Drawing together discourses on contemporaneity and new materialisms, this book examines a material conception of temporality that makes it possible to develop a critique of the philosophical discourse on presence. Claiming that 'there is no now,' Ebeling develops an archaeology of contemporaneity according to which the traces of the contemporary can only be secured through visual or material operations, not historical ones.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 233-244.

1. Theorien der materiellen Kultur von Kant bis Kittler -- 2. Begriffe der Materialität der Zeit, von Archiv bis Zerstörung.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 89-102.

The article focuses on the phenomenon of “Wild Archaeologies” – that is, on “archaeologies” that have appeared in the history of knowledge outside of Classical Archaeology: The first of these projects one thinks of, is of course Foucault’s L’archéologie du savoir, but there has also been Freud’s archaeology of the soul, Benjamin’s archaeology of modernity as well as Kittler’s archaeology of media – and even Kant’s archaeology of metaphysics. All of these various projects experimented with a material reflection of temporality (...) and presented alternatives to the conventional historical thinking of the past. What do these various projects have in common? What is their historical, philosophical and epistemological relation to contemporary archive theory as well as to Classical Archaeology? And which consequences has this “archaeological method” or thinking for art history? And finally, what does Giorgio Agamben’s recent claim mean: that “the archaeologist’s gesture is the paradigm of every human activity”? (shrink)

Ausgehend von Nietzsches Medienkritik an der zeitgenössischen Massenpresse, ihrer Mitverantwortung für die Vermittelmäßigkeit moderner Kultur, Meinungsmanipulation und Informationsüberflutung, die auch die Künste und Wissenschaften verändert, werden Fragen gestellt, inwieweit und ob Nietzsches Beobachtungen und Schlussfolgerungen für den Umgang mit modernen Massenmedien und digitaler Kommunikation produktiv gemacht werden können. Greifen seine Auffassungen auch, wenn es um Internet, social media, Virtual Reality oder KI geht? Gibt es Schnittstellen zwischen moderner Medien-, Kunst- und Theorieentwicklung und Nietzsches Beobachtungen am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts? Die (...) Beiträge thematisieren u.a. den Zusammenhang von Digitalität und Medien, Fragen nach der Wahrheit unter massenmedialen Vorzeichen, mögliche Folgen einer ebenso erhofften wie gefürchteten ‚Herrschaft der Algorithmen‘, Perspektiven der Acceleration, neue Dimensionen der Künste und neue Denkansätze in Philosophie, Psychologie und Kunsttheorie. Diese Fragen betreffen die Herausforderungen des modernen Menschen, sein Selbstverständnis, seine Wahrnehmungswelten, seine Wertepräfiguationen und die Zukunft einer medial dominierten Welt betreffen. (shrink)

Hermann Deuser, international renommierter Theologe, Religionsphilosoph und Fellow am Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universitat Erfurt, hat im Februar 2016 seinen 70. Geburtstag gefeiert. Diesem Anlass widmen die Herausgeber mit dem vorliegenden Band eine Sammlung von Aufsatzen, in denen sich namhafte Weggefahrten und Kollegen aus dem In- und Ausland zu zentralen Aspekten von Deusers Denken, insbesondere seinen jungeren und jungsten Arbeiten zum Verhaltnis von (Natur-)Wissenschaft und Theologie bzw. Religion, programmatisch und im Detail aussern. Es handelt sich folglich nicht um eine Festschrift im ublichen (...) Sinne, sondern um eine Anthologie von Originalbeitragen, die ausschliesslich oder zumindest an prominenter Stelle Deusers substantielle Beitrage zur theologischen und religionsphilosophischen Gegenwartsdebatte konstruktiv-kritisch wurdigen und weiterdenken. Mit Beitragen von:Wolfgang Achtner, Stefan Alkier, Svein Aage Christoffersen, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Hermann Deuser, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, Eilert Herms, Hans Joas, Matthias Jung, Markus Kleinert, Melanie Kohlmoos, Gesche Linde, Dietmar Mieth, Michael Moxter, Robert Cummings Neville, Lukas Ohly, Martin Schmuck, Heiko Schulz, Saskia Wendel, Catherina Wenzel, Knut Wenzel. (shrink)

Computer assisted theorem proving is an increasingly important part of mathematical methodology, as well as a long-standing topic in artificial intelligence (AI) research. However, the current generation of theorem proving software have limited functioning in terms of providing new proofs. Importantly, they are not able to discriminate interesting theorems and proofs from trivial ones. In order for computers to develop further in theorem proving, there would need to be a radical change in how the software functions. Recently, machine learning results (...) in solving mathematical tasks have shown early promise that deep artificial neural networks could learn symbolic mathematical processing. In this paper, I analyze the theoretical prospects of such neural networks in proving mathematical theorems. In particular, I focus on the question how such AI systems could be incorporated in practice to theorem proving and what consequences that could have. In the most optimistic scenario, this includes the possibility of autonomous automated theorem provers (AATP). Here I discuss whether such AI systems could, or should, become accepted as active agents in mathematical communities. (shrink)

The concept of a good life is usually assumed by philosophers to be equivalent to that of well-being, or perhaps of a morally good life, and hence has received little attention as a potentially distinct subject matter. In a series of experiments participants were presented with vignettes involving socially sanctioned wrongdoing toward outgroup members. Findings indicated that, for a large majority, judgments of bad character strongly reduce ascriptions of the good life, while having no impact at all on ascriptions of (...) happiness or well-being. Taken together with earlier findings these results suggest that the lay concept of a good life is clearly distinct from those of happiness, well-being, or morality, likely encompassing both morality and well-being, and perhaps other values as well: whatever matters in a person’s life. Importantly, morality appears not to play a fundamental role in either happiness or well-being among the folk. (shrink)

Despite a voluminous literature on happiness and well‐being, debates have been stunted by persistent dissensus on what exactly the subject matter is. Commentators frequently appeal to intuitions about the nature of happiness or well‐being, raising the question of how representative those intuitions are. In a series of studies, we examined lay intuitions involving happiness‐ and well‐being‐related terms to assess their sensitivity to internal (psychological) versus external conditions. We found that all terms, including ‘happy’, ‘doing well’ and ‘good life’, were far (...) more sensitive to internal than external conditions, suggesting that for laypersons, mental states are the most important part of happiness and well‐being. But several terms, including ‘doing well’, ‘good life’ and ‘enviable life’ were substantially more sensitive to external conditions than others, such as ‘happy’, consistent with dominant philosophical views of well‐being. Interestingly, the expression ‘happy’ was completely insensitive to external conditions for about two thirds of our participants, suggesting a purely psychological concept among most individuals. Overall, our findings suggest that lay thinking in this domain divides between two concepts, or families thereof: a purely psychological notion of being happy, and one or more concepts equivalent to, or encompassing, the philosophical concept of well‐being. In addition, being happy is dominantly regarded as just one element of well‐being. These findings have considerable import for philosophical debates, empirical research and public policy. (shrink)

Synthetic biologists try to engineer useful biological systems that do not exist in nature. One of their goals is to design an orthogonal chromosome different from DNA and RNA, termed XNA for xeno nucleic acids. XNA exhibits a variety of structural chemical changes relative to its natural counterparts. These changes make this novel information‐storing biopolymer “invisible” to natural biological systems. The lack of cognition to the natural world, however, is seen as an opportunity to implement a genetic firewall that impedes (...) exchange of genetic information with the natural world, which means it could be the ultimate biosafety tool. Here I discuss, why it is necessary to go ahead designing xenobiological systems like XNA and its XNA binding proteins; what the biosafety specifications should look like for this genetic enclave; which steps should be carried out to boot up the first XNA life form; and what it means for the society at large. (shrink)

Departing from frequent use of moral conflict cases in business ethics teaching and research, the paper suggests an elaboration of a moral conflict approach within business ethics, both conceptually and philosophically. The conceptual elaboration borrows from social science conflict research terminology, while the philosophical elaboration presents casuistry as a kind of practical, inductive argumentation with a focus on paradigmatic examples.

Rubin and Pearl offered approaches to causal effect estimation and Lewis and Pearl offered theories of counterfactual conditionals. Arguments offered by Pearl and his collaborators support a weak form of equivalence such that notation from the rival theory can be re-purposed to express Pearl’s theory in a way that is equivalent to Pearl’s theory expressed in its native notation. Nonetheless, the many fundamental differences between the theories rule out any stronger form of equivalence. A renewed emphasis on comparative research can (...) help to guide applications, further develop each theory, and better understand their relative strengths and weaknesses. (shrink)

The problematics of alienation have played a rather significant role in the discussions\nabout the sense and relevance of Marxism which have taken place in\nthe last twenty years. &dquo;Back to Marx&dquo; was at least one of the main slogans of\nthat ideological/intellectual movement, which evolved both in the East and\nWest from the mid-fifties and which is sometimes referred to as the trend of\n&dquo;humanist&dquo; Marxism. The idea of a &dquo;Marx-Renaissance&dquo; was undoubtedly\ndirected first of all against the completely petrified framework of institutionalized\nMarxism, turned into (...) a &dquo;religion of state&dquo; legitimating the domination\nof a bureaucratic apparatus over the population of East European societies.\nThe &dquo;rediscovery&dquo; and &dquo;rehabilitation&dquo; of the young Marx, the emphasis on\nthe continuity of his thought, meant not only a reintroduction of a number\nof categories, problems and ideas, which were thought fruitful in their critical\ninsight into contemporary conditions and which the impoverished and distorted\nversion of Marxism in official communist ideology (deliberately) failed\nto take into account: it also meant a global challenge to the appropriation of\nthe Marxian tradition by an apologetic ideology, which disguised its positivistic\ncontent through the form of an old-fashioned, dogmatic metaphysics; it\nwas an attempt to recover the critical/emancipatory meaning of this tradition\nwithin the realities of the twentieth century. It was in this context that the\nnotion of &dquo;alienation&dquo; again reappeared -- as a concept through which one\ncould articulate an attitude which was critical simultaneously of Western\ncapitalist and so-called &dquo;socialist&dquo; Eastern societies. Within the framework of\nEast European realities even the rather abstract character of this notion found\nin young Marx, was well suited to the theoretical vagueness and the practical\nlimitations of this new-found leftist criticism of home-societies. (shrink)

Die Diskussion uber die rechtliche Ausgestaltung der Sterbehilfe wird kontrovers gefuhrt. Ein zentraler Streitpunkt ist die Frage des assistierten Suizids und seiner Vereinbarkeit mit dem arztlichen Standesethos. Dabei werden grundlegende Fragen beruhrt: Gibt es uberhaupt authentische, selbstbestimmte Wunsche zum assistierten Suizid und wie sind diese zu verstehen? Welche Bedeutung hat die Rede vom Leben als Gabe Gottes? Welcher Stellenwert kommt der Gewissensentscheidung der Betroffenen zu? Die Beitrage des Bandes sensibilisieren fur das weite Feld der theologisch-ethischen Herausforderungen und entwickeln Perspektiven fur (...) eine differenzierte Rede von christlicher Verantwortung. Mit Beitragen von Reinhard Bottcher, Reinhard Haubenthaler, Konrad Hilpert, Veronika Hoffmann, Adrian Holderegger, Hartmut Kress, Norbert Kuhn-Flammensfeld, Jochen Sautermeister, Hanspeter Schmitt, Josef Schuster SJ, Nina Streeck, Knut Wenzel und Markus Zimmermann. (shrink)

Social studies of science and technology are dominated by action and macro approaches. This has led to a neglect of institutions and institutional arrangements at the meso level, which are important, in particular to the student of technology. The transfer of concepts and methods from social studies of science to technology studies has conserved this lack of concern with the meso level. This article suggests a more critical evaluation of this transfer, along with a review of the now popular assumption (...) of a high degree of similarity between science and technology. Two case studies show how meso-level considerations are important to an understanding of the nature of technological innovation and illustrate the lack of similarity between scientific and technological development. (shrink)

Many consider the nature of human consciousness to be one of the last great unsolved mysteries. Why should the light turn on, so to speak, in human beings at all? And how is the electrical storm of neurons under our skull connected with our consciousness? Is the self only our brain's user interface, a kind of stage on which a show is performed that we cannot freely direct? In this book, philosopher Markus Gabriel challenges an increasing trend in the (...) sciences towards neurocentrism, a notion which rests on the assumption that the self is identical to the brain. Gabriel raises serious doubts as to whether we can know ourselves in this way. In a sharp critique of this approach, he presents a new defense of the free will and provides a timely introduction to philosophical thought about the self – all with verve, humor, and surprising insights. Gabriel criticizes the scientific image of the world and takes us on an eclectic journey of self-reflection by way of such concepts as self, consciousness, and freedom, with the aid of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nagel but also Dr. Who, The Walking Dead, and Fargo. (shrink)

Seit der Antike wird der Musik eine große emotionale Wirkung zugeschrieben. Bis heute sind unterschiedliche Erklärungsmodelle diskutiert worden. Das betrifft zunächst das Phänomen der Gefühle im Allgemeinen, aber auch die Frage nach der Ursache der ästhetischen Empfindungen im Besonderen. Die Gefühlslehre von Carl Stumpf versucht u. a. in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit William James (James-Lange-Theorie, die vornehmlich auf die somatische Genese der Emotionen insistiert) Erklärungsansätze zu entwickeln, die sowohl kognitive als auch emotional-wertende psychische Funktionen berücksichtigen. Dennoch ist in Bezug auf das (...) nur scheinbar triviale Verhältnis von Hören und Fühlen, Musik und Emotionalität unter stringent wissenschaftlichen Kriterien erst ein Anfang gemacht worden, weil die Thematik - wie der Band zeigt - von einer bislang unterschätzten Komplexität zeugt, die zukünftig wohl nur mit vereinten interdisziplinären Kräften einem besseren Verständnis näherzubringen sein wird. (shrink)

The dynamic differentiation of various social spheres in modernity has not been matched by any similarly dynamic development of new forms of trust which would help to maintain the connection between the impersonal/ systemic forms and the personal ones. Instead, we face today an increasing gap between the forms of trust related to the proliferating ‘abstract systems’ and the personal forms of trust. It is, above all, in this context that the topic of friendship became reintroduced into theoretical debates in (...) search for a model of human relationships which might bridge this gap. It is argued that such transformation of friendship into a ‘radical utopia’ is only the latest phase in the long series of historical transformations it has undergone in the context of changing social articulation of the relation between privacy and publicness. (shrink)

Die Kategorie des Heiligen schlieat - im Anschluss an Rudolf Otto - sowohl faszinierende als auch erschreckende Seiten des Numinosen ein. Mit der uberraschenden Wiederkehr der Religionen ins private und offentliche Leben, die sich vielfach in Konflikten ereignet und zunehmend durch religios motivierte Gewalt Bahn bricht, wird es immer wichtiger, sich dem Heiligen in den Religionen neu zu widmen. Der vorliegende Band diskutiert diese Kategorie deshalb in phanomenologischer und interkultureller Perspektive und zeigt auf, wie sie in religionswissenschaftlichen, theologischen und philosophischen (...) Kontexten anschlussfahig an aktuelle gesellschaftliche Debatten ist. Mit Beitragen von Roderich Barth, Gertrude Deninger-Polzer, Johann Figl, Wolfgang Gantke, Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, Manfred Hutter, Hans Kessler, Markus Luber, Jurgen Mohn, Thomas M. Schmidt, Perry Schmidt- Leukel, Michael Stausberg, Bernd Trocholepczy, Udo Tworuschka, Hans Waldenfels, Edmund Weber, Knut Wenzel, Hamid Reza Yousefi. (shrink)

Philosophers have spent millennia accumulating knowledge about knowledge. But negative epistemological phenomena, such as ignorance, falsity, and delusion, are persistently overlooked. Markus Gabriel argues that being wrong is part and parcel of subjectivity itself, adding a novel perspective on epistemic failures to debates around New Realism.

Text-generative AI-systems have become important semantic agents with ChatGPT. We conducted a series of experiments to learn what teachers’ conceptions of text-generative AI are in relation to philosophical texts. In our main experiment, using mixed methods, we had twenty-four high school students write philosophical essays, which we then randomized to essays with the same command from ChatGPT. We had ten prospective teachers assess these essays. They were able to tell whether it was an AI or student essay with 78.7 percent (...) accuracy, which is better than the Open AI Classifier. Interestingly, however, they used criteria like argumentative and logical flawlessness and neutrality. We concluded from this that they are using an inverted Turing test and are no longer looking for rationality in machines but for irrationality in humans. (shrink)

Work has always been a significant source of ethical questions, philosophical reflection, and political struggle. Although the future of work in a sense is always at stake, the issue is particularly relevant right now, in light of the advent of advanced AI systems and the collective experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has reinvigorated philosophical discussion and interest in the study of the future of work. The purpose of this survey article is to provide an overview of the emerging philosophical (...) field that engages with the future of work, with a special focus on equality and justice, and to outline a research agenda that can help the field to develop further. Section 2 provides some historical context for the current surge in interest in the topic. Then, we discuss what work is and whether there is a philosophy of work (Section 3). The four main sub-debates we then turn to concern the value of work (Section 4), distributive justice and work (Section 5), productive justice (Section 6), and institutional reforms prompted by changes in how work is organized (Section 7). The final section discusses the importance of the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory in philosophical investigations into the future of work. (shrink)

Resenha do livro "Morte", de Giovanni Casertano.

The article explores the relationship between visual culture and the fight for visibility and attention in contemporary society. It draws on a concept of visual culture which not only sees the rising significance of the visual and the proliferation of images as its defining traits, but also the fact that, today, people are—to a much higher degree—both consumers as well as producers of images. Based on this definition, it is argued that in visually oriented communication and media societies, the anthropologically (...) fundamental need for attention manifests itself as a fight for visibility which takes on the form of ever more extreme forms of public self-display. Furthermore, a portrait of two social figures—the star and the voyeur—will serve as further analysis and description of the social trends which can be tied to the emergence of today's visual culture. The article will close by discussing attention and visibility in terms of inclusion and exclusion and by proposing an analytical model for differentiating four modes of existence in a visual culture. (shrink)

When speakers utter metaphors, such as "Lawyers are also sharks," they often intend to communicate messages beyond those expressed by the metaphorical meaning of these expressions. For instance, in some circumstances, a speaker may state "Lawyers are also sharks" to strengthen a previous speaker's negative beliefs about lawyers, to add new information about lawyers to listeners to some context, or even to contradict a previous speaker's positive assertions about lawyers. In each case, speaking metaphorically communicates one of these three social (...) messages that are relevant to the ongoing discourse. At the same time, speaking metaphorically may express other social and affective information that is more difficult to convey using non-metaphorical speech, such as "Lawyers are also aggressive." We report the results of three experiments demonstrating that people infer different pragmatic messages from metaphors in varying social situations and that many metaphors can express additional pragmatic and rhetorical meanings beyond those conveyed by non-metaphorical language. These findings demonstrate the importance of trade-offs between cognitive effort and cognitive effects in pragmatic theories of metaphor use and understanding. (shrink)

The Cognitive Foundations and Epistemology of Arithmetic and Geometry How is knowledge of arithmetic and geometry developed and acquired? In the tradition established by Plato and often associated with Kant, the epistemology of mathematics has been focused on a priori approaches, which take mathematical knowledge and its study to be essentially independent of sensory experience. … Continue reading The Cognitive Foundations and Epistemology of Arithmetic and Geometry →.

Many epistemologists believe that the distinction between the genesis and the validity of a belief is a fundamental presupposition of adequate epistemological reflection. In this article it will be argued that the arguments for this majority conviction are not convincing. As an alternative it is suggested that the distin- ction between epistemic and non-epistemic procedures should be regarded as fundamental for epistemology.

Adorno’s extended conception of ‘culture industry’ renders the usual criticism of his views as ‘elitist’ meaningless. The same expansion creates, however, logical strains and contradictions in his analysis of the character and function of the culture industry: a strain in its ‘psychosocial’ and ‘status compulsion’ interpretation. In his late work Adorno attempts to solve this contradiction, but at a heavy price, by creating a conceptual barrier between pleasure and happiness.