While the enormous influence of Martin Heidegger's thought in Japan and China is well documented, the influence on him from East-Asian sources is much lesser known. This remarkable study shows that Heidegger drew some of the major themes of his philosophy--on occasion almost word for word--from German translations of Chinese Daoist and Zen Buddhist classics.

Was Anselm zu einem leuchtenden Vorbild für die Theologie heute werden lässt, ist nicht seine Gelehrsamkeit, sondern das Wagnis, auf die Anfragen seiner Zeit durch mutige und eigenständige Synthesen des christlichen Denkens zu antworten. Die hier vorliegende Interpretation gestaltet sich als Versuch, die zuletzt etwas eingefahren wirkende Zugangsweise zum Werk Anselms auf einen neuen Boden zu stellen. Die Komplementarität von Teleologie und Eschatologie, bzw. die Begründung der ersteren in der letzteren bietet dafür den begrifflichen Rahmen, von welchem her sich neue (...) Einblicke in das Denken des Doctor magnificus ergeben. (shrink)

Three experiments examined whether the mere priming of potential action effects enhances people’s feeling of causing these effects when they occur. In a computer task, participants and the computer independently moved a rapidly moving square on a display. Participants had to press a key, thereby stopping the movement. However, the participant or the computer could have caused the square to stop on the observed position, and accordingly, the stopped position of the square could be conceived of as the potential effect (...) resulting from participants’ action of pressing the stop key. The location of this position was primed or not just before participants had to stop the movement. Results showed that priming of the position enhanced experienced authorship of stopping the square. Additional experimentation demonstrated that this priming of agency was not mediated by the goal or intention to produce the effect. (shrink)

Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me.My Dear Friend:You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote history."I am so glad the time has (...) come when the "lions write history."In the closing of his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, G. W. F. Hegel famously states, "Whoever asks for a royal road to Science will find it most comfortable to rely on healthy common sense; and, in order to keep in step with the... (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

Measurement instruments assessing multiple emotions during epistemic activities are largely lacking. We describe the construction and validation of the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales, which measure surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom occurring during epistemic cognitive activities. The instrument was tested in a multinational study of emotions during learning from conflicting texts. The findings document the reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the instrument. A seven-factor model best fit the data, suggesting that epistemically-related emotions should be conceptualised in terms (...) of discrete emotion categories, and the scales showed metric invariance across the North American and German samples. Furthermore, emotion scores changed over time as a function of conflicting task information and related significantly to perceived task value and use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies. (shrink)

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one’s action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would . Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator – consistency between one’s action and a subsequent event – was manipulated, and its effects on binding (...) and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship. (shrink)

Tiere haben erstaunliche kognitive Fähigkeiten, ein diesen Fähigkeiten entsprechendes Bewußtsein und Formen des Selbstbewußtseins. Das Denken in diskreten Einheiten von Urteilen scheint ihnen jedoch nicht zugänglich zu sein, damit auch nicht die Unterscheidung von Bejahung und Verneinung und von wahr und falsch. Wie ist das Denken und damit das objektive Erkennen beim Menschen entstanden? Welche Rolle spielt das Gehirn bei Mensch und Tier? Wir Menschen leben in zwei Welten, die paradoxerweise zugleich eine ist. Das Tageslicht, Gerüche, die Hauswand, an der (...) wir entlanggehen und die wir nicht durchschreiten können diese unsere Lebenswelt unterscheidet sich zunächst nicht von der des Hundes, der uns begleitet. Tiere nehmen sinnlich wahr wie wir, sie erschrecken wie wir bei einem lauten Geräusch, sie zeigen dieselbe freudige Erregung wie wir. Zugleich gibt es für uns eine andere, wiewohl identische Welt, von der die Tiere offenbar nichts wissen: Wir Menschen machen die Dinge zu Objekten der Erkenntnis; dieselbe Sonne, die uns blendet und die sich im Tageslauf langsam von Osten nach Westen bewegt, steht, so erkennen wir, fest im Zentrum des Planetensystems. Wir spüren die Kälte, aber wir erkennen in ihr zugleich die Ursache der Eisbildung; kein Tier weiß, was eine Ursache ist, kein Tier kann sich wundern, und auch denken kann es nicht. These: Natürlich können Tiere denken. "Ach, Sie werden es nicht glauben, aber unser Leo versteht jedes Wort." Gegenthese: Natürlich können Tiere nicht denken. Es fehlen ihnen vor allem zwei Voraussetzungen des Urteilens und Denkens: Sie verfügen über keine geeigneten Begriffe, und sie kennen keine gemeinsame Öffentlichkeit, die durch das Zeigen geschaffen und im Urteil vertieft wird. (shrink)

Das System der Disponibilitätshierarchien versucht in der Rechtsphilosophie eine neue Perspektive zu eröffnen, indem speziell das Phänomen der Disponibilitätssetzung und seiner Auswirkungen auf die Umgangsmöglichkeiten und Urteilsmacht des Menschen in der Gesellschaft betrachtet wird. Die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Umgangsmöglichkeit und die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Urteilsmacht dienen dem Aufbau eines neuen Freiheitsbegriffes. Mit der Darstellung des Aufbaus der Statikexistenziale und der Dynamikexistenziale begründet das Werk einen neuen Freiheitsbegriff und überschreitet damit die Grenze der Rechtsphilosophie hin zur Allgemeinphilosophie. In der antiken und in der (...) klassischen Philosophie wurde Freiheit zumeist als Möglichkeit, in der absoluten Daseinsform aufzugehen, verstanden. Kant hat die Möglichkeit der absoluten Eigenursächlichkeit eines gedanklichen Ereignisses für den Folgegedankengang und Ereignisablauf als transzendentale Freiheit verstanden und als notwendige Bedingung der konkreten praktischen Freiheit, die er Selbstautonomie nannte, angesehen. Die moderne Philosophie sieht zumeist in der größtmöglichen materiellen und ideellen Ungebundenheit die Freiheit, die negative Freiheit als Freiheit von Zwängen ist. In diesem Buch wird herausgearbeitet, daß Freiheit ambivalent erstrebt wird durch den Aufbau von Statik- und Dynamikexistenzialen. Der Autor, geb. 1969, absolvierte ein Studium der Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Freiburg im Breisgau und unternahm darüber hinaus Studien zur Allgemeinphilosophie. Er ist derzeit Rechtsreferendar am Landgericht Freiburg. (shrink)

Sustainable development (SD) – that is, “Development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations” – can be pursued in many different ways. Stakeholder relations management (SRM) is one such way, through which corporations are confronted with economic, social, and environmental stakeholder claims. This paper lays the groundwork for an empirical analysis of the question of how far SD can be achieved through SRM. It describes the so-called SD–SRM (...) perspective as a distinctive research approach and shows how it relates to the wider body of stakeholder theory. Next, the concept of SD is operationalized for the microeconomic level with reference to important documents. Based on the ensuing SD framework, it is shown how SD and SRM relate to each other, and how the two concepts relate to other popular concepts such as Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. The paper concludes that the significance of societal guiding models such as SD and of management approaches like CSR is strongly dependent on their footing in society. (shrink)

Auf der Arbeitstagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Soziologie im Oktober 1961 hielten Karl R. Popper und Theodor W. Adorno Referate zur -Logik der Sozialwissenschaften-. Dies leitete den -Positivismusstreit- in der deutschen Soziologie ein, an dem sich prominent vor allem Jurgen Habermas auf Seiten der Kritischen Theorie der Frankfurter Schule und Hans Albert auf Seiten des Kritischen Rationalismus beteiligten. Der daraus entstandene Sammelband, der 1969 kurz vor dem Tod Adornos erschien, wurde im deutschen Sprachraum viel gelesen und diskutiert. Das -Adorno-Jahr- 2003 (...) und das -Popper-Jahr- 2004 gaben Anlass, sich mit den Fragen erneut auseinander zu setzen, die der Positivismusstreit aufgeworfen hat, und sie aus heutiger Sicht neu zu beleuchten. Dies wurde in den Referaten eines Symposiums der Karl Popper Foundation Klagenfurt unternommen. Dieser Sammelband beinhaltet die uberarbeiteten Referate dieses Symposiums. In ihnen werden die methodologische, die politische und die soziologische Dimension der damaligen Auseinandersetzungen mit heute dominierenden Themen und Positionen konfrontiert, was bisher in der einschlagigen wissenschaftlichen Diskussion nicht erfolgt ist.". (shrink)

There is concern that the use of neuroenhancements to alter character traits undermines consumer's authenticity. But the meaning, scope and value of authenticity remain vague. However, the majority of contemporary autonomy accounts ground individual autonomy on a notion of authenticity. So if neuroenhancements diminish an agent's authenticity, they may undermine his autonomy. This paper clarifies the relation between autonomy, authenticity and possible threats by neuroenhancements. We present six neuroenhancement scenarios and analyse how autonomy accounts evaluate them. Some cases are considered (...) differently by criminal courts; we demonstrate where academic autonomy theories and legal reasoning diverge and ascertain whether courts should reconsider their concept of autonomy. We argue that authenticity is not an appropriate condition for autonomy and that new enhancement technologies pose no unique threats to personal autonomy. (shrink)

This paper embeds the core part of Discourse Representation Theory in the classical theory of types plus a few simple axioms that allow the theory to express key facts about variables and assignments on the object level of the logic. It is shown how the embedding can be used to combine core analyses of natural language phenomena in Discourse Representation Theory with analyses that can be obtained in Montague Semantics.

These studies examined whether having thoughts related to an event before it occurs leads people to infer that they caused the event— even when such causation might otherwise seem magical. In Study 1, people perceived that they had harmed another person via a voodoo hex. These perceptions were more likely among those who had first been induced to harbor evil thoughts about their victim. In Study 2, spectators of a peer’s basketball-shooting performance were more likely to perceive that they had (...) influenced his success if they had first generated positive visualizations consistent with that success. Observers privy to those spectators’ visualizations made similar attributions about the spectators’ influence. Finally, addi- tional studies suggested that these results occur even when the thought-about outcome is viewed as unwanted by the thinker and even in field settings where the relevant outcome is occurring as part of a live athletic competition. (shrink)

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after (...) his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this article, we discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf. (shrink)

This book radically simplifies Montague Semantics and generalizes the theory by basing it on a partial higher order logic. The resulting theory is a synthesis of Montague Semantics and Situation Semantics. In the late sixties Richard Montague developed the revolutionary idea that we can understand the concept of meaning in ordinary languages much in the same way as we understand the semantics of logical languages. Unfortunately, however, he formalized his idea in an unnecessarily complex way - two outstanding researchers in (...) the field even compared his work to a `Rube Goldberg machine.' Muskens' work does away with such unnecessary complexities, obtains a streamlined version of the theory, shows how partialising the theory automatically provides us with the most central concepts of Situation Semantics, and offers a simple logical treatment of propositional attitude verbs, perception verbs and proper names. (shrink)

We investigate the processes underlying the feeling of control over one’s actions . Sense of agency may depend on internal motoric signals, and general inferences about external events. We used priming to modulate the sense of agency for voluntary and involuntary movements, by modifying the content of conscious thought prior to moving. Trials began with the presentation of one of two supraliminal primes, which corresponded to the effect of a voluntary action participants subsequently made. The perceived interval between movement and (...) effect was used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Primes modulated perceived intervals for both voluntary and involuntary movements, but the modulation was greatest for involuntary movements. A second experiment showed that this modulation depended on prime–movement contiguity. We propose that sense of agency is based on a combination of internal motoric signals and external sensory evidence about the source of actions and effects. (shrink)