BackgroundFreezing of gait is a disabling burden for Parkinson’s disease patients with poor response to conventional therapies. Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra moved into focus as a potential therapeutic option to treat the parkinsonian gait disorder and refractory FoG. The mechanisms of action of DBS within the cortical-subcortical-basal ganglia network on gait, particularly at the cortical level, remain unclear.MethodsTwelve patients with idiopathic PD and chronically-implanted DBS electrodes were assessed on their regular dopaminergic medication in (...) a standardized stepping in place paradigm. Patients executed the task with DBS switched off, conventional STN DBS and combined STN+SN DBS and were compared to healthy matched controls. Simultaneous high-density EEG and kinematic measurements were recorded during resting-state, effective stepping, and freezing episodes.ResultsClinically, STN+SN DBS was superior to conventional STN DBS in improving temporal stepping variability of the more affected leg. During resting-state and effective stepping, the cortical activity of PD patients in STIM OFF was characterized by excessive over-synchronization in the theta, alpha, and high-beta band compared to healthy controls. Both active DBS settings similarly decreased resting-state alpha power and reduced pathologically enhanced high-beta activity during resting-state and effective stepping compared to STIM OFF. Freezing episodes during STN DBS and STN+SN DBS showed spectrally and spatially distinct cortical activity patterns when compared to effective stepping. During STN DBS, FoG was associated with an increase in cortical alpha and low-beta activity over central cortical areas, while with STN+SN DBS, an increase in high-beta was prominent over more frontal areas.ConclusionsSTN+SN DBS improved temporal aspects of parkinsonian gait impairment compared to conventional STN DBS and differentially affected cortical oscillatory patterns during regular locomotion and freezing suggesting a potential modulatory effect on dysfunctional cortical-subcortical communication in PD. (shrink)

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In his The Revolutionary Kant, Graham Bird engages in a systematic and thorough (...) evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

My contribution to a book symposium on Graham’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, sponsored by the North American and the UK Kant Societies, held in conjunction with the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, 20 February 2009. Comments also delivered by Adrian Moore, Gary Banham, Jill Buroker and Manfred Kuehn, with relplies by Graham Bird.

Flach bringt Kants geltungs- und prinzipientheoretische Freiheitslehre zur Darstellung und sucht zu zeigen, welches Erklärungspotential diese Lehre in puncto Humanität hat. Krijnen bringt Hegels logische und geistphilosophische Freiheitslehre zur Darstellung und sucht zu zeigen, daß und wie in ihr ein fundamentaler Aspekt der Freiheit thematisch wird, der in Kants Lehre unterbeleuchtet bleibt. Die Diskussionsbeiträge zeigen, welchen Stellenwert dem einen und dem anderen Paradigma im aktuellen Urteil zuerkannt wird. Flach presents Kant’s conception of freedom as well as its potential for understanding (...) what it means to be human. Krijnen presents Hegel’s conception of freedom and shows that Kant’s conception underestimates an essential feature of freedom. The contributions of other authors assess the results. (shrink)

This book is the first translation into English of the Reflections which Kant wrote whilst formulating his ideas in political philosophy: the preparatory drafts for Theory and Practice, Toward Perpetual Peace, the Doctrine of Right, and Conflict of the Faculties; and the only surviving student transcription of his course on Natural Right. Through these texts one can trace the development of his political thought, from his first exposure to Rousseau in the mid 1760s through to his last musings in the (...) late 1790s after his final system of Right was published. The material covers such topics as the central role of freedom, the social contract, the nature of sovereignty, the means for achieving international peace, property rights in relation to the very possibility of human agency, the general prohibition of rebellion, and Kant's philosophical defense of the French Revolution. (shrink)

Freiheit ist ein Grundbegriff der modernen Philosophie und die Freiheitskonzeptionen Kants und Hegels bilden wichtige Quellen, um Freiheit zu begreifen. Allerdings sind nicht nur Sinn und Gehalt ihrer Konzeptionen bis heute umstritten, sondern auch eine adäquate Bewertung erweist sich als ein Desiderat der Forschung. In der vorliegenden Studie bringt Werner Flach Kants geltungs- und prinzipientheoretische Freiheitslehre zur Darstellung und sucht zu zeigen, welches Erklärungspotential diese Lehre in puncto Humanität hat. Christian Krijnen bringt hingegen Hegels logische und geistphilosophische Freiheitslehre zur Darstellung (...) und sucht zu zeigen, dass und wie in Kants Lehre der fundamentale Aspekt der Wirklichkeit der Freiheit unterbeleuchtet bleibt. Die Diskussionsbeiträge von Martin Bunte, Jakub Kloc-Konkołowicz, Hernán Pringe, Jacco Verburgt, Kenneth R. Westphal und Manfred Wetzel machen deutlich, welchen Stellenwert dem einen und dem anderen Paradigma im aktuellen Urteil zuerkannt wird. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that there are two types of genericity, called characterizing statements and kind reference in Krifka et al. (1995). Characterizing statements express generalizations about sets of entities or situations, cf. (1); kind reference involves reference to an entity that is related to specimens, cf. (2).

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. (...) Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process--such as adaptation by means of natural selection--depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process. (shrink)

Explores the philosophical contributions and contemporary relevance of early German Romanticism.

This book represents an effort to understand very old questions about biological form, function, and the relationships between them. The essays collected here reflect the diversity of approaches in evolutionary developmental biology, including not only studies by prominent scientists whose research focuses on topics concerned with evolution and development, but also historically and conceptually oriented studies that place the scientific work within a larger framework and ask how it can be pushed further. Topics under discussion range from the use of (...) theoretical and empirical biomechanics to understand the evolution of plant form, to detailed studies of the evolution of development and the role of developmental constraints on phenotypic variation. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary volume that will begin a wider conversation about the shape of Evo Devo as it matures as a field. (shrink)

The argument from faultless disagreement against moral realism is based on the alleged possibility of cognitively faultless moral disagreement, CFD. This possibility contradicts the pre-theoretic intuition that moral truth is knowable, in principle, the so-called epistemic constraint on moral truth, EC. In this paper, I discuss the realist’s two options to cope with this argument. First of all, I point out the realist’s strategies to explain the possibility of cognitively faultless error, which is implied by CFD. Then I discuss one (...) promising option to respond to the argument from faultless disagreement: accepting both CFD and EC but blocking the ensuing contradiction by invoking an equivocation as regards the notion of knowability. After pointing out the drawbacks of this solution I discuss the other promising option: rejecting CFD by drawing on an agnostic stance on the part of cognitively blameless thinkers as regards moral propositions they cannot agree on. Yet this option faces the problem that EC has to be denied. In concluding the paper, I outline the prospects of an attractive objectivist shape of moral antirealism, which is also affected by the argument from faultless disagreement. (shrink)

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In his The Revolutionary Kant, Graham Bird engages in a systematic and thorough (...) evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

This paper details the key steps in Kant’s transcendental proof that we perceive, not merely imagine, physical objects. These steps begin with Kant’s method (§II) and highlight the spatio-temporal character of our representational capacities (§III), Kant’s two transcendental proofs of mental content externalism (§IV), his proof that we can only make causal judgments about spatial substances (§§V, VI), the transcendental conditions of our self-ascription of experiences (§VII), Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (§VIII), perceptual synthesis (§IX), Kant’s justificatory fallibilism (§X), (...) and the cognitive transcendence of global perceptual hypotheses (§XI). The proof outlined here differs markedly from ‘analytic transcendental arguments’ that focus selectively on Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ and portions of the ‘Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding’. Understood as presented here, Kant’s epistemology is directly relevant to contemporary philosophical issues. (shrink)

Two reasons are given for speaking of “reason” even where Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Climacus, speaks of “understanding.” First, we are dealing with a significant contribution to a centuries-old discussion of an issue that goes by the name of “faith and reason.” Second, whereas Kant and Hegel sharply distinguish mere understanding from reason, no such distinction is at work in Kierkegaard’s text. At issue is the quite different distinction of unaided human reason and divine revelation. It is not just any notion of (...) reason that is the target of Kierkegaard’s critique, but an autonomous reason, independent of revelation, that claims hegemony over biblical faith in both its popular and academic forms. This hegemony expresses itself in both outright rejection of and radical reinterpretation of elements of biblical faith. (shrink)

In this paper we will discuss constraints on the number of (non-dummy) players and on the distribution of votes such that local monotonicity is satisfied for the Public Good Index. These results are compared to properties which are related to constraints on the redistribution of votes (such as implied by global monotonicity). The discussion shows that monotonicity is not a straightforward criterion of classification for power measures.

Der "Orient" in Amerika läßt sich auf zwei Begegnungsrichtungen festlegen, wie ich hier anhand einiger Beispiele zu zeigen versuchte: Zunächst finden wir den Weg der Missionare, die versuchten, die für sie buchstäblich "Neue" Welt mit ihrem biblischen Instrumentarium zu deuten: Die heidnischen Götter sind vergleichbar den Götzen, die das Alte Testament kennt, und nichts anderes als Vorspiegelungen des Teufels. Einzelne indianische Anschauungen können dabei überhaupt biblisch gedeutet werden, teils als teuflische Nachahmungen der wirklichen biblischen Geschichte, teils als fast in Vergessenheit (...) geratene Erinnerungen an einen ehemaligen Kontakt zur Alten Welt. Mit den ersten Erfolgen in der Missionierung finden wir aber auch eine andere Begegnungsrichtung : Die Indios selbst greifen auf biblische und somit orientalische Elemente zurück, um ihr Weltbild daran anzuknüpfen. Häufiger kann man aber beobachten, daß die eigene Mythologie nur formal mit biblischen Aussagen in Korrelation gebracht wird, so daß diese "Begegnung" eher oberflächlich bleibt. Beide Wege können dabei als Versuche gelten, das Fremde zu kategorisieren, mit dem "Orient" und "Okzident" durch den Zusammenprall der Kulturen im Gefolge der Conquista plötzlich zu leben hatten. Da diese Versuche jedoch in sich z.T. fragwürdig sind, haben sie letztlich bis heute kaum dazu geführt, das Weltbild des jeweils anderen auch zu verstehen. (shrink)

The interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy as a version of traditional idealism has a long history. In spite of Kant's and his commentators’ various attempts to distinguish between traditional and transcendental idealism, his philosophy continues to be construed as committed (whether explicitly or implicitly and whether consistently or inconsistently) to various features usually associated with the traditional idealist project. As a result, most often, the accusation is that his Critical philosophy makes too strong metaphysical and epistemological claims.In hisThe Revolutionary Kant, (...) Graham Bird engages in a systematic and thorough evaluation of the traditionalist interpretation, as part of perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling defence of a revolutionary reading of Kant's thought. In the third part of this special issue, the exchanges between, on the one hand, Graham Bird and, on the other, Gary Banham, Gordon Brittan, Manfred Kuehn, Adrian Moore and Kenneth Westphal focus on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of Kant's first Critique. More exactly, the emphasis is on specific aspects of Bird's interpretation of the Introduction, Analytic of Principles and Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique.The second part of the special issue is devoted to discussions of particular topics in Bird's construal of the remaining significant parts of the first Critique, namely, of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Written by Sorin Baiasu and Michelle Grier, these articles examine specific issues in these two remaining parts of the Critique, from the perspective of the debate between the traditionalist and revolutionary interpretation. The special issue begins with an Introduction by the guest co-editors. This provides a summary of the exchanges between Bird and his critics, with a particular focus on the debates stemming from the differences between traditional and revolutionary interpretations of Kant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to connect the current debate on relative truth to the discussions of theories of truth in general, in which the so-called platitudes about truth have recently played a prominent role. Truth-relativists propose adding to the standard truth predicate an argument-place for an extra parameter over and above a possible world and they presume that the predicate that results from this relativization is a truth predicate. Yet this relativization arguably isn't just an innocuous extrapolation of (...) the Lewis-Kaplan line in semantics that naturally conserves the predicate's status as a truth predicate. This status has to be specifically established. I'll discuss arguments to the effect that truth-relativists fail on that score since relative truth doesn't satisfy certain basic platitudes about truth, in particular the Equivalence Schema and the normativity of truth. This suggests that a relativized truth predicate cannot play the role required of a truth predicate. I shall discuss the relativist's defensive strategies in detail, the most promising of which is to claim that it is legitimate to deny the Equivalence Schema by arguing that relativism introduces a revisionary concept of truth and so fundamentally revises semantics. However, I'll point out that solely invoking semantic revision doesn't suffice to justify a denial of the Equivalence Schema and that any further justification of such a denial is ad hoc or question begging. Moreover, I suggest that with respect to the normativity of truth the prospects of truth-relativism are equally dim. (shrink)

Dans laScience de la logiqueet dans l’Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques,Hegel reconstruit la philosophie critique de Kant en développant i) une logique transcendantale dans laScience de la logiqueet dans laPhilosophie de la nature; ii) une conception pragmatique de l’a priori; et iii) une caractéristique-clé de l’usage du verbe «réaliser» en relation avec les concepts et les principes. Chacun de ces trois éléments constitue un aspect central de la sémantique spécifiquement cognitive de Hegel, que celui-ci développe, en partant de la thèse kantienne (...) de la référence cognitive singulière, en un réalisme pragmatique systématique. (shrink)

The fine arts are considered as one of several pathways toward insight, knowledge, and understanding. My reflections on this are deliberately not based on aesthetics or on philosophy of art. Speculations on fine art observe two characteristics of specific epistemic processes: first, a tacit knowledge that is not enunciated by ordinary language and, second, a present and effective logic, which has a different pattern from the logic of scientific knowledge. The latter leads to change because it is built upon accumulated (...) knowledge, whereas in the arts, change leads to knowledge as creative processes guide us toward what we do not know, and this challenges what we do know. (shrink)

According to Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, a proper science is organized according to rational principles and has a pure a priori rational part, its metaphysical foundation. In the second edition Preface to the first Critique, Kant claims that his account of time explains the a priori possibility of Newton’s laws of motion. I argue that Kant’s proof of the law of inertia fails, and that this casts doubt on Kant’s enterprise of providing a priori foundations for Newton’s physics.

There are a number of well-known restrictions for the Dative Alternation (cf. Green (1974), Oehrle (1976), Gropen, Pinker, Hollander, & Goldberg (1989), Pinker (1989), Pesetsky (1992), Levin (1993). I will show that several of the low-level semantic restrictions are consequences of a more general one involving the incorporation of a manner component into the meaning of the verb. These restrictions can be explained by assuming two distinct representations of verbs participating in the Dative Alternation: The PO frame expresses movement of (...) an object t o a g o a l , the DO frame implies a change of possession. I will argue that these restrictions cannot be expressed in a syntactic representation of lexical meaning as in Pinker (1989) and Hale & Keyser (1993). (shrink)

Meta-ethical realism faces the serious epistemological problem of how to explain our epistemic access to moral reality. In the face of this challenge many are sceptical about non-naturalist realism. Nonetheless, there is good reason to acknowledge moral objectivity: morality shows all the signs of a truth-apt discourse but doesn’t exhibit the typical relativity inducing features. This suggests a middle-ground position, a theory that embraces the virtues of realism but does avoid its vices: objectivist antirealism. In this paper, I’ll discuss, mainly (...) following Crispin Wright’s account of moral truth as superassertibility, a promising version of objectivist antirealism and show how to cope with notorious problems, notably those arising from the thought that moral disagreement might be possible in which nobody is guilty of a cognitive shortcoming, which contradicts the antirealist claim that moral truth is not beyond our epistemic reach. The solution is to deny the possibility of cognitively faultless moral disagreement by arguing that cognitively blameless thinkers either agree or stay agnostic and, therefore, never disagree about any moral proposition. Since assuming an agnostic stance on the part of such thinkers contradicts the antirealist’s conception of truth—even within the limits of intuitionistic logic—I’ll propose an alternative logical revision for the moral discourse: a three-valued logic with epistemically construed truth-values. (shrink)

The first part of this article questions the authenticity of one of the most quoted and allegedly reliable sources in the Burckhardt-Nietzsche debate. After having pointed out who was interested in manipulating this source and why, it will go back to the original issue of Burckhardt’s “silence.” This time, though, the question is going to be tackled from a different angle: not what Burckhardt thought about Nietzsche; rather, what did Nietzsche think about Burckhardt’s silence. The claims I will raise in (...) this respect are two: 1) Nietzsche is the first interpreter of Burckhardt’s silence; 2) Burckhardt’s silence, far from being a mere private issue, became an elaborate theme of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy. (shrink)