Grace de Laguna was a philosopher working in the first part of the twentieth century on analytic and speculative philosophy, as well as on the psychology and philosophy of language, especially the social function of language. Joel Katzav’s lead essay focuses mainly on the former part of her work, while my commentary focuses mostly on the latter. Katzav shows how her work played a role in the development of analytic philosophy, I try to show how her work played a role (...) in the development of pragmatic linguistics, whose development overlapped with some aspects of analytic philosophy. I situate it in the context of an emerging ‘pragmatic Weltanschauung’ that was embraced by many working in linguistics, philology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and what would later be called linguistic pragmatics. (shrink)

This is the first day of our confinement here in Paris, which soon will feel a bit like house arrest. So, to help cheer you up, in these times of doom and gloom, I have decided to bring the museum to you in the form of a virtual exhibition thrice weekly. I have picked 25 photos from a work in progress I started years ago. The photos are portraits of visitors or guards in museums. It's candid photography, capturing life on (...) the run, a moment in time. I hope you will find many other ways to - Résidence numérique - Brigitte Cavanagh. (shrink)

Lucid dreaming refers to a dream state characterized by the dreamers awareness of being in a dream and being able to volitionally control its content. The aim of this study was to find neurophysiological evidence for the 7 criteria of lucid dreaming proposed by Paul Tholey. Each of the criteria was analyzed separately with regard to its underlying neurocircuits. We hypothesized that not one, but many regions are involved in the state of lucid dreaming. Our results have shown a satisfactory (...) overlap of the theoretical components and the brain regions activated during a lucid dream. During lucid dreaming, a brain network seems to emerge, that is more than the sum of its parts. Further research is needed to understand the psychoneurological underpinnings of lucid dreams. (shrink)

An important function of emoji as communicative symbols is to convey emotional content from sender to receiver in computer-mediated communication, e. g., WhatsApp. However, compared with real faces, pictures or words, many emoji are ambiguous because they do not symbolize a discrete emotion or feeling state. Thus, their meaning relies on the context of the message in which they are embedded. Previous studies investigated affective judgments of pictures, faces, and words suggesting that these stimuli show a typical distribution along the (...) big two emotion dimensions of valence and arousal. Also, emoji and emoticons have been investigated recently for their affective significance. The present study extends previous research by investigating affective ratings of emoji, emoticons and human faces and by direct comparison between them. In total, 60 stimuli have been rated by 83 participants, using the non-verbal Self-Assessment Manikin Scales for valence and arousal. The emotionality of the stimuli was measured on a 9-point Likert scale. The results show significant main effects of the factors “stimulus category” and “discrete emotion” including emotionality, valence and arousal. Also, the interaction between these two main factors was significant. Emoji elicited highest arousal, whereas stimuli related to happiness were rated highest in valence across stimulus categories. Angry emoji were rated highest in emotionality. Also, the discrete emotion was best recognized in emoji, followed by human face stimuli and lastly emoticons. (shrink)

The physics of condensed matter, in contrast to quantum physics or cosmology, is not traditionally associated with deep philosophical questions. However, as science - largely thanks to more powerful computers - becomes capable of analysing and modelling ever more complex many-body systems, basic questions of philosophical relevance arise. Questions about the emergence of structure, the nature of cooperative behaviour, the implications of the second law, the quantum-classical transition and many other issues. This book is a collection of essays by leading (...) physicists and philosophers. Each investigates one or more of these issues, making use of examples from modern condensed matter research. Physicists and philosophers alike will find surprising and stimulating ideas in these pages. (shrink)

John Ellis McTaggart defended an idealistic view of time in the tradition of Hegel and Bradley. His famous paper makes two independent claims (McTaggart1908): First, time is a complex conception with two different logical roots. Second, time is unreal. To reject the second claim seems to commit to the first one, i.e., to a pluralistic account of time. We compare McTaggarts views to the most important concepts of time investigated in physics, neurobiology, and philosophical phenomenology. They indicate that a unique, (...) reductionist account of time is far from being plausible, even though too many conceptions of time may seem unsatisfactory from an ontological point of view. (shrink)

There are many books on Kant's accounts of the laws of nature and of the moral law, but there is almost no literature that covers both topics in order to clarify their common grounds and their diff...

The physics of condensed matter, in contrast to quantum physics or cosmology, is not traditionally associated with deep philosophical questions. However, as science - largely thanks to more powerful computers - becomes capable of analysing and modelling ever more complex many-body systems, basic questions of philosophical relevance arise. Questions about the emergence of structure, the nature of cooperative behaviour, the implications of the second law, the quantum-classical transition and many other issues. This book is a collection of essays by leading (...) physicists and philosophers. Each investigates one or more of these issues, making use of examples from modern condensed matter research. Physicists and philosophers alike will find surprising and stimulating ideas in these pages. (shrink)

In 2001 a highly infectious animal disease, foot and mouth disease, broke out in the UK and spread rapidly. In May, when the spread seemed to be slowing down, new disease hotspots appeared in previously little affected regions, such as North Yorkshire. New biosecurity rules were imposed. Based on a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, this article shows that the biosecurity measures farmers implemented during the epidemic meant more than just reducing the risk of spreading FMD. For many, cleansing (...) and disinfecting became Foot and Mouth. Biosecurity actions became invested with symbolic values and, in particular, were ritualised as part of the symbolic spatial construction of an otherwise 'invisible' enemy. (shrink)

This is an intellectual-biographical research essay on D. I. Chyzhevśkyi (1894-1977), the internationally renowned Ukraine scholar, expert on the history of philosophy, on Russian and Ukrainian philology and Slavic-German intercultural relations. He studied at Saint Petersburg University 1911-1913 and at Kyiv University 1916-1919 where he graduated with distinction. His would have been a promising academic career, however, in 1921, for political reasons Chyzhevśkyi felt compelled to leave Ukraine. He went to Germany, studied with E. Husserl in Freiburg/Breisgau, met M. Heidegger, (...) H.-G. Gadamer and other young influential German philosophers. But political transformations again changed the course of his life. Despite the hardships he had to cope with in the following years he was incredibly productive in publishing, engaged actively in the famous Prague Linguistic Circle and in the first Conferences of the Hegel Association. He became Assistant Professor of Slavonic studies at Harvard University and from 1956 professor at Heidelberg University. Still, his success was not without a drop of bitterness. As an émigré Chyzhevśkyi remained a foreigner in his adopted country. The essay is based on original documents from German archives: institutional files and private letters, many of them yet unknown. Moreover, the article benefits from its author’s personal acquaintance with Chyzhevśkyi in his late Heidelberg years, 1960s and 1970s. (shrink)

In 2019 a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, spread around the world and a global pandemic was declared early in 2020. Currently, the pandemic has still not been brought under control. Over time, many new words have seeped into ordinary language and old words have changed their meanings. In this article, I trace the semantic development of the word ‘endemic’ which spread from science discourse into political discourse and then into public discourse and became a euphemism. People are told that they should (...) now ‘live with’ the pandemic, a pandemic that is no longer dangerous, because it has turned endemic. This euphemistic use of ‘endemic’ has serious consequences for pandemic management and disease control, not only in countries like the UK, where the word has, indeed, become ‘endemic’, but around the world, as the word has the social function of concealing the circulation of the virus and normalising the spread of infection, even death. (shrink)

What skills are required for working with computer-controlled machines in the manufacturing area? Taking the developments in the machine building sector in Germany as an example, it becomes apparent that a human-centred approach (skill-based manufacturing) offers the companies many advantages over Tayloristic forms of work organisation and automation. Closer observations reveal that skills and qualifications based on empirical knowledge and individual capabilities, such as a feeling for machines and materials, continue to play an important part in the work with computer-controlled (...) machines. So far, however, skills of this kind have received neither practical nor systematic consideration and are regarded as tacit skills in most cases. Therefore it is particularly the use of computer technology which is likely — in most cases unintentionally — to restrict and undermine the essential preconditions necessary for the development and application of such skills. (shrink)

After 150 years of scientific developments, the periodic system of chemical elements is still an icon of modern science. Its resilience is striking. The icon used today by scientists and teachers is in fact the outcome of many rearrangements and reinterpretations by the scientific community during that period. This success is often explained as a result of the underlying atomic structure, discovered in the first decades of the 20th century, an explanation that completely neglects the fine structure of the process (...) of ongoing renegotiation and successive stabilizations. How did indeed contemporary scientists navigate in times of reinterpretation? The physicist Lise Meitner and the chemist Ida Noddack were, in different ways, involved in discoveries and interpretations of the periodic system. In 1934, as part of the celebration of the centenary of Dmitri Mendeleev's birth, they each published an article on the system: Meitner in Die Naturwissenschaften, and Noddack in Angewandte Chemie. These two articles, written from the perspectives of a nuclear physicist and a chemist experienced in searching for undiscovered elements, respectively, constitute excellent sources for understanding what new discoveries and insights meant for the meaning and value of the periodic system at the very beginning of the nuclear age in science. Through an analysis of the two contributions, we will argue that resilience is the foremost value of the periodic system. We will also discuss what this value means for the future of the periodic system and its representations. (shrink)

What were the circumstances that led to the development of our cognitive abilities from a primitive hominid to an essentially modern human? The answer to this question is of profound importance to understanding our present nature. Since the steep path of our cognitive development is the attribute that most distinguishes humans from other mammals, this is also a quest to determine human origins. This collection of outstanding scientific problems and the revelation of the many ways they can be addressed indicates (...) the scope of the field to be explored and reveals some avenues along which research is advancing. Distinguished scientists and researchers who have advanced the discussion of the mind and brain contribute state-of-the-art presentations of their field of expertise. Chapters offer speculative and provocative views on topics such as body, culture, evolution, feelings, genetics, history, humor, knowledge, language, machines, neuroanatomy, pathology, and perception. This book will appeal to researchers and students in cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy. * Includes a contribution by Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited authors of our time. (shrink)

Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume explores the reality of the principle of human dignity – a core value which is increasingly invoked in our societies and legal systems. This book provides a systematic overview of the legal and philosophical concept in sixteen countries representing different cultural and religious contexts and examines in particular its use in a developing case law. Whilst omnipresent in the context of bioethics, this book reveals its wider use in healthcare more generally, treatment of prisoners, (...) education, employment, and matters of life and death in many countries. In this unique comparative work, contributing authors share a multidisciplinary analysis of the use of the principle of dignity in Europe, Africa, South and North America and Asia. By revealing the ambivalence of human dignity in a wide range of cultures and contexts and through the evolving reality of case law, this book is a valuable resource for students, scholars and professionals working in bioethics, medicine, social sciences and law. Ultimately, it will make all those who invoke the principle of human dignity more aware of its multi-layered character and force us all to reflect on its ability to further social justice within our societies. (shrink)

Over the last decades, many scholars, feminist and others, have argued that critique must be reframed in different and more ‘productive’ ways because its ‘conventional’ formulation and practice have outlived its usefulness as a conceptual tool. Instead, they have called for affirmation or affirmative critique and a more generative mode of critical engagement in the search for new imaginaries, transformative potentialities and other futures. New feminist materialist thought’s emergence is, we argue, symptomatic of this contemporary intellectual landscape that claims to (...) move beyond critique. While sympathetic with the desire to rethink a form of critique that speaks to the (urgent) politics of the present and the remaking of political imaginaries, we argue that the theoretical gesture to move beyond critique may offer a potentially troubling remapping organised around certain kinds of repression (of the undetermined and ambivalent work of critique) and amnesia (of feminist genealogies and over different feminist projects’ conceptualisation of matter) that yield a politics without politics. (shrink)

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (shrink)

Brigitte Lion and Diana Stein have, in The Tablets from the Temple Precinct at Nuzi, joined forces to edit the texts of the sixty-nine Nuzi texts found in temples and to publish and edit their 282 seal impressions. This masterful collaboration excels in many areas, including in-depth prosopographical analysis and thorough integration of the local seal practice into the orbit of textual analysis. This volume sets a standard of text edition and analysis that dwarfs the achievements of the students (...) of Nuzi from the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and even since. Nevertheless, the raison d’être of this heterogeneous group of texts in the context of their storage in temples remains enigmatic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 447-448 [Access article in PDF] Brigitte Sassen, translator and editor. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 331. Cloth, $54.95. Brigitte Sassen has translated and edited an extremely useful collection of texts dating from the years 1782 to 1789. Most of the texts were written by Kant's (...) empirically minded critics, but a few are the work of defenders of the Critical philosophy. Although some have been translated before—e.g., the notorious Feder/Garve review of the first Critique that prompted Kant's vitriolic response in the Prolegomena, the original Garve review that served as the basis of the Feder/Garve review, and Jacobi's critique of Kant's transcendental idealism—the entire anthology is the first ever to be devoted exclusively to English translations of some of the first reactions to and defenses of Kant's theoretical philosophy. All of this makes for an exciting event in Kant studies.Sassen identifies three major trends in Kant criticism that began in 1782. The first is the empiricist reaction to Kant's theoretical writings. Sassen considers the year 1789 the endpoint of this trend, since critical attention, she argues, shifted around that time to the rationalist reaction to Kant's writings. The initial wave of rationalist criticism, which constitutes the second trend, lasted until 1793. The third and final trend, she says, is the more forward-looking one that eventually blossomed into the systems of post-Kantian thought.Given such a wealth of material, Sassen has focused on Kant's empiricist critics, choosing the writers and topics most representative of the overall empiricist critique of the 1780s. The selections are divided into five sections. The first consists of the Feder/Garve and Garve reviews (from 1782 and 1783, respectively). Since these were the very first reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason, they helped to formulate many of the classic objections to it. For example, not only does the standard charge of Berkeleyan idealism originate in these reviews, but Feder and Garve also express concerns about Kant's ability to distinguish between reality and illusion if nothing in sensation itself determines the understanding to combine sensations in one way as opposed to another. The second section contains discussions of the Transcendental Aesthetic, including an early version of the "neglected alternative" charge more famously made by Trendelenburg in the nineteenth century. Hermann Andreas Pistorius, one of the most sophisticated of Kant's empiricist critics, argues that Kant has not ruled out the possibility that space and time are both forms of sensibility and properties of things in themselves. The third section (especially Jacobi's famous critique) explores the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, the problem of affection, and other topics touching on the very nature of Kant's idealism. The fourth section deals with various issues involving the table of categories. For example, Kant's critics had doubts about its completeness, and they were also puzzled as to how a priori concepts could be applied to ordinary experience. The fifth and final section looks at the contrast between empiricism and purism, that is, the overall adequacy of empiricist and Kantian approaches to issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Here we find Pistorius once again writing thoughtfully about the Critical philosophy, this time in response to Carl Christian [End Page 447] Erhard Schmid, the author of a dictionary for the "easier use" of Kant's writings that went through several editions in the late 1780s and 1790s.This brief sketch of Sassen's book gives only an inadequate idea of its richness and usefulness. Her introduction, which is thorough and informative, patiently sorts out the various players in the debates of the 1780s, outlines their arguments with Kant and one another, and even describes the nature of periodical publication in late eighteenth-century Germany. The editorial apparatus includes short biographies of the participants in the debates as well as the other authors mentioned throughout the book... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.2 (2001) 205-209 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway Banning Human Cloning-Then What? Cynthia B. Cohen The public wonder and concern that accompanied the birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep, four years ago died down soon after her arrival. Little has been heard about human reproductive cloning since then in the public square. This silence was pierced recently when two groups each (...) announced its intention to clone a child from a human being within the next few years.The Raelians, a religious organization, disclosed in October 2000 that they had found a grieving American couple willing to pay $500,000 to clone their deceased child and that they would proceed with cloning in a secret laboratory within the United States. A few months later, an international consortium led by Pavos Zavos, Ph.D., a University of Kentucky emeritus professor of biology, and Severino Antinori, M.D., an Italian infertility specialist, declared that it intended to clone the first human within two years at an undisclosed location outside the United States. These announcements led Representative James Greenwood (R-PA), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to convene a hearing on human cloning on 28 March 2001.Why did human reproductive cloning suddenly become of concern to the House of Representatives? What will the federal government do with regard to the development of human cloning at this point in time? And what should it do to address human cloning in the long-term? I will briefly highlight the major controversies that surfaced at the hearing and then consider the broader questions. Scientific Controversies The initial question of concern to the House subcommittee members was whether cloning science has now reached the point of application to humans. Scientists at the hearing offered widely diverging views about this. Zavos testified that only a small number of cloned animals has died after birth and declared that the key to avoiding impaired human clones is to engage in prenatal screening. Consequently, it is now safe to undertake human cloning, he maintained. He was supported in this view by Brigitte Boisselier, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor [End Page 205] of chemistry at Hamilton College and scientific director of the Raelians, who argued that human cloning would not give rise to the problems that have been encountered in nonhuman mammalian cloning.However, professor of veterinary medicine Mark Westhusin, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Rudolf Jaenisch, Ph.D., maintained that the same sorts of problems that have appeared in nonhuman mammalian cloning would reappear in human cloning. Westhusin stated that mammals have incurred serious defects leading to spontaneous abortion and that mammalian newborns often display severe respiratory and circulatory problems. The most likely explanation for such abnormalities, Jaenisch hypothesized, is that in cloning, the genetic reprogramming that governs the way an organism develops must take place in a much shorter period of time than in coital or in vitro reproduction. This may result in faulty reprogramming leading to dysregulation of gene expression and consequent genetic defects in cloned animals. There is good reason to think that this also would occur in human cloning, Jaenisch maintained. Until reproductive cloning research has been carried out on several generations of primates and is better understood, he argued, human cloning should not be attempted. Even then, several generations of descendants of human clones would have to be observed before scientists could be sure that it would not have a destructive impact on humans. This process could take as long as a century. Ethical Controversy Bioethicists who testified focused on those aspects of the ethical controversy surrounding human cloning that are of particular interest to public policy makers. Thomas Murray, Ph.D., President of The Hastings Center and a member of NBAC, maintained that human cloning is still unsafe, as NBAC had predicted, and that, if carried out, would leave in its wake "damaged women, many dead fetuses, and children born with serious impairments." He expressed particular concern that couples suffering... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 447-448 [Access article in PDF] Brigitte Sassen, translator and editor. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 331. Cloth, $54.95. Brigitte Sassen has translated and edited an extremely useful collection of texts dating from the years 1782 to 1789. Most of the texts were written by Kant's (...) empirically minded critics, but a few are the work of defenders of the Critical philosophy. Although some have been translated before—e.g., the notorious Feder/Garve review of the first Critique that prompted Kant's vitriolic response in the Prolegomena, the original Garve review that served as the basis of the Feder/Garve review, and Jacobi's critique of Kant's transcendental idealism—the entire anthology is the first ever to be devoted exclusively to English translations of some of the first reactions to and defenses of Kant's theoretical philosophy. All of this makes for an exciting event in Kant studies.Sassen identifies three major trends in Kant criticism that began in 1782. The first is the empiricist reaction to Kant's theoretical writings. Sassen considers the year 1789 the endpoint of this trend, since critical attention, she argues, shifted around that time to the rationalist reaction to Kant's writings. The initial wave of rationalist criticism, which constitutes the second trend, lasted until 1793. The third and final trend, she says, is the more forward-looking one that eventually blossomed into the systems of post-Kantian thought.Given such a wealth of material, Sassen has focused on Kant's empiricist critics, choosing the writers and topics most representative of the overall empiricist critique of the 1780s. The selections are divided into five sections. The first consists of the Feder/Garve and Garve reviews (from 1782 and 1783, respectively). Since these were the very first reviews of the Critique of Pure Reason, they helped to formulate many of the classic objections to it. For example, not only does the standard charge of Berkeleyan idealism originate in these reviews, but Feder and Garve also express concerns about Kant's ability to distinguish between reality and illusion if nothing in sensation itself determines the understanding to combine sensations in one way as opposed to another. The second section contains discussions of the Transcendental Aesthetic, including an early version of the "neglected alternative" charge more famously made by Trendelenburg in the nineteenth century. Hermann Andreas Pistorius, one of the most sophisticated of Kant's empiricist critics, argues that Kant has not ruled out the possibility that space and time are both forms of sensibility and properties of things in themselves. The third section (especially Jacobi's famous critique) explores the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, the problem of affection, and other topics touching on the very nature of Kant's idealism. The fourth section deals with various issues involving the table of categories. For example, Kant's critics had doubts about its completeness, and they were also puzzled as to how a priori concepts could be applied to ordinary experience. The fifth and final section looks at the contrast between empiricism and purism, that is, the overall adequacy of empiricist and Kantian approaches to issues in metaphysics and epistemology. Here we find Pistorius once again writing thoughtfully about the Critical philosophy, this time in response to Carl Christian [End Page 447] Erhard Schmid, the author of a dictionary for the "easier use" of Kant's writings that went through several editions in the late 1780s and 1790s.This brief sketch of Sassen's book gives only an inadequate idea of its richness and usefulness. Her introduction, which is thorough and informative, patiently sorts out the various players in the debates of the 1780s, outlines their arguments with Kant and one another, and even describes the nature of periodical publication in late eighteenth-century Germany. The editorial apparatus includes short biographies of the participants in the debates as well as the other authors mentioned throughout the book... (shrink)

Der bedeutendste Vertreter der Stoa in Rom, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, der Erzieher Neros, hinterließ ein umfangreiches philosophisches Werk. Es enthält bemerkenswerte theoretische Äußerungen über die natürliche Veranlagung der Frau und das Verhältnis der Geschlechter, eindrucksvolle Frauenporträts sowie zwei Trostschriften, die sich explizit an zwei Frauen richten. Das hier zutage tretende Frauenbild Senecas erscheint auf den ersten Blick zwiespältig und inkonsequent. Die Untersuchung der einschlägigen Passagen, die traditionelles römisches Denken, stoische Lehre, pädagogische Absicht und persönliche Erfahrung spiegeln, zeigt aber, daß der (...) Philosoph bei der Beurteilung des menschlichen Sittenverhaltens keine geschlechtliche, sondern eine graduelle Differenzierung vornimmt, die ethische Gleichheit von Mann und Frau, die Forderung nach gleicher Erziehung und Bildung vertritt und der Frau in demselben Maße wie dem Mann die Befähigung zukommen läßt, sich durch die Beschäftigung mit der Philosophie dem stoischen Ideal anzunähern. (shrink)

After the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were adopted in 2011, an international treaty has been being negotiated since 2014. The two instruments reveal similarities and also conflicts regarding the adequate organization of the global economy based on human rights. The focus in this article will be on the processes leading to these instruments, because they themselves mirror different understandings of governance in the field of business and human rights as well as the struggle over the power (...) of definition and legitimacy. The UNGPs were developed on the basis of global multi-stakeholder consultations, underlining legitimacy through broad inclusion. There are varying judgements as to the success of this approach. The process towards the treaty follows the traditional path of negotiations at UN level. These negotiations reveal a struggle for recognition of the legitimacy of the process itself. Both procedures have shortcomings with regard to legitimacy and show the need for a revision concerning the inclusion of stakeholders. The complementarity of a soft and hard law instrument may enhance the creation of a level playing field in the global economy, thereby strengthening human rights. (shrink)

Critical Idealism in the Eyes of Kant's Contemporaries BRIGITTE SASSEN THE IDEALISM DEBATES between Kant and his contemporaries were protracted and vehement. Interestingly, all parties in the debates -- Kant's critics, defend- ers, and Kant himself -- began with basically the same conception of idealism as a position that is either skeptical with regard to the inde- pendent existence of the external world , or that denies the existence of ma- terial substance outright .' Positions quickly diverge, however, when (...) it comes to transcendental idealism. Kant's crit- ics argued consistently that transcendental idealism reduces to material idealism. Kant rejected these arguments, insisting, in turn, that transcendental idealism is the only escape from material idealism. 2 Nonetheless, he was influenced by these criticisms. He repeatedly returns to the differentiation between transcendental and material idealism in the years following 17 81,3 and he casts these differences ' This is a paraphrase of the definition that appears in the introductory paragraph of the B- Refutation . Kant's contemporaries might not have bothered to make the differentiation between skeptical and dogmatic idealism, but they certainly agreed with the general terms in which Kant describes idealism. His definition is closely echoed by.. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss some systematic issues of Arthur Danto's philosophy of art and art history from a Hegelian perspective. Belonging to "Absolute Spirit," art can be called a "spiritual kind." Since spiritual kinds are reflective and self-determining, they are not susceptible to philosophical definition. Nevertheless, elements of essentialism can be maintained when describing art's historicity and conceptual structure. To this end, "art" can be interpreted as a two-tier concept: in inherently reflecting its concept, it projects its own (...) conditions into the past, co-opting "prehistorical" artworks as predecessors and classical examples. Hegel's view of art as conceptually structured in itself can have disenfranchising or reenfranchising consequences: either reducing art to minor philosophy, or acknowledging its privileged access to its own essence. After Danto's detachment of the philosophy of art from aesthetics, Hegel would himself be deprived of the possibility to "define" art by intuition . Even if the spirit consists of essential kinds, philosophy is not in a privileged position to establish the essence of art and thus the difference between art and philosophy. Rather, philosophy must acknowledge art as a neighbor and as partner in a dialogue. (shrink)

This paper deals with some structural properties of the sequent calculus and describes strong symmetries between cut-free derivations and derivations, which do not make use of identity axioms. Both of them are discussed from a semantic and syntactic point of view. Identity axioms and cuts are closely related to the treatment of negation in the sequent calculus, so the results of this article explain some nice symmetries of negation.

Le rapport entre féminisme et communisme est ambigu, souvent difficile certes, mais parfois aussi productif. C’est ce que démontrent les contributions du numéro 6 d’Aden, revue publiée par leGroupe Interdisciplinaire d’Études Nizaniennes,consacré à cette thématique. L’approche choisie est biographique et littéraire. C’est d’abord à travers la trajectoire et les écrits d’actrices et d’acteurs historiques que sont abordées la question de la place des femmes et du féminisme dans le communisme et...

Die Arbeit untersucht die auflagenstärkste und international bekannteste deutsche Zeitung des 18. Jahrhunderts, die "Staats- und Gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten", mit dem Ziel, ihre Rolle als Instrument der Aufklärung zu analysieren. Basis der Studie sind als regelmäßige Stichprobe die Jahrgänge 1731, 1741,..., 1781. Auf einen ersten Teil, der sich mit der Unternehmensgeschichte der Zeitung, ihrer Konzeption sowie den Prinzipien der 'unpartheylichen' Nachrichtenmeldung in der politischen Berichterstattung und der 'unpartheylichen' Kritik in den Rezensionen des "Hamburgischen Correspondenten" beschäftigt, folgt ein (...) zweiter inhaltsanalytischer Teil. Dort liegt das Interesse nicht primär auf der Rezeption bestimmter Ereignisse oder Schriften, die von der Forschung als 'Meilensteine' der Aufklärungsbewegung ausgemacht wurden. Vielmehr werden in fünf zentralen Themenbereichen (Wissenschaftsverständnis, Literaturkritik, Rezeption staatswissenschaftlicher und ökonomischer Theorieelemente, bürgerliches Selbstverständnis, Frauenbild) für die Aufklärung typische Argumentationsmuster und Werte nachgewiesen, die den Zeitungslesern durch wiederholte Lektüre so vertraut werden mußten, daß sie ihre Weltanschauung im Sinne der Aufklärung beeinflussen konnten. (shrink)

This volume offers a broad, philosophical discussion on mechanical explanations. Coverage ranges from historical approaches and general questions to physics and higher-level sciences . The contributors also consider the topics of complexity, emergence, and reduction. Mechanistic explanations detail how certain properties of a whole stem from the causal activities of its parts. This kind of explanation is in particular employed in explanatory models of the behavior of complex systems. Often used in biology and neuroscience, mechanistic explanation models have been often (...) overlooked in the philosophy of physics. The authors correct this surprising neglect. They trace these models back to their origins in physics. The papers present a comprehensive historical, methodological, and problem-oriented investigation. The contributors also investigate the conditions for using models of mechanistic explanations in physics. The last papers make the bridge from physics to economics, the theory of complex systems and computer science . This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers with an interest in the philosophy of science, scientific explanation, complex systems, models of explanation in physics higher level sciences, and causal mechanisms in science. (shrink)

This article adds to earlier research revealing that the American news media did not discharge their responsibility as a watchdog press in the post-9/11 years by failing to scrutinize extreme and unlawful government policies and actions, most of all the decision to invade Iraq based on false information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction arsenal. The content analyses presented here demonstrate that leading US news organizations, both television and print, did not expressly refer to human rights violations when (...) they reported on the torturing of foreign detainees during “enhanced interrogations” in US-run prison facilities abroad and the killing of civilians, including children, in US drone strikes overseas and outside theaters of war. Moreover, by framing torture and the “collateral damage” caused by drone-launched missile attacks episodically rather than in the context of human rights, the news media failed to alert the American public to the grave humanitarian violations in the so-called war on terrorism during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. (shrink)

Entrepreneurs who start a business to serve both self-interests and collective interests by addressing unmet social and environmental needs are usually referred to as sustainable entrepreneurs. Compared with regular entrepreneurs, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurs face specific challenges when establishing their businesses owing to the discrepancy between the creation and appropriation of private value and social value. We hypothesize that when starting a business, sustainable entrepreneurs feel more hampered by perceived barriers, such as the institutional environment and have a different (...) risk attitude and perception than regular entrepreneurs. We use two waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on entrepreneurship, which contains information on start-up motivations, start-up barriers, and risk perceptions of approximately 3000 business owners across 33 countries. We find that sustainable entrepreneurs indeed perceive more institutional barriers in terms of a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support at business start-up than regular entrepreneurs. Further, no significant differences between sustainable and regular entrepreneurs are found in terms of their risk attitudes or perceived financial risks. However, sustainable entrepreneurs are more likely to fear personal failure than regular entrepreneurs, which is explained by their varied and complex stakeholder relations. These insights may serve as an important signal for both governments and private capital providers in enhancing the institutional climate. (shrink)

Brigitte Bourgeois and Philippe Jockey Gold and Marble: the Gilded Hellenistic Sculptures of Delos p. 331-349 The investigation we are conducting on the polychromy of the Hellenistic sculptures of Delos has enabled us to add to the corpus of gilded marble works and to refine the typology. A visual examination of the sculptures through a video-microscope, combined with an analysis of the remains isolated by this means under X-fluorescence, has revealed the existence of three large types of gold leaf (...) gilding on marble at Delos in around 100 BC: totally gilded statues, works on which the gilding forms only an added colouring to the general polychromy, and works that we propose to call "chrysochromes", which present a singularity not hitherto recognised of a very bright polychromy on the clothed parts associated with gold on the nude parts. Among the number of important results of this enquiry may be counted the revelation of the overall gilding on the Delian copy in the National Museum at Athens of the Polyclitus Diadumenus, carved and gilded in imitation of a gilt bronze or even a gold statue. Such a use of gold leaf gilding on the Delos marbles calls in any case for a reconsideration of the question of the reception in antiquity of such works, as well as of such a success of gold at Delos and no doubt elsewhere in the Greek world in the same period. (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-healing forces has again and again challenged doctors in the different historical periods of medical science. They relied on effects of self-healing forces in diagnosis and therapy. They also tried to explain these effects based on the current model of organism. The understanding of this phenomenon has always influenced the understanding of therapy and played a role in defining the concept of health and disease. In the 17th and 18th century the idea of self-healing force was interpreted (...) as a phenomenon related to the organic forces, whereas in the 19th century the explanation was reduced to a materialistic mechanism. Nowadays the knowledge of heath-shock-proteins open the way of a new understanding of the organic defense mechanisms. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin, der Traum und das Bild des Weiblichen Geschichtsphilosophie aus gendertheoretischer Perspektive. 0Karin Stögner: 0Beschädigtes Leben und antisemitische „Schiefheilung". Freud und Adorno revisited.0Ljiljana Radonic: 0Autonomie versus Engagement? Über Adorno und Brecht. 0Gerhard Scheit: 0„Une promesse de bonheur". Herbert Marcuses „Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur".0Daniela Berner und Florian Wagner: 0Gebrochene Geschichte, Bedrängte Gegenwart. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines fremdgestellten Blicks 0auf die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit im Film. 0Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann: 0Das drastische Medium. Über Adornos Kritik des Films. 0Christoph Hesse: 0Träumerinnen im Wachen. (...) Die „Kollektivträume" der Comics und die Kritische Theorie. 0Barbara Eder : 0Verehrte Unsichtbare!"0Über die Kunst des Hörens bei Walter Benjamin und Theodor W. Adorno 0Christine Ehardt: 0Exkursion 0Shopping Mall, mit Walter Benjamin u.a. 0Anette Baldauf : 0Zum Einbruch des.Realen' in die Gegenwart 0Eingedenken, Erinnern, Katharsis 0Sara Vorwalder und Veronika Zangl : 0„Alles wirklich Brauchbare besteht in Aushilfen". Zwei Lektüren zu Oskar Negt und Alexander Kluges Geschichte und Eigensinn 0Valentin Mertes und Michael Paninski : 0„Die Nord-West-Passage der Revolution" 0Herrschaftsverhältnisse und die situationistische Kartographierung 0der Stadtlandschaft 0Brigitte Marschall: 0. (shrink)

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well-known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the (...) potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics. (shrink)

This book, first published in 2000, offers translations of the initial critical reactions to Kant's philosophy. Also included is a selection of writings by Kant's contemporaries who took on the task of defending the critical philosophy against early attacks. The first aim of this collection is to show in detail how Kant was understood and misunderstood by his contemporaries. The second aim is to reveal the sorts of arguments that Kant and his first disciples mounted in their defense of the (...) theoretical philosophy. The third aim of the book is to contribute to an understanding of the development of Kant's critical philosophy after its initial formulation in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in particular why Kant made the changes he did in the second edition of the work in 1787. This collection, which includes a glossary of key terms and biographical sketches of the critics on both sides of the debate, is a major addition to Kant scholarship and should be seen as a companion volume to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

Climate scepticism in the sense of climate denialism or contrarianism is not a new phenomenon, but it has recently been very much in the media spotlight. When, in November 2009, emails by climate scientists were published on the internet without their authors' consent, a debate began in which climate sceptic bloggers used an extended network of metaphors to contest science. This article follows the so-called 'climategate' debate on the web and shows how a paradoxical mixture of religious metaphors and demands (...) for 'better science' allowed those disagreeing with the theory of anthropogenic climate change to undermine the authority of science and call for political inaction with regard to climate change. (shrink)

La Renaissance commence vraiment avec Pléthon, contemporain de Nicolas de Cues et qui se voulait comme lui romain, mais du point de vue de Constantinople. Pléthon a conçu le modèle d'une constitution qui permettrait à tous les peuples de coexister en paix. Au temps où l'Occident latin est largement aristotélicien, il plaide pour le retour à Platon, l'idéalisme, la théologie affirmative.

Rapprocher Facebook du Kula mélanésien, un système archaïque d’échanges intertribaux décrit par Marcel Mauss, permet de souligner la capacité de la plateforme phare du Web 2.0 à répondre à des besoins socioculturels anthropologiquement attestés. Tous deux obéissent à une contrainte implicite de réciprocité qui, au-delà du contenu matériel des échanges, possède une fonction symbolique : les interactions mises en œuvre et la recherche de partenaires traduisent une quête de prestige, de mana selon le fameux terme chinook. Le Kula et les (...) murs de Facebook offrent une immense vitrine où chacun valorise son mana et scrute celui d’autrui tout en cherchant de nouveaux partenaires. Mobiliser le Kula tel un modèle de Simmel – un schème d’intelligibilité – indique l’ancienneté de ces traits culturels : la combinaison des dimensions matérielle et symbolique dans les échanges entre pairs et, en l’absence d’instance régulatrice, le risque lié à l’emballement de ce processus inévitablement concurrentiel.Our comparison between Facebook and Melanesia’s Kula, an archaic system of inter-tribal exchanges described by Marcel Mauss, has highlighted the ability of the flagship Web 2.0 platform to respond to anthropologically verified socio-cultural needs. Both systems obey an implicit demand for reciprocity, which, over and above the actual content of exchanges, has a symbolic function: the interactions at play and the search for partners reflect a quest for prestige, or mana as it is famously known in Chinook. Kula and Facebook’s walls are a gigantic shop window where anyone can show off their mana and look at other people’s, while also seeking out other partners. The use of the Kula as described by Simmel – as a model of intelligibility – suggests the ancient roots of these cultural traits: the combination of material and symbolic dimensions in exchanges between peers and, if there is no regulating authority, the risk that this inevitably competitive process may run out of control. (shrink)

One of the first Swiss performance artists, Manon has fashioned a career for herself out of the identities of others. Whether exploring the limits of gender or the beauty of decay, Manon—through her personas, installations, and performance pieces—continually foregrounds the instability of place and self. Her most recent project, She Was Once MISS RIMINI, is one of her most brutal and touching. Here, she literally depicts imagined futures for an aging beauty queen. Each exquisite image in this pictorial essay teases (...) out the possible paths Miss Rimini—an alter-ego for Manon who “happened” upon a beauty pageant in the early 1970s and walked away with the crown—could have taken. A small-town diva? A hypersensitive viola player? Perhaps even a psychiatric patient? She Was Once MISS RIMINI is a trenchant meditation on the art, or artifice, of growing older. Costume, lipstick, lighting, attitude—all aspects of self-presentation are in concert here with quiet critiques of social and economic systems that limit the options of older women. Accompanied by an enlightening introduction by art theorist Brigitte Ulmer, She Was Once MISS RIMINI is the first and only documentation of Miss Rimini and one of the first books in English on Manon. (shrink)