English translation of paper title: Action and Passion in the Renaissance. The Womanly and the Manly in Agrippa, Postel, and Bovelles. This paper uses the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa and the Querelle des Femmes as historic backgrounds for how Agrippa of Nettesheim, Guillaum Postel, and Charles de Bovelles reconcile the notions of "male" and "female" in their respective philosophies.

Paper on the renaissance of panpsychism in the contemporary philosophy of mind.

This essay surveys the main objections to aesthetic hedonism, the view that aesthetic value is reducible to the value of aesthetic pleasure or experience. Hedonism is the dominant view of aesthetic value, but a spate of recent criticisms has drawn its accuracy into question. I introduce some distinctions crucial to the criticisms, before using the bulk of the essay to identify and review six major lines of argument that hedonism's critics have employed against it. Whether or not these arguments suffice (...) to refute hedonism decisively, I argue that its privileged status, as the sole contender in aesthetic value theory, is detrimental to downstream research on aesthetic phenomena. The essay concludes with an overview of current work and promising avenues of inquiry into non-hedonic alternatives. (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine does (...) not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. I consequently argue that we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which epistemic stances can be (...) ranked by degrees, and (2) some way to demarcate science from pseudo-science so that we know what epistemic stances are about. Regarding (1), I argue that empirical detectability can serve as the ground in relation to which epistemic stances are ranked by degrees. Regarding (2), I argue for ranking sciences on a continuum according to established institutional criteria, rather than attempting to draw a strict demarcation. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of science is often overlooked as a relic of 19th century Whiggism. I argue however that his view – suitably modified – can contribute to contemporary philosophy of science, particularly to debates around scientific progress. The reason Whewell’s view needs modification is that he makes the following problematic claim: as science progresses, it reveals necessarily truths and thereby grants a glimpse of the mind of God. Modifying Whewell’s view will involve reinventing his notion of necessary truth as (...) the pragmatist notion of superassertibility. And, if scientific progress does not uncover necessary truths, then it does not reveal the mind of God. The result is an outline of an account of scientific progress that is piecemeal and fallibilist in nature, yet at the same time maintains key Whewellian themes of consilience and the unity of science. (shrink)

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each of these (...) arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of genuine self-government, not membership of political society. Consequently, the demand for open borders is fully consistent with respect to self-determination. (shrink)

On a widely held view in aesthetics, appreciation requires disinterested attention. George Dickie famously criticized a version of this view championed by the aesthetic attitude theorists. I revisit his criticisms and extract an overlooked challenge for accounts that seek to characterize appreciative engagement in terms of distinctive motivation: at minimum, the motivational profile such accounts propose must make a difference to how appreciative episodes unfold over time. I then develop a proposal to meet this challenge by drawing an analogy between (...) how attention is guided in appreciation and how practical action is guided in ‘striving play’—a mode of game play recently foregrounded in the philosophy of games. On the resulting account, appreciation involves an ‘inverted’ motivational structure: the appreciating agent's attention is guided by cognitive goals taken up instrumentally, for the sake of the cognitive activity that results from attending under the guidance of those goals. (shrink)

I here defend historical entitlement theories of property rights against a popular charge. This is the objection that such theories fail because no convincing account of original appropriation exists. I argue that this argument assumes a certain reading of historical entitlement theory and I spell out an alternative reading against which it misfires. On this reading, the role of acts of original appropriation is not to justify but to individuate people’s holdings. I argue that we can identify which acts count (...) as original appropriation against the background of a general justification for a practice of property rights. On this view, what I will call ‘natural’ acts of original appropriation are acts by which a person begins to satisfy the general conditions for justified ownership. Finally, I offer an interpretation of John Locke's theory of appropriation along these lines and argue that it provides an attractive reading of his view. (shrink)

Epistemic pluralists in the philosophy of science often argue that different epistemic perspectives in science are equally warranted. Sandra Mitchell – with her Integrative Pluralism (IP) – has notably advocated for this kind of epistemic pluralism. A problem arises for Mitchell however because she also wants to be an epistemological pluralist. She claims that, not only are different epistemic perspectives in science equally warranted in different contexts, but different understandings of these epistemic perspectives in science are also equally warranted in (...) different contexts. The problem is that Mitchell argues that her understanding of epistemic perspectives in science (IP) is the correct one, and it is dilemmic to then claim that there is more than one such understanding. As solution, I suggest that we abandon epistemological pluralism and instead follow Feyerabend in being opportunistic pluralists. We can adopt pluralism as a short-term strategy in the pursuit of a long-term unitary goal. This unitary goal is what philosophers of understanding call objectual understanding, the kind of understanding that Integrative Pluralism tacitly aspires to anyway. (shrink)

Crossing the road within the traffic system is an example of an action human agents perform successfully day-to-day in complex systems. How do they perform such successful actions given that the behaviour of complex systems is often difficult to predict? The contemporary literature contains two contrasting approaches to the epistemology of complex systems: an analytic and a post-modern approach. We argue that neither approach adequately accounts for how successful action is possible in complex systems. Agents regularly perform successful actions without (...) obeying (explicit or implicit) algorithmic rules (as the analytic approach suggests) and without an existential leap to action (as the post-modern approach suggests). We offer an alternative: A common-sense pragmatist epistemology, one that focuses on the kind of actions making up most agents’ successful moment-to-moment actions in complex systems. Successful actions obtain when agents apply ceteris paribus rules-of-thumb during predictive and decisional practices while achieving some desired goal. (shrink)

Some alethic pluralists maintain that there are two kinds of truths operant in our alethic discourse: a realist kind and an anti-realist kind. In this paper, we argue that such a binary conception cannot accommodate certain social truths, specifically truths about race. Most alethic pluralists surprisingly overlook the status of racial truths. Douglas Edwards is, however, an exception. In his version of alethic pluralism—Determination Pluralism—racial truths are superassertible (anti-realist) true rather than correspondence (realist) true. We argue that racial truths exhibit (...) features of both superassertibility (anti-realism) and correspondence (realism). This suggests a fuzzy boundary between realist and anti-realist kinds of truth. There may be a continuum rather than a dichotomy of truths. We conclude by sketching one way for alethic pluralists to accommodate such a notion. (shrink)

It is often alleged that Cantor’s views about how the set theoretic universe as a whole should be considered are fundamentally unclear. In this article we argue that Cantor’s views on this subject, at least up until around 1896, are relatively clear, coherent, and interesting. We then go on to argue that Cantor’s views about the set theoretic universe as a whole have implications for theology that have hitherto not been sufficiently recognised. However, the theological implications in question, at least (...) as articulated here, would not have satisfied Cantor himself. (shrink)

State legitimacy is often said to have two aspects: an internal and an external one. Internally, a legitimate state has the right to rule over its subjects. Externally, it has a right that outsiders not interfere with its domestic governance. But what is the relation between these two aspects? In this paper, I defend a conception of legitimacy according to which these two aspects are related in an importantly asymmetrical manner. In particular, a legitimate state’s external right to rule affords (...) it protections that include and go beyond what its internal right to rule enables it to do. This asymmetrical view, I argue, is preferable to its two main rivals: the view that a state’s internal and external legitimacy are separate issues, and the view that internal and external legitimacy are mirroring. (shrink)

Stuart Kauffman has, in recent writings, developed a thought-provoking and influential argument for strong emergence. The outcome is his Theory of the Adjacent Possible (TAP). According to TAP, the biosphere constitutes a non-physical domain qualitatively distinct from the physical domain. The biosphere exhibits strongly emergent properties such as agency, meaning, value and creativity that cannot, in principle, be reduced to the physical. In this paper, I argue that TAP includes various (explicit or implicit) metaphysical commitments: commitments to (1) scientific realism, (...) (2) downward causation and teleology, and (3) modal realism. If TAP is to hang together as the kind of robust philosophical thesis it evidently aspires to be, it needs an account – an account that is currently absent – of its metaphysical commitments. It is however unclear how such an account can be developed since various dilemmas present themselves when one explores how subscribers to TAP might do so. (shrink)

Introduction to the special issue including papers about Susan Stebbing, Susanne Langer and Maria Kokoszyńska.

Book Review K. Brad Wray: Resisting Scientific Realism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2018, xii + 224 pp, £ 75.00 (Hardcover), ISBN: 9781108231633. By Ragnar van der Merwe. In The Journal for the General Philosophy of Science.

This article reviews the debate on ‘intersectionality’ as the dominant approach in gender studies, with an emphasis on the politics of representation. The debate on intersectionality officially began in the late 1980s, though the approach can be traced back to the institutionalization of women's studies in the 1970s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. Black and lesbian feminists have long advocated hyphenated identities to be the backbone of feminist thought. But in recent years, intersectionality has sustained criticism from numerous (...) angles within gender studies, ranging from feminist philosophy to applied political research. This article will use the theorization of ‘interference’ as a searchlight to produce an overview of this interdisciplinary debate, culminating in our affirmative answer to the question: should we move from intersectionality to interference? Our answer is based on onto-epistemological reflections, i.e., reflections in which being and knowing are always already entangled. -/- . (shrink)

Does the moral badness of pain depend on who feels it? A common, but generally only implicitly stated view, is that it does not. This view, ‘unitarianism’, maintains that the same interests of different beings should count equally in our moral calculus. Shelly Kagan’s project in How to Count Animals, more or less is to reject this common view, and develop an alternative to it: a hierarchical view of moral status, on which the badness of pain does depend on who (...) feels it. In this review essay, we critically examine Kagan’s argument for status hierarchy. In particular, we reject two of the central premises in his argument: that moral standing is ultimately grounded in agency and that unitarianism is overdemanding. We conclude that moral status may, despite Kagan’s compelling argument to the contrary, not be hierarchical. (shrink)

Quantum leaps happen in texts, too. This reading of the role of the quantum leap in Karen Barad's agential realism is necessary, because arguing that the diffractive reading strategy proposed by Barad's ethico-onto-epistemology mirrors the physical phenomenon of diffraction would indeed be representationalist. Reviewing how Barad—in her own oeuvre—has transformed diffraction into an innovative reading methodology that could not only potentially challenge the epistemological underpinnings of the canonization process that is at work in feminist theory, but could also radically change (...) the canonization practice of feminist oeuvres itself, our article embarks on a detailed examination of the ways in which the oeuvres of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have been mistakenly categorized and canonized in a hierarchical and Oedipalized manner. This conflict-based narrative has not only paralyzed the oeuvres of Irigaray and Beauvoir, but also has had a negative impact on the canonization of sexual difference philosophy as a whole in feminist theory. By (re)reading the oeuvres diffractively, this article brings the feminist philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray together by invalidating the idea that the feminist canonization process always has to run along the lines of discontinuity, Oedipalization and dialectization. (shrink)

Sebastian Franck hat Teile von Agrippas De Vanitate Scientiarum übersetzt und kommentiert. Von daher ist der Einfluss der Philosophie von Agrippa auf Franck bekannt. Es gab allerdings bisher keine ausführlichen Untersuchungen zu den Einflüssen von Agrippa auf Franck. Diese Lücke versucht dieser Aufsatz zu schließen. Beim Vergleich der metaphysischen Systeme von Franck und Agrippa stellt sich heraus, dass es bedeutende Einflüsse im Bereich der Seelenlehre und der Christologie gab. Sowohl Agrippa als auch Franck sind Anhänger der platonischen Lehre der (...) drei Seelenteile. Die Seele besteht nach dieser Lehre aus Geist, Seele und Körper. Der Geist ist der unsterbliche göttliche Teil im Menschen. Der Hauptunterschied zwischen Agrippa und Franck kann darin gesehen werden, dass Agrippas Synkretismus stärker den Neuplatonismus betont und Franck`s Synkretismus die Gnosis. Die Weltseele ergibt im Konzept von Franck nur wenig Sinn, während diese bei Agrippa ganz zentral ist. Franck lehnt den Gedanken ab, die Welt werde durch eine Vernunft geleitet. Sein pessimistisches Bild von der Welt und vom Menschen verträgt sich nicht mit diesem Gedanken. Da es keine Vernunft gibt, ist auch die Astrologie, die Mantik oder die Kabbalistik nicht wichtig für Franck. Daher ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Franck nirgends die Occulta philosophia zitiert, sondern immer nur De Vantitate Scientiarum Der Synkretismus von Agrippa beinhaltet Astrologie, Mantik, Kabbala und Neuplatonismus. Am ehesten spielt bei Franck noch die Hermetik eine Rolle. Franck meint, Christus habe im Pimander mit Hermes Trismegistos kommuniziert. Diesen Gedanken findet man nicht nur bei Franck, sondern auch bei Agrippa. Die für Franck so wichtige Lehre des inneren Christus ist ebenfalls Teil der Seelenlehre von Agrippa. Wenn der Mensch seinen Geist oder seinen inneren Christus erkennt, dann erkennt er Gott. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass Franck nur diejenigen Dinge von dem „weisen Agrippa“ übernommen hat, die in sein Konzept passen. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS) .

Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Findings – Floridi’s PI, including (...) this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects. Research implications – Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS. Originality/value – The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas. (shrink)

Die Sebastian Franck-Forschung hat sich bisher recht ausführlich mit den Themen "Sebastian Franck als Historiker" oder "Sebastian Franck als Kritiker der Theologie" beschäftigt. Weniger Aufmerksamkeit bekam bisher der Gnostizismus im Denken des radikalen Reformers. Seit der Jahrtausendwende ist allerdings ein stärkeres Interesse an einer bestimmten Strömung des Gnostizismus zu erkennen, nämlich der Hermetik. Es gab einige Arbeiten, die den Einfluss von Hermes Trismegistos bzw. der hermetischen Schriften auf Franck aufzeigen konnten. Dieser Aufsatz geht der Frage des Einflusses des christlichen Gnostizismus (...) auf die Metaphysik von Franck nach. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass speziell Basilides und Valentinus einen starken Einfluss auf Franck hatten, der bisher nicht gesehen wurde. Eine große Bedeutung kommt dabei der gnostischen Soteriologie zu. Genauso wie Basilides und Valentinus nimmt Franck die platonische Dreiteilung der Seele in Geist, Seele und Körper an. Der Geist ist göttlich und ist weder entstanden noch kann er vergehen. Diesen Geist oder Christus findet man im Inneren von allen Kreaturen. Durch die Erkenntnis des Geistes oder Christus im Menschen, (=Gnosis) kann sich der Mensch von der Welt befreien. Ebenfalls christlich-gnostisch inspiriert ist der Gottesbegriff und die Lehre von Christus. Franck´s Christologie ist stark von der Nous-Christologie von Basilides beeinflußt, wobei er nicht exakt dem gleichen Doketismus folgt wie Basilides. Dass die Welt vom Demiurgen und nicht von Gott erschaffen wurde, wie Valentinus glaubt, sagt Franck nicht explizit. Franck glaubt aber der Teufel (Demiurg oder böser Engel) habe den Tod und damit die Seele erschaffen, während der unsterbliche Geist des Menschen nicht erschaffen wurde. (shrink)

Abstract (German) Dieses Buch faßt meine Forschungen zur Semiotik Giordano Brunos und zu deren Grundlagen in der Kosmologie und in der Gedächtnistheorie zusammen, wobei sowohl die Heterogenität als auch der Universalität des Denkers den Charakter dieses Buches geprägt haben. Es wird kein glattes Bild seiner Person oder seines Werkes angeboten, kein bejahender Jubel über eine epochale Leistung; wichtiger war mir die bis ins Detail gehende, manchmal mühselige Interpretation seiner Systementwürfe, wobei ich versucht habe, auch deren formales und technisches Niveau deutlich (...) zu machen. Nicht seine Weltanschauung soll dargestellt werden, sondern sein Versuch, eine Vielfalt von Detaillösungen in eine wohlproportionierte, wenn auch ins Unendliche reichende Wissensarchitektur zu integrieren. Als Startsignal mag folgende Frage dienen: Inwiefern ist Giordano Bruno Semiotiker? Der Philosoph Bruno wird von Jacobi als Beispiel spinozistischer Tendenzen wieder ins Gespräch gebracht; später wird er für die spekulative Naturphilosophie, die aus Kants Schatten heraustritt, z.B. für Schelling und Hegel, interessant, und schließlich wird er als Märtyrer der Freiheit von den Antiklerikalen im Risorgimento hochgehoben. Der Heroenkult um die „Kopernikanische Wende" weiß mit Bruno nichts anzufangen, er ist kein Naturwissenschaftler, wie man ihn sich im 20 . Jh . wünscht. Von Yates ( 1964 ) wird er als Hermetiker und Ahnherr der Rosenkreuzer entdeckt, und plötzlich soll er auch noch ein Semiotiker sein ? Die Etikette „Semiotiker" ist allerdings weniger riskant als jene früher an Bruno herangetragenen. Bruno ist Philosoph, in einem allgemeinen Sinn , insofern er alle wesentlichen Aspekte: metaphysische, natur philosophische, ethische, semiotische, poetologische zum Entwurf eines möglichst kohärenten Bildes vereint, und er ist ein Renaissance-Philosoph, d .h. das antike Erbe, besonders jenes in den orientalischen Tiefen der Kulturgeschichte (Ägypten und Chaldäer) ist sein Ausgangspunkt. Selbst den Entwurf des Copernicus versteht Bruno in erster Linie als eine Wiederentdeckung antiker Einsichten. Es gibt jedoch in Brunos Schaffen einen roten Faden: die Architektur unseres Wissens, das Gedächtnis der Kultur- und Wissensgemeinschaft und natürlich desjenigen, der wie Bruno dieses Wissen zu einer Synthese vereinigen will . Seine Philosophie versucht, wie jede große Philosophie, alles, was wir wissen und was wir daraus an weiterem impliziten Wissen erschließen können, in einer Einheit zu denken, und diese Einheit ist notwendigerweise nur als Zeichensystem (begrifflich, argumentativ, bildhaft, als imaginierte Welt) zu realisieren. -/- Abstract (English) This book summarizes my research on Giordano Bruno's semiotics and its foundations in cosmology and memory theory, whereby both the heterogeneity and the universality of the thinker have shaped the character of this book. No smooth picture of his person or his work is offered, no affirmative jubilation over an epochal achievement; What was more important to me was the sometimes laborious interpretation of his system designs, which went down to the last detail, and I also tried to make their formal and technical level clear. It is not his worldview that should be presented but his attempt to integrate various detailed solutions into a well-proportioned, albeit infinitely reaching, architecture of knowledge. The following question may serve as a starting signal: To what extent is Giordano Bruno a semiotician? Jacobi brings up the philosopher Bruno again as an example of Spinozist tendencies; later, he becomes important for the speculative natural philosophy emerging from Kant's shadow, e.g., for Schelling and Hegel. He is finally extolled as a martyr of freedom by the anticlericals in the Risorgimento. The hero cult around the "Copernican turn" does not know what to do with Bruno; he is not a natural scientist as one would wish in the 20th century. Yates (1964) discovered him as a hermetic, even an ancestor of the Rosicrucians. The etiquette "semiotic" is certainly less risky than the associations that Bruno used to have. Bruno is a philosopher, in a general sense, in that he combines all the essential aspects: metaphysical, natural philosophical, ethical, semiotic, poetological to project a picture that is as coherent as possible, and he is a Renaissance philosopher, i .e . the ancient heritage, especially that in the oriental depths of cultural history (Egypt and Chaldeans) is his starting point. Bruno sees even the draft of Copernicus primarily as a rediscovery of ancient insights. However, there is a common thread in Bruno's work: the architecture of our knowledge, the memory of the cultural and knowledge community and, of course, of those who, like Bruno, want to unite this knowledge into a synthesis. His philosophy, like every great philosophy, tries to think of everything that we know and what we can deduce from it as further implicit knowledge as a unit, and this unit is necessarily only available as a system of signs (conceptual, argumentative, pictorial, as an imagined world). to realize. 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The aim of this paper is to show that the French philosopher and historian of science Abel Rey played a more influential role in the formative phase of the Vienna Circle than hitherto supposed. On the whole, it will be argued that Rey's contribution had political impact. His interpretation of "modern physics" in 1907 in the face of the alleged "bankruptcy of science" should be appreciated as a masterpiece of applied enlightenment thought. As such, it was especially paradigmatic for Philipp (...) Frank's "positivist" defense of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics against the irrationalist tendencies of the 1920s and 1930s. (shrink)

Die Einleitung unseres Kapitels bietet eine grundsäzliche Charakterisierung der Soziologie und zeichnet einige wichtige historische Entwicklungslinien der Philosophie der Soziologie (PdS) nach. Im Hauptteil werden zentrale ontologische sowie ausgewählte explanatorische Themen der PdS vorgestellt. Im Schlussteil sollen einige aktuelle Diskussionen umrissen werden.

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

Alexius von Meinong hat eine eigene Philosophie der Emotionen entwi-ckelt, die mit Blick auf die heutige Debatte über Gefühle höchst aktuell erscheint. Laut Meinong zeichnen sich die Emotionen durch drei Merkma-le aus: Sie sind leibliche Erfahrungen der Lust oder Unlust; sie gründen in kognitiven Akten wie Wahrnehmungen, Phantasien, Urteilen und Annah-men; und sie intendieren Werte. In diesem Aufsatz wird eine systematische Untersuchung von Meinongs Philosophie der Gefühle sowie von ihrem Einfluss auf die Grazer Schule und ihrer Bedeutung für (...) die aktuelle Debat-te unternommen. Schwerpunkte der Arbeit ist erstens die Verbindung zwi-schen Emotionen und Werten, die stark von den unterschiedlichen Wert-konzeptionen, die Meinong im Laufe seines Werkes vertreten hat, abhän-gig ist. Zweitens geht es um die exemplarische Untersuchung von zwei Ge-fühlsarten, die für den heutige Diskussion von besonderer Bedeutung sind, nämlich Urteilsgefühlen und Phantasiegefühlen. (shrink)

Orientierung steht am Anfang von allem, ohne selbst ein greifbarer Anfang zu sein. Als Letzt- und Grundbegriff geht sie jedem Denken und jeder Lebenstätigkeit voraus und ermöglicht sie. Dennoch war sie selbst bislang kaum Gegenstand philosophischer Reflexion. In seiner Philosophie der Orientierung macht Werner Stegmaier – bekannt durch seine Beiträge zu Nietzsche, Dilthey, Luhmann und Levinas – sie zum Ausgangspunkt, um die Philosophie selbst im Hinblick auf ihr praktisches, lebensweltliches Potential hin neu zu denken. Das breite Spektrum des (...) Sich-Orientierens und des Orientiert-Seins im Denken, die Bedingungen und Strategien der Orientierung im Alltag und ihr Ziel, die Ungewissheit, das Grundproblem der Orientierung, zu bewältigen, werden von ihm in die Perspektive der Philosophiegeschichte gestellt und im Blick auf aktuelle philosophische Fragestellungen systematisch untersucht. Die Beiträge des Bandes, abgerundet von einem Nachwort Werner Stegmaiers, eröffnen diesem genuinen Ansatz einen breiten Reflexions- und Diskussionsraum und zeigen so seine Bedeutsamkeit nicht nur für die Philosophie im Ganzen, sondern auch über ihre Grenzen hinaus. (shrink)

Ausgangspunkt ist die Frage, was Masse ist, wodurch sie insbesondere befähigt ist, Dauer zu konstituieren und deshalb - im Sinn des kinematischen Relativitätdprinzips - ebenso als bewegt wie als ruhend betrachtet werden kann. In einem Gedankenexperiment wird diese Frage, in Umkehrung der Perspektive, hier nicht von der Masse selbst, sondern von einer stehenden Lichtwelle her angegangen. In diesem Modell lassen sich masse-analoge Strukturen rekonstruieren, die in relativer Bewegung sein können. Die (empirisch bekannte) Unabhängigkeit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit vom Bezugssystem ist dabei nicht (...) vorausgesetzt. Doch kann gezeigt werden, dass die Lichtgeschwindigkeit Grenzgeschwindigkeit solcher relativer Bewegungen ist, dass dies für alle durch masse-analoge Strukturen konstituierte, relativ zueinander gleichförmig bewegten Bezugssysteme gilt und dass die Lichtgeschwindigkeit selbst in allen diesen Systemen gleich ist. Die Absolutheit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit und die Relativität der Massebewegungen erweisen sich so als zwar differente, aber intrinsisch zusammengehörende Momente des kinematischen Relativitätsprinzips: ein Beitrag zu einer Philosophie der Relativitätstheorie. - Die mathematischen Zusammenhänge werden im Anhang ausführlicher dargelegt. (shrink)

Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) hat ab 2016 eine neue Forschergruppe unter Leitung der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal eingerichtet. Sie untersucht die Forschungen an der „größten Forschungsmaschine der Welt“, dem Large Hadron Collider (LHC) am Europäischen Zentrum für Teilchenphysik CERN in Genf, aus philosophischer, historischer und soziologischer Sicht. Wissenschaftsphilosophisch sind diese Forschungen vor allem aus drei Gründen relevant: Die Philosophie interessiert sich für den Ursprung und die grundlegenden Strukturen der Welt, für die Bedingungen des Erkenntniserfolges der Elementarteilchenphysik und nicht zuletzt für (...) die mit den Erfolgen mitunter eng verbundenen theoretischen und praktischen Probleme. Die Diskussion dieser Gründe zeigt die Elementarteilchenphysik als eine lebensweltferne, zugleich aber weltbildrelevante, theoretisch wie praktisch äußerst erfolgreiche Disziplin, die dennoch nicht frei von gewichtigen offenen Fragen ist. Sie könnte ein Typus für die Gewinnung von Wissen an den Grenzen unserer Erkenntnis sein. (shrink)

Kolloquiumsbeiträge des XV. Deutschen Kongresses für Philosophie 1990 in Hamburg. Mit Beiträgen von Herbert Schnädelbach, Hilary Putnam, Karl-Otto Apel, Walter Ch. Zimmerli, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Wolfgang Bartuschat, Elke Hahn und Klaus Vieweg, Roland Simon-Schaefer, Ruedi Imbach, Georg Wieland, Jan Peter Beckmann, Pierre Aubenque, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Gernot Böhme, Dietrich Böhler, Jürgen Habermas, Friedrich Kambartel, Oswald Schwemmer, Dieter Birnbacher, Karl-Friedrich Wessel, Friedrich Rapp, Otfried Höffe, Henning Ottmann und Terry Pinkard.

Die Psychologie hat sich im zweiten Viertel des 19. Jahrhunderts langsam zu einer autonomen Disziplin entwickelt. Im Unterschied zu den anderen Figuren in dieser Entwicklung, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Ernst Heinrich Weber und Gustav Theodor Fechner, hat Lotze in seiner Medicinische Psychologie (1852) von Anfang an die neue Disziplin, die Psychologie, konsequent in enger Verbindung mit der Philosophie entwickelt. Damit hat er die Hoffnung gebremst, die Psychologie völlig experimentellen Untersuchungen zu überlassen, die um diese Zeit schon viele gepflegt haben. Lotze (...) scheute sich jedoch, diese Disziplin „philosophische Psychologie“ zu benennen. Sie war für ihn nur physiologische Psychologie, herausarbeitet mit Hilfe der Philosophie. Sie stellt nur Tatsachen fest, untersucht wie Körper und Seele sich zueinander verhalten und dies nicht nur empirisch, sondern auch „metaphysisch“. (shrink)

Epikurs Philosophie ist Ausdruck seines Ringens um Orientierung. Es geht ihm nicht um ein abstraktes, theoretisches, auf Wahrheiten basierendes Lehrsystem, sondern um die Praxis eines gelingenden Lebens. Durch nüchterne Planung und Einsicht in die Abläufe der Natur will er Ängste vermeiden und eine sichere Orientierung auch im Umgang mit dem Ungewissen gewährleisten. Der Epikureismus lässt sich mit grundlegenden Begriffen und Konzepten der Philosophie der Orientierung deuten, darunter Vertrauen, Autorität, Plausibilität, Paradoxien, Orientierung in Routinen und Orientierung durch Achtung und (...) Planung. -/- In: Andrea Bertino / Ekaterina Poljakova / Andreas Rupschus / Benjamin Alberts (Hg.), Zur Philosophie der Orientierung, Berlin / Boston 2016, S. 33–48. (shrink)

This is a book review of “Malte Hossenfelder: Die Philosophie der Antike 3, Stoa, Epikureismus und Skepsis”.

The term ‘heat’ originates from the Old English word hǣtu, a word of Germanic origin; related to the Dutch ‘hitte’ and German ‘Hitze’. Today, we distinguish three different meanings of the word ‘heat’. First, ‘heat’ is understood in colloquial English as ‘hotness’. There are, in addition, two scientific meanings of ‘heat’. ‘Heat’ can have the meaning of the portion of energy that changes with a change of temperature. And finally, ‘heat’ can have the meaning of the transfer of thermal energy (...) from a hotter to a colder system or body. By contrast, for the Ancients and Scholastics, ‘heat’ was a manifest, real quality of bodies and there was an ontological distinction between biological or innate heat (which was regarded as an innate principle of life for warm-blooded animals) and the physical manifest heat of external objects, which is potentially harmful. During the late Renaissance period, however, both views changed fundamentally and evolved - via the application of physical and mechanical analogies - into the foundations for today’s unified mechanistic theory of heat. (shrink)

Précis of the overall research conveyed by the Chair for Philosophy and Motivation at Munich School of Philosophy.

The aim of this paper is an ontological clarification of the concept of artefact. The following questions are addressed: 1. Do artefacts constitute an ontological category of objects in its own right, and if so, how could this category be characterized? 2. How do artefacts come into existence? 3. What kind of artefacts are there, and in which relations do they stand to each other? It is argued that artefacts are characterized essentially through their genesis and that they owe their (...) existence to mental acts of a particular kind, which I call “acts of creation”. It is maintained that there are not only concrete, material artefacts, but also abstract artefacts, that is, artefacts that cannot be perceived through the senses and are not located in space. Furthermore, it shall be claimed that in a sense those abstract artefacts are even primary to the concrete, material artefacts. (shrink)

Sind die Menschenrechte primär Ausdruck einer politischen Praxis und die Idee der Menschenrechte eine Art „Überbau“, den die Praxis epiphänomenal hervorbringt? Oder ist die Praxis der Menschenrechte das Ergebnis der Verwirklichung einer normativen Idee, die unabhängig von ihr existiert? Ist die Idee der Menschenrechte die Bedingung dafür, dass es die Praxis der Menschenrechte geben kann? Oder gibt es einen Vorrang der Praxis vor der Idee? In meinem Aufsatz argumentiere ich für zwei These: 1. These: Menschenrechte sind prinzipiell unabhängig von jeder (...) bestehenden rechtlichpolitischen Praxis und sind zugleich untrennbar an bestimmte rechtlich-politische Praktiken geknüpft. Darin besteht der konstitutive Widerspruch der Menschenrechte. 2. These: Aus diesem Widerspruch folgt nicht, dass wir aufhören sollten über Menschenrechte nachzudenken und eine Politik der Menschenrechte anzustreben. Der Widerspruch hat keine lähmende Wirkung, sondern ist theoretisch und praktisch produktiv. Um diese Thesen zu plausiblisieren, werde ich zunächst einige Grundzüge von Arendts Diskussion der Menschenrechte rekapitulieren (Abschnitt 2) und ihr Postulat eines den Menschenrechten vorgelagerten „Rechts, Rechte zu haben“ diskutieren (Abschnitt 3). Ausgehend von einer kritischen Diskussion der diskurstheoretischen Weiterentwicklung von Arendts These zu einem „Recht auf Rechtfertigung“ im diskurstheoretischen Konstruktivismus von Seyla Benhabib und Rainer Forst (Abschnitt 4) werde ich einen rechtfertigungstheoretischen Dekonstruktivismus vorstellen, der das Verhältnis von Praxis und Idee der Menschenrechte als produktiven Widerspruch fasst (Abschnitt 5). (shrink)

Phänomenologie und sprachanalytische Philosophie, die erstere mit den Namen Husserl und Heidegger verbunden, die letztere mit Wittgenstein, waren die beiden dominierenden philosophischen Strömungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Phänomenologie und Sprachanalyse ergibt sich auf dem Hintergrund ihrer gemeinsamen Problembestände, vornehmlich in der Philosophie des Geistes, der Philosophie der Wahrnehmung und der Bedeutungstheorie. Konvergenzen sind erst im letzten Drittel des Jahrhunderts sichtbar geworden, wobei die Rezeption phänomenologischen Gedankenguts durch analytische Philosophen (Chisholm, Searle, Føllesdal, Danto, Evans, Tugendhat) intensiver (...) war als die in umgekehrter Richtung. Die Konvergenzen betreffen die neuen Theorien der Intentionalität, die Renaissance des Themas „Bewusstsein” und die Debatte um die Qualia. Der Band versammelt zwölf Beiträge einschlägig ausgewiesener Philosophen aus Deutschland, Schweden, Norwegen, der Schweiz und den USA. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843): A Philosophy of the Exact Sciences -/- Shortened version of the article of the same name in: Tabula Rasa. Jenenser magazine for critical thinking. 6th of November 1994 edition -/- 1. Biography -/- Jakob Friedrich Fries was born on the 23rd of August, 1773 in Barby on the Elbe. Because Fries' father had little time, on account of his journeying, he gave up both his sons, of whom Jakob Friedrich was the elder, to the Herrnhut Teaching (...) Institution in Niesky in 1778. Fries attended the theological seminar in Niesky in autumn 1792, which lasted for three years. There he (secretly) began to study Kant. The reading of Kant's works led Fries, for the first time, to a deep philosophical satisfaction. His enthusiasm for Kant is to be understood against the background that a considerable measure of Kant's philosophy is based on a firm foundation of what happens in an analogous and similar manner in mathematics. -/- During this period he also read Heinrich Jacobi's novels, as well as works of the awakening classic German literature; in particular Friedrich Schiller's works. In 1795, Fries arrived at Leipzig University to study law. During his time in Leipzig he became acquainted with Fichte's philosophy. In autumn of the same year he moved to Jena to hear Fichte at first hand, but was soon disappointed. -/- During his first sojourn in Jenaer (1796), Fries got to know the chemist A. N. Scherer who was very influenced by the work of the chemist A. L. Lavoisier. Fries discovered, at Scherer's suggestion, the law of stoichiometric composition. Because he felt that his work still need some time before completion, he withdrew as a private tutor to Zofingen (in Switzerland). There Fries worked on his main critical work, and studied Newton's "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica". He remained a lifelong admirer of Newton, whom he praised as a perfectionist of astronomy. Fries saw the final aim of his mathematical natural philosophy in the union of Newton's Principia with Kant's philosophy. -/- With the aim of qualifying as a lecturer, he returned to Jena in 1800. Now Fries was known from his independent writings, such as "Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling" (1st edition in 1803), and "Systems of Philosophy as an Evident Science" (1804). The relationship between G. W. F. Hegel and Fries did not develop favourably. Hegel speaks of "the leader of the superficial army", and at other places he expresses: "he is an extremely narrow-minded bragger". On the other hand, Fries also has an unfavourable take on Hegel. He writes of the "Redundancy of the Hegelistic dialectic" (1828). In his History of Philosophy (1837/40) he writes of Hegel, amongst other things: "Your way of philosophising seems just to give expression to nonsense in the shortest possible way". In this work, Fries appears to argue with Hegel in an objective manner, and expresses a positive attitude to his work. -/- In 1805, Fries was appointed professor for philosophy in Heidelberg. In his time spent in Heidelberg, he married Caroline Erdmann. He also sealed his friendships with W. M. L. de Wette and F. H. Jacobi. Jacobi was amongst the contemporaries who most impressed Fries during this period. In Heidelberg, Fries wrote, amongst other things, his three-volume main work New Critique of Reason (1807). -/- In 1816 Fries returned to Jena. When in 1817 the Wartburg festival took place, Fries was among the guests, and made a small speech. 1819 was the so-called "Great Year" for Fries: His wife Caroline died, and Karl Sand, a member of a student fraternity, and one of Fries' former students stabbed the author August von Kotzebue to death. Fries was punished with a philosophy teaching ban but still received a professorship for physics and mathematics. Only after a period of years, and under restrictions, he was again allowed to read philosophy. From now on, Fries was excluded from political influence. The rest of his life he devoted himself once again to philosophical and natural studies. During this period, he wrote "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and the "History of Philosophy" (1837/40). -/- Fries suffered from a stroke on New Year's Day 1843, and a second stroke, on the 10th of August 1843 ended his life. -/- 2. Fries' Work Fries left an extensive body of work. A look at the subject areas he worked on makes us aware of the universality of his thinking. Amongst these subjects are: Psychic anthropology, psychology, pure philosophy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, religious philosophy, aesthetics, natural philosophy, mathematics, physics and medical subjects, to which, e.g., the text "Regarding the optical centre in the eye together with general remarks about the theory of seeing" (1839) bear witness. With popular philosophical writings like the novel "Julius and Evagoras" (1822), or the arabesque "Longing, and a Trip to the Middle of Nowhere" (1820), he tried to make his philosophy accessible to a broader public. Anthropological considerations are shown in the methodical basis of his philosophy, and to this end, he provides the following didactic instruction for the study of his work: "If somebody wishes to study philosophy on the basis of this guide, I would recommend that after studying natural philosophy, a strict study of logic should follow in order to peruse metaphysics and its applied teachings more rapidly, followed by a strict study of criticism, followed once again by a return to an even closer study of metaphysics and its applied teachings." -/- 3. Continuation of Fries' work through the Friesian School -/- Fries' ideas found general acceptance amongst scientists and mathematicians. A large part of the followers of the "Fries School of Thought" had a scientific or mathematical background. Amongst them were biologist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, mathematics and science specialist philosopher Ernst Friedrich Apelt, the zoologist Oscar Schmidt, and the mathematician Oscar Xavier Schlömilch. Between the years 1847 and 1849, the treatises of the "Fries School of Thought", with which the publishers aimed to pursue philosophy according to the model of the natural sciences appeared. In the Kant-Fries philosophy, they saw the realisation of this ideal. The history of the "New Fries School of Thought" began in 1903. It was in this year that the philosopher Leonard Nelson gathered together a small discussion circle in Goettingen. Amongst the founding members of this circle were: A. Rüstow, C. Brinkmann and H. Goesch. In 1904 L. Nelson, A. Rüstow, H. Goesch and the student W. Mecklenburg travelled to Thuringia to find the missing Fries writings. In the same year, G. Hessenberg, K. Kaiser and Nelson published the first pamphlet from their first volume of the "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition". -/- The school set out with the aim of searching for the missing Fries' texts, and re-publishing them with a view to re-opening discussion of Fries' brand of philosophy. The members of the circle met regularly for discussions. Additionally, larger conferences took place, mostly during the holidays. Featuring as speakers were: Otto Apelt, Otto Berg, Paul Bernays, G. Fraenkel, K. Grelling, G. Hessenberg, A. Kronfeld, O. Meyerhof, L. Nelson and R. Otto. On the 1st of March 1913, the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society was founded. Whilst the Fries' school of thought dealt in continuum with the advancement of the Kant-Fries philosophy, the members of the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society's main task was the dissemination of the Fries' school publications. In May/June, 1914, the organisations took part in their last common conference before the gulf created by the outbreak of the First World War. Several members died during the war. Others returned disabled. The next conference took place in 1919. A second conference followed in 1921. Nevertheless, such intensive work as had been undertaken between 1903 and 1914 was no longer possible. -/- Leonard Nelson died in October 1927. In the 1930's, the 6th and final volume of "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition" was published. Franz Oppenheimer, Otto Meyerhof, Minna Specht and Grete Hermann were involved in their publication. -/- 4. About Mathematical Natural Philosophy -/- In 1822, Fries' "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" appeared. Fries rejects the speculative natural philosophy of his time - above all Schelling's natural philosophy. A natural study, founded on speculative philosophy, ceases with its collection, arrangement and order of well-known facts. Only a mathematical natural philosophy can deliver the necessary explanatory reasoning. The basic dictum of his mathematical natural philosophy is: "All natural theories must be definable using purely mathematically determinable reasons of explanation." Fries is of the opinion that science can attain completeness only by the subordination of the empirical facts to the metaphysical categories and mathematical laws. -/- The crux of Fries' natural philosophy is the thought that mathematics must be made fertile for use by the natural sciences. However, pure mathematics displays solely empty abstraction. To be able to apply them to the sensory world, an intermediatory connection is required. Mathematics must be connected to metaphysics. The pure mechanics, consisting of three parts are these: a) A study of geometrical movement, which considers solely the direction of the movement, b) A study of kinematics, which considers velocity in Addition, c) A study of dynamic movement, which also incorporates mass and power, as well as direction and velocity. -/- Of great interest is Fries' natural philosophy in view of its methodology, particularly with regard to the doctrine "leading maxims". Fries calls these "leading maxims" "heuristic", "because they are principal rules for scientific invention". -/- Fries' philosophy found great recognition with Carl Friedrich Gauss, amongst others. Fries asked for Gauss's opinion on his work "An Attempt at a Criticism based on the Principles of the Probability Calculus" (1842). Gauss also provided his opinions on "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and on Fries' "History of Philosophy". Gauss acknowledged Fries' philosophy and wrote in a letter to Fries: "I have always had a great predilection for philosophical speculation, and now I am all the more happy to have a reliable teacher in you in the study of the destinies of science, from the most ancient up to the latest times, as I have not always found the desired satisfaction in my own reading of the writings of some of the philosophers. In particular, the writings of several famous (maybe better, so-called famous) philosophers who have appeared since Kant have reminded me of the sieve of a goat-milker, or to use a modern image instead of an old-fashioned one, of Münchhausen's plait, with which he pulled himself from out of the water. These amateurs would not dare make such a confession before their Masters; it would not happen were they were to consider the case upon its merits. I have often regretted not living in your locality, so as to be able to glean much pleasurable entertainment from philosophical verbal discourse." -/- The starting point of the new adoption of Fries was Nelson's article "The critical method and the relation of psychology to philosophy" (1904). Nelson dedicates special attention to Fries' re-interpretation of Kant's deduction concept. Fries awards Kant's criticism the rationale of anthropological idiom, in that he is guided by the idea that one can examine in a psychological way which knowledge we have "a priori", and how this is created, so that we can therefore recognise our own knowledge "a priori" in an empirical way. Fries understands deduction to mean an "awareness residing darkly in us is, and only open to basic metaphysical principles through conscious reflection.". -/- Nelson has pointed to an analogy between Fries' deduction and modern metamathematics. In the same manner, as with the anthropological deduction of the content of the critical investigation into the metaphysical object show, the content of mathematics become, in David Hilbert's view, the object of metamathematics. -/-. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis provides a pilosophical account of the structure of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. The first, more historical part analyses how classical genetics came to be integrated into evolutionary thinking, highlighting in particular the importance of chromosomal mapping of Drosophila strains collected in the wild by Dobzansky, but also the work of Goldschmidt, Sumners, Timofeeff-Ressovsky and others. The second, more philosophical part attempts to answer the question wherein the unity of the synthesis consisted. I argue (...) that it exemplifies a weak of form of explanatory unification. (shrink)

This book focuses on the intellectual relations between the Byzantine world and Renaissance Italy in the 15th century. The book consists of five independent chapters, which aim to present the complex ways the two cultures interacted. In the first chapter I present the way Modern Greek identity is attached to philosophical discussions and debates among the Byzantine scholars of the 15th century. In the following two chapters I focus on the transmission of knowledge from Western Europe and the Arabic (...) culture to the Byzantine philosophical community and its reactions. The last two chapters are dedicated to George of Trebizond and his efforts to transfer the Byzantine philosophical and scientific research to Renaissance Europe in order to renew philosophy and science. In sum, I support that, besides mutual reservations and skepticism, the two worlds, Byzantine and Renaissance, interacted in mutual benefit. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Aufsatz stellt das Erbe der Kantischen Theorie der Konstitutions- und Regulationsleistung der Erfahrung – die Analytik der Grundsätze – dar, das unserer Auffassung nach zur Begründung der rein spekulativen Philosophie Hegels führt. In diesem Zusammenhang werden einerseits die transzendental-konstitutiven Grundsätze – Axiome der Anschauung und Antizipationen der Wahrnehmung – und andererseits die transzendental-regulativen Grundsätze – Analogien der Erfahrung und Postulate des empirischen Denkens überhaupt – als grundlegendes Material der Exegese benutzt. Als Resultat der Deutung erscheint das Problem (...) des Doppel-Verhältnisses zwischen Erfahrung und Verstandesgrundsätzen. Ein solches Verhältnis entfaltet sich nicht nur als die erfahrungsmäßige Verwirklichung der Grundsätze, sondern auch als die grundsätzliche Ermöglichung der Erfahrung. Der notwendige Charakter der Wahrheit in transzendentaler Hinsicht begründet sich dabei durch die allgemeine Beziehung der transzendentalen Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes zur Gesamtheit der Erfahrung. Es wird die These vertreten, dass die Auffassung der Natur – d.h. die das Dasein der Erscheinungen in der Zeit ermöglichende Einheit – das Hauptvermächtnis Kants für den Deutschen Idealismus im Allgemeinen und für Hegels Philosophie im Besonderen darstellt. (shrink)