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Skepticism, Externalism and Inference to the Best Explanation
No full textThis paper focuses on a combination of the antiskeptical strategies offered by semantic externalism and the inference to the best explanation. I argue that the most difficult problems of the two strategies can be solved, if the strategies are combined: The strategy offered by semantic externalism is successful against standard skeptical brain-in-a-vat arguments. But the strategy is ineffective, if the skeptical argument is referring to the recent-envatment scenario. However, by focusing on the scenario of recent envatment the most difficult problems of the antiskeptical strategy posed by the inference to the best explanation can be solved. The most difficult problems with this strategy are: (1) Why is an explanation of our experience offered by the skeptical hypothesis more complex than our standard explanation? (2) Why is the more complex explanation less likely to be true? By focussing on the recent envatment hypothesis both questions can be answered satisfactorily. Therefore, the combination of semantic externalism and the inference to the best explanation yields to a powerful antiskeptical argument
Downward Determination
No full textThe problem of downward causation – i.e., the problem of the nature of the influence of a system or whole over its components – is highly debated in the literature on property emergence. Nevertheless, most treatments of downward causation do not really refer to causation at all, but rather to explanation and/or determination, as Menno Hulswit recently argued. In this context, it is quite important to search for an understanding of how the roles usually ascribed to systems relatively to their components, such as those of ‘constraining’, ‘selecting’, ‘organizing’, ‘structuring’, ‘determining’, can be connected with the idea of causation. In our view, the important relation here is that in all these cases we are dealing with some kind of ‘determination’. But it is required, then, to clarify what we mean by ‘determination’. For this purpose, we can take as a starting point a difference between the ideas of ‘determining’ and ‘causing’ which seems central to us, and was also highlighted by Hulswit: while ‘determining’ primarily involves the idea of ‘necessitation’ (in the sense of ‘it could not be otherwise’, or, in a somewhat weaker but more broadly applicable manner, ‘it does not tend to be otherwise’), ‘causing’ primarily refers – since the advent of Western modern science – to the idea of ‘bringing about’ some event. In this work, we propose that discussions about the influence of systems or wholes over their components can benefit from a move from the idea of downward ‘causation’ to that of downward ‘determination’. Downward determination can be understood in terms of constraints that the condition of belonging to a system-token of a given kind imposes on the behavior of the components. Thus, we move from an understanding of the influence of wholes over parts based on a neo-Aristotelian perspective, which introduces other causal modes than just efficient causes, to an understanding in terms of modes of determination other than causal determination. This immediately poses a number of questions, which should be faced in order to make this idea more precise. In this paper, we will only discuss two of them. First, we will strive for explaining in further detail what we mean by ‘determination’. We will address this problem here by exploring Peirce’s distinction between ‘causal’ and ‘logic’ determination. Second, we will establish in a clear manner the nature of the relata in downward determination. In the model we put forward here, the determiner, at the level of the system as a whole, is a general principle of organization, a universal, which is characteristic of the kind of structure observed in a type of system, and the determined, at the level of the parts, are particulars, namely, concrete processes involving the system’s components
Jens Spahn und die 9.999 €-Spenden
No full textDer Kurzbeitrag nimmt das in der Öffentlichkeit heftig kritisierte Spendendinner des Bundesgesundheitsministers Jens Spahn zum Anlass, die gesetzlich festgelegte Veröffentlichungspflicht für Namen von Spendern politischer Parteien zu hinterfragen. Als Konkretisierung des verfassungsrechtlichen Transparenzgebots des Art. 21 Abs. 1 S. 4 GG dient die Veröffentlichungspflicht für Spendernamen der Offenlegung politischen Einflusses. Vor diesem Hintergrund stehen die gesetzlichen Grenzwerte, ab denen Veröffentlichungspflichten greifen, seit Jahren in der Kritik, auch weil die Umgehungsanreize – wie das Spendendinner zeigt – offensichtlich noch deutlich zu groß sind
Parteien und Wahlrecht
No full textDer Spiegel der Rechtsprechung nimmt mit der Rubrik „Parteien und Wahlrecht“ die besondere Rolle von politischen Parteien als „Wahlvorbereitungsorganisationen“ in den Blick. Die im Berichtsjahr 2020 dazu ergangenen Gerichtsentscheidungen befassten sich mehrfach mit der Frage des Vorrangs des der Wahl nachgängigen Wahlprüfungsverfahrens vor einem fach- bzw. verfassungsgerichtlichen Rechtsschutz schon vor der Wahl. Die Frage, inwieweit Präsenzwahlen unter Pandemiebedingungen chancengleich abgehalten werden können, war Gegenstand gleich mehrerer Verfahren und auch die – nicht mit dem Einsatz von Wahlcomputern gleichzusetzende – elektronische Auszählung von Papierstimmen, die Teilnahme von blinden und sehbehinderten Personen an Wahlen, die Gestaltung von Stimmzetteln und die Voraussetzungen einer demokratischen Grundsätzen entsprechenden innerparteilichen Kandidatenaufstellung fanden Eingang in die Rechtsprechung. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit erhielten die landesverfassungsgerichtlichen Entscheidungen zu den sogenannten Parité-Gesetzen in Brandenburg und Thüringen
On the Possibility of Contigently Dispositional Properties
No full textMetaphysicians who hold that there is an ontological distinction between two kinds of fundamental natural properties assume that properties are dispositional or non-dispositional necessarily. In contrast to this, I suggest that one can admit the existence of fundamental contingently dispositional properties. After some clarifications concerning the content of the suggested view, I respond to several objections regarding its intelligibility and viability and outline two of its important consequences
Evans and First Person Authority
No full textIn The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans describes the acquisition of beliefs about one’s beliefs in the following way: ‘I get myself in a position to answer the question whether I believe that p by putting into operation whatever procedure I have for answering the question whether p.’ In this paper I argue that Evans’s remark can be used to explain first person authority if it is supplemented with the following consideration: Holding on to the content of a belief and ‘prefixing’ it with ‘I believe that’ is as easy as it is to hold on to the contents of one’s thoughts when making an inference. We do not, usually, have the problem, in going, for example, from ‘p’ and ‘q’ to ‘p and q’, that one of our thought contents gets corrupted. Self-ascription of belief by way of Evans’s procedure is based on the same capacity to retain and re-deploy thought contents and therefore should enjoy a similar degree of authority. However, is Evans’s description exhaustive of all authoritative self-ascription of belief? Christopher Peacocke has suggested that in addition to Evans’s procedure there are two more relevant ways of self-ascribing belief. I argue that both methods can be subsumed under Evans’s procedure