OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OURSELVES and our place in nature constitutes, if not the central, at least a central problem of metaphysics. Yet, faced with this question, modern philosophical thought has for the most part swung helplessly between an empty idealism and an absurd reductivism. It is time we overcame our narrow factionalism and learned not only to think more independently ourselves about persons, minds, and living nature, but to profit from the efforts of those who have already given us concepts (...) and arguments which could help us along this road. Among such writings, Helmuth Plessner's major work, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, seems to me outstanding, in that it provides both a firm rational basis for the biological sciences, in their many-levelled structure, and for the sciences of man. (shrink)

Upon Scheler’ s death in 1928, Martin Heidegger remarked that he was the most important force in philosophy at the time. Jose Ortega y Gasset called Scheler "the first man of the philosophical paradise." The Human Place in the Cosmos, the last of his works Scheler completed, is a pivotal piece in the development of his writing as a whole, marking a peculiar shift in his approach and thought. He had been asked to provide an initial sketch of his much (...) larger works on philosophical anthropology and metaphysics--works he was not able to complete because of his early demise. Frings' new translation of this key work allows us to read and understand Scheler's thought within current philosophical debates and interests. The book addresses two main questions: What is the human being? And what is the place of the human being in the universe? Scheler responds to these questions within contexts of said two projected much larger works but not without reference to scientific research. He covers various levels of being: inorganic reality, organic reality (including plant life and psychological life), all the way up to practical intelligence and the spiritual dimension of human beings, and touching upon the holy. Negotiating two intertwined levels of being, life-energy ("impulsion") and "spirit," this work marks not only a critical moment in the development of his own philosophy but also a significant contribution to the current discussions of continental and analytic philosophers on the nature of the person. (shrink)

The article aims to provide a general framework for assessing and categorizing the cognitive systems of human and non-human animals. Our approach stems from biosemiotic, ethological, and phenomenological investigations into the relations of organisms to one another and to their environment. Building on the analyses of Merleau-Ponty and Portmann, organismal bodies and surfaces are distinguished as the base for sign production and interpretation. Following the concept of modelling systems by Sebeok, we develop a concentric model of human and non-human animal (...) cognition that posits three intertwined spheres: corporeity, social communication, and culture. The model explicitly works with the pluralistic perspective that views the communication and cognition of humans as distinct, but not superior to those of non-human animals. Our position is substantiated by two case studies: the first one focuses on the acquisition and spread of nut-cracking technique among the chimpanzees in the Täi forest, the second one on the communication and cognition of deafblind persons. From an epistemological perspective, our paper is a contribution to contemporary attempts to link biosemiotics and ethology with phenomenological concepts of agency, living bodies, and lifeworld. (shrink)

The relationship of humans to other primates – both in terms of abilities and evolution - has been an age-old topic of dispute in science. In this paper the claim is made that the different views of authors are based not so much on differences in empirical evidence, but on the ontological stances of the authors and the underlying ground narratives that they use. For comparing and reconciling the views presented by the representatives of, inter alia, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, (...) and zoosemiotics, an overarching approach of multi-constructivism is introduced. The paper proposes an analytic model that distinguishes four logical possibilities in representing anthropological difference: Gradualism, Transformativism, Unitarism, and Pluralism. Using this typology, the views of C. Darwin, F. de Waal, M. Tomasello, and T. A. Sebeok regarding the similarities and differences between human and animal capacities for cognition, culture and communication are analyzed. The results indicate systematic differences in the selected narratives by these authors that can be related to the types of underlying ontologies. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

In twentieth-century continental philosophy, German philosophical anthropology can be seen as a sort of conceptual laboratory devoted to human/animal research, and, in particular, to the discontinuity between human and non-human animals. Its main notion—the idea of the special position of humans in nature—is one of the first philosophical attempts to think of the specificity of humans as a natural and qualitative difference from non-human animals. This school of thought correctly rejects both the metaphysical and/or religious characterisations of humans, and the (...) positivistic gradualism, that sees the human being as an animal endowed with a greater degree of certain faculties. At the same time, German philosophical anthropology still takes it for granted that such natural-qualitative novelty is unique in the realm of the living, that in correspondence with humans there is the hiatus, the discontinuity par excellence. The semiotic side of this view is the distinction between signs and symbols developed by Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer: animal signs would be mere proxies for perceptive elements or stimuli, whereas only human symbols could convey complex representation of objects and situations. The goal of this contribution is to criticise the alleged uniqueness of the hiatus and its semiotic implications through the opposite approach of the diffuse discontinuities. This approach that focuses on the semiotic traits of different species-specific environments can be traced back to Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiotical phenomenology, which thinks of discontinuities as a normal phenomenon of animal life. (shrink)

Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as (...) a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

"Die anthropologische Differenz" befasst sich mit dem Geist der Tiere in der frühneuzeitlichen Philosophie und dem Problem der anthropologischen Differenz zwischen Mensch und Tier. Anhand des Gemäldes Las Meninas werden einleitend die Antwortstrategien auf die Frage nach der Mensch-Tier-Unterscheidung aufgezeigt. Montaignes Verteidigung der Tiervernunft setzt sich skeptisch von einem aristotelischen Hintergrund ab. Descartes schlägt eine folgenreiche Betrachtungsweise vor: Tiere als Maschinen. Humes naturalistischer Betrachtungsweise unseres Geistes setzt sich von Descartes ab und greift auf montaignesche Überlegungen zurück. In der Neuzeit etablieren (...) sich zwei grundsätzliche Positionen, die Tier und Mensch entweder weit voneinander entfernt oder eng zusammenführt. Diese Positionen beherrschen auch einen wichtigen Teil der gegenwärtigen Debatte. Der Geist der Tiere ist philosophisch kein Seitenthema, im Gegenteil. (shrink)

This is the second article in a series of review articles addressing biosemiotic terminology. The biosemiotic glossary project is designed to integrate views of members within the biosemiotic community based on a standard survey and related publications. The methodology section describes the format of the survey conducted July–August 2014 in preparation of the current review and targeted on Jakob von Uexküll’s term ‘Umwelt’. Next, we summarize denotation, synonyms and antonyms, with special emphasis on the denotation of this term in current (...) biosemiotic usage. The survey findings include ratings of eight citations defining or making use of the term Umwelt. We provide a summary of respondents’ own definitions and suggested term usage. Further sections address etymology, relevant contexts of use, and related terms in English and other languages. A section on the notion’s Uexküllian meaning and later biosemiotic meaning is followed by attempt at synthesis and conclusion. We conclude that the Umwelt is a centerpiece phenomenon, a phenomenon that other phenomena in the living realm are organized around. To sum up Uexküll’s view, we can characterize an Umwelt as the subjective world of an organism, enveloping a perceptual world and an effector world, which is always part of the organism itself and a key component of nature, which is held together by functional cycles connecting different Umwelten. In order to pay respect to Uexküll’s work, we must move from notion to model, from mention of Uexküll’s Umwelt term to actual application of it. (shrink)

Every year since 1933 many of the world's leading intellectuals have met on Lake Maggiore to discuss the latest developments in philosophy, history, art and science and, in particular, to explore the mystical and symbolic in religion. The Eranos Meetings - named after the Greek word for a banquet where the guests bring the food - constitute one of the most important gatherings of scholars in the twentieth century. The book presents a set of portraits of some of the century's (...) most influential thinkers, all participants at Eranos: Carl Jung, Erich Neumann, Mircea Eliade, Martin Buber, Walter Otto, Paul Tillich, Gershom Scholem, Herbert Read, Joseph Campbell, Erwin Schrodinger, Karl Kereyni, D.T. Suzuki, and Adolph Portmann. The volume presents a critical appraisal of the views of these men, how the exchange of ideas encouraged by Eranos influenced each, and examines the attraction of these esotericists towards authoritarian politics. (shrink)

“Philosophical Anthropology,” which is reconstructed here, does not deal with anthropology as a philosophical subdiscipline but rather as a particular philosophical approach within twentieth-century German philosophy, connected with thinkers such as Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. This paper attempts a more precise description of the core identity of Philosophical Anthropology as a paradigm, observes the differences between the authors within the paradigm, and differentiates the paradigm as a whole from other twentieth-century philosophical approaches, such as transcendental philosophy, evolutionary (...) theory or naturalism, existentialism, and hermeneutic philosophy. In determining the human being as “excentric positionality,” Philosophical Anthropology arrives at unique categorical intertwinings between the biological, social and cultural sciences. (shrink)

This paper develops the ideas of the Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann or, more precisely, his concept of organic self-representation, wherein Portmann considered the outer surface of living organisms as a specific organ that serves in a self-representational role. This idea is taken as a starting point from which to elaborate Portman’s ideas, so as to make them compatible with the theoretical framework of biosemiotics. Today, despite the many theories that help us understand aposematism, camouflage, deception and other phenomena related to (...) the category of mimicry, there still is a need for a general theory of self-representation that would re-synthesize evolutionary, morphogenetic and semiotic aspects of the surface of organisms. Here, Adolf Portmann’s concept of self-representation is considered as an important step towards the biosemiotics of animal form. (shrink)

Over the last few decades the biological sciences have developed a strong new branch which lays down certain important prerequisites for any conception of human nature. This is the science of behavior which has found a place half-way between its sister sciences, morphology and physiology, who are often very far apart from one another. The new science has given some of its representatives the will to try out new conceptions of the organism. “Behavior” combines structure and function in a new (...) whole, and it promises to overcome the separation between individual and environment, for a larger synthesis brings more comprehensive phenomena into view. It also promises to overcome the isolation of the individual, for it makes it possible to comprehend the individual as an integral part of a whole which is of necessity supra-individual. (shrink)

This paper tries to trace the different evolutional stages the egg of primitive chordates had to pass through to reach the complex state of the bird egg . It tries to ascribe to the evolutional stages the successive appearance of transitional particularities which characterise the egg and the ontogeny of birds.The different forms of individual development in birds are classified in 7 groups, proceeding from primitive to more advanced types. The type of Galliformes, especially of the Megapodidae, is shown to (...) be very probably the most primitive one, while the Passeriformes show the highest degree of advanced specialisation.Proceeding from the primitive stages of chordates to the more advanced stages of brids a steadily growing participation of the maternal organism in the development of the young animal is stated . Corresponding to this participation we find the young in a more and more intimate dependance of the mother — a dependance that unites the young and his parents in a “system” just as complicated as that built up by the young mammal and its mother. The comparative study allows us to trace the progressive evolution of such a system in avian phylogeny.Ce travail essaie d'établir les stades de l'évolution par lesquels l'oeuf des cordés primitifs a dû successivement passer pour atteindre l'état complexe réalisé dans l'oeuf des oiseaux . Nous essayons ici d'attribuer aux stades évolutifs l'apparition successive de particularités transitoires qui, dans leur totalité, caractérisent l'oeuf et l'ontogénèse des oiseaux.Les différentes formes de l'ontogénèse des oiseaux sont groupées en 7 catégories, allant d'un mode reconnu primitif à un autre mode évolué. Les Gallinacés, en particulier les Mégapodides, nous paraissent se rapprocher le plus du stade primitif; les Passereaux semblent représenter le stade le plus avancé.En passant des stades primitifs des cordés aux stades plus évolués des oiseaux, on constate une participation progressive de la mère à l'ontogénèse de l'espèce . De cette participation résulte une dépendance de plus en plus étroite du jeune animal — dépendance qui unit les parents et leur progéniture en un „système” supérieur dépassant l'individu seul et qui n'est pas moins complexe que celui formé par la mère et l'enfant des mammifères. L'étude comparative permet actuellement de suivre l'évolution progressive d'un tel système dans la phylogénèse des oiseaux. (shrink)

This edited volume is the first specialized book in English about the Swiss zoologist and anthropologist Adolf Portmann. It provides a clarification and update of Portmann’s theoretical approach to the phenomenon of life, characterized by terms such as “inwardness” and “self-presentation.” Portmann’s concepts of secondary altriciality and the social uterus have become foundational in philosophical anthropology, providing a benchmark of the difference between humans and animals. In its content, this book brings together two approaches: historical and philosophical analysis of Portmann’s (...) studies in the life sciences and application of Portmann’s thought in the fields of biology, anthropology, and biosemiotics. Significant attention is also paid to the methodological implications of his intended reform of biology. Besides contributions from contemporary biologists, philosophers, and historians of science, this volume also includes a translation of an original essay by Portmann and a previously unpublished manuscript from his most remarkable English-speaking interpreter, philosopher Marjorie Grene. Portmann’s conception of life is unique in its focus on the phenomenal appearance of organisms. Confronted with the enormous amount of scientific knowledge being produced today, it is even clearer than it was during Portmann’s lifetime that although biologists employ physical and chemical methods, biology itself is not physics and chemistry. These exact methods must be applied according to what has meaning for living beings. If biology seeks to understand organisms as autonomous agents, it needs to take display and the interpretation of appearances as basic characteristics of life. The topic of this book is significantly relevant to the disciplines of theoretical biology, philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and biosemiotics. The recent epigenetic turn in biology, acknowledging the interconnections between organismal development, morphology and communication, presents an opportunity to revisit Portmann’s work and to reconsider and update his primary ideas in the contemporary context. (shrink)

Following the revival in the last decades of the concept of “organism”, scholarly literature in philosophy of science has shown growing historical interest in the theory of Immanuel Kant, one of the “fathers” of the concept of self-organisation. Yet some recent theoretical developments suggest that self-organisation alone cannot fully account for the all-important dimension of autonomy of the living. Autonomy appears to also have a genuine “interactive” dimension, which concerns the organism’s functional interactions with the environment and does not simply (...) derive from its internal organisation. Against this background, we focus on a family of natural philosophical approaches that historically have already strongly taken in account this aspect of autonomy, notably going beyond Kant’s perspective on self-organisation. We thus review Hegel, Plessner, and Jonas’ different perspectives on living beings, focussing in particular on four points: the distinction between organic and inorganic, the theory of biological organisation, the processuality of the living, and the “boundary” between inside and outside, through which the organism establishes its relationship to the environment. We, then, compare the three perspectives on these four points, and finally address the question of what advantages their contribution present—especially compared to Kant’s theory—with respect to the topic of organism’s autonomy. This could help—we hope—to better understand what is at the stake still today. (shrink)

This paper aims to give an insight into developments that contributed to the significance of the work of Jakob von Uexküll and stresses the importance of his occupation in Hamburg. A biographical survey pays tribute to the implication of the historical pretext and context. A scientific survey describes findings and ideas of Uexküll that proved important for the development of biology and the cognitive sciences. In addition, this paper sets out to reject the common notion that Uexküll’s concepts were ideas (...) of a purely theoretical and philosophical character. It confirms that in fact the central aims of his work were to sustain the empirical method in biology and to give biology a sound epistemological basis. Some examples show how historical and theoretical developments converged at Uexküll’s Institut für Umweltforschung in Hamburg and ignited a productive research activity. (shrink)

The significance of the behavior of biological entities cannot be fully explained in terms of the physical and chemical processes upon which contemporary biological and medical research depends. The characteristic proper of biological entities is that they are systems marked by ‘inwardness’, that is, a capacity to interpret meanings in order to reach goals. The significance of this characteristic is given in examples from the author's morphological research. Keywords: biological research, inwardness, organism CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

The relationship of humans to other primates – both in terms of abilities and evolution - has been an age-old topic of dispute in science. In this paper the claim is made that the different views of authors are based not so much on differences in empirical evidence, but on the ontological stances of the authors and the underlying ground narratives that they use. For comparing and reconciling the views presented by the representatives of, inter alia, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, (...) and zoosemiotics, an overarching approach of multi-constructivism is introduced. The paper proposes an analytic model that distinguishes four logical possibilities in representing anthropological difference: Gradualism, Transformativism, Unitarism, and Pluralism. Using this typology, the views of C. Darwin, F. de Waal, M. Tomasello, and T. A. Sebeok regarding the similarities and differences between human and animal capacities for cognition, culture and communication are analyzed. The results indicate systematic differences in the selected narratives by these authors that can be related to the types of underlying ontologies. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Tierpsychologe Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887–1974) entwickelte in seinen Forschungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Abgrenzung zum Behaviorismus eine antireduktionistische Zugangsweise auf Verhaltensexperimente. So bezog er in seinen Experimentalpraktiken explizit die subjektive Erfahrung des Versuchsleiters mit ein. Damit entwarf Buytendijk eine Wissenschaftstheorie, die methodologisch auf die Phänomenologie, Hermeneutik wie auf gestalttheoretische Ganzheitskonzepte zurückgriff, quantitative Datenerhebungen aber dennoch nicht aufgab. Vielmehr untersuchte Buytendijk auf der Grundlage des Biotheoretikers Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in seinem physiologischen Institut in Groningen konkret (...) die These einer „Tier-Umwelt-Einheit“. Der vorliegende Beitrag ermittelt anhand der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und zweier Experimente (1924 und 1931), inwiefern Buytendijk seine Aussage, dass das Tier „mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren [ist]“, die zugleich sein wissenschaftsphilosophisches Konzept stützte, zu verifizieren wusste. Dass die Umwelt dem Tier ein Organ ist, ist bei Buytendijk dementsprechend nicht nur metaphorisch, sondern ganz real zu verstehen. (shrink)

Despite the radical importance of embryology in the development of organicism, developmental biology remains philosophically underexplored as a theoretical and empirical resource to clarify the nature of organisms. This paper discusses how embryology can help develop the organisational definition of the organism as a differentiated, functionally integrated, and autonomous system. I distinguish two conceptions of development in the organisational tradition that yield two different conceptions of the organism: the life-history view claims that organisms can be considered as such during their (...) whole ontogeny; the constitutive view distinguishes two periods in the life history, a period of generation and a period of self-maintenance of a constitutive organisation. Arguing in favour of the constitutive view, it will be claimed that the organisational criteria for the definition of organism (i.e., differentiation, functional integration, and autonomy) can only be applied to the developmental system when it has entered the period of self-maintenance of a constitutive organisation. Under the light of current research in developmental biology, it is possible to make explicit how organisms come to be as organisms. To this end, I explore key ontogenetic events that help us clarify the core aspects of animal organisation and allow us to identify the developmental stage that marks the ontological transition between an organism in potency and an organism in actuality. The structure of this ontogenetic unfolding parallels the conceptual structure of the very notion of organism; the generation of the being of a particular organism parallels its definition. (shrink)

No student or colleague of Marjorie Grene will miss her incisive presence in these papers on the study and nature of living nature, and we believe the new reader will quickly join the stimulating discussion and critique which Professor Grene steadily provokes. For years she has worked with equally sure knowledge in the classical domain of philosophy and in modern epistemological inquiry, equally philosopher of science and metaphysician. Moreover, she has the deeply sensible notion that she should be a critically (...) intelligent learner as much as an imaginatively original thinker, and as a result she has brought insightful expository readings of other philosophers and scientists to her own work. We were most fortunate that Marjorie Grene was willing to spend a full semester of a recent leave here in Boston, and we have on other occasions sought her participation in our colloquia and elsewhere. Now we have the pleasure of including among the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science this generous selection from Grene's philosophical inquiries into the understanding of the natural world, and of the men and women in it. Boston University Center for the R. S. COHEN Philosophy and History of Science M. W. W ARTOFSKY April 1974 PREFACE This collection spans - spottily - years from 1946 ('On Some Distinctions between Men and Brutes') to 1974 ('On the Nature of Natural Necessity'). (shrink)

An 'Essay on man' is an original synthesis of contemporary knowledge, a unique interpretation of the intellectual crisis of our time, and a brilliant vindication of manís ability to resolve human problems by the courageous use of his mind.

Among the peculiarities of Portmann’s biological philosophy is its contradictory reception. Though it was intended to reform a traditional biological discipline, morphology, in academic biology itself this original doctrine had surprisingly little impact. Instead, Portmann’s theoretical biology remains a focus of interest for philosophical disciplines like phenomenology and aesthetics and enjoys the attention of lay readers as well. Based on this internal tension, this chapter reflects on the theoretical status of a field that was ignored as a scientific reform but (...) is still studied as an unacknowledged philosophy. Through discussion of the central concepts of “form” and “authentic phenomenon,” it demonstrates that these categories do not have a straightforwardly empirically objective, “scientific” character but, rather, require an approach more akin to philosophy. Portmann, however, did not want to address the philosophical aspects of his morphology as a philosopher and styled his project in a manner more empirical than its true character called for, which to a certain degree complicated the reception and influence of his original biological thought. (shrink)

The relationship of humans to other primates – both in terms of abilities and evolution - has been an age-old topic of dispute in science. In this paper the claim is made that the different views of authors are based not so much on differences in empirical evidence, but on the ontological stances of the authors and the underlying ground narratives that they use. For comparing and reconciling the views presented by the representatives of, inter alia, cognitive ethology, comparative psychology, (...) and zoosemiotics, an overarching approach of multi-constructivism is introduced. The paper proposes an analytic model that distinguishes four logical possibilities in representing anthropological difference: Gradualism, Transformativism, Unitarism, and Pluralism. Using this typology, the views of C. Darwin, F. de Waal, M. Tomasello, and T. A. Sebeok regarding the similarities and differences between human and animal capacities for cognition, culture and communication are analyzed. The results indicate systematic differences in the selected narratives by these authors that can be related to the types of underlying ontologies. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Tierpsychologe Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887–1974) entwickelte in seinen Forschungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Abgrenzung zum Behaviorismus eine antireduktionistische Zugangsweise auf Verhaltensexperimente. So bezog er in seinen Experimentalpraktiken explizit die subjektive Erfahrung des Versuchsleiters mit ein. Damit entwarf Buytendijk eine Wissenschaftstheorie, die methodologisch auf die Phänomenologie, Hermeneutik wie auf gestalttheoretische Ganzheitskonzepte zurückgriff, quantitative Datenerhebungen aber dennoch nicht aufgab. Vielmehr untersuchte Buytendijk auf der Grundlage des Biotheoretikers Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in seinem physiologischen Institut in Groningen konkret (...) die These einer „Tier-Umwelt-Einheit“. Der vorliegende Beitrag ermittelt anhand der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und zweier Experimente (1924 und 1931), inwiefern Buytendijk seine Aussage, dass das Tier „mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren [ist]“, die zugleich sein wissenschaftsphilosophisches Konzept stützte, zu verifizieren wusste. Dass die Umwelt dem Tier ein Organ ist, ist bei Buytendijk dementsprechend nicht nur metaphorisch, sondern ganz real zu verstehen. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the topic of technique in the thought of the well-known biologist, zoologist and anthropologist Adolf Portmann . First of all I’ll try to understand the biological and anthropological roots, that make a naturally-artificial being of a man. Then I’ll examine what kind of role and weight Portmann assignes to the technique, underlining risks and chances, closely linked to it, and showing the essentially expressive and self-expressive function of it. Finally I’ll specify the relationship between the development (...) of technique in our society and the loss of the primary world: the aesthetic world of imagination. (shrink)

Michael Tomasello has greatly expanded our knowledge of human cognition and how it differs from that of other animals. In this commentary to his recent book A Natural History of Human Thinking, I first critique some of the presuppositions and arguments of his evolutionary story about how homo sapiens’ cognition emerged. For example, I question the strategy of relying on the modern chimpanzee as a model for our last shared ancestor, and I doubt the idea that what changed first over (...) evolutionary time was hominin behavior, which then in turn brought about changes in cognition. In the second half of the commentary I aim to show that the author oscillates between an additive and a transformative account of human shared intentionality. I argue that shared intentionality shapes cognition in its entirety and therefore precludes the possibility that humans have the same, individual intentionality (as shown in, e.g. their instrumental reasoning) as other apes. (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)

The most influential of Portmann’s concepts up to the present is his characterization of early human ontogeny as secondarily altricial. This finding is coupled with the thesis of a social womb: human children are born prematurely in comparison with other primates, and they find a second womb in a social environment nurturing their healthy development. In Portmann’s view, the interconnection of these phenomena forms a basis for the specific position of humans with regards to other forms of life. It is (...) during the first year of extra-uterine life when a specifically human form is acquired in basic charts: it is a triad of an upright posture, linguistic utterances, and rational thought that together constitutes the core of anthropological difference. Although Portmann’s position has strong ties to the tradition of philosophical anthropology, his ambition was to put together the basis for an even more basal and comprehensive account of human beings, which would unite biological, social, cultural, and philosophical aspects. Even though his programme of basal anthropology did not succeed in its original scope, Portmann’s concept of a social womb remains a source for valuable insights into the specificity of processes in human history and a point of departure for any comparisons between the social lives of humans and animal species. (shrink)

This paper aims to give an insight into developments that contributed to the significance of the work of Jakob von Uexküll and stresses the importance of his occupation in Hamburg. A biographical survey pays tribute to the implication of the historical pretext and context. A scientific survey describes findings and ideas of Uexküll that proved important for the development of biology and the cognitive sciences. In addition, this paper sets out to reject the common notion that Uexküll’s concepts were ideas (...) of a purely theoretical and philosophical character. It confirms that in fact the central aims of his work were to sustain the empirical method in biology and to give biology a sound epistemological basis. Some examples show how historical and theoretical developments converged at Uexküll’s Institut für Umweltforschung in Hamburg and ignited a productive research activity. (shrink)

Although the legacy of the Swiss zoologist Adolf Portmann has left profound traces in the formation of modern evolutionary anthropology and comparative neuroscience, few if any studies have considered the wider context of his comparative research and its potential modern significance. At the same time, current findings and directions seem to offer new tools for this purpose, and doing so may open exciting perspectives in the interpretation of human evolution and neurobiology from developmental viewpoints, as sought by Portmann. Specifically, his (...) bio-anthropological research program, or basal anthropology, challenges established fault-lines between structural and functional research traditions, and seeks new contacts between them through typological generalizations that draw on the distinct developmental patterns of altricial and precocial species – and humans, as a secondarily altricial species. The concept of secondarily evolved altriciality may significantly clarify contested issues of neurological, comparative biological, and anthropological research, by recognizing the wide zoological background upon which the human type of ontogeny can be seen as a distinct class among all vertebrates, including higher mammals and primates. By these means, the more abstract concepts of a socially open and symbolically constituted life mode, as discussed in early anthropology, can be integrated with modern frameworks, where a close dialogue is reemerging between developmental and evolutionary, as well as structural and functional research traditions. (shrink)