Its author was a Carthusian monk. Offered here is a translation, with annotation and an important introduction, of the four books on natural philosophy, the predecessor of modern science.

This collection of essays by Gregor Sebba (1905-1985) reflects the curiosity and insight of his mind. The range of topics is wide, including philosophy and the history of ideas, literature and art; yet there is a single underlying theme - human creativity and the search for truth - pursued along paths as diverse as Greek tragedy, Eric Voegelin's concept of order in history, and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S.Eliot.

The ideal of value free science states that the justification of scientific findings should not be based on non-epistemic (e.g. moral or political) values. It has been criticized on the grounds that scientists have to employ moral judgements in managing inductive risks. The paper seeks to defuse this methodological critique. Allegedly value-laden decisions can be systematically avoided, it argues, by making uncertainties explicit and articulating findings carefully. Such careful uncertainty articulation, understood as a methodological strategy, is exemplified by the current (...) practice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (shrink)

I. The framework. 1, Aristotle's project and methods. 2, The perceptual capacity of the soul. 3, The sensory apparatus. 4, The common sense and the related capacities -- II. The terminology. 1, Overlooked occurrences of the phrase 'common sense'. 2, De anima III.1 425a27. 3, De partibus animalium IV.10 686a31. 4, De memoria et reminiscentia 1 450a10. 5, De anima III.7 431b5. 6, Conclusions on the terminology -- III. Functions of the common sense. 1, Simultaneous perception and cross-modal binding. 2, (...) Perceptual discrimination. 3, Waking, sleep, and control of the senses. 4, Perceiving that what we see and hear, and monitoring of the senses. 5, Other roles of the common sense -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Gregor Moder’s Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity is a lively entry into current debates concerning Hegel, Spinoza, and their relation. Hegel and Spinoza are two of the most influential philosophers of the modern era, and the traditions of thought they inaugurated have been in continuous dialogue and conflict ever since Hegel first criticized Spinoza. Notably, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German Idealists aimed to overcome the determinism of Spinoza’s system by securing a place for the freedom of the subject within (...) it, and twentieth-century French materialists such as Althusser and Deleuze rallied behind Spinoza as the ultimate champion of anti-Hegelian materialism. This conflict, or mutual rejection, lives on today in recent discussions about materialism. Contemporary thinkers either make a Hegelian case for the productiveness of concepts of the negative, nothingness, and death, or in a way that is inspired by Spinoza they abolish the concepts of the subject and negation and argue for pure affirmation and the vitalistic production of differences. Hegel and Spinoza traces the historical roots of these alternatives and shows how contemporary discussions between Heideggerians and Althusserians, Lacanians and Deleuzians are a variation of the disagreement between Hegel and Spinoza. Throughout, Moder persuasively demonstrates that the best way to read Hegel and Spinoza is not in opposition or contrast but together: as Hegel and Spinoza. (shrink)

Naturbegriffe beschreiben naturphilosophische Gegenstandsbereiche und fassen Resultate naturphilosophischer Diskurse zusammen. Gehört ihre Bestimmung zu den grundlegenden Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie, so stellt ihre gegenwärtige Vielfalt für die Naturphilosophie eine Herausforderung dar, Von kaum einer wirkungsgeschichtlich bedeutsamen Definition von Natur ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten behauptet worden, ihr komme keine Relevanz für den Diskurs zu. Der Beitrag zeigt Ordnungsstrukturen in der Pluralität der Verwendungsweisen auf und begründet den aktuellen Geltungsanspruch traditioneller Begriffe im Bezug auf spezifische Erfahrungsweisen. Nach einer Einführung beginne ich mit (...) der Unterscheidung von wissenschaftlicher und nichtwissenschaftlicher Naturerfahrung, beziehe auf diese Differenz die Aufgaben der Naturphilosophie und gehe dann mit einer Klassifikation von Naturbegriffen zum exemplarischen Teil über. In diesem diskutiere ich am Beispiel bestimmter Aspekte der Naturbegriffe von Aristoteles und Descartes ihre für die Gegenwart typischen Bedingungen der Verwendung in nichtwissenschaftlicher Erfahrung sowie darüber hinaus vorkommender Verwendungen. (shrink)

By means of multi-agent simulations, it investigates the truth and consensus-conduciveness of controversial debates. The book brings together research in formal epistemology and argumentation theory.

The principle of performative contradiction. On the epistemological significance of the dialogue form in Plato's "Euthydemus". - In this study, an analysis of the section 285d-288a of Plato's "Euthydemus" shall show two things: (1) The sophistic model of a world in which there is no contradiction, in which every linguistic utterance is true and every action correct, has no semantic inconsistencies, but can only be rejected with the help of the principle of performative contradictions. (2) It is precisely these performative (...) contradictions that make it necessary for Plato to philosophize not in treatises but in dialogues; in other words, that the philosophical relevance of the Platonic form of dialogue can be seen, among other things, in the fact that - in contrast to philosophical forms of representation such as the treatise, the essay, and a henology as reconstructed and represented by the Tübingen School - it permits the representation of performative reflections and performative contradictions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop and defend an Attentional View of bodily awareness, on which attention is necessary for bodily awareness. The original formulation of the Attentional View is due to Marcel Kinsbourne. First, I will show that the Attentional View of bodily awareness as formulated by Kinsbourne is superior to other accounts in the literature for characterizing the relationship between attention and bodily awareness. Kinsbourne’s account is the only account in the literature so far which can (...) accommodate key neurological diseases such as personal neglect. Second, when I consider Kinsbourne’s view in more detail, I will argue that Kinsbourne’s Attentional View faces problems because it is too reductive. Kinsbourne deviates from the standard taxonomy on which there is a body schema and a body image. Instead he reduces the body image to the neural representation of the body in the somatosensory cortex, the body schema and attentional shifts. I will present two challenges to Kinsbourne’s view which demonstrate that Kinsbourne’s reduction of the body image is unsuccessful. Finally, I will present a revised version of the Attentional View that is both empirically adequate and philosophically satisfactory. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

When does a human being begin to exist? Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard have argued that it is possible, through a combination of biological fact and philosophical analysis, to provide a definitive answer to this question. In their view, a human individual begins to exist at gastrulation, i. e. at about sixteen days after fertilization. In this paper we argue that even granting Smith and Brogaard's ontological commitments and biological assumptions, the existence of a human being can be shown to (...) begin much earlier, viz., with fertilization. Their interpretative claim that a zygote divides immediately into two substances and therefore ceases to exist is highly implausible by their own standards, and their factual claim that there is no communication between the blastomeres has to be abandoned in light of recent embryological research. (shrink)

Aristotle's notion of experience plays an important role in his epistemology as the link between perception and memory on the one side, and higher cognitive capacities on the other side. However, Aristotle does not say much about it, and what he does say seems inconsistent. Notably, some passages suggest that it is a non-rational capacity, others that it is a rational capacity and that it provides the principles of science. This paper presents a unitary account of experience. It explains how (...) experience grows from perception and memory into a rational capacity, and in what way it provides the principles. (shrink)

Axel Honneth se pregunta si el concepto del reconocimiento puede hacerse cargo de la función que Jürgen Habermas había atribuido al concepto de la comunicación. Con ello se coloca en posición crítica frente a la tradición de pensamiento en la que él mismo se inscribe, la teoría crítica. Cuestiona ante todo el carácter abstracto o formal de la teoría moral que se da en la Ética del Discurso, que remite finalmente a Habermas a Kant. Honneth, por su lado, se apoya (...) en el joven y casi materialista Hegel de Jena y en el behaviorista G. H. Mead, para proponer una teoría de la sociedad, no ajena a lo empírico, que contenga sustancia normativa , equidistante del formalismo de la ética comunicativa y de la materialidad del comunitarismo, superando así las dos tendencias, la universalista y la relativista, con el fin de mediarlas.Axel Honneth asks himself if the concept of recognition can assume the function that Jürgen Habermas had attributed to the concept of communication. Thus he places himself in a critical position regarding the thinking tradition he belonged to-the critic theory. He questions the abstract or formal character of the moral theory of the Ethics of Discourse, which ultimately leads to Habermas and Kant. Honneth, on his side, seeks support in the young and almost materialist Hegel of Jena and in the behaviorist G. H. Mead to propose a theory of society, not altogether unempirical, somehow normative , equidistant from the formalism of communicative ethics and from the materiality of "communitarism", and going beyond both universalism and relativism. (shrink)

Gregor Betz explores the following questions: Where are the limits of economics, in particular the limits of economic foreknowledge? Are macroeconomic forecasts credible predictions or mere prophecies and what would this imply for the way economic policy decisions are taken? Is rational economic decision making possible without forecasting at all?

This paper gives an explication of our intuitive notion of strength of justification in a controversial debate. It defines a thesis' degree of justification within the bipolar argumentation framework of the theory of dialectical structures as the ratio of coherently adoptable positions according to which that thesis is true over all coherently adoptable positions. Broadening this definition, the notion of conditional degree of justification, i.e.\ degree of partial entailment, is introduced. Thus defined degrees of justification correspond to our pre-theoretic intuitions (...) in the sense that supporting and defending a thesis t increases, whereas attacking it decreases, t's degree of justification. Moreover, it is shown that (conditional) degrees of justification are (conditional) probabilities. Eventually, the paper explains that it is rational to believe theses with a high degree of justification insofar as this strengthens the robustness of one's position. (shrink)

Advancements in scientific research and technological development influence the practice of organ donation and organ transplantation. Many SRTD governance discourses put forward the need for multi-stakeholder engagements. We posit that staff employed by organ procurement organizations have a stake in the discussions around SRTD applicable to ODOT because SRTD is one factor that shapes ODOT and because staff are involved in ODOT education and awareness raising while acting as a nexus between donors and the public. Therefore, we performed a content (...) analysis of eight semi-structured in-depth interviews with staff of one Canadian organ procurement organization to ascertain the views that staff had on the use of SRTD in ODOT in general; specific SRTD envisioned to be used in the future in ODOT namely xenotransplantation, embryonic and non-embryonic stem cells, cloning, bionic/artificial organs, and 3-D printed organs; and the emerging ability of SRTD applicable in ODOT to enhance bodily abilities beyond the normal. We found that staff had views on the topics covered in this study, and staff acknowledged that they do not possess sufficient knowledge to be able to engage meaningfully in governance discussions of the SRTD covered and to educate others on these SRTDs. We recommend implementing continuous education for the staff on SRTD envisioned to be applied in ODOT as a capacity-building measure to enable their participation in the governance discussions of these SRTDs and to enhance their ability to educate others on ODOT applicable SRTD. (shrink)

In the debate about the moral status of human embryos, it is not always clear which arguments are actually disputed. This book offers students and researchers, but also laypersons interested in the current debate, the opportunity to inform themselves about the current state of discussion and to learn about the most important arguments in a clear and concise form. These arguments are as follows: Since embryos as members of the species homo sapiens sapiens are human beings, they possess dignity (species (...) argument); embryos develop continuously, i.e. without morally relevant incisions, into adult human beings possessing dignity (continuum argument); embryos are identical with adult human beings possessing dignity (identity argument); embryos have the potential to become human beings, and this potential is without restriction worth protecting (potentiality argument). These arguments are each represented by a pro position and a contra position and defended or criticized. In an accompanying contribution by the editors, the four arguments in context are reconstructed, evaluated, and supported by new arguments. (shrink)

Die Traume und Visionen aus der antiken Literatur, die die romischen Kaiser und ihr Umfeld betreffen, wurden bislang noch nicht auf ihre Bedeutung hin untersucht. Die vorliegende Arbeit schliesst diese Lucke, indem sie das Material von Caesar bis Maurikios analysiert. Dabei ergeben sich spezifische Motive, die besonders mit Traumen und Visionen verbunden sind: Geburt und Kindheit, Verheissung der Herrschaft, Erringung eines Sieges und gottliches Eingreifen, Ausubung der Herrschaft, besondere Befahigung und gottliche Begunstigung, nahendes Ende. Durch den breiten zeitlichen Ansatz gelingt (...) es, fur die Motive unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte auszumachen: Sie stehen alle in der Spannung zwischen einer gezielten Verbreitung zur Schaffung von Akzeptanz und der Literarisierung durch die antiken Autoren. Fur die Behandlung der Thematik waren nicht nur definitorische Vorarbeiten notwendig, sondern auch der mentale Horizont moglicher Rezipienten musste durch die Interpretation von Inschriften, Papyri und Selbstaussagen antiker Autoren in den Blick genommen werden. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of fulfilment conceives of empty acts, such as symbolic thought, and fulfilling acts, such as sensory perceptions, in a strict parallel. This parallelism is the basis for Husserl’s semantics, epistemology, and conception of truth. It also entails that any true proposition can be known in principle, which Church and Fitch have shown to explode into the claim that every proposition is _actually_ known. I assess this logical challenge and discuss a recent response by James Kinkaid. While Kinkaid’s proposal (...) saves one direction of the parallel for semantics, it gives up the parallelism for truth. I spell out a different response which meshes naturally with Husserl’s account of meaning. If the parallelism is restricted to a class of basic propositions, the truth of non-basic propositions can be defined inductively, without leading to the paradox. I then discuss objections that have been raised against a similar proposal by Dummett. The result is that exegetically plausible and popular interpretations of Husserl’s correlationism are indeed challenged by Church and Fitch. But when taking into account the ‘logical adumbration’ of propositional blindspots, truth and possible fulfilment can be connected without paradox. (shrink)

Gregor Paul, Philosoph an der Universität Karlsruhe, will zeigen, “dass ein Krieg gegen den Terrorismus unmöglich wäre, wenn man gültiger Argumentation folgte”. Die Frage ist, ob es einen „gerechten Krieg“ überhaupt gibt – eine alte Frage, auf die nicht nur in der abendländischen Philosophie unterschiedliche Antworten gegeben worden sind. Paul lässt hier die alte chinesische Philosophie zu Wort kommen. An den Beispielen der Kriege in Afghanistan und Irak wie dem sogenannten Krieg gegen den Terrorismus zeigt Paul, wie für deren (...) “Gerechtigkeit” nicht nur nicht offen argumentiert, sondern eine notwendige allseitige Diskussion verhindert wurde. Erst eine solche offene Diskussion würde das Gewicht der Argumente zeigen und Paul ist überzeugt, dass die Argumente für Kriege jeglicher Art vor dem Forum der Vernunft als zu leicht befunden würden. (shrink)

Postcolonial theory, particularly in its poststructuralist variant, presents important challenges to sociology's self-image, and open debate on these attempts to `unsettle' the modernist, Westernized disciplines is both conceptually and politically interesting. However, the postcolonial unsettling of sociology has to be actively extracted and reconstructed from the key texts of postcolonial theory - it is not transparently available as such - and this is the first main goal of the article. Particular attention is paid to the framings of these issues by (...) Stuart Hall, Homi Bhahba and Robert Young. Second, the article offers the elements of a counter-critique, pointing out where the anti-sociological impulses of postcolonialism are exaggerated or unfounded, and also indicating serious internal problems for postcolonial theory when it is pitched as a direct and superior alternative to the modernist sociological `imaginary'. The continuing centrality (and difficulty) of questions on the nature of and purpose of explanatory social theory and postcolonial cultural studies are discussed. (shrink)

Through two exchanges in this journal, a type of relativism has been advanced by a group of authors from Loughborough University with a view to demolishing what they see as ‘bottom line’ arguments for critical realism in the social sciences. Jauntily dismissing realism, they also soberly disown the supposed ‘extreme’ consequences that some realists insist follow naturally from relativist conceptions of social inquiry. In this article, I contest the Loughborough team’s arguments. Their presentation of relativism itself can be reconstructed in (...) at least three different ways, none of which suffices to undermine a generally realist account of explanatory endeavour. The most productive note in the critics’ conceptual register highlights the utility of rhetorical analysis; yet this can proceed effectively only if it is neutral with respect to different epistemic and ontological stances. The most productive thematic possibility raised in their articles, and shared with several other recent discussions, signals that realism and relativism may not be anything like fixed and opposed stances; yet the polemical thrust of their anti-realism compromises this insight. (shrink)

Wo Meinungen aufeinanderprallen, um Verständnis geworben und Überzeugungsarbeit geleistet wird, sind Begründungen nicht weit. Für jede Überzeugung gibt es immer ein, zwei Gründe, die mit Gegengründen konfrontiert und, im Gegenzug, mit weiteren Überlegungen verteidigt werden usw. usf. Schnell sind wir verwirrt und drohen, ohne uns der "Grammatikregeln" vernünftigen Argumentierens zu besinnen, nicht mehr durchzublicken. Die Theorie dialektischer Strukturen leistet einen Beitrag zur Grammatik vernünftigen Argumentierens. Sie stellt Begriffe und Verfahren bereit, um Fragen, die sich angesichts einer komplexen Argumentation stellen können, (...) zu beantworten: Wie beziehen sich die einzelnen Argumente der Debatte aufeinander? Welche Positionen vertreten die verschiedenen Proponenten, und wie lassen sich diese bewerten? Wie gut ist die zentrale These der Kontroverse alles in allem begründet? Ist die und die Argumentationshandlung angesichts des Debattenstandes tatsächlich zweckmäßig und rational? Liegt hier eine zirkuläre - und damit fehlerhafte - Argumentation vor? Die klassische Logik, die sogenannte informal logic und argumentationstheoretische Ansätze der Künstlichen Intelligenz bilden Anknüpfungspunkte der Theorie dialektischer Strukturen. Exemplarisch werden die entwickelten argumentationstheoretischen Methoden zur Analyse umfangreicher philosophischer Kontroversen eingesetzt. (shrink)

This chapter goes into crucial questions related to the impact of technology on our privacy, our personal identity and our social relationships. While technology often seems extremely convenient in helping us remember things and share our experiences with others, this episode shows that it can have highly undesirable side‐effects as well. Technologies like the grain put inevitable pressures not only on privacy and trust but also on our ability to create and tell our life stories. In this chapter, we show (...) how getting to know each other's entire history and achieving full transparency about ourselves and others will likely destroy crucial and valuable aspects of our social lives. (shrink)

Menschliches Bewusstein findet sich immer schon als verkörpertes vor. Diese Einsicht steht im Zentrum des kognitionswissenschaftlichen Paradigmas der embodied cognition: Der Geist ist „innig an einen Körper gebunden und innig in seine Welt eingebettet“. Der Geist ist kein in einem vermeintlichen Innenraum verborgenes und von der Welt weitgehend gelöstes neuronales Netzwerk, sondern als eine dynamische Weise des leiblichen In-der-Welt-Seins zu verstehen. Mit der Philosophie der Verkörperung gewinnt die Theologie einen Gesprächspartner, der ihr hilft, ihre eigene Körpervergessenheit zu überwinden und Anschluss (...) an die biblischen Anthropologien zu gewinnen. Denn diese verstehen die menschliche Existenz grundsätzlich als leiblich verfasst. Aktuelle Forschungen an der Schnittstelle von Neurobiologie und Philosophie einerseits und Exegese und Systematik andererseits lassen sich so in einen spannenden Diskurs bringen, an dessen Ende eine neue interdisziplinäre Anthropologie stehen könnte. Der vorliegende Band eröffnet diesen Diskurs mit Beiträgen aus Philosophie, Exegese und Systematischer Theologie. (shrink)

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7–12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic “A-not-B error,” infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location “A” continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location “B.” Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects (...) or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of “knowing” not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span. Key Words: cognitive development; dynamical systems theory; embodied cognition; infant development; motor control; motor planning; perception and action. (shrink)

The paper deals with the question of the structure of knowledge and the precise relationship between propositional "knowledge that" and dispositional "knowledge how." In the first part of my essay, I provide an analysis of the term 'knowing how' and argue that the usual alternatives in the recent epistemological debate – knowing how is either a form of propositional or dispositional knowledge – are misleading. In fact it depends on the semantic and pragmatic context of the usage of this term (...) whether 'knowing how' refers to a type of dispositional knowledge, to propositional knowledge, or to a hybrid form of both. Only in the first case, can one say that dispositional know how cannot be reduced to any form of propositional knowledge. Yet, this case is the most interesting one to consider in the investigation of the nature of knowledge, if one assumes that knowing that p presupposes "having found out that p." Having found something out, however, presupposes certain acts of epistemic inquiry and corresponding epistemic abilities. Examined more carefully, it is shown that the dispositional knowledge-how is a necessary condition for propositional knowledge-that, hence propositional knowledge-that is a species of the dispositional knowledge-how. Accordingly, dispositional knowledge has to be understood as being at the very core of our notion of knowledge, including propositional knowledge. (shrink)

Examining developments in two of the central traditions of social and political theory - Marxism and pluralism, this work investigates whether the relation between them is one of progressive convergence.

Climate models don’t give us probabilistic forecasts. To interpret their results, alternatively, as serious possibilities seems problematic inasmuch as climate models rely on contrary-to-fact assumptions: why should we consider their implications as possible if their assumptions are known to be false? The paper explores a way to address this possibilistic challenge. It introduces the concepts of a perfect and of an imperfect credible world, and discusses whether climate models can be interpreted as imperfect credible worlds. That would allow one to (...) use models for possibilistic prediction and salvage widespread scientific practice. (shrink)