In seinen Analysen des Bildbewusstseins begreift Edmund Husserl das Bild als eine Herausforderung phänomenologischen Fragens. Diese Herausforderung begründet sich durch seine spezifische Gegenstands- und Erfahrungsstruktur, die das Bild als ein besonderes unter den Phänomenen auszeichnet, als ein Phänomen, das einen Unterschied zwischen wirklicher und vorgestellter Welt einführt und hierin Differenzbewusstsein konstituiert. Vor allem mit Blick auf das Thema der Zeit erweist sich die Auseinandersetzung mit der differentiellen Natur des Bildes als folgenreich. Iris Laners systematische Studie widmet sich der Aufgabe, (...) den heuristischen Wert der philosophischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Bild für die Beantwortung der komplexen Frage nach der Zeit in und nach der Phänomenologie zu bestimmen. Damit unterstreicht sie nicht nur die Bedeutung des Bildes als Phänomen, sondern erörtert dieses auch als grundlegendes Konzept des Denkens. (shrink)

When it comes to the body, the professional pedagogical field shows a paradoxical attitude: With regard to sense-oriented school subjects, educational policies tend to underline a close relatedness of body and mind. However, where learning is primarily connected with mental activities and intellectual engagement, the body is rarely assigned an integral role. Discussing the grounding ideologies of this paradox, I will consult phenomenological and enactivist perspectives in order to develop an approach to embodied learning which takes into account both sense-oriented (...) as well as intellectual domains. I will argue that considering the interdependence of body and mind including their situatedness does not only benefit the cultivation of the body and the senses, but also opens up further perspectives for intellectual engagement. (shrink)

In this article I aim to shed light on the question of whether aesthetic experience can constitute practical knowledge and, if so, how it achieves this. I will compare the approaches of Nelson Goodman and Edmund Husserl. Both authors treat the question of which benefits aesthetic experience can bring to certain basic skills. Though one could argue together with Goodman that repeated aesthetic experience allows for a trained and discriminating approach to artworks, Husserl argues that by viewing aesthetic objects we (...) can learn to perceive in a more undiluted fashion and to qualify our own perceptions against the backdrop of the conceptual framework that shapes our everyday experience. As a consequence, aesthetic experience is not to be regarded as something that only contributes to a normatively loaded involvement in the distinct field of the ‘aesthetic’. Reading Goodman with Husserl and vice versa, I will argue in support of a practical aesthetic knowledge account that mediates cognitivist-constructivist and phenomenological concerns and can thus overcome some of their respective shortcomings. The account I present is useful for understanding the practical value of aesthetic experience in and beyond the confined field of the arts. (shrink)

A central notion in Benjamin Lipscomb's narrative of the rise of the ‘Wartime Quartet’—Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch—is that of philosophical pictures (e.

O artigo desafia certa interpretação da teoria da justiça rawlsiana que a concebe como um paradigma distributivo-alocativo concentrado na “distribuição de coisas” para pessoas entendidas como “portadoras de coisas”, como objeta Iris Young na sua obra magna. Dada a influência da objeção da filósofa nos debates em teorias da justiça, na primeira seção é reconstruída sua crítica do paradigma distributivo-alocativo dos trabalhos de Rawls. Na segunda seção, com base no artigo divisor de águas de Elisabeth Anderson, é argumentado (...) em que sentido a intuição original de Young acerta no diagnóstico das desventuras dos debates distributivos da época, momento no qual se disputava o sentido do “igualitarismo social” da justiça rawlsiana. Em congruência com o diagnóstico descrito pelas autoras, Rainer Forst condensa suas intuições na célebre distinção das duas “imagens da justiça”: a distributiva-alocativa e a relacional. Ao passo que Forst concorda que no cenário contemporâneo concorre uma imagem da justiça – e do igualitarismo rawlsiano – como uma teoria distributiva-alocativa focada estritamente em distribuir recursos e bens pelas instituições; todavia, Forst argumenta que a justiça rawlsiana melhor se encaixa com a imagem relacional. Para mostrar seus aspectos relacionais, na quarta seção, são reconstruídas três ideias fundamentais de “justiça como equidade”: sociedade, pessoa e sociedade bem-ordenada. (shrink)

The idea of perfection.--On God and Good.--The sovereignty of good over other concepts.

We live in the age of postmodernism. What does that mean? With a call for essays, we asked for proposals for a better understanding. At the same time, we were looking for posts that show how the arts have processed and are still processing the change from the modern to the postmodern selfconception of man, which has been described by philosophy since the 1950s to today. This special issue thus demonstrates how architects, designers and artists have reacted to the new (...) socio-politically relevant concepts of postmodernism. -/- With contributions of Simone Kraft on architecture, Arianna Fantuzzi on self-portraits, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen on visual arts in the 1980s, Anna Kristensson on design, Iris Laner on postmodern theory and the work of Jeff Wall, Christiane Wagner on postmodern avatars and finally, I contributed with a text on the deconstruction of the familiar in postmodern theory and the work of Karin Kneffel. (shrink)

Can machines be conscious and what would be the ethical implications? This article gives an overview of current robotics approaches toward machine consciousness and considers factors that hamper an understanding of machine consciousness. After addressing the epistemological question of how we would know whether a machine is conscious and discussing potential advantages of potential future machine consciousness, it outlines the role of consciousness for ascribing moral status. As machine consciousness would most probably differ considerably from human consciousness, several complex questions (...) must be addressed, including what forms of machine consciousness would be morally relevant forms of consciousness, and what the ethical implications of morally relevant forms of machine consciousness would be. While admittedly part of this reflection is speculative in nature, it clearly underlines the need for a detailed conceptual analysis of the concept of artificial consciousness and stresses the imperative to avoid building machines with morally relevant forms of consciousness. The article ends with some suggestions for potential future regulation of machine consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Thomas Aquinas’s Two Approaches to Female RationalityElisabeth Uffenheimer-LippensAlthough the female human being was never at the center of his daily and intellectual attention, Thomas Aquinas as a religious thinker had no choice but to consider her in a wide range of different contexts. She is found in theoretical-speculative discussions (about creation, original sin and its punishment, resurrection) and in more practical ones (about marriage, reproduction, ordination of women, (...) women as teachers, as witnesses). Thomas’s ideas about the female human being have been investigated by theologians, philosophers, and historians. Often, but not always, the research has been inspired and even distorted by one form or another of feminism.In this article I shall not discuss all the different aspects of the topic “woman” as they can be found in Thomas’s works, but limit myself to one of them, namely, his understanding of female rationality. I have become intrigued by the fact that he thought about the rationality of woman in two different ways which he never integrated or explicitly connected. In the majority of his texts Thomas describes woman’s rationality as “inferior” in comparison to the “superior” male rationality. This justifies her subordination to the male human being and is expressed in her inability to control her passions. There are, however, other texts in which Thomas discusses the human mind in general, without specifying whether he means the mind of the male or the female human being. He recognizes in the human mind two aspects or functions of rationality, namely, a ratio superior which he labels symbolically “masculine” and a ratio inferior which he calls “feminine.” The meaning of this is [End Page 191] that woman’s rationality is not of an inferior kind, but includes both aspects of rationality.The thesis underlying this article is that not enough attention has been paid to the fact that two fundamentally different ways of understanding female rationality can be found in the work of Thomas Aquinas. His symbolic use of male and female has too often been confused with what one could call the “real” relationship between man and woman. The aim of this article is to present these two different understandings in Thomas, without making any detailed attempt to trace their historical origins. In addition, I want to show the new perspectives that are opened up by his second approach.The first part of this article will focus on the “inferior rationality” of women and try to understand what is meant by inferiority. The discussion will develop around an analysis of the words mollis and mollities. This will lead me to the relationship between inferior rationality and bodily weakness on the one hand, and between inferior rationality and the passions on the other hand. The practical consequences of woman’s inferior rationality shall also be treated. The second part of this article will focus on the human mind, and on the difference between ratio inferior and ratio superior. The definition of these two functions of human rationality will be followed by an analysis of texts where Thomas describes original sin as a paradigm for concrete sin, and where he connects ratio inferior to woman/feminine and ratio superior to man/male. The discussion will be completed by a study of the relationship between the ratio inferior and the vis cogitativa. This will allow me to bring out the importance of this second understanding of female rationality.I. Woman’s Inferior RationalityWoman’s intellectual capacity is repeatedly described by Thomas with the unflattering comparatives debilior (debilis meaning, among other things, “disabled, infirm, feeble, frail, [End Page 192] weak”)1 and inferior. Almost every woman does not have a “firm judgment of reason”; she is “unstable of reason.”2 She does not possess “sufficient strength of mind” (to resist concupiscence).3 There is clearly a “deficiency of reason”4 because she has an overall “weakness of nature.”5These descriptions of female rationality can only be understood insofar as they stand over and against the male rationality which is described in almost bodily comparatives as fortior, firmior, robustior. The male has more “strength of soul.”6 In him “the discretion... (shrink)

A collection of the author's most influential essays and short works includes her critique of existentialism, her two dialogues on art and religion, key texts on the continuing importance of the sublime, the concept of love, and more.

We address the controversy in the literature concerning the definition of holobionts and the apparent constraints on their evolution using concepts from community population genetics. The genetics of holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, has been neglected in many discussions of the topic, and, where it has been discussed, a gene-centric, species-centric view, based in genomic conflict, has been predominant. Because coevolution takes place between traits or genes in two or more species and not, strictly speaking, between (...) species, it may affect some traits but not others in either host or symbiont. Moreover, when interacting species pairs are embedded in a larger community, indirect ecological effects can alter the expected pairwise dynamics. Mode of symbiont transmission and the degree of host inbreeding both affect the extent of microbial mixing across host lineages and thereby the degree to which selection on one trait of either partner affects other aspects of a holobiont phenotype. We discuss several potential defining criteria for holobionts using community genetics and population genetics models, suggesting their application and limitations. Using community genetics models, we show how conflict between genomes can be self-limiting, while cooperation and mutualism tend to be self-accelerating. It is likely that this bias in the evolutionary dynamics of interaction between hosts and symbionts is an important feature of holobionts. This bias in the evolutionary dynamic could contribute to explaining the absence of cheaters from natural mutualisms, although cheaters are predicted by gene-centered conflict theory to cause the evolutionary instability of mutualisms. Additionally, it may help explain the more frequent origin of mutualisms from parasitic than from free-living systems, an evolutionary trajectory opposite to that predicted by genome conflict theory. (shrink)

Most models of generational succession in sexually reproducing populations necessarily move back and forth between genic and genotypic spaces. We show that transitions between and within these spaces are usually hidden by unstated assumptions about processes in these spaces. We also examine a widely endorsed claim regarding the mathematical equivalence of kin-, group-, individual-, and allelic-selection models made by Lee Dugatkin and Kern Reeve. We show that the claimed mathematical equivalence of the models does not hold. *Received January 2007; revised (...) April 2008. †To contact the authors, please write to: Elisabeth Lloyd, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 130 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: [email protected]; Richard Lewontin, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Marcus Feldman, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Some methodological adaptationists hijacked the term “exaptation,” and took an occasion of Stephen Jay Gould’s misspeaking as confirmation that it possessed an evolutionarily “designed” function and was a version of an adaptation, something it was decidedly not. Others provided a standard of evidence for exaptation that was inappropriate, and based on an adaptationist worldview. This article is intended to serve as both an analysis of and correction to those situations. Gould and Elisabeth Vrba’s terms, “exaptation” and “aptation,” as originally (...) introduced, are very useful, unlike the faded adaptationist echo of “exaptation” devised by the methodological adaptationists, which has made the term incoherent. We will discuss how exaptation relates to function, to aptation, and to adaptation, both primary and secondary. These ideas have been rendered practically useless through their mistaken definitions and misapplications by evolutionary psychologists. (shrink)

Sexual violence during war varies in extent and takes distinct forms. In some conflicts, sexual violence is widespread, yet in other conflicts—including some cases of ethnic conflict—it is quite limited. In some conflicts, sexual violence takes the form of sexual slavery; in others, torture in detention. I document this variation, particularly its absence in some conflicts and on the part of some groups. In the conclusion, I explore the relationship between strategic choices on the part of armed group leadership, the (...) norms of combatants, dynamics within small units, and the effectiveness of military discipline. (shrink)

This article explores a particular pattern of wartime violence, the relative absence of sexual violence on the part of many armed groups. This neglected fact has important policy implications: If some groups do not engage in sexual violence, then rape is not inevitable in war as is sometimes claimed, and there are stronger grounds for holding responsible those groups that do engage in sexual violence. After developing a theoretical framework for understanding the observed variation in wartime sexual violence, the article (...) analyzes the puzzling absence of sexual violence on the part of the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka. (shrink)

Actions unfold in time, and so do experiences of agency. Yet, despite the recent surge of interest in the sense of agency among both philosophers and cognitive scientists, the import of the fact that agentive experiences unfold in time remains to this day largely underappreciated. This chapter argues that agentive experiences should be conceptualized as continuants, whose contents evolve as actions unfold. It attempts to characterize these content shifts, distinguishing two main dimensions of change—changes in scale, or fine-grainedness, and changes (...) in tense—as well as the main action control and action specification processes that underlie them. The chapter further argues that taking into account this temporal dynamics of agentive experiences can help researchers better appreciate in what sense some of the apparently conflicting empirical models of the sense of agency proposed in recent years can be seen as complementary, rather than as rival, thus refining integrative models. (shrink)

Most models of generational succession in sexually reproducing populations necessarily move back and forth between genic and genotypic spaces. We show that transitions between and within these spaces are usually hidden by unstated assumptions about processes in these spaces. We also examine a widely endorsed claim regarding the mathematical equivalence of kin-, group-, individual-, and allelic-selection models made by Lee Dugatkin and Kern Reeve. We show that the claimed mathematical equivalence of the models does not hold.

Academic performance enhancement or cognitive enhancement (CE) via stimulant drug use has received increasing attention. The question remains, however, whether CE solely represents the use of drugs for achieving better academic or workplace results or whether CE also serves various other purposes. The aim of this study was to put the phenomenon of pharmacological academic performance enhancement via prescription and illicit (psycho-) stimulant use (Amphetamines, Methylphenidate) among university students into a broader context. Specifically, we wanted to further understand students’ experiences, (...) the effects of use on students and other factors, such as pressure to perform in their academic and private lives. (shrink)

In a longitudinal naturalistic study, we observed German mothers interacting with their infants when they were 3 and 6 months old. Pursuing the idea that infants’ attention is socialized in everyday interactions, we explored whether eye contact is reinforced selectively by behavioral modification in the input provided to infants. Applying a microanalytical approach focusing on the sequential organization of interaction, we explored how the mother draws the infant’s attention to herself and how she tries to maintain attention when the infant (...) is looking at her. Results showed that eye contact is reinforced by specific infant-directed practices: interrogatives and conversational openings, multimodal stimulation, repetition, and imitation. In addition, these practices are contingent on the infant’s own behavior. By comparing the two data points (3 and 6 months), we showed how the education of attention evolves hand-in-hand with the developing capacities of the infant. Keywords: multimodal input; eye contact; interactional adaptation; ecology of attention; social learning. (shrink)

As numerous scholars pointed out, Kant’s account of genius suffers from internal inconsistency, primarily due to the contradictory way in which Kant talks about the relation between imagination and taste in artistic production. What remains unclear is whether taste and genius work in concord in order to produce beautiful art, or whether one or the other takes charge. In this paper I look at this challenge, and I offer an interpretation of how Kant conceives of genius. I argue that the (...) gift of genius is multi-componential, including the capacity to maximize imagination’s productivity as well as the capacity to develop taste to the point where one can extract the rules for art production, internalize them and implement them in one’s own original and exemplary artistic production. By analyzing specific claims Kant makes in relation to beautiful art, primarily his account of poetry, I extrapolate further aspects of artistic genius, which relate to his capacity to create artworks imbued with moral and cognitive significance, and which enable the awakening of genius in other artists. (shrink)

This article discusses whether a child can and should be engaged as a co-researcher on moral and epistemological grounds. Selected research literature has been used to illustrate various approaches to the issue of children's participating as co-researchers in social research. By exploring the predicament of childhood and the meaning of the concept ‘research’, we attempt to clarify the necessary conditions for a person to qualify as a researcher and for an activity to qualify as research. We then look at the (...) extent to which the concept of ‘child’ fits within these frames. (shrink)

In a longitudinal naturalistic study, we observed German mothers interacting with their infants when they were 3 and 6 months old. Pursuing the idea that infants’ attention is socialized in everyday interactions, we explored whether eye contact is reinforced selectively by behavioral modification in the input provided to infants. Applying a microanalytical approach focusing on the sequential organization of interaction, we explored how the mother draws the infant’s attention to herself and how she tries to maintain attention when the infant (...) is looking at her. Results showed that eye contact is reinforced by specific infant-directed practices: interrogatives and conversational openings, multimodal stimulation, repetition, and imitation. In addition, these practices are contingent on the infant’s own behavior. By comparing the two data points, we showed how the education of attention evolves hand-in-hand with the developing capacities of the infant. Keywords: multimodal input; eye contact; interactional adaptation; ecology of attention; social learning. (shrink)

A specific form of research question, for instance, “What is the probability of a certain class of weather events, given global climate change, relative to a world without?” could be answered with the use of FAR or RR (Fraction of Attributable Risk or Risk Ratio) as the most common approaches to discover and ascribe extreme weather events. Kevin Trenberth et al. (2015) and Theodore Shepherd (2016) have expressed doubts in their latest works whether it is the most appropriate explanatory tool (...) or the way of public outreach concerning climate events and extremes. As an alternative, these researchers focus on complementary questions, for example, “How much did climate change affect the severity of a given storm?” advocating a “storyline” approach. New methods and new research questions are neither foreign, nor controversial from the standpoint of history and philosophy of science, especially those, related to public interest. Nevertheless, the new proposal has got a tepid reception from the majority of professionals of the given field. They argued that this approach can cause weakening of standards and neglecting of scientific method. The following paper attempts to find the roots of the supposed controversy. We claim inefficiency of uncompromising approach to D&A in absolute sense and assert that errors of a particular type may have a different level of concern in society, depending on the variety of contexts. Therefore, context defines the risk of over-estimation vs. under-estimation of harm. (shrink)

Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) has been well analyzed regarding the life sciences. This article explores the topic of younger fields of medical research and their potential for misuse, especially in the military context. The areas of research considered are artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and neuroenhancement. Each of these areas have brought forward highly promising new research. However, in light of the current armed conflicts in Europe and in the Middle East, there is a need to consider what the potential (...) harmful consequences of medical research are. Using the example of war, this article demonstrates various instances of how current medical research could be—or is being—misused and discusses various possible solutions to the dual use dilemma. The main finding is that there needs to be a more concise and international effort to prevent the misuse of research. The raising of awareness in the general medical research community for the topic of DURC is one of the simplest steps that should be undertaken in order to ensure the non-maleficence of global research. Additionally, considering the potentially far-reaching consequences of DURC, it is time to consider the introduction of a new intergovernmental agency to monitor research and establish safeguards in order to cover all fields of research. (shrink)

Cet article présente une version rédigée du texte de la conférence introductive présentée par Élisabeth Letertre au Colloque Thélème – 29 novembre 2019 – université d'Angers. Le premier colloque Thélème s'est déroulé le 29 novembre 2019. Thélème est un projet de l'université d'Angers et de l'université du Mans, dans le cadre de l'Appel à Projet du troisième Programme d'investissements d'avenir. Ce colloque avait pour thème, les rythmes à l'université, une notion - Sciences de l'éducation et de la formation.

When rape by an armed organization occurs frequently, it is often said to be a strategy of war. But some cases of conflict-related rape are better understood as a practice, violence that has not been explicitly adopted as organization policy but is nonetheless tolerated by commanders. The typology of conflict-related rape in this article emphasizes not only vertical relationships between commanders and combatants but also the horizontal social interactions among combatants. It analyzes when rape is likely to be prevalent as (...) a practice, emphasizing not only gendered norms and beliefs of the society from which combatants come but also how those might be transformed by the organization’s socialization processes. In the conclusion, I suggest that the typology is relevant for analysts of all forms of of political violence and also for prosecutors, policy advocates, and policymakers concerned with conflict-related rape. (shrink)

Recent attempts to revive counterinsurgency strategies for use in Afghanistan and Iraq have been marked by a determination to learn lessons from history. Using the case of the campaign against the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya of 1952—60, this article considers the reasons for this engagement with the past and the issues that have emerged as a consequence. The article disputes the lessons from British colonial history that have been learned by military planners, most obviously the characterization of nonmilitary forms (...) of British counterinsurgency as nonviolent. Although it contests some of these supposed precedents for successful counterinsurgency in British military history, the article also identifies more generalizable elements of the Kenyan case. Particular emphasis is given to the effects on the nature of counterinsurgency, a reliance on locally recruited allies, and the decentralization of command. (shrink)

Detailed, precise and ridden with excellent examples, Jon Phelan’s Literature and Understanding: The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts is an inviting a.

Every philosophical involvement with language centres on the notion of representation. There is controversy over what language represents. The answers can be classified and used as a basis for a systematic survey: 1. Language represents the world. 2. Language does not represent the world but our ideas of the world. 3. Language represents our ideas (of the world) badly. 4. Language not only represents badly; it does not represent anything. 5. Without language there would be no representation of a higher (...) order and thus no thought. The main intention behind this introduction to linguistic philosophy lies in revealing the underlying ordering principle for the many simultaneous and non-simultaneous attempts at a philosophy of language. (shrink)