This book has grown out of eight years of close collaboration among its authors. From the very beginning we decided that its content should come out as the result of a truly common effort. That is, we did not "distribute" parts of the text planned to each one of us. On the contrary, we made a point that each single paragraph be the product of a common reflection. Genuine team-work is not as usual in philosophy as it is in other (...) academic disciplines. We think, however, that this is more due to the idiosyncrasy of philosophers than to the nature of their subject. Close collaboration with positive results is as rewarding as anything can be, but it may also prove to be quite difficult to implement. In our case, part of the difficulties came from purely geographic separation. This caused unsuspected delays in coordinating the work. But more than this, as time passed, the accumulation of particular results and ideas outran our ability to fit them into an organic unity. Different styles of exposition, different ways of formalization, different levels of complexity were simultaneously present in a voluminous manuscript that had become completely unmanageable. In particular, a portion of the text had been conceived in the language of category theory and employed ideas of a rather abstract nature, while another part was expounded in the more conventional set-theoretic style, stressing intui tivity and concreteness. (shrink)

In his influential paper "Epistemology Naturalized" Quine argues that Carnap's failure to define disposition predicates and his subsequent preference for reduction sentences naturally lead to an entirely naturalized epistemology. This conclusion is too hasty, I object. Applying the account of dispositional predicates developed in No. 26 I defend Carnap's aprioristic epistemology against Quine's attacks.

A comprehensive model for describing various forms of developments in science is defined in precise, set-theoretic terms, and in the spirit of the structuralist approach in the philosophy of science. The model emends previous accounts in centering on single systems in a homogenous way, eliminating notions which essentially refer to sets of systems. This is achieved by eliminating the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical terms as a primitive, and by introducing the notion of intended links. The force of the model (...) is demonstrated by formally incorporating many of the important, precise meta-theoretic concepts occurring in the literature. (shrink)

Seit seiner Jugend kritisierte Wolfgang Harich die Philosophie Nietzsches. In den funfziger Jahren verfestigte sich dann ein dezidiert marxistisches Nietzsche-Bild, das er Zeit seines Lebens verteidigte. Nietzsche war fur ihn der Wegbereiter, ja, Begrunder der faschistischen Ideologie. Indem Harich am sozialistischen und humanistischen Erbe des originaren Marxismus festhielt, loste er in den achtziger Jahren die Nietzsche-Debatte der DDR aus, die ihn im kulturellen und wissenschaftlichen Leben der DDR endgultig isolierte. Band 12 der Reihe prasentiert Harichs letztes grosses Werk, den (...) Dialog "Nietzsche und seine Bruder", sowie zahlreiche Dokumente, darunter auch Briefe an Erich Honecker, Willy Stoph, Kurt Hager oder Stephan Hermlin. (shrink)

Hauptbeschreibung Wolfgang Pleger bietet in diesem Handbuch eine kompakte, historisch-systematische Darstellung der wichtigsten anthropologischen Konzepte der europäischen Geschichte und thematisiert die problematische Situation des Menschen in der Welt. Wie etwa in der antiken und biblischen Mythologie, wo der Mensch als sterbliches Geschöpf Gottes gilt oder der materialistischen Anthropologie, die von dem Menschen als determinierte Materie ausgeht. Von der Antike bis in die Moderne, von Homer bis Sartre, wird jedes Konzept durch drei historisch bedeutsame Positionen wichtiger Denk.

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 4 Seiten: 431-462.

A massless electroweak theory for leptons is formulated in a Weyl space, W4, yielding a Weyl invariant dynamics of a scalar field φ, chiral Dirac fermion fields ψL and ψR, and the gauge fields κμ, Aμ, Zμ, Wμ, and Wμ †, allowing for conformal rescalings of the metric gμν and all fields with nonvanishing Weyl weight together with the corresponding transformations of the Weyl vector fields, κμ, representing the D(1) or dilatation gauge fields. The local group structure of this Weyl (...) electroweak (WEW) theory is given by $G = SO(3,1) \otimes D(1) \otimes \tilde G$ —or its universal coverging group $\bar G$ for the fermions—with $\tilde G$ denoting the electroweak gauge group SU(2)W × U(1)Y. In order to investigate the appearance of nonzero masses in the theory the Weyl symmetry is explicitly broken by a term in the Lagrangean constructed with the curvature scalar R of the W4 and a mass term for the scalar field. Thereby also the Zμ and Wμ gauge fields as well as the charged fermion field (electron) acquire a mass as in the standard electroweak theory. The symmetry breaking is governed by the relation D μ Φ 2 = 0, where Φ is the modulus of the scalar field and Dμ denotes the Weyl-covariant derivative. This true symmetry reduction, establishing a scale of length in the theory by breaking the D(1) gauge symmetry, is compared to the so-called spontaneous symmetry breaking in the standard electroweak theory, which is, actually, the choice of a particular (nonlinear ) gauge obtained by adopting an origin, ${\hat \phi }$ , in the coset space representing ϕ, with ${\hat \phi }$ being invariant under the electromagnetic, gauge group U(1)e.m.. Particular attention is devoted to the appearance of Einstein's equations for the metric after the Weyl symmetry breaking, yielding a pseudo-Riemannian space, V4, from a W4 and a scalar field with a constant modulus $\hat \phi _0$ . The quantity $\hat \phi _0^2$ affects Einstein's gravitational constant in a manner comparable to the Brans-Dicke theory. The consequences of the broken WEW theory are worked out and the determination of the parameters of the theory is discussed. (shrink)

If it is the tendency of technology, and especially of information and communication technology, particularly in the context of the smart city, not to empower the human person but rather to disenfranchise them by curtailing their capability to judge and choose, how can one counter this dynamic? Code, make, talk, and pray are suggested as possible modes of resistance.

Against a remarkable hardware oblivion in discussions of algorithmic intelligence, this article insists that algorithmic thought, or abstract computation, cannot be separated from its technological implementation. It requires a material medium for an abstract mechanism to become a procedural event. Temporality is both the condition and the limiting (and irritating) factor in the computational function. ‘Radical’ media archaeology is proposed as a method for such an analysis, and the neologism of techno lógos to describe some aspects of algorithmic reason which (...) only unfold in the moment of its techno-processual coming-into-being. Some core operations, such as the time-discrete rhythm of actual computing algorithms, are discussed, where the ‘tempoReal’ flashes up in computing. In a wider sense, the time-discreteness of digital computing is related to an aesthetics of existence which acknowledges the machine element within human reasoning itself, while at the same time re-actualizing previous cultural techniques of non-narrative chronology. Turing the ‘man’ himself, in the sense of the Turing machine, can be addressed ‘itself’, in its archival sense as a sequence of expressions by symbols. (shrink)

Mit der vorliegenden Arbeit verfolgen wir drei Ziele. Erstens exemplifizieren wir einige wissenschaftstheoretische Fragen und die zugehörigen Antworten am sehr einfachen Beispiel der klassischen Stoßmechanik. Zweitens läßt sich an diesem Beispiel besonders klar der Begriff des Meßmodells darstellen; insbesondere erhalten wir eine vollständige Übersicht über alle Meßmodelle. Und drittens erhalten wir ein schönes Beispiel für den Begriff der Reduktion einer Theorie auf eine andere, denn die Stoßmechanik läßt sich auf einfache Weise auf eine Spezialisierung der Klassischen Partikelmechanik reduzieren.

It is argued that Searle’s argument for the thesis that there is a conceptual connection between intentionality and consciousness suffers from serious ambiguities. Searle’s argument is reconstructed as consisting of three premises that contain the notions of aspectual shape and irreducible subjectivity. Having identified two different readings of ‘aspectual shape’ and ‘irreducibly subjective,’ I conclude that each version of Searle’s argument incorporates at least one false premise.

Drawing on recent Aristotelian readings of Kant's notion of natural causality with an emphasis on substances as causes, I will try to explain how persons can make a difference in the world of appearances by virtue of their rationality. For Kant, the clue is that the peculiar mode of a substance's natural causality supervenes on in-itself features, among which is the mode or character of the person's rationality. Thus, a wedge can be driven between natural necessity and metaphysical necessity, opening (...) up space for a strategy both reminiscent of and superior to that of Leibniz. (shrink)

Studie 1) přibližuje základní principy projektu Descartesovy interiministické etiky 2) přibližuje základní prvky Marquardovy a Blumenbergovy analýzy a interpretace částí projektu provizorní morálky a jejího základu. Poukazuje na využití východisek projektu provizorní morálky při kritice diskurzivní etiky u O. Marquarda a při úvahách o rétorice jako možné cestě ke komunikativnímu dorozumění u H. Blumenberga. Autor poukazuje na možné využití Descartesova konceptu provizorní morálky a jeho východisek ke kritice variant karteziánství (hledání jistého základu teorie) v duchovědných teoriích. Právě Marquardova a Blumenbergova (...) interpretace Descartesova konceptu naznačuje využití metody provizorní morálky nejen proti kartezianizaci teorií morálky, ale i obecně teorií v oblasti duchověd. (shrink)

Dieses Lehrbuch wendet sich vordringlich an die Studierenden und Lehrenden an den deutschen Universitäten, um die Heranbildung von Forschern an den deutschen Universitäten im Geiste des Humboldtschen Bildungsideals der Einheit von Forschung und Lehre ebenso zu unterstützen wie das aktive Forschen in den universitären Forschungseinrichtungen. Dazu wird das Handwerkszeug der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit, die Begriffe in vielfältigen Varianten der logischen, theoretischen und empirischen Wissenschaften dargestellt und ihre Verwendung zur Erzielung von wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen und zur Problemlösung mannigfaltiger Art beschrieben und teilweise vorgeführt.

In this paper, I look at Millikan′s theory of local natural signs as presented in Varieties of Meaning. I try to make sense of the exact way Millikan relates the notion of natural signs with intentional signs. Compared to traditional views, for instance in semiotics, Millikan′s approach represents, as I see it, a remarkable theoretical progress in clarifying the conditions under which organisms can interpret and use natural signs as elementary representations. This approach is also helpful for illustrating more clearly (...) in what way teleosemantics must be based on an independent theory of representation and should take on a non-dretskenean, consumer-orientated form. (shrink)