The conflict over the classic problem of philosophical anthropology, i. e., what man actually is, is not only a conflict about what – X – determines something to be human. It also requires clarification of the manner in which something is determined to be human by the X in question. There being different options for the latter, the classic anthropological conflict concerns not only definitions of being human, but also models of being human. The present paper investigates four such models: (...) the addition model, the interior model, the privation model, and the transformation model. While the first will serve as a baseline for comparison, the three other models will, in order to escape the danger of making too formal an argument, be discussed exemplarily, i. e. by focusing in each case on a certain proponent of the respective model. Those proponents will be Martin Heidegger for the interior model, Arnold Gehlen for the privation model, and Helmuth Plessner for the transformation model. (shrink)

Was ist der Mensch? Und welche Bedeutung hat diese Frage fur die Philosophie? Fur die erste Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts gilt die zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidegger gefuhrte Davoser Disputation als der paradigmatische Streit um den Menschen und das richtige Verstandnis von Philosophie. Ausgeblendet wird dabei, dass die Protagonisten des Streits ihre Positionen selbst in einer Dreierkonstellation mit der von Max Scheler und Helmuth Plessner begrundeten modernen philosophischen Anthropologie sahen. Bezieht man diese dritte, naturphilosophische Alternative mit ein, so eroffnen (...) sich neue Wege der Auseinandersetzung mit Heideggers Daseinsontologie und Cassirers Kulturphilosophie. Zugleich wird eine originelle Position kenntlich, die auch fur eine Reihe von Themenkreisen des gegenwartigen Fragens nach dem Menschen von methodisch-sachlicher Aufschlusskraft ist: den Naturalismus, das Tier-Mensch-Verhaltnis, den Personbegriff und das Verhaltnis von menschlicher Lebensform und objektivem Geist. (shrink)

When discussing the philosophical question of the relation between mind and nature, dualistic approaches are often contrasted with scientistic approaches. However, mind can be situated in nature in a non-scientistic manner and outside of nature in a non-dualistic manner. John McDowell represents the first approach, as he connects mind to our second nature. In his attempt to specify the categorial relation between first and second nature, McDowell finds himself in a dilemma which cannot be solved within his framework. The second (...) approach is represented by Nicolai Hartmann, for whom mind does not belong to nature, but to the real world. Hartmann’s ontology of layers is able to avoid McDowell’s dilemma and the unity of the real world is made intelligible. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

Studies of the history of 20th century philosophy usually suggest a sharp antagonism between Martin Heidegger on the one hand and Philosophical Anthropology, as founded by Max Scheler and Helmuth Plessner, on the other. In contrast I will argue that one of Heidegger′s texts, namely his lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World – Finitude – Solitude, held in the 1929/30 winter semester is in fact very close to the theoretical approach of Philosophical Anthropology. The measure for determining this proximity (...) is taken from Joachim Fischer′s study Philosophische Anthropologie. Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts . Its main systematic thesis posits that the theoretical approach of Philosophical Anthropology is constituted by a core identity, which can be accurately defined by a set of features. In my paper I use these features heuristically to examine the question whether Heidegger, who prima facie is not an adherent of the theoretical approach, in his lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics actually does argue like an exponent of Philosophical Anthropology. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology offers two ways of structuring the concept of person, either by locating the essence of man in his being a person or by providing a bio- philosophy of personhood. Building on the work of Helmuth Plessner, this essay aims at conciliating both structurings. It argues for the thesis that personhood is the life-form of man and discusses the main structural features of human life-form.

Following the revival in the last decades of the concept of “organism”, scholarly literature in philosophy of science has shown growing historical interest in the theory of Immanuel Kant, one of the “fathers” of the concept of self-organisation. Yet some recent theoretical developments suggest that self-organisation alone cannot fully account for the all-important dimension of autonomy of the living. Autonomy appears to also have a genuine “interactive” dimension, which concerns the organism’s functional interactions with the environment and does not simply (...) derive from its internal organisation. Against this background, we focus on a family of natural philosophical approaches that historically have already strongly taken in account this aspect of autonomy, notably going beyond Kant’s perspective on self-organisation. We thus review Hegel, Plessner, and Jonas’ different perspectives on living beings, focussing in particular on four points: the distinction between organic and inorganic, the theory of biological organisation, the processuality of the living, and the “boundary” between inside and outside, through which the organism establishes its relationship to the environment. We, then, compare the three perspectives on these four points, and finally address the question of what advantages their contribution present—especially compared to Kant’s theory—with respect to the topic of organism’s autonomy. This could help—we hope—to better understand what is at the stake still today. (shrink)

Nicolai Hartmann hat philosophische Studien zur Erkenntnistheorie, Ontologie, Ethik, Philosophie des Geistes und Naturphilosophie geschrieben. Die Beiträge des Bandes gehen davon aus, dass seine Arbeit auf all diesen Feldern im Zeichen der Verabschiedung der Systemphilosophie sowie der Begründung einer Konzeption systematischen Philosophierens steht. Im Zentrum von Hartmanns Denken steht das "Kategorienproblem", d. i. die Frage nach den elementaren Strukturen der Wirklichkeit und der menschlichen Erkenntnis. In seinem Bezug auf die philosophische Tradition und seiner Hinwendung zu den Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften unter (...) Einbeziehung auch der alltäglichen Erfahrung macht Hartmann deutlich, dass er an dem Anspruch festhält, die Phänomene der Lebenswelt, Wissenschaft und Geschichte in einem einheitlichen "Aufbau der realen Welt" zu integrieren, ohne ihre Heterogenität und Selbständigkeit zu leugnen. Die Beiträge konzentrieren sich daher auf das Konzept einer "Neuen Ontologie", das Programm der "Kategorienforschung", den Wissenschaftsbezug von Hartmanns Denken, dessen Relevanz für die philosophische Anthropologie und die Problematik des geistigen Seins, der Freiheit sowie der Geschichte. (shrink)

Der Wiener Kreis gehört nicht zu den Strömungen des 20. Jahrhunderts, die heute für ihre Kulturphilosophie oder politische Philosophie bekannt sind. Tatsächlich war er aber in kulturellen und politischen Fragen seiner Zeit engagiert. Er wurde von vielen seiner Mitglieder als kulturelle Bewegung gedacht und wirkte in diesem Sinne auch auf andere. Beispielsweise hielten Mitglieder des Kreises Vorträge im Bauhaus und hatten Künstler die Zeitschrift Erkenntnis abonniert. - Der Sammelband soll das im Wiener Kreis bestehende Selbstverständnis hinsichtlich der Kultur und Politik (...) der eigenen Zeit näher in den Blick nehmen und klären, inwieweit die damit einhergehenden Fragen als etwas Sinnloses, als Nebenschauplatz, als Grundlage oder sogar Ziel des eigenen Wirkens gesehen wurden. In diesem Kontext stellen sich letztlich auch die Fragen, ob sich die Kulturphilosophie und politische Philosophie seiner Mitglieder rekonstruieren lässt und in welcher Beziehung deren Positionen diesbezüglich zueinander stehen. (shrink)

Das normative Grundverständnis der kurativen Medizin und ein Trend, sich ihr zu entwinden, wird beschrieben. Durch systematische Betrachtung des Trends wird der Begriff einer „wunscherfüllenden Medizin“ eingeführt und mit der kurativen Medizin kontrastiert. Am Beispiel der Schönheitschirurgie und der Kritik des „Schönheitswahns“ wird deutlich gemacht, dass die Bewertung von Phänomenen wunscherfüllender Medizin in liberalen Gesellschaften sich nur auf schwache normative Ressourcen stützen kann. Nutzen-Risiko-Argumente und Kohärenzargumente, bezogen auf Lebensentwürfe, stellen die vergleichsweise stärksten dar. Wunscherfüllende Medizin erscheint zwiespältig, einerseits erhöht sie (...) die Klientenzentrierung und Responsivität des Medizinsystems, andererseits befördert sie Kommerzialisierungstendenzen. (shrink)

Die Beiträge zur Altertumskunde enthalten Monographien, Sammelbände, Editionen, Übersetzungen und Kommentare zu Themen aus den Bereichen Klassische, Mittel- und Neulateinische Philologie, Alte Geschichte, Archäologie, Antike Philosophie sowie Nachwirken der Antike bis in die Neuzeit. Dadurch leistet die Reihe einen umfassenden Beitrag zur Erschließung klassischer Literatur und zur Forschung im gesamten Gebiet der Altertumswissenschaften.

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media (...) of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media--books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television--while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)

According to William Alston, we lack voluntary control over our propositional attitudes because we cannot believe intentionally, and we cannot believe intentionally because our will is not causally connected to belief formation. Against Alston, I argue that we can believe intentionally because our will is causally connected to belief formation. My defense of this claim is based on examples in which agents have reasons for and against believing p, deliberate on what attitude to take towards p, and subsequently acquire an (...) attitude A towards p because they have decided to take attitude A. From the possibility of intentional belief, two conclusions follow. First, the kind of control we have over our propositional attitudes is direct; it is possible for us to believe at will. Second, the question of whether what we believe is under our control ultimately depends on whether our will itself is under our control. It is, therefore, a question of the metaphysics of free will. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the rejection of doxastic voluntarism is not as straightforward as its opponents take it to be. I begin with a critical examination of William Alston's defense of involuntarism and then focus on the question of whether belief is intentional.

This volume explores the relation between legal reasoning and logic from both a historical and a systematic perspective. The topics addressed include, among others, conditional legal acts, disjunctions in legal acts, presumptions and conjectures, conflicts of values, Jørgensen´s Dilemma, the Rhetor´s Dilemma, the theory of legal fictions and the categorization of contracts. The unifying problematic of these contributions concerns the conditional structures and, more particularly, the relationship between legal theory and legal reasoning in the context of conditions.

Traditionally, the manufacturer/operator of a machine is held (morally and legally) responsible for the consequences of its operation. Autonomous, learning machines, based on neural networks, genetic algorithms and agent architectures, create a new situation, where the manufacturer/operator of the machine is in principle not capable of predicting the future machine behaviour any more, and thus cannot be held morally responsible or liable for it. The society must decide between not using this kind of machine any more (which is not a (...) realistic option), or facing a responsibility gap, which cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility ascription. (shrink)

Opponents to consciousness in fish argue that fish do not feel pain because they do not have a neocortex, which is a necessary condition for feeling pain. A common counter-argument appeals to the multiple realizability of pain: while a neocortex might be necessary for feeling pain in humans, pain might be realized differently in fish. This paper argues, first, that it is impossible to find a criterion allowing us to demarcate between plausible and implausible cases of multiple realization of pain (...) without running into a circular argument. Second, opponents to consciousness in fish cannot be provided with reasons to believe in the multiple realizability of pain. I conclude that the debate on the existence of pain in fish is impossible to settle by relying on the multiple realization argument. (shrink)

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Alston's arguments for doxastic involuntarism. Alston fails to distinguish (i) between volitional and executional lack of control, and (ii) between compatibilist and libertarian control. As a result, he fails to notice that, if one endorses a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, the outcome is a straightforward and compelling case for doxastic voluntarism. Advocates of involuntarism have recently argued that the compatibilist case for doxastic voluntarism can be blocked by pointing out that belief is never intentional. (...) In response to this strategy, I distinguish between two types of intentionality and argue that belief is no less intentional than action is. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

Studying consciousness requires contrasting conscious and unconscious perception. While many studies have reported unconscious perceptual effects, recent work has questioned whether such effects are genuinely unconscious, or whether they are due to weak conscious perception. Some philosophers and psychologists have reacted by denying that there is such a thing as unconscious perception, or by holding that unconscious perception has been previously overestimated. This article has two parts. In the first part, I argue that the most significant attack on unconscious perception (...) commits the criterion content fallacy: the fallacy of interpreting evidence that observers were conscious of something as evidence that they were conscious of the task-relevant features of the stimuli. In the second part, I contend that the criterion content fallacy is prevalent in consciousness research. For this reason, I hold that if unconscious perception exists, scientists studying consciousness could routinely underestimate it. I conclude with methodological recommendations for moving the debate forward. (shrink)

Rational drug design is a method for developing new pharmaceuticals that typically involves the elucidation of fundamental physiological mechanisms. It thus combines the quest for a scientific understanding of natural phenomena with the design of useful technology and hence integrates epistemic and practical aims of research and development. Case studies of the rational design of the cardiovascular drugs propranolol, captopril and losartan provide insights into characteristics and conditions of this integration. Rational drug design became possible in the 1950s when theoretical (...) knowledge of drug-target interaction and experimental drug testing could interlock in cycles of mutual advancement. The integration does not, however, diminish the importance of basic research for pharmaceutical development. Rather, it can be shown that still in the 1990s, linear processes of innovation and the close combination of practical and epistemic work were interdependent. (shrink)