On the basis of the „principle of the universal connection“ Leibniz connected the science of nature, anthropology and meteorology and linked climatic conditions with human diseases. In 1671/76 he put his bioclimarical conception in writing for the first time in the Directiones. Stimulated and supported by Caspar Neumann, Bernardo Ramazzini and Friedrich Hoffmann, Leibniz since 1690 demanded in several letters and papers bioclimatic observations for Germany. The Summariscbe Punctation is the best paper, where Leibniz named the conditions for an effective (...) bioclimatology. The present paper reports on the philosophical basis and the chronological sequence of Leibniz' bioclimatical project. (shrink)

Many have begun to despair that climate justice will prevail even in a minimal form. The affective dimensions of such despair, we suggest, threaten to make climate action appear too demanding. Thus, despair constitutes a moral challenge to individual climate action that has not yet received adequate attention. In response, we defend a duty to act in hope for a more just (climate) future. However, as we see it, this duty falls differentially upon the shoulders of more and less advantaged (...) agents in society. From arguments by Black thinkers like Derrick Bell, we draw a set of distinctions between two types of hope: one for ideal justice, and one for more modest change; and between two types of hopeful actions, those undertaken through formal political channels and those we call 'extra-political' actions; and between two sites of differential moral burdens, those of the privileged and those of the oppressed. Ours is a case for facing even bleak realities, demanding otherwise, and acting in hope to achieve a better future. (shrink)

There is a remarkable trend in contemporary environmentalism that emphasizes ‘accepting responsibility’ for the natural world in contrast to outdated preservationist thinking that shirks such responsibility. This approach is often explained and justified by reference to the anthropocene: this fundamentally new epoch—defined by human domination—requires active human intervention to avert planetary catastrophe. However, in this paper, I suggest this rhetoric encourages a flight from history. This often jubilant, sometimes anxious, yearning for unprecedented human innovation and—ultimately—control in our new millennia mirrors (...) the Futurist movement that took off near the beginning of the last century. Despite the significant differences in the details of how academics have defended this twenty-first-century environmental outlook, they all represent the true flight from history; they too quickly jettison the ideas of historical environmentalists and so misunderstand the environmental values at the heart of preservation that are more salient than ever. (shrink)

An analysis of the structural properties of collections or pluralities, homogeneous objects like water, and the semantics and philosophy of events.

This article substantiates the common intuition that it is wrong to contribute to dangerous climate change for no significant reason. To advance this claim, I first propose a basic principle that one has the moral obligation to act in accordance with the weight of moral reasons. I further claim that there are significant moral reasons for individuals not to emit greenhouse gases, as many other climate ethicists have already argued. Then, I assert that there are often no significant moral (or (...) excusing) reasons to emit greenhouse gases. In any such trivial-cost – but not necessarily trivial-impact – cases, the individual then has an obligation to refrain. Finally, I apply the moral weighing principle to everyday situations of emitting and establish two surprisingly substantial implications: the relevance of virtues to the interpersonal assessment of environmentally harmful actions and the extensive individual ethical obligations that exist short of moral purity. (shrink)

Within the last two decades, a philosophical field of individual climate ethics has taken off. This subdiscipline interrogates the individual’s moral responsibility in causing and preventing climate harm. On the one hand, environmental movements have long emphasized the importance of individual lifestyle changes in solving collective action problems like air pollution. In this tradition, personal obligations to reduce carbon emissions are well-founded. This is the climate individualist view. Against this thinking, skeptics of climate individualism argue that unilateral emissions reductions will (...) not make a difference to climate harms and insist that individuals instead have moral obligations to promote effective institutions through collective action. This is the climate collectivist camp. Climate individualists have replied to the climate collectivist’s charge in two ways. First, they have denied the description by arguing that individual emitting behaviors do cause harm or otherwise might make a difference. Second, they have denied the prescription by arguing that individual emissions reductions are required even if they do not make a difference. This chapter critically summarizes the arguments that have arisen in this debate, including the problem of inconsequentialism, the moral grounds of collective responsibility, and noncausal accounts of individual responsibility for climate harms. Ultimately, this chapter identifies a consensus in the literature that climate individualism is correct. It then turns to the emerging and contested discussion regarding the extent of individual obligations to minimize contribution to climate harms. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume represent the main body of research arising from the International Munich Centenary Conference in 2001, which commemorated ...

This special section is the outcome of a conference organized in Würzburg, as part of the interdisciplinary research project Motivational and Volitional Processes of Human Integration: Philosophical and Psychological Approaches to Human Flourishing (2018–2021). The goal of the project was to connect (philosophical) perspectives on flourishing to empirical research that suggests that implicit motives play an important role in who we are and what we do and decide. One main aim was to find a middle ground between two extremes that (...) conceptualize implicit motives either as recalcitrant states that hamper flourishing, or as reflecting who we really are, much more than our explicit motives. We propose that both implicit and explicit motives are crucial to flourishing. The articles in this special section bring up other important questions as well. First of all, what is the role of the external world? It seems to be crucial for being a self, but it may also hamper flourishing. And second, how should the relationship between the self as basic subjectivity, and the self with certain values, desires, and intentions be understood? (shrink)

Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. -/- The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by a terrifyingly real problem: climate change. From the election of Donald Trump in 2016 until the 2060s, the book documents Hope’s discussions with a diverse cast of characters. (...) As she ages, her conversations move from establishing the nature of the problem, to engaging with climate skepticism, to exploring her own climate responsibilities, through managing contentious international negotiations, to considering big technological fixes, and finally, as an older woman, to reflecting with her granddaughter on what one generation owes another. Following a philosophical tradition established by Plato more than two thousand years ago, these dialogues are not only philosophically substantive and carefully argued, but also distinctly human. The differing perspectives on display mirror those involved in real-world climate dialogues going on today. (shrink)

Recent debates in philosophy of mind seemingly have resulted in an impasse. Reductive physicalism cannot account for the phenomenal mind, and nonreductive physicalism cannot safeguard a causal role for the mental as mental. Dualism was formerly considered to be the only viable alternative, but in addition to exacerbating the problem of mental causation, it is hard to square with a naturalist evolutionary framework. By 1979, Thomas Nagel argued that if reductionism and dualism fail, and a non-reductionist form of strong emergence (...) cannot be made intelligible, then panpsychism-the thesis that mental being is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe-might be a viable alternative. But it was not until David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind in 1996 that debates on panpsychism entered the philosophical mainstream. Since then the field has been growing rapidly, and some leading philosophers of mind as well as scientist have argued in favor of panpsychism. This book features contemporary arguments for panpsychism as a genuine alternative in analytic philosophy of mind in the 21st century. Different varieties of panpsychism are represented and systematically related to each other in the volume's 16 essays, which feature not only proponents of panpsychism but also prominent critics from both the physicalist and non-physicalist camps. (shrink)

It is now a quarter of a century ago that Wolfgang Stegmfiller wrote his monograph 'Das Wahrheitsproblem und die Idee der Semantik' (1957) which dealt with Tarski's and Carnap's foundational work in the field of semantics. While this book is about the definition of the basic semantical concepts in artificial formal languages there is an article written a year earlier (1956) in which Stegmfiller addresses himself specifically to the relation between logic and natural language. Here he gives a logical analysis (...) of the standard structural expressions in language that are still of primary concern for current semantics: quantifiers, pronouns, articles, etc. The motives for such an analysis at that time were mainly philosophical: the aim was to expose the misconceptions and pitfalls of traditional philosophy arising from the disregard of various systematic semantic ambiguities in everyday language. Or as Stegmfiller puts it: Ober sie [i.e. einige nicht triviale F~ille von Vagheit in der A11tagssprache] Klarheit zu gewinnen, ist schon deshalb yon auBerordentlicher Bedeutung, weil Unkenntnis fiber sie zu schwersten philosophischen Verirrungen ffihren kann, namlich entweder der Unterlassung von berechtigten Fragestellungen, oder, was weit h~ufiger vorgekommen ist, der Formulierung yon falsch gestellten Fragen, denen gegenfiber man dann nur die Wahl hat, entweder fiberhaupt keine oder nur sinnlose Antworten zu geben. So logic was to regiment language. Sentences involving the copula and the above-mentioned structure words are assigned one or more unambiguous formal representations in an already interpreted formal language, usually the first order predicate calculus. The natural language expressions thereby receive a precise meaning, since the semantics of the formal language has been specified in advance, as is always assumed. This procedure has, of course, always been common practice, witness the typical syntactical argot of the mathematicians. It carries, however, an obvious methodological presupposition: it is the idea that the logic of our choice to which the formal representations belong is in some sense an adequate framework to express our thoughts. (shrink)

Reductivist programs in logicand philosophy, especially inthe philosophy of mathematics,are reviewed. The paper argues fora ``methodological realism'' towardsnumbers and sets, but still givesreductionism an important place,albeit in methodology/epistemologyrather than in ontology proper.

Encyclopedia entry about "Panpsychism".

Paper on structural realism and how its problems lend support to some kind of panpsychism.

In the world there are concrete particulars that exhibit the kind of substantial unity that allows them to be called substances or “natural individuals”, as opposed to artifacts or mere conglomerates. Persons, animals, and possibly the most fundamental physical simples are all natural individuals. What gives these entities the ontological status of a substantial unity? Arguments from the philosophy of mind and arguments from general metaphysics show that physical properties alone cannot account for substantial unity. The ultimate intrinsic properties of (...) natural individuals resemble phenomenal mental properties rather than any other kind of known properties. Pan(proto-)psychism is thus supported by systematically related arguments from different areas of philosophical inquiry. A certain amount of skepticism regarding the full nature of absolutely intrinsic properties is nevertheless well-advised. (shrink)

Paper on divine foreknowledge and human freedom.

Ein zentrales Thema des christlichen Glaubens wird in diesem Textbuch von fuhrenden zeitgenossischen Philosophen und Philosophinnen beleuchtet. In systematischer Anordnung werden neben deutschsprachigen "Klassikern" und neuen Originaltexten auch einige der einflussreichsten Autoren der angelsachsischen Debatte in Ubersetzung zuganglich gemacht. Auch diese von der analytischen Philosophie gepragten Texte wurden teilweise eigens fur diesen Band geschrieben oder uberarbeitet. Die Auseinandersetzungen im kontinentaleuropaischen protestantischen und katholischen Denken um Seele, Unsterblichkeit und leibliche Auferstehung in der Mitte des letzten Jahrhunderts werden hier auf lebendige und (...) begrifflich prazise Weise weitergefuhrt. Die Religionsphilosophie und die Theologie werden am Reichtum der Argumente und Positionen nicht vorbeigehen konnen. Mit Texten von Oscar Cullmann, Gisbert Greshake, Gerd Haeffner, Thomas Schartl, Eleonore Stump, Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman, Alvin Plantinga, William Hasker, Lynne Baker, Hud Hudson und Godehard Bruntrup. (shrink)

An essay on the connection between the mind-body-problem and quantum mechanics.

Article on the personal experience concerning the topic of death and dying.

A theoretically rigorous approach to the key problems of Molinism leads to a clear distinction between semantic and metaphysical problems. Answers to semantic problems do not provide answers to metaphysical problems that arise from the theory of middle knowledge. The so-called ‘grounding objection’ to Molinism raises a metaphysical problem. The most promising solution to it is a revised form of the traditional ‘essence solution’. Inspired by Leibniz’s idea of a ‘notio completa’ (complete concept), we propose a mathematical model of ‘possibilistic’ (...) (Molinist) complete concepts. They ground middle knowledge within the very being of the agents themselves. Molinist Complete Concepts can thus serve to reject consequence-style arguments against Molinism. They also allow the Molinist to safeguard a robustly libertarian notion of the ability to do otherwise. (shrink)

Précis of the overall research conveyed by the Chair for Philosophy and Motivation at Munich School of Philosophy.

Essay criticizing Sigmund Freud's critique of religion and its philosophical implications.

Article on the relation between real and ideal self.

In continental philosophy of religion, the hermeneutics of narratives takes a central role. Analytic philosophy of religion, on the other hand, considers religious statements mostly as assertions of fact. It examines the logical form and semantics of religious statements, addresses their logical commitments, and examines their epistemological status. Using the example of a passage in the Book of Job, it is investigated whether the methods of analytic philosophy are also suitable for analyzing religious narratives. The question is explored whether there (...) is a genuine form of knowledge, besides propositional factual knowledge, which is bound to the form of narration. Particular attention will be paid to the inter-personal pragmatic embeddedness of narratives. The connection between second-personal knowledge and narratives is examined. Using the historical example of Ignatius of Loyola's theory of religious knowledge, it is argued that propositional argumentative knowledge is only one form of religious knowledge among others. The others are second-personal and narrative in character. Having thus established this distinct form of knowledge, it is asked whether our best empirical knowledge of the neurophysiological basis of intuitive and non-argumentative cognition provides a foundation for better understanding inter-personal religious cognition within narratives. (shrink)