This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the (...) issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future Scholar research – in philosophy, history, and sociology. -/- (ISSN: 0929-6328). (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the Hungarian intellectual and politician Paul Szende’s sociologically oriented epistemology. I trace the influences of physiology, psychology, economy, evolutionary theory of his day on his sociological theory of abstractive knowledge, and discuss the close connection between physiological, social, and economic aspects in the early sociology of knowledge. My discussion continues with an examination of Szende’s differentiation between two economic effects within social epistemology: on the one hand the ‘economy of thought’ in the tradition of (...) Ernst Mach, with its physiological, organic, and integrative functioning of knowledge; on the other hand, the socio-economic effects of social selection, exclusion, and societal antagonism. Besides the Marxist and more specifically the Austro-Marxist environment of Szende’s writings, I trace the influence of the economic theory of Italian economist Achille Loria on Szende’s understanding of the antagonistic nature of the transformation of knowledge. The paper is set at the intersection of philosophy of science and history of science. It relates epistemological issues to historical, social, and scientific developments in Szende’s day and thus combines a philosophical analysis of Szende’s sociological theory of knowledge with historical research into the natural, social, and economic sciences of his time. (shrink)

Thought Experiments of Economic Surplus: Science and Economy in Ernst Mach’s Epistemology. Thought experiments are an important element in Ernst Mach’s epistemology: They facilitate amplifying our knowledge by experimenting with thoughts; they thus exceed the empirical experience and suspend the quest for immediate utility. In an economical perspective, Mach suggested that thought experiments depended on the production of an economic surplus based on the division of labor relieving the struggle for survival of the individual. Thus, as frequently emphasized, in Mach’s (...) epistemology, not only the ‘economy of thought’ is an important feature; instead, also the socioeconomic conditions of science play a decisive role. The paper discusses the mental and social economic aspects of experimental thinking in Mach’s epistemology and examines those within the contemporary evolutionary, physiological, and economic contexts. (shrink)

The paper discusses the relation of genesis and validity ( Genesis and Geltung ) within the historical epistemologies of Gaston Bachelard, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault. From the perspective of emerging knowledge I examine the co-evolution of discontinuous moments, epistemic practices, and objects of knowledge. Based on this analysis, the paper argues that validity ( Geltung ) should be understood as situated knowledge.

Genesis, Geltung und Zukunft in der historischen Epistemologie«. The paper discusses the relation of genesis and validity (Genesis and Geltung) within the historical epistemologies of Gaston Bachelard, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault. From the perspective of emerging knowledge I examine the co-evolution of discontinuous moments, epistemic practices, and objects of knowledge. Based on this analysis, the paper argues that validity (Geltung) should be understood as situated knowledge.

The paper focuses on the concept of matter and the material in Edgar Zilsel’s considerations about historiographical methods in the context of the Marxist debates on the materialist conception of history in the 1920s and 1930s (György Lukács, Max Adler). It sheds light on Zilsel’s understanding of matter as fluctuating, interfering processes in the lapse of time and the related concept of irreversible laws and relates it to Ernst Mach’s philosophy and to Richard Semon’s theory of mneme . Finally, it (...) shows the practical consequences of the concept of materialism in Edgar Zilsel’s epistemology. (shrink)

After Knowledge: Science, Deregulation, and Restoration. In the light of recent phenomena and developments – from ‘alternative facts’ to the rise of the ‘New Right’ –, the notion that we live in a ‘knowledge society’ (which has served our discipline well over the last couple of decades) seems more than a little antiquated. Our present, or so it would seem, is determined by forces other than ‘knowledge’ or, for that matter ‘science’. By the same token, ‘knowledge’ has lost traction for (...) the purposes of a historiography trying to keep abreast with the times. At this impasse, we propose that historians of science embrace our predicament head‐on. They should take a more serious interest in the trajectories that brought us here: that is, in recent history and the political and ideological projects which shaped it. We suggest two complementary concepts along which such analyses might proceed: deregulation and restoration. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, wisdom orchestrates all other virtues and therefore leads to eudaimonia, which can be translated as flourishing or psychological well-being. Wisdom guides people to take the morally right course of action in concrete situations to benefit themselves and others. If Aristotle’s theory is correct, then wisdom should be related to different moral virtues and wisdom, rather than individual virtues, should predict eudaimonic well-being, establishing wisdom as the driving force behind human flourishing. Survey data were collected from 230 undergraduate (...) students (M = 21 years, median age = 20 years) attending five different classes in the social sciences at a university in the Southeast of the United States at the beginning and end of the fall semester in 2016. Bivariate correlations, regression analyses, and a structural equation model were utilized to analyze the data. Three-dimensional wisdom (3D-WS) at the beginning of the semester (T1), consisting of the average of cognitive, reflective, and compassionate personality qualities, was significantly positively related to gratitude, forgiveness, morality/fairness, modesty, greed avoidance, and sincerity at T1. Wisdom at T1 predicted flourishing at the end of the semester (T2), assessed by self-acceptance, mastery, purpose in life, and orientation toward personal growth. Among the virtues, only gratitude at T1 significantly predicted flourishing at T2. It appears that Aristotle was correct! Wisdom, at least as measured by the 3D-WS, seems to orchestrate moral virtues and result in human flourishing. This implies that cultivating the development of wisdom will lead to a better and more flourishing life. (shrink)

The notion of empathy has been explicated in different ways in the current debate on how to understand others. Whereas defenders of simulation-based approaches claim that empathy involves some kind of isomorphism between the empathizer’s and the target’s mental state, defenders of the phenomenological account vehemently deny this and claim that empathy allows us to directly perceive someone else’s mental states. Although these views are typically presented as being opposed, I argue that at least one version of a simulation-based approach—the (...) account given by de Vignemont and Jacob—is compatible with the direct-perception view. My argument has two parts: My first step is to show that the conflict between these accounts is not—as it seems at first glance—a disagreement on the mechanism by which empathy comes about. Rather, it is due to the fact that their proponents attribute two very different roles to empathy in understanding others. My second step is to introduce Stein’s account of empathy. By not restricting empathy to either one of these two roles, her process model of empathy helps to see how the divergent intuitions that have been brought forward in the current debate could be integrated. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option. In this paper I argue that this way of framing the debate is misleading. Although defenders of second person accounts make use of the vocabulary of the theory of mind debate, they understand some (...) of the core expressions in a different way. I will illustrate this claim by focusing on Reddy’s and Gallagher’s accounts and argue that these authors use the notions of knowing and of understanding other minds differently than traditionally assumed. As a consequence, second person accounts thus conceived do not directly address the questions that gave rise to the theory of mind debate. They invite us, however, to critically reflect upon the way the debate has been set up. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in human rights policy documents, reports, and case law focusing on the impacts of climate change on human rights. In academic discussions, the concept, however, has also sparked a discussion on its benefits and challenges for the advancement of human rights, especially concerning the principles of equality and non-discrimination. This article aims at contributing to this debate from a frame-analytical perspective. In social sciences, frame-analysis is a form of discourse analysis which focuses on (...) the consequences of different concepts for legal, political, and social discussions and norms. With the example of selected UN documents on different human rights issues in the context of climate change, the article, firstly, analyzes whether and how the concept of vulnerability is defined in the documents and why it is used in the documents. Secondly, it is elaborated to which individuals and groups the concept is applied. Thirdly, it is discussed how vulnerability is conceptualized in relation to or in distinction to the concepts of inequality and discrimination. In a further section it is analyzed what narratives are mobilized by the frame of vulnerability. The article concludes that from a discourse-analytical perspective the frame of vulnerability mobilizes problematic narratives which has gendered and racialized implications for those labeled vulnerable. (shrink)

Anthropologie und Moralphilosophie wurden von Kant ausfuhrlicher und differenzierter behandelt als bisher angenommen. Daruber hinaus sind beide Disziplinen notwendig voneinander abhangig und aufeinander bezogen. Seine Konzeption des Verhaltnisses von Anthropologie und Moralphilosophie weist Kant aus als wurdigen Gesprachspartner in der modernen Anthropologie- und Moralphilosophie-Diskussion.".

The Latin text Disputatio nova contra Mulieres, Qua probatur eas Homines non esse, published at the end of the sixteenth century, proved immensely popular in the years to come. Today, this book, the title of which raises doubts about the humanity of women, falls within the context of the longstanding historical debate known as the querelle des femmes. We have two French translations of this Latin text: the first one by Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon made in 1744, the second by (...) Charles Clapiès in 1766. The two translation texts perfectly exemplify the discussion regarding the relative merits of free translation and literal translation in the Age of Enlightenment. Comparing these two translations yields important insights related to fidelity and transposition in translation. (shrink)

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas - entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties - the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity of (...) the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni. (shrink)

In dieser Studie untersucht Monika Palowski das kontrovers diskutierte Phänomen der Klassenwiederholung erstmals aus Perspektive der Wissenssoziologischen Diskursanalyse. Anhand von insgesamt über 700 Texten aus Erziehungswissenschaft und Printmedien werden machtvolle Diskursstränge und -formationen rekonstruiert, die nicht nur die Wahrnehmung von Klassenwiederholung und schulischer Selektion, sondern auch der betroffenen Subjekte je spezifisch präfigurieren und dadurch Klassenwiederholung teils auch legitimieren. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse sind daher einerseits für die erziehungswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit schulischer Selektion und Bildungsungerechtigkeit relevant, andererseits aber auch für die (...) Diskurs- und Subjektivierungsforschung. (shrink)

Vocal fry is a phonation, or voicing, in which an individual drops their voice below its natural register and consequently emits a low, growly, creaky tone of voice. Media outlets have widely acknowledged it as a generational vocal style characteristic of millennial women. Critics of vocal fry often claim that it is an exclusively female vocal pattern, and some say that the voicing is so distracting that they cannot understand what is being said under the phonation. Claiming that a phonation (...) is so distracting as to prevent uptake of the semantic content of an utterance associated with it is an extreme reaction, especially when accompanied by demands for women to change their phonation. We argue that this reaction limits women's communicative autonomy. We analyze the extreme reaction to female vocal fry, which we characterize as a non-content-based response, from the perspectives of philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, and linguistics. We argue that when fry is heard as annoying and distracting, it is because the hearer interprets the speaker as echoing an utterance from a position of authority to which she is not entitled. We show that this reaction encodes conscious or unconscious sexist attitudes toward women's voices. (shrink)

The west-centrism in approaching the knowledge systems of east has been sufficiently highlighted and problematized. This paper argues that the attempts have often been restricted to a framework of colonial gaze that prevents the Indian classical philosophy from gaining a vantage of its own. The approach to the classical traditions have been largely fragmented, catering to the pressure of proving its “relevance” either as a knowledge system or as texts with useful resources and answers to contemporary problems. This “problem solving” (...) framework at the very outset de-recognizes the capacity of an entire philosophical tradition of problem identification and formulation, unsettling terrains of knowledge by asking new questions. The article presents a case for theorizing relevance as a prerequisite to resolving some of these issues. (shrink)

The series Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Studies in German Literature) presents outstanding analyses of German-speaking literature from the early modern period to the present day. It particularly embraces comparative, cultural and historical-epistemological questions and serves as a tradition-steeped forum for innovative literary research. All submitted manuscripts undergo a double peer-review process.

Van Goghs Malerei vollzieht den Wandel vom traditionellen Verständnis des Bildes als Repräsentation zum Bild als einer a-mimetischen, eigengesetzlichen Wirklichkeit, der sich äusserst anregend auf den Expressionismus und auf die abstrakte Malerei ausgewirkt hat. Weniger bekannt ist die Tatsache, dass sein Werk auch zur Entstehung von modernen Dichtungs- und Kunsttheorien beitrug. So wies es Rilke den Weg zur Sachlichkeit des Sagens, Hofmannsthal ermöglichte es ein neues Verständnis von Wirklichkeit, Heidegger unterstützte es bei der Erweiterung und Verwandlung der Metaphysik, während es (...) Jaspers zur Entwicklung seiner künftigen Existenzphilosophie anstiess. (shrink)

This volume discusses the definitional problems and conceptual strategies involved in defining the human. By crossing the boundaries of disciplines and themes, it offers a transdisciplinary platform for exploring the new ideas of the human and adjusting to the dynamic in which we are plunged. The emerging cyborgs and transhumans call for an urgent reconsideration of humans as individuals and collectives. The identity of the human in the 21st century eludes definitions underpinned by simplifying and simplified dichotomies. Affecting all the (...) spheres of life, the discoveries and achievements of recent decades have challenged the bipolar categorizations of human/nonhuman and human/machine, real/virtual and thus opened the door to transdisciplinary considerations. Ours is a new world where the boundaries of normality and abnormality, a legacy of the long history of philosophy, medicine, and science need dismantling. We are now on our way to re-examine, re-understand, and re-describe what normal-abnormal, human-nonhuman, and I-we-they mean. We find ourselves facing what resembles the liminal stage of a global ritual, a stage of being in-between—between the old anthropocentric order and a new position of blurred boundaries. The volume addresses philosophical, bioethical, sociological, and cognitive approaches developed to transcend the binaries of human-nonhuman, natural-artificial, individual-collective, and real-virtual. (shrink)

Comprehensive study of the Vākyapadīya of Bhartr̥hari, work on semantics and philosophy of Sanskrit grammar.

Introducing the first macro-sociological perspective on the concept of creativity this book includes a review of ten domains which have studied creativity. It also explores the results of a six-year on-going research project comparing students' ideas on creativity with employers' and industry professionals' views.

Die Autorin zeigt anhand der Texte von Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Novalis und Jean Paul, wie Motive aus der nachkopernikanischen und newtonschen Astronomie zu Schlüsselmetaphern werden. Die Denker und Dichter erörtern mit diesen die Möglichkeiten eines neuen Grundlagendenkens und -handelns im Angesicht der Verwissenschaftlichung des Weltbildes.

_Reinventing Film Studies_ Edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams London: Arnold Publishers, 2000 ISBN 0-340-67723-6 464 pp.

Human–nonhuman chimeras have been the focus of ethical controversies for more than a decade, yet some related issues remain unaddressed. For example, little has been said about the relationship between the origin of transferred cells and the morally relevant capacities to which they may give rise. Consider, for example, a developing mouse fetus that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a human and another that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a dolphin. If both chimeras acquire morally relevant (...) capacities as a result of transplantation, and if those capacities are indistinguishable, should the difference in cell origin matter to how we classify these creatures? I argue that if morally relevant capacities are easy to detect, cell origin is irrelevant to how the chimera ought to be treated. However, if such capacities are hard to detect, cell origin should play a role in considerations about how to treat the chimera. (shrink)

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws (...) in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking. (shrink)