We argue that objectivity is acquired by learning to refer to particular situations, that is, by developing episodicity. This contrasts with the widespread idea that genericity is crucial in developing humans’ ability to conceive of an objective world. According to the collective intentionality account, objectivity is acquired by contrasting one’s particular perspective in the “here and now” with a generic group perspective on how things are generally. However, this line of argument rests on confusing two independent notions of genericity: social (...) and worldly genericity. Holding these two notions apart shows that there is no coherent developmental route from episodicity to objectivity via genericity. In effect, the collective intentionality account presupposes objectivity. Alternatively, episodicity may develop by enculturation into the common practice of spatial-indexical use. This ability establishes an initial, socially shared spatiotemporal reference system comprising the basis for objectivity. (shrink)

In this book some options concerning the greenhouse effect are assessed from a welfarist point of view: business as usual, stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction by 25% and by 60%. Up to today only economic analyses of such options are available, which monetize welfare losses. Because this is found to be wanting from a moral point of view, the present study welfarizes (among others) monetary losses on the basis of a hedonistic utilitarianism and other, justice incorporating, welfare ethics. (...) For these welfarist evaluations information about the social consequences of the four options are collected from the literature and eventually corrected; then the consequences for individual well-being are assessed based on psychological research about well-being dependent on the social situation of the individual; finally the aggregation formulas of the respective welfare ethics are applied to these data. Assessments by other types of ethics, e.g. Kantian ethic, are included. The strongest abatement option is found to be optimum with great unanimity. - In addition a cost-welfare analysis of greenhouse gas abatement is undertaken revealing efficient cost-welfare ratios for these measures and the most efficient ratio for the strongest option. - A final, more theoretical part discusses the moral obligations following from such evaluations. The notion of 'moral obligation' is explained in a way that, apart from moral goodness of the required act, reinforcement by formal or informal sanctions is another necessary condition for moral obligations. This leads to a conception of a historical morality according to which the demands of morality rise in the long run. Applying this conception to the greenhouse effect implies that presently we have the moral duty to raise the standards of greenhouse gas abatement as much as is politically feasible. (shrink)

The first part of this essay develops the idea of logic as the science of thought, articulating, and thus being, the self-consciousness of thought. It explains that logic, so understood, is nothing other than metaphysics, the science of what is in so far as it is. Self-consciousness, then, thought itself, is not empty, but the source of all content. The second part of the essay discusses the opening paragraphs of Hegel’sScience of Logic; it shows how, in these paragraphs, thought is (...) revealed to be the source of its own content in virtue of its original negativity. Thus the second part begins to make concrete the idea of logic provided by the first. (shrink)

This study seeks to trace the boundaries of the sign in the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl. The approach adopted here is largely historical and has no other ambition that to identify those questions that pertain to the sign and have been of interest for phenomenology. The article is divided in four parts : the first examines an essay from 1890 entitled Semiotik and situates it in the context of the young Husserl's work in the philosophy of mathematics ; the (...) second part concerns the first section of the Logical Investigations ; the third one seeks to account for the changes that testify to the evolution of Husserl's thinking regarding the sign between the Logical Investigations (1900-01) and "Origins of Geometry" (1936) ; the last part considers the contribution of post-Husserlian phenomenology, from Martin Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty and beyond, to semiotics. -/- Résumé. Notre étude vise à délimiter l'espace dans lequel la question du signe s'est posée à la tradition phénoménologique depuis Edmund Husserl. Cette étude est largement historique et elle n'a d'autres ambitions que d'identifier certains aspects de la question du signe qui ont suscité l'intérêt de la phénoménologie. Elle se divise en quatre parties : dans la première, nous examinons le texte de 1890 intitulé Semiotik en le situant dans le contexte des recherches du jeune Husserl sur la philosophie des mathématiques ; la deuxième section est principalement consacrée à l'étude de la première des Recherches logiques ; la troisième partie vise à rendre compte des chan-gements qui ont marqué l'évolution de la pensée de Husserl sur le signe, des Recher-ches logiques (1900/1) à "Origine de la géométrie" (1936) ; finalement, nous esquis-serons à grands traits la contribution de la phénoménologie post-husserlienne à la sémiotique, de Martin Heidegger à Maurice Merleau-Ponty, et au-delà. (shrink)

El trabajo explora críticamente la idea de una justificación débil o pen última de la moral enmarcándola en el conjunto de la filosofía de Tugendhat, reordenan do sus escritos éticos y discriminando los diversos aspectos que incluye dicha idea. Entre ellos, revisa el concepto formal de moral, ligado a los sentimientos, antes de centrarse en el punto crucial: la fundamentación de la ética moderna. Aquí se distingue, por un lado, la justificación comparativa de un contractualismo igualitario frente a otras alternativas (...) teóricas y, por otro, los motivos que pueden llevar a un individuo autónomo a entenderse en términos morales. (shrink)

Of what does the size of spatially and temporally extended phenomena consist? The particular, non-conceptual magnitude of a spatial thing is a determinate, world-defining unit size. Correspondingly, natural objects have a definite size in relation to embodied human subjectivity as a global ‘measure of worlds’. As displayed by the occurrence of global models in human life, this relation has an irreducibly indexical character. The particular temporal extension of events is intrinsic to human experience as well – albeit in a different (...) way. As displayed in local models only, it is a conceivable object of practical but not of propositional knowledge. In its role as a global spatial measure, somehow the human body is more than one among the many possible objects of descriptive knowledge. This role is supplied by rational agency – which is then a condition of the world. (shrink)

This paper outlines the intellectual biography of Walter Dubislav. Besides being a leading member of the Berlin Group headed by Hans Reichenbach, Dubislav played a defining role as well in the Society for Empirical/Scientific Philosophy in Berlin. A student of David Hilbert, Dubislav applied the method of axiomatic to produce original work in logic and formalist philosophy of mathematics. He also introduced the elements of a formalist philosophy of science and addressed more general problems concerning the substantiation of human knowledge. (...) What set Dubislav apart from the other logical empiricists was his expertise in the history of logic and exact philosophy which enabled him to elucidate and advance the thinking in both disciplines. In the realm of logic proper, Dubislav is best known for his pioneering work in theory of definitions. What is more, he did original work on the so called ‘quasi truth-tables’ which aided Reichenbach in developing his logic of probability. Dubislav also elaborated an influe.. (shrink)

Abstract: Kant follows a substantial tradition by defining judgment so that it must involve a relation of concepts, which raises the question of why he thinks that single-term existential judgments should still qualify as judgments. There is a ready explanation if Kant is somehow anticipating a Fregean second-order account of existence, an interpretation that is already widely held for separate reasons. This paper examines Kant's early (1763) critique of Wolffian accounts of existence, finding that it provides the key idea in (...) his mature model of existential judgment, which is in fact sharply opposed to the Fregean strategy. By relating this to Kant's theory of judgment in general—in particular, to his claim for an isomorphism between the assertoric function of judgment and the category of existence—a preliminary case is made that absolute positing, far from being a marginal special case, accomplishes the primary function of judgment. This argument shows the importance of distinguishing between contexts in which Kant is treating judgment as a vehicle for inference (e.g. pure general logic) and contexts in which he is treating it, more robustly, as the cognition of an object. (shrink)

The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, first expounded by Husserl, between formal logic and formal ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-structures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Leniewski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between concrete objects and object-pieces, but also relations between what (...) we shall call dependent parts or moments. A two-dimensional formal language is canvassed for the resultant ontological theory, a language which owes more to the tradition of Euler, Boole and Venn than to the quantifier-centred languages which have predominated amongst analytic philosophers since the time of Frege and Russell. Analytic philosophical arguments against moments, and against the entire project of a formal ontology, are considered and rejected. The paper concludes with a brief account of some applications of the theory presented. (shrink)

Among the philosophical accounts of reference, Quine’s The Roots of Reference stands out in offering an integrated account of the acquisition of linguistic reference and object individuation. Based on a non-referential ability to distinguish bodies, the acquisition of sortals and quantification are crucial steps in learning to refer to objects. In this article, we critically re-assess Quine’s account of reference. Our critique will proceed in three steps with the aim of showing that Quine effectively presupposes what he sets out to (...) explain, namely, reference to objects. We are going to argue that sortals do not individuate, that bodies are already objects, and that the acquisition of variables presupposes a notion of identity. The result is diagnostic of a central desideratum for any theory of reference: an explanation of spatiotemporal object individuation. (shrink)

Object-hood is central to Husserl’s work, yet he employs several different notions of object-hood without clarifying the differences; his work thus offers rich and nuanced reflections on object-hood, but in a theoretically underdeveloped, at times even paradoxical, form. This paper aims to develop Husserl’s theory of objects systematically. In order to achieve this I distinguish five object-concepts operative in Husserl’s phenomenology and prove that they are not co-extensional. I also argue that they form a layer in terms of transcendental constitution, (...) one implying the other. I conclude the paper by exploring Husserl’s paradoxical claim that the absolute is not an object. From these considerations, two meta-phenomenological lessons emerge: object-hood is not total ; yet we cannot escape objectification while engaged in phenomenological reflection. (shrink)

Tugendhat ha propuesto tentativamente en los últimos quince años recuperar el papel de la antropología como disciplina filosófica central o filosofía primera. Este peculiar regreso al pensamiento alemán de los años 20 es una proyección del conjunto de la trayectoria intelectual del autor. Pero además nos permite encarar problemas epistemo­lógicos clásicos de la disciplina: su objeto y conteni­dos, su método, su lugar en los estudios filosóficos. Básicamente se critica la posi­ción de Tugendhat a estos respectos, pero valorando como estimable esas (...) especie de regreso a Kant que considera la antropología como el motor y el telos autorreflexivo último de los estudios filosóficos. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 5, Issue 1, pp 13 - 28 Linking the idea of knowledge with the idea of a certain form of life is uncontestedly one of the lessons the later Wittgenstein wanted to teach us. However, what Wittgenstein exactly meant by this is highly contested in the Wittgenstein literature. In this paper, I distinguish two ways of appealing to the idea of a form of life in order to understand knowledge. According to the first way, the appeal to (...) the idea of a form of life is supposed to “solve” the skeptical problem. On that account the appeal to a form of life is conceived of as an appeal to something that is more fundamental than knowledge and thereby explains how knowledge is possible. According to the second way, the appeal to the idea of a form of life is taken to be a consequence of an insight that makes it impossible for the skeptical problem to even get formulated: it is the insight that the fundamental meaning of the concept of knowledge is to describe a kind of capacity, more precisely, a capacity for knowledge. I take this to be Wittgenstein’s deepest lesson for epistemology which is still to be acknowledged. According to this interpretation, the thought that knowledge is linked with a certain form of life no longer expresses the idea that knowledge rests upon something that is more fundamental than knowledge. It rather expresses the idea that knowledge rests upon a form of life that cannot exist without knowledge. (shrink)

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of “intersubjective”‐communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting (...) a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity. The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that questions of form are questions of logic or language. In his "Logical Investigations" Husserl, however, clearly distinguished formal ontology from formal grammar and formal logic. The article attempts to explain Husserl's notion of formal ontology. It investigates the relation between formal and material ontology as well as the relation between epistemic and metaphysical necessity. The article provides an interpretation of Husserl's claim that there are metaphysical necessities which are necessarily recognized by the human mind on (...) the basis of Husserl's well-known distinction between the meanings of mental acts and their objective correlates. (shrink)

The problem of self-consciousness has been an essential one for philosophy since the onset of modernity. Both E. Tugendhat and the Heidelberg School represented by D. Henrich have reflected critically upon the traditional theory of self-consciousness, and both have revealed the circular dilemma of the “reflection-model” adopted by the traditional theory. In order to avoid the dilemma, they both proposed substitute formulas, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. Husserl also paid particular attention to the traditional theory of self-consciousness (...) in his phenomenology. Through the distinctions of “primal consciousness” and “reflection,” Husserl explored the core problem of the traditional theory of self-consciousness in two different dimensions. In his critique, Husserl clarified the founding relation between primal consciousness and reflection, and in contrast to Tugendhat’s semantic approach, he developed a new reflection-model of self-consciousness which effectively avoids the circular dilemma of the traditional theory and does not narrow the problem domain of that theory. (shrink)

This article develops a constitutive account of self-knowledgethat is able to avoid certain shortcomings of the standard response to the perceived prima facieincompatibility between privileged self-knowledge and externalism. It argues that ifone conceives of linguistic action as voluntary behavior in a minimal sense, one cannot conceive ofbelief content to be externalistically constituted without simultaneously assuming that the agent hasknowledge of his beliefs. Accepting such a constitutive account of self-knowledge does not, however,preclude the conceptual possibility of being mistaken about one’s mental (...) states. Rather, self-knowledgehas to be seen as only a general constraint or as the default assumption of interpreting somebodyas a rational and intentional agent. This is compatible with the diagnosis of a localized lack of self-transparency. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to restore the interdependent or complementary relationship between self and others against the universalistic one (as I call it) that Kant, for example, once insisted on, by reexamining the concept of so-called private language. I shall consider some views in speech act theory and pragmatics, since there has often been discussion about such a private occurrence as the speaker's sincerity. For example, Jürgen Habermas situates it in the speaker's internal nature as will be seen (...) later. In my opinion, alter ego is an ego because we can empathize (einfühlen) with it, and yet it is alter ego because it has some private experiences which we cannot perfectly comprehend. (shrink)

Following Niklas Luhmann, the author assumes that communication creates social systems. The system therefore influences the nature of communication. The impact of rhetoric on media discourse can be understood as a result of the strategy adopted by the system. What follows from the above assumption is a discussion of the notion of truth which is fundamental to media philosophy. Systems, in their adopted strategies, affect the media and use persuasion in a way that is remote from the treatment of the (...) truth as an idea or as a condition of an ethical nature. (shrink)

Biodiversity sciences witness a double dynamic. Whereas the need for interdisciplinary approaches is increasingly appreciated, most disciplinary studies are still confined to developing operational, discipline-specific indices. We show that a reassessment of the general notion of biodiversity is needed to clarify this situation. We advocate a new approach, according to which the main usefulness of this notion is not to capture quantitatively biological objects or processes, but to organize meaningful and coherent interdisciplinary interactions by constructively criticizing disciplinary studies. We apply (...) this approach to ecological-economic models, in the hope of launching more fruitful critical dialogs between economists and biologists. (shrink)

Me propongo explicar que los términos sustanciales usados individuadoramente constituyen la expresión lingüística que fija la referencia a un objeto en el Organon de Aristóteles, y mostrar que esa expresión opera allí como principium individuationis. El artículo desarrolla dos tesis principales: Es legítimo adjudicar a Aristóteles una teoría descriptiva de la referencia, en la cual las propiedades esenciales incluidas en la definición constituyen condiciones suficientes para referir, dado un contexto donde los términos sustanciales se usan para individuar. Los individuos sustanciales (...) se ubican justificadamente en la base ontológica de las Categorías en virtud de que son los objetos de la referencia, y también de que se desempeñan como sujetos últimos de la predicación. My main goal is to explain that the substantial terms fix the reference to an object, and to show that this expression is the principium individuationis, within the Aristotelian Organon. The paper works out two main theses: Aristotle may be ascribed a descriptive theory of reference in which the essential properties included in the definition constitute sufficient conditions for referring to an object, provided that in the context the substantial terms are used to individualize. Substantial individuals are justifiably included at the bottom of the ontology in the Categories by virtue of their being the objects of reference, and also by virtue of their role as ultimate subjects of predication. (shrink)

Tugendhat’s remarks on religion and mysticism are explored in section 5 and 6 of this paper. To this end I outline, in section 1, the role that the criticism of religion has played from its beginnings in philosophy’s self-understanding and its focus on reasoning, which philosophers opposed to the non-reasoning justification of religion. In section 2, I consider philosophy’s relation to empirical statements and to the empirical sciences; in section 3, I discuss Tugendhat’s substitution of anthropology for metaphysics; and in (...) section 4, his moral theory. (shrink)

Although the term “pre-predicative” (vorprädikativ) is used only two times in Being and Time, it qualifies in an essential way the hermeneutical process in which the existentials of understanding, interpretation and discourse cooperate to structure the phenomenal field into a meaningful horizon. This hermeneutical function represents for Heidegger the precondition for every theoretical-predicative behaviour of Dasein towards being. By means of a conceptual-historical analysis throughout the Twenties, it is possible to point out that Heidegger considers the domain of the pre-predicative (...) identical to the hermeneutical process. Nevertheless, on the basis of some indications that are to be found in Heidegger’s writings, we can trace the contours of a different history of the concept of “pre-predicative”, in which the latter hints at a deeper dimension of the human being – a dimension that can be designated as “pathic” or “prehermeneutical”. To this purpose, it is essential to investigate the concept of “pre-worldly” (vorweltlich), introduced by Heidegger in his first lecture course, his analysis of anxiety in 1929 and, finally, the image of the “great silence” (große Stille) in the later Contributions to Philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a thread in the philosophy of E. Tugendhat binding together his moral and justice theories with his conceptual analysis. Oriented by the thesis that a conceptual analysis is necessary to explain what justice is, this paper reconstructs some aspects of Tugendhat’s philosophy. It is divided in four sections: First, I delve into the author’s definition and use of conceptual analysis. Second, I describe some features of Tugendhat’s moral theory of contractualism. Third, I examine his (...) theory of justice. Fourth, I conclude by framing my analysis within the debate between Rawls’s and Tugendhat’s theories of justice. (shrink)

L'interet de Habermas pour lamodernitédont traite son dernier livre, le tourne vers les travaux de Foucault. Celui-ci aurait mis en évidence, dès l'Histoire de la folie, ce qu'il y a de nouveau sous le ciel de la rationalité moderne. Dans plusieurs chapitres consacrés à Foucault, Habermas esquisse une critique qui s'inspire substantiellement des travaux de Fink-Eitel, Fraser, Honegger, Rippel et Münkler, Dreyfus et Rabinow et de Honneth. Cette critique est radicale et prend pour cible la présumée théorie du pouvoir de (...) Foucault, les impasses où conduisent les instructions méthodologiques qu'il entend observer pour reconstruire l'histoire recente des sciences humaines, ainsi que les thèses au sujet du rapport entre les pratiques discursives et les pratiques non discursives, plus exactement les dispositifs de pouvoir dans lesquels les sciences humaines se trouvent intégrées. Bien que Foucault n'ait jamais développé une telle théorie du pouvoir et qu'il dise n'avoir jamais voulu l'élaborer, on doit constater avec Habermas que le thème du pouvoir est pourtant omniprésent, et que le concept de pouvoir doit ëtre considéré comme une notion centrale dans son oeuvre. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The present article attempts to investigate the 'philosophical foundations' of psychology and thereby of the social sciences in general with regard to a central problem, viz. the question of the 'inner'. It does this with special critical reference to an authoritative psychological theory, viz. the so-called 'mediation theory', and tries to show the necessity of interdisciplinary clarification. In the first part mediation theory was introduced as a variant of psychological behaviorism which attempts to substitute for the untenable total neglect of (...) 'inner' events a way of talking about them which is secured methodologically and retains a behavioral foundation. Of the three crucial questions raised by the project the second, viz. question, which concerns the theoretical status of the assumed inner mediators could be answered to the effect that they must be "hypothetical constructs" having the nature of real, phenomenally verifiable events, if, indeed, they are to figure as links in S-R-chains. Conceiving of them as "intervening variables", such a conception would exclude this function. The discussion of 'internalization' of behavior sequences as assumed by mediation theory has led to the conclusion that the relevant phenomena cannot, in this case, justify the necessity of a non-dispositional explanation which goes beyond 'external' performances ). Likewise the subject matter of question remained undecided; that is, the possibilities of phenomenally verifying the assumed 'inner' mediation processes which are only asserted to exist by the theory but are unspecified in content. Therefore, the observable performances in the case of sequential behaviour do not support the mediation theoretic solution of the problem of the 'inner'. (shrink)