Alsatian engineer Gustave-Adolphe Hirn is best known to historians of science for his experimental determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat, first published in 1855. Since the 1840s, that equivalent has been closely associated with the conservation of energy, indeed often conflated with it. Hirn was one of Thomas Kuhn’s twelve ‘pioneers’ whose work he deemed relevant to the ostensible ‘simultaneous discovery’ of energy conservation. Yet Hirn never wholeheartedly embraced energy conservation. After reviewing his experimental work, his (...) philosophical reflections, and his response to developments in heat theory, this article identifies three factors as having played central roles in this regard: Hirn’s deepest concerns were ontological, not energetic; none of the concepts basic to his natural philosophy were appropriate stand-ins for a quantitatively conserved energy; and, accurately reflecting the most common interpretation of the principle of the conservation of energy from the 1860s on – as exemplified already by Helmholtz in 1847 – Hirn associated its corpuscular-mechanical underpinning with the despiritualizing materialism he saw as dominating contemporary science. Hence although Hirn’s natural philosophy embraced sentiments quite in the spirit of the conservation of energy, he never explicitly subscribed to that principle. (shrink)

Mental disorders have been suggested to differ from somatic diseases because they lack an organic correlate. We show that this argument is both empirically wrong and theoretically irrelevant, because diseases are defined by functional impairments and not biological variation. Due to human diversity, a multitude of functions can be defined, and any selection of medically relevant functional impairments is necessarily value-based. We suggest that such values include individual survival and living in a shared world with others, and that their definition (...) requires public debate and a critical reflection by Philosophical Anthropology. However, the presence of functional impairments that are generally relevant for human life and survival only fulfils the so-called disease criterion, which is necessary but not sufficient to diagnose a clinically relevant malady. This would only be justified if such functional impairments cause individual harm, either because they are accompanied by suffering (the illness criterion) or because they interfere with basic activities of daily living such as personal hygiene and food intake (the sickness criterion of a clinically relevant malady). We apply this theory to mental disorders, conclude that only a fraction of such “disorders” currently listed in international classifications of diseases are clinically relevant mental maladies, suggest focusing on the needs of persons with such maladies and recommend avoiding “pathologization” of human diversity. (shrink)

Während seit einiger Zeit im Feuilleton ein Kulturkampf zwischen Vertretern des "Gehirns" und des "Geistes" ausgefochten wird, haben führende Neurobiologen und Philosophen – unter Beteiligung einer Soziologin, eines Mathematikers und zweier Physiker - in der "Deutschen Zeitschrift für Philosophie" eine Sachdiskussion zu den Grenzfragen der Hirnforschung geführt. Neben der hier vorgelegten vollständigen Neuedition dieser Auseinandersetzung umfasst ca. ein Drittel des Bandes sämtliche Beiträge einer bisher unveröffentlichten Schlussrunde, die eine vorläufige Bilanz zieht, die strittig bleibt. Alle Diskussionsteilnehmer sind sich in der (...) Intention einig, dass weder der reduktive Naturalismus noch der ontologische Dualismus von Gehirn und Geist überzeugen können. Uneins bleiben aber nicht nur die Neurobiologen und Philosophen gegen einander, sondern auch die Philosophen und die Neurobiologen jeweils untereinander. Der Dissens betrifft die Frage, wie ihre schwache Gemeinsamkeit methodologisch und geschichtlich, ontologisch und ontisch so durchgeführt werden kann, dass keine Selbstwidersprüche eintreten: Für die Erfüllung des eigenen Anliegens wird noch etwas Anderes in Anspruch genommen, als man selbst zugleich zu erklären vermag. Personale Lebewesen bzw. lebende Personen vollziehen sich anders, als dualistisch konzipiert werden kann. (shrink)

Abstract698 S., geb., € 49,90. ISBN 978-3-88221-115-3.

In his reflections on his adolescent theft of a neighbor’s pears, Augustine first claims that he did it just because it was wicked. But he then worries that there is something unacceptable in that claim. Some readers have found in this account Augustine’s rejection of the principle that all voluntary action is done for the sake of some perceived good. I argue that Augustine intends his case to call the principle into question, but that he does not ultimately reject it. (...) His careful and resourceful analysis of the motivations of his theft adds subtlety to his own understanding of voluntary action and allows hirn to introduce an important component of his general account of sin, namely, that it essentially involves prideful self-assertion in imitation of God. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that environmental reform movements cannot halt humankind’s destruction of the biosphere because they still operate within the anthropocentric humanism that forms the root of the ecological crisis. According to “radical” environmentalists, disaster can be averted only if we adopt a nonanthropocentric understanding of reality that teaches us to live harmoniouslyon the Earth. Martin Heidegger agrees that humanism leads human beings beyond their proper limits while forcing other beings beyond their limits as weIl. The doctrine of (...) the “rights of man” justifies human exploitation of nonhuman beings. Paradoxically, however, the doctrine of rights for nonhuman beings does not escape the orbit of humanism. According to Heidegger, a nonanthropocentric conception of humanity and its relation to nature must go beyond the doctrine of rights. We can dweIl harmoniously on Earth only by submitting to our primary obligation: to be open for the Being of beings. We need a new way of understanding Being, a new ethos, that lets beings manifest themselves not merely as objects for human ends, but as intrinsically important. Heidegger calls this ethos the “fourfold” of earth and sky, gods and mortals. Humanists argue that Heidegger is wrong to abandon the principle of human rights in favor of the notion that we are obligated to “let beings be,” while some radical environmentalists accuse hirn of being a humanist because he supposedly overestimates the importance of humankind’s ability to speak. Heidegger insists, however, that language makes possible culture, without which thereis no human experience of nature. An environmentally sound ethos. can arise, according to Heidegger, only from a shift within the cultural heritage of the West. Richard Rorty agrees that we must become open for a new “conversation” with the West, even if this requires abandoning traditionally important fields such as epistemology. The need to develop a new understanding of Being is so great that thinkers from the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy are finally initiating a long-overdue dialogue. (shrink)

‚Person‘ und ‚PersonalitätPersonPersonalität‘ sind in der Angewandten Ethik, insbesondere in der Bioethik seit den 1980er Jahren aus mehreren Gründen zu Schlüsselbegriffen geworden. In dem Streit um die Bedingungen, die ein Wesen erfüllen muss, um Personalität zugesprochen zu bekommen, kulminieren eine Reihe von oftmals stark emotionalisierten Auseinandersetzungen um den moralischen und rechtlichen Status von Grenzfällen („marginal cases“, vgl. Pluhar 1987) innerhalb und außerhalb der Sphäre des Menschen: auf der einen Seite menschliche Embryonen und Föten, ohne Großhirn geborene Menschen (Anenzephale), schwer geistig (...) Behinderte, irreversibel bewusstseinsunfähige Menschen, Hirntote; auf der anderen Seite Angehörige anderer biologischer Gattungen mit dem Menschen nahekommenden kognitiven und emotionalen Fähigkeiten wie Menschenaffen und Meeressäuger sowie mögliche in Zukunft verfügbare bewusstseinsfähige MaschinenMaschinenethikmoralischer Status von intelligenten Systemen/MaschinenKünstliche Intelligenz. Diese Auseinandersetzung verschärft sich dadurch, dass diametral entgegengesetzte Ethikansätze den Personenbegriff an zentraler Stelle ins Spiel bringen, diesen jedoch zum Ausgangspunkt sehr verschiedener normativer Positionen machen. (shrink)

Die Naturwissenschaft beschreibt die Welt im Wesentlichen so, wie sie ist. Wer das Gegenteil behauptet, lässt sich zwar nicht widerlegen, muss aber absurde Konsequenzen in Kauf nehmen.Klimaforschung ist ein überaus kompliziertes Geschäft. Die Beteiligten sehen sich veranlasst, neue Forschungsgegenstände zu definieren wie zum Beispiel die atlantische Umwälzströmung. Unmittelbar sehen kann man sie nicht; vielmehr postulieren die Forscher die Existenz dieser globalen Strömung, die nahezu den gesamten Atlantik umfasst, weil sie damit eine Fülle von Beobachtungsdaten zu einem einheitlichen Gesamtbild zusammenfügen können. (...) Haben sie sich damit ihre Welt zurechtkonstruiert? Sind die Begriffe, mit denen sie das globale Klima beschreiben, nichts weiter als Produkte ihres Hirns, deren Bezug zur Realität zumindest zweifelhaft ist? Sind sie willkürlich gewählt? Könnten sie insbesondere mit gleichem Recht auch anders definiert werden? Ist etwa die gesamte Klimaforschung eineWillkürveranstaltung vergleichbar der Kleidermode oder einem Kunststil – durchaus mit rudimentärem Realitätsbezug und vom Konsens einer großen Anzahl Menschen getragen, aber in wesentlichen Teilen im Diskurs einiger Fachleute ausgehandelt und nicht weiter begründbar? Haben wir daher die Freiheit, sie nicht ernst zu nehmen? Ich behaupte: Nein, und werde im Folgenden Argumente dafür anführen. (shrink)

The present work is the product of several years study of the various aspects of Kanfs Critical Philosophy and Hume's naturalism. During that time many individuals have helped with this work and it is hardly possible to set down the names of aH of them. One name does des erve special mention - Prof. Dr. H. Heimsoeth with whom the author has discussed some of the very knotty problems of Kantian Philosophy. Although Hume has been - as Kant freely admits (...) in the Preface to his "Prolegomena" - one of the most decisive influences and turning points in the philosophical development of Kant, the author does not thematize in this work the age-old problem of whether Kant reaHy read, understood and refuted Hume. That it has been, ever since Hume wrote, a favorite pursuit among philosophers to answer hirn, to refute hirn, and to refute Kanfs attempt at refutation of hirn, irrespective of its being convincing or not, must be mentioned with special respect. (shrink)

The close relationship that thinking bears to doing is perhaps the foundational idea in the plilosophy of education. This idea makes its first systematic appearance in the thought of Charles S. Peirce. In order to appreciate Peirce’s discovery, we cannot interpret hirn through the eyes of Richard Rorty, who obscures Peirce’s insight by making distinctions Peirce would have resisted. thought and action coincide most essentially in Peirce’s concept of the “scientific” method for fixing beliefs. This method is the most (...) reliable guide for justifying thought because it requires humans to act upon the world. Only such action helps reveal a steadily friendlier and more dependable environment. Rorty misses this idea of Peirce’s in so far as he clings to a radically romantic conception of creativity. (shrink)

This volume contains sOOeen essays written by his students and colleagues in honor of Maurice Natanson. The essays explore some of the diverse themes Professor Natanson has pursued through forty years of teaching and philosophizing in the tradition of existential phenomenology. Because it also includes a lengthy biographical and philosophical interview where one can find an absorbing account of Natanson's Lebens/au/in his own words, there is no need to detail that polypragmatic career here. Suffice to say that even passing acquaintance (...) with the man and the work will reveal that Edmund Husserl's self-description holds equally of his distinguished interpreter: "I seek not to instruct but only to lead, to point out and describe what I see. I claim no other right than that of speaking according to my best lights, principally before myself but in the same manner also before others, as one who has lived in all its seriousness the fate of a philosophical existence. "l For Natanson, as the diversity of the contributions to this volume attest, such seriousness involves something other than that narrow technical vision for which a topic is the more philosophical the less it has to do with anything else. In Natanson's pages-to say nothing of his teaching and conversation-there are no men of straw but living, breathing human beings; with hirn philosophy's tentacles are ubiquitous. (shrink)

Environmental holism and environmental individualism are based on incompatible notions of moral considerability, and yield incompatible results. For Schopenhauer, every intelligible character--every irreducible instance of formative nature---defines a distinct moral patient, and for hirn both holistic entities and the individual members of higher species have distinguishable intelligible characters. Schopenhauer’s neglected metaethics thus can be used to generate an environmental ethics which is complete in the sense of synthesizing holism and individualism while simultaneously meeting TomRegan’s (implicit) demand that an environmental (...) ethics make moral patients of natural objects. (shrink)

Aquinas’s admirers, reacting against Donald Davidson’s criticisms of hirn, commonly argue (a) that the will does play a role in Aquinas’s account of incontinence, and (b) that his explanation of incontinent action turns on the weakness of the will. The first part of this paper argues that they are correct about (a) but wholly mistaken about (b). Aquinas rarely even mentions the weakness of the will, and he neverinvokes it to explain why someone acts counter to her own better (...) judgment. In his view, such a person has the capacity for self-control but fails to exercise it. The second part of the paper considers Gary Watson’s account of incontinence, including and especially his objections to analyzing it as the failure to exercise one’s capacity for self-control. Here I argue that Aquinas’s account better serves the purposesof moral discourse and that it should not be expected to provide the kind of causal explanation Watson seeks. (shrink)

This paper points out several difficulties to understand Putnam’s views in his recent “Dewey Lectures”, which involve a certain move away from his “internal realism”. The main goal is to set into relief tensions in Putnam’s thinking probably provoked by his philosophical development. Two such tensions are touched upon. In the first place, Putnam wants to reject an account of phenomenal consciousness (sensory experience in particular) he had subscribed to during his realist times, which he calls “Cartesianism cum Materialism”, CM. (...) He puts forward what he takes to be an alternative, apparently based on the traditional Chisholmian “Theory of Appearing”. The paper suggest firstly that, in view of the facts to be accounted for, a theory along those lines cannot count as a real alternative to CM. In the second part, the paper develops an analogous tension between the views on truth Putnam seems to be willing to defend in the Dewey Lectures, and previous criticisms of the semantic conception of truth by hirn that heclaims still to be willing to subscribe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS GOD ESSENTIALLY DIFFERENT FROM HIS CREATURES? RAHNER'S EXPLANATION FROM REVELATION INTRODUCTION IN THIS PAPER we shall discuss two questions concerning the doctrine of God in the theology of Karl Rahner. What is it? On what is it based? In the process, we shall critically examine the relationship between the doctrine of God and Rahner's view of Christian revelation, focusing on the nature of theological method. Analysis will proceed (...) in two ways: comparison of Rahner's method with what I see as the method of scripture (faith seeking understanding) and with that of traditional Thomism as represented by Etienne Gilson. In Foundatians of Christian Faith, Chapter ~. "Man in the Presence of Absolute Mystery," Theological Investigations, volume 4, "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," and Theological ln1Yestigations, volume 11, "The Experience of God Today " Rabner develops his doctrine of God from his concept of absolute mystery which is drawn from human experience of reality according to his transcendental method. This method itself establishes the foundation for answering the first question, as we shall see. In answering the second question it is important that we examine carefully the foundation and determining element for any concept of God and of the creature's relation with God. The following issues will have to be discussed also: the nature of and need for Christian revelation, the role of faith and the kind of relation which exists between the Creator God and creatures. We shall discuss how Rahner deals with the free grace of God's revelation and presence in history while synthesizing creaturely self-tran575 576 PAUL D. MOLNAR scendent experience with grace and revelation according to his transcendental method. Such synthesis perceives the reality of God according to the constructs of natural theology and eliminates any practical need for revelation and faith in the triune God as the only true God. Moreover, we hope to show that the starting point for Rahner's transcendental method [human experience] is the very £actor which causes irreconcilable conflicts for a theology which claims to be a theology based on revelation. Rahner's analysis of experience is profound and has been useful for many in describing the creature's relation with the Creator. But as long as it is thought that our self-transcending experiences provide a point of departure for knowing the true God, Christian theologians will always have difficulty actually distinguishing God from their ideas about Hirn. For scriptural faith the point of departure for knowing the reality of God was and remains God's own free self-manifestation in His historical interventions within the realm of experience. As we shall see, this very point is what Rahner seeks to uphold. But in fact his method causes him to be inconsistent. While he would insist that this historical intervention is what happened in Israel, in Christ and in the Church; his method cannot a11ow him to hold consistently that the only point of departure for knowing the truth about our experiences is the Word of God revealed and active in Christ and the Spirit. Thus, true knowledge of God for Rahner is simultaneously ascribed to the grace of God and to our innate knowledge of absolute being. This claim is actually indebted to the Cartesian method and, as we shall see, it causes logical and theological problems for a theology that claims to be a theology of revelation. Concerning Rahner's doctrine of God, then, we return to the opening questions: What is it? On what is it based? Following Rahner's own outline in Fottndations of Christian Faith these questions can only be answered together by tracing the development of his own logic based upon the transcendental experience of our" horizon." Rahner's doctrine of God begins RAHNER'S EXPLANATION FROM REVELATION 577 from the assumption that an experience of one's "horizon " is an experience of God. And this assumption dictates what it is. Therefore, in Rahner's thought, these two questions cannot in fact be separated. Rahner provides no other foundation for this assumption than the idea that man must think and act in light of this horizon. Instead of pointing beyond the circle of human experience to show us... (shrink)

This book is the fruit of a critical inquiry into the nature and scope of Marcel's philosophie achievement. As such, it is concerned less with affixing the appropriate label (personalist or existentialist) to Marcel's thought -and with it making it stick - than with discovering the precise impulse and tenor ofhis philosophy. In the process ofthat more general inquiry, the writer found being forced upon hirn a central concept as integrating focus of Marcel's philosophie investigations. This eoneept was that (...) of the person. Gradually it emerged as a concept not only of prime importance for understanding the underlying harmony that pervades Marcel's professedly unsystematic researches, but equally as one of profound significanee for any philosophy that pretends adequately to aecount for human experienee. Furthermore, it seemed that the eoneept derived much ofthat significance from its acceptance precisely in the context of Marcel's thought. This feature ofMareel's philosophie writings alone is warrant enough for overeoming any initial embarrassment aroused in Anglo-Saxon breasts by his style. For, to speak candidly, that style is of a generation and a climate whose tastes little aecord with palates trained to a greater astringeney. Nor will Marcel's evident and unashamed coneern with life and its problems necessarily evoke a warm response in minds aceustomed to operate in an atmosphere of stricter and more aeademic reserve. (shrink)

This book was completed by the early 1960s and published in 1984 but it has not lost its topicality, for it contains an important re-assessment of the relations of two main streams of contemporary philosophy - the Analytical and the Dialectic. Adherents and critics of these traditions tend to assurnethat they are diametrically opposed, that their roots, concerns and approaches contradict each other, and that no reconciliation is possible. In contradistinction Russell derives both traditions from the common root of the (...) dissatisfaction with the arguments against speculative philosophy. These according to the author leave a lacuna - certain elementsof our Weltanschaaung have been removed, but they cannot be removed without replacement lest we have an incomplete world view, so incomplete in fact that it cannot be viable. According to Russell part of this vacuum is taken up by the analytical tradition but this tradition is not capable of taking up the remainder of it. That portion of the vacant space is however taken up by the dialectical tradi tion, which in turn cannot itself handle the whole of the problem. Thus the two reactions to the demise of speculative philosophy appear to be complementary in at least this sense. But the author goes further, for according to hirn the analytical arguments themselves clearly point to the emergence of dialectical problems, and the dialectical problems themselves need some such background to arise. (shrink)

Epictetus presents difficulties for the historiall of ideas. He published nothing, while his so-called writings are mostly notes of so me of his discussions taken down haphazardly by a friend. Moreover, about half of the notes are lost, and little is known of his life. All this may go toward explaining the paucity of Epictetus studies; for indeed this is the first book-length commentary published in English devoted only to hirn. All known aspects of his work are here considered (...) and recon structed and freshly approached. Eut the emphasis is on his re marks in ethics, for the simple reason that ethics was his dominant interest and that his diagnoses of problems in living and tech niques for coping with those problems have been insufficiently appreciated. His ethics is primarily pain-oriented: it consists of existential reminders, such as that things are ephemer al and people vulnerable, plus ways of avoiding and easing distress, induding training and thought-analysis, because he believed that people's troubles stern largely from silly habits and precon ceptions. (shrink)