We argue that the asymmetry between diverging and converging electromagnetic waves is just one of many asymmetries in observed phenomena that can be explained by a past hypothesis and statistical postulate (together assigning probabilities to different states of matter and field in the early universe). The arrow of electromagnetic radiation is thus absorbed into a broader account of temporal asymmetries in nature. We give an accessible introduction to the problem of explaining the arrow of radiation and compare our preferred strategy (...) for explaining the arrow to three alternatives: (i) modifying the laws of electromagnetism by adding a radiation condition requiring that electromagnetic fields always be attributable to past sources, (ii) removing electromagnetic fields and having particles interact directly with one another through retarded action-at-a-distance, (iii) adopting the Wheeler-Feynman approach and having particles interact directly through half-retarded half-advanced action-at-a-distance. In addition to the asymmetry between diverging and converging waves, we also consider the related asymmetry of radiation reaction. (shrink)

Contemporary society needs the recognition of a moral middle ground, where human behavior can be evaluated as permissible, understandable, or even valuable. As a counterforce to polarization and divisive politics, an identity model is proposed in which individual and group identities are transcended by a human and ecological identity.

Le present ouvrage propose une etude systematique de la conception de la condition humaine contenue dans Condition de l'homme moderne de H. Arendt. Il en eclaire l'orientation, a la fois par rapport a la tradition ancienne et classique de la philosophie et par rapport au contexte immediat de la phenomenologie et de l'existentialisme contemporains. Il met en evidence une structure de la condition humaine, un agencement des differentes conditions qui la composent et l'accent mis par Arendt sur un pluriel de (...) conditions de base plus que sur les traits generaux habituellement mis en avant (la finitude, la mortalite). Outre la triade bien connue des trois activites fondamentales, le travail, l'oeuvre, l'action, il explicite une triade d'activites mentales, l'intelligence, la connaissance et la pensee. Il examine le statut de la pensee dans la condition humaine et le paradoxe de sa capacite de retrait par rapport a elle. La conception arendtienne de la condition humaine, non depassee a ce jour, est une reference capitale pour l'humanite, aujourd'hui inquiete de l'avenir de son monde. La version allemande du livre de Arendt, remaniee par rapport a l'edition anglaise originale, est prise en compte. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Les thèses de Lacan viennent de sa pratique, mais il avait articulé celles-ci dans un cadre théorique très élaboré. De Platon et Descartes jusqu'à Heidegger ou Wittgenstein, en passant par Kant et Hegel, Lacan a lu avec attention les grands philosophes. Le refondateur de la psychanalyse, à l'encontre des scolastiques de la psyché qu'il a sans cesse combattues, avait à faire à la vérité, à la vérité freudienne, celle des sujets qui s'analysent, mais aussi (...) aux articulations de savoir qui prennent une place primordiale dans l'élaboration de son immense séminaire qui constitue une des créations les plus puissantes de notre temps. Les grands philosophes y sont fréquemment interrogés dans leur pensée fondamentale et jusqu'à leur point de butée que Lacan nommait l'impossible et qu'il tentait de déborder à partir des (quatre) concepts fondamentaux de Freud et en posant avec l'objet a le registre du Réel et le primat de l'écriture.". (shrink)

In Fortführung einer postmodernen Geschichtsschreibung haben sich in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten deutsche und angelsächsische Historiker verstärkt darum bemüht, eine virtuelle oder konjekturale Geschichtsforschung als den Königsweg zur Überwindung der Krise der Geschichtswissenschaft zu etablieren. Die Was wäre geschehen, wenn...?-Geschichtsschreibung wird vor allem von dem Althistoriker Alexander Demandt als eine erkenntnistheoretische Wunderwaffe, als ein Novum Organon der Geschichtswissenschaft, angepriesen. In diesem Buch wird gezeigt, daß die irreale oder virtuelle Geschichte sich nicht nur in logische und methodologische Widersprüche verstrickt, sondern geschichtstheoretisch (...) einen erheblichen Rückschritt darstellt. Neben der Kritik an dieser erkenntnisvermindernden Strategie in der Geschichtsforschung wird anhand von unterschiedlichen Interpretationen historischer Ereignisse und Entwicklungen gezeigt, daß von der Antike bis heute alternative Geschichtsinterpretationen das eigentliche Bemühen um größere Erklärungskraft der historischen Forschung darstellten. Auf dieser Grundlage werden Ansätze zu einer Methodologie der Geschichtswissenschaft erarbeitet, die die Erkenntnisse der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie dazu nutzen, um ein größeres Erklärungspotential für historische Interpretationen zu ermöglichen. Geschichtsforschung wird in diesem Sinne zu einer Sozialwissenschaft menschlichen Handelns und muß sich deshalb darum bemühen, die theoretischen Fortschritte anderer sozialwissenschaftlicher Fächer zu integrieren und zu verarbeiten. Dieses Buch ist deshalb ein Plädoyer für interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit, damit die Geschichtswissenschaft Anschluß findet an die methodisch fortgeschrittenen Wissenschaften. Deshalb müssen sich Historiker, Soziologen, Philosophen oder Politikwissenschaftler gleichermaßen mit diesen Problemen befassen. (shrink)

English summary: The authors of this conference volume describe and discuss various aspects of Popper's ethics, such as for example his contributions to freedom and responsibility, to objectivity and truth, to humanism and to metaphysics, from a critical-rational point of view. This is the first time that Popper's ethics have been brought face to face with the Christian faith. The lectures and the ensuing discussions between Protestant and Catholic theologians and advocates of critical rationalism deal with the question of whether (...) Popper's critiques of religion can be compatible with modern social ethics based on Christianity or whether theology can be a critical-rational science. One of the special attractions of this volume is the fact that it contains not only the revised talks but also the very animated discussions on the various subjects. German description: Karl Popper war nicht nur ein Mensch und Wissenschaftler mit klaren ethischen Grundsatzen, auch seiner Wissenschafts- und Erkenntnistheorie lagen ethische Pramissen zugrunde. Dieser Sachverhalt ist lange nicht erkannt worden, weil Popper selbst nicht daruber gesprochen hat und weil er diese ethischen Voraussetzungen in seinen Werken nicht systematisch dargelegt hat. Wenn es aber zutrifft, dass dem wissenschaftlichen Lebenswerk Poppers ein ethisches Forschungsprogramm zugrunde lag, dann wird es Zeit, sich damit zu befassen.Die Autoren dieses Bandes stellen verschiedene Aspekte von Poppers Ethik, wie z.B. seine Beitrage zur Freiheit und Verantwortung, zur Objektivitat und Wahrheit, zum Humanismus und zur Metaphysik, von einem kritisch-rationalen Standpunkt aus zur Diskussion. Erstmalig wird die Ethik Poppers mit dem christlichen Glauben konfrontiert. In den Beitragen sowie den anschliessenden Diskussionen zwischen evangelischen und katholischen Theologen mit Vertretern des kritischen Rationalismus geht es darum, ob Poppers religionskritische Darlegungen mit einer modernen Sozialethik auf christlicher Basis vereinbar sind, bzw. ob es eine Theologie als kritisch-rationale Wissenschaft geben kann.Ein besonderer Reiz dieses Bandes liegt darin, dass nicht nur die uberarbeiteten Referate, sondern auch die sehr lebhaften Diskussionen zu den verschiedenen Themen enthalten sind. Hier wird noch deutlicher, dass Poppers Philosophie von starken ethischen Voraussetzungen durchdrungen ist. (shrink)

The creation and consolidation of a memory can rest on the integration of any number of disparate features and contexts. How is it that these bind together to form a coherent memory? This book offers an unrivalled overview of one of the most debated hotspots of modern memory research: binding, and will instigate innovative and pioneering ideas for future research.

A Critique of Artificial Reason Hubert L. Dreyfus . HUBERT L. DREYFUS What Computers Still Can't Do Thi s One XZKQ-GSY-8KDG What. WHAT COMPUTERS STILL CAN'T DO Front Cover.

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

The effectiveness of complaint handling and service recovery policies in customer retention has been the focus of both scholars and service organizations. In the past decade, Justice Theory has provided the basis of the dominant theoretical framework for complaint management and service recovery. However, it does not explicitly address unfair trade practices, which constitute an ethical issue. Favorable outcomes in complaint handling may not be able to restore the reputation of a company and the potential harm perceived by consumers. Using (...) face-to-face interviews, this study applies Fairness Theory to explore the psychological responses of consumers in the post-complaint phase, particularly in ethical judgment. The findings suggest that an unfavorable outcome in the post-complaint stage leads to counterfactual thinking by the consumer about the consumer's state of well-being. The complaint must be due to the discretionary actions of the service provider whose accountability is assessed. Those harmful actions are then judged against an ethical standard. Explanations can reduce blame, and their effectiveness is moderated by outcome favorability but not ethical judgment. Favorable outcome, captured by "Would Perception," has only limited influence on Perceived Potential Harm (PPH), which is an important determinant of ethical judgment. This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions. It is the first study to validate Fairness Theory empirically and apply it to complaint handling as a complement of Justice Theory in the information and communication technology (ICT) service context. The study indicates that customers may condemn a service provider because of PPH even though the outcome is favorable. Unfair trade practices are what make customers hate ICT service providers. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest pogłębiona analiza przyczyn i konsekwencji rozdwojenia sejmiku wiszeńskiego w 1597 r. z naciskiem na relacje polityczno-społeczne obejmujące teren dawnego województwa ruskiego oraz głównych politycznych aktorów zdarzeń: Stanisława Stadnickiego z Łańcuta, Stanisława Żółkiewskiego i Jana Zamoyskiego. Pomimo stosunkowo obfitego materiału źródłowego w postaci listów, protestacji i sejmowych diariuszy jedyna poważna próba zbadania tego tematu podjęta przez Jana Rzońcę okazała się dalece niewystarczająca, zawężając temat rozbicia sejmiku jedynie do obszaru wpływu na późniejsze obrady sejmu oraz ogólną kondycję państwa. Przeprowadzona (...) w artykule krytyczna analiza zachowanych źródeł pozwoliła w dużym stopniu zrekonstruować obrady tytułowego sejmiku, ustalić dokładne przyczyny jego rozbicia oraz powiązać zaszłe na nim zdarzenia z politycznym przesileniem, do którego doszło w województwie ruskim pod koniec roku 1597 w postaci lokalnego sojuszu Jana Zamoyskiego ze Stanisławem Stadnickim z Łańcuta. Poznanie kulis zawarcia powyższego porozumienia oraz powodów jego fiaska pozwoliło natomiast lepiej zrozumieć mechanizmy funkcjonowania stronnictwa kanclerskiego pod koniec XVI w. i stanu, w jakim się wówczas znalazło. W artykule podjęta została ponadto próba rozwikłania problemu uczestnictwa w sejmiku żołnierzy kwarcianych/prywatnych oraz zbadania ich rzeczywistego wpływu na obrady sejmiku w Wiszni. Bezrefleksyjnie przyjmowana do tej pory teoria personalnie obarczająca winą za rozbicie sejmiku hetmana polnego Stanisława Żółkiewskiego wydaje się co najmniej przesadzona, zupełnie pomijając własnowolność służących w wojsku żołnierzy oraz przysługujące im jako szlachcie prawa do uczestnictwa w życiu publicznym Rzeczypospolitej. (shrink)

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)

For Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.

This book is the first to provide a sustained, coherent analysis of Foucault's work as a whole. To demonstrate the sense in which Foucault's work is beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, the authors unfold a careful, analytical exposition of his oeuvre. They argue that during the of Foucault's work became a sustained and largely successful effort to develop a new method - "interpretative analytics" - capable of explaining both the logic of structuralism's claim to be an objective science and the apparent (...) validity of the hermeneutical counterclaim that the human sciences can proceed only by understanding the deepest meaning of the subject and his tradition. (shrink)

Because Bertrand Russell adopted much of the logical symbolism of Peano, because Russell always had a high regard for the great Italian mathematician, and because Russell held the logicist thesis so strongly, many English-speaking mathematicians have been led to classify Peano as a logicist, or at least as a forerunner of the logicist school. An attempt is made here to deny this by showing that Peano's primary interest was in axiomatics, that he never used the mathematical logic developed by him (...) for the reduction of mathematical concepts to logical concepts, and that, instead, he denied the validity of such a reduction. (shrink)

Essays discuss the themes of worldliness, affectedness, understanding, and the care-structure found in Heidegger's work on the nature of existence.

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

_Internet_ is een van de eerste boeken waarin het filosofische inzicht -van Plato tot Kierkegaard - betrokken wordt op het debat over de mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van het internet. Dreyfus laat zien dat de onstoffelijke, 'vrij zwevende' websurfer zijn oorsprong vindt in Descartes' scheiding van geest en lichaam, en hoe Kierkegaards inzichten in de opkomst van het moderne leespubliek vooruitlopen op de nieuwsgierige, maar elk risico vermijdende internet-junkie. Uitgaande van recente onderzoeken naar het isolement dat veel internetgebruikers ervaren, toont Dreyfus (...) aan hoe het internet, door zijn nadruk op privé-ervaringen, gebruikers berooft van wezenlijke, belichaamde vermogens zoals vertrouwen, stemmingen en betrokkenheid bij met anderen gedeelde lokale aangelegenheden. _Internet_ is verplichte kost voor iedereen die on line is en is geïnteressseerd in onze plaats in de 'e-revolutie'. (shrink)

Le propos de cet article est de revenir sur un présupposé « écologique » assez évident de la clinique médicale, mais qu’on tend à ne plus prendre au sérieux lorsqu’on se laisse obnubiler par les capacités d’objectivation des sciences et surtout les projets philosophiques de naturalisation qui s’en réclament. Réactivant notamment l’héritage de Georges Canguilhem et de la phénoménologie clinique, nous rappelons la profonde ambiguïté sémantique des concepts de santé et de maladie, afin d’indiquer le champ légitime de leur application (...) et de montrer qu’ils ne sont pas indépendants des rapports de pouvoir inhérents à toute existence sociale. (shrink)

Que l'âme ne soit pas séparée du corps est une affaire entendue. Mais a-t-on pris la juste mesure de notre incarnation quand on cherche l'esprit dans le cerveau, comme on s'attend à trouver le génie dans la lampe? À rebours de cette conception, cet ouvrage, au carrefour de la philosophie phénoménologique et de la clinique, propose de prendre au sérieux l'idée d'un corps animé. Aux côtés du langage, le corps est d'abord un lieu privilégié de l'expression de l'esprit. Grâce à (...) lui nous entrons dans une entente de ce que le monde veut nous dire et c'est par son entremise que nous connaissons une transaction vivante avec ce que le monde exige de nous. Cet itinéraire dans le silence de la vie intentionnelle du corps se termine par quelques perspectives cliniques, parce qu'il faut bien admettre que nous n'aurions rien à quoi remédier si nous n'étions au risque de voir cette transaction fléchir dans la maladie. (shrink)

Religiose Vielfalt ist nicht erst eine Erscheinung der "westlichen Moderne". Vielmehr existierten schon in fruhen Zeiten und an verschiedenen Orten der Welt oft mehrere Religionen nebeneinander, sei es dass diese unterschiedlichen Ursprungs waren oder sich aufgrund divergierender Auffassungen der religiosen Akteure innerhalb einer gemeinsamen Tradition ausdifferenzierten. Nicht immer war und ist diese Koexistenz eine friedliche. Die Religion der anderen wird haufig als "deviant" wahrgenommen oder gar als "nonkonformistisch" stigmatisiert und sanktioniert, bis hin zur physischen Vernichtung der "Devianten". Im vorliegenden Band (...) gehen vierzehn ausgewiesene Wissenschaftler_innen aus den Fachgebieten Religionswissenschaft, Soziologie, Sinologie und Judaistik aus ihrer jeweiligen fachlichen Perspektive und anhand diverser Fallbeispiele aus Geschichte und Gegenwart der Frage nach, unter welchen Umstanden, aus welchen Grunden und mit welchen Folgen religiose Pluralitat als Problem wahrgenommen wird. Das Buch verbindet so systematische Fragestellungen mit empirischen Fallbeispielen und liefert damit eine ausgezeichnete Grundlage fur die Erforschung des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit religioser Pluralitat. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are stored, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

McDowell's claim that "in mature human beings, embodied coping is permeated with mindedness",1 suggests a new version of the mentalist myth which, like the others, is untrue to the phenomenon. The phenomena show that embodied skills, when we are fully absorbed in enacting them, have a kind of non-mental content that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational and non-linguistic. This is not to deny that we can monitor our activity while performing it. For solving problems, learning a new skill, receiving coaching, and (...) so forth, such monitoring is invaluable. But monitoring what we are doing as we are doing it degrades performance to at best competence. On McDowell's view, there is no way to account for such a degradation in performance since the same sort of content would be involved whether we were fully absorbed in or paying attention to what we were doing. McDowell claims that it is an advantage of his conceptualism that it avoids any foundationalist attempt to build up the objective world on the basis of an indubitable Given or any other ground-floor experience. And, indeed, if the world is all that is the case and our minds are unproblematically open to it, all experience is on the same footing. But one must distinguish motor intentionality, and the interrelated solicitations our coping body is intertwined with, from conceptual intentionality and the world of propositional structures it opens onto. The existential phenomenologist can then agree with McDowell in rejecting traditional foundationalisms, while yet affirming and describing the ground-floor role of motor intentionality in providing the support on which all forms of conceptual intentionality are based. (shrink)

En 1936, Hubert Elie publiait une these remarquable: Le complexe significabile, accompagnee de l'edition et de la traduction du Traitee de l'infini de Jean Mair. Sous le terme technique de complexe significabile se trouve abordee la question du signifiable par complexe, c'est-a-dire du signifie de la proposition et de son statut objectif. L'ouvrage propose ainsi une double approche de la notion de signification et de ses rapports a la reference ontologique: l'analyse classique depuis Gregoire de Rimini a Leibniz, les (...) points de vue contemporains tels que Meinong ou Russell. (shrink)