•  35
    Christian Damböck, Meike G. Werner, Günther Sandner (eds.), Logischer Empirismus, Lebensreform und die deutsche Jugendbewegung (review)
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. forthcoming.
  •  2
    Die Physikalisierung der Psychologie war für Carnap Teil eines Programms, das die Sonderstellung der Psychologie als Wissenschaft des menschlichen Denkens und Fühlens als Illusion entlarven und zeigen sollte, die Psychologie sei ein Teil der Physik wie alle anderen Wissenschaften auch. In etwas anderer Motivation zielte Carnaps Physikalismus ausserdem auf eine Überwindung der Trennung von Geistes–wissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften: Erwiese sich die Psychologie sich als physikalisierbar, wäre…Read more
  •  219
    The first aim of this paper is to prove a topological completeness theorem for a weak version of Stalnaker’s logic KB of knowledge and belief. The weak version of KB is characterized by the assumption that the axioms and rules of KB have to be satisfied with the exception of the axiom (NI) of negative introspection. The proof of a topological completeness theorem for weak KB is based on the fact that nuclei (as defined in the framework of point-free topology) give rise to a profusion of topologi…Read more
  •  2098
    Abstract. Traditional epistemology of knowledge and belief can be succinctly characterized as JTB-epistemology, i.e., it is characterized by the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief. Since Gettier’s trail-blazing paper of 1963 this account has become under heavy attack. The aim of is paper is to study the Gettier problem and related issues in the framework of topological epistemic logic. It is shown that in the framework of topological epistemic logic Gettier situations necessarily occ…Read more
  •  296
    Traditional epistemology of knowledge and belief can be succinctly characterized as JTB-epistemology, i.e., it is characterized by the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief. Since Gettier’s trail-blazing paper of 1963 this account has become under heavy attack. The aim of is paper is to study the Gettier problem and related issues in the framework of topological epistemic logic. It is shown that in the framework of topological epistemic logic Gettier situations necessarily occur for mos…Read more
  •  495
    The aim of this paper is to show that topology has a bearing on Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). According to (PII), if, for all properties F, an object a has property F iff object b has property F, then a and b are identical. If any property F whatsoever is permitted in PII, then Leibniz’s principle is trivial, as is shown by “identity properties”. The aim of this paper is to show that topology can make a contribution to the problem of giving criteria of how to restr…Read more
  •  309
    Die Physikalisierung der Psychologie war für Carnap Teil eines Programms, das die Sonderstellung der Psychologie als Wissenschaft des menschlichen Denkens und Fühlens als Illusion entlarven und zeigen sollte, die Psychologie sei ein Teil der Physik wie alle anderen Wissenschaften auch. In etwas anderer Motivation zielte Carnaps Physikalismus ausserdem auf eine Überwindung der Trennung von Geistes–wissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften: Erwiese sich die Psychologie sich als physikalisierbar, wäre…Read more
  •  704
    Topological Models of Columnar Vagueness
    Erkenntnis 87 (2). 2022.
    This paper intends to further the understanding of the formal properties of (higher-order) vagueness by connecting theories of (higher-order) vagueness with more recent work in topology. First, we provide a “translation” of Bobzien's account of columnar higher-order vagueness into the logic of topological spaces. Since columnar vagueness is an essential ingredient of her solution to the Sorites paradox, a central problem of any theory of vagueness comes into contact with the modern mathematical …Read more
  •  1196
    The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that pro…Read more
  •  162
    Carnap’s logical empiricism, values, and American pragmatism
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 38 (1): 127-146. 2007.
    Value judgments are meaningless. This thesis was one of the notorious tenets of Carnap's mature logical empiricism. Less well known is the fact that in the Aufbau values were considered as philosophically respectable entities that could be constituted from value experiences. About 1930, however, values and value judgments were banished to the realm of meaningless metaphysics, and Carnap came to endorse a strict emotivism. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the question why Carnap abandone…Read more
  •  452
    Scientific theories as intervening representations
    with Andoni Ibarra
    Theoria 21 (1): 21-38. 2006.
    In this paper some classical representational ideas of Hertz and Duhem are used to show how the dichotomy between representation and intervention can be overcome. More precisely, scientific theories are reconstructed as complex networks of intervening representations (or representational interventions). The formal apparatus developed is applied to elucidate various theoretical and practical aspects of the in vivo/in vitro problem of biochemistry. Moreover, adjoint situations (Galois connections)…Read more
  •  111
    Are All False Theories Equally False?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (4): 505-519. 1988.
  •  29
    Bibliography of structuralism II (1989–1994 and additions)
    with Andoni Ibarra and Werner Diederich
    Erkenntnis 41 (3): 403-418. 1994.
  •  432
    The main thesis of this paper is that Pap’s The Functional A Priori of Physical Theory (Pap 1946, henceforth FAP) and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (Cassirer 1937, henceforth DI) may be conceived as two kindred accounts of a late Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. They elucidate and clarify each other mutually by elaborating conceptual possibilities and pointing out affinities of neo-Kantian ideas with other currents of 20th century’s philosophy of science, namely, p…Read more
  •  186
    Abstract. The aim of this paper is to show that the topological interpretation of knowledge as an interior kernel operator K of a topological space (X, OX) comes along with a partially ordered family of belief modalities B that fit K in the sense that the pairs (K, B) satisfy all axioms of Stalnaker’s KB logic of knowledge and belief with the exception of the contentious axiom of negative introspection (NI). The new belief modalities B introduced in this paper are defined with the help of the (d…Read more
  •  32
    The aim of this paper is to present a topological method for constructing discretizations of topological conceptual spaces. The method works for a class of topological spaces that the Russian mathematician Pavel Alexandroff defined more than 80 years ago. The aim of this paper is to show that Alexandroff spaces, as they are called today, have many interesting properties that can be used to explicate and clarify a variety of problems in philosophy, cognitive science, and related disciplines. For …Read more
  •  846
    The aim of this paper is to elucidate the mereological structure of complex states of affairs without relying on the problematic notion of structural universals. For this task tools from graph theory, lattice theory, and the theory of relational systems are employed. Our starting point is the mereology of similarity structures. Since similarity structures are structured sets, their mereology can be considered as a generalization of the mereology of sets..
  •  3
    Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie als eigenständige philosophische Disziplin ist relativ jung. Ohne Anspruch auf Genauigkeit lassen sich ihre Anfänge auf das letzte Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts datieren. Einen in der zeitgenössischen Diskussion lange vergessenen Ansatz der frühen Wissenschaftsphilosophie bilden die verschiedenen Strömungen des Neukantianismus, der bis in die ersten Jahrzehnte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland eine dominierende Rolle spielte.
  •  3
    Cassirer's Problem and Geometrical Aspects of Epistemology
    In Georg Meggle & Ulla Wessels (eds.), Analyōmen 1 =, De Gruyter. pp. 241-250. 1994.