The article reads the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit as the unfolding of the first circle in the development of spirit. It starts with a deception, as we become aware of the impossibility of reading the text along the lines of a regular understanding of regular meanings: instead, the speculative presentation needs to be written while reading. Philosophy takes place in this actualisation of the speculative, and Hegel appears within the text not as its author, but as the site (...) of the speculative, in which he disappears at the same time. This first circle creates a model for the development of spirit in which the theological form of the kenosis is actualised. Spirit empties itself and actualises itself as externalised, directing us beyond Hegel’s text to other texts, only to find its actual presentation in other places. (shrink)

The article proposes to reconsider the late Heidegger’s examination of the concept of the world, as for Heidegger the eradication of all life on planet earth is not the most horrible thing that could happen. It is the impossibility of thinking the world that exposes us to something worse: the loss of our link with being. Following Heidegger, to think the world is not only necessary to prevent the extinction of life on earth, but, moreover, the loss of thinking the (...) world lies at the beginning of the crisis we are living through. (shrink)

In a famous passage in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant calls the “spirit” an animating or enlivening principle in the mind. Rather than a positive affirmation building on a protobiological background, this definition marks an aesthetic notion of life. As a first step, the “Gemüt” shows itself to be an ambivalent concept between transcendental philosophy and anthropology. This ambivalence then reoccurs in the notion of life in an aesthetical regard: Life in this sense is the one hand (...) bound to the empirical notion of the powers of life – and thereby to the pre-critical works – but is now turned into something surpassing. Life in aesthetical terms is negatively bound to life in an empirical sense. So is spirit, too: It rather works as a negatively defined principle opening up the given. Life, Gemüt, and spirit make up a relational constellation that provides the grounds for the work of aesthetic ideas. By means of aesthetic ideas, spirit opens up the cognitive and thereby enlivens the Gemüt. This principle, which is spirit, can then be understood as following Kant’s logic of the infinite judgment, because the aesthetic is the opening of the rational to its indeterminate other. (shrink)

William of Ockham was a medieval English philosopher and theologian. In 1328 Ockham turned away from 'pure' philosophy and theology to polemic. From that year until the end of his life he worked to overthrow what he saw as the tyranny of Pope John XXII and of his successors Popes Benedict XII and Clement VI. This campaign led him into questions of ecclesiology and political philosophy. The Dialogus purports to be a transcript made by a mature student of lengthy discussions (...) between himself and a university master about the various opinions of the learned on the matters disputed between John XXII and the dissident Franciscans. (shrink)

Die Frage des Menschen nach sich selbst beschäftigt Menschen zu allen Zeiten und an allen Orten, so auch in der Gegenwart. Die hier versammelten Wissenschaftler, Politiker, Theologen, Journalisten und Schriftsteller aus verschiedenen kulturellen Traditionen geben in über fünfzig prägnanten Beiträgen ihre persönliche Antwort auf die aufgeworfene Frage. Was ist davon zu erwarten? Sicherlich keine abschließende Lösung der Frage. Doch ist ein schillerndes Spektrum aktueller Positionen zum menschlichen Selbstverständnis entstanden - zugleich kritisch und konstruktiv, pointiert und tiefgründig. Eingeleitet und kommentiert wird (...) die Sammlung mit Beiträgen von Volker Gerhardt, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Detlev Ganten und Jan-Christoph Heilinger. (shrink)

Mit dem Abschluss des Humangenomprojekts und den Fortschritten der Lebenswissenschaften stellt sich die Frage nach dem Selbstverstandnis des Menschen in geradezu dramatischer Weise. DAs neu gewonnene Wissen uber den Menschen muss analysiert, aufgearbeitet und bewertet werden. NIcht nur in den Lebens-, sondern auch in den Kulturwissenschaften stellt sich daher die Frage nach dem Selbstverstandnis des Menschen, das unsere Handlungen und Bewertungen sowie unsere Orientierung in der Welt pragt. DIe Forschenden stehen hierbei jedoch vor der Herausforderung, dass vertraute Intuitionen fragwurdig geworden (...) sind, feststehende Terminologien nicht zur Verfugung stehen und die neuen Erkenntnisse vielleicht grundlegend neue Antworten verlangen. DIe Buchreihe Humanprojekt nimmt diese Herausforderung an. SIe schafft eine Plattform, um einen forschungsrelevanten, dabei aber auch offentlich wirksamen Dialog der Natur-, Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften uber die vielfaltigen Dimensionen der Frage nach dem Menschen zu fuhren. MOnographien und thematisch fokussierte Sammelbande, verfasst von ausgewiesenen Forscherinnen und Forschern, behandeln umfassend einzelne Elemente einer aktuellen Anthropologie. EIn systematischer uberblick und vielfaltige interdisziplinare Verknupfungen auf dem aktuellsten Stand der Forschung weisen die Bande als Referenzwerke zum jeweiligen Thema aus. AKtuelle Referenzwerke zur Anthropologie Analyse und Bewertung neuester Entwicklungen in den Lebenswissenschaften Erstklassige WissenschaftlerInnen Interdisziplinare Kompetenz Klare Darlegung aller verwendeten Begriffe: ideale Werke fur interessierte Laien Reihenherausgeber: Detlev Ganten, Charité Universitatsmedizin Berlin Volker Gerhardt, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin Jan-Christoph Heilinger, Universitat Zurich Julian Nida-Rumelin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen. (shrink)

Wie beeinflussen sich Recht und Technik? Im ersten Teil dieses Bandes hinterfragen die Autorinnen und Autoren, ob es tatsächlich die rechtliche Entwicklung sein kann, die die Rahmenbedingungen für den technologischen und den damit möglicherweise einhergehenden gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt setzt – oder ob vielmehr das Recht nicht antizipiert, sondern nur reagiert. Damit und mit der globalen Dimension des Themas einher geht die Erkenntnis, dass es vielleicht an der Zeit ist, in einer weltweiten Informationsgesellschaft an neue, auch außerhalb des Rechts liegende Regulierungsansätze zu (...) denken. Im zweiten Teil des Bandes fragen die Autorinnen und Autoren nach der Relevanz des „practice turn“ für Recht und Moral. In ihren Beiträgen zeigen sie unter Rückgriff auf verschiedene philosophische Ansätze, was es für das Verständnis von Normen, Pflichten und Rechten bedeutet, wenn man diese als Teil sozialer Praktiken betrachtet: Wird so ein differenzierteres Bild gewonnen, das neue Möglichkeiten für die Kritik an bestehenden Normen eröffnet? Liegt hier theoretisches Potential für Völker- und Menschenrechtsdebatten? Oder wird die Möglichkeit normativer Begründungen dabei provinzialisiert und am Ende gar zugunsten von sozialtheoretischen Beschreibungen aufgegeben? (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 106 Heft: 4 Seiten: 709-713.

1. Bd. Die Entwicklung der deutschen Wissenssoziologie -- 2. Bd. Rezeption und Kritik der Wissenssoziologie.

The Logic Manual is a clear and concise introduction to logic for beginning philosophy students.

Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures contains previously unpublished notes from lectures given by Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1938 and 1941. The volume offers new insight into the development of Wittgenstein’s thought and includes some of the finest examples of Wittgenstein’s lectures in regard to both content and reliability.

Every educational system requires some kind of management and control. This is particularly true in the case of occupational education and dual apprenticeship. Nevertheless, the didactical value and the overall success of such kind of educational systems can vary considerably. Any educational system, any system of apprenticeship requires either some kind of coordination or some kind of co-operation. In Germany, despite the fact that there is a lot of rumors about the importance of cooperation for over a decade by now, (...) the well-known dual system of vocational education is firmly grounded on the management principle of co-ordination. The control of the system ‘by plans’ apparently has proved to be the most adequate approach to its organization and management structures. Starting from the idea of a duality which is characterized by its didactical dimension, the set of qualities needed for this purpose can be illustrated by following the logic of different didactical approaches in vocational education. (shrink)

At the centre of the traditional discussion of truth is the question of how truth is defined. Recent research, especially with the development of deflationist accounts of truth, has tended to take truth as an undefined primitive notion governed by axioms, while the liar paradox and cognate paradoxes pose problems for certain seemingly natural axioms for truth. In this book, Volker Halbach examines the most important axiomatizations of truth, explores their properties and shows how the logical results impinge on the (...) philosophical topics related to truth. In particular, he shows that the discussion on topics such as deflationism about truth depends on the solution of the paradoxes. His book is an invaluable survey of the logical background to the philosophical discussion of truth, and will be indispensable reading for any graduate or professional philosopher in theories of truth. (shrink)

The attempts to mitigate the unprecedented health, economic, and social disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are largely dependent on establishing compliance to behavioral guidelines and rules that reduce the risk of infection. Here, by conducting an online survey that tested participants’ knowledge about the disease and measured demographic, attitudinal, and cognitive variables, we identify predictors of self-reported social distancing and hygiene behavior. To investigate the cognitive processes underlying health-prevention behavior in the pandemic, we co-opted the dual-process model of thinking (...) to measure participants’ propensities for automatic and intuitive thinking vs. controlled and reflective thinking. Self-reports of 17 precautionary behaviors, including regular hand washing, social distancing, and wearing a face mask, served as a dependent measure. The results of hierarchical regressions showed that age, risk-taking propensity, and concern about the pandemic predicted adoption of precautionary behavior. Variance in cognitive processes also predicted precautionary behavior: participants with higher scores for controlled thinking (measured with the Cognitive Reflection Test) reported less adherence to specific guidelines, as did respondents with a poor understanding of the infection and transmission mechanism of the COVID-19 virus. The predictive power of this model was comparable to an approach (Theory of Planned Behavior) based on attitudes to health behavior. Given these results, we propose the inclusion of measures of cognitive reflection and mental model variables in predictive models of compliance, and future studies of precautionary behavior to establish how cognitive variables are linked with people’s information processing and social norms. (shrink)

(1984). Goodbye to the School System— Goodbye to the System of Leisure and Recreation? Aspects of the decay of the last dominant mode of socialisation at the levels of meaning and identity[1] Educational Studies: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 43-63.

Die Frage nach dem aWozuo der Geschichte(n) eroffnet ein weites Feld von eng miteinander verschlungenen Problemkomplexen, das durch die Begriffe Geschichtsbewusstsein und Identitat, Geschichtsphilosophie und Historik in seinen Grenzen ...

International organizations such as the UN, EU and IMF play an increasingly important role in international politics. Fully revised and updated, this broad-ranging text provides a systematic theoretical and empirical introduction to the structure, policies and performance of international organizations.

Bewusstsein, Außenwelt und Sprache bilden eine untrennbare Einheit in der Frage nach dem Sinn und der Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke. Zeichen und ihre Verwendung lassen sich daher weder durch rein internalistische Bewusstseinsanalysen noch durch rein externalistische Gegenstandsbezüge angemessen rekonstruieren. Daher befinden sich Bedeutungen weder „innerhalb" noch „außerhalb" des Kopfes. Unterschiedliche Gebrauchsweisen und somit Bedeutungen spiegeln sich vielmehr in der Fähigkeit wieder, sprachliche Zeichen zu verstehen und auf unsere subjektiven Erlebnisse sowie die uns umgebende Welt anzuwenden. Volker Munz zeigt, inwieweit sowohl rein (...) phänomenale als auch rein physikalistische Interpretationsansätze zu kurz greifen, die Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke zu bestimmen. Beide Positionen stehen nicht in Widerstreit zueinander, sondern ergänzen einander vielmehr in der Bestimmung des Sinnes und der Bedeutung sprachlicher Zeichen. Sowohl externalistische Semantiken (Putnams Zwillingserde, Kripkes Marsianer, Davidsons Sumpfmann etc.) als auch internalistische Positionen (Locke, Thomas Nagel, Jackson etc.) werden anhand spezifischer Gedankenexperiment kritisch auf ihre Rolle und Schlüssigkeit hin überprüft und mit alternativen Gedankenszenarios konfrontiert. Neben den genannten Autoren werden auch Russell, Frege und insbesondere Wittgenstein ausführlich diskutiert. (shrink)

Definitional and axiomatic theories of truth -- Objects of truth -- Tarski -- Truth and set theory -- Technical preliminaries -- Comparing axiomatic theories of truth -- Disquotation -- Classical compositional truth -- Hierarchies -- Typed and type-free theories of truth -- Reasons against typing -- Axioms and rules -- Axioms for type-free truth -- Classical symmetric truth -- Kripke-Feferman -- Axiomatizing Kripke's theory in partial logic -- Grounded truth -- Alternative evaluation schemata -- Disquotation -- Classical logic -- Deflationism (...) -- Reflection -- Ontological reduction -- Applying theories of truth. (shrink)

In view of the question, to what democracy should provide an up-to-date answer, it should be stressed that liberal political democracy (historically rooted in human rights) is part of that which is globalizing itself. What has to be determined is the relationship between democracy as political, and the market as economic forms of modernity. This is done under three aspects: (1) the market and democracy in the wake of modernity; (2) the modernization of modernity through a renewed social contract; (3) (...) the problem of the market and politics in the global society. (edited). (shrink)

We investigate axiomatizations of Kripke's theory of truth based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme for treating sentences lacking a truth value. Feferman's axiomatization KF formulated in classical logic is an indirect approach, because it is not sound with respect to Kripke's semantics in the straightforward sense: only the sentences that can be proved to be true in KF are valid in Kripke's partial models. Reinhardt proposed to focus just on the sentences that can be proved to be true in (...) KF and conjectured that the detour through classical logic in KF is dispensable. We refute Reinhardt's Conjecture, and provide a direct axiomatization PKF of Kripke's theory in partial logic. We argue that any natural axiomatization of Kripke's theory in Strong Kleene logic has the same proof-theoretic strength as PKF, namely the strength of the system RA< ωω ramified analysis or a system of Tarskian ramified truth up to ωω. Thus any such axiomatization is much weaker than Feferman's axiomatization KF in classical logic, which is equivalent to the system RA<ε₀ of ramified analysis up to ε₀. (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

Solutions to semantic paradoxes often involve restrictions of classical logic for semantic vocabulary. In the paper we investigate the costs of these restrictions in a model case. In particular, we fix two systems of truth capturing the same conception of truth: of the system KF of Feferman formulated in classical logic, and the system PKF of Halbach and Horsten, formulated in basic De Morgan logic. The classical system is known to be much stronger than the nonclassical one. We assess the (...) reasons for this asymmetry by showing that the truth theoretic principles of PKF cannot be blamed: PKF with induction restricted to non-semantic vocabulary coincides in fact with what the restricted version of KF proves true. (shrink)

Entgegen rationalistisch verkürzten Handlungs- und Wissenstheorien wird mit der Philosophie des Empraktischen der der selbstbewussten Praxis immer je schon vorgängige leiblich gestimmte Handlungsvollzug thematisiert. Das Buch knüpft an aktuelle Debatten um unmittelbar körperliche, implizite Wissensformen und um eine Philosophie der Gefühle an.

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 6-29.

Hauptbeschreibung Hinter den Anderen erscheint unser Ich immer schon als Schattenbild aller Möglichkeiten Seit jeher ist sich der Mensch in seiner Bösartigkeit und Güte ein Rätsel, dem Philosophen mit Moral und Tugend beizukommen versucht haben. Dabei ist der scharfe Blick auf das tatsächliche Verhalten von Menschen nicht verlorengegangen. Die Aufklärung am Beginn unserer Moderne versuchte eine Balance zwischen einem realistischen Menschenbild und einer zukunftsweisenden Perspektive zu finden, die das Zusammenleben durch Staat und Recht für alle verträglich machen sollte. D.

To the axioms of Peano arithmetic formulated in a language with an additional unary predicate symbol T we add the rules of necessitation and conecessitation T and axioms stating that T commutes with the logical connectives and quantifiers. By a result of McGee this theory is -inconsistent, but it can be approximated by models obtained by a kind of rule-of-revision semantics. Furthermore we prove that FS is equivalent to a system already studied by Friedman and Sheard and give an analysis (...) of its proof theory. (shrink)