Mechanistic explanations – especially mechanistic models – are commonly used to describe living beings. But their usage should be scrutinised closely. This text elucidates the motives, conditions and implications of a so called ‘methodical mechanism’. Due to the fact that humans cannot properly explain certain biotic processes, they have to rely on their technical knowledge to explain them. The history of philosophy and scientific thinking is, therefore, intertwined with the history of technology: the way humans interpret and explain natural phenomena (...) is subject to the technological knowledge of a given time. The danger of this mechanistic approach, however, is that it can lead to false ontological assumptions about nature and humankind’s place therein, resulting in a subjugation of natural processes to instrumental reason. (shrink)

Examines men's efforts to escape from the fear of death by performing acts of human wickedness through socially-sanctioned institutions.

Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central ...

Inductive Metaphysics combines an anti-aprioristic emphasis on an empirical and scientific basis for metaphysics with an insistence on a specifically philosophical abductive theory-building. Since the latter specifically philosophical work is not empirical itself, it may in a liberal sense be called apriori. This paper highlights this apriori dimension within IM by a case study on Structuralism, the view that fundamental reality consists of a network of relations, which a number of philosophers consider to be suggested by modern physics. Focussing on (...) Dasgupta’s algebraic Generalism, the author argues that Structuralism suffers from a severe entailment problem, because the relations-spanning apparatus must stand for metaphysically fundamental forms. Schaffer’s contention that there are no entailment problems is rejected. Advocates of IM are well advised to take seriously their own insistence on metaphysical abduction and not to one-sidedly emphasise the empirical input: the elaboration of exact metaphysical theories and the apriori evaluation of their inherent tenability is a constituent of IM no less important than the consideration of scientific input. More traditional ways of metaphysical reasoning inevitably survive as an essential dimension within IM. (shrink)

Strong dispositional monism, the position that all fundamental physical properties consist in dispositional relations to other properties, is naturally construed as property structuralism. J. Lowe’s circularity/regress objection constitutes a serious challenge to SDM that questions the possibility of a purely relational determination of all property essences. The supervenience thesis of A. Bird’s graph-theoretic asymmetry reply to CRO can be rigorously proved. Yet the reply fails metaphysically, because it reveals neither a metaphysical determination of identities on a purely relational basis nor (...) a determination specifically of identities in the sense of essences. Asymmetry is thus not by itself sufficient for a solution to CRO. But it cannot even help to answer CRO when a model for the determination of essences is taken as a basis. Nor is asymmetry necessary for a reply, as property structures may well be symmetric. A metaphysics of dispositional properties as grounded in a purely relational structure faces serious obstacles, and the properties would not be fundamental. Since essence and grounding are notions of metaphysical priority, there can be no essentially dispositional metaphysically fundamental properties, and the prospects of a “coherentist” metaphysics of basic properties are dim. A modal retreat that refrains from a post-modal conception of essence and simply claims that fundamental properties play dispositional roles by metaphysical necessity is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

Chapter One THE MAN-APES A Lesson for Thomas Hobbes Probably the most exciting development in modern anthropology is the discovery of the australopithecines ...

Inhalt Einfuhrung - Staat im Wandel. Rudiger Voigt zum 65. Geburtstag I. Konzeptualisierung und Systematisierung von Staatswandel Ralf Walkenhaus: Entwicklungslinien moderner Staatlichkeit.

Der Staat hat die politische Moderne wie keine andere Institution und Ordnungsidee gepragt. Als eine Herrschaftsformation, die sich standig an die Umweltbedingungen anpasst, ist ihm die Funktionalitat des Wandels quasi institutionell in die Wiege gelegt. Dennoch ist der Nationalstaat im Prozess der Globalisierung und Europaisierung als Entgrenzung von Herrschaftsraumen der groae Verlierer geworden: Legitimations-, Souveranitats- und Steuerungsprobleme sind die Folge. Der Band erfasst den Staatswandel auf politik- und verwaltungswissenschaftlicher, geschichtswissenschaftlicher, soziologischer und offentlich-rechtlicher Ebene. Dabei behandeln die Beitrage exemplarisch Politikfelder wie (...) Soziales, Wirtschaft, Umwelt, Bildung, Wissenschaft und Verwaltung und bieten so ein breites Forum interdisziplinarer Staatsforschung. Inhalt Einfuehrung - Staat im Wandel. Ruediger Voigt zum 65. Geburtstag I. Konzeptualisierung und Systematisierung von Staatswandel Ralf Walkenhaus: Entwicklungslinien moderner Staatlichkeit. Konzeptualisierungsprobleme des Staatswandels Peter Nahamowitz: Themenkonjunkturen der Politikwissenschaft als Indikatoren fuer nachhaltige Veranderungen der Staatlichkeit in Deutschland? Zugleich ein Nachruf auf die okonomische Globalisierung II. Staatliche Steuerung in einzelnen Politikfeldern Nicolai Dose: Der informierende Staat: Information als Instrument staatlicher Steuerung Lutz R. Reuter: Zum Wandel des staatlichen Handelns im Bildungswesen Helmuth Schulze-Fielitz: Staatliche Wissenschaftssteuerung als organisations- und verfahrensrechtliche Aufgabe Dietrich Fuerst: Der Beitrag der Regionalplanung zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Eine steuerungstheoretische Perspektive Erhard Treutner: Staat und nachhaltige Entwicklung. Zur Bedeutung staatlicher Steuerung fuer Prozesse nachhaltiger Entwicklung III. Einzelaspekte Emanual Richter: Zur Rekonstruktion der Kategorie aNachhaltigkeito Stefan Machura: Der Einfluss der Parteien auf die dritte Gewalt Axel Gorlitz / Oliver Sigrist: Des Staates neue Kleider. Demokratie- und Rechtsstaatsdefizite der Verwaltungsreformkonzepte Peter Nitschke: Die Reterritorialisierung Europas auf subnationaler Identitatsebene. Uberlegungen zu einer Rekonstruktion der Theorie des apolitischen Raumeso Klaus A. Ziegert: Weltgesellschaft und Nationalstaat im 21. Jahrhundert. Eine rechtssoziologische Analyse Michael Staack: Multilateralismus, Unilateralismus und das Volkerrecht. Deutschland und die aBush-Revolutiono IV. Historische Bezuege Otwin Massing: Der (europaische) Praambelgott. Fetisch, sakralisierende Uberhohung oder Skandalon? Uber den Atavismus politischer Symbolsprache in amoderneno Staaten Rainer S. Elkar: Die Meister des Staates. Vom Scheitern und von der Aktualitat des Korporatismus Walter Demel: Verwaltung in China und Japan aus der Sicht des fruehneuzeitlichen Europa Georg-Christoph von Unruh: Widerstandsrecht und Widerstandspflicht Verzeichnis der Publikationen von Ruediger Voigt Verzeichnis der Doktoranden und Habilitanden von Ruediger Voigt Verzeichnis der Autoren. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes bruteness from fundamentality by developing a theory of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental bruteness. Stochastic grounding relations, which only underwrite incomplete explanations, arise when the fundamental level underdetermines derivative levels. The framework is applied to fission cases, showing how one can break symmetries and mitigate bruteness whilst avoiding arbitrariness and hypersensitivity.

Die Qualität der psychoanalytischen Praxis ist eine immer aktuelle Frage für den einzelnen Psychoanalytiker und die analytischen Institutionen. Ausgehend von den Grundelementen der psychoanalytischen Situation werden Basiskompetenzen des Analytikers postuliert und beschrieben, die die Herstellung und Bewahrung der analytischen Situation garantieren. Im Zentrum der Überlegung steht dann die analytische Deutungsfunktion, um die immer wieder gerungen werden muss, weil sie auch der Dynamik von Übertragung und Widerstand unterworfen ist. Es wird festgestellt, dass diese Überlegungen in Übereinstimmung mit modernen Auffassungen der psychoanalytischen (...) Haltung und Kompetenz stehen. (shrink)

Resemblance Nominalism About Perfect Naturalness is the view that perfect naturalness of classes is best defined by a conceptual primitive of resemblance between particulars. The adequacy of RNPN is defended by outlining nominalism as the strictly anti-constitutive view that the particulars’ being the fundamental ways they are is not constituted by anything further, supplying a doubly plural contrastive and graded resemblance predicate that allows for a definition of perfect naturalness on an actualist basis, and proving a representation and a uniqueness (...) theorem on the basis of a formal constraint on resemblance called “the Principle”, thereby revealing that bodies of nominalist resemblance facts are guaranteed to behave as if they were grounded in patterns of universals distributed over particulars. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the problem of opaque sweetening and argues that one should use stochastic dominance in comparing lotteries even when dealing with incomplete orderings that allow for non-comparable outcomes.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Recently, metaphysical coherentism has been propounded as an alternative to metaphysical foundationalism and infinitism. The view replaces the picture of reality as a hierarchy of levels with that of a network of objects or facts standing in symmetric or, more generally, cyclic relations of metaphysical dependence. This paper defends the orthodox picture of a well-founded hierarchy against the claimed superiority of coherentism. First, it will be argued that alleged theoretical advantages of coherentism do not hold up to scrutiny. Secondly, examples (...) that are claimed to support coherentism are either misdescribed as involving metaphysical interdependence, or foundationalist treatments fare at least as good and often better than coherentist interpretations. Thirdly, a similar diagnosis applies to a recently proposed coherentist interpretation of quantum entanglement. The more general diagnosis is that claims of metaphysical dependence are convincing only if there is a detailed account of how one item metaphysically explains another. While foundationalists can resort to various specific explanatory relations, coherentism seems to be incapable of providing detailed explanations. (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, following (...) mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

This paper assesses the role of the Refutation of Idealism within the Critique of Pure Reason, as well as its relation to the treatment of idealism in the First Edition and to transcendental idealism more generally. It is argued that the Refutation is consistent with the Fourth Paralogism and that it can be considered as an extension of the Transcendental Deduction. While the Deduction, considered on its own, constitutes a 'regressive argument', the Refutation allows us to turn the Transcendental Analytic (...) into a 'progressive argument' that proceeds by the synthetic method. (shrink)

Let N be a transitive model of ZFC such that ωN ⊂ N and P(R) ⊂ N. Assume that both V and N satisfy "the core model K exists." Then KN is an iterate of K. i.e., there exists an iteration tree J on K such that J has successor length and $\mathit{M}_{\infty}^{\mathit{J}}=K^{N}$. Moreover, if there exists an elementary embedding π: V → N then the iteration map associated to the main branch of J equals π ↾ K. (This answers (...) a question of W. H. Woodin, M. Gitik, and others.) The hypothesis that P(R) ⊂ N is not needed if there does not exist a transitive model of ZFC with infinitely many Woodin cardinals. (shrink)

Uses the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology and psychiatry to explain what makes people act the way they do.

The mechanics of claims focusses predominantly on the claim to life. The claim to life is rooted in the autonomy principle, just like other specific claims. Still, the mechanics of claims does not have a systematic place for the fundamental negation of the status as an autonomous being as such. It is, however, the proctiction of the status as such, which is at the center of the protection of human dignity in German constitutional law. Looked at it from this perspective, (...) the protection of human dignity as the protection of the status of an autonomous human being, appears to be a blind spot of the mechanics of claims. The comment attempts to show, how this blindspot leads to inconsistencies in the mechanics of claims, and how they might be ameliorated if human dignity is considered as an absolute right independent of the claims to life. (shrink)