Kant’s essay on the question of literary piracy has so far been read as a foundational text in the history of literary property. When Kant refers to the book as a “mute instrument,” scholars of intellectual property already know how to interpret that formulation because they presume the distinction that the contemporary jurisprudence of intellectual property makes between matter and form and its concomitant assumption that print is just an inert, nonagentive medium. In fact, Kant begins his analysis of unauthorized (...) publication not with the question What is an author? but with the question What is publication?. His insight was that unauthorized publication revealed a structural feature of publication in general. The effect of the interposition of print, or the fact that speech begins in and with print, is that the author is structurally alienated from his or her speech. Kant was not an Enlightenment media theorist, but he recognized that speech had to be mediated and therefore delivered to the reader and that it was the medium itself that determined the conditions under which authors and readers could exist and be present to one another and under which speech could become an authorship. In order to create a language channel for public reason, Kant had to take a detour through the legal fiction of agency. Speech might have been an action that could have its existence “only in a person,” but this supposedly innate bond was made by a legal fiction of representation, according to which one person could truly speak “as if” they were another. Kant’s answer to the question What is a book? developed a law that was not so much a law of literary property as a law that sought to suspend the alienating effects of print so as to restore the Enlightenment ideal of communication. (shrink)

The scale is the most famous emblem of the law, including intellectual property (IP). Because IP rights impose social costs on the public by limiting access to protected work, the law can be justified only to the extent that, on balance, it encourages enough creation and dissemination of new works to offset those costs. The scale is thus a potent rhetorical trope of fairness and objectivity, but also an instrument the law thinks with – one that is constantly invoked to (...) justify or to question the extent of available IP protection. The balancing act that underlies the legitimacy of IP is, however, literally impossible to perform. Because we are unable to measure the benefits that IP has for inventors or the costs it has for the public, the scale has nothing to weigh. It conveys a clear sense that IP law can be balanced, but in fact propagates only a visible simulacrum of balance – one that is as empty as it is powerful. (shrink)

In conversation with Marilyn Strathern’s work on kinship and especially on metaphors of intellectual and reproductive creativity, this paper provides an analysis of plagiarism not as a violation of intellectual property but of the kinship relationships between author, work, and readers. It also analyzes the role of figures of kidnapped slaves and children in the genealogy of the modern concept of plagiarism.

Questions about how closure is achieved in disputes involving new observational or experimental claims have highlighted the role of bodily knowledge possibly irreducible to written experimental protocols and instructions how to build and operate instruments. This essay asks similar questions about a scenario that is both related and significantly different: the replication of an invention, not of an observation or the instrument through which it produced. Furthermore, the machine considered here—Galileo’s compass or sector—was not a typical industrial invention (like a (...) spinning jenny), but a mathematical invention (a calculator), that is, a machine that produces numbers, not yarn. This case study describes some of the similarities and differences between replicating experiments, traditional machines producing material outputs, and mathematical inventions yielding calculations or information. This comparison indicates that, as in other kinds of replication, the replication of mathematical inventions involves texts (the calculator’s instructions) but that in this case bodily knowledge cannot be properly described as either tacit or explicit. It rather takes the shape of memory—muscle memory—that may be recalled from reading the instructions. (shrink)

i propose a revisionist account of the production and reception of galileo's telescopic observations of 1609–10, an account that focuses on the relationship between credit and disclosure. galileo, i argue, acted as though the corroboration of his observations were easy, not difficult. his primary worry was not that some people might reject his claims, but rather that those able to replicate them could too easily proceed to make further discoveries on their own and deprive him of credit. consequently, he tried (...) to slow down potential replicators to prevent them from becoming competitors. he did so by not providing other practitioners access to high-power telescopes and by withholding information about how to build them. this essay looks at the development of galileo's monopoly on early telescopic astronomy to understand how the relationship between disclosure and credit changed as he moved from being an instrument-maker to becoming a discoverer and, eventually, a court philosopher. (shrink)

The ArgumentI propose a revisionist account of the production and reception of Galileo's telescopic observations of 1609–10, an account that focuses on the relationship between credit and disclosure. Galileo, I argue, acted as though the corroboration of his observations were easy, not difficult. His primary worry was not that some people might reject his claims, but rather that those able to replicate them could too easily proceed to make further discoveries on their own and deprive him of credit. Consequently, he (...) tried to slow down potential replicators to prevent them from becoming competitors. He did so by not providing other practitioners access to high-power telescopes and by withholding information about how to build them. This essay looks at the development of Galileo's monopoly on early telescopic astronomy to understand how the relationship between disclosure and credit changed as he moved from being an instrument-maker to becoming a discoverer and, eventually, a court philosopher. (shrink)

Historians of science and technology and STS practitioners have always taken intellectual property very seriously but, with some notable exceptions, they have typically refrained from looking “into” it. There is mounting evidence, however, that they can open up the black box of IP as effectively as they have done for the technosciences, enriching their discipline while making significant contributions to legal studies. One approach is to look at the technologies through which patent law construes its object – the invention – (...) in specific settings and periods by examining procedures, classifications, archives, models, repositories, patent specifications (in both their linguistic and pictorial dimensions), and the highly specialized language of patent claims. More ambitiously, we could treat intellectual property as a technology itself. Patent law does not evolve either by merely articulating its doctrine in response to technological developments. The line between what does and does not count as invention may be redrawn with the emergence of new objects and technologies, but is not determined by them. It is this constructive feature of the law that we are trying to capture with the notion of law as technology. We hope that thinking about the technologies of the law and the law as technology will bring into question what we mean by both “technology” and “law”. (shrink)

It is well known that Felix Klein took a decisive step in investigating the invariants of transformation groups. However, less attention has been given to Klein’s considerations on the epistemological implications of his work on geometry. This paper proposes an interpretation of Klein’s view as a form of mathematical structuralism, according to which the study of mathematical structures provides the basis for a better understanding of how mathematical research and practice develop.

Most social scientists and philosophers claim that sociology and philosophy are disjoint fields of inquiry. Some have wondered how to trace the precise boundary between them. Mario Bunge argues that the two fields are so entangled with one another that no demarcation is possible or, indeed, desirable. In fact, sociological research has demonstrably philosophical pre-suppositions. In turn, some findings of sociology are bound to correct or enrich the philosophical theories that deal with the world, our knowledge of it, or (...) the ways of acting upon it. While Bunge's thesis would hardly have shocked Mill, Marx, Durkheim, or Weber, it is alien to the current sociological mainstream and dominant philosophical schools. Bunge demonstrates that philosophical problematics arise in social science research. A fertile philosophy of social science unearths critical presuppositions, analyzes key concepts, refines effective research strategies, crafts coherent and realistic syntheses, and identifies important new problems. Bunge examines Marx's and Durkheim's thesis that social facts are as objective as physical facts; the so-called Thomas theorem that refutes the behaviorist thesis that social agents react to social stimuli rather than to the way we perceive them; and Merton's thesis on the ethos of basic science which shows that science and morality are intertwined. He considers selected philosophical problems raised by contemporary social studies and argues forcefully against tolerance of shabby work in academic social science and philosophy alike. (shrink)

Until recently, dance was not considered to warrant copyright protection because it existed only as a live performance that was not fixed in a ‘tangible medium of expression’. Not being an object, it could not be property. But the more we try to fold dance into existing modes of copyright and conventional notions of property, the more it resists, upsetting the core assumptions of Locke's social contract theory. Legal scholars argue that the expansion of copyright protection shrinks the public domain. (...) While copyright has become more important for dancers and choreographers who wish to control the appropriation of their work that is now made available to millions of end-users online, it also potentially restricts them from engaging in a dialog with other dancers or building on inspiring dance moves across communities. This paper investigates notions of property that rely on both the commons and individual personhood in the context of dance. (shrink)

While the initial reception of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo was unspectacular, it made its presence felt in a host of other films – from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, to Brian De Palma's Obsession, and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.. What seemed to have eluded the critics at the time is that Vertigo is a film about being haunted: by illusive images, turbulent emotions, motion and memory, the sound and feeling of falling into the past, into a nightmare. But it is also a (...) shrewdly reflexive film that haunts filmmakers, critics, and artists alike, raising fundamental questions about the ontology of moving images and the regime of fascination that churns them out. Douglas Gordon's Feature Film, D.N. Rodowick's The Wanderers, and Lynn Hershman's VertiGhost are contemporary examples of how the appropriation and contemplation of some the film's most iconic motifs, themes and strategies ask us to rethink the relation of fetishism to fabulation, and supplementarity to dissimulation and social engineering. Feature Film, The Wanderers, and VertiGhost are supplementary works, but like the original film they are about duplicity, doppelgänger, and dissimulation. What interests us is how they challenge the authority over, or even proximity to, that which returns in the form of the supplement. And ultimately, attaching themselves to the chain of forgers and forgeries, these supplementary works take their place in the vertiginous sequence of substitutions the film established: a neat allegory for a reign of the digital ghosting that Hitchcock could never have anticipated. (shrink)

pt. I. Matter: 1. Philosophy as worldview ; 2. Classical matter: bodies and fields ; 3. Quantum matter: weird but real ; 4. General concept of matter: to be is to become ; 5. Emergence and levels ; 6. Naturalism ; 7. Materialism -- pt. II. Mind: 8. The mind-body problem ; 9. Minding matter: the plastic brain ; 10. Mind and society ; 11. Cognition, consciousness, and free will ; 12. Brain and computer: the hardware/software dualism ; 13. Knowledge: (...) genuine and bogus -- pt. III. Appendices: 14. Appendix A: Objects ; 15. Appendix B. Truths. (shrink)

Should decision-making algorithms be held to higher standards of transparency than human beings? The way we answer this question directly impacts what we demand from explainable algorithms, how we govern them via regulatory proposals, and how explainable algorithms may help resolve the social problems associated with decision making supported by artificial intelligence. Some argue that algorithms and humans should be held to the same standards of transparency and that a double standard of transparency is hardly justified. We give two arguments (...) to the contrary and specify two kinds of situations for which higher standards of transparency are required from algorithmic decisions as compared to humans. Our arguments have direct implications on the demands from explainable algorithms in decision-making contexts such as automated transportation. (shrink)

Digital cameras and motion capture technologies that document and share creative practices have transformed the way we think about dance as an embodied knowledge as well as the way we experience it bodily. Computational media, which not only records and archives but also calculates, analyses and models dance, further complicates its ontological status. This move to document and inscribe dance in a tangible medium marks a shift from understanding dance as an ungraspable event towards conceiving of dance as a tangible (...) process that can be collected, transmitted, repeated and packaged or archived as an object. I look at two dance works – Matthias Sperling’s Loop Atlas and Siobhan Davies and Anri Sala’s Solo in the Doldrums – that trouble conventional notions of embodiment and its relationship to both presence and absence, at the same time they challenge how computational media fixates on figures and gestures that can be traced, mapped and calibrated. (shrink)

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

This book offers a reconstruction of the debate on non-Euclidean geometry in neo-Kantianism between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Kant famously characterized space and time as a priori forms of intuitions, which lie at the foundation of mathematical knowledge. The success of his philosophical account of space was due not least to the fact that Euclidean geometry was widely considered to be a model of certainty at his time. However, such (...) later scientific developments as non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein’s general theory of relativity called into question the certainty of Euclidean geometry and posed the problem of reconsidering space as an open question for empirical research. The transformation of the concept of space from a source of knowledge to an object of research can be traced back to a tradition, which includes such mathematicians as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, Richard Dedekind, Felix Klein, and Henri Poincaré, and which finds one of its clearest expressions in Hermann von Helmholtz’s epistemological works. Although Helmholtz formulated compelling objections to Kant, the author reconsiders different strategies for a philosophical account of the same transformation from a neo-Kantian perspective, and especially Hermann Cohen’s account of the aprioricity of mathematics in terms of applicability and Ernst Cassirer’s reformulation of the a priori of space in terms of a system of hypotheses. This book is ideal for students, scholars and researchers who wish to broaden their knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry or neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

Slightly revised version of the author's habilitation--Universitèat Gèottingen, 2014.

English summary: What is Religious Experience? For more than a hundred years the term "religious experience" has been part of the vocabulary of philosophy of religion. However, there is no common understanding of the meaning of religious experience. Mario Fischer analyzes Heidegger's early phenomenology of religious life and its background in contemporaneous theological and philosophical developments. The young Martin Heidegger developed his first autonomous phenomenological approaches by considering how the Christian experience of life is expressed in the letters of (...) the apostle Paul and in Augustine's onfessions These studies led to his later analysis of aseinin eing and Time In conclusion, Fischer examines the significance of Heidegger's understanding of religious experience for current discussions in the philosophy of religion. German description: Was ist religiose Erfahrung? Auch wenn seit etwas mehr als einem Jahrhundert der Begriff der religiosen Erfahrung aus der Religionsphilosophie nicht mehr wegzudenken ist, besteht kein einheitliches Verstandnis dessen, was unter religioser Erfahrung zu verstehen ist. Mario Fischer untersucht Heideggers fruhe Phanomenologie des religiosen Lebens vor dem Hintergrund der zeitgeschichtlichen theologischen und philosophischen Entwicklungen. Der junge Freiburger Privatdozent Martin Heidegger wollte nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg die Philosophie neu grundlegen und entwickelte seine ersten Ansatze einer eigenstandigen Phanomenologie. Dabei spielte die Auseinandersetzung mit Fragen nach der Bedeutung und Erfassung religioser Erfahrung eine wesentliche Rolle. Zunachst befasste sich Heidegger mit der Struktur religioser Erlebnisse, weitete seinen Blick dann aber auf die Struktur der Lebenserfahrung und ihre religiose Dimension. Dazu untersuchte er, wie sich diese konkret in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus und in den Confessiones Augustins ausdruckt. Spater fuhrten diese Studien zu seiner Daseinsanalyse in Sein und Zeit und stellten die Grundlage seines spateren Gesprachs mit Bultmann dar. Die Darstellung orientiert sich an Heideggers Biographie bis zu seinem Weggang aus Freiburg im Jahre 1923. Bewusst setzt sie nicht erst mit dem Beginn seiner philosophischen Lehrtatigkeit ein, sondern nimmt auch die Einflusse aus Heideggers Kindheit und Jugend sowie aus seiner Studentenzeit mit in den Blick. So entsteht ein vielgestaltiges und spannendes Bild der verschiedenen Geistesstromungen um den Ersten Weltkrieg. Abschliessend fragt Fischer nach der Bedeutung von Heideggers phanomenologischen Studien fur die gegenwartige religionsphilosophische Diskussion um religiose Erfahrung. (shrink)

An objective and relational theory of local time is expounded and its philosophical implications are discussed in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3 certain physical and metaphysical questions concerning time are taken up in the light of that theory. The basic concepts of the theory are those of event, reference frame, chronometric scale, and time function. These are subject to four axioms: existence of events, frames and scales; time is a real valued function; the set of events is compact; and any (...) duration can be subdivided into two contiguous durations. Several theorems are derived, among them the one of the asymmetry of time. And a number of concepts are defined, such as those of time order, instant, and time coordinate. It is argued that the theory, though untestable, belongs to the background of a number of scientific theories. It is also shown that it includes all relational theories of time. The usual confusion between the asymmetry of time and the direction of irreversible processes is clarified. Time reversal is interpreted either as a purely formal operation or as a convenient way of describing motion reversed processes. Time orders are shown to be both relative and objective, apart from the choice of the positive direction, which is conventional. The various attempts to define the direction of time in terms of irreversible processes are shown to be logically untenable and methodologically undesirable. A number of metaphysical questions, such as the one of the reality and the fundamental character of time, are tackled. Finally the occasion is seized to extoll the advantages of systematization over both ordinary language discussions and open context analyses. (shrink)