In "On Social Facts" (1989) and subsequent works, Margaret Gilbert has suggested a plural subject account of the semantics of ‘we’ that claims that a central or standard use of ‘we’ is to refer to an existing or anticipated plural subject. This contrasts with the more general approach to treat plural pronouns as expressions referring to certain pluralities. I argue that (i) the plural subject approach cannot account for certain syntactic phenomena and that (ii) the sense of intimacy, which Gilbert (...) cites as evidence for her plural subject account, has a different source than the existence of joint commitments constituting a respective plural subject. Moreover, (iii) there is a wide varie-ty of phenomena in the linguistic record, which, while not constituting conclusive evidence against the plural subject account, nevertheless, are dealt with better by the plurality account. ‘We’ thus refers to pluralities, which may or may not be plural subjects. The precise analysis of ‘we’ thus reveals a multi-layered ontology of groups. (shrink)

Der Band widmet sich der aktuellen Entwicklung in der Humangenomforschung und der Biomedizin. Die neuen Einsichts- und Eingriffsmöglichkeiten nach der Entschlüsselung der menschlichen Gene konfrontieren Forscher und Gesellschaft mit ethischen, rechtlichen und soziokulturellen Fragen in der Genforschung am Menschen. Das Buch bietet einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der Forschung und ist zugleich eine hilfreiche Einführung in die gegenwärtige Diskussion. Daneben werden ausgewählte Bereiche vertieft behandelt: genetische Diagnostik, funktionelle Forschung mit therapeutischem Ziel, Pharmakogenetik und die individualisierte Medizin der Zukunft.

This book discusses the philosophy of influential contemporary philosopher Peter van Inwagen. Looking at perennial philosophical problems from a modern point of view, Peter van Inwagen’s philosophy masterfully combines positions that have been considered irreconcilable: incompatibilism concerning free will, materialism, organicism, theism and realism concerning fictional entities. As readers will discover, his arguments are witty, surprising and deep. -/- The book includes Peter van Inwagen’s Münster Lecture of 2015 on free will, as well as eleven papers from the Münster colloquium (...) discussing central themes of his philosophy, and a reply to each paper by Peter van Inwagen himself. Introducing his philosophy and relating his work to other contemporary views, this book is of interest to graduate students and professionals in philosophy alike. (shrink)

The humanities, natural and technical sciences seemingly have little to say to each other – despite all the trans-disciplinary efforts. The “Applied Virtuality” series will comprise four volumes that create and examine a discourse on the correlations between the larger contexts of ther present. Printed Physics, the first volume, begins with the discussion of developments in information technology that make the physical behavior of matter technologically programmable, allow for its factual construction, industrial production and its determination with symbols. Is it (...) possible that a revitalization of the field of physics looms in the future similar to that which took place with geometry in the 19th century? (shrink)

Sparrows fly because they are birds. This mushroom is poisonous because it is an Amanita muscaria. Pointing out the kind to which things belong explains many of their properties. Jonathan Lowe’s four-category ontology and his account of laws of nature provide a framework to account for the explanatory appeal of referring to kind membership. For Lowe, “Electron has Unit-negative charge” is a typical example for a law of nature: a kind universal characterized by a property universal. We present both Lowe’s (...) original account of laws of nature and later developments, and show how Lowe’s account can help to solve notorious problems of other accounts, namely, the regularity view and the Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley view. We argue that there are two challenges that Lowe’s view cannot master. First, Lowe conflates generics and dispositions, which is a considerable problem for Lowe, because his account of dispositional predication and his account of laws of nature are intimately connected. Second, there is the identification problem of fully specifying and identifying the formal ontological relation of characterization between kind universals and property universals. In order to solve these problems, we develop an account of formal causation inspired by Aristotle’s theory of explanation in his Posterior Analytics. Though very close to Lowe’s own account, our neo-Aristotelian account avoids Lowe’s confusion regarding dispositions, avoids overdetermination through several similar laws of nature, and provides an answer to the identification problem: The characterization of a kind universal by a property universal constitutes the relation of formal causation. By virtue of this relation, the kind Amanita muscaria is the formal cause of this mushroom having the attribute of being poisonous. (shrink)

In cognitive science, long-term anticipation, such as when planning to do something next year, is typically seen as a form of ‘higher’ cognition, requiring a different account than the more basic activities that can be understood in terms of responsiveness to ‘affordances,’ i.e. to possibilities for action. Starting from architects that anticipate the possibility to make an architectural installation over the course of many months, in this paper we develop a process-based account of affordances that includes long-term anticipation within its (...) scope. We present a framework in which situations and their affordances unfold, and can be thought of as continuing a history of practices into a current situational activity. In this activity affordances invite skilled participants to act further. Via these invitations one situation develops into the other; an unfolding process that sets up the conditions for its own continuation. Central to our process account of affordances is the idea that engaged individuals can be responsive to the direction of the process to which their actions contribute. Anticipation, at any temporal scale, is then part and parcel of keeping attuned to the movement of the unfolding situations to which an individual contributes. We concretize our account by returning to the example of anticipation observed in architectural practice. This account of anticipation opens the door to considering a wide array of human activities traditionally characterized as ‘higher’ cognition in terms of engaging with affordances. (shrink)

Band 1. Paradigmen personaler Identität -- Band 2. Soziale Gruppen und Identitätspraktiken.

Semiotics, the age-old investigation of signs, is still striving for acknowledgement as a scientific discipline. Though the ‘linguistic turn’ in the philosophical disciplines seemed to be followed by a ‘semiotic turn’ in many sciences during the 1970s, efforts were not crowned by great success. When seen from a certain distance, a definition of semiotics as a discipline can only be obtained from its history. Research into the sources of the human pre-occupation with signs, and with concepts or conceptions of signs, (...) is really desirable and even necessary when a field of considerable scientific interest at the brink of being awarded the rank of a discipline runs the risk of getting lost between the unificationism of the Morris-type and the elegance of pseudo-mathematical empty classificationism on the one side, and profitable exploitation of the sign's popularized design qualities on the other. (shrink)

Die Aufzeichnungen, die Ludger Kühnhardt in 235 Ländern und Territorien der Erde verfasst hat, lassen ein faszinierendes Panorama entstehen, gespiegelt in persönlichen Eindrücken, Begegnungen und Erfahrungen eines in aller Welt tätigen Politikwissenschaftlers und Publizisten. Das Buch rekonstruiert die Verknüpfungen zwischen den Transformationen Europas und dem entstehenden globalen Zeitalter während sechs Jahrzehnten ab 1960 bis zur Schwelle der post-Corona-Welt 2020.

_Religion, War and the Crisis of Modernity: A Special Issue Dedicated to the Philosophy of Jan Patočka_ _The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_ provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. Contributors: Ivan Chvatík, Nicolas de Warren, James Dodd, Eddo Evink, Ludger Hagedorn, Jean-Luc Marion, Claire Perryman-Holt, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Michael Staudigl, Christian (...) Sternad, and Ľubica Učník. (shrink)

The "immeasurable lightness and fragility of the human fact." Jan Patočka and the Crisis of HumanismThe article addresses Jan Patočka’s writings in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The paper’s title – "The Immense Lightness and Fragility of the Human Fact" – is taken from a short, yet immensely crucial 1946 text of his that formulates a severe criticism of ideology/ideologies and eventually offers a profound questioning of humanist ideals. Accentuating his critique against the backdrop of Sartre's and (...) Heidegger's contemporaneous challenges to humanism, the paper argues that Patočka debunks a misconceived "cult of the human being" and ideologies of progress while insisting on the integrity of a human life in confrontation with its inherent weakness and fragility. (shrink)

Classical spinning particles are interpreted in terms of an underlying geometric theory. They are described by trajectories on the Poincaré group. Upon quantization an eleven-dimensional Kaluza-Klein type theory is obtained which incorporates spin and isospin in a local SL(2, C)×U(1)×SU(2) gauge theory, unifying gravity and the pre-Higgs standard model. The relation to parametrized relativistic quantum theory is discussed.

In der Geschichte der Philosophie waren Bilder oft dem Verdacht des Lügens ausgesetzt. Doch wenn sie lügen können, können sie dann auch die Wahrheit sagen?0Der Vorwurf des Lügens unterstellt nicht, dass jemand beim Gebrauch eines Bildes die Unwahrheit sagt, sondern dass Bilder selbst agieren. Viele Kulturtechniken unterstellen Bildern eine Wahrheitsfähigkeit, ein Potenzial der Verifizierung und Bezeugung. In Bildern wird etwas anschaulich, auf das sich die visuelle Wahrheitsgewinnung stützen kann. Das vorliegende Buch versucht eine systematische Bestimmung dieser »pikturalen Evidenz±: Bilder »sagen± (...) die Wahrheit nicht, aber sie können Sachverhalte überprüfbar präsentieren. Sie können Aspekte der Wirklichkeit erhellen, die außerhalb des pikturalen Objekts nicht wahrnehmbar sind. Um diese Wahrheitsfähigkeit präzise zu erfassen, gilt es, Gestaltungseigenschaften von Bildern sowie Funktionen und Wirkungsweisen ins Zentrum der Analyse zu stellen. Es zeigt sich, dass die pikturale Evidenz weniger aus der Bezugnahme auf ein Vorbild herrührt, noch aus den ästhetischen Qualitäten der Abbildung, sondern aus einer Anschaulichkeit, die nur das Bild als ein gestaltetes Ding eröffnet. (shrink)

Radical empiricists at the turn of the twentieth century described organisms as experiencing the relations they maintain with their surroundings prior to any analytic separation from their environment. They notably avoided separating perception of the material environment from social life. This perspective on perceptual experience was to prove the inspiration for Gibson’s ecological approach to perceptual psychology. Gibson provided a theory of how the direct perception of the organism-environment relation is possible. Central to his account was the notion of a (...) medium for direct perception. However Gibson provided two mutually inconsistent accounts of the medium leading to problems for his radical empiricism. We develop an account of the medium that does justice to ecological psychology’s radical empiricist roots. To complement this account of the medium we detail a usage-based account of information. Together they allow us to propose a novel radical empiricist view of direct perception. We then return to the notion of medium and expand it to include sociomaterial practices. We show how direct perception happens in the midst of social life, and is made possible by an active achieving and maintaining of a pragmatic relation with the environment. (shrink)

Sacrifice is a key issue of historical, sociological, political, and religious research debates. It also has a variety of interconnections with the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. For this issue of the journal Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy authors were invited to explore the manifold dimensions of sacrifice.

Theorizing about perception is often motivated by a belief that without a way of ensuring that our perceptual experience correctly reflects the external world we cannot be sure that we perceive the world at all. Historically, coming up with a way of securing such epistemic contact has been a foundational issue in psychology. Recent ecological and enactive approaches challenge the requirement for perception to attain epistemic contact. This article aims to explicate this pragmatic starting point and the new direction of (...) inquiry that this opens up for psychology. It does so by detailing the development of James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. Securing epistemic contact has been a leitmotiv in Gibson’s early work, but subsequent developments in Gibson’s works can teach us what it takes to adopt a pragmatic approach to psychology. We propose a reading of the developments in Gibson’s original works that shows that, since perception is a mode of acting, perception aims for pragmatic contact before allowing for epistemic contact. Amplifying these pragmatist lines of thought in Gibson’s works we end by considering situations where an individual is adapted to the intricacies of specific social practices. These situations show how pragmatic contact can also afford attaining epistemic contact. (shrink)

One can be reproached for not remembering. Remembering and forgetting shows who and what one values. Indeed, memory is constitutively normative. Theoretical approaches to memory should be sensitive to this normative character. We will argue that traditional views that consider memory as the storing and retrieval of mental content, fail to consider the practices we need for telling the truth about our past. We introduce the Radically Enactive view of Cognition, or REC, as well-placed to recognize the central role of (...) norms in remembering. Crucially, REC construes all remembering as “something we do”, and the most sophisticated forms of remembering as things we collectively do, answerable to socioculturally established practices. On this view our mnemonic performances cannot avoid re-shaping our collective ways of doing and seeing going forward. By REC’s lights therefore, the “is” of memory is “oughty” through and through. (shrink)

The future will tell whether or not the European Union is developing a political philosophy of its own. But the current trend indicates several interesting features structurally different, or asymmetric, to the experiences with the evolution of key notions of political philosophy in relation to the past experience with the development of statehood. The paper gives examples which call for deepened research and provides stimulating material for a new and innovative reflection on the process and substance of European integration, this (...) most unique feature of political history in the course of the 20th century. (shrink)

After a short sketch of Lowe’s account of his four basic categories, I discuss his theory of formal ontological relations and how Lowe wants to account for dispositional predications. I argue that on the ontic level Lowe is a pan-categoricalist, while he is a language dualist and an exemplification dualist with regard to the dispositional/categorical distinction. I argue that Lowe does not present an adequate account of disposition. From an Aristotelian point of view, Lowe conflates dispositional predication with hôs epi (...) to poly statements about what is normally or mostly the case. (shrink)