Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
The author or concept searched is found in the following 44 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analysis | Katz | Cresswell I 21 Lexical decomposition/analysis/Katz/word meaning/list/Cresswell: (Katz 1972(1), p. 49). Example: "Chair": (10) (object), (physical), (non-alive), (artifact), (furniture), (portable), (something with legs), (something with a back), (something with a sitting space), (seat for one). Problem: Katz declines to say what, e.g. an (object) is. N.B.: even in recent times (Harrison 1974(2), 601 ff), we find this "object" as an English word (!) ((s) i.e. not perceived) as a physical object.) Cresswell: that's all right, as long as we consider e.g. (seat for one) to be sufficiently similar to an electron in a physical theory. I 32 CresswellVsKatz: we simply have no idea what the most basic entities of his decomposition should be. On the other hand, we have an idea of it in the semantics of possible worlds. I 21 Semantics of possible worlds/word meaning/CresswellVsKatz: Example "chair": a function , so that for each world w and thing a, w ε ω (a) iff. a is a chair in w. See below I 51: omega/ω: evaluation of the predicate, w: possible world. ((s) ε ω (a)": the world w is an element of the set of the worlds in which this object is a chair "/" ω (a)": the function ω makes the object "ω(a)") from this object. >Semantics of possible worlds, >Possible world. I 32 Problem: this is not quite accurate: just as there is a reference to different worlds, there should also be one to different moments, where something is in one moment a chair, but not in another. Context dependence/Cresswell: is taken into account both in the semantics of possible worlds (Cresswell 1973, 180) and in the Katz/Fodor semantics. (Katz, 1972(1), 303ff). Circularity is only apparent here: if I use "chair" in my meta-language, I have, of course, presupposed the knowledge of the reader of this meta-language. So that the way in which the set of worlds where x is a chair was presented, the word "chair" was used. Katz/Fodor semantics/semantics of possible worlds/Cresswell: one can connect both: e.g. "chair": we would not treat "chair" as a single symbol whose meaning is w, but as a complex expression of the form (x is an object) & ... & (x is a seat for one). >Context-dependence. 1. Jerrold J. Katz. (1972). Semantic Theory. New York: Harper & Row 2. B. Harrison. (1974) KATZ, J. J. "Semantic Theory". Mind 83:599 |
Katz I Jerrold J. Katz "The philosophical relevance of linguistic theory" aus The Linguistic Turn, Richard Rorty Chicago 1967 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974 Katz II Jerrold J. Katz Jerry Fodor Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Katz III Jerrold J. Katz Jerry Fodor The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Katz V J. J. Katz The Metaphysics of Meaning 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 |
| Animals | Putnam | III 45 Concept/animal/Putnam: a dog would eat something conjured or artificial meat. It has no terms to distinguish here. "Indefinite reference": indefinite reference is unlike complexity for humans. Animals recognize only disappointment, no deception, no concept of truth/falsity. III 47 Correspondence is here an artifact of our description. >Deception, >Reference, cf. >Forgery, cf. >Animal language. |
Putnam I Hilary Putnam Von einem Realistischen Standpunkt In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Frankfurt 1993 Putnam I (a) Hilary Putnam Explanation and Reference, In: Glenn Pearce & Patrick Maynard (eds.), Conceptual Change. D. Reidel. pp. 196--214 (1973) In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (b) Hilary Putnam Language and Reality, in: Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 272-90 (1995 In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (c) Hilary Putnam What is Realism? in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (1975):pp. 177 - 194. In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (d) Hilary Putnam Models and Reality, Journal of Symbolic Logic 45 (3), 1980:pp. 464-482. In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (e) Hilary Putnam Reference and Truth In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (f) Hilary Putnam How to Be an Internal Realist and a Transcendental Idealist (at the Same Time) in: R. Haller/W. Grassl (eds): Sprache, Logik und Philosophie, Akten des 4. Internationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, 1979 In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (g) Hilary Putnam Why there isn’t a ready-made world, Synthese 51 (2):205--228 (1982) In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (h) Hilary Putnam Pourqui les Philosophes? in: A: Jacob (ed.) L’Encyclopédie PHilosophieque Universelle, Paris 1986 In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (i) Hilary Putnam Realism with a Human Face, Cambridge/MA 1990 In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam I (k) Hilary Putnam "Irrealism and Deconstruction", 6. Giford Lecture, St. Andrews 1990, in: H. Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (The Gifford Lectures), Cambridge/MA 1992, pp. 108-133 In Von einem realistischen Standpunkt, Vincent C. Müller Reinbek 1993 Putnam II Hilary Putnam Representation and Reality, Cambridge/MA 1988 German Edition: Repräsentation und Realität Frankfurt 1999 Putnam III Hilary Putnam Renewing Philosophy (The Gifford Lectures), Cambridge/MA 1992 German Edition: Für eine Erneuerung der Philosophie Stuttgart 1997 Putnam IV Hilary Putnam "Minds and Machines", in: Sidney Hook (ed.) Dimensions of Mind, New York 1960, pp. 138-164 In Künstliche Intelligenz, Walther Ch. Zimmerli/Stefan Wolf Stuttgart 1994 Putnam V Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge/MA 1981 German Edition: Vernunft, Wahrheit und Geschichte Frankfurt 1990 Putnam VI Hilary Putnam "Realism and Reason", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (1976) pp. 483-98 In Truth and Meaning, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 Putnam VII Hilary Putnam "A Defense of Internal Realism" in: James Conant (ed.)Realism with a Human Face, Cambridge/MA 1990 pp. 30-43 In Theories of Truth, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 SocPut I Robert D. Putnam Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community New York 2000 |
| Art | Flusser | Rötzer I 58 Art/Flusser: Art making is about making something that has never been there before and therefore cannot be foreseen by any given program. Rötzer I 59 Rome is the seed that was planted by auctor Romulus in a wide field, Latium. The man (vir) dug a hole in the camp with his cane (aratrum). His masculine act (actio), i. e. the rape of the field leads to the possibility (virtualitas) of semen (semen) to develop into the reality of Rome (augere)... etc. The transfer of this myth to art brought a lot of things like genius, inspiration and uniqueness. Artists as all kinds of Romulusses. >Artists, >Genius, >Creativity. Rötzer I 64 Art/Flusser: Ghettos: Museums, Academies. The more untheoretical, empirical and more on good luck these people proceed, the better they are. At present, the craftsmen's revolution has come to an end. Division into capitalists and workers resigns. The meaning of life is no longer work but consumption. In contrast to the Middle Ages, leisure no longer serves to acquire wisdom; it is pointless, and therefore the whole of life is absurd. We expect art (which we understand as a creator of experience models) to give meaning to our leisure, but this task cannot be accomplished by theory-less authors. Rötzer I 65 As long as art could not be taken seriously, the authors could not only be tolerated, but their nonsense also came in handy. But now, when art has to be taken seriously, as in television, and because leisure is more and more recognized as a goal and the main component of life, the authors become dangerous to the public. --- Flusser I 11 Art/Flusser: for a Christian, everything is art (namely God's work). >Christianity, >Artifacts. For an enlightened philosopher of the 18th century, everything is nature (namely, in principle, explainable). >Enlightenment, >Explanation. I 11ff Art/Flusser: Separation of art and technology is the result of printing. Pictures become works of art as soon as they cease to be the dominant code. They only become "beautiful" because they can no longer be "good", "true". >Beauty, >Truth, >Images. This makes them opaque. Even if they hang on walls, they are also more than just "beautiful" they are models of different ways to experience the world. You do not have to accept the romantic ideology of art as a "revelation of reality" to see that when you look at a Goya, you get a different view of the world than when you look at Matisse. They are different ways of living. |
Fl I V. Flusser Kommunikologie Mannheim 1996 Rötz I F. Rötzer Kunst machen? München 1991 |
| Artificial Intelligence | Wilczek | Brockman I 66 Artificial Intelligence/Wilczek: Thesis: There is no sharp divide between natural and artificial intelligence. People try to understand how minds work by understanding how brains function; and they try to understand how brains function by studying how information is encoded in electrical and chemical signals, transformed by physical processes, and used to control behavior. It has never proved necessary to allow for the influence of consciousness or creativity unmoored from brain activity to explain any observed fact of psychophysics or neurobiology. No one has ever stumbled upon a power of mind that is separate from conventional physical events in biological organisms. >Mind/Wilczek. No “thought waves,” separate from known Brockman I 67 physical processes yet capable of influencing physical events, seem to exist. That conclusion, taken at face value, erases the distinction between natural and artificial intelligence. (…) if we were to duplicate, or accurately simulate, the physical processes occurring in a brain - as, in principle, we can - and wire up its input and output to sense organs and muscles, then we would reproduce, in a physical artifact, the observed manifestations of natural intelligence. Nothing observable would be missing. Thus (…) we deduce that natural intelligence is a special case of artificial intelligence. [A consequence of this is that] [s]ince consciousness, creativity, and evil are obvious features of natural human intelligence, they are possible features of artificial intelligence. Wilczek, F. “The Unity of Intelligence”, in: Brockman, John (ed.) 2019. Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press. |
Brockman I John Brockman Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI New York 2019 |
| Attention | Autism Research | Slater I 158 Awareness/attention/autism research: there has been evidence that deficits in social processing were better explained by differences in spontaneous attention allocation rather than by deficits in social cognition. (>Emotion/autism research, >Autism/social psychology, >Autism/psychological theories). Recent studies indicate that activity of the Fusiform Face Area (FFA), an area of the brain that is specialized for facial recognition, which had previously been thought to be very low in ASDs (for a review, see Jemel, Mottron, & Dawson, 2006)(1), can be quasi-normalized provided that participants’ attention to the face is controlled for (Hadjikhani et al., 2004(2)). Furthermore, FFA activity is also observed when participants are presented with stimuli they are intrinsically interested in, such as familiar faces (Pierce, Haist, Sedaghat, & Courchesne, 2004)(3) or cartoon characters (Grelotti et al., 2005)(4). 1. Jemel, B., Mottron, L., & Dawson, G. (2006). Impaired face processing in autism: Fact or artifact? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 91—106. 2. Hadjikharii, N., Joseph, R. M., Snyder, J., Chabris, C. F., Clark, J., Steele, S., McGrath, L., Vangel, M.,Aharon, I., Feczko, E., Harris, G. J., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Activation of the fusiform gyrus when individuals with autism spectrum disorder view faces. Neuroimage, 22, 1141—1150. 3. Pierce, K., Haist, F., Sedaghat, F., & Courchesne, E. (2004). The brain response to personally familiar faces in autism: findings of fusiform activity and beyond. Brain, 127, 2703—2716. 4. Grelotti, D., Kiln, A., Gauthier, L, Skudlarski, P., Cohen, D., Gore, J., Volkmar, F., & Schultz, R. (2005). fMRI activation of the fusiform gyrus and amygdala to cartoon characters but not to faces in a boy with autism. Neuropsychoiogia, 43, 3 73—385. Coralie Chevallier, “Theory of Mind and Autism. Beyond Baron-Cohen et al’s. Sally-Anne Study”, in: Alan M. Slater and Paul C. Quinn (eds.) 2012. Developmental Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies. London: Sage Publications |
Slater I Alan M. Slater Paul C. Quinn Developmental Psychology. Revisiting the Classic Studies London 2012 |
| Calibration | Hogan | Calibration/Kala Krishna/Kathleen Hogan/Phillip Swagel: Our work indicates that there is good reason to be suspicious of the results of (…) simple calibration exercises. Indeed, policymakers should be extremely cautious in the application of “optimal” trade policies suggested by calibrated models, as the nature of the recommended policies may simply be an artifact of the model specification and calibration procedure. Since the optimal policy resulting from one model can differ dramatically from that of another model, and since use of the “wrong” policies can actually reduce welfare, it is important to specify a flexible form which does not dictate the direction of the results. Even if the optimal policies are found and implemented, the gains from doing so are relatively limited, even without foreign retaliation. Krugman III 14 This result, that only fairly small welfare gains are to be had from optimal tariffs and subsidies, seems common to many such models. Calibration models should thus probably not be used to determine trade and industrial policy without detailed empirical work to guide the model selection. Sufficiently well specified, however, they prove to be a valuable tool in the analysis of imperfectly competitive industries, since many important results are not sensitive to model specification. Guidance from careful empirical work as to the correct demand and cost parametrizations to use in such calibration models is vital for them to serve as useful guides to determine trade policy. >International trade/Kala Krishna, >New trade theory. Kala Krishna, Kathleen Hogan, and Phillip Swagel. „The Nonoptimality of Optimal Trade Policies: The U.S. Automobile Industry Revisited, 1979-1985.“ In: Paul Krugman and Alasdair Smith (Eds.) 1994. Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. |
EconKrug I Paul Krugman Volkswirtschaftslehre Stuttgart 2017 EconKrug II Paul Krugman Robin Wells Microeconomics New York 2014 Krugman III Paul Krugman Alasdair Smith Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1994 |
| Calibration | Krishna | Calibration/Kala Krishna/Kathleen Hogan/Phillip Swagel: Our work indicates that there is good reason to be suspicious of the results of (…) simple calibration exercises. Indeed, policymakers should be extremely cautious in the application of “optimal” trade policies suggested by calibrated models, as the nature of the recommended policies may simply be an artifact of the model specification and calibration procedure. Since the optimal policy resulting from one model can differ dramatically from that of another model, and since use of the “wrong” policies can actually reduce welfare, it is important to specify a flexible form which does not dictate the direction of the results. Even if the optimal policies are found and implemented, the gains from doing so are relatively limited, even without foreign retaliation. Krugman III 14 This result, that only fairly small welfare gains are to be had from optimal tariffs and subsidies, seems common to many such models. Calibration models should thus probably not be used to determine trade and industrial policy without detailed empirical work to guide the model selection. Sufficiently well specified, however, they prove to be a valuable tool in the analysis of imperfectly competitive industries, since many important results are not sensitive to model specification. Guidance from careful empirical work as to the correct demand and cost parametrizations to use in such calibration models is vital for them to serve as useful guides to determine trade policy. >International trade/Kala Krishna, >New trade theory. Kala Krishna, Kathleen Hogan, and Phillip Swagel. „The Nonoptimality of Optimal Trade Policies: The U.S. Automobile Industry Revisited, 1979-1985.“ In: Paul Krugman and Alasdair Smith (Eds.) 1994. Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. |
EconKrug I Paul Krugman Volkswirtschaftslehre Stuttgart 2017 EconKrug II Paul Krugman Robin Wells Microeconomics New York 2014 Krugman III Paul Krugman Alasdair Smith Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1994 |
| Categories | Pinker | I 381 Categories/PinkerVsTradition: Urge to classify not because the memory is limited. Tradition: without order chaos would reign. >Classification, >Order, >Memory, >Information processing. PinkerVs: Organization is pointless for its own sake. Solution: Only with categories it is possible to draw conclusions (inferences) - most categories are in the middle: E.g. "rabbit", not "cottontail" or "mammal". I 386 George Lakoff (linguist) VsCategories: there are no clear, pure fictions, they must be abolished - PinkerVsLakoff: rules are just idealizations. >George Lakoff. I 386 Categories/Gould: it is a mistake, to force extinct animals into categories. Pinker: difficult is the classification on the stump where a branch was cut off. >Idealization. I 402f Categories/Folk Psychology/Pinker: Vs is assumed to be essentialist: taxonomies all over the world look similar to the tree structure of Linné. >Structures, >Classification. I 404 But there is no age in which children are essentialists with respect to artifacts: E.g. a coffeepot turned into a birdhouse is referred to by everyone as a birdhouse. >Artifacts, >Essentialism, >Folk psychology. |
Pi I St. Pinker How the Mind Works, New York 1997 German Edition: Wie das Denken im Kopf entsteht München 1998 |
| Climate Data | Climatology | Edwards I 406 Climate data/climatology/Edwards: The purposes, priorities, sources, and character of climate data contrast with those of weather data. The purpose of climate data is to characterize and compare patterns and trends. This requires statistics - averages, maxima, minima, etc. - rather than individual observations. And climate scientists care more about measurement quality, station stability, and the completeness and length of station records than they care about the speed of reporting. >Weather data/metereology, >Climate data/Edwars, >Models/climatology, >Weather forecasting/Edwards. Climatologists use many of the same data sources as forecasters, but they also use many others. Certain kinds of data, such as precipitation measurements or paleoclimatic proxies, are crucial to climatology yet have little relevance to forecasting. Conversely, some kinds of data useful in forecasting play little or no role in climatology. For example, Doppler radar revolutionized Edwards I 407 daily precipitation forecasting, but the data it produces are of little interest to climatologists.(1) When examining pre-twentieth century and paleoclimatic data, climatologists also use numerous “proxy” sources, including data on non-meteorological phenomena that depend strongly on climatic conditions. These data can provide indirect information about past weather conditions. Examples include ice cores, harvest records, tree rings, and species ranges.(2) Edwards I 408 Data quality: To control data quality, climatologists may compare one data set with another for the same area, perhaps taken with different instruments (e.g. radiosonde vs. satellite). Metadata - information about station or instrument history, location, etc. - are crucial to this process. Edwards I 411 Temperature changes: In an influential article published in 1953, J. Murray Mitchell dissected the many causes of “long-period” temperature changes in station records, dividing them into two principal types. “Apparent” changes, such as changes in thermometer location or shelters, were purely artifactual, stemming from causes unrelated to the actual temperature of the atmosphere. “Real” changes represented genuine differences in atmospheric conditions. These could be either “directly” or “indirectly” climatic, for example resulting from shifts in the general circulation (direct) or variations in solar output (indirect). But not all “real” temperature changes reflected actual climatic shifts, since some were caused by essentially local conditions (such as urban heat islands, industrial smoke, and local foliage cover) that had nothing to do with the climates of the region or the globe.(3) >Homogenization/climatology, >Reanalysis/climatology, >Model bias/climatology. Cf. >Emission permits, >Emission reduction credits, >Emission targets, >Emissions, >Emissions trading, >Climate change, >Climate damage, >Energy policy, >Clean Energy Standards, >Climate data, >Climate history, >Climate justice, >Climate periods, >Climate targets, >Climate impact research, >Carbon price, >Carbon price coordination, >Carbon price strategies, >Carbon tax, >Carbon tax strategies. 1. Doppler radar can detect falling raindrops, hail, and snow, so it is commonly used for short-term precipitation forecasts. However, the amount of precipitation actually reaching the ground can differ from what radar detects in the atmosphere. For climatological purposes, actual ground-level precipitation is usually all that matters. 2. K. R. Briffa et al., “Tree-Ring Width and Density Data Around the Northern Hemisphere: Part 1, Local and Regional Climate Signals,” The Holocene 12, no. 6 (2002): 737; H. Grudd et al., “A 7400-Year Tree-Ring Chronology in Northern Swedish Lapland: Natural Climatic Variability Expressed on Annual to Millennial Timescales,” The Holocene 12, no. 6 (2002): 657; J. Esper et al., “Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability,” Science 295, no. 5563 (2002): 2250–; J. R. Petit et al., “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica,” Nature 399 (1999): 429–; T. L. Root et al., “Fingerprints of Global Warming on Wild Animals and Plants,” Nature 421, no. 6918 (2003): 57–; T. L. Root and S. H. Schneider, “Ecology and Climate: Research Strategies and Implications,” Science 269, no. 5222 (1995): 334; I. Chuine et al., “Back to the Middle Ages? Grape Harvest Dates and Temperature Variations in France Since 1370,” Nature 432 (2004): 289–. 3. 13. J. M. Mitchell, “On the Causes of Instrumentally Observed Secular Temperature Trends,” Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 10, no. 4 (1953): 244–. |
Edwards I Paul N. Edwards A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge 2013 |
| Coercion | Aristotle | Gaus I 304 Coercion/Plato/Aristotle/Keyt/Miller: The two major political thinkers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, though no less hostile to despotic rule over free men than Athenian democrats (Aristotle, Poi. 111.6.1279a19-21; Plato, Laws V111.832c), travel a different road. ((s) Cf. >Coercion/Ancient philosophy). They are unimpressed by the democratic argument for two reasons. 1) First of all, they understand freedom differently. Following Socrates' lead (Xenophon, Mem. I.3. I l), they define it as rational, rather than unimpeded, agency: a man who is enslaved to a passion but whose activity is unimpeded is free in one sense of the word but not in the other (Plato, Rep. IX.577d, 579d—e; Aristotle, Metaph. XII.10.1075a18-23). 2) Second, they think that Athenian democracy, being in practice if not in theory the rule by force of the mass over the wealthy, is itself despotic (Plato, Laws VIII.832c; Aristotle, Pol. 111.6.1279a19-21 together with 7.1279b4—6). Wishing to maintain rather than to minimize or eliminate the distance between ruler and ruled, they are led to distinguish different sorts of rule and in particular to distinguish the rule of the wise and the virtuous from despotic rule (Plato, Laws 111.689e-690d; Aristotle, Poi. 111.4.1277a33-b11). (The response of Greek intellectuals to Athenian democracy is the theme of Ober, 1996(1) and 1998(2); Saxonhouse, 1996(3); and Veyne, 1983(4).) Gaus I 313 Coercion/Aristotle: the concept of natural existence paves the way for the notion of an unnatural condition, and along with it an account of the opposition between force and persuasion. Only a natural entity can be in a natural or an unnatural condition: a horse can be blind and deaf, but not a statue of a horse (see Pol. I.5.1254a34-b9). Furthermore, Aristotle identifies what is contrary to nature with what is forced (Cael. 1.2.300a23). He also thinks that natural entities, unlike artifacts, are unified wholes by nature and not by force (Metaph. X. 1.1052a22-5). It follows, then, that it is unnatural for a polis, which in Aristotle's view is a natural entity, to be a unified whole by force. This means that coercion and brute force are alien to a polis in a natural condition (the ramifications of this point are explored in Keyt, 1996)(5). In a political setting the alternative to force is its antithesis, persuasion, the source of willing obedience (for the opposition see EE II.8.1224a39). Aristotle devotes an entire treatise to this subject, and addresses the question of political persuasion specifically (Rhet. I.4, 8). >Persuasion/Aristotle. EE: Aristotle Eudemian Ethics Pol: Aristotle Politics Metaph.: Aristotle Metaphysics Cael.: Aristotle de Caelo 1. Ober, Josiah, ed. (1996) The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2. Ober, Josiah (1998) Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 3. Saxonhouse, Arlene W. (1996) Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists. Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame Press. 4. Veyne, Paul (1983) 'Did the Greeks invent democracy?' Diogenes, 124: 1-32. 5. Keyt, David (1996) 'Aristotle and the ancient roots of anarchism'. Topoi, 15: 129-42. Keyt, David and Miller, Fred D. jr. 2004. „Ancient Greek Political Thought“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Coincidence | Maturana | I 104 Random/ Maturana: Coincidence ist not ontological, only a computational artifact. - It is adopted for unobservable systems that are assumed to be objective. Cf. >Objective probability, >Subjective probability, >Epistemic/ontologic. |
Maturana I Umberto Maturana Biologie der Realität Frankfurt 2000 |
| Complexes/Complexity | Darwin | Gould I 249 Complexity/Darwin/Gould: When Darwin wrote "The Origin"(1), not a single trace of Pre-Cambrian life was found. In the Cambrian, almost all complex organisms occur at the same time. However, the distance to the earth's history is more than five sixths. The Eozoon entered the fourth edition of the "Origin of Species"(1). Darwin was delighted. It was also meant to unite with the Bathybius, the equally formless and diffuse. Gould I 248 Th: H. Huxley discovered a gelatinous mass he called "Bathybius Haeckelii" (today identified as dead supporting structures of algae). Gould I 251 Later, Bathybius was recognized as an artifact: it occurred whenever mud was preserved in a sample with alcohol. >Evolution, >Darwinism, >Ch. Darwin. 1. Ch. Darwin, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray, London 1850. |
Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Computer Model | McGinn | II 201 Algorithm/McGinn: an algorithm does not presuppose intelligence, only patience. It can be carried out without consciousness. Symbol processing: is purely syntactic. Computer/mind/McGinn: because symbol processing is purely syntactic, mental processes cannot be equated with symbol-processing algorithms. The mind responds to meaning and not only to syntax. >Algorithm, >Information processing, >Mind, >Syntax, >Consciousness. II 202 Computer/sensation/McGinn: running a program does not guarantee a sensation, it is neither necessary nor sufficient, because sensations generally do not include any symbol processing. >Sensation. II 206 McGinn: A pain is no more a symbol than a heartbeat. There is nothing linguistic about an anguished animal and the same applies to us. >Pain. I 212 ff Robot/sensation/McGinn: all this does not mean that a robot cannot have a consciousness, it can just not have by virtue of his property as a computer. There might actually be a conscious artifact. If it turned out that we were created by aliens, it would not mean that we have no consciousness. II 225 General question: does consciousness add anything to the organization of mental functions? >Artificial Intelligence, >Strong Artificial Intelligence, >Artificial General Intelligence, >Artificial Consciousness. |
McGinn I Colin McGinn Problems in Philosophy. The Limits of Inquiry, Cambridge/MA 1993 German Edition: Die Grenzen vernünftigen Fragens Stuttgart 1996 McGinn II C. McGinn The Mysteriouy Flame. Conscious Minds in a Material World, New York 1999 German Edition: Wie kommt der Geist in die Materie? München 2001 |
| Cross-Cultural Communication | Benkler | Benkler I 293 Cultural Conversation/Culture/Freedom/Benkler: My claim is that the emergence of a substantial nonmarket alternative path for cultural conversation increases the degrees of freedom available to individuals and groups to engage in cultural production and exchange, and that doing so increases the transparency of culture to its inhabitants. (…) the degree of self-consciousness that is feasible with open, conversation-based definition of culture (…) is itself rendered more transparent. (…) second, [there is] the degree to which the culture is writable, the degree to which individuals can participate in mixing and matching and making their own emphases, for themselves and for others, on the existing set of symbols. I 294 The flexibility with which cultural artifacts—meaning-carrying objects—can be rendered, preserved, and surrounded by different context and discussion makes it easy for anyone, anywhere, to make a self-conscious statement about culture. They enable what Balkin has called “glomming on”— taking that which is common cultural representation and reworking it into your own move in a cultural conversation(1). (…) as with other, purposeful peer-produced projects like Wikipedia, the basic characteristics of the Internet in general and the World Wide Web in particular have made it possible for anyone, anywhere, for any reason to begin to contribute to an accretion of conversation about well-defined cultural objects or about cultural trends and characteristics generally. These conversations can persist across time and exist across distance, and are available for both active participation and passive reading by many people in many places. The result is, as we are already seeing it, the emergence of widely accessible, self-conscious conversation about the meaning of contemporary culture by those who inhabit it. >Meaning/Benkler, >Cultural Freedom/Benkler. 1. Jack Balkin, “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society,” New York University Law Review 79 (2004): 1. |
Benkler I Yochai Benkler The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom New Haven 2007 |
| Deconstruction | Derrida | Gaus I 26 Deconstruction/Derrida/Ball: In Derrida’s version of postmodernism, the aim of interpretation is to expose and criticize the arbitrary or constructed character of claims to truth or knowledge, particularly by examining various binary oppositions or dichotomies such as knower/ known, object/representation, text/interpretation, true/false – a process that Derrida (1976)(1) calls ‘deconstruction’. Preresentation/Derrida: According to Derrida, all attempts to ‘represent’ reality produce, not knowledge or truth, but only different ‘representations’, none of which can be proven to be better or truer than any other. All social phenomena and forms of human experience – wars, revolutions, relations between the sexes, and so on – exist only through their representations or ‘texts’. And just as a literary text has many possible interpretations, so, says Derrida, do these other texts admit of multiple and contradictory ‘readings’ or interpretations. And all interpretations of meaning are in the final analysis ‘indeterminate’ and ‘undecidable’. As Derrida famously puts it, ‘there is nothing outside the text’ and even within the text its constitutive concepts or ‘signifiers’ have no stable meaning. Ambiguities within the text only increase with the passage of time and multiple and varied readings, until the text’s signifiers float freely and playfully apart, so that the reader – not the author – constructs whatever meaning the text may be said to have. Thus ‘the death of the author’ refers not to a physical fact but to an artifact of postmodernist interpretation. >Facts/Postmodernism, >Postmodernism/Ball, >Interpretation/Postmodernism. 1. Derrida, J. 1976. Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatrai Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ball, Terence. 2004. „History and the Interpretation of Texts“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Derrida I J. Derrida De la grammatologie, Paris 1967 German Edition: Grammatologie Frankfurt 1993 Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Dixit, Avinash | Hogan | Krugman III 12 Avinash Dixit/trade policies/international trade/Kala Krishna/Kathleen Hogan/Phillip Swagel: Since Dixit’s model (1988)(1) is probably the most influential of [calibration] models to date, we examine how an alternative specification of this model alters the policy recommendations and welfare results of the calibration exercise. As does Dixit, we apply the model to US.-Japan competition in the automobile industry, expanding the years examined to the full range from 1979 to 1985. VsDixit: The specification we employ is richer than Dixit’s in that we allow product differentiation not only between U.S. and Japanese goods, but also between goods made within each of the countries.* >International trade, >Trade policies, >Models, >Economic models, >Calibration, >New trade theory. The advantages of doing so are twofold. First, the richer specification allows us to get estimates for the extent of product differentiation, as well as timevarying behavioral parameters for firms and consumers. Second, it allows us to ask which results from Dixit’s simpler model are robust and which are artifacts of the model specification. Optimal trade policy: The effect of the richer specification is to completely reverse the sign of the resulting optimal trade policy: we find the optimal policy to be a subsidy to rather than a tax on imports. VsDixit: In fact, following the policies recommended by Dixit’s model can result in a welfare loss if the “true” model is as we specify. The more detailed specification also greatly affects the implicit estimates of collusion/competition between firms. >Competition, >Mergers. Competition: Our results suggest that auto industry firms behave more competitively than Bertrand oligopolists**, as opposed to Dixit’s finding of competition somewhere between that of Bertrand and Cournot oligopolists. Dixit’s result is in part a byproduct of his assumption that firms within a nation produce a homogeneous good. Price/marginal cost: With this assumption, the existence of any markup of price above marginal cost implies that behavior is more collusive than Bertrand. On the other hand, some results are robust. For example, the effects on firms’ behavior of trade policies, particularly the voluntary export restraints (VERs) imposed at the end of 1981, correspond to the effects noted by Dixit. Our implicit estimates of demand cross-elasticities are also consistent with other sources. >Cournot Competition, >Bertrand Competition. Krugman III 13 In addition, the targeting of instruments to distortions evident in Dixit’s results seems to carry through. Finally, as is common with most calibrated trade models, the extent of welfare gains from optimal policies, particularly optimal trade policies alone, remains quite limited. As in Dixit (1988)(1), we estimate optimal polices both with and without monopoly (union) labor rents. We then compare our results to Dixit’s. Dixit: Dixit finds that the optimal policy consists of a tariff on imports and a subsidy to domestic production. VsDixit: In contrast, our model indicates a subsidy to both imports and domestic production to be optimal. We suspect that this is related to our demand specification, which increases the importance of consumer surplus in welfare, thereby increasing the attractiveness of import subsidies which raise consumption. In addition, competition in our model appears to be quite vigorous.*** This tends to limit the gains from using the optimal production subsidy, as these gains are largest in the face of less competitive behavior. As does Dixit, we find that the existence of labor rents raises the optimal subsidy to production and reduces, and in some cases reverses, the optimal import subsidy. Cf. >Optimal tariffs. * Dixit (1988)(1), in contrast, assumes that goods produced within a country are perfect substitutes for one another-that a Chevrolet is the same as a Lincoln or a Pontiac. Although our specification allows for imperfect substitution between all products, the separability we impose groups together all U.S. cars and all Japanese cars. That is, our model puts a Chevy in the same group as a Cadillac, and a Civic in the same group as an Acura. ** ((s) In the economics of oligopoly, the Cournot and Bertrand models explore different ways firms can compete. Cournot models focus on quantity competition, where firms choose output levels, while Bertrand models focus on price competition, where firms set prices. In Bertrand competition, firms making identical products often reach an equilibrium where prices are equal to marginal costs, leading to zero economic profits. In contrast, Cournot competition typically leads to higher prices and positive profits for firms, as they limit their output to maximize profits.) *** The direction of optimal trade policy is known to he related to the extent of competition, as parametrized by the choice of the strategic variable and thus in our model by the CVs. For example, in Eaton and Grossman’s (1986)(2) simple model of duopolistic competition in third party markets, a tax on exports turns out to be optimal with price competition, while a subsidy is optimal with quantity competition. 1. Dixit, A. K. 1988. Optimal trade and industrial policies for the US automobile industry. In: Empirical methods for international trade, ed. R. Feenstra. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2. Eaton, J., and G. Grossman. 1986. Optimal trade and industrial policy under oligopoly. Quarterly Journal of Economics 100:383-406. Kala Krishna, Kathleen Hogan, and Phillip Swagel. „The Nonoptimality of Optimal Trade Policies: The U.S. Automobile Industry Revisited, 1979-1985.“ In: Paul Krugman and Alasdair Smith (Eds.) 1994. Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. |
EconKrug I Paul Krugman Volkswirtschaftslehre Stuttgart 2017 EconKrug II Paul Krugman Robin Wells Microeconomics New York 2014 Krugman III Paul Krugman Alasdair Smith Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1994 |
| Dixit, Avinash | Krishna | Krugman III 12 Avinash Dixit/trade policies/international trade/Kala Krishna/Kathleen Hogan/Phillip Swagel: Since Dixit’s model (1988)(1) is probably the most influential of [calibration] models to date, we examine how an alternative specification of this model alters the policy recommendations and welfare results of the calibration exercise. As does Dixit, we apply the model to US.-Japan competition in the automobile industry, expanding the years examined to the full range from 1979 to 1985. VsDixit: The specification we employ is richer than Dixit’s in that we allow product differentiation not only between U.S. and Japanese goods, but also between goods made within each of the countries.* >International trade, >Trade policies, >Models, >Economic models, >Calibration. The advantages of doing so are twofold. First, the richer specification allows us to get estimates for the extent of product differentiation, as well as timevarying behavioral parameters for firms and consumers. Second, it allows us to ask which results from Dixit’s simpler model are robust and which are artifacts of the model specification. Optimal trade policy: The effect of the richer specification is to completely reverse the sign of the resulting optimal trade policy: we find the optimal policy to be a subsidy to rather than a tax on imports. VsDixit: In fact, following the policies recommended by Dixit’s model can result in a welfare loss if the “true” model is as we specify. The more detailed specification also greatly affects the implicit estimates of collusion/competition between firms. >Competition, >Mergers. Competition: Our results suggest that auto industry firms behave more competitively than Bertrand oligopolists**, as opposed to Dixit’s finding of competition somewhere between that of Bertrand and Cournot oligopolists. Dixit’s result is in part a byproduct of his assumption that firms within a nation produce a homogeneous good. Price/marginal cost: With this assumption, the existence of any markup of price above marginal cost implies that behavior is more collusive than Bertrand. On the other hand, some results are robust. For example, the effects on firms’ behavior of trade policies, particularly the voluntary export restraints (VERs) imposed at the end of 1981, correspond to the effects noted by Dixit. Our implicit estimates of demand cross-elasticities are also consistent with other sources. >Cournot Competition, >Bertrand Competition. Krugman III 13 In addition, the targeting of instruments to distortions evident in Dixit’s results seems to carry through. Finally, as is common with most calibrated trade models, the extent of welfare gains from optimal policies, particularly optimal trade policies alone, remains quite limited. As in Dixit (1988)(1), we estimate optimal polices both with and without monopoly (union) labor rents. We then compare our results to Dixit’s. Dixit: Dixit finds that the optimal policy consists of a tariff on imports and a subsidy to domestic production. VsDixit: In contrast, our model indicates a subsidy to both imports and domestic production to be optimal. We suspect that this is related to our demand specification, which increases the importance of consumer surplus in welfare, thereby increasing the attractiveness of import subsidies which raise consumption. In addition, competition in our model appears to be quite vigorous.*** This tends to limit the gains from using the optimal production subsidy, as these gains are largest in the face of less competitive behavior. As does Dixit, we find that the existence of labor rents raises the optimal subsidy to production and reduces, and in some cases reverses, the optimal import subsidy. Cf. >Optimal tariffs. * Dixit (1988)(1), in contrast, assumes that goods produced within a country are perfect substitutes for one another-that a Chevrolet is the same as a Lincoln or a Pontiac. Although our specification allows for imperfect substitution between all products, the separability we impose groups together all U.S. cars and all Japanese cars. That is, our model puts a Chevy in the same group as a Cadillac, and a Civic in the same group as an Acura. ** ((s) In the economics of oligopoly, the Cournot and Bertrand models explore different ways firms can compete. Cournot models focus on quantity competition, where firms choose output levels, while Bertrand models focus on price competition, where firms set prices. In Bertrand competition, firms making identical products often reach an equilibrium where prices are equal to marginal costs, leading to zero economic profits. In contrast, Cournot competition typically leads to higher prices and positive profits for firms, as they limit their output to maximize profits.) *** The direction of optimal trade policy is known to he related to the extent of competition, as parametrized by the choice of the strategic variable and thus in our model by the CVs. For example, in Eaton and Grossman’s (1986)(2) simple model of duopolistic competition in third party markets, a tax on exports turns out to be optimal with price competition, while a subsidy is optimal with quantity competition. 1. Dixit, A. K. 1988. Optimal trade and industrial policies for the US automobile industry. In: Empirical methods for international trade, ed. R. Feenstra. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2. Eaton, J., and G. Grossman. 1986. Optimal trade and industrial policy under oligopoly. Quarterly Journal of Economics 100:383-406. Kala Krishna, Kathleen Hogan, and Phillip Swagel. „The Nonoptimality of Optimal Trade Policies: The U.S. Automobile Industry Revisited, 1979-1985.“ In: Paul Krugman and Alasdair Smith (Eds.) 1994. Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. |
EconKrug I Paul Krugman Volkswirtschaftslehre Stuttgart 2017 EconKrug II Paul Krugman Robin Wells Microeconomics New York 2014 Krugman III Paul Krugman Alasdair Smith Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1994 |
| Existence | McGinn | II 95 Existence/McGinn: the universe contains four basic forms of existence: 1) inanimate objects: stones, planets, clouds. 2) Organisms such as plants, worms and bacteria. 3) Artifacts such as watches, cars and computers. 4) conscious or sentient creatures such as bats, apes or humans. >Experience/McGinn. |
McGinn I Colin McGinn Problems in Philosophy. The Limits of Inquiry, Cambridge/MA 1993 German Edition: Die Grenzen vernünftigen Fragens Stuttgart 1996 McGinn II C. McGinn The Mysteriouy Flame. Conscious Minds in a Material World, New York 1999 German Edition: Wie kommt der Geist in die Materie? München 2001 |
| Existence | Simons | I 197 Interrupted Existence/Simons: e.g. a clock before and after disassembly can be called an interrupted existence. Problem: if parts are lost and are replaced by others, the question whether it continues to exist as the same depends on the course of development. This seems wrong. SimeonsVs"continuity theory": e.g. that the table of the same building blocks could be the same for the second time > Ship of Theseus. I 199ff Ship of Theseus/Simons: a) "collector": material continuity, b) "practitioner": functional continuity. Wrong: it is wrong to assume relativized identity (also for collector/practitioner). Then there is the question why there is a problem. Solution/Simons: the sortal term always compromises between a) the identity of the matter, "matter-constant" and b) the form, "form-constant". Form: a) for organisms: life-enabling structure, b) is for artifacts: function-enabling and c) e.g. islands: characteristic shape and relation to the neighborhood. Form Term/Simons: its heterogeneity ensures its usefulness. Collectors and practitioners are satisfied because both wanted from the beginning, something different. N.B.: there are two ships from the beginning (form-constant, matter-constant), and both coincide. The shipbuilder builds only one ship > coincidence - see Identity/Simons. I 259f Existence/modality/necessity/Simons: thesis: not everything that exists, exists necessarily. Hughes/Cresswell: but if it exists, it exists necessarily. ((s) That boils down to the same thing with Simons). I 261 Samson's thesis: existence is essential but not necessary. |
Simons I P. Simons Parts. A Study in Ontology Oxford New York 1987 |
| Homogenization | Climatology | Edwards I 401 Homogenization/climatology/Edwards: (…) observing systems and standards changed often and rapidly over time, creating temporal discontinuities and inconsistencies. These “inhomogeneities,” as meteorologists call them, rendered large quantities of weather data unusable for climatological purposes. Yet in recent decades, with fast, high-quality 4-D data assimilation, forecasting and climatology have begun to converge. Reanalysis of global weather data is producing - for the first time - consistent, gridded data on the planetary circulation, over periods of 50 years or more, at resolutions much higher than those achieved with traditional climatological data sets. Reanalysis may never replace traditional climate data, since serious concerns remain about how assimilation models “bias” data when integrated over very long periods. >Reanalysis/climatology. Edwards I 402 Nonetheless, the weather and climate data infrastructures are now inextricably linked by the “models of data” each of these infrastructures requires in order to project the atmosphere’s future and to know its past. >Models/metereology, >Weather data/metereology. Edwards I 406 Reanalysis: permits true four-dimensional assimilation, in which future observations as well as past observations can influence the state of the analysis at any point in time.(1) Edwards I 415 Inhomogeneities: Most inhomogeneities in climate data have little political valence, but there are important exceptions. As we saw in chapter 8, during the Cold War the Soviet Union withheld some data, while the People’s Republic of China withheld virtually all data. These data were not included in any Western climate data set until the mid 1980s.(2) Some recent work suggests that systematic errors may be more widespread than was previously believed. For example, nineteenth-century meteorologists throughout the Alps placed precipitation gauges on rooftops and thermometers Edwards I 416 thermometers in windows; later, they moved precipitation gauges to ground level and mounted thermometers inside screening devices placed in open areas (thus reducing the artifactual effects of buildings and pavement). Although stations modified their instrument placement at different times, precipitation measurements were systematically higher and temperature measurements lower after instrument placements were changed.(3) Satellite data: A different and much more problematic issue arises with respect to satellite data. (…) most raw sensor readings from satellites require some kind of processing to convert them into meteorological information. This can be a complex modeling process, as in the inversion of microwave radiances, but it also can be a much simpler data-reduction process. >Reanalysis/climatology, >Model bias/climatology. 1. K. E. Trenberth, “Atmospheric Circulation Climate Changes,” Climatic Change 31, no. 2 (1995), 306. 2. 15. P. D. Jones et al., A Gridpoint Surface Air Temperature Data Set for the Northern Hemisphere (US Department of Energy, Carbon Dioxide Research Division, 1985), 1. 3. R. Boehm et al., “Regional Temperature Variability in the European Alps: 1760–8 From Homogenized Instrumental Time Series,” International Journal of Climatology 21, no. 14 (2001): 1779–; Auer et al., “Metadata and Their Role in Homogenising.” |
Edwards I Paul N. Edwards A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge 2013 |
| Humans | Postmodernism | Gaus I 49 Humans/Postmodernism/Bennett: Postmodern theorizing repositions the human in relation to the non-human entities and forces with which it shares the world. Its metaphysics of immanence displaces humans from the centre of the universe. >Immanence. We are viewed instead as a particularly complex and reflexive formation, differing from other forms in significant degree but not in kind. The human is pictured as a mixture of categories of things against which it has traditionally been defined. We are hybrids of animal and machine, culture and biology, language and affect. Cf. >Animal, >Animal language, >Thinking, >Artificial intelligence, >Language, >Culture, >Affects. Haraway: We are cyborgs, says Donna Haraway (1989)(1), who examines the advantages and disadvantages of this for democratic politics, feminism, and multicultural coexistence. >Democracy, >Feminism. Bruno Latour: Latour says that the human is not one pole to be opposed to another called the non-human, but rather a ‘weaver of morphisms’: ‘The expression “anthropomorphic” considerably underestimates our humanity. We should be talking about … technomorphisms, zoomorphisms, physiomorphisms, ideomorphisms, theomorphisms, sociomorphisms, psychomorphisms … Their alliances and their exchanges, taken together, are what define the anthropos’ (1993(2): 137). >B. Latour. Deleuze: Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987)(3) discussion of the childhood game of ‘becoming animal’ explores the positive potential of this mobile hybridity. The game, they say, reveals the child’s sense of herself as born from an over-rich field of protean forces and materials, only some of which are tapped by her current, human form. In playing their barking, mooing, chirping, growling games, children bear witness to an ‘inhuman contrivance with the animal’ within them (...).(3) >G. Deleuze, >F. Guattari. Gaus I 50 Ball: The postmodern emphasis on the shared material basis of all things – of humans, animals, artifacts and natural objects – also advances an ecological sense of interconnectedness. >Ecology, cf. >Deep ecology. Becoming: Postmodern theorists picture the human being, like everything else that is, to be engaged in ongoing transitions between being and becoming. For Derrida, becoming is what makes possible any progress or improvement toward an ideal in political life (...).(4) >J. Derrida, >Change. 1. Haraway, Donna (1989) Primate Visions. New York: Routledge. 2. Latour, Bruno (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 4. Derrida, Jacques (2001) ‘An interview with Jacques Derrida’. Theory & Event, 5 (1). Jane Bennett, 2004. „Postmodern Approaches to Political Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Identity | Postmodernism | Gaus I 47 Identity/Postmodernism/Bennett: Much genealogical work, (...) insists upon the material recalcitrance of cultural products. Gender, sexuality, race, and personal identity are viewed as congealed responses to contingent sets of historical circumstances, and yet the mere fact that they are human artifacts does not mean that they yield readily to human understanding or control (Gatens, 1996)(1). >Identity politics, >Gender, >Sexuality. A personal identity, for example, is a construction, but one sedimented into bodily movements, instinctive tendencies, linguistic routines, and institutional forms that resist human attempts to redirect or revise them. Cf. >S. de Beauvoir. Everything is acculturated, but cultural forms are themselves material assemblages of natural bodies. >Culture, >Cultural tradition, >Cultural values, >Cultural relativism. Postmodern theory acknowledges the artifice of the natural and the materiality of the cultural. >Postmodernism. Difference/Specifity: There always exists – in words, things, bodies, thoughts, artifacts, ways of life – that which is persistently resistant to theoretical capture, or, for that matter, to any fixed form. This indeterminate and never fully determinable dimension of things has been described as difference or différance (Jacques Derrida), the virtual (Gilles Deleuze), non-identity (Theodor Adorno), the invisible (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), the immanent (William Connolly), the semiotic (Julia Kristeva), sexual difference (Luce Irigaray), the real (Jacques Lacan), life (Friedrich Nietzsche), or negativity (Diana Coole). >Theodor W. Adorno, >F. Nietzsche, >J. Lacan, >M. Merleau-Ponty, >G. Deleuze, >J. Derrida, >W. Connolly. Jean-François Lyotard calls it ‘that which exceeds every putting into form or object without being anywhere else but within them’ (1997(2): 29). Postmodern political theory tries to acknowledge this resistance and to resist the urge to expel this disruptive force from politics (Honig, 1993)(3). >J.-F. Lyotard. 1. Gatens, Moira (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. New York: Routledge. 2. Lyotard, Jean-François (1997) Postmodern Fables, trans. Georges van den Abbeele. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 3. Honig, Bonnie (1993) Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jane Bennett, 2004. „Postmodern Approaches to Political Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Infrastructure | Edwards | I 40 Infrastructure/Star/Ruhleder/Edwards: Infrastructure thus exhibits the following features, (…) summarized by Susan Leigh Star and Karen Ruhleder: -Embeddedness. Infrastructure is sunk into, inside of, other structures, social arrangements, and technologies. -Transparency. Infrastructure does not have to be reinvented each time or assembled for each task, but invisibly supports those tasks. -Reach or scope beyond a single event or a local practice. -Learned as part of membership. The taken-for-grantedness of artifacts and organizational arrangements is a sine qua non of membership in a community of practice. Strangers and outsiders encounter infrastructure as a target object to be learned about. New participants acquire a naturalized familiarity with its objects as they become members. I 41 - Links with conventions of practice. Infrastructure both shapes and is shaped by the conventions of a community of practice. - Embodiment of standards. Infrastructure takes on transparency by plugging into other infrastructures and tools in a standardized fashion. - Built on an installed base. Infrastructure wrestles with the inertia of the installed base and inherits strengths and limitations from that base. - Becomes visible upon breakdown. The normally invisible quality of working infrastructure becomes visible when it breaks: the server is down, the bridge washes out, there is a power blackout. -Is fixed in modular increments, not all at once or globally. Because infrastructure is big, layered, and complex, and because it means different things locally, it is never changed from above. Changes require time, negotiation, and adjustment with other aspects of the systems involved. Adapted from S. L. Star and K. Ruhleder, “Steps Toward an Ecology of Infrastructure: Design and Access for Large Information Spaces,” Information Systems Research 7, no. 1 (1996): 111–. |
Edwards I Paul N. Edwards A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge 2013 |
| Interpretation | Dennett | I 237 Artifact/interpretation/Game of Life/Conway/Dennett: Question: are the "Eater", "Glider", etc. designed objects or natural formations? The easiest Glider arises obviously from the rules, no one had to make it. ((s) >Game of Life/Conway; Cf. > Objet ambigu, Paul Valéry). --- Fodor IV 137 Interpretation theory/Dennett/Fodor/Lepore: (Brentano: Thesis: The intentional cannot be reduced to the physical). Dennett: i.e. ontologically, there are no such things as belief, desires, intentional phenomena! Interpretation: they are, however, indispensable as elements of interpretation (epistemic). ((s) That is, that intentionality (or its attribution) is accessible only by interpretation. ("Interpretivism", "interpretativism")). IV 138 Intentional attribution/Dennett: intentional attribution is always wrong. Because there is no intentionality which is ontological (merely as epistemically useful concepts), Vs intentional realism. >Attribution. Principle of Charity/Fodor/Lepore: must be intrinsically holistic, which is also accepted by Dennett. >Principle of Charity. Interpretation theory:/Fodor/Lepore: according to Dennett, there are two schools: 1. Def Projectivism/Dennett: one ascribes to the other the internal states that one would have oneself in the appropriate circumstances. 2. Def Normativism/Dennett: one ascribes to the other internal states which he should have in the circumstances. IV 139 There are, of course, close relations between normativism and holism. >Holism. |
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 F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Liability | Calabresi | Parisi I 19 Liability rules/property rules/Calabresi/Melamid/Miceli: The classic paper by Calabresi and Melamed (1972)(1) addresses the manner in which rights or entitlements, once assigned, are legally protected and transferred. Parisi I 20 They distinguished between ... Property rules: ... under which an entitlement can only be transferred if the holder of the entitlement consents; and ... Liability rules: ..., under which a party seeking to acquire an entitlement can do so without the holder’s consent provided that he or she is willing to pay compensation for the holder’s loss.* Property rules: Property rules therefore form the basis for market (voluntary) exchange, while... Liability rules: ... liability rules form the basis for legal (forced) exchange. Markets: Because market exchange is consensual, it ensures a mutual benefit, or the realization of gains from trade. Law/property rules: : The role of the law in such transactions is limited to the enforcement of property rights and contractual exchange of entitlements. In other words, law is complementary to markets in promoting the efficient allocation of resources. Law/liability rules: In the case of liability rules, on the other hand, the law takes the primary role of forcing an exchange of the entitlement on terms dictated by the court. Here, the law is a substitute for market exchange in organizing the transfer of entitlements because bargaining costs preclude voluntary transfers. Externalities/liability: The choice between market and legal exchange depends on the trade-off between the transaction costs associated with bargaining over the price, and errors by the court in setting the price. >Coase Theorem/Miceli. Property rule/Miceli: (...) suppose that farmers situated along a railroad track have the legal right to be free from crop damages caused by sparks, and that right is protected by a property rule. The railroad would then have to secure the agreement of all farmers in order to run trains along a given route, a prospect that would likely prevent any trains from ever running due to high bargaining costs. Liability rule: If the farmers’ rights were instead protected by a liability rule that only required the railroad to compensate farmers for any damages but did not allow the farmers to prevent trains from running, the railroad would internalize the harm through the assessment of liability for damages, and it would run the efficient number of trains. Legal problem: This arrangement, however, places a heavy burden on the court to measure the damages suffered by victims accurately. If it underestimates the damages, the railroad will run too many trains, and if it overestimates damages, the railroad will run too few. * Calabresi and Melamed also discuss a third rule, called an inalienability rule, which prohibits the exchange of an entitlement under any circumstances, including consensual exchange. Examples include constitutional protections of certain fundamental rights, like speech and religion, as well as laws prohibiting the sale of organs, children, and cultural artifacts. 1. Calabresi, Guido and A. Douglas Melamed (1972). “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral.” Harvard Law Review 85: 1089–1128. Miceli, Thomas J. „Economic Models of Law“. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press. |
Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
| Liability | Melamed | Parisi I 19 Liability rules/property rules/Calabresi/Melamid/Miceli: The classic paper by Calabresi and Melamed (1972)(1) addresses the manner in which rights or entitlements, once assigned, are legally protected and transferred. Parisi I 20 They distinguished between ... Property rules: ... under which an entitlement can only be transferred if the holder of the entitlement consents; and ... Liability rules: ..., under which a party seeking to acquire an entitlement can do so without the holder’s consent provided that he or she is willing to pay compensation for the holder’s loss.* Property rules: Property rules therefore form the basis for market (voluntary) exchange, while... Liability rules: ... liability rules form the basis for legal (forced) exchange. Markets: Because market exchange is consensual, it ensures a mutual benefit, or the realization of gains from trade. Law/property rules: : The role of the law in such transactions is limited to the enforcement of property rights and contractual exchange of entitlements. In other words, law is complementary to markets in promoting the efficient allocation of resources. Law/liability rules: In the case of liability rules, on the other hand, the law takes the primary role of forcing an exchange of the entitlement on terms dictated by the court. Here, the law is a substitute for market exchange in organizing the transfer of entitlements because bargaining costs preclude voluntary transfers. Externalities/liability: The choice between market and legal exchange depends on the trade-off between the transaction costs associated with bargaining over the price, and errors by the court in setting the price. >Coase Theorem/Miceli. Property rule/Miceli: (...) suppose that farmers situated along a railroad track have the legal right to be free from crop damages caused by sparks, and that right is protected by a property rule. The railroad would then have to secure the agreement of all farmers in order to run trains along a given route, a prospect that would likely prevent any trains from ever running due to high bargaining costs. Liability rule: If the farmers’ rights were instead protected by a liability rule that only required the railroad to compensate farmers for any damages but did not allow the farmers to prevent trains from running, the railroad would internalize the harm through the assessment of liability for damages, and it would run the efficient number of trains. Legal problem: This arrangement, however, places a heavy burden on the court to measure the damages suffered by victims accurately. If it underestimates the damages, the railroad will run too many trains, and if it overestimates damages, the railroad will run too few. * Calabresi and Melamed also discuss a third rule, called an inalienability rule, which prohibits the exchange of an entitlement under any circumstances, including consensual exchange. Examples include constitutional protections of certain fundamental rights, like speech and religion, as well as laws prohibiting the sale of organs, children, and cultural artifacts. 1. Calabresi, Guido and A. Douglas Melamed (1972). “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral.” Harvard Law Review 85: 1089–1128. Miceli, Thomas J. „Economic Models of Law“. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press. |
Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
| Mysticism | Nozick | II 660 Astral body/mysticism/Nozick: Suppose we have a theory that in a dream a body leaves the sleeping body. Problem: if one dreams of others, must there astral bodies also arrive there? Problem: if many dream of Marilyn Monroe, but she does not dream of so many. II 157 Mysticism/Nozick: mystical experiences might as well be more superficial. - They do not show that they are "deeper". >"Ivresse des grands profondeurs", >Description levels, >Levels/order. II 154 People have always difficulty to describe it - but sounds and colors are not hard to describe - Incorrect use of "indescribable". >Description, >Colors, >Knowledge, >Phenomena, >Qualia. II 158 If the reality is as the mystic says, but the knowledge of it brings no evolutionary advantage, we should not expect that brain states were selected to display the reality as it is (namely, as the mystics experienced). >Selection, >Evolution, >Brain states. Meditation/"as few thoughts as possible": should we believe that there is something that corresponds to this experience? - That depends on what we believe, what meditation creates, if there were no such underlying reality. - E.g. what would the amplifier amplify if we take out the CD? - To adopt an unusual reality, would be a mistake. >Reality, >Regularity, >World. If a particular experience adjusts each time in the procedure (meditation), it is an artifact. >Artifacts. Rigid coupling shows nothing. >Covariance, >Rigidity. II 160 The mystical experience does not show why it is there. Mysticism/Nozick: I take it seriously - if not, you should justify this. >Experiences, >Justification. |
No I R. Nozick Philosophical Explanations Oxford 1981 No II R., Nozick The Nature of Rationality 1994 |
| Object | Lewis | IV 258 Object/Thing/Object/Extension/Lewis: a given object in itself is neither extension nor intension - e.g. in a metameta language you can say that one and the same thing is both, the intension of the expression in the surface structure "my ha" and the extension of the meta-linguistic expression intension of "my hat" - However, some entities can only serve as extensions, while others - e.g. functions of indices - can be used as both - but there is not one thing that would be unsuited to be an extension. >Intension/Lewis, >Extension/Lewis, >Meta language. --- Rorty VI 210 Objects/Reality/world/Lewis/Rorty: Thesis: all objects in the universe except the elementary particles are manipulated artifacts. |
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 Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Objectivity | Monod | I 23 Object/Objectivity/Monod: there are two criteria for artefacts: 1. Regularity 2. Repeatability >Artifacts. For example, according to these criteria, one could decide that pebbles are natural and quartz crystals (falsely) artificial. The crystal reflects macroscopically the microscopic molecular structure. Therefore the regularity. (Natural origin). >Regularities. Our conclusions are ambiguous: one could find all the criteria of an artificial origin in a hive of wild bees. I 36 Objectivity/Monod: objectivity of nature: means the cancellation of the submission of a final cause, a "project". >Teleology, >Teleonomy, cf. >Purposes/Aristotle. |
Mon I J. Monod Le hasard et la nécessité, Paris 1970 German Edition: Zufall und Notwendigkeit Hamburg 1982 |
| Order | Huxley | Gould I 250 Order/Th. H. Huxley/Gould: according to Th. H. Huxley, a living being without inner complexity proved that the organization of life was born from an indeterminate vital force, and not vice versa; "organization is the result of life, not vice versa the result of organization". >Complexity, >Simplicity, >Life. Gould I 248 Huxley discovered a gelatinous mass he called "Bathybius Haeckelii" (today identified as dead supporting structures of algae). Gould I 250 The predicted shapeless and structureless substance had been found. It stretched over time and space and covered the bottom of the mysterious oceans. GouldVsHuxley: but why should the formless be equated with the primitive? (These are progress-oriented metaphorics). Only a few organisms are equal to viruses in terms of regularity and recurrence. Simple bacteria have exactly defined forms. Gould I 251 Later, Bathybius was recognized as an artifact: it occurred whenever mud was preserved in a sample with alcohol. cf. >Life/Kauffman. |
HuxleyA I Aldous Huxley Science, Liberty and Peace London 1946 HuxleyTh I Thomas Henry Huxley Lectures On Evolution Whitefish, MT 2010 Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Personality Traits | Allport | Corr II 29 Trait-names/personality traits/lexicon/study background/ Allport/Odbert/Saucier: The essence of [Allport’s and Odbert’s article ‘Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study’] was a classification of (…) English ‘trait-name’ words (terms distinguishing the behavior of one human being from another) into four categories. (…) from a scientific standpoint, some of the most basic personality attributes might be discovered from studying conceptions implicit in use of the natural language. If a distinction is highly represented in the lexicon – and found in any dictionary – it can be presumed to have practical importance. This is because the degree of representation of an attribute in language has some correspondence with the general importance of the attribute in real-world transactions. Therefore, when a scientist identifies personality attributes that are strongly represented in the natural language, that scientist is simultaneously identifying what may be the most important attributes. >H.S. Odbert, >G. Allport. II 30 Study Design/Allport/Odbert: Allport and Odbert turned to Webster’s New International Dictionary (1925)(1), a compendium of approximately 400,000 separate terms. Combining judgments of three investigators (themselves plus a person designated only as ‘AL’, (…)), they built a list of 17,953 trait-names in the English language that drew on the following criterion for inclusion: ‘the capacity of any term to distinguish the behavior of one human being from that of another’ (p. 24) (1). Allport and Odbert went further and differentiated terms into four categories or columns. The (…) terms in Column I were ‘neutral terms designating possible II 31 personal traits’ (p. 38)(1), more specifically defined as ‘generalized and personalized determining tendencies – consistent and stable modes of an individual’s adjustment’ to his/her environment (p. 26)(1). The (…) terms in Column II were ‘terms primarily descriptive of temporary moods or activities’ (…). The (…) terms in Column III were ‘weighted terms conveying social and characterial judgments of personal conduct, or designated influence on others’ (p. 27)(1) (…).The other (…) terms fell into the miscellaneous category in Column IV, labeled as ‘metaphorical and doubtful terms’ (p. 38)(1). This last grab-bag category included terms describing physical characteristics and various abilities (…). II 33 Findings/Allport/Odbert: 1. Allport and Odbert cogently argue that, basically, normal human life cannot proceed without some reference to personality dispositions. There is no better argument than their trenchant words from the monograph: “Even the psychologist who inveighs against traits, and denies that their symbolic existence conforms to ‘real existence’ will nevertheless write a convincing letter of recommendation to prove that one of his favorite students is ‘trustworthy, self-reliant, and keenly critical’” (pp. 4–5)(1). 2. Allport and Odbert indicate that the dispositions to which trait-names refer are more than conversational artifact, a form of everyday error (though in part they may be that). They are to some degree useful for understanding and prediction, as confirmed by later research (Roberts et al., 2007)(3). [The follow-on assertion constitutes that] the degree of representation of an attribute in language has some correspondence with the general importance of the attribute in real-world transactions. II 34 3. (…) science can lean on and build on the body of commonsense concepts in language. Rather than relying exclusively on the top-down gambits of theorists, there is opportunity for a generative bottom-up approach. II 35 4. (…) Allport and Odbert recognized a difficulty inherent in personality language: trait-names mean different things to different people. To a degree, these meanings are contingent on one’s ‘habits of thought’ (p. 4)(1). One reason builds on the polysemy (multiple distinct meanings) that many words have. 5. Within science, the difficulty might be even further resolved by explicit communication and consensus. For Allport and Odbert, this meant naming traits in a careful and logical way, and not merely codifying but also ‘purifying’ natural-language terminology (p. vi)(1). II 36 6. Allport and Odbert’s prime interest was in tendencies that are ‘consistent and stable modes of an individual’s adjustment to his environment’ rather than ‘merely temporary and specific behavior’ (p. 26)(1). 7. (…) trait-names reflect a combination of the biophysical influences and something more cultural (perhaps historically varying). (…) characterizations of human qualities are determined partly by ‘standards and interests peculiar to the times’ (p. 2)(1) in a particular social epoch. [In this way] culture, trait-names are partly ‘invented in accordance with cultural demands’ (p. 3)(1). II 37 VsAllport/VsOdbert: 1. (…) they ignore and give short-shrift to culture, both with regard to issues of cross-cultural generalizability and of how traits themselves may reflect culture-relevant contents. 2. According to their distinctive ‘trait hypothesis’ (p. 12), no two persons ‘possess precisely the same trait’ (p. 14)(1) and each ‘individual differs in every one of his traits from every other individual’ (p. 18)(1). The problem is not that individualism is wrong; rather, it may be ethnocentric to impose an individualistic filter throughout personality psychology, and in fact such idiothetic approaches are outside the mainstream of current and recent personality psychology. II 38 3. Another aspect of the thinking (…) that might appear odd, in retrospect, is the notion of a single, cardinal trait that provides determining tendencies in an individual life. (…) a particular attribute becomes so pervasive in a person that it becomes a distinct focus of organization. Seventy years later, there seems still to be a lack of evidence for cardinal traits that perform a more or less hostile take-over, coming to determine and structure the remainder of the personality system. II 39 4. Allport and Odbert argue for the desirability of neutral terminology in science. Unfortunately, it appears that they extend the desire for unweighted emotion-free vocabulary into the very attribute-contents evident in the trait-names in language, with confusing consequences. On this view, the trait-names in language that are judgmental and ‘emotionally toned’ (p. v)(1), having affective polarity, are suspect and less worthy of study than the neutral ones. But affectively toned concepts like evil and virtue are particularly worthy of study particularly because of their extreme affective tone (…). II 40 5. (…) the numerically largest category of trait-names was social evaluation. However, they offer no account for why the third column – reflecting social judgments likely unconnected with biophysical traits – would be the biggest component in person perception. 6. (…) the notion that censorial and moral terms – and virtues, II 41 vices, whatever is associated with blame or praise, not to mention social effects – have no use for a psychologist seems now obsolete. 7. To accept at face value the particular Allport and Odbert classification of trait-names into four categories is to take on the assumptions of a specialized theory of traits, whose main propositions can be construed based on the classification itself. (…) attention to emotions and morality would distract us from the central aspects of personality which reflect enduring consistencies operating intrinsically in the person, and outside the influence of society (…). 1. Webster’s new international dictionary of the English language (1925). Springfield, MA: Merriam. 2. Allport, G. W., & Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47 (1, Whole No. 211). 3. Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 313–345. Saucier, Gerard: “Classification of Trait-Names Revisiting Allport and Odbert (1936)”, In: Philip Corr (Ed.), 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 29-45. |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Personality Traits | Odbert | Corr II 29 Trait-names/personality traits/lexicon/study background/ Allport/Odbert/Saucier: The essence of [Allport’s and Odbert’s article ‘Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study’] was a classification of (…) English ‘trait-name’ words (terms distinguishing the behavior of one human being from another) into four categories. >Lexical hypothesis, >Lexical studies. (…) from a scientific standpoint, some of the most basic personality attributes might be discovered from studying conceptions implicit in use of the natural language. >Everyday language, >Concepts, >Language use, >Personality. If a distinction is highly represented in the lexicon – and found in any dictionary – it can be presumed to have practical importance. This is because the degree of representation of an attribute in language has some correspondence with the general importance of the attribute in real-world transactions. Therefore, when a scientist identifies personality attributes that are strongly represented in the natural language, that scientist is simultaneously identifying what may be the most important attributes. >Relevance. II 30 Study Design/Allport/Odbert: Allport and Odbert turned to Webster’s New International Dictionary (1925)(1), a compendium of approximately 400,000 separate terms. Combining judgments of three investigators (themselves plus a person designated only as ‘AL’, (…)), they built a list of 17,953 trait-names in the English language that drew on the following criterion for inclusion: ‘the capacity of any term to distinguish the behavior of one human being from that of another’ (p. 24) (1). Allport and Odbert went further and differentiated terms into four categories or columns. The (…) terms in Column I were ‘neutral terms designating possible II 31 personal traits’ (p. 38)(1), more specifically defined as ‘generalized and personalized determining tendencies – consistent and stable modes of an individual’s adjustment’ to his/her environment (p. 26)(1). The (…) terms in Column II were ‘terms primarily descriptive of temporary moods or activities’ (…). The (…) terms in Column III were ‘weighted terms conveying social and characterial judgments of personal conduct, or designated influence on others’ (p. 27)(1) (…).The other (…) terms fell into the miscellaneous category in Column IV, labeled as ‘metaphorical and doubtful terms’ (p. 38)(1). This last grab-bag category included terms describing physical characteristics and various abilities (…). II 33 Findings/Allport/Odbert: 1. Allport and Odbert cogently argue that, basically, normal human life cannot proceed without some reference to personality dispositions. There is no better argument than their trenchant words from the monograph: “Even the psychologist who inveighs against traits, and denies that their symbolic existence conforms to ‘real existence’ will nevertheless write a convincing letter of recommendation to prove that one of his favorite students is ‘trustworthy, self-reliant, and keenly critical’” (pp. 4–5)(1). 2. Allport and Odbert indicate that the dispositions to which trait-names refer are more than conversational artifact, a form of everyday error (though in part they may be that). They are to some degree useful for understanding and prediction, as confirmed by later research (Roberts et al., 2007)(3). [The follow-on assertion constitutes that] the degree of representation of an attribute in language has some correspondence with the general importance of the attribute in real-world transactions. >Dispositions, >Representation. II 34 3. (…) science can lean on and build on the body of commonsense concepts in language. Rather than relying exclusively on the top-down gambits of theorists, there is opportunity for a generative bottom-up approach. II 35 4. (…) Allport and Odbert recognized a difficulty inherent in personality language: trait-names mean different things to different people. To a degree, these meanings are contingent on one’s ‘habits of thought’ (p. 4)(1). One reason builds on the polysemy (multiple distinct meanings) that many words have. >Conventions, >Meaning, >Reference. 5. Within science, the difficulty might be even further resolved by explicit communication and consensus. For Allport and Odbert, this meant naming traits in a careful and logical way, and not merely codifying but also ‘purifying’ natural-language terminology (p. vi)(1). II 36 6. Allport and Odbert’s prime interest was in tendencies that are ‘consistent and stable modes of an individual’s adjustment to his environment’ rather than ‘merely temporary and specific behavior’ (p. 26)(1). 7. (…) trait-names reflect a combination of the biophysical influences and something more cultural (perhaps historically varying). (…) characterizations of human qualities are determined partly by ‘standards and interests peculiar to the times’ (p. 2)(1) in a particular social epoch. [In this way] culture, trait-names are partly ‘invented in accordance with cultural demands’ (p. 3)(1). II 37 VsAllport/VsOdbert: 1. (…) they ignore and give short-shrift to culture, both with regard to issues of cross-cultural generalizability and of how traits themselves may reflect culture-relevant contents. 2. According to their distinctive ‘trait hypothesis’ (p. 12), no two persons ‘possess precisely the same trait’ (p. 14)(1) and each ‘individual differs in every one of his traits from every other individual’ (p. 18)(1). The problem is not that individualism is wrong; rather, it may be ethnocentric to impose an individualistic filter throughout personality psychology, and in fact such idiothetic approaches are outside the mainstream of current and recent personality psychology. II 38 3. Another aspect of the thinking (…) that might appear odd, in retrospect, is the notion of a single, cardinal trait that provides determining tendencies in an individual life. (…) a particular attribute becomes so pervasive in a person that it becomes a distinct focus of organization. Seventy years later, there seems still to be a lack of evidence for cardinal traits that perform a more or less hostile take-over, coming to determine and structure the remainder of the personality system. II 39 4. Allport and Odbert argue for the desirability of neutral terminology in science. Unfortunately, it appears that they extend the desire for unweighted emotion-free vocabulary into the very attribute-contents evident in the trait-names in language, with confusing consequences. On this view, the trait-names in language that are judgmental and ‘emotionally toned’ (p. v)(1), having affective polarity, are suspect and less worthy of study than the neutral ones. But affectively toned concepts like evil and virtue are particularly worthy of study particularly because of their extreme affective tone (…). II 40 5. (…) the numerically largest category of trait-names was social evaluation. However, they offer no account for why the third column – reflecting social judgments likely unconnected with biophysical traits – would be the biggest component in person perception. 6. (…) the notion that censorial and moral terms – and virtues, II 41 vices, whatever is associated with blame or praise, not to mention social effects – have no use for a psychologist seems now obsolete. 7. To accept at face value the particular Allport and Odbert classification of trait-names into four categories is to take on the assumptions of a specialized theory of traits, whose main propositions can be construed based on the classification itself. (…) attention to emotions and morality would distract us from the central aspects of personality which reflect enduring consistencies operating intrinsically in the person, and outside the influence of society (…). 1. Webster’s new international dictionary of the English language (1925). Springfield, MA: Merriam. 2. Allport, G. W., & Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47 (1, Whole No. 211). 3. Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 313–345. Saucier, Gerard: “Classification of Trait-Names Revisiting Allport and Odbert (1936)”, In: Philip Corr (Ed.), 2018. Personality and Individual Differences. Revisiting the classical studies. Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne: Sage, pp. 29-45. |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| Political Theory | Postmodernism | Gaus I 47 Political Theory/Postmodernism/Bennett: Postmodern theory often takes the form of genealogical studies which reveal how discursive practices and conceptual schemata are embedded with power relations, and how these cultural forms constitute what is experienced as natural or real (Butler, 1993(1) ; Brown, 1995(2); Ferguson, 1991(3)). >J. Butler. One of the political insights of postmodern theory is that ‘the stakes of a democratic politics … are as much about the modern crisis of representation as they are about the distribution of other goods’ (Dumm, 1999(4): 60). Much genealogical work, however, also insists upon the material recalcitrance of cultural products. Gender, sexuality, race, and personal identity are viewed as congealed responses to contingent sets of historical circumstances, and yet the mere fact that they are human artifacts does not mean that they yield readily to human understanding or control (Gatens, 1996)(5). >Identity/Postmodernism, >Gender, >Sex Differences, >Identity Politics. 1. Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge. 2. Brown, Wendy (1995) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 3. Ferguson, Kathy E. (1991) The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 4. Dumm, Thomas (1999) ‘The problem of the We’. boundary 2, 26 (3): 55–61. 5. Gatens, Moira (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. New York: Routledge. Jane Bennett, 2004. „Postmodern Approaches to Political Theory“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Progress | Darwin | Gould III 177 Progress/Darwin/Gould: Question: why did Darwin smuggle progress back in through the back door by writing about the supremacy of biotic competition in a constantly overcrowded world? (KropotkinVsDarwin). After the extinction of the Permian period, 95% of marine invertebrates had disappeared. Nothing was crowded. Darwin: was only able to pull himself out of the affair by considering the fossils to be artifacts (gaps in the finds). >Evolution, >Darwinism, >Selection. |
Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Progress | Gould | IV 112 Thinking/progress/Gould: progress in science requires new ways of thinking. Examples: See Natural Laws/Lyell, Gradualism/Gould. IV 186 Progress/evolution/Gould: there is no progress in evolution to better individual parts: the eyes of the trilobites, for example, have never been reached in their complexity or sharpness by the later anthropodes, let alone surpassed. III 16 Progress/life/trends: new trends may be explained by a change in the range of variations of entire systems (instead of individual entities within the systems). It is just an inversion of terms, not a mathematical procedure. Gould thesis: evolution: the history of life as a whole is not marked by progress! Not even by a directed evolutionary force. III 34 Progress/Gould: some assume a development towards complexity or differentiation. Gould: even for these earmarked replacement terms, progress cannot be defined as the main impulse of life. We have the need to view evolution as predictable and progress-oriented. Thesis: the human is not the crown of creation. Trend: there are more and more animals in evolution - the time of the human is simply short ((s)GouldVsAnthropic Principle > Anthropic Principle). III 39 It is a mistake to understand evolution as an ascending ladder. Bacteria are actually no less complex than we are. III 86 Trend: progress is not walking a path, but a complex series of transitions or lateral steps. III 92 The trend is not a ladder, but a chain of reinforcements. III 89 Success/evolution: what are real "success stories" in evolution? E.g. rats, bats, antelopes. These three groups dominate the world of mammals, both in number and ecological distribution. Most successful: bony fish: bony fish make up almost 50% of all vertebrate species. There are hundreds of times as many bony fish species as the primates and five times as many as all mammals put together. III 121 Progress/sport/Gould: improved performance: progress in spots can be depicted by an asymptote. What is remarkable, is that women have a much steeper improvement curve than men. Progress/livestock breeding: the progress in livestock breeding is often 13% per year. The breeding of thoroughbred horses is economically more interesting than all other breeding projects! It can therefore be assumed that thoroughbred horses have long since reached their optimum. III 123 Sports/progress: the records in the running disciplines (200m, 10,000m) have improved by the same relative amount regardless of distance: namely from 5.69 to 7.57 metres per minute in a decade (marathon: 9.18). If you extrapolated that, then women should soon run faster than the men. However, extrapolation is a mostly unsuitable means. Sports/women: advantages of the female body are the fat distribution and thus buoyancy. E. g. crossing the English Channel and swimming distance to Catalina Island: here the women already hold the world record today. Many women would beat most (untrained) men in all disciplines anyway. III 167 Progress/evolution/Darwin/Gould: Darwin initially rejected the term evolution because it is linked to progress. The term does not appear in the first edition of the "Origin of Species". III 175 Progress/nature/Gould: struggle: a)"biotic": the biotic struggle describes the struggle between living beings and for food; it can produce progress, as in faster running, better thinking, stronger physical condition, etc. b)"abiotic": abiotic is e. g. the fight of a plant at the edge of the desert. This cannot bring about any progress, because the environment does not change over a long period of time. Progress: the argument of the predominance of biotic competition is not enough, something must be added. If the environment is relatively empty, the inferior variants can continue to exist next to it. III 177 Progress/Darwin/Gould: question: why did Darwin smuggle progress back in through the back door by writing about the supremacy of biotic competition in a constantly overcrowded world? (KropotkinVsDarwin). After the demise of the Permian period, 95% of marine invertebrates had disappeared. Nothing was crowded. Darwin: was only able to pull himself out of the affair by considering the fossils to be artifacts (gaps in the finds). III 179 Progress/Gould: how can one define "higher" if evolution produces a parasite with every alleged progress? >Evolution, >Explanation. |
Gould I Stephen Jay Gould The Panda’s Thumb. More Reflections in Natural History, New York 1980 German Edition: Der Daumen des Panda Frankfurt 2009 Gould II Stephen Jay Gould Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. Further Reflections in Natural History, New York 1983 German Edition: Wie das Zebra zu seinen Streifen kommt Frankfurt 1991 Gould III Stephen Jay Gould Full House. The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, New York 1996 German Edition: Illusion Fortschritt Frankfurt 2004 Gould IV Stephen Jay Gould The Flamingo’s Smile. Reflections in Natural History, New York 1985 German Edition: Das Lächeln des Flamingos Basel 1989 |
| Propensities | Bigelow | I 333 Functional Explanation/Forward-looking theory/function/Bigelow/Pargetter: 1. Aetiological theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: I 334 For example, suppose that a pattern usually has a certain effect and is the result of natural selection. Then the aetiological theory says, that it is now a function of this pattern. >Function, >Cause, >Effect, >Causality, >Causal explanation, >Functional explanation, >Functional analysis, >Selection. In the past, there must have been a relevant effect in a sufficient number of cases. >Relevance. N.B.: the corresponding situations are not randomly chosen situations, but situations where the effect was appropriate. In these situations, it contributes to survival. Propensity/Survival/Bigelow/Pargetter: although probability laws allow for a long series of coincidences, this is very unlikely. Normally, there will be a propensity towards the survival of the individual. Function/Bigelow/Pargetter: if there are only a few coincidences, we certainly do not speak of function. >Coincidence. I 335 Etiological theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: we interpret it in a way so it attributes the function for the whole time, even before it contributed to survival! At that time, it contributed to a propensity. Environment: this too must be relativized for the environment. If this suddenly changes, there may be ambiguities of adaptation. >Adaptation, >Environment, >Niches. I 336 Function/Bigelow/Pargetter: Functions can be described as components of an organism in descending hierarchy of complexity. For example, body parts, but also cells have functions. >Complexity, >Parts. Propensity theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: according to it, the functions are therefore relational properties. >Properties. And they are dispositional. >Dispositions. This is true even if the individual does not survive or is never in his normal environment. >Individuals, >Natural kinds. I 337 Explanation/Bigelow/Pargetter: the functions interpreted (like that as propensities) explain survival by causal information, as a why-explanation. >Explanation, >Causal explanation, >Functional explanation, >Why questions. Propensity Theory/Artefacts/Bigelow/Pargetter: can it be applied to artifacts as well as to biological patterns? It can be part of an overarching theory, but with artifacts there is again the problem of looking back (see above). >Artifacts. Solution/Bigelow/Pargetter: Thesis: we propose a theory of propensity for selection as a forward-looking theory for biological patterns and artifacts. >Selection. I 338 This means that all functions, be they biological or artifacts, have something in common. Function/fitness/causal explanation/propensity theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: it is possible that an organism may not survive, even though it has developed a survival function. But if it survives, it is because of this function. VsPropensity theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: For example, a structure does not serve any purpose at all, suppose its environment changes, and suddenly its functions serve survival. Then our theory of propensity would have to say that the structure has a function lately. For example, suppose one could say that heart tones have the function of alerting doctors. But only in this century, that seems wrong. Aetiological theory: says that heart tones have no such function because they are not designed for it. Bigelow/Pargetter: nevertheless the reason why we want to deny heart tones a function is not that they have no evolutionary history of the desired kind... I 339 ...but because the heart tones have an inevitable connection with the function of blood pumping. >Functional analysis. The heartbeat does nott produce any propensity for survival. This corresponds to examples of functions that existed in the past, but have now lost their function: VsPropensity Theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: this assumes that the pattern has no function. Aetiological theory: assumes that it has a function, no matter what it was used for and what it was designed for. Propensity Theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: generally gives better explanations. We can say that this function used to exist in the past, but unfortunately it became harmful to the individual. I 340 Explanation/Bigelow/Pargetter: a propensity can play an explanatory causal role, while the fact that something has a historical origin does not matter. This shows us that the propensity theory has such strong advantages that it seems to be justified to argue away counterexamples. Paul GriffithsVsPropensity Theory/Bigelow/Pargetter: just because fitness is forward-looking, functions should be retrospective. And we can even give up the term "function" in favour of "fitness". BigelowVsVs: Function and fitness can play independent roles. Fitness: Property of an organism Function: functions specify the properties that together contribute to fitness. And here we can also ask why they are doing this. Information/Bigelow/Pargetter: an attribution of fitness breaks apart into the attribution of many functions. Thus, functions are more informative in one respect, and less informative in another than fitness. a) they do not tell us about the level of fitness, but b) each one tells us not only what characteristics contribute, but also why. I 341 Artifact/Fitness/Bigelow/Pargetter: artifacts are not about fitness, so function cannot be made superfluous by them. Therefore, fitness cannot be redundant in it. But instead, necessity can be redundant analogously. Propensity Theory/Solution/Bigelow/Pargetter: provides a uniform concept of function that also applies to artifacts. |
Big I J. Bigelow, R. Pargetter Science and Necessity Cambridge 1990 |
| Rationality | Evolutionary Psychology | Norvig I 638 Rationality/Evolutionary psychology/Norvig/Russell: There has been a recent outpouring of more-or-less popular books on human irrationality. The best known is Predictably Irrational (Ariely, 2009)(1); others include Sway (Brafman and Brafman, 2009)(2), Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009)(3), Kluge (Marcus, 2009)(4), How We Decide (Lehrer, 2009)(5) and On Being Certain (Burton, 2009)(6). They complement the classic (Kahneman et al., 1982)(7) and the article that started it all (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979)(8). The field of evolutionary psychology (Buss, 2005)(9), on the other hand, has run counter to this literature, arguing that humans are quite rational in evolutionarily appropriate contexts. Its adherents point out that irrationality is penalized by definition in an evolutionary context and show that in some cases it is an artifact of the experimental setup (Cummins and Allen, 1998)(10). >Experiments, >Method, >Measurement, >D. Kahneman. 1. Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational (Revised edition). Harper. 2. Brafman, O. and Brafman, R. (2009). Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. Broadway Business. 3. Thaler, R. and Sunstein, C. (2009). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin. 4. Marcus, G. (2009). Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind. Mariner Books. 5. Lehrer, J. (2009). How We Decide. Houghton Mifflin. 6. Burton, R. (2009). On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. St. Martin’s Griffin. 7. Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University Press. 8. Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, pp. 263–291. 9. Buss, D. M. (2005). Handbook of evolutionary psychology. Wiley. 10. Cummins, D. and Allen, C. (1998). The Evolution of Mind. Oxford University Press. |
Norvig I Peter Norvig Stuart J. Russell Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach Upper Saddle River, NJ 2010 |
| Reality | Lewis | I (c) 50 Ambiguities in connection with reversed spectra are ordinary ambiguities that exist in everyday life when it comes to relativity without clear criterion. E.g. What are "relevant investigations" when it is not clear whether they are relevant to the politics of the day, the emotional well-being or for understanding or whatever. >Inverted spectra, >Ambiguity. --- Rorty VI 208 Objects/Reality/World/Lewis/Rorty: all objects in the universe except the elementary particles are manipulated artifacts. --- Rorty VI 208 LewisVsSellars: even he was too much inclined to label nature as "atoms plus empty space" like Democritus and to invent pseudo-problems about the possibility to reconcile the "scientific" to the "manifest" idea of man. (reductionist view of the non-human nature). >Reductionism, >Nature, >Sellars, cf. >Relationism, >Substantivalism. |
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 Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Relations | Locke | Euchner I 37f Relations/Locke: Comparison ideas - human artifacts: not all relations are meaningful. - E.g. age, size. "man": no clear idea - but probably "fatherhood". Special relations. e.g. cause/Effect: heat on wax - also creation e.g. nihilo. >Idea/Locke. Arndt II 204 Relations/Locke: are not included in the real existence of things. >Reality/Locke, >Existence/Locke II 207 Created by ourselves (such as mixed modes). Ideas/Locke/(s): the simple ones are not generated by us. |
Loc III J. Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Loc I W. Euchner Locke zur Einführung Hamburg 1996 Loc II H.W. Arndt "Locke" In Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen - Neuzeit I, J. Speck (Hg) Göttingen 1997 |
| Semantics | Katz | Cresswell I 20 f Katz-Fodor semantics/Cresswell: Thesis: meanings are theoretical constructions. - E.g. lexical decomposition: (object), (Physical), (not alive), (artifact), (furniture), (portable), (Something with legs), (something with a back), (something with a seating area) (seat for one). - CresswellVs: that does not explain what "object" is. Problem: "Electron" has no intelligible theoretical construction. - What should be the "most basic" construction? -> Possible worlds. Semantics/Word Meaning/CresswellVsKatz: E.g. "chair": a function w so that for every possible world w and thing a, w ε w (a) iff. a is a chair in w. I 32 Problem: this is not entirely accurate: as there is a reference to various possible worlds, there should also be one for various moments where something is a chair in a moment, but not in another. I 22 Katz: Thesis: the distinction between "logical" and "descriptive" words is arbitrary (Cresswell pro). CresswellVsKatz: he, of all things, uses implicit logical constants - and therefore relies on the distinction |
Katz I Jerrold J. Katz "The philosophical relevance of linguistic theory" aus The Linguistic Turn, Richard Rorty Chicago 1967 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974 Katz II Jerrold J. Katz Jerry Fodor Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Katz III Jerrold J. Katz Jerry Fodor The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Katz V J. J. Katz The Metaphysics of Meaning 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 |
| Sociobiology | Deacon | I 114 Sociobiology/Meme/Deacon: Recently, researchers have treated the social evolution of artifacts, techniques, customs and even ideas as if they were independent organisms competing with each other. That is more than a metaphor. One can observe how these artifacts develop parallel to their living hosts - not only as epiphenomena. >Artifacts, >Evolution, >Culture. I 115 They have to reproduce themselves from generation to generation. Cf. >Memes. Language/Deacon: is also a social phenomenon. It cannot be understood exclusively in formal, psychological or neurobiological terms. Otherwise, their reason for existence would be disregarded. >Language, >Language/Deacon, >Language development. |
Dea I T. W. Deacon The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of language and the Brain New York 1998 Dea II Terrence W. Deacon Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York 2013 |
| Terminology | Edwards | I 12 Terminology/Edwards: Making global data: efforts to gather weather and climate records for the whole planet. Def Data friction: the effort it involves. I 13 Def Simulation models/Edwards: are based on physical theory. Even after atmospheric physics became adequate to the task early in the twentieth century, computational friction prevented serious attempts to simulate weather or climate mathematically. Reanalysis models: come from weather forecasting. These models also simulate the weather, but unlike pure simulations they constrain their results with actual weather observations. Essentially, they produce a movie-like series of global weather forecasts, blending observations with simulation outputs to produce fully global, uniform data. Climate statistics derived from reanalysis cover the I 14 whole planet at all altitudes, unlike data from instruments alone. Def Climate knowledge infrastructure/Edwards: systems for observing weather and climate originated in the nineteenth century, for the most part as national weather services. These developed as separate systems, but soon they linked their data reporting through loosely coordinated international networks. I 16 Climate knowledge is knowledge about the past. Def Metadata friction/Edwards: the difficulty of recovering contextual knowledge about old records. If you succeed, you find (perhaps) changes in station siting, faked logbooks, changes in instrumentation, misapplied standards, or a thousand other things that alter your understanding of the numbers in the records. I 17 Def Infrastructural globalism/Edwards: in the context of meteorology, this refers to how the building of technical systems for gathering global data helped to create global institutions and ways of thinking globally. Building global observing systems required creating global intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I 20 Def Climate sensitivity/Edwards: is a widely used benchmark for simulation experiments. Climate sensitivity is short for “how much the global average temperature will change when carbon dioxide concentrations double from their pre-industrial levels.” I 42 LTS: “large technical systems” approach to telephone, railroads, air traffic control, electric power, and many other major infrastructures. I 44 Gateway technologies and standards: spark the formation of networks. Using gateways, homogeneous and often geographically local systems can be linked to form heterogeneous networks in which top-down control is replaced by distributed coordination processes. The shift from homogeneous systems to heterogeneous networks greatly increases flexibility and creates numerous opportunities for innovation. I 51 Knowledge infrastructures comprise robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds. I 470 Def Tuning/Edwards: “Tuning” means adjusting the values of coefficients and even, sometimes, reconstructing equations in order to produce a better overall model result. “Better” may mean that the result agrees more closely with observations, or that it corresponds more closely to the modeler’s expert judgment about what one modeler I interviewed called the “physical plausibility” of the change. >Parameterization/Climatology. I 574 Def Reproductionism/Edwards: reproductionism accepts computer simulation as a substitute for experiments that are not feasible on a global scale. It also accepts the use of data modeling as a control on heterogeneity in space and time. Once again, it’s “models almost all the way down.” In this very important sense, comprehensive model building is a central practice of global knowledge infrastructures. |
Edwards I Paul N. Edwards A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge 2013 |
| Understanding | Genz | II 118 Understanding/principle/principles/Genz: a deeper understanding is achieved if one can show that a theory can be derived from principles. >Principles, >Theories, >Derivation, >Derivability. Relativity theory/Einstein/Genz: Einstein has done this for the three theories of relativity. >Relativity theory. II 185 Understanding/Genz: we only understand artifacts. II 186 Quantum mechanics: we understand the behavior of molecules only by taking quantum mechanics into account, so we do not understand it. II 207 Law/understanding/compression/natural laws/Genz: a law allows understanding, unlike merely observed periodicity. >Laws, >Natural laws, >Regularities. II 208 A law compresses the observation data. Prediction: any theory compressing the data allows predictions. >Predictions. |
Gz I H. Genz Gedankenexperimente Weinheim 1999 Gz II Henning Genz Wie die Naturgesetze Wirklichkeit schaffen. Über Physik und Realität München 2002 |
| Weather Data | Meteorology | Edwards I 394 Weather data/metereology/Edwards: Meanwhile, global data sets are produced by simulations, which are constrained but not determined by instrumental observations. In earlier work I described this relationship as “model-data symbiosis,” a mutually beneficial but also mutually dependent relationship.(1) This idea aligns with recent work by philosophers of science on “models as mediators”—a semi-autonomous “third force” in science, functioning in the spaces between the real world, instrumentation, and theory.(2) As Margaret Morrison and Mary Morgan argue, Scientific models have certain features which enable us to treat them as a technology. They provide us with a tool for investigation, giving the user the potential to learn about the world or about theories or both. Because of their characteristics of autonomy and representational power, and their ability to effect a relation between scientific theories and the world, they can act as a powerful agent in the learning process. That is to say, models are both a means to and a source of knowledge.(3) Edwards I 395 The concept of model-data symbiosis also supports the claims of the philosophers Stephen Norton and Frederick Suppe, who argue that “to be properly interpreted and deployed, data must be modeled.” Defining scientific methods essentially as ways of controlling for the possibility of artifactual results, Norton and Suppe argue that model-data symbiosis pervades all sciences—even the laboratory sciences, in which data modeling allows investigators to remove or correct for artifactual elements. “Even raw data,” they argue, “involve modeling built into the instrumentation.” One example is a thermoelectric probe, which derives ambient temperature from the current generated by two dissimilar metals joined inside the probe. Relating these currents to temperature requires parameters for each metal’s magnetic permeability. The probe’s temperature measurements must be understood as outputs of a physically instantiated mathematical model.(4) Edwards: If Norton and Suppe are right, seeking purity in either models (as theories) or data (as unmediated points of contact with the world) is not only misguided but impossible. Instead, the question is how well scientists succeed in controlling for the presence of artifactual elements in both theory and observation – Edwards I 396 and this is exactly how the iterative cycle of improving data assimilation systems (and the observing network) proceeds. Thus, in global climate science (and perhaps in every model-based science), neither pure data nor pure models exist. Not only are data “theory-laden”; models are “data-laden.” Today: Modern analysis models blend data and theory to render a smooth, consistent, comprehensive and homogeneous grid of numbers (…) a data image, rather than a data set. >Models/metereology. Edwards I 397 Models: Using models to make data global legitimized the possibility of alternative data images. The logic goes as follows: You will never get perfect knowledge of initial conditions. No practical observing mesh will ever be fine enough to do full justice to the atmosphere’s huge range of scales of energy and motion, from the molecular to the global. Furthermore, there will always be errors in the instruments, errors in the transmission, and errors in the analysis model. On top of that, the chaotic nature of weather physics means that tiny variations in initial conditions (here, read “analyzed global data”) often produce highly divergent outcomes. Therefore, using a single analyzed data set as input to a single deterministic forecast model will always entail a substantial margin of error, especially for periods longer than one or two days. Solution: In the early 1990s, forecasters began to turn this apparent defect in their method into an advantage. In a technique known as “ensemble forecasting,” for every forecast period they now generate an “ensemble” Edwards I 398 of slightly different data sets - different global data images, versions of the atmosphere—which collectively reflect the probable range of error. Typically the ensemble contains twelve or more such data sets. Forecasters then run the forecast model on each of these data sets, producing a corresponding ensemble of forecasts.(6) Edwards: Characterized statistically, the differences among these forecasts represent a forecast of the forecast error. >Climate data/climatology. 1. Edwards, “Global Climate Science, Uncertainty and Politics.” 2. Morgan and Morrison, Models as Mediators. 3. M. Morrison and M. S. Morgan, “Models as Mediating Instruments,” in Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Sciences, ed. M. S. Morgan and M. Morrison (Cambridge University Press, 1999). 4. Norton and Suppe, “Why Atmospheric Modeling Is Good Science,” 70, 72, 5. Lorenz, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow”; E. N. Lorenz, “A Study of the Predictability of a 28-Variable Atmospheric Model (28-Variable Atmosphere Model Constructed by Expanding Equations of Two-Level Geostrophic Model in Truncated Double-Fourier Series),” Tellus 17 (1965): 321–; E. S. Epstein, “Stochastic Dynamic Prediction,” Tellus 21, no. 6 (1969): 739–; C. E. Leith, “Theoretical Skill of Monte Carlo Forecasts,” Monthly Weather Review 102, no. 6 (1974): 409–; R. N. Hoffman and E. Kalnay, “Lagged Average Forecasting, an Alternative to Monte Carlo Forecasting,” Tellus, Series A—Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography 35 (1983): 100–. 6. Z. Toth and E. Kalnay, “Ensemble Forecasting At NMC: The Generation of Perturbations,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 74, no. 12 (1993): 2317–; M. S. Tracton and E. Kalnay, “Operational Ensemble Prediction at the National Meteorological Center: Practical Aspects,” Weather and Forecasting 8, no. 3 (1993): 379–. |
Edwards I Paul N. Edwards A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge 2013 |
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| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
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Reference |
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| Burke, Michael | Simons Vs Burke, Michael | I 195 Interrupted Existence/Simons: interrupted existence met us in connection with temporal sums and products and will meet us again below in connection with superposition (to be in the same place at the same time). Anyway, it is not clear to decide if it exists: E.g. an artifact can be taken apart and reassembled, for example for maintenance or repair. Here, we will say that it exists again when it resumes its old function. I 197 E.g. if some parts are scattered and may be lost and must be replaced by other parts it is a matter of chance. Then the question is whether an object exists in the state, not only dependent on the current physical state and on the history but also on the further course of development, and that seems wrong. Artifacts/Simons: of course, the conditions for the survival of artifacts are vague. We certainly allow the replacement of parts. E.g. a machine that is fed with any powder and water and busts of Mozart are made of it. After a while, the busts are crashed and the powder is filled again in the machine. Then again a bust of Mozart is made. Should it be the same? No, because the atoms are in another place. E.g. variant: in the variant Mozart and Beethoven busts are produced alternately. Then the case would be clear anyway. (For the defenders of continuity): there is a new bust every time, despite the complete continuity. Stronger example: Chisholm's toy castle: here the building blocks are always in the same place. E.g. Michael Burke: a table is created with thirty blocks, then disassembled and with the same building blocks a chair and a bird house are created. Then again a table. I 198 Burke: 1. The table ended its existence when being disassembled: 2. The same table is created again. Simons: then the continuity theorists are in trouble no matter what strategies they apply. But Burke leaves the way open for them to deny identity across the gap: they can still claim that the example corresponds to the one of the busts, despite the fixed localization of parts: a new table is always created out of old material. BurkeVs: pro identity. SimonsVsBurke: Burke's arguments for identity are less convincing than for the ends of the existence of the table. His point is rather that so well controlled interruptions are ontologically harmless and not one has to search the traces of parts across the gap. "Continuity Theory"/terminology/Simons: the continuity theory is the thesis that the "old" existence is resumed after the interruption. SimonsVs: it paid a price for it: namely the exaggeration of objects which are broken down into its parts or duplication of objects that do not take place. Simons: but both views seem benign: each has its arguments. The only problem is that the two are contradicting each other. This can be seen with e.g. the Ship of Theseus. I 199 Ship of Theseus/Simons: problem: there are conflicting claims: between a) the "Collector": he places value on substantive continuity and b) the "Pragmatist": he wants functional continuity. Problem: both sides have complementary things that speak for each of them. Wrong solution: "relativized identity": then both sides would virtually no longer "touch" each other but that would not explain why there is a problem at all. SimonsVsBurke: that the type of an object is a function of its properties is regardless of it wrong: e.g. objects that are needed in a community: there are many pairs of objects which are physico-chemically exactly alike but belong to different types: e.g. holy/normal water, real/ perfectly counterfeit banknotes, originals/replicas, wedding rings/other rings, maybe also person/body. Of course, each of these objects falls under a higher sortal. Burke: thesis: various substantive objects cannot be simultaneously embodied in one and the same matter. SimonsVsBurke: on the contrary, e.g. (see above) different boards may have the same members. |
Simons I P. Simons Parts. A Study in Ontology Oxford New York 1987 |
| Frege, G. | Hintikka Vs Frege, G. | Cresswell I 148 Compositionality/Cresswell: It has long been known that it fails on the surface structure. (Cresswell 1973 p 77). HintikkaVsCompositionality/HintikkaVsFrege: H. says that it is simply wrong. In saying that, he ignores the deep structure. And indeed you can regard the difference of the two readings of (39) (Everybody loves somebody) in the context of the game theory as changing the order in the choice of individuals. Then you could say that the only linguistic object is the surface structure. CresswellVsHintikka: but when it comes to that, his observations are not new. Compositionality/Cresswell: fails if we say that the two readings depend on the order in which we first process "and" then "or", or vice versa. Nevertheless, the Frege principle (= compositionality) is in turn applicable to (44) or (45). It is treated like this in Montague. (see below Annex IV: Game-theoretical semantics). I 149 HintikkaVsCompositionality/HintikkaVsFrege: fails even with higher order quantification. CresswellVsHintikka: this is a mistake: firstly, no compositionality is effective in the 1st order translation of sentences like (29). But authors who use higher-order entities (Montague and Cresswell) do not see themselves as deniers of the Frege principle. Hintikka seems to acknowledge that. (1982 p 231). I 161. "is"/Frege/Russell: ambiguous in everyday language. HintikkaVsFrege/KulasVsFrege: (1983): not true! Cresswell: ditto, just that "normal semantics" is not obliged to Frege-Russell anyway. Hintikka II 45 (A) Knowledge/Knowledge Objects/Frege/Hintikka: His concern was what objects we have to assume in order to understand the logical behavior of the language, when it comes to knowledge. Solution/Frege/Hintikka: (see below: Frege’s knowledge objects are the Fregean senses, reified, >intensional objects). Hintikka: For me, it is primarily about the individuals of which we speak in epistemic contexts; only secondarily, I wonder if we may call them "knowledge objects". Possible Worlds Semantics/HintikkaVsFrege: we can oppose the possible worlds semantics to his approach. (Hintikka pro possible worlds semantics). II 46 Idea: application of knowledge leads to the elimination of possible worlds (alternatives). Possible World/Hintikka: the term is misleading, because too global. Def Scenario/Hintikka: everything that is compatible with the knowledge of a knower. We can also call them knowledge worlds. Set of All Possible Worlds/Hintikka: we can call it illegitimate. (FN 5). Knowledge Object/Hintikka: can be objects, people, artifacts, etc. Reference/Frege/Hintikka: Frege presumes a completely referential language. I.e. all our expressions stand for some kind of entities. They can be taken as Fregean knowledge objects. Identity/Substitutability/SI/Terminology/Frege/Hintikka: SI is the thesis of the substitutability of identity ((s) only applies with limitation in intensional (opaque) contexts). II 47 E.g. (1) ... Ramses knew that the morning star = the morning star From this it cannot be concluded that Ramses knew that the morning star = the evening star (although MS = ES). II 48 Context/Frege/Hintikka: Frege distinguish two types of context: Direct Context/Frege/Hintikka: extensional, transparent Indirect Context/Frege/Hintikka: intensional, opaque. E.g. contexts with "believes" (belief contexts). ((s) Terminology: "ext", "opaque", etc. not from Frege). Frege/Hintikka: according to his own image: (4) expression >sense >reference. ((s) I.e. according to Frege the intension determines the extension.) Intensional Contexts/Frege/Hintikka: here, the picture is modified: (5) Expression (>) sense (> reference) Def Systematic Ambiguity/Frege/Hintikka: all our expressions are systematically ambiguous, i.e. they refer to different things, depending on whether they are direct (transparent, extensional) contexts or indirect ones (intensional, opaque). Fregean Sense/Hintikka: Fregean senses in Frege are separate entities in order to be able to work at all as references in intensional contexts. E.g. in order to be able to restore the inference in the example above (morning star/evening start) we do not need the identity of morning star and evening star, but the. identity of the Fregean sense of "morning star" and "evening star". II 49 Important argument: but Frege himself does not reinterpret the identity in the expression morning star = evening star in this way. He cannot express this fact, because there identity occurs in an extensional context and later in an intensional context. Identity/Frege/Hintikka: therefore we cannot say that Frege reinterprets our normal concept of identity. Problem: It is not even clear whether Frege can express the identity of the senses with an explicit sentence. For in his own formal language (in "Begriffsschrift"(1) and "Grundgesetze"(2)) there is no sentence that could do this. He says that himself in: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung": we can only refer to the meanings of our expressions by prefixing the prefix "the meaning of". But he never uses this himself. (B) Knowledge Objects/Possible World Approach/HintikkaVsFrege: Idea: knowledge leads us to create an intentional context that forces us to consider certain possibilities. These we call possible worlds. new: we do not consider new entities (intensional entities) in addition to the references, but we look at the same references in different possible worlds. Morning Star/Evening Star/Possible Worlds Semantics/Hintikka: Solution: "morning star" and "evening star" now single out the same object, namely the planet in the real world. II 50 (C) Possible Worlds Semantics/HintikkaVsFrege: there is no systematic ambiguity here, i.e. the expressions mean the same thing intensionally as extensionally. E.g. Knowing what John knows means knowing those possible worlds which are compatible with his belief, and knowing which are not. II 51 Extra premise: for that it must be sure that an expression singles out the same individual in different possible worlds. Context: what the relevant possible worlds are depends on the context. E.g. Ramses: here, the case is clear, On the other hand: E.g. Herzl knew Loris is a great poet Additional premise: Loris = Hofmannsthal. II 53 Meaning Function/Possible Worlds Semantics/Hintikka: the difference in my approach to that of Frege is that I consider problems locally, while Frege considers them globally. Fregean Sense/(= way of givenness) Hintikka: must be considered as defined for all possible worlds. On the other hand: Hintikka: if Fregean sense is construed as meaning function, it must be regarded as only defined for the relevant alternatives in my approach. Frege: precisely uses the concept of identity of senses implicitly. And as meaning function, identity is only given if the mathematical function works for all relevant arguments. Totality/Hintikka: this concept of totality of all logically possible worlds is now highly doubtful. Solution/Hintikka: it is precisely the possible worlds semantics that helps dispense with the totality of all possible worlds. ((s) And to consider only the relevant alternatives defined by the context). Fregean Sense/Hintikka: was virtually constructed as an object (attitude object propositional object, thought object, belief object). This is because they were assumed as entities in the real world (actual world), however abstract. II 54 Meaning Function/M. F./HintikkaVsFrege/Hintikka: unlike Fregean senses, meaning functions are neither here nor elsewhere. Problem/Hintikka: Frege was tempted to reify his "senses". Knowledge Object/Thought Object/Frege/Hintikka: Frege, unlike E.g. Quine, has never considered the problem. Existential Generalization/EG/Hintikka: entitles us to move from a sentence S(b) with a singular term "b" to the existential statement (Ex) S(x). This fails in intensional (epistemic) contexts. Transition from "any" to "some". E.g. epistemic context: (10) (premise) George IV knew that (w = w) (11) (tentative conclusion) (Ex) George IV knew that (w = x) II 55 Problem: the transition from (10) to (11) fails, because (11) has the strength of (12) (12) George IV knew who w is. EG/Fail/Solution/Frege/Hintikka: Frege assumed that in intensional (opaque) contexts we are dealing with ideas of references. HintikkaVsFrege: Problem: then (11) would follow from (10) in any case ((s) and that’s just what is not desired). Because you’d have to assume that there is definitely some kind of sense under which George IV imagines an individual w. Problem: "w" singles out different individuals in different possible worlds. II 56 Possible Worlds Semantics/Solution/Hintikka: E.g. Suppose. (13) George knows that S(w) to (14) (Ex) George knows that S(x) where S(w) does not contain expressions that create opaque contexts. Then we need an additional condition. (15) (Ex) in all relevant possible worlds (w = x). This is, however, not a well-formed expression in our notation. We have to say what the relevant possible worlds are. Def Relevant Possible Worlds/Hintikka: are all those that are compatible with the knowledge of George. Thus, (15) is equivalent to (16) (Ex) George knows that (w = x). This is the additional premise. I.e. George knows who w is. (Knowing that, knowing who, knowing what). Knowing What/Logical Form/Hintikka/(s): corresponds to "knows that (x = y)" ((s) >single class, single quantity). E.g. knowing that "so and so has done it" does not help to know who it was, unless you know who so and so is. ((s) i.e. however, that you know y!) Solution/Hintikka/(s): the set of possible worlds compatible with the knowledge) II 57 Meaning Function/M. F./Possible Worlds Semantics/Hintikka: in order to be a solution here, the meaning function (see above) needs to be a constant function, i.e. it must single out the same individuals in all possible worlds. Frege/Identity/Opaque Context/Hintikka: Frege had to deal with the failure of the SI (substitutability in case of identity) ((s) i.e. the individuals might have a different name), not with the failure of the Existential Generalization (EG). ((s) I.e. the individuals might not exist). Hintikka: therefore, we need several additional premises. Possible Worlds Semantics: SI: here, for substitutability in case of identity, we only need on the assumption that the references of two different concepts in any possible world can be compared. Existential Generalization: here we have to compare the reference of one and the same concept in all possible worlds. Frege/Hintikka: now it seems that Frege could still be defended yet in a different way: namely, that we now quantify on world-lines (as entities). ((s) that would accomodate Frege’s Platonism). II 58 World Lines/Hintikka: are therefore somehow "real"! So are they not somehow like the "Fregean senses"?. HintikkaVs: it is not about a contrast between world bound individuals and world lines as individuals. World Lines/Hintikka: but we should not say that the world lines are something that is "neither here nor there". Using world lines does not mean reifying them. Solution/Hintikka: we need world-lines, because without them it would not even make sense to ask at all, whether a resident of a possible world is the same one as that of another possible world. ((s) cross world identity). II 59 World Line/Hintikka: we use it instead of Frege’s "way of givenness". HintikkaVsFrege: his error was to reify the "ways of givenness" as "sense". They are not something that exists in the actual world. Quantification/Hintikka: therefore, in this context we need not ask "about what we quantify". II 109 Frege Principle/FP/Compositionality/Hintikka: if we proceed from the outside inwards, we can allow a violation of Frege’s principle. (I.e. the semantic roles of the constituents in the interior are context dependent). II 110 HintikkaVsFrege/HintikkaVsCompositionality: Thesis: meaning entities should not be created step by step from simpler ones in tandem with syntactic rules. They should instead be understood, at least in some cases, as rules of semantic analysis. 1. G. Frege, Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Halle 1879, Neudruck in: Ders. Begriffsschrift und andere Aufsätze, hrsg. v. J. Agnelli, Hildesheim 1964 2. Gottlob Frege [1893–1903]: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Jena: Hermann Pohle Wittgenstein I 71 Def Existence/Wittgenstein: predicate of higher order and is articulated only by the existence quantifier. (Frege ditto). I 72 Hintikka: many philosophers believe that this was only a technical implementation of the earlier idea that existence is not a predicate. HintikkaVsFrege: the inexpressibility of individual existence in Frege is one of the weakest points, however. You can even get by without the Fregean condition on a purely logical level. HintikkaVsFrege: contradiction in Frege: violates the principle of expressing existence solely through the quantifier, because the thesis of inexpressibility means that through any authorized individual constant existential assumptions are introduced in the logical language. |
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 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 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 |
| Searle, J.R. | Dennett Vs Searle, J.R. | I 282 Intentionality/Darwin/Dennett: Darwin turns it all around: intentionality is secured from bottom to top. The first meaning was not a fully developed meaning, it certainly does not show all ’essential’ properties (whatever they may be). "Quasi-meaning", half semantics. I 555 SearleVsDennett: "as-if intentionality". Intentionality/DennettVsSearle: But you have to start somewhere (if you want to avoid metaphysics). The first step in the right direction is hardly recognizable as a step towards meaning. SearleVsArtificial Intelligence: Computers only possess "as-if intentionality". DennettVsSearle: then he has a problem. While AI says we are composed of machines, Darwinism says we are descended from machines!. I 557 You can hardly refuse the first if you agree with the second statement. How can something that has emerged from machines be anything other than a much, much more sophisticated machine?. Function/Searle: (according to Dennett): Only products that have been produced by a real human consciousness have a function ((s)> objet ambigu, Valéry). DennettVsSearle: I.e. the wings of the aircraft, but not the wings of the eagle serve for flying!. I 558 Intentionality/SearleVsDennett: cannot be achieved by the composition of machines or the ever better structure of algorithms. I 569 DennettVsSearle: this is the belief in sky hooks: the mind is not supposed to emerge, it is not created, but only (inexplicable) source of creation. Intention/DennettVsSearle: (E.g. Vending Machine): Those who select its new function perhaps do not even formulate any new intention. They only fall into the habit of relying on the new useful function. They do not perceive that they carry out an act of unconscious exaptation. Parallel: >Darwin: There is an unconscious selection of properties in pets. II 73 Searle: In the case of the artifact the creator must always be asked. Intrinsic (original) intentionality/DennettVsSearle: is metaphysical, an illusion. As if the "author would need to have a more original intention". Dennett: but there is no task for that. The hypothetical robot would be equally capable of transfering derived intentionality to other artifacts. Intentionality/DennettVsSearle: there certainly used to be coarser forms of intentionality (Searle contemptuously "mere as-if intentionality"). Dennett: they serve both as a temporal precursors as well as current components. We are descended from robots and consist of robots (DNA, macromolecules). All intentionality we enjoy is derived from the more fundamental intentionality of these billions of systems. |
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 |
| Vitalism | Dennett Vs Vitalism | Metz II 691 VsArtificial Consciousness/VsRobots/Dennett: Traditional ArgumentsVsArtificial Intelligence: 1) Robots are purely physical objects, while something immaterial is required for consciousness. DennettVs: That is Cartesian dualism. II 692 2) Robots are not organic, consciousness can only exist in organic brains. (Vitalism) DennettVsVitalism: Is deservedly dead, since the biochemistry showed that the properties in all organic compounds can be mechanistically reduced and therefore are also reproducible at any scale in another physical medium. 3) Robots are artifacts and only something natural, born may have consciousness. (Chauvinism of origin). DennettVsChauvinism of Origin/Forgery/Dennett: II 694 E.g. A fake cheap wine can also be a good wine if experts consider it good. E.g. A fake Cézanne is also a good picture, if "experts" consider it good. Dennett: but these distinctions represent a dangerous nonsense if they refer to alleged "intrinsic properties". (That means that the molecules would still needed the consecrations of a befitting birth; that would be racism). (By the way, the robot COG passes through a childhood period of learning). Forgery/Dennett: Whether a fake is produced artificially atom by atom, (but in the same molecule compounds) may have legal consequences with respect to a clone that does not deserve the same punishment. II 695 Dennett: E.g. The movie "Schindler’s List" could in principle be produced artificially through computer animation, because it only consists of two-dimensional gray tones on the screen. II 696 4) Robots will always be too simple to have consciousness. Dennett: this is the only acceptable argument, even if we try to refute it. The human body consists of trillions of individual parts. But wherever one looks, one discovers functional similarities at higher levels that allow us to replace hellishly complex modules with relatively simple ones. II 697 There is no reason to believe that any part of the brain could not be substituted. Robots/Dennett: Robot enthusiasts who believe it is easy to construct a conscious robot reveal an infantile understanding of the real world with the intricacies of consciousness. |
Dennett I D. Dennett Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York 1995 German Edition: Darwins gefährliches Erbe Hamburg 1997 |
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The author or concept searched is found in the following 2 theses of the more related field of specialization.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
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| Object | Lewis, D. | Schw I 28 Object/Thing/van Inwagen: (1990b) Thesis: Parts only form an object if it is a living being. According to this there are humans, fish, cats, but not computers, walls and bikinis. Object/Thing/Lewis: better answer: two questions: 1. Under what conditions do parts assemble a whole? Among all! For arbitrary things there is always one thing that they put together. (Def mereological Universalism/ > Quine). 2. Which of these aggregates do we count as an independent thing in everyday life? Rorty VI 210 Items/Reality/World/Lewis/Rorty: Thesis: are all items in the universe except the elementary particles that are manipulated artifacts! |
Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Theseus Ship | Salmon, N. | Staln I 115 For example, a complex artifact, e.g. a bicycle to which a part has been exchanged, is still the same bicycle, only slightly different. But when most parts have been replaced, you would say it's similar, but different. Hugh Chandler: (1975) Variant split between two possible worlds. w1: as in the original story w2: like w2, except that the old parts are removed but not replaced. The ship is dismantled and later reconstructed. 2. Example Statue/Clay/Allan Gibbard: (1975) Example a lump of clay called "Klumpi" (lumpl) and a statue called "Goliath". The statue is made of the lump and the lump and the statue come to existence or cease to exist at the same moment. Then both are identical. ((s) the formulation disguises that they are detached). Identity/statue/clay/Gibbard/Stalnaker: but it is clear that this identity is not a necessary identity, but a contingent identity. In another possible world, the statue before the lump could have been destroyed. Then both are different. I 117 Cross-world Identity/Stalnaker: it looks as if we have to give it up, or accept an extreme mereological essentialism that requires the identity of all parts. Chandler/Nathan Salmon: thesis: the bicycles are all identical, but those from the more distant worlds are not accessible to each other. |
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The author or concept searched is found in the following theses of an allied field of specialization.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
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| Theseus Ship | Chandler, H. | Stalnaker I 115 E.g. a complex artifact, as a bicycle, to which a part has been replaced, is still the same cycle, only slightly different. But if most of the parts have been replaced, you would say it is similar, but a different one. Hugh Chandler: (1975) variant, divided into two worlds w1: as in the original story W2: equal, except that the old parts are removed but not replaced. The ship will be dismantled and reconstructed later. I 117 Cross world identity/Stalnaker: it looks like, as we would have to give them up or accept an extreme mereological essentialism, which requires the identity of all parts. Chandler/Nathan Salmon: the bikes are all identical, but they are not accessible for each other from the distant worlds. |
Stalnaker I R. Stalnaker Ways a World may be Oxford New York 2003 |
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