Progress in neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides unprecedented insights into the human brain. There are increasing possibilities to influence and measure brain activity. These developments raise multifaceted ethical and legal questions. The proponents of neurorights argue in favour of introducing new human rights to protect mental processes and brain data. This article discusses the necessity and advantages of introducing new human rights focusing on the proposed new human right to mental self-determination and the right to freedom of thought as (...) enshrined in Art.18 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Art. 9 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I argue that the right to freedom of thought can be coherently interpreted as providing comprehensive protection of mental processes and brain data, thus offering a normative basis regarding the use of neurotechnologies. Besides, I claim that an evolving interpretation of the right to freedom of thought is more convincing than introducing a new human right to mental self-determination. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's ‘Critique of Judgment’ is often read either in terms of art appreciation or teleology. In this paper however, the object is to examine the ‘Critique of Judgment’, especially the concepts of the Beautiful and the Sublime, in relation to the Kantian version of the Enlightenment. The main theses in the paper are as following: That Beauty can provide us with the sensuous experience of the possibility of the moral law and that the Sublime can provide us with the (...) sensuous experience of the possibility that we as rational beings can effectuate the actual existence of the moral law. (shrink)

It became customary in the eighteenth century to praise Longinus in ways that mimicked one of his own favorite turns of thought—to identify enthusiastically two elements that would more commonly be thought of as quite distinct. To say, with Boileau and Pope, that Longinus “is himself the great Sublime he draws,” or to profess to doubt, as Gibbon did, “which is the most sublime, Homer’s Battle of the Gods or Longinus’ apostrophe…upon it,” is knowingly to override certain conventional lines of (...) demarcation—between writers and their subject matter, between text and interpretation—very much in the manner of Longinus overriding the distinction between Homer and his heroes, between sublime language and its author , or between sublime poet and his audience .1 Longinus’ admirers, struck by the force of the treatise, are usually willing to release him from the strictures of theoretical discourse and allow him the license of a poet; they are likely to appreciate his transgressions of conventional limits without ever calling them into question. It has been left to more skeptical readers, wary of Longinus’ “transports,” to draw attention to his odd movements of thought: W. K. Wimsatt, for example, is unsympathetic but acute when he accuses Longinus of “sliding” from one theoretical distinction to another, a slide “which seems to harbor a certain duplicity and invalidity.”2 Wimsatt is right: something one might want to call a “slide” is observable again and again in the treatise, and not merely from one theoretical distinction to another. One finds in the treatise a rhetorician’s argument conducted with great intelligence and energy, but one also discovers that it is remarkably easy to lose one’s way, to forget which rhetorical topic is under consideration at a particular point, to find oneself attending to a quotation, a fragment of analysis, a metaphor—some interestingly resonant bit of language that draws one into quite another system of relationships. I want to attempt to follow that movement here, to hold it in mind and to question its implications. I will look closely at a number of passages in which Longinus interweaves language of his own with that of the authors he admires—for it is here, out of the play of text with quotation and of quotations with one another, that the most interesting meanings as well as the peculiar power of the treatise are generated.1. ‘Longinus’ On Sublimity, trans. D. A. Russell , 9. 2, 7. 2; all further references to this work will appear in text, though I have changed a word or two of Russell’s translation in the interests of a more literal rendering of the Greek. I am indebted to another recent translation, G. M. A. Grube’s Longinus On Great Writing , and more particularly to the ample and intelligent introduction and notes accompanying Russell’s edition of the Greek text, ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime .2. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History , p.101. (shrink)

Maxwell accounted for the apparent elastic behavior of the electromagnetic field by augmenting Ampere’s law with the so-called displacement current, in much the same way that he treated the viscoelasticity of gases. Maxwell’s original constitutive relations for both electrodynamics and fluid dynamics were not material invariant. In the theory of viscoelastic fluids, the situation was later corrected by Oldroyd, who introduced the upper-convective derivative. Assuming that the electromagnetic field should follow the general requirements for a material field, we show that (...) if the upper convected derivative is used in place of the partial time derivative in the displacement current term, Maxwell’s electrodynamics becomes material invariant. Note, that the material invariance of Faraday’s law is automatically established if the Lorentz force is admitted as an integral part of the model. The new formulation ensures that the equation for conservation of charge is also material invariant in vacuo. The viscoelastic medium whose apparent manifestation are the known phenomena of electrodynamics is called here the metacontinuum. (shrink)

Heinrich Hertz dedicated the last four years of his life to a systematic reformulation of mechanics. One of the main issues that troubled Hertz in the customary formulation of mechanics was a "logical obscurity" in the notion of force. However, it is unclear what this logical obscurity was, hence it is unclear how Hertz took himself to have avoided it. -/- In this paper, I argue that a subtle ambiguity in Newton's original laws of motion lay at (...) the basis of Hertz's concerns; an ambiguity which led to the development of two slightly different notions of force. I then show how Hertz avoided this ambiguity by deriving a unitary notion of force, thus dispelling the obscurity that lurked in the customary representation of mechanics. (shrink)

There have recently appeared claims that the influence Heinrich Hertz exerted over Wittgenstein's later work was far more abiding than previously recognised. I critically evaluate such claims by Gordon Baker and Allan Janik. I first show that Hertz was indeed concerned with the same feature, clarity, which often exercised Wittgenstein. But I then argue that Wittgenstein should not be seen as having adopted the conception of philosophical method, which Hertz deployed in The Principles of Mechanics. I show (...) that Hertz ‘clarifies’ the concept of force only in the sense that he alters that concept, and that he is not using the sort of ‘contrastive’ methods characteristic of Wittgenstein's later works. (shrink)

There have recently appeared claims that the influence Heinrich Hertz exerted over Wittgenstein's later work was far more abiding than previously recognised. I critically evaluate such claims by Gordon Baker and Allan Janik. I first show that Hertz was indeed concerned with the same feature, clarity, which often exercised Wittgenstein. But I then argue that Wittgenstein should not be seen as having adopted the conception of philosophical method, which Hertz deployed in The Principles of Mechanics. I show (...) that Hertz ‘clarifies’ the concept of force only in the sense that he alters that concept, and that he is not using the sort of ‘contrastive’ methods characteristic of Wittgenstein's later works. (shrink)

In a recently published article A. Nordmann highlighted the fact that Hertz considered it as the greatest pleasure of scientific research to be “alone with nature” and to learn “directly from nature” (see Nordmann, 1998, p. 156). Hertz contrasts this being on his own with nature with the “disputes about human opinions views and demands. (see Nordmann, 1998, p. 156) . It is this contrast between nature on the one hand and human beliefs etc. on the other that (...) is fundamental for his central epistemological pursuit: the attempt to sort out which features of our theories can be attributed to nature as opposed to those which depend on us. I will discuss the various writings in which Hertz touches this subject. (shrink)

I reappraise in detail Hertz's cathode ray experiments. I show that, contrary to Buchwald 's evaluation, the core experiment establishing the electrostatic properties of the rays was successfully replicated by Perrin and Thomson. Buchwald 's discussion of 'current purification' is shown to be a red herring. My investigation of the origin of Buchwald 's misinterpretation of this episode reveals that he was led astray by a focus on what Hertz 'could do'-his experimental resources. I argue that one should (...) focus instead on what Hertz wanted to achieve-his experimental goals. Focusing on these goals, I find that his explicit and implicit requirements for a successful investigation of the rays' properties are met by Perrin and Thomson. Thus, even by Hertz's standards, they did indeed replicate his experiment. (shrink)

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as (...) I exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. (shrink)

The place of Heinrich Hertz’s The principles of mechanics in the history of the philosophy of science is disputed. Here I critically assess positivist interpretations, concluding that they are inadequate.There is a group of commentators who seek to align Hertz with positivism, or with specific positivists such as Ernst Mach, who were enormously influential at the time. Max Jammer is prominent among this group, the most recent member of which is Joseph Kockelmans. I begin by discussing what (...) class='Hi'>Hertz and Mach had to say about one another, and I specify certain respects in which their views are indeed similar. I then go on to detail their differences, looking at Hertz’s attitude to the atomic theory, to the mechanical world-view, to simplicity, to unobservables and metaphysics, and his objections to Newtonian forces. I conclude that the positivist interpretation of Hertz’s mechanics significantly overplays its similarities to Mach’s views.Keywords: Ernst Mach; Heinrich Hertz; Mechanics; Positivism; Atomism; Force; Metaphysics. (shrink)

Various claims have been made about the influence of Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics on Wittgenstein's work. I consider some such recent claims, made by Allan Janik, to the effect that Hertz exercised a very strong influence on Wittgenstein, early and late. I suggest they are ill-founded, in virtue of misinterpretations either of Hertz, or of Wittgenstein, or of both. I try to set the record straight on issues such as the three criteria Hertz suggests for (...) evaluating scientific 'representations' [Darstellungen] or 'images' [Bilder], his conception of philosophy, the nature of Hertz's project and its relation to philosophy, the extent to which he agrees and disagrees with Ernst Mach, and his influence on the Tractatus. (shrink)

I propose to sketch and compare the "picture theories" of Hermann von Helmholtz and Heinrich Hertz. These semiotic conceptions of scientific knowledge are forerunners of the now prevailing semantic views of scientific theories in philosophy of science, and my intent is to bring out the respective main features that either proved to be influential or, as such, retained in contemporary formal approaches to the semantics of physical theories. For our purposes, "picture theories" can be characterized as conceptions that take (...) as a departure the fact that scientific theories are embodied in a system of signs and involve a systematic treatment of the relation that obtains between the semiotic system and the world. Essentially, such a theory will have in its core an answer to the question: "What does it take for a picture to be a picture of something?" In concludion, I outline a filiation between Helmholtz, Hertz and Carnap pertaining to the question of monomorphism or categoricity in the general semantics of physical theories. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una interpretación del abordaje axiomático temprano a la geometría de David Hilbert, i.e., el desarrollado entre 1891 y 1905. Se sostiene que diversos aspectos de este abordaje, a primera vista problemáticos, se pueden comprender mejor si se contrastan con una de sus influencias más importantes en este periodo: la teoría pictórica [Bildtheorie] de Heinrich Hertz. En particular se argumenta que un análisis de la concepción axiomática de Hilbert a la luz de la teoría de Hertz (...) permite aliviar ciertas tensiones en la concepción hilbertiana; más precisamente, las tensiones que surgen de mantener, al mismo tiempo, una posición axiomática abstracta o formal y una concepción empirista de la geometría, que la considera una ciencia natural. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against readings of Hertz that overly assimilate him into the thought of late 20th century anti-realists and pluralists. Firstly, as is well-known, various images of the same objects are possible according to Hertz. However, I will argue that this envisaged pluralism concerns the situation before all the evidence is considered i. e. before we can decide whether the images are correct and appropriate. Hertz believes in final and decisive battles of the kind (...) he participated in while doing experiments in electrodynamics. Secondly, I will argue that the concept of representation is still quite appropriately applied to important aspects of images, namely when it comes to fundamental physical equations. In this context Hertz explicitly allows that “characteristics of our image, which claim to represent observable relations of things, do really and correctly correspond to them” (Hertz [1894] 1956, 9). A final consideration is Hertz’s consistent appeal to the concept of the hypothesis. I will argue that his use of the concept does not indicate that he contributed to an increasing hypothetization of science, if this trend is understood in a strong sense, i. e. as the belief that the correctness of scientific theories cannot be established for principled reasons. As mentioned, when it comes to experimental evidence Hertz believes in decisive battles. (shrink)

Identifications, diagnoses, and treatments of pseudo-problems form a family of classic methodologies in later nineteenth century philosophy and at least partly, as I shall argue, in the philosophy of science. They were devised, not by academic philosophers, but by three of the greatest of the philosopher-scientists. (Later, the idea was taken up by academic philosophers, of course. But I will not discuss that development). Here I show how Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann each deployed methods of this (...) general kind, how they identified different pseudo-problems, how they gave different diagnoses of such problems, and how they suggested quite different treatments for them. I argue that it was Mach who really first developed the idea of a pseudo-problem, that he did so in a relatively focused way on the basis of two kinds of examples. Hertz’s contribution was much more limited, identifying two specific pseudo-problems concerning physics, and suggesting a way in which they might be treated. Boltzmann’s conception of pseudo-problems, though, was far less focused, being applied to a very wide range of problems in philosophy and physics. However, his conception was certainly more influential in philosophy, and perhaps ultimately more fruitful and suggestive. I argue for the originality and continuing interest of such approaches, and I try to dissociate them from any problematic ‘positivism’. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of the role of objects in our philosophical understanding of the logic of our language is critical for his early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. While the important connections between Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein's Tractatus have long been recognized, recent work by Jed Buchwald has deepened our knowledge of the importance of the object-orientation of Hertz's scientific work in a manner that should also deepen our understanding of the nature of objects in (...) the Tractatus. I will argue that there are important ontological links, involving "a certain physical scheme, one that had powerful implications for thinking as well as doing," between Hertz's work and Wittgenstein's early philosophy. (shrink)

This paper begins by reflecting on the current generalised political apathy signalled by low voter turnout and falling party membership. It would appear that people are exercising political choices not at the ballot box but by means of consumer activism. Corporations respond to consumer pressure in a way that governments do not, and are gradually assuming the role of global political actors. But this is a dangerous state of affairs for several reasons. In the first place, social welfare can never (...) be the core activity of corporations. Corporate social motives are commercial, and there is a danger that their social policy decisions will be driven by the logic of the market place rather than social need. Recession, for instance, will curtail their social responsiveness, as will decisions to relocate. It is also the case that partnerships between governments and corporates run the risk of removing checks on the growth and abuse of corporate power. And finally, what price does society have to pay for the growth of corporate benevolence? (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Prinzipien der Mechanik in Neuem Zusammenhange Dargestellt Wahl eines Berufs entschliefsen mufste, wahlte er den des Ingenieurs. Es scheint, dafs die auch in spateren Jahren als ein charakteristischer Grundzug seines Wesens hervor tretende Bescheidenheit ihn an seiner Begabung fur theore tische Wissenschaft zweifeln liefs, und dafs er sich bei der Beschaftigung mit seinen geliebten mechanischen Arbeiten des Erfolges sicherer fuhlte, weil er deren Tragweite schon damals ausreichend verstand. Vielleicht hat ihn auch die in seiner Vaterstadt herrschende, mehr (...) dem Praktischen zugeneigte Sinnesweise beeinflufst. Ubrigens beobachtet man nicht selten diese Art zaghafter Bescheidenheit gerade bei jungen Leuten von hervorragenden Anlagen. Sie haben wohl eine deutliche Vorstellung von den Schwierigkeiten, die vor der Erreichung des ihnen vorschwebenden hohen Zieles zu uberwinden sind, und mussen ihre Krafte erst praktisch erprobt haben, ehe sie das zu ihrem schweren Werke notige Selbstvertrauen ge winnen. Aber auch in ihrer spateren Entwickelung pflegen reich veranlagte Naturen um so unzufriedener mit ihren eigenen Werken zu sein je hoher ihre Fahigkeiten und ihre Ideale reichen. Die Begabtesten erreichen offenbar nur des halb das Hochste, weil sie am empfindlichsten gegen jede Un vollkommenheit sind, und am unermudlichsten an deren Beseitigung arbeiten. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This paper begins by reflecting on the current generalised political apathy signalled by low voter turnout and falling party membership. It would appear that people are exercising political choices not at the ballot box but by means of consumer activism. Corporations respond to consumer pressure in a way that governments do not, and are gradually assuming the role of global political actors. But this is a dangerous state of affairs for several reasons. In the first place, social welfare can never (...) be the core activity of corporations. Corporate social motives are commercial, and there is a danger that their social policy decisions will be driven by the logic of the market place rather than social need. Recession, for instance, will curtail their social responsiveness, as will decisions to relocate. It is also the case that partnerships between governments and corporates run the risk of removing checks on the growth and abuse of corporate power. And finally, what price does society have to pay for the growth of corporate benevolence? (shrink)

As the discoverer of electromagnetic waves, Hertz is one of the most important figures in the history of physics. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his death, this volume ties together his personal and professional life. It contains 11 of Hertz's most important papers, seven accounts of his life by renowned contemporaries, and a biographical introduction. A bibliography of Hertz's scientific papers, a general bibliography of books and articles about his contributions to physics, and a comprehensive (...) index round out the coverage. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Deleuze's readings of Hume, Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche respond to philosophical critiques of classical and modern empiricism. However, Deleuze's arguments against those critiques - by Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger - consolidate the philosophy of immanence that can be called 'transcendental empiricism'. Marc Rolli offers us a detailed examination of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of transcendental empiricism. He demonstrates that Deleuze takes up and radicalises the empiricist school of thought developing a systematic alternative to the mainstreams of modern continental philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtual Gallery*Neil Hertz Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil (...) class='Hi'>Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz. Click for larger view View full resolutionPhotograph by Neil Hertz.Footnotes* The photographs on the cover and back cover and pages 2, 14, 29, 43, 53, 66, and 80 were taken in Baltimore by Neil Hertz.Copyright © 1999 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)