Back cover: Meister Eckhart betont in seinen Predigten und Traktaten die Gelassenheit als einen radikal freien Lebensvollzug in geistiger Tätigkeit. Anna Keiling vollzieht diese Konzeption anhand des Leitparadigmas der Musse nach. So können Darstellungen der Abgeschiedenheit, Gelassenheit, ledecheit und ruowe in mystischer Literatur in ihrem spezifischen Zusammenhang gesehen werden.

If folk science means individuals having well worked out mechanistic theories of the workings of the world, then it is not feasible. Laypeople’s explanatory understandings are remarkably coarse, full of gaps, and often full of inconsistencies. Even worse, most people overestimate their own understandings. Yet recent views suggest that formal scientists may not be so different. In spite of these limitations, science somehow works and its success offers hope for the feasibility of folk science as well. The success of science (...) arises from the ways in which scientists learn to leverage understandings in other minds and to outsource explanatory work through sophisticated methods of deference and simplification of complex systems. Three studies ask whether analogous processes might be present not only in laypeople but also in young children and thereby form a foundation for supplementing explanatory understandings almost from the start of our first attempts to make sense of the world. (shrink)

Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline (...) cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. -/- In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes "soritical " vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of "vagueness ", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. -/- The paper is an introduction to a book of the same title. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, the book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive legal ambiguity from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. (shrink)

What would it be like to have never learned English, but instead only to know Hopi, Mandarin Chinese, or American Sign Language? Would that change the way you think? Imagine entirely losing your language, as the result of stroke or trauma. You are aphasic, unable to speak or listen, read or write. What would your thoughts now be like? As the most extreme case, imagine having been raised without any language at all, as a wild child. What—if anything—would it be (...) like to be such a person? Could you be smart; could you reminisce about the past, plan the future? (shrink)

This work is both an introduction to, and a reader in, contemporary hermeneutics. Included are papers by Betti, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Apel and Habermas.

People feel they understand complex phenomena with far greater precision, coherence, and depth than they really do; they are subject to an illusion—an illusion of explanatory depth. The illusion is far stronger for explanatory knowledge than many other kinds of knowledge, such as that for facts, procedures or narratives. The illusion for explanatory knowledge is most robust where the environment supports real‐time explanations with visible mechanisms. We demonstrate the illusion of depth with explanatory knowledge in Studies 1–6. Then we show (...) differences in overconfidence about knowledge across different knowledge domains in Studies 7–10. Finally, we explore the mechanisms behind the initial confidence and behind overconfidence in Studies 11 and 12, and discuss the implications of our findings for the roles of intuitive theories in concepts and cognition. (shrink)

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for pheno- menological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, (...) we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self. (shrink)

In a number of articles, Hans-Johann Glock has argued against the »lingualist« view that higher mental capacities are a prerogative of language-users. He has defended the »assimilationist« claim that the mental capacities of humans and of non-human animals differ only in degree. In the paper under discussion, Glock argues that animals are capable of acting for reasons, provided that reasons are construed along the lines of the new »objectivist« theory of practical reasons.

This paper argues that Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) do not compromise the agent’s ability to decide otherwise. In his attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, Frankfurt relied on what Austin called the ‘all-in’ sense of ‘can’, and misconstrued the agent’s inability to do otherwise as an all-in can’t. Like the new dispositionalists, I maintain that the agent’s relevant abilities are ‘masked’ rather than lost in Frankfurt cases. The argument from masked abilities, however, is not confined to a compatibilist construal of (...) the relevant abilities. On a libertarian construal, Black deprives Jones of the opportunity to use his two-way power of choice to a different outcome than he actually uses it. I argue that being deprived of this opportunity is immaterial to what free will requires. In the second half of the paper, I relate my approach to the ‘flicker of freedom’ strategy. On closer look, we do find a residual ability that Jones not only possesses but also exercises in cases where Black intervenes. I argue that Jones tries to decide otherwise in these cases, that Black only thwarts the success of Jones’s attempt, and that being snatched from the wheel at the very last moment does not compromise Jones’s free will. (shrink)

We propose that typical schizophrenic delusions develop on the background of preexisting anomalies of self-experience. We argue that disorders of the Self represent the experiential core clinical phenomena of schizophrenia, as was already suggested by the founders of the concept of schizophrenia and elaborated in the phenomenological psychiatric tradition. The article provides detailed descriptions of the pre-psychotic or schizotypal anomalies of self-experience, often illustrated through clinical vignettes. We argue that delusional transformation in the evolution of schizophrenic psychosis reflects a global (...) reorganization of consciousness and existential reorientation, both of which radiate from a fundamental alteration of the Self. We critically address the contemporary cognitive approaches to delusion formation, often finding them inconsistent with the clinical features of schizophrenia or implausible from a phenomenological point of view. (shrink)

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the (...) energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU. (shrink)

Although California is often regarded as a regional civilization within the United States of America, this article argues that California justifies being considered a major civilization in itself, indeed the only genuinely 21stcentury civilization, if only because of its top ranking among world economies. The article traces the varied facets of California natural and social history to show the overriding importance of biodiversity as a perennially unifying theme for an understanding of that civilization, and it confronts the varied challenges to (...) this biodiversity that constitute more recent California history and politics. (shrink)

Three studies provided evidence that syntax influences intentionality judgments. In Experiment 1, participants made either speeded or unspeeded intentionality judgments about ambiguously intentional subjects or objects. Participants were more likely to judge grammatical subjects as acting intentionally in the speeded relative to the reflective condition (thus showing an intentionality bias), but grammatical objects revealed the opposite pattern of results (thus showing an unintentionality bias). In Experiment 2, participants made an intentionality judgment about one of the two actors in a partially (...) symmetric sentence (e.g., “John exchanged products with Susan”). The results revealed a tendency to treat the grammatical subject as acting more intentionally than the grammatical object. In Experiment 3 participants were encouraged to think about the events that such sentences typically refer to, and the tendency was significantly reduced. These results suggest a privileged relationship between language and central theory-of-mind concepts. More specifically, there may be two ways of determining intentionality judgments: (1) an automatic verbal bias to treat grammatical subjects (but not objects) as intentional (2) a deeper, more careful consideration of the events typically described by a sentence. (shrink)

Kevin Starr’s Golden Dreams is the culmination to some forty years of scholarship on the unfolding theme of a “California Dream,” that imaginal component to the growth of the self-identity and increasing international economic power of the most populous state in the American Union. Indeed, the period 1950–1963 that the book meticulously covers forms in many ways the most imposing manifestation of that Dream. This essay reviews the central features of Starr’s account, particularly the infrastructural foundations in transportation, water supply, (...) and higher education realized by a triumvirate of California governors, both Republican and Democrat, who regarded themselves as nonpartisan members of the “Party of California”; the expansion of California’s major cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco; the characteristics of the Silent Generation and the culture of “cool Jazz” that dominated the period; as well as the rise of dissident elements among environmentalists, minorities, and Beats, that foretold the protest period of the 1960s. This essay then asks whether Starr has avoided the larger implications of his own narrative that California from this period on had become in most respects a putative nation-state in its own right. From the global impact of its major media industry—Hollywood—to the continued advances of its economic clout throughout the rest of the century as at times the fifth largest economic entity in the world, California may need to be increasingly regarded as a world civilization in itself rather than as a regional civilization to which Starr’s historical narrative has so far constricted it.Corrigenda:The title of the work in footnote 1, p. 270, should be: “Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915”In footnote 6, p. 274, the title of the last work cited in the note should be: The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. (shrink)

Many existence propositions in constructive analysis are implied by the lesser limited principle of omniscience LLPO; sometimes one can even show equivalence. It was discovered recently that some existence propositions are equivalent to Bouwer's fan theorem FAN if one additionally assumes that there exists at most one object with the desired property. We are providing a list of conditions being equivalent to FAN, such as a unique version of weak König's lemma. This illuminates the relation between FAN and LLPO. Furthermore, (...) we give a short and elementary proof of the fact that FAN is equivalent to each positive valued function with compact domain having positive infimum. (shrink)

"Amongst the human mind's proudest accomplishments is the invention of a science dedicated to understanding itself: cognitive science. ... This volume is an authoritative guide to this exhilarating new body of knowledge, written by the experts, edited with skill and good judment. If we were to leave a time capsule for the next millennium with records of the great achievements of civilization, this volume would have to be in it."--Steven Pinker.

Zum ersten Mal wird hier die Entwicklung der Ideen in der Geographie in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert konsistent aufgezeigt. Die weit verstreute Literatur zu diesem Thema wurde erstmals gebundelt und diskutiert. Die grundlegenden Ideen und Traditionslinien der klassischen Geographie (19./20.Jh.) in Deutschland werden dargestellt: die Auffassung des Mensch-Raum-Verhaltnisses, die zunehmende Akzeptanz differenzierter Raumeinheiten, die Durchsetzung des aufklarerischen und emanzipatorischen "Possibilismus". "Geburtshelfer" in diesem Prozess sind einerseits J. G. Herder, andererseits - uber den franzosischen Geographen Vidal de la Blache (...) - J. J. Rousseau. Aus dem Inhalt: J. G. Herder und die Geographie - "Landschaft" - Das Mensch-Raum-Paradigma - Geode-terminismus - Possibilismus - Kulturen - Entwicklung des chorologischen Paradigmas - Vergleich mit dem franzosischen Geographen Vidal de la Blache - Einflusse Rousseaus - Classical German Geography: an overview in English. (shrink)

This title, which at first sight seems curious, shows Pieper's philosophical work as rooted in the basics. He takes his inspiration from Plato - and his Socrates - and Thomas Aquinas. With them, he is interested in philosophy as pure theory, the theoretical being precisely the non-practical. The philosophizer wants to know what all existence is fundamentally about, what "reality" "really" means. With Plato, Pieper eschews the use of language to convince an audience of anything which is not the truth. (...) If Plato was opposed to the sophists - among them the politicians - Pieper is likewise opposed to discourse that leads to the "use" of philosophy to bolster a totalitarian regime or any political or economic system. A fundamental issue for Pieper is "createdness." He sees this as the fundamental truth of our being - all being - and the fundamental virtue we can practice is the striving to live according to our perception of real truth in any given situation. The strength and attraction of Pieper's writing is its direct and intuitive character which is independent of abstract systematization. He advocates staying in touch with the "real" as we experience it deep within ourselves. Openness to the totality of being - in no matter what context being reveals itself - and the affirmation of all that is founded in this totality are central pillars of all his thinking. Given the "simplicity" of this stance, it is no surprise that much of it is communicated - and successfully - through his gift for illustration by anecdote. Like Plato, this philosopher is a story-teller and, like him, very readable. (shrink)

A model of writing in cognitive development, Understanding the Representational Mind synthesizes the burgeoning literature on the child’s theory of mind to provide an integrated account of children’s understanding of representational and mental processes, which is crucial in their acquisition of our commonsense psychology. Perner describes experimental work on children’s acquisition of a theory of mind and representation, offers a theoretical account of this acquisition, and gives examples of how the increased sophistication in children’s theory of mind improves their understanding (...) of social interaction and how, in the case of autistic children, an impairment results in social ineptitude. He analyzes the concepts of representation and metarepresentation as they appear in current discussion in the philosophy of cognitive science and explains how the unfolding of mental representation enables infants to comprehend change over time, engage in pretence, and use representational systems like pictures and language. Perner goes on to show that around age four children become able to understand the representational nature of pictures and language and to distinguish appearance from reality. Introducing basic distinctions in philosophy of mind for characterizing the mental, Perner discusses differences in how commonsense and cognitive psychology view the mind. Tracing the onset of a commonsense psychology in the social and emotional awareness of early infancy, he reveals how the child begins to take a cognitive, representational view of the mind with repercussions for children’s episodic memory, self control, and their ability to engage in deception. Perner concludes by describing the observed developmental changes as a case of theory change And contrasts his thesis with competing proposals. Josef Perner is Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Sussex University, Brighton, England. (shrink)

This article examines the structure of self-consciousness in people with schizophrenia. The findings indicate that our self-experience is not neutral with respect to the metaphysical status of the self and that it is important to attend carefully to the experience of the subject in order to understand schizophrenia. The results also suggest that the variable disruptions in the sense of self-presence, first-person perspective, and the phenomenality of experience in schizophrenics directly affect the minimal self and it may also have implications (...) for the narrative self. (shrink)

It is shown that, relative to Bishop-style constructive mathematics, the boundedness principle BD-N is equivalent both to a general result about the convergence of double sequences and to a particular one about Cauchyness in a semi-metric space.

The author notes that European spiritual culture has provided the world with two great myths: the myth of Jesus Christ and the Promethean myth. These two myths were an early indication of the rise of the hidden predatory spiritual paradigm. As a result of this paradigm (setting), later culture hypertrophically strengthened the human genetic predisposition towards an aggressive adaptive strategy. It is therefore necessary, according to the author, to expose and criticize this predatory paradigm and eventually transform it into a (...) biophilic paradigm. If we want to understand this requirement, we need a higher-order theory, an evolutionary ontological theory of culture. One of the ways of achieving this objective is to weaken and criticize the myth in which the defiant Prometheus acts as an honored civilization hero. In the second part the author briefly introduces his evolutionary-ontological concept of culture. He defends the claim that culture is an artificial system with its own internal information and that two types of order have come into existence within culture in harmony with this information (spiritual culture): 1. strictly information-prescribed structures (specifically the material culture and technology), 2. Spontaneously (through succession) originating structures (especially institutions). If we want to change the orientation of the cultural system, we have to change not only its current information but also its former spiritual setting (paradigm). (shrink)

Transactive memory theory describes the processes by which benefits for memory can occur when remembering is shared in dyads or groups. In contrast, cognitive psychology experiments demonstrate that social influences on memory disrupt and inhibit individual recall. However, most research in cognitive psychology has focused on groups of strangers recalling relatively meaningless stimuli. In the current study, we examined social influences on memory in groups with a shared history, who were recalling a range of stimuli, from word lists to personal, (...) shared memories. We focused in detail on the products and processes of remembering during in-depth interviews with 12 older married couples. These interviews consisted of three recall tasks: (1) word list recall; (2) personal list recall, where stimuli were relevant to the couples’ shared past; and (3) an open-ended autobiographical interview. We conducted these tasks individually and then collaboratively two weeks later. Across each of the tasks, although some couples demonstrated collaborative inhibition, others demonstrated collaborative facilitation. We identified a number of factors that predicted collaborative success, in particular, group-level strategy use. Our results show that collaboration may help or hinder memory, and certain interactions are more likely to produce collaborative benefits. (shrink)

The Nazis hijacked Germany’s medical establishment and appropriated medical language to hegemonize their ideology. In White Noise, shifting medical information stifles the public into docility. In Nazi Germany the primacy of language and medical authority magnified the importance of academic doctors. The muddling of identities caused complex insecurities and the need for psychological doubles. In White Noise, Professor Gladney is driven by professional insecurities to enact a double in Murray. Through the manipulation of language and medical overreach the U.S., exemplified (...) in the novel White Noise, has become a hypermedicalized society where the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath has eroded. (shrink)