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Cultural domination: philosophical perspectives (edited book)Routledge (expected 2024). forthcoming.
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184Introduction to Cultural domination: philosophical perspectivesIn Thomas M. Besch, Raphael Van Riel, Harold Kincaid & Tarun Menon (eds.), Cultural domination: philosophical perspectives, Routledge (expected 2024). forthcoming.
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Constructionism in Psychiatry. From Social Causes to Psychiatric ExplanationFrontiers in Psychiatry 7 1-25. 2016.It is common to note that social environment and cultural formation shape mental disorders. The details of this claim are, however, not well understood. The paper takes a look at the claim that culture has an impact on psychiatry from the perspective of metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Its aim is to offer, in a general fashion, partial explications of some significant versions of the thesis that culture and social environment shape mental disorders and to highlight some of the conseque…Read more
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In Search of the Missing MechanismIn Rebekka Hufendiek, Daniel James & Raphael van Riel (eds.), Social Functions in Philosophy: Metaphysical, Normative, and Methodological Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 70-92. 2020.
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13Ein Fundament in Lebenswelt und Apriori (review)Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 71 (5): 809-815. 2023.
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35Free Will and Two Types of DeterminismReview of Metaphysics 76 (1): 95-113. 2022.Abstract:The goal of this article is to examine some differences between two types of incompatibilism, concerning, on the one hand, incompatibilism about free will and past causes, and, on the other, incompatibilism concerning free will and past divine beliefs or past truths about future actions. On standard conceptions, determinism comes relatively cheap. On van Inwagen's explication, all that is required is that truths about our actions are implied by appropriate descriptions of the past and t…Read more
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733The good, the bad, and the timely: How temporal order and moral judgment influence causal selectionFrontiers in Psychology 5 (1336): 1-10. 2014.Causal selection is the cognitive process through which one or more elements in a complex causal structure are singled out as actual causes of a certain effect. In this paper, we report on an experiment in which we investigated the role of moral and temporal factors in causal selection. Our results are as follows. First, when presented with a temporal chain in which two human agents perform the same action one after the other, subjects tend to judge the later agent to be the actual cause. Second…Read more
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5Leibniz on Freedom, Divine Foreknowledge, and Necessitation without DependenceStudia Leibnitiana 48 (2): 178-200. 2016.
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24Weberian ideal type construction as concept replacementEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 1358-1377. 2022.This paper contains a novel and coherent reading of Weberian ideal type construction, based on recent philosophical approaches to conceptual engineering. This reading makes transparent the dialectics of Weber's approach, resulting in a more nuanced interpretation of his methodological work. It will become apparent that Weber, when introducing his notion of an ideal type, did not merely summarize his views on methodology in the social sciences, but, rather, presented a two-step argument in favor …Read more
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19Two Originals, One Artwork: On the Ontology of Originals and ImprovisationsEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 59 (2): 119-134. forthcoming.There is disagreement as to the ontological status of works associated with an original. Some hold that works like paintings are identical to the concrete particular the artist worked on while creating the artwork. Others suggest that works of this sort cannot be instantiated more than once. In this paper, it is argued that, even if artworks like paintings cannot be instantiated in reproductions, they are nevertheless possibly instantiated more than once. Moreover, it is tentatively suggested th…Read more
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24Representationalist physicalismTheoria 88 (5): 887-898. 2022.In this paper, I discuss a view proposed by Carl Hempel in his paper Reduction: Ontological and Linguistic Facets, published in 1969. Here, Hempel suggested that questions regarding the identification of mental states with physiological states, the relation between sociological phenomena and individual behavioral states, and between biological and physicochemical states should be given what he calls a ‘linguistic’ interpretation. His main point is that whether or not an object is physical or bio…Read more
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9Nagel on Idealization in ScienceIn Matthias Neuber & Adam Tamas Tuboly (eds.), Ernest Nagel: Philosophy of Science and the Fight for Clarity, Springer. pp. 111-130. 2021.The goal of this paper is to reconstruct Nagel’s approach to idealization in the sciences and present his views as a viable option. In a nutshell, the theory that emerges can be described as follows: There are various types of idealization, which can be found in theoretical and experimental laws, and which, according to Nagel, play various important epistemic roles. In particular, they help organize complex knowledge and allow for approximations to truth. A cognate of idealization, which Nagel d…Read more
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43Social Functions in Philosophy: Metaphysical, Normative, and Methodological Perspectives (edited book)Routledge. 2020.Social functions and functional explanations play a prominent role not only in our everyday reasoning but also in classical as well as contemporary social theory and empirical social research. This volume explores metaphysical, normative, and methodological perspectives on social functions and functional explanations in the social sciences. It aims to push the philosophical debate on social functions forward along new investigative lines by including up-to-date discussions of the metaphysics of …Read more
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16Aussagen- Und Prädikatenlogik: Eine EinführungJ.B. Metzler. 2018.Dieses Lehrbuch vermittelt eines der wichtigsten Werkzeuge der Philosophie durch die Einführung in die Grundideen einer formalen Sprache. Schrittweise werden so die relevanten Sprachstrukturen aufgedeckt, die dann in der Aussagen- und Prädikatenlogik formalisiert werden. Sowohl die Semantik als auch ein Kalkül des natürlichen Schließens werden jeweils detailliert diskutiert. In Kombination mit einer Lernplattform wird der zentrale Stoff anwendungsorientiert und plastisch vermittelt, was die auch…Read more
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50Lying beyond a Conversational Purpose: A Critique of Stokke's Assertion-Based Account of LyingJournal of Philosophy 116 (2): 106-118. 2019.In this paper, I argue that a particular assertion-based account of lying, which rests on Stalnaker’s theory of assertions, proposed by Andreas Stokke, is both too broad and too narrow. I tentatively conclude that the account fails because lying does not necessarily involve a conversational purpose.
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56Understanding through modeling: the explanatory power of inadequate representationSynthese 192 (12): 3777-3780. 2015.status: published.
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227Philosophical Methods Under Scrutiny: Introduction to the Special Issue "Philosophical Methods"Synthese 197 (3): 915-923. 2020.This paper is the introduction to the Special Issue “Philosophical Methods”. The Special Issue will be published by Synthese.
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31If You Understand, You Won’t Be LuckyGrazer Philosophische Studien 93 (2): 196-211. 2016.The present paper argues that there is a structural difference between classical cases involving knowledge-undermining environmental luck, and cases where a subject acquires understanding in the presence of environmental luck. This difference appears to bear on arguments against the reductionist thesis that understanding is a special form of knowledge.
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11Mental Disorder and the Indirect Construction of Social FactsJournal of Social Ontology 3 (1): 27-48. 2016.In this paper, I argue for two claims, that on a common conception of the second order property of being a mental disorder, some facts about mental disorders are the result of social constructions, and that the way facts about mental disorders are constructed differs from the received view on social construction. The difference is examined, a novel type of social construction is identified, and it is suggested that there are numerous other types of social facts that are constructed in a similar …Read more
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50Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Future‐Dependent BeliefsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 55 (4): 500-520. 2017.Recently, a time-honored assumption has resurfaced in some parts of the free will debate: if past divine beliefs or past truths about what we do depend on what we do, then these beliefs and truths are, in a sense, up to us; hence, we are able to act otherwise, despite the existence of past truths or past divine beliefs about our future actions. In this paper, I introduce and discuss a novel incompatibilist argument that rests on. This argument is interesting in itself, for it is independent of a…Read more
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Personal Identity. An Introduction to the Philosophy of John PerryIn Albert Newen & Raphael van Riel (eds.), Identity, Language, and Mind. An Introduction to the Philosophy of John Perry, Csli. 2012.
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55The content of model-based informationSynthese 192 (12): 3839-3858. 2015.The paper offers an account of the structure of information provided by models that relevantly deviate from reality. It is argued that accounts of scientific modeling according to which a model’s epistemic and pragmatic relevance stems from the alleged fact that models give access to possibilities fail. First, it seems that there are models that do not give access to possibilities, for what they describe is impossible. Secondly, it appears that having access to a possibility is epistemically and…Read more
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339Nagelian Reduction Beyond the Nagel ModelPhilosophy of Science 78 (3): 353-375. 2011.Nagel’s official model of theory-reduction and the way it is represented in the literature are shown to be incompatible with the careful remarks on the notion of reduction Nagel gave while developing his model. Based on these remarks, an alternative model is outlined which does not face some of the problems the official model faces. Taking the context in which Nagel developed his model into account, it is shown that the way Nagel shaped his model and, thus, its well-known deficiencies, are best …Read more
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499Real Knowledge Undermining LuckLogos and Episteme 7 (3): 325-344. 2016.Based on the discussion of a novel version of the Barn County scenario, the paper argues for a new explication of knowledge undermining luck. In passing, an as yet undetected form of benign luck is identified.
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194Identity-Based Reduction and Reductive ExplanationPhilosophia Naturalis 47 (1-2): 183-219. 2010.In this paper, the relation between identity-based reduction and one specific sort of reductive explanation is considered. The notion of identity-based reduction is spelled out and its role in the reduction debate is sketched. An argument offered by Jaegwon Kim, which is supposed to show that identity-based reduction and reductive explanation are incompatible, is critically examined. From the discussion of this argument, some important consequences about the notion of reduction are pointed out.
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14Editorial - Second European Graduate School: Philosophy of Language, Mind and ScienceAbstracta 5 (2): 113-115. 2009.