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.

In der Neonatologie—wie auch in anderen Bereichen der Intensivmedizin—müssen Ärzte und Pflegende häufig die ethisch schwierige Entscheidung treffen, ob die Therapie eines schwer kranken Patienten intensiviert oder eingeschränkt werden soll. In der Literatur existieren verschiedene Instrumente zur Entscheidungsfindung, die, angewandt im Rahmen ethischer Konsile, die Nachvollziehbarkeit einer ausgesprochenen Empfehlung gewährleisten sollen. Zwei dieser verfügbaren Modelle („Schema zur ethischen Urteilsbildung nach dem Muster der aristotelischen Ethik“, Honnefelder 1994 und die „Nimwegener Methode für ethische Fallbesprechung“, Gordijn 1998) wurden anhand klinischer Fälle auf (...) ihre Anwendbarkeit in der Neonatologie hin untersucht. Unsere Studie zeigt, dass die Verwendung eines Entscheidungshilfeinstruments zwar grundsätzlich sinnvoll ist, deckt aber gleichzeitig den Konkretisierungsbedarf der oben genannten Modelle beim Einsatz in der Neonatologie auf. Der daraufhin entwickelte „Kölner Arbeitsbogen zur ethischen Entscheidungsfindung in der Neonatologie“ stellt ein auf die speziellen Bedürfnisse der Neonatologie ausgerichtetes Schema dar und könnte damit eine Lücke für den rasant expandierenden Bereich der Früh- und Neugeborenenmedizin schließen. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn der Neonatologie—wie auch in anderen Bereichen der Intensivmedizin—müssen Ärzte und Pflegende häufig die ethisch schwierige Entscheidung treffen, ob die Therapie eines schwer kranken Patienten intensiviert oder eingeschränkt werden soll. In der Literatur existieren verschiedene Instrumente zur Entscheidungsfindung, die, angewandt im Rahmen ethischer Konsile, die Nachvollziehbarkeit einer ausgesprochenen Empfehlung gewährleisten sollen. Zwei dieser verfügbaren Modelle („Schema zur ethischen Urteilsbildung nach dem Muster der aristotelischen Ethik“, Honnefelder 1994 und die „Nimwegener Methode für ethische Fallbesprechung“, Gordijn 1998) wurden anhand klinischer Fälle auf (...) ihre Anwendbarkeit in der Neonatologie hin untersucht. Unsere Studie zeigt, dass die Verwendung eines Entscheidungshilfeinstruments zwar grundsätzlich sinnvoll ist, deckt aber gleichzeitig den Konkretisierungsbedarf der oben genannten Modelle beim Einsatz in der Neonatologie auf. Der daraufhin entwickelte „Kölner Arbeitsbogen zur ethischen Entscheidungsfindung in der Neonatologie“ stellt ein auf die speziellen Bedürfnisse der Neonatologie ausgerichtetes Schema dar und könnte damit eine Lücke für den rasant expandierenden Bereich der Früh- und Neugeborenenmedizin schließen. (shrink)

Social Capital belongs to the core repertoire of social theory. Its potential can be spelled out in the economic dimension of ownership and in the social dimension of belonging. Renowned scholars from philosophy, sociology, economics, and religious.

The need for character education for those in public leadership is of unquestionable importance. Professor Christoph Stückelberger has recently argued that ‘structural ethics’ have their merits, and that ‘there are no virtuous institutions, there are only virtuous people’. Stückelberger calls for the cultivation of virtues, especially the virtue of integrity. In recent decades, character education has received new attention. Those who call for character education most often draw from Greek traditions, especially from Aristotle. This article will explore a different (...) source for the discussion of virtues and character. About 80 years ago, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber proposed character education, based on what he called ‘Hebrew humanism’, as the foundation of nation-building. I will explore the continuing relevance of Buber’s view of character and character formation, taking his famous Tel Aviv speech on ‘The Education of Character’ of 1939 as a point of departure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aspiration to the Condition of TouchChristopher Perricone"The Dance," written by William Carlos Williams in 1944 is one of my favorite poems: I return to it regularly. Williams gives us a feel for that life of the kermess (a carnival) in his poem through Breughel's picture, as it were three times removed from the event itself. Of course, unlike Plato, I would argue that the vitality of the kermess (...) is not lost in the poem; it is actually enhanced by a subtle sleight of hand. The poem isn't primarily about Breughel's picture. It is about dance, about the dancers who go round, their squeal, the crude music, its rollicking measures, the dancers kicking and rolling and swinging, their hips, bellies, and butts. Reading and re-reading this poem, I "see" those ordinary folk of Breughel's great picture. I "hear" their music. I "move" to their dance. The poem seems a condensation, a summary of the fine arts. Perhaps the poem is about poetry's power to reinvigorate imaginatively what we hear and see. Perhaps I think of festivities at which I have danced, how such festivities are essential to the human experience. Perhaps, William Carlos Williams in 1944, World War II coming to a close, was anticipating similar good times. As always, it's best to let the poem speak for itself:In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the [End Page 229] Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.The visual, musical, and literary arts do much to educate our senses, especially our senses of sight and hearing. The well-formed visual and auditory sensations we gain from the arts are, as it were, the melody of those experiences. They are the images we store away, the tunes we whistle. However, here, I want to draw attention to an overlooked, although not entirely disregarded, sense, i.e., touch. I want to argue that touch is the bass line to the melody of sight and hearing in the arts, i.e., that touch keeps the work of art coherent and grounded.This is an old idea. Bernhard Berenson had the idea when he was examining the painters of the Italian renaissance. Berenson argued that great painting stimulates touch, which inspires, our "tactile imagination," which produces our "tactile values." Here lay, according to Berenson the genius of Giotto. Tactile imagination and values enchance the "material significance" of a work; they act as a "test of reality." Berenson was on to something not only about painting but about the arts in general. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he lacked the scientific evidence about touch and its role in human relationships to develop his idea of tactile values to any great extent.1Although Berenson had keen intuitions, he didn't know about the biological/psychological nuts and bolts of touch. Thus, he never knew about the detailed nature and extent of our physical contact with other physical things in the world. He didn't know about Merkel's discs, Ruffini and Pacinian corpuscles. He didn't know about hierarchical and parallel levels of brain processing. Berenson didn't know that more brain space in the somatosensory cortex is given to the hand than to any other part of the body, that your fingers especially have a high density of touch receptors compared to other body areas. Today, all this information is standard textbook fare.2 Many neuroscientific details need to be worked. However, a general picture based on hard evidence has begun to emerge.This information adds significant substance to Berenson's ideas. Berenson's "third dimension" is essentially a sense of temperature, pressure, vibration, and texture. And chances are the tactile imagination is inspired most by what is touched by... (shrink)

In debate with Bernhard H. F. Taureck, Burkhard Liebsch and other authors, we try to develop a materialistic theory of war. Central to this are the rivalries between sovereign states, which have extended and become more complex in the course of globalization. Both political-economic and symbolic-emotional interests are bundled in them. The competition between states, only partially curbed by supranational authorities, also reflects in so-called international law. In contrast to the domestic legal system, this has indeed only limited legal (...) character, as Thucydides’ famous Melian dialogue shows. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Place of Touch in the ArtsChristopher Perricone (bio)IntroductionIn Breughel's great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick- sided glasses whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their (...) butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.1"The Dance" written by William Carlos Williams in 1944 is one of my favorites. Williams gives us a feel for that life of the kermess (a carnival) in his poem through Breughel's picture, as it were three times removed from the event itself. Of course, unlike Plato, I would argue that the vitality of the kermess is not lost in the poem; it is actually enhanced by a subtle sleight of hand. The poem is not primarily about Breughel's picture. It is about dance, about the dancers who go round, their squeal, the crude music, its rollicking measures, the dancers kicking and rolling and swinging, their hips, bellies, and butts. Reading this poem, I "see" those ordinary folk of Breughel's great picture. I "hear" their music. I "move" to their dance. The poem seems a condensation, a summary of the fine arts. Perhaps the poem is about poetry's power to reinvigorate imaginatively what we hear and see. Perhaps I think of festivities at which I have danced, how such festivities are essential to the human experience. Perhaps William Carlos Williams in 1944, World War II coming to a close, was anticipating similar good times.Tactile ValuesThe fine arts do much to educate our senses. One need only recall the many essays and books written on art, on how to look and hear, how various [End Page 90] critics draw our attention to the power of imagery and song. The well-formed visual and auditory sensations we gain from the arts are, as it were, the melody of those experiences. They are the pictures we store away, the tunes we whistle. However, here I want to draw attention to an overlooked sense—touch. I want to argue that touch is the bass line to the melody of sight and hearing in the arts, that is, that touch keeps the artwork coherent and grounded.This is an old idea. Bernhard Berenson had the idea when he was examining the painters of the Italian Renaissance. In a sense this article is a resurrection of Berenson's idea of "tactile values." Berenson was on to something both about painting and about the arts in general. However, he lacked the scientific evidence about touch and its role in human relationships needed to develop his idea of tactile values to any great extent.The idea of tactile values is first mentioned at the beginning of the essay "The Florentine Painters." Berenson is discussing the art of Giotto. However, prior to plunging into his subject, he says that we need to know what is essential to figure painting before we can appreciate its real value. What is essential are the "tactile values" we give to our retinal impressions, "a test of reality."2 Painting stimulates touch in order for it to stimulate our "tactile imagination."3 Giotto was a genius in stimulating the tactile imagination. Like other medieval masters, Giotto was a fine story teller and had great compositional skills. However, unlike Giotto, other medieval masters "never painted a figure which has artistic existence."4 Giotto's predecessors crafted "highly elaborate, very intelligible symbols, capable, indeed, of communicating something, but losing all higher value the moment the message is delivered."5 If such medieval symbols communicated anything at all, it was only some residue of what one might touch; whatever reality those symbols might have possessed was virtually eviscerated by the artists' emphasis on form and cognitive content. Giotto's predecessors were driven merely by ideas and, one might add, not altogether consistent and coherent ones. On the contrary, Giotto's work seemed to... (shrink)

We argue that friendship is constituted in the practice of narration, not merely identifi ed through psychological or sociological criteria. We show that whether two people have, as Aristotle argues, ‘lived together’ in ‘mutually acknowledged goodwill’ can be determined only through a narrative reconstruction of a shared past. We demonstrate this with a close reading of Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Friendship (1982). We argue that this book provides not only an illustration but also an enactment of the practice (...) of friendship as the urge to redeem—and thus to instantiate—Aristotelian suzên (‘living together’) by means of its telling. (shrink)

In Sebastian Thrun, Lawrence K. Saul, and Bernhard Schölkopf (eds), Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 16 (NIPS 2003). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 497-504.

This book collects essays from the 2006 and 2007 International Philosophy Colloquia Evian, centred around a central problem in the philosophy of mind: the relationship between the human faculty of sensory experience and the faculty of conceptual reflection, that is self-consciousness. Containing articles by philosophers of eight nationalities, in three languages (English, French, German), and of "analytical" as well as "continental" provenance, it beautifully represents the spirit of the colloquia. Authors include Joshua Andresen (AU Beirut), Valérie Aucouturier (Kent U / (...) U Paris I), Karin de Boer (KU Leuven), Santiago Echeverri (U Genève), Roberto Farneti (LU Bolzano), Tim Henning (JLU Giessen), Felix Koch (Columbia U), Christophe Laudou (Madrid), David Lauer (FU Berlin), Jason Leddington (Bucknell U), Nicolas Monseu (UC Louvain), Soraya Nour (HU Berlin), Hans Bernhard Schmid (U Wien), Henning Tegtmeyer (U Leipzig). (shrink)

The thematic focus of this yearbook is concerned with the various relations of „art“ and „technology“. It seeks to interrogate and reflect their conceptual filiations, their complementarities and mutual stimulations, and contrasts and tensions. The very notion of the „work“ challenges us to explode or triangulate the dichotomy of art and technology. This connects to further problems in and for the philosophy of technology, such as the relation of arts and crafts, the question of Kitsch or camp in art and (...) technology, or the role of play as a basic modality of artful technical production. Finally, of course, comes design, packaging, marketing and the aesthetic effects of works. With contributions by Katrin Becker, Rainer Becker, Andreas Beinsteiner, Hans Blumenberg, Johanna Dombois, Daniel Martin Feige, Nico Formanek, Petra Gehring, Sebastian Hallensleben, Andreas Hauschke, Dawid Kasprowicz, Viet Anh Nguyen Duc, Regina Oehler, Anika Reineke, Dirk Rustemeyer, Bernhard Siebert, Larissa Ullmann, Claudia Wiesemann, Ryan Mitchell Wittingslow and Konstanze Wolter. (shrink)

The monograph Drei Wurzeln des Krieges. Und warum nur eine nicht ins Verderben führt by Bernhard Taureck was published in 2019. It is one of the few current philosophical contributions on the theory of war that is not limited to the question of the moral justification of war (such as Michael Walzer’s work). Instead, the book contains not only various references to the war discourses of antiquity and their multiple references to actuality, but also a detailed examination of the (...) question of how radically war determines our history, present and future. In this book, interdisciplinary statements on Taureck’s concisely summarised approach make critical reference to this question in the common interest of finding ways out of this situation. With contributions by Lothar Brock, Hans-Georg Ehrhart, Martin Kahl, Wolfgang Knöbl, Barbara Kuchler, Ishay Landa, Burkhard Liebsch, Herfried Münkler, Max Mutschler, Norman Paech, Christopher Pollmann, Bernhard H. F. Taureck and Pascal Weitmann. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism (...) and dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenon of meta-emotions. Meta-emotions are emotions people have about their own emotions. We analyze the intentional structure of meta-emotions and show how psychological findings support our account. Acknowledgement of meta-emotions can elucidate a number of important issues in the philosophy of mind and, more specifically, the philosophy and psychology of emotions. Among them are (allegedly) ambivalent or paradoxical emotions, emotional communication, emotional self-regulation, privileged access failure for repressed emotions, and survivor guilt.

This article consists of three parts, two introductory, in which the limits and the methods of analysis of dialogues are expounded, and the major part, in which the main features of a philosophical theory of disputation are outlined.It was an essential aim of the philosophical analysis of argumentative dialogues to develop tools of substantiation for cases in which logic doesn't help any more. In the first part of this paper I show that such tools can and will be developed only (...) by analyzing argumentations (“argumentation” in the sense of a monologue in which arguments for a thesis are brought forward), and that the analysis of argumentative dialogues doesn't contribute anything to the development of such tools.The systematically first task of the philosophical analysis of dialogues consists in understanding the general practical aims of philosophically interesting types of dialogue. Only subsequently the rules of the dialogue can be reconstructed as good means for reaching these aims. Dialogical games constructed without referring to such a purpose are externally senseless and useless.The third part is an outline of a philosophical theory of disputation (“disputation” here will mean: (learned) dialogue in which the participants cooperatively though perhaps controversially attempt to find out by means of arguments and mutual criticism whether a thesis is true or false). Disputations contain argumentations, and many functions of a disputation can also be fulfilled by argumentations alone. Certifying the truth of convictions is the specific aim of disputation. This is accomplished by eliminating errors of substantiation and foundation as effectively as possible, in revising false convictions and their foundations, thereby making the remaining convictions more certain. Based on this analysis of the aim of disputation, the basic rules of disputations will be critically reconstructed: possible moves, rules of sequence, and the internal aim and ends of disputations. (shrink)

An influential thought-experiment by Derek Parfit sought to establish that people have a preference for unpleasant events to lie in the past rather than the future. In recent discussions of Parfit’s argument, this purported preference is modelled as a discounting phenomenon, as is the tensed emotion of relief, which Arthur Prior argued demonstrated that there is an objective metaphysical difference between the past and the future. Looking at recent work demonstrating some psychological past/future asymmetries that are more clearly instances of (...) discounting I argue that this existing philosophical literature fails to distinguish between what are clearly two quite different psychological phenomena. This affects recent attempts to respond to Prior’s metaphysical argument, because it is not clear that they have identified the right phenomenon to be explained. It also affects Parfit’s thought-experiment, because the purported unitary ‘preference’ may in fact be an amalgam of these two quite different psychological phenomena. (shrink)

Davon ausgehend, dass Natur und Kultur das gemeinsame Erbe des Menschen bilden, wird dargestellt, was wir unter dem Anthropozän verstehen. Es werden die ungewollten Wirkungen der Industrialisierung und Modernisierung untersucht. Dazu gehören der Klimawandel, die Zerstörung der Biodiversität, die gestörten biogeochemischen Kreisläufe, die Versauerung der Ozeane und die Verschmutzung des Planeten mit der Gefahr der Zerstörung der Lebensgrundlagen der Menschen, Tiere und Pflanzen. Welche Rolle spielen in diesem Prozess die Maschinen? Ohne ihre Erfindung wäre es nicht zu diesem Prozess mit (...) seinen zahlreichen Nebenwirkungen gekommen. Ihre Entwicklung reicht von der Dampfmaschine über die Prothetik bis zur Robotik. Ein wichtiger Motor der Entwicklung sind heute die digitale Kultur und die Künstlichen Intelligenz. Lassen sich diese auch für die nachhaltige Entwicklung nutzen? Ohne die Digitalisierung wäre es nicht zu den Entwicklungen der Gentechnologie gekommen. Mit der Erfindung und Nutzung der CRISPR-Technologie werden Eingriffe in die Evolution möglich, die sich als eine Zuspitzung der Dynamik des Anthropozäns begreifen lassen. Gibt es Möglichkeiten, die Gefährdungen und die negativen Auswirkungen dieser Entwicklungen zu vermeiden oder sie sogar zu kompensieren? Hier entstehen viele nicht einfach beantwortbare anthropologische Fragen, die für ein historisch und kulturell reflexives (Selbst-)Verständnis des Menschen von zentraler Bedeutung sind. (shrink)

Pour l'auteur, la Lettre représente un seuil décisif dans l'évolution de la théologie fondamentale moderne. Partant des trois acquis majeurs du projet blondélien , l'auteur propose une voie de réinterprétation dans une perspective culturelle nouvelle de ces acquis, notamment en raison du pluralisme qui semble d'abord s'opposer à la structure fondamentalement chrétienne du discours de Blondel, ce qui contraint à infléchir la définition blondélienne du surnaturel. Enfin, l'esquisse d'un argument apologétique valorise l'ensemble du processus circulaire de l'argument apologétique dans la (...) mesure où cet ensemble est constitué par vérité, justesse et authenticité : ce processus prend aujourd’hui son départ dans la consistance du comportement de celui qui engage l’argumentation en faveur de la foi chrétienne.For the author, the Lettre represents a decisive threshold in the evolution of fundamental modern theology. Starting with the three major accepted propositions of Blondel’s project , the author proposes a way of reinterpretation in a new cultural perspective of these propositions, notably because of a pluralism that seems at first to be opposed to the fundamentally Christian structure of Blondel’s discourse, which forces one to bend Blondel’s definition of the supernatural. Finally, the outline of an apologetical argument valorises the whole of the circular method of the apologetical argument in so far as this whole is constituted by truth, soundness, and authenticity. Today this method being with the consistency of the comportment of he who engages the argumentation in favour of the Christian faith. (shrink)

In der Architekturtheorie ist häufig von der Identität von Bauwerken oder Städten die Rede. Der Ausdruck „Identität“ bezieht sich dabei auf etwas, was man „spezifischen Charakter“ nennen könnte. Wir schlagen eine symboltheoretische Explikation dieses Identitätsbegriffs vor und zeigen, in welchem Sinn ein Bauwerk verschiedene, sich verändernde oder gar konfligierende Identitäten haben kann. Identitäten von Bauwerken werden oft als mehr oder weniger klar, positiv, angemessen oder stark bewertet. Solche Attribute diskutieren wir, indem wir epistemische, materielle und strukturelle Bewertungen von Identitäten unterscheiden. (...) Abschliessend weisen wir Wechselwirkungen zwischen Identitäten von Bauwerken und Identitäten (im Sinn des Selbstverständnisses) von Personen und Gesellschaften hin. (shrink)

The origin of colour categories and their relationship to colour perception have been the prime example for testing the influence of language on perception and thought and more generally for investigating the biological, ecological and cultural determination of human cognition. These themes are central to a broad range of disciplines, including vision research, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, developmental science, cultural anthropology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. Unfortunately, though, it has been tacitly taken for granted that the conceptual assumptions and methodological practices (...) from the dawn of empirical research on colour categorisation are the gold standard for current colour category research. Here, we show that these assumptions and practices are obsolete and flawed and have led to four fundamental and widespread misconceptions about colour categorisation: 1.) that colour perception is inherently categorical; 2.) that English Basic Colour Terms correspond to universal categories that are the end point of a fixed evolutionary sequence; 3.) that the prototypes of English basic colour terms are perceptually salient and qualify as focal colours; and 4.) that colour category research essentially revolves around the universalism-realism debate. State-of-the-art research on colour categorisation provides new, more sophisticated approaches and allows for rectifying those four statements. At the same time, some of the questions underlying those statements are not convincingly answered yet and constitute major challenges to future research. The critical considerations on colour categorisation may be transferred to research on other kinds of perceptual categorisation to inspire new, more general research questions. (shrink)