Hence, there is still controversy over which of the two versions of the deduction deserves priority and whether indeed any distinction between them can be maintained that would go beyond questions of presentation and involve the structure of the proof itself. Schopenhauer and Heidegger held that the first edition alone fully expresses Kant's unique philosophy, while Kant himself, as well as many other Kantians, have only seen a difference in the method of presentation.

In a series of studies over the last 30 years, Henrich has shown that Hölderlin played a decisive role in the development of philosophy from Kant to Hegel. This book includes six of Henrich's most important essays on Hölderlin.

Starting with D. Scott's work on the mathematical foundations of programming language semantics, interest in topology has grown up in theoretical computer science, under the slogan `open sets are semidecidable properties'. But whereas on effectively given Scott domains all such properties are also open, this is no longer true in general. In this paper a characterization of effectively given topological spaces is presented that says which semidecidable sets are open. This result has important consequences. Not only follows the classical Rice-Shapiro (...) Theorem and its generalization to effectively given Scott domains, but also a recursion theoretic characterization of the canonical topology of effectively given metric spaces. Moreover, it implies some well known theorems on the effective continuity of effective operators such as P. Young and the author's general result which in its turn entails the theorems by Myhill-Shepherdson, Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield and Ceĭtin-Moschovakis, and a result by Eršov and Berger which says that the hereditarily effective operations coincide with the hereditarily effective total continuous functionals on the natural numbers. (shrink)

Irony has a suspicious moral reputation, especially in popular media and internet culture. Jonathan Lear (2011) introduces a proposal which challenges this suspicion and identifies irony as a means to achieve human excellence. For Lear, irony is a disruptive uncanniness which arises from a gap between aspiration and actualisation in our practical identity. According to Lear, such a disruptive experience of ironic uncanniness reorients us toward excellence, because it passionately propels us to really live up to that practical identity. However, (...) Lear’s understanding of irony is idiosyncratic and his proposal overlooks that disruption often results from value incompatibility between different practical identities. The disruption which follows from value incompatibility does not inherently reorient us toward excellence. The point is exactly that achieving excellence in one practical identity is sometimes incompatible with excellence in the other. Pace Lear, I do not identify this disruptive experience as a central example of irony. Instead, I consider irony a virtuous coping strategy for such disruption, because it introduces the necessary distance from our moral imperfection to sustain practical deliberation and maintain good mental health. Such virtuous irony negotiates a golden mean between too little disruption (complete insensitivity toward one’s imperfection) and too much disruption (a complete breakdown of practical deliberation and mental health). I argue that ironic media in popular culture provide a rich source of such virtuous irony, which I demonstrate through analysis of satirical examples. (shrink)

Transzendental wird hier, abweichend von Kant, im Sinn transzendentaler Argumente verstanden. Im Kontext der Letztbegründungsdiskussion sind diese dadurch definiert, dass ihre Verneinung zu einem pragmatischen Widerspruch führt. Nun ist Hegels Philosophie auf die ‚logische Idee‘ gegründet, also auf die in Hegels Verständnis fundamentale dialektische Logik. Sein philosophischer Systementwurf hat dadurch, wie gezeigt wird, transzendentalen Charakter und schließt dementsprechend auch eine transzendentale Naturphilosophie ein. Gezeigt wird weiter, dass Grundbe- stimmungen der Natur, die üblicherweise einfach vorausgesetzt werden, in diesem Rahmen grundsätzlich erklärt (...) werden können: die Existenz der Natur und ihr (räumlich-zeitliches) Auseinandersein, ferner die Erkenn- barkeit der Natur, ihre Gesetzmäßigkeit, Kontingenz und immanente Idea- lisierungstendenz. Dass sich so auch konkrete Naturphänomene erschließen, wird an zwei Exempeln verdeutlicht: in der Begründung dimensionaler Raumstrukturen und in der Begründung des Relativitätsprinzips der Bewe- gung – letzteres mit der Pointe (im Sinn einer Philosophie der (speziellen) Relativitätstheorie), dass die Relativität der Körperbewegung und die Absolutheit der Lichtbewegung so als logisch zusammengehörende Momente kinematischer Relativität verstehbar werden. (shrink)

Ziel der Untersuchung ist zu zeigen, inwiefern Hegels Charakterisierung des Schönen als ‚das sinnliche Scheinen der Idee‘ auch für die Deutung des Naturschönen Erklärungswert hat. Vorausgesetzt ist die für den Idea- lismus Hegelscher Prägung zentrale Doktrin, derzufolge der Natur Ideel- les zugrunde liegt. Schön sind dann Naturphänomene, in denen jener ideelle Grund der Natur durchscheint. Das Erfassen von Ideellem scheint ein Privileg geistiger Wesen zu sein. Dem stehen evolutionsbiologische Argumente entgegen, die dem Schönen einen positiven Selektionswert, etwa bei der sexuellen (...) Partnerwahl, zusprechen. Auch der Mensch hat stammesgeschichtliche Wurzeln, die in ihm weiter wirken. Doch sobald der Geist auf der evolutionären Bühne erscheint, herrscht das Biologische nicht länger mit der uneingeschränkten Macht, die es im Rahmen natürli- cher Selektion hat. Hegels Deutung des Schönen, auch des Naturschönen, ist wesentlich bezogen auf den Geist. Ich verdeutliche dies an einigen Exempeln (Schneekristall, musikalische Harmonie, Abendhimmel, Ge- birgslandschaft, organische Blüten- und Körperformen). Aber wodurch sind Naturschönheit und Kunstschönheit dann voneinander unterschie- den? Die Hervorbringungen der Natur sind lediglich Zufallskonstellatio- nen. Allerdings, so Hegel, hat der Zufall es ‘recht’ gemacht, d.h. hat er etwas reizend Stimmiges gefügt, gewahrt der Geist darin das im Sinnli- chen durchscheinende Ideelle. Eben darin wird, mit Adorno gesprochen, die gemeinsame Wurzel des Kunstschönen und des Naturschönen erkennbar. Wer das Naturschöne preist, begebe sich „an den Rand der Afterpoe- sie“, des Kitsches, meint Adorno. Gleichwohl sei es wahr zu sagen, „die Landschaft der Toscana sei schöner als die Umgebung von Gelsenkirchen“ (Adorno 1993, 110, 112). In der Tat. Doch was meinen wir, wenn wir Landschaften, Blumen, Sonnenuntergänge ‘schön’ nennen, und welche Kriterien bringen wir dafür in Anschlag? Im Folgenden möchte ich darle- gen, inwiefern Hegels Charakterisierung des Schönen als „das sinnliche Scheinen der Idee“ diesbezüglich erhellend und klärend ist. Hinweise auf Adornos ästhetische Theorie ergänzen diese Überlegungen. Dem stehen evolutionsbiologische Argumente entgegen, die zunehmend Einfluss auf die ästhetische Diskussion gewinnen. (shrink)

Hegel's Science of Logic makes the just not low claim to be an absolute, ultimate-grounded knowledge. This project, which could not be more ambitious, has no good press in our post-metaphysical age. However: That absolute knowledge absolutely cannot exist, cannot be claimed without self-contradiction. On the other hand, there can be no doubt about the fundamental finiteness of knowledge. But can absolute knowledge be finite knowledge? This leads to the problem of a self-explication of logic (in the sense of Hegel) (...) and further, as will be shown, to a new definition of the dialectical procedure. The stringency of which results from the fact that always exactly that implicit content is explicated that was generated by the preceding explication step itself and is thus concretely comprehensible. At the same time, a new implicit content is generated by this act of explication, which requires a new explication step, and so forth. In the dialectical procedure reinterpreted in this way, dialectical arguments are not beheld, guessed at or even surreptitiously obtained, but are methodically accountable. Thereby dialectics is understood as a self-explication of logic by logical means and thus as a proof of the possibility of ultimate-grounding in the form of absolute and nevertheless finite – and thus also fallible – knowledge. (shrink)

The following pages contain a partial edition of Husserl’s manuscript A I 35, pages 1a-28b. The first few pages are dated on May 1927 and are included mostly for completeness’ sake. The bulk of the manuscript convolute, however, is from 1912. Four pages of the convolute, 31a-34b, have been published as Beilage XII (210, 2–216, 2) in Hua XXXII. The manuscript was excluded from the text selection of Husserliana XXI3 based on its much later date of composition. A I 35/24a (...) is mentioned in Husserliana XXII (p. xxi, n. 4) as confirmation for Zermelo’s 1902 “oral report” to Husserl of his own independent discovery of the paradox. The text presented here for the first time has already been the target of at least three extensive commentaries, while still unpublished, by Claire Ortiz Hill and Guillermo Rosado Haddock. These present a good survey in english of the central issues on the text and contain many translated quotations. (shrink)

The contribution argues that causal interpretations of empirical correlations between neural and conscious events are meaningful even if not fully verifiable and that there are reasons in favour of an epiphenomenalist construction of psychophysical causality. It is suggested that an account of causality can be given that makes interactionism, epiphenomenalism and Leibnizian parallelism semantically distinct interpretations of the phenomena. Though neuroscience cannot strictly prove or rule out any one of these interpretations it can be argued that methodological principles favour a (...) causal interpretation on epiphenomenalist lines, both for reasons of metaphysical parsimony and for reasons of coherence with established physical principles such as the conservation of energy. In the concluding chapter, some of the philosophical and the empirical challenges following from this model are outlined, the most important being closer scrutiny of the neurophysiological processes accompanying conscious volition. (shrink)

Among systems of normative ethics, Utilitarianism has been the one most persistently claimed to stand on a scientific basis. The paper restates this claim by showing that although Mill’s so-called "proof"of Utilitarianism is indefensible even in terms of non-demonstrative plausibility, an alternative argument can be constructed yielding the same conclusion by making use of a "minimum agreement principle". It is argued, further, that the concept of happiness central to Utilitarianism is empirically determinate and is capable of scientific investigation by various (...) psychological and sociological approaches. (shrink)

The readymades conceived and selected by Marcel Duchamp be- tween the years 1914–1917 have, with very few exceptions, not survived until the present day as ‘original.’ A variety of forms, in- cluding documentary photos, objects chosen and approved later by Duchamp as well as remakes of the historical objects comprise the readymades’ legacy. Duchamp’s remakes of his readymades as a limited edition of multiples from 1964, commemorating the 50-year anniversary of his selection of the Bottle Dryer in 1914, mark the (...) beginning of the second half of the “Readymade Century.” In contrast to their widespread visibility, the paradoxical ‘construct- edness’ of these objects is rarely discussed. The representational impact and the conceptual specificity of these multiples goes far beyond the oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp, and can be seen as a pre- monition of artistical appropriation strategies from the 1980s to the present day. (shrink)

While humanity is altering planet Earth at unprecedented magnitude and speed, representation of the cultural driving factors and their dynamics in models of the Earth system is limited. In this review and perspectives paper, we argue that more or less distinct environmental value sets can be assigned to religion – a deeply embedded feature of human cultures, here defined as collectively shared belief in something sacred. This assertion renders religious theories, practices and actors suitable for studying cultural facets of anthropogenic (...) Earth system change, especially regarding deeper, non-materialistic motivations that ask about humans' self-understanding in the Anthropocene epoch. We sketch a modelling landscape and outline some research primers, encompassing the following elements: extensions of existing Earth system models by quantitative relationships between religious practices and biophysical processes, building on databases that allow for formalisation of such knowledge; design of new model types that specifically represent religious morals, actors and activities as part of co-evolutionary human–environment dynamics; and identification of research questions of humanitarian relevance that are underrepresented in purely economic–technocratic modelling and scenario paradigms. While this analysis is by necessity heuristic and semi-cohesive, we hope that it will act as a stimulus for further interdisciplinary and systematic research on the immaterial dimension of humanity's imprint on the Earth system, both qualitatively and quantitatively. (shrink)