >I. Kant, >Morals/Kant, >Categorical Imperative, >Principles. 1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, Ind. 1981. Dt: Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend. Zur moralischen Krise der Gegenwart. Erweiterte Neuausgabe, Frankfurt/M. 2006 (zuerst 1987), S. 61. 2. Ibid. p. 80 3. Ibid. p. 313f. Jürgen Goldstein, „Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Existence | Gorgias | Taureck I 85 Existence/Gorgias/Sophist/Taureck: Thesis: "It is nothing". (There are not even fragments of Gorgias handed down). According to Sextus Empiricus, Gorgias wants three things: 1. There is nothing. 2. If there is something, it is not recognizable. 3. But if there is something and if it is also recognizable, it is not to be made clear to others. (GorgiasVsParmenides). > I 85 Existence/Parmenides: Thesis: only beings can exist and be thought. Gorgias: ad 1. ("There is nothing"): "If the non-existence is non-existence, both the non-being is non-existent, and the being exists, so that nothing more is than the things." Taureck: if one says of non-existence, that it is non-existence, then non-existence belongs to the realm of beings! >Nonexistence. "Nothing is" can also mean that neither non-being nor being is. But why is it to be conceded that non-existence is? ("Is" must be understood here as "means".) I 87 Gorgias: ad 2. ("If there is something, it is not recognizable"): "If non-existence is, then existence is nothing but its opposite. I 88 Therefore nothing should be, if it is not the same to be and not to be. Taureck: if there are only two mutually exclusive ways, the affirmation of non-existence would have to include the denial of existence. Gorgias: ad 3. ("If, however, something is and if it is also recognizable, it is not to be made clear to others."): equates being and non-being: both, not the non-being and the being, for it is indeed the same as the non-being. Taureck: here he has changed a premise: previously it applied: the non-existence has the property of existence. Now this is not the opposite. I 89 Existence/Gorgias: from the argumentation of the becoming/un-becoming: Either a singular something has become or has not become. Now it can be shown that it is neither one nor the other, so it does not exist. If something has not become, it is unlimited, but it cannot be anywhere. So it is not. (Here Gorgias refers to Zenon and Melissos). >Change/Gorgias, >Change/Aristotle, >Change/Parmenides, >Change/Eleatics. I 91/92 Gorgias: ad 2. ("If there is something after all, it is not recognizable"): If the merely thought already refers to existent, then only the imagined would rotten on existence. From the point of view of the imagined, however, we know that it is not true. (There are no criteria for the really existent). I 93 Gorgias: ad 3. ("If, however, something is and is also recognizable, it is not to be made clear to others."): How should one utter what has been seen, through speech? How could this be clear to the listener, where he/she does not see it? Just as seeing does not recognize sounds, in the same way the hearing does not hear colors. I 94 Taureck: perceptions cannot represent each other. Logos is here only speech and no longer the described thing itself. Gorgias, however, already knows the concept of the sign (semeio). >Logos. >Logos/>Aristotle >Logos/Ancient Philosophy >Logos/Bubner >Logos/Gorgias >Logos/Heraclitus >Logos/Plato >Logos/Protagoras |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Experiments | Aronson | Haslam I 246 Experiment/stereotypes/Aronson, Joshua/Steele: A. In a first study (Steele and Aronson, 1995(1)) 117 Black and White university students (both male and female) had to complete a verbal test along with three anagram problems. Before they performed this test, participants were randomly assigned to hear one of three frames for the task. >Stereotype threat/Aronson/Steele. 1) In the “diagnostic test” (DT) condition, participants learned that the study concerned ‘various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities’ (p. 799). Feedback would be provided that ‘may be helpful to you by familiarizing you with some of your strengths and weaknesses’ (1995, p. 799) in verbal problem solving. Test difficulty was justified as a means of providing ‘a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations so that we might better understand the factors involved in both’ (p. 799). The assumption underpinning this condition is that any reminder of intellectual testing would trigger reminders of the racial stereotypes about intellectual ability among Black participants that would undermine their performance. 2) Two “Non-diagnostic tests” (ND) were designed to neutralize these processes by Haslam I 247 framing the purpose of the study as a way to better understand the ‘psychological factors involved in solving verbal problems’ (p. 799). a) Feedback would be provided to familiarize participants ‘with the kinds of problems that appear on tests [they] may encounter in the future’ (p. 799). b) The challenging nature of the problems was justified in terms of a research focus on difficult verbal problems in the non-diagnostic only condition and on giving ‘highly verbal people ... a mental challenge’ (p. 799) in the non-diagnostic challenge (NDC) condition. Results: Analyses of the performance revealed only preliminary evidence in support of the theory. Focused analyses just of Black participants’ performance suggested that after controlling for SAT scores, Black students performed significantly worse on the test in the diagnostic condition than in either of the two non-diagnostic conditions. In comparison, performance for White students was relatively unaffected by the way the task was described. However, the critical statistical test of the race by test description interaction was not significant, p < .19. B. A second study sought to replicate the effect and examine the role of anxiety in explaining these performance impairments. Twenty Black and 20 White female participants were assigned to the same non-diagnostic and diagnostic test frame conditions used in Study i and spent 25 minutes solving the same 30-item GRE test used in the prior study. Participants also self-reported their anxiety levels. In this study, the predicted interaction was significant: controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants in the diagnostic test frame condition solved fewer items correctly, were less accurate on the questions they completed, completed fewer problems, and tended to be slower than participants in all other conditions. There were no differences between conditions in anxiety, however. C. Study 3 was designed to test three implications of the theory: that Black students taking a diagnostic (vs. non-diagnostic) test would (a) show increased activation of negative racial stereotypes and self-doubt, (b) distance themselves from Black stereotypes, and (c) show a tendency to self-handicap by making pre-emptive excuses for poor performance. 35 Black and 33 White students were randomly assigned to a diagnostic test frame, a non-diagnostic test frame or a control condition where participants completed he critical dependent measure without expecting to take a test of any sort. Test performance was not assessed. Stereotype avoidances was assessed by having participants rate a series of activities and personality traits, some of which were related to Black stereotypes. Haslam I 248 Results: Results from this study provided evidence that anticipating performance on a diagnostic test had a host of psychological implications for Black but not for White students. Controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants anticipating a diagnostic test were more likely than Blacks in the other conditions (and more likely than Whites in the diagnostic condition) to complete word fragments with race-related (…) and self-doubt-related (…) words. They were also significantly more likely to avoid endorsing stereotypic activities and traits. D. In a fourth study half of the participants were required to indicate their race while the other half were not. Result: Black participants in the race prime condition answered significantly fewer items correctly than those in all other conditions (again controlling for prior SAT score). They also seemed to approach the questions more methodically in the race prime condition — completing fewer items, avoiding guesses, but still performing somewhat less accurately. There were no differences found for reported effort and performance estimates, but a follow-up study reported in the discussion section suggested that priming race might have elevated anxiety for Black compared with White participants. Interpretation/Steele/Aronson: having their abilities tested reminds Black students of negative racial stereotypes and motivates them to distance themselves from them. They might be plagued by greater feelings of self-doubt (and perhaps anxiety) and seek to self-handicap for potentially poor performance. >Performance. 1. Steele, C.M. and Aronson, J. (1995) ‘Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 797—811. Toni Schmader and Chad Forbes, “Stereotypes and Performance. Revisiting Steele and Aronson’s stereotypes threat experiments”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications |
Haslam I S. Alexander Haslam Joanne R. Smith Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017 |
| Experiments | Steele | Haslam I 246 Experiment/stereotypes/Aronson, Joshua/Steele: A. In a first study (Steele and Aronson, 1995(1)) 117 Black and White university students (both male and female) had to complete a verbal test along with three anagram problems. Before they performed this test, participants were randomly assigned to hear one of three frames for the task. >Stereotype threat/Aronson/Steele. 1) In the “diagnostic test” (DT) condition, participants learned that the study concerned ‘various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities’ (p. 799). Feedback would be provided that ‘may be helpful to you by familiarizing you with some of your strengths and weaknesses’ (1995, p. 799) in verbal problem solving. Test difficulty was justified as a means of providing ‘a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations so that we might better understand the factors involved in both’ (p. 799). The assumption underpinning this condition is that any reminder of intellectual testing would trigger reminders of the racial stereotypes about intellectual ability among Black participants that would undermine their performance. 2) Two “Non-diagnostic tests” (ND) were designed to neutralize these processes by Haslam I 247 framing the purpose of the study as a way to better understand the ‘psychological factors involved in solving verbal problems’ (p. 799). a) Feedback would be provided to familiarize participants ‘with the kinds of problems that appear on tests [they] may encounter in the future’ (p. 799). b) The challenging nature of the problems was justified in terms of a research focus on difficult verbal problems in the non-diagnostic only condition and on giving ‘highly verbal people ... a mental challenge’ (p. 799) in the non-diagnostic challenge (NDC) condition. Results: Analyses of the performance revealed only preliminary evidence in support of the theory. Focused analyses just of Black participants’ performance suggested that after controlling for SAT scores, Black students performed significantly worse on the test in the diagnostic condition than in either of the two non-diagnostic conditions. In comparison, performance for White students was relatively unaffected by the way the task was described. However, the critical statistical test of the race by test description interaction was not significant, p < .19. B. A second study sought to replicate the effect and examine the role of anxiety in explaining these performance impairments. Twenty Black and 20 White female participants were assigned to the same non-diagnostic and diagnostic test frame conditions used in Study i and spent 25 minutes solving the same 30-item GRE test used in the prior study. Participants also self-reported their anxiety levels. In this study, the predicted interaction was significant: controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants in the diagnostic test frame condition solved fewer items correctly, were less accurate on the questions they completed, completed fewer problems, and tended to be slower than participants in all other conditions. There were no differences between conditions in anxiety, however. C. Study 3 was designed to test three implications of the theory: that Black students taking a diagnostic (vs. non-diagnostic) test would (a) show increased activation of negative racial stereotypes and self-doubt, (b) distance themselves from Black stereotypes, and (c) show a tendency to self-handicap by making pre-emptive excuses for poor performance. 35 Black and 33 White students were randomly assigned to a diagnostic test frame, a non-diagnostic test frame or a control condition where participants completed he critical dependent measure without expecting to take a test of any sort. Test performance was not assessed. Stereotype avoidances was assessed by having participants rate a series of activities and personality traits, some of which were related to Black stereotypes. Haslam I 248 Results: Results from this study provided evidence that anticipating performance on a diagnostic test had a host of psychological implications for Black but not for White students. Controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants anticipating a diagnostic test were more likely than Blacks in the other conditions (and more likely than Whites in the diagnostic condition) to complete word fragments with race-related (…) and self-doubt-related (…) words. They were also significantly more likely to avoid endorsing stereotypic activities and traits. D. In a fourth study half of the participants were required to indicate their race while the other half were not. Result: Black participants in the race prime condition answered significantly fewer items correctly than those in all other conditions (again controlling for prior SAT score). They also seemed to approach the questions more methodically in the race prime condition — completing fewer items, avoiding guesses, but still performing somewhat less accurately. There were no differences found for reported effort and performance estimates, but a follow-up study reported in the discussion section suggested that priming race might have elevated anxiety for Black compared with White participants. Interpretation/Steele/Aronson: having their abilities tested reminds Black students of negative racial stereotypes and motivates them to distance themselves from them. They might be plagued by greater feelings of self-doubt (and perhaps anxiety) and seek to self-handicap for potentially poor performance. >Performance. 1. Steele, C.M. and Aronson, J. (1995) ‘Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 797—811. Toni Schmader and Chad Forbes, “Stereotypes and Performance. Revisiting Steele and Aronson’s stereotypes threat experiments”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications |
Haslam I S. Alexander Haslam Joanne R. Smith Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017 |
| Gorgias | Taureck | I 15 Gorgias/Sophist/Taureck: (~ 485 Leontinoi, Sicily - 376, Thessaly): he was in no conflict with the state power. He was influenced by the physician and philosopher Empedocles (~ 495 - 435). In 427, Gorgias was entrusted with an embassy to Athens by his hometown. He won the General Assembly for support against Syracuse. He had a great influence on the politicians Pericles, Alcibiades and Critias, but also on Thucydides. Among his pupils was Isocrates, whose attempt at a general consensus-based ethics was temporally better known than Plato's philosophy. >Change/Gorgias, >Existence/Gorgias, >Logos/Gorgias, >Perception/Gorgias, >Understanding/Gorgias. >Isocrates, >Sophists. Additional literature on Gorgias: Scott Consigny (2001). Gorgias, Sophist and Artist. Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Hippias of Elis | Taureck | I 17 Hippias of Elis/Sophist/Taureck: (after 470) he was discovered in the 20th century as a philosopher, until then he was only known as a mathematician. Hippias of Elis belonged to the second generation of the Sophists. He carried out political missions to Athens and Syracuse. Thesis: He supports democracy. Ideal: education in the arts. Cf. >Ancient Philosophy, >Sophists. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Human Rights | Agamben | Brocker I 828 Human Rights/Agamben: Democracy (see Totalitarianism/Agamben) does not abolish sacred life in such a way (as one should assume), but "fragments it, scattering it in every single body to be used in political conflicts". (1) (See also Life/Agamben, Biopolitics/Agamben). Arendt had already investigated and uncovered this logic in her book on totalitarianism about the Déclaration des Droits de l'homme et du citoyen of 1789. (2) Starting from the paradox that the very person - the stateless refugee who "was only human" - who actually had to make use of human rights had no right to these rights, the failure of these rights becomes clear, which apply de facto exclusively as the rights of the citizen. Thus the title of the declaration already takes account of the impossibility of granting rights to humans as such, to the naked life, the "homo sacer", which are not secured by the nation state. >Human rights. 1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Torino 1995. Dt.: Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer – Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben, Frankfurt/M. 2002, p. 132. 2. Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Antisemitismus, Imperialismus, totale Herrschaft, München/Zürich 1998. Maria Muhle, „Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer – Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben“, in: Manfred Brocker (Ed.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
Agamben I Giorgio Agamben Homo sacer – Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben Frankfurt 2002 Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Knowledge | Hayek | Sunstein I 118 Knowledge/Friedrich Hayek/Sunstein: In his essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society" Hayek writes that the great advantage of prices is that they reflect both information and people's tastes, which is much more than planning or planned economy could achieve. According to Hayek, the information is distributed to individuals in the form of incomplete and often contradictory fragments of knowledge.(1) >Price, >Markets, >Information economics, >Economy, >Planning. Sunstein: the knowledge of course includes facts about the product, but also about customer preferences. Sunstein I 119 Knowledge/Hayek: the knowledge contained in the prices exceeds that of the best experts. Prices/Hayek: in this context, Hayek underlines the importance of prices being in motion. Small movements produce the complete economic picture, which is overlooked by many economists according to Hayek. Sunstein I 120 In particular, prices react to new information. >Information/Hayek. 1. Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35 (1945): 519, reprinted in The Essence of Hayek, ed. Chiaki Nishiyama and Kurt Leube (Stanford: Hoover, 1984), 211. A superb treatment of Hayek’s thought is Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Boudreaux II 20 Knowledge/Hayek/Boudreaux: „Most of the advantages of social life, especially in its more advanced forms which we call “civilization,” rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of.“(1) Boudreaux II 21 Goods/specialization/knowledge/Hayek/Boudreaux: […] goods exist not because some great and ingenious human plan called them into being. Instead, they exist because of a social institution that encourages people to specialize in learning different skills, as well as to learn different slices of knowledge and gather different bits of information about the real world. This social institution also sends out signals to these hundreds of millions of specialist producers, informing each of them how best to use his or her special skills and knowledge so that the resulting outputs of the economy will satisfy genuine consumer demands - and do so at costs that are as low as possible. Production: [e.g., ink and paper] if these signals are reasonably accurate, the loggers’ activities are coordinated well with those of the paper mill: neither too few nor too many trees are cut down. And the paper-mill’s activities are coordinated well with those of the printer: neither too little nor too much paper (…) is produced. Boudreaux II 24 One of the most notable facts of life in modern market economies is that each and every one of the things that we enjoy as consumers is something that no person knows in full how to produce. There is conscious planning and adjustment going on at the level of each individual and each firm and each distinct organization. But there is no overarching - no “central” - plan for the whole. >Spontaneous order. 1. Friedrich Hayek (1960). The Constitution of Liberty. In Ronald Hamowy (ed.), The Constitution of Liberty, XVII (Liberty Fund Library, 2011): 73. |
Hayek I Friedrich A. Hayek The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) Chicago 2007 Sunstein I Cass R. Sunstein Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge Oxford 2008 Sunstein II Cass R. Sunstein #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Princeton 2017 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 Boudreaux II Donald J. Boudreaux The Essential Hayek Vancouver: Fraser Institute 2014 |
| Knowledge | Sunstein | Sunstein I 118 Knowledge/Friedrich Hayek/Sunstein: In his essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society" Hayek writes that the great advantage of prices is that they reflect both information and people's tastes, which is much more than planning or planned economy could achieve. According to Hayek, the information is distributed to individuals in the form of incomplete and often contradictory fragments of knowledge.(1) >Information/Hayek, >Information Markets. Sunstein: the knowledge of course includes facts about the product, but also about customer preferences. Sunstein I 119 Knowledge/Hayek: the knowledge contained in the prices exceeds that of the best experts. Prices/Hayek: in this context, Hayek underlines the importance of moving prices. Small movements produce the complete economic picture, which is overlooked by many economists according to Hayek. --- Sunstein I 120 In particular, prices react to new information. 1. Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35 (1945): 519, reprinted in The Essence of Hayek, ed. Chiaki Nishiyama and Kurt Leube (Stanford: Hoover, 1984), 211. A superb treatment of Hayek’s thought is Bruce Caldwell, Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). |
Sunstein I Cass R. Sunstein Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge Oxford 2008 Sunstein II Cass R. Sunstein #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Princeton 2017 |
| Language | Minsky | I 196 Language/thinking/Artificial Intelligence//Minsky: Language builds things in our minds. Yet words themselves can't be the substance of our thoughts. They have no meanings by themselves; they're only special sorts of marks or sounds. If we're to understand how language works, we must discard the usual view that words denote or represent, or designate; instead, their function is control: each word makes various agents change what various other agents do. If we want to understand how language works, we must never forget that our thinking-in-words reveals only a fragment of the mind's activity. >Intentions/Minsky. I 197 For example, all English speakers learn that saying big brown dog is right, while brown big dog is somehow wrong. How do we learn which phrases are admissible? No language scientist even knows whether brains must learn this once or twice — first, for knowing what to say, and second, for knowing what to hear. Do we reuse the same machinery for both? Our conscious minds just cannot tell, since consciousness does not reveal how language works. Thinking: We sometimes seem to think in words — and sometimes not. What do we think in when we aren't using words? And how do the agents that work with words communicate with those that don't? [We make a theory with three levels]: The upper region contains agents that are concerned specifically with words. The lower region includes all the agencies that are affected by words. And in the center lie the agencies involved with how words engage our recollections, expectations, and other kinds of mental processes. There is also one peculiarity: the language-agency seems to have an unusual capacity to control its own memories. I 198 Tradition: Many people have tried to explain language as though it were separate from the rest of psychology. Indeed, the study of language itself was often divided into smaller subjects, called by traditional names like >syntax, >grammar, and >semantics. But because there was no larger, coherent theory of thinking to which to attach those fragments, they tended to lose contact with one another and with reality. Once we assume that language and thought are different things, we're lost in trying to piece together what was never separate in the first place. Artificial Intelligence/language: we'll introduce two kinds of agents that contribute to the power of words. The first kind, called polynemes, are involved with our long-term memories. A polyneme is a type of K-line; it sends the same, simple signal to many different agencies: each of those agencies must learn, for itself, what to do when it receives that signal. When you hear the word apple, a certain polyneme is aroused, and the signal from this polyneme will put your Color agency into a state that represents redness. The same signal will set your Shape agency into a state that represents roundness, and so forth. K-line: see >Terminology/Minsky. Isonome: Each isonome controls a short-term memory in each of many agencies. For example, suppose we had just been talking about a certain apple, and then I said, Please put it in this pail. In this case, you would assume that the word it refers to the apple. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |
| Language Games | Wittgenstein | Hintikka I 29 Language game/use/explanation/analysis/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: not the usual language use is unanalysable and inexplicable according to Wittgenstein - but the language games are. I 247 Language game/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: the only thing that distinguishes Wittgenstein's late period from the middle. - Solution to the problem: random acting in accordance with the rule to differentiate from real rule following. >Rules, >Rule following. I 250 Language game/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: Brown book: not fragments of language - but in itself closed system of understanding. - Simple primitive languages. - Solution to the problem of naming: role in our language. - There are so many relationships between names and object, as there are names and objects. >Names, >Words. I 273 Language/world/language game/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: StegmüllerVsWittgenstein: supposedly does not show how the language is directly linked to the reality. - Stegmüller: thesis: it would not be about the "vertical" connections, but only about the horizontal between steps in the language game. - Hintikka: quasi mere role without facts. - HintikkaVs: that would mean that not even descriptive meaning is based on truth conditions. - justification solely by the role of words in our lives. - Hintikka: Wittgenstein emphasizes the vertical relationship on the contrary - whereby the logic before each match lies with facts - such as the method of measurement before measuring. - Measurement is very probably a comparison with facts. I 281 HintikkaVsStegmüller: otherwise speaking would be already the whole language game. I 282 Language game/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: distinction between language games - a) that gives a word a meaning - b) the game in which we express the word. - E.g. we learn what a lie is, not like other words. I 329 Definition physiognomic language game/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: E.g. pain behavior: is conceptual - not bound to facts. >Pain, >Facts. I 331 Also involves the reaction of others. - This is a logical connection, which is constitutive for the language game. I 335 Primary language games/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: E.g. physiognomic language games. - Here doubts about the certainty are meaningless. - In primary language games epistemological concepts like knowledge/belief/truth/error and so on do not occur. I 348 Primary language games/Wittgenstein/Hintikka: Steps in them cannot be corrected - otherwise they could not serve as the basis of the relation language/world. - In primary language games there are no criteria. - But they can provide as a whole criteria for mental processes. - Terminology: "primary language games": in Wittgenstein "beginning of the language game". --- II 237 Explore/Law/Natural Law/Wittgenstein: Supposing someone has discovered the law of energy conversion - it could be a new math - he has developed a new game. - Not new mechanics. >Discoveries. II 283f In accordance/Wittgenstein: dependent on language games. - tertium comparationis. - An imagination in the context of truth does not relate to us. - Wrong: to think that things would be an extension of something else. - As if a sentence would be more true if it coincides with reality - that is not an extension. - ((s) > "Make true"/Wittgenstein, >More authors on Truthmakers). --- VI 138 Language game instead of calculus: - the rules are not strict - undefined terms - is not a theory of the language game - VsTheories: better: to search for a way. >Calculus. --- Metzinger II 721 Language Game/rules/Wittgenstein/Birnbacher: Problem: Stability/flexibility or changeability and historicality of the language game rules. Criteria can become symptoms and symptoms can become criteria. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 354). Wittgenstein himself tends to assume that criteria are undisputed that excldudes an appliance to exotic possibilities. (Residual Verificationism). Birnbacher: Pretty conservative fixation: not every new application is a shift in meaning. |
W II L. Wittgenstein Wittgenstein’s Lectures 1930-32, from the notes of John King and Desmond Lee, Oxford 1980 German Edition: Vorlesungen 1930-35 Frankfurt 1989 W III L. Wittgenstein The Blue and Brown Books (BB), Oxford 1958 German Edition: Das Blaue Buch - Eine Philosophische Betrachtung Frankfurt 1984 W IV L. Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), 1922, C.K. Ogden (trans.), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Originally published as “Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung”, in Annalen der Naturphilosophische, XIV (3/4), 1921. German Edition: Tractatus logico-philosophicus Frankfurt/M 1960 Hintikka I Jaakko Hintikka Merrill B. Hintikka Investigating Wittgenstein German Edition: Untersuchungen zu Wittgenstein Frankfurt 1996 Hintikka II Jaakko Hintikka Merrill B. Hintikka The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic Dordrecht 1989 Metz I Th. Metzinger (Hrsg.) Bewusstsein Paderborn 1996 |
| Logic | Lévi-Strauss | I 49 Logic/Bricolage/Lévi-Strauss: there is undoubtedly something paradoxical in the notion of logic, whose terms stand in waste and fragments, traces of psychological and historical processes that as such lack every necessity. >Bricolage/Lévi-Strauss. As far as form is concerned, there is an analogy in them. See Analogy/Lévi-Strauss. I 50 The necessity of this logic exists as the invariance of a semantic or aesthetic nature that characterizes the group of transformations to which these relationships are suitable. ((s)VsLévi-Strauss: "Group of transformations" unclear.) (See Alan Sokal, and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science, New York, 1998.) Logic/Lévi-Strauss: this logic works a little like the kaleidoscope... but the products of breakage... must show some similarities. ((s)VsLévi-Strauss: the comparison with a kaleidoscope removes the argumentation from what actually constitutes logic. I 51 Solution/Lèvi-Strauss: he speaks of a "concrete logic". By this he means that the natives, about which his investigations are, are subject to certain constraints in their own perception with regard to the handling of signs and objects. Cf. >Sign/Lévi-Strauss, >Magical thinking/Lévi-Strauss, >Religious belief/Lévi-Strauss. |
LevSt I Claude Lévi-Strauss La pensée sauvage, Paris 1962 German Edition: Das Wilde Denken Frankfurt/M. 1973 LevSt II C. Levi-Strauss The Savage Mind (The Nature of Human Society Series) Chicago 1966 |
| Meaning Change | Kanitscheider | I 145 Change of meaning/conceptual change/Newton/Einstein/Kanitscheider: the semantic differences are serious: with Newton gravity is active force in passive space with Einstein gravity is the activity of space-time. With Newton the cosmic forces of distant matter are indeterminate or extinguish each other or are in equilibrium, in relativity each point is specific and has specific dynamic properties. Now a subrange can be distinguished where the velocities are small and the gravitational fields are weak, where the two theories give comparable statements. Thus the theories are not separated by an insurmountable semantic gap. >Theory change, >Fragments. |
Kanitsch I B. Kanitscheider Kosmologie Stuttgart 1991 Kanitsch II B. Kanitscheider Im Innern der Natur Darmstadt 1996 |
| Memory | Minsky | Münch III 113 Memory/Minsky: memory is not separated from thinking; it uses the same strategies. Effective searching (and finding) can therefore not be innate! It must depend on one's own knowledge. Problem: Only a little can be retrieved, which is not already embedded in a framework. Marvin Minsky, “A framework for representing knowledge” in: John Haugeland (Ed) Mind, design, Montgomery 1981, pp. 95-128 Minsky I 35 Memory/software agents/Minsky: People often think of memory in terms of keeping records of the past, for recollecting things that happened in earlier times. But agencies also need other kinds of memory as well. See, for example, requires some sort of temporary memory in order to keep track of what next to do, when it starts one job before its previous job is done. If each of “See's” [a software agent for vision tasks] agents could do only one thing at a time, it would soon run out of resources and be unable to solve complicated problems. But if we have enough memory, we can arrange our agents into circular loops and thus use the same agents over and over again to do parts of several different jobs at the same time. >Hierarchies/Minsky, >Conflicts/Minsky, >Learning/Minsky. Minsky I 62 Memory/Minsky: Our memories are only indirectly linked to physical time. We have no absolute sense of when a memorable event actually happened. At best, we can only know some temporal relations between it and certain other events. You might be able to recall that X and Y occurred on different days but be unable to determine which of those days came earlier. And many memories seem not to be linked to intervals of time at all — like knowing that four comes after three, or that I am myself. >Now/Minsky, >Experience/Minsky. I 82 Memory/Terminology/Minsky: Whenever you get a good idea, solve a problem, or have a memorable experience, you activate a K-line to represent it. Def K-Line/Minsky: A K-line is a wirelike structure that attaches itself to whichever mental agents are active when you solve a problem or have a good idea. When you activate that K-line later, the agents attached to it are aroused, putting you into a mental state much like the one you were in when you solved that problem or got that idea. (…) we memorize what we're thinking about by making a list of the agents involved in that activity. Example/Kenneth Haase: You want to repair a bicycle. Before you start, smear your hands with red paint. Then every tool you need to use will end up with red marks on it. When you're done, just remember that red means ‘good for fixing bicycles.’ Next time you fix a bicycle, you can save time by taking out all the red-marked tools in advance. If you use different colors for different jobs, some tools will end up marked with several colors. Problem: suppose you had tried to use a certain wrench, and it didn't fit. It wouldn't be so good to paint that tool red. To make our K-lines work efficiently, we'd need more clever policies. I 83 P-agents: were used before in solving a problem. Q-agents: are agents of your recent thoughts. Problem: (…) we wouldn't want our memories to re-arouse old states of mind so strongly that they overwhelm our present thoughts — for then we might lose track of what we're thinking now and wipe out all the work we've done. We only want some hints, suggestions, and ideas. >Levels/Minsky. I 154 Memory/Minsky: It's hard to distinguish memories from memories of memories. Indeed, there's little evidence that any of our adult memories really go way back to infancy; what seem like early memories may be nothing more than reconstructions of our older thoughts. Then what do we mean by memory? Our brains use many different ways to store the traces of our pasts. No single word can describe so much, unless it is used only in a general, informal sense. Artificial intelligence/memory/Minsky: Memories are processes that make some of our agents act in much the same ways they did at various times in the past. I 155 We like to think of memories as though they could restore to us things we've known in the past. But memories can't really bring things back; they only reproduce some fragments of our former states of mind, when various sights, sounds, touches, smells, and tastes affected us. The Immanence Illusion: Whenever you can answer a question without a noticeable delay, it seems as though that answer were already active in your mind. >Present/Minsky. I 156 Kinds of Memory: A brain has no single, common memory system. Instead, each part of the brain has several types of memory-agencies that work in somewhat different ways, to suit particular purposes. I 157 Representation/Minsky: rearrangements of memory: E.g. what would we need to imagine moving things around a room? First we'd need some way to represent how objects are arranged in space. (…) we could use the following simple four-step script: 1. Store the state of A in M-1. 2. Store the state of B in M-2. 3. Use M-2 to determine the state of A. 4. Use M-1 to determine the state of B. A memory-control script like this can work only if we have memory-units that are small enough to pick out couch-sized portions of the larger scene. M-1 and M-2 would not do the job if they could store only descriptions of entire rooms. In other words, we have to be able to connect our short-term memories only to appropriate aspects of our current problems. Learning such abilities is not simple, and perhaps it is a skill some people never really master. Our pair-exchanging script needs more machinery. Because each memory-unit must wait until the previous step is finished, the timing of each script step may have to depend on various condition sensors. >Representation/Minsky. I 158 Organization of memory/Minsky: We'll assume that every substantial agency has several micromemory-units, each of which is a sort of temporary K-line (>Terminology/Minsky) that can quickly store or restore the state of many of the agents in that agency. There is good evidence that, in human brains, the processes that transfer information into long-term memory are very slow, requiring time intervals that range from minutes to hours. Accordingly, most temporary memories are permanently lost. >Artificial Consciousness/Minsky. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 Mü III D. Münch (Hrsg.) Kognitionswissenschaft Frankfurt 1992 |
| Morals | MacIntyre | Brocker I 654 Morals/Knwoledge/Modernism/MacIntyre: Thesis: the language of moral is as neglected in today's world as scientific knowledge would be if it had to be reconstructed from fragments without connection after a revolution. (1) Vocabulary/MacIntyre: the "impoverished moral vocabulary"(2) has caused a "state of serious disorder"(3) in our culture, since it allows only "false images of moral"(4). Brocker I 655 The original moral has disappeared. Modernism/MacIntyre: the crisis of modernism is one of its moral foundations. Politics/MacIntyre: Moral cannot be separated from politics; if moral practice fails, the political structures of society also lose their binding character. >Society, >Politics. Individuals/Moral/MacIntyre: in modernism, moral orientations are no longer based on a consistent understanding of good, but follow the eclectic taste preferences of exaggerated individualism. >Emotivism/MacIntyre, >Modernism. 1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, Ind. 1981. Dt: Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend. Zur moralischen Krise der Gegenwart. Erweiterte Neuausgabe, Frankfurt/M. 2006 (zuerst 1987). p. 15 2. Ibid. p. 85 3. Ibid. p. 341 4. Ibid. p. 15 Jürgen Goldstein, „Alasdair MacIntyre, Der Verlust der Tugend“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Observation Language | Fraassen | I 56 Phenomenon/Fraassen: phenomena are preserved by being shown to be fragments of a larger unit. VsObservation language: you cannot describe phenomena apart from the rest of the world. >Language, >Method, >Experiments, >Obervation. |
Fr I B. van Fraassen The Scientific Image Oxford 1980 |
| Ontology | Dennett | I 695 Physics/Dennett: physics is true throughout the universe, such as mathematics. BarrowVs. I 177 System/Mathematics/Minsky/Dennett: Question: could there be another arithmetic that would be equally good? (> alien intelligence). Minsky: No, there could not. The reason for this is the "scantiness principle"! If two relatively simple processes have produced similar products, these products are usually completely identical! For example: Dennett: let us look at the "quantity of all possible processes" e.g. Turing machines, computer programs. Apart from vanishing exceptions, the vast majority of these processes do nothing at all! If you only find two that do something similar, then they are almost always connected at some level of analysis through a single process. >Analysis. I 178 Minsky: a structure that searches through the simplest processes will soon find fragments that do not necessarily look arithmetic, but are arithmetic! Fact of the geometry of the computing universe (library). A world much more limited than the world of real things. Dennett: this applies not only to arithmetic, but to all necessary truths! II 77 Reason/Existence/Ontology/Dennett: for millions of years there were reasons, but nobody existed who formulated reasons, represented reasons, or even appreciated them in the strict sense. Cf. >Realism, >Platonism. |
Dennett I D. Dennett Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York 1995 German Edition: Darwins gefährliches Erbe Hamburg 1997 Dennett II D. Dennett Kinds of Minds, New York 1996 German Edition: Spielarten des Geistes Gütersloh 1999 Dennett III Daniel Dennett "COG: Steps towards consciousness in robots" In Bewusstein, Thomas Metzinger Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 1996 Dennett IV Daniel Dennett "Animal Consciousness. What Matters and Why?", in: D. C. Dennett, Brainchildren. Essays on Designing Minds, Cambridge/MA 1998, pp. 337-350 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Overproduction | Rothbard | Rothbard III III 725 Overproduction/VsOverproduction/Rothbard: Perhaps the most important conclusion of the theory of monopolistic or imperfect competition is that the real world of monopolistic competition (where the demand curve to each firm is necessarily falling) is inferior to the ideal world of pure competition (where no firm can affect its price). This conclusion was expressed simply and effectively by comparing two final equilibrium states: under conditions of pure and monopolistic competition. >Monopolistic competition/Rothbard, >Pure competition/Rothbard, >Competition/Rothbard, >Equilibrium. Rothbard III 727 The only assumption we need in drawing the average-cost curve is that, for any plant in any branch of production, there will be some optimum point of production, i.e., some level of output at which average unit cost is at a minimum. All levels of production Iower or higher than the optimum have a higher average cost. Pure competition: In pure competition, where the demand curve for any firm is perfectly elastic, (…) each firm will eventually adjust so that its (…) curve will be (…) in equilibrium; (…) Monopolistic competition: (…) monopolistic competition yields higher prices and less production—i.e., a Iower standard of living - than pure competition. Furthermore, output will not take place at the point of minimum average cost - clearly a social "optimum," and each plant will produce at a Iower than optimum level, i.e., it will have "excess capacity." This was the "welfare" case of the monopolistic-competition theorists. III 728 Vs: (…) Chamberlin and others have shown that this analysis does not apply if we are to take consumer desire for diversity as a good to besatisfied.(1) Many other effective and sound attacks have been made from different directions. One basic argument is that the situations of pure and of monopolistic competition cannot be compared because the AC curves would not, in fact, be the same. Chamberlin(2,3) has pursued his revisionism in this realm also, declaring that the comparisons are wholly illegitimate, that to apply the concept of pure competition to existing firms would mean, for example, assuming a very large number of similar firms producing the identical product. Ifthis were done, say, with General Motors, it would mean that either GM must conceptually be divided up into numerous fragments, or else that it be multiplied. If divided, then unit costs would undoubtedly be higher, and then the "competitive firm" would suffer higher costs and have to subsist on higher prices. This would clearly injure consumers and the standard of living; thus, Chamberlin follows Schumpeter's criticism that the "monopolistic" firm may well have and probably will have Iower costs than its "purely competitive" counterpart. If, on the other hand, we conceive of the multiplication of a very large number of General Motors corporations at existing size, we cannot possibly relate it to the present world, and the whole comparison becomes absurd.(4) 1. And the product differentiation associated with the falling demand curve may well lower costs of distribution and of inspection (as well as improve consumer knowledge) to more than offset the supposed rise in production costs. In short, the AC curve above is really a production-cost, rather than a total-cost, curve, neglecting distribution costs. Cf. Goldman, “Product Differentiation and Advertising.” Furthermore, a genuine total-cost curve would then not be independent of the firm’s demand curve, thus vitiating the usual “cost-curve” analysis. See Dewey, Monopoly in Economics and Law, p. 87. 2. H. Chamberlin, Theory of Monopolistic Competition, and Mrs. Joan Robinson, Economics of Imperfect Competition. For a lucid discussion and comparison of the two works, see Robert Triffin, Monopolistic Competition and General Equilibrium Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940). 3. Recently, Professor Chamberlin has conceded this point and has, in a series of remarkable articles, astounded his followers by repudiating the concept of pure competition as a welfare ideal. Chamberlin now declares: "The welfare ideal itself... is correctly described as one of monopolistic competition.... [This] seems to follow very directly from the recognition that human beings are individual, diverse in their tastes and desires, and moreover, widely dispersed spatially." Chamberlin, Towards a More General Theory of Value, pp. 93-94; also ibid., pp. 70-83; E.H. Chamberlin andJ.M. Clark, "Discussion," American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May, 1950, pp. 102-04; Hunter, "Product Differentiation and Welfare Economics," pp. 53 3-52; Hayek, "The Meaning of Competition" in Individualism and the Economic Order, p. 99; and Marshall I. Goldman, "Product Differentiation and Advertising: Some Lessons from Soviet Experience," Journal of Political Economy, August, 1960, pp. 346-57. 4. See Chamberlin, “Measuring the Degree of Monopoly and Competition” and “Monopolistic Competition Revisited” in Towards a More General Theory of Value, pp. 45-83. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Performance | Aronson | Haslam I 246 Experiment/stereotypes/Aronson, Joshua/Steele: A. In a first study (Steele and Aronson, 1995(1)) 117 Black and White university students (both male and female) had to complete a verbal test along with three anagram problems. Before they performed this test, participants were randomly assigned to hear one of three frames for the task. >Stereotype threat/Aronson/Steele. 1) In the “diagnostic test” (DT) condition, participants learned that the study concerned ‘various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities’ (p. 799). Feedback would be provided that ‘may be helpful to you by familiarizing you with some of your strengths and weaknesses’ (1995, p. 799) in verbal problem solving. Test difficulty was justified as a means of providing ‘a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations so that we might better understand the factors involved in both’ (p. 799). The assumption underpinning this condition is that any reminder of intellectual testing would trigger reminders of the racial stereotypes about intellectual ability among Black participants that would undermine their performance. 2) Two “Non-diagnostic tests” (ND) were designed to neutralize these processes by Haslam I 247 framing the purpose of the study as a way to better understand the ‘psychological factors involved in solving verbal problems’ (p. 799). a) Feedback would be provided to familiarize participants ‘with the kinds of problems that appear on tests [they] may encounter in the future’ (p. 799). b) The challenging nature of the problems was justified in terms of a research focus on difficult verbal problems in the non-diagnostic only condition and on giving ‘highly verbal people ... a mental challenge’ (p. 799) in the non-diagnostic challenge (NDC) condition. Results: Analyses of the performance revealed only preliminary evidence in support of the theory. Focused analyses just of Black participants’ performance suggested that after controlling for SAT scores, Black students performed significantly worse on the test in the diagnostic condition than in either of the two non-diagnostic conditions. In comparison, performance for White students was relatively unaffected by the way the task was described. However, the critical statistical test of the race by test description interaction was not significant, p < .19. B. A second study sought to replicate the effect and examine the role of anxiety in explaining these performance impairments. Twenty Black and 20 White female participants were assigned to the same non-diagnostic and diagnostic test frame conditions used in Study i and spent 25 minutes solving the same 30-item GRE test used in the prior study. Participants also self-reported their anxiety levels. In this study, the predicted interaction was significant: controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants in the diagnostic test frame condition solved fewer items correctly, were less accurate on the questions they completed, completed fewer problems, and tended to be slower than participants in all other conditions. There were no differences between conditions in anxiety, however. C. Study 3 was designed to test three implications of the theory: that Black students taking a diagnostic (vs. non-diagnostic) test would (a) show increased activation of negative racial stereotypes and self-doubt, (b) distance themselves from Black stereotypes, and (c) show a tendency to self-handicap by making pre-emptive excuses for poor performance. 35 Black and 33 White students were randomly assigned to a diagnostic test frame, a non-diagnostic test frame or a control condition where participants completed he critical dependent measure without expecting to take a test of any sort. Test performance was not assessed. Stereotype avoidances was assessed by having participants rate a series of activities and personality traits, some of which were related to Black stereotypes. Haslam I 248 Results: Results from this study provided evidence that anticipating performance on a diagnostic test had a host of psychological implications for Black but not for White students. Controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants anticipating a diagnostic test were more likely than Blacks in the other conditions (and more likely than Whites in the diagnostic condition) to complete word fragments with race-related (…) and self-doubt-related (…) words. They were also significantly more likely to avoid endorsing stereotypic activities and traits. D. In a fourth study half of the participants were required to indicate their race while the other half were not. Result: Black participants in the race prime condition answered significantly fewer items correctly than those in all other conditions (again controlling for prior SAT score). They also seemed to approach the questions more methodically in the race prime condition — completing fewer items, avoiding guesses, but still performing somewhat less accurately. There were no differences found for reported effort and performance estimates, but a follow-up study reported in the discussion section suggested that priming race might have elevated anxiety for Black compared with White participants. Interpretation/Steele/Aronson: having their abilities tested reminds Black students of negative racial stereotypes and motivates them to distance themselves from them. They might be plagued by greater feelings of self-doubt (and perhaps anxiety) and seek to self-handicap for potentially poor performance. 1. Steele, C.M. and Aronson, J. (1995) ‘Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 797—811. Toni Schmader and Chad Forbes, “Stereotypes and Performance. Revisiting Steele and Aronson’s stereotypes threat experiments”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications |
Haslam I S. Alexander Haslam Joanne R. Smith Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017 |
| Performance | Steele | Haslam I 246 Experiment/stereotypes/Aronson, Joshua/Steele: A. In a first study (Steele and Aronson, 1995(1)) 117 Black and White university students (both male and female) had to complete a verbal test along with three anagram problems. Before they performed this test, participants were randomly assigned to hear one of three frames for the task. >Stereotype threat/Aronson/Steele. 1) In the “diagnostic test” (DT) condition, participants learned that the study concerned ‘various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities’ (p. 799). Feedback would be provided that ‘may be helpful to you by familiarizing you with some of your strengths and weaknesses’ (1995, p. 799) in verbal problem solving. Test difficulty was justified as a means of providing ‘a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations so that we might better understand the factors involved in both’ (p. 799). The assumption underpinning this condition is that any reminder of intellectual testing would trigger reminders of the racial stereotypes about intellectual ability among Black participants that would undermine their performance. 2) Two “Non-diagnostic tests” (ND) were designed to neutralize these processes by Haslam I 247 framing the purpose of the study as a way to better understand the ‘psychological factors involved in solving verbal problems’ (p. 799). a) Feedback would be provided to familiarize participants ‘with the kinds of problems that appear on tests [they] may encounter in the future’ (p. 799). b) The challenging nature of the problems was justified in terms of a research focus on difficult verbal problems in the non-diagnostic only condition and on giving ‘highly verbal people ... a mental challenge’ (p. 799) in the non-diagnostic challenge (NDC) condition. Results: Analyses of the performance revealed only preliminary evidence in support of the theory. Focused analyses just of Black participants’ performance suggested that after controlling for SAT scores, Black students performed significantly worse on the test in the diagnostic condition than in either of the two non-diagnostic conditions. In comparison, performance for White students was relatively unaffected by the way the task was described. However, the critical statistical test of the race by test description interaction was not significant, p < .19. B. A second study sought to replicate the effect and examine the role of anxiety in explaining these performance impairments. Twenty Black and 20 White female participants were assigned to the same non-diagnostic and diagnostic test frame conditions used in Study i and spent 25 minutes solving the same 30-item GRE test used in the prior study. Participants also self-reported their anxiety levels. In this study, the predicted interaction was significant: controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants in the diagnostic test frame condition solved fewer items correctly, were less accurate on the questions they completed, completed fewer problems, and tended to be slower than participants in all other conditions. There were no differences between conditions in anxiety, however. C. Study 3 was designed to test three implications of the theory: that Black students taking a diagnostic (vs. non-diagnostic) test would (a) show increased activation of negative racial stereotypes and self-doubt, (b) distance themselves from Black stereotypes, and (c) show a tendency to self-handicap by making pre-emptive excuses for poor performance. 35 Black and 33 White students were randomly assigned to a diagnostic test frame, a non-diagnostic test frame or a control condition where participants completed he critical dependent measure without expecting to take a test of any sort. Test performance was not assessed. Stereotype avoidances was assessed by having participants rate a series of activities and personality traits, some of which were related to Black stereotypes. Haslam I 248 Results: Results from this study provided evidence that anticipating performance on a diagnostic test had a host of psychological implications for Black but not for White students. Controlling for verbal SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores, Black participants anticipating a diagnostic test were more likely than Blacks in the other conditions (and more likely than Whites in the diagnostic condition) to complete word fragments with race-related (…) and self-doubt-related (…) words. They were also significantly more likely to avoid endorsing stereotypic activities and traits. D. In a fourth study half of the participants were required to indicate their race while the other half were not. Result: Black participants in the race prime condition answered significantly fewer items correctly than those in all other conditions (again controlling for prior SAT score). They also seemed to approach the questions more methodically in the race prime condition — completing fewer items, avoiding guesses, but still performing somewhat less accurately. There were no differences found for reported effort and performance estimates, but a follow-up study reported in the discussion section suggested that priming race might have elevated anxiety for Black compared with White participants. Interpretation/Steele/Aronson: having their abilities tested reminds Black students of negative racial stereotypes and motivates them to distance themselves from them. They might be plagued by greater feelings of self-doubt (and perhaps anxiety) and seek to self-handicap for potentially poor performance. 1. Steele, C.M. and Aronson, J. (1995) ‘Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 797—811. Toni Schmader and Chad Forbes, “Stereotypes and Performance. Revisiting Steele and Aronson’s stereotypes threat experiments”, in: Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam (eds.) 2017. Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications |
Haslam I S. Alexander Haslam Joanne R. Smith Social Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2017 |
| Phenomena | Fraassen | I 2 Phenomenon/Fraassen: does not decide about the truth of hypotheses about atoms. Def phenomenon/Fraassen: observable processes and structures. I 44 Phenomenon/Newton: should be preserved. Reality/Newton: is postulated. I 56 Phenomena/Fraassen: preserved by being shown to be fragments of a larger unit. VsObservation Language: one cannot describe phenomena different from the rest of the world. >Observation language, >Observation, >Structures, >Hypotheses, >Theories. |
Fr I B. van Fraassen The Scientific Image Oxford 1980 |
| Postcolonialism | Mbembe | Brocker I 912 Postcolonialism/Mbembe/Herb: Achille Mbembe's study De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine(1) is, despite all appearances, not a postcolonial book about Africa. As little as the investigation wants to be a book, it is not sure about Africa as its subject. Under the title Postcolony, the author rather provides fragments of a study that first wants to find its approach to the subject of Africa, and this at a critical distance to the postcolonial currents of the present. The reception (...) [of the] work obviously means otherwise. From the very beginning, the author is attributed to post-colonialism. The author, who was born in Cameroon in 1957, sees himself more as a dissident who moves freely between the boundaries of occidental rationality and postcolonial criticism, seeking to overcome the rigid boundaries between academic traditions and disciplines. Brocker I 914 The chapters "du commandement" and "du gouvernement privé indirect" analyse the period of post-colonial regimes. Here Mbembe formulates his thesis of the manifest and hidden continuities between colonial hierarchy and postcolonial rule. It will be shown that violence, arbitrariness and death function as the matrix of African regimes, and this before and after the attainment of political independence from the colonial powers. (...) in states such as Cameroon, Senegal and Togo (...) the idiosyncratic "aesthetics of vulgarity" ("Esthétique de la vulgarité") is still at work in the discipline and dressage of post-colonial societies. They are organized under the sign of fetish, ritual representation and the rule of the simulacrum. Brocker I 917 Postcolony appears (...) as "epoch", "peculiarity" or "spirit of the age". "As an epoch, the postcolony in fact encompasses multiple periods of time, consisting of overlapping, nested and enclosing discontinuities, overturns, inertia, fluctuations" (Mbembe 2016(1), 66). >Tyranny/Mbembe. The colonial transformation of the economy into political and social life also takes place under changed conditions in postcolonial regimes. It forms virtually the "cement of postcolonial African authoritarianism" (107). Brocker I 923 Postcolony/Mbembe: Mbembe's analyses suggest that the conditions in the postcolony are not significantly different from those in the colony. In any case, the time after that does not mark a new beginning. It seems as if the same theatre is being performed, only with different actors and different spectators. The postcolony appears as an "epoch of raw life" (282), as a place of indistinguishability of life and death. HigddlestonVsMbembe: After the publication of the postcolony, Mbembe had to put up with contradiction and criticism from various sides. His concept of the postcolony, as diverse, vociferous and colorful as it may have been, seemed to many as all too "abstract", his individual analyses as "somewhat hyperbolic and extraordinarily generalized" (Hiddleston 2009(2), 175). The individual colonial regimes were often lumped together and remained undiscovered in their historical particularities. 1. Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine, Paris 2000. Dt.: Achille Mbembe, Postkolonie. Zur politischen Vorstellungskraft im Afrika der Gegenwart, Wien/Berlin 2016 2. Hiddleston, Jane, Understanding Postcolonialism, Stocksfield 2009. Karlfriedrich Herb, „Achille Mbembe, Postkolonie (2000)“. in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018. |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Prodicus of Ceos | Taureck | I 17 Prodicus of Ceos/Sophist/Taureck: (470 or 460 - 399). Prodicus of Ceos was a student of Protagoras. He influenced Isocrates, Socrates and Eurypides. Aristophanes: (The Clouds): of all the great wise men one can only listen to Prodicus, he has wisdom and he is right. The myth of "Heracles at the Crossroad" originates from Prodicus. He works as a linguist and natural philosopher. Cf. >Ancient Philosophy, >Sophists. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Pronouns | Minsky | I 217 Pronouns/anaphora/Artificial Intelligence/Minsky: pronouns do not signify objects or words; instead, they represent conceptions, ideas, or activities that the speaker assumes are going on inside the listener's mind. Our language often uses pronounlike words to refer to mental activities — but we do not do this only in language: it happens in all the other higher-level functions of our minds. Whenever we talk or think, we use pronounlike devices to exploit whatever mental activities have already been aroused, to interlink the thoughts already active in the mind. To do this, though, we need to have machinery we can use as temporary handles for taking hold of, and moving around, those active fragments of mental states. Pronomes/Terminology/Minsky: we need to have machinery we can use as temporary handles for taking hold of, and moving around, those active fragments of mental states. To emphasize the analogy with the pronouns of our languages, I'll call such handles pronomes. Cf. >Anaphora/Philosophical theories. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |
| Protagoras | Taureck | I 13 Protagoras/Sophist/Taureck: (~ 485-415) Protagoras is one of the first and most important representatives of the sophists. Forty years profession of the paid thinker. I 14 He was commissioned in 444 by the democratic Athens to formulate a constitution for the stand of Thuroi in southern Italy. In the end, like Socrates, but also Phidias and Anaxagoras, he was supposed to have been a victim of the Athenian democracy. The reason is probably his remark that he does not know anything about the existence and nature of the gods. Supposedly he was expelled from Athens and burned his books on the market. He supposedly drowned on departure in the sea storm. Banishment is now being doubted. Protagoras wrote books on science, gods, ambition and truth. None of these was preserved. Quote: "The human is the measure of all things". I 15 Our main source: Plato: "Protagoras", "Theaitetos". I 111 Protagoras/Taureck: there is no proof that Protagoras regarded humans as equal. Already in antiquity, he was interpreted differently, either phenomenally or realistically. >Democracy/Protagoras, >Ethics/Protagoras, >Logos/Protagoras, >Myth/Protagoras, >Recognition/Protagoras, >Relativism/Protagoras, >Social Contract/Protagoras, >Sophists. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Representation (Presentation) | Freud | Ricoeur I 108 Presentation/presenting/Freud/Ricoeur: Freud considers the preference for representation in dream work to be the hallucinatory revival of a primal scene that really belonged to perception. Cf. >Regression/Ricoeur. There is no doubt that Freud, when he interprets the infantile scene as a real memory, must confuse fantasy with the memory image of a real perception; the topical regression is then a regression to perception, and the actual dimension of the imaginary is missed (...) the formal regression, which characterizes the "representation", i.e. the regression of the logical to the pictorial, [poses] a problem analogous to condensation and displacement: the representation is also a "distortion", consequently an inhibition of direct expression, the forced substitution of one mode of expression by another. In all three cases - condensation, displacement and presentation - the dream is therefore a work. Therefore, the interpretation corresponding to them is also a work which, in order to become a theme, requires a mixed language, neither purely linguistic nor purely energetic. >Symbol/Freud. Ricoeur I 112 Dream/Freud: (...) the representation is problematic, and Freud has created a whole metapsychology of >regression to accommodate it; symbolisation is not problematic because in symbolism the work has already been done elsewhere; the dream uses symbolism, it does not elaborate it. >Symbol/Freud. We now understand why the dreamer finds no memory in his typical dreams: in his dream he has used only, as a common saying, symbolic fragments that have become commonplace, worn out by use, phantoms that he has animated for a moment; (...). |
Freud I S. Freud Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse Hamburg 2011 Ricoeur I Paul Ricoeur De L’interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud German Edition: Die Interpretation. Ein Versuch über Freud Frankfurt/M. 1999 Ricoeur II Paul Ricoeur Interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning Fort Worth 1976 |
| Sense | Droysen | Gadamer I 221 Sense/History/Droysen/Gadamer: [by means of the term] the expression (...) historical reality rises into the sphere of the meaningful, and thus in Droysen's methodological self-contemplation hermeneutics becomes master over history: "The individual is understood in the whole, and the whole from the individual" (§ 10)(1). >Understanding/Droysen. Gadamer: This is the old rhetorical-hermeneutical basic rule, which is now turned inward: Schleiermacher: "The one who understands, because he or she is an I, a totality in him- or herself, like the one he or she has to understand, the person's totality is complemented by the individual utterance and the individual utterance by its totality. "That's Schleiermacher's formula. In its application lies that Droysen shares its premise, that is, the history which he sees as acts of freedom is nevertheless deeply understandable and meaningful to him as a text. Droysen: The completion of the understanding of history is, like the understanding of a text, "spiritual presence". DroysenVsRanke/Gadamer: So we see Droysen more clearly defining than Ranke what research and understanding implies in terms of mediation, but in the end he too is only able to conceive the task of history in aesthetic-hermeneutic Gadamer I 222 categories. According to Droysen, what history is striving for is to reconstruct the great text of history from the fragments of tradition. 1. J.G. Droysen, Grundriss der Historik, 1868 |
Droys I J. G. Droysen Grundriss der Historik Paderborn 2011 Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 |
| Sophists | Taureck | I 8 Sophists/Taureck: contemporary meaning of Sophists is: "knowledgeable, experienced men". There was a turn to humans and to anthropological questions. Relationship of the human to the state. Before, being, cosmos and nature were in the foreground. I 9 The Sophists are linked to money and power struggles. "Whores of knowledge," in such a way the author lets Socrates speak. Sophists appeared as teachers of public speech. Time of the reign of the "30 tyrants": 404 - 403, Peloponnese war: 431 - 404. Resolutions of the people's assemblies were majority resolutions. >Art/Sophists, >Copula/Sophists, >Epistemology/Sophists, >Metaphysics/Sophists, >Morals/Sophists, >Nomos/Sophists, >Religious Belief/Sophists. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Substitutional Quantification | Quine | V 140 Substitutional quantification/Quine: is open for other grammatical categories than just singular term but has other truth function. - Referential quantification: here, the objects do not even need to be specifiable by name. >Referential quantification, >Truth functions, >Singular terms. --- V 141 Language learning: first substitution quantification: from relative pronouns. - Later: referential quantification: because of categorical sentences. Substitution quantification: would be absurd: that every inserted name that verifies Fx also verifies Gx - absurd: that each apple or rabbit would have to have a name or a singular description. - Most objects do not have names. --- V 140 Substitutional Quantification/Referential Quantification/Truth Function/Quine: referential universal quantification: can be falsified by one single object, even though this is not specifiable by a name. - The same substitutional universal quantification: in contrast, remains true. - Existential quantification: referential: may be true due to a non-assignable value. - The same in substitutional sense: does not apply for lack of an assignable example. --- V 146f Substitutional Quantification/Quine: Problem: Blind spot: substitutional universal quantification: E.g. none of the substitution cases should be rejected, but some require abstention. - Existential quantification: E.g. none of the cases is to be approved, but some abstention is in order.- then neither agree nor abstain. (Equivalent to the alternation). --- Ad V 170 Substitutional Quantification/(s): related to the quantification over apparent classes in Quine’s meta language? --- V 175 Numbers/Classes/Quantification/Ontology/Substitutional quantification/Quine: first substitutional quantification through numbers and classes. - Problem: Numbers and classes can then not be eliminated. - Can also be used as an object quantification (referential quantification) if one allows every number to have a successor. - ((s) with substitution quantification each would have to have a name.) Class quantifier becomes object quantifier if one allows the exchange of the quantifiers (AQU/AQU/ - EQu/EQu) - so the law of the partial classes of one was introduced. --- X 124 Substitutional quantification/Quine: requires name for the values of the variables. Referential quantification/(s) speaks of objects at most. - Definition truth/Substitutional Quantification/Barcan/Quine: applying-Quantification - is true iff at least one of its cases, which is obtained by omitting the quantifier and inserting a name for the variable, is true. - Problem: almost never enough names for the objects in a not overly limited world. - E.g. No Goedel numbers for irrational numbers. - Then substitutional quantification can be wrong, because there is no name for the object, but the referential quantification can be true at the same time - i.e. both are not extensionally equal. X 124 Names/logic/substitutional quantification/Quine: Problem: never enough names for all objects in the world: e.g. if a set is not determined by an open sentence, it also has no name. - Otherwise E.g. Name a, Determination: x ε a - E.g. irrational numbers cannot be attributed to integers. - (s) > substitution class. --- XII 79f Substitutional Quantification/Quine: Here the variables are placeholders for words of any syntactic category (except names) - Important argument: then there is no way to distinguish names from the rest of the vocabulary and real referential variables. ((s) Does that mean that one cannot distinguish fragments like object and greater than, and that structures like "there is a greater than" would be possible?). XII 80 Substitutional Quantification/Quine: Problem: Assuming an infinite range of named objects. - Then it is possible to show for each substitution result of a name the truth of a formula and simultaneously to refute the universal quantification of the formula. - (everyone/all). - Then we have shown that the range has at least one unnamed object. - ((s) (> not enough names). - Therefore QuineVsSubstitutional Quantification. E.g. assuming the range contained the real name - Then not all could be named, but the unnamed cannot be separated. - The theory can always be strengthened to name a certain number, but not all - referential quantification: attributes nameless objects to itself. - Trick: (see above) every substitution result with a name is true, but makes universal quantification false. ((s) Thus an infinite number of objects secured). - A theory of real names must be based on referential quantification. |
Quine I W.V.O. Quine Word and Object, Cambridge/MA 1960 German Edition: Wort und Gegenstand Stuttgart 1980 Quine II W.V.O. Quine Theories and Things, Cambridge/MA 1986 German Edition: Theorien und Dinge Frankfurt 1985 Quine III W.V.O. Quine Methods of Logic, 4th edition Cambridge/MA 1982 German Edition: Grundzüge der Logik Frankfurt 1978 Quine V W.V.O. Quine The Roots of Reference, La Salle/Illinois 1974 German Edition: Die Wurzeln der Referenz Frankfurt 1989 Quine VI W.V.O. Quine Pursuit of Truth, Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Unterwegs zur Wahrheit Paderborn 1995 Quine VII W.V.O. Quine From a logical point of view Cambridge, Mass. 1953 Quine VII (a) W. V. A. Quine On what there is In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (b) W. V. A. Quine Two dogmas of empiricism In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (c) W. V. A. Quine The problem of meaning in linguistics In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (d) W. V. A. Quine Identity, ostension and hypostasis In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (e) W. V. A. Quine New foundations for mathematical logic In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (f) W. V. A. Quine Logic and the reification of universals In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (g) W. V. A. Quine Notes on the theory of reference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (h) W. V. A. Quine Reference and modality In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VII (i) W. V. A. Quine Meaning and existential inference In From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA 1953 Quine VIII W.V.O. Quine Designation and Existence, in: The Journal of Philosophy 36 (1939) German Edition: Bezeichnung und Referenz In Zur Philosophie der idealen Sprache, J. Sinnreich (Hg) München 1982 Quine IX W.V.O. Quine Set Theory and its Logic, Cambridge/MA 1963 German Edition: Mengenlehre und ihre Logik Wiesbaden 1967 Quine X W.V.O. Quine The Philosophy of Logic, Cambridge/MA 1970, 1986 German Edition: Philosophie der Logik Bamberg 2005 Quine XII W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York 1969 German Edition: Ontologische Relativität Frankfurt 2003 Quine XIII Willard Van Orman Quine Quiddities Cambridge/London 1987 |
| Terminology | Minsky | Minsky I 73 Terminology/Minsky: Puzzle Principle: We can program a computer to solve any problem by trial and error, without knowing how to solve it in advance, provided only that we have a way to recognize when the problem is solved. >Trial and error/Minsky. I 74 Progress Principle: Any process of exhaustive search can be greatly reduced if we possess some way to detect when progress has been made. Then we can trace a path toward a solution (...). >Problem Solving/Minsky. I 78 Difference-engine: must contain a description of a desired situation. It must have subagents that are aroused by various differences between the desired situation and the actual situation. Each subagent must act in a way that tends to diminish the difference that aroused it. >Goals/Minsky. I 82 K-line/Minsky: Whenever you get a good idea, solve a problem, or have a memorable experience, you activate a K-line to represent it. A K-line is a wirelike structure that attaches itself to whichever mental agents are active when you solve a problem or have a good idea. When you activate that K-line later, the agents attached to it are aroused, putting you into a mental state much like the one you were in when you solved that problem or got that idea. >Memory/Minsky. I 83 P-agents: were used before in solving a problem. Q-agents: are agents of your recent thoughts. I 92 S-agents: let's call the original agents S-agents and call their society the S-society. Given any S-society, we can imagine building memories for it by constructing a corresponding K-society for it. When we start making a K-society, we must link each K-line directly to S-agents, because there are no other K-lines we can connect them to. >Society of Minds/Minsky. I 121 Uniframe/Minsky: a description constructed to apply to several different things at once. ((s) E.g.building blocks may be arranged in different ways and create tools for different functions). I 124 Accumulation/Minsky: Uniframing doesn't always work. We often try to make an everyday idea precise - but just can't find much unity. Then, we can only accumulate collections of examples. I 127 The Exception Principle: It rarely pays to tamper with a rule that nearly always works. It's better just to complement it with an accumulation of specific exceptions. I 145 The Investment Principle: Our oldest ideas have unfair advantages over those that come later. The earlier we learn a skill, the more methods we can acquire for using it. Each new idea must then compete against the larger mass of skills the old ideas have accumulated. (Cf. Matthew effect). I 155 Def Immanence Illusion: Whenever you can answer a question without a noticeable delay, it seems as though that answer were already active in your mind. I 161 Def Recursion Principle: When a problem splits into smaller parts, then unless one can apply the mind's full power to each subjob, one's intellect will get dispersed and leave less cleverness for each new task. I 166 Def Cross-exclusion/Minsky: if several urgent needs occur at once, there must be a way to select one of them. (…) cross-exclusion, (…) appears in many portions of the brain. In such a system, each member of a group of agents is wired to send inhibitory signals to all the other agents of that group. I 167 Conservation: Force all activities to depend upon some substance or other kind of quantity of which only a certain amount is available. Negative Feedback: Supply a summary device that estimates the total activity in the agency and then broadcasts to that agency an inhibitory signal whose strength is in proportion to that total. This will tend to damp down incipient avalanches. Censors and Suppressors: The conservation and feedback schemes tend to be indiscriminate. I 198 Polynemes: are involved with our long-term memories. A polyneme is a type of K-line; it sends the same, simple signal to many different agencies: each of those agencies must learn, for itself, what to do when it receives that signal. When you hear the word apple, a certain polyneme is aroused, and the signal from this polyneme will put your Color agency into a state that represents redness. The same signal will set your Shape agency into a state that represents roundness, and so forth. Isonome: Each isonome controls a short-term memory in each of many agencies. For example, suppose we had just been talking about a certain apple, and then I said, Please put it in this pail. In this case, you would assume that the word it refers to the apple. Def Pronomes/Terminology/Minsky: we need to have machinery we can use as temporary handles for taking hold of, and moving around, those active fragments of mental states. To emphasize the analogy with the pronouns of our languages, I'll call such handles pronomes. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |
| Thrasymachus | Taureck | I 18 Thrasymachus/Sophist/Taureck: (~ 460 - 399): Main source: Plato, Republic. He did not possess the Athenian citizenship and was therefore not allowed to speak in the people's assemblies. Topics: Constitution, possibility and benefit of justice. >Justice/Thrasymachus, >Sophists. Additional literature on the sophists: W. K C. Guthrie, The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1971. A. Laks and G. W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy 2016. Richard Winton. "Herodotus, Thucydides, and the sophists" in: C.Rowe & M.Schofield, The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Cambridge 2005. Hermann Diels & Rosamond Kent Sprague (eds.) The Older Sophists a Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. With a New Ed. Of Antiphon and of Euthydemus. University of South Carolina Press 1972. John Dillon and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. UK: Penguin Group 2003. |
Taureck I B. H.F. Taureck Die Sophisten Hamburg 1995 |
| Tradition | Burke | Sunstein I 121 Tradition/knowledge/E. Burke/Sunstein: According to Edmund Burke, judgments based on long-standing traditions are more reliable than judgments of individuals with conflicting interests. >Judgments, >Reliability, cf. >Cultural tradition. Sunstein: Burke's major contribution to the study of knowledge and information is that it shows that knowledge is distributed over time. >Knowledge, >Education, >Culture. Sunstein I 122 Knowledge/Burke: is distributed by tradition in small fragments to many individuals and expands over time. >Learning, >Progress. Sunstein I 124 SunsteinVsBurke, E.: he does not take into account the effects of group pressure on information retention (>Information Cascades). Precisely this can contribute to the fact that traditional moral concepts last longer than necessary. >Morality, >Values, >Cultural values, >Change in values, >Change in meaning, >Society, >Public sphere, >Media. |
BurkeE I Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 2nd Revised ed. Edition Oxford 2015 Sunstein I Cass R. Sunstein Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge Oxford 2008 Sunstein II Cass R. Sunstein #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Princeton 2017 |
| Wikis | Sunstein | I 3 Wikis/Sunstein: Wikis for critical legal questions are led in the American Ministry of Defense. Some of them also concern national security issues. Some of these files are renewed daily. I 6 With the problem of working through large amounts of text, fragments were distributed to groups that created wikis, which were later merged. So it happened in 2005 with documents about prisoners in Guantanamo by volunteers of the liberal blog Daily Kos; the Wiki dKosopedia was created. Wikis also help to take account of rapidly changing data, e. g. within companies. While books are not yet written, processes and costs change. In Wikis, the material can be processed by any employee. I 7 In this way, individual knowledge is constantly taken into account. I 10 Wikis are not written by individuals. We all write them down. This can result in a Daily Us ((s) instead of a "Daily Me"). I 148 Ward Cunnigham, the developer of the first Wiki server in 1994, wrote that wiki is inherently democratic, each user has the same possibilities as everyone else.(1) See also (2). VsWiki/VsCunningham/Sunstein: does this fact make the Wikis not susceptible to vandalism? Ward CunninghamVs: experience shows that this is not the case, even without precautions.(3) Documentation/Wikis/Sunstein: a currently important application of wikis is the technical documentation of ongoing projects and documentation in many open software projects. The motivation here lies not in economic incentives, as in prediction markets, but in the interest of the participants to keep things going. 1. See Bol Leuf and Ward Cunningham, The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2001), 15. 2. Für einen Überblick: WikiWikiWeb site, the place to go is http:/c2.com/cgi/wiki; it includes many thousands of pages with discussions of software design. 3. Bol Leuf/Cunningham ibid. p. 17. |
Sunstein I Cass R. Sunstein Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge Oxford 2008 Sunstein II Cass R. Sunstein #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Princeton 2017 |
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| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
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Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lewis, C.I. | Schwarz Vs Lewis, C.I. | Schwarz I 31 Personal identity/SchwarzVsLewis: his criterion is not accurate and provides in interesting cases no answer. E.g. continuity after brain surgery, etc. But Lewis does not want that. Our (vague) everyday term should only be made explicitly. Beaming/Teleportation/Doubling/Lewis: all this is allowed by his theory. Schwarz I 60 Identity/Lewis/Centered world/Possible world/Schwarz: my desire to be someone else, does not refer to the whole world, but only to my position in the world. E.g. Twin Earth/Schwarz: one of the two planets is blown tomorrow, the two options (that we are on the one or the other) do however not correspond to two possible worlds! Detailed knowledge would not help out where we are, because they are equal. ((s) so no "centered world"). Actually, we want to know where we ourselves are in the world. (1979a(1),1983b(2),1986e(3):231 233). SchwarzVsLewis: says too little about these perspective possibilities. It is not enough here to allow multiple counterparts (c.p.) in a world. It should not just be possible that Humphrey is exactly as the actual Nixon, he should also to be allowed to be different. Humphrey may not be a GS of himself. (> Irreflexive counterpart relation,> see below Section 9.2. "Doxastic counterparts". Similarity relation. No matter what aspects you emphasize: Nixon will never be more similar to Humphrey than to himself. Schwarz I 100 Fundamental properties/SchwarzVsLewis: this seems to waver whether he should form the fE to the conceptual basis for the reduction of all predicates and ultimately all truths, or only a metaphysical basis, on which all truths supervene. (>Supervenience, >Reduction). Schwarz I 102 Naturalness/Natural/Property/Content/Lewis: the actual content is then the most natural candidate that matches the behavior. "Toxic" is not a perfectly natural property (p.n.p.), but more natural than "more than 3.78 light years away" and healthy and less removed and toxic". Naturalness/Degree/Lewis: (1986e(3):, 61,63,67 1984b(4):66): the naturalness of a property is determined by the complexity or length of their definition by perfectly natural properties. PnE: are always intrinsically and all their Boolean combinations remain there. Problem: extrinsic own sheep threaten to look unnatural. Also would e.g. "Red or breakfast" be much more complicated to explain than e.g. "has charge -1 or a mass, whose value is a prime number in kg. (Although it seems to be unnatural by definition). Naturalness/Property/Lewis: (1983c(5), 49): a property is, the more natural the more it belongs to surrounding things. Vs: then e.g. "cloud" less natural than e.g. "table in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant or clock showing 7:23". Schw I 103 Naturalness/Properties/Lewis: (1983c(5): 13f): naturalness could be attributed to similarity between characteristics: E.g. a class is more natural, the more the properties of its elements resemble each other. Similarity: Lewis refers to Armstrong: similarity between universals 1978b(6),§16.2,§21, 1989b(7): §5.111997 §4.1). Ultimately LewisVs. Naturalness/Lewis/Schwarz: (2001a(8):§4,§6): proposing test for naturalness, based on similarity between individual things: coordinate system: "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" axis. A property is then the more natural, the more dense and more compact the appropriate region is. Problem: 1. that presupposes gradual similarity and therefore cannot be well used to define gradual naturalness. 2. the pnE come out quite unnatural, because the instances often do not strongly resemble each other. E.g. if a certain mass property is perfect, of course, then all things with this mass build a perfectly natural class, no matter how dissimilar they are today. SchwarzVsLewis: it shows distinctions between natural and less natural properties in different areas, but does not show that the distinction is always the same. Naturalness/SchwarzVsLewis: could also depend on interests and biological expression. And yet, can in various ways the different types of natural - be determined by perfect naturalness. That is not much, because at Lewis all, by definition, by the distribution of p.n.p. is determined. ((s)>Mosaic). Schwarz I 122 Naturalness/SchwarzVsLewis: not reasonable to assume that it was objectively, regardless of how naturally it appears to us. Lewis introduced objective naturalness as a metaphysical basis for qualitative, intrinsic similarity and difference, as some things resemble each other like eggs and others do not. (see above 5.2). Intrinsic Similarity: also qualitative character and duplication: these terms are intended to be our familiar terms by Lewis. SchwarzVsLewis: but if objective naturalness is to explain the distinction of our opinions about similarity, one cannot ask with sense the question whether the distinction serves exactly this. So although there are possible beings (or worlds) whose predicates express relatively unnatural properties and therefore are wrong about natural laws, without being able to discover the error. But we can be sure a priori that we do not belong to them. Problem: the other beings may themselves believe a priori to be sure that their physical predicates are relatively natural. Solution: but they (and not we) were subject to this mistake, provided "natural" means in their mouth the same as with us. ((s) but we also could just believe that they are not subject to error. Respectively, we do not know whether we are "we" or "they"). Schwarz: here is a tension in our concept of natural law (NL): a) on the one hand it is clear that we can recognize them empirically. b) on the other hand they should be objective in a strong sense, regardless of our standards and terms. Problem: Being with other standards can come up with the same empirical data to all other judgments of NL. Schwarz I 134 Event/SchwarzVsLewis: perhaps better: events but as the regions themselves or the things in the regions: then we can distinguish e.g. the flight from the rotation of the ball. Lewis appears to be later also inclined to this. (2004d)(9). Lewis: E.g. the death of a man who is thrown into a completely empty space is not caused by something that happens in this room, because there is nothing. But when events are classes of RZ regions, an event could also include an empty region. Def Qua thing/Lewis/Schwarz: later theory: “Qua-things” (2003)(10): E.g. „Russell qua Philosoph“: (1986d(9a),247): classes of counterpieces – versus: LewisVsLewis: (2003)(10) Russell qua Philosoph and Russell qua Politician and Russell are identical. Then the difference in counterfactual contexts is due to the determined by the respective description counterpart relation. These are then intensional contexts. (Similar to 1971(11)). counterfactual asymmetry/Lewis/Schwarz: Lewis' analysis assumes similarity between possible worlds. HorwichVsLewis: (1987(15),172) should explain why he is interested in this baroque dependence. Problem/SchwarzVsLewis: so far, the analysis still delivers incorrect results E.g. causation later by earlier events. Schwarz I 139 Conjunctive events/SchwarzVsLewis: he does not see that the same is true for conjunctive events. Examples A, B, C, D are arbitrary events, so that A caused B and C caused D. If there is an event B&C, which exactly occurs when both B and C happen, then A is the cause of D: without A, B would not have happened, neither B&C. Likewise D would not have happened without B&C. Because causation is transitive, thus any cause causes any effect. Note: according to requirement D would not happen without C, but maybe the next possible world, in which B&C are missing, is one in which C is still taking place? According to Lewis the next possible world should however be one where the lack of cause is completely extinguished. Schwarz: you cannot exclude any conjunctive events safely. E.g. a conversation or e.g. a war is made up of many events and may still be as a whole a cause or effect. Lewis (2000a(13), 193) even used quite unnatural conjunctions of events in order to avoid objections: E.g. conjunction from the state of brain of a person and a decision of another person. Absence/Lewis/Schwarz: because Lewis finds no harmless entities that are in line as absences, he denies their existence: they are no events, they are nothing at all, since there is nothing relevant. (200a, 195). SchwarzVsLewis: But how does that fit together with the Moore's facts? How can a relationship be instantiated whose referents do not exist?. Moore's facts/Schwarz: E.g. that absences often are causes and effects. Something to deny that only philosopher comes to mind. I 142 Influence/SchwarzVsLewis: Problem: influence of past events by future. Example had I drunk from the cup already half a minute ago, then now a little less tea would be in the cup, and depending on how much tea I had drunk half a minute ago, how warm the tea was then, where I then had put the cup, depending on it the current situation would be a little different. After Lewis' analysis my future tea drinking is therefore a cause of how the tea now stands before me. (? Because Ai and Bi?). Since the drinking incidents are each likely to be similar, the impact is greater. But he is not the cause, in contrast to the moon. Schwarz I 160 Know how/SchwarzVsLewis: it is not entirely correct, that the phenomenal character must be causal effect if the Mary and Zombie pass arguments. For causal efficacy, it is sufficient if Mary would react differently to a phenomenally different experience ((s) >Counterfactual conditional). Dualism/Schwarz: which can be accepted as a dualist. Then you can understand phenomenal properties like fundamental physical properties. That it then (as above Example charge 1 and charge 1 switch roles in possible worlds: is possible that in different possible worlds the phenomenal properties have their roles changed, does not mean that they are causally irrelevant! On the contrary, a particle with exchanged charge would behave differently. Solution: because a possible world, in which the particle has a different charge and this charge plays a different role, is very unlike to our real world! Because there prevail other laws of nature. ((s) is essential here that besides the amended charge also additionally the roles were reversed? See above: >Quidditism). SchwarzVsLewis: this must only accept that differences in fundamental characteristics do not always find themselves in causal differences. More one must not also accept to concede Mary the acquisition of new information. Schwarz I 178 Content/Individuation/Solution/LewisVsStalnaker: (1983b(2), 375, Fn2, 1986e(3), 34f), a person may sometimes have several different opinion systems! E.g. split brain patients: For an explanation of hand movements to an object which the patient denies to see. Then you can understand arithmetic and logical inference as merging separate conviction fragments. Knowledge/Belief/Necessary truth/Omniscience/SchwarzVsLewis/SchwarzVsFragmentation: Problem: even within Lewis' theory fragmentation is not so easy to get, because the folk psychology does not prefer it. Schwarz I 179 E.g. at inconsequent behavior or lie we do not accept a fragmented system of beliefs. We assume rather that someone changes his beliefs or someone wants to mislead intentionally. E.g. if someone does not make their best move, it must not be the result of fragmentation. One would assume real ignorance contingent truths instead of seeming ignorance of necessary truths. Fragmentation does not help with mathematical truths that must be true in each fragment: Frieda learns nothing new when she finally finds out that 34 is the root of the 1156. That they denied the corresponding proposition previously, was due to a limitation of their cognitive architecture. Knowledge/Schwarz: in whatever way our brain works, whether in the form of cards, records or neural networks - it sometimes requires some extra effort to retrieve the stored information. Omniscience/Vs possible world/Content/VsLewis/Schwarz: the objection of logical omniscience is the most common objection to the modeling mental and linguistic content by possible worlds or possible situations. SchwarzVsVs: here only a problem arises particularly, applicable to all other approaches as well. Schwarz I 186 Value/Moral/Ethics/VsLewis/Schwarz: The biggest disadvantage of his theory: its latent relativism. What people want in circumstances is contingent. There are possible beings who do not want happiness. Many authors have the intuition that value judgments should be more objective. Solution/Lewis: not only we, but all sorts of people should value under ideal conditions the same. E.g. then if anyone approves of slavery, it should be because the matter is not really clear in mind. Moral disagreements would then in principle be always solvable. ((s)>Cognitive deficiency/Wright). LewisVsLewis: that meets our intuitions better, but unfortunately there is no such defined values. People with other dispositions are possible. Analogy with the situation at objective probability (see above 6.5): There is nothing that meets all of our assumptions about real values, but there is something close to that, and that's good enough. (1989b(7), 90 94). Value/Actual world/Act.wrld./Lewis: it is completely unclear whether there are people in the actual world with completely different value are dispositions. But that does not mean that we could not convince them. Relativism/Values/Morals/Ethics/Lewis/Schwarz: Lewis however welcomes a different kind of relativism: desired content can be in perspective. The fate of my neighbor can be more important to me than the fate of a strangers. (1989b(14), 73f). Schwarz I 232 Truthmaker principle/SchwarzVsLewis: here is something rotten, the truth maker principle has a syntax error from the outset: we do not want "the world as it is", as truth-makers, because that is not an explanation, we want to explain how the world makes the truth such as the present makes propositions about the past true. Schwarz I 233 Explanation/Schwarz: should distinguish necessary implication and analysis. For reductive metaphysics necessary implication is of limited interest. SchwarzVsLewis: he overlooks this when he wrote: "A supervenience thesis is in the broader sense reductionist". (1983,29). Elsewhere he sees the difference: E.g. LewisVsArmstrong: this has an unusual concept of analysis: for him it is not looking for definitions, but for truth-makers ". 1. David Lewis [1979a]: “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se”. Philosophical Review, 88: 513–543. 2. David Lewis [1983b]: “Individuation by Acquaintance and by Stipulation”. Philosophical Review, 92: 3–32. 3. David Lewis [1986e]: On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden (Mass.): Blackwell 4. David Lewis [1984b]: “Putnam’s Paradox”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61: 343–377 5. David Lewis [1983c]: “New Work for a Theory of Universals”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61: 343–377. 6. David M. Armstrong [1978b]: Universals and Scientific Realism II: A Theory of Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 7. David M. Armstrong [1989b]: Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press 8. David Lewis [2001a]: “Redefining ‘Intrinsic’ ”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63: 381-398 9. David Lewis [2004d]: “Void and Object”. In [Collins et al. 2004], 277–291 9a. David Lewis [1986d]: “Events”. In [Lewis 1986f]: 241–269 10. David Lewis [2003]: “Things qua Truthmakers”. Mit einem Postscript von David Lewis und Gideon Rosen. In Hallvard Lillehammer und Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Hg.), Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D.H. Mellor, London: Routledge, 25–38. 11. David Lewis [1971]: “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies”. Journal of Philosophy, 68: 203–211. 12. David Lewis [1987]: “The Punishment that Leaves Something to Chance”. Proceedings of the Russellian Society, 12: 81–97. 13. David Lewis [2000a]: “Causation as Influence”. Journal of Philosophy, 97: 182–197. Gekürzte Fassung von [Lewis 2004a] 14. David Lewis [1989b]: “Dispositional Theories of Value”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 63: 113-137. 15. Paul Horwich [1987]: Asymmetries in Time. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press |
Schw I W. Schwarz David Lewis Bielefeld 2005 |
| Lewis, D. | Verschiedene Vs Lewis, D. | Metz II 274 Nida-RümelinVsLewis: this objection is off the table here after we have shown that on the 1st level (Marianna finds a colorfully furnished room with partly wrongly colored prints) the alternatives come into view, which are then excluded on the 2nd level. Real phenomenal knowledge. Lewis I 9 ShafferVsIdentity Theory: it cannot be true because experiences with analytical necessity are not spatial while neural events take place in the nervous system. LewisVsShaffer: this is not analytical or otherwise necessary. And neural events are also abstract. Whatever results from considerations about experiences as an argument for nonspatiality should also apply to neural events. - VsLewis: it is nonsense to consider a mere sound chain or character string as a possible carrier of a meaning or a truth value. Meaning/Carrier: Carriers of meaning are only single speech acts! II 213 LewisVsVs: my assertion is not that sounds and characters are carriers of meaning, but that they carry meaning and truth relatively to a language or population. A single speech act can be the bearer of meaning because in most cases it unambiguously determines the language used in its particular enforcement situation. - VsLewis: A meaning theory recurred to a possible world is circular. - Def Possible World/VsLewis): The concept of a possible world can itself be explained by recourse to semantic terms. Possible worlds are models of the analytical propositions of a language or diagrams or theories of such models. -LewisVs: Possible world cannot be explained by recourse to semantic terms. Possible worlds exist and should not be replaced by their linguistic representations. 1. Such a substitution does not work properly: two worlds which are not different in the representing language get (wrongly) assigned to one and the same representation. II 214 ++ 2. Such a replacement would also be completely unnecessary: the concept of possible worlds is perfectly understandable in itself. II 216 Hypostatization of meaning - VsLewis: not just words, things exist! - VsVs: we can form a grammar II 221 VsLewis: maybe internal representation? VsVs: that does not help! II 222 Convention is more than agreement: the others must believe in it! II 223 VsLewis:Language conventions are no better than our infamous obscure old friends, the language rules. VsVs: A convention of truthfulness and trust could be called a rule. II 224 VsLewis: Language is not conventional. LewisVs: There may be less conventionality than we originally thought. However, there are conventions of language. II 225 VsLewis: Only those who are also set theorists can expect others to adhere to regularity. LewisVs: An ordinary person does not need to possess a concept of L in order to be able to expect that the others are truthful and trusting in L. He only needs to have expectations about action. II 226 VsLewis: Using language is almost never a rational matter. LewisVs: An action can be rational and explainable even if it is done out of habit and without thought. II 227 VsLewis: Language cannot possibly be traced back to conventions. It is impossible to agree on everything at any time. LewisVs: Admittedly, the first language cannot possibly go back to a convention. II 227 VsLewis: E.g. Suppose a lifelong isolated person could one day spontaneously start using a language due to his ingenious talent. LewisVs: Even people living in isolation always adhere to a certain regularity. II 228 VsLewis: It is circular to define the meaning in P of sentences using the assumptions made by the members of P. LewisVs: It may be so, but it does not follow that making an assumption should be analyzed as accepting sentences. II 229 VsLewis: E.g. Suppose population of notorious liars. LewisVs: I deny that L is used in this population! II 229 E.g. Ironist: these people are actually true in L! But they are not literally true in L! I.e. they are truly in another language, connected with L, which we can call "literal-L". II 232 VsLewis: Truthfulness and trust (here not in L) cannot be a convention. LewisVs: The convention is not the regularity of truthfulness and trust par excellence. It is in a certain language! Its alternatives are regularities in other languages! II 233 + VsLewis: Even truthfulness and trust in L cannot be a convention. Moral obligation/Lewis: a convention continues to exist because everyone has reason to abide by it, if others do, that is the obligation. VsLewis: Why communication when people can draw completely different conclusions from a statement? II 234 VsVs is quite compatible with my theory. But these are not independent conventions but by-products. II 235 VsLewis: not only one language, but an infinite number of fragments (e.g. interest in communication etc.) VsVs: this is indeed the case, the language is inhomogeneous e.g. educated/uneducated. II 237 VsLewis: silence is not untruthful. VsVs: Right expectation of truthfulness, but no trust! II 238/239 VsLewis: either analytical or not, no smooth transition! VsVs: fuzzy analyticity with the help of gradual conventionality: regarding the strength of assumptions or the frequency of exceptions, or uncertainty as to whether certain worlds are actually possible. II 240 VsLewis: thesis and anti-thesis refer to different objects: a) semantic (artificial) languages, b) language as part of natural history - VsVs: no, there is only one philosophy of language, language and languages are complementary! |
Lewis I David K. Lewis Die Identität von Körper und Geist Frankfurt 1989 Lewis I (a) David K. Lewis An Argument for the Identity Theory, in: Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (b) David K. Lewis Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications, in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (c) David K. Lewis Mad Pain and Martian Pain, Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Ned Block (ed.) Harvard University Press, 1980 In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis II David K. Lewis "Languages and Language", in: K. Gunderson (Ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. VII, Language, Mind, and Knowledge, Minneapolis 1975, pp. 3-35 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, Georg Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1979 Lewis IV David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd I New York Oxford 1983 Lewis V David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd II New York Oxford 1986 Lewis VI David K. Lewis Convention. A Philosophical Study, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Konventionen Berlin 1975 LewisCl Clarence Irving Lewis Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis Stanford 1970 LewisCl I Clarence Irving Lewis Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) 1991 |
| Observation Language | Fraassen Vs Observation Language | I 56 Empirical Content/Theory/Fraassen: we have seen that we cannot isolate the empirical content of a theory in the interpretation by saying that language consists of two parts (observation language, theoretical terms). That should not surprise us. Phenomenon/Fraassen: the phenomena are preserved if they are proven to be fragments of a larger unit. FraassenVsObservation Language: it would be very strange if the theories described the phenomena, the observable, in other terms than the rest of the world they describe. A conceptual distinction between the observable and the unobservable is always too easy. |
Fr I B. van Fraassen The Scientific Image Oxford 1980 |
| Quantum Mechanics | Verschiedene Vs Quantum Mechanics | Kanitscheider II 108 Quantum ChemistryVsQuantum Mechanics: Weak point of orthodox quantum mechanics: v. Neumann's traditional Hilbert-Space formulation (1929) is limited to closed systems with finite degrees of freedom, which means the neglect of the environment of the quantum system. Hennig Genz Gedankenexperimente, Weinheim 1999 VIII 208 Completeness/Quantum Mechanics/QM: the quantum mechanics is complete in the sense that more cannot be said about the locations of the particles than the probability distributions of the quantum mechanics permit. Problem: how can it be that Gretel's unsuccessful search not only creates the reality that it is not with her, but also the reality that it is in Hänsel's area? Einstein-Podoski-Rosen/EPR: that is impossible! She cannot instantly create reality in the distant territory. Reality must have existed before the first experiment. EPRVsQM: incomplete as it does not take into account existing realities. Instead, we need a theory that is real, local and causal. It should only concern properties of measurable physical objects. John Gribbin Schrödingers Kätzchen Frankfurt/M 1998 III 135 Quantum Electrodynamics/QED: (best confirmed theory of all times) provides information about the interaction of electrons with electromagnetic radiation. It explains everything except gravity and the behaviour of atomic nuclei (e.g. radioactive decay). III 137 Feynman: we only have three things to take care of: 1. the probability with which a photon moves from one place to another. 2. the probability with which an electron changes location, 3. the probability with which a photon is absorbed or emitted by an electron. III 138 Feynman realized that we had to take into account every possible route (Fig III 138). A lot of convolutions on the way from A to B. (Feynman diagrams). In the double-split experiment, we added the probabilities with which the light passed one of the columns. III 139 Feynman: why not cut more slits in the screen until there is no obstacle at all, since all the "slits" now overlap. Now that the screen has disappeared, we have to add all probabilities of all possible paths. For the complicated paths, the probabilities are very small and usually cancel each other out. Feynman showed with a mirror that their influence is still noticeable! III 140 The light chooses the most time-saving path. III 141 Gribbin: it actually happens that the light continues to travel at a different, flatter angle at the same time, other photons hit the eye perpendicularly... That we do not observe this is solely due to the fact that the paths in the vicinity of the shortest path are on the one hand more probable, and on the other hand mutually reinforce each other. But that is not the end of the story! III 142 Measurements show that reflected photons actually arrive from the far corner of the mirror, although they cancel each other out! III 142/143 Although neighboring parts of the mirror corner cancel each other out, you can still find mirror strips where the probabilities add up. How large the distance between the strips must be depends on the wavelength of the light: this is a nice confirmation of the wave particle dualism, since we consider the light here as photons. (diffraction grid). III 145 Similarly, all optical phenomena can be interpreted as the addition of probabilities, including lenses, diffraction and deceleration of light entering water, Poisson's spot, double-split experiment. III 150 VsQuantifier-Electrodynamics/VsQED: it is not completely flawless: difficulty in moving an electron: it would cause an endless addition of probabilities, the results would grow into infinity, that would be nonsense. III 145 Def magnetic moment of the electron: measure of the interaction of an electron with a magnetic field. III 147 Nature/Physics/Feynman: "The enormous diversity of nature can be derived from the monotonous repetition of the combination of only three basic processes" (see above). III 148 Feynman-Diagram: bizarre: two electrons interact by exchanging a photon, but we may just as well say that the second electron emits the photon "in the future" and this goes backwards in time so that it is absorbed by the first electron "in the past". It is well known that an electron can change into a pair of particles with positrons. The corresponding equations are symmetrical as usual. III 149 Feynman now realized that the whole interaction can be described with reference to a single electron: an electron moves from one place to another and interacts with a high-energy photon. Through this interaction, the electron is sent backwards in time until it interacts with another high-energy photon, becoming "reversed" and travelling again into the future. Three things seem to be involved in both interactions: positron, electron, photon. Similar to when a ray of light bounces off a mirror: two rays of light forming the appropriate angle and the mirror itself. Analogy: But just as in reality there is only one ray of light reflected back into space, there is also only one electron. Photons can act as "time mirrors" for electrons. Def Re-Normation: Method to get rid of the infinite. One divides both sides of the equation by infinity. Feynman: "Crazy". Hennig Genz Gedankenexperimente, Weinheim 1999 VII 275 Re-Normation: unfortunately also has to be applied to the vacuum, because the QED tells us that here the energy density is infinite. If you include the relativity theory, the situation gets even worse: there are still infinite quantities, but they cannot be renormalized anymore. Twistor Theory/Penrose: Try to explain both the particles and the long empty distances within an object with the same theory. Measure/Length Unit: a universal length unit is obtained by combining the gravitational constant, Planck's Constant and the speed of light: "quantum of length". VII 276 Planck's Length: about 1035. Planck's time, etc. It is pointless to speak of a time or length that is shorter. Quantum Foam/Wheeler: quantum fluctuations in the geometry of space are completely negligible on the level of atoms, even particles, but on this very fundamental level one can imagine space itself as a foam of quantum fluctuations. >Twistor Theory/Penrose: Thesis: then one could imagine that all matter particles are no more than twisted fragments of empty space. |
Kanitsch I B. Kanitscheider Kosmologie Stuttgart 1991 Kanitsch II B. Kanitscheider Im Innern der Natur Darmstadt 1996 |
| Substance | Kant Vs Substance | Danto I 254 Substance/Danto: ... each of these teachings is completely useless if you give up the substance itself. The idea that any underlying I-do-not-know-what holds the world together, that keeps things from flying apart into fragments. But it’s almost breathtaking to observe how little happened when you gave up the substance. KantVsSubstance/Danto: Proposed to no longer understand the substance as an objective necessity but as an inner necessity of thinking. NietzscheVsSubstance/Danto: Substance is only fiction. The question of what characterizes the spirit was still absolutely not explained by the substance. A question that only then could follow, which would also exclude the function of the mind, that a mental state of affair can be physical. |
I. Kant I Günter Schulte Kant Einführung (Campus) Frankfurt 1994 Externe Quellen. ZEIT-Artikel 11/02 (Ludger Heidbrink über Rawls) Volker Gerhard "Die Frucht der Freiheit" Plädoyer für die Stammzellforschung ZEIT 27.11.03 Danto I A. C. Danto Connections to the World - The Basic Concepts of Philosophy, New York 1989 German Edition: Wege zur Welt München 1999 Danto III Arthur C. Danto Nietzsche as Philosopher: An Original Study, New York 1965 German Edition: Nietzsche als Philosoph München 1998 Danto VII A. C. Danto The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (Columbia Classics in Philosophy) New York 2005 |
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