The spiders Cupiennius salei and Achaearanea tepidariorum are firmly established laboratory models that have already contributed greatly to answering evolutionary developmental questions. Here we appraise why these animals are such useful models from phylogeny, natural history and embryogenesis to the tools available for their manipulation. We then review recent studies of axis formation, segmentation, appendage development and neurogenesis in these spiders and how this has contributed to understanding the evolution of these processes. Furthermore, we discuss the potential of comparisons of (...) silk production between Cupiennius and Achaearanea to investigate the origins and diversification of this evolutionary innovation. We suggest that further comparisons between these two spiders and other chelicerates will prove useful for understanding the evolution of development in metazoans. BioEssays 30:487–498, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media (...) of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media -- books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television -- while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)

Sraffa was one of two persons whom Wittgenstein explicitly acknowledged in the preface of the Philosophical Investigations. However, little is known of Sraffa’s influence on Wittgenstein. On the basis on the yet unpublished letters from Wittgenstein to Sraffa and interviews with Georg Kreisel, the influence of Sraffa on Wittgenstein is investigated.

Existing proposals concerning the ontology of quantum mechanics either involve speculation that goes beyond the scientific evidence or abandon realism about large parts of QM. This paper proposes a way out of this dilemma, by showing that QM as it is formulated in standard textbooks allows for a much more substantive ontological commitment than is usually acknowledged. For this purpose, I defend a non-fundamentalist approach to ontology, which is then applied to various aspects of QM. In particular, I will defend (...) realism about spin, which has been viewed as a particularly hard case for the ontology of QM. (shrink)

Simulations are used in very different contexts and for very different purposes. An emerging development is the possibility of using simulations to obtain a more or less representative reproduction of organs or even entire persons. Such simulations are framed and discussed using the term ‘digital twin’. This paper unpacks and scrutinises the current use of such digital twins in medicine and the ideas embedded in this practice. First, the paper maps the different types of digital twins. A special focus is (...) put on the concrete challenges inherent in the interactions between persons and their digital twin. Second, the paper addresses the questions of how far a digital twin can represent a person and what the consequences of this may be. Against the background of these two analytical steps, the paper defines first conditions for digital twins to take on an ethically justifiable form of representation. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

Trust is one of the big buzzwords in debates about the shaping of society, democracy, and emerging technologies. For example, one prominent idea put forward by the High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence appointed by the European Commission is that artificial intelligence should be trustworthy. In this essay, we explore the notion of trust and argue that both proponents and critics of trustworthy AI have flawed pictures of the nature of trust. We develop an approach to understanding trust in AI (...) that does not conceive of trust merely as an accelerator for societal acceptance of AI technologies. Instead, we argue, trust is granted through leaps of faith. For this reason, trust remains precarious, fragile, and resistant to promotion through formulaic approaches. We also highlight the significance of distrust in societal deliberation, as it is relevant to trust in various and intricate ways. Among the fruitful aspects of distrust is that it enables individuals to forgo technology if desired, to constrain its power, and to exercise meaningful human control. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and up-to-date account of the landscape of contemporary epistemology. It presupposes only a minimum of prior philosophical knowledge, and includes an account of the logical and conceptual tools needed for philosophical analysis. Focuses on the writings and ideas of W. Alston, R. Audi, L. BonJour, R. Chisholm, A. Goldman. H. Kornboith, K. Lehrer. A. Plantinga, W. V. Quine, E. Sosa, and B Stroud, among others; links particular theories and arguments to their chief proponents and critics.

Between 1819 and 1832 Friedrich Schleiermacher was giving lectures on the life of Jesus at the University of Berlin. The following article includes two partial editions, which document the introductory parts of the lectures from 1819/20 and 1829/30. Both are based on manuscripts written by Schleiermacher’s listeners. Especially to explore the development of Schleiermacher’s conceptual considerations this two partial editions should be a useful addition to the new critical edition of Schleiermacher’s Vorlesungen über das Leben Jesu published in 2018 by (...) Walter Jaeschke (KGA II/15). (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's (...) approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

Die biographischen Dialoge entfalten ideengeschichtliches Denken als eigene Kunst des Verstehens. Sie zeigen Gestalten der Nachdenklichkeit zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft. Karl Jaspers" Buch "Die Psychologie der Weltanschauungen" (1919) entwickelte 1919 ein philosophisches Interesse an der inneren Dynamik moderner Menschen. Seinem interdisziplinären Blick folgen die zwölf Gespräche, die Matthias Bormuth als Ideenhistoriker mit Wissenschaftlern, Künstlern und Schriftstellern führte. Unter anderem in den Werdegängen von Johannes Grützke, Inge Jens, Hartmut Lange, Michael Triegel, Michael Krüger und Martin Warnke verbinden sich individuelle und (...) gesellschaftliche Geschichte. Die biographischen Dialoge entfalten ideengeschichtliches Denken als eigene Kunst des Verstehens. In den Gesprächen entstehen - mit Uwe Johnson gesprochen - "Ich-Geschichten". Sie bieten unterschiedliche Verflechtungen von Kunst und Wissenschaft im Medium von Buch und Bild. Im Vergleich der intellektuellen Lebensläufe zwischen Ost und West spiegeln sich auch die historischen Zäsuren von 1945 und 1989. (shrink)

The environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and (...) environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice. (shrink)

Making good decisions in extremely complex and difficult processes and situations has always been both a key task as well as a challenge in the clinic and has led to a large amount of clinical, legal and ethical routines, protocols and reflections in order to guarantee fair, participatory and up-to-date pathways for clinical decision-making. Nevertheless, the complexity of processes and physical phenomena, time as well as economic constraints and not least further endeavours as well as achievements in medicine and healthcare (...) continuously raise the need to evaluate and to improve clinical decision-making. This article scrutinises if and how clinical decision-making processes are challenged by the rise of so-called artificial intelligence-driven decision support systems (AI-DSS). In a first step, this article analyses how the rise of AI-DSS will affect and transform the modes of interaction between different agents in the clinic. In a second step, we point out how these changing modes of interaction also imply shifts in the conditions of trustworthiness, epistemic challenges regarding transparency, the underlying normative concepts of agency and its embedding into concrete contexts of deployment and, finally, the consequences for (possible) ascriptions of responsibility. Third, we draw first conclusions for further steps regarding a ‘meaningful human control’ of clinical AI-DSS. (shrink)

To study consciousness, scientists need to determine when participants are conscious and when they are not. They do so with consciousness detection procedures. A recurring skeptical argument against those procedures is that they cannot be calibrated: there is no way to make sure that detection outcomes are accurate. In this article, I address two main skeptical arguments purporting to show that consciousness scientists cannot calibrate detection procedures. I conclude that there is nothing wrong with calibration in consciousness science.

Some proponents of the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness profess strong views on the Neural Correlates of Consciousness, namely that large swathes of the neocortex, the cerebellum, at least some sensory cortices, and the so-called limbic system are all not essential for any form of conscious experiences. We argue that this connection is not incidental. Conflation between strong and weak versions of the theory has led these researchers to adopt definitions of NCC that are inconsistent with their own previous definitions, (...) inadvertently betraying the promises of an otherwise fruitful empirical endeavour. (shrink)

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

Epistemic deontology is the view that the concept of epistemic justification is deontological: a justified belief is, by definition, an epistemically permissible belief. I defend this view against the argument from doxastic involuntarism, according to which our doxastic attitudes are not under our voluntary control, and thus are not proper objects for deontological evaluation. I argue that, in order to assess this argument, we must distinguish between a compatibilist and a libertarian construal of the concept of voluntary control. If we (...) endorse a compatibilist construal, it turns out that we enjoy voluntary control over our doxastic attitudes after all. If, on the other hand, we endorse a libertarian construal, the result is that, for our doxastic attitudes to be suitable objects of deontological evaluation, they need not be under our voluntary control. (shrink)

As for most measurement procedures in the course of their development, measures of consciousness face the problem of coordination, i.e., the problem of knowing whether a measurement procedure actually measures what it is intended to measure. I focus on the case of the Perceptual Awareness Scale to illustrate how ignoring this problem leads to ambiguous interpretations of subjective reports in consciousness science. In turn, I show that empirical results based on this measurement procedure might be systematically misinterpreted.

This paper begins by pointing out the commonality of phenomenology and pragmatism, particularly by referring to Husserl and Dewey, respectively, but it soon turns to fundamental differences. The common starting point is the acknowledgement of everyday experience as the basis of any scientific proposition as well as any non-scientific notion of the world. Phenomenology and pragmatism are allies in their rejection of scientism. However, while Husserl reflects on the structure of experience in order to establish a theoretical view that allows (...) us to scrutinize ordinary and scientific experience from without, from some privileged standpoint, Dewey states that the process of experience, properly conceived and due to its entanglement with action in a contingent world, is always already self-reflective. Philosophy is thus conceived of as the practice of internal criticism that relies on the very form of contingent experience, not, as in Husserl’s work, as some transcendental foundation drawing upon an ideal of timeless reason. Husserl’s conception of philosophy is scientific, while anti-scientistic, whereas Dewey sees philosophy as structurally different from science while mediating between it and all other forms of experience. (shrink)

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Alston's arguments for doxastic involuntarism. Alston fails to distinguish (i) between volitional and executional lack of control, and (ii) between compatibilist and libertarian control. As a result, he fails to notice that, if one endorses a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, the outcome is a straightforward and compelling case for doxastic voluntarism. Advocates of involuntarism have recently argued that the compatibilist case for doxastic voluntarism can be blocked by pointing out that belief is never intentional. (...) In response to this strategy, I distinguish between two types of intentionality and argue that belief is no less intentional than action is. (shrink)

For a long time, ‘culture’ appears only to be an effect of the power of discourses and media in Friedrich Kittler’s works. But in his Berlin lecture series on the cultural history of cultural studies, he discusses the historical formations in which a discrete science of culture could emerge. His perspective not only highlights the historical foundations but also the blind spots of cultural studies.

This chapter looks at Daoism from Heidegger’s perspective, seeing what use he makes of “way” and “dao” in reference to the critical understanding of what he calls technology. As I am not a scholar of Daoism, my goal is not to contribute to our understanding of Daoism; nor am I doing what I think is standard work in “comparative philosophy.” My goal is more focused: I am interested in the conceptual work carried out for Heidegger by the notion of dao, (...) of way in the sense of the non-enduring “mother of heaven and earth” in accounting for the normative source of his critique of technological modernity. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell vertritt die These, dass man nur verstehen kann, was eine Sprache ist, wenn man die Grammatik der Aussagen untersucht, mit der Muttersprachler ihre Sprache artikulieren: Es sind Aussagen in der Ersten Person Plural, die kein Beobachtungswissen, sondern eine Form von Selbstbewusstsein zum Ausdruck bringen. Während Cavells These, das Wesen von Sprache zeige sich in der Grammatik jener Aussagen, eine tiefe Einsicht darstellt, ist seine Analyse ihrer Form verfehlt. Cavell verwechselt verschiedene Formen der Ersten Person Plural und in der (...) Konsequenz verschiedene Begriffe des Sozialen. Für eine angemessene Metaphysik der Sprache gilt es, das generische Wir von dem distributiven und dem kollektiven Wir zu unterscheiden. (shrink)

Was macht das Besondere der menschlichen Lebensform aus? Wie können wir es verstehen, dass unsere Art wie alle anderen natürlich evolviert ist und dennoch als einzige Art die Fähigkeit entwickelt hat, unter dem Anspruch der Freiheit und in reflexiver Distanz zu handeln, damit aber die Umwelt auf eine Welt hin zu transzendieren? Jung argumentiert, dass sich diese Fragen nur beantworten lassen, wenn man philosophische, evolutionstheoretische und kognitionswissenschaftliche Ansätze aufeinander bezieht. Der Schlüssel hierfür ist der Begriff der Bedeutung. Alle Lebewesen erfassen (...) ihre Umwelt im praktischen Umgang mit ihr als bedeutsam. Auch der Geist des Menschen ist essentiell verkörpert und basiert auf erlebten Bedeutsamkeiten. Die Fähigkeit zur symbolischen Artikulation und kulturellen Weiterentwicklung solcher Lebensbedeutungen erlaubt es ihm aber auch, die lokale Umwelt zu transzendieren und dabei Werte, Normen und objektive Geltungsansprüche zu entwickeln. Eine zeitgemäße Anthropologie muss in der Lage sein, diese qualitativen Besonderheiten des menschlichen Geistes als Resultate von Naturprozessen verständlich zu machen. Sie verbindet methodischen Naturalismus mit Offenheit für die Transzendenz des Geistes über die Umwelt. Damit leistet der Autor einen wichtigen Beitrag zu einem nichtreduktionistischen Verständnis des Menschen, das Leib und Geist nicht dualistisch trennt, sondern ihre spannungsvolle Einheit sichtbar macht. (shrink)

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

We investigate a lattice of conditional logics described by a Kripke type semantics, which was suggested by Chellas and Segerberg – Chellas–Segerberg (CS) semantics – plus 30 further principles. We (i) present a non-trivial frame-based completeness result, (ii) a translation procedure which gives one corresponding trivial frame conditions for arbitrary formula schemata, and (iii) non-trivial frame conditions in CS semantics which correspond to the 30 principles.

Der Glaube an die Wirkmacht des Wortes ist ein Herzstück protestantischer Theologie, aber nicht nur dieser. Er bildet genauso das Fundament der Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers. Denn Gadamer wie auch der Protestantismus gehen von der Annahme aus, dass der Mensch nicht Herr über das Wort ist. Die Wirkung des Wortes entzieht sich der menschlichen Kontrolle - und doch ereignet sich das Wort nicht willkürlich: Im Wort tut sich Wahrheit kund. Matthias Baum untersucht die Hermeneutik Gadamers aus christlichtheologischer Perspektive. Er leistet (...) dabei ein Dreifaches: Er sens zeichnet er Gadamers Rezeption theologischer Grundgedanken nach; analysiert zweitens, wie Gadamer diese transformiert und beleuchtet drittens Strukturanalogien zwischen Gadamers Hermeneutik und christlicher Theologie." --Dust Jacket Front Inside Flap. (shrink)

Das Gerucht, Gott sei tot, scheint ubertrieben gewesen zu sein. An dessen Verbreitung haben die Naturwissenschaften einen wesentlichen Anteil gehabt. Gegenwartig fuhren dagegen gerade sie Gott wieder im Munde. Massgeblichen Anteil daran hat die Entdeckung des Phanomens der Feinabstimmung Wenn Naturkonstanten, die die Gestalt unseres Universums bestimmen, nur wenig andere Werte angenommen hatten, hatte es bewusstes Leben nie gegeben. Matthias Schleiff entwickelt daraus das teleologische Feinabstimmungsargument. In der Nachfolge traditioneller Gottesbeweise, aber mit den wissenschaftlichen Einsichten unserer Zeit, argumentiert er (...) dafur, dass sich die Annahme eines kosmischen Schopfers auf rationale Grunde stutzen kann. Er setzt sich dabei intensiv mit alternativen Erklarungshypothesen auseinander - etwa der Erklarung durch den Zufall, das Anthropische Prinzip oder die Theorie des Multiversums - und bringt so Naturwissenschaften, Philosophie und Theologie wieder in ein Gesprach uber den Anfang der Welt. (shrink)