Pseudo‐mechanistic explanations in psychology and cognitive neuroscienceThis paper focuses on the level of systems/cognitive neuroscience. It argues that the great majority of explanations in psychology and cognitive neuroscience is “pseudo‐mechanistic.” On the basis of various case studies, Hommel argues that cognitive neuroscience should move beyond what he calls an “Aristotelian phase” to become a mature “Galilean” science seeking to discover actual mechanisms of cognitive phenomena.

Based on the argument that violence has a parasitic quality rather than an essence of its own, this article seeks to bring to light the conversion processes through which violence crystallises out of, as well as into, various phenomena. Violence is first examined in terms of the relation between perpetrator and victim with, however, an emphasis on the fact that violence cannot be reduced to the intention or the act of the perpetrator. On the contrary, violence is shown to have (...) the character of pathos and to open up a dimension of which the act itself is only a part. Further, the author argues that in being directed towards the other, violence harbours a performative contradiction: by turning the addressee into a thing to be destroyed, the addressing act cancels itself. The paper also sets out to identify the breeding grounds of violence, which, due to its capacity for conversion, can be detected in various phenomena that are not necessarily linked to violence. This means that violence can resort to various mechanisms and can emerge in multiple fields of activity: in bureaucracy, economics, medicine, politics, war, and most importantly, in everyday life, hidden under inconspicuous but sometimes pervasive forms. Finally, the metamorphoses of violence are shown to ultimately rest on the temporal character of violence, which implies that violence has a time of preparation and an aftermath. (shrink)

In this seminal work, acclaimed philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels deals with the problem of the nature of order after the “shattering of the world,” and the loss of the idea of a universal or fundamental order._ _ Order in the Twilight__ unites phenomenological methodology with recent work on the theory of order, normativity, and dialogue, as well as structuralism and Gestalt theory. Philosophically stringent, it expresses a more optimistic attitude than much modern philosophy, especially deconstruction._ Waldenfels passes the question of (...) order through numerous defining aspects, and concludes that there is not one global order, but rather various conflicting domains of order. Whenever the boundary of a vital or experiential domain is crossed, a discourse speaks at the boundary, not about it, and across a threshold without abolishing it. The rest is rationalization, i.e., an attempt to find a place in the respective order for what is to-be-ordered. But why, the author concludes, should a theory be more unambiguous than reality? _ Order in the Twilight__ is an important book at this time, because it may help lift the humanities out of the skeptical, relativistic disarray in which they have been embroiled in recent decades. Waldenfels does not attempt to dictate what reality should be; rather, he is open to any valid evidences. His book offers a solid footing to the human and social sciences as they seek to escape from deconstructive irrationalism. (shrink)

This paper discusses free-choice like effects in generics. Just as Jane may drink coffee or tea can be used to convey Jane may drink coffee and Jane may drink tea (she is free to choose ), some generics with disjunctive predicates can be used to convey conjunctions of simpler generics: elephants live in Africa or Asia can be used to convey elephants live in Africa and elephants live in Asia. Investigating these logically slightly more complex generics and especially the free-choice (...) like effects throws light on both the semantics of generics and the interaction between world knowledge and the interpretive options generics offer. This paper presents a package of semantic and pragmatic hypotheses to account for the data, including why the effect is absent in the superficially logically similar elephants live in Africa or give birth to live young. (shrink)

Increasing evidence suggests that cognitive-control processes can be configured to optimize either persistence of information processing (by amplifying competition between decision-making alternatives and top-down biasing of this competition) or flexibility (by dampening competition and biasing). We investigated whether high-frequency binaural beats, an auditory illusion suspected to act as a cognitive enhancer, have an impact on cognitive-control configuration. We hypothesized that binaural beats in the gamma range bias the cognitive-control style toward flexibility, which in turn should increase the crosstalk between tasks (...) in a dual-task paradigm. We replicated earlier findings that the reaction time in the first-performed task is sensitive to the compatibility between the responses in the first and the second task—an indication of crosstalk. As predicted, exposing participants to binaural beats in the gamma range increased this effect as compared to a control condition in which participants were exposed to a continuous tone of 340 Hz. These findings provide converging evidence that the cognitive-control style can be systematically biased by inducing particular internal states; that high-frequency binaural beats bias the control style toward more flexibility; and that different styles are implemented by changing the strength of local competition and top-down bias. (shrink)

Starting from the position of the ancient Stoa, these two interdisciplinary collections examine the influence of Stoic thinkers from late antiquity to modernity. Following an introductory overview, the 42 essays examine central Stoic themes and consider their cultural significance.

In this article, I apply a structural-phenomenological conception of experience and self to the anthropological theorizing of spirit possession. In particular, I argue that a phenomenology of the alien, as elaborated by the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels, allows for a more differentiated understanding of possession phenomena. Following a characterization of alienness—in conceptual distinction from the more common term “otherness”—as a dimension that necessarily eludes experience, I describe spirit possession as a cultural technology to appropriate the experiential alien by transforming it (...) into the symbolic other. I discuss this relation to the alien in thematic areas central to the anthropology of possession: illness and therapy, symbolism and naming, embodiment and self. (shrink)

In the so-called reverse proportional reading :53, 1997), the truth conditions of statements of the form many/few \\ appear to make reference to the ratio of the individuals that are in the extensions of both \ and \ to the individuals that are in the extension of \. The analysis of such readings is controversial. One prominent approach assumes they are a symptom of many and few making reference to a context dependent standard of comparison. We observe that this initially (...) attractive approach systematically undergenerates, failing to capture pervasive reverse proportionality in environments that remove context dependency of the standard. Instead, we propose that reverse proportionality in such cases can arise from the underspecification of the measure function underlying the meanings of many and few. (shrink)

In this paper we bring together results from a series of previous papers to prove the constructive version of the Gelfand duality theorem in any Grothendieck topos , obtaining a dual equivalence between the category of commutative C*-algebras and the category of compact, completely regular locales in the topos.

This paper outlines the basic traits of a responsive phenomenology by focusing on the issue of originary substitution. On the one hand, a phenomenology of alienness or otherness and an ethics of the other in the sense of Levinas will prove to be closely bound up with this sort of substitution. On the other side, this substitution can be concretised by transitional figures such as the advocate, the therapist, the translator, the witness, or the field researcher; they all intervene from (...) the position of a Third without closing the fissure which opens between ourselves and the Other, between the own and the alien. Precisely by focussing on the issue of substitution, we have the opportunity to outline the basis traits of a responsive phenomenology and to discuss some of its institutional consequences. (shrink)

1. t. Optische und elektromagnetische erscheinungen unter dem einfluss von bewegungen.--2. t. Die weitere relativitätstheorie.

ZusammenfassungRichard Schaeffler gehört zu den bedeutenden katholischen Religionsphilosophen der Gegenwart. Seine dreibändige Summe versteht er bewusst als »Philosophische Einübung in die Theologie«, nicht als deren »Grundlegung«. In einer meisterhaften Re-Vision seiner Methodologie arbeitet Schaeffler die traditionelle Lehre vom »vierfachen Schriftsinn« zu einer transzendental-hermeneutischen Kriteriologie der religiösen Erfahrung aus. Mit dieser werden alle klassisch fundamentaltheologischen Themen rekonstruierbar. Die Glaubensgeschichte Israels wird als »Schule des Glaubens« verständlich, welche entscheidende Kriterien für eine angemessene oder unangemessene Transzendenzbeziehung ausbildet. Israels Erfahrungsgeschichte ist deshalb konstitutiv für (...) das Verständnis der Fülle des Heils in Christus wie für das Selbstverständnis kirchlicher Zeugenschaft.SummaryRichard Schaeffler stands in the forefront of distinguished Catholic religious philosophers of the present time. He deliberately understands his new compendium in three volumes as “philosophical practise in theology” and not as “basics”. By a masterly re-vision of his methodology Schaeffler elaborates the traditional doctrine of the “fourfold meaning of scripture”. In his transcendental and hermeneutical reflection he points out criterias for an objective understanding of religious experience by which all fundamental theological subjects are reconstructable. The history of the faith of Israel can be comprehended as a “school of belief” that forms decisive criteria for an adequate or inadequate relation to God. Thus, the history experienced by Israel is constitutive for a proper understanding of the repletion of salvation in Christ as well as for the self-conception of the ecclesiastic testimony. (shrink)

Probabilistic Knowledge, by MossSarah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 288.

This article explores the implications of Bernhard Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology for the discipline of cultural anthropology or ethnology, insofar as it understands itself as the “science of the culturally Other”. It discusses Waldenfels’s own engagement with ethnology and shows the compatibility of his approach with discussions within the discipline. The intertwining of ownness and alienness that is central to Waldenfels’s account of experience is applied to the problem of culture in ethnology. This leads to an acknowledgement of a domain (...) between cultures, a genuine interculturality, as the fundamental field of ethnological research, which, however, can only be addressed through indirect forms of representation. Such forms are identified in the practice of ethnographic citation, and through a reinterpretation of Horace Miner’s classical satire “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, thus demonstrating the possibility of a prospective “responsive ethnology”. (shrink)

We live in a technologically mediated lifeworld and culture. Technologies either magnify or amplify human experiences. They can change the ways we live. Technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different cultures. German phenomenologist philosopher Bernhard Irrgang for than 2 decades engaging with the questions, what role does technology play in everyday human experience? How do technological artefacts affect people's existence and their relations with the world? And how do instruments, devices and apparatuses produce and (...) transform human knowledge? Along with Albert Borgmann, Larry Hickman, Don Ihde, Carl Mitcham, Hans Poser, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Walther Zimmerli, contemporary German philosopher of technology Bernhard Irrgang provides a useful vocabulary for understanding the ways we relate to technology and to the world through technologies in different cultures. (shrink)

Bernhard Nickel presents a theory of generic sentences and the kind-directed modes of thought they express. The theory closely integrates compositional semantics with metaphysics to solve the problem that generics pose: what do generics mean? Generic sentences are extremely simple, yet if there are patterns to be discerned in terms of which are true and which are false, these patterns are subtle and complex. Ravens are black, and lions have manes: statistical measures cannot do justice to the facts, but (...) what else is there that has a hope of giving us insight into what we are capturing across so many domains? Nickel argues that generics are the top of a fundamentally explanatory iceberg, and that this explanatory framework is deeply intertwined with the semantics of the language we use to express them. In providing an integrated semantic and metaphysical theory of generics, he aims to solve old puzzles and draw attention to new phenomena. (shrink)

The present paper reports the results of a vignette- and questionnaire-based research project investigating the influence of Moral Intensity (MI) on decision making in a New Zealand business context. The use of a relatively sensitive research design yielded results showing that – in contrast to previous research – objective manipulations, as well as subjective perceptions, of three of the six MI components were of particular importance in accounting for a comparatively large proportion of the variation in four outcome variables. There (...) were no interactions of appreciable magnitude between MI components, or variations across scenarios. Also, no support was found for a reliable multi-dimensional structure of perceptions of Moral Intensity. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)