Die ersten vier von Brentanos 25 Habilitationsthesen fordern eine Erneuerung der Philosophie - worauf diese Forderung jedoch abzielt, ist nicht so klar. Vielfach wird behauptet, daß dieses Ziel eng verwandt mit der Konzeption einer wissenschaftlichen Philosophie im Sinne Russells und des Logischen Empirismus sei. Diese insbesondere auch von Rudolf Haller vertretene Auffassung setzt aber voraus, daß der katholisch-klerikale Kontext, in den der junge Priester Brentano eingebunden war, nur die unwesentliche Hülle eines eigentlichen Kernes bildet. Dagegen wird gezeigt, daß dieser (...) Kontext nicht so ablösbar, sondern vielmehr für das Verständnis der Habilitationsthesen unabdingbar ist. Es ergibt sich, daß das, worauf die vier ersten Thesen abzielen, eine Erneuerung der philosophia perennis aus dem Geiste des Thomas von Aquin und im Rahmen der Vorgaben der Kirchenlehre ist. (shrink)

By now scholars agree that the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810 and its glorification through the “Humboldtian myth” must be viewed separately. Nevertheless, ever since the 1910 centennial, historiography has rarely gone beyond references to the historical documents edited by Rudolf Köpke and Max Lenz. Analyzing the lectures announced in the university calendar for the fall semester 1810/11, the essay shows that applied science and vocational training played a larger role than assumed. In founding the university, (...) it seems, the authorities looked rather for the advancement of the common public interest than for the realization of a “Bildungsideal”. This essay pleads, therefore, for a comprehensive reassessment of the historical documents from the planning and founding stages of the University of Berlin. (shrink)

This is a discussion and transcription of a “lose Blatt” of Immanuel Kant’s that was recently located in the Dibner Library of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. It briefly comments on (1) religious delusion [Andachtswahn], (2) Kant’s pedagogical aims, (3) virtue and the general will, and (4) perceptual relativism of magnitude. The sheet may have belonged to a group stemming from Kant’s copy of his Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), and its provenance can be traced to (...) class='Hi'>Rudolf Reicke, the Königsberg librarian and Kant scholar of the late 19th century. (shrink)

Schlusslogische Letztbegründung is a collection of essays in honor of Kurt Walter Zeidler. Mr. Zeidler is a distinguished Kant- and Neo-Kantian-scholar who has reconstructed Kant's concept of transcendental logic in connection with the logic of the concept of Hegel and the logic of symbolization of Peirce. (cf. Zeidler: Grundriss der transzendentalen Logik, 3rd ed., Wien 2017) He has most notably inquired intensively into the relation of transcendental logic to philosophy of science (cf. Zeidler: Prolegomena zur Wissenschaftstheorie, Wien 2000) and to (...) phenomenology (cf. Zeidler: Vermittlungen. Zum antiken und neueren Idealismus, Wien 2016). He has also published several studies on Neo-Kantianism (cf. Zeidler: Provokationen. Zu Problemen des Neukantianismus, Wien 2018). This is refelected in the collection of essays by distinguished scholars who discuss and critically examine Zeidler's work. It includes contributions by Steinar Mathisen (Oslo), Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Vienna), Werner Flach (Lichtenau), Thomas Knoppe (Straberg), Geert Edel (Wyk/Föhr), Martin Bunte (Münster), Reinhard Hiltscher (Dresden), Walter Tydecks (Bensheim), Christian Krijnen (Amsterdam), Hartwig Wiedebach (Zürich), Max Gottschlich (Linz), Thomas Sören Hoffmann (Hagen), Rudolf Meer (Kaliningrad), Hans-Jürgen Müller (Frankfurt am Main), Robert König (Vienna), Ulrich Blau (Marburg), Karen Gloy (Luzern/Munich), Reinhold Breil (Aachen), Erhard Oeser (Vienna), Hans-Dieter Klein (Vienna), Hans Martin Dober (Tübingen), Kurt Walter Zeidler (Vienna) and Lois Marie Rendl (Vienna). (shrink)

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the integration of product-evaluating certificates and reports ( Gutachten) into advertisements triggered repeated condemnations of “advertisement- Gutachten” ( Reklamegutachten), and scientists and science administrators introduced various restrictions to prevent the appearance of such documents. At the same time, the provision of Gutachten to private individuals and firms seemed crucial to the success of many private and public laboratories. Some chemical and other professionals, moreover, argued that the authoring and use of Reklamegutachten could represent (...) a “scientific” and, therefore, ethical practice. By examining the contested history of the advertisement- Gutachten, this article reveals how a previously tolerated knowledge service lost its legitimacy in a particular place and period of time, and highlights the challenges of eliminating this practice or restoring its legitimacy afterward. The article also explores how professional scientists’ approaches to maintaining a reputation for integrity in the face of commercial and competitive pressures related to the better-known efforts of professionals in other fields, particularly the medical. I emphasize that, in determining whether a Gutachten qualified as scientific, the nature and transparency of the underlying research process was only one of the criteria that were considered, and often not the most significant yardstick. At the same time, however, ideas about the personal and professional/institutional integrity of providers of Gutachten were inextricably connected with assessments of the honesty and objectivity of their research. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to refute the widely held view that in the wake of his so-called reistic turn Brentano subjected his notion of intentionality to a deep-going revision, viz., that he turned from an ontological account of the intentional object by way of identifying it with the thought-of-thing, i.e., the intentional correlate, or by way of attributing to it a peculiar sort of existence, to a non-ontological account thereof. It will be shown that neither the pre-reistic Brentano (...) espoused anything of an ontological account of the intentional object in that he both distinguished it sharply from the intentional correlate and definitely rejected the idea of there being different sorts of existence, and it will be argued that the apparently ineradicable inclination to ascribe to the pre-reistic Brentano an ontological account of the intentional object stems from ignoring the Aristotelian background of Brentano's thinking about relations. (shrink)

This volume has its already distant or1g1n in an inter national conference on Evolutionary Epistemology the editors organized at the University of Ghent in November 1984. This conference aimed to follow up the endeavor started at the ERISS (Epistemologically Relevant Internalist Sociology of Science) conference organized by Don Campbell and Alex Rosen berg at Cazenovia Lake, New York, in June 1981, whilst in jecting the gist of certain current continental intellectual developments into a debate whose focus, we thought, was in (...) danger of being narrowed too much, considering the still underdeveloped state of affairs in the field. Broadly speaking, evolutionary epistemology today con sists of two interrelated, yet qualitatively distinct inves tigative efforts. Both are drawing on Darwinian concepts, which may explain why many people have failed to discriminate them. One is the study of the evolution of the cognitive apparatus of living organisms, which is first and foremost the province of biologists and psychologists (H. C. Plotkin, Ed. , Learning, Development, and Culture: Essays in Evolu tionary Epistemology, New York, Wiley, 1984), although quite a few philosophers - professional or vocational - have also felt the need to express themselves on this vast subject (F. M. Wuketits, Ed. , Conce ts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology, Dordrecht Boston, Reidel, 1984). The other approach deals with the evolution of science, and has been dominated hitherto by (allegedly) 'naturalized' philosophers; no book-length survey of this literature is available at present. (shrink)

This paper develops the metaphysical hypothesis that there are irreducibly collective pluralities, pluralities of objects that do not have a singular object among them. A way to formulate this hypothesis using plural quantification will be proposed and the coherence of irreducibly collective existence will be defended. Furthermore, irreducibly collective existence will be shown to allow for bottomless scenarios that do not involve things standing in relations of parthood. This will create logical space for an anti-atomistic form of mereological nihilism.

Stance-independent nonnaturalist moral realism is subject to two related epistemological objections. First, there is the metaethical descendant of the Benacerraf problem. Second, there are evolutionary debunking arguments. Standard attempts to solve these epistemological problems have not appealed to any particular moral epistemology. The focus on these epistemologically neutral responses leaves many interesting theoretical stones unturned. Exploring the ability of particular theories in moral epistemology to handle these difficult epistemological objections can help illuminate strengths or weaknesses within these theories themselves, as (...) well as opening up potentially unexplored avenues for responding to deeply entrenched concerns about our epistemic access to the moral properties. In this paper, I assess the prospects of an empiricist and perceptualist model of moral knowledge for responding to epistemological arguments against non-skeptical moral realism. I argue that such a view has powerful responses to these objections that are not open to other moral epistemologists. The upshot is that if some version of the view is correct, then the realist has less to fear from Benacerraf and evolutionary debunking–style epistemological objections. Insofar as one is already a committed realist, then, this provides some indirect support for moral perceptualism. (shrink)

Ontology is currently perceived as the solution of first resort for all problems related to biomedical terminology, and the use of description logics is seen as a minimal requirement on adequate ontology-based systems. Contrary to common conceptions, however, description logics alone are not able to prevent incorrect representations; this is because they do not come with a theory indicating what is computed by using them, just as classical arithmetic does not tell us anything about the entities that are added or (...) subtracted. In this paper we shall show that ontology is indeed an essential part of any solution to the problems of medical terminology – but only if it is understood in the right sort of way. Ontological engineering, we shall argue, should in every case go hand in hand with a sound ontological theory. (shrink)

„Luhmann meets Nietzsche“ – Luhmann hat in seinem Werk jeden Anschein vermieden, mit Nietzsche zu tun zu haben. Das hatte Folgen: Bis heute scheut Nietzsche, wer Luhmann kennt, und auch wer Nietzsche kennt, scheut Luhmann. Ihre Orientierungen scheinen füreinander abwegig zu sein: Philosophie hier, Soziologie dort, hier aphoristischer und bilderreicher Stil, dort hoch komplexe, konsequent gepflegte Theorie und zwischen beiden ein Jahrhundert, das die Welt von Grund auf verändert hat. Doch Luhmann könnte für das 21. Jahrhundert entfaltet haben, was Nietzsche (...) im 19. Jahrhundert gedacht hat. Seine soziologische Systemtheorie bewegt sich in philosophischen Dimensionen, und Nietzsche hatte bereits soziologische Perspektiven auf die Gesellschaft entwickelt, die Soziologen vom Fach bald dankbar aufgenommen haben. Nietzsche und Luhmann zusammen lassen mit ihren radikal neuen Ansätzen die meisten Philosophien und Soziologien des 20. Jahrhunderts buchstäblich alt aussehen. Sie könnten Wegbereiter einer Philosophie für das 21. Jahrhundert sein, für eine gelassene Orientierung im verstörenden Nihilismus. Wenn man sie einander begegnen lässt. (shrink)

DieVorlesung über Moralphilosophie aus den 1770er Jahren ist eine wichtige Erläuterung und Ergänzung zur Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sittenvon 1785. Die Neuedition der so genannten Menzer-Vorlesung präsentiert diese Vorlesung auf dem aktuellen Stand der Forschung. Zugrunde gelegt ist die Nachschrift Kaehler, die seit 1997 zum Kant-Archiv in Marburg gehört. Abgeglichen ist der Text mit mehreren Handschriften des Archivs der Berlin-Bandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Staatsbibliothek Berlin. Ein Anhang mit textkritischem Apparat und Erläuterungen zu Literatur und Personen sowie eine Einleitung (...) von Manfred Kühn erschließen die Vorlesung für alle, die sich für die Kant'sche Philosophie der Ethik interessieren. (shrink)

Modal potentialism as proposed by Barbara Vetter (2015) is the view that every possibility is grounded in something having a potentiality. Drawing from work by Jessica Leech (2017), Samuel Kimpton-Nye (2021) argues that potentialists can have an S5 modal logic. I present a novel argument to the conclusion that the most straightforward way of spelling out modal potentialism cannot validate an S5 modal logic. Then I will propose a slightly tweaked version of modal potentialism that can validate an S5 modal (...) logic and still does justice to the core claim of potentialism. (shrink)

Imagine coming across an alternative community such that, while they have normative terms like 'ought' with the same action-guiding roles and relationships to each other, their normative terms come to pick out different properties. When we come across such a community, or even just imagine it, those of us who strive to be moral and rational want to ask something like the following: Further Question: Which set of concepts ought we use—theirs or ours? The problem, first raised by Eklund, is (...) that on almost any metasemantic theory, Further Question cannot be stated in a way that captures the spirit of what we want to ask. This is because any way of asking the question makes use of our own normative concepts, and thus their reference is already fixed on the properties that our current normative concepts refer to. Any purported solution to this problem must meet two conditions. First, it must capture the spirit of what Further Question is intuitively attempting to ask. Second, it must reframe the inquiry in a way that makes the answer neither trivial nor ineffable. In this paper, I propose a solution to this problem by appeal to edenic representation, inspired by, but not identical to, Chalmers’ notion of edenic content. The rough idea here is that representation is edenic to the extent that the representational vehicle mirrors, in quality and structure, the represented property. I argue that a reframing of Further Question in terms of edenic representation can capture the spirit of the question, without collapsing it into a question with a trivial or ineffable answer. Thus, the realist about normative properties can face the problem of the alternative normative community head on, without collapsing into incoherence or triviality. If correct, this solution is of further interest to any metanormative realist concerned with metasemantic questions, because it can tell us more about how the proper representation of the robustly normative would look. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that some truths or facts don’t have a minimal full ground [see e.g. Fine ]. Every full ground of them contains a smaller full ground. In this paper I’ll propose a minimality constraint on immediate grounding and I’ll show that it doesn’t fall prey to the arguments that tell against an unqualified minimality constraint. Furthermore, the assumption that all cases of grounding can be understood in terms of immediate grounding will be defended. This assumption guarantees that (...) the proposed minimality constraint is significant for all cases of grounding. With its help one can get a clear grip on the relevance of grounding, a feature that will be put to use in the penultimate section. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a fundamentally different kind of moral luck, Patient Moral Luck (PML). Unlike traditional moral luck, PML concerns the amount of moral consideration that different moral patients — that is, creatures (including human beings) with moral status — will be owed, independent of factors in their control. PML, I argue, entails that morality itself appears to sanction and even obligate actions which, along predictable patterns, involve repeatedly failing to equally consider certain moral patients - and (...) repeatedly the same people - over sustained periods of time, through no fault of their own. And often these people will be members of groups who are already worse off through no fault of their own, thus exacerbating unjust inequalities. I defend the existence and normative puzzle of PML by introducing the notion of “moral force” - roughly, the amount of considerative weight a given moral patient is owed by some deliberating agent or group of agents. I then argue that this will vary widely between different moral patients through no fault or credit of their own. This, I claim, is inconsistent with the intuition that supports Equal Consideration principles in moral theory. I conclude by considering how we can minimize or mitigate PML without a radically revisionary normative theory. (shrink)

The book is the first formulation of a meta-philosophical scheme rooted in the embodied cognition paradigm. The latter views subjects capable of cognition and experience as living, embodied creatures coupled with their environments. On the other hand, the emergence of experimental philosophy has given rise to a new context in which philosophers have begun to search for a more thorough definition of philosophical competence. The time is ripe for these two trends to join their efforts. Therefore, the book discusses what (...) it means for a human being thought of as a living subject to pursue philosophy. In this context, in contrast to the existing literature, philosophical competence must not be conflated with competence in philosophy. The former is a skill or attitude. The book refers to this peculiar attitude as the recognition of one’s epistemic position. (shrink)

According to phenomenal conservatism, seemings can provide prima facie justification for beliefs. In order to fully assess phenomenal conservatism, it is important to understand the nature of seemings. Two views are that (SG) seemings are a sui generis propositional attitude, and that (D2B) seemings are nothing over and above dispositions to believe. Proponents of (SG) reject (D2B) in large part by providing four distinct objections against (D2B). First, seemings have a distinctive phenomenology, but dispositions to believe do not. Second, seemings (...) can provide a non-trivial explanation for dispositions to believe, which wouldn’t be possible if seemings were dispositions to believe. Third, there are some dispositions to believe that are not seemings. Fourth, there are instances of seemings which are not dispositions to believe. I consider and reject each of these objections. The first and third objections rely on a misunderstanding of (D2B). The second objection fails because there are contexts in which an appeal to a previously unknown identity can provide an interesting explanation. The fourth objection overlooks the possibility of finkish and masked dispositions, phenomena which are widely accepted in the dispositions literature. I conclude that (D2B) escapes these common objections unscathed. (shrink)

Simon’s bounded rationality , the first scientific research program to seriously take the cognitive limitations of decision makers into account, has often been conflated with his more restricted concept of satisficing—choosing an alternative that meets or exceeds specified criteria, but that is not guaranteed to be unique or in any sense “the best.” Proponents of optimization often dismiss bounded rationality out of hand with the following “hallway syllogism” : bounded rationality “boils down to” satisficing; satisficing is “simply” a theory of (...) search for alternatives that takes into account the costs of computation. Hence, bounded rationality is “just a minor tweak” on optimal search theory. (shrink)

One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic (...) as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective. (shrink)

Dieser Band formuliert - über den Kontext philosophischer Editionen hinaus - Probleme und Forschungsfragen, die sich in der Edition von Manuskripten zu Vorlesungen, von Nachschriften sowie von Seminarprotokollen ergeben. Der Fokus liegt auf methodischen Lösungsansätzen, die exemplarisch an Editionsvorhaben von Texten des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts vorgeführt werden. Damit bildet der Band ein Kompendium, von dem weitere editorische Forschung ausgehen kann. Frank Grunert und Holger Glinka eröffnen den Band, indem sie am Beispiel der Edition einer Nachschrift der Grotius-Vorlesung von Christian (...) Wolff zeigen, dass professionell hergestellte Nachschriften auf eine besondere wissenssoziologische Situation hinweisen: Mit der zunehmenden Emanzipation der Vorlesungen von kanonischen Lehrbüchern hat die Vorlesung selbst Lehrbuchcharakter entwickelt, der den Zugzwang ihrer Hörer noch verstärkt, sich des von Professoren gesprochenen Wortes schriftlich zu vergewissern. Der Handel mit Nachschriften hat hier seinen Grund wie in der Überlieferung besonders elaborierter Manuskripte in den Nachlässen adeliger und vermögender Häuser. Werner Stark stellt die problematische Funktion von Nachschriften als vermeintlicher Stütze für weitgehend ungeschriebene Werke am Beispiel von Kants Physischer Geographie in der Ausgabe Rink heraus und teilt damit spezifische Erfahrungen mit den älteren Editionen von Nachschriften Kantischer Vorlesungen in Königsberg mit. Holden Kelm rekonstruiert im historischen Vergleich, wie unterschiedliche Editionsstandards und v. a. Absichten ihren Autor gerade in der Rekonstruktion seiner Lehre jeweils neu konstitutieren, sodass ein editorisch manifestes theologisches Interesse an Schleiermacher zunehmend von einem philosophischen abgelöst wird. Annette Sell spürt anhand der Edition der Vorlesungsnachschriften zu Hegels Logik der Frage nach Hegels möglicherweise eigenen Überlieferungsabsichten seines in seiner Bewegung vorgetragenen Werkes nach. Johannes Korngiebel nimmt eine Nachschrift zu Friedrich Schlegels Jenaer Vorlesung zur Transcendentalphilosophie von 1800/01 zum Anlass, die Leistungsfähigkeit einer textkritischen Auswertung von Vorlesungsnachschriften für die Edition exemplarisch darzustellen. Christoph Binkelmann teilt aus der Werkstatt Schellings die editorischen Herausforderungen mit, die dessen Vorlesungen über Philosophie der Kunst bedeuten. Daniel Elon beleuchtet Schopenhauers Versuche als Dozent, wie sie sich in den Manuskripten zu dessen Vorlesung von 1820 darstellen. Francisco Arenas-Dolz nimmt Nietzsche als Universitätslehrer ernst und vertieft anhand der Edition der Vorlesung,,Einleitung in das Studium der klassischen Philologie" die Reflexionen über das Verhältnis von Vorlesungen und den sie begleitenden Textarten. Windelbands vor wenigen Jahren in Sendai wiederaufgefundene Manuskripte zur Vorbereitung von Lehrveranstaltungen und Publikationsvorhaben sind Gegenstand von Jörn Bohrs Beitrag. Andrea Leubin und Monika Philippi gewähren einen Einblick in die Edition von Vortragsnachschriften innerhalb der Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe. Max Webers Manuskripte für Vorlesungen dienen Sophia Krebs und Ulrich Rummel als Fallbeispiel für das Ermitteln und Belegen von Krypto-Zitaten und Paraphrasen, einem Hauptgegenstand editorischen Kommentierens. Mit Thomas Kessels Beitrag zu Nicolai Hartmanns Circelprotokollen wird das 20. Jahrhundert in den Blick genommen, als in den Seminaren und Kolloquien die Form des Protokolls Einzug hielt. Dirk Braunstein liefert eingehende Reflexionen über den möglichen Sinn der Begriffe,Autorschaft' und,Authentizität' in der Editionspraxis solcher Seminarprotokolle. - Beigefügt ist eine Bibliographie zum Thema Edition von Kollegheften, Kollegnachschriften und Protokollen. (shrink)

Der Psychiater und Philosoph Karl Jaspers hinterließ eine große fachliche und persönliche Korrespondenz, die historisch vom Untergang des Kaiserreichs bis zur Etablierung der Bundesrepublik reicht. Diese kritische und kommentierte Edition vermittelt ein umfassendes Bild dieses Denkers. Briefpartner dieses Bandes:Gustav Bally, Kurt Beringer, Ludwig Binswanger, Eugen Bleuler, Max Born, Albert Fraenkel, Viktor E. Frankl, Robert Gaupp, Wolfgang Gentner, Hans Walter Gruhle, Willy Hellpach, Jakob Klaesi, Ludwig Klages, Kurt Kolle, Ernst Kretschmer, Arthur Kronfeld, Willhelm Mayer-Gross, Alexander Mitscherlich, Rudolf Nissen, Franz Nissl, (...) Curt Oehme, Wolfgang Pauli, Oskar Pfister, Hans Prinzhorn, Werner Scheid, Gerhard Schmidt, Kurt Schneider, Johannes Heinrich Schultz, Albert Schweitzer, Hugo Spatz, Georg Stertz, Hans Jörg Weitbrecht, Carl Friedrich v. Weizsäcker, Viktor v. Weizsäcker, Albrecht Wetzel, Karl Wilmanns, Richard Woltereck, Jürg Zutt. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology have added to our insights into the vulnerabilities of human agency as well as to the methods of exploiting them. This has raised the stakes for efforts to clarify the concept and ethics of manipulation. Among these efforts, Robert Noggle’s influencer-centered account of manipulation has been most significant. He defines manipulative acts as those whereby an agent intentionally influences a recipient’s attitudes so that they do not conform as closely as they otherwise would to the (...) pertinent norms and ideals endorsed by the influencer. This provides a relatively simple and in many ways clear definition of manipulation. It sidesteps thorny debates about autonomy, freedom, or practical rationality. It also promises to reveal a conceptual parallel between manipulating and lying, and thus to explain why manipulation is pro tanto wrong. In one respect, however, the account remains ambiguous: It remains unclear whether, and to what extent, it requires that influencers’ beliefs about what is ideal for their recipients to be grounded in some effort on the part of the influencer to identify with or take on the role of her recipient. This paper explains this ambiguity. It argues that influencer-centrism cannot remain indifferent to the validity of an agent’s beliefs about the ideal state of the recipient and provide an identification requirement that would render the whole account plausible and sufficiently determinate. (shrink)

Es wird versucht, einige Aspekte von Carnaps Werk Der logische Auflyau der Welt vor dem Hintergrund des Kantianismus zu betrachten, insbesondere die Strukturalismusthese, das Verhältnis von Gegebenem und Konstruiertem und den Wirklichkeitsbegriff; das Ergebnis geht dahin, daß sich mehr Gemeinsamkeiten mit der kantianischen Tradition zeigen als es von einem klassischen Werk des Neopositivismus zu erwarten wäre.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In der Technikethik spielt das Konzept der Verantwortung eine zentrale Rolle. ›Verantwortung‹ ist ein Basiskonzept, das, ähnlich wie die Konzepte ›Pflicht‹ oder ›Schuld‹, in vielfältigen Kontexten gebraucht wird. Dennoch lassen sich einige allgemeine Aussagen über seine Bedeutung treffen. Gerade Autoren, die im Bereich der Technik- und Wissenschaftsethik aktiv sind, haben sich nachdrücklich um eine Klärung des allgemeinen Verantwortungsbegriffs und seiner verschiedenen Aspekte und Gebrauchsweisen bemüht.

Non-naturalism is the view that normative properties are response-independent, irreducible to natural properties, and causally inefficacious. An underexplored question for non-naturalism concerns the metasemantics of normative terms. Ideally, the non-naturalist could remain ecumenical, but it appears they cannot. Call this challenge the metasemantic challenge. This chapter suggests that non-naturalists endorse an epistemic account of reference determination of the sort recently defended by Imogen Dickie, with some modifications. An important implication of this account is that, if correct, a fully fleshed out (...) moral epistemology will simultaneously rebut metasemantic objections to non-naturalism. Thus, both the metasemantic and the more widely discussed epistemological challenges in effect amount to one. Before setting out the positive view, the chapter considers why all of the traditional metasemantic theories cause trouble for the non-naturalist. This includes discussions of teleosemantics, conceptual role semantics, as well as Schroeter and Schroeter’s “connectedness” model. (shrink)

Referent tracking (RT) is a new paradigm, based on unique identification, for representing and keeping track of particulars. It was first introduced to support the entry and retrieval of data in electronic health records (EHRs). Its purpose is to avoid the ambiguity that arises when statements in an EHR refer to disorders or other entities on the side of the patient exclusively by means of compound descriptions utilizing general terms such as ‘pimple on nose’ or ‘small left breast tumor’. In (...) this paper, we describe the theoretical foundations of this paradigm and show how it is being applied to the solution of analogous problems of ambiguous identification in the fields of digital rights management, corporate memories and decision algorithms. (shrink)

Against the background of the contemporary debate about financialisation, the paper conceptualises the capitalist labour economy as fundamentally a monetary system. It argues that money is not a capitalist means of organising its labour economy but that it is rather a capitalist end. The argument examines and finds wanting conceptions of money in political economy, including Keynesianism and neoliberalism, and argues that the debate about financialisation is fundamentally based on the propositions of political economy. It holds that Marx’s critique of (...) political economy conceives of money as the form of value and expounds money-making as the purpose of the capital labour economy. Thus, the labour theory of value is fundamentally a monetary theory of value, labour is the means of valorisation, and that is, of money in process, and as such capital. Making money out of money is capital as its most rational. In the form of credit, money posits wealth as a claim on future surplus value. (shrink)

This is the second of two articles in which I reflect on “generalized Darwinism” as currently discussed in evolutionary economics. In the companion article (Callebaut, Biol Theory 6. doi: 10.1007/s13752-013-0086-2, 2011, this issue) I approached evolutionary economics from the naturalistic perspectives of evolutionary epistemology and the philosophy of biology, contrasted evolutionary economists’ cautious generalizations of Darwinism with “imperialistic” proposals to unify the behavioral sciences, and discussed the continued resistance to biological ideas in the social sciences. Here I assess Generalized Darwinism (...) as propounded by Geoffrey Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen, and others, concentrating on the roles of theory and model building in science (and the roles of analogy and metaphor therein), generative replication, and the relation between selection and self-organization. I then point to advances in current biology that promise to be more fruitful as sources of inspiration for evolutionary economics than the project to generalize Darwinism in its current, “hardened Modern Synthesis” form; and I draw some conclusions. (shrink)

It is commonly presupposed that there are no decisive differences between empathy with fictional characters on one hand and empathy with real persons on the other. I distinguish two types of processes of affect recognition "Perceptual Affect Recognition" and "Affective Affect Recognition". The consensus view about empathy with fictional characters has to be challenged if "empathy" refers to the former or the latter process because of the significant differences between the fictional and the non-fictional scenario: firstly, readers as "empathizers" cannot (...) perceive the fictional target person directly but only the literary text. This is especially problematic for Affective State Recognition. Secondly, fictional characters do not exist, at least not in the sense that they are real people or entities with mental states which leads to relevant differences of the accuracy conditions of Affective Affect Recognition in the fictional and the nonfictional scenario. (shrink)

Review text: "Aufs Ganze besehen präsentiert St. einen ambitionierten Entwurf, der Verschiedenstes auf eine Kernstruktur zu beziehen vermag. Vieles ist bedenkenswert und bietet Anlass, über Grundsätzliches und weitgespannte Zusammenhänge nachzusinnen."Stefan Berg in: Zeitschrift für evangelische Ethik 2/2010 "Ein stattlicher Band von einem renommierten Verlag... "In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 29.9.2008.

Context: Von Foerster’s concept of eigenbehavior can be recognized against the broader context of enactivism as it has been advocated by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, by Noë and recently by Hutto and Myin, among others. This flourishing constellation of ideas is on its way to becoming the new paradigm of cognitive science. However, in my reading, enactivism, putting stress on the constitutive role of action when it comes to mind and perception, faces a serious philosophical challenge when attempting to account (...) for the way we actually perceive our environments, most importantly for the fact that we perceive things or objects. Von Foester’s eigenbehavior is understood here as a concept supposed to take on this challenge. Problem: In this article I tackle the following issues: Enactivism must be able to account for the apparent stability of the perceived world: this is not a realm of a never-ending flux of stimuli; it is a realm of stable things. Enactivism is committed to the anti-Cartesian endeavor seeking to bridge the gap between the inner and the outer; between the subjective and the objective. Now, these two points constrain each other so that one cannot address simply by regarding the apparent stability of things as a projection that springs out of the internal machinery binding inputs with outputs. This is because the very idea of such an internal machinery opposes, i.e., it employs the Cartesian dichotomy. So, enactivism is in need of an account of that would not oppose its anti-Cartesian commitment. Method: I introduce the ontology of location and niche theory, as it has been brought forth by Varzi, Casati, and Smith, and develop it so that it can be used in the philosophy of mind. This is a conceptual, semi-formal philosophical analysis. Results: I shall come up with the idea of object conceived of a product of action, and - drawing on von Foerster’s central idea - as a product of coordination of perceptions. Yet, it is not coordination of stimuli but coordination of cognitive connections. The notion of connection is thus articulated in the article and cast as the central concept in my proposal. Implications: We are able to account for both and (2. The apparent stability of the perceived world is due to the setting up and maintaining of connections between the perceiver and the things perceived, resulting in the establishment of what I call a cognitive niche. Constructivist content: Constructivism, broadly construed, takes, in my reading, a negative stance in the first place. Namely, it opposes what I call the metaphysics of the ready-made world. So, it holds that there is no ready-made reality; however it remains open when it comes to positive claims: a mind-independent reality does not exist at all or it does exist but it is not ready-made and as such it must be brought to completion, so to speak, or enacted, as Varela et al. would say, by a cognitive subject. In this article, I follow the latter and address one specific issue: how the enacted world gains its relatively stable architecture. (shrink)

Es wird versucht, einige Aspekte von Carnaps Werk Der logische Auflyau der Welt vor dem Hintergrund des Kantianismus zu betrachten, insbesondere die Strukturalismusthese, das Verhältnis von Gegebenem und Konstruiertem und den Wirklichkeitsbegriff; das Ergebnis geht dahin, daß sich mehr Gemeinsamkeiten mit der kantianischen Tradition zeigen als es von einem klassischen Werk des Neopositivismus zu erwarten wäre.