When we reframe design through a discourse, designing on a meta level, we are actually designing design, as we are giving design a different meaning, changing frame to include or exclude what we do or don't consider as a part of the field. Therefore we need to frame at first what we understand in speaking about design. And it is far more complex to speak about media design, since it triggers the idea of designing media. Marshall McLuhan's thoughts on media (...) will help to explore what a media designer actually does; what he designs. However, if the digital media comes into place, the new medium, the digital medium, suddenly is the major carrier of all of society's messages. How does it change the designer's work, and does it require a different designer. (shrink)

Die Wirkung der Schrift "Erkenntnis und Interesse" ging weit über die akademische Debatte hinaus und hatte auch unmittelbaren Einfluß auf den politischen Diskurs in den 70er Jahren. Denn die kritische Reflexion auf die vorgängig leitenden Interessen, die den Erkenntnisprozessen ihre Richtung geben, entzog der Kantischen Vorstellung den Boden, alle Erkenntnis beruhe allein auf der Selbstbestimmtheit des erkennenden Subjekts."Ich verspüre keine große Neigung, Gegenstand einer nostalgischen Veranstaltung zu sein." J.H.

Der Tagungsband beinhaltet fünfzehn Beiträge einer interdisziplinären Tagung des wissenschaftlichen, bildungsorientierten und gemeinnützigen Arbeitskreises philosophierender Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler (APHIN) e.V. Der Band umfasst Aufsätze aus dem Spannungsfeld von Philosophie, Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften und Aufsätze, die diesen Bereich transzendieren. Alle Beiträge spiegeln die Neugierde und Freude wider, über den eigenen fachlichen Tellerrand hinauszuschauen. Und sie zeigen, dass der Philosophie hierbei eine Schlüsselrolle zukommt. Das Selbstverständnis von APHIN – die Offenheit für die Fragen und Probleme der jeweils anderen – ist damit in (...) allen Beiträgen gegenwärtig. (shrink)

The present volume contains 14 contributions presented at a colloquium on "Structure and Approximation in Physical Theories" held at Osnabruck in June 1980. The articles are presented in the revised form written after the colloquium and hence also take account of the results of the discussion at the colloquium. It is a striking feature that the problem of approximation in physical theories has only recently found some attention in the philosophy of science, although the working physicist is con stantly confronted (...) with those questions. No interesting theory of exact science exactly fits its experimental data; almost every relation between different theories is an approximate one. There fore an adequate reconstruction of physical theories must take into account and conceptualize the moment of approximation. The majority of the articles in this book is centered around this subject. There are at least two elaborate, 'structuralistic' approaches to the formalization of physical theories in which the aspect of approximation has been incorporated: the approach due to P. Suppes, J. Sneed, W. Stegmuller ("S-approach") and the approach of G. Lud wig and his co-workers ("L-approach"). The articles in this book correspondingly fall into three classes: presentation, elaboration and critique of the L-approach [Hartkamper/Schmidt, Ludwig, Neumann, Werner, Schmidt, Mayr, Kamiah, Majer, Grafe] or of the S-approach [Moulines, Balzer, Cooke], and articles referring to both approaches or concerned with related matters [Scheibe, Pfarr, Castrigiano]. Of course, this is only a rough classification and each article must be appraised in its own right. (shrink)

A series of dialogues with the most exciting and controversial German philosopher writing today. Peter Sloterdijk first became known in this country for his late 1980s Critique of Cynical Reason, which confronted headlong the “enlightened false consciousness” of Habermasian critical theory. Two decades later, after spending seven years in India studying Eastern philosophy, he is now attracting renewed interest for his writings on politics and globalization and for his magnum opus Spheres, a three-volume archaeology of the human attempt to dwell (...) within spaces, from womb to globe: Bubbles, 1998; Globes, 1999; Foam, 2004, all forthcoming from Semiotext. In Neither Sun nor Death, Sloterdijk answers questions posed by German writer Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, commenting on such issues as technological mutation, development media, communication technologies, and his own intellectual itinerary. Iconoclastic and provocative, alternatively sparkling and bombastic, a child of '68 and a libertarian, Sloterdijk is the most exciting and controversial German philosopher to appear on the world scene since Nietzsche and Heidegger. Like Nietzsche, Sloterdijk remains convinced that contemporary philosophers have to think dangerously and let themselves be “kidnapped” by contemporary “hypercomplexities”; they must forsake our present humanist and nationalist world for a wider horizon at once ecological and global. Neither Sun nor Death is the best introduction available to Sloterdijk's philosophical theory of globalization. It reveals a philosophe extraordinaire, encyclopedic and provocative, as much at ease with current French Theory as with Heidegger and Indian mystic Osho Rajneesh. (shrink)

In this book Jürgen Habermas addresses some of the most pressing social and political issues of our time: the consequences of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; the resurgence of nationalism and right-wing violence in Europe; and the prospects for a transformation of international relations and the building of a more just and peaceful world order. Most of the book takes the form of an extended interview which covers a wide range of contemporary (...) topics and events, from German unification to the Gulf War, from the limits of theory to the role of intellectuals. While Habermas draws on ideas developed in his more theoretical works, he states his views here with exceptional clarity and force. The Past as Future will be of great interest not only to students of social and political theory, but to anyone concerned with the current state and future of Europe and the West. (shrink)

The article argues that individualist accounts cannot adequately explain the social dynamics ofterrorist behavior as they turn analyses ofterrorism into analyses of terrorists. A relational approach that concentrates on the social relations between terrorist organizations and their members would be able to do this, however. Therefore, the article presents a fonnal analysis that makes the "secret society" of terrorists the lynchpin of an explanation of how terrorist organizations shape the behavioral conditions of volunteers and suicide terrorists in a manner that (...) triggers a type ofbehavior we might call terrorism. (shrink)

SummaryThe discovery of dark lines in the spectrum of the sun as well as in some fixed stars since 1802 by William Hyde Wollaston, Joseph Fraunhofer and Johann Lamont is a relatively isolated phenomenon in the history of astronomy of the first half of the 19th century. Wollaston's representation of the sun's spectrum of 1802 can be seen as a simplification and reduction of the phenomenon by way of a seemingly clear connection with contemporary knowledge. Fraunhofer's famous colour etching of (...) the dark lines, of about 1817, can be regarded as a meticulous and painstaking representation of the known facts, taken to a high aesthetic level.Lamont's spectra of the fixed stars from 1836 are the first sketches of all of these phenomena. He emphasized the ‘oddness’, that is, the chaotic variety of identifiable lines. What was common to all of these representations was the general belief that something new and unimaginable could now be established as a scientific subject. The observations of these lines were coincidental with the thinking in other fields, as for example, in Alexander Humboldt's understanding of nature, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's theory of light and his interest in pictorial representations of nature, and in the new concept of landscape of the romantic painters. (shrink)

Cerebral energy supply is insufficient to support continuous neuronal processing of the plethora of time-constant objects that we are aware of. As a result, the brain is forced to limit processing resources to (the most relevant) cases ofchange. The neuronally generated world is thus temporally discontinuous. This parallels the fact that, in all relevant microscopic fundamental equations of nature, temporalchangeplays a dominant role. When a scientist calculates a “solution” to such an equation, integration over time is an essential step. The (...) present Hypothesis expresses that the step from neuronal activity to phenomenal content of consciousness is reflective of a (phenomenal) “solution:” the main source of the incomprehensibility of consciousness is proposed to result from the introduction of phenomenal time-constant entities. These are “filled-in”viaintegration, even though neuronal data only exists forchangesto these entities. In this way, a temporally continuous picture of the world phenomenally appears. Qualia are “initial conditions,” which are required for integration and cannot be deduced frompresentdata. Phenomenal “identity” (vs. “high similarity”) is related to qualia.Inattentivevisual perception, which is only rarely investigated, offers insights into these relationships. Introspectively, unattended vision appears rich because percepts are cumulated over long time spans, whereas attentive perception relies purely onpresentneuronal signals. The present Hypothesis is that a brief neuronal activity cansignifylong-lasting and constant phenomenal content of consciousness. Experimental support is presented that comes from discrepancies between neuronal activity and perception: transient neuronal responses to sustained stimuli, “filling-in,” change blindness, identity vs. close resemblance. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held Dec. 4-5, 1998 at the Universit'at G'ottingen.

Werturteile über Musik - lassen sie sich begründen, sind sie verbindlich, welche Geltung haben sie? Das Buch untersucht philosophische, soziologische und pädagogische Aspekte. Dabei werden insbesondere die wichtigsten Urteilsformen und Argumentationsmöglichkeiten sowohl mit kulturabhängigem als auch mit universalem Geltungsanspruch dargestellt und diskutiert. Den theoretischen Erörterungen folgen mit zahlreichen Noten- und Textbeispielen Hinweise und methodische Vorschläge zur Beurteilung von Musik in unterschiedlichen kulturellen Milieus.

Wie ist der Ort der Vernunft in einer natürlichen Welt zu bestimmen? Diese Frage hat wörtliche und metaphorische Lesarten. Im wörtlichen Sinne kann die Vernunft schwerlich einen Ort haben, wohingegen wir als vernunftfähige Wesen zugleich in der natürlichen Welt situiert sind. Man kann aber sinnvoll nach dem logischen Ort der Vernunft fragen, also danach, wie sich die Rede über Vernünftiges oder potentiell Vernünftiges zur Rede über Natürliches verhält. In der metaphorischen Lesart lautet die Frage, in welchem logischen oder begrifflichen Verhältnis (...) Redeweisen über Vernunft, Geist, Bedeutung, gute Gründe, Normen etc. zu den Diskursen der Naturwissenschaften stehen, die ja höchst erfolgreich ohne diese Begriffe auszukommen scheinen. Der Naturalismus behauptet ein Erklärungsprivileg naturwissenschaftlicher Methoden. Nach Sellars und Quine sind die Naturwissenschaften in kognitiver Hinsicht das Maß aller Dinge, nämlich der einzig verlässliche Weg, Wissen über die Welt zu erlangen. Will die Philosophie dem szientifischen Naturalismus eine vernünftige Alternative entgegensetzen, so ist sie herausgefordert, die Eigenart philosophischer Erkenntnissuche zu verteidigen, ohne die beispiellose Erfolgsgeschichte der Naturwissenschaften zu leugnen. Der Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft entspricht auf der Objektebene die nach dem Verhältnis von Vernunft und Natur. Vernunftfähige Wesen sind zwar mit all ihren Fähigkeiten Teil der Welt, doch es ist fraglich, ob und in welchem Sinne vernünftige Gründe, semantische Inhalte, Bewusstsein und Normen als Teil der Natur verstanden werden können. Will man den Begriff der Natur nicht jeglichen einschränkenden Gehaltes berauben, scheint er diese Zuordnung auszuschließen. Die an diesem Band beteiligten Autoren sind sich einig in dem Ziel, die Begriffe von 'Vernunft' und 'Natur' auf eine solche Weise zu entwickeln, dass die Frage nach der Ortsbestimmung eine sinnvolle Antwort ermöglicht, unabhängig davon, wie diese ausfällt. (shrink)