The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central issues about (...) the nature and variety of love, the possibility of its rational justification, and whether it is an emotion, to the significance of love for law, economics, morality, and free will. The volume also contains an introduction to the subject as well as essays on love’s relation to jealousy, biotechnology, religion, knowledge, and several other topics. This wide-ranging handbook will be a key resource for specialists working on the philosophy of love, and a helpful guide for those looking to learn more about the area. (shrink)

An important finding of the game theoretic research on signaling games is the insight that under many circumstances, a signal obtains credibility by incurring costs to the sender. Therefore it seems questionable whether or not cheap talk—signals that are not payoff relevant—can serve to transmit information among rational agents. This issue is non-trivial in strategic interactions where the preferences of the players are not aligned. Researchers like Crawford & Sobel, Rabin, and Farrell demonstrated, however, that even in the case of (...) partially divergent interests, cheap talk may be informative. They assume that signals have an exogenously given meaning that is common knowledge between the players, and they explore the conditions under which such a signal is credible. This discussion has obvious relevance to the program of Gricean pragmatics in linguistics. According to Grice’s "Cooperative Principle”, this research tradition only considers scenarios where the interests of the players are aligned. Nevertheless, the assumption of differential signaling costs introduces an element of non-aligned interests. The present paper proposes a framework that combines these two research strands. Using an inference protocol of iterated best response, it gives a recipe for how the interlocutors derive rationalizable strategies from exogeneously given "literal” meanings of signals. No special assumptions about the alignment of interests or signaling costs are made. After introducing the formal model, the paper sketches several applications of this model to problems in linguistic pragmatics, like scalar implicatures, the division of pragmatic labor, and the interpretation of measure terms. (shrink)

English summary: This volume contains controversial views and discussions on the purpose, function, analysis and justification of value judgments and norms in the social sciences and humanities.

Grau and Pury (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 5, 155–168, 2014) reported that people’s views about love are related to their views about reference. This surprising effect was however not replicated in Cova et al.’s (in press) replication study. In this article, we show that the replication failure is probably due to the replication’s low power and that a metaanalytic reanalysis of the result in Cova et al. suggests that the effect reported in Grau and Pury is real. (...) We then report a large, highly powered replication that successfully replicates Grau and Pury 2014. This successful replication is a case study in the challenges involved in replicating scientific work, and our article contributes to the discussion of these challenges. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universitèat Tèubingen, 1993.

Oft wird nur jenes anerkannt, was "wissenschaftlich beweisbar" ist. Ein solches Vorurteil vergisst, dass es auch andere Wirklichkeiten gibt. Ist unsere Welt ein Blick durch ein Kaleidoskop? Wie kann es sein, dass man eine mehr oder minder große Auswahl panoramenhafter Wirklichkeiten vor sich hat? Ist es möglich, solche Wirklichkeiten zu verlassen und in andere überzuwechseln? Anhand konkreter Beispiele wird dieser Wirklichkeits-Pluralismus beleuchtet. Das erste Beispiel, ein astronomisches, zeigt in aller Ausführlichkeit, auf welche Weise Wirklichkeit entstehen kann. Dann ist von anderen (...) naturwissenschaftlichen Wirklichkeiten die Rede, vom Licht und von der Farbe sowie von einer fremden heilkundlichen Wirklichkeit. Ein zentrales Anliegen von Gerhard Fasching ist ein Denken, welches in einen Wirklichkeitspluralismus mündet. Unser monokulturelles Wirklichkeitsverständnis hat nämlich schon viele Wirklichkeiten unserer eigenen Kultur und fremder Kulturen missachtet und dadurch verloren. Unser humanistisches Weltbild benötigt also ein breiteres Fundament. Das Buch findet zu einem überraschenden Ergebnis: Man selbst gehört nicht zur Wirklichkeit, sondern man steht stets außerhalb jeder Wirklichkeit. GERHARD FASCHING. Geb. 1933 in Wien, Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn., 1966 Habilitation, seit 1970 Ordinarius an der Technischen Universität Wien, Österreich. Er hält Vorlesungen über Aufbau und Eigenschaften der Materie und über Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie. HANS-PETER DÜRR. Em. Univ.-Prof., Direktor em. am Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, München, Deutschland. Träger des Alternativen Nobelpreises. (shrink)

Semantische Fragen erwecken seit Jahrzehnten das besondere Interesse verschiedenster Wissenschaften. In den Studien des vorliegenden Bandes werden aus der Sicht der germanistischen Linguistik Antwortangebote versucht, insbesondere zu theoretischen Positionen innerhalb verschiedenster Semantikauffassungen, zur Strukturiertheit der Semantik im Morphem, im Wort, im Syntagma, zu semantischen Relationen im Sprachsystem und im Sprachgebrauch. Ausgehend von übereinstimmenden, jedoch im Detail nicht immer identischen Auffassungen zum Phänomen Sprache, widerspiegeln die Aufsätze den Stand und die Ergebnisse von Forschungen zur deutschen Gegenwartssprache, die in den von den (...) Herausgebern geleiteten Wissenschaftlerkollektiven entstanden. (shrink)

To find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central issues about the (...) nature and variety of love, the possibility of its rational justification, and whether it is an emotion, to the significance of love for law, economics, morality, and free will. The volume also contains an introduction to the subject as well as essays on love’s relation to jealousy, biotechnology, religion, knowledge, and several other topics. This wide-ranging handbook will be a key resource for specialists working on the philosophy of love, and a helpful guide for those looking to learn more about the area. (shrink)

A unique and interdisciplinary collection in which scholars from Philosophy join those from Film Studies, English, and Comparative Literature to explore the nature and limits of love through in-depth reflection on particular works of literature and film.

The article outlines the Multiple-Field-Approach ("Mehr-Felder-Ansatz") in Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy and in psychotherapy in general. This Gestalt theory based approach deals 1) with the conditions under which a secondary phenomenal field (containing a secondary phenomenal ego and a secondary phenomenal environment) segregates within the primary phenomenal field, 2) with the dynamic field interaction between primary and secondary field and their role in psychotherapy, 3) with psychotherapeutic techniques favouring the segregation and favouring the dissolution of a secondary field . Some of (...) these phenomena have been discussed as mind-wandering, daydreaming, or - in a pathological context - as dissociation. But it seems that the Gestalt psychological approach presented in this paper has to offer a more promising framework for these phenomena and their dynamics. (shrink)

Gerhard Richter's groundbreaking study argues that the concept of "afterness" is a key figure in the thought and aesthetics of modernity. It pursues questions such as: What does it mean for something to "follow" something else? Does that which follows mark a clear break with what came before it, or does it in fact tacitly perpetuate its predecessor as a consequence of its inevitable indebtedness to the terms and conditions of that from which it claims to have departed? Indeed, (...) is not the very act of breaking with, and then following upon, a way of retroactively constructing and fortifying that from which the break that set the movement of following into motion had occurred? The book explores the concept and movement of afterness as a privileged yet uncanny category through close readings of writers such as Kant, Kafka, Heidegger, Bloch, Benjamin, Brecht, Adorno, Arendt, Lyotard, and Derrida. It shows how the vexed concepts of afterness, following, and coming after shed new light on a constellation of modern preoccupations, including personal and cultural memory, translation, photography, hope, and the historical and conceptual specificity of what has been termed "after Auschwitz." The study's various analyses—across a heterogeneous collection of modern writers and thinkers, diverse historical moments of articulation, and a range of media—conspire to illuminate Lyotard's apodictic statement that "after philosophy comes philosophy. But it has been altered by the 'after.'" As Richter's intricate study demonstrates, much hinges on our interpretation of the "after." After all, our most fundamental assumptions concerning modern aesthetic representation, conceptual discourse, community, subjectivity, and politics are at stake. (shrink)

Although Walter Benjamin's writings are considered to be among the most powerful theoretical enterprises of the twentieth century, his ideas are resistant to cooptation by the doctrines of various critical programs. These essays engage this resistance by examining the ghostly in Benjamin's work. The contributors show that the haunting truths Benjamin offers point towards new forms of responsibility. These truths reside in a figurative elsewhere, a ghostly space that his texts delimit but never fully inhabit, and these essays seek to (...) do justice to the ghosts of Benjamin. Issues explored include: the status of the image in Benjamin's literary reflections and in his meditations on cinema and visual culture; abiding Benjaminian notions of messianism, aura, reproducibility, semblance, and melancholy; Benjamin's relation to Freud; his innovative rethinking of history, virtuality, and translation; and his reflections on tragedy and prophecy, the geometrical dimensions of writing, and the relation between eros and language. (shrink)

This is the first book to explore and address the philosophical aspects of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Beginning with a helpful introduction that places each essay in context, specially commissioned chapters examine the following topics: -/- * Philosophical issues surrounding love, friendship, affirmation and repetition * The role of memory (and the emotions) in personal identity and decision-making * The morality of imagination and ethical importance of memory * Philosophical questions about self-knowledge and knowing the minds of others (...) * The aesthetics of the film considered in relation to Gondry’s other works and issues in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

In order to explore the political and transformative potential of bodies in relation to gender and affects, I discuss how bodies, gender and politics are entangled through the figuration of ‘overflown bodies’. Departing from a material-discursive feminist conceptualisation of bodies, ‘overflown bodies’ are assemblages embedded in complex relationships of matter, discourse, emotions, affects, ideologies, protest, norms, values, relations, practices, expectations and other possibilities of (for) social and political action. Three ethnographic cases illustrate how ‘overflown bodies’ assemble matter and discourse, and (...) how matter, bodies and gender matter. They are used to explore the political possibilities of gendered bodies and show how matter is entangled, embedded and assembled with our politics of being. The three cases interrogate the limits and boundaries of bodies and the modes and modalities of (political) agency. Finally, the article argues that it is through visibility and recognition that ‘overflown bodies’ become critically and creatively transforming, which can be useful for addressing issues related to exclusion, domination, political emancipation and social transformation. (shrink)

The paper presents basic Gestalt psychological concepts of ego and self. They differ from other concepts in the way that they do not comprehend ego and self as fixed entities or as central controlling instances of the psyche, but as one specific organized unit in a psychological field in dynamic interrelation with the other organized units—the environment units—of this field. On this theme, well-known representatives of Gestalt theory have presented some general and special theories since the early days of this (...) approach that could partly be substantiated experimentally. They illuminate the relationship between ego and world in everyday life as well as in the case of mental disorders. Not only the spatial extension of the phenomenal ego is subject to situational changes, but also its place in the world, its functional fitting in this world, its internal differentiation, its permeability to the environment, and much more. The German Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Metzger emphasizes the significant functional role that this dynamic plasticity of the phenomenal world and its continuously changing segregation of ego and environment have for human life by designating the phenomenal world as a “Central Steering Mechanism.” In this article, ego and self as part of this field in their interrelation with the total psychological field will be illuminated from the perspective of the thinking of the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Metzger, Mary Henle, Edwin Rausch, and Giuseppe Galli. (shrink)

The project of renewing childhood by transforming one's life -- Critical theory -- Reason's self-criticism -- Defined negation -- The two faces of enlightenment -- Rescuing what is beyond hope -- Philosophy from the perspective of redemption -- Primacy of the object -- The totally socialized society -- The concept of society -- Liquidation of the individual -- Critical theory on morality -- The goal of the emancipated society -- The powerless utopia of beauty -- The destruction and salvation of (...) art -- The silence of music -- The transition from art to knowledge -- Theorizing art and culture in the institute for social research -- Benjamin and kracauer: theorizing mass art -- Anarchistic and bourgeois romanticism: Adorno's critique of Benjamin -- The work of art and the concept of truth -- The failure of culture -- The radically pathetic and guilty culture -- Enlightenment as mass deception. (shrink)

Proceedings of a symposium held Sept. 24-28, 1996 in Vienna, Austria.

In this paper I discuss whether there is a specific experience of thinking or not. I address this question by analysing if it is possible to reduce the phenomenal character of thinking to the phenomenal character of sensory experiences. My purpose is to defend that there is a specific phenomenality for at least some thinking mental states. I present Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations as a way to defend this claim and I consider its assumptions. Then I (...) present the case of understanding as a paradigmatic case for the phenomenal contrast argument and I defend it against two objections. (shrink)

Critical Rationalism has become an influential philosophy in many areas including a great number of scientific disciplines. Yet only few studies have been devoted to the role of the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper in the vast field of education. This volume undertakes to fill this gap. Leading scholars in the educational science and in the philosophy of education have critically written for this volume in an attempt to elaborate Popper's methodological and socio-political views and confront them with a globally (...) relevant spectrum of scientific objectives and cultural values. Among the topics discussed are moral values, education for freedom and its consequences for the student, and the critical attitude in political education. Attention is also paid to the historiography of this significant philosophical movement. Regarding pedagogical research, the empirical paradigm, the falsificatory approach to educational research, the complex relationship between educational theory and practice as well as the problem of value-neutrality in educational science are objects of critical analysis. (shrink)

Las discusiones sobre la intencionalidad en la Filosofía de la mente contemporánea se plantean en un marco un tanto ajeno al de la Fenomenología, bajo la suposición, de modo bastante generalizado, de que hay una separación entre intencionalidad y consciencia . Mi objetivo en este artículo es, en primer lugar, exponer tal supuesto. En segundo lugar, presentar los elementos clave de la teoría de la intencionalidad en las Investigaciones Lógicas de Husserl para presentar una visión que se opone a tal (...) separación. Y, en tercer lugar, finalizar con un tema común a ambos espacios de discusión, el de una experiencia o vivencia propia del pensamiento, que surge como un problema para muchas visiones analíticascontemporáneas y que tiene una explicación que puede derivarse de la concepción de Husserl.In contemporary Philosophy of mind, discussions about intentionality areset up in a quite different framework from the phenomenological one, assuming, in general, a separation between intentionality and consciousness. My aim in this paper is, firstly, to present this assumption. Secondly, I will put forward the key elements of Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations in order to present a view which is opposed to this assumption. And thirdly, I will end up with a common topic for both frameworks, that is, the topic of a specific experience of thinking, which emerges as a problem for many contemporary analytic views and which has an explanation that can be derived from Husserl's conception. (shrink)

The topic of this paper concerns the relation between thinking and phenomenality as it is discussed in the Philosophy of Mind. Thus, I am addressing the following questions: does the domain of phenomenal consciousness include thinking? And if so, is the phenomenality of thinking (PT) proprietary or not? I will firstly present the debate and the main notions involved in it, by contrasting a certain mainstream picture of the mind with the one offered by Phenomenology. Second, I will consider the (...) particular question of a proprietary phenomenology of conscious thought through the examination of the reductionist and antireductionist positions, concluding with a sceptical remark towards this dialectics. (shrink)

Enthält: Gesichtspunkte zur Beurteilung von Wissenschaftsbegriffen / von Gerhard Funke. Kriterien zur Beurteilung der Naturwissenschaften / von Erhard Scheibe.

In this book the author gives a broad overview of different areas of research in nonmonotonic reasoning, and presents some new results and ideas based on his research. The guiding principles are: clarification of the different research activities in the area, which have sometimes been undertaken independently of each other; and appreciation of the fact that these research activities often represent different means to the same ends, namely sound theoretical foundations and efficient computation. The book begins with a discussion of (...) the various types of nonmonotonic reasoning, their applications and their logics. Theorem proving techniques for these logics are also described. The following chapters deal with formulations of nonmonotonic inheritance, and nonmonotonic reasoning based on nonmonotonic rules. The final chapter discusses the achievements in the field in the light of the Yale shooting example. The book will be welcomed by researchers in theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The volume contains the written versions of all papers given at the workshop, divided into five chapters and followed by Alvin Goldman's replies in the sixth.

Die jetzt vorliegende ungekürzte Korrespondenz zwischen Sigmund Freud und Karl Abraham in originalem Deutsch erlaubt Einblicke in den wissenschaftlichen Austauschprozess bei der Entwicklung ihrer psychoanalytischen Konzepte. Abrahams einseitig-genetische Vorstellungen über die destruktiv-sadistischen Aspekte der Oralität und über die frühen Objektbeziehungen sind bei Freud auf Widerspruch gestoßen. Freud erweist sich einerseits als geduldiger Lehrer und Supervisor für Abraham. Andererseits ist er auch kritischer Mahner, der Abraham bis in die letzten Briefe daran erinnert, die Grundbedingungen der Neurosenentstehung zu beachten. Die Ergebnisse von (...) Abrahams klinischen Beobachtungen sind für Freud wiederum wertvolle Bestätigungen für seine eigenen Überlegungen zur Pathologie früher Störungen. Der Autor zeichnet die Entwicklung der unterschiedlichen Ansätze am wissenschaftlichen Briefwechsel nach. Der Akzent liegt auf dem ätiologischen Problem der Neurosengenese im kausalen Denken bzw. im Denken vor dem Hintergrund von Nachträglichkeit. Die weitere Entwicklung der Konzeptionen nach Abrahams Tod wird kurz skizziert. (shrink)

Das Buch bietet einen hervorragenden Einstieg in die Theorie von Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Es werden die zentralen Theorieannahmen dargestellt und die Bedeutung für die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften der Gegenwart aufgezeigt.

We discuss several ontological properties of explicit mathematics and operational set theory: global choice, decidable classes, totality and extensionality of operations, function spaces, class and set formation via formulas that contain the definedness predicate and applications.

Der Titel Eudämonie verspricht Schönes, Angenehmes, Erbauliches, und alles das will und soll dieses Buch auch leisten. Wer von uns wünschte sich nicht ein gutes und gelingendes Leben, ohne allerdings so mir nichts, dir nichts sagen zu können, woraus denn dieses Gute, Schöne und Wahre besteht. Wer von uns kennt nicht den intensiven Wunsch nach Glück und Zufriedenheit, und wem begegneten bei seiner oder ihrer Suche nach Glück und Zufriedenheit aber nicht schon Hürden und Herausforderungen aller Art, die uns bisweilen (...) rat- und hilflos haben werden lassen? Allein schon aufgrund dieser persönlichen Kalamitäten, die jeder von uns oftmals zu gewärtigen hat, scheint es gerechtfertigt, über Eudämonie und damit über die Möglichkeiten eines gelingenden Lebens nachzudenken. Leben zwischen... Kunst und Spiel / Ich und Du / verbaler Sprache und beredtem Leib / Vergangenheit und Zukunft / Kontemplation und Tat / Sinnlichkeit und Form. Der Autor Gerhard Danzer ist Facharzt für Innere Medizin, Facharzt für Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie (Tiefenpsychologie) sowie Diplompsychologe. Jahrzehntelang war er als Professor an der Charité und an der Medizinischen Hochschule Brandenburg (MHB) sowie als Honorarprofessor an der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (Psychologie) und an der Universität Potsdam (Philosophie) tätig. 2019 wurde ihm der renommierte Preis der Dr. Margrit Egnér-Stiftung (Zürich) für sein bisheriges literarisches Oeuvre verliehen. Seine jüngsten Buchpublikationen bei Springer sind Wie wäre es, ein Mensch zu sein? (2020), Personale Medizin (2021) und Shakespeare auf der Couch (2021) sowie Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit - Mythos, Logos und Person (2022). (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In Deutschland verlangt das Transplantationsgesetz die Zuteilung von postmortal gespendeten Organen nach den Kriterien der Dringlichkeit und der Erfolgsaussicht. Der herrschenden Auffassung zufolge darf die Erfolgsaussicht hierbei jedoch lediglich den Charakter einer Minimalnutzenschwelle annehmen. Eine darüber hinausgehende Gewichtung von Erfolgsaussichten soll zudem nicht mit der Lebenswertindifferenzkonzeption des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zu vereinbaren sein, die aus dem Gleichheitsgrundsatz sowie aus der Menschenwürde abgeleitet wird. Gerhard Dannecker argumentiert, diese im juristischen Schrifttum überwiegend vertretene Auffassung sei weniger zwingend, als es auf den ersten (...) Blick scheinen mag. Seiner Auffassung zufolge lässt sich aus der Lebensschutzgarantie in Artikel 2 der Verfassung eine Pflicht ableiten, die vorhandenen Ressourcen möglichst effektiv einzusetzen. Zwar dürfe Effizienz hier tatsächlich nicht bedeuten, dass die Funktionsdauer der vorhandenen Organe über das Gesamtkollektiv aller Patienten hinweg utilitaristisch zu maximieren sei - eine Pflicht zur Rettung einer möglichst großen Anzahl an Menschen lässt sich ihres Erachtens jedoch durchaus rechtfertigen. (shrink)

During a conference entitled “_Un logicien consciencieux. La philosophie de Evert Willem Beth_,” held in Nancy in 1998 and published in this journal, volume 3, cahier 4 [Barth, Heinzmann _et al._ 1998-1999], the participants regretted that a reasoned biography of Beth was not available. In view of the efforts made since then in this direction, in particular by Paul van Ulsen in his PhD thesis in Dutch [2000], this article attempts to provide an overview of Beth’s work for a broader (...) community of philosophers of science. However, my focus is not so much on Beth’s widely discussed and important contributions to mathematical logic, where his most creative merits reside. My aim is to emphasize Beth’s philosophical and cultural background. Both are also discussed in the first two chapters of Ulsen’s thesis, which globally focuses on Beth’s work in logic. Of course, philosophical and scientific aspects cannot be systematically separated, but Beth’s influence on the philosophy of mathematics be... (shrink)

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)