The most important Jewish source for Hermann Cohen's rational theology of Judaism is Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed . Indeed, the Guide is of such importance that Cohen bases his entire idealistic interpretation of the Jewish religion on it. In particular, Cohen derives his discussion of the continued authority of Mosaic law from the Guide . What follows focuses on Cohen's discussion of the “Law” in his Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism , and attempts to fill (...) a gap in recent Cohen research by dealing with questions of halakhah and the interpretation of rabbinical sources. Cohen's original reading of, inter alia, Guide III.31-32 led him to formulate a theory wherein Mosaic law—and by extension Judaism—guarantees the highest end of human morality. In identifying God with this end, Cohen eventually finds the ultimate criterion for the decision of how much of traditional Jewish law must still be observed in the need for the preservation of the purest monotheism—another central point in Maimonides' philosophy. (shrink)

La traduction latine du livre de Maïmonide Moreh Nevukhim | Guide des égarés, a été l'ouvrage juif le plus influent des derniers millénaires (Di Segni, 2019 ; Rubio, 2006 ; Wohlman, 1988, 1995 ; Kohler, 2017). Elle marqua le début de la scolastique, fille du judaïsme élevée par des penseurs juifs, selon l'historien Heinrich Graetz (Geschichte der Juden, L. 6, Leipzig 1861, p. xii). Imprimée par la première presse mécanique de Gutenberg, son influence en Occident s'étendit jusqu'au Vème concile (...) du Latran (1512-1517) « où les savants furent encouragés à lever les difficultés qui semblaient diviser l'ensemble de la théologie et de la philosophie — (Leibniz, Théodicée, 11 ) ». Pendant des siècles, le Guide a révolutionné le programme d'instruction scolaire en réintégrant dans le domaine de la foi les lois de la pensée (dont la quatrième est devenue le principe de la raison suffisante de Leibniz). Cette collection complète de notes qui expose les idées du Guide fournit tous les passages sélectionnés et réécrits par Leibniz. Cette première traduction complète bilingue annotée des manuscrits originaux en latin sert de porte d'entrée à la foi conforme à la Raison. -/- « L'excellent livre du Rabbin Moïse Maïmonide, le Guide des égarés, est plus philosophique que je ne l'avais imaginé et mérite une lecture attentive. L'auteur, distingué par son intelligence en philosophie, était versé dans les mathématiques, l'art médical, et aussi dans la connaissance de Saintes Écritures. » — G. W. LEIBNIZ, 1685, Anthologie de Leibniz du Guide de Maïmonide, Chapitre III. (shrink)

Vorwort - Einleitung: Welt und Wirkung von Hegels Ästhetik I. KUNSTIDEAL UND KULTURPOLITIK. Otto Pöggeler. System und Geschichte der Künste bei Hegel - Helmut Schneider. Aus der Ästhetikvorlesung Hegels 1820/1821 - Lucia Sziborsky. Schelling und die Münchener Akademie der bildenden Künste. Zur Rolle der Kunst im Staat - Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. Die Rolle der Kunst im Staat. Kontroverses zwischen Hegel und den Hegelianern II. DIE BILDENDEN KÜNSTE UND DIE HISTORIE. Heinrich Dilly. Hegel und Schinkel - Werner Busch. Wilhelm von Kaulbach -peintre-philosophe (...) und modern painter. Zu Kaulbachs Weltgeschichtszyklus im Berliner Neuen Museum - Gregor Stemmrich/Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. Hegels Kügelgen-Rezension und die Auseinandersetzung um den eigentlichen historischen Stil in der Malerei - Wolfgang Beyrodt. Ansichten vom Niederrhein. Zum Verhältnis von Carl Schnaases Niederländischen Briefen zu Georg Forster III. MUSIK UND POESIE. Konrad Schüttauf. Melos und Drama. Hegels Begriff der Oper - Jürgen Söring. Hegel und die Romantheorie R. Wagners IV. POESIE UND WELTKULTUR. Hans-Georg Gadamer. Die Stellung der Poesie im System der Hegelschen Ästhetik und die Frage des Vergangenheitscharakters der Kunst - Dieter Bremer. Hegel und Aischylos - Clemens Menze. Das indische Altertum in der Sicht Wilhelm von Humboldts und Hegels - Barbara Stemmrich-Köhler/Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert. Von Hammer, Goethe und Hegel über Firdausi. Literaturkritik. Geschichtsbild und kulturpolitische Implikation der Ästhetik - Karlheinz Stierle. Malerei und Literatur der italienischen Renaissance in Hegels Ästhetik - Ursula Rautenberg. Ein Hegelianer unter Germanisten. Karl Rosenkranz' mediaevistische Studien. (shrink)

La traducción al latín de la obra de Maimónides Moreh Nevukhim | Guía para Perplejos, ha sido la obra judía más influyente en los últimos milenios (Di Segni, 2019; Rubio, 2006; Wohlman, 1988, 1995; Kohler, 2017). Ésta marcó el comienzo de la escolástica, «hija del judaísmo nutrida por pensadores judíos, » según el historiador Heinrich Graetz (Geschichte der Juden, L. 6, Leipzig 1861, p. xii). Impresa por la primera imprenta mecánica de Gutenberg, su influencia en Occidente se extendió hasta (...) el Quinto Concilio de Letrán (1512-1517) « donde se instó a los eruditos a eliminar las dificultades que parecían dividir el conjunto de la teología y la filosofía (Leibniz, Teodicea, 11 ). » Durante siglos, la Guía revolucionó el currículo de estudios de la instrucción escolar al reintegrar en el ámbito de la fe las leyes del pensamiento (la cuarta de las cuales se convirtió en el principio de la razón suficiente de Leibniz). La colección completa de las notas que exponen las ideas de la Guía incluye todos los pasajes seleccionados y reescritos por Leibniz. Esta primera traducción bilingüe completa y anotada de los manuscritos originales en latín sirve como una puerta de entrada a la fe conforme a la Razón. -/- « El excelente libro del rabino Moisés Maimónides, Guía para perplejos, es más filosófico de lo que había imaginado y merece una lectura atenta. El autor, distinguido por su inteligencia filosófica, fue versado en matemáticas, en el arte de la medicina, y también en el conocimiento de las Sagradas Escrituras. » — GW LEIBNIZ, 1685. Antología de Leibniz de la Guía de Maimónides, Capítulo III. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in (...) virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

A core commitment of meta-ethical expressivism is that ordinary descriptive judgements are representational states, while normative judgements are non-representational directive states. Traditionally, this commitment has been understood as a psychological thesis about the nature of normative judgements, as the view that normative judgements consist in certain sorts of conative propositional attitudes. This paper’s aim is to challenge this reading and to show that changing our view on how this commitment is to be understood opens up space for attractive forms of (...) expressivism. The paper argues this by example: by presenting one of the possible expressivist views that can be developed on this reading and by arguing that this view has distinctive advantages over forms of expressivism that endorse the traditional interpretation of expressivism. (shrink)

Formal principles governing best practices in classification and definition have for too long been neglected in the construction of biomedical ontologies, in ways which have important negative consequences for data integration and ontology alignment. We argue that the use of such principles in ontology construction can serve as a valuable tool in error-detection and also in supporting reliable manual curation. We argue also that such principles are a prerequisite for the successful application of advanced data integration techniques such as ontology-based (...) multi-database querying, automated ontology alignment and ontology-based text-mining. These theses are illustrated by means of a case study of the Gene Ontology, a project of increasing importance within the field of biomedical data integration. (shrink)

Recent years have seen incredible advances in our abilities to gather and store data, as well as in the computational power and methods—most prominently in machine learning—to do things with those data. These advances have given rise to the emerging field “data science.” Because of its immense power for providing practically useful information about the world, data science is a field of increasing importance. This paper argues that a core part of what data scientists are doing should be understood as (...) conceptual engineering. At all stages of the data science process, data scientists need to deliberate about, evaluate, and make classificatory choices in a variety of ways, including as part of training and evaluating machine learning models. Viewing these activities as involved in conceptual engineering offers a new way to think about them, one that helps to clarify what is at stake in them, what sorts of considerations are relevant, and how to systematically think about the choices faced. Given the increasing importance of data science, if conceptual engineering is relevant for activities in data science, this also highlights the relevance and impact of conceptual engineering as a method. Furthermore, the paper also suggests that machine learning opens distinctive and novel ways in which data scientists engage in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

A number of concerns have been recently raised regarding the possibility of human agents to effectively maintain control over intelligent and (partially) autonomous artificial systems. These issues have been deemed to raise “responsibility gaps.” To address these gaps, several scholars and other public and private stakeholders converged towards the idea that, in deploying intelligent technology, a meaningful form of human control (MHC) should be at all times exercised over autonomous intelligent technology. One of the main criticisms of the general idea (...) of MHC is that it could be inherently problematic to have high degrees of control and high degrees of autonomy at the same time, as the two dimensions appear to be inversely related. Several ways to respond to this argument and deal with the dilemma between control and autonomy have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we further contribute to the philosophical effort to overcome the trade-off between automation and human control, and to open up some space for moral responsibility. We will use the instrument of conceptual engineering to investigate whether and to what extent removing the element of direct causal intervention from the concept of control can preserve the main functions of that concept, specifically focusing on the extent it can act as a foundation of moral responsibility. We show that at least one philosophical account of MHC is indeed a conceptually viable theory to absolve the fundamental functions of control, even in the context of completely autonomous artificial systems. (shrink)

Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) was one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, the influential school that argues that perception is best understood as an organized pattern rather than as separate parts. Penetrating in its insights and lucid in presentation, Gestalt Psychology (1947) is Köhler's definitive statement of Gestalt theory.

Excerpt from Geistige Werte: Ein Vermächtnis Deutscher Philosophie Das Sein ist ewig; denn Gesetze Bewahren die lebendigen Schätze, Aus welchen sich das All geschmückt. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the (...) original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Empathy means understanding another person’s emotional or intentional state by vicariously sharing this state. As opposed to emotional contagion, empathy is characterized by the self–other distinction of subjective experience. Empathy develops in the second year, as soon as symbolic representation and mental imagery set in that enable children to represent the self, to recognize their mirror image, and to identify with another person. In experiments with 126 children, mirror recognition and readiness to empathize with a distressed playmate were investigated. Almost (...) all recognizers showed compassion and tried to help, whereas nonrecognizers were perplexed or remained indifferent. Several motivational consequences of empathy are discussed and its special quality is outlined in comparison with theory of mind and perspective taking. (shrink)

We are all familiar with judgements about the persistence of people. Furthermore, we tend to structure certain attitudes and practices around such judgements because we think that personal identity matters for the relevant practical concerns. Response‐dependence views try to accommodate that personal identity matters by letting relevant attitudes and practices determine the personal identity relation for a particular person. This paper argues that genuine response‐dependence views are not well positioned to accommodate the connection between personal identity and what matters. Rather, (...) if we accept such a connection, this supports normative‐facts‐first views, according to which relevant normative facts determine personal identity. (shrink)

The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others (...) analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga. Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and proof and on the nature of metalanguages. The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner. (shrink)

Die gegenwartigen Herausforderungen des internationalen Verhaltnisses sind Gemeingut: Gewalt zwischen und in Staaten, Bedrohung durch Massenvernichtungswaffen, der zunehmende globale Wirtschaftsverkehr. Durch sie ist souverane Staatlichkeit als Kern politischer Handlungsoptionen, rechtlicher Begriffsbildung und ihrer wissenschaftlichen Erfassung problematisch geworden. Oft erscheint der Ruckzug auf staatliche Selbstbehauptung oder die Einrichtung einer globalen Zwangsgewalt als einzige Losung. Welches Potential im Gegensatz dazu in dem auf Kant zuruckgehenden Gedanken internationaler Kooperation liegt, untersuchten Vertreter verschiedener Fachrichtungen im Rahmen der im Band dokumentierten interdisziplinaren Tagung des Seminars (...) fur Rechtsphilosophie an der Universitat Hamburg.". (shrink)

"Passing Time" is a profound meditation on life's many interstitial spaces, in which we spend time waiting for something to happen -- the queue, the waiting room, the place held for two when only one has arrived. At once poetic and philosophical, intimate and analytical, "Passing Time" forms the perfect antidote to the headlong rush of our culture.

Der Band enthält Essays des bekannten Zürcher Philosophen, die auf vielfältige Weise so grundlegende Dinge wie den Ursprung des Bösen, die Machbarkeit des Glücks, die Möglichkeit von Hoffnung oder das Wesen der Verführung behandeln. Gemeinsam ist diesen Arbeiten die Absicht, die großen Philosophischen Themen aus ihrem Zusammenhang in den alltäglichen Empfindungen unseres Daseins zu verstehen. Das ist das, was Kohler die >Kunst des Philosophierens nennt: Kunst vergnügt, weil sie, ohne zu langweilen, viel zum Denken aufgibt.