Vojtěch Kolman - Böcker

Inferentialism is a philosophical approach premised on the claim that an item of language (or thought) acquires meaning (or content) in virtue of being embedded in an intricate set of social practices normatively governed by inferential rules. Inferentialism found its paradigmatic formulation in Robert Brandom’s landmark book Making it Explicit, and over the last two decades it has established itself as one of the leading research programs in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic. While Brandom’s version of inferentialism has received wide attention in the philosophical literature, thinkers friendly to inferentialism have proposed and developed new lines of inquiry that merit wider recognition and critical appraisal.From Rules to Meaning brings together new essays that systematically develop, compare, assess and critically react to some of the most pertinent recent trends in inferentialism. The book’s four thematic sections seek to apply inferentialism to a number of core issues, including the nature of meaning and content, reconstructing semantics, rule-oriented models and explanations of social practices and inferentialism’s historical influence and dialogue with other philosophical traditions. With contributions from a number of distinguished philosophers—including Robert Brandom and Jaroslav Peregrin—this volume is a major contribution to the philosophical literature on the foundations of logic and language.

Inferentialism is a philosophical approach premised on the claim that an item of language (or thought) acquires meaning (or content) in virtue of being embedded in an intricate set of social practices normatively governed by inferential rules. Inferentialism found its paradigmatic formulation in Robert Brandom’s landmark book Making it Explicit, and over the last two decades it has established itself as one of the leading research programs in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic. While Brandom’s version of inferentialism has received wide attention in the philosophical literature, thinkers friendly to inferentialism have proposed and developed new lines of inquiry that merit wider recognition and critical appraisal. From Rules to Meaning brings together new essays that systematically develop, compare, assess and critically react to some of the most pertinent recent trends in inferentialism. The book’s four thematic sections seek to apply inferentialism to a number of core issues, including the nature of meaning and content, reconstructing semantics, rule-oriented models and explanations of social practices and inferentialism’s historical influence and dialogue with other philosophical traditions. With contributions from a number of distinguished philosophers—including Robert Brandom and Jaroslav Peregrin—this volume is a major contribution to the philosophical literature on the foundations of logic and language.

By making fallibilism's own expression part of fallibilism's own problem, this open access book explores the ways in which the negative aspects of our experience—such as error or doubt—can be "as sweet as" or even "sweeter than" knowledge, as Dante suggests in the Divine Comedy. It does so, primarily by addressing the need to view ourselves from a universal standpoint outside, which is also always a particular position from within, and by translating this contradictory condition into a strong fallibilist framework. In this framework, not only do we make mistakes, as is usually acknowledged, but we must also make mistakes in order to know.This immanent epistemology leads to a peculiar hermeneutics that, rooted in historicity, combines the vehicles of both formal and dialectical logic. Taking this approach also in concrete, practical terms, the book constructs a broad exegetical arc from Hegel's phenomenology (with its appeal to mistrust), through Nietzsche's perspectivism and Peirce's scientific method to Wittgenstein’s relational analysis of truth. United in their rejection of Descartes’ absolute notion of truth and certainty, these approaches all conceive of knowledge as "more than" it supposedly is. This is what "sweeter than knowledge" can mean as well: experience in all its forms and flavors, from science to religion to art. This volume will appeal to academic philosophers and students interested in pragmatism, the philosophy of language and logic, and German idealism.

Warum schon bei Platon die Zahlen und ihr gutes Verständnis einen speziellen Platz in der philosophischen Bildung einnehmen, ist zunächst ein Rätsel. Eine Aufhebung der zukunftsweisenden Leistungen der Pythagoräer besonders in der Harmonielehre gegenüber mystifizierendem Verständnis eines Pythagoräismus ist daher nach wie vor interessant, auch noch im Blick auf Freges ‚drittes Reich‘ abstrakter Gegenstände oder Cantors Mengenlehre. Zahlen sind von philosophischem Interesse durch ihr enges Verhältnis zu den Formen von Rationalität und Sprache – und wegen der Möglichkeit, Aussagen nicht bloß über Zahlen selbst, sondern auch über andere Verhältnisse durch Zahlen zu kodieren und dadurch zum Thema zu machen. Auf einfach nachvollziehbare Weise wird außerdem die Verschränkung von mathematischem Fortschritt, von Problemen und ihren Aufhebungen vorgeführt oder skizziert, etwa die Entdeckung inkommensurabler Größenverhältnisse und das Rechnen mit infinitesimalen Größen, Cantors Stufen des Unendlichen, Brouwers Intuitionismus, Gödels Unvollständigkeitsätze, u.a.m. Die Philosophie der Mathematik wird zum Lehrstück logischer Selbstreflexion überhaupt.

The volume develops the concepts of the self and its reflexive nature as they are linked to modern thought from Hegel to Luhmann. The moderns are reflexive in a double sense: they create themselves by self-reflexivity and make their world – society – in their own image. That the social world is reflexive means that it is made up of non-subjective (or supra-subjective) communication. The volume's contributors analyze this double reflexivity, of the self and society, from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing both on individual and social narratives. This broad, interdisciplinary approach is a distinctive mark of the entire project. The volume will be structured around the following axes: Self-making and reflexivity – theoretical topics; Social self and the modern world; Literature – self and narrativity; Creative Self – text and fine art. Among the contributors are some of the most renowned specialists in their respective fields, including J. F. Kervégan, B. Zabel, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, I. James, L. Kvasz, H. Ikäheimo and others.