In an earlier paper Luu and Meißner we discussed emergence from the context of effective field theories, particularly as related to the fields of particle and nuclear physics. We argued on the side of reductionism and weak emergence. George Ellis has critiqued our exposition in Ellis, and here we provide our response to his critiques. Many of his critiques are based on incorrect assumptions related to the formalism of effective field theories and we attempt to correct these issues here. (...) We also comment on other statements made in his paper. Important to note is that our response is to his critiques made in archive versions arXiv:2004.13591v1-5 [physics.hist-ph]. That is, versions 1–5 of this archive post. Version 6 has similar content as versions 1–5, but versions 7–9 are seemingly a different paper altogether. (shrink)

This paper deals with EMIL-S, a software tool box which was designed during the EMIL project for the simulation of processes during which norms emerged in an agent society. This tool box implements the cognitive architecture of normative agents which was designed during the EMIL project which is also discussed in other papers in this issue. This implementation is described in necessary detail, and two examples of its application to several different scenarios are given, namely a scenario in which persons (...) involved in micro finance are simulated and learn how to sanction free riders and how to learn from these sanctions, and a scenario in which simulated persons move through a simulated airport where they more often than not have to wait in queues and learn how to behave properly in queues. (shrink)

Die Wittgenstein-Schülerin Elizabeth Anscombe zählt zu den einflussreichsten Philosophinnen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mit der Monographie Absicht begründete sie die analytische Handlungstheorie, viele ihrer Abhandlungen gelten als Klassiker, aber nur wenige liegen bislang in deutscher Übersetzung vor. Der vorliegende Band füllt diese Lücke: Er versammelt zwölf von Anscombes wichtigsten Aufsätzen, die thematisch von der praktischen Philosophie über die Metaphysik und die Philosophie des Geistes bis hin zu Aristoteles- und Wittgenstein-Interpretationen reichen, also das ganze Spektrum ihres Denkens repräsentieren. Die Anmerkungen und Erläuterungen (...) der Herausgeber sowie das Nachwort von Anselm W. Müller erschließen die Texte und bieten zusätzliche Einblicke in das facettenreiche Werk dieser solitären Denkerin. (shrink)

We sometimes violate social norms in order to express our views and to trigger public debates. Many extant accounts of social norms don’t give us any insight into this phenomenon. Drawing on Cristina Bicchieri’s work, I am putting forward an empirical hypothesis that helps us to understand such norm violations. The hypothesis says, roughly, that we often adhere to norms because we are systematically blind to norm-violating options. I argue that this hypothesis is independently plausible and has interesting consequences. It (...) implies, e.g., that some experimental paradigms for investigating social norms have hitherto unnoticed shortcomings. (shrink)

The paper presents an exhaustive menu of nonmonotonic logics. The options are individuated in terms of the principles they reject. I locate, e.g., cumulative logics and relevance logics on this menu. I highlight some frequently neglected options, and I argue that these neglected options are particularly attractive for inferentialists.

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report (...) measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither situation nor domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so. (shrink)

While many of Elizabeth Anscombe’s philosophical views are well-known (e.g. her views on practical knowledge or consequentialism), little has been written on her philosophical method, i.e., on her way of doing philosophy. This is unfortunate, for two reasons: First, the failure to understand Anscombe’s method is a major stumbling block for many of her readers. Second, and more importantly, we can still learn a lot from Anscombe’s way of doing philosophy: Her view differs considerably from current alternatives in metaphilosophy. Here (...) we want to begin to fill this lacuna. (shrink)

While many of Elizabeth Anscombe’s philosophical views are well-known (e.g. her views on practical knowledge or consequentialism), little has been written on her philosophical method, i.e., on her way of doing philosophy. This is unfortunate, for two reasons: First, the failure to understand Anscombe’s method is a major stumbling block for many of her readers. Second, and more importantly, we can still learn a lot from Anscombe’s way of doing philosophy: Her view differs considerably from current alternatives in metaphilosophy. Here (...) we want to begin to fill this lacuna. -/- REPRINT IN: John Haldane (ed.) (2019): The Life and Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe. (St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy.) Imprint Academic: Exeter: 42-61. (shrink)

“Philosophy isn’t useful for changing the world,” parents of philosophy students and Karl Marx tell us (at least about non-Marxist philosophy). Cristina Bicchieri’s new book Norms in the Wild provides an impressive antidote against this worry. It stands to change of social practices as Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare stands to political revolutions. Bicchieri combines hands-on advice on how to change social practices with compelling theoretical analyses of social norms. She draws heavily on her influential earlier work on norms, but the (...) book doesn’t presuppose familiarity with it. Many of her examples stem from her work with UNICEF and other NGOs; they include female genital cutting, open defecation, child marriage, and many more. I cannot do full justice to Bicchieri’s rich book here, but will instead focus on three points. 1. Bicchieri offers a detailed and helpful botanization of collective behavior. Purely behavioral definitions of the relevant categories are inadequate. We must look at preferences and beliefs in order to know, e.g., whether something is a social norm. 2. Intentionally changing social norms is a complex process that requires several steps and extensive diagnostics. Simple information campaigns or provision of resources are unlikely to be successful. 3. Trendsetters and scripts often play a crucial role in norm change. Any approach that doesn’t look at psychological mechanisms and variables that are unevenly distributed across the population is inadequate. (shrink)

This paper explores two routes along which a pragmatic philosophical approach can contribute to reflections on agnosticism. The first of these approaches is developed in dialogue with William James, and it is oriented towards the needs and obligations of individuals and the extent to which agnosticism affects our abilities to lead strenuous lives. The second is developed in dialogue with Richard Rorty. It is oriented towards how agnosticisms can be adopted within particular vocabularies vis-a-vis other vocabularies as a pragmatically helpful (...) strategy or skill. I discuss the extent to which these can contribute to philosophical reflection on agnosticism and propose that they show that the agnosticism debate would benefit from a broadened focus where epistemic and pragmatic considerations are better integrated than presently. This would enable us to discuss different types of agnosticism that come to the fore in various contexts and whether they prevent us or allow us to better handle concrete problems in our interactions with the world. (shrink)

Our society is in the middle of the AI revolution. We discuss several applications of AI, in particular medical causality, where deep-learning neural networks screen through big data bases, extracting associations between a patient’s condition and possible causes. While beneficial in medicine, several questionable AI trading strategies have emerged in finance. Though advantages in many aspects of our lives, serious threats of AI exist. We suggest several regulatory measures to reduce these threats. We further discuss whether ‘full AI robots’ should (...) be programmed with a virtual consciousness and conscience. While this would reduce AI threats via motivational control, other threats such as the desire for AI—human socioeconomic equality could prove detrimental. (shrink)

Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...) seven sets of normative axioms. We conclude that a deliberative approach, with its focus on the conditions of legitimation and deliberative democracy, has the potential to become a cornerstone of stakeholder theory. The need for global stakeholder discourse and its internalization in corporate structures and institutions is exemplified by a multitude of CSR and stakeholder initiatives that have mushroomed in response to global risk scenarios such as climate change, nuclear warfare, or terrorism. Further research may help to build a functioning global governance system in order to provide guidance for management in the 21st century. (shrink)

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10–14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in all cultures in the same basic (...) situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants’ pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers’ and infants’ pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that conventional reasoning on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the assumption of a liberal market economy in the context of a nation state. I build on the study of Scherer and Palazzo (Acad Manage Rev 32(4):1096-1120, 2007), developing a number of criteria to identify elements of liberal philosophy in the ongoing CSR debate. I discuss their occurrence in the CSR literature in detail and reflect on the implications, taking into account the emerging political (...) reading of the firm. I conclude that the apolitical framework in the mainstream CSR literature has to be overcome since it does not reflect recent changes in the socio-economic conditions for economic actors in a globalizing world. (shrink)

I argue against abductivism about logic, which is the view that rational theory choice in logic happens by abduction. Abduction cannot serve as a neutral arbiter in many foundational disputes in logic because, in order to use abduction, one must first identify the relevant data. Which data one deems relevant depends on what I call one's conception of logic. One's conception of logic is, however, not independent of one's views regarding many of the foundational disputes that one may hope to (...) solve by abduction. (shrink)

Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral self-regulation” (...) and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates. (shrink)

I argue that the accounts of inference recently presented (in this journal) by Paul Boghossian, John Broome, and Crispin Wright are unsatisfactory. I proceed in two steps: First, in Sects. 1 and 2, I argue that we should not accept what Boghossian calls the “Taking Condition on inference” as a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. I present a different condition of adequacy and argue that it is superior to the one offered by Boghossian. More precisely, I point out (...) that there is an analog of Moore’s Paradox for inference; and I suggest that explaining this phenomenon is a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. Boghossian’s Taking Condition derives its plausibility from the fact that it apparently explains the analog of Moore’s Paradox. Second, in Sect. 3, I show that neither Boghossian’s, nor Broome’s, nor Wright’s account of inference meets my condition of adequacy. I distinguish two kinds of mistake one is likely to make if one does not focus on my condition of adequacy; and I argue that all three—Boghossian, Broome, and Wright—make at least one of these mistakes. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of inference. The account underwrites the idea that inference requires that the reasoner takes her premises to support her conclusion. I reject views according to which such ‘takings’ are intuitions or beliefs. I sketch an alternative view on which inferring consists in attaching what I call ‘inferential force’ to a structured collection of contents.

This is a response to a claim by Sven Ove Hansson to the effect that Poppers dictum that falsification lies at the heart of all pursuit of science has once and for all been falsified by his study of articles published in Nature during the year 2000. We claim that this is based on a misunderstanding of Poppers philosophy of science interpreting it too literally, and that alternative readings of those papers are fully compliant with falsification. We scrutinize Hansson’s arguments (...) as well as giving an overview of Poppers falsification theory. (shrink)

Nontransitive responses to the validity Curry paradox face a dilemma that was recently formulated by Barrio, Rosenblatt and Tajer. It seems that, in the nontransitive logic ST enriched with a validity predicate, either you cannot prove that all derivable metarules preserve validity, or you can prove that instances of Cut that are not admissible in the logic preserve validity. I respond on behalf of the nontransitive approach. The paper argues, first, that we should reject the detachment principle for naive validity. (...) Secondly, I show how to add a validity predicate to ST while avoiding the dilemma. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, (...) we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false. (shrink)

After giving some contextual information, we propose an analysis of music and meaning in the song “The Garden,” as performed by the rock group Einstürzende Neubauten in the official video from the 1996 release of the album Ende Neu. We present a semiotic blending model of the narrative content of the song and of its imagery, partly determined by the structure and character of the music. Finally, we add a view of the apocalyptic perspective of some comparable creations.

We present a natural standard translation of inquisitive modal logic $\mathrm{InqML}$ into first-order logic over the natural two-sorted relational representations of the intended models, which captures the built-in higher-order features of $\mathrm{InqML}$. This translation is based on a graded notion of flatness that ties the inherent second-order, team-semantic features of $\mathrm{InqML}$ over information states to subsets or tuples of bounded size. A natural notion of pseudo-models, which relaxes the non-elementary constraints on the intended models, gives rise to an elementary, purely (...) model-theoretic proof of the compactness property for $\mathrm{InqML}$. Moreover, we prove a Hennessy-Milner theorem for $\mathrm{InqML}$, which crucially uses $\omega $ -saturated pseudo-models and the new standard translation. As corollaries we also obtain van Benthem style characterisation theorems. (shrink)

According to McHugh and Way reasoning is a person-level attitude revision that is regulated by its constitutive aim of getting fitting attitudes. They claim that this account offers an explanation of what is wrong with reasoning in ways one believes to be bad and that this explanation is an alternative to an explanation that appeals to the so-called Taking Condition. I argue that their explanation is unsatisfying.

I var tid ar ambitionen att sa mycket verksamhet som mojlig skall vila pa vetenskaplig grund. Darmed utokas vetenskapens domaner, samtidigt som begreppet som sadant forflackas. Filosofen Karl Poppers syn pa vetenskapen ar mera subtil. Enligt honom kan vi ingenting veta med sakerhet, ingenting bevisa, endast falsifiera, det vill saga visa att nagot ar oforenligt med faktiska forhallanden. Det som undandrar sig falsifieringen kan vi acceptera tillsvidare. Ulf Persson provar i denna bok Poppers teori pa ett antal vetenskapsomraden, daribland ekonomi, (...) pedagogik och evolutionsbiologi. (shrink)

Pragmatist aesthetics has not yet reached its full potential. This is primarily due to the legacy of John Dewey’s aesthetics. In order to confront the shortcomings and insufficiencies of his aesthetics, pragmatist aestheticians ought to establish a dialogue with continental aesthetics. The attempt to clarify what pragmatist aesthetics can learn from Theodor W. Adorno’s materialist aesthetics is still a desideratum. This essay focuses on two aspects. First, it shows that pragmatist aestheticians can use Adorno’s modern aesthetics in order to gain (...) a deeper and more complex understanding of the social nature or register of form (of what might be termed “die Gesellschaftlichkeit der Form”). Second, the essay demonstrates that Adorno, in contrast to Dewey, is valuable for the endeavor to grasp the significance of the dialectics of harmony and dissonance or organicity and fragmentation when analyzing modern art and literature. (shrink)

Applying the sensemaking perspective in the field of corporate social responsibility is a recent but promising development. Using an in-depth exploratory case study, we analyze and discuss the CSR character of British American Tobacco Switzerland. Our findings indicate that BAT Switzerland does not follow traditional patters of building CSR. BAT Switzerland can be classified as a “legitimacy seeker,” characterized mainly by a relational identity orientation and legitimation strategies that might provide pragmatic and/or cognitive legitimacy. We conclude that understanding the cognitive (...) processes underlying the CSR decision-making process is of fundamental value when analyzing and changing the CSR approach of a firm. We discuss boundary conditions of the CSR character framework and expand it by differentiating between process and product legitimacy, as both perspectives have important but possibly different implications for the firm. (shrink)

The perhaps most important criticism of the nontransitive approach to semantic paradoxes is that it cannot truthfully express exactly which metarules preserve validity. I argue that this criticism overlooks that the admissibility of metarules cannot be expressed in any logic that allows us to formulate validity-Curry sentences and that is formulated in a classical metalanguage. Hence, the criticism applies to all approaches that do their metatheory in classical logic. If we do the metatheory of nontransitive logics in a nontransitive logic, (...) however, there is no reason to think that the argument behind the criticism goes through. In general, asking a logic to express its own admissible metarules may not be a good idea. (shrink)

Some think that logic concerns the “laws of truth”; others that logic concerns the “laws of thought.” This paper presents a way to reconcile both views by building a bridge between truth-maker theory, à la Fine, and normative bilateralism, à la Restall and Ripley. The paper suggests a novel way of understanding consequence in truth-maker theory and shows that this allows us to identify a common structure shared by truth-maker theory and normative bilateralism. We can thus transfer ideas from normative (...) bilateralism to truth-maker theory, such as non-transitive solutions to paradox, and vice versa, such as notions of factual equivalence and containment. (shrink)

Hegemonic masculinity is a concept that has been of central concern in gender research on different masculinities. However, with the exception of the pioneering work of Wajcman, it has not been widely discussed in relation to studies of science and technology. In this article, which mainly draws on anthropological fieldwork among car and motor mechanics in Penang, Malaysia, a certain form of hegemonic masculinity, based on an intimate embodied interaction with machines, is being discussed. Such a masculinity is furthermore founded (...) on an anthropomorphization of the man-machine relationship in which the machines are transformed into subjects in what might be termed a masculine technical sociability. In such a sociability, machines are understood as a means of a performative and embodied communication enabling masculine homosocial bonding linkages. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that there are no diachronic norms of epistemic rationality, that is, that there are no norms regarding how you should change your attitudes over time. I argue that this is wrong on the grounds that there are norms governing reasoning.

I am presenting a sequent calculus that extends a nonmonotonic consequence relation over an atomic language to a logically complex language. The system is in line with two guiding philosophical ideas: (i) logical inferentialism and (ii) logical expressivism. The extension defined by the sequent rules is conservative. The conditional tracks the consequence relation and negation tracks incoherence. Besides the ordinary propositional connectives, the sequent calculus introduces a new kind of modal operator that marks implications that hold monotonically. Transitivity fails, but (...) for good reasons. Intuitionism and classical logic can easily be recovered from the system. (shrink)

While we can judge and believe things by merely accepting testimony, we cannot make inferences by merely accepting testimony. A good theory of inference should explain this. The theories that are best suited to explain this fact seem to be theories that accept a so-called intuitional construal of Boghossian’s Taking Condition.