Until now, the literature on Kant s Opus Postumum has lacked a commentary on the key draft, Transition 1 14. The study offers a systematic interpretation with reference to Kant s other works especially the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant s presentation of natural science as a true science of nature is thereby placed in the context of his transcendental philosophy.".

Auf die Frage: "Was ist Schönheit" oder "Was ist das Schöne" antwortet Hegel mit seiner oft zitierten Formel, das Schöne sei das "Sinnliche Scheinen der Idee". Idee ist hier letztlich das Absolute oder auch das Göttliche, das in den Werken schöner Kunst zuerst und auf dieser Stufe als das sinnlich erfahrbare Göttliche in Erscheinung tritt. Diese Hegelsche Positionierung der Kunst innerhalb seiner Philosophie des absoluten Geistes bedingt nicht nur ihren einmaligen Höhepunkt in der klassischen Kunst des griechischen Altertums, sondern zugleich (...) mit diesem auch die Sicht der Kunst als einer solchen, deren Zenit ein Vergangenes ist. Muß hieraus aber mit Notwendigkeit die Sinnlosigkeit weiterer Kunstausübung folgen? Im Zuge einer Darstellung der wichtigsten Begriffe und Theorien innerhalb der Hegelschen Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik geht vorliegende Studie auf derartige Fragestellungen ein. Ein zweiter Hauptteil befaßt sich ausführlicher mit der Musikästhetik Hegels. Der Autor widmet sich hier den Antworten Hegels auf Fragen nach Material und Anschauungsform musikalischer Kunst und deren qualitativen wie auch quantitativen Bestimmungen. Zudem wird die Hegelsche Bestimmung des Wesens musikalischer Kunst als kadenzierte Interjektion erörtert. Zur Einleitung in den Themenbereich der Arbeit werden in knapper Form die musikästhetischen Aussagen Kants in dessen Kritik der Urteilskraft referiert. (shrink)

In Kant's theoretical philosophy substance is not only constitutive for objects as one of the categories of pure reason, but also functions as a substrate for the unity of time. Result of these different functions is an ambiguity in the meaning of Kant's notion of substance. Is there only one or are there many individual substances? This paper traces the ways in which Kant uses substance not only in the Critique of Pure Reason, but also in the draft „Transition 1–14“ (...) of the Opus postumum to find a solution for this problem. (shrink)

Purpose of this paper is to show, that within the Hobbesian Philosophy of law and state the establishment of legal force can be considered to be a conditio sine qua non for a persistent state of peace. In this regard legal force is to be understood not only as a power able to legislate but also to guarantee the abidance of the law by means of coercive power. As a result of this point of view on legal force as a (...) necessary condition for peace and security, arises furthermore the conceptof legal force as condition of culture. This paper traces the central claims of Thomas Hobbes’ highly influential theory of the origination of state and law pointed out in the first chapters of De Cive, a writing that is part of Hobbes Elements of Philosophy. To this aforementioned theory belongs the Hobbesian conception of the so called state of nature as a legal vacuum and a status of absolute freedom of every individual. Furthermore the war of everyone against everyone as a consequence of this absence of legal force and finally the subjects comprehension in the uselessness of absolute freedom which leads to war and instead of this the decision to abandon specific rights and to subrogate those rights to an elected sovereign. The decision to leave the state of nature and hence war and search peace instead which is granted by the legislative and executive power of the sovereign is according to Hobbes the ultimate dictate of reason. Additionally to the first chapters of De Cive I refer to some passages of Hobbes chief work Leviathan. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 1 Seiten: 166-170.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 1 Seiten: 171-172.

In Kant's theoretical philosophy substance is not only constitutive for objects as one of the categories of pure reason, but also functions as a substrate for the unity of time. Result of these different functions is an ambiguity in the meaning of Kant's notion of substance. Is there only one or are there many individual substances? This paper traces the ways in which Kant uses substance not only in the Critique of Pure Reason, but also in the draft „Transition 1–14“ (...) of the Opus postumum to find a solution for this problem. (shrink)

This paper constitutes a radical departure from the existing philosophical literature on models, modeling-practices, and model-based science. I argue that the various entities and practices called 'models' and 'modeling-practices' are too diverse, too context-sensitive, and serve too many scientific purposes and roles, as to allow for a general philosophical analysis. From this recognition an alternative view emerges that I shall dub model anarchism.

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

There has been much criticism of the idea that Friston's free-energy principle can unite the life and mind sciences. Here, we argue that perhaps the greatest problem for the totalizing ambitions of its proponents is a failure to recognize the importance of evolutionary dynamics and to provide a convincing adaptive story relating free-energy minimization to organismal fitness.

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 46-48.

Imagine a world where everyone is healthy, intelligent, long living and happy. Intuitively this seems wonderful, albeit unrealistic. However, recent scientific developments in genetic engineering, namely CRISPR/Cas bring the question into public discourse, how the genetic enhancement of humans should be evaluated morally.

The conditions animals experience during the early developmental stages of their lives can have critical ongoing effects on their future health, welfare, and proper development. In this paper we draw on evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of the processes of developmental programming, particularly Predictive Adaptive Responses (PAR) that serve to match offspring phenotype with predicted future environmental conditions. When these predictions fail, a mismatch occurs between offspring phenotype and the environment, which can have long-lasting health and welfare effects. Examples (...) include metabolic diseases resulting from maternal nutrition and behavioral changes from maternal stress. An understanding of these processes and their evolutionary origins will help in identifying and providing appropriate developmental conditions to optimize offspring welfare. This serves as an example of the benefits of using evolutionary thinking within veterinary science and we suggest that in the same way that evolutionary medicine has helped our understanding of human health, the implementation of evolutionary veterinary science (EvoVetSci) could be a useful way forward for research in animal health and welfare. (shrink)

Alongside the rapid global advances in neuroscientific research, neuroethics has been one of the fastest growing sub-fields within bioethics. With this rapid expansion, bioethicists struggle to kee...

En 1945 P. Demargne publiait la nécropole de Chrysolakkos à Malia en soulignant la qualité et la richesse extraordinaires de la céramique du style «Camarès» qu'il avait trouvée. Dans les nombreuses publications traitant de l'époque des anciens palais en Crète, la céramique de Chrysolakkos restait méconnue. Malia même figurait — selon l'opinion commune — parmi les centres de second ordre. Cette étude présente, après un catalogue plus complet, un examen des formes, des motifs, des décors, des couleurs et de la (...) qualité de cette céramique unique et en quantité égale à celle de centres comme Cnossos et Phaistos. (shrink)

Climate change mitigation has become a paradigm case both for externalities in general and for the game-theoretic model of the Tragedy of the Commons (ToC) in particular. This situation is worrying, as we have reasons to suspect that some models in the social sciences are apt to be performative to the extent that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Framing climate change mitigation as a hardly solvable coordination problem may force us into a worse situation, by changing real-world behaviour to fit (...) our model, rather than the other way around. But while this problem of the performativity of the ToC has been noted in a recent paper in this journal by Matthew Kopec, his proposed strategies for dealing with their self-fulfilling nature fall short of providing an adequate solution. Instead of relying on the idea that modelling assumptions are always strictly speaking false, this paper shows that the problem may be better framed as a problem of underdetermination between competing explanations. Our goal here is to provide a framework for choosing between this set of competing models that allows us to avoid a ‘Russian Roulette’-like situation in which we gamble with existential risk. (shrink)

Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back (...) to Quine, but has generally been assumed to undermine naturalism or, worse, to be incoherent by the majority of philosophers who maintain that there clearly are things or mental states that are about others. In a recent paper, Hutto and Satne (2015a) offer an update that tries to revive John Haugeland’s baseball analogy from his influential 1990 review paper The Intentionality All-Stars on the state of the game to argue that the failure of Neo-Cartesians, Neo- Behaviorists, and Neo-Pragmatists should urge us to make them work together to naturalize content and “win the game.” But Hutto and Satne misunderstand what the game is ultimately about. The goal of the Intentionality All-Stars is not to naturalize content against eliminativism but to defend a naturalist “thirdperson” view of the problem against first-person phenomenalists. For this goal, a naturalist defense of global content eliminativism would equally enable them to emerge victorious. Revisiting Haugeland, I will offer my own analysis of the current state of play to argue that global content eliminativism has not received sufficient attention and deserves a more prominent place in the debate than it currently occupies. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap is increasingly regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. He was one of the leading figures of the logical empiricist movement associated with the Vienna Circle and a central figure in the analytic tradition more generally. He made major contributions to philosophy of science and philosophy of logic, and, perhaps most importantly, to our understanding of the nature of philosophy as a discipline. In this volume a team of contributors explores the major themes (...) of his philosophy and discusses his relationship with the Vienna Circle and with philosophers such as Frege, Husserl, Russell, and Quine. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Carnap currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Carnap. (shrink)

Debates about the EU show that the holy trinity of absolute, indivisible sovereignty, nationality/citizenship and national identity/loyalty should be replaced by multilayered, pluralist concepts for descriptive, explanatory and normative purposes. Democratic pluralism criticizes replacement‐strategies (of the nation‐state by a European state, citizenship‐rights by human rights, national obligations by European or global ones). It opts for productive complementarity guided by two principles: “proximity and accountability” and “correspondence of powers and democratic say” and for progressive transdomestic shifts. The inclusion of the articles (...) on citizenship in the EC Treaty has, unintendedly, contributed to such a shift though it missed historical chances to develop a more democratic and social EU living up to minimal global obligations. (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second sense--as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality. For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern (...) aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology in which the absence of resonance is the very condition of thought. Our mind's relationship to the world is said to rest on distance or, as the very synonym for reason suggests, reflection. Reason and Resonance traces the genealogy of this "intimate animosity" between reason and resonance through a series of interrelated case studies involving a varied cast of otologists, philosophers, physiologists, pamphleteers, and music theorists. Among them are the seventeenth-century architect-zoologist Claude Perrault, who refuted Cartesianism in a book on sound and hearing; the Sturm und Drang poet Wilhelm Heinse and his friend the anatomist Samuel Sömmerring, who believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes Müller, who invented the concept of "sense energies"; and Müller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of the magisterial Sensations of Tone. Erlman also discusses key twentieth-century thinkers of aurality, including Ernst Mach; the communications engineer and proponent of the first nonresonant wave theory of hearing, Georg von Békésy; political activist and philosopher Günther Anders; and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, direct, or (...) mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy. (shrink)

Justus Hartnack provides a highly accessible, philosophically astute introduction to Hegel’s logic.

This paper addresses what we consider to be the most pressing challenge for the emerging science of consciousness: the measurement problem of consciousness. That is, by what methods can we determine the presence of and properties of consciousness? Most methods are currently developed through evaluation of the presence of consciousness in humans and here we argue that there are particular problems in application of these methods to nonhuman cases—what we call the indicator validity problem and the extrapolation problem. The first (...) is a problem with the application of indicators developed using the differences between conscious and unconscious processing in humans to the identification of other conscious vs. nonconscious organisms or systems. The second is a problem in extrapolating any indicators developed in humans or other organisms to artificial systems. However, while pressing ethical concerns add urgency to the attribution of consciousness and its attendant moral status to nonhuman animals and intelligent machines, we cannot wait for certainty and we advocate the use of a precautionary principle to avoid causing unintentional harm. We also intend that the considerations and limitations discussed in this paper can be used to further analyze and refine the methods of consciousness science with the hope that one day we may be able to solve the measurement problem of consciousness. (shrink)

The rise of experimental philosophy has placed metaphilosophical questions, particularly those concerning concepts, at the center of philosophical attention. X-phi offers empirically rigorous methods for identifying conceptual content, but what exactly it contributes towards evaluating conceptual content remains unclear. We show how x-phi complements Rudolf Carnap’s underappreciated methodology for concept determination, explication. This clarifies and extends x-phi’s positive philosophical import, and also exhibits explication’s broad appeal. But there is a potential problem: Carnap’s account of explication was limited to empirical and (...) logical concepts, but many concepts of interest to philosophers are essentially normative. With formal epistemology as a case study, we show how x-phi assisted explication can apply to normative domains. (shrink)

Seckendorff's »Teutsche Reden« of 1691 and the outline of his ideas on natural law published with them are a uniquely eloquent testimony of German Baroque culture. Seckendorff was the only 17th century aristocratic practitioner of courtly and political life to publish a number of his speeches in book form during his own lifetime and to supplement them with a theoretical superstructure substantiating his practical convictions. The text is centrally concerned with the connection between civilization and language culture and the dependence (...) of public speaking on the nature of the state. Seckendorff's unfinished outline of natural law betokens the critical engagement with the rise of secular natural law by a genuinely significant theoretician on the essential issues posed by government and administration. (shrink)

I applaud recent improvements upon previous guidelines for the assessment of pain in non-human species and the application of their framework towards decapod crustaceans. Rather than constituting a mere intermediate solution between the scientific difficulty of settling questions of animal consciousness and the need for a framework for the purposes of animal welfare legislation, I will argue that the longer lists of criteria for animal sentience should make us realize that animal sentience is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that must be studied (...) with a plethora of methods in order to assess its diversity across the tree of life. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited (...) Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

Therefore, the difference between the natural and the non or supernatural would not be an ontological one. The identification of kinds of complexes or ...

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.