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Democracy, Deliberation and Social Distancing in the Pandemic: Adaptive Strategies in Legislatures and Political Parties
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has challenged one of the foundations of democratic practice, namely that people meet in order to decide about the rules and regulations concerning their community. We identify three strategies of coping with the need to restrict or avoid physical presence and provide information on how political parties and parliaments in 29 countries initially responded to the crisis. While it is too early to arrive at definitive conclusions, it is evident that the repercussions on democracy have been substantial: Party congresses and plenary sessions were cancelled or decisions were shifted to more elitist bodies. Yet, there are also signs of widening participatory opportunities by introducing digital decision-making, particularly within political parties
Zwischen Parteitag und Fernsehshow – Parteienrecht in Zeiten der Corona-Pandemie
No full textDas Parteienrecht operiert mit einem Leitbild von Parteien, das diese sowohl als Mitgliederparteien als auch als Anwesenheitsparteien begreift und konstituiert. Aufgrund dieser doppelten Verankerung der Präsenz sowohl in der faktischen als auch in der rechtlichen Grundlage der Parteien stellt die Corona-Pandemie sie vor grundlegende Herausforderungen ihrer Organisationsstruktur. Nachdem der deutsche Gesetzgeber zunächst relativ lange mit einer Anpassung gezögert hat und die Parteien daher eher auf experimenteller Grundlage ihre Aktivitäten zumindest teilweise auf Online-Formate umgestellt haben, hat der Bundestag Ende 2020 eine zeitlich befristete Änderung des Parteienrechts beschlossen, die den Parteien ein flexibleres Agieren in der Pandemie und ein teilweises Ausweichen auf digitale Veranstaltungen auch bei verbindlichen Entscheidungsfindungen ermöglichen soll. Der Beitrag beleuchtet die erheblichen sowohl praktischen als auch verfassungsrechtlichen Probleme, die die neue, vorübergehende Gesetzesfassung aufweist
Relativizing the Opposition between Content and State Nonconceptualism
No full textContent nonconceptualism (CNC, henceforth) and State conceptualism (SNC, henceforth) are motivated by constraints of content-attribution that pull in opposite directions, namely, the so-called cognitive significance requirement (CSR, henceforth) and what I would like to call here the same representing constraint (SRR, henceforth). The solution to this apparent contradiction is the rejection of the real content view (RV, henceforth) and the adherence to what I call here Content-pragmatism (CPR, henceforth). In CPR, “proposition” is not as real as a mental state, but rather is a term of art that semanticists use, as a matter of theoretical convenience, to classify mental states. What follows from CPR is Content-pluralism (CP, henceforth): there is no such a thing as the content of experience. Because both criticisms and the defense of SNC overlook CPR and CP, they are ineffective. In this paper, I will argue that the opposition between SNC and CNC is a real one, but only a relative one, that is, relative to the opposite constraints to be met, namely CSR and SRR. If we want to meet CSR, the best we can do is to let the content of experience be modeled as neo-Fregean content, namely a compound of non-conceptual modes of presentation of objects and properties. In this case, CNC prevails. In contrast, if we want to meet SRR, the best we can do is let the content of experience be modeled either as a Russellian compound of objects and properties or as a function from possible worlds to truth-values. In this case, SNC prevails
Concerning the Possibility of Exactly Similar Tropes
No full textIn this paper I attempt to show, against certain versions of trope theory, that properties with analyzable particularity cannot be merely exactly similar: such properties are either particularized properties (tropes) that are dissimilar to every any other trope, or else universalized properties (universals). I argue that each of the most viable standard and nonstandard particularizers that can be employed to secure the numerical difference between exactly similar properties can only succeed in grounding the particularity of properties, that is, in having properties be tropes, at the expense of ruling out the possibility of their exact similarity. Here are the four nonstandard particularizers that I examine: the genealogy of a property, the history of a property, the causal effects of a property, and the duration of a property. And here are the two standard particularizers that I examine: the bearer of a property, by which I mean either a bare particular or a spatiotemporal location, and the property itself, by which I mean that the property is self-particularized. In my concluding remarks, I explain that the only remaining hope for preserving the possibility of exactly similar tropes is regarding properties as primitively particular, and that this must mean not that properties are selfparticularized but that they are particularized due to nothing. I close by arguing that this may not help trope theory after all
Um Exame de Objeções a Ryle sobre o Funcionamento dos Termos Psicológicos Intencionais
No full textThis paper briefly presents an account, partially based upon Ryle’s approach, of the functions of intentional psychological terms as they are used in ordinary language. According to this account, intentional psychological terms describe known patterns of behavior that are determined by selective mechanisms of causation. That is, these terms describe relations between certain responses, selected on the basis of the consequences they produce in the environment, and contexts of their occurrence, to which they become associated. Intentional psychological terms do not point to inner causes of a given behavior, but can explain it only in the sense of stating that it could be expected to occur, if we can identify its behavior pattern and the context in which it occurs. We proceed then to examine three main objections that have been raised against Ryle’s position, namely: (a) Davidson’s challenge to the non-causal accounts of reason-explanations; (b) Armstrong’s worries about “leaving the counterfactuals hanging in the air”; and (c) the holistic objection to the (wrongly) presumed Ryle’s atomism. We aim at showing that none of these objections pose serious problems to the proposed account
The Possibility of Knowledge: Reply to Denis Bühler, Daniel Dohrn, David Lüthi, Bernhard Ritter and Simon Sauter
No full textProspects for an Intentionalist Theory of Self-Deception
No full textA distinction can be made between those who think that self-deception is frequently intentional and those who don’t. I argue that the idea that self-deception has to be intentional can be partly traced to a particular invalid method for analyzing reflexive expressions of the form ‘Ving oneself’ (where V stands for a verb). However, I take the question of whether intentional self-deception is possible to be intrinsically interesting, and investigate the prospects for such an alleged possibility. Various potential strategies of intentional self-deception are examined in relation to Alfred Mele’s suggestion that doing something intentionally implies doing it knowingly. It is suggested that the best prospects for an intentionalist theory of self-deception lie with a strategy involving the control of attention