Recent debates in philosophy of mind seemingly have resulted in an impasse. Reductive physicalism cannot account for the phenomenal mind, and nonreductive physicalism cannot safeguard a causal role for the mental as mental. Dualism was formerly considered to be the only viable alternative, but in addition to exacerbating the problem of mental causation, it is hard to square with a naturalist evolutionary framework. By 1979, Thomas Nagel argued that if reductionism and dualism fail, and a non-reductionist form of strong emergence (...) cannot be made intelligible, then panpsychism-the thesis that mental being is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe-might be a viable alternative. But it was not until David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind in 1996 that debates on panpsychism entered the philosophical mainstream. Since then the field has been growing rapidly, and some leading philosophers of mind as well as scientist have argued in favor of panpsychism. This book features contemporary arguments for panpsychism as a genuine alternative in analytic philosophy of mind in the 21st century. Different varieties of panpsychism are represented and systematically related to each other in the volume's 16 essays, which feature not only proponents of panpsychism but also prominent critics from both the physicalist and non-physicalist camps. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume represent the main body of research arising from the International Munich Centenary Conference in 2001, which commemorated ...

On the basis of the „principle of the universal connection“ Leibniz connected the science of nature, anthropology and meteorology and linked climatic conditions with human diseases. In 1671/76 he put his bioclimarical conception in writing for the first time in the Directiones. Stimulated and supported by Caspar Neumann, Bernardo Ramazzini and Friedrich Hoffmann, Leibniz since 1690 demanded in several letters and papers bioclimatic observations for Germany. The Summariscbe Punctation is the best paper, where Leibniz named the conditions for an effective (...) bioclimatology. The present paper reports on the philosophical basis and the chronological sequence of Leibniz' bioclimatical project. (shrink)

An analysis of the structural properties of collections or pluralities, homogeneous objects like water, and the semantics and philosophy of events.

In continental philosophy of religion, the hermeneutics of narratives takes a central role. Analytic philosophy of religion, on the other hand, considers religious statements mostly as assertions of fact. It examines the logical form and semantics of religious statements, addresses their logical commitments, and examines their epistemological status. Using the example of a passage in the Book of Job, it is investigated whether the methods of analytic philosophy are also suitable for analyzing religious narratives. The question is explored whether there (...) is a genuine form of knowledge, besides propositional factual knowledge, which is bound to the form of narration. Particular attention will be paid to the inter-personal pragmatic embeddedness of narratives. The connection between second-personal knowledge and narratives is examined. Using the historical example of Ignatius of Loyola's theory of religious knowledge, it is argued that propositional argumentative knowledge is only one form of religious knowledge among others. The others are second-personal and narrative in character. Having thus established this distinct form of knowledge, it is asked whether our best empirical knowledge of the neurophysiological basis of intuitive and non-argumentative cognition provides a foundation for better understanding inter-personal religious cognition within narratives. (shrink)

A critique of a reductionist theory of intentionality by Ansgar Beckermann.

Is philosophy nowadays a 'globalized' endeavor?

It is now a quarter of a century ago that Wolfgang Stegmfiller wrote his monograph 'Das Wahrheitsproblem und die Idee der Semantik' (1957) which dealt with Tarski's and Carnap's foundational work in the field of semantics. While this book is about the definition of the basic semantical concepts in artificial formal languages there is an article written a year earlier (1956) in which Stegmfiller addresses himself specifically to the relation between logic and natural language. Here he gives a logical analysis (...) of the standard structural expressions in language that are still of primary concern for current semantics: quantifiers, pronouns, articles, etc. The motives for such an analysis at that time were mainly philosophical: the aim was to expose the misconceptions and pitfalls of traditional philosophy arising from the disregard of various systematic semantic ambiguities in everyday language. Or as Stegmfiller puts it: Ober sie [i.e. einige nicht triviale F~ille von Vagheit in der A11tagssprache] Klarheit zu gewinnen, ist schon deshalb yon auBerordentlicher Bedeutung, weil Unkenntnis fiber sie zu schwersten philosophischen Verirrungen ffihren kann, namlich entweder der Unterlassung von berechtigten Fragestellungen, oder, was weit h~ufiger vorgekommen ist, der Formulierung yon falsch gestellten Fragen, denen gegenfiber man dann nur die Wahl hat, entweder fiberhaupt keine oder nur sinnlose Antworten zu geben. So logic was to regiment language. Sentences involving the copula and the above-mentioned structure words are assigned one or more unambiguous formal representations in an already interpreted formal language, usually the first order predicate calculus. The natural language expressions thereby receive a precise meaning, since the semantics of the formal language has been specified in advance, as is always assumed. This procedure has, of course, always been common practice, witness the typical syntactical argot of the mathematicians. It carries, however, an obvious methodological presupposition: it is the idea that the logic of our choice to which the formal representations belong is in some sense an adequate framework to express our thoughts. (shrink)

Article on the debate about libertarian freedom.

The interdisciplinary book series Studies in Spiritual Care (SCC) publishes international research ranging from studies on specific aspects of Spiritual Care to programmatic contributions to the self-understanding of this new practice and research area. The series is of interest to professionals working in the field as well as to students, researchers, and scholars from the fields of medicine, pastoral care, psychotherapy, and social work.

An article on Free Will and Processphilosophy (in German).

SummaryIn Germany, Holm Tetens is an influential analytic philosopher of science, mind, and logic. For many years he had been arguing within the widely accepted framework of naturalism and atheism. It came, to put it mildly, as a surprise to the entire philosophical community in Germany when he published a book defending theism in 2015. In this book “Thinking God” he claims that physicalism is an incomplete account of reality, because the mental and ideal realm cannot be reduced to the (...) physical realm. As an alternative, he develops a version of theistic idealism which stands in the tradition of “panentheism”. Human subjectivity is fully embedded into the all-encompassing divine subjectivity. In dealing with the problem of theodicy, he then argues that the hope for eternal life and salvation by a supremely good being makes life more meaningful, esp. because it offers a prospect for justice to the countless victims of history. To Tetens, the worldview of naturalism and the worldview of theistic idealism are on the one hand both equally rational and defensible. On the other hand, both cannot be defeated by knock-down arguments. In closing, he urges his peers in philosophy to take the question of God seriously again. Shortly after the publication of the book, the Catholic Academy of Bavaria and the Munich School of Philosophy jointly organized an international master class on Tetens’s views which was taught by himself. The papers published in this issue grew out of this master class. For each paper by a young scholar there is also a reply by Tetens. The following editorial addresses specifically the German-speaking audience. It was thus not translated into English. All original papers discussing Tetens’s views and his replies to these, however, were written in English for the sake of reaching a larger worldwide readership. (shrink)