David Lanius

University of Salzburg · Department of Philosophy

Problemstellung: Mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit wird die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) am 24. September in den Bundestag einziehen. Jüngste Umfragen legen nahe, dass sie sogar drittstärkste Partei werden könnte. Warum findet die AfD so viele Unterstützerinnen und Unterstützer? Mit welchen Argumenten wirbt die AfD für ihren Einzug in den Bundesta...

In this book I examine various forms of indeterminacy in the law and scrutinize (i.a. by way of game theoretical models) the conditions under which they can be strategically used. In particular, I analyze the advantages and disadvantages of indeterminacy in the wording of laws, contracts, and verdicts. Legal texts are particularly interesting insof...

Recently, the term «fake news» has become ubiquitous in public discourse. Despite its omnipresence, however, it is anything but clear what fake news is. An adequate and comprehensive definition of fake news is called for. We take steps towards this goal by providing a systematic account of fake news that makes the phenomenon tangible, rehabilitates...

Classically, vagueness has been considered something bad. It leads to the Sorites paradox, borderline cases, and the (apparent) violation of the logical principle of bivalence. Nevertheless, there have always been scholars claiming that vagueness is also valuable. Many have pointed out that we could not communicate as successfully or efficiently as...

This chapter shows why defining “fake news” is worthwhile and what a suitable definition of “fake news” might look like. It begins by introducing the authors’ definition of “fake news” (§2) and employs it to set fake news apart from related phenomena that are often conflated with it (§3). It then extracts seven potential dimensions of the concept o...

Drerup (2021) argumentiert dafür, dass Kontroversen im Unterricht eingesetzt werden sollten, um demokratische Grundbildung zu fördern. Als Bildungsziel ist die Förderung demokratischer Grundbildung in seiner Allgemeinheit sicherlich klar zu befürworten, ob der Einsatz von Kontroversen jedoch ein geeignetes und verhältnismäßiges Mittel dafür ist, ka...

Few philosophers today embrace quantitative hedonism, which states that a person's well-being depends only on the amount of her experienced happiness and suffering. Despite recent attempts to rehabilitate it, most philosophers still consider it untenable. The most influential arguments levelled against it by Mill, Moore, Nozick and Kagan purport to...

This volume consists of a series of essays on the epistemology of fake news, written by leading philosophers. The epistemology of fake news is a branch of applied epistemology, and an exercise in non-ideal epistemology. It provides insight into the nature and spread of misinformation, fake news, conspiratorial thinking, echo chambers, epistemic pat...

Um die Presse- und Meinungsfreiheit wird Tag für Tag gerungen - auch in Deutschland, wo sie im Grundgesetz verankert ist. Was darf man sagen? Wie weit geht die Meinungsfreiheit? Wo endet die Toleranz? Diese Fragen müssen immer wieder auf ein Neues beantwortet werden. Auch in der Demokratie wird die Meinungsfreiheit bedroht. Politscher Populismus un...

Populism has become one of the most intensely discussed topics in both public debate and academic research. So far there has been no systematic argumentation theoretic analysis of populism, however. This paper is intended to provide first steps towards such an analysis by giving a full argumentation theoretic reconstruction of the political manifes...

This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (COST Action CA17132; https://publicpolicyargument.eu) reviews goals and functions of public argumentation. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, the paper introduces basic distinctions and charts out options. It is meant to guide reflection o...

Das Funktionieren moderner Demokratien hängt von der Informiertheit der Öffentlichkeit ab. Durch den Erfolg von Fake News und post-faktischer Politik ist die Informiertheit der Öffentlichkeit jedoch in Gefahr, zumal parallele Öffentlichkeiten zunehmend sogenannte alternative analoge und digitale Medienangebote nutzen. In diesem Beitrag untersuchen...

Disinformation has long been a tool used in political communication. However, with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and in the run-up to Britain’s ‘Brexit’ from the European Union, deliberately falsified news gained a whole new social meaning. Now, the devastating effects false reports can have on democratic systems ha...

Philosophy of science attempts to reconstruct science as a rational cognitive enterprise. In doing so, it depicts a normative ideal of knowledge acquisition and does not primarily seek to describe actual scientific practice in an empirically adequate way. A comprehensive picture of what good science consists in may serve as a standard against which...

This chapter examines the role of lexical and syntactic ambiguity, polysemy, as well as gradual and multi-dimensional vagueness in the law. It relates the legal functions of generality and conversational vagueness and finally surveys the different types of pragmatic indeterminacy. This examination shows that semantic vagueness is less relevant to t...

The last chapter identifies five basic functions of indeterminacyin laws, verdicts, and contracts.First, indeterminacy can facilitate the finding of compromise in the light of conflicting interests and beliefs. Second, indeterminacy can be used to counter the over- and under-inclusiveness due to an unforeseeable and complex world by delegating powe...

This chaptersheds light on the potential use of linguistic indeterminacy. It identifies conditions under which indeterminacy in general (if not semantic vagueness) can be strategically used.The negative results of this examination are that most arguments for the value of semantic vagueness are unsound and that even our best game theoretic models of...

In the first chapter, linguistic indeterminacy is defined in terms of unclarity in linguistic content. Based on this general definition, three main forms of linguistic indeterminacy are differentiated:there is semantic indeterminacy, pragmatic indeterminacy, and conversational vagueness. Lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity and polysemy as well a...

In this chapter legal utterances are analysed as being typically normative, directed toward future events, addressed to heterogeneous audiences, and applied in a wide variety of circumstances.It argues that these features of legal language are decisive for the use of linguistic indeterminacy in law, and that they are exemplified in three paradigmat...

Problemstellung: Mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit wird die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) am 24. September in den Bundestag einziehen. Jüngste Umfragen legen nahe, dass sie sogar drittstärkste Partei werden könnte. Warum findet die AfD so viele Unterstützerinnen und Unterstützer? Mit welchen Argumenten wirbt die AfD für ihren Einzug in den Bundesta...

When the United States Supreme Court used the expression “with all deliberate speed” in the case Brown v. Board of Education, it did so presumably because of its vagueness. Many jurists, economists, linguists, and philosophers accordingly assume that vagueness can be strategically used to one’s advantage. Roy Sorensen has cast doubt on this assumpt...

According to article 6(1) ECHR, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing “within a reasonable time.” Imagine a series of defendants whose cases are identical except that each successive defendant is prosecuted one day later than his predecessor. The first defendant in the series clearly was prosecuted within a reasonable time, whereas the...

Vagueness is one of the great problems that have puzzled logicians and philosophers. Almost all natural language expressions are vague, despite their reputation of being less useful than precise ones. So far, there were only hints as to why vagueness is nonetheless so ubiquitous in ordinary discourse. Recently, however, game theoretical models have...

Vertreter der epistemischen Theorie kommen darin überein, dass Vagheit Unwissen ist und die Zweiwertigkeit der klassischen Logik auch im Angesicht des Sorites-Paradoxes beibehalten werden kann. In der vorliegenden Arbeit zeige ich auf, warum die epistemische Theorie zum Scheitern verurteilt ist. Dabei unterziehe ich die Ansätze von James Cargile, R...