Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, die für die Anerkennung einer Pluralität von Welten des Wissens und von Wahrheit argumentiert, wirft die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang des Wissens und der Symbolsysteme des Mythos, der Religion, der Sprache, der Kunst und der Wissenschaft auf. Cassirer hat die Freiheit der Gestaltung der Symbolwelten betont und das Problem der Einheit des Denkens weniger nachdrücklich behandelt. In diesem Band geht es um Cassirer und die Konzeption einer Einheit des Geistes: um den Status und die (...) Formen des Apriorismus, um die Einflüsse moderner Wissenschaften - der Transformationsgruppentheorie in der Geometrie, der Relativitätstheorie, der Psychologie W. Wundts und der Gestaltpsychologie sowie des Konventionalismus Poincarés. Der Systematiker Cassirer wird kritisch befragt: Auf welchen Grundannahmen fußt seine Philosophie und inwieweit sind sie fundiert? (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers introduced the idea of philosophical research on cognition that could enter into competition with psychology, which was developing into an autonomous discipline at that time. In view of the problems of the traditional but still prevailing associationist theory, Ernst Cassirer demanded a more sophisticated theory that could explain the human ability to concentrate one's thoughts on a topic, such as a problem or a task. He presented a representational theory (...) of mind to explain this ability. This paper explicates the scope of this theory and Cassirer's idea of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophers and psychologists. (shrink)

How do people and institutions manage to bring their different perspectives into an effective and productive interplay? How can we overcome obstacles for the creative potentials of distributed perspectives? Traditionally, the perspectives of people and institutions are considered to be fixed and isolated points of view. In such a picture, the perspectives seem determined in advance by positions and persons seem trapped within their perspectival horizons. In contrast, the new approach of this volume’s contributions focuses on the simple but fundamental (...) fact that people always already refer to fellow human beings and coordinate their own perspectives with those of other persons and institutions. The contributions of the present volume concentrate on the structures, mechanisms, and dynamics of the interplays of different perspectives of interacting, communicating, and cooperating persons and institutions. The volume focuses on how the creative potentials as well as the organizational effectiveness of distributed perspectives can be set free. (shrink)