Die Evolutionstheorie hat sich in den letzten 150 Jahren von einer speziellen naturwissenschaftlichen zur universellen wissenschaftlichen Theorie entwickelt.

Although the principle of informed consent is well established and its importance widely acknowledged, it has met with criticism for decades. Doubts have been raised for a number of different reasons. In particular, empirical data show that people regularly fail to reproduce the information provided to them. Many critics agree, therefore, that the received concept of informed consent is no more than a myth. Strategies to overcome this problem often rest on a flawed concept of informed consent. In this paper, (...) it is suggested that informed consent is a communicative act between two persons. The challenge is to elucidate the norms and constraints for successfully performing such a communicative act. The view developed here has major consequences with regard to the standards for information disclosure as well as for the general scope of informed consent. (shrink)

As the discoverer of electromagnetic waves, Hertz is one of the most important figures in the history of physics. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his death, this volume ties together his personal and professional life. It contains 11 of Hertz's most important papers, seven accounts of his life by renowned contemporaries, and a biographical introduction. A bibliography of Hertz's scientific papers, a general bibliography of books and articles about his contributions to physics, and a comprehensive index round out (...) the coverage. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to analyse compactness properties of nonmonotonic inference operations within the framework of model theory. For this purpose the concepts of a deductive frame and its semantical counterpart, a semantical frame are introduced. Compactness properties play a fundamental in the study of non-monotonic inference, and in the paper several new versions of compactness are studied.

Corporate social responsibility has an impact on many areas of society, and it has recently been active in the digital space, a growing area of business activity. However, certain factors prevent it from firmly establishing itself in this area. One of these factors is the lack of user trust. Certain instruments have been created to address this issue, such as codes of conduct that seek to mitigate the causes of distrust by making significant improvements in the regulations and ethical standards (...) applicable to business transactions. These instruments are the product of industry self-regulation and complement rather than substitute for effective legal regulations. In light of some European Community directives, European legislators are addressing certain issues in this area, especially unfair business practices. (shrink)

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non-prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced-choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent-patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2-year olds were better with familiar than novel verbs, while the (...) 2½-year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½-year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½-year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb-in-construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½-year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them. (shrink)

Advertising is a booming activity both in the physical realm and on the Internet. Online advertising is growing and is subject to legal standards, although some self-imposed ethical standards for the industry are needed. This has been called self-regulation. This article examines the important role that self-regulation can play in addressing advertising that uses degrading and discriminatory images of women that compromise their dignity. Sexist advertising is a reification of women—stereotypes and sexist social models—that do not convey a realistic image (...) of a woman’s abilities and potential. This article analyzes specific decisions on the subject issued by the Jury of the Spanish Association for the Self-Regulation of Commercial Communication. The Jury’s decisions are based on a code of ethics. The technical expertise and impartiality manifested in its decisions have produced a high degree of credibility and confidence in the organization. (shrink)

Proof Theory of Modal Logic is devoted to a thorough study of proof systems for modal logics, that is, logics of necessity, possibility, knowledge, belief, time, computations etc. It contains many new technical results and presentations of novel proof procedures. The volume is of immense importance for the interdisciplinary fields of logic, knowledge representation, and automated deduction.

Examines the diverse cultural influences which have shaped the basic philosophical traditions of India "Indian philosophy was at the heart of Zimmer's interest..

Lange vergriffen ' jetzt als Neuausgabe:Heinrich Barths Philosophie der Praktischen VernunftHeinrich Barths Philosophie der Praktischen Vernunft ist zugleich eine gründliche Analyse von Immanuel Kants Kritik der praktischen Vernunft und die Grundlegung einer eigenständigen Philosophie der existentiell begründeten Vernunft. Ausgehend von den Marburger Philosophen Hermann Cohen und Paul Natorp, vertieft Barth deren transzendentalen Systemgedanken zu einem radikalen Prinzip, das die Wirklichkeitsfrage neu aufwirft. Letztere wird zwar auch in Kants zweiter Kritik gestellt, doch nicht im Sinne einer Handlungstheorie, sondern mit der (...) Absicht aufzuweisen, dass es so etwas wie praktische Vernunft überhaupt «gibt». Genau darin aber erkennt Barth den Kern der Philosophie der Existenz, wodurch sich seine Philosophie der Praktischen Vernunft ' wie Sein und Zeit 1927 erschienen ' in einer noch zu erhellenden Verwandtschaft zu Martin Heidegger befindet. Dennoch könnte die Ausgangslage beider Philosophen verschiedener nicht sein. Weder Sein noch Tod geben die Leitlinien von Barths Interpretation vor, vielmehr die transzendental verstandene Vernunft und der Mensch, der wesensmässig vom Anspruch praktischer Verwirklichung herausgefordert ist. Grundsätzlicher als ethische Normen und Regeln werden hier die Grundlagen der praktischen Vernunft erachtet, die im Horizont von Platons «Idee des Guten» und Kants Begriff der «Pflicht» eine eigenständige Wirklichkeit beansprucht. Dass der Philosoph Barth auch offen ist für die Dimension der Glaubenswahrheiten zeigte sich schon bei seiner Mitarbeit an der «Dialektischen Theologie» in den frühen Zwanzigerjahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Dans l'exégèse de l'épistémé classique, il y a un 'manque', une omerta ou une éclipse de la pensée éducative et universaliste de Comenius (J-A). Pourtant elle est décisive à bien des égards sur le plan de l'effectuation ou du dévoilement critique de la raison envisagée en tant que principe même de l'individuation. Alors même que l'on assiste à un regain d'intérêt croissant pour la philosophie de Spinoza et son éthique fondée sur le parallélisme du corps et de l'esprit, le problème (...) de l'expression en philosophie se pose à nouveau. Mais si ce parallélisme nous semble être une condition nécessaire de l'individuation, le parallélisme plus général de la ratio et de l'operatio appréhendé par Comenius nous apparaît comme une condition suffisante pour comprendre le passage du problème de l'individuation au problème de l'expression."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

La perception nous ouvre à un monde sensoriel, à un déploiement des sens qui se cristallisent dans un corps : elle est ouverture, orientation du vivant dans un monde polarisé, comme chez Simondon. La phénoménologie de la perception, et la perspective génétique de Simondon postulent en amont une théorie du corps percevant comme reconnaissance d'un "foyer" préindividuel qui précède la pensée objective : percevoir, c'est "prendre à travers" l'expérience continuelle de choses changeantes la possibilité d'une unité de soi-même sans réduire (...) le mouvement qu'elle imprime en nous, et à notre conduite. La perception est du domaine du préindividuel, qui s'aligne sur une détermination du sujet comme investissement de son corps et de sa motricité : le préindividuel, possibilité ontologique du mouvement, du sujet qui peut se mouvoir dans le monde et en cela ne jamais pouvoir achever sur un mode constituant sa conscience des choses – idéal d'adéquation, est bien ce champ de spatialisation originaire du sentir, de l'indéterminé du sentir que vit notre corps dans son expérience du monde. (shrink)

Simondon and Deleuze are the philosophers of intensity: thinking the intensity of being rather than its formal a priori is for them the path to the “true transcendental.” The true transcendental, according to these two post-Kantian philosophers, would be the conditions of real experience, which are not dictated by a reason anticipating the relation to phenomena, but by individuation. This reversal priviledges the process of openness to difference as a production of the unexpected for knowledge. To be individuated, for Simondon (...) as for Deleuze, is to learn to overcome a certain logic of representation, based on the principle of identity, by giving precedence to singularities: the individual is not only a thinking substance cutting up the world according to its categories, but also an active nature facing the unknown. But one might ask how the individual can be identified and develop if it is constituted, at its expense, from intensive relations and experiences that it cannot synthesize in the understanding. Does individuation ultimately make sense? Simondon and Deleuze agree that consciousness is nothing without a synthesis of unification: this possibility for consciousness of unifi ng the diversity of experience, of maintaining a unity in plurality, refers to the preindividual, which defines in Simondon a field of ontological freedom, that is, of multiple individuations enriching the Self. For Deleuze, in his careful reading of Simondon, it is the place of the emission of singularities in the process of intensive individuation. In both cases, it is a question of defining a new form of subjectivity, closer to the realities of experience, of what we might call the transductive forms of sensibility. (shrink)

Dans son dernier cours au Collège de France, Michel Foucault nous parle d'un oubli, plus fondamental à ses yeux que le fameux "oubli de l'être", ou plus précisément d'une négligence ; une négligence dont la philosophie est responsable, ce qui est d'autant plus paradoxal qu'il concerne précisément la vie philosophique. "Je voudrais, en tout cas, suggérer simplement que s'il est vrai que la question de l'être a bien été ce que la philosophie occidentale a oublié et dont l'oubli a rendu (...) possible la métaphysique, peut-être aussi la question de la vie philosophique n'a-t-elle pas cessé d'être, je ne dirais pas oubliée, mais négligée ; elle n'a pas cessé d'apparaître comme en trop par rapport à la philosophie, à la pratique philosophique, à un discours de plus en plus indexé au modèle scientifique" Cette négligence a une histoire. Car le problème de la vie philosophique a été posé dans toute sa radicalité dans l'Antiquité ; il n'était pas complètement oublié à l'époque moderne, comme en témoigne l'oeuvre de Spinoza ; mais à partir du moment "où la philosophie est devenue un métier de professeur, c'est-à-dire au début du XIXème siècle", elle a évacué du champ des problèmes pertinents, des problèmes "sérieux", cela même qui pourtant lui avait donné son horizon et sa raison d'être : la possibilité de définir une vie philosophique, c'est-à-dire une vie juste, une vie bonne, une "vraie vie". (shrink)

Can an artificially intelligent tool be a part of a human’s extended mind? There are two opposing streams of thought in this regard. One of them can be identified as the externalist perspective in the philosophy of mind, which tries to explain complex states and processes of an individual as co-constituted by elements of the individual’s material and social environment. The other strand is normative and explanatory atomism which insists that what is to be explained and evaluated is the behaviour (...) of individuals. In the present contribution, it is argued that counterintuitive results turn up once atomism tries to appropriate insights from psychological externalism and holism. These results are made visible by technological innovations, especially artificially intelligent systems, but they do not result from these innovations alone. They are rather implicit in situated cognition approaches which join both theoretical strands. This has repercussions for explanatory as well as ethical theorising based on situated cognition approaches. It is a fairly rare constellation that new technological options, namely artificial intelligence, raise doubts concerning a philosophical theory, namely extended mind theory. (shrink)

Zudem kommen neben Uninteressierten (Descartes, Kant) auch Kritiker der Tradition (Nietzsche, Heidegger) zu Wort. Die Rolle der Wahrheit in Politik, Recht und Theologie wird im Blick gehalten.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la Revue germanique internationale, n° 14, 2011. Nous remercions Clémence Couturier-Heinrich de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : Gottfried Hermann (1772-1848) a fait ses études, puis sa carrière d'enseignant et de chercheur à Leipzig. Parmi les philologues classiques allemands de la première moitié du XIXesiècle, il se singularise par l'influence que la philosophie de Kant a exercé sur ses conceptions théoriques dans plusieurs domaines, notamment la métrique. (...) - Études germaniques (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)