A collection of essays by German philosophers on the question of the dispensability or indispensability of language for human capacities of thought, perception, and agency.

This book attempts to give a systematic account of the development of semantic holism within the philosophy of language in the 20th century. One of the things that might make it interesting is that it covers philosophers from the analytic tradition (Hilbert, Schlick, Sellars, Davidson, McDowell) as well as structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers (Saussure, Jakobson, Hjelmslev, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida). It is not only claimed that these philosophers address what can intelligibly be recognized as the same systematic questions concerning the constitution of (...) linguistic meaning, but also that the development of holistic approaches in the two traditions follows the same course, leading from formalist to post-formalist varieties of holism. This course implies the rejection of the myth of a pure or autonomous structure of language in favour of a view of language which sees linguistic practice as necessarily interwoven with the natural and social world. (shrink)

Quentin Lauer has written a masterful study of the subject indicated by his title. His book draws upon a comprehensive knowledge of Hegel’s writings. It carefully situates Hegel’s writings in their own philosophical context, and also explains the manner in which those writings retrieve classical philosophy and certain aspects of medieval theology and philosophy. It discusses the theology contemporary to Hegel of which he was aware, and his assessments of that theology. It takes account of our contemporary philosophical and (...) theological assessments of Hegel’s views regarding a “concept of God.” But this book not only achieves scholarly and philosophical excellence. It is also a personal investigation of an issue clearly of deep concern to the author. On occasion Lauer makes use of anecdote and personal narrative in developing his exposition. On other occasions he shows that he is quite aware that his book is one which will generate controversy. Indeed it should. The excellence of this work demands that it be taken seriously. The theses which this work propounds will certainly appear controversial to many who labor at Hegel scholarship, and to others who assess Hegel’s views from diverse philosophical and theological standpoints. (shrink)

Quentin Lauer has written a masterful study of the subject indicated by his title. His book draws upon a comprehensive knowledge of Hegel’s writings. It carefully situates Hegel’s writings in their own philosophical context, and also explains the manner in which those writings retrieve classical philosophy and certain aspects of medieval theology and philosophy. It discusses the theology contemporary to Hegel of which he was aware, and his assessments of that theology. It takes account of our contemporary philosophical and (...) theological assessments of Hegel’s views regarding a “concept of God.” But this book not only achieves scholarly and philosophical excellence. It is also a personal investigation of an issue clearly of deep concern to the author. On occasion Lauer makes use of anecdote and personal narrative in developing his exposition. On other occasions he shows that he is quite aware that his book is one which will generate controversy. Indeed it should. The excellence of this work demands that it be taken seriously. The theses which this work propounds will certainly appear controversial to many who labor at Hegel scholarship, and to others who assess Hegel’s views from diverse philosophical and theological standpoints. (shrink)

„Czytelnicy sięgną po tę książkę przede wszystkim z racji nie ogłoszonych dotąd drukiem listów Martina Bubera" - pisze w pierwszym Słowie wstępnym Freya von Moltke, znana niektórym jako Honorowa Przewodnicząca Rady Fundacji „Krzyżowa". Drugie Słowo wstępne dołączył Maurice Friedman, obecnie emerytowany profesor filozofi w amerykańskich uczelniach, któremu zawdzięczamy m.in. obszerne trzytomowe dzieło o życiu i twórczości Bubera. Czytelnika może zastanowić fakt, że tak zatytułowana pozycja jest tłumaczeniem z języka angielskiego, dokładniej: z amerykańskiego - jak podaje nota bibliograficzna.

„Czytelnicy sięgną po tę książkę przede wszystkim z racji nie ogłoszonych dotąd drukiem listów Martina Bubera" - pisze w pierwszym Słowie wstępnym Freya von Moltke, znana niektórym jako Honorowa Przewodnicząca Rady Fundacji „Krzyżowa". Drugie Słowo wstępne dołączył Maurice Friedman, obecnie emerytowany profesor filozofi w amerykańskich uczelniach, któremu zawdzięczamy m.in. obszerne trzytomowe dzieło o życiu i twórczości Bubera. Czytelnika może zastanowić fakt, że tak zatytułowana pozycja jest tłumaczeniem z języka angielskiego, dokładniej: z amerykańskiego - jak podaje nota bibliograficzna.

Affectionately known as "Lady Ruth" at the Jivamukti Yoga School in New York City where she teaches, Ruth Lauer-Manenti has presented dharma talks on daily life from a yogic perspective for many years (collected in An Offering of Leaves and Sweeping the Dust, both published by Lantern Books). Fell in Her Hands is an altogether more ambitious work: a commentary and reflection on the venerable yogic text, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali--written in the form of a series of interlaced (...) stories that grow out of the sutras, with the various characters evolving through the obstacles and challenges that are presented in the Yoga Sutra. Deeply personal, humane, expressive, and even humorous, Fell in Her Hands is a fresh and insightful examination of the yoga--the yoke--that ties us to our friends and family and acquaintances, to the past and the future, and to all creation. The result is a unique insight into the heart of yoga by a much-loved and compassionate practitioner. (shrink)

This contribution explores correctives to several errors that Thomas Nagel seems to presuppose in his seminal defence of scepticism about global justice. I rely on lessons learned and conventions surviving in West African contemporary social and moral contexts, where people engage as a matter of course in divergent, historically antagonistic cultural and political traditions. On this view, global justice is a work in progress—not a fixed univocal formula but an on-going collaborative effort, a project in perpetual renovation and inter-cultural reconsideration (...) by successive generations which presupposes a diversity of values and ways of sanctifying human life. I consider ways in which an ethics of care, as suggested by Virginia Held, might have been anticipated by the time-honoured norms of governance and political culture surviving in complex African polities, cultures which have withstood the corrosion of external colonialism since early modernity. How might iconically African, universally fundamental moral notions of decency and fairness find their way back into the global marketplace of diplomatic discourse and economic policy design?To demonstrate the need to navigate towards some consensus within the diversity of indigenous concepts associated with justice and good governance in Africa, I discuss the fiasco displayed in a widely celebrated proposal for exercising globally principles of justice in the Western liberal political tradition applied to remedy Africans’ notorious resource curse. (shrink)

This paper (in German) discusses the question of what is going on when large language models (LLMs) produce meaningful text in reaction to human prompts. Can LLMs be understood as authors or producers of speech acts? I argue that this question has to be answered in the negative, for two reasons. First, due to their lack of semantic understanding, LLMs do not understand what they are saying and hence literally do not know what they are (linguistically) doing. Since the agent’s (...) knowing what they are doing is a necessary condition of action, LLMs cannot be said to produce speech acts. Secondly, agency conceptually implies accepting accountability for one’s doings, which in turn implies some kind of practical commitment to live up to that accountability. Since LLMs lack any kind of practical commitment, they cannot be said to produce speech acts. I then assess two proposals of how better to understand the contribution of LLMs to human discourse. According to Anna Strasser and Eric Schwitzgebel, they should be understood as junior partners in asymmetric joint action. I claim that this suggestion founders on the same objections as rehearsed above. According to Alice Helliwell, they should be understood as a radically new kind of component of our (human) extended mind. Although I do have reservations about this suggestion as well, it seems the most promising at this point. (shrink)

It is shown here that injustices due to racial discrimination are best identified in light of the deleterious effects they have upon their victims, rather than the beliefs and attitudes of their perpetrators. For among participants who cooperate clandestinely to bring about racial injustice there may be broad disagreement about what it is they are doing collectively, and why; or they may disagree in principle about whether what they are doing is morally right. I employ the notion of ‘nomotropic’ behaviour (...) to replace the oversimplified notion of ‘rule-following’ in order to explain how duplicity and hypocrisy fall shy of being regarded as irrational in social climates where implicit norms reinforce racial privileging while explicit norms denounce it. Further, examining the ‘collective utility’ of dogmatic beliefs and norms comprising part of the social architecture that covertly reinforces racial injustice may help to explain why it often seems to make so little diffe... (shrink)

This article (in German) discusses the scope and content of John McDowell's famous claim that human perception is "conceptual all the way out". I motivate the claim by explaining its role within McDowell's transcendental concern to account for the mind's "openness to the world", i. e. the immediate presence or givenness (no capital "G") of objective reality in human perception. I argue that (a) dissolving this problem requires us to understand human perception as a rational power, that (b) a rational (...) power is a power whose actualizations involve the actualization of conceptual capacities, and that (c) the actualizations of powers that involve the actualizations of conceptual capacities have conceptual contents. I discuss the different versions of this claim to be found in McDowell's writings since "Mind and World". Furthermore, I distinguish between two ways of reading the claim which I call the "apperceptive" and the "phenomenal" reading respectively. The first reading, I argue, is the one McDowell actually endorses, whereas the second reading, which is not a part of his position, is the one foisted on him in many of the critical engagements with his work. (shrink)

John McDowell’s Mind and World takes us on a philosophical journey leading from the concept of experience to the concept of tradition. It also traces a conceptual path from a Kantian to a Gadamerian problematic. In this paper, it is argued that a final step is missing in order to complete the conceptual arc of Mind and World and make the book come full circle: The Kantian conception of experience articulated on the first pages of of the book needs to (...) be integrated into the hermeneutic framework articulated on its last pages, transforming it into a more encompassing, fully hermeneutic conception. This can be achieved, I contend, by drawing on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of experience in Truth and Method. I show that Gadamer’s conception of “dialectical experience” conceives of experience as an event, a process unfolding in time, and as inextricably intertwined with the notions of tradition and critique. Explaining this conception, I claim that it gives us reason to revise McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience as „openness to the world“ in an important respect: We should not understand openness to the world as unproblematically and transcendentally given, but as an inherently self-critical event unfolding in time, too. (shrink)

In his collection of articles, "Where Are We Now - The Epidemic as Politics", Giorgio Agamben appears to make some very startling (if not downright outrageous) claims concerning the political situation in Italy and elsewhere in Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this piece [in German] I analyse how these claims are rooted in the philosophy of Agamben's "Homo sacer" project. Focussing on three central notions (Schmitt's "state of exception", Foucault's "biopolitics", and Agamben's very own "bare life"), I show how (...) Agamben's illegitimate identification of the bare life with the subject of biopolitics leads to the derailment of his theory as well as to some of the grave political misjudgments he makes regarding the pandemic. (shrink)

Because a title such as the one I have assigned to this contribution could either prompt all sorts of expectations or lead to forming no expectations at all, it seems important at the outset to begin by indicating what I shall not be concerned with. On the face of it the title could seem to call for a discussion of the way religious consciousness is expressed in the framework of this or that particular rational system or culture, presumably contemporary—be it (...) Hispanic, African, American Indian, Asiatic, European, or whatever. There can be no question that such a discussion would be significant, involving as it does the important contemporary concept of “acculturation,” which seeks to obviate the unfortunate identification of religion and any particular cultural or rational form of its expression. I shall not, in fact, be concerned with any particular culture or system at all, while, on the other hand, from the religious point of view I shall, like Hegel, be concerned only with Christianity, not as particular but as universal; not as a one among many but as all-embracing religious awareness. (shrink)

Carl Vogt’s quarrel with Rudolph Wagner is considered to be a culmination of the materialism dispute in the 19th century. Out of this basically academic issue on the nature of human mental functions, a personal dispute quickly developed which was unrivalled in thematic incisiveness and expression. The aim of this study is the detailed linguistic analysis of the polemics and argumentation in this dispute based on extensive text excerpts, in which for the first time detailed linguistic studies on Vogt and (...) Wagner are presented. (shrink)

There is in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit a relatively brief passage at the beginning of Chapter IV, “Self-Consciousness,” which may well be one of the most difficult passages in the whole Hegelian corpus, but which is also of supreme importance for coming to grips with the movement of Hegel’s thought, not only in the Phenomenology but in the entire “system.” It is precisely the difficulty of the passage, it would seem, that explains why it has not been given by commentators (...) an attention proportionate to its significance. So much attention has been focused on the “independence of self-consciousness,” expressed in the sections on “Lordship and Bondage,” “Stoicism and Skepticism” and “The Unhappy Consciousness” — which are, it is true, important and which lend themselves most readily to extended interpretation — that not enough attention has been given to the introductory section, entitled “The Truth of the Certainty of Self,” in which are enunciated the principles which regulate the whole movement of Hegel’s thought. The section might be described as the indispensable transition from those forms of consciousness, which are merely “objective” yet try to give themselves off as authentic knowing, to what Hegel considers to be the only possible way of authenticating the objectivity of human consciousness, i.e., the self, which claims to know, progressively coming to know itself, a self-knowing which will be knowing at all only if it culminates in “absolute knowing.” Only in the light of this section will the preface be intelligible; only in its light will the whole of the Phenomenology hang together. (shrink)

An important contribution to the burgeoning field of the ethics of recognition, this book examines the contradictions inherent in the very concept of intimacy. Working with a wide variety of philosophical and literary sources, it warns against measuring our relationships against ideal standards, since there is no consummate form of intimacy. After analyzing ten major ways that we aim to establish intimacy with one another, including gift-giving, touching, and fetishes, the book concludes that each fails on its own terms, since (...) intimacy wants something that is impossible. The very concept of intimacy is a superlative one; it aims not just for closeness, but for a closeness beyond closeness. Nevertheless, far from a pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition, this is a meditation on how to live intimately in a world in which intimacy is impossible. Rather than contenting itself with a deconstructive approach, it proposes to treat intimacy dialectically. For all its contradictions, it shows intimacy is central to how we understand ourselves and our relations to others. (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

Simmel begreift den Menschen als ,tauschendes Tier', der durch das Geld als universelles Äquivalent und nicht relativierbare Größe in ein Netz universeller Tauschbeziehungen eingesponnen ist. Seine systemische Analyse der Rolle des Geldes als unkontrollierbaren Fetisches ist für das Verständnis der mentalen Einstellungen der verantwortlichen Akteure in der gegenwärtigen Wirtschaftskrise durchaus aktuell, weil er nachweist, wie der Götze Geld in unsere intimsten, unbewussten Regungen vordringt und mittels seiner Indifferenz und seines Egoismus unser Bewusstsein in ein kalkulierendes, rechnendes und technokratisches eintrübt. Womit (...) nicht nur unsere Ratio, sondern auch unsere Sinnlichkeit, unser Selbstbezug und unser Bezug zu den Anderen präformiert wird. (shrink)

On Inception is a translation of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe 70. This work belongs to the crucial period, before and during WWII, when Heidegger was at work on a series of treatises that begins with "Contributions to Philosophy" and includes "The Event" and "The History of Beyng." These works are difficult, even hermetic, but represent a crucial development in Heidegger's thinking. On Inception deepens the investigation underway in the other volumes of the series and provides a unique perspective on Heidegger's (...) thinking of Being and of Event. Here, Heidegger asks, with a greater insistence than anywhere else in his work, what it might mean to think of being as event, and not as presence. Event cannot be thought without the sense of a beginning - an inception - and so, Heidegger insists, we must try to think of being as inception, as fundamentally inceptive. On Inception pursues rigorously the difficult and puzzling implications of this speculation. It does not merely extend work already undertaken but also opens doors onto wholly other pathways. (shrink)

Is it OK to lie to Siri? Is it bad to mistreat a robot for our own pleasure? Under what condition should we grant a moral status to an artificial intelligence (AI) system? This paper looks at different arguments for granting moral status to an AI system: the idea of indirect duties, the relational argument, the argument from intelligence, the arguments from life and information, and the argument from sentience. In each but the last case, we find unresolved issues with (...) the particular argument, which leads us to move to a different one. We leave the idea of indirect duties aside since these duties do not imply considering an AI system for its own sake. The paper rejects the relational argument and the argument from intelligence. The argument from life may lead us to grant a moral status to an AI system, but only in a weak sense. Sentience, by contrast, is a strong argument for the moral status of an AI system—based, among other things, on the Aristotelian principle of equality: that same cases should be treated in the same way. The paper points out, however, that no AI system is sentient given the current level of technological development. (shrink)

Many humanists and social scientists argue—if not assume—that race's centrality in social-scientific research provides an empirical justification for its reality as a constructed kind. In this paper, we first regiment these arguments, and then show that they face significant challenges. Specifically, race-concepts' social-scientific success is compatible with race being neither constructed nor real.

Over the past three decades, the philosophy of biology has emerged from the shadow of the philosophy of physics to become a respectable and thriving philosophical subdiscipline. The authors take a fresh look at the life sciences and the philosophy of biology from a strictly realist and emergentist-naturalist perspective. They outline a unified and science-oriented philosophical framework that enables the clarification of many foundational and philosophical issues in biology. This book will be of interest both to life scientists and philosophers.

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second factor in the (...) aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event.

What exactly is hope and how does it influence our decisions? In How We Hope, Adrienne Martin presents a novel account of hope, the motivational resources it presupposes, and its function in our practical lives. She contends that hoping for an outcome means treating certain feelings, plans, and imaginings as justified, and that hope thereby involves sophisticated reflective and conceptual capacities. Martin develops this original perspective on hope--what she calls the "incorporation analysis"--in contrast to the two dominant philosophical (...) conceptions of hope: the orthodox definition, where hoping for an outcome is simply desiring it while thinking it possible, and agent-centered views, where hoping for an outcome is setting oneself to pursue it. In exploring how hope influences our decisions, she establishes that it is not always a positive motivational force and can render us complacent. She also examines the relationship between hope and faith, both religious and secular, and identifies a previously unnoted form of hope: normative or interpersonal hope. When we place normative hope in people, we relate to them as responsible agents and aspire for them to overcome challenges arising from situation or character. Demonstrating that hope merits rigorous philosophical investigation, both in its own right and in virtue of what it reveals about the nature of human emotion and motivation, How We Hope offers an original, sustained look at a largely neglected topic in philosophy. (shrink)

English summary: Johann Gottfried Herder played a central role in the emergence of aesthetics and art history in the eighteenth century. His was not only an avid reader and critic of important contemporaries, but also made essential contributions to the possibilities of art and art theory. This volume is illuminated by contemporary art discussion and the many facets of debate around Herder and the emergence of aesthetics and art history, from his early writings in the 1760s and 70s, to this (...) later works. French description: Johann Gottfried Herder spielt eine zentrale Rolle fur die Entstehung der Asthetik und der Kunstgeschichte, die beide zu den grundlegenden geistesgeschichtlichen Neuerungen des 18. Jahrhunderts gehoren. Er war nicht nur ein aufmerksamer Leser und Kritiker der wichtigsten Autoren, die sich mit dieser Materie befassten, wie etwa Winckelmann, Lessing oder Baumgarten, sondern hat selbst grundlegende und umfassende Beitrage geschrieben, die immer wieder aufs Neue die Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der Kunst, der Kunstwahrnehmung und der Kunsttheorie ausloten. Der hier vorgelegte Band leuchtet vor dem Hintergrund der zeitgenossischen Kunstdiskussionen die vielen Facetten der Auseinandersetzung Herders mit der entstehenden Asthetik und Kunstgeschichte aus, beginnend mit seinen Schriften, Kritische Walder' und, Plastik' aus den 1760er und 1770er Jahren bis hin zu seinen spateren Werken. (shrink)

A landmark discussion between two great thinkers, vital to an understanding of twentieth-century philosophy and intellectual history.

A ‘lottery belief’ is a belief that a particular ticket has lost a large, fair lottery, based on nothing more than the odds against it winning. The lottery paradox brings out a tension between the idea that lottery beliefs are justified and the idea that that one can always justifiably believe the deductive consequences of things that one justifiably believes – what is sometimes called the principle of closure. Many philosophers have treated the lottery paradox as an argument against the (...) second idea – but I make a case here that it is the first idea that should be given up. As I shall show, there are a number of independent arguments for denying that lottery beliefs are justified. (shrink)

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

Martin Heidegger is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th Century. A major figure in the development of phenomenology, his work also profoundly influenced many of the intellectual movements that followed in his wake, from Sartre's Existentialism to Derrida's deconstructionism. Towards the Definition of Philosophy brings together two seminal lectures that mark a breakthrough moment in Heidegger's thought and introduces the major themes that he would develop in his opus Being and Time.