Der Artikel geht der Frage nach, wie „Wir und die Anderen" in Rosenzweigs „neuem Denken" vorkommen, - und das über das Vorkommen als Thema bzw. Gegenstand hinaus im methodischen Sinne der Frage nach dem „Subjekt" dieses „neuen Denkens" selbst. Die These bezüglich dieser Frage lautet, dass Rosenzweig das Thema „Wir und die Anderen" in einer spezifischen „Dia-logik" von Verwurzelung im Eigenen und Verhältnis zum Anderen austrägt. Spezifisch ist insbesondere sein Rekurs auf die „Tatsachen" des „Welttags des Herrn", Schöpfung, Offenbarung und (...) Erlösung, als philosophische Kategorien. Durch sie wäre durchzudeklinieren, wer jeweils „Wir und die Anderen" sind. Denn im Vorgang des Stern gewinnt mit dem „Wir" ein „Subjekt" Gestalt, das den Horizont der Menschheit, des „Wir alle", gerade deshalb nicht unterbieten kann, weil es im „Gottesgeschehen" konstituiert und darin der „Weltgeschichte" ausgesetzt wird. Dass dem so ist, erfährt der Jude Rosenzweig Christen gegenüber und reflektiert er im „Stern der Erlösung" als Sprachgeschehen insbesondere in seinem Konzept „chorischen Sprechens". In diesem Artikel wird die These vermittelt durch den Umweg darüber einer Relecture unterzogen, wie Levinas Rosenzweig im „Wir" des modernen Judentums verortet.This essay is concerned with the question how Rosenzweig's „new thinking" deals with „We and the Others", - and this beyond tackling it as a topic or object but in a methodical sense as the question about the „subject" of the „new thinking" itself. Concerning this question, it is the thesis to explore that Rosenzweig ponders „We and the Others" in a specific „dia-logical" way of becoming deeply rooted in one's own while being related to the other. He specifically refers to the „facts" of the „World-Day of the Lord" as philosophical categories. They could give the cases of who it is particularly, „We and the Others": In the process of the Star a „We" becomes the „subject" which cannot deny the universal horizon of „We all" because it is constituted as such in „God's history", i.e. the temporal sequence of His World-Day, and therefore exposed to „universal world-history". That is Rosenzweig's experience as a Jew face to face with Christians which he reflects upon in the Star as a speech-process, especially in his concept of „choral speech". In this essay, the thesis is submitted to a relecture by means of a detour, which is made by following Levinas' way of locating Rosenzweig in the „We" of the modern Jewish community. (shrink)

Heinz Von Forester characterizes the objects “known” by an autopoietic system as eigen-solutions, that is, as discrete, separable, stable and composable states of the interaction of the system with its environment. Previous articles have presented the FBST, Full Bayesian Significance Test, as a mathematical formalism specifically designed to access the support for sharp statistical hypotheses, and have shown that these hypotheses correspond, from a constructivist perspective, to systemic eigen-solutions in the practice of science. In this article several issues related (...) to the role played by language in the emergence of eigen-solutions are analyzed. The last sections also explore possible connections with the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to use the epistemological framework of a specific version of Cognitive Constructivism to address Piaget’s central problem of knowledge construction, namely, the re-equilibration of cognitive structures. The distinctive objective character of this constructivist framework is supported by formal inference methods of Bayesian statistics, and is based on Heinz von Foerster’s fundamental metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. This epistemological perspective is illustrated using some episodes in the history of chemistry concerning the (...) definition or identification of chemical elements. Some of von Foerster’s epistemological imperatives provide general guidelines of development and argumentation. (shrink)

This article analyzes the role of entropy in Bayesian statistics, focusing on its use as a tool for detection, recognition and validation of eigen-solutions. “Objects as eigen-solutions” is a key metaphor of the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework developed by the philosopher Heinz von Foerster. Special attention is given to some objections to the concepts of probability, statistics and randomization posed by George Spencer-Brown, a figure of great influence in the field of radical constructivism.

In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to (...) our autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves, in others or in God. Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open. (shrink)

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to the reasons (...) why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

Everyday media consumption leaves no doubt that the perception of moving images from various media is characterized by experience and understanding. Corresponding research in this field has shown that the stimulus patterns flooding in on us are not only processed mentally, but also bodily. Building on this, the following study argues that incoming stimuli are processed not only visually, but multimodally, with all senses, and moreover affectively. The classical binding of a sensory organ to a medium, on whose delimitation the (...) common understanding of multimodality is based, is thus abolished. Can arguments for this assumption be found? Building on the research of cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer and his successors, the two American philosophers Susanne K. Langer and John M. Krois, and supported by research from the life sciences in which, in parallel, the arts also play an important role in understanding image formation, as in the work of Heinz Werner and, following on from this, in the more recent research of the child psychologist Daniel N. Stern in collaboration with mirror neuron research by the group of neuroscientists around Giacomo Rizzolatti in Parma, justifications for this will be provided. What the multimodal processing of film images is concretely based on will finally be made clear by means of an exemplary analysis of a video film by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. It aims to prove, that the prerequisites for the thesis can only lie in the fact, that both the modes of perception (visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory) as well as the medially conditioned modes of image formation are based on non-discursive, formal-abstract structures that are also processed affectively. At the same time, the analysis thus shows how the selection and composition of the vital experienced forms can provide information about the socio-culturally shaped self-image of the producer and the viewer. (shrink)

In this volume, the author investigates and argues for, a particular answer to the question: What is the right way to logically analyze modalities from natural language within formal languages? The answer is: by formalizing modal expressions in terms of predicates. But, as in the case of truth, the most intuitive modal principles lead to paradox once the modal notions are conceived as predicates. -/- The book discusses the philosophical interpretation of these modal paradoxes and argues that any satisfactory approach (...) to modality will have to face the paradoxes independently of the grammatical category of the modal notion. By systematizing modal principles with respect to their joint consistency and inconsistency, Stern provides an overview of the options and limitations of the predicate approach to modality that may serve as a useful starting point for future work on predicate approaches to modality. Stern also develops a general strategy for constructing philosophically attractive theories of modal notions conceived as predicates. The idea is to characterize the modal predicate by appeal to its interaction with the truth predicate. This strategy is put to use by developing the modal theories Modal Friedman-Sheard and Modal Kripke-Feferman. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of Robert Stern's work on the theme of Kantian ethics. It begins by focusing on the relation between Kant's account of obligation and his view of autonomy, arguing that this leaves room for Kant to be a realist about value. Stern then considers where this places Kant in relation to the question of moral scepticism, and in relation to the principle of 'ought implies can', and examines this principle in its own right. The (...) papers then move beyond Kant himself to his wider influence and to critics of his work, and the volume concludes with a consideration of a broadly Kantian critique of divine command ethics offered by Stephen Darwall. General themes considered in this volume include value, perfectionism, agency, autonomy, moral motivation, moral scepticism, and obligation, as well as the historical place of Kant's ethics and its influence on thinkers up to the present day. (shrink)

Philosophers working within the pragmatist tradition have pictured their relation to Kant and Kantianism in very diverse terms: some have presented their work as an appropriation and development of Kantian ideas, some have argued that pragmatism is an approach in complete opposition to Kant. This collection investigates the relationship between pragmatism, Kant, and current Kantian approaches to transcendental arguments in a detailed and original way. Chapters highlight pragmatist aspects of Kant’s thought and trace the influence of Kant on the work (...) of pragmatists and neo-pragmatists, engaging with the work of Peirce, James, Lewis, Sellars, Rorty, and Brandom, among others. They also consider to what extent contemporary approaches to transcendental arguments are compatible with a pragmatist standpoint. The book includes contributions from renowned authors working on Kant, pragmatism and contemporary Kantian approaches to philosophy, and provides an authoritative and original perspective on the relationship between pragmatism and Kantianism. (shrink)

Bayesians standardly claim that there is rational pressure for agents’ credences to cohere across time because they face bad (epistemic or practical) consequences if they fail to diachronically cohere. But as David Christensen has pointed out, groups of individual agents also face bad consequences if they fail to interpersonally cohere, and there is no general rational pressure for one agent's credences to cohere with another’s. So it seems that standard Bayesian arguments may prove too much. Here, we agree with Christensen (...) that there is no general rational pressure to diachronically cohere, but we argue that there are particular cases in which there is rational pressure to diachronically cohere, as well as particular cases in which interpersonal probabilistic coherence is rationally required. More generally, we suggest that Bayesian arguments for coherence apply whenever a collection (of agents or time slices) has a shared dimension of value and an ability to coordinate their actions in a range of cases relevant to that value. Typically, this shared value and ability to coordinate is very strong across the time slices of one human being, and very weak across different human beings, but there are special cases where these can switch—i.e., some groups of humans will have as much reason for their beliefs to cohere across a particular range of cases as the time slices of one human usually do, but some time slices of a human will have as much freedom to differ in their beliefs from the others as the members of a group usually do. (shrink)

Using hitherto unpublished manuscripts from the Zermelo Nachlass, I describe the development of the notion of definiteness and the discussion about it, giving a conclusive picture of Zermelo's thoughts up to the late thirties. As it turns out, Zermelo's considerations about definiteness are intimately related to his concept of a Cantorian universe of categorically definable sets that may be considered an inner model of set theory in an ideationally given universe of classes.

Hegel's holistic metaphysics challenges much recent ontology with its atomistic and reductionist assumptions; Stern offers us an original reading of Hegel and contrasts him with his predecessor, Kant.

This book explores the nature of meaning, primarily through readings of the work of Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Alexander Stern offers a critical analysis of Benjamin's philosophy of language, finding in it a common root with Wittgenstein's thought on language, and traces the historical foundation of both accounts of meaning to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy. Benjamin's theory of language is notoriously dense and obscure. In elucidating it, Stern emphasizes Benjamin's attempt to reorient the Kantian project around (...) language-the medium in which knowledge is expressed-and his concern with the logical understanding of language gaining credence in the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. The result is a radical model of the relationship between language, experience, and the world that sees "absolutely everything" as linguistic in a broadened sense and which sees the logical or designative capacities of language as grounded in an aesthetic foundation. Wittgenstein and Benjamin are read in the book as complementary to one another, sharing comparable critiques of empiricism and comparable accounts of concept use, linguistic understanding, and the relation between experience and language. Although this similarity breaks down over Wittgenstein's account of the "experience of meaning," which is subordinated to his account of meaning as use, Stern argues that Benjamin's theory of language can productively address some unresolved issues in Wittgenstein's understanding of meaning. (shrink)

For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.

Symbol formation is a term used to unify the view on the interdependencies in the research of the Hamburg University before 1933: the Philosophical Institute (William Stern, Ernst Cassirer), the Psychological Institute (Stern) with its laboratory (Heinz Werner) in cooperation with the later joining Umwelt Institut (Jakob von Uexküll). The term, definitely used by Cassirer and Werner, is associated with the personalistic approach: “Keine Gestalt ohne Gestalter” (Stern), but also covers related terms like “melody of motion” (...) (Uexküll), and “relational content” (Cassirer), discussing the term “empirical scheme” (Kant). All this scientific interest addressed personal forces to structure thresholds in equivalent stimuli. This view on intermodal formation allowed research in common aspects in the environments of animals, of children and adults to meet there the symbol formation of artists (Weimar Bauhaus) and poets like R. M. Rilke, a friend of Uexküll. (shrink)

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this book Paul Stern provides a full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. He argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character. More specifically, he argues that Socrates' (...) revolutionary decision to subject political life to philosophic reflection, the decision that leads directly to his trial and execution, is based on his awareness of the elusiveness of comprehensive knowledge and the implications of that elusiveness for the validity of philosophic inquiry. This view of Socrates' rationale has important consequences for our understanding of political philosophy and of the validity of the life of reason itself. (shrink)

A team of philosophers and scientists at Dartmouth College worked for three years to create, train faculty and pilot test an adequate and exportable class in research methods for graduate students of science and engineering. Developing and testing methods for evaluating students’ progress in learning research ethics were part of the project goals. Failure of methods tried in the first year led to the refinement of methods for the second year. These were used successfully in the pilot course and in (...) one university setting external to Dartmouth. The process of development and justification for the final methods are discussed here. (shrink)

This paper examines the place of metaphorical interpretation in the current Contextualist‐Literalist controversy over the role of context in the determination of truth‐conditions in general. Although there has been considerable discussion of ‘non‐literal’ language by both sides of this dispute, the language analyzed involves either so‐called implicit indexicality, loose or loosened use, enriched interpretations, or semantic transfer, not metaphor itself. In the first half of the paper, I critically evaluate Recanati’s (2004) recent Contextualist account and show that it cannot account (...) for the metaphorical‐literal dependence characteristic of metaphor. I then turn to Carston’s (2002), and Bezuidenhout’s (2001) Contextualist accounts and show that they place no constraints on metaphorical interpretations. In the second half of the paper I sketch a Literalist theory of metaphor elaborated in Stern (2000) and respond to two kinds of Contextualist criticisms of that account by Camp (2005) and Stanley (2005). (shrink)

Robert Stern; VII*—The Relation between Moral Theory and Metaphysics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 143–160, h.

This paper argues first that, contrary to what one would expect, metaphorical interpretations of utterances pass two of Cappelan and Lepore's Minimalist tests for semantic context-sensitivity. I then propose how, in light of that result, one might analyze metaphors on the model of indexicals and demonstratives, expressions that (even) Minimalists agree are semantically context-dependent. This analysis builds on David Kaplan's semantics for demonstratives and refines an earlier proposal in (Stern, Metaphor in context, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000). In the course (...) of this argument, I also discuss some new examples of linguistic phenomena that motivate a semantic structure underlying metaphorical interpretation, phenomena I argue that neither Minimalists nor Contextualists can explain. (shrink)

This text explores how we understand living and other complex systems. The conventional basis of understanding rests on abstract general theories, but this book proposes conceptual continuity as a new means of comparing systems of divergent complexity and resolving problems in complex systems.

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished (...) via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism. (shrink)

[1] Metaphysische Ursprünge und ontologische Grundlagen.--2. Methodenbegriffe der Ergänzungswissenschaften und Gegensätzlichkeiten spekulativer Weltkonzeption.

Tom Stern on the problem with the principle of charity as a way to interpret figures in the history of philosophy.

Laurent Stern here provides a concise account of the difficulties that arise within the interpretive process and in the context of interpretive conflict. Speakers and agents are expected by others to be occasionally insincere. Attempting to be tolerant of alternative interpretations, and dealing with the insincerity of others, often motivates interpreters themselves to become insincere. Accordingly, moral issues emerge for both speakers and interpreters. Interpretive Reasoning discusses such issues in the literature on interpretation. Stern offers a carefully argued (...) account of the very idea of interpretation. What are the constraints on interpretations? What are our grounds for demanding that others agree with our interpretations? How do we support our interpretations? What are the types of interpretations we encounter? How are problems of first-person authority and self-knowledge connected with interpreting? While the author argues for interpretations supported by principles rather than by the consensus of interpreters, he also shows that even well-supported interpretations may be mistaken, and that some interpretive conflicts are interminable. Although this is a book in philosophy, scholars and students in the humanities, the social sciences, and disciplines concerned with interpretive reasoning can read it profitably. (shrink)