Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla

In the debate of epistemic peer disagreement the equal-weight view suggests to split the difference between one's own and one's peer's opinions. An argument in favour of this view---which is prominently held by Adam Elga---is that by such a difference-splitting one may make some use of a so-called wise-crowd effect. In this paper it is argued that such a view faces two main problems: First, the problem that the standards for making use of a wise-crowd effect are quite low. And second, the problem that following the equal-weight view decreases such effects and by this the argument's own basis is defeated. We therefore come to the conclusion that an argument for the equal-weight view with the help of wise-crowd effects as provided more or less explicitly by Elga does not succeed.

The standard approach to solve prediction tasks is to apply inductive methods such as, e.g., the straight rule. Such methods are proven to be access-optimal in specific prediction settings, but not in all. Within the optimality-approach of meta-induction, success-based weighted prediction methods are proven to be access-optimal in all possible continuous prediction settings. However, meta-induction fails to be access-optimal in so-called demonic discrete prediction environments where the predicted value is inversely correlated with the true outcome. In this paper the problem of discrete prediction environments is addressed by embedding them into a synchronised prediction setting. In such a setting the task consists in providing a discrete and a continuous prediction. It is shown that synchronisation constraints exclude the possibility of demonic environments.

Sometimes the cognitive part of the human mind is modelled in a simplified way by degrees of belief. E.g., in philosophy of science and in formal epistemology agents are often identified by their credences in a set of claims. This line of dealing with the individual mind is currently expanded to groups by attempts of finding adequate ways of pooling individual degrees of belief into an overall group credence or, more abstractly speaking, into a collective mind. In this paper, we model religious people’s minds as such a collective mind. Religious people are therein identified with a set of degrees of beliefs containing religious and secular credences. E.g., within a religious context a person may be sure that some statement is true, whereas the same person lacks non-religious support for such a credence and hence may doubt the truth of that statement within a secular context. We will also present two results on the adequacy of this model.

In diesem Beitrag werden einige wissenschaftstheoretische Thesen u.a. von Paul K. Feyerabend hinsichtlich ad-hoc-Hypothesen untersucht. Es wird dabei gezeigt, dass Feyerabends Empfehlungen dafür, ad-hoc-Hypothesen zu akzeptieren oder abzulehnen, vom Einfluss dieser Hypothesen auf die Entwicklung von Technik abhängen. In einem weiteren Schritt wird angedeutet, dass eine derartige Relativierung auch in gängigen Bestätigungstheorien nahegelegt wird, dass man also gängigen Bestätigungstheorien und Feyerabend zufolge ad-hoc-Hypothesen nur hinsichtlich ihres Einflusses auf die Technikentwicklung akzeptieren oder ablehnen sollte.

In this contribution the socalled Meno-Problem will be discussed. With respect to theories the problem is the following question: Why is it epistemologically more valuable to know a true theory than to simply believe it? A classical answer in reabilist accounts to this problem refers to the value of the operation which is used for gathering knowledge. But there is a gap in the argumentation as far as one is not allowed to derive from this assumption the conclusion that also the result of the operation is valuable. We are going to show a difference between true theories which are just believed and theories which are also known to be true. This difference seems to allow one to close the mentioned gap.

This paper discusses one of the advantages of applying formal methods in ethics. First, an approach from democratic morality—which is a special case of contractualist ethics that brings together theories of legal and moral philosophy—will be adopted, in order to argue for the non-trivial thesis that moral norms are increasingly democratically motivated. To accept this thesis also as a desired way of justifying ethical principles raises some issues, such as the problem of providing adequate principles for moral opinion pooling. Secondly, it is therefore shown how formal criteria of rationality provide at least a partial solution to such problems. In a broad context this results can be seen as formal preliminaries to contractualist ethics.

In diesem Beitrag wird das Verhalten des Papstes im europäischen Dialog der Religionen und Weltanschauungen kritisch erörtert. Am Anfang steht eine kurze Analyse der Sprache der Religionen bzw. Weltanschauungen, die in Anlehnung an Joseph Maria Bochenski durchgeführt ist. Es wird dabei die Auffassung vertreten, dass Religionen und manche Weltanschauungen Behauptungen über die Wirklichkeit aufstellen, Sprache in einer deskriptiv-kognitiven Funktion verwenden, dass ein solcher Sprachgebrauch eine epistemische Verpflichtung auf Bescheidenheit mit sich bringt und dass eine solche Verpflichtung wiederum eine Basis für einen ernstgemeinten europäischen Dialog bieten könnte. Danach werden von einem theologischen Standpunkt ausgehend Bedingungen dafür untersucht, dass ein europäischer Dialog stattfinden kann. Anhand konkreter Beispiele, im Speziellen anhand der "Regensburger Rede" und der "Neuformulierung der Karfreitagsfürbitte für die Juden", wird gezeigt, wie sich der Papst im europäischen Dialog tatsächlich verhält und wie von Seiten der jeweiligen Religion auf dieses Verhalten eingegangen wird. Da er vor allem in der menschlichen Vernunft eine Brücke für einen europäischen Dialog sieht, wird anschließend auf seine Argumentation für eine Ausweitung der Vernunft und seinen Gebrauch der Wörter "Vernunft" und "Glauben" eingegangen. Dabei wird hauptsächlich auf Schriften, in denen der Papst seine Überzeugung ausdrückt, dass Religion und Vernunft sich gegenseitig korrigieren, begrenzen und unterstützen müssen, Bezug genommen. Abschließend wird ein bestimmtes Argument des Papstes für diese Überzeugung expliziert und bewertet.

One problem of intergenerational justice concerns the question whether the present generation bears moral responsibility for future generations and how to justify such a responsibility. A way of justification is to take a person-affecting view of ethics, according to which no action is morally bad per se, but only with respect to someone (e.g. with respect to future generations). Against a person-affecting view sometimes the so-called non-identity-problem is posed. This problem states that there are actions which - from a person-affecting point of view - have to be considered as bad for a person, although without execution of the action the person would not exist. In this paper I will try to show how this conflict can be solved by an exact analysis of its structure.

One challenge of societies in the 21st century is the conflict of norms between different cultures. In Ancient Greece, too, such conflicts arose, and great thinkers offered great solutions. In this contribution we will argue for the following: - Ancient ethical theories were not only individual ethical theories but also social ethical theories (II). - The ancient methods of scientific examinations are useful not only in classical sciences but also in ethics (III). - Accepting the result of (III) yields highly interesting theoretical results about conflicts of norms between different cultures (IV).

Dieser Sammelband hat zum Ziel, moderne atheistische Richtungen kritisch und wissenschaftlich zu betrachten. Mit diesen modernen atheistischen Richtungen ist vor allem der in Oxford unterrichtende Biologe und Religionskritiker Richard Dawkins verknüpft, bekennender Gegner von Kreationismus, Intelligent Design und Theologie, der schon 1976 mit der Veröffentlichung seines Buches "Der Gotteswahn" in der breiten Öffentlichkeit auf sich aufmerksam machte. Auch in jüngerer Vergangenheit, und zwar im Jahr 2006, war Dawkins mit seinem Buch (Dawkins 2006) an einem erneuten Aufflammen einer vor allem in den USA geführten Diskussion rund um die Vereinbarkeit oder Unvereinbarkeit von theologischen und evolutionstheoretischen Ansätzen beteiligt. Beim Durchblättern dieses Buches wird spätestens beim Entdecken des vierten Kapitels, das den provokanten Titel "Warum es mit ziemlicher Sicherheit keinen Gott gibt" trägt, klar, dass Dawkins damit keine Brücke zwischen Evolutionsbiologie und Schöpfungstheologie schlagen möchte. Auch Dawkins selbst hält dieses Kapitel für das wichtigste seines Buches: "This chapter has contained the central argument of my book" (cf. Dawkins 2006, p. 187). Dies ist Grund genug, uns dieses Kapitel aus Dawkins' Buch näher anzusehen. Schließlich verbindet Dawkins damit hohe Ansprüche: "If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion - the God Hypothesis - is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist. This is the main conclusion of the book so far" (cf. Dawkins 2006, p.189). Sein Argument, im englischen Original "main argument" (hier: "Hauptargument") genannt, verdient also genauere Betrachtung und soll in diesem Artikel wissenschaftstheoretisch beleuchtet werden.

Eleonore Stump claims in her book "Wandering in Darkness" that the problem of evil can be solved best by the help of narratives. This - so Stump - is due to the fact that narratives allow one to get a general view about relevant parts of the discussion of suffering. In this context she distinguishes the more detailed view of the discussion from a more general one by two different modes of cognition: the mode of gathering "knowledge that" and that one of gathering "knowledge how". Knowledge by narratives is a subcategory of the last-mentioned one. In the paper I argue for the thesis that this distinction is not really crucial for Stump's argumentation and that in fact only "knowledge that" is relevant for her proposed solution.

In philosophy of science concept formation and reduction is usually discussed with respect to definability. In the paper at hand this discussion is slightly expanded to an investigation of concept formation and reduction by analogies. It is argued that many kinds of such analogies bear some important features of partial contextual definitions. With the help of a detailed investigation of the so-called gene-meme-analogy it is then demonstrated how the meme-concept is introduced via analogies into an expanded theory of (cultural) evolution. As a consequence it is shown that the diversity of meanings of the meme-concept fits into the current state of establishing this analogy.

In their paper on the influence of meta-induction to the wisdom of the crowd, Paul Thorn and Gerhard Schurz argue that adding meta-inductive methods to a group influences the group positively, whereas replacing independend methods of a group with meta-inductive ones may have a negative impact. The first fact is due to an improvement of average ability of a group, the second fact is due to an impairment of average diversity within a group by meta-induction. In this paper some critical remarks to meta-inductive group expansion and replacement are made. In particular it is stressed that both ability and diversity are of equal importance to a group’s performance