In Zeiten einer beschleunigten und zugleich als krisenhaft erlebten Entwick­ lung der Psychologie als Wissenschaft nimmt auch das Bedtirfnis zu, diese Ent­ wicklung selbst wissenschaftlich zu rekonstruieren. Es erwachst aus der augen­ flHligen Notwendigkeit, yom augenblicklichen Stand der Entwicklung ausgehend, mogliche und vielversprechende zukiinftige Entwicklungsrichtungen zu bestim­ men. Diese Notwendigkeit ist selbst ein Ergebnis der neueren Entwicklung der Wissenschaft: die Entstehung neuer wissenschaftswissenschaftlicher Disziplinen ist Ausdruck dieser Notwendigkeit. D~ sie tiberhaupt entstanden sind, mag den Kritikern der Notwendigkeit metawissenschaftllcher Ansiitze als (...) starkes Argu­ ment entgegengehalten werden: ihre Entstehung ist Beweis genug flir ihre Not­ wendigkeit. Ihre institutionalisierte Unabhangigkeit als wissenschaftswissenschaftliche Forschungsinstitute und Studiengange markiert aber zugleich eine ihrer grund­ legenden Schwachen. Ihre potentielle inter- und infradisziplinare Bedeutung fur die Grundlagendiskussion aller Einzelwissenschaften wird gerade dadurch einge­ schrankt, daB sie als bloB zusatzliche "neue" Einzeldisziplin, als eine Disziplin unter anderen erscheint (vgl. v. Hentig 1972). Urn die potentielle Fruchtbarkeit einer metawissenschaftlichen Perspektive zur Entfaltung gelangen zu lassen, er­ scheint es aber erforderlich, diese zum integralen Bestandteil der Grundlagendis­ kussion in den Einzelwissenschaften zu machen. Das grotHe Hindernis fur die Entfaltung der Fruchtbarkeit dieses Ansatzes ist dabei wohl ~re Ablehnung durch die Einzelwissenschaftler. Die Bedingungen der Entwicklung ihrer Wissenschaft wissenschaftlich zu untersuchen, scheint vielen Psychologen beispielsweise ganz undgar unnotig, mitunter sogar dieser Entwicklung selbst abtraglich: sie sind der Meinung, bereits im Besitz der Kenntnis dieser Bedingungen zu sein. (shrink)

»Wo gesprochen, wird von Etwas gesprochen, das in allen andren Fällen vor diesem Sprechen davon bekannt ist, und da ist: -- hier, von etwas, das nur durch das Sprechen davon, und in diesem Sprechen, ist und wird, u. [anders] durchaus nicht ist. Es folgt daraus, daß jeder, mit dem gesprochen werden soll, dies unmittelbar selber erzeugen muß; weder erinnert an etwas bekanntes; noch etwa auffassen, auf den Vorrath, sondern hier auf der Stelle es denken, begreifen, u. abmachen. -- Ausserdem ist (...) von Nichts geredet. ist leer die Klage über Leerheit dieser Spekulationen; ist gegründeter als die Klagenden meinen; nur auch aus einem anderen Grunde, als sie meinen.«. (shrink)

»Wo gesprochen, wird von Etwas gesprochen, das in allen andren Fällen vor diesem Sprechen davon bekannt ist, und da ist: -- hier, von etwas, das nur durch das Sprechen davon, und in diesem Sprechen, ist und wird, u. [anders] durchaus nicht ist. Es folgt daraus, daß jeder, mit dem gesprochen werden soll, dies unmittelbar selber erzeugen muß; weder erinnert an etwas bekanntes; noch etwa auffassen, auf den Vorrath, sondern hier auf der Stelle es denken, begreifen, u. abmachen. -- Ausserdem ist (...) von Nichts geredet. ist leer die Klage über Leerheit dieser Spekulationen; ist gegründeter als die Klagenden meinen; nur auch aus einem anderen Grunde, als sie meinen.«. (shrink)

Developments in the sequencing of whole genomes and in simultaneously surveying many thousands of transcription and translation products of specific cells have ushered in a conceptual revolution in genetics that rationally introduces top-down, holistic analyses. This emphasized the futility of attempts to reduce genes to structurally discrete entities along the genome, and the need to return to Johannsen's definition of a gene as 'something' that refers to an invariant entity of inheritance and development. We may view genes either as generic (...) terms for units of inheritance whose referents are pragmatic ad hoc and context-dependent, or as (epistemologically) representing entities of cell functions. It is cellular functions that determine the structural referents along the DNA. Structures that happened to secure specific functions that were essential for or conducive to the survival of cells were selected for. With natural selection being the etiological background of genes as functions, genes obtain again their theoretical role as intervening variables, abstractive variables that purely 'summarize' characters. The importance of DNA sequences is that of all possible phenotypes these are the most basic ones from which we can read off the genotype directly. (shrink)

Many people share the intuition that by turning to works of literature something can be learned about the world. One way to explain the epistemic access to the world that fictional literature provides is by comparing it to thought experiments. Both? thought experiments and works of fiction? might be seen as imaginative exercises which help to find out what would or could happen if certain conditions were met. This comparison of fictional literature with thought experiments provides the point of departure (...) for the contributions in our volume. It contributes to the discussion of an approach that has quite recently entered the field of the philosophy of literature. (shrink)

In two eye-tracking studies we investigated the influence of Mandarin numeral classifiers – a grammatical category in the language – on online overt attention. Mandarin speakers were presented with simple sentences through headphones while their eye-movements to objects presented on a computer screen were monitored. The crucial question is what participants look at while listening to a pre-specified target noun. If classifier categories influence Mandarin speakers' general conceptual processing, then on hearing the target noun they should look at objects that (...) are members of the same classifier category – even when the classifier is not explicitly present. The data show that when participants heard a classifier they shifted overt attention significantly more to classifiermatch objects than to distractor objects, but when the classifier was not explicitly presented in speech, overt attention to classifier-match objects and distractor objects did not differ. This suggests that although classifier distinctions do influence eye-gaze behavior, they do so only during linguistic processing of that distinction and not in moment-to-moment general conceptual processing. (shrink)

Interprofessional collaboration involves some kind of knowledge sharing, which is essential and will be important in the future in regard to the opportunities and challenges in practices for delivering safe and effective health care. Nursing assistants are seldom mentioned as a group of health care workers that contribute to interprofessional collaboration in health care practice. The aim of this ethnographic study was to explore how the nursing assistants’ knowledge can be shared in a team on a spinal cord injury rehabilitation (...) ward. Using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, we captured different aspects of interprofessional collaboration in health care. The findings reveal how knowledge was shared between professionals, depending on different kinds of practice architecture. These specific cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements enabled possibilities through which nursing assistants’ knowledge informed other practices, and others’ knowledge informed the practice of nursing assistants. By studying what health care professionals actually do and say in practice, we found that the nursing assistants could make a valuable contribution of knowledge to the team. (shrink)

You have invited me to speak about Morals without Faith . Briefly, I take it, this question means: is there any moral law for agnostics? But it might be more interesting to put it rather differently: to ask, not simply whether there is a moral law for those who do not believe in God, but whether there is any such law even for those who do independent of their belief? We are then asking: Does being under a moral law mean (...) nothing more than being commanded by God? Is the only incentive for obeying it in our love or fear of Him, the only criterion by which to judge the morality of actions in their conformity to a revealed standard? Or would it be more true to say that the law which God wishes us to obey is that law to which we ought to conform because it corresponds to our nature and conditions in this world, a law which, apart from being God's will, we can understand as being indispensable to the kind of beings we are? (shrink)

Butler observes in the Preface to the Sermons that the subject of morals can be approached in two different ways: “One begins from enquiring into the abstract relations of things: the other from a matter of fact, namely what the particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitution; from whence it proceeds to determine what course of life it is, which is correspondent to his whole nature. In the former method the conclusion is expressed thus, that (...) vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things: in the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in upon our own nature. Thus they both lead us to the same thing, our obligations to the practice of virtue; and thus they exceedingly strengthen and enforce each other.” In making this observation Butler raises the problem of the nature of moral obligation, and of the criteria by which the existence of a moral obligation can be known. He does so by calling attention to the divisions of opinion which existed on this issue in his own days. Samuel Clarke, the fashionable moralist of the period, sought the roots of moral obligation in the “nature and reason of things”: for an agent to know that an act is his duty is to know that it is fitting or suitable to the circumstances in which it occurs . Shaftesbury, on the other hand, and many of the adherents to the doctrine of Natural Law, like Grotius and Pufendorf, sought the roots of moral obligation in the nature of agents: for an agent, to know that an act is his duty is for him to experience a special motive to do it . Butler recognized the fundamental difference between these two approaches. (shrink)

Kant's rationale for making self-respect an immediately clear precondition for action grounded in freedom is in need of thoroughgoing revision, since it fails to consider the phenomenological content and the actual origin of reflexive self-reference. On the basis of a history of the concept and a systematic reconstruction of affirmative relations to the self, the author proposes an alternative explanation. According to Bornmüller, moral insight should once again be properly regarded as emerging from a self-referential individual subject.

The writings of Weber and Taylor have some strong affinities. Both start from the anthropological idea that man evaluates his position in the world and constitutes the social world by values. Their analyses of values aim at an understanding of those intersubjective meanings that have constituted western modernity. But, at the same time, their anthropological starting point leads to different interpretations of modernity. Historically, both argue that rationalization (as instrumental rationality) is one of the most influential Kulturbedeutung of modernity. Weber's (...) thesis of rationalization is, however, entangled in a paradox. Overemphasizing the rationalized elements of modernity, he fails scientifically to grasp certain counter-movements in modernity, such as individuation, subjectivity and new life forms. Taylor, investigating the moral sources of expressivism, shows that these life forms are an inherent part of modernity. Yet his method of articulating the sources of modernity is insufficient to transform it towards a causal explanation of behaviour in everyday life. (shrink)

This article explores the tensions between geopolitics and human rights under present conditions of world politics. It takes notes of the rise of human rights as a discourse in international law, and draws attention to the use of this discourse by powerful states, especially the United States, to validate non-defensive uses of force. It also notes the role of the media in facilitating the geopolitical agenda associated with exerting pressure on some conditions but exempting other situations as serious or more (...) so . This article also discusses the reliance on the human rights discourse by oppressed groups and by countries in the South, and the emergence of a counter-hegemonic tradition in human rights that challenges geopolitical projects in a variety of settings. The main conclusion is that neither an uncritical endorsement nor a cynical dismissal of human rights is appropriate at this time.Keywords: human rights; geopolitics; hegemony; counter-hegemony; international law. (shrink)

This volume provides new sources of knowledge based on Michael Otte’s fundamental insight that understanding the problems of mathematics education – how to teach, how to learn, how to communicate, how to do, and how to represent ...

Marr's levels of analysis—computational, algorithmic, and implementation—have served cognitive science well over the last 30 years. But the recent increase in the popularity of the computational level raises a new challenge: How do we begin to relate models at different levels of analysis? We propose that it is possible to define levels of analysis that lie between the computational and the algorithmic, providing a way to build a bridge between computational- and algorithmic-level models. The key idea is to push the (...) notion of rationality, often used in defining computational-level models, deeper toward the algorithmic level. We offer a simple recipe for reverse-engineering the mind's cognitive strategies by deriving optimal algorithms for a series of increasingly more realistic abstract computational architectures, which we call “resource-rational analysis.”. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biological research in the latter half of the twentieth century have made the story of the gene vastly complicated: the more we learn about genes, the less sure we are of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but the gene has also become curiously intangible. This collection of essays renews the question: what are genes? Philosophers, historians and working scientists re-evaluate the question in this volume, treating the gene as (...) a focal point of interdisciplinary and international research. It will be of interest to professionals and students in the philosophy and history of science, genetics and molecular biology. (shrink)

Some fundamental aspects of the lived body only become evident when it breaks down through illness, weakness or pain. From a phenomenological point of view, various breakdowns are worth analyzing for their own sake, and discussing them also opens up overlooked dimensions of our bodily constitution. This book brings together different approaches that shed light on the phenomenology of the lived body—its normality and abnormality, health and sickness, its activity as well as its passivity. The contributors integrate phenomenological insights with (...) discussions about bodily brokenness in philosophy, theology, medical science and literary theory. Phenomenology of the Broken Body demonstrates how the broken body sheds fresh light on the nuances of embodied experience in ordinary life and ultimately questions phenomenology’s preunderstanding of the body. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses how early modern materialism can be defined and delineated, before turning to a brief survey of the main philosophical resources early modern materialist theories draw on. Subsequently, I discuss competing overall narratives concerning early modern materialism, and conclude with a defence of the controversial view that material soul theories belong to materialism proper.

Falk Wunderlich präsentiert einen grundlegend neuen Ansatz zum Verständnis der Kant'schen Bewusstseinstheorie. Im ersten Teil bietet er eine detaillierte Rekonstruktion der bewusstseinstheoretischen Diskussionen des 18. Jahrhunderts. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Rekonstruktion des Geflechts von Diskussionen, in dessen Kontext sich Kants Überlegungen bewegen. Auf diese zeitgenössischen Debatten werden im zweiten Teil Kants bewusstseinstheoretische Ansätze bezogen. Der Autor vertritt die These, dass Kant die zeitgenössischen Standardansichten über Bewusstsein, Apperzeption und Selbstbewusstsein entgegen dem Anschein nur einschränkt modifiziert und ihre begrifflichen Grundlagen beibehält. (...) Schließlich wird vor dem Hintergrund dieser Kontextualisierung eine alternative Interpretation der transzendentalen Deduktion entwickelt. (shrink)

In this two-part essay I develop a theory of natural signs. Since even primordial signs signify values, in the first part I develop the theory’s valuative aspect. Goods are as primary in nature as facts are, and together facts and values generate semeiosis in all life without excess extrapolation from human psychology. To ward off over-extrapolating on values, I defend a major discontinuity between man and nature on the goods of ethics. In the essay’s second part I develop the semeiotic (...) dimensions of the negative feedback model of purposive systems. I provide tests for the truth and falsity of the primitive representations in these systems. I account for the holism of representational systems and their non-extensionality, and I define functions. I solve this important definitional problem by inverting the usual mode of thinking: Functions do not explain signs; signs explain functions. Finally I defend this theory’s way of understanding the continuity between human beings and the rest of living nature against several criticisms. (shrink)

‘Ifs’ come washed or unwashed. The washed ifs are embedded in precise theories: the constantly strict implication of deductive inference, the variably strict implication of ‘nearness’ conditionals, and statements of conditional probability. By a nearness conditional I mean the common part of Stalnaker's and D. Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals, which depends on a notion that possible worlds are more or less near to each other, as a measure of their over-all similarity to each other.