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)

Lotze’s "Microcosm" was published in three volumes, in 1856, 1858 and 1864, respectively. It was soon one of the most widely read philosophy books of the time. It was translated into French and Russian immediately, into English in 1885/87, and into Italian in 1911/16. The book saw six editions in Germany alone by 1923.

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)

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)

The purpose of this study is to assess Husserl’s debt to Lotze’s philosophy during the Halle period (1886-1901). I shall first track the sources of Husserl’s knowledge of Lotze’s philosophy during his studies with Brentano in Vienna and then with Stumpf in Halle. I shall then briefly comment on Husserl’s references to Lotze in his early work and research manuscripts for the second volume of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. In the third section, I examine Lotze’s influence (...) on Husserl’s antipsychologistic turn in the mid-1890s. The fourth section is a commentary on Husserl’s manuscript entitled “Microcosmus,” to which he explicitly refers in his Prolegomena, and which he planned to publish as an annex of his Logical Investigations. This work contains a detailed analysis of the third book of Lotze’s 1874 Logic. The last section examines Husserl’s arguments against logical psychologism in his Prolegomena, which I discuss through the lens of Stumpf’s critique of psychologism in his paper “Psychology and theory of knowledge”. I argue that Stumpf’s early works on this topic make it possible to establish a connection between Lotze’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas and Husserl’s antipsychologism. My hypothesis is that Stumpf’s analyses represent the background of Husserl's critique of logical psychologism in his Logical Investigations. I shall conclude this study by showing that Husserl’s position with respect to Lotze’s philosophy remains basically unchanged after the publication of his Logical Investigations, and that Husserl’s main criticism of Lotze pertains, in the final analysis, to the absence of a theory of intentionality in Lotze’s philosophy. (shrink)

The task of this paper is to show that Franz Brentano was not a solitary figure who advanced his philosophy in complete isolation from other contemporary philosophers in Germany, as some Neo-Brentanists have claimed over the last 30–40 years. He developed his philosophical psychology in the context of his time—in particular, under the influence of Hermann Lotze.

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. (...) class='Hi'>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)

El propósito del presente estudio es afirmar la deuda de Husserl con la filosofía de Lotze durante el período de Halle. Mi interés se centra especialmente en el pensamiento del joven Husserl desde su llegada a Halle en 1886 hasta la publicación de su Hauptwerk en 1900-1901. Primero me remontaré a las fuentes del conocimiento de la filosofía de Lotze por parte de Husserl durante sus estudios con Brentano en Viena y después con Stumpf en Halle. Luego comentaré (...) brevemente las referencias de Husserl a Lotze en sus primeros trabajos y en sus manuscritos de investigación para el segundo volumen de su Filosofía de la aritmética. En la tercera sección, examino la influencia de Lotze en el giro antipsicologista de Husserl a mediados de la década de 1890. La cuarta sección es un comentario al manuscrito de Husserl titulado "Microcosmos", al cual se refiere explícitamente en sus Prolegómenos, y que planeaba publicar como anexo a sus Investigaciones lógicas. Esta obra contiene un análisis detallado del tercer volumen de la Lógica de Lotze de 1874. La última sección examina los argumentos de Husserl contra el psicologismo lógico en sus Prolegómenos, que yo expongo a través del prisma de la crítica de Stumpf al psicologismo en su artículo "Psicología y teoría del conocimiento". Sostengo que las primeras obras de Stumpf sobre este asunto hacen posible establecer una conexión entre la interpretación de Lotze de la teoría de las Ideas de Platón y el antipsicologismo de Husserl. Mi hipótesis es que los análisis de Stumpf representan el fondo de la crítica de Husserl al psicologismo lógico en sus Investigaciones lógicas. Concluiré este estudio mostrando que la posición de Husserl respecto de la filosofía de Lotze permanece básicamente la misma después de la publicación de sus Investigaciones lógicas, y que la principal crítica de Husserl a Lotze se refiere, en un último análisis, a la ausencia de una teoría de la intencionalidad en la filosofía de Lotze. (shrink)

States of affairs are entities like snow’s being white. This dissertation encompasses two projects. First, I provide a historical survey of the concept of state of affairs as it has been used in the history of ontology. Second, I provide a novel conceptual account of states of affairs.

Even though Frege is a major figure in the history of analytic philosophy, it is not surprising that there are still issues surrounding his views, interpreting them, and labeling them. Frege’s view on numbers is typically termed as ‘Platonistic’ or at least a type of Platonism (Reck 2005). Still, the term ‘Platonism’ has views and assumptions ascribed to it that may be misleading and leads to mischaracterizations of Frege’s outlook on numbers and ideas. So, clarification of the term ‘Platonism’ is (...) required to portray Frege’s views more accurately (Reck 2005). This clarification gives us a better picture of what Frege is interested in and what he does not emphasize. Moreover, in such a clarifying process, we find that Frege draws significant influence from Rudolf Hermann Lotze, who is frequently called a Neo-Kantian (Vagnetti 2018). In Lotze’s major work, Logik, Lotze has a central focus on validity, in its most general form as he used it, that investigates various related topics, i.e., concepts, language, etc. (Vagnetti 2018; Lotze 1888). Furthermore, we observe that Frege’s work is so similar to Lotze, that it seems questionable to call his outlook ‘Platonism’. Therefore, attributing ‘Platonism’ to Frege may be a slight misnomer. This paper’s entirety is mostly a synthesis of a variety of articles related to Frege, Lotze, and their respective outlooks and the original works of Frege and Lotze that I use to support the view that the term ‘Platonism’ is a slight issue when predicated to Frege. As such, I include an overview of Frege’s treatment in other work that highlights the usage of the term ‘Platonism’ and how broad its uses tend to be utilized (Balaguer 2006; Burge 1992). In sum, it is observed that the general label ‘Platonism’ becomes less appropriate when we consider Lotze in the picture and contrast Lotze alongside Mr. Frege. Overall, this paper is just an explanatory one of Mr. Frege, the Platonist, and the issues of applying the term ‘Platonism’ onto him as his views are seemingly more of a segue from Lotze. Keywords: Frege, Lotze, number, objectification, Platonism, validity. (shrink)

Commentaires sur le débat nativisme-empirisme au XIXe siècle et la théorie des signes locaux de Lotze.

Carl Stumpf (1848–1937) is a key figure in the fin de siècle germanophone philosophy. Unfortunately, after the World War One, the interest towards Stumpf as a philosopher waned. One of the reasons was that already in the 1920s the attention of the mainstream philosophers shifted in direction of the rising rivalry between analytic and continental philosophy. The interest towards Carl Stumpf’s philosophy was revived only in the last twenty years or so. Great service in this provided the Neo-Brentanists. But while (...) the association of Carl Stumpf with Franz Brentano fostered Stumpf studies, it also gave rise of one-sided interpretations of Stumpf as a philosopher. In this way his importance and idiosyncrasy as philosopher remained in shadow. (shrink)

This paper argues that the ‘scientific dispute’ between Hermann Cohen and Rudolf Stammler is symptomatic of a philosophical movement of left-wing Kant interpretations at the turn of the twentieth century. By outlining influential predecessors that shaped Cohen’s and Stammler’s thinking, I show that their Kantian justifications of socialism differ regarding their conception of law, history, and the political implications that follow from their practical philosophies. Against scholars who suggest that the Marburg School’s view on socialism was a coherent (...) school of thought, I introduce the concept of ‘left-Kantianism’ as an open term that includes a wide variety of novel socialist approaches to Kant at the time. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Was für eine Art von Beziehung ist die Erkenntnisbeziehung? Ihre geläufige Konzeption im Sinne einer linearen Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung bildet so etwas wie den Boden, bzw. das logische Rückgrat der Erkenntnistheorie. Von ihr leiten sich weitestgehend die Annahmen, Vorstellungen und Begriffe her, in denen wir über Erkenntnis (als Tätigkeit und als Produkt) kommunizieren. Und insofern ist sie auf informelle oder explizite Weise auch ein Kernelement unserer Auffassung von Wissenschaft. Die Bezeichnung als 'logisches Rückgrat' der Erkenntnistheorie verweist dabei zugleich auf ihren heuristisch-funktionalen Zusammenhang (...) mit der zentralen Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie, nämlich der rationalen Rekonstruktion der Beziehung zwischen Inhalt und Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Es ist diese Aufgabe, die den meta-wissenschaftlichen Status und Anspruch der Erkenntnistheorie begründet. Die genannte Konzeption widerspricht aber zugleich ganz grundlegend unserem Selbstverständnis als 'Teil der Natur' (d.h. als natürlicher Gegenstand unter den anderen Gegenständen der Erkenntnis), von dem auch die 'naturalistischen' Erkenntnistheorien ausgehen. Demnach ist der reale Boden der Erkenntnisreflexion grundsätzlich nicht als lineare Beziehung, sondern als holistische Situation zu begreifen. Das eröffnet einen Spielraum der Reflexion und Kritik, die letztlich zwingend zu einer Re-Konzeption der Erkenntnisbeziehung als eine holistische Erkenntnissituation führt, mit umfassenden logischen und konzeptuellen Konsequenzen für das Grundverständnis des Erkenntnisvorgangs, und in weiterer Folge auch für das Verständnis von Wissenschaft. (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)

English title: The Problem of the Synthetic a priori Judgements According to Hermann Lotze. The present article compares Kant’s and Lotze’s concepts of synthetic judgements. Lotze’s aim is a renewing of the Kant’s solutions, what he achieves thanks to introduction of the distinction between analytic (identical) content and synthetic form of these judgements which Kant recognised as synthetic. This distinction makes possible to lay down the concept of intentional sense which has influence over Frege and Husserl.

Philosophy of science sees itself in the tradition of epistemology, whose epistemological paradigm it adopts and on which it is based, namely the subject-object model of cognition in conjunction with the idea of certainty of knowledge and the claim to the 'critical legitimation' of knowledge. On closer inspection, however, its own development turns out to be a deconstruction of the basic epistemological idea, namely the idea of certainty of knowledge. Without this, however, not only the adherence to the linear subject-object (...) model of cognition, but also the claim to the 'legitimation' of cognition loses its binding force. For philosophy of science this means the opportunity to rethink its own task, i.e. to take a step back from the claim of 'critical legitimation' of scientific knowledge to its unbiased reflection, starting from the real, holistic situation of cognition. It is only in this framework that the fundamental difference between the concepts of cognition, namely the object-related concept of metaphysics (to which epistemology also refers), and the transcendental, cross-referential concept of physics becomes epistemologically comprehensible. And the question also arises as to what our notion of cogniton and our epistemological ideas are all about. It will turn out that these are essentially based on an ontological premise, which in reality is gradually being undermined by physics. In other words, these epistemological ideas themselves are an obstacle to an adequate understanding of physics. (shrink)

For two reasons, physics occupies a preeminent position among the sciences. On the one hand, due to its recognized position as a fundamental science, and on the other hand, due to the characteristic of its obvious certainty of knowledge. For both reasons it is regarded as the paradigm of scientificity par excellence. With its focus on the issue of epistemic certainty, philosophy of science follows in the footsteps of classical epistemology, and this is also the basis of its 'judicial' pretension (...) vis-à-vis physics. Whereas physics is in a strong competitive relationship to philosophy and epistemology with respect to its position as a fundamental science - even on the subject of cognition, as the pretension of 'reductionism' shows. It is the thematic focus on epistemic certainty itself, however, that becomes the root of a profound epistemological misunderstanding of physics. The reason for this is twofold: first, the idea of epistemic certainty as a criterion of 'demarcation' between physics and metaphysics obscures the view of the much deeper heuristic differences between the two kinds of knowledge. The second, related, reason is that epistemology does not ask the question of the reason for the epistemic certainty of physics; instead, it sets itself the task of 'legitimating' physical knowledge, and this, crucially, with reference to the interpretation of the process of cognition. Thus, as a matter of course, all epistemological assumptions about this process – including the common descriptive understanding of knowledge and its ontological premises – flow into the interpretation of physics as a science. Consequently, this undertaking is not only doubtful from the ground up, because it presupposes for its meaningfulness nothing less than certainty of knowledge concerning (the interpretation of) the process of knowledge, thereby relying on mere convictions; moreover, by projecting the descriptive, 'metaphysical' concept of knowledge onto physics, it leads to unsolvable epistemological problems and corresponding resignative conclusions concerning the claim of knowledge of physics. In other words, epistemology itself builds, due to its basic assumptions, a major obstacle for an adequate understanding of physics. Physics' cross-object, deconstructive approach to knowledge implies a completely different, non-descriptive understanding of its concepts, with consequences that extend far beyond itself due to its status as a basic science. (shrink)

The question of what ontological insights can be gained from the knowledge of physics (keyword: ontic structural realism) cannot obviously be separated from the view of physics as a science from an epistemological perspective. This is also visible in the debate about 'scientific realism'. This debate makes it evident, in the form of the importance of perception as a criterion for the assertion of existence in relation to the 'theoretical entities' of physics, that epistemology itself is 'ontologically laden'. This is (...) in the form of the assumption that things (or entities) in themselves exist as such and such determined ones (independent of cognition, autonomously). This ontological assumption is not only the basis of our naïve understanding of cognition, but also its indispensable premise, insofar as this understanding is a fundamentally passive, 'receptive' one. Accordingly, just as 'perception' is the foundation, ('objective') description is the aim of cognition, that which cognition is about. In this sense, our idea of cognition and our idea of the things are inseparably linked. Without the ontological premise mentioned we just would not know what cognition is, but it is basically just a kind of image that we have in our minds (an assumption that helps us understand 'cognition'). Epistemology not only shares this basic assumption (which it also shares with metaphysics), but it revolves (unlike metaphysics) entirely around it by making the idea and demand of 'certainty' a condition of 'real' knowledge. As 'certainty' is a subjective criterion this entails the 'remodelling' of the real, holistic cognitive situation (to which metaphysics adheres) into a linear subject-object-relation (which results in the strict 'transcendence' of the objects). And it also establishes, due to its 'expertise' in matters of cognition, the 'primacy of epistemology' over all other sciences. Now, on closer inspection, however, the expertise of epistemology seems not all that dependable, because it basically consists only of paradigms which, from the point of view of the holism of the real cognitive situation itself, are nothing more than relatively simplistic interpretations of this situation. However, we do not yet know what another conception of cognition might look like (which is not surprising given the high rank of the phenomenon of cognition in the hierarchy of phenomena according to their complexity). 'Certainty' as a criterion of cognition is thus excluded from the outset, and thus the linear relational model of cognition appears as what it is, a gross distortion of the real, holistic cognitive situation. The significance of this argumentation with regard to physics is that the linear epistemological model of cognition itself is a major obstacle to an adequate epistemological understanding of physics. This is because it is fixed 'a priori' to an object-related concept of cognition, and to 'description' as the only mode of ('real') cognition. But physics (without questioning our naïve notion of cognition on the level of epistemology) simply works past it and its basic assumptions. Its cognitive concept (alias heuristic) is fundamentally different from that of metaphysics. The acceptance of the real, holistic cognitive situation is, in my opinion, the condition for an adequate understanding of physics' heuristic access to objects, its transcendental, generalizing cognitive concept, as well as its ontological relevance and dimension of its own. (shrink)

Die Physik nimmt aus zwei Gründen eine herausragende Stellung unter den Wissenschaften ein. Zum einen aufgrund ihrer anerkannten Stellung als Grundlagenwissenschaft, und zum anderen auch durch das Merkmal ihrer offenkundigen Erkenntnissicherheit. Aus beiden Gründen gilt sie gewissermaßen als Paradigma von Wissenschaftlichkeit schlechthin. Mit ihrem Fokus auf das Thema der Erkenntnissicherheit tritt die Wissenschaftstheorie in die Fußstapfen der klassischen Erkenntnistheorie, und darauf gründet sich auch ihr 'richterlicher' Anspruch gegenüber der Physik. Wohingegen die Physik in puncto ihrer Stellung als Grundlagenwissenschaft – sogar (...) beim Thema Erkenntnis, wie der Anspruch des 'Reduktionismus' zeigt – in einem Konkurrenzverhältnis zur Philosophie und zur Erkenntnistheorie steht. Der thematische Fokus auf der Erkenntnissicherheit selbst ist es allerdings, der zur Wurzel eines tiefgreifenden epistemologischen Missverständnisses der Physik wird. Der Grund dafür ist ein zweifacher: Zum einen verstellt die Idee der Erkenntnissicherheit als Kriterium der 'Abgrenzung' zwischen Physik und Metaphysik den Blick auf die viel tieferen heuristischen Unterschiede der beiden Erkenntnisarten. Der zweite, damit zusammenhängende Grund ist, dass die Erkenntnistheorie nicht die Frage nach dem Grund der Erkenntnissicherheit der Physik stellt, sondern die Frage nach der 'Legitimation' der physikalischen Erkenntnis, und zwar, das ist entscheidend, mit Bezug auf die Deutung des Erkenntnisvorgangs. Dadurch fließen wie selbstverständlich alle epistemologischen Annahmen über diesen Vorgang – inklusive der geläufigen deskriptiven Erkenntnisauffassung und ihrer ontologischen Prämissen – in die Deutung der Physik als Wissenschaft ein. Dieses Unterfangen ist folglich nicht nur von Grund auf zweifelhaft, weil es zu seiner Sinnhaftigkeit seinerseits nicht weniger als Erkenntnissicherheit bezüglich (der Deutung) des Erkenntnisvorgangs voraussetzt, und sich dabei auf bloße Überzeugungen stützt, es führt außerdem durch die Projektion des deskriptiven, 'metaphysischen' Erkenntniskonzepts auf die Physik zu unlösbaren epistemologischen Problemen und entsprechenden resignativen Schlussfolgerungen. Der wirkliche Grund der Erkenntnissicherheit der Physik ist auf diese Weise aber gar nicht zu fassen, denn er liegt schlicht in der Eindeutigkeit der Messung. Deren Signifikanz ist aber nur verständlich im Rahmen des originären gegenstandsübergreifenden, dekonstruktiven Erkenntniskonzepts der Physik, dessen Fokus nicht auf den Gegenständen, sondern auf den dynamischen Phänomenen liegt. Der gegenstandsübergreifende, dekonstruktive Erkenntnisansatz bedingt ein völlig anderes, nicht-deskriptives Verständnis der physikalischen Konzepte, und betrifft so auch das Verständnis der Physik als Grundlagenwissenschaft, mit Konsequenzen auch für die Problemstellungen der Biologie und der Epistemologie. (shrink)

The question of what ontological insights can be gained from the knowledge of physics (keyword: ontic structural realism) cannot obviously be completely separated from the view of physics as a science from an epistemological perspective. This is also visible in the debate about 'scientific realism'. This debate makes it clear, in the form of the importance of perception as a criterion for the assertion of existence in relation to the 'theoretical entities' of physics, that epistemology itself is 'ontologically loaded'. This (...) is in the form of the assumption that things in themselves (independent of cognition, in an autonomous way) exist as so-and-so determined ones. This ontological assumption is not only the basis of our (naive) conception of knowledge, but also its indispensable premise, insofar as this conception is a fundamentally passive, 'receptive' one. This is true to the full extent of metaphysics, and to a not much lesser extent of epistemology. The interpretation of knowledge in the sense of 'description' seems to be without alternative. In the philosophy of science, this view is reflected in the emphasis on 'objectivity' as the essence of science, in the belief in 'induction' as the traditional method of science, and (ex negativo) in the problem of the 'theory laden nature of observation'. To these paradigms of epistemology, however, a further aggravating factor is added, namely the criterion of 'subjective certainty' as evidence of 'real' knowledge (only meaningful on the basis of the ontological premise mentioned above). Thus, due to its 'expertise' in matters of knowledge, epistemology becomes the 'prima philosophia'. But what is even more important, the real, holistic cognitive situation is transformed into a linear cognitive relationship, with the consequence of the 'transcendence' of the objects. Now, on closer inspection, however, there is not too much in the expertise of epistemology, because it basically consists only of paradigms which, from the point of view of the holism of the real cognitive situation itself, are nothing more than relatively simplistic interpretations of this situation. However, we do not yet know what another conception of knowledge might look like (which is not surprising given the position of the phenomenon of knowledge in the hierarchy of phenomena according to their complexity). 'Certitude' as a criterion of cognition is thus excluded from the outset, and thus the linear relational model of cognition also appears as what it is, a gross distortion of the real, holistic situation of cognition. The significance of this argumentation with regard to physics is that the linear epistemological model of cognition itself is a major obstacle to an adequate epistemological understanding of physics. This is because it is fixed 'a priori' to an object-related concept of knowledge, and to 'description' as the only mode of ('real') knowledge. The acceptance of the real, holistic epistemological situation is therefore, in my opinion, the condition for an adequate understanding of physics' heuristic access to objects, its transcendental, generalizing epistemological concept, as well as its ontological relevance and dimension. (shrink)

The influence that the meditations of Husserl's later years may have had on the younger generation is, as yet, difficult to assess. And it is, in fact, not important whether this question can or cannot be answered. Husserl, obviously, was not less sensitive to the problems arising from the intellectual and cultural situation as it developed around 1920, than were those who have emphatically made the Lebenswelt the primary object of their inquiries and the starting point for the reconstruction of (...) philosophy. (shrink)

The influence of Brentano on the emergence of Husserl's notion of intentionality has been usually perceived as the key of understanding the history of intentionality, since Brentano was credited with the discovery of intentionality, and Husserl was his discipline. This much debated question is to be revisited in the present essay by incorporating recent advances in Brentano scholarship and by focusing on Husserl's very first work, his habilitation essay (Über den Begriff der Zahl), which followed immediately after his study years (...) at Brentano, and also on manuscript notes from the same period. It is to be shown that (i) although Brentano failed to enact a direct influence on Husserl's notion of intentionality (much in line with K. Schuhmann's claim), (ii) yet the core of Brentano's notion remained operative in Husserl's theory of relations, which is seemingly influenced by John Stuart Mill and Hermann Lotze. This investigation is intended as a contribution towards the proper understanding of the complexities of Husserl's early philosophy. (shrink)

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur sex stycken tillfrågade lärare för grundskolans lägre årskurser F-3 upplever sin undervisning kring läroplanens område sexualitet, samtycke och relationer. Studien utgår från Sandra Hardings genusteori samt Judith Butlers begrepp kring performativitet. Studien är tänkt att synliggöra hur lärare i de lägre årskurserna undervisar kring läroplanens område sexualitet, samtycke och relationer samt att lyfta hur undervisningen balanseras mellan kön och normer. -/- Resultatet av studien visar att det upplevs finnas svårigheter kring framför allt (...) ämnet sexualitet i läroplanens område sexualitet, samtycke och relationer där det framkommer en osäkerhet kring vad undervisningen förväntas innehålla samt den egna lärarens svårighet att veta hur ämnet ska anpassas till grundskolans lägre åldrar. Inte heller sexuella övergrepp och grooming lyfts av fler än två av de sex tillfrågade lärarna, något som inte svarar mot det eventuella behovet av sådan undervisningen med tanke på att forskning visar hur vanligt det är med sexuella övergrepp hos barn. -/- Studiens resultat visar också på att lärarna har ett väletablerat normkritiskt förhållningssätt där de aktivt reflekterar över sina egna normer och språkbruk för att inte förstärka normer i sin undervisning. I och med detta aktiva normkritiska förhållningssätt påvisade studien knappa svårigheter kring balansen mellan kön och normer i undervisningen inom området sexualitet, samtycke och relationer. Normerna kring genus uppfattades av de tillfrågade lärarna skapas utanför skolverksamheten. Eleverna upplevdes av lärarna att vara medvetna om normer hörande till de olika könen, vilket styrks av tidigare forskning där kulturella definitioner av manligt och kvinnligt påverkar barn även i yngre ålder. Resultatet av studien förklaras utifrån Hardings genusteori där lärarnas individuella normer kring genus, som är en produkt av hur de strukturella och symboliska normerna i samhället ser ut, kan ha en inverkan på hur de tolkar innehållet i läroplanens område sexualitet, samtycke och relationer. Det tolkas även utifrån Butlers begrepp om performativitet, att våra handlingar och ord skapar normer, där lärarna riskerar att påverka undervisningen i och med att undervisningen eventuellt kan föra vidare beteenden och normer som är påverkade av den individuella tolkningen av området. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom has it that between 1905 and 1919 Russell was critical to pragmatism. In particular, in two essays written in 1908–9, he sharply attacked the pragmatist theory of truth, emphasizing that truth is not relative to human practice. In fact, however, Russell was much more indebted to the pragmatists, in particular to William James, as usually believed. For example, he borrowed from James two key concepts of his new epistemology: sense-data, and the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and (...) knowledge by description. Reasonable explanation of this is that, historically, Russell’s logical realism and James’s pragmatism have the same roots—the German philosopher Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817–1881). In this paper we are going to explore the fact that in 1905, under Lotze’s influence, Russell married propositions with beliefs. A few years later this step also made Russell prone to embrace the theory of truth-making that has its roots in James. In contrast to the concept of sense-data and to the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, however, the understanding that we believe propositions—and not, for example, simply grasp them—was in tension with Russell’s Principle of Extensionality, according to which propositions can be logically connected with other propositions only as truth-functions. The point is that when we judge a mind-relation (for example, a relation of belief) to a proposition, the latter cannot be determined as true or false. The two most talented pupils of Russell, Wittgenstein and Ramsey, severely criticized the central place propositional attitudes play in Russell’s logic. Wittgenstein analyzed “A believes that p” to “ ‘p’ says p” (5.542). Ramsey criticized Russell’s beliefs in propositions the other way round: He stressed that belief is an ambiguous term that can be interpreted for the better in the sense of pragmatism. Prima facie surprisingly, he maintained that his “pragmatism is derived from Mr Russell.” (1927: 51). (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)

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)

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)

A letter to The Times of London, May 9, 1992 protesting the Cambridge University proposal to award an honorary degree to M. Jacques Derrida.

Morphological Computation is based on the observation that biological systems seem to carry out relevant computations with their morphology (physical body) in order to successfully interact with their environments. This can be observed in a whole range of systems and at many different scales. It has been studied in animals – e.g., while running, the functionality of coping with impact and slight unevenness in the ground is "delivered" by the shape of the legs and the damped elasticity of the muscle-tendon (...) system – and plants, but it has also been observed at the cellular and even at the molecular level – as seen, for example, in spontaneous self-assembly. The concept of morphological computation has served as an inspirational resource to build bio-inspired robots, design novel approaches for support systems in health care, implement computation with natural systems, but also in art and architecture. As a consequence, the field is highly interdisciplinary, which is also nicely reflected in the wide range of authors that are featured in this e-book. We have contributions from robotics, mechanical engineering, health, architecture, biology, philosophy, and others. (shrink)

Although the economic thought of Marshall and Pigou was united by ethical positions broadly considered utilitarian, differences in their intellectual milieu led to degrees of difference between their respective philosophical visions. This change in milieu includes the influence of the little understood period of transition from the early idealist period in Great Britain, which provided the context to Marshall’s intellectual formation, and the late British Idealist period, which provided the context to Pigou’s intellectual formation. During this latter period, the pervading (...) Hegelianism and influences of naturalism arising from the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were challenged by Hermann Lotze, a key transitional thinker influencing the Neo-Kantian movement, who recognised significant limits of naturalism, on the one hand, and the metaphysical tenor of absolute idealism, on the other, and attempted to provide a balance between the two. The goal of this paper is to make the provisional case for the argument that Pigou’s views on ethics were not only directly influenced by utilitarian thinkers like Mill and Sidgwick, but they were also indirectly influenced by Hermann Lotze, via the influence of the Neo- Kantian movement on late British idealism. To that end, Pigou’s essays in The Trouble with Theism (1908), including his sympathetic consideration of the ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche, reflect the influence of Lotze indirectly through the impact at Cambridge of: James Ward’s critique of associationist psychology, and consideration of the limits of naturalism including the critique of evolutionary ethics; Bertrand Russell’s rejection of neo-Hegelianism and, together with Alfred North Whitehead, the development of Logicism; and G.E. Moore’s critique of utilitarian ethics on the basis of the naturalistic fallacy and the development of his own intuitionist system of ethics. (shrink)

Logic has a fundamental role in the philosophy of Franjo Marković (1845-1914). His theory of concepts and reasoning is analyzed, especially with respect to the essential role of the principle of sufficient reason and in connection with the concept of causality. The interplay of various types of evidence in Marković's inductive-deductive logic is analysed by means of contemporary justification logic tools.

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu sich (...) selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)

Many historians of analytic philosophy consider the early philosophy of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein as much more neo-Hegelian as once believed. At the same time, the authors who closely investigate Green, Bradley and Bosanquet find out that these have little in common with Hegel. The thesis advanced in this chapter is that what the British (ill-named) neo-Hegelians brought to the early analytic philosophers were, above all, some ideas of Lotze, not of Hegel. This is true regarding: (i) Lotze’s (...) logical approach to practically all philosophical problems; (ii) his treating of the concepts relation, structure (constructions) and order; (iii) the discussion of the concepts of states of affairs, multiple theory of judgment, general logical form; (iv) some common themes like panpsychism and contemplating the world sub specie aeternitatis. (shrink)

State of affairs (Sachverhalt) is one of the few terms in philosophy, which only came into use for the first time in the twentieth century, mainly via the works of Husserl and Wittgenstein. This makes the task of finding out who introduced this concept into philosophy, and in exactly what sense, of considerable interest. Our thesis is that Lotze introduced the term in 1874 in the sense of the objective content of judgments, which is ipso facto the minimal structured (...) ontological unit. We would argue against authors such as Michael Dummett and Barry Smith, who have tried to prove that Lotze's theory of judgment, and so of states of affairs, was ad-vanced in the wake of psychologism. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a partial rehabilitation of Cohen’s Kant interpretation. In particular, I will focus on the center of Cohen’s interpretation in KTE, reflected in the title itself: his interpretation of Kant’s concept of experience. “Kant hat einen neuen Begriff der Erfahrung entdeckt,”7 Cohen writes at the opening of the first edition of KTE (henceforth, KTE1), and while the exact nature of that new concept of experience is hard to pin down in the 1871 edition, he states it (...) succinctly in the second edition (henceforth KTE2): experience is Newtonian mathematical natural science.8 While this equation of experience with mathematical natural science has few contemporary defenders, I believe it is substantially correct, with one important qualification. Kant uses the term Erfahrung in a number of different senses in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (henceforth, KrV). I will argue that a central, and neglected, sense of that key technical term aligns with Cohen’s reading; what Kant sometimes refers to as ‘universal experience’ (sometimes, simply ‘experience’) is, in broad outlines, correctly interpreted by Cohen as mathematical natural science. (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)