La obra de Sauer abre paso a la formación del saber ambiental de nuestro tiempo y contribuye a su desarrollo en América Latina. El artículo sigue una serie de temas profundizados por el autor, y concluye recordándonos que el aterrador impacto del moderno mundo Occidental, no cancela la verdad de que el la historia del hombre ha sido marcadamente pluralista, y que no existen leyes generales de la sociedad, sino únicamente acuerdos culturales.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy AnalysisJames B. Sauer Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis. Ralph D. Ellis. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998.Editor's note:The following review was written by the late Jim Sauer, who selflessly managed the business of this journal’s forerunner, The Personalist Forum, from 1998 until 2004. Jim was a beloved member of the academic community, known far and wide for his service, his (...) humility, and the upright life he led. This review was written at a time when the journal was being published only sporadically. It was set aside when it should have been published, but it is a privilege to publish it now. In publishing the review, we honor this journal more than we honor Jim, because Jim was better than most of us.This book addresses one of the most significant problems in the field of public policy: how to incorporate qualitative social values into the traditional quantitative models used in policy making. Ellis’s practical argument that qualitative social value, what Ellis calls “the justice factor” (171), can be meaningfully incorporated into cost-benefit models is ambitious and innovative. He delivers admirably on his promise to provide “quantitative methods of measuring justice, so that it can become commensurable with utility in a coherent and rationally defensible decision principle” (2).The argument of the book is tightly organized and clearly presented as befits its relative brevity. Chapters 1and 2 set up the problem of the incommensurability of utility, justice, and procedural legitimacy. In the process, Ellis provides a succinct, articulate, and critical account of five “values systems” (ethical theories) that could easily be used in an introductory ethics class without obscuring the nuances of current debates well-known to philosophers. Ellis shows that at heart of the utility-justice debate there is an underexamined assumption of philosophers and policy analysts that values are incommensurate, which gives by default the field of policy formation to various forms of quantified utilitarianism. Because “happiness” is desired by all people (without prejudging what makes anyone happy) and since happiness can be quantified by reference to willingness to pay for what makes one happy, utilitarianism has commended itself as the only reliable way, adjudicating among values in the pluralistic public sphere. However, this view is not [End Page 127]without problems because there are cases where relatively trivial economic values trump more substantive, though admittedly qualitative, human values such as the right to life, access to basic goods to maintain life, and a reasonably salubrious environment.Ellis carefully examines the arguments for moral subjectivism upon which claims of incommensurability are based. He finds they are not sustainable because it can be demonstrated by rational argument and empirical evidence that there are (1) objectively true value statements and (2) a core of common intrinsic value claims regardless of value system that do not conflict. Thus, there is no incommensurable pluralism of value systems (55) because the divergent extrinsic values of different systems are meant to promote similar intrinsic values (56). So the meaningful conflict among value systems is not about whatshould be valued but howthe things people do value are to be equitably distributed. This debate is not intractable but is, in fact, what debate about policy is about. Whether or not a policy achieves an equitable distribution of value is a social outcome, so what is needed is a means of combining claims for justice with a justifiable and practical means of measuring the outcomes of justice achieved.Chapters 3 and 4 lay out in more detail the problems already set up and provide a method for addressing them. Ellis takes a standard “problems” approach to deal with utilitarianism and rights-based decision-making principles. These chapters, however, are rich because of the extensive literature and concrete cases that Ellis draws on. Ellis’s argument does not head toward an either-or choice between utility or justice as do some standard accounts. Consistent with his setup, he argues for the methodological possibility of weighing conflicting values against each other by giving utility and distributive justice their “appropriate place” in a comprehensive decision principle that he sketches out in chapter... (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day, it has rarely been doubted that whenever formal aesthetic methods meet their iconological counterparts, the two approaches appear to be mutually exclusive. In reality, though, an ahistorical concept is challenging a historical analysis of art. It is especially Susanne K. Langer´s long-overlooked system of analogies between perceptions of the world and of artistic creations that are dependent on feelings which today allows a rapprochement of these positions. Krois’s insistence on (...) a similar point supports this analysis. - I - Unbestritten bis heute gilt, formwissenschaftliche und ikonologische Methoden scheinen sich grundsätzlich auszuschließen, da die ersteren auf ahistorischen und die letzteren auf historischen Grundlagen aufbauen. Dem entgegen soll mit diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, wie insbesondere die Forschungen Susanne K. Langers und ergänzend diejenigen von John M. Krois eine Annäherung beider Positionen ermöglichen. (shrink)

Do have pictures an impact on future? Yes, say theories of embodiment by making perceptual foundations in place of representational arrangements responsible for it. -/- Wirken sich Bildern auf die Zukunft aus? Ja sagen Verkörperungstheorien und machen dafür weniger Repräsentationsmodelle als Wahrnehmungsweisen verantwortlich.

In this crisply written book, Hanno Sauer offers the first book-length treatment of debunking arguments in ethics, developing an empirically informed and philosophically sophisticated account of genealogical arguments and their significance for the reliability of moral cognition. He breaks new ground by introducing a series of novel distinctions into the current debate, which allows him to develop a framework for assessing the prospects of debunking or vindicating our moral intuitions. He also challenges the justification of some of our moral judgments (...) by showing that they are based on epistemically defective processes. His book is an original, cutting-edge contribution to the burgeoning field of empirically informed metaethics, and will interest philosophers, psychologists, and anyone interested in how - and whether - moral judgment works. (shrink)

Rationalists about the psychology of moral judgment argue that moral cognition has a rational foundation. Recent challenges to this account, based on findings in the empirical psychology of moral judgment, contend that moral thinking has no rational basis. In this book, Hanno Sauer argues that moral reasoning does play a role in moral judgment—but not, as is commonly supposed, because conscious reasoning produces moral judgments directly. Moral reasoning figures in the acquisition, formation, maintenance, and reflective correction of moral intuitions. Sauer (...) proposes that when we make moral judgments we draw on a stable repertoire of intuitions about what is morally acceptable, which we have acquired over the course of our moral education—episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Moral judgments are educated and rationally amenable moral intuitions. -/- Sauer engages extensively with the empirical evidence on the psychology of moral judgment and argues that it can be shown empirically that reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment. He offers detailed counterarguments to the anti-rationalist challenge (the claim that reason and reasoning play no significant part in morality and moral judgment) and the emotionist challenge (the argument for the emotional basis of moral judgment). Finally, he uses Joshua Greene's Dual Process model of moral cognition to test the empirical viability and normative persuasiveness of his account of educated intuitions. Sauer shows that moral judgments can be automatic, emotional, intuitive, and rational at the same time. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for “intervention-generated” inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities (...) through self-monitoring applications. (shrink)

We propose a fundamental challenge to the feasibility of moral progress: most extant theories of progress, we will argue, assume an unrealistic level of cognitive control people must have over their moral judgments for moral progress to occur. Moral progress depends at least in part on the possibility of individual people improving their moral cognition to eliminate the pernicious influence of various epistemically defective biases and other distorting factors. Since the degree of control people can exert over their moral cognition (...) tends to be significantly overestimated, the prospects of moral progress face a formidable problem, the force of which has thus far been underappreciated. In the paper, we will provide both conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis, and explain its most important implications. (shrink)

Global sourcing largely occurs from so-called emerging markets and developing economies. In these contexts, substantial leverage effects for sustainability in supply chains can be expected by reducing adverse impacts on society and minimising related risks. For this ethical end, an adequate understanding of the respective sourcing contexts is fundamental. This case study of South Africa’s mining sector uses institutional theory and the notion of institutional uncertainty to empirically analyse the challenges associated with establishing social sustainability. The case study research is (...) informed by 39 semi-structured interviews with top management representatives and various state and non-state decision makers in SA. Our findings suggest that sustainability in the institutional field is mainly shaped by the Social and Labour Plan institution, induced by state actors and mining companies’ practices. However, four weakening factors were identified that adversely affect this regulative institution, drive institutional uncertainty and allow for mining companies’ gradual decoupling. Contrastingly, complementing pressures of non-state actors limit institutional uncertainty and push toward mainstreaming the stipulations of the institution. This study contributes to the business ethics literature by providing an in-depth exploration of institutional uncertainty’s drivers and barriers within an upstream SC setting and shedding light on multiple actors’ interplay and relevance in sector-wide sustainability. The findings are condensed into three main propositions as well as an analytical framework as a basis for follow-up research. This case study helps practitioners understand and manage complexity that results from actor plurality and institutional uncertainty in EMDEs. (shrink)

In light of recent empirical data, many psychologists and philosophers have turned away from rationalism about moral judgment and embraced sentimentalism. In the process, they have rejected the classical “moral signature” as a way of distinguishing moral from conventional norms in favor of a sentimentalist approach to carving out the moral domain. In this paper, we argue that this sentimentalist turn has been made prematurely. Although we agree that the experiments reveal that the classical approach is flawed, we propose to (...) replace it with an alternative, according to which a norm is moral precisely if it is justifiable to all. This does not hold for most norms based on disgust or loyalty to a particular community. We accommodate the fact that such norms are not merely conventional by introducing a third domain, the domain of ethics. Our proposal reveals that (psychological) rationalism is still a viable option, as a lot of the experimental evidence that features emotions concerns the domain of ethics rather than morality. (shrink)

What credence should we assign to philosophical claims that were formed without any knowledge of the current state of the art of the philosophical debate and little or no knowledge of the relevant empirical or scientific data? Very little or none. Yet when we engage with the history of philosophy, this is often exactly what we do. In this paper, I argue that studying the history of philosophy is philosophically unhelpful. The epistemic aims of philosophy, if there are any, are (...) frustrated by engaging with the history of philosophy, because we have little reason to think that the claims made by history’s great philosophers would survive closer scrutiny today. First, I review the case for philosophical historiography and show how it falls short. I then present several arguments for skepticism about the philosophical value of engaging with the history of philosophy and offer an explanation for why philosophical historiography would seem to make sense even if it didn’t. (shrink)

Rationalism about the psychology of moral judgment holds, among other things, that the justifying moral reasons we have for our judgments are also the causally effective reasons for why we make those judgments. This can be called the ‘effectiveness’-thesis regarding moral reasoning. The theory that best exemplifies the thesis is the traditional conscious reasoning-paradigm. Current empirical moral psychology, however, poses a serious challenge to this thesis: it argues that in fact, emotional reactions are necessary and sufficient to account for moral (...) judgment, and that typically, moral reasoning is a matter of mere confabulation. In this survey, the empirical challenge to this thesis made by the ‘social intuitionist’ model of moral judgment and reasoning is discussed. The model claims that moral reasoning is essentially ineffective and, psychologically speaking, a matter of mere post hoc-rationalizations of cognitively impenetratable gut reactions. Several interpretations of this evidence are discussed and it is shown that there is room for a psychology of moral reasoning that can account for the available empirical evidence and yet does not have to give up the most central elements of a normative picture of moral reasoning. (shrink)

Societies change over time. Chattel slavery and foot-binding have been abolished, democracy has become increasingly widespread, gay rights have become established in some countries, and the animal rights movement continues to gain momentum. Do these changes count as moral progress? Is there such a thing? If so, how should we understand it? These questions have been receiving increasing attention from philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists in recent decades. This survey provides a systematic account of recent developments in the understanding of (...) moral progress. We outline the concept of moral progress and describe the different types of moral progress identified in the literature. We review the normative criteria that have been used in judging whether various developments count as morally progressive or not. We discuss the prospects of moral progress in the face of challenges that claim that moral progress is not psychologically possible for human beings, and we explore the metaethical implications of moral progress. (shrink)

Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance (...) ? in short: education ? of our moral intuitions. (shrink)

In recent research, dual-process theories of cognition have been the primary model for explaining moral judgment and reasoning. These theories understand moral thinking in terms of two separate domains: one deliberate and analytic, the other quick and instinctive. -/- This book presents a new theory of the philosophy and cognitive science of moral judgment. Hanno Sauer develops and defends an account of "triple-process" moral psychology, arguing that moral thinking and reasoning are only insufficiently understood when described in terms of a (...) quick but intuitive and a slow but rational type of cognition. This approach severely underestimates the importance and impact of dispositions to initiate and engage in critical thinking – the cognitive resource in charge of counteracting my-side bias, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, and breakdowns of self-control. Moral cognition is based, not on emotion and reason, but on an integrated network of intuitive, algorithmic and reflective thinking. -/- Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Welche Erkenntnisse bietet Michel Foucaults Ansatz der Gouvernementalität für eine politische Theorie, die Geschlecht als zentrale Kategorie setzt? In diesem Band werden Grundbegriffe aus Foucaults Spätwerk aus feministischer Sicht beleuchtet, z.B. Gouvernementalität, Macht, Staat, Subjekt, Sicherheit, Wissen und Kritik. Diese Re-Lektüre möchte zum einen Foucaults Ansatz geschlechtertheoretisch weiterentwickeln und vertiefen, zum anderen Anstöße für eine politische Theoretisierung von Geschlecht geben.

Many believe that moral education can cause moral progress. At first glance, this makes sense. A major goal of moral education is the improvement of the moral beliefs, values and behaviors of young people. Most would also consider all of these improvements to be important instances of moral progress. Moreover, moral education is a form of social learning, and there are good reasons to think that social learning processes shape episodes of progressive moral change. Despite this, we argue that instead (...) of being a cause of moral change, the main effect of moral education is often to provide stability or continuity. In addition, we will argue that even when the conditions are right for moral education to contribute to moral change, it is far from clear that the resulting changes will always, or even most of the time, end up being progressive. (shrink)

Moral judgements are based on automatic processes. Moral judgements are based on reason. In this paper, I argue that both of these claims are true, and show how they can be reconciled. Neither the automaticity of moral judgement nor the post hoc nature of conscious moral reasoning pose a threat to rationalist models of moral cognition. The relation moral reasoning bears to our moral judgements is not primarily mediated by episodes of conscious reasoning, but by the acquisition, formation and maintenance (...) – in short: education – of our moral intuitions. (shrink)

This volume offers an integrated understanding of how the theory of general relativity gained momentum after Einstein had formulated it in 1915. Chapters focus on the early reception of the theory in physics and philosophy and on the systematic questions that emerged shortly after Einstein's momentous discovery. They are written by physicists, historians of science, and philosophers, and were originally presented at the conference titled Thinking About Space and Time: 100 Years of Applying and Interpreting General Relativity, held at the (...) University of Bern from September 12-14, 2017. By establishing the historical context first, and then moving into more philosophical chapters, this volume will provide readers with a more complete understanding of early applications of general relativity and of related philosophical issues. Because the chapters are often cross-disciplinary, they cover a wide variety of topics related to the general theory of relativity. These include: Heuristics used in the discovery of general relativity Mach's Principle The structure of Einstein's theory Cosmology and the Einstein world Stability of cosmological models The metaphysical nature of spacetime The relationship between spacetime and dynamics The Geodesic Principle Symmetries Thinking About Space and Time will be a valuable resource for historians of science and philosophers who seek a deeper knowledge of the uses of general relativity, as well as for physicists and mathematicians interested in exploring the wider historical and philosophical context of Einstein's theory. (shrink)

Philosophical and empirical moral psychologists claim that emotions are both necessary and sufficient for moral judgment. The aim of this paper is to assess the evidence in favor of both claims and to show how a moderate rationalist position about moral judgment can be defended nonetheless. The experimental evidence for both the necessity- and the sufficiency-thesis concerning the connection between emotional reactions and moral judgment is presented. I argue that a rationalist about moral judgment can be happy to accept the (...) necessity-thesis. My argument draws on the idea that emotions play the same role for moral judgment that perceptions play for ordinary judgments about the external world. I develop a rationalist interpretation of the sufficiency-thesis and show that it can successfully account for the available empirical evidence. The general idea is that the rationalist can accept the claim that emotional reactions are sufficient for moral judgment just in case a subject’s emotional reaction towards an action in question causes the judgment in a way that can be reflectively endorsed under conditions of full information and rationality. This idea is spelled out in some detail and it is argued that a moral agent is entitled to her endorsement if the way she arrives at her judgment reliably leads to correct moral beliefs, and that this reliability can be established if the subject’s emotional reaction picks up on the morally relevant aspects of the situation. (shrink)

This book develops a unified theory of moral progress. The author argues that there are mechanisms in place that consistently drive societies towards moral improvement and that a sophisticated, naturalistically respectable form of teleology can be defended. The book's main aim is to flesh out the process of moral progress in more detail, and to show how, when the right mechanisms and institutions of moral progress are matched together, they create pressure for the desired types of moral gains to manifest. (...) The first part of the book deals with two issues: the conceptual one about what moral progress is, and the broadly empirical one whether it is possible. It shows that cultural evolution successfully explains the origins of modern forms of morally welcome change. The second part argues that there is logical space for a moderate, scientifically credible form of teleology, and that the converse case for moral decline is weak. It addresses the types, drivers and institutions of moral progress that allow for the storage, transmission and cumulative improvement of our normative infrastructure over time. Finally, the third part demonstrates why moral progress cannot be accounted for in metaethically realist terms. Moral Teleology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics, moral epistemology and moral psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that recent evidence regarding the psychological basis of moral cognition supports a form of (moderate) moral abolitionism. I identify three main problems undermining the epistemic quality of our moral judgments – contamination, reliability, and bad incentives – and reject three possible responses: neither moral expertise, nor moral learning, nor the possibility of moral progress succeed in solving the aforementioned epistemic problems. The result is a moderate form of moral abolitionism, according to which we should make (...) fewer moral judgments much more carefully. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to refute the widely held view that in the wake of his so-called reistic turn Brentano subjected his notion of intentionality to a deep-going revision, viz., that he turned from an ontological account of the intentional object by way of identifying it with the thought-of-thing, i.e., the intentional correlate, or by way of attributing to it a peculiar sort of existence, to a non-ontological account thereof. It will be shown that neither the pre-reistic Brentano (...) espoused anything of an ontological account of the intentional object in that he both distinguished it sharply from the intentional correlate and definitely rejected the idea of there being different sorts of existence, and it will be argued that the apparently ineradicable inclination to ascribe to the pre-reistic Brentano an ontological account of the intentional object stems from ignoring the Aristotelian background of Brentano's thinking about relations. (shrink)

Es wird versucht, einige Aspekte von Carnaps Werk Der logische Auflyau der Welt vor dem Hintergrund des Kantianismus zu betrachten, insbesondere die Strukturalismusthese, das Verhältnis von Gegebenem und Konstruiertem und den Wirklichkeitsbegriff; das Ergebnis geht dahin, daß sich mehr Gemeinsamkeiten mit der kantianischen Tradition zeigen als es von einem klassischen Werk des Neopositivismus zu erwarten wäre.

ZusammenfassungPflegende und Ärzte haben in der beruflichen Alltagspraxis unterschiedliche Perspektiven. Dies zeigt sich insbesondere in ethisch relevanten Entscheidungssituationen, in denen sie oft zu grundlegend unterschiedlichen Urteilen kommen. Aus dieser „Unterschiedlichkeit der Perspektiven“ können in der beruflichen Alltagspraxis mitunter erhebliche Dissonanzen entstehen, die einer konstruktiven Zusammenarbeit im Wege stehen. Die vorliegende Arbeit will zum einen den in der Praxis der klinischen Ethik gewonnenen Eindruck und die daraus formulierte These einer „perspektivischen Differenz“ empirisch nachweisen. Um dies zu leisten, wurde am Universitätsklinikum Frankfurt (...) eine quantitative Erhebung durchgeführt. Zum anderen sollen die empirischen Ergebnisse zur Erklärung in einem weiteren theoretischen Kontext verortet werden. Hierfür wird im Anschluss an Bourdieu das Habituskonzept rekonstruiert, um zu erklären, warum die perspektivische Differenz weder unmittelbar wahrgenommen wird noch ohne weiteres überwunden werden kann. Die These der perspektivischen Differenz wird durch die empirische Studie gestützt. Dieser Sachverhalt ist insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der habitustheoretischen Rekonstruktion von erheblicher Relevanz für die klinische Ethik, die einerseits Verfahren zur diskursiven Bearbeitung ethischer Konflikte in der klinischen Praxis und andererseits Konzepte für die medizinethische Fortbildung anbietet. (shrink)

Implicit cognition is cognition that happens automatically and (typically) non-consciously. In moral psychology, implicit cognition is almost always understood in terms of dual process models of moral judgment. In this chapter, we address the question whether implicit moral judgment is usefully cashed out in terms of automatic (“type 1”) processes, and what the limitations of this approach are. Our chapter has six sections. In (1), we provide a brief overview of dual process models of domain-general (moral and non-moral) cognition. (2) (...) reviews a recent debate regarding the soundness of dual process models to begin with. Section (3) is about dual process accounts of moral judgment specifically. The last three sections then survey attempts to go beyond a simplistic automatic/controlled (“type 2”) distinction in conceptualizing implicit moral cognition. Recently, three main theoretical approaches have emerged, which all revolve around the questions whether type 2 processing can successfully penetrate implicit moral cognition. First, rational learning approaches highlight how episodes of moral learning can feed back into and shape our moral intuitions (4). Second, so-called triple process models suggest that automatic cognitive outputs can under certain circumstances be reined in by reflective cognition (5). Finally, recent evidence shows that moral reasoning is not as impotent as earlier developments in empirical moral psychology claimed to demonstrate (6). (shrink)

Die Religionsschrift und die Predigten Schleiermachers sind sowohl theoretische Entfaltung als auch literarisch-rhetorischer Vollzug von Religionskommunikation. Beiden Aspekten geht Mirjam Sauer nach. Im Licht frühromantischer Literaturproduktion und spätaufklärerischer Predigten interpretiert sie die erschlossenen Kommunikationsmodelle als Beiträge zu einer Theologie religiöser Rede an der Schwelle zur Moderne.

Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that we need a metamorality to solve moral problems for which evolution has not prepared us. The metamorality that he proposes is a utilitarian account that he calls deep pragmatism. Deep pragmatism is supposed to arbitrate when the values espoused by different groups clash. To date, no systematic appraisal of this argument for a metamorality exists. We reconstruct Greene’s case for deep pragmatism as a metamorality and consider three lines of objection to it. We argue (...) that, in the end, only one of these objections seriously threatens Greene’s position. Greene has to commit to the nonexistence of moral truth in order for his argument for the need of a metamorality to get off the ground. This, however, leads to a tension in his overall argument for deep pragmatism: ultimately, it casts his rejection of antiutilitarian moral intuitions into doubt. (shrink)

The form of an action has a strong influence on the interaction between humans. According to their mood, people may perform the same gesture in different ways, such as gently or rudely. These aspects of social communication are named vitality forms by Daniel Stern, represent a mean to establish a direct and immediate connection with others. Indeed, the expression of different vitality forms enables us to communicate our affective states and at the same time the perception of these vitality forms (...) enables people around us to understand how we feel in that moment. In the last years of research, different fMRI studies have been carried out to investigate the neural correlates of vitality forms recognition and execution. Moreover, recent psychophysics studies conducted from our research group have demonstrated the presence of an affective contagion effect, during which vitality forms expressed by an agent affect the action perception and the motor response of the receiver. This means that vitality forms expressed by others can influence our mood positively or negatively, modulating as consequence our behavior. Note that vitality forms pervade our lives in a continuous manner and thus they are not expressed and perceived only during social interactions. For example, when we observe an artistic representation at the theatre, the dynamic postures of dancers, together with an alternation of acceleration and deceleration in their movements, communicate to us different affective states. Also when we are in a museum in front of a painting, lines, colors and shapes used by the artist can elicit in us different sensations and modify our attitude. In this view, with the aim to extend the concept of vitality forms from neuroscience and psychology to other disciplines of study, we dedicate part of this review to discuss how art, in all its forms, can be considered a pure expression of vitality forms. (shrink)

In a historiographical and methodological comparison of Formal Aesthetics and Iconology with the method of Affordance, the latter is to be introduced as a new method in Visual Cultural Studies. In extension ofepistemologically relevant aspects relatedtostyle and history of the artefacts, communicative and furthermoreaction and decisionrelevant aspects of artefacts become important. In this respect, it is the share of artefacts in life that the new method aims to uncover. The basis for this concern is the theory and methodological tools of (...) Visual Semiotics, which I have already presented. A direct comparison of the three methods based on the same example should clarify the points of contact and the respective performance of the methods. For this purpose, theChrist among the Doctorsof Albrecht Dürer from 1506 will be used, which was already examined in 1905 and indirectly in 1915 by the prominent representative of Formal Aesthetics Heinrich Wölfflin,and in 1914 and finally in1943by the founder of Iconology Erwin Panofsky. With the new method thecommunicative-actionand decision relevant aspects and thus their share in life should be shown. (shrink)

The most popular argument against moral realism is the argument from disagreement: if there are mind‐independent moral facts, then we would not expect to find as much moral disagreement as we in fact do; therefore, moral realism is false. In this paper, I develop the flipside of this argument. According to this argument from agreement, we would expect to find lots of moral disagreement if there were mind‐independent moral facts. But we do not, in fact, find much moral disagreement; therefore, (...) moral realism is false. I defend the argument, explain the empirical evidence that supports it, and show what makes this challenge novel and powerful. (shrink)

According to the neo-Kantian and cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer, man always interacts with nature. This assumption forms the basis for his philosophical approach to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms of 1929. It is based on the thesis that we do not conceive nature as objects (‘Ding-Wahrnehmung’), but immediately feel and suffer nature through the so-called ‘perception of expression’ (‘Ausdrucks-Wahrnehmung’). Thus, our understanding of the world is based on interaction with nature, because feeling and suffering depend on something we feel and (...) suffer about. In conclusion, Cassirer developed already a theory of Enaktivismus, embodiment, and respectively to modern film theories of immersion. The thesis of the following paper is based on these findings of Cassirer and states that that there is no dichotomy between nature and man. (shrink)

To what extend is there a relevance of aesthetics for life? By postulating a non-discursive and emotional relevance of forms Cassirer, Langer and Krois open the door for this idea. -/- Inwieweit spielt die Ästhetik im Leben eine Rolle? Indem sowohl Cassirer, Langer und Krois eine nicht-diskursive und emotionale Relevanz von Formen unterstellen, öffnen sie die Türen für diese Idee.