In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the predictive processing (PP) framework. This convergence has so far proven fruitful for both sides: while PP is increasingly adopted as a framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena, the arts and aesthetics, examined under the lens of PP, are starting to be seen as important windows (...) into our mental functioning. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic encounters as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest. Here, we present this developing research programme, describing its grounds and highlighting its prospects. We start by clarifying how the study of the arts and aesthetics encounters the PP picture of mental functioning (§1). We then go on to outline the prospects of this encounter for the fields involved: philosophy and history of art (§2), psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics (§3) and psychology and neuroscience more generally (§4). The upshot is an ambitious but well-defined framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. -/- . (shrink)

Analyzes the philosophical ideas of two famous neo-Kantian philosophers, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, who worked together in the Marburger Schule research institute from 1880 to 1912. In volume 1, mentions differences of opinion between them, partly due to Cohen's Jewishness, noting that Cohen resented the prevalence of antisemitism and discrimination. Cohen felt that Natorp's opposition to his ideas was motivated by antisemitism. The second volume is a collection of documents and correspondence between the two and others, where antisemitism is (...) frequently mentioned (see the index). (shrink)

Originating in the north-west of India during the fourth century B.C. the Vijñānavāda oder Yogācāra school of thought vanished from India together with Buddhism around the year 100. At 640 A.D. the great chinese pilgrim and scholar Hsüan-tsang translated the doctrine of Yogācāra as Cheng-weih-shih-lun, Treatise on the cognition that everything is knowledge only. The doctrine entails essential parallels to transzendental philosophy and even surpasses it in some essential details regarding Fichtes Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. The present paper is (...) the first one comparing the most important philosophical doctrine of Asia from the point of view of transzendental philosophy.Die aus Indien stammende Vijnānavāda- oder Yogācāra-Lehre, die im 1. Jahrhundert mit dem Buddhismus aus Indien verschwand, wurde von Hsüan-tsang nach China gebracht und dort bekannt als „Abhandlung über das Erreichen der Erkenntnis, daß alles nur Erkenntnis ist“. Die Lehre weist weitgehende Gemeinsamkeiten mit der Transzendentalphilosophie auf und geht, was die Begründung von Ethik und Religionsphilosophie betrifft, in wesentlichen Einzelheiten über Fichtes Erkenntnisse hinaus. Das vorliegende Essay ist das erste, das die aus transzendentalphilosophischer Sicht bedeutendste Lehre Asiens und ihre weitgehende Übereinstimmung mit der Theorie Fichtes zum Thema hat. (shrink)

Der dialogphilosophische Konsens daruber, dass weder das Sein noch die Zeit umfassend begreifbar sei, zwingt zu der Einsicht, dass auch die Welt und ihre Elemente weder aus dem Sein noch aus der Zeit ableitbar sind: Die Phanomene sind kognitiv nicht greifbar. Die vorliegende Studie zur Dialogphilosophie geht dieser Dimension der Zeitlichkeit des Seins nach. Sie gliedert sich in zwei Teile: Der erste Teil widmet sich der Untersuchung der Zeitlichkeit in der Sprache, insbesondere in ihrem Niederschlag in der Grammatik. Darauf aufbauend (...) untersucht der zweite Teil die Zeitlichkeit des Sozialen. (shrink)

Due to the exponential growth of science and, recently, the explosive expansion of the extrascientific information of computerized 'Data' of all sorts, a New Cognitive Order of Society comes into existence. The invalidation of the 'Old Order' with its classical conditions for the production, processing, application and fairly equal social distribution of knowledge is a result of technological developments, especially of the rise of Information Technology. What may be called the Cognitive-Technological Complex is rapidly developing. This causes a fundamental change (...) of the situation of knowledge in the Information Society so-called. It confronts philosophy with the task, 'to climb up' the growing information mountains and to analyse its contents and structures, i.e., old and new sorts of knowledge in huge quantities and mixtures, with different rationality-structures, etc. This cannot be done without new theories of knowledge and rationality. What is practically needed, involves a new philosopher's comprehensive competence for handling the whole information stuff, ranging from classical theory-knowledge to modern data-knowledge. Technical competence for computers is not enough. Thus, information technology opens philosophy and philosophers an unexpected, perhaps undeserved chance to keep pace with the most progressive cognitive and technological developments. To take advantage of the new situation of knowledge and to explore the constitutive conditions of the New Cognitive Order is the first task of contemporary philosophy, in close cooperation with all cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)