In this carefully argued critique, Steven Horst pronounces the theory deficient.

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, and that this (...) implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some limitation of our self-understanding. In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology. Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm. Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

A main subject of philosophy of science is the reconstruction of scientific theories. Not only scientists are holding theories but everybody else, namely theories about everyday knowledge. In this article two geometric theories of this kind are reconstructed. The reconstruction is performed under the structuralist view of theories. It turns out that there are important differences between scientific theories and everyday theories, concerning the intended applications as well as the logical status of the concepts.

Das Buch steht im Zusammenhang des Versuches, die zentrale Rolle der Bilder für die Ausbildung der modernen Philosophie am Beispiel bedeutender Gestalten des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts zu rekonstruieren. Das Projekt begann mit der Erschließung der Staatstheorie aus der Bildpolitik des "Leviathan" von Thomas Hobbes. Mit Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' Ideen, ein Theater der Natur und Kunst sowie einen Atlas der Einbildungskraft zu errichten, folgt nun die Rekonstruktion eines Projektes, das für das Verständnis seiner Philosophie von tiefgreifender Bedeutung sein könnte. Obwohl Leibniz diese (...) Idee so hartnäckig und ausdauernd wie kaum ein anderes Unternehmen betrieben hat, ist sie in der Forschung bislang so gut wie unbekannt geblieben. Für diesen Umstand war die zersplitterte und unvollständige Überlieferung von Leibniz' Schriften ebenso verantwortlich wie ein mächtiger Strang der Philosophiegeschichte, der die Welt des Haptischen und Visuellen immer dann favorisiert, wenn sie transzendiert wird. Die jüngsten Bände der Akademie-Ausgabe bieten jedoch erstmals die Möglichkeit, Leibniz' Wertschätzung der tastenden und zeichnenden Hand und des neugierigen und geschulten Auges im Zusammenhang zu verfolgen. Seine schier unbegreiflich vielfältigen Denkbewegungen und Aktivitäten erhalten mit dem Projekt des Theaters der Natur und Kunst daher nicht nur eine Ergänzung, sondern einen neuen Rahmen. Leibniz' Faible für das Theatrum Naturae et Artis könnte das Gesamtbild seiner Philosophie verwandeln, weil es die Kluft zwischen Kalkül und Anschauung wie auch zwischen der "Fensterlosigkeit" der Monade und der körperlichen Form ihrer Perzeptionsweisen zugleich vertieft und überbrückt. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 61 Heft: 3 Seiten: 414-428.

Shaping the Future maps out the ascetic practices of a Neitzschean way of life. Hutter argues that Nietzsche's doctrines are attempts and "temptations" that aim to provoke his free-spirited readers into changing themselves by putting philosophy into practice in their lives.

Fifty years ago Hartman studied the barrier transmission time of wave packets (J Appl Phys 33:3427–3433, 1962). He was inspired by the tunneling experiments across thin insulating layers at that time. For opaque barriers he calculated faster than light propagation and a transmission time independent of barrier length, which is called the Hartman effect. A faster than light (FTL or superluminal) wave packet velocity was deduced in analog tunneling experiments with microwaves and with infrared light thirty years later. Recently, the (...) conjectured zero time of electron tunneling was claimed to have been observed in ionizing helium inside the barrier. The calculated and measured short tunneling time arises at the barrier front. This tunneling time was found to be universal for elastic fields as well as for electromagnetic fields. Remarkable is that the delay time is the same for the reflected and the transmitted waves in the case of symmetric barriers. Several theoretical physicists predicted this strange nature of the tunneling process. However, even with this background many members of the physics community do not accept a FTL signal velocity interpretation of the experimental tunneling results. Instead a luminal front velocity was calculated to explain the FTL experimental results frequently. However, Brillouin stated in his book on wave propagation and group velocity that the front velocity is given by the group velocity of wave packets in the case of physical signals, which have only finite frequency bandwidths. Some studies assumed barriers to be cavities and the observed tunneling time does represent the cavity lifetime. We are going to discus these continuing misleading interpretations, which are found in journals and in textbooks till today. (shrink)

Many virtue epistemologists conceive of epistemic competence on the model of skill —such as archery, playing baseball, or chess. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: epistemic competences and skills are crucially and relevantly different kinds of capacities. This, I suggest, undermines the popular attempt to understand epistemic normativity as a mere special case of the sort of normativity familiar from skilful action. In fact, as I argue further, epistemic competences resemble virtues rather than skills—a claim that (...) is based on an important, but often overlooked, difference between virtue and skill. The upshot is that virtue epistemology should indeed be based on virtue, not on skill. (shrink)

Seit dem byzantinischen Bilderstreit und dem Bildersturm der Reformation ist nicht mehr in solcher Intensität über Bilder nachgedacht worden wie in den letzten Jahrzehnten. Neben der Archäologie und der Kunstgeschichte haben sich zahlreiche weitere Fächer an Fragestellungen rund um das Bild geradezu festgebissen. Angesichts dessen geht einer der bedeutendsten Kunsthistoriker der Gegenwart der Frage nach, warum Begriff und Geltung sowie Macht und Ohnmacht von Bildern so hartnäckig verfolgte Themen unserer Tage geworden sind.

Horst Ruthrof revisits Husserl's phenomenology of language and highlights his late writings as essential to understanding the full range of his ideas. Focusing on the idea of language as imaginable as well as the role of a speech community in constituting it, Ruthrof provides a powerful re-assessment of his methodological phenomenology. From the Logical Investigations to untranslated portions of his Nachlass, Ruthrof charts all the developments and amendments in his theorizations. Instead of emphasising the definition and meaning of words, (...) Husserl's later writings point to the variation produced by a community of speakers in the act of communicating. Essential to this linguistic meaning is the intersubjective character that Ruthrof argues is so emblematic of Husserl's position. Using his concepts of intimation, introjection, reciprocity, and voice further outlines a theory that is intersubjective and communal. Bringing his study up to the present day, Ruthrof discusses metal time travel, the evolution of language, and protosyntax in the context of Husserl's late writings, progressing a comprehensive new phenomenological ontology of language with wide-ranging implications for philosophy, linguistics, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Epistemic constitutivism (EC) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. (...) I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are ‘reason-giving’ only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what’s special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard-governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons. (shrink)

This book introduces an account of cognitive architecture, Cognitive Pluralism, on which the basic units of understanding are models of particular content domains. Having many mental models is a good adaptive strategy for cognition, but models can be incompatible with one another, leading to paradoxes and inconsistencies of belief, and it may not be possible to integrate the understanding supplied by multiple models into a comprehensive and self-consistent "super model". The book applies the theory to explaining intuitive reasoning and cognitive (...) illusions and explores implications for epistemology, semantics, and disunity of science. (shrink)

Many hold that theoretical reasoning aims at truth. In this paper, I ask what it is for reasoning to be thus aim-directed. Standard answers to this question explain reasoning’s aim-directedness in terms of intentions, dispositions, or rule-following. I argue that, while these views contain important insights, they are not satisfactory. As an alternative, I introduce and defend a novel account: reasoning aims at truth in virtue of being the exercise of a distinctive kind of cognitive power, one that, unlike ordinary (...) dispositions, is capable of fully explaining its own exercises. I argue that this account is able to avoid the difficulties plaguing standard accounts of the relevant sort of mental teleology. (shrink)

Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to that question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, playing the piano, or (...) archery, creditworthy moral success is a matter of getting things right by way of manifesting a relevant skill. My main aim in this paper is to bring out an important structural difference between moral creditworthiness and creditworthiness in sports, arts, and craft, undermining attempts to use examples of the latter as a model for understanding the former. As an alternative, I propose an account of morally creditworthy action, according to which such action is a matter of manifesting virtue, not skill—a claim that's based on an important, but underappreciated, difference between the sorts of excellences constituting virtues and skills. The paper thus contributes to a more nuanced picture of normative achievements across different domains of human agency, highlighting largely overlooked structural dissimilarities among them. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 60 Heft: 3 Seiten: 464-476.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: A Contribution to Recent Discussion* ST. THOMAS AQUINAS accepted and consistently defended Boethius' definition of person: "persona est substantia individua rationalis naturae." St. Thomas' analysis of this definition necessarily involves metaphysical questions because of the implications of the terms " substance" and " nature" and moreover it manifests the inescapahle imprint of the theological problematics which surrounded the issue (e.g. the (...) Trinity and the hypostatic union). Both of these influences, metaphysical and theological, have engendered problems of interpretation and criticism. Contemporary discussions of person largely either continue the scholastic controversies or adopt a modern perspective from which to expose apparent contradictions in St. Thomas' doctrine. The purpose of this article will be limited to a consideration of the metaphysical problems concerning the relationship between individual substance, universal, nature, and existence. It is hoped that such a clarification will resolve not only the neoscholastic controversies, but also some of the contemporary problems. I. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION OF PERSON AND ST. THOMAS' EXPLANATION A. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION Boethius develops his definition of person in the Liber contra Eutychen et N estorium after a careful consideration of na- * I have to thank cordially Father Brian Shanley, 0.P. for having revised completely this English version, devoting much time and energy to fit the text and the footnotes to the style of The Thomist. He adapted the version in good style and verified the Latin quotations. 435 436 HORST SEIDL ture and substance.1 In the first chapter he sets out to define nature and discovers four possible meanings. The first and broadest definition, embracing both substances and accidents, describes nature as belonging to all things which by their being can be in some way or another be comprehended by reason: "natura est earum rermn quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." A second definition, comprising substances alone both corporeal and incorporeal, describes nature as anything that can effect or suffer something: " natura est vel quod facere vel quod pati possit." A third sense, taken from the Aristotelian analysis of the motion of natural substances, describes nature as the immanent principle of movement : "natura est motus principium per se et non per accidens." Finally, nature can also refer to the formal cause which provides the specific difference: " natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia" (cf. ST Ia. 29, I ad 4). It is this last sense which is most important. In sum, "nature" is a broad term encompassing both composite beings and their causes. Boethius continues in chapter two by first narrowing the relevant sense of nature to substances (thus excluding accidents ) and then presenting a complete division of substances. The major distinction is between corporeal substances and incorporeal substances. Corporeal subdivides further into inanimate and animate, with animate dividing. into insensitive and sensitive and the latter dividing finally into irrational and rational. Incorporeal subdivides into rational and irrational (the life-principle of animals), with rational incorporeal substances being further distinguished into those that are immutable by nature (the Creator) and those that are not so by nature (the human soul and angels) but may become so by virtue of the immutable substance. Boethius then argues that person cannot be affirmed of inanimate beings or irrational animals. A 1 All citations from Boethius are taken from the Loeb text in Boethius: Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918). THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 437 final distinction of :substance into universal and particular leads to the conclusion that person must refer to an individual. Thus the background is set for the definition of person which opens the third chapter: " naturae rationalis individua substantia." Person must be an individual substance of a certain nature, namely rational, which nature accounts for the form or specific difference of the particular substance (the fourth meaning of chapter 1). The connection of this definition with Aristotle 's definition of man as a rational animal is unmistakable. It should also be noted that this definition of person is applicable not only to man, in whom the rational nature is not identical with his substance, but also to the... (shrink)

Die philosophische Promotion Horst-Eberhard Richters stellt eine wichtige Auseinandersetzung mit der Phänomenologie des Schmerzes dar. Geprägt von seinem subjektiven Schmerzerleben und seinen Leiderfahrungen als Soldat im Zweiten Weltkrieg in Russland formuliert Richter bereits 1948 – im Alter von 25 Jahren – die Grundgedanken seines wirkmächtigen philosophischen Hauptwerks Der Gotteskomplex (1979). In seinem »Antrag auf Zulassung zur Promotion« im Fach Philosophie schrieb Richter, die »philosophische Arbeit« stelle für ihn »eine zentrale Lebensfrage« dar. Obwohl er seine »Zukunft als Mediziner« sehe, betrachte (...) er die Philosophie »als Basis für die weitere Entfaltung meiner philosophischen Tätigkeit«. Ihm schwebte eine Verbindung von Medizin und Philosophie vor, die er in der Psychosomatischen Medizin, der Psychoanalyse und auch in seinen sozialphilosophischen Schriften verwirklichte. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS: A Contribution to Recent Discussion* ST. THOMAS AQUINAS accepted and consistently defended Boethius' definition of person: "persona est substantia individua rationalis naturae." St. Thomas' analysis of this definition necessarily involves metaphysical questions because of the implications of the terms " substance" and " nature" and moreover it manifests the inescapahle imprint of the theological problematics which surrounded the issue (e.g. the (...) Trinity and the hypostatic union). Both of these influences, metaphysical and theological, have engendered problems of interpretation and criticism. Contemporary discussions of person largely either continue the scholastic controversies or adopt a modern perspective from which to expose apparent contradictions in St. Thomas' doctrine. The purpose of this article will be limited to a consideration of the metaphysical problems concerning the relationship between individual substance, universal, nature, and existence. It is hoped that such a clarification will resolve not only the neoscholastic controversies, but also some of the contemporary problems. I. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION OF PERSON AND ST. THOMAS' EXPLANATION A. BOETHIUS' DEFINITION Boethius develops his definition of person in the Liber contra Eutychen et N estorium after a careful consideration of na- * I have to thank cordially Father Brian Shanley, 0.P. for having revised completely this English version, devoting much time and energy to fit the text and the footnotes to the style of The Thomist. He adapted the version in good style and verified the Latin quotations. 435 436 HORST SEIDL ture and substance.1 In the first chapter he sets out to define nature and discovers four possible meanings. The first and broadest definition, embracing both substances and accidents, describes nature as belonging to all things which by their being can be in some way or another be comprehended by reason: "natura est earum rermn quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." A second definition, comprising substances alone both corporeal and incorporeal, describes nature as anything that can effect or suffer something: " natura est vel quod facere vel quod pati possit." A third sense, taken from the Aristotelian analysis of the motion of natural substances, describes nature as the immanent principle of movement : "natura est motus principium per se et non per accidens." Finally, nature can also refer to the formal cause which provides the specific difference: " natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia" (cf. ST Ia. 29, I ad 4). It is this last sense which is most important. In sum, "nature" is a broad term encompassing both composite beings and their causes. Boethius continues in chapter two by first narrowing the relevant sense of nature to substances (thus excluding accidents ) and then presenting a complete division of substances. The major distinction is between corporeal substances and incorporeal substances. Corporeal subdivides further into inanimate and animate, with animate dividing. into insensitive and sensitive and the latter dividing finally into irrational and rational. Incorporeal subdivides into rational and irrational (the life-principle of animals), with rational incorporeal substances being further distinguished into those that are immutable by nature (the Creator) and those that are not so by nature (the human soul and angels) but may become so by virtue of the immutable substance. Boethius then argues that person cannot be affirmed of inanimate beings or irrational animals. A 1 All citations from Boethius are taken from the Loeb text in Boethius: Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918). THE CONCEPT OF PERSON IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 437 final distinction of :substance into universal and particular leads to the conclusion that person must refer to an individual. Thus the background is set for the definition of person which opens the third chapter: " naturae rationalis individua substantia." Person must be an individual substance of a certain nature, namely rational, which nature accounts for the form or specific difference of the particular substance (the fourth meaning of chapter 1). The connection of this definition with Aristotle 's definition of man as a rational animal is unmistakable. It should also be noted that this definition of person is applicable not only to man, in whom the rational nature is not identical with his substance, but also to the... (shrink)

Aufgrund sorgfältiger Untersuchung in phänomenologischer Erkenntnishaltung können die Struktur des Lysis, die künstlerisch-ideelle Gedankenbewegung und damit die Einheit von philosophisch-künstlerischer Gestalt und philosophischem Gehalt des Dialoges in einer strengeren Weise erfasst werden als bisher. Dadurch werden ganz neue Beziehungen zu Gestalt und Gehalt der Politeia sichtbar. Sie erlauben im Verein mit grundsätzlichen Überlegungen zur Methode der datierenden Sprachstatistik und weiteren Beobachtungen, den Lysis chronologisch nach der Politeia anzusetzen - in der Trilogie Phaidros - Lysis - Euthydemos. So können die interpretatorischen (...) Einschränkungen durch das Vorurteil, der Lysis sei ein Frühdialog, überwunden werden. Die positive Interpretation des Dialoges und ihre Vertiefung durch die platonische Prinzipienlehre werden damit auf ungewohnte Weise stärker begründet. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 1 Seiten: 137-146.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 1 Seiten: 281-296.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 61 Heft: 1 Seiten: 107-118.

Over the past several decades, the philosophical community has witnessed the emergence of an important new paradigm for understanding the mind.1 The paradigm is that of machine computation, and its influence has been felt not only in philosophy, but also in all of the empirical disciplines devoted to the study of cognition. Of the several strategies for applying the resources provided by computer and cognitive science to the philosophy of mind, the one that has gained the most attention from philosophers (...) has been the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). CTM was first articulated by Hilary Putnam (1960, 1961), but finds perhaps its most consistent and enduring advocate in Jerry Fodor (1975, 1980, 1981, 1987, 1990, 1994). It is this theory, and not any broader interpretations of what it would be for the mind to be a computer, that I wish to address in this paper. What I shall argue here is that the notion of symbolic representation employed by CTM is fundamentally unsuited to providing an explanation of the intentionality of mental states (a major goal of CTM), and that this result undercuts a second major goal of CTM, sometimes refered to as the vindication of intentional psychology. This line of argument is related to the discussions of derived intentionality by Searle (1980, 1983, 1984) and Sayre (1986, 1987). But whereas those discussions seem to be concerned with the causal dependence of familiar sorts of symbolic representation upon meaning-bestowing acts, my claim is rather that there is not one but several notions of meaning to be had, and that the notions that are applicable to symbols are conceptually dependent upon the notion that is applicable to mental states in the fashion that Aristotle refered to as paronymy. That is, an analysis of the notions of meaning applicable to symbols reveals that they contain presuppositions about meaningful mental states, much as Aristotle's analysis of the sense of healthy that is applied to foods reveals that it means conducive to having a healthy body, and hence any attempt to explain mental semantics in terms of the semantics of symbols is doomed to circularity and regress. I shall argue, however, that this does not have the consequence that computationalism is bankrupt as a paradigm for cognitive science, as it is possible to reconstruct CTM in a fashion that avoids these difficulties and makes it a viable research framework for psychology, albeit at the cost of losing its claims to explain intentionality and to vindicate intentional psychology. I have argued elsewhere (Horst, 1996) that local special sciences such as psychology do not require vindication in the form of demonstrating their reducibility to more fundamental theories, and hence failure to make good on these philosophical promises need not compromise the broad range of work in empirical cognitive science motivated by the computer paradigm in ways that do not depend on these problematic treatments of symbols. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of U.S. farmland owners, operators, and workers by race, ethnicity, and gender. We first review the intersection between racialized and gendered capitalism and farmland ownership and farming in the United States. Then we analyze data from the 2014 Tenure and Ownership Agricultural Land survey, the 2012 Census of Agriculture, and the 2013–2014 National Agricultural Worker Survey to demonstrate that significant nation-wide disparities in farming by race, ethnicity and gender persist in the U.S. In 2012–2014, White (...) people owned 98% and operated 94% of all farmland. They generated 98% of all farm-related income from land ownership and 97% of income from farm owner-operatorship. Meanwhile, People of Color farmers were more likely to be tenants rather than owners, owned less land, and generated less farm-related wealth per person than their White counterparts. Hispanic farmers were also disproportionately farm laborers. In addition to racial and ethnic disparities, there were disparities by gender. About 63% of non-operating landowners, 86% of farm operators, and 87% of tenant farmers were male, and female farmers tended to generate less income per farmer than men. This data provides evidence of ongoing racial, ethnic and gender disparities in agriculture in the United States. We conclude with a call to address the structural drivers of the disparities and with recommendations for better data collection. (shrink)

Nach einer Skizze der Logik wird ihr Nutzen fur andere philosophische Disziplinen herausgearbeitet. Mit minimalen logisch-technischen Mitteln werden philosophische Termini, Theoreme und Konzeptionen analysiert. Insbesondere bei der Untersuchung von philosophischer Terminologie zeigt sich, dass logische Standards fur jede wissenschaftliche Philosophie unabdingbar sind. Das Buch wendet sich an einen breiten philosophisch interessierten Leserkreis und setzt keine logischen Kenntnisse voraus.