Der Wunsch nach Gesundheit, Schönheit und Langlebigkeit nimmt einen immer größeren Raum in unserem Leben ein. Was aber ist der Sinn, was sind die Werte und Ziele der Heilkunst? Wo liegen ihre Ursprünge und wie sieht die Medizin der Zukunft aus? Der Autor gibt als Forscher und Arzt Denkanstöße und zeigt unerwartete Zusammenhänge zwischen Wissenschaft, Religion und Magie auf. Ein Dialog zwischen Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften, der Orientierung bietet in einer Zeit rasanten Wandels.

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

Moral behaviour, based on social norms, is commonly regarded as a hallmark of humans. Hitherto, humans are perceived to be the only species possessing social norms and to engage in moral behaviour. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting their presence in chimpanzees, but systematic studies are lacking. Here, we examine the evolution of human social norms and their underlying psychological mechanisms. For this, we distinguish between conventions, cultural social norms and universal social norms. We aim at exploring whether chimpanzees possess evolutionary (...) precursors of universal social norms seen in humans. Chimpanzees exhibit important preconditions for their presence and enforcement: tolerant societies, well-developed social-cognitive skills and empathetic competence. Here, we develop a theoretical framework for recognizing different functional levels of social norms and distinguish them from mere statistical behavioural regularities. Quasi social norms are found where animals behave functionally moral without having moral emotions. In proto social norms, moral emotions might be present but cannot be collectivized due to the absence of a uniquely human psychological trait, i.e. shared intentionality. Human social norms, whether they are universal or cultural, involve moral emotions and are collectivized. We will discuss behaviours in chimpanzees that represent potential evolutionary precursors of human universal social norms, with special focus on social interactions involving infants. We argue that chimpanzee infants occupy a special status within their communities and propose that tolerance towards them might represent a proto social norm. Finally, we discuss possible ways to test this theoretical framework. (shrink)

Philosophical epistemology bases its understanding of cognition on the heuristic short-circuit of the content with the object of cognition. This short-circuit corresponds to the idea of truth in the sense of some kind of correspondence between the content and the object of knowledge. The problem that arises from this is the question of the verifiability of this correspondence, which would presuppose a transcendent standpoint that, for lack of existence, becomes a mere vanishing point of reflection. The standpoint of reflection corresponds (...) to the adoption of a transcendent standpoint that is nevertheless anchored in the cognizing subject. The question of correspondence thus becomes a question of certainty. This leads to a second, this time theoretical short-circuit, namely the conflation of the actual question of a theory of the phenomenon of cognition, the question of the genesis (or generation) of the content of cognition, with the question of the certainty of this content. This conflation ultimately leads to the question of which (by definition subjective) elements of the cognitive process can guarantee certainty, and thus to a further, third, namely methodological short-circuit through the definition of the (in truth holistic) cognitive situation in terms of a subject-object opposition and the associated exclusion of the knowledge of the empirical natural sciences from cognitive reflection. The aim of this short paper (which is the introduction to a recent publication entitled 'Rehabilitation of Pure Reason') is to find an adequate understanding of the phenomenon of cognition by reversing these short-circuits in reverse order, i.e. by starting from the affirmative acknowledgement of the holism of the real cognitive situation, which excludes subjective certainty as a reasonable goal of cognition from the outset. (shrink)

[1.] Husserl-Studien -- 2. Bd. Studien zur Phänomenologie der Epoché.

Wittgenstein, possibly the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, is often labelled a Neopositivist, a New-Kantian, even a Sceptic. _Questions on Wittgenstein_, first published in 1988, presents a selection of nine essays investigating a matter of vital philosophical importance: Wittgenstein’s relationship to his Austrian predecessors and peers. The intention throughout is to determine the precise contours of Wittgenstein’s own thought by situating it within its formative context. Although it remains of particular interest to Anglo-Saxon philosophers, special familiarity with Austrian (...) philosophy is required to appreciate the subtle and profound influence which this cultural and philosophical setting had on Wittgenstein’s intellectual development. Professor Haller has spent his career exploring these themes, and is one of the foremost authorities on both Wittgenstein and contemporary Austrian philosophy. Questions on Wittgenstein thus offers a unique insight into the twentieth-century tradition of Austrian philosophy, and its importance for Wittgenstein’s thought. (shrink)

In the judgment of many historians of contemporary philosophy as well as of analytic philosophers of different lines, there is no doubt about the truth of the statement that the philosophy of the Vienna Circle is dead. And since it is dead, some think that the only remaining task could be to find out the cause that led to the downfall of this proud philosophical movement.

In Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and memory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a possible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the "unconscious" consciousness of a "virtual" past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian version of a critique of "the metaphysics of presence" is, for all that, an offshoot (...) of a Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional standpoints on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evidence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound up with the work of memory. (shrink)

Relying on Husserl as well as on the reflections by Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne, Henry on Kandinsky and Deleuze on Bacon, this essay sketches some basic problems that arise in a phenomenological account of non-figurative painting. An investigation of the distinction between phenomenological and pictorial perception, of the transposition of the painter’s mode of perception into a painted image, and of the expressive force of paintings inevitably confronts one with the enigma of the appearing of something invisible. The essay proceeds in (...) three steps. The first step describes pictorial perception in terms of a ‘seeing according to’. Such a mode of perception pays attention to visual ambiguities, to the ‘gaze of things’ and to the conditions of visibility that are ordinarily overlooked. The second step moves on to the issue of the transposition of a pictorial perception in a painted image. Deleuze’s account of “manipulated chance” proves to be very helpful here. In the final step, Henry’s and Deleuze’s emphasis on the painting’s expression of totally invisible ‘forces’ is discussed. (shrink)

The developments of recent years have made it more and more clear that one of the most fruitful approaches to the science of science, i.e. to a logical, epistemological and methodological analysis of science, consists in the analysis of the language of science. This analysis is meant not only as an analysis of the general structure of the scientific language, but also as an analysis of the expressions of that language as they are used in science, e.g. of the words (...) used, of the sentences of different forms asserted by scientists, of the theories consisting of such sentences, of proofs and derivations for such sentences, etc. (shrink)