An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

This book explores a universal question of human social order: Under what circumstances and to what extent is the individual to be held morally responsible for collective events? This question reaches far beyond the intentions and actions of a particular business enterprise, state or a similar large-scale collective. The philosopher Wolfgang Sohst (Berlin, Germany) investigates the subject with unprecedented thoroughness, covering the whole range of contemporary discussion on this subject. He provides a detailed analysis of the functions of individual (...) members in such a collective, the structural prerequisites for them to be held responsible for acts which they have not directly committed themselves and the transmission of responsibility even to successor generations of the perpetrators collective. -/- Table of contents: -/- Introduction 1 Actors and Moral Action 1.1 On the concepts of actors and action 1.2 The simultaneous emergence of actor and action 1.3 The difference between a unit of event and a unit of action 1.4 The difference between legal and moral responsible action -/- 2 The Continuum Between Individual and Corporate Actor 2.1 The relationship between a single human actor and a corporate actor 2.1.1 The primary responsibility of the individual actor and the ontological status of the collective 2.1.2 Additional arguments for putting collective responsibility onto the individual actor 2.2 The levels within structural consolidation 2.3 A different schematic view: Community, Society, State 2.4 Direct vs. organized sociality 2.5 Conflicts of application in assigning collective responsibility -/- 3 Individual and Collective Actions 3.1 A better form of social reductionism 3.2 Corporate bodies as a bundle of agency relationships 3.3 The horizon of view for collective social phenomena -/- 4 The Corporate Entity as a Moral Subject 4.1 Are corporate actors also morally responsible? 4.2 Corporate bodies as norm subjects -/- 5 Possible criteria for the moral qualification of collective action 5.1 Membership in a group 5.2 Success of an action 5.3 Shared intentionality or purpose, common interests and common consciousness 5.4 Social relationships between actors as a condition of collective action 5.5 Subjective and factual feelings of collective responsibility 5.6 The community of shared values 5.7 Social identity 5.8 Origin and ethnic belonging 5.9 No equality in injustice -/- 6 Norm-based and Purpose-oriented Organization 6.1 No collective responsibility without inner organization 6.2 Collective shame as an indication of collective responsibility 6.3 Individual responsibility for collective norms 6.4 The collective organization as an independent unit of purpose for the collective 6.4.1 The actualistic perspective 6.4.2 Structural persistence 6.4.3 Possible counter-examples of structural persistence 6.5 The other side of collective responsibility 6.6 Interim Result -/- 7 Moral Responsibility of the Individual from an International Perspective -/- 8 Social Norms and Our Responsibility for their Fulfillment 8.1 Norm dimensions 8.2 The overarching importance of norm ranking in assigning collective moral responsibility 8.3 Private and public norms 8.4 Subjective ‘ought’ and personal responsibility 8.5 The obligation to morally acceptable and coherent behavior -/- 9 The Difference between Culpability and Responsibility 10 The Temporal Horizon of Collective Moral Responsibility Index Bibliography. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of political realism as a form of ideology critique. Our focus is a defence of the normative edge of this critical-theoretic project against the common charge that there is a problematic trade-off between a theory’s groundedness in facts about the political status quo and its ability to consistently envisage radical departures from the status quo. To overcome that problem we combine insights from three distant corners of the philosophical landscape: theories of legitimacy by Bernard Williams (...) and other realists, Frankfurt School-inspired Critical Theory, and recent analytic epistemological and metaphysical theories of cognitive bias, ideology, and social construction. The upshot is a novel account of realism as empirically-informed diagnosis- critique of social and political phenomena. This view rejects a sharp divide between descriptive and normative theory, and so is an alternative to the anti- empiricism of some approaches to Critical Theory as well as to the complacency towards existing power structures found within liberal realism, let alone mainstream normative political philosophy, liberal or otherwise. (shrink)

In this paper we put forward a realist account of the problem of the accommodation of conflicting claims over sacred places. Our argument takes its cue from the empirical finding that modern, Western-style states necessarily mould religion into shapes that are compatible with state rule. So, at least in the context of modern states there is no pre-political morality of religious freedom that states ought to follow when adjudicating claims over sacred spaces. In which case most liberal normative theory on (...) religious accommodation turns out to be wrong headed. As an alternative, we suggest the question of contested sacred places should be settled with reference to the state’s purposes—at least as long as one is committed to the existence of modern states. If one finds the state’s treatment of religion unsatisfactory, then our argument provides a pro tanto reason for seeking alternative forms of political organisation. (shrink)

This essay is about the Wolfgang Köhler’s philosophical ideas expressed in his The Place of Value in a World of Facts of 1938. Köhler, who strongly supports a scientific world view, considers the question as to whether science is able to cope with human values, besides natural facts. Relying upon phenomenological analyses, and on his previous researches in natural philosophy, Köhler introduces his doctrine of “epistemological dualism”. From a historical point of view, this theory exhibits some similarity with the (...) philosophical ideas expressed by Köhler’s Berlin mentor Carl Stumpf. It is argued that Köhler’s epistemological dualism actually supports ontological monism and aims at offering a unified view of natural facts and human values. (shrink)

Wolfgang Pauli was influenced by Carl Jung and the Platonism of Arnold Sommerfeld, who introduced the fine-structure constant. Pauli’s vision of a World Clock is related to the symbolic form of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes and Plato’s geometric allegory otherwise known as the Cosmological Circle attributed to ancient tradition. With this vision Pauli revealed geometric clues to the mystery of the fine-structure constant that determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction. A Platonic interpretation of the World Clock and (...) the Cosmological Circle provides an explanation that includes the geometric structure of the pineal gland described by the golden ratio. In his experience of archetypal images Pauli encounters the synchronicity of events that contribute to his quest for physical symmetry relevant to the development of quantum electrodynamics. (shrink)

A prevailing view in moral psychology holds that empathy and sympathy play key roles in morality and in prosocial and altruistic actions. Recently, Jesse Prinz (2011a, 2011b) has challenged this view and has argued that empathy does not play a foundational or causal role in morality. He suggests that in fact the presence of empathetic emotions is harmful to morality. Prinz rejects all theories that connect empathy and morality as a constitutional, epistemological, developmental, motivational, or normative necessity. I (...) consider two of Prinz’s theses: the thesis that empathy is not necessary for moral development, and the thesis that empathy should be avoided as a guide for morality. Based on recent research in moral psychology, I argue that empathy plays a crucial role in development of moral agency. I also argue that empathy is desirable as a moral emotion. (shrink)

An abstract in English is included in the download. Wolfgang Pauli war einer der Grossen unter den Physikern des 20. Jahrhunderts, nicht ganz so berühmt wie Heisenberg und Einstein, aber annähernd ebenso bedeutend. Er war es, der bei der Entwicklung der Quantenphysik das sogenannte Ausschließungsprinzip entdeckte und damit den Weg zu unserem physikalischen Grundverständnis der ganzen Chemie eröffnete. Seine Gedanken galten aber auch hintergründigen wissenschaftsphilosophischen Fragen, und die gängigen Auffassungen über die Rolle von Vernunft und Materialismus in der Naturwissenschaft (...) waren ihm zu eng. Er betonte vielmehr, dass wissenschaftliches Verständnis immer wesentlich auch psychisch ist, dass das erlebte Glücksgefühl, welches mit einer Entdeckung verbunden ist, entscheidendes Motiv ist, dass dabei Ordnungen der Natur mit Urbildern unserer Psyche verknüpft werden, und dass eine sinnvolle Weltsicht zwar auch, aber nicht nur durch abendländisches Vernunftdenken zustande kommen kann; er strebte nach einer Verbindung mit einem gefühlten Einheitsdenken in der Tradition der östlichen asiatischen Kulturen. Abschliessend betont der Artikel, wie vielseitig überhaupt die Gedanken der Begründer der modernen Physik im 20. Jahrhundert in Bezug auf Grundfragen des religiösen Denkens waren. (shrink)

This paper addresses Prinz's naturalistic theory of conceptual content, which he has defended in several works (Prinz, 2000; 2002; 2006). More precisely, I present in detail and critically assess his account of referential content, which he distinguishes from nominal or cognitive content. The paper argues that Prinz's theory faces four important difficulties, which might have significant consequences for his overall empiricist project.

In Germany, between the last decades of the 18th and the first decades of the 19th centuries, four fundamental figures of German and European culture emerged: Lessing the great playwright, Herder the promoter of the epistemological foundations of modern linguistics and of the emerging historical-social sciences, Goethe the supreme poet and novelist, and Fichte the eminent philosopher. They were all Freemasons and basic authors of Masonic thought. The most significant works of these authors have been chosen, which summarize the interpretative (...) modalities of the complex Masonic reality of the 18th century. The book analyses Lessing's five Dialogues for Freemasons, highlighting his austere vision in the search for the essence of Freemasonry. Of Herder's two Masonic Dialogues, the connotation in the sense of Humanity of a Freemasonry that leaves the Enlightenment to set out towards new goals of pure and spiritual thought is noted. Among Goethe's poetic works, two in particular highlight the depth of a Masonic thought pervaded by a sophisticated and modern hermeticism. Fichte's Lessons on Freemasonry are framed in his complex philosophical thought and in his complicated experience of Masonic life. ========== Nella Germania tra gli ultimi decenni del XVIII e i primi del XIX secolo emergono quattro figure fondamentali della cultura tedesca ed europea: Lessing il grande drammaturgo, Herder promotore delle basi epistemologiche della moderna linguistica e delle nascenti scienze storico-sociali, Goethe il sommo poeta e romanziere, Fichte l’eminente filosofo. Erano tutti Massoni e autori basilari del pensiero massonico. Di questi Autori sono state scelte le opere più significative che sintetizzano le modalità interpretative della complessa realtà massonica del ‘700. Nel libro si analizzano i cinque Dialoghi per Massoni di Lessing evidenziando la sua visione austera nella ricerca dell’essenza della Massoneria. Dei due Dialoghi massonici di Herder è rilevata la connotazione nel senso dell’Humanität di una Massoneria che esce dall’Illuminismo per avviarsi a nuove mete di pensiero puro e spirituale. Tra le opere poetiche di Goethe due in particolare evidenziano la profondità di un pensiero massonico pervaso di un sofisticato e moderno ermetismo. Le Lezioni sulla Massoneria di Fichte sono inquadrate nel suo complesso pensiero filosofico e nella sua complicata esperienza di vita massonica. (shrink)

Does a nihilist who kills himself betray his own beliefs? An unreflected answer would probably turn out positive, because a nihilist may be defined as a person who embraces all aspects of life and pain itself. But someone who escapes his sorrowful existence by committing suicide seems not to accept his own human condition and therefore cannot die as a nihilist. If this argumentation is right, human life would not be possible outside cultural contexts, for the particularity of nihilism is (...) its large distance to and independence of culture and collectivity. In his autobiographical work "Arbeit und Struktur" Wolfgang Herrndorf portrays his three and a half years of living with brain cancer. At the same time he shows us how his originally humanistic nihilism turns into a more pessimistic one while coping with his disease. Herrndorf, in a manner of speaking, writes his own "myth to live" without being able to rely on the shelter of culture, without a "myth of collectivity". In the face of this, we must assume Herrndorf's ideological transformation from a cooperative nihilism to a pessimistic nihilism, which justifies his own death, was his sole opportunity to mentally survive the three and a half years of pain and dissolution. From this perspective, the example of Wolfgang Herrndorf and his "Arbeit und Struktur" would reveal mankind's absolute dependency on metaphysical significance and its need for individual myths to live. Despite regarding himself as a modern, secular and rationalistic human being, Herrndorf cannot overcome the necessity of the iconological translation of "reality to world". Therefore, the intent of this master's thesis is to show that all living human beings are captives of icons and their metaphysical representation, and that the endless effort of translating whole reality into a single myth to live is part of our conditio humana. (shrink)

In the article I discuss the philosophical premises of Kleist's literary work, focussing on the relationship between his conception of moral conscience and Kant's ethics.

This book is the result of a survey conducted across different segments of Indian populace to understand the influence of religion on the country and how sometimes the political ideas and the ground realities are at loggerheads. The authors juxtapose their findings in India with the studies in the West:.

Narrativity is basically linked to the dynamics of the events and actions which are told and it depends on the pragmatic context, mainly on the narrator and his audience, i.e. on the discursive setting. These dynamics ask for an adequate theoretical frame, e.g. in the format of dynamical system theory or vector analysis. Furthermore, narrativity can be manifested in different modalities. We shall present some specimens of analysis in the linguistic modality (spontaneous oral tales, folktales), in the visual modality (painting (...) by Leonardo da Vinci, action movie in the series of Bond films), and in the musical modality (Blues music). The static analyses in the tradition of structuralism are replaced by morphodynamic schemes, by gesture and glance vectors, paths of pursuit and scenarios of conflict in action movies and eventually by harmonic sequences in the Blues. In this dynamic perspective, the notion of narrativity gains a different profile and it is freed from the preference for linguistic or logical categories. (shrink)

The nature-nurture debate rages so, one cannot help but wonder why the sides are so vehemently partitioned. What's at stake? It is simply not clear why a great amount of people embrace either one side or the other, but dare not even blow a kiss to the opposite opinion. Prinz does an excellent job of arguing for the nurture position, zeroing in on some of the most preciously held nature arguments including the basis of knowledge, thought, and feelings in (...) experience and cultural values, increasing as a child grows. Most prominent of the nature hypothèses that Prinz takes on may be that of language acquisition and the Chomskyean notion of inborn lingusitic knowledge, via the proposed universal language. He contends that children's language acquisition--even the notion that the supposed inborn language device shuts off somewhere in mid-childhood, meaning most people will not be fully bilingual--need not demand such a natural language faculty in the brain, as general learning strategies can account for language acquisition. His arguments can stimulate both nurturists and naturists. Yet, in the end--realizing how much of the human arise from the genes--one still cannot help wonder why the two debated positions so rally to one flag or the other. (shrink)

Wolfgang Spohn's theory of ranking functions is an elegant and powerful theory of the structure and dynamics of doxastic states. In two recent papers, Spohn has applied it to the analysis of conditionals, claiming to have presented a unified account of indicative and subjunctive (counterfactual) conditionals. I argue that his analysis fails to account for counterfactuals that refer to indirect causes. The strategy of taking the transitive closure that Spohn employs in the theory of causation is not available for (...) counterfactuals. I have a close look at Spohn's treatment of the famous Oswald-Kennedy case in order to illustrate my points. I sketch an alternative view that seems to avoid the problems. (shrink)

“Applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to 21st Century Art” was delivered to the 2009 Congress of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) in Dublin as a guide to critical thinking through a paradigm shift. This new paper uncovers a new critical theory in the form of a formula that has been successfully applied to a universal appraisal of arts across all boundaries, whether they be gender, discipline or culture. The configuration predicted by Pauli as arising from under the collapsed (...) quantum wave is sourced in an ancient icon: the hieros gamos. As her functional role as newspaper critic shifted to a more esoteric passage as performance artist/curator/blogger, the author spent 14 years theorizing; and another 14 years applying a new critical theory to contemporary art. Her (R)evolution series for the Huffington Post places the containment of the hieros gamos at the forefront of contemporary art practice. The goal is the embodiment of Jean Gebser’s 360-degree aperspectival awareness, whereas the shadow is contacted and absorbed into the very body of art. This paper will reveal the strategy for determining holistic art forms containing the 21st century icon that Pauli understood would arise from under the collapsed quantum wave. (shrink)

The Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels published his essay "On 'Gestalt Qualities'" in 1890. The essay initiated a current of thought which enjoyed a powerful position in the philosophy and psychology of the first half of this century and has more recently enjoyed a minor resurgence of interest in the area of cognitive science, above all in criticisms of the so-called 'strong programme' in artificial intelligence. The theory of Gestalt is of course associated most specifically with psychologists of the Berlin (...) school such as Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka. We shall see in what follows, however, that an adequate philosophical understanding of the Gestalt idea and of Ehrenfels' achievement will require a close examination not merely of the work of the Berlin school but also of a much wider tradition in Austrian and German philosophy in general. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2006, 2007) claimed that emotions are necessary and sufficient for moral judgments. First of all, I clarify what this claim amounts to. The view that he labels emotionism will then be critically assessed. Prinz marshals empirical findings to defend a series of increasingly strong theses about how emotions are essential for moral judgments. I argue that the empirical support upon which his arguments are based is not only insufficient, but it even suggests otherwise, if properly interpreted. (...) My criticism is then extended to his sentimentalist theory, that accounts for how emotions are integrated into moral judgments. The central problem is that Prinz’s view fails to capture the rational aspect of moral evaluation. I make this failure explicit and defend that some version or other of neosentimentalism is a more promising route. (shrink)

The most long-standing criticism of virtue ethics in its traditional, eudaimonistic variety centers on its apparently foundational appeal to nature in order to provide a source of normativity. This paper argues that a failure to appreciate both the giving and taking of reasons in sustaining an ethical outlook can distort a proper understanding of the available options for this traditional version of virtue ethics. To insist only on giving reasons, without also taking (maybe even considering) the reasons provided by others, (...) displays a sadly illiberal form of prejudice. The paper finds and criticizes such a distortion in Jesse Prinz’s recent discussion of the ‘Normativity Challenge’ to Aristotelian virtue ethics, thus highlighting a common tendency that we can helpfully move beyond. (shrink)

Nach einer kurzen Erinnerung an einige von Keplers Hauptwerken, in denen traditionelle und moderne Elemente eingehen (Abschnitt 1), wird zwei Beispielen die Differenz zwischen diesen beiden Elementen näher untersucht. Das erste Beispiel, Keplers Naturbegriff, dient zur Diskussion der Kritik qualitativer Unterscheidungen. Hierbei stehen Keplers Verhältnis zur aristotelischen Naturauffassung und die Relevanz dieser Relation für die moderne Wissenschaftsauffassung im Mittelpunkt (Abschnitt 2). Das andere Beispiel befasst sich mit dem absoluten Wahrheitsanspruch von Keplers Wissenschaft und rückt damit exemplarisch eine Differenz zur modernen (...) Wissenschaftsauffassung in den Vordergrund (Abschnitt 3). Anschließend werden umfassender traditionelle Elemente der frühneuzeitlichen Wissenschaft, wie sie Kepler vertrat, dem modernen Wissenschaftsverständnis gegenübergestellt. Nachdem damit die Entfernung Keplers zur Gegenwart gleichsam maximiert ist, wende ich mich den Wissenschaftsauffassungen von Wolfgang Pauli und Werner Heisenberg zu, die in bemerkenswerter Nähe zu Keplers vormodernen Ansichten stehen und doch ganz im Kontext der Moderne entwickelt wurden (Abschnitt 4). Obwohl also in jüngster Zeit ganz differente Einstellungen zu Keplers Verhältnis zur modernen Wissenschaft vertreten wurden, lässt sich doch eine Tendenz zur Abstandsvergrößerung in dieser Relation ausmachen (Abschnitt 5). (shrink)

Introduction: Prinz’s SentimentalismMany ethicists claim that one cannot derive an ought from an is. In others words, they think that one cannot derive a statement that has prescriptive force from purely descriptive statements. This thesis plays a crucial role in many theoretical and practical ethical arguments. Since, according to many, David Hume advocated a view along these lines, this thesis has been called ‘Hume’s Law’. In this paper, I adopt this widespread terminology, whether or not Hume did indeed take (...) this position. There are some notable exceptions among philosophers, such as John SearleSee John R. Searle, “How to Derive “Ought” from “Is”,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 1, (1964), pp. 43–58. and Arthur Prior,See Arthur N. Prior, “The Autonomy of Ethics,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38, No. 3, (1960), pp. 199–206. but most philosophers have embraced Hume’s Law. Recently, however, Hume’s Law has come under attack. In his book The Emotional Construction of Mor. (shrink)

In this paper, I use an example from the history of philosophy to show how independently defining each side of a pair of contrary predicates is apt to lead to contradiction. In the Euthyphro, piety is defined as that which is loved by some of the gods while impiety is defined as that which is hated by some of the gods. Socrates points out that since the gods harbor contrary sentiments, some things are both pious and impious. But “pious” and (...) “impious” are contrary predicates; they cannot simultaneously characterize the same thing. Euthyphro changes his definition, but the problem of recognizing emotional ambivalence is only side-stepped. I go on to show how contemporary philosophers run into a similar problem. According to Prinz, something is good if and only if we harbor positive sentiments towards it and bad if and only if we harbor negative sentiments towards it. Thus, if we are ambivalent towards something (if we harbor both positive and negative sentiments towards it), then it is both good and bad. Like “pious” and “impious”, “good” and “bad” are contraries. Next, according to the fitting-attitude theory first elaborated by Brentano and favored by contemporary meta-ethicists like Blackburn, Brandt, Ewing, Garcia, Gibbard, McDowell, and Wiggins, something is good if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of approbation, and something is bad if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of disapprobation. I argue that moral ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, i.e., that the correct response to some things is to both love and hate them. Hence, according to the fitting-attitudes theory, some things are both good and bad. I conclude by discussing a variety of ways in which the problem of ambivalence may be solved, suggesting that attitudes of approbation and disapprobation be further individuated by the reasons for them. (shrink)

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which (...) some of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common. (shrink)

The Emotions chapter (XXV) in James' Principles of Psychology traverses the entire range of experienced emotions from the “coarser” and more instinctual to the “subtler” emotions intimately involved in cognitive, moral, and aesthetic aspects of life. But Principles limits himself to an account of emotional consciousness and so there are few direct discussions in the text of Principles about what later came to be called moral psychology, and fewer about anything resembling philosophical ethics. Still, James’ short section on the subtler (...) emotions, when read in connection with his later philosophical writings, still provides insight on James’ views about how human emotion colors our moral psychology and agency. The paper tries to articulate how James' somatic account of emotion adds significantly to contemporary discussions at the borders of moral psychology and philosophy: discussions over the foreground/background distinction, emotional temperament, emotional learning, moral imagination, and selfhood and narrativity. The final section focuses on the neo-Jamesian character of "new sentimentalist" moral psychologists. Among the substantial connections I discuss between James and 1) between Jonathan Haidt’s “social intuitionism” and 2) Jesse Prinz’s "emotionism" are the critiques that they each share of the pretensions of hard universalist ethical theories. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz's The Emotional Construction of Morals is an ambitious and intriguing contribution to the debate about the nature and role of emotion within moral psychology. I review Prinz's recent claims surrounding the nature of emotional concepts as ?embodied representations of concern? and survey his later arguments meant to establish a form of cultural relativism. Although I suggest that other theories of emotional representation (i.e. prototype views) would better serve Prinz's aims, the underlying meta-ethical relativism that results (...) is well defended and represents a significant advance for constructivist Sentimentalists. (shrink)

The essay ends addressing the fracture lines dividing the European Left as far as the integration process is concerned, also among those who disapprove of the levelling of social democracy with its dominant austerity policies imposed by communitarian institutions. A “duel on the Left” – we one would have written – all the more interesting because Martinelli compares two German intellectuals, both hostile to the lasting compromise of the Große Koalition that governs the country and on which the destiny of (...) the European Union depends. Wolfgang Streeck, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, and Jürgen Habermas, the grand maestro of critical theory. (shrink)

This is an essay I entered in a competition about the Bhagavad Gita. Probably written about 2,000 years ago; this writing is perhaps the greatest philosophical expression of Hinduism. I was attracted to the contest because the website included a very favourable comment about the Bhagavad Gita by Albert Einstein (see below). For a while, I actually considered it possible that I’d win the contest. But that time has passed. The winner has been announced and I can now see my (...) entry for what it is – a naïve attempt to preach science to the religionists, as well as a naïve attempt to preach religion to the scientists. -/- There’s a statement in the essay which I’m wondering about. I said, “However, the concept of possessing a soul is not automatically supported. The idea of having a reincarnating soul would be an easy way of explaining immortality thousands of years ago when people were completely unfamiliar with the scientific facts of an eternal universe, Einstein’s Unified Field, and fractal geometry.” I still think this might be correct. But “might” is the word. I’m wondering about something I later wrote – could the ghostly immaterial body described below be what we call the soul? If such a body is developed in the future to overcome present limitations, could it be referred to as a soul if it travels into the past and is absorbed into a physical body? (It might be what the Bhagavad Gita refers to as the Supersoul, and might be quantum entangled with all space and all time. And if the physical brain is receptive to this so-called entangled soul’s knowledge of everything in space and time, the presently accepted limits to acquiring knowledge would, to use the below quote of Einstein’s, be “superfluous”). The preceding agrees with Zen Buddhism's idea of intuitively getting in touch with your inner self. -/- From “Physics and Philosophy Beyond the Standard Model” (http://vixra.org/abs/1411.0585) – “In 1925, the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli discovered the exclusion principle. This says two similar particles cannot have both the same position and velocity. If two electrons could have identical positions and velocities, they could all collapse into a roughly uniform, dense “soup”. Protons and neutrons would do the same, and there would be no well-defined atoms. So we need the exclusion principle. Force-carrying particles like photons and gravitons do not obey the exclusion principle so we might assume the immaterial body wouldn’t be well-defined and would collapse into a ghostly soup. But perhaps a well-defined structure can be built if the photons are first stopped. The potential for photons to possess mass by having their digital sequence altered and being converted to other particles – or the potential for programming the photons - may make this definition possible. A chrononaut whose body is defined by mass would still have a gravitational effect, and be dark matter. But if she or he would rather not be a lump of dark matter, her or his body might be defined by programming photons and gravitons; creating a body of “light matter”. The beginnings of this technology may be in [43] which speaks of one photon being “stuck” to another.” . (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the different strategies the Bard uses in order to evoke sympathy in the reader for Macbeth who is so persistent in the path of evil. What strategy does Shakespeare use in order to provoke such a deep emotional response from his readers? By using paradoxes in the play, the Bard creates a world of illusion, fear and wild imagination. The paradoxical world in Macbeth startles us into marvel and fear, challenges our commonly held opinions, and (...) reshapes our thought in the process (Platt 8). As the text involves the reader in the formation of illusion and the simultaneous formation of the means whereby the illusion is punctured, “reading reflects the process by which we gain experience. Once the reader is entangled, his own preconceptions are continually overtaken so that the text becomes his present while his own ideas fade into the past. As soon as it happens, he is open to the immediate experience of the text” (Iser, The Implied Reader 290). Mesmerised by Macbeth’s powerful imagination and poetic language, the reader engages in a dialogical interaction with the play and eventually finds light in the murky world of the text. Regardless of Macbeth’s diabolical world, the reader ventures into it, shares it with him and ultimately wakes up from its dizzying stupor. In reading Macbeth, the reader leaves behind the familiar world of his experience in order to participate in the adventure the text offers him. The edifying effect of the tragedy in the end is the reward the reader reaps after eventually waking up from the nightmarish dream of the text. (shrink)

Sexual lust – understood as a feeling of sexual attraction towards another – has traditionally been viewed as a sort of desire or at least as an appetite akin to hunger. I argue here that this view is, at best, significantly incomplete. Further insights can be gained into certain occurrences of lust by noticing how strongly they resemble occurrences of “attitudinal” (“object-directed”) emotion. At least in humans, the analogy between the object-directed appetites and attitudinal emotions goes well beyond their psychological (...) structure to include similar ways in which their occurrence can be introspectively recognized, resulting in similar extensions of their functionality and meaningfulness to the subject. I conclude that although further research is needed, given the strength of the analogy, the ability of lust to satisfy some general requirements for being an emotion, and perhaps certain neurological findings, lust may somewhat uniquely straddle the line between appetite and emotion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: With this article, I advance a historicist and relativist feminist philosophy of disability. I argue that Foucault’s insights offer the most astute tools with which to engage in this intellectual enterprise. Genealogy, the technique of investigation that Friedrich Nietzsche famously introduced and that Foucault took up and adapted in his own work, demonstrates that Foucault’s historicist approach has greater explanatory power and transgressive potential for analyses of disability than his critics in disability studies have thus far recognized. I show (...) how a feminist philosophy of disability that employs Foucault’s technique of genealogy avoids ahistorical, teleological, and transcultural assumptions that beleaguer much work in disability studies. The article also situates feminist philosophical work on disability squarely in age-old debates in (Eurocentric) Western philosophy about universalism vs. relativism, materialism vs. idealism, realism vs. nominalism, and freewill vs. determinism, as well as contributes to ongoing discussions in (Western) feminist philosophy and theory about (among other things) essentialism vs. constructivism, identity, race, sexuality, agency, and experience. (shrink)

This paper is a comparison of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s theory of indexicals, especially concerning Frege’s remarks on time as “part of the expression of thought”. I analyze the most contrasting features of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s remarks on indexicals. Subsequently, I try to identify a common ground between Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations, and hint at a possible convergence between those two views, stressing the importance given by Frege to nonverbal signs in defining the content of (...) thought. I conclude by indicating a possible direction for further research. (shrink)

The term ‘Gestalt’ was introduced into psychology by the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels in an essay entitled “On ‘Gestalt-Qualities’” published in 1890. ‘Gestalt,’ in colloquial German, means roughly: ‘shape’ or ‘structure’ or ‘configuration’, and Ehrenfels demonstrates in his essay that there are certain inherently structural features of experience which need to be acknowledged in addition to simple tones, colours and other mental ‘atoms’ or ‘elements’. His essay thus initiated a reaction against the then still dominant atomism in psychology, a (...) reaction which culminated in the work on ‘cerebral intregation’ of the so-called Berlin school of Gestalt psychology. Max Wertheimer, one of the leading members of this school, was a student of Ehrenfels in Prague. Ehrenfels himself belonged to an impressive list of original thinkers – a list which includes also Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong and Carl Stumpf, the founder of the Berlin school – who were students of Franz Brentano. Each of these thinkers attempted to elaborate, both ontologically and psychologically, the doctrine of intentionality put forward by Brentano. The work of Ehrenfels and of the later Gestaltists, too, may be seen as a contribution to the understanding of this mental directedness, and in particular to the understanding of the directedness of perceptual experience. (shrink)

My philosophical case study concerns textbook presentations of the theory of demand. Does this theory contain anything more than just a collection of tautologies? In order to determine its empirical content, it must be viewed holistically. But then, the theory implies false factual claims. We can avoid this result by embracing the theory's normative character. The resulting consequences will be illuminated with the new autodetermination thesis recently proposed in the philosophy of physics by Oliver Timmer. Applying his ideas to the (...) theory of demand reveals that the statements of this discipline simultaneously concern both values and acts. (shrink)

When it became uncool to speak of beauty with respect to pieces of art, physicists started claiming that their results are beautiful. They say, for example, that a theory's beauty speaks in favour of its truth, and that they strive to perform beautiful experiments. What does that mean? The notion cannot be defined. (It cannot be defined in the arts either). Therefore, I elucidate it with examples of optical experimentation. Desaguliers' white synthesis, for example, is more beautiful than Newton's, and (...) the many colourful syntheses done by Viennese painter Ingo Nussbaumer exemplify even greater beauty. Here are some criteria (which, of course, do not implement a decision procedure concerning beauty in experiments): cleanliness, simplicity, intellectual clarity, symmetry. Similar criteria are relevant to our aesthetical judgements about some pieces of music. So we can assume that our notion of beauty conserning art is related to the one conserning scientific experiments. (shrink)

The project of a naive physics has been the subject of attention in recent years above all in the artificial intelligence field, in connection with work on common-sense reasoning, perceptual representation and robotics. The idea of a theory of the common-sense world is however much older than this, having its roots not least in the work of phenomenologists and Gestalt psychologists such as Kohler, Husserl, Schapp and Gibson. This paper seeks to show how contemporary naive physicists can profit from a (...) knowledge of these historical roots of their discipline, which are shown to imply above all a critique of the set-theory-based models of reality typically presupposed by contemporary work in common-sense ontology. (shrink)

In accordance with the contemporary state of the natural sciences, Wolfgang Sohst here presents an extended ontological model where the process is the first cosmological category, not objects. Her starts with very few primordial categories of becoming that even precede the fundamental concepts of physics and mathematics. Since Democritus, ie. for about 2,400 years, all cultures of European descent rest mainly on the presupposition that substances and their properties provide the inventory of our world. This, however, contradicts the formerly (...) and still today lively intuition (intellectually up to Heraclitus, again in Aristotle and only then resurgent with Hegel) that objects are not the dominating aspect of what we are living in. Rather, the basis of our cosmos is a world process as the result of the complementary relationship of particular objects and their mutual efficiencies. (shrink)

Die Natur ist als Thema in der Phänomenologie von Husserl bis zu Schmitz wenig bearbeitet worden. Der Grund ist teilweise in der respektvollen oder auch kritischen Distanz vieler Phänomenologen zur Naturwissenschaft zu suchen, teils darin, dass es auf dem Feld der Selbstgegebenheit - Leib, Gefühl, zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen - zunächst die eigentlichen Entdeckungen zu machen galt. Selbst die Leibphilosophie wurde nicht als ein Teil einer Phänomenologie der Natur entwickelt. Doch ist der Leib nicht die Natur, die wir selbst sind? Im vorliegenden (...) Band unternehmen Forscher verschiedener Herkunft die gemeinsame Anstrengung, mit dem Thema Natur der Phänomenologie ein neues Forschungsfeld zu eröffnen. Dabei wird nicht nur an die phänomenologische Bewegung angeknüpft, sondern auch an aristotelische goethische Naturwissenschaft, soweit sie als phänomenologisch betrachtet werden kann. Damit wird die Absicht verfolgt, die Phänomenologie der Natur als eine alternative Erkenntnisweise im Unterschied zur herrschenden naturwissenschaftlich-technischen zu entwickeln. Nach der Entfaltung des Programms wird zunächst die goethische Naturwissenschaft als ein Paradigma von Naturphänomenologie dargestellt. Dann werden die Beiträge aus der phänomenologischen Bewegung (Husserl, Klages, Schmitz) durchmustert. Und schließlich werden Fallbeispiele gegenwärtiger phänomenologischer Erforschung der Natur vorgeführt. Dabei geht es einerseits um Beiträge von seiten goetheanischer Wissenschaft (Botanik und Wärmelehre), andererseits um Beispiele, die im Rahmen der Naturphilosophie entstanden sind (Phänomenologie von Wind und Wetter, Phänomenologie des eigenen Leibes als Natur, Phänomenologie der Stoffe). (shrink)

This is a comprehensive critique of the Heidegger problem and while putting forward a critique of Heidegger; it establishes the sanctity of Levinas. In the process of doing so; the reviewer touches on the problems of not considering Edith Stein in a book of this sort. When I got my tenure in India, one wisecrack on the board of interviewers asked me how Kit Marole influenced Shakespeare. I knew that he was just quoting Wayne C Booth's stuff on Macbeth. John (...) E Drabinski and Eric S Nelson are not those wisecrack sorts. They are serious scholars and this review gives them their due. They have shown the Janus nature of the Nazi, Heidegger who was instrumental in gassing Edith Stein, who needs to be known more throughout the academy, which COVID 19 has successfully destroyed. And we need Levinas and Stein to rebuild a world which will be mediated soon by drones and inane webinars and contactless nonsense. This reviewer suggests that we read this book with great care. And not participate in meaningless online events. (shrink)