Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. In this article, we develop relational sufficientarianism – a view of justice according to which people must relate as sufficients. We distinguish between three versions of this ideal, one that is incompatible with relational egalitarianism and two that are not. Building on this, we argue that relational theorists have good reason to support a pluralist view that is both egalitarian and sufficientarian.

This article investigates the hitherto under-examined relations between affirmative action, paternalism and respect. We provide three main arguments. First, we argue that affirmative action initiatives are typically paternalistic and thus disrespectful towards those intended beneficiaries who oppose the initiatives in question. Second, we argue that not introducing affirmative action can also be disrespectful towards these potential beneficiaries because such inaction involves a failure to adequately recognize their moral worth. Third, we argue that the paternalistic disrespect involved in affirmative action is (...) alleviated when the potential beneficiaries’ preferences against such initiatives are adaptive. We conclude that although there is a relevant sense in which paternalistic affirmative action is disrespectful, it may well be more disrespectful not to pursue such policies. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. The theory applies to those who stand in the relevant social relations. In this paper, I distinguish four different accounts of what it means to be socially related and argue that in all of them, self-relations—how a person relates to themselves—fall within the scope of relational egalitarianism. I also point to how this constrains what a person is allowed to do to themselves.

People often discriminate based on negative or positive stereotypes about others. Important examples of this are highlighted by the theory of ambivalent sexism. This theory distinguishes sexist stereotypes that are negative (hostile sexism) from those that are positive (benevolent sexism). While both forms of sexism are considered wrong towards women, hostile sexism seems intuitively worse than benevolent sexism. In this article, we ask whether the difference between discriminating based on positive vs. negative stereotypes in itself makes a morally relevant difference. (...) We suggest that it does not. By examining a number of prominent accounts of what makes discrimination wrong, we defend the Moral Irrelevance View according to which stereotype valence is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of discrimination, all else equal. (shrink)

Affirmative action is standardly pursued in relation to admissions to prestigious universities, in hiring for prestigious jobs, and when it comes to being elected to parliament. Central to these forms of affirmative action is that they have to do with competitive goods. A good is competitive when, if we improve A’s chances of getting the good, we reduce B’s chances of obtaining the good. I call this Competitive Affirmative Action. I distinguish this from Non-competitive Affirmative Action. The latter has to (...) do with non-competitive goods, e.g., being granted early parole or freedom from arbitrary arrest. I argue that some of the most prominent objections against affirmative action—in particular, the reverse discrimination objection and the merit objection—speak less against Non-competitive Affirmative Action. And that some of the most prominent arguments in favor of affirmative action, insofar as they justify Competitive Affirmative Action, also justify Non-competitive Affirmative Action. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which justice requires that people relate as equals. According to some relational egalitarians, X and Y relate as equals if, and only if, they (1) regard each other as equals; and (2) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that relational egalitarians must give up 1.

В этой статье мы утверждаем, что философия символических форм Эрнста Кассирера является незаменимым философско-антропологическим партнером риторики. Мы предполагаем, что освоение риторикой теории символических форм Кассирера позволит вывести риторику за пределы её доминирующей трактовки как теории, ориентированной на языковое выражение, и позволит ей полностью соответствовать широкому пониманию риторики как учения о том, каким образом создаётся, утверждается и изменяется социальное значение. Чтобы сделать наше расширенное понимание риторико-философско-антропологического подхода более ясным, мы построили наше рассуждение частично на критике недавней попытки Томаса А. Дишенны (Discenna, (...) Rhetorica 32/3, 2014) включить Кассирера в риторическую традицию в ходе анализа давосских дебатов между Кассирером и М. Хайдеггером 1929 года; и частично на разъяснении тех аспектов мысли Кассирера, которые мы считаем наиболее важными для развития риторико-философской антропологии социального значения. Основным выводом проведенного исследования является тезис о том, что философия символических форм Кассирера создает теоретические основы современной риторической философской антропологии как учения о формировании социального значения. (shrink)

Affirmative action continues to divide. My aim in this paper is to present participants in the debate with a new distinction, namely one between negative and positive affirmative action. Whereas positive affirmative action has to do with certain goods, such as a place at a prestigious university or a job at a prestigious company, negative affirmative action has to do with certain bads, such as a firing or a sentence. I then argue that some of the most prominent arguments in (...) favor of affirmative action speak at least as much in favor of negative as positive affirmative action. At the same time, at least one of the most prominent arguments put forward against affirmative action speak less against negative affirmative action. Thus, the paper should redraw the battle lines in the affirmative action debate. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarianism, justice requires equal relations. In this paper, I ask the question: can equal relations be unjust according to relational egalitarianism? I argue that while on some conceptions of relational egalitarianism, equal relations cannot be unjust, there are conceptions in which equal relations can be unjust. Surprisingly, whether equal relations can be unjust cuts across the distinction between responsibility-sensitive and non-responsibility-sensitive conceptions of relational egalitarianism. I then show what follows if one accepts a conception in which equal (...) relations can be unjust, including why it provides a reason to grant some people less political power than others. (shrink)

What makes discrimination morally bad? In this paper, we discuss the putative badness of a case of consensual discrimination to show that prominent accounts of the badness of discrimination—appealing, inter alia, to harm, disrespect and inequality—fail to provide a satisfactory answer to this question. In view of this, we present a more promising account.

Construed as a theory of justice, relational egalitarianism says that justice requires that people relate as equals. Construed as a theory of what makes democracy valuable, it says that democracy is a necessary, or constituent, part of the value of relating as equals. Typically, relational egalitarians want their theory to provide both an account of what justice requires and an account of what makes democracy valuable. We argue that relational egalitarians with this dual ambition face the justice-democracy dilemma: Understanding social (...) relations in such a way that renders relational egalitarianism plausible as an answer to what makes democracy valuable comes at the price of understanding social relations in a way that makes it less plausible as a theory of justice, and vice versa. We also argue that there is no easy way out of the dilemma and that relational egalitarians, who want relational equality to provide both accounts mentioned, may simply have to set their ambitions lower on behalf of relational equality. (shrink)

According to a prominent view, discrimination is wrong, when it is, because it makes people worse off. In this paper, I argue that this harm-based account runs into trouble because it cannot point to a harm, without making controversial metaphysical commitments, in cases of discrimination in which the discriminatory act kills the discriminatee. That is, the harm-based account suffers from a problem of death. I then show that the two main alternative accounts of the wrongness of discrimination—the mental-state-based account and (...) the objective-meaning account—do not run into this problem. (shrink)

Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are some more principled worries regarding (...) Marway's idea of a strong pro tanto duty not to complete injustices through one's procreative choices. Nonetheless, we believe Marway's arguments point in the right general direction regarding duties and structural injustice. Thus, in the final part, we suggest a positive proposal on how it would be possible to respond to the cases we raise. More specifically, we explore the suggestion that agents have a pro tanto duty to participate in eliminating structural injustice. Importantly, this duty can be satisfied, not only in procreation choices but in multiple ways. (shrink)

Many believe that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relationships. In this paper, we argue that this view cannot be justified by appeal to (i) beneficence, (ii) shared projects, (iii) vulnerability, (iv) epistemic access, (v) expressivism, or (vi) autonomy as nonalienation. We finally provide an error theory for why many may have believed that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relations.

In 1970, Stewart advocated disenfranchising everyone reaching retirement age or age 70, whichever was earlier. The question of whether senior citizens should be disenfranchised has recently come to the fore due to votes on issues such as Brexit and climate change. Indeed, there is a growing literature which argues that we should increase the voting power of non-senior citizens relative to senior citizens, for reasons having to do with intergenerational justice. Thus, it seems that there are reasons of justice to (...) disenfranchise senior citizens, or at least to grant them a lower voting weight than non-senior citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether there are democratic reasons to do so. To answer this question, we turn to the boundary problem in democratic theory, i.e., the question of who should be included in democratic decision-making. Two prominent solutions, and a more recent one, are particularly relevant: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle, and the relational egalitarian principle. When it comes to the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle, we argue that there is reason to grant most senior citizens a lower voting weight than most non-senior citizens in most decisions. Whether that is the case on the relational egalitarian principle depends on how people relate to each other in society. Indeed, it is sometimes in accordance with the relational egalitarian view to grant senior citizens a greater voting weight than non-senior citizens. (shrink)

According to the relational egalitarian theory of justice, justice requires that people relate as equals. To relate as equals, many relational egalitarians argue, people must (i) regard each other as equals, and (ii) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that, under conditions of background injustice, such relational egalitarians should endorse affirmative action in the ways in which (dis)esteem is attributed to people as part of the regard-requirement for relating as equals.

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we perceive (...) phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

From the earliest times, American ethics, the rules for the moral \& intellectual life of the West, used to be founded upon the two principles of self-reliance and good neighborliness. Here we consider the underlying functions of neural brain circuits, organic structures that have evolved adaptively by Darwinian rules subject to selection pressure. In the left brain resides our self-reliant private Ego, making plans, launching initiatives. Your public Ego dwells in the right brain, looking around, meeting with your friendly neighbor. (...) A main component is our bilateral interior cosmos, providing us with all the detailed information about our environment as well as the universe at large. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. So far, philosophy (...) has been rehearsing our thoughts, our human-internal world, a grand painting of the outer world, how we comprehend subjectively our experience, worked up by the logos machine, but now we seek a wider horizon, how humans understand the world thanks to Darwinian evolution to adapt in response to the metaphysical gap, the chasm between the human animal and its environment, shaping the organism so it can deal with its variable world. This new horizon embraces global context coded in neural structures that support the noumenal cosmos, our inner mental world, for us as denizens of the outer environment. Kant’s inner and outer senses are fundamental ingredients of scientific philosophy. Several sections devoted to Heidegger, his lizard debunked, but his version of the metaphysical gap & his doctrine of the logos praised. Rorty and others of the behaviorist school discussed also. (shrink)

Guided by key insights of the four great philosophers mentioned in the title, here, in review of and expanding on our earlier work (Burchard, 2005, 2011), we present an exposition of the role played by language, & in the broader sense, λογοζ, the Logos, in how the CNS, the brain, is running the human being. Evolution by neural Darwinism has been forcing the linguistic nature of mind, enabling it to overcome & exploit the cognitive gap between an animal and its (...) world by recognizing environmental structures. Our work was greatly influenced by Heidegger’s lecture notes on metaphysics (Heidegger, 1935). We found agreement with recent progress in neuroscience, but also mathematical foundations of language theory, equating Logos with the mathematical concept of structure. The mystery of perception across the gap is analyzed as radiation and molecules impinging on sensory neurons that carry linguistic information about gross environmental structures, and only remotely about the physical reality of elementary particles. The most important logical brain function is Ego or Self, guiding the workings of the brain as a logos machine. Ego or Self operates from neurons in frontopolar cortex with global receptive fields. The logos machine can function only by availing itself of global context, its internally stored noumenal cosmos NK, and the categorical-conceptual apparatus CCA, updated continually through the neural default mode network (Raichle, 2005). In the Transcendental Deduction, Immanuel Kant discovered that Ego or Self is responsible for conscious control in perception relying on concepts & categories for a fitting percept to be incorporated intoNK. The entire CNS runs as a “movie-in-the-brain” (Parvizi & Damasio, 2001), at peak speed processing simultaneously in a series of cortical centers a stack of up to twelve frames in gamma rhythm of 25 ms intervals. We equate global context, or NK, with our human world, Heidegger’s Dasein being-in-the-world, and are able to demonstrate that the great philosopher in EM parallels neuro-science concerning the human mind. (shrink)

Conscious existence is the product of a neural brain mechanism, which is largely identical with Immanuel Kant's Oneness Function, a service performed by 200 million neurons in the prefrontal lobe, & makes possible our interior cosmos, the record of our interconnected, or general, experience. Essential for us humans is the well-being of our interior cosmos, or Saint Teresa of Avila's interior castle, in all interactions with each other \& the greater environment. Any disorders of our cosmos are liable to make (...) us fall ill, setting our existence on a path of psychosomatic etiology of a large class of mysterious undiagnosed diseases. (shrink)

This chapter contains an introduction by the editors of the volume P.F. Strawson and his Philosophical Legacy. First, the chapter describes Strawson’s life and gives a summary of his most important works, ranging from his early ‘On Referring’ to his latest book Analysis and Metaphysics. Secondly, it gives an overview of the contributions that appear in P.F. Strawson and his Philosophical Legacy. Lastly, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources is given. The aim of the chapter is to introduce the (...) reader to Strawson’s work and to facilitate the learning process of becoming acquainted with Strawson’s philosophical project. (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering phenomena, (...) ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

Georg Cantor's absolute infinity, the paradoxical Burali-Forti class Ω of all ordinals, is a monstrous non-entity for which being called a "class" is an undeserved dignity. This must be the ultimate vexation for mathematical philosophers who hold on to some residual sense of realism in set theory. By careful use of Ω, we can rescue Georg Cantor's 1899 "proof" sketch of the Well-Ordering Theorem––being generous, considering his declining health. We take the contrapositive of Cantor's suggestion and add Zermelo's choice function. (...) This results in a concise and uncomplicated proof of the Well-Ordering Theorem. (shrink)

Studie se zabývá tím, jak se v českých zemích obráželo bouřlivé období vývoje biologického myšlení od přelomu 19. a 20. století do první světové války, kdy vedle sebe existovaly velmi různé názory na evoluci. Mnohovrstevnatost teoretickou přitom doplňuje i kulturní a vědecká mnohovrstevnatost českých zemí, kde se jednak mísí vlivy německé a české biologie na svých autonomních institucích, a jednak lze spatřovat rozdíly i mezi lokálními centry Prahou a Brnem se svými badatelskými tradicemi a nezávislými vazbami na další centra ve (...) Vídni a evropských univerzitách. Centrem zájmu jsou teoreticky uvažující biologové, kteří buď sami dlouhodobě profilovali české biologické myšlení, anebo na něj měli díky zdejšímu působení přímý vliv. V letech ca 1900–1915 došlo k prvnímu otevřenému a diskutovanému vrcholu v české recepci evolucionismu a před jednoznačnými pozicemi a „velkými teoriemi“ má navrch spíše prostředkování diferencované zahraniční diskuse, podněty vlastní experimentální práce a opatrné očekávání od nového studia variability a dědičnosti. (shrink)

This volume offers a collective study of the work of P. F. Strawson (1919-2006) and an exploration of its relevance for current philosophical debates. It is the first book since Strawson's death to cover the full range of his philosophy, with chapters by world-leading experts about his lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and philosophical methodology. It aims to achieve a balance between exegesis of Strawson, critical engagement, and consideration of the reception and continuing value (...) of his work. It explores the intellectual relations between Strawson and some of his predecessors and contemporaries and it will be an indispensable source for scholars and students of twentieth-century philosophy and its influence in the twenty-first. With contributions by Anne Bezuidenhout, Ian Rumfitt, Paul Snowdon, Quassim Cassam, Michelle Montague, Hans-Johann Glock, Anil Gomes, Lilian Alweiss, Giuseppina D'Oro, A.P. Martinich, Paul Russell, Lucy Allais, and Victoria McGeer. (shrink)

Origin of the Yellowstone hotspot & Columbia River Basalts has remained uncertain until now. Here, we present evidence of meteorite impact origin. The hotspot is shallow, only 200 km deep, invalidating a theory of mantle plume origin. The hotspot track runs from the Yellowstone National Park in NW Wyoming to the volcanic Modoc Plateau in NE California. We present evidence of apparent remnants of an impact crater existing in the Modoc, a large multi-ring structure at least 160 km diameter. Much (...) of the complex crater has become obliterated by later Cascadia and Sierra orogenies. The crater has a tall 4,100 foot central uplift cone, locally known as Chalk Mountain, consisting of diatomaceous earth, presumably the rebound cone of a meteorite impact. This falsifies a theoretical prohibition of cosmic impact volcanism. Based on recent insights into explosive volcanism a plausible mechanism is proposed for how meteorite impacts can lead to resurgent calderas of the Yellowstone type, & of apparent LIP origin from thin crust ET impacts, invalidating theoretical constructs of mantle plumes. We mention chaotic terrains, including plutons, arising antipodal to impacts. (shrink)

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

This paper examines how different forms of performance evaluation relate to aspects of the creative climate in a major pharmaceutical company. The study was based on a large employee-attitude survey that was distributed to all company employees. The study analyses survey results from 5,333 employees at five R&D sites. The results indicate that management’s evaluation of employees (either dialogue-based or control-based) relates to the type of motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) that drives employees, to their style of thinking (value-focused thinking) and (...) on their attitudes to organizational creativity. The paper then discusses implications of these findings for HRM. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

The neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen is famously anti-empiricist in that he denies that sensations can make a definable contribution to knowledge. However, in the second edition of Kant’s Theory of Experience (1885), Cohen considers a proposition that contrasts with both his other work and that of his followers: a Kantian who studies scientific claims to truth—and the grounds on which they are made—cannot limit himself to studying mathematics and logical principles, but needs to also investigate underlying presuppositions about the empirical (...) element of science. Due to his subjectivist approach, Cohen argues, Kant not only failed to explain how scientific observation and experiments are possible, but also misconceived the role of the ideas, particularly the idea of a system of nature. (shrink)

In Bertrand Russell's 1903 Principles of Mathematics, he offers an apparently devastating criticism of the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen's Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and its History (PIM). Russell's criticism is motivated by his concern that Cohen's account of the foundations of calculus saddles mathematics with the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum, and thus threatens the very idea of mathematical truth. This paper defends Cohen against that objection of Russell's, and argues that properly understood, Cohen's views of limits and (...) infinitesimals do not entail the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. Essential to that defense is an interpretation, developed in the paper, of Cohen's positions in the PIM as deeply rationalist. The interest in developing this interpretation is not just that it reveals how Cohen's views in the PIM avoid the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. It also reveals some of what is at stake, both historically and philosophically, in Russell's criticism of Cohen. (shrink)

Two seemingly contradictory tendencies have accompanied the development of the natural sciences in the past 150 years. On the one hand, the natural sciences have been instrumental in effecting a thoroughgoing transformation of social structures and have made a permanent impact on the conceptual world of human beings. This historical period has, on the other hand, also brought to light the merely hypothetical validity of scientific knowledge. As late as the middle of the 19th century the truth-pathos in the natural (...) sciences was still unbroken. Yet in the succeeding years these claims to certain knowledge underwent a fundamental crisis. For scientists today, of course, the fact that their knowledge can possess only relative validity is a matter of self-evidence. The present analysis investigates the early phase of this fundamental change in the concept of science through an examination of Hermann von Helmholtz's conception of science and his mechanistic interpretation of nature. Helmholtz (1821-1894) was one of the most important natural scientists in Germany. The development of this thoughts offers an impressive but, until now, relatively little considered report from the field of the experimental sciences chronicling the erosion of certainty. (shrink)

The Prussian Protestant Daniel Hermann is an important Neo-Latin poet. He lived from probably 1543 until 1601. Hermann studied at Königsberg, Straßburg, Basel and Wittenberg. Afterwards he served as a secretary at the Imperial Court at Vienna, later as a secretary of the city of Danzig and permanent ambassador of Danzig at the Royal Polish court during the wars against Russia. After the war he married and settled down in Riga and became the secretary of the Polish governor (...) Cardinal Radziwil and later of the general Georg Fahrensbach. Besides lots of poems on academical, political and private occasions he wrote letters in poetic form as well as theological, philosophical and political poems. This paper provides an overview over Hermann ’s life and his poetry, especially the poems written and published in Riga, and a short summary of the research on this poet. (shrink)

(2005). Hermann Cohen and the Renewal of Kantian philosophy2. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the german traditionissue editor: damian veal, pp. 95-108.

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 148-168, March 2022.

Nineteenth-century scientist Hermann von Helmholtz’s peculiar wavering between empiricism and transcendentalism in his philosophy of science in general, and in his theory of perception in particular, is a much debated and well-documented topic in the history and philosophy of science. This contribution aims at providing a fresh angle on this classical issue, by considering Helmholtz’s account of differential consciousness against the background of a centuries-old philosophical debate between the empiricist tradition and the tradition of transcendental idealism. By placing Helmholtz’s (...) psychology against the background of a historical narrative stretching from Hume to Fichte, one can gain insight into the possible merits of his empirico-transcendentalism with regard to the problem of differentiation. More particularly, it is argued that Helmholtz’s psychology tilted towards transcendentalism when met with the classical theoretical problems of strict empiricism in dealing with the foundation of consciousness, most notably circularity and infinite regress. Without claiming that Helmholtz’s theorizing presented a self-conscious attempt to overcome the latter issues, his well-known wavering between perspectives in general, and his appropriation of the a priori in particular, might have served him well in avoiding the deadlocks of empiricism. As noted at the end, however, Helmholtz’s account produced complex philosophical problems of its own. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen’s 1871 classic, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, had a formative influence, not only on the Marburg school’s reading of Kant, but on their entire conception of philosophy. This influence was further magnified by the substantially revised and expanded second edition of 1885 and the yet further expanded third edition of 1918. Neo-Kantianism was the dominant philosophical movement in Germany in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which means that a work, ostensibly, of Kant scholarship had an influence on (...) the development of German philosophy that few works of secondary literature can claim. (shrink)

Grete Hermann’s essay “Die naturphilosophischen Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik” has received much deserved scholarly attention in recent years. In this paper, I follow the lead of Elise Crull who sees in Hermann’s work the general outlines of a neo-Kantian interpretation of quantum theory. In full support of this view, I focus on Hermann’s central claim that limited spatio-temporal, and even analogically causal, representations of events exist within an overall relational structure of entangled quantum mechanical states that defy any (...) unified spatio-temporal description. In my view, Hermann also advances an important transcendental argument that perspectival spatio-temporal representations of nature have their foundations in general relational networks that are not spatio-temporal. The key point is that the adoption of a perspectival system within the general network induces the representation but only for that context. These ideas are consistent with a perspectival subject–object principle in Kant and also with Weyl’s work on Lie groups and their representations. (shrink)

Der Verzicht auf absolut gültige Erkenntnis, heute in den Naturwissenschaften beinahe schon selbstverständlich, ist erst jüngeren Datums. Noch im vergangenen Jahrhundert zweifelte die experimentelle Forschung kaum an der vollkommenen Begreifbarkeit der Welt. Diesen Wandel zu erkunden und aufzuzeigen ist Thema der vorliegenden Studie. Der erste Teil präsentiert verschiedene Typen neuzeitlicher und moderner Wissenschaftsauffassungen von Galilei über Newton bis hin zu Kant. Im zweiten Teil werden Entwicklung und Wandel der Wissenschafts- und Naturauffassung bei Helmholtz (1821-1895) erstmals mittels detaillierter Textanalysen einer umfassenden (...) Rekonstruktion unterzogen. Die Relativierung des Wahrheitsanspruchs erlaubt es Helmholtz, seine Naturauffassung trotz der antimechanistischen Kritik innerhalb der Physik, die im letzten Viertel des vergangenen Jahrhunderts laut wurde, als Hypothese aufrechtzuerhalten. Auch gewährt die Studie eine neue Sichtweise des Verhältnisses zwischen Helmholtz und Kant, das in der Vergangenheit kontroverse Beurteilungen erfuhr. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I present Hermann Cohen's foundation for the history and philosophy of science. My investigation begins with Cohen's formulation of a neo-Kantian epistemology. I analyze Cohen's early work, especially his contributions to 19th century debates about the theory of knowledge. I conclude by examining Cohen's mature theory of science in two works, The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and its History of 1883, and Cohen's extensive 1914 Introduction to Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. In the former, Cohen (...) gives an historical and philosophical analysis of the foundations of the infinitesimal method in mathematics. In the latter, Cohen presents a detailed account of Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics of 1894. Hertz considers a series of possible foundations for mechanics, in the interest of finding a secure conceptual basis for mechanical theories. Cohen argues that Hertz's analysis can be completed, and his goal achieved, by means of a philosophical examination of the role of mathematical principles and fundamental concepts in scientific theories. (shrink)

Nach einer kurzen Übersicht über das Leben und Werk von Helmholtz, diskutiere ich die drei Themenbereiche, die für die Beurteilung seines Verhältnisses zu Kant vornehmlich ins Gewicht fallen. Der erste Bereich bildet die Begründung des Energieerhaltungssatzes von 1847, den der späte Helmholtz selbst „durch Kant’s erkenntnistheoretische Ansichten […] beeinflusst“ gesehen hat. Während viele Interpreten diese Selbstauskunft für berechtigt halten, sehe ich in der Struktur der Begründung einen Ausdruck der gegensätzlichen Wissenschaftsauffassungen von Helmholtz und Kant. Als zweites gehe ich auf die (...) Rolle der Kausalität in der Wahrnehmungstheorie ein. In diesem Kontext bezieht sich Helmholtz erstmals und durchaus positiv explizit auf Kant. Seine Rede "Über das Sehen des Menschen" von 1855 zur Einweihung eines Kantdenkmals in Königsberg gilt als eines der Gründungsdokumente des Neukantianismus und spiegelt doch zugleich die tiefgreifenden Differenzen zwischen empiristischer und idealistischer Wissenschaftsphilosophie wider. Zeitlich wiederum nachfolgend steht die Begründung der nichteuklidischen Geometrien als dritter Bereich für die deutlichste Kritik an Kants transzendentaler Begründung der Wissenschaft. Sie ist zugleich wohl auch Helmholtz’ bekanntester Beitrag zur Hypothetisierung der Wissenschaftssauffassung. -/- der Gründungsdokumente des Neukantianismus und spiegelt doch zugleich die tiefgreifenden Differenzen zwischen empiristischer und idealistischer Wissenschaftsphilosophie wider. Zeitlich wiederum nachfolgend steht die Begründung der nichteuklidischen Geometrien als dritter Bereich für die deutlichste Kritik an Kants transzendentaler Begründung der Wissenschaft. Sie ist zugleich wohl auch Helmholtz’ bekanntester Beitrag zur Hypothetisierung der Wissenschaftssauffassung. Dem Werk von Hermann von Helmholtz wird gemeinhin ein maßgeblicher Stellenwert bei der Begründung der neukantianischen Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert beigemessen. Wo diese Zuordnung Helmholtz’ positive Bezüge auf Immanuel Kant ohne hinreichende Kontextualisierung hervorhebt, läuft sie Gefahr, die Distanz zu übersehen, die zwischen den wissenschaftsphilosophischen Positionen von Helmholtz und Kant bestand. In meinem Beitrag gewinnt das Verhältnis von Helmholtz zu Kant erst seine Bedeutung vor dem Hintergrund ihrer konträren ontologischen und erkenntnistheoretischen Grundannahmen. Helmholtz betrachte ich als repräsentativen Vertreter einer szientistischen Wissenschaftsauffassung in der Naturforschung des 19. Jahrhunderts. Demgegenüber bietet Kant ein paradigmatisches Beispiel einer metaphysischen Wissenschaftsbegründung. Im Gegensatz zu Kant beschränkt Helmholtz seinen Ausgangspunkt nicht auf erfahrungsfreie Prinzipien, sondern entwickelt und stützt seine Begründung des Geltungsanspruches der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis auf forschungsbewährte Theorien und Experimente. Eine Differenz zwischen den beiden Positionen findet sich ebenfalls in den Strukturen der jeweils vertretenen Naturkonzeptionen. Führt Kants dynamischer Mechanismus alle Eigenschaften der Materie auf Kräfte zurück, so geht Helmholtz von einer Dualität von Kraft und Materie aus. (shrink)

Hermanns Lotze (1817–1881) hat nachweislich einige der bedeutendsten Philosophen des fin de siècle beeinflusst: (i) die britischen „Neo-Hegelianer“; (ii) Husserls Phänomenologie; (iii) Diltheys Philosophie des Lebens; (iv) die Neukantianer; (v) die frühere analytische Philosophie. Das angegebene Ziel seines dreibändigen Mikrokosmos (1856–1864) war „die Reflexion über den Sinn unseres menschlichen Daseins“. Die Aktualität dieser Aufgabe war eine Folge der wissenschaftlichen und industriellen Revolution Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Sie veränderte die Art, wie sich die Menschen das Universum vorstellten. Lotze sah Gefahr in (...) den zahlreichen Versuchen seitens einiger philosophisch interessierter Wissenschaftler in Deutschland, zu beweisen, dass das menschliche Sein nur mechanisch und materialistisch zu verstehen ist. Er machte es sich zur Aufgabe, den Menschen das Gefühl von Heimat in dieser stark veränderten Welt zurückzugeben. Dies erklärt auch, wieso Lotze seine Untersuchung in „völlig populärer Form“ darstellte. Lotzes Mikrokosmos war jedoch nicht nur ein Werk der populären Philosophie. Sie fußt auf fundierten theoretischen Überlegungen. Man kann Lotzes Werk als einen gewagten Versuch betrachten, die sich abzeichnende Spaltung zwischen akademischer und populärer Philosophie zu überwinden. (shrink)

This paper for an upcoming journal volume examines Grete Hermann's Naturphilosophischen Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (1935) and the relative context, or perspectival, interpretation of standard quantum mechanics found therein. I find an argument for the emergence of limited spatio-temporal and retrocausal stories, from a chosen experimental perspective, within a larger set of entangled systems not subject to a spatio-temporal interpretation. This argument can be read in reverse as giving some of the necessary preconditions of spatio-temporal representations as based upon perspectival (...) relations, carrying on a Kantian transcendental argument on one hand, and on the other hand, looking forward to Weyl's use of symmetry groups, Lie algebras and their representations in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the problem of anthropodicy in the philosophical system of Hermann Cohen and its interpretation by Jacob Gordin (1896—1947). Gordin was one of the last followers of Cohen in Russia. He developes his interpretation in the lecture “Anthropodicy”, which was given in the Philosophical Circle at the Petrograd University in December 1921. For the study of the problem of anthropodicy he was apparently inspired by the discussions at the Free Philosophical Association in 1919—1921. Gordin places Cohen’s (...) concept of man in the wide intellectual context given by the ideas of the Russian religious philosophy, German classical philosophy, Neo-Kantianism, and the West European and Jewish mysticism (cabbala). Gordin compares Cohen’s anthropodicy with Vladimir Soloviev’s one and shows that there is a similarity in their approaches. Both philosophers point out that the justification of man is possible only in form of the justification of humanity and not as for Berdyaiev in form of the justification of personality. But Gordin uses Soloviev’s concept of all-unity and Berdyaiev’s concept of creativity in order to “improve” Cohen’s conception and to reveal the contribution of a person to the justification of humanity. Stronger as Cohen Gordin connects the programm of anthropodicy with individuality and underlines the participation of the individual in creating culture. (shrink)

As a philosopher, psychologist, and physician, the German thinker Hermann Lotze defies classification. Working in the mid-nineteenth-century era of programmatic realism, he critically reviewed and rearranged theories and concepts in books on pathology, physiology, medical psychology, anthropology, history, aesthetics, metaphysics, logic, and religion. Leading anatomists and physiologists reworked his hypotheses about the central and autonomic nervous systems. Dozens of fin-de-siècle philosophical contemporaries emulated him, yet often without acknowledgment, precisely because he had made conjecture and refutation into a method. In (...) spite of Lotze's status as a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century intellectual thought, no complete treatment of his work exists, and certainly no effort to take account of the feminist secondary literature. Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography is the first full-length historical study of Lotze's intellectual origins, scientific community, institutional context, and worldwide reception. (shrink)

Resumo: Franz Brentano não foi uma figura solitária que propôs sua filosofia isolada de outros filósofos contemporâneos na Alemanha, tal como alguns neo-brentanianos reivindicaram nos últimos anos. O objetivo deste artigo é corrigir tais concepções equivocadas estabelecendo que Brentano desenvolveu sua psicologia filosófica engajado ativamente no rico contexto histórico-intelectual e acadêmico de seu tempo - em particular, sob a influência de Hermann Lotze. Especificamente, Brentano: (i) adota de Lotze a ideia de que juízo não é apenas uma associação de (...) ideias, mas uma asserção do conteúdo; (ii) também adota a ideia de Lotze de que o conteúdo da percepção é algo dado; (iii) a noção brentaniana de intencionalidade também foi herdada de Lotze, (iv) bem como o método da psicologia descritiva; (v) finalmente, Lozte e Brentano concordaram ao admitir que percepção e conhecimento estão intrinsicamente conectados às emoções. Ao mesmo tempo, há ao menos dois pontos nos quais Brentano discorda de Lotze: (i) ele critica a teoria da percepção do signo local, bem como o atomismo de Lotze. Estas eram claramente teorias construtivistas inspiradas por Kant. (ii) Brentano também critica o princípio do teleomecanismo de Lotze, influenciado pelos idealistas alemães. (shrink)

The article includes a short biography of Hermann of Dalmatia and gives an account of his translations and philosophical and scientific work. In order to have a better understanding of Hermann’s philosophy, a reminder of Greek and Arabic philosophy of nature, on which he relies in his interpretation of the world picture, needs to be presented. Cosmological models by Plato, Aristotle, Eudoxus, Heraclides of Pont, Apollonius of Perga, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and the Arab scientist Abu Ma’shar, are presented. The (...) main focus of interest is on Hermann’s translations. The immense importance of his translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin is due to the fact that some of the seminal Greek and Arabic works became known in Western Europe in the middle of the twelfth century. Hermann is also important as the author of the original work De essentiis, which presented a blend of Platonian and Aristotelian as well as Western European and Arab traditions. (shrink)