The High Line – a public park on a repurposed railway track in New York City – first opened to the public in 2009, and has been increasingly celebrated as a model public space, and as a democratic project directed by community. Artistic and amateur photographic practices have significantly informed the High Line’s design, landscaping, publicity, urban policy, use and constellations of community. This photo-conceptual essay critically considers the constitutive function of the photographic image, as photography produces, interpellates and defines (...) the public and public sphere of the High Line. However, these imaging practices have also taken increasingly regulated form, and endorse conservative forms of community, personhood and publicness. The new park’s imaging practices may be understood as supplementary to neoliberal forms of property accumulation, in fact diminishing public space even as they purport to represent it. Drawing from the historical avant-garde, feminist critiques of representation and anti-capitalist urban theory, the following photographic series critiques the High Line’s photographic apparatus, from within a practice of photography, and from a position within the field of contemporary art. (shrink)

Regular musical activity as a complex multimodal lifestyle activity is proposed to be protective against age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. This cross-sectional study investigated the association and interplay between musical instrument playing during life, multi-domain cognitive abilities and brain morphology in older adults from the DZNE-Longitudinal Cognitive Impairment and Dementia Study study. Participants reporting having played a musical instrument across three life periods were compared to controls without a history of musical instrument playing, well-matched for reserve proxies of education, (...) intelligence, socioeconomic status and physical activity. Participants with musical activity outperformed controls in global cognition, working memory, executive functions, language, and visuospatial abilities, with no effects seen for learning and memory. The musically active group had greater gray matter volume in the somatosensory area, but did not differ from controls in higher-order frontal, temporal, or hippocampal volumes. However, the association between gray matter volume in distributed frontal-to-temporal regions and cognitive abilities was enhanced in participants with musical activity compared to controls. We show that playing a musical instrument during life relates to better late-life cognitive abilities and greater brain capacities in OA. Musical activity may serve as a multimodal enrichment strategy that could help preserve cognitive and brain health in late life. Longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to support this notion. (shrink)

There are two Habsburg empires in our minds: One – that of Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth – evokes melancholy and a sense of loss, a yearning not for simpler but perhaps more colourful, less exacting...

The political scientist and former Bavarian Minister of Culture Hans Maier has created a historically profound, theologically educated, literarily and musically highly sensitive, politically mature body of work, with which he has inscribed himself in the (intellectual) history of the Federal Republic. This book is the first to contain contributions by renowned scholars and politicians on the rich work and impact of the Catholic scholar and politician Hans Maier. It thematises and appreciates in detail his view of German (...) history and the traditions of political thought, his critique of political language, political theology, totalitarianism and political religions, but also his contributions on Catholicism and modernity, his writings on literature and music, and finally his influence as an academic teacher, public intellectual and politician. With contributions by Udo Bermbach, Thomas Brose, Ahmet Cavuldak, Horst Dreier, Hermann-Josef Große Kracht, Jens Hacke, Oliver Hidalgo, Hans Günter Hockerts, Patrick Horst, Horst Möller, Heinrich Oberreuter, Henning Ottmann, Mark Edward Ruff, Hans Otto Seitschek, Michael Stolleis, Bernhard Vogel, Peter Graf von Kielmansegg, Theo Waigel and Markus Zimmermann. (shrink)

During the last decades, the cognitive sciences and cognitive anthropology have increasingly veered away from each other. Cognitive anthropologists have become so rare within the cognitive sciences that Beller, Bender, and Medin (this issue) even propose a division of the cognitive sciences and cognitive anthropology. However, such a divorce might be premature. This commentary tries to illustrate the benefits that cognitive anthropologists have to offer, not despite, but because of their combination of humanistic and scientific elements. It argues that the (...) cognitive sciences (among others) profit from these benefits, as culture will become crucial for cognitive research. At the same time, problems within cognitive anthropology are discussed, including, for example, the responsibility of cognitive anthropologists to promote young academics. Finally, ideas are presented that might support future interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the world and logic, between intuition and language, between objects and their quantitative determinations? Rationalists, on the one hand, hold that the world is structured in a rational way. Representationalists, on the other hand, assume that language, logic, and mathematics are only the means to order and describe the intuitively given world. In World and Logic, Jens Lemanski takes up three surprising arguments from Arthur Schopenhauer’s hitherto undiscovered Berlin Lectures, which concern the philosophy of (...) language, logic, and mathematics. Based on these arguments, Lemanski develops a new position entitled ‘rational representationalism’: the world is always structured by human beings according to linguistic, logical, and mathematical principles, but the basic vocabulary of these structural descriptions already contains metaphors taken from the world around us. (shrink)

It is little known that Schopenhauer (1788–1860) made thorough use of Euler diagrams in his works. One specific diagram depicts a high number of concepts in relation to Good and Evil. It is, hence, uncharacteristic as logicians of that time seldom used diagrams for more than three terms (the number demanded by syllogisms). The objective of this paper is to make sense of this diagram by explaining its function and inquiring whether it could be viewed as an early serious attempt (...) to construct complex diagrams. (shrink)

Extensions of traditional syllogistics have been increasingly researched in philosophy, linguistics, and areas such as artificial intelligence and computer science in recent decades. This is mainly due to the fact that syllogistics is seen as a logic that comes very close to natural language abilities. Various forms of extended syllogistics have become established. This paper deals with the question to what extent a syllogistic representation in CL diagrams can be seen as a form of extended syllogistics. It will be shown (...) that the ontology of CL enables numerically exact assertions and inferences. (shrink)

In early modernity, one can find many spatial logic diagrams whose geometric forms share a family resemblance with religious art and symbols. The family resemblance these diagrams bear in form is often based on a vesica piscis or on a cross: Both logic diagrams and spiritual symbols focus on the intersection or conjunction of two or more entities, e.g. subject and predicate, on the one hand, or god and man, on the other. This paper deals with the development and function (...) of logic diagrams, their analogy to religious art and symbols, and their modern application in artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

The question of naturalness in logic is widely discussed in today’s research literature. On the one hand, naturalness in the systems of natural deduction is intensively discussed on the basis of Aristotelian syllogistics. On the other hand, research on “natural logic” is concerned with the implicitly existing logical laws of natural language, and is therefore also interested in the naturalness of syllogistics. In both research areas, the question arises what naturalness exactly means, in logic as well as in language. We (...) show, however, that this question is not entirely new: In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, Arthur Schopenhauer already discussed in depths what is natural and unnatural in logic. In particular, he anticipates two criteria for the naturalness of deduction that meet current trends in research: (1) Naturalness is what corresponds to the actual practice of argumentation in everyday language or scientific proof; (2) Naturalness of deduction is particularly evident in the form of Euler-type diagrams. (shrink)

In this paper, we interpret a 19th century diagram, which is meant to visualise G.W.F. Hegel’s entire method of the `Science of Logic' on the basis of bitwise operations. For the interpretation of the diagram we use a binary numeral system, and discuss whether the anti-Hegelian argument associated with it is valid or not. The reinterpretation is intended to make more precise rules of construction, a stricter binary code and a review of strengths and weaknesses of the critique.

The emergentist position that R. Keith Sawyer has formulated, nonreductive individualism, contains three propositions. First, that social characteristics must always be realized in individuals; second, that it is nevertheless possible to understand social properties as irreducible; and third, that therefore it is possible to demonstrate how social properties are able to exercise independent causal influences on individuals and their properties. It is demonstrated that Sawyer is not able to meet an objection that Kim has formulated against the analogous position in (...) the philosophy of mind. In his defense of the claim of irreducibility Sawyer refers to Fodor’s argument about multiple realizability, but this line of argument cannot preserve the claim for downward causation because Fodor’s claim for irreducibility rests on assumptions that are not compatible with a systematic formulation of downward causation. The article proposes a reading of Fodor’s argument that is consistent with individualism but not with nonreductive individualism. (shrink)

We study sincere-strategy preference-based approval voting , a system proposed by Brams and Sanver [1] and here adjusted so as to coerce admissibility of the votes , with respect to procedural control. In such control scenarios, an external agent seeks to change the outcome of an election via actions such as adding/deleting/partitioning either candidates or voters. SP-AV combines the voters' preference rankings with their approvals of candidates, where in elections with at least two candidates the voters' approval strategies are adjusted (...) – if needed – to approve of their most-preferred candidate and to disapprove of their least-preferred candidate. This rule coerces admissibility of the votes even in the presence of control actions, and hybridizes, in effect, approval with pluralitiy voting. We prove that this system is computationally resistant to 19 out of 22 types of constructive and destructive control. Thus, SP-AV has more resistances to control than is currently known for any other natural voting system with a polynomial-time winner problem. In particular, SP-AV is the second natural voting system with an easy winner-determination procedure that is known to have full resistance to constructive control, and unlike Copeland voting it in addition displays broad resistance to destructive control. (shrink)

We study sincere-strategy preference-based approval voting (SP-AV), a system proposed by Brams and Sanver [1] and here adjusted so as to coerce admissibility of the votes (rather than excluding inadmissible votes a priori), with respect to procedural control. In such control scenarios, an external agent seeks to change the outcome of an election via actions such as adding/deleting/partitioning either candidates or voters. SP-AV combines the voters' preference rankings with their approvals of candidates, where in elections with at least two candidates (...) the voters' approval strategies are adjusted – if needed – to approve of their most-preferred candidate and to disapprove of their least-preferred candidate. This rule coerces admissibility of the votes even in the presence of control actions, and hybridizes, in effect, approval with pluralitiy voting. We prove that this system is computationally resistant (i.e., the corresponding control problems are NP-hard) to 19 out of 22 types of constructive and destructive control. Thus, SP-AV has more resistances to control than is currently known for any other natural voting system with a polynomial-time winner problem. In particular, SP-AV is (after Copeland voting, see Faliszewski et al. [2, 3]) the second natural voting system with an easy winner-determination procedure that is known to have full resistance to constructive control, and unlike Copeland voting it in addition displays broad resistance to destructive control (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (shrink)

Logicians have often suggested that the use of Euler-type diagrams has influenced the idea of the quantification of the predicate. This is mainly due to the fact that Euler-type diagrams display more information than is required in traditional syllogistics. The paper supports this argument and extends it by a further step: Euler-type diagrams not only illustrate the quantification of the predicate, but also solve problems of traditional proof theory, which prevented an overall quantification of the predicate. Thus, Euler-type diagrams can (...) be called the natural basis of syllogistic reasoning and can even go beyond. In the paper, these arguments are presented in connection with the book Nucleus Logicae Weisaniae by Johann Christian Lange from 1712. (shrink)

In the year 1714, Johann Christian Lange published a baroque textbook about a logic machine, supposed to simulate human cognitive abilities such as perception, judgement, and reasoning. From today’s perspective, it can be argued that this blueprint is based on an inference engine applied to a strict ontology which serves as a knowledge base. In this paper, I will first introduce Lange’s approach in the period of baroque logic and then present a diagrammatic modernization of Lange’s principles, entitled Calculus CL. (...) Finally, I would like to discuss the possibilities of how to apply CL to modern cases of concern by using an example from epidemiology. (shrink)

Christian Lotz’s book, The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction, seeks to reconcile Marx’s logic of conceptual determination with Kant’s logic of constitution. It is in this context that Lotz reconfigures Kant’s transcendental schema as money and understands money as an a priori determination that makes the world accessible and meaningful to individuals. Furthermore the book’s point of departure is Adorno’s Kant interpretation, and in foregrounding money Lotz also wishes to ‘reconnect Adorno’s Critical Theory to Marx’. The (...) review engages with both endeavours, discusses the, so to speak, temporal impossibility of such a reconciliation project and revisits a previous attempt to bring Kant and Marx together: Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s theory of real abstraction. (shrink)

Aun cuando Trágame tierra2 (1969), de Lizandro Chávez Alfaro (1929-2006), es reconocida como la primera novela contemporánea nicaragüense, sigue ocupando un lugar marginal en el panorama de la crítica latinoamericana. Las lecturas que se le han hecho tienden a enfatizar cómo retrata los esfuerzos revolucionarios contra la dictadura somocista, dando poca importancia al elemento regional que Chávez Alfaro desarrolla, en particular el mundo cultural de la llamada Costa Atlántica. Este artículo analiza la novela a partir de una perspectiva transcultural, guiada (...) por las elaboraciones teóricas de Ángel Rama, con el objetivo de problematizar cómo introduce la otredad cultural del Caribe nicaragüense en el discurso letrado nacional. Se centra en las diversas formas de representar el choque entre la modernización estatal y la diferencia cultural caribeña, en particular las representaciones de sujetos subalternos, la pluralidad de nombres y las tensiones presentadas entre la oralidad y la escritura. Se argumenta que estos elementos forman las piezas de una narrativa transculturadora que destaca la inherente conflictividad de toda simbiosis cultural. (shrink)

The following introduction has two parts: the first part provides a sketch of the Frankfurt School’s history, highlighting the circumstances under which the authors discussed in this issue engaged philosophically with matters of economy. We thereby follow the prevailing periodization, starting with the school’s foundation in 1924 and ending with Theodor W. Adorno’s death in 1969 and the school’s preliminary dissolution. The second part of the introduction explores the legacy of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical critique of economy. Max Horkheimer’s writings (...) thereby serve as a model case for such a critique and become the point of departure for the discussion of contemporary critical theories of the economic. (shrink)

According to epistemic two-dimensionalism, or simply two-dimensionalism, linguistic expressions are associated with two intensions, one of which represents an expression’s a priori implications. The author investigates the prospects of conceptual analysis on the basis of a two-dimensionalist theory of meaning. He discusses a number of arguments for and against two-dimensional semantics and argues that properly construed, two-dimensionalism provides a potent and plausible account of meaning. Against the background of this account, the author then goes on to assess the value of (...) conceptual analysis in philosophical practice, outlining its goals, its promises, but also its limitations. (shrink)

The mechanistic view of computation contends that computational explanations are mechanistic explanations. Mechanists, however, disagree about the precise role that the environment – or the so-called “contextual level” – plays for computational explanations. We advance here two claims: Contextual factors essentially determine the computational identity of a computing system ; this means that specifying the “intrinsic” mechanism is not sufficient to fix the computational identity of the system. It is not necessary to specify the causal-mechanistic interaction between the system and (...) its context in order to offer a complete and adequate computational explanation. While the first claim has been discussed before, the second has been practically ignored. After supporting these claims, we discuss the implications of our contextualist view for the mechanistic view of computational explanation. Our aim is to show that some versions of the mechanistic view are consistent with the contextualist view, whilst others are not. (shrink)

This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist's' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims (...) to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation. (shrink)

We critique five points that impede the target article's far-reaching efforts toward formulating a neurobiological theory of language. Neurolinguistics amounts to no more than neurology in linguistics in this account, because it assumes “perceptual representational isomorphism,” processing autonomy and “meaning,” thereby aiming primarily at justifying modular concepts in terms of associative principles.

Mit dem Begriff der Innenwelt der Ökonomie adressiert der vorliegende Band die vielfältigen Eintrittspunkte von ökonomischem Wissen in die Wirtschaft. Dieses Wissen ist nicht auf die Wirtschaftswissenschaft beschränkt. Vielmehr findet ökonomisch relevante Wissensproduktion auch in der Politik, den Medien, in der Wirtschaft selbst sowie anderen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen statt. Die Beiträge des Bandes zeichnen aus soziologischer, wissenschaftshistorischer, ethnographischer und wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive die Umrisse dieses Forschungsfeldes nach. Ihr gemeinsames Ziel ist eine systematische empirische Untersuchung wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Wissens und dessen Einfluss auf ökonomische Verhältnisse (...) vor einem interdisziplinären Horizont. Ihr Gegenstandsbereich umfasst die Produktion ökonomischen Wissens, die Wirtschaftswissenschaft als Faktor im Spiel um Macht und Legitimität sowie die performative Rolle der Ökonomik. (shrink)

To reconcile the standard possible worlds model of knowledge with the intuition that ordinary agents fall far short of logical omniscience, a Stalnakerian strategy appeals to two components. The first is the idea that mathematical and logical knowledge is at bottom metalinguistic knowledge. The second is the idea that non-ideal minds are often fragmented. In this paper, we investigate this Stalnakerian reconciliation strategy and argue, ultimately, that it fails. We are not the first to complain about the Stalnakerian strategy. But (...) in contrast to existing complaints, we want to cause trouble for the strategy directly on its home turf. That is, we will advance our objection while granting both the plausibility of the fragmentation component—save for an extreme version of it—and that of the metalinguistic component. Once our central objection to the Stalnakerian strategy is in place, we will show how it negatively affects Adam Elga and Augustín Rayo’s recent attempt to apply the Stalnakerian strategy in the context of Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)

Nowadays, the forms assumed by knowledge indicate an unhinging of traditional structures conceived on the model of discipline. Consequently, what was once strictly disciplinary becomes interdisciplinary, what was homogeneous becomes heterogeneous and what was hierarchical becomes heterarchical. When we look for a matrix of interdisciplinarity, that is to say, a primary basis or an essential dimension of all the complex phenomena we are surrounded by, we see the need to break with the disciplinary self-restraint in which, often completely inadvertently, many (...) of us lock ourselves up, remaining anchored to our own competences, ignoring what goes beyond our own sphere of reference. However, interdisciplinarity is still a vague concept and a much demanding practice. It presupposes the continuous search for convergent theoretical perspectives and methodologies, and the definition of common spaces and languages, as well as a true dialogical and open mind of several scholars. From ethics to science, from communication to medicine, from climate change to human evolution the volume Controversies and Interdisciplinarity offers a series of original insights beyond disciplinary fragmentation for a new knowledge model. (shrink)

This review article discusses some problems and needs for clarification that are connected with the use of the concepts culture, language, tool, and communication in Daniel Everett's recently published book, Language: The Cultural Tool . It also discusses whether the idea of biological readiness and preparedness for language (rather than grammar) can really be disposed of as a result of Everett's very convincing arguments against a specific genetic predisposition for the syntactic component of a grammar. Finally, it calls into question (...) whether Everett really is true to his professed ideology of scientific ideographical pragmatism. (shrink)

It is argued that Wallace Chafe's approach of relating studies of mind and consciousness to studies of real spoken language interaction is precisely what is needed in linguistics and psycholinguistics. However, the way Chafe attempts to establish the link between spoken language and consciousness is, in several respects, in need of clarification. The paper critically examines several of Chafe's claims and points to areas — e.g., the notions of 'consciousness', 'intonation unit', and 'new idea' — where clarification or possible revision (...) is needed. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the potential bearing of the extended mind thesis—the thesis that the mind extends into the world—on epistemology. We do three things. First, we argue that the combination of the extended mind thesis and reliabilism about knowledge entails that ordinary subjects can easily come to enjoy various forms of restricted omniscience. Second, we discuss the conceptual foundations of the extended mind and knowledge debate. We suggest that the theses of extended mind and extended knowledge lead to (...) a bifurcation with respect to the concepts of belief and knowledge. We suggest that this conceptual bifurcation supports a form of pluralism about these concepts. Third, we discuss whether something similar can be said at the metaphysical level. (shrink)

A recent approach to the problem of logical omniscience holds that belief is question-sensitive: what an agent believes depends on what question they try to answer (Pérez Carballo, 2016; Yalcin, 2018; Hoek, 2022). While the question-sensitive approach can avoid some logical omniscience problems, we argue that it suffers from nearby problems. First, these accounts all validate closure principles that are just as implausible as the ones it was designed to avoid. Second, question-sensitivity by itself isn’t suitable for explaining many kinds (...) of failures of logical omniscience. Recognizing the flaws of this approach, however, naturally leads to a more promising solution. Our account generalizes the question-sensitive approach by appealing to (1) the defeasible nature of dispositions toward action associated with belief and (2) the algorithms an agent uses to make decisions. On our view, then, believing that φ means being disposed to employ an algorithm which outputs acting on the information that φ in normal circumstances associated with φ. We argue that this account naturally generalizes the question-sensitive accounts while avoiding their faults. (shrink)

The paper examines Schopenhauer's logic lectures and the eristic dialectics of the manuscript remains in particular. The content of the logic lectures is briefly presented, then the characteristics are highlighted and finally Schopenhauer’s Euler diagrams are examined. The section on eristic dialectics summarizes the history of the text and its origin and reflects the content and order of the document.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 50 Heft: 1 Seiten: 45-98.