Starting from one of the classical criticisms of evolutionary thinking accusing it of being based on tautological reasoning and being unable to predict future events, the authors propose an escape route from this attack by programmatically specifying the notion of fitness with reference to three particular aspects: cultural context, individual choice and social networks. Paralleling recent developments in economics, that try to explain preference formation endogeneously, the authors argue for an endogeneous explanation of the evolutionary fitness landscape to explain the evolution of structural complexity.

The acceleration and qualitative change of West European integration in the 1980s — as evidenced by the Single European Act — were big events of the world political economy of that decade. They not only paved the way for political union, but also altered the competition in the Triad — United States, Western Europe and Japan. This article analyzes the relaunch of the European Community and later European Union in the framework of conflictive evolutionary theory. Two elements of that theory are combined to explain the timing, the forces behind and the actors involved. The arguments are developed from the theory of the rise and decline of societal models and from the theory of competition among governments in the world market for social order and protection. The thesis of an elite argain among European transnational corporations and the EC-Commission is exposed ana briefly confronted with empirical evidence from the author's research. The article also reflects the competitive position of Western Europe in the Triad and draws conclusions for the future structure of the core: no hegemon similar to Britain's and America's position in the past will emerge since the systemic conditions have changed.

Contrary to political rhetorics of market economy and democracy the so-called "transformation " of the former GDR - attempted to start a quick and nevertheless extensive social change - is in reality a change with little room for spontaneous order or self-organization, for social evolution or development. Analyzing this example this essay tries to work out the structural dynamics of social evolution and to demonstrate the diverse control media and alternative steering strategies available in postindustrial societies.

Ascriptive solidarity is a fundamental relationship in human societies. Sociologists have often stated this social fact but they have seldom explained this kind of solidarity. Karl Otto Hondrich has elaborated fundamental social laws which are useful for the explanation of the evolutionary dominance of ascriptive solidarity. In the context of sociological knowledge I intend - following this account - to sketch variations of ascriptive solidarity in an evolutionary perspective and to describe structural problems of social integration in modern societies.

Piaget's genetic epistemology claims to be an empirically grounded, universal theory of mental development. This claim is excessive because of Piaget's naturalistic approach. His genetic structuralism explains only a smallpart of human conduct. Communicative theories of action are a necessary completion of the genetic structuralism. If they succeed in combining specific, individual experiences of reality with a theoretical reconstruction of the universal mental development Piaget's abstract biologism can be overcome.

The difficulties of sociologists - particularly in Germany - to contribute to the political discussion about 'Nation' and (recent) national movements is suggested do be due to insufficiant theoretical clarity. It is proposed to to define ethnic identity as cultural phenomenon. Political unrest and dangerous movements, however, arise, whenever to be 'ethnic' is associated with state/government in its modern sense. The recent experience of political-cultural hegemony over against socalled minorities' makes requests for ethnic self-determination plausible and necessary.

The evolution of the nation state is described as a process of bordernisation and de-bordernisation of macro-social units. The processes of political and cultural inclusion within the formation of the nation state lea to three paradoxes of implementation. These paradoxes are analysed with the dichotomies: universal - particularistic, affirmative - critical, and traditional - modern. These three kinds of self-description are reasons for both, the contradictions and the flexibility of the evolution of the nation state.

The sociology of emotion is still in its infancy and dominated by biological or psychological and social constructivist approaches. This contribution proposes a socio-structural approach integrating structural evolution and elementary processes of structuration with a typology of differential emotions. First, a concept of structural evolution is sketched out following leads by DURKHEIM, SIMMEL and FARARO; second, elementary mechanisms of structuration are combined with the structuration of identifications and perspectives in social networks; third, the processes of structuration are employed to reconstruct the socio-structural dimension of emotions and to develop a typology of structural emotions. The approach is not intended to replace constructivist theory, but to provide a structural basis for socio-cultural conceptions of emotional codes.

It is argued that sociological evolutionary theory can be regarded as a revised and extended version of classical evolutionism which explains not only structural differentiation but any form of macro-social dynamics. This explanatory programme finds its micro-foundation in an theory of individual and social action which allows for the identification of typical social dilemmata which in turn serve as a selectors for reproducible institutional arrangements. At the same time modern evolutionary dynamics unites quite different social- scientific disciplines into a coherent theoretical frame.

On what has become the received view of the principle of charity, it is a fundamental methodological constraint on interpretation that we find peoples’ intentional states patterned in ways that are characterized by norms of rationality. This recommended use of normative principles of rationality to inform intentional description is epistemically unmotivated. To say that the received view lacks epistemic motivation is to say that to interpret as it recommends would be epistemically irresponsible ans, in important respects irrational. On the alternative that I recommend, descriptive psychological generalization are what properly inform interpretation. One can readily understand the epistemic motivations for so interpreting, for they are the familiar reasons for informing description with background descriptive information. No parallel motivations for the received view seems possible.

In chapter 2 of The Fragmentation of Reason, Stephen Stich argues that certain passages of Quine’s Word and Object are the source of what he calls the conceptual argument. That argument claims there is a conceptual connection between intentionality and rationality: intentionality requires rationality. Stich rejects the idea that intentionality requires either perfect or fixed bridgehead rationality, but he concedes that it requires minimal rationality. After explaining Stich’s position and a criticism of it offered by John Biro and Kirk Ludwig, I sketch an alternative to the conceptual argument. This alternative claims that rationality requires psychological plausibility and/or smoothness of communication, not rationality.

Gregory Kavka’s toxin puzzle has spawned a lively literature about the nature of intention and of rational intention in particular. This paper is largely a critique of a pair of recent responses to the puzzle that focus on the connection between rationally forming an intention to A and rationally A-ing, one by David Gauthier and the other by Edward McClennen. It also critically assesses the two main morals Kavka takes reflection on the puzzle to support, morals about the nature of intention and the consequences of a divergence between “reasons for intending and reasons for acting.”

After having introduced Goodman’s concept of exemplification I discuss his general argument that exemplification would be the best for comprehensible the expressive phenomena of art. But there will arise problems when making differences between features of works of art which are exemplified and which are not, and when reconstructing the variable forms of autoreflexive expressions. I try to demonstrate that Goodman’s concept of exemplification therefore ist too limited: 1. Goodman doesn’t take into account that the caracteristics of works such as colours, form etc. also can be interpreted as materials of artistic expressions. 2. He doesn’t give any idea to solve the question what would make an exemplification work effectively. Therefore I suggest to reformulate the concept of exemplification.

Traditionally conceived, rational action is action founded on reasons. Reasons involve the propositional attitudes — beliefs, desires, intentions, and the like. What are we to make of the propositional attitudes? One possibility, a possibility endorsed by Donald Davidson, is that an agent’s possession of propositional attitudes is a matter of that agent’s being interpretable in a particular way. Such a view accounts for the propositional content of the attitudes, but threatens to undercut their causal and explanatory roles. I examine Davidson’s view and the suggestion that the explanatory value of appeals to propositional attitudes is best understood on analogy with measurement systems, and argue that, appearances to the contrary, this conception of the propositional attitudes can be reconciled with the idea that reasons are causes.

Recent obituaries for traditional non-naturalistic approaches to rationality are not just premature but demonstrably self-defeating. One such prominent obituary appears in the writings of W. V. Quine, whose pessimism about traditional epistemology stems from his scientism, the view that the natural sciences have a monopoly on legitimate theoretical explanation. Quine also offers an obituary for the a priori constraints on rationality found in “first philosophy”, resting on his rejection of the “pernicious mentalism” of semantic theories of meaning. Quine’s pronouncements of the death of traditional conceptions of rationality in epistemology and in the theory of meaning are, we contend, but misguided wishes for their death, wishes that face severe problems of self-defeat. In addition, Quine’s naturalistic epistemology is subject to damaging skeptical worries, the force of which one cannot escape by ignoring them. A non-naturalistic approach to rationality is here to stay, whether friends of Quine’s naturalism like it or not. Any sweeping claim that non-naturalistic accounts of rationality are dead will face insurmountable obstacles from unavoidable questions about its own rational justification. Such questions will keep non-naturalistic epistemology and first philosophy alive forever, or at least as long as philosophers endure.

Advocates of naturalized epistemology who wish to secure epistemology’s normativity want that normativity to be restricted to instrumental concerns, because these can be understood naturalistically. But epistemic normativity cannot be so limited; a ‘categorical’ sort of normativity must be acknowledged. Naturalism can neither account for nor do away with this sort of normativity. Hence naturalism is at best a seriously incomplete and therefore inadequate meta-epistemological position.

Putnam’s internal realism implies a form of conceptual relativity with respect to ontology. There can be different descriptions of the world which are based on distinct ontologies. It has been argued that this relativity forecloses any possibility of unifying our knowledge and can even lead to inconsistency. If this is true, internal realism should be abandoned because it is compatible with non-rational positions. We will argue that these objections can be dismissed if truth as idealized warranted assertibility is understood as stability of a belief state under new evidence. This view of truth is still compatible with the existence of distinct belief states expressing different views on the world. This understanding of the notion of truth is a consequence of interpreting both our cognitive activities and the notion of meaning dynamically. The meaning of a sentence is no longer given in terms of (static) truth conditions but as a relation between belief sets, that is, as a kind of information change potential.