Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ‘p, but I shouldn’t believe p’. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are ‘elusive’ in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internalist principles. I (...) argue that this allows us to do justice to the motivations behind both (i) and (ii). And I explain in some detail what a view of evidence that implements this strategy, and makes it independently plausible, might look like. (shrink)

Die in diesem Band enthaltenen Beiträge gehören in den Umkreis von Waldenfels' 1987 erschienenem Buch Ordnung im Zwielicht. Der dort vorgelegte Grundriß wird hier auf mannigfache Weise ausgeführt und fortgeführt - ein Materialienband also zu Ordnung im Zwielicht, doch gleichzeitig ein Vorbereitungsband zur Behandlung dessen, was Waldenfels dort responsive Rationalität genannt hat.

This edited volume offers a new approach to understanding social conventions by way of Martin Heidegger. It connects the philosopher's conceptions of the anyone, everydayness, and authenticity with an analysis and critique of social normativity. Heidegger’s account of the anyone is ambiguous. Some see it as a good description of human sociality, others think of it as an important critique of modern mass society. This volume seeks to understand this ambiguity as reflecting the tension between the constitutive function of conventions (...) for human action and the critical aspects of conformism. It argues that Heidegger’s anyone should neither be reduced to its pejorative nor its constitutive dimension. Rather, the concept could show how power and norms function. This volume would be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy and the social sciences who wish to investigate the social applications of the works of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Participants were required to switch among randomly ordered tasks, and instructional cues were used to indicate which task to execute. In Experiments 1 and 2, the participants indicated their readiness for the task switch before they received the target stimulus; thus, each trial was associated with two primary dependent measures: (1) readiness time and (2) target reaction time. Slow readiness responses and instructions emphasizing high readiness were paradoxically accompanied by slow target reaction time. Moreover, the effect of task switching on (...) readiness time was an order of magnitude smaller then the (objectively estimated) duration required for task preparation (Experiment 3). The results strongly suggest that participants have little conscious awareness of their preparedness and challenge commonly accepted assumptions concerning the role of consciousness in cognitive control. (shrink)

This comment deals with some basic elements Searle uses in order to construct social reality, i.e. togetherness, we-intentionality and the distinction between institutional and brute facts. The commentator argues that Searle’s theory tends to a partial biologism because lacking a sufficient concept of embodiment. Consequently ‘pre-institutional facts’ such as eating, copulating, working or torturing are systematically underdetermined. On the deontic level the theory relies on natural processes of conventional power. So the distinction between factual acceptance and acceptability is blurred by (...) a sort of conformism, and one neglects the status of dissidents and victims whose belonging to the predominant ‘we’ remains highly dubious. (shrink)

Studies investigating differences in mental health problems between self-employed and employed workers have provided contradictory results. Many of the studies utilized scales validated for employed workers, without collecting validity evidence for making comparisons with self-employed. The aim of this study was to collect validity evidence for three different scales assessing depressive symptoms, emotional exhaustion, and sleep disturbances for employed workers, and combinators; and to test if these groups differed. We first conducted approximate measurement invariance analysis and found that all scales (...) were invariant at the scalar level. Self-employed workers had least mental health problems and employed workers had most, but differences were small. Though we found the scales invariant, we do not find them optimal for comparison of means. To be more precise in describing differences between groups, we recommend using clinical cut-offs or scales developed with the specific purpose of assessing mental health problems at work. (shrink)

Biodiversity sciences witness a double dynamic. Whereas the need for interdisciplinary approaches is increasingly appreciated, most disciplinary studies are still confined to developing operational, discipline-specific indices. We show that a reassessment of the general notion of biodiversity is needed to clarify this situation. We advocate a new approach, according to which the main usefulness of this notion is not to capture quantitatively biological objects or processes, but to organize meaningful and coherent interdisciplinary interactions by constructively criticizing disciplinary studies. We apply (...) this approach to ecological-economic models, in the hope of launching more fruitful critical dialogs between economists and biologists. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Rationalität der Metapher" verfügbar.

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)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

First, we discuss issues raised with respect to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s scope, that is, its limitations and possible extensions. Then, we address the issue of specificity, that is, the widespread concern that TEC is too unspecified and, therefore, too vague in a number of important respects. Finally, we elaborate on our views about TEC's relations to other important frameworks and approaches in the field like stages models, ecological approaches, and the two-visual-pathways model. Footnotes1 We acknowledge the precedence (...) of both Freud¹s Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) and Neisser¹s Stimulus Information and Its Vicissitudes (a term Neisser borrowed from Freud for his monograph “Cognitive psychology,” 1967). (shrink)

The paper is interested in likely routes for the evolution of normative practice, which, it is here assumed, is a necessary precursor to the development of language. It argues that each normative practice requires a policing practice, consisting of, at least, moves of commendation, condemnation, and retraction, and it contrasts policing with mere monitoring practice. So the evolution of norms can be seen to be the development of policing from mere monitoring practice. It conjectures that a likely site for such (...) a development to take place is in the active transmission of technology, notably, toolmaking technology. Using data and observations drawn from the archaeological record and the psychology of mimicry, it attempts to illustrate the likely emergence of policing practices. (shrink)

Feelings not only have a place, they also have a time. Today, one can speak of a multifaceted renaissance of feelings. This concerns philosophy itself, particularly, ethics. Every law-based morality comes up against its limits when morals cease to be only a question of legitimation and begin to be a question of motivation, since motives get no foothold without the feeling of self and feeling of the alien. As it is treated by various social theories and psychoanalysis, the self is (...) not formed through the mere acquisition or change of roles, but rather through a process that is susceptible to crises, a process shaped by affective bonds and separations. Learning, which is the theme of pedagogy, loses its hold whenever it is confronted by disinterest and listlessness. In neurobiology, the increased significance of those zones of the brain that are connected with the realization of feelings makes the brain, accordingly, no mere apparatus that processes data, but a living organ that selects and “evaluates” what is “important.” Finally, cross-cultural comparison shows the extent to which the one-sided preference for understanding and willing, which is the mark of Western rationalism, arises from a typical, not to mention a highly masculine attitude toward the world and life, as many different studies on gender difference stress (In reference to this perspective, see Seethaler, Gefühle und Urteilskraft. Ein Plädoyer für die emotionale Vernunft, 1997). The following reflections provide a historical orientation directed toward a new determination of feelings. This new determination of feelings is phenomenological and takes the pathetic character of experience, nourished by the corporeality of experience as its point of departure. (shrink)

We discuss conceptual change and progress within mathematics, in particular how tools, structural concepts and representations are transferred between fields that appear to be unconnected or remote from each other. The theoretical background is provided by the frame concept, which is used in linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence to model how explicitly given information is combined with expectations deriving from background knowledge. In mathematical proofs, we distinguish two kinds of frames, namely structural frames and ontological frames. The interaction between (...) both kinds of frames can drive mathematical interpretation. We first discuss two examples where structural frames (formulaic notation) drive ontological development (the discovery or exploration of mathematical objects). The development of Boole’s Boolean algebra may at first appear as a metaphorical treatment of the (then) new area of logic. In the analysis, we discuss how different (aspects of) certain algebraic frames change in the transfer, how arising difficulties are solved and overall argue that Boole uses the numerical algebra frame as a research template for the discovery of a system for calculations in logic. Following Ifrah, we analyse the discovery of zero as an extension to the number ontology as driven by the development of notation. Both structural and ontological frames are extended and simplified as notation progresses. Finally, we discuss two examples from infinite combinatorics, viz. topological graph theory, and one foundational issue. In both examples, the two simultaneous frames about one object are maintained independently. They motivate different research questions, but may also fruitfully interact: shifting between multiple synchronously maintained perspectives acts as a motor of innovation. The analysis shows how a frame-based approach allows to model how different perspectives drive mathematical innovation because they highlight different aspects, questions and heuristics. (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)

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)

Essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of language and mind, Reading Brandom is also an excellent companion volume to Reading McDowell: On ...