This paper seeks to introduce cultural techniques to an Anglophone readership. Specifically geared towards an Anglophone readership, the paper relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims at (...) presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. As Siegert points out, this shift recalls certain concurrent developments within the North American posthumanities; the paper therefore also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism. (shrink)

"Im Rahmen der technikphilosophischen, ethnologischen wie auch medien- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Debatte über die Handlungsmacht der Dinge ist es zu einer Konjunktur von Ontologien gekommen, die jedoch das traditionelle Konzept der Ontologie dekonstruiert bzw. verschiebt. Der Beitrag folgt dieser Verschiebung der Ontologie, die Medien und mediale Artefakte nicht mehr als Substanzen denkt, sondern als Verkettungen von Praktiken und Operationen, die diese Medien-Dinge allererst generieren. Nach ›operativen Ontologien‹ zu fragen bedeutet, nach den konkreten ontischen Operationen zu fragen, die allererst ontologische Unterscheidungen hervorbringen (...) – z. B. zwischen Form und Materie, Bild und Gegenstand, Ding und Prozess, Figur und Grund. Diese ontischen Operationen bilden den Kern dessen, was man Kulturtechniken nennt. Anhand von beispielhaften Hybridobjekten aus dem Bereich der material culture des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit zeigt der Beitrag, wie dies konkret zu verstehen ist. The debate on the agency of objects, lead by philosophy, ethnology as well as cultural and media studies, has triggered a boom of ontologies, deconstructing the traditional concept of ontology. The contribution follows this shift of ontology, which no longer conceives of the media and media artifacts as substances, but as concatenations of practices and operations that are generated by media objects in the first place. To ask for ‘operational ontologies’ means to ask for the concrete ontical operations which first of all produce onto- logical distinctions – e. g. between form and matter, image and object, thing and process, figure and background. These ontical operations form the core of what we call cultural techniques. The contribution illustrates and explains this thesis with reference to hybrid objects from the material culture of the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. ". (shrink)

Die Einführung von Längengraden auf den Weltmeeren wurde vom 16. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert als die größte wissenschaftliche Herausforderung angesehen. Der Beitrag skizziert ihren Einfluss auf die Erschaffung des Britischen Imperiums, die Physik, und die frühe Philosophie Martin Heideggers. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Geschichte wird eine historische Ontologie der Uhr entwickelt. Während die Uhr im Mittelalter eine Maschine war, wurde sie in der frühen Moderne zum Instrument und im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert zum Medium. Als Medium des Daseins ist die (...) Uhr nicht nur ein ontisches Zeitmessgerät, sondern auch ein ontologisches Ding, das dem Dasein sein eigenes technisches Wesen zugänglich macht. (shrink)

From the 16th to the 18th century, the introduction of longitude on the high seas was considered the greatest scientific challenge. The paper outlines their impact on the creation of the British Empire, physics, and the early philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Against the background of this story, a historical ontology of the clock is developed. While the clock was a machine in the Middle Ages, it became an instrument in early modernity and a medium in the 19th and 20th century. (...) As a medium of existence, the clock is not only an ontic device to measure the time, but also an ontological thing that provides access to the technical nature of existence. German Die Einführung von Längengraden auf den Weltmeeren wurde vom 16. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert als die größte wissenschaftliche Herausforderung angesehen. Der Beitrag skizziert ihren Einfluss auf die Erschaffung des Britischen Imperiums, die Physik, und die frühe Philosophie Martin Heideggers. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Geschichte wird eine historische Ontologie der Uhr entwickelt. Während die Uhr im Mittelalter eine Maschine war, wurde sie in der frühen Moderne zum Instrument und im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert zum Medium. Als Medium des Daseins ist die Uhr nicht nur ein ontisches Zeitmessgerät, sondern auch ein ontologisches Ding, das dem Dasein sein eigenes technisches Wesen zugänglich macht. (shrink)

Doors are mediums of architecture as an elementary cultural technique, as they process the key differences of architecture from within and without. The door is a machine, through which the symbolic was materialized in architecture. This contribution describes, by means of examples from cultural, literary and art history, the monologic, epistemic and social aspects and paradoxes of the door as an analog and binary medium. With the obsolescence of the door knob, engendered by the invention of the automated revolving door, (...) the analog door has bid farewell to society and is now mutating to a bio-political instrument which no longer addresses mankind as 'persona', but as a major perturberence. (shrink)

Das Thema Leib ist langst nicht mehr nur auf die traditionelle phanomenologische Forschung beschrankt. Das leibliche Sein betrifft vielmehr die Situation des Menschen an sich. Die Anthropologie des 20. Jh. bedarf angesichts der Ergebnisse der Ethologie, der Genomforschung und der Neurowissenschaften einer Revision. Die hier formulierte Version einer empirisch orientierten transklassischen Phanomenologie thematisiert den menschlichen Leib philosophisch neu und begrundet so eine leiborientierte Anthropologie fur das 21. Jahrhundert. Kern dieser Anthropologie ist nicht eine biologische Definition, sondern das leibliche In-der-Welt-Sein des (...) Menschen. Dieses leibliche Sein definiert sich durch die Fahigkeit, mit sich selbst, mit anderen und mit der Natur angemessen umgehen zu konnen. (shrink)

Wiederkehr des Raumes?. Topologisches Paradigmen ; Rückkehr zum gelebten Raum ; Raumkonzepte und Raumpraktiken ; Regionale oder fundamentale Räumlichkeit ; Zweideutigkeiten und Paradoxien der Lebenswelt -- Polarität von Ort und Raum. Phänomenologische Topik ; Wo-Frage im Schatten der Was-Frage ; Ortsbestimmung als Antwort auf eine Wo-Frage ; Fremde und eigene Wo-Frage ; Hier als Standort : Grund und Boden ; Woher und Wohin : Wegstrecken ; Worin : offene und geschlossene Räume ; Ringsum : Umgebung, Umwelt und Welt ; Wie (...) weit : Vermessene Räume -- Leibliches Wohnen im Raum. Vielfalt des Raumes ; Verankerung im Hier ; Raumachsen ; Durchmessung, Dehnung und Schrumpfung des Raumes ; Nähe und Ferne ; Drinnen und Draußen ; Interieur und Exterieur im Blickfield der Malerei ; Raumanlage und Raumbühne ; Raumtechniken und Ortskarten ; Lokale Räume und globaler Raum -- Ortsverschiebungen. Hier und Anderswo ; Aktualität, Habitualität und Virtualität der räumlichen Bewegung ; Spuren der Zeit im Raum ; Zersprengter Raum ; Telepräsenz ; Fremdorte und andere Räume ; Gemeinorte und globaler Raum ; Gastlichkeit ; Coda : Topos : Atopie : Heterotopien -- Zeitverdoppelung und Zeitverschiebung. Zwischen Mythos und Logos ; Frage nach der Zeit ; Zeitverdoppelung in der Rede und Zeitverkörperung ; Zeitverschiebung zwischen Pathos und Respons ; Zeitverschiebung und Reaktionszeit ; Der entrückte Anfang im Roman und auf der Bühne ; Zeit der Sinne ; Jenseits von Erinnerung und Erwartung ; Rhythmen und Tempi ; Zwischen Leere und Erfüllung ; Coda : Anderswo enden -- Die verändernde Kraft der Wiederholung. Wiederholungsexperiment ; Sich wiederholdende Erfahrung ; Widerholung als Rettung aus der Zeit ; Altes und Neues im Widerstreit ; Unwiederholbares in der Zeit -- Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Zukünftigem im Anschluß an Aristoteles. Handlungsperspektive ; Die drohende Seeschlacht ; Wahrscheinlichkeit und Häufigkeit ; Zwischen Gewißheit und Ungewißheit ; Rückzug auf pratische Gewißheit ; Zwischen Entwurf und Erwartung ; Unwahrscheinliche Zukunft -- Kommen und Gehen in der Zeit im Anschluß an Merleau-Ponty. Frühe dialektik der Zeit ; Zeit als bloßes Nacheinander ; Totalität der Zeit : Präsenzfeld ; Riß der Zeit : Selbstaffektion ; Bewegung der Zeit : Vor- und Rückläufigkeit ; Wahrnehmung zwischen Vor- und Rückblick ; Handeln zwischen Vorsatz und Vorschlag ; Kommen und Gehen ; Chiasmus der Zeit -- Epilog : Verquickung von Ort, Raum und Zeit. (shrink)

An ethical epoché is required to leave the terrain of a self-evident morality and question its origin. In particular, four fundamental motifs of the ethical dimension are identified: pathos, to be thematised as an alternative to the persistent activist unilateralism; response, which always involves body and soul; diastasis with its stumbles and subtractions; and finally coaffection, in which the social dimension of experience is announced. Ethical behaviour feeds on the magma of pathos, which in turn would be blind and directionless (...) without any ethos. (shrink)

Living corporeity is the intermediate element between nature and culture, which must be thought of as a reciprocal interconnection, since as corporeal beings we always move on a threshold. In the reflection of the bodily self, a doubling between the living body as a functioning subject and as a material object is revealed; after all, even one's own body sometimes takes on the features of a foreign body, as is the case in the experience of illness. In the technical instrument, (...) the body is prolonged and this highlights the connection between the technique of the thing and the technique of the self; however, despite the gradual autonomisation of the technical element from the living corporeity, there remains what escapes calculation and looms large in the subtraction of the alien. (shrink)

Bernhard Nickel presents a theory of generic sentences and the kind-directed modes of thought they express. The theory closely integrates compositional semantics with metaphysics to solve the problem that generics pose: what do generics mean? Generic sentences are extremely simple, yet if there are patterns to be discerned in terms of which are true and which are false, these patterns are subtle and complex. Ravens are black, and lions have manes: statistical measures cannot do justice to the facts, but (...) what else is there that has a hope of giving us insight into what we are capturing across so many domains? Nickel argues that generics are the top of a fundamentally explanatory iceberg, and that this explanatory framework is deeply intertwined with the semantics of the language we use to express them. In providing an integrated semantic and metaphysical theory of generics, he aims to solve old puzzles and draw attention to new phenomena. (shrink)

Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue (...) that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail. (shrink)

This volume introduces a model of the human physical mind that puts the concept of competence at the center of its analysis, constructing a post-positivistic, postmodern and post-analytic philosophy of the human mind that combines empirical-instrumental phenomenology and neo-hermeneutics. German text. Contents: Die Neurowissenschaften: Topographie des menschlichen Gehirns und die Architektur des menschlich-leiblichen Geistes - Cognitive Science: Unterschiede maschineller und menschlicher Intelligenz - Explizite psychisch-geistige Kompetenzen: Erfahrung, Erinnerung,Wissen, Bewusstsein - Freiheit, Handlungskompetenz und Selbsterkenntnis: leiblicher Geist und menschliche Personlichkeit.

This volume documents for the first time the enormous variety of diverging interpretations and presents a text-oriented analysis of antinomy and its resolution ...

I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go (...) on to sketch an inquiry-based view. (shrink)

Few would contest the fact that analytical philosophy has dominated philosophical practice in the English speaking world for about the last century. But dispute continues about both its origins and nature; whilst others question its value. Michael Dummett wholly embraced the analytical approach to philosophy, as he conceived of it. For him analytical philosophy marked itself off from its precursors and its alternatives, embodied in the Continental tradition, by taking the linguistic turn. And Frege was unequivocally the first philosopher to (...) take that auspicious turn, which ushered in a new method in philosophy. Henceforth philosophers were to approach the business of analyzing thought via the enterprise of analyzing language. So Dummett is presenting us with both a history lesson and a recommendation about how we ought to do philosophy. But is his reading of the history accurate? And is his conception of the nature of analytical philosophy viable? In order to reflect on these questions this collection brings together eight scholars who have made a serious business of reading Dummett. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

Die Rede von einem Zwischenreich des Dialogs deutet hin auf den intermedHi. ren Charakter des Dialogs, in dem zwischen uns zustande kommt, was keiner fur sich zustande brachte. Stehen wir immer schon im Dialog, so ist fur jeden der Weg zu sich selbst nicht der kurzeste, sondern der langste, er ginge durch die Welt sowohl wie durch die Andern. Dieser Gesichtspunkt ist keines wegs selbstverstandlich, doch selbst dort, wo er sich Geltung ver schafft, wird er vielfach verdunkelt durch die Verwandlung (...) von Verschiedenem in Gegensatzliches, wenn etwa interpersonale Be ziehung und soziale Verhaltnisse, interpersonales Ereignis und anonyme Prozesse und Strukturen, personliche Umkehr und so ziale Veranderungen gegeneinander ausgespielt werden. N eigt die sogenannte Philosophie des Dialogs dazu, reine zwischenmensch liche Beziehungen abzulosen von der mundanen und sozialen Wirklichkeit, so tendiert ein Denken, das von Geschichte und Gesellschaft ausgeht, dahin, einzig den konkreten Entwicklungs gang einer Menschheit in Rechnung zu stellen. Der wechselseitig erhobene Vorwurf, man verliere sich hierin der AuBerlichkeit des Offentlichen und der bloBen Geschichte, man fluchte sich dort in die Innerlichkeit des Privaten und des bloBen Augenblicks, ware dann nur der Ausdruck dafur, daB entweder das Ganze ohne das Urspriingliche oder das Ursprungliche ohne das Ganze gesucht wird. Was hier auseinanderstrebt, nicht nur in der Theorie, sondern auch in der Lebenspraxis, sind zwei Weisen des mitmenschlichen Umgangs. (shrink)

"Die Einführung von Längengraden auf den Weltmeeren wurde vom 16. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert als die größte wissenschaftliche Herausforderung angesehen. Der Beitrag skizziert ihren Einfluss auf die Erschaffung des Britischen Imperiums, die Physik, und die frühe Philosophie Martin Heideggers. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Geschichte wird eine historische Ontologie der Uhr entwickelt. Während die Uhr im Mittelalter eine Maschine war, wurde sie in der frühen Moderne zum Instrument und im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert zum Medium. Als Medium des Daseins ist die (...) Uhr nicht nur ein ontisches Zeitmessgerät, sondern auch ein ontologisches Ding, das dem Dasein sein eigenes technisches Wesen zugänglich macht. From the 16th to the 18th century, the introduction of longitude on the high seas was considered the greatest scientific challenge. The paper outlines their impact on the creation of the British Empire, physics, and the early philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Against the background of this story, a historical ontology of the clock is developed. While the clock was a machine in the Middle Ages, it became an instrument in early modernity and a medium in the 19th and 20th century. As a medium of existence, the clock is not only an ontic device to measure the time, but also an ontological thing that provides access to the technical nature of existence. ". (shrink)

The specter of the ‘group mind’ or ‘collective subject’ plays a crucial and fateful role in the current debate on collective intentionality. Fear of the group mind is one important reason why philosophers of collective intentionality resort to individualism. It is argued here that this measure taken against the group mind is as unnecessary as it is detrimental to our understanding of what it means to share an intention. A non-individualistic concept of shared intentionality does not necessarily have to get (...) stuck with some collectivist super-agent. Rather, the specter of the group mind arises from a deep-seated ‘Cartesian’ preconception concerning intentionality, which we should try to overcome. (shrink)

Ceteris Paribus (cp-)laws may be said to hold only “other things equal,” signaling that their truth is compatible with a range of exceptions. This paper provides a new semantic account for some of the sentences used to state cp-laws. Its core approach is to relate these laws to natural language on the one hand — by arguing that cp-laws are most naturally expressed with generics — and to natural kinds on the other — by arguing that the semantics of generics (...) in the context of the special sciences are best spelled out by appeal to natural kinds. The paper then goes on to draw on these semantics in order to illuminate several problems raised by cp-laws, some familiar, some new. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interaction between semantic theories for cp-laws (roughly, laws that hold “all things equal”) and metaphysical theories of kinds in the special sciences. Its central conclusion is that cp-laws concerning kinds behave differently from cp-laws concerning non-kinds: “ravens are black” which concerns the kind corvus corax, behaves differently from from “albino ravens are white” which concerns the non-kind grouping of albino ravens. I argue that this difference is in the first instance logical: the two sorts of cp-laws (...) give rise to different inferential patterns. I draw two further conclusions. The difference in logical behavior poses a severe problem for extant semantic theories of cp-laws, and: we cannot elucidate the distinction between kinds and non-kinds by suggesting that only kinds can appear in laws. (shrink)

We construct a type p with preweight ω with respect to itself in a theory with few types. A type with this property must be present in a stable theory with finitely many (but more than one) countable models. The construction is a modification of Hrushovski's important pseudoplane construction.

Good’s theorem is the apparent platitude that it is always rational to ‘look before you leap’: to gather information before making a decision when doing so is free. We argue that Good’s theorem is not platitudinous and may be false. And we argue that the correct advice is rather to ‘make your act depend on the answer to a question’. Looking before you leap is rational when, but only when, it is a way to do this.

This article explores the implications of Bernhard Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology for the discipline of cultural anthropology or ethnology, insofar as it understands itself as the “science of the culturally Other”. It discusses Waldenfels’s own engagement with ethnology and shows the compatibility of his approach with discussions within the discipline. The intertwining of ownness and alienness that is central to Waldenfels’s account of experience is applied to the problem of culture in ethnology. This leads to an acknowledgement of a domain (...) between cultures, a genuine interculturality, as the fundamental field of ethnological research, which, however, can only be addressed through indirect forms of representation. Such forms are identified in the practice of ethnographic citation, and through a reinterpretation of Horace Miner’s classical satire “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, thus demonstrating the possibility of a prospective “responsive ethnology”. (shrink)

Many approaches to the semantics of generic sentences posit an unpronounced quantifier gen. However, while overt quantifiers are conservative, gen does not seem to be. A quantifier Q is conservative iff instances of the following schemas are equivalent: Q As are F and Q As are As that are F. All ravens are black is obviously equivalent to All ravens are ravens that are black, yet ravens are black is not equivalent to ravens are ravens that are black. This may (...) cast doubt on theviability of quantificational analyses of generics. This paper proposes a theory of why such “conservativity” generics are problematic that is compatible with the conservativity of gen and also accounts for perennially troublesome examples such as books are paperbacks and bees are workers. (shrink)

Die in diesem Band enthaltenen Beiträge gehören in den Umkreis von Waldenfels' 1987 erschienenem Buch Ordnung im Zwielicht. Der dort vorgelegte Grundriß wird hier auf mannigfache Weise ausgeführt und fortgeführt - ein Materialienband also zu Ordnung im Zwielicht, doch gleichzeitig ein Vorbereitungsband zur Behandlung dessen, was Waldenfels dort responsive Rationalität genannt hat.

An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a version (...) of the KK principle with an “externalist” or “reliabilist” conception of knowledge commonly thought to make that principle particularly problematic. (shrink)