The present discussion contribution argues that O. Müller not only suppresses Goethe’s declared intentions with regard to the latter’s Theory of Colors and ignores his place in what in any case is a different scientific culture than his own or Newton’s, namely a premodern culture of “narrative knowledge” in the sense specified by Lyotard. Moreover, Müller entangles himself in the paradox of wanting on the one hand to back up Goethe on the level of fact when the latter opposes the (...) militant selfrighteousness of the Newtonian school, but doing so on the other hand by constructing an epic-heroic narrative of Newtonian militance, not to say eristic belligerence contradictory to Goethe’s own “tolerant enlightenment” in Lakatos’ sense. Thus, we are confronted with one of those cases where, as Paul de Man puts it, a multidimensional critical reading on the semiological as well as rhetorical levels shows “that the text does not practice what it preaches”. (shrink)

Let Carolyn Jane Bohler inspire you to consider a wide range of images of God in order to refine how you imagine God to have and use power, and how God wills ...

Nietzsche's model of eternal return triggers a drama of affirmation, the overcoming of a simple miming of our ancestors in favour of an active participation in the counter-actualisation of hidden potentials in recurrent events. Based on a close study of Zarathustra's struggle to free himself from a suffocating nihilism, the paper focuses on the revelatory caesura that ushers in what Deleuze calls the third synthesis of time, a time of ‘doing’ rather than reflection.

Die Prinzipienbegrundungsfrage bzw. die einen Verbindlichkeitserweis erfordernde Frage "Was gilt?" verweist auf unsere grundlegende Mitverantwortung fur die im High-tech-Zeitalter bedrohte Menschheitszukunft. Um jene - zugleich hochpolitische - Prinzipienfrage geht es in diesem Diskurs- und Verantwortungsbuch: zunachst in Dietrich Bohlers einfuhrendem Essay, sodann in den acht Diskursen zwischen Jon Hellesnes, Gunnar Skirbekk, Hans Lenk, Alberto Damiani, Sebastian Hopfl, Vittorio Hosle, Thomas Rusche und Dietrich Bohler, der auf diese antwortet. Drei kritisch wurdigende Essays zu Hans Jonas' und Karl-Otto Apels Verantwortungsdenken pointieren (...) schliesslich die Aktualitat der Zukunftsethik. (shrink)

Microtubules are protein cylinders with functions in cell motility, signal sensing, cell organization, intracellular transport, and chromosome segregation. One of the key properties of microtubules is their dynamic architecture, allowing them to grow and shrink in length by adding or removing copies of their basic subunit, the heterodimer αβ‐tubulin. In higher eukaryotes, de novo assembly of microtubules from αβ‐tubulin is initiated by a 2 MDa multi‐subunit complex, the gamma‐tubulin ring complex (γ‐TuRC). For many years, the structure of the γ‐TuRC and (...) the function of its subunits remained enigmatic, although structural data from the much simpler yeast counterpart, the γ‐tubulin small complex (γ‐TuSC), were available. Two recent breakthroughs in the field, high‐resolution structural analysis and recombinant reconstitution of the complex, have revolutionized our knowledge about the architecture and function of the γ‐TuRC and will form the basis for addressing outstanding questions about biogenesis and regulation of this essential microtubule organizer. (shrink)

Transcendental Pragmatics and Discourse Ethics. Elements and Perspectives of Apel's Discourse-Philosophy. The author follows Apel's intellectual biography and shows the conception of a critique of meaning qua ‘reflection upon the discourse within the discourse’ to be the centre of Apel's language-pragmatic ‘Transformation of Philosophy’. Beginning with an explication of the situation of a speaker/thinker, especially of the situation of a philosophising speaker/thinker, Apel reconstructs a two fold apriori of communication: Every thought is situated within the context of a particular, historically (...) evolved, community of language and interaction. At the same time, however, the validity-claims of thoughts transcend the context of their origin towards an unlimited community of argumentation. On the basis of the first apriori Apel criticises the methodical solipsism as well as the objectivism of modern philosophy and theory of science. Drawing upon the second apriori he develops a universalist critique of meaning of relativism and contextualism. In the sixties and seventies Apel worked out a differentiated theory of the – more or less – communicatively cognizing humanities and set it apart from the theory of the causal-explanatory natural sciences, thus challenging the objectivism of a Theory of Unified Science. Building upon this work Transcendental Pragmatics, as developed by Apel and others, sets philosophy primarily two tasks: firstly, a internal reconstruction of argumentative discourse as the situation of speech and thought which seeks to elucidate the conditions of the meaningfulness, i. e. the presuppositions, of discourse. These presuppositions comprise, thus Apel with Habermas, the four validity-claims to intelligibility, sincerety/credibility, truth and normative rightness/legitimacy. Their moral content consists, thus Apel, not only in the recognition of the equality of all beings capable of discursive reasoning but also in their recognition of a co-responsibility for the realizability of discourses and of responsibility. The author argues that the existence of a co-responsibility of this kind is indisputable because the discursive claims to validity are intertwined with a set of ‘primordial promises of dialogue’. Only with the elucidation and explication of these promises can the reconstruction of the internal conditions of discourse be completed.The second task of a pragmatics of argumentation isthe strict resp. actual reflection of the thinker upon the presuppositions of the discourse in which he currently engages. This reflection has a Socratic character and can only be done in the form of discussion and debate with critics of the reconstruction. In this context, the author proposes a method of Socratic reflection upon the presuppositions of dialogue which suspends the usual, theoretically oriented, attitude of the scientist and the philosopher in favour of an actual reflective attitude. Within a dialogue with a sceptic who doubts one of the results of the internal reconstruction of dialogical presuppositions, say X, it is tested whether his doubt as to the unrestricted validity of X can be understood as a sincere contribution to the current dialogue or whether this particular sceptical thesis does not make sense, because it is incompatible with the role of a sincere participant of argumentation which, after all, the sceptic cannot refuse to claim for himself.Finally the author explains Apel's characterization of the tension between “Discourse and Responsibility”. In the course of discussions with Max Weber, Lawrence Kohlberg, Hans Jonas et al., Apel formulates and justifies an ethics of responsibility and gives an affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether the fulfilment of the moral obligations connected with the recognition of co-responsibility can be demanded within the non-dialogical circumstances of social reality. Apel's answer employs the idea of counter-strategies which are morally legitimate in virtue of their being worthy of argumentative consensus. (shrink)

Summary It is argued that the „pragmatic turn represented by Kuhn's work constitutes a modification but not a change of the paradigm of „analytic philosophy of science. To show this, that paradigm (P) is reconstructed in terms of five programmatic schemata of knowledge production.

Performing Philosophy in Asian Traditions.

In den ersten Kapiteln werde ich ein ethologisches Modell von Körperlichkeit vorstellen, in dem Körper, ganz im Sinne Spinozas, als lokale Bestandteile eines weltweiten Gefüges gedacht werden. Körper sind demnach keine von ihrer Umgebung isolierbaren Substanzen, in ihnen treten vielmehr Sach-Verhalte in Erscheinung, denen ein systemisches Selbsterhaltungsstreben (conatus) innewohnt. Der den Körpern immanente Appetit, sich in ihrem Sein zu erhalten, bezieht sich daher nicht nur auf die Selbsterhaltung des eigenen Organismus, sondern auf die systemische Erhaltung des eigenen In-der-Welt-Seins, das ein (...) Organismus mit seiner Umwelt teilt. In den darauffolgenden Kapiteln analysiere ich die dunkle Alchemie, die Körper erleiden, wenn ihr Appetit, sich in ihrem Sein zu erhalten, durch äußere Ursachen gehemmt und schließlich vergiftet wird. Eine Dynamik, die Nietzsche in seiner Streitschrift Zur Genealogie der Moral treffend als Wille zum Nichts charakterisiert hatte. In ihr verkehrt sich der Lebenswille in einen Hass auf das Leben, der sich am Leben zu rächen beginnt, indem er es verdammt. Diesem destruktiven, selbstwidersprüchlichen Willen zum Nichts setzt Spinoza im fünften Buch seiner Ethik eine Glückseligkeitslehre entgegen, die den Geist der Rache immunisiert, indem sie an der Hervorbringung freudvoller Lebensverhältnisse arbeitet. Nicht der dialektische Kampf gegen das Ressentiment und seine destruktive Dynamik steht daher im Zentrum seiner Ethik. Es ist vielmehr die Kultivierung aktiver Affekte – Affekte der Freude, Liebe und Selbstzufriedenheit –, die für Spinoza das Ende der Hass- und Gewaltspirale versprechen. Damit zieht er die Konsequenzen aus der Einsicht, dass ein Affekt nur durch einen anderen, stärkeren Affekt gehemmt und schließlich außer Kraft gesetzt werden kann: Hass durch tiefgründige Liebeserfahrungen, Ressentiment durch freudvolle Erfahrungen. (shrink)

L’auteur s’est attachée à l’écriture singulière de G. Duby dans le domaine de l’histoire des femmes, et tout particulièrement dans les trois volumes des Dames du XIIe siècle. G. Duby y témoigne en effet d’une vigilance toute particulière à l’égard de l’expression, en centrant son discours sur un « JE » qui assume les risques d’affronter des documents toujours masculins, pour y débusquer ce qu’il appelle « des ombres insaisissables », les femmes de l’époque féodale. Parfaite maîtrise des ressources de (...) la langue, syntaxe souple et inventive, mais aussi forte conscience des effets de la voix : cette langue est bien celle de l’affect tout comme celle d’un imagier. L’historiographe du féminin use d’une écriture subjective et dramatisée, où le point de vue de la narration désigne toujours la relation passionnée du locuteur avec les témoignages qu’il interroge. À quoi contribuent les alternances des perspectives temporelles et la constance de champs métaphoriques : capture, rapt, butin, girons périlleux ou fertiles... Martèlements et ellipses font de cette écriture un discours véhément et convaincant, le plus personnel que l’historien ait jamais mis en oeuvre. (shrink)

Long description: Wie lässt sich die Verbindung zwischen Leiblichkeit und der Konstitution kultureller Bedeutungen denken? Die Beiträge des Bandes reichen von begrifflichen Überlegungen zu den Körpern über die Einbeziehung der Psychosomatik zu jenen Körperpraktiken, welche die akademische Praxis selbst mitbestimmen. Der Vielfalt von Blickwinkeln gemeinsam ist die Aufmerksamkeit für den Körper als Ausgangspunkt und sinnstiftendes Medium wissenschaftlichen Denkens, Vortragens und Schreibens. Künstlerische Formen wie die Lecture-Performance geraten ebenso in den Blick wie die Frage, ob sich die Philosophie in der Perspektive (...) der Korporalen Performanz selbst als eine Form leiblicher Kreativität enthüllt. (shrink)

À la fin du XVIe siècle, Christine de Pizan apparaît comme la première « intellectuelle » du monde occidental. Écrivaine consciente des bienfaits de l’éducation que lui a donnée son père, elle refuse de s’enfermer dans sa chambre de travail et s’engage dans un espace public jusqu’alors réservé aux hommes. À la jonction du Privé et du Public,elle prend le risque d’une longue marche vers un monde meilleur : le champ du savoir à ses yeux doit être mis au service (...) d’une parole efficace pour la cité des hommes. (shrink)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is (...) typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Williams and J. Fraser have recently argued that effective field theory methods enable scientific realists to make more reliable ontological commitments in quantum field theory than those commonly made. In this paper, I show that the interpretative relevance of these methods extends beyond the specific context of QFT by identifying common structural features shared by effective theories across physics. In particular, I argue that effective theories are best characterized by the fact that they contain intrinsic empirical limitations, and I extract (...) from their structure one central interpretative constraint for making more reliable ontological commitments in different subfields of physics. While this is in principle good news, this constraint still raises a challenge for scientific realists in some contexts, and I bring the point home by focusing on Williams’s and J. Fraser’s defense of selective realism in QFT. (shrink)

Should the government censor dangerous anti-vaccination propoganda? Should it restrict the praise of terrorist groups, or speech intended to promote discriminatory attitudes? In other words, should the government curb the advocacy of dangerous ideas and actions (i.e. 'harmful advocacy'), or should the government take a more permissive approach? Strong free speech supporters argue that citizens should be free to engage in and to hear harmful advocacy, arguing that restrictions are deeply objectionable at best, and, at worst, wholly impermissible. To support (...) their position, strong free speech supporters have offered a wide range of arguments and ideas. One of the most interesting arguments revolves around the idea that restrictions on harmful advocacy are deeply insulting to citizens. The worry, broadly understood, is that this kind of censorship is demeaning, treats citizens as though they are stupid, or as though they are children. As such, even when censorship is effective in preventing harms to citizens, it nonetheless comes at the significant political cost of failing to properly respect the citizenry at large. By contrast, so the thought goes, an alternative political scheme that prohibits censorship, or permits it only in exceptional cases, does a better job of respecting citizens as independent, rational, morally responsible agents. This alternative political system may, sometimes, be less effective at preventing speech harms. But it is a political system where citizens can stand tall and hold their heads high. In this paper, I consider and reject three versions of the worry that censorship is insulting. §1 explores the idea that censorship is insulting qua involving a negative appraisal of the citizens being interfered with. The key idea here is that censorship involves a lack of what Stephen Darwall terms ‘appraisal respect’, insofar as the government is suggesting that citizens cannot be trusted to manage their own beliefs and intentions. Drawing on the work of Thomas Nagel, §2 explores the idea that censorship diminishes the political status of citizens. Finally, §3 explores the suggestion that censorship is incompatible with a full appreciation of the thinking nature of citizens, and thus involves a lack of what Darwall would term ‘recognition respect’. The paper argues that censorship is not necessarily premised upon an insulting view of the citizenry. On the contrary, it argues that the best kind of censorship stems from a rich appreciation of the diverse range of capabilities, needs, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities of citizens, as well as the need for co-operation between citizens if societal flourishing is going to be achieved on a large scale. Granted, such a vision places an emphasis on the imperfections and liabilities of citizens – at least when compared to the rather solitary, highly intellectual creature one sometimes finds in the philosophical literature. Still, such a vision of citizens as imperfect falls well short of being genuinely insulting. To err is human. And there’s nothing insulting about being treated like a human. (shrink)

This article proposes a unified framework for understanding creative problem solving, namely, the explicit–implicit interaction theory. This new theory of creative problem solving constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight). The explicit–implicit interaction theory relies mainly on 5 basic principles, namely, (a) the coexistence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge, (b) the simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most (...) tasks, (c) the redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge, (d) the integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing, and (e) the iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing. A computational implementation of the theory is developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and applied to the simulation of relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related.. (shrink)

Winner of the 2015 Pierre-Antoine Bernheim Prize for the History of Religion by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-LettresAfter a century during which Confucianism was viewed by academics as a relic of the imperial past or, at best, a philosophical resource, its striking comeback in Chinese society today raises a number of questions about the role that this ancient tradition might play in a contemporary context. The Sage and the People is the first comprehensive enquiry into the "Confucian revival" that (...) began in China during the 2000s. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork carried out over eight years in various parts of the country, it explores the re-appropriation and reinvention of popular practices in fields as diverse as education, self-cultivation, religion, ritual, and politics.The book analyzes the complexity of the "Confucian revival" within the broader context of emerging challenges to such categories as religion, philosophy, and science that prevailed in modernization narratives throughout the last century. Exploring state cults both in Mainland China and Taiwan, authors Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval compare the interplay between politics and religion on the two shores of the Taiwan strait and attempt to shed light on possible future developments of Confucianism in Chinese society. (shrink)

This survey covers some of the main philosophical debates raised by the framework of effective field theories during the last decades. It is centered on three issues: whether effective field theories underpin a specific realist picture of the world, whether they support an anti-reductionist picture of physics, and whether they provide reasons to give up the ultimate aspiration of formulating a final and complete physical theory. Reviewing the past and current literature, we argue that effective field theories do not give (...) convincing reasons to adopt a particular stance towards these speculative issues. They hold good prospects for asking ontologically perspicuous and sensible questions about currently accessible domains. With respect to more fundamental questions, however, the only certainty is provisional and instrumental: effective theories are currently indispensable for conducting fruitful scientific research. (shrink)