ABSTRACT This article considers Michel Foucault's theories of ethical speech and militant life in the context of Occupy Wall Street's encampments in Zuccotti Park. Focusing on the encampments and the production and circulation of resources to meet bodily needs, the article concludes that occupation was a self-inflicted form of precarity as well as an extension of an already existing vulnerability, a living that is at once a form of social death. I read the occupations as a mode of militant life, (...) which is to say, that which enacts precarity while at the same time transforming it into the object of radical speech. (shrink)

Typical theory of mind tasks assess children’s ability to attribute a false belief in order to predict or explain an action. According to these standard tasks, young children do not represent the independent (mistaken) beliefs of others until the fourth year—yet long before this, children are able to track speakers’ intentions in order to learn new words. Might communication be a privileged domain for theory of mind? In the present study we explored pre‐schoolers’ ability to track a false belief in (...) order to acquire a novel word. A puppet labeled a novel object in a false belief condition (contents of a box had been switched without her knowledge), and a true belief condition (contents switched in her presence). Children were significantly better at tracking the puppet’s false belief in the word‐learning task than in a standard false belief test. Possible reasons for this advantage are discussed, and the suggestion made that representation of mental states may emerge precociously in the service of communication. (shrink)

English summary: Deism, the "Religionsphilosophie der Aufklarung" (religious philosophy of the Enlightenment, Ernst Troeltsch) played a significant role in the modernization of philosophy in the early modern age and of European culture in a broader sense. Although this has been known for a long time, there is still the need for a differentiated overall picture of the subject. Therefore, on the occasion of Gunter Gawlick's 80th birthday in June 2010, a seminar on the manifestations of Deism in Europe was held (...) at the "Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuttel" (library of Duke August of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel). The resulting anthology, edited by Winfried Schroder, assembles the partial results of current research on Deism, thereby providing a definition of Deism's role in the cultural, ideological and intellectual history of early modern times. German description: Zu den philosophie- und theologiegeschichtlichen Formationen, denen in der Zeitspanne zwischen dem spaten 16. und dem 18. Jahrhundert die Uberwindung der vormodernen Welt die wichtigsten Impulse verdankt, gehort ohne Zweifel der Deismus. Seine Leitideen sind der Gedanke der Suffizienz einer um moralische Vorschriften zentrierten 'naturlichen' Religion, die aus blosser Vernunft zuganglich ist, die Uberflussigkeit einer ubernaturlichen Offenbarung und die daraus abgeleitete Forderung nach Toleranz und Denkfreiheit. Diese Ideen weisen den Deismus geradezu als "die Religionsphilosophie der Aufklarung" (Ernst Troeltsch) aus. Diese massgebliche Rolle, die der Deismus im Modernisierungsprozess der fruhneuzeitlichen Philosophie und der europaischen Kultur im weiteren Sinne gespielt hat, ist seit langem bekannt - und doch fehlt es an einem differenzierten Gesamtbild. In den letzten Jahrzehnten sind zum einen wichtige Forschungsertrage erzielt worden, zum anderen hat die Deismus-Forschung etliche Desiderate festgestellt, denen sie teilweise bereits nachgegangen ist. Aus Anlass des 80. Geburtstags von Gunter Gawlick fand deshalb im Juni 2010 ein Arbeitsgesprach zu den Gestalten des Deismus in Europa in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuttel statt. Der zugehorige von Winfried Schroder herausgegebene Sammelband bundelt die Teilergebnisse der bisherigen Desismus-Forschung zu einer Positionsbestimmung des Deismus in der Kultur-, Ideen- und Geistesgeschichte der Fruhen Neuzeit. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Catherine Malabou builds on neuroscience to offer a theory of the plasticity of the brain, arguing that trauma holds transformative potential. This article argues, however, that her theory prioritizes resilience in the face of episodic moments of violence and trauma, which undertheorizes the trauma of chronic conditions experienced by racialized, particularly Black, subjects. Instead, this article turns to Christina Sharpe’s theory of wake work and, more specifically, Black annotation and Black redaction, to demonstrate how, in the wake of transatlantic (...) slavery, there is space for the collective disruption of symbolic structures to generate openings for imagining and circulating alternative possibilities to the hegemonic institutions of the past and present. Contrasting Malabou’s focus on the transformation of the brain during episodic violence and trauma, this article contends that Sharpe may demonstrate the possibility of plasticity in form and the symbolic in quotidian experiences and practices. (shrink)

Many scholars of philosophy, aesthetics, religion, history or social science have ventured to offer a comprehensive explanation of music, one of the most intangible and elusive phenomena in the world. A palaeoanthropological approach, which places music into an evolutionary paradigm, can add important perspectives to our understanding of this phenomenon. To begin with, the question whether music is an adaptation that has survival value in the classical Darwinian sense is contemplated. Views on the origin of music in conjunction with the (...) emergence of language and as a domain for the expression of emotion, linked to music’s benefits for social coherence, are discussed. More recent views on the emergence of consciousness, on semiosis and on music as a manifestation of biocultural co-evolution, especially in conjunction with ritual, are then presented. Finally, the merit of exploiting the concept of play to help account for the systematicity of music’s semiosis is examined.Contribution: In line with the intent of this special collection of articles, the above considerations are placed into the context of materialist versus nonmaterialist perspectives on the emergence of the human mind. The overarching argument is that music contributes crucially to what it means to be human. (shrink)

I propose that a logical formalization of a natural language text may be regarded as adequate if the following three groups of beliefs can be integrated into a wide reflective equilibrium: our initial, spontaneous beliefs about the structure and logical quality of the text; our beliefs about its structure and logical quality as reflected in the proposed formalization, and our background beliefs about the original text’s author, his thought and other contextually relevant factors. Unlike a good part of the literature, (...) I stress the indispensable role of initial beliefs in achieving such a wide reflective equilibrium. In the final sections I show that my approach does not succumb to undue subjectivism or the mere perpetuation of prejudice. The examples I use to illustrate my claims are chiefly taken from Anselm’s Proslogion 2–3 and the various attempts to formalize these texts. (shrink)

Angesichts der Globalisierung und der von ihr aufgeworfenen Probleme für das nationale und das internationale Recht gewinnt die Rechtsphilosophie immer stärker an Bedeutung. Zugleich verbinden sich rechtstheoretische Fragen wieder zunehmend mit philosophischen Überlegungen. Der vorliegende Band versammelt 20 Beiträge namhafter Rechtstheoretiker und Philosophen, die die eigenständige Begriffsbildung und die Entwicklung neuer Theorieansätze auf dem Gebiet der Rechtsphilosophie zum Ziel haben. Das Spektrum reicht dabei von grundbegrifflichen Klärungen bis hin zu konkreten Problemstellungen des globalisierten Rechts und bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über (...) die aktuelle deutsche und internationale Debatte. Mit Beiträgen u. a. von Robert Alexy, Klaus Günther, Gunther Teubner, Otfried Höffe und Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay thinks through the relationship between dystopia and utopia, in particular, how the constellation of past and present in radical demands amid state and economic violence is that which creates “crisis”—an estrangement from the present, a reclaiming of past insurgency, and the possibilities for other worlds.

From cosmology to the fact that the existence of God and nature, to address these issues, the development of two kinds of controversial contemporary line of argument, I compared and assessed in this paper: the physical cosmology as a starting argument and the natural design as a starting point of the argument. I made ​​some preliminary assessment of the court. The results showed that the Big Bang argument are quite reasonable, however, found the natural design of the demonstration clearly insufficient. (...) I compare and evaluate two contemporary and controversial lines of argument from cosmological facts to the existence and nature of God: the argument from physical cosmology and the argument from design in nature. As a preliminary step, some criteria for such an evaluation are proposed. It turns out that the Big Bang argument keeps considerable plausibility , whereas the Design argument can be shown to be deficient. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 420-463.

Nicht nur die Politik, auch die Demokratietheorie thematisiert die Partizipation der Bürger seit Jahren vorwiegend unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Rationalität. Demgegenüber diskutiert der vorliegende Band, ausgehend vom Denken Hannah Arendts, wie sich demokratische Politik noch als Praxis, d.h. als ein um seiner selbst willen geschätztes Handeln unter Freien und Gleichen denken lässt.

The paper argues that contemporary consciousness studies can profit from Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of consciousness. It confronts mainstream tendencies in contemporary consciousness studies, including those which consider consciousness as an unsolvable mystery, with Peirce’s phenomenological approach to consciousness. Peirce’s answers to the following contemporary issues are presented: phenomenological consciousness and the qualia, consciousness as self-controlled agency of humans, self-control and self-reflection, consciousness and language, self-consciousness and introspection, consciousness and the other, consciousness of nonhuman animals, and the question of a (...) quasi-consciousness of the physical universe. A detailed account of Peirce’s three modes of consciousness is presented: primisense, qualisense or feeling-consciousness, altersense, and medisense, the consciousness of cognition, thought, and reasoning. In contrast to consciousness studies that establish a rather sharp dividing line between conscious and unconscious states of mind, Peirce adopts the principle of synechism, the theory of continuity. For him, consciousness is a matter of degree. An important difference between Peirce’s concept of qualia and current theories of qualia in human consciousness is discussed. The paper shows how consciousness, according to Peirce, emerges from unconscious qualia and vanishes into equally unconscious habits. It concludes with a study of the roles of qualia, habit, and self-control in Peirce’s theory of signs, in particular in qualisigns and symbols, and the question of signs as quasi-conscious agents in semiosis. (shrink)

Winfried Weier ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Z 47.281-39/40.

Why do many autistic people develop outstanding abilities in domains like drawing, music, computation, and reading? What aspects of autism predispose some to talent? This book explores the origin and prevalence of exceptional talent, its basis in the brain, the current theories, and the representation of talent and autism in biography and fiction.

We prove the existence of p-ideals that are nonmeagre subsets of P(ω) under various set-theoretic assumptions.