This original new work takes a sharply focused look at Berkeley's ontology and provides a fuller understanding of the relationship between, on the one hand, Berkeley's nominalism and antiabstractionism and, on the other, his principal arguments for idealism and his attempts to square his idealism with common sense. Drawing heavily on detailed textual analysis, historical context, and careful examination of the work of other scholars, Muehlmann challenges, modifies, rejects, and exploits some well-established interpretations of Berkeley's philosophy.

BOOK REVIEWS $0 5 David Berman. George Ber~ley: Idealism anti the Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 230. Cloth, $42.00. Professor Berman's focus on Berkeley is more on "the Man" than on the metaphysics and this engaging study will therefore be of greater value to those with a historical, rather than a philosophical, interest in the good bishop. The book is aptly subtitled, particularly if we understand 'idealism' in its first, or Platonic sense , rather than just (...) in the peculiarly Berkeleyan metaphysical sense. The first three of its eight chapters deal with Berkeley's metaphysics, but the bulk of the book is concerned with extraphilosophical events in Berkeley's life, in particular with the two most significant ones: the abortive Bermuda Project and the messianic, indeed almost mystical, devotion to tar-water as a medical panacea. One of the great virtues of Berman's book is that it ties together the three periods of Berkeley's career--"each marked by an.. (shrink)

According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with (...) varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n= 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r= 0.50,p= 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r= 0.46,p= 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r= 0.43,p= 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r= 0.30,p= 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis. (shrink)

In modern discourse about the history of science, it seems to be widely accepted that at the end of the nineteenth century, Germany was one of the leading countries in the production of science. In the past, historians of science tried to trace back a specific ‘German style’ of science that—in combination with other factors—determined this German dominance around 1900, especially in the life sciences. Considering the theoretical concept of ‘national styles’, it has to be kept in mind that around (...) 1900, contemporaries already proclaimed ‘national styles’ of science as representations of national identity. Thus, the question arises as to how far existing historiographical conceptions of national styles may include earlier claims and prejudices. Careful reconstructions of contemporary discourses on national styles and inquiries into the ‘stylisation’ of a dominant, successful ‘German style’ are necessary. One of the contemporary critics of a ‘German style’ of science was the physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924), who emigrated to the USA in 1891. Loeb corresponded regularly with the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Ernst Mach can be considered Loeb's intellectual father with whom he corresponded about strategic, philosophical, and epistemological questions. Using the Loeb–Mach correspondence, the aim of the paper is to reconstruct Loeb's conception of a ‘German style’ of science and its differences to an ‘American style’. Changes in his views are discussed as well as the roots of his views and some of their consequences. Finally, Loeb's ideas on national styles and his working profiles before and after his emigration are compared to historiographical analyses of ‘American’ or ‘German’ styles of science around 1900. (shrink)

This paper consists of a thorough examination of the russell-Wittgenstein controversy over identity. The early wittgenstein's comments on this issue are cryptic and obscure; yet one thing is obvious. His views on identity are partly, If not wholly a negative response to russell's. In unearthing the source of the controversy, I distinguish several senses of 'identity'. I then examine several texts of russell's showing that he fails to make these necessary distinctions. I conclude by demonstrating that wittgenstein's comments are designed (...) in part to rectify this mistake and in part to offer an illuminating analysis of his own. (shrink)

Huang, Chun-chieh, Konfuzianismus: Kontinuität und Entwicklung: Studien zur chinesischen Geistesgeschichte (Confucianism: Continuity and Development: Studies in Chinese Intellectual History), Edited and translated by Stephan Schmidt Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11712-010-9191-0 Authors Heiner Roetz, Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr University, 44780 Bochum, Germany Journal Dao Online ISSN 1569-7274 Print ISSN 1540-3009 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 4.

In this contribution, we argue that critical theories of the public sphere (in Habermas, but also in Negt and Kluge as well as Fraser) leave out the socially central field of labour and labour-political disputes, and that a reactualization and refocusing becomes necessary: We define the dynamics of globalization, commodification and digitalization as sequences of a renewed structural transformation of both social self-understanding and gainful employment. With the help of a multi-level model of labour-political publics and counter-publics, class mobilizations can (...) be examined with a public-theoretical lens and important moments of labour-political disputes can also be reflected on their communicative conditions. This is exemplified by two vignettes. (shrink)

This collection of fourteen interpretative essays on the philosophy of George Berkeley focuses specifically on Berkeley’s theory of the nature and variety of existing things. The collection is notable for containing the first four winners of the Turbayne International Berkeley Essay Prize. The seven essays in the first part, entitled “Idealism,” attempt to illuminate Berkeley’s notorious thesis that to be is to be perceived, that the _esse_ of sensible things is _percipi._ Most of the essays in this first part are (...) either direct or indirect responses to an influential interpretation of Berkeley’s idealism advanced thirty years ago by Edwin B. Allaire. The second part, “Volition, Action, and Causation,” contains four essays focusing on Berkeley’s volitionism, on his thesis that only the activities of minds are causally efficacious. “Vision and the Perceptual Objects,” the third part of the volume, deals with Berkeley’s theory of vision and his doctrine that all of the objects of perception depend on God’s will for their existence. (shrink)

Berkeley's idealism consists of the following claims. Objects such as chairs, apples, mountains, and our bodies are combinations of sensible qualities. Sensible qualities and combinations of such are ideas or sensations. In the philosophical sense of ‘substance’ there is no such entity as a substance. There are minds which perceive and will: When a mind perceives it has sensations or ideas; and when a mind wills it produces or causes sensations or ideas. These claims are grounded in the ontological and (...) epistemological framework of assumptions, distinctions and arguments informing Berkeley's doctrine thatesse est percipi aut percipere.The purpose of this paper is to explore and expose the main features of that framework.What is the ontological force and import on Berkeley's claim thatesse est percipi?One influential recent suggestion1 is this: Berkeley holds that (1) material substances do not exist, (2) the analysis of sensible things yields nothing but sensible qualities, (3) minds are mental substances and (4) no sensible quality or collection of sensible qualities can exist without inhering in some substance. (shrink)

Die Menschenrechte bezeichnen eine Kategorie von Rechten, die dem Menschen schlichtweg aufgrund seines Menschseins zukommen und deshalb in jedem Menschen gleichermaßen respektiert werden müssen. Dies macht den normativen Universalismus aus, der die Menschenrechte im Unterschied zu partikularen Rechten auszeichnet. Sie gelten unabhängig von individuellen Vorleistungen, Funktionen, Dokumenten, Mitgliedschaften usw. und haben ihren Grund in der Würde des Menschen.

NA PRIMEIRA PARTE DO PRESENTE ARTIGO, COMEÇO POR UM ESBOÇO SOBRE A RELAÇÃO ENTRE LIBERDADE, MORAL E MUNDO EM KANT. NA SEGUNDA PARTE DISCUTO OS EXEMPLOS DE CHRISTIAN WOLFF E CHRISTIAN AUGUST CRUSIUS COMO DUAS VERSÕES MODERNAS DO INDIFFERENTISMUS MORAL. NA TERCEIRA PARTE, PROPONHO A IDÉIA DE QUE A CONCEPÇÃO DE DEVER MORAL, EXPLICITADA POR KANT NOS ANOS 1780 E 90, PRESSUPÕE A LIBERDADE HUMANA DE PODER ESCOLHER ENTRE UMA AÇÃO POR DEVER, UMA AÇÃO CONFORME AO DEVER E UMA CONTRÁRIA (...) AO DEVER. NA QUARTA E ÚLTIMA PARTE, POR FIM, TENTAREI MOSTRAR QUE A CRÍTICA DE KANT À CONCEPÇÃO DA LIBERTAS INDIFFERENTIAE NA METAFÍSICA DOS COSTUMES NÃO ESTÁ EM CONTRADIÇÃO COM SUA IDÉIA DE QUE, DO PONTO DE VISTA MORAL, O HOMEM PODE E TEM DE SE DETERMINAR LIVREMENTE À AÇÃO. CERTAMENTE ESSA INTERPRETAÇÃO CONDUZ A ALGO COMO UMA DISCRETA ANTINOMIA DA RAZÃO PURA PRÁTICA, EMBORA ESTA NÃO SEJA UMA DENOMINAÇÃO DO PRÓPRIO KANT. (shrink)

This article objects to two major economistic shortcomings of Philippe Van Parijs’s Real Freedom for All: (1) Van Parijs claims that market prices are the best metric for equal real freedom. This is challenged. Market prices admittedly are the best instrument for distributive purposes at hand. They are, however, a means of transport for supply and demand contingendes. Hence market prices are to be considered as an insufficient metric for equal freedom. (2) Van Parijs claims that Real Freedom for All (...) is all there is to social justice. This claim is rejected. Despite its demanding egalitarian ambition, Real Freedom for All fails to protect a flourishing human life. Basic human rights like the right to social recognition and, in part, the right to health care are violated. Curiously even the right to autonomy is in want of full protection. These lacks are caused by the monetarism and the Straightforward market optimism of Real Freedom for All. (shrink)

More than 95 per cent of criminal convictions in the USA never go to trial, as the vast majority of defendants forfeit their constitutional rights to due process in the pervasive practice of plea bargaining. This article analyses the relationship between American mass incarceration and this mass forfeiture of procedural justice by situating the practice of plea bargaining in the normative framework drawn by recent Supreme Court rulings and the proliferation of criminal statutes, including mandatory minimum sentencing legislation. Looking at (...) systemic racial disparities in sentence severity and incarceration rates for otherwise similarly situated defendants, I argue that, rather than a voluntary waiver of constitutional rights, this mass forfeiture of due process rights ought to be conceptualized as the product of an entrenched system of procedural entrapment. Such entrapment, I argue, ought to be abolished not only on grounds of procedural injustice, but because the practice refashions rather than redresses forms of racial domination derived from prior eras. The article concludes by exploring the tactic of mass conscientious plea refusal through the collectively organized assertion of constitutional due process rights as a strategy of resisting mass incarceration. (shrink)

My purpose herein is to demonstrate that Berkeley's only use of the argument from perceptual relativity (APR), in both of his major works, is ad hominem, that he uses it to undermine what he calls materialism. Specifically, I show that Berkeley does not use APR to conclude that sensible qualities are mind-dependent; rather he uses APR only to conclude that they are not in material substances; and that his real argument for the former is a quite different one: the heat-pain (...) identification argument. (shrink)

Originally published under title: Dictionary of eighteenth-century German philosophers: London: Continuum, 2010.

Wenn es eine Lehre gibt, welche neben der Raum-Zeittheorie der Inauguraldissertation von 1770 für die Genese der Kritik der reinen Vernunft von zentraler Bedeutung ist, dann ist es die von Kant in den frühen Anthropologievorlesungen der siebziger Jahre vorgetragene Theorie eines spontanen, freien und selbstbewußten Ich. Aus welchen systematischen Erwägungen heraus hat er diese Ich-Theorie entwickelt? Was hat ihn dazu veranlaßt, seine Philosophie auf einem spontanen, freien und selbstbewußten Ich zu gründen, welches als eine einfache, numerisch identische, immaterielle und freie (...) Substanz verstanden wird, von der wir eine anschauende Erkenntnis im inneren Sinn haben? Aufgrund welcher konzeptionellen Änderungen wird diese Theorie gegenüber seiner Dissertation überhaupt erst ein sinnvolles Unternehmen? Es wird im Rahmen einer detaillierten Rekonstruktion der Problemlage, mit der sich Kant zwischen 1770 und 1772 konfrontiert war, gezeigt, daß er wesentliche Anregungen durch seinen früheren Schüler Marcus Herz erhalten hat, der in seiner Schrift Betrachtungen aus der spekulativen Weltweisheit einige grundlegende Lehrstücke der Dissertation kritisiert und mit Moses Mendelssohn für die Notwendigkeit eines „ersten Subjekts" plädiert. Nicht Rousseau, sondern Herz und Mendelssohn haben also in ihrer direkt auf die Dissertation bezogenen Kritik Kant davon überzeugt, daß das epistemisch aufgewertete Ich als Grund einer neuen Theorie des Verhältnisses von Denken und Gedachtem fungieren muß, um die Einheit unserer Erfahrung erklären zu können. (shrink)

: The paper discusses the concepts of obligation and moral evidence in Mendelssohn’s and Kant’s prize essays. I argue that Mendelssohn departs in significant ways from Christian Wolff’s position, and that Kant intends to overcome Wolffian philosophy with Newtonian methodology while still owing a lot to Wolff and to the project of an ethics within the limits of metaphysics. Although quite akin to Francis Hutcheson’s philosophy, it becomes clear that Kant intended to lay the foundation of an innovative concept of (...) obligation, which shares some similarities with Christian August Crusius’s interpretation of it. (shrink)

Following Snyderman and Rothman, we surveyed expert opinions on the current state of intelligence research. This report examines expert opinions on causes of international differences in student assessment and psychometric IQ test results. Experts were surveyed about the importance of culture, genes, education, wealth, health, geography, climate, politics, modernization, sampling error, test knowledge, discrimination, test bias, and migration. The importance of these factors was evaluated for diverse countries, regions, and groups including Finland, East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, the Arabian-Muslim (...) world, Latin America, Israel, Jews in the West, Roma, and Muslim immigrants. Education was rated by N = 71 experts as the most important cause of international ability differences. Genes were rated as the second most relevant factor but also had the highest variability in ratings. Culture, health, wealth, modernization, and politics were the next most important factors, whereas other factors such as geography, climate, test bias, and sampling error were less important. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the survey. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 106 Heft: 1 Seiten: 88-96.

Which Books by Teichmüller Did Nietzsche Have Access to? An Attempt at a Reconstruction. The question of which books by Gustav Teichmüller Nietzsche had available has not been satisfactorily clarified to this day. Drawing on sources not considered so far, including the correspondence between Teichmüller and Franz Overbeck and a list that Teichmüller kept about copies of his writings he had sent to colleagues and friends found in his Nachlass, I conclude that Nietzsche only had four books by Teichmüller at (...) his disposal (apart from the opusculum Ueber die Reihenfolge der platonischen Dialoge). Three of these were loans: Aristotelische Forschungen I from the University Library of Basel in the summer semester of 1870, Die Wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt, from Overbeck between late summer 1882 (at the earliest) and November 1885, and the Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe III also from Overbeck from October 1883 to November 1885. Only the Aristotelischen Forschungen II seem to have been Nietzsche’s personal property (since 1869). Although it is often assumed that Nietzsche also read other books by Teichmüller – e. g., the Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe, the Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe II, and the two volumes of the Literarische Fehden im vierten Jahrhundert v. Chr. – they were most likely not available to Nietzsche. (shrink)