Als praktische Philosophie ist der Pragmatismus an Prinzipien und Mechanismen von Gesellschaft interessiert. Es geht im Kern darum, diese Prinzipien und Mechanismen zu verstehen, Handlungsformen und Institutionen mit Blick auf gesellschaftliche Probleme und deren Behebung zu entwickeln und auf diesem Wege Gesellschaft menschlicher, gerechter und demokratischer zu gestalten. Aus diesem Grund scheint der Pragmatismus für die kritische zeitgenössische Sozialwissenschaft von größter Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Band versammelt eine Reihe von Beiträgen, die das Themenfeld pragmatistischer Sozialforschung näher bestimmen. Diese lassen sich in (...) zwei Gruppen einteilen: Beiträge, die pragmatistische Theorien und Methoden mit anderen Denktraditionen oder Forschungsansätzen ins Gespräch bringen, sowie Beiträge, die pragmatistische Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische, gesellschaftliche Problemlagen beziehen. (shrink)

Félix Aubé Beaudoin | : Le dilemme darwinien, formulé par Sharon Street, somme les réalistes moraux d’expliquer pourquoi de nombreux jugements qui sont des candidats au statut de vérités morales indépendantes sont aussi ceux qui ont une grande valeur sélective. Les réalistes peuvent soit nier, soit affirmer l’existence d’un lien entre pressions évolutionnistes et vérités morales. Selon Street, la première option mène au scepticisme tandis que la seconde est indéfendable sur le plan scientifique. Peter Singer et Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (...) optent pour la première branche de ce dilemme. Dans cet article, la stratégie argumentative qu’ils adoptent — la réponse naturelle — sera soumise à un examen critique. Deux objections seront formulées. La première est d’ordre épistémologique : l’intuitionnisme philosophique défendu par les auteurs fait face à des difficultés majeures. La seconde, plus fondamentale, est que leur solution ne permet pas d’expliquer autrement que par un heureux hasard l’alignement entre les vérités morales et les jugements ayant une valeur sélective. | : According to Sharon Street’s Darwinian Dilemma, moral realists must explain why many judgments that are likely to be independent moral truths are those it would be evolutionarily adaptive to hold. Realists can either deny or assert the existence of a relation between evolutionary influences and moral truths. The first option leads to skepticism, while the second is unacceptable on scientific grounds, says Street. Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek take the first horn of this dilemma. In this article, the argumentative strategy they adopt — the Natural Reply - is submitted to critical scrutiny. Two objections are raised. The first objection is epistemological : philosophical intuitionism, as defended by the authors, is an untenable position. The second objection is that their solution must appeal to unlikely coincidences to account for the overlap between independent moral truths and evolutionarily adaptive attitudes. (shrink)

Festschrift for prof. Helge Malmgren. -/- Contents: • Kristoffer Ahlström: Two Levels of Epistemic Inquiry; • Jan Almäng: Till frågan om trancendentala argument; • Kent Gustavsson: Perceptionens gåta; • Björn Haglund: Some Notes on Induction; • Ingvar Johansson: Money and Fictions; • Frank Lorentzon: Intuition och kunskap; • Ingmar Persson: Double Effect Troubles; • Filip Radovic: Wittgenstein om tautologier och andra logiska satser; • Claes Strannegård: Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence; • Bolof Stridbeck: Den motbjudande slutsatsen & den plågade filosofen; • Christer (...) Svennerlind: Armstrong on Instantiation as Partial Identity; • Anders Tolland: Mr Darcys berättigade stolthet; • Björn Vickhoff: H-speech: the Musical Self - A Phenomenological Approach to Music & Emotion; • Dag Westerståhl: On the Aristotelian Square of Opposition; • Carl-Gustaf Wikstrand: On Pain States & Mental Causation;. (shrink)

Utilitarianism tells us to maximize the total amount of well-being in the world. I discuss whether there is a total amount of well-being in the world, given hedonist and preferentialist notions of well-being, respectively. My conclusion is that the prospects for preferentialism, in particular, are quite bleak.

There is an increasing interest in the complexity of mainstream communication education, and in the management of today's Global Media Organizations. Real world systems in communication processes cannot be completely designed, controlled, understood, or predicted, even by the sciences of complexity, but they are more effectively understood and explained as complex systems. I explore complexity in this article, analyzing the new paradigm of Agenda-Setting of today's New Media and Communication.

The Fifth Joint Workshop on Integrated History and Philosophy of Science asked participants, “What is HPS for?” This clearly instrumental question generated a welcome spectrum of practical responses. Examples of “HPS-in-action” included the concept of complementary science, suggestions for new pedagogical strategies and investigations into the socio-political dimensions of science. On the other hand, a more theoretical underpinning did emerge in a discussion of the pros and cons of pluralism. This emphasis on pluralism not only underlies complementary science, but may (...) also provide a pragmatic working basis for developing a more active role for HPS in both science and society. (shrink)

Max Scheler and Siegfried Kracauer met during World War I and remained in correspondence until the early phase of the Weimar Republic. The two exchanged ideas and plans, and at times Kracauer sent his early essays for Scheler’s comments on and recommendations for publishing them. The correspondence brings to light some revealing philosophical similarities between the two authors: both Scheler and Kracauer were interested in material phenomenology, the philosophy of emotions, formal sociology; moreover, they also enthusiastically supported the German war. (...) In 1921, the conversation broke off, presumably because of the sharp criticism of Scheler’s study “Vom Ewigen im Menschen,” which Kracauer published in the Frankfurter Zeitung that same year. But even after the end of the exchange, Scheler remained an intellectual point of reference in Kracauer’s thinking. This becomes evident from the detailed reviews he wrote of Scheler’s works until the end of the Weimar period. The essay attempts to historically situate and philosophically reconstruct the correspondence between Scheler and Kracauer presented in this issue. In this way, a constellation of thought in the 1910s and 1920s becomes visible – one that that has received little attention to date. (shrink)

Propomos neste texto examinar o papel das disposições (Stimmungen), e, particularmente, das chamadas “disposições fundamentais” na construção da pergunta heideggeriana pela historicidade da história. Nós partimos da pergunta pela historicidade da história da filosofia para a análise do papel hermenêutico cumprido pela angústia na analítica da cotidianidade em Ser e Tempo, procurando esclarecer a conexão dessa disposição com o conceito de historicidade tal como tratado nessa obra. Em seguida, tratamos da maneira como são pensadas as disposições em Conceitos fundamentais da (...) metafísica, obra na qual Heidegger explicitamente pensa a disposição do tédio como característica de uma época. Uma vez que mostramos como podemos entender as disposições em geral em sentido historial, retomamos a análise da angústia, e, a partir da discussão de sua estrutura tal como apresentada em Ser e Tempo, perguntamos pela relação específica da angústia com a questão da historicidade, no que ela significa para o projeto de Ser e Tempo e para a obra posterior de Heidegger. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey und Hans-Georg Gadamer waren wohl die beiden letzten großen Gelehrten, die Philipp Melanchthon als Philosophen ernst genommen hatten. Im 20. Jahrhundert war dieser weitgehend nur ein Thema der Reformationsgeschichte. In den vergangenen wenigen Jahrzehnten hat sich die Forschungssituation jedoch wesentlich verändert. Melanchthon ist in das Blickfeld der allgemeinen Wissenschafts- und Bildungsgeschichte, aber auchvon Einzeldisziplinen wie der Dialektik- und Rhetorikforschung gerückt. Tatsächlich vertrat dieser, 1518 als Gräzist nach Wittenberg berufen, nicht nur mit den "artes liberales", ergänzt durch Geschichte und (...) Literatur, die damaligen Fächer der philosophischen Fakultät. Seine vielfältigen Kommentare, Scholien und Paraphrasen selbst zu den höheren Disziplinen, der Anthropologie und Naturphilosophie, der Ethik und Politik, der Staats- und Rechtsphilosophie weisen ihn als einen universalen Gelehrten des 16. Jahrhunderts aus, der vielfältige Spuren im damaligen Europa hinterließ. (shrink)

Hermeneutics originates in the mediation of meaningful utterances understood as arising from a suprahuman, divine domain. The religious origin of hermeneutics is centrally connected with the history of Christianity both in the Patristic period, ending with St. Augustine, and in the modern era of Reformation and Counter‐Reformation. Schleiermacher outlines a general theory of interpretation, while resisting any claims to special status of biblical hermeneutics. This chapter charts both facets of hermeneutics before ending with the relation of hermeneutics to the phenomenology (...) of the sacred. The masters of suspicion, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, understood religion as a cultural phenomenon, and one which masks a deeper reality. The hermeneutics of religion continues to be a fundamental philosophical and theological concern. Hermeneutics and religious phenomena inform each other in the development of a hermeneutics of religion and an exploration of the religious origins of hermeneutics. (shrink)

This collection of original essays on political and legal theory concentrates on themes dealt with in the work of Felix Oppenheim, including fundamental political and legal concepts and their implications for the scope of morality in politics and international relations. Among the issues addressed are the relationship between empirical and normative definitions of "freedom", "power", and "interests", whether governments are free to act against the national interest, and whether they can ever be morally obliged to do so.