Excerpt from Zur Psychologie des Asthetischen Genusses Die erste Erfahrung, auf der uberhaupt die Existenz berechtigung einer Wissenschaft wie der Asthetik beruht, ist die, da durch Einwirkung gewisser Objekte auf unsere Sinne ein Wohlgefallen in uns erzeugt wird, das wir unmittelbar und mit ziemlicher Sicherheit von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens unterscheiden. Wenn wir versuchen, diesen zunachst nur gefiihlten Unterschied zu begrifi'licher Klarheit emporzuheben, so bemerken wir, da das asthetische Wohl gefallen durch zwei Eigenschaften charakterisiert und von allen anderen Arten (...) des Glucksgefiihls geschieden ist: erstens knupft es sich nicht an Elementarvorstellungen also ein fache Empfindungen sondern an Vorstellungskomplexe, und zweitens setzt es nicht die reale oder gedachte Erfullung einer zielsetzenden Tatigkeit voraus, sondern hat sein Ziel allein in sich selbst. Durch die erste Bestimmung unterscheidet es sich von sinnlichen Lustgefuhlen, durch die zweite von allen anderen Arten des Wohlgefallens, die wir aus leicht ersieht lichen Grunden als praktisch bezeichnen wollen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This chapter examines the stages of processing meta‐theory (SPM) that has guided construction of theories in psychology during the past 350 years, from philosopher René Descartes in seventeenth‐century France to neuropsychologists Carl Wernicke and Paul Broca in nineteenth‐century Europe to psychologists Dominic Massaro and Alan Baddeley in late twentieth‐century America and Britain. The most basic SPM assumptions are that processing and storage of information take place within a finite number of autonomous modules or stages, and that some stages are sequentially (...) ordered with respect to others. Flowcharts typically summarize these assumptions. The traditional stages of processing for verbal information are comprehension, storage, retrieval, and production. SPM flowcharts can add new stages and can alter old labels to represent new types of information processing, but whatever the labels, the stages must be finite in number, distinct, independent, and sequentially ordered between input and output. (shrink)

This is the first dictionary dedicated to the work of Jean Baudrillard. It explains and contextualises more than a hundred key concepts, terms, influences and topics within his thought. An essential reference for students and scholars of Baudrillard, it also serves as an authoritative overview of how his ideas have shaped a broad range of disciplines, from art, architecture, film and photography to sociology, philosophy, human geography, media studies and cultural studies. The entries are written by 35 leading Baudrillard specialists (...) from around the world, including Rex Butler, Mike Gane, Gary Genosko, Victoria Grace, Diane Rubenstein and Andrew Wernick. (shrink)

Background: Neurotypical young adults show task-based modulation and stability of their eye movements across tasks. This study aimed to determine whether persons with aphasia (PWA) modulate their eye movements and show stability across tasks similarly to control participants. Methods: Forty-eight PWA and age-matched control participants completed four eye-tracking tasks: scene search, scene memorization, text-reading, and pseudo-reading. Results: Main effects of task emerged for mean fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and standard deviations of each, demonstrating task-based modulation of eye movements. Group by (...) task interactions indicated that PWA produced shorter fixations relative to controls. This effect was most pronounced for scene memorization and for individuals who recently suffered a stroke. PWA produced longer fixations, shorter saccades, and less variable eye movements in reading tasks compared to controls. Three-way interactions of group, aphasia subtype, and task also emerged. Text-reading and scene memorization were particularly effective at distinguishing aphasia subtype. Persons with anomic aphasia showed a reduction in reading saccade amplitudes relative to their respective control group and other PWA. Persons with conduction/Wernicke’s aphasia produced shorter scene memorization fixations relative to controls or PWA of other subtypes, suggesting a memorization specific effect. Positive correlations across most tasks emerged for fixation duration and did not significantly differ between controls and PWA. Conclusions: PWA generally produced shorter fixations and smaller saccades relative to controls particularly in scene memorization and text-reading respectively. The effect was most pronounced recently after a stroke. Selectively in reading tasks, PWA produced longer fixations and shorter saccades relative to controls, consistent with reading difficulty. PWA showed task-based modulation of eye movements, though the pattern of results was somewhat abnormal relative to controls. All subtypes of PWA also demonstrated task-based modulation of eye movements. However, persons with anomic aphasia showed reduced modulation of saccade amplitude and smaller reading saccades, possibly to improve reading comprehension. Controls and PWA generally produced stabile fixation durations across tasks and did not differ in their relationship across tasks. Overall, these results suggest there is potential to differentiate among PWA with varying subtypes and from controls using eye movement measures of task-based modulation, especially reading and scene memorization tasks. (shrink)

The first major advances in the understanding of the neurological bases for language abilities were the results of the study of the brains and behaviors of patients with language impairments due to focal brain damage. The two most prominent pioneers in this field are remembered because their names have become associated with distinctive aphasia (language loss) syndromes and the brain regions associated with them. In 1861 Paul Broca described the damage site in the brain of a patient who had lost (...) the ability to produce articulate speech as a result of a stroke. Broca's aphasia, as it is now commonly called, is produced by damage that involves the inferior left frontal lobe of the brain. It tends to produce both a loss of articulatory skill (sometimes but not always with paralysis) and (as discovered much later) problems with grammar and syntax, including grammatical comprehension under certain conditions. Despite speech production impairments, Broca's aphasics do not have basic word‐ and sentence‐comprehension difficulties, when comprehension is not dependent on syntactic analysis. In 1874 Carl Wernicke demonstrated that damage to the left superior temporal lobe produced a different syndrome of language impairments. Wernicke's aphasia generally spares fluent, syntactic speech but impairs the use and comprehension of content words. Wernicke's aphasics'speech includes inappropriate word substitutions, neologisms, and semantic confusions, and their comprehension is similarly disturbed. These early studies also demonstrated that these aphasic disturbances were almost exclusively associated with damage to the structures of the left cerebral hemisphere, even though anatomically corresponding structures are present on both sides of the brain. However, this is not true of all language functions. Some left‐handed individuals can suffer aphasia from right hemisphere damage, and recent studies of patients with right hemisphere damage without aphasia have demonstrated impairment of their comprehension above the sentence level (e.g., interpretation of jokes and stories) and in the production and interpretation of prosodic features of speech (rhythmic and tonal patterning that conveys emphasis and emotion). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 77-78 [Access article in PDF] Language, Mind, and World Werdie (C. W.) Van Staden Keywords psychotherapy, linguistics, semantics, references, speech The paper by Mcconnell and Gillett touches, in a Lacanian way, on the connections between language, world, and the conscious and unconscious mind. Their paper brings together the influential ideas of Freud, philosophical phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism in describing Lacan's approach to these (...) connections. Going further than Lacan's concerns in psychotherapy, their paper calls on us to consider the importance of these connections more generally in philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology.These connections matter substantially in the practice of psychiatry and psychology, for there we need to understand as much as possible of the ways in which language is intimately involved with the minds and brains of people and their biological and interpersonal worlds. Even at first glance, we can easily concede that people use language to express their troubled minds and their past, present, and anticipated relations with their biological and interpersonal worlds; that language use depends inescapably on brain functions (of the Broca and the Wernicke areas, for example); and that practitioners use language receptively and exploratively to access and examine the minds as well as the biological and interpersonal worlds of the people.Cognizant of the connections between language, mind, and world, language has received considerable attention in the psychotherapy literature and practice (e.g., Russell 1987), including from Lacan and his followers. In addition to these practices and theoretical expositions, empirical linguistic studies in psychotherapy have also been published recently (e.g., Van Staden in press; Van Staden and Fulford 2004; Spence 1995; Spence, Mayes, and Dahl 1994).There has been, furthermore, a growing interest in defining linguistic variables for empirical research in general psychiatry and psychology (Van Staden 2002; Thomas and Fraser 1994). The necessary and intimate role of language has also been reviewed recently in coming to a diagnostic understanding of people's difficulties (Van Staden 2003) and in conducting ethically sound assessments of mentally disordered people's capacity to give informed consent (Van Staden and Krüger 2003). Furthermore, the underlying connections between language, mind, and world, for example, have brought about the expectation that genetic factors in the etiology of schizophrenia would be related to the far-reaching capacity of human beings to use language (Crow 1997).A philosophical interest in the connections between language, mind, and world can be traced back to Plato. More recently, it has been taking a central place in analytic philosophy. The vast and sophisticated philosophical literature on this topic suggests that these connections are very [End Page 77] intricate and that we probably have an inchoate understanding of them. These connections are about theories of reference; theories of descriptions; semantic theories of truth; Kant's distinction between form and content; meaning; contextual content; linguistic pragmatism and speech act theories—all elaborate topics, of course, intertwined with various ontological commitments (cf. Luntley 1999).Lacan's contribution, driven by practical need albeit in the constrained area of psychotherapy, has not yet been taken up in analytic philosophy circles. The paper by McConnell and Gillett sets the scene for further philosophical examination that could determine whether Lacan's work does advance contemporary analytic philosophy on this topic. The most potential for such advance concerns probably, as indicated by McConnell and Gillet, insights about the unconscious mind.Notwithstanding a worthy philosophical examination of whether Lacan's work advances contemporary analytic philosophy on the connections between language, mind, and world, it may prove to be a challenging undertaking—probably even more challenging than the admirable groundwork done in the paper by McConnell and Gillett. The reason is, in my opinion, that the depth of Lacan's work is difficult to penetrate, in part because of the abundance of his esoteric terms, some of which are prima facie incommensurable with ordinary analytic language. The philosophical cogency of his work, moreover, is difficult to verify, because he often simply made conjectures, true as they might be, without explicating (sufficiently) the justification thereof.Lacan's work is commendable, however, even if... (shrink)

Ethicists are typically willing to grant that thick terms (e.g. ‘courageous’ and ‘murder’) are somehow associated with evaluations. But they tend to disagree about what exactly this relationship is. Does a thick term’s evaluation come by way of its semantic content? Or is the evaluation pragmatically associated with the thick term (e.g. via conversational implicature)? In this paper, I argue that thick terms are semantically associated with evaluations. In particular, I argue that many thick concepts (if not all) conceptually entail (...) evaluative contents. The Semantic View has a number of outspoken critics, but I shall limit discussion to the most recent--Pekka Väyrynen--who believes that objectionable thick concepts present a problem for the Semantic View. After advancing my positive argument in favor of the Semantic View (section II), I argue that Väyrynen’s attack is unsuccessful (section III). One reason ethicists cite for not focusing on thick concepts is that such concepts are supposedly not semantically evaluative whereas traditional thin concepts (e.g. good and wrong) are. But if my view is correct, then this reason must be rejected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Third Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume beyond Theism and Atheism” by Dr. Ariel Peckel. Dr. Peckel’s essay was chosen as the winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2022 through July 2023. Please see the full prize announcement with information about this talented Hume scholar elsewhere in this (...) issue. Our Call for Papers for the Fourth Essay Prize competition is printed in the back of this issue and on-line at the Hume Studies website. The contest is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D. and closes on August 1, 2024. If you are eligible, please consult our “Call” for further details!In other Hume Studies news, we have once again acquired a new printer. Christensen Printing (Lincoln, Nebraska), whose work for us was excellent, suddenly closed its business when its owner retired this past year and had no one to succeed him. We received the news just when our November issue was ready to go to press. With the assistance of our friends at the Philosophy Documentation Center, we obtained estimates from three printers and have now engaged Bailey Printing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our November issue was published on-line by November 1 (at the Philosophy Documentation Center website, the Project Muse website, and the Hume Society website), but the print issue took longer to get to subscribers.For a second time, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that Hume Studies will be marking its 50th year of publication in 2025. As we have previously noted, we are planning an anniversary issue for 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the special features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in [End Page 7] Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue or on the Hume Studies website (https://www.humesociety.org/ojs/index.php/hs), which includes details on where to send your response. The due date is October 15, 2024, but we encourage you to send your entries as soon as possible! [End Page 8]Copyright © 2024 Hume Studies... (shrink)

Adults are skilled at using language to construct/negotiate identity and to signal affiliation with others, but little is known about how these abilities develop in children. Clearly, children mirror statistical patterns in their local environment (e.g., Canadian children using zed instead of zee), but do they flexibly adapt their linguistic choices on the fly in response to the choices of different peers? To address this question, we examined the effect of group membership on 7‐ to 9‐year‐olds' labeling of objects in (...) a trivia game, exploring whether they were more likely to use a particular label (e.g., sofa vs. couch) if members of their “team” also used that label. In a preregistered study, children (N = 72) were assigned to a team (red or green) and were asked during experimental trials to answer questions—which had multiple possible answers (e.g., blackboard or chalkboard)—after hearing two teammates and two opponents respond to the same question. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to produce labels less commonly used by the community (i.e., dispreferred labels) when their teammates had produced those labels. Crucially, this effect was tied to group membership, and could not be explained by children simply repeating the most recently used label. These findings demonstrate how social processes (i.e., group membership) can guide linguistic variation in children. (shrink)

Critics of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy argue that Arendt fails to address the most important problem of political judgment, namely, validity. This essay shows that Arendt does indeed have an answer to the problem that preoccupies her critics, with one important caveat: she does not think that validity is the all-important problem of political judgment--the affirmation of human freedom is.

This essay examines the significantly different approaches of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt to the problem of judgment in democratic theory and practice.

In his 1936 paper,On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition oflogical consequence: “The sentenceσfollows logicallyfrom the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentenceσ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence which (...) follows from the sentences of this class. From an intuitive standpoint it can never happen that both the class Γ consists only of true sentences and the sentenceσis false. Moreover, … we are concerned here with the concept of logical, i.e.,formal, consequence.” [55, p. 414] Tarski believed his definition of logical consequence captured the intuitive notion: “It seems to me that everyone who understands the content of the above definition must admit that it agrees quite well with common usage. … In particular, it can be proved, on the basis of this definition, that every consequence of true sentences must be true.” [55, p. 417] The formality of Tarskian consequences can also be proven. Tarski's definition of logical consequence had a key role in the development of the model-theoretic semantics of modern logic and has stayed at its center ever since. (shrink)

Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account of character and its formation in moral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy. The first (...) book to focus on character formation in Kant's moral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear on moral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition of character through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure of character, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception of Moral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies and moral philosophy in general. (shrink)

The Ramsey-sentence H* of any hypothesis H is shown to be a synthetic proposition containing mathematics as a finite component. Far from being quasi-tautological, H* proves to have as much physical content as H itself.

This essay is written on the following premises and argues for them. “Enlightenment” is a word or signifier, and not a single or unifiable phenomenon which it consistently signifies. There is no single or unifiable phenomenon describable as “the Enlightenment,” but it is the definite article rather than the noun which is to be avoided. In studying the intellectual history of the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth, we encounter a variety of statements made, and assumptions proposed, to which the (...) term “Enlightenment” may usefully be applied, but the meanings of the term shift as we apply it. The things are connected, but not continuous; they cannot be reduced to a single narrative; and we find ourselves using the word “Enlightenment” in a family of ways and talking about a family of phenomena, resembling and related to one another in a variety of ways that permit of various generalizations about them. We are not, however, committed to a single root meaning of the word “Enlightenment,” and we do not need to reduce the phenomena of which we treat to a single process or entity to be termed “the” Enlightenment. It is a reification that we wish to avoid, but the structure of our language is such that this is difficult, and we will find ourselves talking of “the French” or “the Scottish,” “the Newtonian” or the “the Arminian” Enlightenments, and hoping that by employing qualifying adjectives we may constantly remind ourselves that the keyword “Enlightenment” is ours to use and should not master us. (shrink)

Following Henkin’s discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or “cardinality” quantifiers, e.g., “most”, “few”, “finitely many”, “exactly α ”, where α is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a series of generalizations, extending the original, Henkin definition first to a (...) general definition of monotone-increasing (M↑) POQ and then to a general definition of generalized POQ, regardless of monotonicity. The extension is based on (i) Barwise’s 1979 analysis of the basic case of M↑ POQ and (ii) my 1990 analysis of the basic case of generalized POQ. POQ is a non-compositional 1st-order structure, hence the problem of extending the definition of the basic case to a general definition is not trivial. The paper concludes with a sample of applications to natural and mathematical languages. (shrink)

A series of structural constitutional arguments lodged in multiple cases against Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) authorities to negotiate prescription drug prices via the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act threaten the legitimacy of CMS program and federal agency powers.

Features of threatening cues and the associated context influence the perceived imminence of threat and the defensive responses evoked. To provide additional knowledge about how the directionality of a threat (i.e. directed-towards or away from the viewer) might impact defensive responses in humans, participants were shown pictures of a man carrying a gun (threat) or nonlethal object (neutral) directed-away from or towards the participant. Cardiac and electrodermal responses were collected. Compared to neutral images, threatening images depicting a gun directed-towards the (...) participant induced sustained bradycardia and an increased electrodermal response, interpreted as immobility under attack. This defensive immobility reaction is evoked by high perceived threat and inescapable situations and indicates intense action preparation. Pictures of guns directed-away from the participant induced shorter bradycardia and no significant modulation of the electrodermal response compared to neutral pictures, which might be consistent with the perception of a less threatening situation. The results show that the directionality of threat stimuli is a key factor that prompts different patterns of defensive responses. (shrink)

In order to study early human development while avoiding the burdens associated with human embryo research, scientists are redirecting their efforts towards so-called human embryo-like structures (hELS). hELS are created from clusters of human pluripotent stem cells and seem capable of mimicking early human development with increasing accuracy. Notwithstanding, hELS research finds itself at the intersection of historically controversial fields, and the expectation that it might be received as similarly sensitive is prompting proactive law reform in many jurisdictions, including the (...) Netherlands. However, studies on the public perception of hELS research remain scarce. To help guide policymakers and fill this gap in the literature, we conducted an explorative qualitative study aimed at mapping the range of perspectives in the Netherlands on the creation and research use of hELS. This article reports on a subset of our findings, namely those pertaining to (the degrees of and requirements for) confidence in research with hELS and its regulation. Despite commonly found disparities in confidence on emerging biotechnologies, we also found wide consensus regarding the requirements for having (more) confidence in hELS research. We conclude by reflecting on how these findings could be relevant to researchers and (Dutch) policymakers when interpreted within the context of their limitations. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold: to demystify the ancient concept of courage, making it more palpable for the modern reader, and to suggest the reasonably specific constraints that would restrict the contemporary tendency of indiscriminate attribution of this virtue. The discussion of courage will incorporate both the classical interpretations of this trait of character, and the empirical studies into the complex relation between the emotion of fear and behavior. The Aristotelian thesis that courage consists in overcoming the fear (...) of significant harm for a worthy cause will be further developed by exploring its relevance for military professionals today. Specific criteria will be offered in order to restrict the application of the term?courageous? to a certain type of action, as well as to demarcate this virtue from the related vices, such as recklessness. The normative aspect of our study aims to make sense of what could qualify as a worthy goal of a fearless action in the modern world. It will be argued that a courageous agent aims at alleviating or preventing harm for others in a situation of potential risk for the agent himself, while respecting the factual conditions that determine the probability of success. (shrink)

When Aristotle limits the manifestation of true courage to the military context only, his primary target is an overly inclusive conception of courage presented by Plato in the Laches. At the same time, Aristotle explicitly tries to demarcate his ideal of genuine courage from the paradigmatic examples of courageous actions derived from the Homeric epics. It remains questionable, though, whether Aristotle is truly earnest in his efforts to distance himself from Homer. It will be argued that Aristotle's attempt to associate (...) with Homer the two forms of specious courage—courage of the citizen troops and spirit-caused courage—fails to provide sufficient criteria for the demarcation in question. All the essential elements of the Aristotelian account of courage, such as a voluntary choice, a noble goal, and a thumos-driven reaction guided by reason are exemplified by a number of Homeric characters as well. It is thus likely that the philosopher's account of courage largely incorporates the poetic tradition at a new level, rather than supersedes it. (shrink)

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. Wittgenstein.

A key philosophical feature of Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is its use of fantasy to inspire a “recovery” of the actual or, in other words, a reawakening to the beauty of nature and the many possible ways of living in healthier ecological relation to the world. Though none of these ways is perfectly achieved, this pluralistic view is demonstrated in the various lifeways of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Ents. All of the positive (...) relationships embodied in the films—to trees, mountains, horses, and vegetable gardens—involve loving care and attention, receiving nourishment and livelihood without instrumentalization, or reducing nature to mere resource. The films also vividly display a variety of ugly and destructive ways of using the land to accrue power and wealth. These noxious ways, specifically because they actively destroy the lands that they use, always need more. They will thus eventually annihilate the beautiful ways of being if they are not actively resisted. Some of those who would rather be tending their own trees, gardens, or horses or even wandering in the wild forests must therefore turn their attention to struggle and resistance instead. This is a struggle full of grief, and at times even verging on despair, but it is marked by the refusal to give up hope. Indeed, what Jackson and Tolkien have to say about hope is as important in responding to the ecological crisis as anything they have to say about nature, inasmuch as they help to remind us that even in our own times, “there is still hope.”. (shrink)

The conception on which the affirmative philosophy of G.G. Shpet rests can be called hermeneutic phenomenology. The choice of this term demands explanation. Shpet's basic hermeneutic work, Hermeneutics and Its Problems [Germenevtika i ee problemy], was completed in 1918. At the time hermeneutics was understood usually as the art of grasping the meaning of a text. It is worth noting that this art was quite specific. It consisted mostly of a set of psychological techniques for "penetrating" into the internal world (...) of the text's author. The techniques were empathy, sympathy, immersion in a historico-cultural world, and imaginative penetration into the author's creative "workshop." Understood in this way, hermeneutics was a psychologically loaded research method. And if it is treated only in that way, the recently coined term "hermeneutic phenomenology" is in respect to content internally contradictory. As I see it, Shpet fully realized what conclusions could follow from this. Nevertheless his fundamental aspirations are connected precisely with the idea of unifying hermeneutics and phenomenology. This is possible because words have a complex structure . The sense of a word is objective and can be known by nonpsychological methods. The art of comprehending the sense of a text must inevitably include semiotic methods as well as logical and phenomenological techniques. They are aimed at comprehending (studying, researching, but not "grasping" or "sympathizing with" the objective, internal sense of the text. All the other elements of the sensible structure of the text are overlaid with the psychological peculiarities of the author and historical and social conditions. They are external factors that influence the sense of the text in a distinctive way and, without question, must be taken into account and included in the investigation of texts under the general heading "conditions of understanding," which are comprehended by the historical method. The psychological and historical methods in hermeneutics were historically conditioned research techniques, scientific means of comprehending sense under conditions when semiotic means were not yet developed, contemporary logico-semantic techniques were not available, and the phenomenological method was not yet invented. For this reason hermeneutics is reducible conceptually to a mere psychological art: it was only forced into being this by the lack of technical instrumentation. Moreover, the psychological hermeneutics of the nineteenth century may be called without any exaggeration the historical variant of hermeneutics in general. (shrink)

Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account of character and its formation in moral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy. The first (...) book to focus on character formation in Kant's moral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear on moral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition of character through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure of character, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception of Moral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies and moral philosophy in general. (shrink)

Suppose COVID-19 is the runaway tram in the famous moral thought experiment, known as the “Bystander at the Switch.” Consider the two differentiated responses of governments around the world to this new threat, namely the option of quarantine/lockdown and herd immunity. Can we contrast the hypothetical with the real scenario? What do the institutional decisions and strategies for dealing with the virus, in the beginning of 2020, signify in a normative moral framework? This paper investigates these possibilities in order to (...) highlight the similarities and, more importantly, the differences that exist between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Analysis shows that the hypothetical scenario can never be fully compared to the complex multifactorial nature of the real world. But if a comparison is attempted, the most obvious difference between the two governmental strategies is the concept of duty within the Kantian perspective. Ultimately, it is a matter of comparing freedom and life. Attributing a moral “priority ticket” to one or the other can be analysed through interpersonal aggregation. (shrink)

A collection of writings on Buddhist philosophy.

Anyone who goes beyond procedural questions of a discourse theory of morality and ethics and, in a normative attitude … embarks on a theory of the well-ordered, or even emancipated, society will very quickly run up against the limits of his own historical situation.For some time now, a certain strand of contemporary critical theory has understood its task not as providing a substantive critique of power relations, let alone an alternative normative conception of what social relations might be, but as (...) how to justify critique as such: how to justify those elements which critique owes to its philosophical origins, albeit in a nonfoundationalist manner.1 This focus on—if not obsession with—the theoretical problem of... (shrink)

In 1916, Einstein rederived the blackbody radiation law of Planck that originated the idea of quantized energy one hundred years ago. For this purpose, Einstein introduced the concept of transition probability, which had a profound influence on the development of quantum theory. In this article, we adopt Einstein's assumptions with two exceptions and seek the statistical condition for the thermal equilibrium of matter without referring to the inner details of either statistical thermodynamics or quantum theory. It is shown that the (...) conditions of thermodynamic equilibrium of electromagnetic radiation and the energy balance of thermal radiation by the matter, between any of its two energy-states, not only result in Planck's radiation law and the Bohr frequency condition, but they remarkably yield the law of the statistical thermal equilibrium of matter: the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. Since the transition probabilities of the modern quantum theory of radiation coincide with their definition in Einstein's theory of blackbody radiation, the presented deduction of the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution is equally valid within the bounds of modern quantum theory. Consequently, within the framework of the fundamental assumptions, the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution of energy-states is not only a sufficient, but a necessary condition for thermal equilibrium between the matter and radiation. (shrink)