When a conflict of duties arises, a resolution is often sought by use of an ordering of priority or importance. This paper examines how such a conflict resolution works, compares mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature, and gives preference to one developed by Brewka and Nebel. I distinguish between two cases – that some conflicts may remain unresolved, and that a priority ordering can be determined that resolves all – and provide semantics and axiomatic systems for accordingly defined (...) dyadic deontic operators. (shrink)

Abstract“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization (...) properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 219-232.

Beim Stichwort ”Kognition“ denken die meisten an das Gehirn, Computermodelle oder Informationsverarbeitung. In der realen Welt treffen wir aber immer nur auf Wesen mit Körpern, die in eine Umwelt eingebunden und in ihr aktiv sind. Kognition findet nicht im Kopf statt, sondern in der Welt. So lautet der Grundgedanke der Philosophie der Verkörperung. Die Hinwendung zu Körper und Umwelt stellt eine der vielleicht weitreichendsten Neuorientierungen der modernen Kognitionswissenschaft und Philosophie dar, die auch unser Verständnis von Wissenschaft und Kultur prägen wird. (...) Der Band versammelt die Grundlagentexte zu diesem Thema zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache. (shrink)

This article explores the elective affinities between Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the sociology of critical capacities. It argues that these two research programmes can be understood as symmetrical twins. We show the extent to which the exchange between Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanski has influenced their respective theoretical developments. Three strong encounters between the twin research programmes may be distinguished. The first encounter concerns explanations for social change. The second encounter focuses on the status of objects and their relationship to (...) places. The third encounter is about the concept of critique. Drawing on their long-term mutual readings, we gain insight into how pleas for symmetrical analysis raised in response to Bourdieu’s theory of fields have evolved within both ANT and the sociology of critical capacity. We conclude by relating the development of the respective research programmes to the issue of disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 357-361.

In this paper I discuss Plato's conception of expertise as a part of the Platonic theory of a good, successful life (eudaimonia). In various Platonic dialogues, Socrates argues that the good life requires a certain kind of knowledge that guides all our good, beneficial actions: the “knowledge of the good and bad”, which is to be acquired by “questioning ourselves and examining our and others’ beliefs”. This knowledge encompasses the particular knowledge of how to recognize experts in a given technical (...) domain. The central element in Socrates’ account of an expert is what I call the truth-and-caring criterion: an expert has to make seeking the truth and avoiding (avoidable) error her supreme epistemic goal and she has to make caring for common goods the supreme goal of practising her expertise. (shrink)

The article offers an insight into road traffic accidents by unravelling both the internal elements and the social context of the so-called car–driver hybrid. It takes a critical perspective on the art of designing road safety. More importantly, it seeks to contribute to social studies of transport and mobility through development of analytical concepts within the discipline. The points of departure are the inherent ambiguities of mobility. The author suggests that ‘being in traffic’ is always determined by coexisting forms of (...) mobility and immobility. This ambivalent stage is then called motility. The author discusses car-drivers as motile hybrids, as they are mobile and immobile, as well as subjects and objects at the same time. In order to apply these concepts, the question of what happens to hybrids in crashes is addressed, employing Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘immutable mobiles’. The article concludes with a discussion of the social role of road safety experts, arguing that transport safety experts create a specific kind of spatio-temporal order within which the motile hybrid exists. It is the safety professional who decides when to take agency away from the subject and give it to the object, and it s/he who determines where to slow down and where to speed up the car–driver hybrid. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeichnet nach, wie Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) mit der Deutung der Dichtung Hölderlins, Georges, Rilkes und Trakls sein eigenes Denken legitimiert und zugleich grundlegende Positionen eines poetologischen Modells gewinnt. Heidegger setzt sich dabei sowohl von der philosophischen Hermeneutik als auch von der philologischen Interpretation deutlich ab. Er sieht sich in der Rolle eines singulären Sinngebers und begreift seine Deutung als einzig mögliche Antwort auf die Fragen, die Dichtung an das Verstehen richtet. Die sogenannte "Zwiesprache" zwischen Dichter und Denker (...) identifiziert die Untersuchung als hermeneutische Strategie, die eng mit der Wissenschaftskultur ihrer Zeit - vor allem mit den literaturwissenschaftlichen Paradigmen des George-Kreises - verknüpft ist. Heideggers "ungeschriebene" Poetologie ist bis heute noch nicht ansatzweise beschrieben worden. Die vorliegende Arbeit nimmt sich dieser Aufgabe an und nennt zudem die Vorbilder und Konzepte aus der Theoriegeschichte der Interpretation, von denen Heidegger sich leiten läßt. Die Poetologie Heideggers wird literaturwissenschaftlich aufgefaltet und aus verschiedenen Perspektiven im Hinblick auf ihr theoriegeschichtliches Erbgut durchleuchtet. Die intellektuellen Voraussetzungen und die lange verdeckte theoriegeschichtliche Nähe des sich sezessionistisch und antirational gebenden Denkens Heideggers sind damit erstmalig in einer zusammenhängenden Untersuchung vorgestellt. (shrink)

Let κ < λ be regular uncountable cardinals. Using a finite support iteration (in fact a matrix iteration) of ccc posets we obtain the consistency of b = a = κ < s = λ. If μ is a measurable cardinal and μ < κ < λ, then using similar techniques we obtain the consistency of b = κ < a = s = λ.

This article examines the relativistic view according to which the interpretation of texts is a matter of opinion and one interpretation is as good as any other. It clarifies the question by establishing precise understandings of texts and interpretations and by introducing various distinctions between different kinds of interpretations based on their function. It argues that not all kinds of interpretations are relativistic, although all interpretations are relative, and that even those interpretations that are relativistic are not so in the (...) same ways. (shrink)

We prove some results about the limitations of the expressive power of quantifiers on finite structures. We define the concept of a bounded quantifier and prove that every relativizing quantifier which is bounded is already first-order definable (Theorem 3.8). We weaken the concept of congruence closed (see [6]) to weakly congruence closed by restricting to congruence relations where all classes have the same size. Adapting the concept of a thin quantifier (Caicedo [1]) to the framework of finite structures, we define (...) the concept of a meager quantifier. We show that no proper extension of first-order logic by means of meager quantifiers is weakly congruence closed (Theorem 4.9). We prove the failure of the full congruence closure property for logics which extend first-order logic by means of meager quantifiers, arbitrary monadic quantifiers, and the Härtig quantifier (Theorem 6.1). (shrink)

In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction that is underlying Freedom’s Right undermines Critical Theory’s aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, I demonstrate that (...) abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom’s Right entails no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom’s Right. I show that Honneth’s own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom’s Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments. (shrink)

In a series of articles, P. Vranas recently proposed a new imperative logic. The strong and weak inferences of this logic are motivated by an appeal to a strong and weak ‘support by reasons’ that transfers from the premisses of an argument to its conclusion. They also combine nonmonotonic and monotonic reasoning patterns. I show that for any moral agent, Vranas’s proposal can be simplified enormously.

In my paper, I shall take seriously Kant’s puzzling statements about the moral feeling of respect, which is, according to him, “a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different” from all common feelings. I will focus on the systematic position of the moral feeling of respect within the framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By considering its volitional structure, I argue for a compatibilist account of the moral feeling of respect, according to which both intellectualist and (...) affectivist interpretations are true. As such, respect can be understood in terms of a process of moral self-consciousness and self-formation, which means that the will must be freed from initial empirical motives, and finally be determined only by rational principles. (shrink)

What do Mesoamerica, Greece, Byzantium, Island, Chad, Ethiopia, India, Tibet, China and Japan have in common? Like many other cultures of the world, they share a particular form of cultural heritage: ancient handwritten documents. In 2007, scholars from some 20 countries around the world gathered at the University of Copenhagen for a workshop on manuscripts to compare notes. This event led to the publication of this volume, which brings together 16 articles on philological, cultural, and material aspects of manuscripts in (...) search for a common ground across disciplines and cultures. (shrink)

Covering the Hellenistic and Imperial periods in both pagan polytheistic as well as Jewish monotheistic settings, this edited collection focuses on individuation in everyday religious practices across the ancient Mediterranean as identified in institutional developments and philosophical reflections on the self.

We investigate which filters onωcan contain towers, that is, a modulo finite descending sequence without any pseudointersection. We prove the following results:Many classical examples of nice tall filters contain no towers.It is consistent that tall analytic P-filters contain towers of arbitrary regular height.It is consistent that all towers generate nonmeager filters, in particular Borel filters do not contain towers.The statement “Every ultrafilter contains towers.” is independent of ZFC.Furthermore, we study many possible logical implications between the existence of towers in filters, (...) inequalities between cardinal invariants of filters $,${\rm{co}}{{\rm{f}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$,${\rm{no}}{{\rm{n}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$, and${\rm{co}}{{\rm{v}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$), and the existence of Luzin type families, that is, if${\cal F}$is a filter then${\cal X} \subseteq {[\omega ]^\omega }$is an${\cal F}$-Luzin family if$\left\{ {X \in {\cal X}:|X \setminus F| = \omega } \right\}$is countable for every$F \in {\cal F}$. (shrink)

In his book “Schiller as Philosopher”, Frederick Beiser laments that “contemporary Kant scholars have been intent on ignoring him. If they know anything at all about Schiller, it is only as the author of an epigram satirizing Kant”. Therefore, Beiser calls us “to consider Schiller as a philosopher, to reconstruct and appraise the arguments of his philosophical writings” (Beiser, 2005, p. vii). In this paper, I shall argue that it is Schiller's conception of freedom of the will as “heautonomy” that (...) stands behind his critique and modification of Kant's ethics. However, the systematic significance of Schiller's theory of freedom is not obvious. Its argumentative structure must first be reconstructed—as Beiser has demanded—because it is concealed by an esthetic discourse. A reconstruction of Schiller's theory of freedom shows that he contrasts his concept of heautonomy as individual self‐determination with the Kantian concept of an autonomy or autocracy of reason by the universal moral law. Schiller's own philosophical contribution to the debate on freedom after Kant must therefore not be understood as a mere esthetic balancing and softening of Kant's ethical rigorism. Rather, it shows serious transformations of Kant's approach, which justifies understanding it as a critical step beyond Kant's theory of the autonomy of reason. (shrink)

The distinction between agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons is philosophically important, but there is no consensus on how to understand the distinction exactly. In this paper, I discuss several interpretations of the distinction that can be found in the literature: the Motivational Interpretation, the Scope Interpretation, and the Goal Interpretation, and argue that none of these interpretations is entirely convincing. I propose a novel interpretation of the distinction, which I call the Normative Force Interpretation, according to which the distinction between (...) agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral reasons concerns the normative force that these reasons can have for agents. (shrink)

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art. This volume contains original papers on the topic of (...) feelings of being alive by Fiorella Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and Achim Stephan. (shrink)

We show that determinism is false assuming a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics and considering the sensitive dynamics of macroscopical physical systems.

In this chapter, I will address the philosophical ambivalence of the concept of Willkür in and after Kant. The aim of my chapter is to defend it against the charge of irrationality and mere chance, and to rehabilitate it from a historical and analytic point of view. I will analyze Kant’s use of the word “Willkür”, and chronologically follow the semantic and systematic changes in his philosophical work. Finally, I address recent attempts to revitalize the concept of Willkür in the (...) analytic debate by referring to the work of Harry Frankfurt and Robert Kane. I shall argue that we need to distinguish between two kinds of libera arbitria. Whereas the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae can be interpreted in terms of the pejorative sense of “Willkür”—as mere chance—the liberum arbitrium voluntatis equals a reflective kind of Willkür—literal Will-kür —which involves freedom of the will. (shrink)

In this short note we develop an unorthodox panmentalistic and libertarian dualism. Especially we skech a mental-physikal law of free will. Our aim is to to provoke the contemporary scentific common-sense.

Contrary to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's theoretical critique of Kant's philosophy, his practical critique has been almost unknown. In my paper, I shall reconstruct Reinhold's practical philosophy after Kant. I will concentrate on the so‐called Reinhold's dilemma, which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions in Kant. Also, I shall explain how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing a new action theory and by sharply distinguishing between reason and will. Finally, I shall evaluate Reinhold's (...) practical significance by relating his conception of individual freedom to recent theories of volitional self‐determination. (shrink)

Agent-relative reasons are an important feature of any nonconsequentialist moral theory. Many authors think that they cannot be accommodated within a value-first theory that understands all value as agent-neutral. In this paper, I offer a novel explanation of agent-relative reasons that accommodates them fully within an agent-neutral value-first view. I argue that agent-relative reasons are to be understood in terms of second-order value responses: when an agent acts on an agent-relative reason, she responds appropriately to the agent-neutral value of her (...) own appropriate response to some agent-neutral value. This view helps reconcile important elements of deontology and consequentialism. (shrink)

The target article raises the question of whether transcription-based evidence is sufficient to support assumptions relating to patterns of mandibular activity in young children. Studies on the perception of both adult and infant speech indicate that the argument needs to be reexamined on the basis of acoustic and articulatory data.

Constitutions enshrine the fundamental values of a people and they build a framework for a state’s public policy. With regard to generational change, their endurance gives rise to two interlinked concerns: the sovereignty concern and the forgone welfare concern. If constitutions are intergenerational contracts, how (in)flexible should they be? This article discusses perpetual constitutions, sunset constitutions, constitutional reform commissions and constitutional conventions, both historically and analytically. It arrives at the conclusion that very rigid constitutions are incompatible with the principle of (...) intergenerational justice. Recurring constitutional reform commissions in fixed time intervals would give each generation of citizens a say without leaning too much to the side of flexibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reconstruct Kant’s theory of illusion from the perspective of his transcendental philosophy. I argue that it is Kant’s theory of dialectic as the “logic of illusion” that grounds both theoretical and practical error and that traces them back to a common root: the operation of rationalizing by theoretical and practical reason. I analyze different kinds of theoretical and practical errors and show how they are grounded in reason’s general propensity to rationalize. The paper exposes this (...) common root and shows which rules Kant develops in order to avoid rationalizing. (shrink)