This chapter covers the traditional role of responsibility, and the possible connections between response and responsibility. These connections are explored through the advance of trust and the surplus of the extraordinary in relation to the Third Party. The idea of responsibility comes from the sphere of juridical law, and has a theological touch. The classical conception presented suffers from a permanent erosion that is reinforced by systemic constraints. Trust is a natural element of every community that is together applied by (...) common aims in life. The phenomenon of trust refers to the bond, the nexus, which holds together the members of a community, creating the requisite solidarity. The term ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’ should not primarily read as a substantive, but as a verb or as the derivative of a verb. Furthermore, it is noted that the responsive ethics proposed could function as a permanent corrective. (shrink)

Wiederkehr des Raumes?. Topologisches Paradigmen ; Rückkehr zum gelebten Raum ; Raumkonzepte und Raumpraktiken ; Regionale oder fundamentale Räumlichkeit ; Zweideutigkeiten und Paradoxien der Lebenswelt -- Polarität von Ort und Raum. Phänomenologische Topik ; Wo-Frage im Schatten der Was-Frage ; Ortsbestimmung als Antwort auf eine Wo-Frage ; Fremde und eigene Wo-Frage ; Hier als Standort : Grund und Boden ; Woher und Wohin : Wegstrecken ; Worin : offene und geschlossene Räume ; Ringsum : Umgebung, Umwelt und Welt ; Wie (...) weit : Vermessene Räume -- Leibliches Wohnen im Raum. Vielfalt des Raumes ; Verankerung im Hier ; Raumachsen ; Durchmessung, Dehnung und Schrumpfung des Raumes ; Nähe und Ferne ; Drinnen und Draußen ; Interieur und Exterieur im Blickfield der Malerei ; Raumanlage und Raumbühne ; Raumtechniken und Ortskarten ; Lokale Räume und globaler Raum -- Ortsverschiebungen. Hier und Anderswo ; Aktualität, Habitualität und Virtualität der räumlichen Bewegung ; Spuren der Zeit im Raum ; Zersprengter Raum ; Telepräsenz ; Fremdorte und andere Räume ; Gemeinorte und globaler Raum ; Gastlichkeit ; Coda : Topos : Atopie : Heterotopien -- Zeitverdoppelung und Zeitverschiebung. Zwischen Mythos und Logos ; Frage nach der Zeit ; Zeitverdoppelung in der Rede und Zeitverkörperung ; Zeitverschiebung zwischen Pathos und Respons ; Zeitverschiebung und Reaktionszeit ; Der entrückte Anfang im Roman und auf der Bühne ; Zeit der Sinne ; Jenseits von Erinnerung und Erwartung ; Rhythmen und Tempi ; Zwischen Leere und Erfüllung ; Coda : Anderswo enden -- Die verändernde Kraft der Wiederholung. Wiederholungsexperiment ; Sich wiederholdende Erfahrung ; Widerholung als Rettung aus der Zeit ; Altes und Neues im Widerstreit ; Unwiederholbares in der Zeit -- Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Zukünftigem im Anschluß an Aristoteles. Handlungsperspektive ; Die drohende Seeschlacht ; Wahrscheinlichkeit und Häufigkeit ; Zwischen Gewißheit und Ungewißheit ; Rückzug auf pratische Gewißheit ; Zwischen Entwurf und Erwartung ; Unwahrscheinliche Zukunft -- Kommen und Gehen in der Zeit im Anschluß an Merleau-Ponty. Frühe dialektik der Zeit ; Zeit als bloßes Nacheinander ; Totalität der Zeit : Präsenzfeld ; Riß der Zeit : Selbstaffektion ; Bewegung der Zeit : Vor- und Rückläufigkeit ; Wahrnehmung zwischen Vor- und Rückblick ; Handeln zwischen Vorsatz und Vorschlag ; Kommen und Gehen ; Chiasmus der Zeit -- Epilog : Verquickung von Ort, Raum und Zeit. (shrink)

Few would contest the fact that analytical philosophy has dominated philosophical practice in the English speaking world for about the last century. But dispute continues about both its origins and nature; whilst others question its value. Michael Dummett wholly embraced the analytical approach to philosophy, as he conceived of it. For him analytical philosophy marked itself off from its precursors and its alternatives, embodied in the Continental tradition, by taking the linguistic turn. And Frege was unequivocally the first philosopher to (...) take that auspicious turn, which ushered in a new method in philosophy. Henceforth philosophers were to approach the business of analyzing thought via the enterprise of analyzing language. So Dummett is presenting us with both a history lesson and a recommendation about how we ought to do philosophy. But is his reading of the history accurate? And is his conception of the nature of analytical philosophy viable? In order to reflect on these questions this collection brings together eight scholars who have made a serious business of reading Dummett. (shrink)

Certain anti-realisms about mathematics are distinguished by their taking proof rather than truth as the central concept in the account of the meaning of mathematical statements. This notion of proof which is meaning determining or canonical must be distinguished from a notion of demonstration as more generally conceived. This paper raises a set of objections to Dummett's characterisation of the notion via the notion of a normalised natural deduction proof. The main complaint is that Dummett's use of normalised natural deduction (...) proofs relies on formalisation playing a role for which it is unfit. Instead I offer an alternative account which does not rely on formalisation and go on to examine the relation of proof to canonical proof, arguing that rather than requiring an explicit characterisation of canonical proofs we need to be more aware of the complexities of that relation. (shrink)

Through a comparison of the phenomenological motif of the alien and the psychoanalytic motif of the unconscious, a critique is advanced against Cartesian dualism, which recurs today in the natural sciences and in the split of the contemporary individual, divided between spirit and nature, the proper world and the alien world, the inner sphere and the outer sphere. It is a matter of thinking of an original subtraction, an absent presence that begins with ourselves, in a slippage that achieves no (...) synthesis. (shrink)

Living corporeity is the intermediate element between nature and culture, which must be thought of as a reciprocal interconnection, since as corporeal beings we always move on a threshold. In the reflection of the bodily self, a doubling between the living body as a functioning subject and as a material object is revealed; after all, even one's own body sometimes takes on the features of a foreign body, as is the case in the experience of illness. In the technical instrument, (...) the body is prolonged and this highlights the connection between the technique of the thing and the technique of the self; however, despite the gradual autonomisation of the technical element from the living corporeity, there remains what escapes calculation and looms large in the subtraction of the alien. (shrink)

An ethical epoché is required to leave the terrain of a self-evident morality and question its origin. In particular, four fundamental motifs of the ethical dimension are identified: pathos, to be thematised as an alternative to the persistent activist unilateralism; response, which always involves body and soul; diastasis with its stumbles and subtractions; and finally coaffection, in which the social dimension of experience is announced. Ethical behaviour feeds on the magma of pathos, which in turn would be blind and directionless (...) without any ethos. (shrink)

Good’s theorem is the apparent platitude that it is always rational to ‘look before you leap’: to gather information before making a decision when doing so is free. We argue that Good’s theorem is not platitudinous and may be false. And we argue that the correct advice is rather to ‘make your act depend on the answer to a question’. Looking before you leap is rational when, but only when, it is a way to do this.

Bernhard Nickel presents a theory of generic sentences and the kind-directed modes of thought they express. The theory closely integrates compositional semantics with metaphysics to solve the problem that generics pose: what do generics mean? Generic sentences are extremely simple, yet if there are patterns to be discerned in terms of which are true and which are false, these patterns are subtle and complex. Ravens are black, and lions have manes: statistical measures cannot do justice to the facts, but (...) what else is there that has a hope of giving us insight into what we are capturing across so many domains? Nickel argues that generics are the top of a fundamentally explanatory iceberg, and that this explanatory framework is deeply intertwined with the semantics of the language we use to express them. In providing an integrated semantic and metaphysical theory of generics, he aims to solve old puzzles and draw attention to new phenomena. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Bernhard Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology for the discipline of cultural anthropology or ethnology, insofar as it understands itself as the “science of the culturally Other”. It discusses Waldenfels’s own engagement with ethnology and shows the compatibility of his approach with discussions within the discipline. The intertwining of ownness and alienness that is central to Waldenfels’s account of experience is applied to the problem of culture in ethnology. This leads to an acknowledgement of a domain (...) between cultures, a genuine interculturality, as the fundamental field of ethnological research, which, however, can only be addressed through indirect forms of representation. Such forms are identified in the practice of ethnographic citation, and through a reinterpretation of Horace Miner’s classical satire “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, thus demonstrating the possibility of a prospective “responsive ethnology”. (shrink)

I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go (...) on to sketch an inquiry-based view. (shrink)

Die Rede von einem Zwischenreich des Dialogs deutet hin auf den intermedHi. ren Charakter des Dialogs, in dem zwischen uns zustande kommt, was keiner fur sich zustande brachte. Stehen wir immer schon im Dialog, so ist fur jeden der Weg zu sich selbst nicht der kurzeste, sondern der langste, er ginge durch die Welt sowohl wie durch die Andern. Dieser Gesichtspunkt ist keines wegs selbstverstandlich, doch selbst dort, wo er sich Geltung ver schafft, wird er vielfach verdunkelt durch die Verwandlung (...) von Verschiedenem in Gegensatzliches, wenn etwa interpersonale Be ziehung und soziale Verhaltnisse, interpersonales Ereignis und anonyme Prozesse und Strukturen, personliche Umkehr und so ziale Veranderungen gegeneinander ausgespielt werden. N eigt die sogenannte Philosophie des Dialogs dazu, reine zwischenmensch liche Beziehungen abzulosen von der mundanen und sozialen Wirklichkeit, so tendiert ein Denken, das von Geschichte und Gesellschaft ausgeht, dahin, einzig den konkreten Entwicklungs gang einer Menschheit in Rechnung zu stellen. Der wechselseitig erhobene Vorwurf, man verliere sich hierin der AuBerlichkeit des Offentlichen und der bloBen Geschichte, man fluchte sich dort in die Innerlichkeit des Privaten und des bloBen Augenblicks, ware dann nur der Ausdruck dafur, daB entweder das Ganze ohne das Urspriingliche oder das Ursprungliche ohne das Ganze gesucht wird. Was hier auseinanderstrebt, nicht nur in der Theorie, sondern auch in der Lebenspraxis, sind zwei Weisen des mitmenschlichen Umgangs. (shrink)

The present paper reports the results of a vignette- and questionnaire-based research project investigating the influence of Moral Intensity (MI) on decision making in a New Zealand business context. The use of a relatively sensitive research design yielded results showing that – in contrast to previous research – objective manipulations, as well as subjective perceptions, of three of the six MI components were of particular importance in accounting for a comparatively large proportion of the variation in four outcome variables. There (...) were no interactions of appreciable magnitude between MI components, or variations across scenarios. Also, no support was found for a reliable multi-dimensional structure of perceptions of Moral Intensity. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

List-method directed forgetting is the demonstration that people can intentionally forget previously studied information when they are asked to forget what they have previously learned and remember new information instead. In addition, recent research demonstrated that people can selectively forget when cued to forget only a subset of the previously studied information. Both forms of forgetting are typically observed in recall tests, in which the to-be-forgotten and to-be-remembered information is tested independent of original cuing. Thereby, both LMDF and selective directed (...) forgetting have been studied mostly with unrelated item materials. The present study examined whether LMDF and SDF generalize to prose material. Participants learned three prose passages, which they were cued to remember or forget after the study of each passage. At the time of testing, participants were asked to recall the three prose passages regardless of original cuing. The results showed no significant differences in recall of the three lists as a function of cuing condition. The findings suggest that LMDF and SDF do not occur with prose material. Future research is needed to replicate and extend these findings with complex and meaningful materials before drawing firm conclusions. If the null effect proves to be robust, this would have implications regarding the ecological validity and generalizability of current LMDF and SDF findings. (shrink)

Suppose you’d like to believe that p, whether or not it’s true. What can you do to help? A natural initial thought is that you could engage in Intentionally Biased Inquiry : you could look into whether p, but do so in a way that you expect to predominantly yield evidence in favour of p. This paper hopes to do two things. The first is to argue that this initial thought is mistaken: intentionally biased inquiry is impossible. The second is (...) to show that reflections on intentionally biased inquiry strongly support a controversial ‘access’ principle which states that, for all p, if p is part of our evidence, then that p is part of our evidence is itself part of our evidence. (shrink)

From princesses who free princes to journalists who tell stories about natural catastrophes and, most generally, individual and collective actors who make sense of the world, narratives are everywh...

Introduction : facets of the alien -- The human as a liminal being -- Between pathos and response -- Response to the alien -- Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness -- Thresholds of attention -- Between cultures.

Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ‘p, but I shouldn’t believe p’. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are ‘elusive’ in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internalist principles. I (...) argue that this allows us to do justice to the motivations behind both (i) and (ii). And I explain in some detail what a view of evidence that implements this strategy, and makes it independently plausible, might look like. (shrink)

Theories of explanation seek to tell us what distinctively explanatory information is. The most ambitious ones, such as the DN-account, seek to tell us what an explanation is, tout court. Less ambitious ones, such as causal theories, restrict themselves to a particular domain of inquiry. The least ambitious theories constitute outright skepticism, holding that there is no reasonably unified phenomenon to give an account of. On these views, it is impossible to give any theories of explanation at all. I argue (...) that both the less ambitious and outright skeptical varieties are committed to a certain context-sensitivity of our explanatory discourse. And though this discourse is almost certainly context-sensitive in some respects, it does not exhibit the context-sensitivity less than fully ambitious theories are committed to. Therefore, all accounts that seek to restrict themselves in scope, including causal accounts of explanation, fail. (shrink)

In opposition to traditional forms of dualism and monism, the author holds that our bodily self includes certain aspects of otherness. This is shown concerning the phenomenological issues of intentionality, of self-awareness and of intersubjectivity, by emphasizing the dimension of pathos. We are affected by what happens to us before being able to respond to it by acts or actions. Every sense, myself and others are born out of pathos. The original alienness of our own body, including neurological processes, creates (...) shifting degrees of nearness and remoteness, and allows for pathological deviations such as depersonalisation, paranoia or trauma. Such a phenomenology of body crosses the borderlines of different disciplines. (shrink)

Essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of language and mind, Reading Brandom is also an excellent companion volume to Reading McDowell: On ...

In this article, I apply a structural-phenomenological conception of experience and self to the anthropological theorizing of spirit possession. In particular, I argue that a phenomenology of the alien, as elaborated by the philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels, allows for a more differentiated understanding of possession phenomena. Following a characterization of alienness—in conceptual distinction from the more common term “otherness”—as a dimension that necessarily eludes experience, I describe spirit possession as a cultural technology to appropriate the experiential alien by transforming it (...) into the symbolic other. I discuss this relation to the alien in thematic areas central to the anthropology of possession: illness and therapy, symbolism and naming, embodiment and self. (shrink)

Ceteris Paribus (cp-)laws may be said to hold only “other things equal,” signaling that their truth is compatible with a range of exceptions. This paper provides a new semantic account for some of the sentences used to state cp-laws. Its core approach is to relate these laws to natural language on the one hand — by arguing that cp-laws are most naturally expressed with generics — and to natural kinds on the other — by arguing that the semantics of generics (...) in the context of the special sciences are best spelled out by appeal to natural kinds. The paper then goes on to draw on these semantics in order to illuminate several problems raised by cp-laws, some familiar, some new. (shrink)

Kann der Johanneische Logosbegriff - besonders im Prolog des 4. Evangelisten - auf Heraklit zurückgeführt werden? Der Autor untersucht Inhalt und Umfang des Logosbegriffs bei Heraklit. Parallelen zwischen Heraklitischem und Johanneischem Logosbegriff werden aufgezeigt: bei Ewigkeitscharakter, bei der Schöpfungsrolle, beim Phänomen der Ablehnung und Aufnahme, bei der Aussage über die Göttlichkeit des Logos.