Meike Wagner and Wolf-DieterErnst Performing the Matrix. Mediating Cultural Performances Neo: The matrix? Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? ...
Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by (...) desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world. (shrink)
Wolf's study represents an incredible work of scholarship. A full and detailed account of three centuries of innovation, these two volumes provide a complete portrait of the foundations of modern science and philosophy. Tracing the origins and development of the achievements of the modern age, it is the story of the birth and growth of the modern mind. A thoroughly comprehensive sourcebook, it deals with all the important developments in science and many of the innovations in the social sciences, British (...) and Continental philosophy and psychology. Wolf's exposition is clear and accessible. As well as its comprehensive treatment of the practical innovations, it includes a wealth of biographical information to give a human aspect to the extensive canvas. A mine of useful information that will be repeatedly used for reference, it is also lavishishly illustrated throughout. These two volumes, published together for the first time, present in one invaluable source the history, methods and principles that form the foundations of science and philosophy. --covers both the major and minor figures in the history of science and philosophy --accessible to the general reader --provides all necessary information on the period immediately before and after the dates covered --both volumes are fully indexed --lavishly illustrated with over 660 portraits, diagrams of scientific apparatus and instruments, frontispieces, B&W photographs Abraham Wolf (1877-1948) other works include: The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (1927), The Philosophy of Nietzsche (1915). (shrink)
According to one influential conception of morality, being moral is a matter of acting from or in accordance with a moral point of view, a point of view which is arrived at by abstracting from a more natural, pre-ethical, personal point of view, and recognizing that each person''s personal point of view has equal standing. The idea that, were it not for morality, rational persons would act from their respectively personal points of view is, however, simplistic and misleading. Because our (...) nonmoral reasons cannot all be adequately captured as falling within any single, unified and coherent point of view, morality cannot be adequately understood as a matter of abstracting from such points of view and taking them all equally into account. After considering several ways of modifying the initial conception of morality in a way that accommodates the variety of nonmoral reasons that do not have their source in a personal point of view, the paper concludes with the suggestion that we free ourselves more thoroughly from the grip of the metaphor that takes morality as a whole to be a matter of acting in accordance with the judgments of a single unified and coherent point of view. (shrink)
Writers on collective action are in broad agreement that in order for a group of agents to form a collective intention, the members of that group must have beliefs about the beliefs of the other members. But in spite of the fact that this so-called "interactive knowledge" is central to virtually every account of collective intention, writers on this subject have not offered a detailed account of the nature of interactive knowledge. In this paper, we argue that such an account (...) is necessary for any adequate analysis of collective intention. Furthermore, we argue that an application of Robert Aumann's theory of interactive knowledge may be used to address several puzzling features of collective intention. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
Brian Skyrms has argued that the evolution of the social contract may be explained using the tools of evolutionary game theory. I show in the first half of this paper that the evolutionary game-theoretic models are often highly sensitive to the specific processes that they are intended to simulate. This sensitivity represents an important robustness failure that complicates Skyrms's project. But I go on to make the positive proposal that we may none the less obtain robust results by simulating the (...) population structures that existed among our evolutionary ancestors. It is by extending the evolutionary models in this way that we should pursue the project of explaining the evolution of the social contract. (shrink)
In this paper, we offer an analysis of ‘group intentions.’ On our proposal, group intentions should be understood as a state of equilibrium among the beliefs of the members of a group. Although the discussion in this paper is non-technical, the equilibrium concept is drawn from the formal theory of interactive epistemology due to Robert Aumann. The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of group intentions that is informed by important work in economics and formal epistemology.
In this article, I investigate actions that the United States took against Costa Rica during the 1980s in order to argue that current discussions about global justice and its foundations are flawed in three ways. First, it misidentifies the parties of global justice as individual citizens. Second, it conceptualizes global justice as exclusively a distributive justice concern and, as a result, it misidentifies what constitutes a global injustice as being the adverse fate of individuals who live in a poor nation. (...) Finally, the current debate provides no guidance in what must be considered to identify the specific obligations one nation may have to another nation. Given these three problems, I maintain that we conceptualize global injustice as an issue of social justice rather than one exclusively of distributive justice. This will require identifying nations as the parties to global justice, at least in certain cases, and realizing that our goal is to remedy oppressive global structures of power. Utilizing the social justice I propose will put us on the road toward achieving justice across the Americas. (shrink)
Few philosophers today doubt the importance of some notion of rigid designation, as suggested by Kripke and Putnam for names and natural kind terms. At the very least, most of us want our theories to be compatible with the most plausible elements of that account. Anaphoric theories of reference have gained some attention lately, but little attention has been given to how they square with rigid designation. Although the differences between anaphoric theories and many interpretations of the New Theory of (...) reference are substantial, I argue that rigid designation and anaphoric theories can be reconciled with one another and in fact complement one another in important ways. (shrink)
We argue that conceptual analyses of collective action should be informed by game-theoretic analyses of collective action. In particular, we argue that Ariel Rubenstein’s so-called ‘Electronic Mail Game’ provides a useful model of collective action, and of the formation of collective intentions.
Causal theories of reference in the philosophy of language and philosophy of science have suggested that it could resolve lingering worries about incommensurability between theoretical claims in different paradigms, to borrow Kuhn’s terms. If we co-refer throughout different paradigms, then the problems of incommensurability are greatly diminished, according to causal theorists. I argue that assuring ourselves of that sort of constancy of reference will require comparable sorts of cross-paradigm affinities, and thus provides us with no special relief on this problem. (...) Suggestions on how to think about rigid designation across paradigms are included. (shrink)
In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...) is, “Can an artificial agent that changes its own programming become so autonomous that the original designer is no longer responsible for the behavior of the artificial agent?” To explore this question, we distinguish between LoA1 (the user view) and LoA2 (the designer view) by exploring the concepts of unmodifiable, modifiable and fully modifiable tables that control artificial agents. We demonstrate that an agent with an unmodifiable table, when viewed at LoA2, distinguishes an artificial agent from a human one. This distinction supports our first counter-claim to Floridi and Sanders, namely, that such an agent is not a moral agent, and the designer bears full responsibility for its behavior. We also demonstrate that even if there is an artificial agent with a fully modifiable table capable of learning* and intentionality* that meets the conditions set by Floridi and Sanders for ascribing moral agency to an artificial agent, the designer retains strong moral responsibility. (shrink)
It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.
This article addresses recent claims made by Richard Rorty about antirepresentationalist theories of meaning. Rorty asserts that a faithful rendering of the core antirepresentationalist assumptions precludes even revised pieces of representationalist semantics like "refers" or "true" and epistemological correlates like "answering to the facts." Rorty even asserts that such notions invite reactionary authoritarian elements that would impede the development of a democratic humanism. I reject this claim and assert that such notions (suitably constructed) pose no greater threat to democratic humanism (...) than the alternatives and in fact are crucial to its maintenance and continuing success. These notions (suitably constructed) reflect a metatheoretical stance that I call "openness," which I believe lies at the heart of both democratic humanism and the pragmatism from which Rorty claims to take his inspiration. (shrink)
If there is a sense of beauty, what is its nature? The main problem we are confronted with here is that on the one hand a sense of beauty, somehow, has to be connected with perception. On the other hand it does not seem to be reducible to it. I argue that a sense of beauty should be analyzed as a faculty of reason. I try to elucidate the nature of this faculty by identifying similarities between aesthetic, moral and scientific (...) knowledge. (shrink)
We prove (in ZFC Set Theory) that all infinite games whose winning sets are of the following forms are determined: (1) (A - S) ∪ B, where A is $\Pi^0_2, \bar\bar{S}, 2^{\aleph_0}$ , and the games whose winning set is B is "strongly determined" (meaning that all of its subgames are determined). (2) A Boolean combination of Σ 0 2 sets and sets smaller than the continuum. This also enables us to show that strong determinateness is not preserved under complementation, (...) improving a result of Morton Davis which required the continuum hypothesis to prove this fact. Various open questions related to the above results are discussed. Our main conjecture is that (2) above remains true when "Σ 0 2 " is replaced by "Borel". (shrink)
Wayne Davis (2004) argues against the thesis that knowledge claims are indexical, and he presents an alternative account of the contextual variability of our use of S knows p. In this commentary I focus on the following three points. First, I want to supplement Daviss considerations about the inability of indexicalism to deal with skeptical paradoxes by considering what the consequence would be if the indexicalists explanation of these paradoxes were satisfactory. Second, I am going to take a brief look (...) at Daviss alternative theory. Third, in the main part of my commentary I try to show that indexicalism may be true in spite of the linguistic evidence Davis presents against it. (shrink)
In the middle of the nineteenth century, advances in experimental psychology and the physiology of the sense organs inspired so-called ?Back to Kant? Neo-Kantians to articulate robustly psychologistic visions of Kantian epistemology. But their accounts of the thing in itself were fraught with deep tension: they wanted to conceive of things in themselves as the causes of our sensations, while their own accounts of causal inference ruled that claim out. This paper diagnoses the source of that problem in views of (...) one Neo-Kantan, F. A. Lange, and argues that it is solved only by Ernst Mach. No less than Lange and other Neo-Kantians, Mach was inspired to develop a psychologistic account of the foundations of knowledge, but his account also includes a coherent denial of things in themselves? existence. Finally, this paper uses this account of Lange and Mach on things in themselves to illuminate Mach's relation to a certain strain of the Neo-Kantian philosophy of his own time: his views constitute a more fully coherent version of the psychologistic theory of knowledge Back to Kant figures tried to articulate. (shrink)
A 2012 survey article for Metascience which explains Mach's realistic brand of empiricism, contrasting it with the common phenomenalist reading of Mach by John Blackmore in two recent books.
It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's Cause and Effect in Biology wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.
In the thirties, Martin Heidegger was heavily involved with the work of Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). He says that he is indebted to Jünger for the ‘enduring stimulus’ provided by his descriptions. The question is: what exactly could this enduring stimulus be? Several interpreters have examined this question, but the recent publication of lectures and annotations of the thirties allow us to follow Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger more precisely. -/- According to Heidegger, the main theme of his philosophical thinking in (...) the thirties was the overcoming of the metaphysics of the will to power. But whereas he seems to be quite revolutionary in heralding ‘another beginning’ of philosophy in the beginning of the thirties, he later on realized that his own revolutionary vocabulary was itself influenced by the will to power. In his later work, one of the main issues is the releasement from the wilful way of philosophical thinking. My hypothesis is that Jünger has this importance for Heidegger in the thirties, because the confrontation with Jünger’s way of thinking showed him that the other beginning of philosophy presupposes the irrevocable releasement of willing and a gelassen or non-willing way of philosophical thinking. -/- In this article, we test this hypothesis in relation to the recently published lectures, annotations and unpublished notes from the thirties. After a brief explanation of Jünger’s diagnosis of modernity (§1), we consider Heidegger’s reception of the work of Jünger in the thirties (§2). He not only sees that Jünger belongs to Nietzsche’s metaphysics of the will to power, but also shows the modern-metaphysical character of Jünger’s way of thinking. In section three, we focus on Heidegger’s confrontation with Jünger in relation to the consummation of modernity. According to Heidegger, Jünger is not only the end of modern metaphysics, but also the perishing (Verendung) of this end, the oblivion of this end in the will to power of representation. In section four, we focus on the real controversy between Jünger and Heidegger: the releasement of willing and the necessity of a radical other beginning of philosophical thinking. -/- . (shrink)
One of the most important philosophical topics in the early twentieth century ? and a topic that was seminal in the emergence of analytic philosophy ? was the relationship between Kantian philosophy and modern geometry. This paper discusses how this question was tackled by the Neo-Kantian trained philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Surprisingly, Cassirer does not affirm the theses that contemporary philosophers often associate with Kantian philosophy of mathematics. He does not defend the necessary truth of Euclidean geometry but instead develops (...) a kind of logicism modeled on Richard Dedekind's foundations of arithmetic. Further, because he shared with other Neo-Kantians an appreciation of the developmental and historical nature of mathematics, Cassirer developed a philosophical account of the unity and methodology of mathematics over time. With its impressive attention to the detail of contemporary mathematics and its exploration of philosophical questions to which other philosophers paid scant attention, Cassirer's philosophy of mathematics surely deserves a place among the classic works of twentieth century philosophy of mathematics. Though focused on Cassirer's philosophy of geometry, this paper also addresses both Cassirer's general philosophical orientation and his reading of Kant. (shrink)
A full appreciation for Ernst Mach's doctrine of the economy of thought must take account of his direct realism about particulars (elements) and his anti-realism about space-time laws as economical constructions. After a review of thought economy, its critics and some contemporary forms, the paper turns to the philosophical roots of Mach's doctrine. Mach claimed that the simplest, most parsimonious theories economized memory and effort by using abstract concepts and laws instead of attending to the details of each individual (...) event or experiment. For Mach, the individual case never truly repeated in all of its uniqueness, nor was all of the individual detail of a physical element adequately captured in abstract laws and schemata, however necessary these were for the pursuit of science. As can be shown from specific passages, some already published, some not, Mach's elements included physical qualia in nature similar to Russell's unsensed sensibilia, which existed even where there were no conscious observers. An argument will be presented to make the case that Mach believed in the mind-independent elements from the 1870s on, while other aspects of his thought evolved over time; I have thus dated the references to reflect this historical progression. I concentrate on Mach's ontology, as it bears on economy of thought, not his epistemology per se, which might well have been restricted to observable elements/sensations. After his own conversion to neutral monism, in the 1920s, Bertrand Russell echoed Mach's call for a 'future science' capable of handling the 'intrinsic character' of qualitative data directly without the excessive abstraction of physics. (shrink)
The article reconsiders the Davos-debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer to reassess the discussion of interrelations and differences of their philosophies. The focus is the fecund motifs of thought that each philosopher presents. These are worked out by dispersing the contexts. Heidegger’s primary motifs of thought are identified through the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard as the question of finitude understood as continuance of the event and as the act of understanding the event. The primary motif of thought in (...) Cassirer’s philosophy is identified with the question of form and formation. It is argued that it is possible to think the motifs of event and form in connection with each other. The focal point of connection between their philosophies is uncovered in the relations of form between persons—in the rigorous practice of promising and demanding. The philosophies of Heidegger and Cassirer are thus read in a way where they productively enhance each other without minimizing the differences of their motifs of thought. (shrink)
The article investigates Cassirer’s developing interest in the cultural sciences to display how his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms constitutes a philosophy of culture. The core concept in such a philosophy of culture is the symbolic formation that both possesses a structured-structuring dimension and appears as an historical process in which culture shows itself as a temporal creation. The philosophy of culture displays ‘life in meaning’, that is reality as it exhibits human reality manifested in and through the medium of linguistic, (...) artistic, religious, scientific “and so on” action and behaviour. This reality, therefore, is mediation between culture and nature through human spirit. Cassirer’s philosophy of culture connects back to Kant’s transcendental idealism by emphasizing that any concept of reality establishes itself through a modalization of reality, e.g. that reality constitutes itself in the mode of interpretation. This makes the basis for Cassirer’s characteristic understanding of hermeneutics where cultural development is regarded as drama. (shrink)
Can a phenomenology of culture be at the same time a philosophy of culture? In other words, can a descriptive exploration of acts and objects of culture serve at the same time as a critical reflection on those acts and objects? Or does cultural critique imply a separate and additional task, that of a normative examination of the explored cultural phenomena? What would be the founding values of such an examination? How would it be established? Furthermore, what would be the (...) importance of recognizing the distinct nature of this task compared to the exploratory-descriptive one? How would the two tasks relate to one another? Finally, is a full-fledged philosophy of culture, i.e. a critical exploration of cultural phenomena, needed? And if yes, why? These are the questions addressed by this paper. Answers are sought in a close examination of the work of Ernst Cassirer which involved both a phenomenology of cultural forms as well as an attempt at their normative-critical evaluation. And yet his work was criticized by many for its lack of an ethical dimension, a critique endorsed by another phenomenologist of culture, Alfred Schutz, whose work itself was accused for being non-critical. Beginning with a presentation of these two phenomenologies of culture this paper examines closely the charges directed against Cassirer's comprehensive philosophy of culture, namely, its idealism and its a-moralism. Through this examination the paper aims to shed light on a number of issues pertaining to the questions formulated above. (shrink)
A study of the published and unpublished parts of Ernst Mach's last notebook (1910–14) suggests that Max Planck's attack (1908–11) provoked Mach into opposing ‘The Church of Physics’ more strongly than previously realized. Shortly after Mach threatened to leave the discipline if belief in atoms were required. Albert Einstein tried to persuade him to accept atomism (September 1910). Mach declined to mention Einstein again in his publications and increasingly criticized ‘The Church of Physics’. Evidence that Mach opposed relativity theory (...) and the absence of evidence that he favored it is pointed out. It is suggested that Mach's alleged ‘friendly interest’ in Einstein's work in early 1914 may have been stimulated by the hope that the young genius might develop a continuum or field theory to refute Planck's discontinuity physics. The paper concludes with suggestions on how philosophers who defend Mach's non-realism such as Gereon Wolters and Paul Feyerabend might be better off switching to a realist epistemology more compatible with rationally-held science, religion, and common sense. (shrink)
In this paper, I will argue with Ernst Cassirer that anticipation plays an essential part in the constitution of time, as seen from a transcendental perspective. Time is, as any transcendental concept, regarded as basically relational and subjective and only in a derivative way objective and indifferent to us. This entails that memory is prior to history, and that anticipation is prior to prediction. In this paper, I will give some examples in order to argue for this point. Furthermore, (...) I will also argue, again with Cassirer and contra Henri Bergson, that time should be seen as a functional unity, and not as a collection of three different things-in-themselves (past, present and future). (shrink)
Susan Wolf, Meaning in Life and Why it Matters Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10677-011-9321-8 Authors Simon Derpmann, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Philosophisches Seminar, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster, Germany Journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Online ISSN 1572-8447 Print ISSN 1386-2820.
This paper provides a précis of Ernst Cassirer’s concept of art as a symbolic form. It does so, though, in a specific respect. It points to the fact that Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic form” is two-sided. On the one hand, the concept captures general cultural phenomena that are not only meaningful but also manifest the way man makes sense of the world; thus myth, religion, and art are considered general symbolic forms. On the other hand, it captures the formal (...) structures and semiotic tools thanks to which meaning is constructed within each general symbolic form (Cassirer called these structures “modes of objectivation”); thus, in art, perspective or the golden section are well-known examples of symbolic forms, now in a narrow sense, i.e. they are means to configure parts into an organized, meaningful whole. The paper will comment on art along both these two dimensions, but its main goal is to provide with concrete examples of aesthetic symbolic forms in the narrow sense in order to show how conceptual meaning can be inscribed in the space of aesthetic intuition. (shrink)
Ernst Mayr's typological/population distinction is a conceptual thread that runs throughout much of his work in systematics, evolutionary biology, and the history and philosophy of biology. Mayr himself claims that typological thinking originated in the philosophy of Plato and that population thinking was first introduced by Charles Darwin and field naturalists. A more proximate origin of the typological/population thinking, however, is found in Mayr's own work on species. This paper traces the antecedents of the typological/population distinction by detailing Mayr's (...) changing views of species between 1942 and 1955. During this period, Mayr struggles to refine the biological species concept in the face of tensions that exist between studying species locally and studying them as geographically distributed collections of variable populations. The typological/population distinction is first formulated in 1955, when Mayr generalizes from the type concept versus the population concept in taxonomy to typological versus population thinking in biology more generally. Mayr's appeal to the more general distinction between typological and population thinking coincides with the waning status of natural history and evolutionary biology that occurs in the early 1950s and the distinction plays an important role in Mayr's efforts to legitimate the natural historical sciences. (shrink)
Ernst Mayr''s distinction between ultimate and proximate causes is justly considered a major contribution to philosophy of biology. But how did Mayr come to this philosophical distinction, and what role did it play in his earlier scientific work? I address these issues by dividing Mayr''s work into three careers or phases: 1) Mayr the naturalist/researcher, 2) Mayr the representative of and spokesman for evolutionary biology and systematics, and more recently 3) Mayr the historian and philosopher of biology. If we (...) want to understand the role of the proximate/ultimate distinction in Mayr''s more recent career as a philosopher and historian, then it helps to consider hisearlier use of the distinction, in the course of his research, and in his promotion of the professions of evolutionary biology and systematics. I believe that this approach would also shed light on some other important philosophical positions that Mayr has defended, including the distinction between essentialism: and population thinking. (shrink)
I offer an appreciation and critique of Ernst Fehr’s altruism research in experimental economics that challenges the "selfishness axiom" as an account of human behavior. I describe examples of Fehr’s experiments and their results and consider his conceptual terminology, particularly his "biological" definition of altruism and its counterintuitive implications. I also look at Fehr’s experiments from a methodological perspective and examine his explanations of subjects’ behavior. In closing, I look at Fehr’s neuroscientific work in experimental economics and question his (...) adherence to a subjective expected utility interpretation of subjects’ behavior. Key Words: altruism • Ernst Fehr • strong reciprocity • neuroeconomics • experimental economics. (shrink)
Dieter Lohmar, Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie. Untersuchungen der Psychologie, Cognitive Science, Neurologie und Phänomenologie zur Funktion der Phantasie in der Wahrnehmung Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10743-010-9069-3 Authors Andrea Staiti, Boston College Department of Philosophy Chestnut Hill MA USA Journal Husserl Studies Online ISSN 1572-8501 Print ISSN 0167-9848 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 2.
Hobbesian anthropology makes use of the wolf motif, a Roman and Republican one, by which Hobbes defines a state of nature as a state of war where men live in diffidence each other and where fear is law; the wolf is there a timid or unsociable animal, not a sanguinary or savage creature. But against ancient philosophers and moral writers - Aristotle, Cicero - who regard man as a rational being and who believe in a right reason, the modern philosopher (...) reuses this motif to set before men eyes that monarchy is the only way to protect citizens from gatherings of wolves in the city; reflections on civil wars conduct him to side with the sovereign power of one. Against upholders of regicide who compare the king to a tyrant, Hobbes inscribes the political motif of the wolf in his text by which beast - 'arrant wolf ' - is distinguishable from animal; he mainly rewrites it on Seneca's text, the Stoic who expounded a desperate vision of humankind. By focusing on a Graeco-Roman heritage, this study shows in three parts that the philosopher of De Cive and Leviathan is not really - not only - the man of a pessimistic view on mankind; it is a portrait of a Renaissance philosopher who never, exactly, wrote that 'man is a wolf to man'. (shrink)
Introduction Jan Abbink and Hans Vermeulen This volume consists of essays and studies by authors inspired by the work of Eric Wolf, a central figure in ...
Ernst Mayr’s influence on philosophy of biology has given the field a particular perspective on evolution, phylogeny and life in general. Using debates about the tree of life as a guide, I show how Mayrian evolutionary biology excludes numerous forms of life and many important evolutionary processes. Hybridization and lateral gene transfer are two of these processes, and they occur frequently, with important outcomes in all domains of life. Eukaryotes appear to have a more tree-like history because successful lateral (...) events tend to occur among more closely related species, or at a lower frequency, than in prokaryotes, but this is a difference of degree rather than kind. Although the tree of life is especially problematic as a representation of the evolutionary history of prokaryotes, it can function more generally as an illustration of the limitations of a standard evolutionary perspective. Moreover, for philosophers, questions about the tree of life can be applied to the Mayrian inheritance in philosophy of biology. These questions make clear that the dichotomy of life Mayr suggested is based on too narrow a perspective. An alternative to this dichotomy is a multidimensional continuum in which different strategies of genetic exchange bestow greater adaptiveness and evolvability on prokaryotes and eukaryotes. (shrink)
Constructivism rejects the metaphysical position that “truth”, and thus knowledge in science, can represent an “objective” reality, independent of the knower. It modifies the role of knowledge from “true” representation to functional viability. In this interview, Ernst von Glasersfeld, the leading proponent of Radical Constructivism underlines the inaccessibility of reality, and proposes his view that the function of cognition is adaptive, in the biological sense: the adaptation is the result of the elimination of all that is not adapted. There (...) is no rational way of knowing anything outside the domain of our experience and we construct our world of experiences. In addition to these philosophical claims, the interviewee provides some personal insights; he also gives some suggestions about better teaching and problem solving. These are the aspects of constructivism that have had a major impact on instruction and have modified the manner many of us teach. The process of teaching as linguistic communication, he says, needs to change in a way to involve actively the students in the construction of their knowledge. Because knowledge is not a transferable commodity, learning is mainly identified with the activity of the construction of personal meaning. This interview also provides glimpses on von Glasersfeld’s life. (shrink)
Presented here are translations of two essays of the Austrian logician, philosopher and experimental psychologist Ernst Mally, originally delivered at the Third International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg, Germany. Both essays conclude with discussion between Mally and Kurt Grelling. Mally was a student of Alexius Meinong and a contributor to logical investigations in the field of object theory (Gegenstandstheorie). In these essays, Mally introduces a vital distinction between formal and extra-formal ?determinations? (Bestimmungen), and he argues that formal determinations are (...) not part of the identity conditions for intended objects, but provide the basis for a theory of pure logical and mathematical relations. Mally then proceeds to develop a formal logic of formal and extra-formal determinations, whose interrelations of ontic and modal predications provide an analysis of fundamental object theory concepts. (shrink)
The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on February 5, 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman.
