Gesellschaftliche Veränderungen in grossem Massstab, von der Pluralisierung der Gesellschaft, der Digitalisierung, die als Vierte Kulturtechnik bezeichnet wird, bis hin zur Widerfahrnis von Kontingenzen wie Armut und Flüchtlingsströmen oder Umweltkatastrophen, stellen die Verantwortungsfähigkeit des Menschen vor neue Herausforderungen. Es wird dabei deutlich: Humanität und Vernunft, Würde und Freiheit verdanken ihren Gehalt und ihre Gestalt einem die Vernunft selbst übersteigenden Transzendenten, in dem die Vernunft je und je ihres eigenen Grundes ansichtig werden kann. Dass dieses Verhältnis zwischen Vernunft und ihrem transzendenten (...) Grund alle Wissens- und Lebensbereiche durchdringt, zeigen die interdisziplinären Beiträge dieses Bandes, die Fragen der Weltentstehung und Anthropologie, der Logik und Mystik, des Glaubens und des Gottesbildes, des Sinns und der Religion, der Gottesdienstpraxis und der Architektur behandeln. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

Proponents of the higher‐order (HO) theory of consciousness (e.g., Lau and Rosenthal) have recently appealed to brain lesion evidence to support their thesis that mental states are conscious when and only when represented by other mental states. This article argues that this evidence fails to support HO theory, doing this by first determining what kinds of conscious deficit should result when HO state‐producing areas are damaged, then arguing that these kinds of deficit do not occur in the studies to which (...) HO theorists appeal. The article also develops an apparatus that can be used to evaluate whether other lesion evidence confirms or disconfirms HO theory. (shrink)

The volume shows how both the distinction and connection between literature and poetry is staged within Heidegger's thought. It offers Heidegger's perspective on a range of key themes, topics, poets, and writers, including Friedrich Hölderlin, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, Euripides and Sophocles.

The article discusses different but related figures of trans-generational heritage in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Heinrich Heine, and Sigmund Freud. The common ground of these German-Jewish authors is an interpretative pattern within the theory of history/memory based in the idea of a strong bond of subsequent generations and their interrelation, which refers back to the biblical origins of the idea of ‘heritage’. Both Heine and Benjamin hypothesize a secret agreement between the generations, which might be (...) read as the origin of the idea of solidarity. In Freud’s psychoanalysis we find a complementary concept in the figure of ‘archaic heritage’ elaborated in Monotheism, namely a trans-generational trans- feral of repressed memories of the ancestors to their offspring. While Freud, not coincidentally after the First World War and during the rise of Nazism, discovers the unconscious transfer of guilt, Arendt seeks – after the Second World War – to regain, in the space between human beings, action as the space of the political. By emphasizing ‘natality’ as a basic human condition she invests policy in the acting of men in history with the condition of the possibility of a new beginning. The future, according to the insight of these authors, will not be created in abstract images or produced by means of a program, but will come into being by the treatment of the past and the heritage of those who lived before us and by the way in which we act in the present. (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints on (...) views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints on (...) views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

The article is primarily concerned with the notion of a truth-maker. An explication for this notion is offered, which relates it to other notions of making something such-and-such. In particular, it is shown that the notion of a truth-maker is a close relative of a concept employed by van Inwagen in the formulation of his Consequence Argument. This circumstance helps understanding the general mechanisms of the concepts involved. Thus, a schematic explication of a whole battery of related notions is offered. (...) It is based on an explanatory notion, introduced by the sentential connector “because”, whose function is examined in some detail. Finally, on the basis of the explication proposed, an argument is developed to the effect that the objects usually regarded as truth-makers are not apt to play this role. (shrink)

The chief goal of Velmans' article is to find a way to solve the problem of how conscious experience could have bodily effects. I shall discuss his treatment of this below. First, I would like to deal with Velmans' treatment of my own studies of volition and free will in relation to brain processes. Unconscious Initiation and Conscious Veto of Freely Voluntary Acts Velmans appropriately refers to our experimental study that found that onset of an electrically observable cerebral process preceded (...) the appearance of the subject's awareness of the conscious wish to act, by at least 350 msec. That indicated that the volitional process is initiated unconsciously. Velmans uses the term preconscious instead of unconscious. But, in fact, subjects have no reportable awareness or intuitive feeling that the brain has started a process before their conscious wish/urge to act appears. Unconscious initiation of the voluntary process appeared to mean that conscious free will could not actually 'tell' the brain to begin its preparation to carry out a voluntary act. (shrink)

It is widely believed that platonists face a formidable problem: that of providing an intelligible account of mathematical knowledge. The problem is that we seem unable, if the platonist is right, to have the causal relationships with the objects of mathematics without which knowledge of these objects seems unintelligible. The standard platonist response to this challenge is either to deny that knowledge without causation is unintelligible, or to make room for causal interactions by softening the platonism at issue. In this (...) essay I argue that the idea of causal relations with fully platonist objects is unproblematic. (shrink)

Sensations of acting and control have been neglected in theory of action. I argue that they form the core of action and are integral and indispensible parts of our actions, participating as they do in feedback loops consisting of our intentions in acting, the bodily movements required for acting and the sensations of acting. These feedback loops underlie all activities in which we engage when we act and generate our control over our movements.The events required for action according to the (...) causal theory, or Searle. (shrink)

The article scrutinises the semantics of canonical property designators of the forms ‘the property of being F’ and ‘F-ness’. First it is argued that, as their form suggests, the former are definite definitions, albeit of a special sort. Secondly, the prima facie plausible classification of the latter as proper names (which is often met in philosophical writings) is rejected. The semantics of such terms is developed and it is shown how its proper understanding yields important consequences about the concepts expressed (...) by these terms. (shrink)

Capacity : environment in a century of space -- Containment : the ship as a figure of enclosure and expansion -- Circulation : ecological life support systems -- Storage : the lifeboats of human ecology -- Classification : biosphere reserves -- Departure : the habitats of tomorrow.

During the seventeenth century Francisco Surez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age: he is now reemerging as a major subject of critical and historical investigation. A leading team of scholars explore his work on ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and theology. This will be the starting-point for future research on Surez.

Solutions to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness must accept conscious experience as a fundamental non-reducible phenomenon in nature, as Chalmers suggests. Chalmers proposes candidates for an acceptable theory, but I find basic flaws in these. Our own experimental investigations of brain processes causally involved in the development of conscious experience appear to meet Chalmers’ requirement. Even more directly, I had previously proposed a hypothetical ‘conscious mental field’ as an emergent property of appropriate neural activities, with the attributes of integrated subjective (...) experience and a causal ability to modulate some neural processes. This theory meets all the requirements imposed by the ‘hard problem’ and, significantly, it is experimentally testable. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that traditional theism, in its theory, history, and practice has implications for the philosophy of nature. Namely, nature should be designed around aesthetic or meaningful principles and nature should be engineered in order to fulfil a fairly well defined set of purposes. If theism is true, we should be able to study nature objectively as a teleological system. After all, the teleological structure of nature is more important to us as spiritual beings than its mechanisms. (...) Since a teleological philosophy of nature is no longer viable, traditional theism is untenable. (Published Online July 10 2006). (shrink)

Many attempts have been made in recent months to throw light on the problem of vagueness. That perfect precision is an ideal not to be attained by any language seems clear. But the obvious fact is that words and sentences in our languages are not so precise as we should like to have them, and we are naturally concerned with finding some sort of device by which vagueness can, in the first place, be detected and measured, and, in the second (...) place, eliminated or reduced to a minimum. I shall not be concerned in what follows with these various special attempts to meet the problem. My task is the somewhat more general one of showing that there are other factors contributing to vagueness, one of which is of particular significance when we leave the realm of ostensively defined symbols and begin to concern ourselves with suppositional symbols, constructs and hypotheses. (shrink)

Every natural scientist, I should suppose, is an empiricist. But to say this is not to assert that he is consciously such. Very few scientists would presumably consider themselves qualified to state even what is involved in the term, and still fewer would be willing to admit that they are adherents of the position. One might say that natural scientists, in their general outlook, presuppose—in one of the many meanings of this term—the empirical point of view. This probably means that (...) if one could make clear to them what is meant by the term, and if one could convince them that it is proper for scientists to take sides on philosophical issues, they should probably be willing to call themselves empiricists. Expressed otherwise, the general temper and spirit of natural science are those which philosophers tend to identify with the empirical outlook. (shrink)

The term qittīer designates the act of burning the food offerings, the 'iššîm, within the ritual sequence of all three types of sacrifice, the zébach, the ōlāh, and the minchāh. Incense is not an 'iššeh substance and is never associated with this piel conjugation. Qittēr appears to have been limited to intransitive use, while the synonyms hiqtîr and heelāh were used predominantly in transitive constructions. By the exilic or post-exilic period, hiqtîr seems to have become the preferred form for intransitive (...) use as well, supplanting qittēr completely. The term has no overtones of illegitimacy, as commonly presumed. (shrink)

This Note will address the salience of a simple analogy: will privacy law be for the information age what consumer protection law was for the industrial age? At the height of industrialization, the United States market for consumer products faced instability caused by a lack of consumer competence, lack of disclosure about product defects, and advancements in technology that exacerbated the market's flaws. As this Note will show, these same causes of market failure are stirring in today's economy as well. (...) The modern economy is not one of goods but of information, and although consumers have long been aware that their personal information may have marketing value, the Internet has fundamentally changed the scope and depth of information collection, exposing more consumers than ever to injuries requiring not just a comprehensive remedy but a wholesale change in the level of care of the information industry. Just as the mass-production economy precipitated a wave of reforms in consumer protection (in part thanks to a kick-start by author Upton Sinclair), so too must the mass-information economy adapt. After demonstrating the parallels between the problems of today with those of yesterday, this Note will propose parallel solutions, particularly a consolidation of regulatory power and a new tort for breach of information privacy, which draws its inspiration from general products liability. These proposals show that rather than reinvent the wheel, modern lawmakers can (and should) answer today's problems with lessons from the last century. (shrink)

_Steal This University_ explores the paradox of academic labor. Universities do not exist to generate a profit from capital investment, yet contemporary universities are increasingly using corporations as their model for internal organization. While the media, politicians, business leaders and the general public all seem to share a remarkable consensus that higher education is indispensable to the future of nations and individuals alike, within academia bitter conflicts brew over the shape of tomorrow's universities. Contributors to the volume range from the (...) star academic to the disgruntled adjunct and each bring a unique perspective to the discussion on the academy's over-reliance on adjuncts and teaching assistants, the debate over tenure and to the valiant efforts to organize unions and win rights. (shrink)

In what follows I shall consider symbols only in their function as conveyors of meanings. That symbols have emotive and volitional properties as well, that they have elaborate and complicated relations to the self which uses them, that they are themselves physical counters, i.e., noises, visual objects, etc.,—all of these facts I recognize but choose to neglect. When symbols are considered merely as instruments for the transfer of meanings, only one important assumption is involved, viz., symbols which are precisely defined (...) are to be preferred to symbols which either are undefined or are defined inadequately. In other words, the task of a theory of meaning is that of showing how symbols take on a maximum degree of precision in significance. (shrink)

The history of design arguments stretches back to before Aquinas, who claimed that things which lack intelligence nevertheless act for an end to achieve the best result. Although science has advanced to discredit this claim, it remains true that many biological systems display remarkable adaptations of means to ends. Versions of design arguments have persisted over the centuries and have culminated in theories that propose an intelligent designer of the universe. This volume is the only comprehensive survey of 2,000 years (...) of debate, drawing on both historical and modern literature to identify, clarify and assess critically the many forms of design argument for the existence of God. It provides a neutral, informative account of the topic from antiquity to Darwin, and includes concise primers on probability and cosmology. It will be of great value to upper-level undergraduates and graduates in philosophy of religion, theology, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of “folk psychology,” the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. According to Gordon, we attribute mental states to others not by representing those states or by applying the generalizations of theory, but by imagining ourselves in the position of a target to be interpreted and exploiting our own decision-making skills to make assertions which we then attribute to others as ‘beliefs’. I describe a leading objections to Gordon’s theory—the problem of (...) adjustment—and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer this objection. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon’s position still runs into a new problem concerning the epistemological presuppositions of belief-attribution. This suggests a new account of folk psychological explanation that draws on children’s basic folk epistemological knowledge. Identifying this new alternative helps undermine the simplicity of a theory based on simulation-based explanation. (shrink)

Some recent and historical writers in the philosophy of science have concerned themselves with a certain problem which seems to occupy, at least in the minds of those who have written about it, a position of peculiar importance. Whether the problem is really as significant as its authors maintain need not be decided here; certainly many writers in this area have either neglected it or made only vague allusions to it. It can best be described as the problem of the (...) development of science, and it is usually solved in terms of a certain theory that science passes in its growth, either naturally or under the control of conscious logical techniques, through various “stages” or “phases.” For some strange reason these levels are usually exactly three in number. One would like to believe that this number is not a magic one, but empirically demanded by the actual way in which the sciences develop. But the fact that the descriptions of these stages in the writings of the various authors appear to agree only in their triplicity, and not in content, would incline one to believe otherwise. There is, in fact, the slight suspicion that the number three has been preferred to the number two simply because a triad may be ordered in a way in which a couple may not, and to the number four or any larger number merely because of the preference for simplicity over complexity. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of the social process of unsilencing in the specific context of heterosexual relationships. Unsilencing is the process in which an individual woman becomes empowered to the extent of voicing what is silenced by structural hierarchies that shape her experiences of the heterosexual relationships she is involved in. I connect the process of unsilencing to the sociological notion of “negotiated order” and a feminist notion of the self as fragmented and continually changing. Unsilencing is conceived as (...) a response to power operating on three levels: emotional connection that empowers a contesting meaning structure; a process of distancing that empowers the individual in overcoming positioning processes; and an increased sense of authenticity in relation to the set of emotional management, language and beliefs embedded in the contesting meaning structure. (shrink)

Los ensayos de Otfried Hffe reunidos en El proyecto politico de la modernidad giran en torno a temas fundamentales de la etica, la filosofia politica, la filosofia del derecho y la antropologia filosofica, que se encuentran en el centro del debate contemporaneo. Las reflexiones desarrolladas a lo largo de los trabajos se inscriben en un dialogo productivo y continuo tanto con Aristoteles como con Kant. Asi, analiza si la etica aristotelica es una filosofia practica o un arte de vivir y (...) comprende la filosofia practica kantiana como capaz de ofrecer un parametro normativo no etnocentrico, multicultural, capaz de elucidar el estado del derecho y la democracia en el mundo globalizado actual. (shrink)