This article discusses African feminist approaches to decolonization and social transformation. In recent years, there has been a significant shift in African feminist scholarship towards African concerns and Africa-centered solutions. Today’s turn to Indigenous knowledge, social structures, and gender relations is no longer just about shedding light on the precolonial past, but about fundamentally changing the epistemic framework in the sense of developing alternative epistemologies beyond the dominant ‘Western’ framework. But what is meant by ‘alternative epistemologies’? How do African feminist (...) thinkers conceptualize social change today? And how do they relate epistemic and social change in their thinking? These questions are explored in this article, focusing on work by Sylvia Tamale (Uganda), Wangari Maathai (Kenya), and Anthonia Kalu (Nigeria) and drawing on the discourse of ecofeminism and Ubuntu as two models of alternative epistemologies. (shrink)

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women (...) was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau. (shrink)

It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according (...) to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, although neglected so far, there is a strong link between generics and testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word”. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a category or about its members without specifying what proportion of the category members possess the predicated property. We argue that generics are especially suited to cause testimonial (...) injustice for three reasons. First, generics elicit an “inferential asymmetry” :1452–1482, 2010). That is, generics are accepted even if only a few individuals possess the predicated property but are, nonetheless, taken to refer to almost all the members of the category. This peculiar combination makes generics particularly apt to cause testimonial injustice. High resistance to counter-evidence is a crucial feature of prejudice, the cause of testimonial injustice, and the more highly predictive a generalization the more it will be employed in concrete situations, leading to instances of testimonial injustice. Second, generics seem to play a key role in leading people to develop essentialist beliefs : 273–301, 2010; Rhodes et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 109: 13526–13531, 2012). Subjects holding such beliefs treat categories as warranting strong generaliations over their members. Therefore, they will be more likely to rely on prejudice while dealing with the category members. Finally, generics are outstandingly common in everyday speech. Hence, their noxious effects are amplified by their diffusion and should not be underestimated. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhat kind of objects are computer programs used for simulation purposes in scientific settings? The current investigation treats a special case. It focuses on “event generators,” the program packages that particle physicists construct and use to simulate mechanisms of particle production. The paper is an attempt to bring the multiplex and unfolding character of such knowledge objects to the fore: Multiple meanings and functions are embodied in the object and can be drawn out selectively according to the requirements of (...) a work setting. The object's conceptual complexity governs its application in some contexts, while the object is considered a mere “black box,” transparent and ready-to-hand, in others. These two poles span a full spectrum of object aspects, functions, and conceptions. Event generators are ideas turned into software, testing grounds for models, just a tool to study the performance of a detector, etc. The object's multiplex nature is submitted to negotiation among different actors. (shrink)

In reaction to growing critics regarding ecological and ethical aspects of intensive animal husbandry, different initiatives of ethical poultry production try to establish alternative food supply chains on the market. To be able to stabilise these niche innovations parallel to the mainstream regime, new forms of cooperation along the value added chain and with the consumers play an important role. Based on a case study of integrated egg and meat production from a dual-purpose breed by small multifunctional farms in Northeast (...) of Germany, the paper exemplifies the challenges for the different partners of the food supply chain and cooperation management. Empirical data were obtained via nine qualitative interviews with actors along the value chain and via participatory observation of workshops and meetings. The research was embedded in a transdisciplinary project, where different measures to meet the existing challenges were taken and evaluated. Analysing the existing cooperation reveals possibilities for improving cooperation management by e.g. clarifying the goals of the cooperation, including the points of sale as part of the food supply chain and communication of the ethical and sustainability qualities of the product to the consumers. However, the analysis also shows the limits of cooperation in an environment dominated by the paradigm of specialisation, economies of scale and cost reduction, which is also characteristic for parts of the organic sector. The paper discusses if the challenges of establishing this radical niche innovation can be met without a fundamental change of framework conditions as e.g. regulation on animal husbandry. (shrink)

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the easing of East- West tensions, Samuel Huntington presented his theory of a “clash of civilizations.” He announced that conflicts between ideologies had come to an end and were to be replaced by a new kind of confrontation, this time between cultures and religions. This essay attempts to show how misled Huntington’s thesis can be by referring to forms of humanism from Africa as well as to some (...) ideas developed in Arabian-Islamic philosophy. In the early 1930s, African intellectuals such as Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire already tried to oppose their own conception of humanism to Western individualistic humanism. The distinction can be found in the concept of Ubuntu, or “African humanism,” which incorporates notions of respect for the other, collective responsibility and solidarity. The Arab-Islamic world has also had similar concerns from an early stage. Its heritage from classical Greek philosophy, which placed human being at the centre of its thinking and ethical acting, came indeed under the significant influence of Islamic values, such as equality, fraternity and the community. Thus the essay offers an alternative to Huntington’s post-modern model of “clash of civilizations” beyond the frontiers set by Western humanism and that is more relevant to our current globalising world – a new trans- and intercultural humanism that favours the ways human beings can relate to each other as persons regardless of race, culture and religion. Human dignity and respect for the “other,” including the environment, are therefore central to this new humanism. (shrink)

O texto analisa o conceito de crença [Glaube]e sua relação com a razão na fenomenologia de Husserl, sob três aspectos. Primeiramente, a partir da concepção da razão como essência e telos do homem e da concepção da filosofia como o modo de vida que lhe corresponde e que exige a crença na razão. Em segundo lugar é analisada a crença como posição de ser e a sua legitimação pela razão. O último aspecto analisado é o da implição da crença em (...) Deus na elucidação da exigência da vida ética para o sentido racional da existência no mundo. A concepção teleológica da vida da subjetividade e intersubjetividade marca a compreensão da relação entre crença e razão; esta última é alargada de modo a permitir pensar uma originária unidade entre as suas dimensões teórica e prática. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers introduced the idea of philosophical research on cognition that could enter into competition with psychology, which was developing into an autonomous discipline at that time. In view of the problems of the traditional but still prevailing associationist theory, Ernst Cassirer demanded a more sophisticated theory that could explain the human ability to concentrate one's thoughts on a topic, such as a problem or a task. He presented a representational theory (...) of mind to explain this ability. This paper explicates the scope of this theory and Cassirer's idea of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophers and psychologists. (shrink)

Traditional grammar and current theoretical approaches towards modelling grammatical knowledge ignore language in interaction: that is, words such as huh, eh, yup or yessssss. This groundbreaking book addresses this gap by providing the first in-depth overview of approaches towards interactional language across different frameworks and linguistic sub-disciplines. Based on the insights that emerge, a formal framework is developed to discover and compare language in interaction across different languages: the interactional spine hypothesis. Two case-studies are presented: confirmationals and response markers, both (...) of which show evidence for systematic grammatical knowledge. Assuming that language in interaction is regulated by grammatical knowledge sheds new light on old questions concerning the relation between language and thought and the relation between language and communication. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relation between language, cognition and social interaction. (shrink)

Recently, the mechanistic framework of active inference has been put forward as a principled foundation to develop an overarching theory of consciousness which would help address conceptual disparities in the field (Wiese 2018 ; Hohwy and Seth 2020 ). For that promise to bear out, we argue that current proposals resting on the active inference scheme need refinement to become a process theory of consciousness. One way of improving a theory in mechanistic terms is to use formalisms such as computational (...) models that implement, attune and validate the conceptual notions put forward. Here, we examine how computational modelling approaches have been used to refine the theoretical proposals linking active inference and consciousness, with a focus on the extent and success to which they have been developed to accommodate different facets of consciousness and experimental paradigms, as well as how simulations and empirical data have been used to test and improve these computational models. While current attempts using this approach have shown promising results, we argue they remain preliminary in nature. To refine their predictive and structural validity, testing those models against empirical data is needed i.e., new and unobserved neural data. A remaining challenge for active inference to become a theory of consciousness is to generalize the model to accommodate the broad range of consciousness explananda; and in particular to account for the phenomenological aspects of experience. Notwithstanding these gaps, this approach has proven to be a valuable avenue for theory advancement and holds great potential for future research. (shrink)

Questo articolo ricostruisce la dimensione formale dell’ontologia elaborata da Max Scheler fra il 1908-1909 ed il 1922, nel corso cioè della sua prima fase produttiva d’interesse fenomenologico. Particolare attenzione è riservata alla struttura “architettonica” della prima ontologia formale scheleriana, composta da un trivium di sotto-discipline formali. L’autore elabora in questo modo la distinzione, sostenuta dai maggiori rappresentanti dei primi Circoli tedeschi di fenomenologia realista, fra un’ontologia formale “pura” che indaga la regione formale analitica dell’“oggettività in generale” e ontologie formali generali (...) interessate alle forme o categorie oggettuali dell’essere reale, organizzato in sommi generi materiali. L’articolo mostra inoltre come l’approccio scheleriano all’ontologia formale apra percorsi di recupero e rielaborazione di un’idea tipicamente pre-moderna: l’ontologia è disciplina che tratta anche dell’ordine sovra-predicamentale delle relazioni trascendentali. (shrink)

La dimensione epistemologica dell’opera giovanile, pre-fenomenologica di M. Scheler non è stata ad oggi adeguatamente studiata. Questo breve articolo intende esplorare tale dimensione della prima riflessione filosofica scheleriana da una prospettiva analitica di tipo storiografico. Particolare attenzione sarà quindi riservata alle fonti e ai principali temi di interesse epistemologico affrontati dall’autore. I testi di riferimento sono la tesi di dottorato Beiträge zur festellung der Beziehungen zwischen den logischen und ethischen Prinzipien, lo scritto di abilitazione Versuch über die philosophische Methode, pubblicato (...) con il titolo Die transzendentale und die psycologische Methode e il frammento del primo libro della Logik, opera che Scheler ritira dalle stampe nel 1906. Conclusivamente, si proporrà un percorso di lettura dell’epistemologia che Scheler elabora nel contesto delle due versioni della sua successiva filosofia fenomenologica. (shrink)

This article is dedicated to Euclid’s Elements, to translations of this work into Czech, and to the translators who have taken on the task of translation. It contains a short overview of the results achieved during a three-year project supported by the Czech Grant Agency.We explored how Euclid’s Elements were spread around the Czech lands.We will try to describe the circumstances that lay behind attempts to translate the Elements into the Czech language.

Thanks to the revival in Bergson’s scholarship prompted by Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonism, it is widely recognized that Bergsonism challenges the metaphysics of presence. Less attention, however, has been devoted to the status of negation or negativity in Bergson’s thought. Differently from Deleuze, I argue that Bergson’s claim that memory and perception, past and present, differ in kind does not call for the erasure of the negative but rather for the radical reconceptualization of negation in temporal terms. Thinking negation temporally allows (...) Bergson to open the space for conceptualizing existence beyond presence, for developing an account of the paradoxical nature of the past. With an insight that anticipates Derrida’s thinking, Bergson tells us that the past is neither “there” nor “not-there,” neither a presence nor an absence. Grâce au regain d’intérêt pour Bergson qu’a suscité le livre de Gilles Deleuze, Le bergsonisme, il est maintenant largement reconnu que le bergsonisme met la métaphysique de la présence à l’épreuve. On a cependant moins porté attention au statut de la négation ou de la négativité dans la pensée de Bergson. Au contraire de Deleuze, je soutiens que l’affirmation de Bergson selon laquelle la mémoire et la perception, le passé et le présent, diffèrent en espèce n’amène pas un effacement du négatif mais plutôt une reconceptualisation radicale de la négation en termes temporels. En pensant la négation temporellement, Bergson peut ouvrir un espace pour conceptualiser l’existence au-delà de la présence et développer une explication de la nature paradoxale du passé. Anticipant la pensée de Derrida, Bergson nous montre que le passé est ni « présent » ni « non-présent », ni une présence ni une absence. (shrink)

En el siguiente trabajo me propongo describir y analizar brevemente, desde mi experiencia como entrevistadora, algunos aspectos del Archivo Oral de la Memoria; dando cuenta de su contexto de creación y su vinculación con el proyecto de Sitios de Memoria. Asimismo a través de un momento y un recorte de la extensa noción desarrollada por Pierre Nora analizo el archivo oral como Lugar de Memoria. Dada la imposibilidad de dar una definición acabada de esta categoría elegí tomar dos elementos que (...) se mantienen en sus redefiniciones: La dimensión simbólica de los Lugares de Memoria y la Voluntad de Memoria de los mismos. Los testimonios que este archivo atesora - en tanto pasaje de lo privado a lo público – otorgan el carácter simbólico a este lugar de memoria, y se configuran como hecho político. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 1 Seiten: 79-114.

In this article, I propose a philosophical reading of Max Schelers work centered on the theme of metaphysics. This is in order to understand what the unique contribution offered by the author is, in an open debate towards contemporary philosophical reflection. The argument will be divided into four main steps : 1) to show how the theme of metaphysics emerges within Scheler's philosophy ; 2) to examine the model proposed by the author, especially highlighting how Scheler here attempts to draw (...) a new "way" of development for the metaphysical discourse, linked to the figures of Geist and spiritual act; 3) highlight the development of a central difficulty in Schelers model; 4) outline a possible in depth study of the authors philosophical work, in my view, capable of providing an appropriate key to start understanding where the difficulty inside Schelers model originates from. Precisely, the development of the last two steps give me the opportunity to show how Scheler conceives the profound connection between metaphysics and philosophy of life that represent the common object in the ideas proposed here. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline and defend a view on which in olfactory experience we can, and often do, smell ordinary things of various kinds—for instance, cookies, coffee, and cake burnings—and the olfactory properties they have. A challenge to this view are cases of smelling in the absence of the source of a smell, such as when a fishy smell lingers after the fish is gone. Such cases, many philosophers argue, show that what we perceive in olfactory experience are odour (...) objects, and not ordinary things. On behalf of our opponent, we articulate a screening-off argument based on cases of lingering smells for the thesis that we do not smell ordinary things. We then develop an alternative account of these cases that is consistent with our view. In doing so, we call into question two claims that are typically built into the notion of an odour object. (shrink)