Competence to enact responsible practices, such as recycling waste or boycotting irresponsible companies, is core to learning for responsibility. We explore the role of apps in learning such responsible practices ‘in the wild,’ outside formal educational environments over a 3-week period. Learners maintained a daily diary in which they reflected on their learning of responsible practices with apps. Through a thematic analysis of 557 app mentions in the diaries, we identified five types of app-agency: cognitive, action, interpersonal, personal development, and (...) material. Findings were interpreted from an actor-network perspective using the lens of ‘translation.’ To understand how apps enabled the learning of responsible practices, we analyzed app agency throughout four moments of translation: problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization. Based on our analysis of how students’ app mentions changed over time, we further theorize learning as a sequence of subtranslations that form the larger translation process: learning as translation(s). Each subtranslation cycle is centered on enrolling a different set of human and nonhuman actors, with their competence, into the network. We contribute to the learning for responsibility field by showcasing how app-enabled learning may create real-life actor networks enacting responsibility, and by priming an actor-network pedagogy for ‘learning in the wild.’ We also contribute to the actor-network learning discussion by conceptualizing heterogeneous human–nonhuman competence and the first processual model of learning as translation(s). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Hypatia 14.4 (1999) 186-191 -/- [Access article in PDF] Simone De Beauvoir: a Critical Reader. Edited by Elizabeth Fallaize. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. As this special volume attests, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in Simone de Beauvoir. A number of books on her have been published in the last several years. However, Elizabeth Fallaize's book, Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader (1998), occupies (...) a special niche. Many of its essays are excerpts from studies done of Beauvoir's work before this latest renaissance. Some of these studies are not in print in the United States. Some are perhaps unfamiliar to present-day readers or those from different disciplines. In addition, the articles reprinted here are otherwise not easily accessible. Fallaize has performed an important service by gathering them all in one place and by carefully editing, presenting, and, in some cases, translating them. -/- The book is divided into three sections, the first entitled "Readings of The Second Sex." Aside from Judith Okely's piece that assesses Beauvoir's chapter on myths from an anthropological standpoint, the essays mainly address the philosophical aspects of this work. Beauvoir herself of course swore that she was not a philosopher and that Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1953) was the sole philosophical foundation for all her work. Some recent analyses have attempted to turn this picture on its head by arguing that Beauvoir was a central influence on, or even the origin of, the philosophical doctrines put forward in Being and Nothingness. None of the writers in this book addresses this issue. But two emphasize Beauvoir's intellectual independence from Sartre. -/- The Swedish scholar Eva Lundgren-Gothlin argues that Beauvoir turned to G. W. F. Hegel to find a satisfactory theoretical model with which to explain the subjugation of women (Lundgren-Gothlin's essay is taken from her book [End Page 186] Sex and Existence [1996]) . In opposition to other scholars, she argues that the French Hegelian Alexandre Kojève, not Sartre, influenced Beauvoir's interpretation of Hegel. Following Hegel and Kojève, Beauvoir envisioned a possible resolution to the struggle for recognition—reciprocal recognition—whereas Sartre's view of self-other relations in Being and Nothingness rules such reciprocity out. However, Lundgren-Gothlin judges, Beauvoir was not critical enough of the sexist presuppositions of Hegel's thought, citing the same pronouncements Beauvoir makes that subsequent feminists have criticized. -/- Another piece that stresses Beauvoir's philosophical originality is "Beauvoir: The Weight of Situation," taken from Sonia Kruks's book Situation and Human Existence (1990). For some time, Kruks has been doing excellent work placing Beauvoir within the wider phenomenological tradition. In this piece, she argues that, starting with the early essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) and culminating in The Second Sex (1989), Beauvoir elaborated a more nuanced position on the nature and extent of human freedom than Sartre did in Being and Nothingness. According to Beauvoir, human freedom, which Sartre dramatically proclaims is absolute, can under some conditions, notably conditions of severe oppression, "be reduced to no more than a suppressed potentiality" (Fallaize 1998, 57). In The Second Sex, Beauvoir definitively breaks with the philosophical framework of Being and Nothingness by implying that a woman's situation is a general one, not individually self-constituted, and one that she cannot transcend by an act of free choice. The phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a better foundation for Beauvoir's conception of subjectivity as socially mediated and embodied than does Sartre's philosophy, Kruks suggests. -/- Another piece in this section, Judith Butler's landmark essay "Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex" (1986), highlights Beauvoir's philosophical originality in a different way. In her introduction, Fallaize points out how this essay served as a foundation for Butler's own subsequent work on a performative theory of gender. Butler argues that Beauvoir's claim that one is not born but becomes a woman implies that gender is socially constructed and not natural, as people have insisted for centuries. But to the extent that we become women, gender is not something... (shrink)

In July 1940, Simone de Beauvoir began a routine of going to the Bibliothèque Nationale most days from 2.00 to 5.00 p.m. to read G. W. F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Hitler's armies had invaded and occupied Paris earlier, on June 14, 1940. She was teaching philosophy classes at a girls' lycée and living in her grandmother's empty apartment. Her close companion, Jean-Paul Sartre, who had been a soldier in a meteorological unit of the French Army, had been captured and (...) was now being held in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Beauvoir was relieved to receive a note from him sent on July 2 saying he was being well treated, but life in Paris was dismal. Food was scarce, and the German troops were grim reminders of Parisians' lack of political freedom. Her reading routine helped soothe the dread, isolation, and alienation she felt. Beauvoir had always been a very earnest student. She had passed the demanding aggregation exam in philosophy at the young age of twenty-one. To supplement her knowledge of classical philosophical texts, she learned German and read texts in phenomenology. In 1935 she had read Edmund Husserl's The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness “without too much difficulty.” She also read Heidegger and translated long passages into French for Sartre. Back when she was in college, her prodigious work habits had earned her a special nickname among her friends: Castor, or the beaver. Poring over a difficult philosophical text in a foreign language for three hours a day might seem a strange way to get through such times, but with her it made sense. (shrink)

With extraordinary elegance and philosophic power, Frithjof Bergmann presents a genuine rethinking of freedom. By changing the focus from outside to inside the person, Bergmann shows how freedom can be a reality in self-growth, parenting, education, and in shaping a society that stimulates rather than stunts the self.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Purpose of Hegel's System FRITHJOF H. BERGMANN THIS ESSAYIS MEANTtO answer the question: what was Hegel really trying to do; what was the program that his system attempted to execute; what was the general enterprise that his philosophy sought to perform? Two things are clear: (1) Hegel insisted that philosophy had to be systematic. He ridiculed philosophers who made disconnected assertions and accused them of "shallowness" and (...) of "inspirationalism." The systematic exposition of philosophy was for Hegel synonymous with doing philosophy scientifically. If a proposition was not presented in the context of a philosophic system, it could not be more than a bald and unsupported assertion that did not merit serious philosophical consideration? (2) Hegel claimed that his own system demonstrated the "necessity" of its contents. The majority of the German Hegel scholars, Haym, Haering, Fischer, Rosenzweig, and Glockner, for example, never attempted to arrive at a precise explication of the function of Hegel's system or of his concept of necessity. They were interested in altogether different questions. The Englishspeaking scholars are generally agreed that by "necessity" Hegel meant "deductive certainty" or something very akin to it and that his system was therefore intended to demonstrate the indubitability, the certainty, or the a priority, of the propositions it contains. The deductions of Hegel's system were, according to them, designed to guarantee the factual truth of the statements derived. The general function of the system was to eliminate doubt. Stace, for example, defends this interpretation in his well-known book The Philosophy of Hegel. 2 In fact, he regards this claim to deductive certainty as the "cardinal claim" of Hegel's philosophy and extends it furthermore beyond the limits of Hegel's system so that, according to him, every possible true proposition can be established with logical necessity. Stace says: If we could discover a first principle, and could prove that it followed by logical necessity from that first principle that there must be a world and that it must be just the sort of world it is, then we should have an explanation.... Thus a philosophy which would genuinely explain the world will take as its first principle not a cause but a reason. From this first reason it will proceed to deduce the world, not as an effect, but as a logical consequent. We shall then see not merely that things are as they are, but we shall see why xCf. Preface to the Phenomenology. W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1955). [189] 190 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY they are as they are. This is the fundamental Hegelian idea of explanation. This is what tIegel's philosophy attempts to do? Later in the book Stace examines the "extraordinary position" which Hegel "takes up" on the question of the "contingency of nature." Hegel, as Stace points out, believed that particular facts and things cannot be deduced, that the "details of nature.., are governed by contingency and caprice." This position, according to Stace, "will not bear examination." Stace ascribes to tIegel the premise that "there is in this stone, or this man, nothing but thought, nothing but universals," and it, in Stace's opinion, implies that everything can be deduced. "If we are to have an idealistic monism it must explain everything from its single first principle, thought. And that means that it must deduce everything. To leave anything outside the network of deduction, to declare anything utterly undeducible, is simply dualism." * To answer this interpretation thoroughly, the character and purpose of Hegel's system has to be explained. This we shall attempt in the remainder of this essay. But three points can be made in a preliminary way: 1) Is the position which Hegel did not hold, but which he should have held, according to Stace, any more tenable than the position which Stace rejects as inconsistent? Is it really conceivable that every last fact concerning tile universe--including the number of hairs on Hegel's head--could be "logically deduced" from a first principle? 2) Did Hegel really accept the premise which in Stace's opinion implies that every fact must be deducible? This would certainly be important, since Ilegel... (shrink)

Edited and introduced by Robert Arp, _Revisiting Aquinas’ Proofs for the Existence of God_ is a collection of new papers written by scholars focusing on the famous Five Proofs or Ways for the existence of God put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas near the beginning of his unfinished tome, _Summa Theologica_.

The first part of this paper argues that the various contending positions in the contemporary Theory of Value share one tacit presupposition, namely that the world of facts is value?neutral. Some of the sources of this premise are identified and a critique attempts to show that it cannot be defended. The second part delineates the general implications that the abandonment of this premise would have for the Theory of Value and outlines an alternative position.

Lines of Identity are important elements in Existential Graphs. They can be assembled to whole networks called “ligatures.” They are not straightforwardly understandable: for example, in constrast to LoI, ligatures may stand for more than one object.This article elaborates the handling of ligatures. It is precisely investigated how ligatures are dealt with in the calculus and how they can be modified without changing the meaning of a graph. Finally, a sufficient criterion for reading a ligature similar to a LoI is (...) provided, as well as an algorithm which grasps the correct meaning of an existential graph even if it contains arbitrarily complex ligatures. (shrink)

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an account of how our hominin ancestors evolved a conscious ability I call scenario visualization that enabled them to manufacture novel tools so as to survive and flourish in the ever-changing and complex environments in which they lived. I first present the ideas and arguments put forward by evolutionary psychologists that the mind evolved certain mental capacities as adaptive responses to environmental pressures. Specifically, Steven Mithen thinks that the mind has evolved cognitive fluidity, viz., an (...) ability to exchange information flexibly between and among mental modules. Showing the deficiency in Mithen’s view, I then argue that the flexible exchange of information between and among modules together with scenario visualization is what explains the ability to construct the novel tools needed to survive and flourish in the environments in which our hominin ancestors resided. Finally, I trace the development of the multi-purposed javelin, from its meager beginnings as a stick, in order to illustrate scenario visualization in novel tool manufacturing. (shrink)

In the biological realm, a complete explanation of a trait seems to include an explanation in terms of function. It is natural to ask of some trait, "What is its function?" or "What purpose in the organism does the particular trait serve?" or "What is the goal of its activity?" There are several views concerning the appropriate definition of function for biological matters. Two popular views of function with respect to living things are Cummins' organizational account and the Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith modern (...) history account. Whereas Cummins argues that a trait functions so as to contribute to the general organization of some organism's present structure, Griffiths, and Godfrey-Smith argue that a trait functions because of its fitness with respect to the organism's recent evolutionary history. In this paper, I show how these accounts can be made compatible and compliment one another. Given that structure, organization, operational flexibility, function, and evolutionary history are all factors to be considered in an organism's makeup, we should expect that the traits of an organism function the way they do because such traits presently contribute to the overall organization of the organism (Cummins) as well as were selected for in the organism's species' recent ancestry (Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith). (shrink)

Background: Studies from Western countries show that doctors working in neonatal intensive care units find withdrawal of treatment to be their most difficult ethical dilemma. There is less knowledge of how this is experienced in other economic, cultural, religious and educational contexts.Objectives: To explore and describe how Indian doctors experience ethical dilemmas concerning the withdrawal of treatment among critically sick and/or premature neonates.Method: Qualitative data from interviews was analysed according to Giorgi's phenomenological approach. The subjects were 14 doctors with various (...) levels of neonatal experience, recruited from two state‐owned NICUs in India. Main outcome measures: description reflecting the nature of ethical dilemmas and how they are experienced.Results: All doctors reported situations where the question of withdrawal of treatment was experienced as the worst part of their job. They felt that they lacked training in how to handle such dilemmas, and some had never talked about ethics before. They were especially concerned about non‐medical considerations that do not feature in current treatment guidelines. In describing their personal experiences, the informants mentioned their sense of responsibility in situations where they were aware that their decisions would influence a family's economy and reputation, availability of food and education for siblings, other children's access to equipment in the unit, and the use of resources in an underprivileged population. Sometimes lack of resources, usually ventilators, forced them to make decisions about which babies should get the chance to live. Other reported dilemmas included difficulties co‐operating with uneducated and poor parents.Conclusion: While Western doctors seem to focus on the rights and problems of the individual child, Indian doctors tend to refer to consequences for other children, for parents and society. There is a need for further research in this field, and for the development of guidelines on how to cope with differences in resources, and how to handle different patient groups’ cultural and religious concerns. (shrink)

Numerous research groups are now utilizing Basic Formal Ontology as an upper-level framework to assist in the organization and integration of biomedical information. This paper provides elucidation of the three existing BFO subcategories of realizable entity, namely function, role, and disposition. It proposes one further sub-category of tendency, and considers the merits of recognizing two sub-categories of function for domain ontologies, namely, artifactual and biological function. The motivation is to help advance the coherent ontological treatment of functions, roles, and dispositions, (...) to help provide the potential for more detailed classification, and to shed light on BFO’s general make-up and use. (shrink)

Beauvoir's essay “Pyrrhus and Cineas” serves as an excellent introduction to existentialism for students. People today still try to bring meaning to their lives in the ways she examines: through religion, humanitarianism, the scientific worldview, or a focus on the present moment (inspired nowadays by the West's fascination with Eastern mysticism). She points out the numerous questions these points of view leave unanswered. Her existentialist conclusion is that we ourselves give meaning to our lives and cannot justify our life decisions (...) solely by appeal to external standards. (shrink)

Schuon asserts that to transcend religious differences, we must explore the esoteric nature of the spiritual path back to the Divine Oneness at the heart of all ...

Among others, four significant criticisms have been leveled against Kant’s morality. These criticisms are that Kant’s morality lacks a motivational component, thatit ignores the spiritual dimensions of morality espoused by a virtue-based ethics, that it overemphasizes the principle of autonomy in neglecting the communal context of morality, and that it lacks a theological foundation in being detached from God. In this paper I attempt to show that, when understood in the broader context of his religious doctrines and the overall philosophical (...) project of the architectonic of reason, Kant’s morality has a strong motivational component, supports the forming of a virtuous character as an essential element in a complete moral life, must be grounded in a community so as to realize peace and happiness for rational individuals, and is linked, ultimately, to a theological foundation. (shrink)

Covering philosophical issues ranging from tattooed religious symbols to a feminist aesthetics of tattoo, _Tattoos and Philosophy_ offers an enthusiastic analysis of inking that will lead readers to consider the nature of the tattooing arts in a new and profound way. Contains chapters written by philosophers, tattoo artists, and tattoo enthusiasts that touch upon many areas in Western and Eastern philosophy Enlightens people to the nature of tattoos and the tattooing arts, leading readers to think deeply about tattoos in new (...) ways Offers thoughtful and humorous insights that make philosophical ideas accessible to the non-philosopher. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir published a number of philosophical essays and novels before writing The Second Sex. The most important of these was The Ethics of Ambiguity, in which she argues that one’s freedom is always intertwined with that of others. The Bonds of Freedom examines de Beauvoir’s ideas on ethics, demonstrating her importance in contemporary philosophy.

This paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, I attempt to show that the characterization of Frege as a redundancy theorist is not accurate. Using one of Wolfgang Carl's recent works as a foil, I argue that Frege countenances a realm of abstract objects including truth, and that Frege's Platonist commitments inform his epistemology and embolden his antipsychologistic project. In the second section, contrasting Frege's Platonism with pragmatism, I show that even though Frege's metaphysical position concerning truth (...) has been criticized as reproachable, I argue that it may be useful for people to think like Platonists while conducting their scientific and philosophical inquiries. (shrink)

This collection of letters by Frithjof Schuon, the foremost spokesman of the perennial philosophy, contains nearly 200 newly translated letters from Schuon's youth to old age as written to friends, spiritual seekers, scholars, and others. Among the letters are those that address, in a simpler and more accessible manner, the same metaphysical subjects that continually recur in Schuon's published works. Other letters relate to the spiritual life in its simple and concrete aspects, by answering such fundamental questions as "Why (...) is there evil in the world?", "How can I recognize if I am on a wrong path?", and "What should I do to be saved?" Finally, there are letters that relate to various aspects of Schuon's life, most of which were written to his closest friends. While not a comprehensive autobiography, these letters offer an intimate view of certain key moments in his life. Taken as a whole, the present collection of letters offers insights into the content of Frithjof Schuon's message-his exposition of the perennial philosophy-as well as a glimpse into his life as messenger of that philosophy. (shrink)

There is a two-fold problem the phenomenologist must face: the first has to do with thinking like a phenomenologist given that one is always already steeped in the mundane sphere; the second has to do with the phenomenologist entering into dialogue with those scientists, psychologists, sociologists and other laypersons who still remain in the mundane sphere. I address the first problem by giving an Husserlian-inspired account of the movement from the mundane to the transcendental, and show that there are decent (...) prospects for getting life-world folks to start thinking like phenomenologists. I address the second problem by showing that Husserl has himself caught in a dilemma: either the reduction takes place and no communication is possible between phenomenologist and non-phenomenologist, or the reduction does not take place and the phenomenological method remains a psychological makeshift, supposedly accessible to Husserl and his esoteric followers. (shrink)

This new edition of Logic and Transcendence, his most important philosophical work, is a fully revised translation from the French original and contains:.

"I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religion". -- T.S. Eliot. A momentous volume.

The ancient Athenians believed that their forebears sprang directly from the earth rather than being created by gods or born of human parents. In some version of the myth, the ancestor was depicted as having a man's form above the waist and a snake's form below: "Having emerged from the earth, he still in part resembled the creature that slips to and fro between the upper and lower worlds."'1 At the beginning of her 1947 work, The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone (...) de Beauvoir asserts that there is a fundamental ambiguity to human life. According to her, every human, like the chthonic ancestor of the Athenians, exists at the same time in two realms: "he is still part of the world of which he is conscious."2 Rooted as they are in the earth, humans can transcend their material origin in thought but they can never escape it. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Belief in Jesus Christ, and Other Religious Beliefs and Disbeliefs Tattoos, Tea, and Testing Faith Unmoved Mover and Uncaused Cause Interaction of the Supernatural and the Natural The ‘Three Ms’ Meaning Morality.

Freud finds it impossible to accept the existence of a Supreme Being because he thinks that there is no way to scientifically demonstrate or prove the existence of a being so defined. Consequently, Freud maintains that individuals who claim to have a religious experience of God suffer from a delusion. Such individuals remain in an infantile state of neurotic denial, fooling themselves about the reality of extramental existence.In contradistinction, Max Scheler, a student of Husserlian phenomenology, can accept the existence of (...) God because he finds that God. understood as the summum bonum, is the superlative value to which humanity can give assent in the religious act. Within the context of the religious act, an individual can come to discover or realize God. But this discovery is not made through a scientific demonstration or proof. Unlike Freud, Scheler shows that this discovery comes about via a phenomenological methodology which endorses a broader view of experience. Scheler ultimately makes the further claim that those individuals, like the scientist, who choose not to engage in the religious act are, in fact, involved in a delusional state.So, both thinkers claim that the other is in a delusional state. The task I undertake in this paper is to place these two thinkers into dialogue with one another in order to evaluate their specific methodologies. First, I explicate Freud’s view of religion. In doing so, I make explicit Freud’s empirical methodology and mechanistic materialism which is the root for his claim that God exists as an illusion or “wretched makeshift” of the neurotic unconscious mind. Next, I present the Schelerian response to Freud and positivistic science by making explicit the parameters of the religious act which recognizes God as the superlative value. Finally, I assess the views of Freud and Scheler, and in so doing, show that Scheler’s phenomenological methodology, with its emphasis upon bracketing empirical presuppositions, has merit in that it broadens experience beyond merely what is scientifically observed. We see that Freud’s claim that all experience needs to be scientifically demonstrated is too narrow a view of experience. And so, by denying other types of possible epistemologies and methodologies, he and his followers of the empirical methodology of strict positivism involve themselves in a delusional state by not accepting these approaches to extramental reality. However, I maintain that the psychoanalytic method advocated by Freud has merit in that it can be a useful aid to a person involved in or seeking to be involved in the religious act. In the end I show how it is possible to view the empirical methodology of Freud and the phenomenological methodology of Scheler as coexisting and harmonizing with one another. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that starting with the organelles that constitute a cell - and continuing up the hierarchy of components in processes and subsystems of an organism - there exist clear instances of emergent biological phenomena that can be considered,,living" entities. These components and their attending processes are living emergent phenomena because of the way in which the components are organized to maintain homeostasis of the organism at the various levels in the hierarchy. I call this view the (...) homeostatic organization view of biological phenomena, and, as is shown, it comports well with the standard philosophical accounts of nomological emergence and representational emergence. To proffer HOV, I describe properties of biological entities that include internal-hierarchical data exchange, data selectivity, informational integration, and environmental-organismic information exchange. Further, a distinction is drawn between particularized homeostasis and generalized homeostasis, and I argue that because the various processes and subsystems of an organism are functioning properly in their internal environments, the organism is able to exist as a hierarchically-organized entity in some environment external to it. Stated simply: that components of biological phenomena are organized to perform some function resulting in homeostasis marks them out to be living emergent entities distinguishable, in description and in reality, from the very physico-chemical processes of which they are composed. German In diesem Aufsatz argumentiere ich dafür, daß - beginnend mit den Organellen, die eine Zelle bilden und die Hierarchie der Komponenten von Prozessen und Subsystemen eines Organismus hinaufführend - klare Fälle emergenter biologischer Phänomene existieren, die als,,lebende Entitäten betrachtet werden können. Diese Komponenten und die sie begleitenden Prozesse sind lebende emergente Phänomene wegen der Art, in der die Komponenten organisiert sind, um die Homöostase des Organismus auf den verschiedenen Ebenen in der Hierarchie aufrechtzuerhalten. Ich nenne diese Sichtweise die homöostatische Organisationssichtweise biologischer Phänomene, und es wird gezeigt, daß sie sich gut mit üblichen philosophischen Darstellungen nomologischer Emergenz und repräsentationaler Emergenz verträgt. Um HOV zu präsentieren, beschreibe ich Eigenschaften biologischer Entitäten, die den intern-hierarchischen Datenaustausch, die Datenselektivität, die informationelle Integration und den Umwelt-Organismus-Informationsaustausch einschließen. Des weiteren wird eine Unterscheidung zwischen partikularisierter und generalisierter Homöostase getroffen, und ich argumentiere dafür, daß ein Organismus fähig ist, als eine hierarchisch organisierte Entität in einigen Umwelten, die ihm extern sind, zu existieren, weil die verschiedenen Prozesse und Subsysteme eines Organismus in ihren internen Umwelten richtig funktionieren. Einfach formuliert: Daß Komponenten biologischer Phänomene organisiert sind, um eine Funktion zu erfüllen, die in Homöostase resultiert, zeichnet sie aus, lebende emergente Entitäten zu sein, die - in der Beschreibung und in der Wirklichkeit - von den physikalisch-chemischen Prozessen, aus denen sie zusammengesetzt sind, unterscheidbar sind. (shrink)