Ethics in business and economics is often attacked for being too superficial. By elaborating the conclusions of two such critics of business ethics and welfare economics respectively, this article will draw the attention to the ethics behind these apparently well-intended, but not always convincing constructions, by help of the fundamental ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. To Levinas, responsibility is more basic than language, and thus also more basic than all social constructions. Co-operation relations in organizations, markets and value networks are generated (...) from personal relations and personal responsibilities. It is not sufficient to integrate ethics in an impersonal, rational system, neither in business organizations nor in the world economy. Ethics has its source not in rationality, but in the personal. (shrink)

This volume examines the notion of an analytic proof as a natural deduction, suggesting that the proof's value may be understood as its normal form--a concept with significant implications to proof-theoretic semantics.

Levinas did not present any new ethical theories; he did not even give any normative recommendations. But his phenomenological investigations help us to understand how the idea of ethics emerges and how we try to cope with it. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some implications from a reading of Levinas on how ethical challenges are handled within a management perspective. The paper claims that management, both in theory and in practice, is necessarily egocentric and thus ethically biased. (...) Therefore, ethics, defined as the idea that it is possible to do otherwise than pursue one's own interest, must have its source outside the scope of management. Levinas identifies this source as the call for responsibility from the Other, beyond the reach of managerial control. He also suggests how this idea of ethics is put into practice, especially in economic life: the existence of money makes it both possible and necessary to compare unique and incomparable others. Management tools may be used in the service of always more justice, as it also may be used for the opposite purpose. Instead of trying to draw a normative conclusion from Levinas, we may distinguish between two ways of experiencing reality: one through language and knowledge, covering both descriptive and normative knowledge, including business ethics, and the other through the particular events of encounters, from where this knowledge is continuously questioned through the call for responsibility, and thereby may provide possibilities for continuous improvements towards always more justice. (shrink)

Levinas did not present any new ethical theories; he did not even give any normative recommendations. But his phenomenological investigations help us to understand how the idea of ethics emerges and how we try to cope with it. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some implications from a reading of Levinas on how ethical challenges are handled within a management perspective. The paper claims that management, both in theory and in practice, is necessarily egocentric and thus ethically biased. (...) Therefore, ethics, defined as the idea that it is possible to do otherwise than pursue one's own interest, must have its source outside the scope of management. Levinas identifies this source as the call for responsibility from the Other, beyond the reach of managerial control. He also suggests how this idea of ethics is put into practice, especially in economic life: the existence of money makes it both possible and necessary to compare unique and incomparable others. Management tools may be used in the service of always more justice, as it also may be used for the opposite purpose. Instead of trying to draw a normative conclusion from Levinas, we may distinguish between two ways of experiencing reality: one through language and knowledge, covering both descriptive and normative knowledge, including ‘business ethics’, and the other through the particular events of encounters, from where this knowledge is continuously questioned through the call for responsibility, and thereby may provide possibilities for continuous improvements towards always more justice. (shrink)

There are two main routes to a concept of (generalized) quantifier. The first starts from first‐order logic, FO, and generalizes from the familiar ∀ and ∃ occurring there. The second route begins with real languages, and notes that many so‐called noun phrases, a kind of phrase which occurs abundantly in most languages, can be interpreted in a natural and uniform way using quantifiers.

Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es, den Zusammenhang der kantischen Kritiken unter Wahrung einer transzendental-kritischen Perspektive nachzuweisen. Dazu wird zunächst eine Paraphrasierung der einzelnen Kritiken entwickelt und aus einem gemeinsamen erkenntnistheoretischen Horizont heraus interpretiert, der anschließend jeweils mit einschlägigen Positionen der Forschungsliteratur diskutiert wird. Der inhaltliche Schwerpunkt der Arbeit zielt auf eine besondere Einordnung der Leistung Kants: Eine Differenzierung der Bereiche "Metaphysik", "Transzendentalphilosophie" und "transzendentale Kritik" lässt Kants Standpunkt einheitlich bestimmen und zeigt unter der Berücksichtigung der Notwendigkeit für das menschliche Denken (...) die grundlegenden allgemeingültigen Strukturen des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögens. Diese Akzentuierung der Betrachtung hat einige Verschiebungen des heute gelehrten Kant-Bildes zur Folge, die bes. den Kategorischen Imperativ und die sogenannte "Ästhetik" der Kritik der Urteilskraft betreffen. (shrink)

All of metaethical positions today can be replaced by a universal architecture of moral philosophy, all but one: moral realism. Here, I use the term “metaethics” to refer to any theory of ethics concerning the groundwork of ethics, on the one hand, and the inquiry of the use of philosophical words, concepts or methods on the other. In this article, I will present my hypothesis that in moral philosophy, we do not need any specialized metaethics at all. Metaethics as a (...) discipline of philosophy is only required by the work of moral realists, who try to show us a realm of values and norms that exist (per se) naturally, non-naturally or supernaturally. How can they know? The effort of metaethical realists cannot be proven either in ontology or in the philosophy of language or in cognitive science or in any meta-science that works en plus to ethics, because even in every additional discipline, we have to accept the presupposition of a validity of judgments. So, let us try it the other way around; we have to find a way to found ethics by following its structures, and that means, based on David Velleman’s concepts: a) We have to search for a ubiquitous point of ethical theory in its foundation – here, no kind of value or norm can be found that is not based on a universal formal structure of normativity. b) We have to start an empirical inquiry to collect norms and values in actual use. MFT, moral psychology and moral sociology are in charge here. The combination of such an abstract groundwork with mere empirical study has to be legitimized again. Hence, I am going to try to sum up the main ideas of such a project to show the relevance of a new architecture of moral philosophy today. There is a line of reasoning that addresses the possibility of a transcendental critique in practical philosophy; therefore, it has to look into the different notions of “intuition” in moral methods like it was used by Sidgwick (Rashdall, Green, Ross, Brentano, McTaggart) and Moore on the one hand and Brentano and Bergson on the other. In my view, there is a way to combine these perspectives using the two-level-model of Hare, Singer, Greene, where “intuition” is used to categorize habits and customs of the common sense morality in general while a critical reflection uses act-utilitarian calculus to provide a universal decision – in the sense of “concrete reason” – for any possible actor in a singular situation (Hegel, Peirce, Bloch etc.). The change between these levels may be explained by means of a pragmatistic kind of continuum of research with an ideal summum bonum in the long run and a concept of common sense morality as can be found in every group or society. (shrink)

In der jüngeren Philosophie entbrannte eine Debatte über den Geltungsanspruch ethischer Aussagen. Wie sich zeigen lässt, treten im Spektrum der metaethischen Positionen dialektische Begründungsmuster im Stile der vorkantischen Metaphysik auf. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht, ob sich die Metaethik auf ähnliche Weise „therapieren“ lässt wie die Metaphysik zu Kants Zeiten. Sie entwickelt dazu eine transzendentale Architektonik der Moralphilosophie und übergibt die Aufgabe der Moralforschung an empirische Wissenschaften, wobei eine pragmatistische Methodologie gewährleistet, dass diese unterschiedlichen Perspektiven nahtlos ineinander übergehenden.

According to a main idea of Gentzen the meanings of the logical constants are reflected by the introduction rules in his system of natural deduction. This idea is here understood as saying roughly that a closed argument ending with an introduction is valid provided that its immediate subarguments are valid and that other closed arguments are justified to the extent that they can be brought to introduction form. One main part of the paper is devoted to the exact development of (...) this notion. Another main part of the paper is concerned with a modification of this notion as it occurs in Michael Dummett’s book The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The two notions are compared and there is a discussion of how they fare as a foundation for a theory of meaning. It is noted that Dummett’s notion has a simpler structure, but it is argued that it is less appropriate for the foundation of a theory of meaning, because the possession of a valid argument for a sentence in Dummett’s sense is not enough to be warranted to assert the sentence. (shrink)

Reviewed Works:Gaisi Takeuti, Proof Theory.Georg Kreisel, Proof Theory: Some Personal Recollections.Wolfram Pohlers, Contributions of the Schutte School in Munich to Proof Theory.Stephen G. Simpson, Subsystems of $\mathbf{Z}_2$ and Reverse Mathematics.Solomon Feferman, Proof Theory: A Personal Report.

How should the policies of search engines and other information intermediaries be ethically evaluated? It is argued that Kant’s principles for the public use of reason are useful starting points for the formulation of criteria for such an evaluation. The suggestion is, furthermore, that a search engine can be seen to provide a testimony to the user concerning what information that is most relevant to her query. This suggestion is used as the basis for the development of a broadly Kantian (...) account of a rational searcher. It is argued that the search engine companies are morally required to publish their information policies and act in accordance with them but given the threat of search engine spam they can have no obligation to publish the details of their algorithms. (shrink)

In the analysis of the ethicalproblems of online research, there is much tobe learned from the work that has already beendone on research ethics in the socialsciences and the humanities. I discuss thestructure of norms in the Norwegian ethicalguidelines for research in the social scienceswith respect to their relevance for the ethicalissues of Internet research. A four-stepprocedure for the ethical evaluation ofresearch is suggested. I argue that eventhough, at one level, the problems of onlineresearch are very similar to those we (...) find intraditional areas of social scientificresearch, there still are some issues that areunique to research online. A general model forthe analysis of privacy and data protection issuggested. This model is then used tocharacterize the special problems pertaining tothe protection of privacy in online contexts,and to argue that one cannot assume a simpledistinction between the private and the publicwhen researching in such contexts. (shrink)

In the 12th century the "Book of the Soul" by the philosopher Avicenna was translated from Arabic into Latin. It had an immense success among scholastic writers and deeply influenced the structure and content of many psychological works of the Middle Ages. The reception of Avicenna's book is the story of cultural contact at an imipressively high intellectural level. The present volume investigates this successful reception using two approaches. The first is chronological, tracing the stages by which Avicenna's work was (...) accepted and adapted by Latin scholars. The second is doctrinal, analyzing the fortunes of key doctrines. The sense of the original Arabic text of Avicenna is kept in mind throughout and the degree to which his original Latin interpreters succeeded in conveying it is evaluated. (shrink)

The paper elaborates two points: i) There is no principal opposition between predicate logic and adherence to subject-predicate form, ii) Aristotle's treatment of quantifiers fits well into a modern study of generalized quantifiers.

"Das Ringen ums Seyn" entwickelt eine Destruktion der Schriften Martin Heideggers von "Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens" bis zu "Sein und Zeit". Dabei wird zunächst untersucht, ob die Annahme einer Kehre in diesem Denkprozess berechtigt ist. Im zweiten Teil wird vor diesem Hintergrund das "Denken des Selben" als zentrales Besinnungsmoment herausgestellt, um Rückschlüsse auf den Umgang Heideggers mit den Topoi Existenz, Eigentlichkeit und Apperzeption ziehen zu können.

Ibn al-'Arabī (d. 1240) was one of the towering figures of Islamic intellectual history, and among Sufis still bears the title of al-shaykh al-akbar, or "the greatest master." Ibn al-'Arabī and Islamic Intellectual Culturetraces the history of the concept of "oneness of being" (wahdat al-wujūd) in the school of Ibn al- 'Arabī, in order to explore the relationship between mysticism and philosophy in Islamic intellectual life. It examines how the conceptual language used by early mystical writers became increasingly engaged over (...) time with the broader Islamic intellectual culture, eventually becoming integrated with the latter's common philosophical and theological vocabulary. It focuses on four successive generations of thinkers (Sadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, Mu'ayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī, 'Abd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī, and Dāwūd al-Qaysarī), and examines how these "philosopher-mystics" refined and developed the ideas of Ibn al-'Arabī. Through a close analysis of texts, the book clearly traces the crystallization of an influential school of thought in Islamic history and its place in the broader intellectual culture. Offering an exploration of the development of Sufi expression and thought, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic thought, philosophy, and mysticism. (shrink)

The traditional picture of logic takes it for granted that "valid arguments have a fundamental epistemic significance", but neither model theory nor traditional proof theory dealing with formal system has been able to give an account of this significance. Since valid arguments as usually understood do not in general have any epistemic significance, the problem is to explain how and why we can nevertheless use them sometimes to acquire knowledge. It is suggested that we should distinguish between arguments and acts (...) of inferences and that we have to reconsider the latter notion to arrive at the desired explanation. More precisely, the notions should be developed so that the following relationship holds: one gets in possession of a ground for a conclusion by inferring it from premisses for which one already has grounds, provided that the inference in question is valid. The paper proposes explications of the concepts of ground and deductively valid inference so that this relationship holds as a conceptual truth. Logical validity of inference is seen as a special case of deductive validity, but does not add anything as far as epistemic significance is concerned—it resides already in the deductively valid inferences. (shrink)

We study the logical and computational properties of basic theorems of uncountable mathematics, including the Cousin and Lindelöf lemma published in 1895 and 1903. Historically, these lemmas were among the first formulations of open-cover compactness and the Lindelöf property, respectively. These notions are of great conceptual importance: the former is commonly viewed as a way of treating uncountable sets like e.g. [Formula: see text] as “almost finite”, while the latter allows one to treat uncountable sets like e.g. [Formula: see text] (...) as “almost countable”. This reduction of the uncountable to the finite/countable turns out to have a considerable logical and computational cost: we show that the aforementioned lemmas, and many related theorems, are extremely hard to prove, while the associated sub-covers are extremely hard to compute. Indeed, in terms of the standard scale (based on comprehension axioms), a proof of these lemmas requires at least the full extent of second-order arithmetic, a system originating from Hilbert–Bernays’ Grundlagen der Mathematik. This observation has far-reaching implications for the Grundlagen’s spiritual successor, the program of Reverse Mathematics, and the associated Gödel hierarchy. We also show that the Cousin lemma is essential for the development of the gauge integral, a generalization of the Lebesgue and improper Riemann integrals that also uniquely provides a direct formalization of Feynman’s path integral. (shrink)

It has been common in contemporary logic and philosophy of logic to identify the validity of an inference with its conclusion being a (logical) consequence of its premisses.