Philosophy

Introduction In the last century, the philosophy and logic of human action received a lot of attention. Milestones in its development were Anscombe's Intention (1957), Davidson's 'Actions, reasons and causes' (1963) and von Wright's Explanation and understanding. Anscombe aimed at bringing out the subjective basis one must appeal to when ascribing an action to someone. Davidson defended the claim that action explanations are a sort of causal explanations. Von Wright pointed out that explanation in history and the social sciences proceeds in very different ways. Arguably, these studies formed the shape of the philosophical discipline now known as action theory. They sparked a host of philosophical contributions that eventually broadened the perspective on the philosophy and logic of human action so much as to include as diverse approaches as critical reviews of age-old problems (like the problem of weakness of the will) and present day concerns with normative aspects of reason-based approaches (like patient autonomy in medical ethics). So the stream became a river, and the river became a sea. Today there is no denying that action theory is in fairly good shape. Of course, like in all other scientific disciplines there are controversies and difficulties in action theory too. Yet there is a solid consensus as to the phenomena to be explained, there are paradigmatic theories constantly being made reference to, and there are classic contributions providing starting points for old insights and new debates. Although there are specialists in the field, philosophical action theory is not at all marginalised. Even theorists not specialising in action theory acknowledge its relevance for the practical disciplines without hesitation. Also, philosophers of every provenance generally have more than an inkling that the relevance of action theory must somehow extend further to the social sciences proper as well. Last, not least: Being a philosopher of action makes you neither left, centrist or right. It carries no hidden or overt implications as to your ideology, political and moral views, or creed. It is thus safe to conclude that as a scientific discipline action theory is a decent, well-established, and worthwhile field of study in its own right.

How come all of this is immediately reversed once we shift focus and turn to economics? Apart from occasional fine words found in introductory chapters the study of human action in economics really has a bad reputation.

It will be sketched what the study of human action in the way presented can contribute to the study of the social sciences (in general and economics in particular). From these discussions will emerge the outline of a systematic and integrated treatment making use of the well-estab- lished tools of action theory and some neighbouring disciplines and applying them in the field of the social sciences. It will be seen that the philosophy and logic of human action has quite a lot to contribute to economics and the social sciences. It will also be seen that it does so without compromising the rigour, richness and respectability it deserves as the decent, well- established and worthwhile field of study that it is.

Few distinctions in philosophy are as pervasive as the distinction between the subjective and the objective. Apparently, this distinction has less often been submitted to thorough examination than one would expect. Perhaps this is due to its difficult nature. It might also be due to the uneasiness with which the subjective-objective distinction is brought to harmony with the received scientific perspective on the world. Yet so deep entrenched in our conceptual scheme is this distinction that to cast light on it is a worthwhile undertaking even if that did not lead to a complete, convenient, or coherent conception. But there is no need for pessimism. A clear and viable reformulation of that venerable distinction seems possible. It would bring out its essence and at the same time it would exceed mere historical interest. This paper aims at such a reformulation. In what follows, I offer an explanation of the central idea of independence in terms of non-inference and causal non-determination. Also, I point to the essential intentionality of the subjective and stress the central feature of intentional inexistence. In the course of this I shall use the most limited means only. Thus I hope to lay bare what the subjective-objective distinction comes down to, and I hope to do so in a manner acceptable on all sides. I close with some indications as to what such a reformulation may have a bearing on.

In his Principia Ethica (1903) George Edward Moore notes that "the meaning of good [res-ists] correct analysis". This raises two questions: (i) What is the peculiar meaning of "good" and its cognates? This leads to the problem of moral obligation. (ii) What is the nature of analysis if so easily rendered futile in central cases? This leads to the paradox of analysis. The paper argues that these problems are linked by the same solution. Once we, unlike Moore, correctly account for the semantics and the pragmatics of valuing and explanation the problem dissolves and the air of paradox is dispelled.

Zusammenfassung: Was ist Diskriminierung und warum ist Diskriminierung verwerflich, wenn sie es denn ist? Dies bleibt ungeachtet der seit fünfundzwanzig Jahren anschwellenden Forschungsliteratur unverändert eine harte Nuss. Larry Alexander, der selbst maßgeblich zu dieser Forschungsliteratur beigetragen hat, merkt daher selbstkritisch an: „All cases of discrimination, if wrongful, are wrongful either becau-se of their quite contingent consequences or perhaps because they are breaches of promises or fiduciary duties.“ Wenn dies der Fall ist, stellt sich die Frage, wie moralisch verwerfliche Diskriminierung dann noch an sich verwerflich sein kann. Es stellt sich dann auch die Frage, wer hier ein Versprechen bricht und seine Treuepflichten verletzt.
Die leitende Annahme dieses Aufsatzes ist es, dass man dem sachlichen Kern dieser Bedenken Rechnung tragen kann, indem man eine politische Perspektive auf das Phänomen der Diskriminierung einnimmt. Die Bedenken erweisen sich dann als substanziell und zutreffend. Konzeptualisieren wir den Bereich des Politischen mit Thomas Hobbes als das Spannungsfeld, das die private Sphäre des Individuums und die öffentliche Sphäre des Gemeinwesens gegeneinander abgrenzt, wird sichtbar, dass Diskriminierung in diesen Sphären jeweils unterschiedlich zu bewerten ist. Um dies zu verdeutlichen, lege ich Kasper Lippert-Rasmussens deskriptives Verständnis von Diskriminierung als „differential treatment on the basis of membership of a socially salient group“ zugrunde und mache von der in der Diskussion verbreiteten Ansicht Gebrauch, dass das Zufügen von Schaden oder die Verweigerung von Respekt Diskriminierung verwerflich macht.
In der privaten Sphäre kann es nun Fälle moralisch zulässiger Diskriminierung geben. Zentral ist die sexuelle Diskriminierung aufgrund der Ausübung einer freien Wahl des eigenen Sexual- oder Liebespartners. Auch wenn sich der Abgewiesene womöglich geschädigt sieht, wird unbilliger Schaden nicht zugefügt und geschuldeter Respekt nicht verweigert. Den Grund finden wir in Alexanders Formel: Ein „breach of promises“ oder eine Verletzung „fiduciary duties“ liegt nicht vor. Anders im Fall staatlicher Diskriminierung: Ein „breach of promises“ oder eine Verletzung „fiduciary duties“ liegt hier stets vor, da Fälle staatlicher Diskriminierung regelmäßig Machtmissbrauch darstellen: Der Inhaber staatlicher Gewalt verletzt die Treuepflicht, das Mandat unparteilich auszuüben, das getreulich auszuführen er gelobt hat. Diskriminierung erscheint also weniger als ein Problem der angewandten Ethik denn als eines der politischen Philosophie.
Schlagwörter: Diskriminierung, Sexuelle Diskriminierung, Privater Raum, Treuhandpflichten, Machtmissbrauch
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What is discrimination and what makes wrongful discrimination wrong? Even after an ever-rising tide of research over the course of the past twenty-five or so years these questions still remain hard to answer. Exercising candid and selfcritical hindsight, Larry Alexander, who contributed his fair share to this tide, thus remarked: “All cases of discrimination, if wrongful, are wrongful either because of their quite contingent consequences or perhaps because they are breaches of promises or fiduciary duties.” If this is true it raises serious doubts as to how wrongful discrimination can be a moral wrong in itself. Also, the question comes up as to who it is who breaches a promise or a fiduciary duty.
This paper defends the view that the substance of these remarks is better understood by couching them in a political approach towards discrimination. Against this background, they give rise to real and pressing concerns. Once we conceptualise the realm political along Hobbesian lines as the battleground comprising both the private sphere of the individual and the public sphere of the commonwealth it emerges that discrimination has different significance with regard to these respective spheres. In order to illustrate this, I adopt Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s descriptive account of discrimination as „differential treatment on the basis of membership of a socially salient group“ and the common view that wrongful discrimination is wrong because it is harmful, disrespectful, or both.
In the private sphere the case can be made for morally permissible cases of discrimination. Sexual discrimination due to sexual self-determination with consequently freely choosing your sexual or romantic partner is the central case in point. Where somebody feels unfairly rejected and consequently hurt neither the charge of harm inflicted nor that of disrespect endured need be justified. No “breach of promises or fiduciary duties” is involved. The case is different, however, when it comes to the fiduciary of power. In discriminating, he who exercises the power of the commonwealth necessarily breaches a promise and a fiduciary duty. Discrimination thus appears to be more of a problem of political philosophy than one of applied ethics.
Keywords: Discrimination, Sexual Discrimination, Private Sphere, Fiduciary Duties, Abuse of Power

Moral subjectivism is commonly associated with out-of-favour theories like, e.g., Alfred Ayer’s emotivism or John Mackie’s error theory. This paper approaches the field against the background of the attitudinal character of morality and religion. The possibility of a brand of moral subjectivism is established which is common to Ayer’s and Mackie’s theories in name only but seems to have considerable merits. The perspec- tive from action theory and the philosophy of mind suggests that the problem of moral obligation, central to moral philosophy, is more convincingly dealt with by subjectivism than by its rivals: In contrast to realism or even relativism (with which subjectivism often gets confused), subjectivism can help to explain the peculiarities of obligation without forcing us to disregard the parallel problem in the field of religion. This finding calls into question the rationale for, as well as the success of, central assumptions in ontology and semantics which the realist so freely hands out in order to make his point: If religious facts and the truth-aptness of religious judgements will not explain religious obligation, moral facts and the truth-aptness of moral judgements will not help the moral realist either. So, unless we do not wish to simply cast the problem of moral obligation aside, in future, moral subjectivism must be seriously considered as a worthwhile position in its own right.

Handeln ist im Deutschen ein Wort, das mindestens zwei Bedeutungen hat. Es kann zunächst im Sinne von Wirtschaften gebraucht werden, aber auch grundsätzlicher im Sinne eines (absichtlichen) Tuns. Ist dies mehr als ein sprachgeschichtlicher Zufall? Schließlich gibt es nicht in allen Sprachen eine entsprechende Mehrdeutigkeit. Im Lateinischen oder Englischen etwa verwenden wir ganz verschiedene Wörter (mercari/trade beziehungsweise agere/act). Wenn wir uns jedoch wesentliche Zusammenhänge vor Augen führen, kann man finden, dass das Deutsche die Sachlage angemessener wiedergibt. Denn klarerweise gilt, dass jedes Handeln im ersten Sinne, also jedes Wirtschaften, auch eines im zweiten Sinne ist, ein Tun. Es gilt jedoch auch-und dies ist das eigentlich Substanzielle-, dass jedes Handeln im zweiten Sinne auf instruktive Weise beleuchtet wird, wenn man es im ersten Sinne auffasst. Diese letzte Betrachtungsweise, dass alles Handeln ein Wirtschaften ist, hat von jeher das Interesse der Ökonomen gefunden. Sie hätte auch größere Aufmerksamkeit von Seiten der Philosophie verdient, da sie zwei ganz grundlegende Betrachtungsgegenstände vereinigt, von denen einer eben der Philosophie zuzuordnen ist: Handeln einerseits als paradigmatische ökonomische Tätigkeit und andererseits als grundlegende Selbstverwirklichung eines sich selbst wesentlich als Akteur begreifenden Wesens. Auf diese Weise nimmt man zugleich ein Grundphänomen der Sozialwissenschaften und eine grundlegende anthropologische Perspektive in den Blick, was eine Reihe interessanter Fragen im Spannungsfeld von Philosophie und Ökonomie aufwirft.

Adam Smith said that 'the propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.' Smith addressed the mark of the man economical, and there is no denying that this is the peculiar way he acts: clearly, to truck, barter and exchange is to act in a certain way. Austrian economics adopts this way of looking at the realm of economics. It prides itself as a theory of human action. This claim seems ill-founded as long as so important a contribution as Ludwig von Mises's praxeology remains insufficiently understood. In this paper, I address Barry Smith's charge that in praxeology 'other core notions, in addition to the concept of action, have been smuggled into and the theory is therefore not purely analytic'. I offer logical proofs of two cornerstone theorems of praxeology, the uneasiness theorem and the scarcity theorem, and thus provide vindication. Also, the findings support Mises's controversial claim that economics is a priori founded in action theory. Thus, Carl Menger's dream to lay foundations to economics and the other social sciences may have come true in the guise of praxeology.

The paper unfolds a non-modal problem for (moderate) meta-linguistic descriptivism, the thesis that the meaning of a proper name (e.g. 'Aristotle') is given by a meta-linguistic description of a certain type (e.g. 'the bearer of "Aristotle"'). According to this theory, if ⌜α⌝ is a proper name, it is a sufficient condition for the name's being significant that the description ⌜the bearer of ⌜α⌝⌝ is significant. However, a quotational expression may be significant even when the expression quoted is not. Therefore, proper names and their corresponding descriptions cannot be synonymous, and the corresponding descriptions cannot be viewed as giving the meanings of proper names. So, even if it was immune to Kripke-style modal criticisms, moderate meta-linguistic descriptivism would still seem to founder on the rocks of the opacity of quotation.

The theory of the just price is commonly assumed to have three sources: Political philosophy of Greek antiquity, scholastic ethics of the High Middle Ages, and the Roman law of obligations of late antiquity. While closer inspection confirms this holds for the first two worlds of thought the latter assumption seems ultimately unfounded. The paper claims that the evidence notoriously presented on behalf of that assumption-two rescripts attributed to Roman emperor Diocletian, namely Codex Iustinianus 4.44.2 and 4.44.8-ultimately points in another direction. Offering both an analysis and an alternative reading of the rescripts an integrated interpretation is given that reconciles them with the "liberalistic spirit of Roman law". Also, it is explained why, from the point of view of legal and social philosophy, the fact that Roman law refrains from introducing a moral aspect to the institute of price fixing speaks in favour of Roman law rather than against it.

The theory of the just price is commonly assumed to have three sources: Political philosophy of Greek antiquity, scholastic ethics of the High Middle Ages, and the Roman law of obligations of late antiquity. While closer inspection confirms this holds for the first two worlds of thought the latter assumption seems ultimately unfounded. The paper claims that the evidence notoriously presented on behalf of that assumption – two rescripts attributed to Roman emperor Diocletian, namely Codex Iustinianus 4.44.2 and 4.44.8 – ultimately points in another direction. Offering both an analysis and an alternative reading of the rescripts an integrated interpretation is given that reconciles them with the "liberalistic spirit of Roman law". Also, it is explained why, from the point of view of legal and social philosophy, the fact that Roman law refrains from introducing a moral aspect to the institute of price fixing speaks in favour of Roman law rather than against it.

Adam Smith said that 'the propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.' Smith addressed the mark of the man economical, and there is no denying that this is the peculiar way he acts: clearly, to truck, barter and exchange is to act in a certain way. Austrian economics adopts this way of looking at the realm of economics. It prides itself as a theory of human action. This claim seems ill-founded as long as so important a contribution as Ludwig von Mises's praxeology remains insufficiently understood. In this paper, I address Barry Smith's charge that in praxeology 'other core notions, in addition to the concept of action, have been smuggled into and the theory is therefore not purely analytic'. I offer logical proofs of two cornerstone theorems of praxeology, the uneasiness theorem and the scarcity theorem, and thus provide vindication. Also, the findings support Mises's controversial claim that economics is a priori founded in action theory. Thus, Carl Menger's dream to lay foundations to economics and the other social sciences may have come true in the guise of praxeology.

Around the eighteenth century, several theorists came to advocate the separation of re- ligion and state. In various ways they argued that all that concerns religion lies beyond the sphere of the state’s activity. This “wall of separation” is today often understood as a matter of freedom of conscience. Where freedom of conscience is infringed, man’s soul is burdened beyond what the individual can bear. The separation of religion and state thus protects the inviolability of religious attitudes. However, matters of conscience are not exclusively religious. They can be moral, or even pertaining to individual worldviews beyond morality or religion. Those who want to follow thinkers like Jef- ferson or Humboldt must therefore go beyond their call. This paper investigates the consequences for contractarianism in the spirit of Hobbes and Locke. I suggest conscientious reservations are implied conditions for contractarian consent which oblige the commonwealth to strict neutrality in matters of freedom of conscience. To infringe upon freedom of conscience thus destroys the bond of the commonwealth, i.e., political, “Lockean” trust.

Much of what has been discussed in the theory of reference in the last twenty-five years is strongly influenced by considerations centring on the business of devising a semantics for quantified modal logic. In this context, discussion of the property of rigidity plays an important role. This property is conceived of as a semantic modal property that distinguishes proper names from descriptions. It is argued that there is a semantic modal asym-metry between expressions of these types. In this talk I shall challenge this assumption. By examining the intuitive Kripkean argument or test employed I arrive at two rather nonconformist results: Firstly, it seems that the test does not establish a genuine semantic asymmetry: Rigidity appears to be a pragmatic property. Secondly, the test does not seem to demonstrate an asymmetry at all: When applied correctly it suggests that both proper names and descriptions (even discounting notorious cases like “the even prime”) can be used rigidly—or so...

The paper unfolds a non-modal problem for (moderate) meta-linguistic descriptivism, the thesis that the meaning of a proper name (e.g. ‘Aristotle’) is given by a meta-linguistic description of a certain type (e.g. ‘the bearer of “Aristotle”’). According to this theory, if ⌜α⌝ is a proper name, it is a sufficient condition for the name’s being significant that the description ⌜the bearer of ⌜α⌝⌝ is significant. However, a quotational expression may be significant even when the expression quoted is not. Therefore, proper names and their corresponding descriptions cannot be synonymous, and the corresponding descriptions cannot be viewed as giving the meanings of proper names. So, even if it was immune to Kripke-style modal criticisms, moderate meta-linguistic descriptivism would still seem to founder on the rocks of the opacity of quotation.