The paper presents a new proposal how to explain pictorial representation. Starting point is the phenomenological idea that pictures, in the first place, make something visible (instead of being a sign of something). Making something visible is taken as an achievement of the faculty of imagination, and the faculty of imagination in turn is taken to be a variety of our faculty to simulate (referring here to the concept of simulation as it is used in contemporary cognitive psychology, according to (...) which the ability to simulate e.g. other minds is the ability to reenact somebody else’s cognitive processes). Taken together, these pieces come down to the claim that pictorial representation of some x is simulating the perception of x with pictorial means; pictures prompt and guide such a simulation. Crucial is the addition »with pictorial means«. Picture-based simulation has constraints, which differ from those of perception and imagination. Therefore, in picture-based simulation perceptual processes are not simply copied but re-modeled and open to modification. The primary means of such modification are provided by the properties of pictures as material objects, such as their having a frame which encloses a two-dimensional surface. Therefore, being a material object promotes and shapes pictorial representation, instead of hampering it. (shrink)

Thirteen English-language papers, the proceedings of a conference held in Frankfurt in 2000, examine the culture of knowledge that surrounded Plato, contrasting it with Plato's idealised theory of knowledge. These specialised and annotated papers closely examine a number of Platonic texts including the Republic, Symposium and Gorgias. Extracts are in English translation.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 6 Seiten: 1057-1083.

How do listeners experience Jazz? This is a question also about how Jazz music organizes the listening time. A classically educated listener expects a piece of music to structure, unify and thereby re-constitute the externally given time frame. Such an expectation is foreign to Jazz music which doesn’t relate the moment to a goal provided by a large scale structure. Rather, one moment is carried on to the next, preserving the stimulus potentially ad infinitum. How does such an organization of (...) time affect the large scale form? The paper tries to answer this question by analyzing two examples which permit to trace the transformation of a classical form into a form germane to Jazz music. (shrink)

Die Dissoi Logoi - "Zweierlei Ansichten" - sind ein kurzer Traktat, der als Anhang zu den Schriften des kaiserzeitlichen Skeptikers Sextus Empiricus uberliefert wurde. Der von einem anonymen Autor wahrscheinlich an der Wende vom 5. zum 4. Jh. verfasste Text gibt einen einzigartigen Einblick in die Debatten und den Unterricht der Sophisten. ".

These specialised and annotated papers closely examine a number of Platonic texts including the Republic, Symposium and Gorgias. Extracts are in English translation.