Social Facts Explained and Presupposed

Attempts are often made to explain collective action in terms of the interaction of individuals. A common objection to such attempts is that they are circular: Since every interaction presupposes the existence of common practices and common practices involve collective action, no analysis of collective agency in terms of interaction can reduce collectivity away. In this essay I will argue that this does not constitute a real circularity. It is true that common practices are presupposed in every attempt to explain collective action. However, this does not mean that every analysis of collective action presupposes an understanding of collective action. Common practices do not involve or presuppose particular collective actions. They are more fundamental than individual or collective agency. The subject of a common practice is not a "us" or "them", but the impersonal "one": "One does this and that". What "one does" is not yet a joint activity. It is not a particular action at all

Teleonomy

The distinction between teleology and teleonomy that biologists sometimes refer to seems to be helpful in certain contexts, but it is used in several different ways and has rarely been clearly drawn. This paper discusses three prominent uses of the term “teleonomy” and traces its history back to what seems to be its first use. This use is examined in detail and then justified and refined on the basis of elements found in the philosophy of Aristotle, Kant, Anscombe and others. In the course of this explication, it will also be shown how the description of end-directed processes relates to their explanation

Ghazali on Immaterial Substances

I will in this paper attempt to extract a positive doctrine on the substantiality of the human soul from Ghazali"s critique of the Aristotelian philosophical tradition. Rather than reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of intercultural dialogue, my aim is to directly engage in such dialogue. Accordingly, I will not suppose that we need to develop and apply external standards according to which one of the two philosophical traditions addressed here, Western and Islamic, may turn out to be superior. Up to a certain point, Western and Islamic philosophy are virtually indistinguishable regarding their style, the main topics, and the arguments discussed, which both take over from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Further, at least up to Ghazali, no Islamic philosopher actually employs standards of rationality that would differ from the standards also accepted in the West. Ghazali himself would certainly be at least as disturbed by a valid philosophical objection to his claims as any other serious philosopher. He does not pursue another kind of project, but submits to the same standards of truth and validity, as far as philosophical argument reaches. His point is, of course, that these standards do not reach as far as some philosophers suppose. But this, again, is not a particularly "Islamic� insight

Substance, Reality, and Distinctness

Descartes claims that God is a substance and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible. For Descartes, that something is real means that it can exist in separation, and something is a substance if it does not depend on other substances for its existence. Further, separable objects are correlates of distinct ideas, since an idea is distinct (in an objective sense) if its object may be easily and clearly separated from everything that is not its object. It follows that if our idea of God is our most distinct idea, as Descartes claims, God must be a substance in the Cartesian sense of this term. Second, if we can have an idea of a thinking subject that does not in any sense refer to bodily things, and if bodily things are substances, then mind and body must be two different substances

Luhmann und die Formale Mathematik

Niklas Luhmann verwendet in seiner soziologischen Systemtheorie offenbar etwas, das er den Büchern des englischen Mathematikers George Spencer Brown entnimmt. Dessen Formenkalkül ist für Luhmann, wie Günther Schulte treffend bemerkt, "Mädchen für alles, mit dem er nicht nur in der Lage ist Teezukochen, sondern auch Auto oder Straßenbahn zu fahrenâ€?. Der erste Blick in Spencer Browns Laws of Form vermittelt einen anderen Eindruck: nichts scheinen sie mit soziologischer Systemtheorie zu tun zu haben. Der vorliegende Text bearbeitet hieran anknüpfend eine recht bescheidene Frage, die sich gleichwohl jedem Luhmann-Leser schon einmal gestellt haben dürfte: Was wollen die Laws of Form und was will Luhmann mit ihnen? Als Antwort ergibt sich, nach Zurückverfolgung der relevanten Fußnoten, eine gute und eine schlechte Nachricht. Die schlechte Nachricht ist, daß die Lektüre der Laws of Form offenbar niemandem wirklich weiterhelfen kann, auch Luhmann selbst nicht. Die gute ist folglich, daß dem Luhmann-Leser die Notwendigkeit erspart bleibt, einen so dunklen, weil sparsamen Kalkül zu verstehen. Das meiste nämlich, was Luhmann den Laws of Form angeblich entnimmt, steht auf den zweiten Blick nicht darin. Er wird es also ohnehin durch andere Texte begründen müssen

Naturteleologie, reduktiv

The sciences may be able to describe living beings, but this is not to account for their life. Life is not a describable property of things. There is also no philosophical a priori argument by which one could prove the existence of life – except perhaps our own. In order to understand what life is, we must start with our conception of that life that we know, human life, and reduce the notion of this life to a notion of mere life. We may do this by introducing the following distinctions. Intentional movements may succeed, be interrupted, or be mistaken. In contrast, merely teleological movements can only succeed or be interrupted, but not mistaken. Further, intentional movements are executed as more or less suitable means for achieving an end. Merely teleological movements are not performed as means to ends in this sense, but that does not render them less goal-directed

Schuld und Gewissen bei Abelard

Exzerpt: Dass der Schuldige prinzipiell Zugehöriger der Gemeinschaft bleibt, führt dazu, dass das Vorliegen eines Schuldbewusstseins unverzichtbar wird. Wenn es zur Schuld gehört, dass sie nicht unmittelbar zur Ausgrenzung aus der Gemeinschaft führt, sie ihn also in dieser Weise nicht existenziell betrifft, muss der Bezug des Handelnden zu der ihm angelasteten Tat auf andere Weise gefestigt werden. Die Beziehung des Täters zu seiner Tat gewinnt gerade dadurch an Bedeutung, dass sie nicht mehr zur letzten Konsequenz führt. "Vor Gott" herrscht kein Ansehen der Person, es bleibt also der prinzipielle Status des Menschen als Mitglied der Gemeinschaft gewahrt. Indem er jedoch für schuldhaftes Tun verantwortlich ist, steht er in umso engerer Verbindung zu der Tat, sie lastet auf ihm

What is Formal Ontology?

After briefly addressing the origin of the word ontology, I will ask what formal ontology might be. I will first argue that formal ontology is not the same as formalized or general ontology. In order to understand the meaning of the epithet "formal,� I will then look for a suitable way of distinguishing form from matter. Formal ontology will be shown to be formal insofar as it does not refer to concrete, singular entities. This implies that it cannot be the study of singular things, but also not the study of our knowledge of them. For in both cases, it would depend on empirical facts about concrete things. Rather, formal ontology is about the objectivity of objects, and in this sense, it is the study of the form that objects have only insofar as they are objects

Supstancija, stvarnost i odjelitost

Descartes claims that God is a substance, and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible. For Descartes, that something is real means it can exist in separation, and something is a substance if it does not depend on other substances for its existence. Further, separable objects are correlates of distinct ideas, for an idea is distinct (in an objective sense) if its object may be easily and clearly separated from everything that is not its object. It follows that if our idea of God is our most distinct idea, as Descartes claims, then God must be a substance in the Cartesian sense of the term. Also, if we can have an idea of a thinking subject which does not in any sense refer to bodily things, and if bodily things are substances, then mind and body must be two different substances.Descartes tvrdi da je Bog supstancija te da su tijelo i um dvije različite i odvojive supstancije. Članak daje stanovitu podlogu s obzirom na koju ove dvije tvrdnje postaju razumljive. Za Descartesa, da nešto jest stvarno znači da to nešto može postojati zasebno, a nešto jest supstancija ako svoje postojanje ne duguje drugim supstancijama. Nadalje, odvojivi objekti predstavljaju korelate odjelitih ideja, jer ideja je odjelita (u objektivnome smislu) ako se njezin objekt može lako i jasno odvojiti od svega što nije njezin objekt. Ako je naša ideja Boga naša najodjelitija ideja, kao što tvrdi Descartes, onda slijedi da Bog mora biti supstancija u kartezijanskom smislu ovog termina. Također, ako možemo imati ideju mislećeg subjekta koja ni u kojem smislu ne upućuje na tjelesne stvari, te ako tjelesne stvari jesu supstancije, onda um i tijelo moraju biti dvije različite supstancije

Aitiai as Middle Terms

Aristotle’s aitiai (‘causes’) are middle terms in Aristotelian syllogisms. I argue that stating the aitia of a thing therefore amounts to re-describing this same thing in an alternative and illuminating way. This, in turn, means that a thing and its aitiai really are one and the same thing under different descriptions. The purpose of this paper is to show that this view is implied by Aristotle’s account of explanation, and that it makes more sense than one might expect