This collection of revised and new essays argues that biology is an autonomous science rather than a branch of the physical sciences. Ernst Mayr, widely considered the most eminent evolutionary biologist of the 20th century, offers insights on the history of evolutionary thought, critiques the conditions of philosophy to the science of biology, and comments on several of the major developments in evolutionary theory. Notably, Mayr explains that Darwin's theory of evolution is actually five separate theories, each with its (...) own history, trajectory and impact. Ernst Mayr, commonly referred to as the "Darwin of the 20th century" and listed as one of the top 100 scientists of all-time, is Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. What Makes Biology Unique is the 25th book he has written during his long and prolific career. His recent books include This is Biology: The Science of the Living World (Belknap Press, 1997) and What Evolution Is (Basic Books, 2002). (shrink)

Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, here presented for the first time in English translation, is one of the great historic books from the beginning of the twentieth-century. A peculiar amalgam of biblical, Marxist, and Expressionist turns, drawing on both Hegel and Schopenhauer for the groundwork of its metaphysics of music, but consistently interpreting the cultural legacy in the light of a certain Marxism, The Spirit of Utopia is a unique attempt to rethink the history of Western civilizations as a process (...) of revolutionary disruptions and to reread the artworks, religions, and philosophies of this tradition as incentives to continue disrupting. The first part concerns a mode of 'self-encounter' which presents itself in the history of music from Mozart through Mahler as an encounter with the problem of a community to come. The second part is entitled 'Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse'. (shrink)

An 'Essay on man' is an original synthesis of contemporary knowledge, a unique interpretation of the intellectual crisis of our time, and a brilliant vindication of manís ability to resolve human problems by the courageous use of his mind.

This is an important book for students, biologists, and general readers interested in the history of ideas--especially ideas that have radically altered our ...

While the information revolution has ushered in a renewed philosophical interest in the notion of virtuality, the ontological status of virtual entities remains ambiguous. The present paper examines three forms of metaphysical realism about the meaning of the term ‘virtual’: genuine as well as intentionalist and computer-based reductivist realisms. Since all three are found wanting, a nominalist alternative is proposed. It is argued that ‘virtual’ is non-referential, and thus ontologically non-committing. Focusing on the metaphysical problem about the ontological status of (...) virtuality obscures the real issue, namely the ontological status of models as implemented in software. (shrink)

While the information revolution has ushered in a renewed philosophical interest in the notion of virtuality, the ontological status of virtual entities remains ambiguous. The present paper examines three forms of metaphysical realism about the meaning of the term ‘virtual’: genuine as well as intentionalist and computer-based reductivist realisms. Since all three are found wanting, a nominalist alternative is proposed. It is argued that ‘virtual’ is non-referential, and thus ontologically non-committing. Focusing on the metaphysical problem about the ontological status of (...) virtuality obscures the real issue, namely the ontological status of models as implemented in software. (shrink)

Wittgenstein did not claim that the ordinary language concept ‘game’ cannot be defined: he claimed that there are multiple definitions that can be adopted for special purposes, but no single definition applicable to all games. I will defend this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s position by showing its compatibility with a pragmatic argumentative view of definitions, and how this view accounts for the diversity of disagreeing game definitions in definitional disputes.

The notion of dialogue is foundational for both Juri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also central in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotics and logic. While there are several scholarly comparisons of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s dialogisms, these have yet to be compared with Peirce’s semeiotic dialogues. This article takes tentative steps toward a comparative study of dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin. Peirce’s understanding of dialogue is explicated, and compared with both Lotman’s as well as Bakhtin’s conceptions. Lotman saw dialogue as (...) the basic meaning-making mechanism in the semiosphere. The benefits and shortcomings of reconceptualizing the semiosphere on the basis of Peircean and Bakhtinian dialogues are weighed. The aim is to explore methodological alternatives in semiotics, not to challenge Lotman’s initial model. It is claimed that the semiosphere qua model operating with Bakhtinian dialogues is narrower in scope than Lotman’s original conception, while the semiosphere qua model operating with Peircean dialogues appears to be broader in scope. It is concluded that the choice between alternative dialogical foundations must be informed by attentiveness to their differences, and should be motivated by the researcher’s goals and theoretical commitments. (shrink)

Deepfakes are fake recordings generated by machine learning algorithms. Various philosophical explanations have been proposed to account for their epistemic harmfulness. In this paper, I argue that deepfakes are epistemically harmful because they undermine trust in recording technology. As a result, we are no longer entitled to our default doxastic attitude of believing that P on the basis of a recording that supports the truth of P. Distrust engendered by deepfakes changes the epistemic status of recordings to resemble that of (...) handmade images. Their credibility, like that of testimony, depends partly on the credibility of the source. I consider some proposed technical solutions from a philosophical perspective to show the practical relevance of these suggestions. (shrink)

Introduction Undoubtedly it would be useful to interpret the "new Nietzsche," as he is often called, within the larger contexts of "Nietzsche and the ...

Ernst Cassirer occupies a unique space in Twentieth-century philosophy. A great liberal humanist, his multi-faceted work spans the history of philosophy, the philosophy of science, intellectual history, aesthetics, epistemology, the study of language and myth, and more. Cassirer's thought also anticipates the renewed interest in the origins of analytic and continental philosophy in the Twentieth Century and the divergent paths taken by the 'logicist' and existential traditions, epitomised by his now legendary debate in 1929 with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, (...) over the question "What is the Human Being?" The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is Cassirer's most important work. It was first published in German in 1923, the third and final volume appearing in 1929. In it Cassirer presents a radical new philosophical worldview - at once rich, creative and controversial - of human beings as fundamentally "symbolic animals," placing signs and systems of expression between themselves and the world. This major new translation of all three volumes, the first for over fifty years, brings Cassirer's magnum opus to a new generation of students and scholars. Taken together, the three volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms are a vital treatise on human beings as symbolic animals and a monumental expression of neo-Kantian thought. Correcting important errors in previous English editions, this translation reflects the contributions of significant advances in Cassirer scholarship over the last twenty to thirty years. Each volume includes a new introduction and translator's notes by S. G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and a thorough index. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to reflect on the complex practice of responsibility within the context of a globalised world and contemporary means of action. Levinas' exploration of the ethical serves as point of entry and is shown to be seeking inter-cultural political relevance through engagement with the issues of postcoloniality and humanism. Yet, Levinas fails to realise the ethical implications of the inevitable instrumental mediation between ethical meaning and political practice. With recourse to Weber, Apel and Ricoeur, (...) class='Hi'>Ernst Wolff proposes a theory of strategic co-responsibility for the uncertain global context of practice. (shrink)

Our subject is how the experience of Americans with a certain funding criterion, “broader impacts” may help in efforts to turn the European concept of Responsible Research and Innovation into a useful guide to funding Europe’s scientific and technical research. We believe this comparison may also be as enlightening for Americans concerned with revising research policy. We have organized our report around René Von Schomberg’s definition of RRI, since it seems both to cover what the European research group to which (...) we belong is interested in and to be the only widely accepted definition of RRI. According to Von Schomberg, RRI: “… is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products .” While RRI seeks fundamental changes in the way research is conducted, Broader Impacts is more concerned with more peripheral aspects of research: widening participation of disadvantaged groups, recruiting the next generation of scientists, increasing the speed with which results are used, and so on. Nevertheless, an examination of the broadening of funding criteria over the last four decades suggests that National Science Foundation has been moving in the direction of RRI. (shrink)

This chapter describes the development of a workshop series focused on helping students develop research lab ethics guidelines. The workshop was developed through a National Science Foundation-funded project that situates ethics education within the research environment. Students in four departments at a private research university were recruited to join a Student Ethics Committee that collaboratively developed context-specific codes-of-ethics-based guidelines for their departments. These bottom-up developed guidelines were revised in an iterative process, including feedback from faculty, other graduate students, and the (...) original Student Ethics Committee. The goal of the workshops was to promote the cultivation of an ethical culture in experimental laboratories by integrating research stakeholders in a bottom-up approach to developing context-specific guidelines and to identify factors that students consider relevant to the ethical conduct of research. After describing the workshop series, this chapter presents a qualitative content analysis of the guidelines. The guidelines developed by the Student Ethics Committees reflect the current culture of experimental labs in these departments and the ethical issues that students think are important. The content of these guidelines and the ethical issues the students focused on contrast in some key ways with what ethical issues faculty who head research groups saw as paramount. The chapter describes the first two iterations of the ethics education workshop module, a qualitative analysis of the first draft of these guidelines, and finally reflects on future work in this area of in situ ethics education. (shrink)

In this book the author analyzes the work of physicists, mathematicians, biologists, historians, and philosophers in order to discover the principles that underlie their various ways of knowing and in terms of which they describe the ...

Wer hat sich nicht schon gefragt, was es mit unseren moralischen Überzeugungen auf sich hat: Spiegeln diese die Wahrheit in Sachen Moral wieder? Gibt es eine solche Wahrheit überhaupt? Oder sind moralische Überzeugungen eher das Produkt unserer Interessen und Neigungen, Ausdruck unserer Wünsche oder Mittel der Machtausübung, das bloße Ergebnis unserer Erziehung, unseres sozialen Umfelds oder gar eine List der Evolution? Ist es eine Illusion, wenn man glaubt, echte moralische Erkenntnisse gewinnen zu können? Kurzum: Kann die Moral Objektivität beanspruchen? Die (...) vorliegende Arbeit versucht, eine Antwort auf diese zentrale Frage der Metaethik zu geben. Dazu wird zunächst gezeigt, dass uns der Status der Moral ein Rätsel ist, weil wir dazu neigen, drei Thesen für wahr zu halten, die nicht zugleich wahr sein können. Die drei prinzipiell möglichen Strategien zur Auflösung dieses Trilemmas geraten jedoch in Schwierigkeiten, weil es bisher nicht gelungen ist, ein passendes Vergleichsobjekt für die Moral zu finden. In dieser Arbeit wird dafür argumentiert, dass die Moral in genau der gleichen Weise wie die Wissenschaft Objektivität beanspruchen kann. (shrink)

Truthlikeness in historiography would allow us to be optimistic fallible realists about historiography – to hold that historical knowledge is about the past, true albeit fallible, and can increase over time. In this paper, three desiderata for a concept of truthlikeness in historiography will be outlined. One of the main challenges for truthlikeness is historiographic skepticism which holds that historiography is indistinguishable from fiction and cannot therefore furnish us with true knowledge about the past. Such skepticism rests on the postmodern (...) challenge, which will be criticized on the grounds that it rests on an implausible theory of meaning. It will be shown that Peirce’s semeiotic and pragmatist theory of truth, interpreted dialogically or game-theoretically, provides a suitable framework within which to pursue the project of defining a concept of truthlikeness for historiography. Finally, directions for possible future research into truthlikeness in historiography, including ways of defining a measure of truthlikeness, will be considered. (shrink)

While visiting a friend's family in Cornwall during the traditional May Day celebrations, eighteen-year-old Laura becomes involved in an old family mystery concerning the disappearance of ancient heirlooms.

Die erste systematische Schrift, die Ernst Cassirer veröffentlicht hat, ist das Buch »Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff« von 1910, in dem er sich mit dem Problem der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung auseinandersetzt. Als »Faktum« legte er den damaligen Stand der Wissenschaft zugrunde, der das klassische System der Physik noch als unbestritten galt. Mit den Fortschritten der Wissenschaften, in diesem Fall der Entwicklung der theoretischen Physik, muss die Erkenntniskritik Schritt halten. Und so drängten sich im Laufe der Zeit neue Fragen auf, die (...) der philosophischen Behandlung bedurften. Aus dieser Motivation heraus veröffentlichte Cassirer 1920 die Schrift »Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie« (ECW Bd. 10), in der er sich mit der Um- und Neubildung der modernen Physik durch die allgemeine und spezielle Relativitätstheorie beschäftigt. Um dem philosophischen Ideal der methodischen Analyse und erkenntniskritischen Grundlegung gerecht zu werden, ergab sich jedoch die Notwendigkeit, auch die Auswirkungen der Quantentheorie in die Reflexion mit einzubeziehen. Den historischen Ursachen und systematischen Gründen der Sprengkraft, die die Quantentheorie auf dem ganzen Gebiet der Physik entwickelte, geht Cassirer in der Schrift »Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik« nach, die er 1936 abschließt. (shrink)

After twenty-five years of integrating ethics across the curriculum at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions conducted a survey of full-time faculty to investigate: a) what ethical topics faculty thought students from their discipline should be aware of when they graduate, b) how widely ethics is currently being taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, c) what ethical topics are being covered in these courses, and d) what teaching methods are (...) being used. The survey found that while progress spreading ethics across the curriculum has been substantial, it remains incomplete. The faculty think more should be done. From these findings we draw six lessons for ethics centers engaged in encouraging ethics across the curriculum. (shrink)

Als ich meine Schrift "Zur Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie" veröffentlichte, fanden sich viele Kritiker, die mir in den Schlußfolgerungen, die ich aus der Entwicklung der neuen Physik gezogen hatte, zwar zustimmten, die aber an diese Zustimmung die Frage knüpften, ob ich, als "Neu-Kantianer", derartige Folgerungen hätte ziehen dürfen. Die vorliegende Schrift ["Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik"] wird vielleicht in noch weit höherem Grade solchen Fragen und Zweifeln ausgesetzt sein. Aber ich glaube, daß derartige Einwände das Wesen und die historische Tendenz (...) des "Neukantianismus", wie er von den Begründern der "Marburger Schule", von Hermann Cohen und Paul Natorp verstanden worden ist, verkennen. Natorp hat in einem Aufsatz "Kant und die Marburger Schule" ausdrücklich erklärt, daß es niemals die Meinung der "Marburger Schule" gewesen sei, an den Lehrsätzen Kants unbedingt festhalten zu sollen oder zu wollen. "Die Rede von einem orthodoxen Kantianismus"- so betont er - "war niemals begründet; sie hat mit der Weiterentwicklung der Schule auch jeden fernsten Schein von Berechtigung verloren" [Auszug aus dem Buch]. (shrink)

“Father” Zachary Hale Comstock is a self‐professed prophet, religious zealot, and racist, who has kept his “heir” under lock and key in the floating city of Columbia. Booker DeWitt is a washed‐up, disgraced ex‐Pinkerton agent haunted by his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre. He enters Columbia to rescue Elizabeth in exchange for having his gambling debts settled. After much bloodshed, Booker saves Elizabeth and kills Comstock. In the past, Booker attended a baptism to assuage his guilt over Wounded Knee. (...) In some worlds he rejected the baptism, got married, had a daughter, Anna, and ended up as an indebted alcoholic ex‐Pinkerton agent. In the Comstock world, Anna is renamed Elizabeth in order to conceal her true origins. BioShock Infinite paints a metaphysical picture that treats the many‐worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics as reality. (shrink)

Published just after the Second World War, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a sweeping exploration of the remarkable continuity of European literature across time and place, from the classical era up to the early nineteenth century, and from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. In what T. S. Eliot called a "magnificent" book, Ernst Robert Curtius establishes medieval Latin literature as the vital transition between the literature of antiquity and the vernacular literatures of later centuries. (...) The result is nothing less than a masterful synthesis of European literature from Homer to Goethe. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages is a monumental work of literary scholarship. In a new introduction, Colin Burrow provides critical insights into Curtius's life and ideas and highlights the distinctive importance of this wonderful book. (shrink)

This essay presents a dialogical framework for treating philosophical disagreements as persuasion dialogues with analogical argumentation, with the aim of recasting philosophical disputes as disagreements over analogies. This has two benefits: it allows us to temporarily bypass conflicting metaphysical intuitions by focusing on paradigmatic examples, similarities, and the plausibility of conclusions for or against a given point of view; and it can reveal new avenues of argumentation regarding a given issue. This approach to philosophical disagreements is illustrated by studying the (...) role of argumentation by analogy in disputes over Lockean justifications of intellectual property rights, and disagreements over whether artificial agents should be treated as moral agents. Finally, a nonexhaustive list of possible global and local points of contention over analogical arguments is identified in order to highlight potential avenues of argumentation in disagreements over analogies. (shrink)

Arguments from analogy are pervasive in everyday reasoning, mathematics, philosophy, and science. Informal logic studies everyday argumentation in ordinary language. A branch of fuzzy logic, approximate reasoning, seeks to model facets of everyday reasoning with vague concepts in ill-defined situations. Ways of combining the results from these fields will be suggested by introducing a new argumentation scheme—a fuzzy analogical argument from classification—with the associated critical questions. This will be motivated by a case study of analogical reasoning in the virtual friendship (...) debate within information ethics. The virtual friendship debate is a disagreement over whether virtual friendships are genuine friendships. It will be argued that the debate could move away from its current impasse, caused by unproductive metaphysical and logical assumptions, if extant arguments are reinterpreted as fuzzy analogical arguments from classification, and subjected to a new set of critical questions which would replace the quest for facts of essence about friendship with an emphasis on empirical data, persuasion, and definitional power. (shrink)

Text: Reproduktion der 2. Ausgabe Berlin 1924. - Eine gänzlich andere, eine fundamental neue Form der Beziehung des Besonderen aufs Allgemeine waltet in Goethes Naturbetrachtung, die von dem Urphänomen des Lebens ihren Ausgang nimmt. Darin zwar stimmt diese Betrachtung mit der wissenschaftlichen Physik überein, dass auch in ihr der Wert und die Kraft des Allgemeinen rückhaltlos anerkannt wird. Das Vergängliche, das zeitlich Wandelbare und Verfließende wird zum Gleichnis. Die morphologische Erkenntnis der Gestalten und des Gestaltenwandels, wie Goethe sie versteht, geht (...) niemals im Sinnlich-Einzelnen oder in einem Analogon des Sinnlich-Einzelnen auf. [Auszug aus dem Buch]. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer occupies a unique space in Twentieth-century philosophy. A great liberal humanist, his multi-faceted work spans the history of philosophy, the philosophy of science, intellectual history, aesthetics, epistemology, the study of language and myth, and more. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is Cassirer's most important work. It was first published in German in 1923, the third and final volume appearing in 1929. In it Cassirer presents a radical new philosophical worldview - at once rich, creative and controversial - (...) of human beings as fundamentally "symbolic animals," placing signs and systems of expression between themselves and the world. This major new translation, the first for over fifty years, brings Cassirer's magnum opus to a new generation of students and scholars. Volume 1: Language is a fascinating examination of arguably the most fundamental of these systems of expression: human language. Cassirer traces the problem of language and expression far back in the history of philosophy, considering the work of the early Greek rationalists. He then examines the later empiricist tradition, up to the romantic tradition in the nineteenth century tackling fundamental questions about representation, signification and expression as well as language and conceptual thought in mathematics and science. Correcting important errors in previous English editions, this translation reflects the contributions of significant advances in Cassirer scholarship over the last twenty to thirty years. Each volume includes a new introduction and translator's notes by S. G. Lofts, a foreword by Peter Gordon, a glossary of key terms, and a thorough index. (shrink)

In this contribution, an overview of the distinct ways in which the interplay between knowledge, values, and beliefs took shape in the South African context since 1948 is offered. This is framed against the background of the paleontological significance of South Africa and an appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems, but also of the ideological distortion of knowledge and education during the apartheid era through the legacy of neo-Calvinism. The overview includes references to discourse on human rationality, on the use of (...) social sciences in theological reflection, on the teaching of evolution in public schools, on science and religion, and on religion and ecology. The essay concludes with a survey of some of the major voices regarding the interface between religion and science in South Africa. (shrink)

1.t. Die Sprache. --2.t. Das mythische Denken. --3.t. Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis.

What role does gender play in scientific research and the development of technologies? This book provides methodological expertise, research experiences and empirical results in the dynamic field of Science and Technology Studies. The authors, coming from disciplines as computer science, social sciences, or philosophy, discuss how to ask questions about gender and give examples for their application in interdisciplinary research, development and teaching. Topics range from the design of information and communication technologies, epistemologies of biology and chemistry to teaching mathematics (...) and professional processes in engineering. (shrink)

After twenty-five years of integrating ethics across the curriculum at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions conducted a survey of full-time faculty to investigate: a) what ethical topics faculty thought students from their discipline should be aware of when they graduate, b) how widely ethics is currently being taught at the undergraduate and graduate level, c) what ethical topics are being covered in these courses, and d) what teaching methods are (...) being used. The survey found that while progress spreading ethics across the curriculum has been substantial, it remains incomplete. The faculty think more should be done. From these findings we draw six lessons for ethics centers engaged in encouraging ethics across the curriculum. (shrink)

A great contemporary German philosopher attacks the explosive problem of political myth in our day, and reveals how the myth of the state evolved from primitive times to prepare the way for the rise of the modern totalitarian state. "A brilliant survey of some of the major texts in the history of political theory."—Kenneth Burke, _The Nation._.

Egocentricity and Mysticism is a philosophical milestone that clarifies our relationship to language, social interaction, and mortality. Ernst Tugendhat casts mysticism as an innate facet of what it means to be human--a response to an existential need for peace of mind.

Die Cassirer-Forschungen erscheinen parallel zu den Editionen der Werke und des Nachlasses Ernst Cassirers. Sie sind ein Forum für die Vorstellung und Diskussion von Arbeiten, die sich entweder unmittelbar auf das Werk Cassirers beziehen oder sich mit Themen beschäftigen, die von ihm in einer spezifischen Weise formuliert und angeregt worden sind.

“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.”—Ernst Fischer Reissued with an introduction by John Berger, The Necessity of Art is a beautifully written meditation on art’s importance in viewing the world in which we live. In this wide-ranging and erudite exploration of literary and fine art, Fischer looks at the relationship between the creative imagination and social reality, (...) arguing that truthful art must both reflect existence in all its flaws and imperfections, and help show how change and improvement might be brought about. With his emphasis on the individual’s need to engage with society, his rejection of rampant consumerism and hypertechnology, and his indomitable optimism, this radical, affirmative and humane vision of the artistic endeavor remains as timely today as when it was first published sixty years ago. (shrink)