It has been claimed in the literature that collective intentionality and group attitudes presuppose some “sense of ‘us’” among the participants (other labels sometimes used are “sense of community,” “communal awareness,” “shared point of view,” or “we-perspective”). While this seems plausible enough on an intuitive level, little attention has been paid so far to the question of what the nature and role of this mysterious “sense of ‘us’” might be. This paper states (and argues for) the following five claims: (1) (...) it is neither the case that the sense in question has the community (or “us”) in its content or as its object nor does the attitude in question presuppose a preexistent community (or “us”) as its subject. (2) The “sense of ‘us’” is plural pre-reflective self-awareness. (3) Plural pre-reflective self-awareness plays the same role in the constitution of a common mind that singular pre-reflective self-awareness plays in the individual mind. (4) The most important conceptions of plural subjects, collective persons, or group agents in the current literature fail to recognize the nature and role of plural self-awareness, and therefore fall short in important respects. (5) In spite of the striking similarities between the plural and the singular mind, there are important differences to consider. The authority of the singular first person point of view has no equivalent in the plural case. (shrink)

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the (...) subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change. (shrink)

This article compares situated cognition to contemporary Neo-Aristotelian approaches to the mind. The article distinguishes two components in this paradigm: an Aristotelian essentialism which is alien to situated cognition and a Wittgensteinian “capacity approach” to the mind which is not just congenial to it but provides important conceptual and argumentative resources in defending social cognition against orthodox cognitive science. It focuses on a central tenet of that orthodoxy. According to what I call “encephalocentrism,” cognition is primarily or even exclusively a (...) computational process occurring inside the brain. Neo-Aristotelians accuse this claim of committing a “homuncular” or “mereological fallacy”. The article explains why the label “fallacy” is misleading, reconstructs the argument to the effect that encephalocentric applications of psychological predicates to the brain and its parts amount to a category mistake, and defends this argument against objections by Dennett, Searle, and Figdor. At the same time it criticizes the Neo-Aristotelian denial that the brain is the organ of cognition. It ends by suggesting ways in which the capacity approach and situated cognition might be combined to provide a realistic and ecologically sound picture of cognition as a suite of powers that flesh-and-blood animals exercise within their physical and social environments. (shrink)

Public and intellectual debates have long struggled with the concept of values and the difficulties of defining them. With _The Genesis of Values,_ renowned theorist Hans Joas explores the nature of these difficulties in relation to some of the leading figures of twentieth-century philosophy and social theory: Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Max Scheler, John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas. Joas traces how these thinkers came to terms with the idea of values, and then extends beyond them (...) with his own comprehensive theory. Values, Joas suggests, arise in experiences in self-formation and self-transcendence. Only by appreciating the creative nature of human action can we understand how our values arise. (shrink)

Production of Presence is a comprehensive version of the thinking of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one of the most consistently original literary scholars writing today. It offers a personalized account of some of the central theoretical movements in literary studies and in the humanities over the past thirty years, together with an equally personal view of a possible future. Based on this assessment of the past and the future of literary studies and the humanities, the book develops the provocative thesis (...) that, through their exclusive dedication to interpretation, i.e. to the reconstruction and attribution of meaning, the humanities have become incapable of addressing a dimension in all cultural phenomena that is as important as the dimension of meaning. Interpretation alone cannot do justice to the dimension of "presence," a dimension in which cultural phenomena and cultural events become tangible and have an impact on our senses and our bodies. Production of Presence is a passionate plea for a rethinking and a reshaping of the intellectual practice within the humanities. (shrink)

Judging works of art is one thing. Loving a work of art is something else. When you visit a museum like the Louvre you make hundreds of judgements in the space of just a couple of hours. But you may grow to love only one or a handful of works over the course of your entire life. Depending on the art form you are most aligned with, this can be a painting, a novel, a poem, a song, a work of (...) architecture, or some other art object or performance. As it happens, however, we have fallen in love with a series of films: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. But what does it mean to love a film? What’s the difference between liking a film, loving a film, and being a film lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a film? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions we seek to address in this paper. -/- . (shrink)

One of this century’s most important philosophers here focuses on Plato’s _Protagoras, Phaedo, Republic, _and _Philebus_ and on Aristotle’s three moral treatises to show the essential continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian reflection on the nature of the good. “Well translated and usefully annotated by P. Christopher Smith…. Gadamer’s book exhibits a broad and grand vision as well as a great love for the Greek thinkers.”—Alexander Nehemas, _New York__ Times Book Review_ “The translation is highly readable. The translator’s introduction and frequent (...) annotation provide special elucidation on points of doctrinal complexity, giving ample references to other works and rival interpretations.”—_Choice_ “This book is an important addition to the steadily growing number of Gadamer’s works available in English. In it, we see Gadamer at his best, that is, engaged in the practice of interpreting important texts from the philosophical tradition, and also at his most controversial…. I enthusiastically recommend this…challenging book as one that rewards all efforts to understand the important claims it makes on its readers.”—Francis J. Ambrosio, _International Philosophy Quarterly_ Hans-Georg Gadamer is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Heidelberg. He is the author of numerous books, including two others translated by Smith: _Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato _and _Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies._. (shrink)

An idea going back to Plato’s Meno is that knowledge is stable. Recently, a seemingly stronger and more exciting thesis has been advanced, namely that rational belief is stable. I sketch two stability theories of knowledge and rational belief, and present an example intended to show that knowledge need not be stable and rational belief need not be stable either. The second claim does not follow from the first, even if we take knowledge to be a special kind of rational (...) belief. ‘Stability’ is an ambiguous term that has an internally conditional structure. (shrink)

Grasping Reality addresses the methodology of a sophisticated realistic approach to scientific as well as everyday recognition by using schemes and interpretive constructs to analyze theories and the practice of recognition from a hypothesis-realistic vantage point. An appendix provides an overview regarding a realistic and pragmatic philosophy of technology, including the so-called new information technologies.

In recent years, the relation between studying and learning has been a topic of debate. This article is mainly interested in a concept of study practices, conceived of as practices that are strongly engaged with issues of living together in a superdiverse city. Such practices firstly require to think the relation between studying and learning in other-than-oppositional terms, and secondly, to raise questions concerning the political role of education. The aim of the article is double in that it wants to (...) further elaborate the concept of study practices in relation to a concrete practice on the one hand, and, on the other, that it has the objective to rethink in educational terms the notion of solidarity—deeply entwined with matters of living together in superdiversity. These aims are pursued based on an analysis of the study practice of System_D, a film festival in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Brussels, drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway. (shrink)

En este artículo, Hans Rainer Sepp estudia el cuadro de El Greco, Laocoonte, pasando desde la descripción puramente formal del cuadro y el análisis simbólico del mismo hasta el análisis fenomenológico del conjunto pictórico. Análisis que reflejará no sólo la realidad de un mundo cambiante que se mueve entre el todo y la nada sino también la presencia del autor dentro del cuadro, creando un mundo aparente, una Troya toledana, que refleja el drama del artista, hostigado por el compromiso (...) ético y la alternativa de la huída. Por ello, tal vez Laocoonte pueda ser visto como la respuesta de El Greco ante el dilema de la obra de arte. In this paper, Hans Rainer Sepp studies El Greco's Laocoon, from the purely formal description and symbolic analysis to the phenomenological analysis of the pictorial whole. Analysis that highlights not only the reality of a changing world that moves between all and nothing, but the author's presence in the picture, creating a seeming world, a Troy-Toledo, and reflecting the drama of the artist, harassed by the ethical commitment and the alternative of the escape. Perhaps Laocoon can be seen as El Greco's answer to the dilemma of art. (shrink)

This three-part paper comprises: (i) a critique by Halvorson of Bell’s (1973) paper ‘Subject and Object’; (ii) a comment by Butterfield; (iii) a reply by Halvorson. An Appendix gives the passage from Bell that is the focus of Halvorson’s critique.

In his influential book, "Changing Order", H.M. Collins puts forward the following three claims concerning experimental replication. (i) Replication is rarely practiced by experimentalists; (ii) replication cannot be used as an objective test of scientific knowledge claims, because of the occurrence of the so-called experimenters' regress; and (iii) stopping this regress at some point depends upon the enculturation in a local community of practitioners, who tacitly learn the relevant skills. In my paper I discuss and assess these claims on the (...) basis of a more comprehensive analysis of experimentation and experimental reproducibility. The main point is that Collins' claims are not, strictly speaking, wrong, but rather too one-sided and therefore inadequate. This point also calls for a reconsideration of the radical (social constructivist) conclusions that Collins has drawn from his studies of scientific experimentation. (shrink)

The concept of similarity plays a crucial role in biology, especially in natural history. Despite its apparent familiarity it has been subject again and again to reinterpretations — it may even be stated that the main streams of theoretical thinking in the life sciences are reflected and condensed in its ever changing meaning. The changing content of the concept is analyzed from Linnaean systematics through classical morphology and comparative anatomy to Darwinian evolutionary thinking. It appears that the meaning of similarity (...) is inseparable from the function of the concept in theory, viz. its operational determination. In addition a remarkable correspondence has to be recognized between the notion of similarity and the conceptualization of an organism as the basic unit of life. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Internistenkongress von 1949 war Anlass und Arena einer breit wahrgenommenen Kontroverse zu epistemologischen Fragen der Psychosomatischen Medizin. Der Beitrag verortet zunächst den Kongress in der Nachkriegsgeschichte und zeichnet die Verlaufslinien der Debatte nach. Dabei werden sowohl die Positionen der Sprecher der Psychosomatischen Medizin – Viktor von Weizsäcker und Alexander Mitscherlich – als auch diejenige von Paul Martini, der auf Basis seiner Methodologie klinischer Forschung grundsätzliche Kritik äußerte, rekonstruiert. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die jeweils unterschiedlichen Auffassungen von Kausalität, Evidenz (...) und Subjektivität herausgearbeitet und kontextualisiert. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt hierbei auf dem konkreten und expliziten Gebrauch dieser Begriffe bei Martini. Schließlich zeige ich, dass diese Ereignisse im Jahr 1949 als Kulmination einer fortdauernden Kontroverse über wissenschaftliche Evidenz in der klinischen Medizin gelesen werden können, die sich mit ihren Beteiligten und Bezugsebenen über mehrere Jahrzehnte erstreckte. (shrink)

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäckers Philosophie der Physik kann als eine Reformulierung von Schellings Identitätsphilosophie angesehen werden, indem aber nicht eine ins Absolute geweitete transzendentale Subjektivität den Ausgangpunkt bildet, sondern eine reformulierte Quantentheorie. So wie Schelling in immer erneuten Anläufen versuchte, die Naturwissenschaft seiner Zeit mit seinem geistphilosphischen Ansatz zur Deckung zu bringen, so durchlief von Weizsäcker in seinen Schriften immer wieder den Weg vom Menschen zur Natur und von der Naturwissenschaft zum Menschen. Am Beispiel des Begriffs der »Zeit« als Geschichtszeit (...) wird gezeigt, dass diese Versuche interessante Vermittlungsfiguren hervorbringen, dann aber scheitern, wenn die Zeit der Natur und der menschlichen Geschichtserfahrung identifiziert werden sollen. Solche Versuche sind zudem theologisch fragwürdig, da sie die Transzendenz Gottes ausschließen. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen, Adolf Merkl und Alfred Verdross haben durch ihre Werke die Wiener rechtstheoretische Schule begrundet, die mit ihren Beitragen zur Rechts- und Staatstheorie, zum offentlichen Recht und zur politischen Wissenschaft weltweite Bedeutung erlangt hat. Um das Schrifttum dieser osterreichischen Rechtsgelehrten, das in Jahrzehnten des vergangenen Jahrhunderts entstanden ist, Interessierten in Gegenwart und Zukunft zuganglich zu machen, haben sich die Herausgeber der Aufgabe gestellt, die deutschsprachigen Veroffentlichungen der drei Autoren, soweit sie nicht in Buchform erschienen sind, zu sammeln, nach (...) Sachgebieten und innerhalb derselben nach zeitlichen Gesichtspunkten zu ordnen und zum Neudruck zu bringen. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Sein und Werden -- Bd. 2. Gott und Welt -- Bd. 3. Einheit und Widerspruch I -- Bd. 4. Einheit und Widerspruch II -- Bd. 5. Einheit und Widerspruch III.

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 296-325, April 2022.

Die ›Wiedergeburt‹ des Interesses am Kosmos, an der Rolle des Menschen, vor allem des Individuums, die Reformation und die humanistische Neubesinnung auf die Antike, auch die Tierkunde, bilden den inspirierenden Hintergrund für Denker und Forscher der frühen Neuzeit, die das Verhältnis des Menschen zum ›Tier‹ und dessen ›Seele‹ neu reflektieren, und zwar jenseits des scholastischen Konzepts einer »anima sensitiva«. Montaigne gibt in seinen Essays erste wirkmächtige ethische Impulse, indem er das individuelle Tier in den Blick nimmt. Aber auch die reformatorische (...) Theologie fordert neu heraus, über das Leiden der Kreaturen Gottes nachzudenken. Individualismus und Humanismus, Wissenschaft und Theologie bereiten der neuzeitlichen Tierethik in Europa den Weg und begleiten sie weit über Darwins Zeiten hinaus. Dieser historische Gang seit den Anfängen der Neuzeit führt über allgemeine und spezielle tierethische Diskurse in der angelsächsischen und deutschen philosophischen Aufklärung bis zu heute aktuellen Kernpositionen und tangiert heterogene Praktiken und Probleme im konkreten Tierschutz. (shrink)

The term >Bioethik Bioethical Imperative: Respect every living being in general as an end in itself and treat it, if possible, as such! reinvented Bioethics: The Science of Survival Kennedy Institute of Bioethics three-located birth bioethics medical ethics bioethics< as a comprehensive term, which includes social, cultural, environmental, medical and other fields of applied ethics.

Kaum ein anderer lebender Naturwissenschaftler besitzt die Fähigkeit, mit solcher Geistesklarheit die tiefsten Einsichten von moderner Quantenphysik mit dem uralten spirituellen Menschheitswissen zu verknüpfen wie - Hans-Peter Dürr! Es gelingt Dürr scheinbar mühelos, eine Synthese zwischen den meditativen Einsichten der Weisen des Ostens und den aktuellen Erkenntnissen der modernen Naturwissenschaften herzustellen. Dabei verliert er sich niemals in langatmigen akademischen Erläuterungen, sondern hat stets den Menschen und die gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit des 21. Jahrhunderts im Blick. Ein Brückenschlag zwischen zwei Welten, der (...) vielleicht niemals notwendiger war als zurzeit. Eine kleines Meisterwerk, das in einleuchtender Weise aufzeigt - alles Leben ist EINS! (shrink)

En un ensayo de 2002 Julia Iribarne somete a crítica algunas teorías fenomenológicas sobre el sueño, agregando algunas descripciones de los fenómenos. En este ensayo se evaluará de modo crítico la contribución de Iribarne. En el primer apartado se esbozarán brevemente las principales conclusiones de una fenomenología del sueño tal fueron formuladas desde Husserl a Th. Conrad. En el segundo se contrastará con ellas la crítica de J. Iribarne. En el tercero se examinarán la solidez de sus objeciones antes de (...) intentar, en el último apartado, desde la pregunta central sobre la producción de la realidad en un sueño, formular un resultado que lleva un poco más lejos, pero que igualmente solo puede ser provisional.In a 2002 essay, Julia Iribarne subjected to criticism some phenomenological theories on sleep, adding some descriptions of phenomena. This essay critically evaluates the contribution of Iribarne. In the first section, it briefly outlines the main conclusions of a phenomenology of sleep that were made from Husserl to Th. Conrad. The second, it contrasts these theories with Iribarne's criticism. The third part examines the strength of their objections, before attempting to formulate, in the fourth and final section, from the central question about the production of reality in a sleep, a result that takes a little further, but it also can only be provisional. (shrink)

Kritik der Repräsentation ist eine Einführung in die Theorie der Überzeugungen und der Wissenskulturen, der Erkenntnis und des Wissens. Sie warnt davor, angesichts des neurowissenschaftlichen Naturalismus zu resignieren, und plädiert für eine "kopernikanische Wende der Objektivität". Aufklärung über Repräsentation beruht auf der Klärung dessen, was Einstellungen, Meinungen und Überzeugungen sind und ob sie als wahr gerechtfertigt werden können. Daher steht die Rolle der freien richterlichen Überzeugung im Recht ebenso zur Debatte wie die Bedeutung von Überzeugungen in naturwissenschaftlichen Experimentalkulturen. Weil Ansprüche (...) auf die eine Wahrheit Kennzeichen totalitärer Herrschaft und Politik sind, schließt das Buch mit der Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Wissen, Urteilsfähigkeit, Recht und Demokratie. (shrink)