In apparent motion experiments, participants are presented with what is in fact a succession of two brief stationary stimuli at two different locations, but they report an impression of movement. Philosophers have recently debated whether apparent motion provides evidence in favour of a particular account of the nature of temporal experience. I argue that the existing discussion in this area is premised on a mistaken view of the phenomenology of apparent motion and, as a result, the space of possible philosophical (...) positions has not yet been fully explored. In particular, I argue that the existence of apparent motion is compatible with an account of the nature of temporal experience that involves a version of direct realism. In doing so, I also argue against two other claims often made about apparent motion, viz. that apparent motion is the psychological phenomenon that underlies motion experience in the cinema, and that apparent motion is subjectively indistinguishable from real motion. (shrink)

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)

Many philosophers of action, including Bratman and Mele, conceive intentions functionally, as executive states: intentions are mental states that represent an action and tend to cause this action. In the philosophical tradition (e.g. for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant) another function of intentions, which may be called “volitive”, played a much more prominent role: intentions are mental states that represent what kind of actions we want and prefer to be realised and thus, in a possibly rational way, synthesise our motivational, (...) desiderative, and perhaps affective as well as cognitive attitudes towards this action. This paper argues that intentions must fulfil both functions and then develops a concept of ‘intention’ that integrates both functions. One reason for including the volitive function in the definition of ‘intention’ is that only via this function the value of actions as such is realised, namely to enable the person, the kernel of the self to express herself and to control the world. Various forms of dissociation of the two functions are discussed and a proposal how to deal with such cases in the definition of ‘intention’ is developed. (shrink)

Fiction and truth : ancient stories about Pythagoras -- In search of the historical Pythagoras -- The Pythagorean secret society -- Thinkers influenced by Pythagoras and his pupils.

The „left Hegelian” interpretation of Hegel′s theory of Sittlichkeit has shown that the claim of the concept of autonomy to establish an internal connection between normativity and freedom can only be carried out, if the subject of autonomy is defined by its participation in social practices. While the left Hegelian interpretation thereby solves the paradoxes of the Kantian tradition of understanding autonomy, it is destined to repeat the paradoxical structure of autonomy in a new and fundamental form. This follows from (...) the insight – articulated by Hegel′s anti-Aristotelian concept of “second nature” – that participation in social practices is at the same time the medium and the other of autonomy. Autonomy thus remains dependent on an act of liberation that cannot be an autonomous action itself. (shrink)

_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)

Promotion of pro-social attitudes and moral behaviour is a crucial and challenging task for social orders. As traditional ways such as moral education have some, but apparently and unfortunately only limited effect, some authors have suggested employing biomedical means such as pharmaceuticals or electrical stimulation of the brain to alter individual psychologies in a more direct way — moral bioenhancement. One of the salient questions in the nascent ethical debate concerns the impact of such interventions on human freedom. Advocates argue (...) that moral bioenhancements do not pose a serious threat to freedom. This contention, however, is based on an overly narrow, if not impoverished, sense of freedom, which comprises only freedom of action and freedom of will. Mind-altering interventions primarily affect another sense of freedom: freedom of mind, a concept that has not received much attention although it should rank among the most important legal and political freedoms. The article introduces three senses of mental freedom potentially infringed upon by moral bioenhancement and places it in a broader perspective. Ignorance of mental freedom has far-ranging consequences for the shape of the political and legal order at large. As many advocates are apparently not aware of the freedoms they seek to undermine, their calls for moral enhancement programmes are dangerously premature. (shrink)

History of medicine is taught in West Germany as part of the standard course offerings for medical students and is well represented at many universities. But history of science and technology unfortunately still lacks any adequate supporting system and accordingly barely continues to survive at a few institutions of the Federal Republic. Although history of medicine serves a different function than history of science and technology, closer cooperation between these groups is possible and greatly desired for the future.

_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)

When confronted with unfair contributions in an argumentative discourse, participants evaluate these contributions negatively and show emotional and verbal reactions. These reactions may be crucial for further discourse and may depend on cognitive evaluation. In order to investigate the relationship between cognitive, emotional and verbal responses to unfair contributions, such contributions were embedded in argumentational episodes and presented to participants in written, auditory or role play modality. The application of a path model relating indicators of cognitive, emotional and verbal reactions, (...) demonstrated that the intensity of emotional reactions depends on evaluative cognitions, whereas verbal confrontativeness merely depends on the offender’s perceived awareness. The results are discussed with respect to methodological and theoretical issues. (shrink)

In this article, two phenomenologists are considered who both view the relation between religion and subjectivity as an affective one: M. Scheler and M. Henry. According to Scheler, the specific religious field deals with the personal appropriation of an objective modality of value. Even though he reproaches F. Schleiermacher for perpetrating a ‘Bedürfnistheologie’, there is doubt whether his own alternative is not susceptible to a similar tendency of immediacy. In the case of Henry, this tendency is striking. His plea for (...) a completely immanent self-experience seems to remove divine incarnation from transcendence. Therefore it is suggested that the possibility of God’s self-revelation requires a different kind of subjective comprehension, namely by rethinking a cogital reserve in subjectivity. In his attempt, the author briefly formulates an existential-phenomenological framework in which religious pathos can claim its proper, but ambiguous place. To that end, he deconstructs two perspectives: that of any ‘gnostic’ immediacy in which the natural capacities of man, on the one hand, and transcendence, on the other, spontaneously intertwine, and any radical hermeneutics in which the necessity of a linguistic mediation tends to fall back on contextual self-satisfaction. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 2 Seiten: 15-24.

Cognitive technology is an increasingly important form of technology that can deal with meaning by either replicating or simulating human cognition. Cognitive technology can make use of information technology, but it strives to go beyond mere information processing by recognizing, changing, and creating meaning. This presents us with a two-sided challenge: On the one hand, cognitive technology is challenged to ‘understand’ meaning in ordinary language. And on the other, it challenges us to rethink fundamental questions of human cognition and sense-making. (...) Both challenges demand a better understanding of the difference between the technical transformation of symbols and the understanding of meaning in the ordinary sense. After explaining the topic in relation to both the insights and the limitations of the reflections by Turing, Searle, and Heidegger, this paper primarily builds on Wittgenstein’s contributions to a better understanding of the difference between two conceptions of meaning and their implications for technical replication and simulation. The paper shows that Wittgenstein developed his early calculus account of meaning into that of language games and that language games not only come in many different varieties, but are also much more flexible than calculi. Of particular interest will be the difference between rigid and creative rule-following. Creative rule-following involves an intricate interplay of very different bodily, mental, and cultural constituents, so that its simulation is not merely a technical problem but also requires clarification of a number of profound philosophical questions. It will become clear that the challenge of cognitive technology shows up at unexpected places and that is much bigger than usually assumed. (shrink)

Art is not only autonomous, following its own law, different from nonaesthetic reason, but sovereign: it subverts the rule of reason.In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling ...

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature (...) of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering. (shrink)

Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980) gilt als einer der Grundervater einer theoretisch-systematischen Analyse der Internationalen Politik. Sein machtzentrierter, aber auch machtskeptischer Ansatz wurde in Deutschland lange vernachlassigt oder einseitig interpretiert. Dieser Band ist der erste politikwissenschaftlich umfassende Sammelband im deutschen Sprachraum, der das vielseitige und komplexe Denken Morgenthaus abbildet und dabei auch sein Verstandnis innerstaatlicher politischer Prozesse inkorporiert. Im Dialog mit den Disziplinen der Jurisprudenz, der Geschichte und Politik hat Morgenthau ein Gedankengebaude errichtet, das Machtskepsis einerseits und einen hohen normativen Anspruch (...) an politische Herrschaft andererseits miteinander verbindet. In diesem Band werden die staatsrechtlichen Aspekte im Denken Morgenthaus, seine Kritik am Akteur Staat sowie seine Uberlegungen zur Uberwindung einer staatszentrierten internationalen Ordnung dargestellt. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 2 Seiten: 183-191.

Paradigms of anthropology -- Evolution-hominization-anthropology -- Philosophical anthropology -- Anthropology in the historical sciences: historical anthropology -- Cultural anthropology -- Historical cultural anthropology -- Core issues of anthropology -- The body as a challenge -- The mimetic basis of cultural learning -- Theories and practices of the performative -- The rediscovery of rituals -- Language-the antinomy between the universal and the particular -- Images and imagination -- Death and recollection of birth -- Future prospects.

C'est d'un nouveau positionnement de la Bible dans la culture dont il s'agit aujourd'hui, et pas seulement d'une nouvelle manière de la recevoir et de la lire, bien que ces deux aspects soient inséparables. L'Ecriture s'est progressivement sécularisée et transformée en " classique " parmi d'autres. Simultanément, l'accès au texte s'est " démocratisé ". Désormais, il ne jouit plus d'aucun privilège statutaire par rapport à d'autres grands textes de l'humanité : tous sont soumis à la même méthodologie plurielle qui évolue (...) continuellement, tout en se voulant contrôlable par le plus grand nombre. Dans ce contexte, la pratique ecclésiale de lecture qui continue à considérer le texte comme inspiré n'est plus qu' " une pratique parmi d'autres ". On en vient donc aujourd'hui à une situation paradoxale où le canon des Ecritures, largement discuté par les historiens et les théologiens, est en réalité accepté par la culture, tandis que l'inspiration pose problème sans avoir bénéficié jusqu'à maintenant d'une même traitement, voire d'une simple attention. Cette situation peut révéler un état de " crise " dans la réception et l'intelligence des Ecritures ; elle peut aussi être reçue comme une " chance ".Today, it is a question of a new positioning of the Bible in culture and not only a new way of receiving and reading it, although these two aspects are inseparable. Scripture has been gradually secularized and transformed into a "classic" among others. At the same time, access to the text has been "democratized." In the future, it will no longer enjoy a privileged status in relation to other great texts of humanity: they all undergo examination from the same multiple methodological approach that is constantly evolving, while seeking to be verifiable by as many people as possible. In this context, the ecclesial practice of reading that continues to consider the text as inspired is no more than "one practice among others." This has resulted today in a paradoxical situation in which the canon of the Scriptures, widely discussed by historians and theologians, is in reality accepted by the culture, whereas inspiration poses a problem without having benefited until now from the same treatment, or even given any attention. This situation could reveal a state of "crisis" in the reception and understanding of the Scriptures: it could also be welcomed as "good fortune". (shrink)