Mit diesem Buch tritt ein Autor, der mit der sprachanalytischen Philosophie ebenso vertraut ist wie mit den modernen Entwicklungen der theoretischen Sprachwissenschaft, der gängigen Meinung entgegen und versucht zu zeigen, daß die Wittgensteinsche Auffassung von der Sprache, der zufolge die Sprache eine Form sozialen Lebens ist, nicht unverträglich ist mit einer kognitiven Sprachtheorie, der zufolge die Sprache eine Form biologischen Lebens ist und in Analogie zu einem Organ gesehen werden kann. Bei dem Versuch, die scheinbar konträren Sprachauffassungen Chomskys und Wittgensteins (...) miteinander zu versöhnen, werden der Erklärungsanspruch Chomskys und der Beschreibungsanspruch Wittgensteins auf komplementäre Problemstellungen und unterschiedliche wissenschaftliche Verfahren relativiert. (shrink)

“Shooting [or ‘guessing’] characters” was a game, and later a communication method, based on phonological analysis of Chinese syllables. Over time, it became used in a variety of ways, including as a teaching tool, a cipher, and a phonological writing aid for the less educated. The actual and proposed applications of one phonological game show that Chinese phonology did not just exist in books, but encompassed distinct non-written practices that were essential to its proliferation. Chinese phonology is generally studied as (...) a source for the history of the Chinese language, but it is also of interest for the history of cultural and intellectual life. (shrink)

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991. The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. (...) The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

Dimensional quantities such as length, mass and charge, i.e., numbers combined with a conventional unit, are essential components of theories in the sciences, especially physics, chemistry and biology. Do they represent a world with absolute physical magnitudes, or are they merely magnitude ratios in disguise? Would we notice a difference if all the distances or charges in the world suddenly doubled? These central questions of this Element are illustrated by imagining how one would convey the meaning of a kilogram to (...) aliens if one were only allowed to communicate via Morse code. (shrink)

Among the many common criticisms of the Turing test, a valid criticism concerns its scope. Intelligence is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that will require testing using as many different formats as possible. The Turing test continues to be valuable as a source of evidence to support the inductive inference that a machine possesses a certain kind of intelligence and when interpreted as providing a behavioural test for a certain kind of intelligence. This paper raises the novel criticism that the (...) Turing test represents an example of Goodhart’s Law operating in the field of artificial intelligence. As one measure towards the goal of creating genuinely intelligent machines, the Turing test must not be confused with the goal itself. Moreover, the Turing test ought to be augmented such that through its use additional evidence could be secured to support the strong inference that a machine, were it to pass the Turing Test, could think like a human. (shrink)

Following decades of neglect, the work of the German Jewish philosopher, literary author, cultural critic, and poet Günther Anders (1902–1992) is gaining increasing recognition in the English-speaking world. This translation of “Résistance heute” (Resistance Today) makes one of Anders’s most programmatic and polemical short texts available. Published at the height of his anti-nuclear activism, “Resistance Today” is the written version of a speech Anders delivered in November 1962 upon acceptance of the northwest Italian city of Omegna’s Resistance Prize (other notable (...) recipients included Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon). It first appeared in print in the West German left-wing journal Das Argument in November 1963. Clearly written for the occasion, the text condenses (and often further radicalizes) key premises about the end of history, the amoral character of work, and the continuity between Nazi totalitarianism, the nuclear age and the world of consumerism that are developed in great nuance across a range of books that Anders had recently published. Key co-ordinates include: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1 (The Obsolescence of Human Beings 1, 1956), his groundbreaking critique of technology; Der Mann auf der Brücke (The Man on the Bridge, 1959), a philosophical travel diary occasioned by Anders’s 1958 visit to Japan and his participation at the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Tokyo; Burning Conscience (1961), a correspondence with the American reconnaissance pilot Claude Eatherly, who scouted the target area before the Enola Gay went on to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It seems likely that Burning Conscience, which turned into an international bestseller, occasioned the award of the prize. (shrink)

One important concern regarding implantable Brain Computer Interfaces is the fear that the intervention will negatively change a patient’s sense of identity or agency. In particular, there is concern that the user will be psychologically worse-off following treatment despite postoperative functional improvements. Clinical observations from similar implantable brain technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, show a small but significant proportion of patients report feelings of strangeness or difficulty adjusting to a new concept of themselves characterized by a maladaptive je ne (...) sais quoi despite clear motor improvement. Despite the growing number of cases in the DBS literature, there is currently no accepted or standardized tool in neuroethics specifically designed to capture the phenomenological postoperative experience of patients implanted with DBS or BCI devices. Given potential risks of postoperative maladaptation, it is important for the field of neuroethics to develop a qualitative instrument that can serve as a shared method for capturing postoperative variations in patient experience of identity and agency. The goal of this article is to introduce an instrument we have developed for this purpose and call for further neuroethical efforts to assess the phenomenology of implantable brain device use. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context-dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular biocommunication (...) between soil microorganisms. This includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

The present debate in legal theory is dominated by an unfruitful schism. On the one hand, analytical theories are concerned with the positivity of law, running the risk of missing the law's relation to society. On the other hand, sociological approaches analyze all sorts of social interactions of law, but have developed no conceptual tools to do justice to the autonomy of law. The theory of autopoiesis offers law a chance of getting round the falsely posed alternative between an autonomous (...) rule system or a socially conditioned decision-making process. It is a theory of law that sees the law's autonomy in the self-reproduction of a communication network and understands its relation to society as interference with other autonomous communication networks. Building on the ideas of Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster and Niklas Luhmann, Gunther Teubner uses the concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis to develop a concept of law as a hypercyclically closed social system. This book will stand as a landmark in legal theory and become a standard point of departure in the sociology of law. (shrink)

In the twenty-second series of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze references a remarkable essay by Günther (Stern) Anders. Anders’ essay, translated here as ‘The Pathology of Freedom’, addresses the sickness and health of our negotiation with the negative anthropological condition of ‘not being cut out for the world’.

Günther Buck legt in dieser Studie eine phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Theorie des Lernens, des Beispiels und der Analogie vor, die für Pädagogik sowie für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften von grundlegender Bedeutung ist. Der Prozess der Erfahrung im Lernen wird in drei Momenten entfaltet: der epagogischen Gangstruktur, der antizipatorischen Horizonthaftigkeit und der dialektischen, „negativen“ Umwendung auf sich selbst. Lernen wird als Lernen aus Erfahrung und als Erfahrung kenntlich. Im zweiten und dritten Teil gelingt Buck eine Neubestimmung des Beispiels in seinen hermeneutischen, bildenden und didaktischen (...) Funktionen. Unterschiedliche Typen der Analogie werden identifiziert und deren Funktionsweisen differenziert. Mit dieser Neuausgabe kann nach 30 Jahren das bekannteste und wirkungsmächtigste Buch von Günther Buck wieder zugänglich gemacht werden. (shrink)

Recently, there has been increasing interest in the use of heavily restricted randomization designs which enforce balance on observed covariates in randomized controlled trials. However, when restrictions are strict, there is a risk that the treatment effect estimator will have a very high mean squared error. In this article, we formalize this risk and propose a novel combinatoric-based approach to describe and address this issue. First, we validate our new approach by re-proving some known properties of complete randomization and restricted (...) randomization. Second, we propose a novel diagnostic measure for restricted designs that only use the information embedded in the combinatorics of the design. Third, we show that the variance of the MSE of the difference-in-means estimator in a randomized experiment is a linear function of this diagnostic measure. Finally, we identify situations in which restricted designs can lead to an increased risk of getting a high MSE and discuss how our diagnostic measure can be used to detect such designs. Our results have implications for any restricted randomization design and can be used to evaluate the trade-off between enforcing balance on observed covariates and avoiding too restrictive designs. (shrink)

The article investigates one of the key contributions to modern structural mathematics, namely Hilbert’sFoundations of Geometry and its mathematical roots in nineteenth-century projective geometry. A central innovation of Hilbert’s book was to provide semantically minded independence proofs for various fragments of Euclidean geometry, thereby contributing to the development of the model-theoretic point of view in logical theory. Though it is generally acknowledged that the development of model theory is intimately bound up with innovations in 19th century geometry, so far, little (...) has been said about how exactly model-theoretic concepts grew out of methodological investigations within projective geometry. This article is supposed to fill this lacuna and investigates this geometrical prehistory of modern model theory, eventually leading up to Hilbert’sFoundations. (shrink)

When two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time to produce a joint outcome, they perform a joint action. The perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that enable individuals to coordinate their actions with others have been receiving increasing attention during the last decade, complementing earlier work on shared intentionality and discourse. This chapter reviews current theoretical concepts and empirical findings in order to provide a structured overview of the state of the art in joint action research. We (...) distinguish between planned and emergent coordination. In planned coordination, agents' behavior is driven by representations that specify the desired outcomes of joint action and the agent's own part in achieving these outcomes. In emergent coordination, coordinated behavior occurs due to perception action couplings that make multiple individuals act in similar ways, independently of joint plans. We review evidence for the two types of coordination and discuss potential synergies between them. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a unified account of conditionals inspired by Frank Ramsey. Most contemporary philosophers agree that Ramsey’s account applies to indicative conditionals only. We observe against this orthodoxy that his account covers subjunctive conditionals as well—including counterfactuals. In light of this observation, we argue that Ramsey’s account of conditionals resembles Robert Stalnaker’s possible worlds semantics supplemented by a model of belief. The resemblance suggests to reinterpret the notion of conditional degree of belief in order to overcome a (...) tension in Ramsey’s account. The result of the reinterpretation is a tenable account of conditionals that covers indicative and subjunctive as well as qualitative and probabilistic conditionals. (shrink)

This is a critical exposition and limited defence of a theory of first- person belief transiently held by Roderick Chisholm after giving up the early haecceity theory of Person and Object and before adopting the late self-attribution theory of The First Person. I reconstruct that 'middle' theory as involving what I call a 'hard-core' approach to de re belief and I rebut objections concerning epistemic supervenience and abnormal consciousness. In my rebuttals, I sketch a variant of the middle theory according (...) to which first- person belief essentially involves the believer's introspective acquaintance with herself. (shrink)

Recent work by philosophers of mind and psychology on nonconceptual content.

Mystik und Romantik sind Gegenmodelle einer stets fremder werdenden Moderne. Die Romantik als eine Kulturepoche nimmt das überzeitliche religiöse Phänomen der Mystik in sich auf. Der vorliegende Band geht auf zahlreiche Beispiele ein, insbesondere auf die Rezeption Jacob Böhmes in der Romantik. Mysticism and Romanticism are counter-models of an ever stranger modernity. Romanticism as a cultural epoch absorbs the supra-temporal religious phenomenon of mysticism. This volume deals with numerous examples, specifically the reception of Jacob Böhme in Romanticism.

_Political Poetry across the Centuries_ aims to give a concise yet wide ranging overview of political poetry from antiquity to the immediate past spanning from Europe to East Asia.

ZusammenfassungDer finale Dialog zwischen Kriemhild und Hagen in der Schlussszene der 39. Aventiure im Nibelungenlied – von der Forschung bis heute irreführend als »2. Hortforderungsszene« bezeichnet – wird als eine psychologisch basierte Finte Hagens gedeutet, die nicht nur eine individuelle Innensphäre der Figur Kriemhilds verifiziert, sondern zugleich das furiose Ende der burgundischen Nibelungen kohärent motiviert. Das Nibelungenlied erscheint in diesem Kontext als literarisches Zeugnis eines zeitgenössischen Ringens um politische Stabilität und traditionelle Wertvorstellungen, das besonders über die Figurenrolle Dietrichs im Spannungsfeld (...) heroischer Gewaltverherrlichung und höfischer Interessenwahrung problematisiert ist.The final dialogue between Kriemhild and Hagen in the closing scene of the Nibelungenlied’s 39th Aventiure – to date falsely designated as the second »Hortforderungsszene« – is here interpreted as a psychological feint of Hagen, which not only verifies the individual interior life of Kriemhild but also provides a coherent motivation for the stirring end of the Burgundian Nibelungen. In this context, the Nibelungenlied appears as a literary testimony of a contemporary struggle about politically stability and traditional moral concepts, which is problematized, first and foremost, via the figure of Dietrich, caught in a conflict between the heroic glorification of violence and the protection of courtly interests. (shrink)