Kräfte, Wahrscheinlichkeit und 'Zuversicht'

The book investigates the systematic relations between central concepts in Bernard Bolzano's (1781-1848) theory of knowledge which connects a logic-semantic realism with a causalist metaphysics of the mind. Bolzano treats basic epistemic activities such as representing, judging and inferring as being in tension between the poles of logical relations on the one hand and causal connections of mental episodes on the other hand. The book elucidates the significance of the prominent concepts 'force' and 'probability' with regard to the epistemological concerns of knowledge and justification. Accounting for a causalist metaphysics of mind and world the concept of force determines the conditions of factual epistemic progression. Denoting relations of grounding between objective propositions the concept of probability determines the rational warrant of beliefs. The factuality and normativity of knowledge claims together constitute epistemic probability, a property that Bolzano calls 'confidence'; confidence is characterized as the force of judgments conferring assertion on the one hand and entitlement to get the credit of knowledge on the other hand.