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51Measuring Need-Based Justice – Empirically and FormallyIn Bernhard Kittel & Stefan Traub (eds.), Priority of Needs?: An Informed Theory of Need-based Justice, Springer Verlag. pp. 61-94. 2024.The formal part of this chapter is concerned with measures of need-based justice. According to the measures we propose, a distribution is unjust (i) the more it deviates from absolute need satisfaction and equal degrees of need satisfaction, (ii) the more the given undersupply could have been mitigated by transfers, or (iii) the more resources are used for oversupply instead of need satisfaction. These measures are compared, i.e., as to the satisfaction of need-oriented relatives of axioms promi…Read more
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18Paradoxien – Grenzdenken und Denkgrenzen von A(llwissen) bis Z(eit) (edited book)Brill mentis. 2024.Paradoxes evoke astonishment, confusion, and delight in the extraordinary. But that is not all: They point to fundamental problems of philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences. This volume presents a number of the most important paradoxes from an analytical-philosophical perspective. German abstract: Paradoxien rufen Staunen, Verwirrung und die Lust am Außergewöhnlichen hervor. Aber nicht nur das: Es sind Paradoxien, die bis heute auf Grundprobleme der Philosophie, der Mathematik sowie…Read more
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12Winter is Coming – How Laypeople Think About Different Kinds of NeedsPLoS ONE 18 (11). 2023.Needs play a key role in many fields of social sciences and humanities, ranging from normative theories of distributive justice to conceptions of the welfare state. Over time, different conceptions of what counts as a need (i. e., what is considered a normatively relevant need) have been proposed. Many of them include (in one way or the other) needs for survival, decency, belonging, and autonomy. Little work has been done on how these kinds of needs are evaluated in terms of their significance f…Read more
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7Concept Negation in KantHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 25 (1): 31-65. 2021.Kant distinguishes concept negation from copula negation. While the latter results in a negative judgement, i.e. a judgement denying a property of certain objects, the former gives rise to a negative concept, such as ‘immortal’. Since Kant’s remarks on concept negation are scattered and inconclusive, five interpretations are worked out and put to the test: logical negation, pseudo-negation, attribution of a zero degree, possibility-restricted negation and genus-restricted negation. Whereas the f…Read more
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11Semantik Und Ontologie: Beiträge Zur Philosophischen Forschung (edited book)Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. 2004.Der zweite Band der Reihe Philosophische Forschung spannt zwei Kerngebiete der Analytischen Philosophie zusammen: die Semantik und die Ontologie. Was sind die Grundbausteine unserer Ontologie? Wie beziehen wir uns sprachlich bzw. geistig auf sie? Diese und weitere Fragen werden von international renommierten Philosophen aus historischer und systematischer Perspektivediskutiert. Die Beiträge sind in Deutsch und English verfasst. Sie stammen von Christian Beyer, Johannes Brandl, Dagfinn Føllesdal,…Read more
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145Collections in Early BolzanoJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 6 (7). 2018.There are quite a few studies on late Bolzano’s notion of a collection (Inbegriff). We try to broaden the perspective by introducing the forerunner of collections in Bolzano’s early writings, namely the entities referred to by expressions with the technical term ‘et’. Special emphasis is laid on the question whether these entities are set-theoretical or mereological plenties. Moreover, similarities and differences to Bolzano’s mature conception are pointed out.
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Bolzano's theory of judgmentIn Brian Andrew Ball & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. 2019.
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21Need, equity, and accountability – Evidence on third-party distribution decisions from a vignette studySocial Choice and Welfare. 2022.We report the results of a vignette study with an online sample of the German adult population in which we analyze the interplay between need, equity, and accountability in third-party distribution decisions. We asked participants to divide firewood between two hypothetical persons who either differ in their need for heat or in their productivity in terms of their ability to chop wood. The study systematically varies the persons’ accountability for their neediness as well as for their productivi…Read more
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249We report the results of a vignette experiment with a quota sample of the German population in which we analyze the interplay between need, equity, and accountability in third-party distributive decisions. We asked subjects to divide firewood between two hypothetical persons who either differ in their need for heat or in their productivity in terms of their ability to chop wood. The experiment systematically varies the persons’ accountability for their neediness as well as for their productivity…Read more
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79Kant on Infinite and Negative Judgements: Three Interpretations, Six Tests, No Clear ResultTopoi 39 (3): 699-713. 2017.In his table of judgements, Kant added infinity as a third quality. An infinite judgement ‘All S are non-P’ is said to differ from the affirmative ‘All S are P’ because it ascribes a negative predicate; and it differs from the negative ‘No S is P’ because it has a richer content. The present paper puts three interpretations of this surplus content to six tests. Among other things, it is examined whether these interpretations marry up with Kant’s solution to the first antinomy, his conception of …Read more
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18The logic of coherenceSynthese 198 (8): 7697-7714. 2020.To remedy the lack of precision attached to the concept of coherence, a plethora of probabilistic measures has been developed. To broaden the perspective, we do not focus on the differences between these quantitative but the differences between qualitative approaches to coherence by comparing three probabilistic definitions for the relation denoted by ‘coheres with’. To reveal the different logics underlying these relations, we introduce a considerable number of formal properties and examine whe…Read more
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11Bolzano and Analytic Philosophy (edited book)BRILL. 1997.Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Vorbemerkung/Preface. Dagfin FØLLESDAL: Bolzano's Legacy. Jan BERG: Bolzano, the Prescient Encyclopedist. Jan SEBESTIK: Bolzano, Exner and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Paul RUSNOCK: Bolzano and the Traditions of Analysis. Peter SIMONS: Bolzano on Collections. Ali BEHBOUD: Remarks on Bolzano's Collections. Mark SIEBEL: Variation, Derivability and Necessity. Edgar MORSCHER: Bolzano's Method of Variation: Three Puzzles. Rolf GEORGE: Bolzano's Programme…Read more
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374Need considerations play an important role in empirically informed theories of distributive justice. We propose a concept of need-based justice that is related to social participation and provide an ethical measurement of need-based justice. The β-ε-index satisfies the need-principle, monotonicity, sensitivity, transfer and several »technical« axioms. A numerical example is given.
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147Inconsistency as a Touchstone for Coherence MeasuresTheoria 30 (1): 11-41. 2015.The debate on probabilistic measures of coherence has focused on evaluating sets of consistent propositions. In this paper we draw attention to the largely neglected question of whether such measures concur with intuitions on test cases involving inconsistent propositions and whether they satisfy general adequacy constraints on coherence and inconsistency. While it turns out that, for the vast majority of measures in their original shape, this question must be answered in the negative, we show t…Read more
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14Semantik und Ontologie: Beiträge zur philosophischen Forschung (edited book)Ontos Verlag. 2004.Der zweite Band der Reihe Philosophische Forschung spannt zwei Kerngebiete der Analytischen Philosophie zusammen: die Semantik und die Ontologie. Was sind die Grundbausteine unserer Ontologie? Wie beziehen wir uns sprachlich bzw. geistig auf sie? Diese und weitere Fragen werden von international renommierten Philosophen aus historischer und systematischer Perspektive diskutiert. Die Beiträge sind in Deutsch und English verfasst. Sie stammen von Christian Beyer, Johannes Brandl, Dagfinn Føllesdal…Read more
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26“It Falls somewhat short of logical precision.” Bolzano on Kant’s definition of analyticityGrazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1): 91-127. 2011.
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108Gricean Communication and Transmission of ThoughtsErkenntnis 69 (1): 55-67. 2008.Gricean communication is communication between utterers and their audiences, where the utterer means something and the audience understands what is meant. The weak transmission idea is that, whenever such communication takes place, there is something which is transmitted from utterer to audience; the strong transmission idea adds that what is transmitted is nothing else than what is communicated. We try to salvage these ideas from a seemingly forceful attack by Wayne Davis. Davis attaches too mu…Read more
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Variation, Derivability and Necessity: In Bolzano's view, a proposition is necessarily true iff it is derivable from true propositions that include no intuition (Anschauung)Grazer Philosophische Studien. forthcoming.
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154Red watermelons and large elephants: A case against compositionality?Theoria 15 (38): 263-280. 2000.The standard argument against the compositionality of adjective-noun compounds containing "red" says that "red" does not make the same semantic contribution because a red car has to be red outside whereas a red watermelon has to be red inside. Fodor's reply to that argument is that the inside/outside feature is semantically irrelevant because "red F" just means F which is red for Fs. That account agrees with our intuitions concerning analyticity; but it seems to be in conflict with a central tes…Read more
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114Equivalent testimonies as a touchstone of coherence measuresSynthese 161 (2): 167-182. 2008.Over the past years, a number of probabilistic measures of coherence have been proposed. As shown in the paper, however, many of them do not conform to the intuitition that equivalent testimonies are highly coherent, regardless of their prior probability.
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86Against Probabilistic Measures of CoherenceErkenntnis 63 (3): 335-360. 2005.It is shown that the probabilistic theories of coherence proposed up to now produce a number of counter-intuitive results. The last section provides some reasons for believing that no probabilistic measure will ever be able to adequately capture coherence. First, there can be no function whose arguments are nothing but tuples of probabilities, and which assigns different values to pairs of propositions {A, B} and {A, C} if A implies both B and C, or their negations, and if P(B)=P(C). But such se…Read more
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39William P. Alston: Illocutionary acts and sentence meaning, Cornell university press: Ithaca and London 2000Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1): 249-261. 2001.
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31Truth and intra-personal concept stabilityBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (4): 632-633. 1999.I criticize three claims concerning simulators: (1) That a simulator provides the best-fitting simulation of the perceptual impression one has of an object does not guarantee, pace Barsalou, that the object belongs to the simulator's category. (2) The people described by Barsalou do not acquire a concept of truth because they are not sensitive about the potential inadequacy of their sense impressions. (3) Simulator update prevents Barsalou's way of individuating concepts (i.e., identifying them …Read more
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24La notion bolzanienne de déductibilitéPhilosophiques 30 (1): 171-189. 2003.L’article présente le concept de déductibilité que Bolzano introduit dans sa Wissenscahftslehre, indique quelques traits caractéristiques en vertu desquels ce concept diffère de plusieurs conceptions contemporaines de la conséquence et examine l’affirmation selon laquelle il présente une forte similarité avec la conception de Tarski et la logique de la pertinence.The article presents the concept of deducibility which Bolzano introduced in his Wissenschaftslehre, points out some of the characteri…Read more
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48Der Rabe und der BayesianistJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 35 (2): 313-329. 2004.The Raven and the Bayesian. As an essential benefit of their probabilistic account of confirmation, Bayesians state that it provides a twofold solution to the ravens paradox. It is supposed to show that (i) the paradox’s conclusion is tenable because a white shoe only negligibly confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black, and (ii) the paradox’s first premise is false anyway because a black raven can speak against the hypothesis. I argue that both proposals are not only unable to solve the…Read more
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7Variation, Derivability and NecessityGrazer Philosophische Studien 53 (1): 117-137. 1997.In Bolzano's view, a proposition is necessarily true iff it is derivable from true propositions that include no intuition (Anschauung). This analysis is historically important because it displays close similarities to Quine's and Kripke's ideas. Its systematic significance, however, is reduced by the fact that derivability is defined with recourse to the method of variation, which we are allowed to apply even to propositions containing none of the respective variables. This liberality leads to t…Read more
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