The focus of the following pages is an attempt to understand one of the central texts of political thought in the 20th century: Walter Benjamin’s The Critique of Violence. This text has lost none of its critical potential in the hundred years since it was written. Not least, the epochal Homo-sacer-Project of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben represents at its core an attempt to interpret the Critique of Violence. The primary aim of the present essay is to present the text’s (...) underlying conception of the sphere of moral relations and the force that operates in this sphere - violence. Thus, it is about the sphere-relative classification of violence. First, the concept of violence underlying the text and the sphere of moral relations in general are determined, and then the positive and negative results of Benjamin’s critical project are presented. After the reconstruction of the central concepts of violence, some aporias in the relationship between these concepts of violence and in the relationship between the spheres corresponding to them are to be addressed. In this context, the ‘autodestructive’ character of the text is to be elaborated. However, it will also be shown that the Benjaminian text - despite its obscurity - provides means to criticize state systems that instrumentalize theology to justify governance. I would like to develop this by means of Benjamin’s frequently used concept of “spheres.”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 311-312.

Schlusslogische Letztbegründung is a collection of essays in honor of Kurt Walter Zeidler. Mr. Zeidler is a distinguished Kant- and Neo-Kantian-scholar who has reconstructed Kant's concept of transcendental logic in connection with the logic of the concept of Hegel and the logic of symbolization of Peirce. (cf. Zeidler: Grundriss der transzendentalen Logik, 3rd ed., Wien 2017) He has most notably inquired intensively into the relation of transcendental logic to philosophy of science (cf. Zeidler: Prolegomena zur Wissenschaftstheorie, Wien 2000) and to (...) phenomenology (cf. Zeidler: Vermittlungen. Zum antiken und neueren Idealismus, Wien 2016). He has also published several studies on Neo-Kantianism (cf. Zeidler: Provokationen. Zu Problemen des Neukantianismus, Wien 2018). This is refelected in the collection of essays by distinguished scholars who discuss and critically examine Zeidler's work. It includes contributions by Steinar Mathisen (Oslo), Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Vienna), Werner Flach (Lichtenau), Thomas Knoppe (Straberg), Geert Edel (Wyk/Föhr), Martin Bunte (Münster), Reinhard Hiltscher (Dresden), Walter Tydecks (Bensheim), Christian Krijnen (Amsterdam), Hartwig Wiedebach (Zürich), Max Gottschlich (Linz), Thomas Sören Hoffmann (Hagen), Rudolf Meer (Kaliningrad), Hans-Jürgen Müller (Frankfurt am Main), Robert König (Vienna), Ulrich Blau (Marburg), Karen Gloy (Luzern/Munich), Reinhold Breil (Aachen), Erhard Oeser (Vienna), Hans-Dieter Klein (Vienna), Hans Martin Dober (Tübingen), Kurt Walter Zeidler (Vienna) and Lois Marie Rendl (Vienna). (shrink)

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind (...) is that the mechanism explains the rich, deep, and multifaceted character of our conscious perception. It also gives a unified account of how perception is sculpted by attention, and how it depends on action. The mind is revealed as having a fragile and indirect relation to the world. Though we are deeply in tune with the world we are also strangely distanced from it. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen hat mit seiner wissenschaftslogischen Kantinterpretation und programmatischen Orientierung der Erkenntnislehre am ‚Faktum der Wissenschaft‘ das Verständnis von transzendentaler Logik bis in die Gegenwart maßgeblich mitgeprägt. Der zentrale Punkt seiner Kantinterpretation ist die Identifikation der „transzendentalen Methode“ mit der „regressiven Lehrart“ der Prolegomena und damit die Ersetzung der metaphysischen Deduktion der Kategorien durch eine wissenschaftstheoretische Rekonstruktion der synthetischen Grundsätze der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird versucht im Anschluss an grundlegende Arbeiten von Kurt Walter Zeidler, die von Cohen in (...) Kants Theorie der Erfahrung entwickelten Argumente für diese Interpretation und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Motive darzulegen und sowohl mit Blick auf Kants eigene methodologische Ausführungen in den Prolegomena und der Kritik der reinen Vernunft als auch mit Blick auf das von Cohen in der Logik der reinen Erkenntnis als „härtestes Problem der Logik“ bezeichnete Problem der Vermittlung von Einzelnem und Allgemeinem kritisch zu hinterfragen. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen hat mit seiner wissenschaftslogischen Kantinterpretation und programmatischen Orientierung der Erkenntnislehre am ‚Faktum der Wissenschaft‘ das Verständnis von transzendentaler Logik bis in die Gegenwart maßgeblich mitgeprägt. Der zentrale Punkt seiner Kantinterpretation ist die Identifikation der „transzendentalen Methode“ mit der „regressiven Lehrart“ der Prolegomena und damit die Ersetzung der metaphysischen Deduktion der Kategorien durch eine wissenschaftstheoretische Rekonstruktion der synthetischen Grundsätze der mathematischen Naturwissenschaft. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird versucht im Anschluss an grundlegende Arbeiten von Kurt Walter Zeidler, die von Cohen in (...) Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1871, 2. Aufl. 1885) entwickelten Argumente für diese Interpretation und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Motive darzulegen und sowohl mit Blick auf Kants eigene methodologische Ausführungen in den Prolegomena und der Kritik der reinen Vernunft als auch mit Blick auf das von Cohen in der Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (21914) als „härtestes Problem der Logik“ bezeichnete Problem der Vermittlung von Einzelnem und Allgemeinem kritisch zu hinterfragen. (shrink)

This article aims to examine journalists' adversarial challenges within the Australian political news interview. Within the Australian context, journalists tend to challenge interviewees: by challenging the content of the prior turn, by `interrupting' the prior turn, and by initially presenting their challenge as a freestanding assertion, not attributed to a third party. As a result, journalists could be interpreted as expressing their own perspective on the topic at hand, rather than maintaining a neutralistic stance. Although the challenging nature of journalistic (...) questions has been previously noted within the Australian context, there have been few analyses of such challenges. Using the framework of conversation analysis, the aim of the following article is to examine adversarial challenges in more detail. In particular, the article will focus on how interviewers and interviewees collaboratively produce the political news interview in such a way as to avoid accusations of bias or non-neutrality. First, the article will focus on the challenging nature of the IR's turn, by examining the various techniques used by journalists to ensure that they maintain a neutralistic stance. Second, it will examine the way in which IEs respond to such adversarial challenges. It will show how although politicians do not overtly accuse IRs of bias or impartiality, they clearly orient to the challenging nature of the journalists' turn. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) is now a prominent theoretical framework in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This review focuses on PP research with a relatively philosophical focus, taking stock of the framework and discussing new directions. The review contains an introduction that describes the full PP toolbox; an exploration of areas where PP has advanced understanding of perceptual and cognitive phenomena; a discussion of PP's impact on foundational issues in cognitive science; and a consideration of the philosophy of science (...) of PP. The overall picture is that PP is a fruitful framework, with exciting new directions awaiting exploration. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the development of Kurt Walter Zeidler's argument for a reformulation of Kant's transcendental dialectic as a theory of the foundation of transcendental logic. It therefore examines his doctoral dissertation "Logik des Erkenntnisprozesses. Dedukton - Induktion - Abduktion" (1979), where he discusses Norwood Russell Hansons 'logic of discovery' and finds an analogy between Charls S. Peirce's definiton of 'abduction' and Hegel's defintion of 'analogy', as well as his early papers, collected in "Grundlegungen. Zur Theorie der Vernunft und Letztbegründung" (...) (2015), and his habilitation dissertation "Vernunft und Erfahrung. Untersuchungen zum Erkenntnisproblem in Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie" (1986), where he first seeks to verify the claim of Hegel and Peirce, that the synthetical unity of apperception is to be analyzed as a unity of three forms of syllogism corresponding to Aristotle's three figures of syllogism, through a close study of Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories as well as of the transcendental ideas, before he comes to reformulate these deductions in the light of the original unity of sensuality and understanding. The development of this argument is critically examined in three respects, first, in reference to Zeidler's reading of Peirce, Hegel and Schelling, second, with respect to Zeidler's analysis of scientific rationality as well as of the architectonic of the Critique of pure reason, and third, in view of the influence of Erhard Oeser and Erich Heintel on Zeidler's thought. (shrink)

Carnaps Denken wurde während seines Studiums und der Arbeit an seiner Dissertation von Neukatianischen Motiven beeinflusst, von denen er sich nach seiner Habilitation in Wien (1926) zunehmend distanzierte. Er besuchte in Freiburg bei Heinrich Rickert (1911/1912) und in Jena (1913/14) bei Bruno Bauch Lehrveranstaltungen zur Philosophie. Außerdem besuchte er in Freiburg bei Jonas Cohn Lehrveranstaltungen zur experimentellen Psychologie. Bei Bauch reichte er 1920 eine Arbeit mit dem Titel Welche philosophische Bedeutung hat das Problem der „Grundlegung der Geometrie“ für die Lehramtsprüfung (...) und 1921 seine darauf aufbauende Dissertation Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre ein. Rickert war das Haupt der von Wilhelm Windelband begründeten Südwestdeutschen Schule des Neukantianismus, zu der auch Cohn und Bauch gezählt werden. Bauch war jedoch auch von der von Hermann Cohen begründeten Marburger Schule des Neukantianismus, deren herausragenste Vertreter Paul Natorp und Ernst Cassirer sind, beeinflusst. Vor allem Natorps Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (1910a) und Cassirers Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910) beeinflussten Carnaps Verständnis der methodischen Grundlagen der Mathematik und der Physik (Richardson 1998, 115-117, 138-139; Mormann 2000, 44-46). In persönlichem Kontakt war Carnap seit seinem Umzug nach Buchenbach Anfang der 1920er Jahre auch mit dem Rickert-Schüler Broder Christiansen. (shrink)

Socially, people find it difficult to say ‘no’ to requests or invitations. In spoken interaction, we orient to this difficulty through the design of our responses. An agreement response is characteristically said straightaway with minimal gap between request and response. A disagreement response is characteristically delayed through silence and by prefacing the disagreement turn with tokens such as ‘well’, ‘uhm’ and ‘uh’ or with accounts as to why the recipient cannot accept the request or invitation. The question for this article (...) concerns what occurs when requests or invitations are made via texting. The results from 329 texting interactions showed that if responses to a request or invitation were delayed by more than 1 minute, it was much more likely be a ‘no’ rather than a ‘yes’ response. In other words, preferred responses were sent quickly; dispreferred responses were delayed. Understanding texting as social interaction is increasingly important as the range of communicative options continues to widen, Multimedia Messaging Service, Instant Messaging, email). This study shows preference organisation similarities between spoken interaction and texting with texters orienting to social norms concerning delayed responses. Further research is needed to understand in what contexts a person might choose one communicative medium over another. (shrink)

A diferencia de todos los demás sistemas de imputación, Jakobs ubica el acento de la relevancia jurídico-penal del hecho en su significado normativo, como algo que trasciende la mera causalidad exterior y la finalidad del autor, de manera que lo decisivo para la imputación jurídico-penal no es ni lo psíquicoreal querido por el autor, ni la causalidad desplegada por su conducta, sino el significado normativo de esa conducta como la expresión de un sentido objetivo de desautorización de la vigencia de (...) la norma en un determinado contexto social. (shrink)

Lower levels of news use are generally understood to be associated with less political engagement among citizens. But while some people simply have a low preference for news, others avoid the news intentionally. So far little is known about the relationship between active news avoidance and civic engagement in society, a void this study has set out to fill. Based on a four-wave general population panel survey in the Netherlands, conducted between April and July 2020 (N = 1,084) during a (...) crisis situation, this research-in-brief investigates the development of news avoidance and pro-social civic engagement over time. Results suggest that higher news topic avoidance results in higher levels of civic engagement. The study discusses different explanations for why less news can mean more engagement. (shrink)

An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...) and its environment. This boundary defines the mind-world relation, opens the door to skepticism, and makes the mind transpire as more inferentially secluded and neurocentrically skull-bound than many would nowadays think. Therefore, PEM somewhat deflates contemporary hypotheses that cognition is extended, embodied and enactive; however, it can nevertheless accommodate the kinds of cases that fuel these hypotheses. (shrink)

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are epistemically opaque in the sense that their inner functioning is often unintelligible to human investigators. Inkeri Koskinen has recently argued that this poses special problems for a widespread view in social epistemology according to which thick normative trust between researchers is necessary to handle opacity: if DNNs are essentially opaque, there simply exists nobody who could be trusted to understand all the aspects a DNN picks up during training. In this paper, I present a counterexample (...) from scientific practice, AlphaFold2. I argue that for epistemic reliance on an opaque system, trust is not necessary, but reliability is. What matters is whether, for a given context, the reliability of a DNN has been compellingly established by empirical means and whether there exist trustable researchers who have performed such evaluations adequately. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch a programme for AI-driven social theory. We begin by defining what we mean by artificial intelligence (AI) in this context. We then lay out our specification for how AI-based models can draw on the growing availability of digital data to help test the validity of different social theories based on their predictive power. In doing so, we use the work of Randall Collins and his state breakdown model to exemplify that, already today, AI-based models can (...) help synthesise knowledge from a variety of sources, reason about the world, and apply what is known across a wide range of problems in a systematic way. However, we also find that AI-driven social theory remains subject to a range of practical, technical, and epistemological limitations. Most critically, existing AI-systems lack three essential capabilities needed to advance social theory in ways that are cumulative, holistic, open-ended, and purposeful. These are (1) semanticisation, i.e., the ability to develop and operationalize verbal concepts to represent machine-manipulable knowledge; (2) transferability, i.e., the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to another; and (3) generativity, i.e., the ability to independently create and improve on concepts and models. We argue that if the gaps identified here are addressed by further research, there is no reason why, in the future, the most advanced programme in social theory should not be led by AI-driven cumulative advances. (shrink)

Eine zentrale Frage der Populationsethik ist, ob eine Welt mit zusätzlichen glücklichen Individuen besser ist als eine ansonsten gleiche Welt ohne diese Individuen. Natürlich wirkt sich die Existenz zusätzlicher Individuen auf verschiedenste Weise auf das Wohlergehen anderer (wie z.B. der Eltern) aus und ist aus diesem Grund instrumentell gut oder schlecht. Es verbleibt jedoch die strittige Frage, ob die Existenz zusätzlicher glücklicher Individuen an sich gut ist. Nach einer verbreiteten (obgleich keineswegs universellen) Intuition ist die Existenz zusätzlicher glücklicher Individuen, zumindest (...) wenn es diesen nicht außergewöhnlich gut geht, an sich weder gut noch schlecht, sondern ethisch neutral. Diese Intuition motiviert das starke Neutralitätsprinzip, welches in etwa besagt, dass eine Welt mit zusätzlichen Individuen, denen es nicht besonders gut oder schlecht geht, genauso gut ist wie die gleiche Welt ohne diese Individuen. Im Folgenden rekonstruiere ich ein einflussreiches Argument von John Broome gegen das starke Neutralitätsprinzip. Broomes Argument ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie eine überraschende und für viele kontraintuitive Konklusion aus weitgehend anerkannten Prämissen abgeleitet werden kann. (shrink)

The free energy principle says that any self-organising system that is at nonequilibrium steady-state with its environment must minimize its free energy. It is proposed as a grand unifying principle for cognitive science and biology. The principle can appear cryptic, esoteric, too ambitious, and unfalsifiable—suggesting it would be best to suspend any belief in the principle, and instead focus on individual, more concrete and falsifiable ‘process theories’ for particular biological processes and phenomena like perception, decision and action. Here, I explain (...) the free energy principle, and I argue that it is best understood as offering a conceptual and mathematical analysis of the concept of existence of self-organising systems. This analysis offers a new type of solution to long-standing problems in neurobiology, cognitive science, machine learning and philosophy concerning the possibility of normatively constrained, self-supervised learning and inference. The principle can therefore uniquely serve as a regulatory principle for process theories, to ensure that process theories conforming to it enable self-supervision. This is, at least for those who believe self-supervision is a foundational explanatory task, good reason to believe the free energy principle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 65-70 [Access article in PDF] Top-Down and Bottom-Up in Delusion Formation Jakob Hohwy Keywords delusions, top-down, bottom-up, predictive coding Some delusions may arise as responses to unusual experiences (Davies et al. 2001; Maher 1974;). The implication is that delusion formation in some cases involves some kind of bottom-up mechanism—roughly, from perception to belief. Delusion formation may also involve some kind of top-down (...) mechanism. This could be in the shape of a patient's flawed background beliefs, or biases, which somehow modulate perception or ensure delusional interpretations of experience. There is little agreement about what kind of mechanism is primary in delusion formation, or, indeed, what the particular mechanisms and their neural substrates might be.In the evaluation of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in delusion formation, a number of conceptual questions should be addressed (Davies and Coltheart 2000). For example, if there is an experiential component, why is a hypothesis with a delusional explanation of the unusual experience seen as relevant? Why do the subjects come to believe it tenaciously? How come some unusual experiences do not develop into delusions?A number of empirical findings also need to be taken into account: for example, the damage to the autonomic system in Capgras delusion (Ellis et al. 1997), the decreased ability for fast error correction in schizophrenia (Frith and Done 1989), modulation of activity in parietal cortex in delusions of alien control and other passivity experiences (Blakemore, Oakley, and Frith 2003), and also in schizophrenia, the increased sensitivity to self-produced stimuli, such as tickling oneself (Blakemore et al. 2000) and the sound of one's own voice (Ford et al. 2001).Theory choice can also be guided by philosophical doctrines about, for example, the nature of belief, the constitutive role of rationality, and intersubjectivity and the nature of judgements about the external world. It is natural, however, to let beliefs about philosophical doctrine be secondary to empirical findings and conceptual issues.The distinction between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms is particularly sharp in John Campbell's (2001) account of delusions and in Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie's (2004) discussion of Campbell. In this discussion, top-down approaches are associated with the general philosophical doctrine of rationalism, and bottom-up approaches with the philosophical doctrine of empiricism. Campbell's account is top-down because he posits delusional framework beliefs that arise directly as a result of brain damage or malfunction, and that work in some top-down fashion on the interpretation of experience. Bayne [End Page 65] and Pacherie convincingly defend empiricism against Campbell's rationalist account. Among their many other objections, they briefly puzzle about how a delusional framework belief (e.g., that one's spouse is an impostor) in a top-down fashion could cause the damage to the autonomic system seen in the Capgras and Cotard delusions (2004, 1). I think this is a very important objection because skin conductance data are part of the evidence for the bottom-up hypothesis concerning the Capgras delusion. We could add to this, for example, that it is mysterious how belief in a top-down fashion could cause people with schizophrenia to be worse at fast error correction than normal controls, to be better at tickling themselves than normal controls, and to have an increased response to the sound of their own voice.On the other hand, although the skin conductance response (SCR) evidence suggests a bottom-up approach to the Capgras delusion, it does not explain the character of the subjective experience that is hypothesized to give rise to the delusional belief: reduced SCR is not part of the experience itself (thanks to Ian Gold for discussion of this). Something more is required to give a full account of the type of experience that gives rise to the delusion. Further, as they stand, most bottom-up accounts are unable to account for why reality testing fails for beliefs based on these experiences.Neither rationalism nor empiricism on their own seem able to address the conceptual questions while paying... (shrink)

Our objectives in this article are to bring some theoretical order into developmental sequences and simultaneities in children’s ability to appreciate multiple labels for single objects, to reason with identity statements, to reason hypothetically, counterfactually, and with beliefs and desires, and to explain why an ‘implicit’ understanding of belief occurs before an ‘explicit’ understanding. The central idea behind our explanation is the emerging grasp of how objects of thought and desire relate to real objects and to each other. To capture (...) this idea we make use of the notion of discourse referents, as did Perner and Brandl (2005), to explain the developmental link between understanding beliefs and alternative naming. We present confirming evidence of the prediction from this analysis that children should have comparable problems with understanding identity statements. We explain the precociously correct answers in ‘implicit’ false belief tests based on indirect measures in the following way: From infancy children are able to keep track of other people’s experiences, to reason about counterfactual circumstances, and to reason about goal-directed (rational) action depending on given circumstances. Indirect tasks reduce the bias to use actual circumstances for reasoning about goal directed action compared to the traditional task, which leads to more correct answers. An emerging metarepresentational understanding helps overcome these biases and enables not only correct action prediction but also the explanation of erroneous actions. The common metarepresentational element explains why false belief tasks and the alternative naming task are mastered at the same time as children understand identity statements. (shrink)

Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general theoretical framework, based on generative models, that (...) may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions. (shrink)

The phenomenology of agency and perception is probably underpinned by a common cognitive system based on generative models and predictive coding. I defend the hypothesis that this cognitive system explains core aspects of the sense of having a self in agency and perception. In particular, this cognitive model explains the phenomenological notion of a minimal self as well as a notion of the narrative self. The proposal is related to some influential studies of overall brain function, and to psychopathology. These (...) elusive notions of the self are shown to be the natural upshots of general cognitive mechanisms whose fundamental purpose is to enable agents to represent the world and act in it. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there is at least a pro tanto reason to favor the control account of the right to privacy over the access account of the right to privacy. This conclusion is of interest due to its relevance for contemporary discussions related to surveillance policies. We discuss several ways in which the two accounts of the right to privacy can be improved significantly by making minor adjustments to their respective definitions. We then test the improved versions (...) of the two accounts on a test case, to see which account best explains the violation that occurs in the case. The test turns out in favor of the control account. (shrink)

Korleis kan forsking fremje menneskerettane? Og korleis oppfattar forskarar frå forskjellige fag og disiplinar menneskerettar innanfor si forsking? Kapitla i denne boka er skrivne av 14 forskarar som represen.terer varierande fagtradisjonar og forskingsmetodar. Dei viser at menneske.rettsspørsmål er aktuelle som aldri før, og inspirerer forskarar i eit breitt spekter av fag. Sjølv om menneskerettane tar ulik form i ulike fag, viser boka at dei er viktige også i fag der dei er mindre synlege. Forskarane som skriv i denne boka, konsentrerer (...) seg om grunnleggjande menneskerettar med stikkord som fred, fridom, likskap, verdighet, utdanning og fråver av diskriminering av svake enkeltindivid, grupper eller folk. Forsking har bi.dratt til at desse menneskerettane i dag står sterkare internasjonalt enn nokon gong. Men nettopp fordi menneskerettane er blitt så synlege og internasjonalt nærverande, blir det tydeleg kor grove brota på dei er i.mange land, og kor mykje arbeid som står att før dei er sikra som rettar for alle menneske. Kapitla i boka er reviderte og ajourførte versjonar av foredraga på ein konferanse som menneskerettskomiteen i Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi arrangerte i desember 2015. Jakob Lothe er professor i engelsk litteratur ved Universitetet i Oslo og leiar av menneskerettskomiteen i Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi. (shrink)

Wittgenstein zufolge ist die Welt alles, was der Fall ist. Aber ich selbst bin - nie anders denn hier und jetzt, d.h. immer in jeweils dieser Situation; es ist folglich eine Ontologie aus der Perspektive der ersten Person moglich, und zwar im Ausgang vom Begriff der Situation. Dabei ergibt sich, dass Situativitat letztlich zu verstehen ist als absolute (nicht auf unsere oder irgendeine Art von Aktivitat zuruckfuhrbare) Prozessualitat. In deren Dynamik einbegriffen durchlaufen wir - die Situierten - unsere jeweilige existenzielle (...) Lebensbahn von der Geburt zum Tod. So zeigt sich der alte Gedanke einer unhintergehbaren conditio humana neu aus der Perspektive der ersten Person gedacht. (shrink)

This article proposes a direction—inspired by a reading of Heidegger’s reflections on sculpture— in which thinking enriched by artistic experience can unfold an alternative mode of being-in-the-world. Heidegger points out that, in contrast to a scientific understanding of space as an empty container, the special character of space in sculpture is characterized by a clearing-away (Räumen), which presupposes and points to an open, receptive attitude toward experience that is necessary for dwelling to take place. From Heidegger this article proceeds to (...) reflect on artworks by Eduardo Chillida and Janet Echelman. These offer concrete examples of how a thinking of sculpture can apply to different notions of place. While Chillida’s sculptures present a sense of place as rooted and embedded in the landscape, Echelman’s artworks explore an expanded notion of place through a multisensory sense of immersion. Applying Heidegger’s meditations on Räumen, it turns out that the differences between these artworks are of greatest significance in illustrating the breadth of the experiential space that they share: an openness to dwelling and a receptivity toward being-in-the-world. In this way, Heidegger’s reflections on sculpture are unfolded in a contemporary context and the potential of sculpture for a thinking of experience is established. (shrink)

Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg war einer der akademischen Lehrer Hermann Cohens und die Debatte zwischen Trendelenburg und Kuno Fischer über die Interpretation der transzendentalen Ästhetik gilt gemeinhin als Anlass für Cohens Kantstudien und seine Abwendung von der Völkerpsychologie und damit als Geburtsstunde des Marburger Neukantianismus. Über die nähere persönliche Beziehung Cohens zu Trendelenburg ist allerdings wenig bekannt und auch die Frage, ob und inwiefern Cohen als „Schüler“ Trendelenburgs bezeichnet werden kann ist nicht eindeutig zu beantworten, zumindest scheint Cohens Verhältnis zu Trendelenburg (...) eher distanziert gewesen zu sein und es ist nicht klar, ob nicht Cohens Trendelenburg gegenüber teilweise auch kritische Haltung in seiner Stellungnahme zur Kontroverse zwischen Trendelenburg und Fischer auch zum Scheitern seiner Habilitationsversuche in Berlin beigetragen hat. Andererseits wurde darauf hingewiesen, dass sich Cohen durch die von Trendelenburg aufgeworfene Frage, ob Kant die ausschließliche Subjektivität von Raum und Zeit bewiesen habe, vor das für seine Philosophie und Kantkritik zentrale Problem einer nicht bloß „subjektiven“ Begründung des Idealismus gestellt sah und diesbezüglich (in Abgrenzung von Kuno Fischer und Friedrich Albert Lange) im wesentlichen Trendelenburgs Absicht, „das Ideale im Realen zu befestigen“, weiterverfolgte (Klaus Christian Köhnke). Kurt Walter Zeidler hat diese These vor kurzem insofern zugespitzt, als er zu dem Schluss kommt, dass Cohen „seine eigene systematische Position – und damit die Grunddoktrin der Marburger Schule – an dem Leitfaden einer Kantinterpretation entwickelt, die Trendelenburgs latenten Platonismus, seine Lehre von der ursprünglichen Tätigkeit und konstruktiven Bewegung sowie den wissenschaftstheoretischen Ansatz seiner Logischen Untersuchungen gleichsam als Hebel einsetzt, um Kants Lehre von allen Anmutungen eines empirischen oder subjektiven Idealismus zu befreien.“ Diese These wird mit Blick auf Cohens frühe Kant- und Platon-Interpretation überprüft und der historische und biographische Kontext von Cohens Berliner Studienzeit skizziert. (shrink)

Im Aufsatz wird eine antirealistische und nominalistische Position nicht nur bezogen auf fiktionale Eigennamen entwickelt. Ausgangspunkt sind Überlegungen von Nelson Goodman und Kendall Walton. Der Gedanke dabei ist, dass wir fiktionale Ausdrücke und Darstellungen vermittels metasprachlicher Kategorienbäume verstehen. Dieser Lösungsversuch erlaubt es, von einem Verständnis des Ausdrucks ‚Osterhasen‘ zu sprechen, ohne auf die Annahme der Existenz von seltsamen fiktiven Gegenständen verpflichtet zu sein.

On the basis of a recent in-depth case study of the severe conflicts that arose in relation to the process of forming a spin-off biotech company at Helsinki University, Juha Tuunainen argued that "the traditional university is not being transformed into an entrepreneurial one as straightforwardly as claimed by Henry Etzkowitz" and that it remains an open question whether "hybrid entities" combining academic work and corporate activity can "ever survive as stable organizations within a university" (2005, 202, 203). The present (...) paper offers a reinterpretation of Tuunainen's study, identifying the inadequate separation of researcher and entrepreneur roles as the crux of the conflicts. Most importantly, however, this reinterpretation enables the conceptualisation of a model for university governance that maintains role separation while at the same time promoting an acceleration of university entrepreneurship and commercialisation by integrating it in the very core of the university institution. (shrink)

It appears that consciousness science is progressing soundly, in particular in its search for the neural correlates of consciousness. There are two main approaches to this search, one is content-based (focusing on the contrast between conscious perception of, e.g., faces vs. houses), the other is state-based (focusing on overall conscious states, e.g., the contrast between dreamless sleep vs. the awake state). Methodological and conceptual considerations of a number of concrete studies show that both approaches are problematic: the content-based approach seems (...) to set aside crucial aspects of consciousness; and the state-based approach seems over-inclusive in a way that is hard to rectify without losing sight of the crucial conscious-unconscious contrast. Consequently, the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of new experimental paradigms. (shrink)

Most consciousness researchers, almost no matter what their views of the metaphysics of consciousness, can agree that the first step in a science of consciousness is the search for the neural correlate of consciousness (the NCC). The reason for this agreement is that the notion of ‘correlation’ doesn’t by itself commit one to any particular metaphysical view about the relation between (neural) matter and consciousness. For example, some might treat the correlates as causally related, while others might view the correlation (...) as evidence for identity between conscious states and brain states. The common ground therefore seems to be that the scientific search for the NCC is largely independent of the metaphysics of consciousness. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band bietet einen Durchgang durch Hölderlins dichterisches Schaffen und interpretiert zahlreiche Gedichte ausgehend von der Frage, wie sich das Verhältnis von Gott/Mensch/Sprache darin jeweils darstellt. Dieses zeigt sich als ein zunehmend gebrochen-fragiles; in dieser Schwächung kann sich jedoch eine neue Aufmerksamkeit für das Göttliche, das Menschliche und die Sprache entwickeln – in theologischer Diktion: Offenbarung Gottes nicht in einem „Mehr“, sondern in der Zurücknahme einer für den Menschen nicht fassbaren Fülle und im Abschied von fixierten Bildern.

Some monothematic types of delusions may arise because subjects have unusual experiences. The role of this experiential component in the pathogenesis of delusion is still not understood. Focussing on delusions of alien control, we outline a model for reality testing competence on unusual experiences. We propose that nascent delusions arise when there are local failures of reality testing performance, and that monothematic delusions arise as normal responses to these. In the course of this we address questions concerning the tenacity with (...) which delusions are maintained, their often bizarre content, the patients' inability to dismiss them, and their often circumscribed character. (shrink)

It has been widely discussed whether the existence of other universes than the known universe is a purely metaphysical consideration. This paper argues to the contrary that the existence of other universes is a meaningful hypothesis, which can be tested based on observable data. The paper applies the perspective of observer bias as an approach for assigning probabilities to the mutually excluding hypotheses of universe vs. multiverse, i.e., whether the known universe is the only universe, or just one universe in (...) an ensemble of universes, a so-called multiverse. The basic idea of the paper relies on the following consideration. In a multiverse, the vast majority of observers would live in universes that are more life friendly. Thus, conditional on there being a multiverse, we should expect to find ourselves in a universe with values of the fundamental parameters that provide particularly fertile grounds for life. In contrast, if there is only a single universe, it may well be the case that there is still a few observers even if the parameters are far from ideal for life, and in that case, those observers will find values of the parameters that are not ideal for intelligent life. It may well be the case that, among all parameter configurations that allow life at least somewhere, those that are not ideal for life far outnumber those that are ideal for life. Based on this elementary consideration, the paper proceeds to propose a quantitative framework to determine probabilities for either hypothesis. In particular, it is described how a future ab initio determination of some of the factors in the Drake equation may be used to infer which one of the two hypotheses is the more likely. A quantitative approach to this end is proposed. Expressing these factors of the Drake equation in the context of the two hypotheses, a general likelihood approach is first described. Then, to support intuition, example computations are provided, illustrating how an actual hypothesis test would work in practice. (shrink)