Guido Löhrer

My considerations are typological in nature. A lie is a disingenuous assertion made to another person with the intent of deceiving the other person into believing both that the assertion is true and that the liar believes it to be true. This definition is morally neutral. It requires a further, moral judgment to determine whether a lie is a good or a bad thing, or whether, in specified circumstances, a lie is morally right or wrong. However, what if the truth is not only occasionally contaminated but lies are spread en masse in order to make the addressees question their ability to judge or to induce collective self-deception? Beginning with small-scale use of lies, related variants of dishonesty – especially large scale, propagandistic uses of lies – are conceptually characterized and evaluated. Lies can be systematically distinguished via their purposes.

Davidson's 1963 essay "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" convinced most philosophers that reason explanations are a species of causal explanation. By way of argument, Davidson challenged the non-causalist to make sense of cases where the agent has more than one reason that would justify her behavior but only acts on one of these reasons. We claim that a teleological account of action explanation can answer Davidson's challenge, but we argue further that if the Davidsonian challenge is a problem for the teleologist, then it is equally a problem for the causalist, and thus cannot serve as an argument for causalism.

Distancing myself from theories that present dignity as if it were a feature of an independent reality, I use the concept as defined by praxis and speak about shared dignity. I begin by testing some of the argumentative strategies that dominate current local discussion. This is followed by a probing of Kant's concept of dignity, which significantly determines these strategies. Finally I plead for the alternative view that dignity be understood as something which, firstly, no one can have for themselves and that, secondly, exists only in and only through a social praxis of dignification

In Platons Apologie des Sokrates zeichnet sich eine auf menschliche Art weise Person durch ihre Fähigkeit aus, den epistemischen Status und den Wert ihrer Meinungen über Sachverhalte korrekt zu beurteilen. Sie weiß, ob es sich bei ihnen um Wissen oder bloß um Meinung handelt, aber auch, ob sie etwas nicht weiß. Es ist zudem eine breit geteilte Auffassung, dass intellektuelle Bescheidenheit, obwohl nicht dasselbe wie Weisheit, ein bedeutender Aspekt der Weisheit ist. Doch wenn die hier vorgestellten Überlegungen triftig sind und das Spektrum der relevanten Deutungen abdecken, ist das für Sokratische Weisheit nicht haltbar. Denn die Bedingungen für korrekte Urteile über den epistemischen Status der eigenen Meinungen sind so anspruchsvoll, dass fehlbare Wesen, die ein entsprechendes Wissen zweiter Stufe beanspruchen, nicht anders als epistemisch unbescheiden sein können. Wenn Sokratische Weisheit epistemische Bescheidenheit verlangt, ist Sokrates nicht weise.

(1) A lie is an untruthful assertion made to another person with the intention to make that other person believe the asserted proposition to be true and that the speaker himself also believes that proposition to be true. (2) A lie in the morally relevant sense is not to be considered as an action type but as an aspect of action with a negative moral valence. (3) Holism in fixing the valance of an aspect should not be combined with non-additivism in determining the valence of the action as a whole, and vice versa. (4) If there is a true description of an action as a lie, this action is prima facie morally wrong. (5) It is morally right to lie in cases where the action which has a true description as a lie and which is pars pro toto correctly called a lie, has other aspects with a positive valence which, on balance, are weighing higher.

According to Plato’s Apology of Socrates, a humanly wise person is distinguished by her ability to correctly assess the epistemic status and value of her beliefs. She knows when she has knowledge or has mere belief or is ignorant. She makes no unjustified knowledge claims and considers her knowledge to be limited in scope and value. This means: A humanly wise person is intellectually modest. However, when interpreted classically, Socratic wisdom cannot be modest. For in classical epistemic logic, modelling second-order knowledge of knowing something or not, i.e. positive and negative introspection, requires a degree of self-transparency that would at most be attributed to an omniscient and infallible agent. If intellectual modesty is part of Socratic wisdom, we have to look for another epistemic model. I will offer three proposals and argue that an intuitionist reading of the classical concept of knowledge is best suited for this purpose.

This paper is a study in semantics and conceptual logic, analysing the relation between the notions of truth and rightness (rectitudo) in St. Anselm’s De veritate: Are they conceived of relativistically or absolutely? Are they synonymous or not? Are we concerned with ontological or with epistemic notions? I argue that right is what satisfies a direction or follows a rule. Yet, pertaining to God, we deal with an unary use of the expression, since His unique role consists in establishing a measure in the first place without being measured Himself. Truth deals with facts, rightness with norms. Considered as “rightness perceptible only to the mind” (St. Anselm’s definition), “truth” is an ontological, non-epistemic notion. Truth, in turn, depends on the knowability of rightness, being a normative, epistemic notion. Keywords: truth, rightness, ontological, epistemic, rule, normativity

In Analysis and Metaphysics, Peter F. Strawson presents a proposal for an analysis of the conceptual structure of our thinking and speaking about the world that should enable us to determine what is conceptually fundamental and ontologically primary. With “presupposition”, “ontological commitment” and “judgment”, his analytical procedure comprises a series of expressions that are characterized by an act/object ambiguity. On the one hand, they denote semantic or non-epistemic terms that capture the ontological conditions of the possibility of the use of basic concepts. On the other hand, they express normative or epistemic terms that define the conditions of correctness for the use of these concepts. This can have different ontological consequences, but at least suggests a more differentiated understanding of these terms.

Revisionen moralischer Überzeugungen erfordern nach allgemeiner Auffassung einen festen Bezugspunkt: einen stabilen moralischen Charakter der umdenkenden Personen. Andernfalls können diesen ihre Überzeugungen, Entscheidungen und Handlungen nicht zugerechnet werden. So lehren metaethische Generalisten einerseits und Partikularisten andererseits, für Charakterstabilität seien fixe Moralprinzipien bzw. eine fixe moralische Feinfühligkeit konstitutiv. Beiden Positionen zufolge zielen Revisionen auf moralische Richtigkeit im Sinne synchroner Kohärenz niedrigstufiger moralischer Überzeugungen . Der kritische Befund: Das statische Vermögen, in moralischen Dingen immer richtig zu liegen, bildet keine einer besonderen Zurechnung fähigen moralischen Charaktere aus; das dynamische Vermögen, sich selbst auf angemessene Weise korrigieren zu können, dagegen wohl. Darum argumentiert der Beitrag erstens dafür, Charakterstabilität als diachrone Kohärenz unserer moralischen Überzeugungen aufzufassen. Zweitens wird für eine Sicht plädiert, nach der iterative Revisionen moralischer Überzeugungen nicht nur Moralprinzipien gemäß vorgenommen werden, sondern diese auch affizieren und deren maßvolle Veränderung nach sich ziehen können. Zuletzt wird diskutiert, nach welchen Strategien sich Revisionen dieser Art vollziehen sollten

In der analytischen Handlungstheorie streiten seit einigen Jahren Kausalisten und Teleologen über die angemessene Erklärung menschlichen Handelns aus Gründen. Mit Fokus auf das Problem abweichender Kausalketten zielt der Beitrag auf eine reflektierte Einschätzung des Stands dieses Disputs sowie der Vorzüge und Defizite der involvierten Ansätze und konstatiert ein Patt. Während Kausalisten ein kausaltheoretischer Begriff der Abweichung fehlt, ringen Teleologen mit der Abwägung kontrafaktischer Situationen

As in the Doctrine of Right, Kant uses a principle in the Critique of Prac­tical Reason according to which whatever diminishes the hindrances to an activ­ity is a furthering of this activity itself. This is meant to help to determine a priori from concepts the modus operandi of the moral law, insofar as it is an incentive whose effect confers moral value on actions. I argue, first, that following a par­ticular reading of what is meant by "hindrance," "resistance," and "furthering," this principle is likely to be false. This is because a hindrance obstructs an event or prevents it from taking place. By contrast, the removal of the hindrance or its absence merely permits or enables an event to occur. It does not bring it about. Preventing or disabling and furthering (in terms of "making happen") are not contradictory, but contrary opposites. Either, then, the furthering of an activity is to be understood as limited to enabling that activity by disabling its disablers or the notion of furthering presupposes a lot more than can be seen a priori, in­dependently of such a presupposition. The latter would be question-begging. Second, I point out that the pre-critical writing on the Negative Magnitudes pres­ents a Kantian solution to the motivation problem that, albeit not satisfactory, is more promising than that of the Second Critique.