The former Queen of Science seems to be lacking both a specific subject and a particular method. Thus the need arises for intra- and metaphilosophical orientation – especially since the way philosophy sees itself stems from various influential schools and traditions whose mutual exchange is not as lively as one might have hoped. This volume of original essays brings together some of the protagonists of different metaphilosophical debates that have so far been led fairly independently of each other. The authors (...) discuss the question of both the possibility and the scope of philosophical knowledge under a variety of aspects, particularly: (1) a priori knowledge and the role of intuitions, (2) transcendental arguments, (3) analytic philosophy and its methods as well as (4) phenomenology and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This article presents and compares Frege’s and Husserl’s conceptions of sense, also taking into account their 1891 and 1906 correspondence. It is argued that while the similarities between their views speak in favour of a Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense, there are also important differences. With regard to the latter, it is argued that Husserl’s view yields a more general criterion of propositional difference and also provides a more detailed conception of the use of indexicals and non-descriptive (...) singular terms, and of their reference. In this context, Husserl’s conceptions of constitution and genetic constitution analysis, respectively, are invoked and interpreted in terms of the epistemic notion of processing mental files or individual “concepts”. (shrink)

This book investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality.

Following much work in linguistic theory, it is hypothesized that the language faculty has a modular structure and consists of two basic components, a lexicon of (structured) entries and a computational system of combinatorial operations to form larger linguistic expressions from lexical entries. This target article provides evidence for the dual nature of the language faculty by describing recent results of a multidisciplinary investigation of German inflection. We have examined: (1) its linguistic representation, focussing on noun plurals and verb inflection (...) (participles), (2) processes involved in the way adults produce and comprehend inflected words, (3) brain potentials generated during the processing of inflected words, and (4) the way children acquire and use inflection. It will be shown that the evidence from all these sources converges and supports the distinction between lexical entries and combinatorial operations. (shrink)

This essay argues that Oscar Wilde noticeably contributed to the emerging discourse about world literature, even though his views in this regard have to be unearthed from the margins of his works, from his early and unpublished American lectures and ‘between the lines’ of his major critical essays. Wilde’s implicit ideas around world literature can be understood as being closely related to his broader endeavour of redirecting and revaluing the pejorative discourse around ‘decadence’ in art and literature. More specifically, the (...) arch-aesthete preferred to use the word ‘romance’ rather than ‘decadence’, signalling a sensitivity attuned to what he called the ‘love of things impossible’. This reconceptualization of the decadent outlook was to inspire a critical ideal of literature which relied on creatively activating the other as Other, culminating in a vision of intersubjective, transcultural and unlimited literary communication. Wilde’s thought can be more specifically understood as anticipating central tenets of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s evocations of the planetary, thus preparing the way for an alterity-oriented understanding of literary cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

The letters convey a picture of Broch’s political discussions with Kahler. Other topics covered in the letters include the intentions of his novels and his theory of mass hysteria as well as the cultural-historical essay “Hofmannsthal and his Time”. The letters also reveal personal details ‑ old Austrian retrospectives as well as current friendships with women and the efforts of his sponsors to promote his fame.

The remarkable movement known as Solidarity recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in Poland. This essay provides a theoretical appreciation of the values and principles that guided and undergirded the movement, which greatly contributed to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. This systematic overview of the ethic of the Solidarity movement fills a lacuna in the field of ethics because ethicists who are interested in the concept of solidarity have largely overlooked the Polish experience of the 1980s. This (...) essay attempts to describe the key ingredients of the Polish ethic of solidarity by analyzing both Polish treatises on the subject and accounts of events on the ground. It elaborates conceptual categories and describes characteristic features of the movement in order to provide a phenomenological account of the nature of solidarity embodied in Poland during this era. These categories and characteristics include unity among differences, the foundation of hope at the movement's roots, self-sacrifice and heroism, promoting the equality and dignity of all, the centrality of participation, the affirmation of "bread and freedom," an option for the poor, and the insistence on life in truth. Although this essay does not attempt to demonstrate the relevance of this "thick" ethic of solidarity to capitalist, democratic societies today, by way of conclusion it raises questions pertaining to the contemporary significance of the Polish ethic of solidarity. (shrink)

Increasingly, commissioners and providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities are turning to assistive technology and telecare as a potential solution to the problem of the increased demand for services, brought about by an expanding population of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of relatively static or diminishing resources. While there are numerous potential benefits of assistive technology and telecare, both for service providers and service users, there are also a number of ethical issues. The aim of this (...) paper is to raise these issues and to set them within the ethical framework proposed by Beauchamp and Childress. There is a need for a wider debate as a first step in the development of strategies to address the issues raised in the paper. (shrink)

The dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some related (...) approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization. (shrink)

The concept of complementarity, originally defined for non-commuting observables of quantum systems with states of non-vanishing dispersion, is extended to classical dynamical systems with a partitioned phase space. Interpreting partitions in terms of ensembles of epistemic states (symbols) with corresponding classical observables, it is shown that such observables are complementary to each other with respect to particular partitions unless those partitions are generating. This explains why symbolic descriptions based on an ad hoc partition of an underlying phase space description should (...) generally be expected to be incompatible. Related approaches with different background and different objectives are discussed. (shrink)

1,857 adults rated the grandparental solicitude they received in childhood. Through a simple model based on the evolutionary concepts of ontogenetically differentiated reproductive strategy and paternity confidence, an ordered discriminative pattern of grandparental caregiving was predicted and confirmed by solid main effects, based on 603 complete cases. The maternal grandmother was the most caring. Unlike prevalent gender stereotypes, she was followed by the maternal grandfather, the paternal grandmother, and the paternal grandfather. The preferential grandparental solicitude was not influenced by residential (...) distance, grandparent age, and availability of other grandparents. A predicted higher correlation for male than for female progenitors between solicitude and phenotypic resemblance could be confirmed. (shrink)

A novel conceptual framework for theoretical psychology is presented and illustrated for the example of bistable perception. A basic formal feature of this framework is the non-commutativity of operations acting on mental states. A corresponding model for the bistable perception of ambiguous stimuli, the Necker–Zeno model, is sketched and some empirical evidence for it so far is described. It is discussed how a temporal non-locality of mental states, predicted by the model, can be understood and tested.

Sehen, Horen, Riechen, Schmecken, Tasten: Die Autorin fragt nach Entstehung, Begrundung und Folgen dieser tradierten Ordnung der Sinne. Sie fragt auch nach den abweichenden Varianten, die von der antiken Idee des Korpers als ganzheitliches Sensorium uber die hoheren Sinne des Mittelalters bis zu den sinnlichen Vermogen der Aufklarung, wie Einbildungskraft und Dichtungsvermogen, reichen. Im 18. Jahrhundert verstarkte sich zusammen mit der anthropologischen Aufwertung der Sinnlichkeit der Impuls zur Uberschreitung der Funfzahl der Sinne und zur Umordnung der uberkommenen Hierarchie. An Textbeispielen (...) von Platon, Ovid und Goethe untersucht die Autorin uberdies Zusammenhange, aber auch Widerspruche, die zwischen der europaischen Liebeskultur und der Bewertung von Auge und Ohr als hohere, von Geschmack, Geruch und Tasten als niedere Sinne bestehen. (shrink)

Scepticism, a philosophical tradition that casts doubt on our ability to gain knowledge of the world and suggests suspending judgment in the face of uncertainty, has been influential since its beginnings in ancient Greece. Harald Thorsrud provides an engaging, rigorous introduction to the central themes, arguments, and general concerns of ancient Scepticism, from its beginnings with Pyrrho of Elis to the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the second century A.D. Thorsrud explores the differences among Sceptics and examines in particular (...) the separation of the Scepticism of Pyrrho from its later form—Academic Scepticism—the result of its ideas being introduced into Plato's Academy in the third century B.C. Steering an even course through the many differences of scholarly opinion surrounding Scepticism, the book also provides a balanced appraisal of the philosophy's enduring significance by showing why it remains so interesting and how ancient interpretations differ from modern ones. _Copub: Acumen Publishing Limited _. (shrink)

Following on Westerståhl’s argument that many is not Conservative [9], I propose an intensional account of Conservativity as well as intensional versions of EXT and Isomorphism closure. I show that an intensional reading of many can easily possess all three of these, and provide a formal statement and proof that they are indeed proper intensionalizations. It is then discussed to what extent these intensionalized properties apply to various existing readings of many.

The relationship between the international mobility of academic researchers and social capital is complex. On the one hand, the literature suggests that social capital facilitates the international mobility of academics which, in turn, promotes the accumulation of international social capital, enhances research productivity, and advances careers. On the other hand, international mobility can isolate researchers from the national social capital in their origin countries. In this paper, I present the results of 42 interviews in Canada and Germany to examine how (...) academics in both countries have experienced the connection between international mobility and social capital. In addition to revealing the complexity of this connection, the results show that social capital facilitates international mobility and that mobility sometimes creates social capital. However, mobility can also lead to the loss of national social capital that negatively affects early-career researchers in particular. (shrink)

Although foreign workers contribute to the economy and society, their lack of citizenship renders them unequal, vulnerable and exploitable. In this article, I suggest that the citizenship principle of jus domicile can address this aspect of inequality and exploitation experienced by migrant labour. In addition, I argue that the jus domicile principle should be combined with open borders. In making this argument, I draw on a dialectical methodology and a diverse literature on social justice and liberal political theory. The model (...) I am developing is not necessarily for immediate policy implementation but rather presents a vision for a future of free mobility and settlement. (shrink)

A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics offers a much-needed survey of the entire field of early modern Spanish scholastic thought. The volume introduces main themes and contexts of scholastics inquiry (theology, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, law, science and the senses) through close examination of a wide range of texts, debates, methods, and authors, as well as in-depth discussion of the relevant literature. Each chapter includes a useful bibliography and serves as point of departure for future research. The volume not only (...) draws the sum of existing research, but also challenges established notions and breaks new ground. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans le champ de la psychologie transculturelle du bébé et du jeune enfant. Lorsque la pathologie s’invite dans la vie de la jeune mère martiniquaise, cette dernière se trouve confrontée à la fois au discours médico-social (médecine visible) et au discours populaire (médecine invisible), mobilisant alors le double ancrage de sa propre parentalité. L’inscription ancestrale de la parentalité est façonnée par le personnage emblématique du doktè fey (guérisseur). Ceci sera illustré par l’étude de cas d’un bébé de (...) 20 mois face à une mère dépressive, qui est dans un rapport ambivalent avec sa propre mère. Il s’agit de trouver des points d’accordage entre les deux représentations du soin au bébé, car ces visions qui ont le même but, porter la jeune mère afin de la rendre plus compétente auprès de son enfant, concerneraient deux niveaux différents pour devenir mère, le niveau traditionnel et le niveau médico-social. (shrink)