Unentwegt werden neue technische Produkte gestaltet. Doch was macht die technische Gestaltung aus? Wie lässt sich ihr Gegenstand - (noch) nicht existierende Artefakte - adäquat auf den Begriff bringen? Michael Kuhn begreift technische Ideen vor ihrer Realisierung als Fiktionen. Er bietet eine fiktionstheoretische Rekonstruktion der Gestaltungstätigkeit und entwickelt hieraus eine Ethik der Gestaltung. Der stark interdisziplinäre Zugang zwischen Technikphilosophie und Ingenieurwissenschaften liefert neue Erkenntnisse für beide Fachrichtungen und stellt wertvolle Grundlagen bereit.

In spite of the considerable literature nowadays existing on the issue of the moral exclusion of nonhuman animals, there is still work to be done concerning the characterization of the conceptual framework with which this question can be appraised. This paper intends to tackle this task. It starts by defining speciesism as the unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who are not classified as belonging to a certain species. It then clarifies some common misunderstandings concerning what this means. Next, (...) it rejects the idea that there are different kinds of speciesism. Such an idea may result from confusion because there are (1) different ways in which speciesism can be defended; and (2) different speciesist positions, that is, different positions that assume speciesism among their premises. Depending on whether or not these views assume other criteria for moral consideration apart from speciesism, they can be combined or simple speciesist positions. But speciesism remains in all cases the same idea. Finally, the paper examines the concept of anthropocentrism, the disadvantageous treatment or consideration of those who are not members of the human species. This notion must be conceptually distinguished from speciesism and from misothery (aversion to nonhuman animals). Anthropocentrism is shown to be refuted because it either commits a petitio principia fallacy or it falls prey to two arguments: the argument from species overlap (widely but misleadingly known as “argument from marginal cases”) and the argument from relevance. This rebuttal identifies anthropocentrism as a speciesist view. (shrink)

Among Leibniz’s contributions to the philosophy of mind, two topics bear relevance to contemporary discussions in cognitive sciences: the mind-body problem, and the universal language. Leibniz’s deterministic view rejects inter-substance causality between mental and bodily states, as well as between mental or bodily states of different individuals. In addition, Leibniz believed in the need to enhance communication through a universal language based on symbolic representations. Here I reconsider Leibniz’s ideas in the light of experimental evidence coming from mirror neurons. These (...) recently discovered brain cells, responsive to both action execution and observation, are thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions through their representation in the observer’s own brain, thus storing embodied shared representations. I propose that mirror neurons’ cross-modal responsiveness, whereby seeing an action being performed by somebody else triggers similar neural response to that of performing that action oneself, can be interpreted as an instantiation of intersubstance causality. I suggest that mirror neurons’ properties speak not only to the non-dualistic equation, supported by brain science in general, whereby in a given individual, mental states arise from bodily states but also introduce the possibility that bodily states may arise from someone else’s bodily states. In addition, I propose that this automatic embodied flow of information between individuals (from performer to observer) bears relevance to Leibniz’s intuitions on symbols. Specifically, I suggest that the shared representations stored in mirror neurons, thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions, may be seen as a biological instantiation of Leibniz’s planned, but never realized, universal characteristic. (shrink)

The article is a translator’s commentary to the Ukrainian translation of E. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. The task of this article is twofold: On the one hand, to reveal the historical context of the writing and publishing of Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, to outline the strategic and terminological aspects of the Ukrainian translation of this work. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of creation of the text of Cartesian Medita-tions. In particular, the author answers (...) the question of why the German text of Cartesian Medita-tions was not published until 1950, almost twenty years after the French translation of the book was released. The historico-philosophical investigation conducted in the article shows that Husserl considered the publication of Cartesian Meditations as an opportunity to systematically present his phenomenological philosophy and, eventually, recognized the impossibility of embracing the com-plexity of his doctrine within this work. The difficulty of this systematic presentation led to the enhancement of the role of Husserl’s assistant, Eigen Fink, in the editing of Cartesian Meditations and, ultimately, to the creation of Fink’s Sixth Meditation. The latter, as the author of the article demonstrates, puts previous developments in the phenomenology of static and genetic types into a new theoretical perspective, mainly by introducing the method of constructive phenomenology. In the second part of the article, the author offers one of the possible strategies for translating Husserlian texts that consists in structural simplification and stylistic improvement of the text. This strategy is proposed to be implemented by using simpler grammatical structures, by supplementing the text with translator’s comments, as well as by consistent usage of the Ukrainian phenomenological terminology. During the analysis of the terminological discourse of contemporary Ukrainian phenomenology, the author revises some of the established Ukrainian translations, such as the translation of the phenomenological terms Ausschaltung and Zeitbewusstsein and introduces the translation of new terms, such as Vergemeinschaftung, Person, reell and ideell. (shrink)

One of the dominant characteristics of Western philosophical and literary history of the last two centuries is that the object of desire (in the novel) and the object of perception (in epistemology) have been made to reveal aspects which are more complex than the classical age had suspected. With Descartes, everything was clear: the object is but a portion of extension. But with Kant things already become more complicated: the object has a mysterious. en-soi (an sich-in itself) which escapes us. (...) And the object of desire, in literature, acquires such a mystic character that it loses its status of creature. “For what the romantic lover seeks is not really the beloved”, writes Eric Heller. “Intermingled with his erotic craving, inarticulate, diffuse, and yet dominating it, is the desire for spiritual salvation.” It is no longer the object (the creature) which one wishes to embrace, but the invisible reality mirrored in it. Desire does not tend so much toward objects as toward what lies beyond these objects where, it believes, it will find its salvation. (shrink)

Chomskyian claims of a genetically hard-wired and cognitively autonomous “universal grammar” are being promoted by generative linguistics as facts about language to the present day. The related doctrine of an evolutionary discontinuity in language emergence, however, is based on misconceptions about the notions of homology and preadaptation. The obvious lack of equivalence between symbolic communicative capacities in existing nonhuman primates and human language does not preclude common roots. Normal and disordered language development is strongly influenced by the genome, but there (...) is no evidence for the existence of specific genes underlying “universal grammar.” In the mature brain, stages of language processing can be distinguished and “first-pass” syntactic analyses appear to precede semantic decoding. However, this partial seriality – as well as behavioral and clinical dissociations between lexical and functional categories – can be best described, not in terms of serially activated and discrete modules, but in terms of classes of cell assemblies that differ in their distributional properties. Whereas cell assemblies involved in semantic interpretation (“content word” assemblies) are widely distributed and are generally less vulnerable to focal lesion, those involved in structural decoding (functor assemblies) are primarily distributed within the left perisylvian cortices and are selectively vulnerable to left perisylvian lesion. These distributional differences are explained in terms of the perceptuomotor components involved in the acquisition of relevant representations. The emerging “motivated” or “toposemantic” brain regional specificity can only be accommodated with “soft” and maturational versions of modularity. The failure to reproduce double dissociations in current connectionist models is due to overly simple neuroscientific assumptions, notably that of overall equipotentiality. Linguistic models should not be expected to be “implemented” in the brain, but need to be constrained by neuroscientific evidence on how biological brains function. (shrink)

Contrary to Müller's claims, and in support of modular theories, genetic factors play a substantial and significant role in language. The finding that some children with specific language impairment (SLI) have nonlinguistic impairments may reflect improper diagnosis of SLI or impairments that are secondary to linguistic impairments. Thus, such findings do not argue against the modularity thesis. The lexical/functional distinction appears to be innate and specifically linguistic and could be instantiated in either symbolic or connectionist systems.

The belief that syntax is an innate, autonomous, species-specific module is highly questionable. Syntax demonstrates the mosaic nature of evolutionary change, in that it made use of (and led to the enhancement of) numerous preexisting neurocognitive features. It is best understood as an emergent characteristic of the explosion of semantic complexity that occurred during hominid evolution.

Müller's target article aims to summarize approaches to the question of how language elements (phonemes, morphemes, etc.) and rules are laid down in the brain. However, it suffers from being too vague about basic assumptions and empirical predictions of neurobiological models, and the empirical evidence available to test the models is not appropriately evaluated. (1) In a neuroscientific model of language, different cortical localizations of words can only be based on biological principles. These need to be made explicit. (2) Evidence (...) for and against word class differences could be evaluated more rigorously. (3) All (and only) humans are able to learn languages with complex syntactic structures; it is, therefore, not appropriate to deny innateness and universality of syntactic principles. The real question appears to be the following: Which neurobiological principles are the linguistic principles based on? (shrink)

I enlarge on the theme that the brain mechanisms required for languageand other aspects of the human mind evolved through selective changes in the regulatory genes governing growth. Extension of the period of postnatal growth increases the role of the environment in structuring the brain, and spatiotemporal programming (heterochrony) ofgrowth might explain hierarchical representation, hemispheric specialization, and perhaps sex differences.

The concepts of the innateness, universality, species-specificity, and autonomy of the human language capacity have had an extreme impact on the psycholinguistic debate for over thirty years. These concepts are evaluated from several neurobiological perspectives, with an emphasis on the emergence of language and its decay due to brain lesion and progressive brain disease.Evidence of perceptuomotor homologies and preadaptations for human language in nonhuman primates suggests a gradual emergence of language during hominid evolution. Regarding ontogeny, the innate component of language (...) capacity is likely to be polygenic and shared with other developmental domains. Dissociations between verbal and nonverbal development are probably rooted in the perceptuomotor specializations of neural substrates rather than the autonomy of a grammar module. Aphasiologicaldata often assumed to suggest modular linguistic subsystems can be accounted for in terms of a neurofunctional model incorporating perceptuomotor-based regional specializationsand distributivity of representations. Thus, dissociations between grammatical functors and content words are due to different conditions of acquisition and resulting differences in neural representation. Human brains are characterized by multifactorial interindividual variability, and strict universality of functional organization is biologically unrealistic.A theoretical alternative is proposed according to which (1) linguistic specialization of brain areas is due to epigenetic and probabilistic maturational events, not to genetic ”hard-wiring,” and (2) linguistic knowledge is neurally represented in distributed cell assemblies whose topography reflects the perceptuomotor modalities involved in the acquisition and use of a given item of knowledge. (shrink)

If we regard discursive practice as constitutive for the way we relate to the world, ourselves and others, then it is vitally important to ask how this practice can be formed or cultivated. For this reason, rhetoric has always been closely connected to ethics. This article attempts to explicate this relationship. It revolves around ancient conceptions of rhetoric that do not aim at establishing a system or a theory of speech, but at cultivating speech as a practice of good life. (...) This “rhetorical ethics” of antiquity remains instructive for contemporary thinking, since it points to a way of reflecting discourse that accounts not only for the content of speech but also for how it shapes human life. In particular, it is instructive for modern ethics, since it reveals that moral discourse can be regarded as a rhetorical practice too: it is not ethically neutral but has to be reflected upon as a practice of life. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the philosophical origins of the conception of plants as machines and analyses the contemporary technical and ethical consequences of that thinking. First, we explain the historical relationship between the explicit animal machine thesis of Descartes and the implicit plant machine thesis of today. Our hypothesis is that, although it is rarely discussed, the plant machine thesis remains influential. We define the philosophical criteria for both a moderate and radical interpretation of the thesis. Then, assessing the compatibility of (...) current botanical knowledge with both interpretations, we find that neither withstands scrutiny. We trace how biological and agricultural sciences have historically relied upon thinking of plants as machines and how they continue to do so today through rhetoric centred on breeding, biotechnology, and production. We discuss some of the most important legal and ethical consequences of obscuring the vitality of plants. Finally, we explore less reductive and destructive ways of thinking about, and using, plants. (shrink)

This book defends a relational theory of the passage of time. The realist view of passage developed in this book differs from the robust, substantivalist position. According to relationism, passage is nothing over and above the succession of events, one thing coming after another. Causally related events are temporally arranged as they happen one after another along observers’ worldlines. There is no unique global passage but a multiplicity of local passages of time. After setting out this positive argument for relationism, (...) the author deals with five common objections to it: (a) triviality of deflationary passage, (b) a-directionality of passage, (c) the impossibility of experiencing passage, (d) fictionalism about passage, and (e) the incompatibility of passage with perduring objects. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) body, the imaginary (or ideal) (...) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (1-3), Lacan's conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (4-5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes). (shrink)

Does Wittgenstein have a method? There are two challenges to an affirmative answer. One is put forth by Schulte, who claims that Wittgenstein’s method is little more than a skill, and thus not a method in any ambitious sense of that word. Another is Conant’s view that the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein entertains not one method, but a variety of methods. I tackle these challenges by questioning what I take to be their presupposed conceptions of ‘method’ and conclude that (...) we can indeed speak of Wittgenstein’s method in an interesting sense. Thereby, the concept of method will be elucidated and the sense in which Wittgenstein’s philosophy has a method clarified. (shrink)

This article investigates the deep-rooted logical structures underlying our thinking about other animals with a particular focus on topics relevant for cognitive primate research. We begin with a philosophical propaedeutic that makes perspicuous how we are to differentiate ontological from epistemological considerations regarding primates, while also accounting for the many perplexities that will undoubtedly be encountered upon applying this difference to concrete phenomena. Following this, we give an account of what is to be understood by the assertion of a thesis (...) of anthropological difference, identifying, inter alia, a property that fulfils the exclusivity, universality, and constitution criteria and demarcates the differentia specifica between humans and other animals. Also, we systematically develop how such theses can be formulated more moderately. Furthermore, we account for different theoretical frameworks, argumentative schemes, and sociological factors whose employment is associated with theses as such. This endeavor is carried out under the guise of anthropomorphism and anthropodenial. Doing so, we show that both are favored by the logic of cognitive primate research. Put briefly, concepts like cladistic parsimony and arguments by analogy favor anthropomorphism whereas concepts like traditional parsimony and Morgan’s canon favor anthropodenial. We close by framing these topics in the light of the self-other category mistake that lies in ascribing exclusive self-properties to some other. Lastly, we probe this category mistake for potency and scope of implications and find it to be central to and unavoidably ingrained in our thinking about other animals. (shrink)

One can disagree with Müller that it is neurobiologically questionable to suppose that human language is innate, specialized, and species-specific, yet agree that the precise brain mechanisms controlling language in any individual will be influenced by epigenesis and genetic variability, and that the interplay between inherited and acquired aspects of linguistic capacity deserves to be investigated.

This paper represents a philosophical reflection on the nature and value of philosophy itself. Georges Canguilhem somewhat scandalously argued that the fundamental value of philosophy does not lie in truth. He suggests that truth is a typical value of science because truth is what science says and what is said scientifically. Why would a philosopher depreciate his own discipline? And does he really do so? Or is there a different motivation: to help philosophy to become a much more self‐confident voice? (...) And if truth is no longer a value of philosophy, what value fits it better? The article follows Canguilhem in his conception of truth, science, and philosophy. It is against the background of these considerations that the specific revised anthropology of the scientist or philosopher is formed. The main question is what this means for current philosophy and why it could be inspiring for philosophers today. (shrink)

In a calculation involving imaginary numbers, we begin with real numbers that represent concrete measures and we end up with numbers that are equally real, but in the course of the operation we find ourselves walking “as if on a bridge that stands on no piles”. How is that possible? How does that work? And what is involved in the as-if stance that this metaphor introduces so beautifully? These are questions that bother Törless deeply. And that Törless is bothered by (...) such questions is a central question for any reader of Törless. Here I offer my interpretation, along with a reconstruction of the philosophical intuition that lies behind it all. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the natural philosophical method of Geminiano Montanari, one of the most prominent Italian natural philosophers of the late seventeenth century. Montanari’s views are used as a case study to assess recent claims concerning early modern experimental philosophy. Having presented the distinctive tenets of seventeenth-century experimental philosophers, I argue that Montanari adheres to them explicitly, thoroughly, and consistently. The study of Montanari’s views supports three claims. First, experimental philosophy was not an exclusively British phenomenon. Second, in spite of (...) some portrayals of experimental philosophy as an ‘atheoretical’ or ‘purely descriptive’ enterprise, experimental philosophers could consistently endorse a variety of natural philosophical explanations and postulate theoretical entities. Third, experimental philosophy and mechanical philosophy were not, as such, antagonistic. They could be consistently combined in a single philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

The article is a translator’s commentary to the Ukrainian translation of E. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. The task of this article is twofold: On the one hand, to reveal the historical context of the writing and publishing of Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, to outline the strategic and terminological aspects of the Ukrainian translation of this work. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of creation of the text of Cartesian Meditations. In particular, the author answers (...) the question of why the German text of Cartesian Meditations was not published until 1950, almost twenty years after the French translation of the book was released. The historico-philosophical investigation conducted in the article shows that Husserl considered the publication of Cartesian Meditations as an opportunity to systematically present his phenomenological philosophy and, eventually, recognized the impossibility of embracing the complexity of his doctrine within this work. The difficulty of this systematic presentation led to the enhancement of the role of Husserl’s assistant, Eigen Fink, in the editing of Cartesian Meditations and, ultimately, to the creation of Fink’s Sixth Meditation. The latter, as the author of the article demonstrates, puts previous developments in the phenomenology of static and genetic types into a new theoretical perspective, mainly by introducing the method of constructive phenomenology. In the second part of the article, the author offers one of the possible strategies for translating Husserlian texts that consists in structural simplification and stylistic improvement of the text. This strategy is proposed to be implemented by using simpler grammatical structures, by supplementing the text with translator’s comments, as well as by consistent usage of the Ukrainian phenomenological terminology. During the analysis of the terminological discourse of contemporary Ukrainian phenomenology, the author revises some of the established Ukrainian translations, such as the translation of the phenomenological terms Ausschaltung and Zeitbewusstsein and introduces the translation of new terms, such as Vergemeinschaftung, Person, reell and ideell. (shrink)

For Kant, the main aim of teleology in nature is to identify or to segregate as a particular class of objects certain types of causal systems, specifically, systems of interdependent parts.With the development of physiology as a distinct science at the beginning of the 18th century, the idea of interdependence or reciprocity of parts in a system was well-established as a fundamental principle for the specification of organisms. Kant combined the ideas of teleology and causal reciprocity in his systems-theoretical foundation (...) of organized beings in nature. In the analysis of such systems teleological thinking, i.e. the focus on end states or outcomes, is prevalent because the outcome of each process is relevant for the perpetuation of the system as a whole. Teleological thinking thus plays a methodological role in Kant’s philosophy of nature. Its status ismerely reflective, in that it neither postulates a separate ontological category for living beings nor does it constrain mechanical explanations. But at the same time, teleology is constitutive for a particular class of objects and their scientific study. In Kants Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften kommt der Teleologie eine wesentliche Rolle in der Identifikation und Ausgliederung einer bestimmten Klasse von kausalen Systemen zu: den Systemen aus wechselseitig voneinander abhängigen Teilen. Die Vorstellung der wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit zwischen den Teilen eines Ganzen entwickelt sich mit der Etablierung der Physiologie als einer besonderen Wissenschaft zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts zu einem grundlegenden Prinzip, das der Spezifizierung von Organismen dient. Kant verbindet diese Vorstellung der Wechselseitigkeit mit der Teleologie in seiner systemtheoretischen Fundierung des Begriffs eines organisierten Wesens der Natur. In der Analyse dieser Systeme spielt die Teleologie im Sinne der Konzipierung eines Prozesses ausgehend von seinem Resultat eine wichtige Rolle, weil die Wirkung eines physiologischen Vorgangs für die Erhaltung des ganzen organischen Systems entscheidend ist. Da das System in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit erst in der teleologischen Beurteilung erkannt wird, kommt dem teleologischen Denken in Kants Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften eine methodologische Funktion zu. Die teleologische Beurteilung hat allerdings einen bloß reflektierenden Status, insofern über sie keine neue ontologische Kategorie für Lebewesen begründet wird und die Reichweite mechanistischer Erklärungen durch sie nicht beschränkt wird. Trotzdem ist die Teleologie konstitutiv für die Erkenntnis einer bestimmten Klasse von Gegenständen und deren wissenschaftliche Untersuchung. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs and discusses a proof of God’s existence by Anselm of Canterbury’s friend Ralph of Battle, developed in his recently edited De nesciente, a fictitious dialogue between a Christian and an atheist. Without precedent in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ralph’s proof has never been examined in detail. It combines a “cogito” argument with a two-part cosmological argument. The paper first presents the textual basis and an exegetical interpretation of Ralph’s reasoning, classifies the parts of the proof historically (...) and systematically, and then compares these with the proofs of God’s existence as well as other arguments in Anselm’s Proslogion and Monologion. Finally, it points out some similarities between Ralph’s “cogito” argument and a passage in the Liber pro insipiente, which may suggest that this anonymous critique of Anselm’s Proslogion proof was authored not by Gaunilo, as traditionally thought, but by Ralph. (shrink)

Evidence is presented from a polyglot savant to suggest that double dissociations between linguistic and nonverbal abilities are more important than Müller's target article implies. It is also argued that the special nature of syntax makes its assimilation to other aspects of language or to nonhuman communication systems radically implausible.

Müller's review of the neuroscientific evidence undermines nativist claims for autonomous syntax and the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. Generativists will appeal to data from language acquisition, but here too there is growing evidence against the nativist position. Epigenetic naturalism, the developmental alternative to nativism, can be extended to epigenetic socionaturalism, acknowledging the importance of sociocultural processes in language and cognitive development.

We agree with Müller's epigenetic view of evolution and ontogeny and applaud his multilevel perspective. With him, we stress the importance in ontogeny of progressive specialisation rather than prewired structures. However, we argue that he slips from “speech” to “language” and that, in seeking homologies, these two levels need to be kept separate in the analysis of evolution and ontogeny.

Es ya un tópico, aquél que establece una relación entre la obra de Montaigne y la de Descartes, bien como adversarios, bien como precedente el uno del otro o como alternativas por relación al concepto de sujeto, que no llegaron a formular plenamente con sus características actuales. Sin embargo, al hilo del estudio del papel del cuerpo en ambos pensadores trataremos de mostrar, primero, su cercanía contextual y, luego, sus filiaciones conceptuales. Ambos autores están mucho más cerca de lo que (...) suele creerse y las deudas intelectuales de Descartes con Montaigne se resumen, además, en una noción de individuo realmente existente y una concepción de la “vida” como alternativa a la filosofía tradicional, que pueden ser de gran interés para el pensamiento actual. There is a cliché that establishes a relationship between the works of Montaigne and the writings of Descartes, either as adversaries, either as a precedent one of the other or as alternatives in relation to a concept that they did not fully draw up with its contemporary characteristics, that is, the subject. However, in connection with the study of the role of the body in both thinkers we will try to show first its contextual closeness and then its conceptual affiliations. Both authors are much closer to what we usually believe and the intellectual debts of Descartes to Montaigne are also summarized in a notion of an existing individual and a conception of “life” as an alternative to traditional philosophy, which can be of great interest for current thinkers. (shrink)

Although the works of the authors of the Golden Age of Latin Literature play an important formative role for Early Modern philosophers, their influence in Early Modern thought is, nowadays, rarely studied. Trying to bring this topic to light once again and following the seminal works of Kajanto (1979), Proietti (1985) and Akkerman (1985), I will target Spinoza’s Latin sources in order to analyze their place in his philosophy. On those grounds, I will offer an overview of the problems of (...) the reception of classical literature in Early Modernity and then dwell on the particular case of Ovid and Spinoza. The present paper will argue that although Spinoza’s references to Ovid fill a rhetorical purpose as suggested by the existing literature, these mentions have a prior philosophical motivation. That is, the references in the Ethics are not merely illustrative; instead, they indicate that Spinoza acknowledges Ovid’s beliefs about human experiences and deliberately elaborates on Ovid’s view to construct and defend his own theses. To this end, the paper will analyze some citations mapped by Proietti (1985) and add a new one in an attempt to enlarge the list of places and topics that merit further investigation. To conclude, I will point out how the references to Ovid are part of Spinoza’s own defense of the powers of imagination. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes based his natural philosophy on definitions and general principles of matter in motion, which he refrained from calling “laws of nature.” Across the channel, René Descartes had presented his own account of matter in motion in such a way that laws of nature play a central causal-explanatory role. Despite some notable differences in the two systems of natural philosophy, the content of the three Cartesian laws of nature is shared by Hobbesian principles of motion. Why is it the (...) case that Hobbes never ‘transferred’ the concept of law of nature from the sphere of civil society to the realm of nature? What is the status of the Hobbesian principles of motion if they are not laws? Answering these questions is the main aim of this article. It is shown that Hobbes made available an importantly different and genuinely original way to do natural philosophy, which renders it free of metaphysics and eschews the need to ground it in anything other than ‘natural reason’. Briefly put, Hobbes took the category of ‘laws of nature’ to involve commitments that cannot be met in the natural world, unless natural philosophy loses its autonomy from theology and metaphysics. (shrink)

Nous proposons dans cet article de rechercher chez les prédécesseurs de Frank Knight un peu de lumière pour éclairer sa distinction entrerisque etincertitude. D'une part, la lecture des économistes qui l'ont précédé permet de comprendre sa situation dans lapolémique sur la répartition. D'autre part, l'examen des sources philosophiques qui informent sa théorie de la connaissance conduit à analyser l'opposition risque/incertitude comme une opposition théorie de la probabilité/théorie de la connaissance (imparfaite). Le recours à l'épistémologie de Knight fait saisir en quoi (...) sa démarche philosophique le mène à conclure par l'absurde la polémique sur la répartition, et l'autorise alors à proposer une reconstruction de la théorie économique comme science des choix rationnels. (shrink)

Neurobiological models of language need a level of analysis that can account for the typical range of language phenomena. Because linguistically motivated models have been successful in explaining numerous language properties, it is premature to dismiss them as biologically irrelevant. Models attempting to unify neurobiology and linguistics need to be sensitive to both sources of evidence.

This study deals with responsibility as part of innovation. By nature, innovation gives birth to development for the organization and can only be at the core of any strategy within an ever-increasingly global economic context. However it also raises new questions stemming mostly from the impossibility to forecast the success of the innovations. More precisely, the questions raised by innovation also concern its consequences on society as a whole. Today, the innovator should understand his responsibility, the consequence of each innovation. (...) Moreover, common acceptance of the word ‘responsibility’ raises some questions about its use and how it should be understood. What does ‘responsibility’ mean? Who is responsible and for what? Through the notion of ‘care’, we aim at providing an evolution of responsible-innovation. The concept of ‘innovation-care’ is centered on people and more precisely focuses on taking care of them. The purpose of innovation-care is indeed to innovate and keep up with the level of productivity necessary to any organization while taking into account the essential interdependence between the status of the innovator and that of the citizen. (shrink)

John Tradescant the Elder was probably born in England in the 1570s. The earliest known historical record of his life documents his marriage to Elizabeth Day, at Meopham on 18 June 1607.1 A long career working as gardener in the service of England’s nobility—among his employers were Robert and William Cecil, Edward Wotton, and George Villiers —provided numerous opportunities for travel abroad in pursuit of the exotic species for which his eminent employers clamored. As a result of his voyages, Tradescant (...) not only imported hundreds of plant varieties for his clients, but also amassed thousands of artefacts and other.. (shrink)

The ArgumentMontaigne'sEssayswere an exercise in self-knowledge carried out for more than twenty years in Montaigne's private library located in his mansion near Bordeaux. The library was a place of solitude as well as a place of knowledge, a kind ofheterotopiain which two sets of spatial relations coexisted and interacted: the social and the epistemic. The spatial demarcation and arrangement of the site – in both the physical and the symbolic sense – were necessary elements of the constitution of Montaigne's self (...) as an object of knowledge and as a subject of discourse. The spatial setting of the library made possible and constrained certain discursive patterns through which words were systematically linked to things, authority was correlated with access and visibility, and the epistemological was coordinated with the social. In this sense, Montaigne's library resembled other places of empirical knowledge of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which subjects of knowledge were constituted, objects were posited in their proper phenomenal fields and the entire structure of intellectual activity was reproduced through various cultural mechanisms. But the initial similarity is only apparent. The private library never became a culturally recognized place for knowledge of the self; its heterotopic structure could not have been reproduced without the concrete presence of an author and of a self, while Montaigne's skepticism systematically undermined the possibility of the author's position and of the identity of the self. (shrink)

Starting from a suggestion of Stephen Toulmin and through an interpretation of the criticism to which Neurath, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, submits Descartes’ views on science, the paper attempts to outline a pattern of modernity opposed to the Cartesian one, that has been obtaining over the last four centuries. In particular, it is argued that a new alliance has to be established between science and education, overcoming Descartes’ banishment against education. In a Neurathian perspective education is (...) a key-moment of the scientific enterprise without which science itself is in danger of going astray and no scientific outlook is promoted in the society at large. Such an anti-Cartesian attitude is a leitmotiv of the whole Neurath’s production and characterizes his fundamental approach to the sense of modernity. For this reasons, despite all its shortcomings, Neurath’s proposal represents a very promising option for a new agenda of the modernity away from Descartes’ spell. By elaborating on Neurath’s (and Dewey’s) insights, the paper puts forward the idea that philosophy of science (such as it was originated by neopositivism in its Reichenbachian version) should give way to an educational philosophy of science which could allow us “to bring the genuine modern into existence”. (shrink)

Because Müiller fails to distinguish between two senses of the term “autonomy,” there is a danger that his results will be misinterpreted by both linguists and neuroscientists. Although he may very well have been successful in refuting one sense of autonomy, he may actually have helped to provide an explanation for the correctness of autonomy in its other sense.

ABSTRACTThough the apprehension one may have of Aristotelian forms comes about from what Aristotle calls ‘induction,’ there is nothing necessary or intelligible to link together their components, as there is between the properties of matter. That is what leads René Descartes to rid the sciences of them surreptitiously in his VIth Meditation, and to make matter and its properties the common denominator of natural beings. The attempt is made in what follows to bring this move to light — a move (...) that continues to elude some of his readers. (shrink)

This paper describes and defends the “virtues of ingenuity”: detachment, lucidity, thoroughness. Philosophers traditionally praise these virtues for their role in the practice of using reasoning to solve problems and gather information. Yet, reasoning has other, no less important uses. Conviction is one of them. A recent revival of rhetoric and argumentative approaches to reasoning (in psychology, philosophy and science studies) has highlighted the virtues of persuasiveness and cast a new light on some of its apparent vices—bad faith, deluded confidence, (...) confirmation and myside biases. Those traits, it is often argued, will no longer look so detrimental once we grasp their proper function: arguing in order to persuade, rather than thinking in order to solve problems. Some of these biases may even have a positive impact on intellectual life. Seen in this light, the virtues of ingenuity may well seem redundant. Defending them, I argue that the vices of conviction are not innocuous. If generalized, they would destabilize argumentative practices. Argumentation is a common good that is threatened when every arguer pursues conviction at the expense of ingenuity. Bad faith, myside biases and delusions of all sorts are neither called for nor explained by argumentative practices. To avoid a collapse of argumentation, mere civil virtues (respect, humility or honesty) do not suffice: we need virtues that specifically attach to the practice of making conscious inferences. (shrink)

What causes winds was regarded as one of the most difficult questions of early modern natural philosophy. Vitruvius, the ancient Roman architectural author, put forth an alternative to Aristotle’s theory by likening the generation of wind to the actions of the aeolipile, which he believed made artificial winds. As Vitruvius’s work proliferated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous natural philosophers, including Descartes, used the aeolipile as a model for nature. Yet, interpretations of Vitruvius’s text and of the relation of (...) the aeolipile to natural winds varied according to definitions and conceptions of air, wind, rarefaction, condensation, and vapor. (shrink)