We consider an extension of Gödel logic by a unary operator that enables the addition of non-negative reals to truth-values. Although its propositional fragment has a simple proof system, first-order validity is Π2-hard. We explain the close connection to Scarpellini’s result on Π2-hardness of Łukasiewicz’s logic.

Witnessed Gödel logics are based on the interpretation of () by minimum instead of supremum . Witnessed Gödel logics appear for many practical purposes more suited than usual Gödel logics as the occurrence of proper infima/suprema is practically irrelevant. In this note we characterize witnessed Gödel logics with absoluteness operator w.r.t. witnessed Gödel logics using a uniform translation.

Oft wird nur jenes anerkannt, was "wissenschaftlich beweisbar" ist. Ein solches Vorurteil vergisst, dass es auch andere Wirklichkeiten gibt. Ist unsere Welt ein Blick durch ein Kaleidoskop? Wie kann es sein, dass man eine mehr oder minder große Auswahl panoramenhafter Wirklichkeiten vor sich hat? Ist es möglich, solche Wirklichkeiten zu verlassen und in andere überzuwechseln? Anhand konkreter Beispiele wird dieser Wirklichkeits-Pluralismus beleuchtet. Das erste Beispiel, ein astronomisches, zeigt in aller Ausführlichkeit, auf welche Weise Wirklichkeit entstehen kann. Dann ist von anderen (...) naturwissenschaftlichen Wirklichkeiten die Rede, vom Licht und von der Farbe sowie von einer fremden heilkundlichen Wirklichkeit. Ein zentrales Anliegen von Gerhard Fasching ist ein Denken, welches in einen Wirklichkeitspluralismus mündet. Unser monokulturelles Wirklichkeitsverständnis hat nämlich schon viele Wirklichkeiten unserer eigenen Kultur und fremder Kulturen missachtet und dadurch verloren. Unser humanistisches Weltbild benötigt also ein breiteres Fundament. Das Buch findet zu einem überraschenden Ergebnis: Man selbst gehört nicht zur Wirklichkeit, sondern man steht stets außerhalb jeder Wirklichkeit. GERHARD FASCHING. Geb. 1933 in Wien, Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn., 1966 Habilitation, seit 1970 Ordinarius an der Technischen Universität Wien, Österreich. Er hält Vorlesungen über Aufbau und Eigenschaften der Materie und über Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie. HANS-PETER DÜRR. Em. Univ.-Prof., Direktor em. am Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, München, Deutschland. Träger des Alternativen Nobelpreises. (shrink)

This volume powerfully examines divides and mistrust between urban communities and police. The essays challenge readers to contemplate how eroding trust developed, the concerns and challenges facing divided communities, and possible pathways forward considering whose lives matter.

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

What is morality? How many moral values are there? And what are they? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. This theory predicts that there will be as many different types of morality as there are different types of cooperation. Previous research, drawing on evolutionary game theory, has identified at least seven different types of cooperation, and used them to explain seven different (...) types of morality: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Here we explore the conjecture that these simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a much larger number of more complex moral ‘molecules’, and that as such morality is a combinatorial system. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise a candidate moral molecule, and successfully locate an example of it in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. These findings indicate that morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. Thus morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and powerful theory, that explains why there are many moral values, and successfully predicts what they will be; and it generates a systematic framework that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing. (shrink)

The main markets for this book are in the areas of philosophy, Islamic studies, Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, religious studies and theology.

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) seeks to produce explanations for those machine learning methods which are deemed opaque. However, there is considerable disagreement about what this means and how to achieve it. Authors disagree on what should be explained (topic), to whom something should be explained (stakeholder), how something should be explained (instrument), and why something should be explained (goal). In this paper, I employ insights from means-end epistemology to structure the field. According to means-end epistemology, different means ought to be (...) rationally adopted to achieve different epistemic ends. Applied to XAI, different topics, stakeholders, and goals thus require different instruments. I call this the means-end account of XAI. The means-end account has a descriptive and a normative component: on the one hand, I show how the specific means-end relations give rise to a taxonomy of existing contributions to the field of XAI; on the other hand, I argue that the suitability of XAI methods can be assessed by analyzing whether they are prescribed by a given topic, stakeholder, and goal. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

Many spiritual traditions employ certain mental techniques (meditation) which consist in inhibiting mental activity whilst nonetheless remaining fully conscious, which is supposed to lead to a realisation of one’s own true nature prior to habitual self-substantialisation. In this paper I propose that this practice can be understood as a special means of becoming aware of consciousness itself as such. To explain this claim I conduct some phenomenologically oriented considerations about the nature of consciousness qua presence and the problem of self-presence (...) of this presence. (shrink)

Substantivalists believe that spacetime and its parts are fundamental constituents of reality. Relationalists deny this, claiming that spacetime enjoys only a derivative existence. I begin by describing how the Galilean symmetries of Newtonian physics tell against both Newton's brand of substantivalism and the most obvious relationalist alternative. I then review the obvious substantivalist response to the problem, which is to ditch substantival space for substantival spacetime. The resulting position has many affinities with what are arguably the most natural interpretations of (...) special and general relativity. I move on to consider and reject two recent antisubstantivalist lines of thought. The interim conclusion is that the best argument for relationalism is an appeal to Ockham's razor. However, for this to be successful there must be genuine relationalist theories that share the theoretical virtues of their substantivalist rivals but without the additional ontological commitment. The bulk of the paper is therefore an investigation of various concrete relationalist proposals. I distinguish three options for the relationalist in the face of the success of Galilean invariant physics and trace how these generalise to relativistic physics. One of the options is particularly promising but, since its basic objects end up being spacetime points, this does not help the prospects of relationalism as traditionally conceived. I end with some reflections on the fate of substantivalism in the aftermath of the Hole Argument, concluding that we have as yet to be given good reasons to abandon the natural, substantivalist interpretation of current physics. (shrink)

The central thesis of the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta is the doctrine of the identity of brahman and ātman. Brahman is essentially sat, being as such in the sense of the dimension of existence in which all worldly goings-on take place. The ātman is conceived as the “seer,” i.e., as the pure subject qua the to-whom of any experiential givenness; and this subject, in turn, is understood not as some entity that performs the seeing but as nothing but the very (...) seeing itself, i.e., as consciousness in the sense of the abiding presence-realm in which permanently changing experiential contents come to givenness. The Advaitic thesis is that this presence-realm—the seeing that takes place “in us”—is ultimately nothing other than the universal being-dimension—brahman—itself, modified by the mental contents of an innerworldly individual. This paper attempts to vindicate this doctrine by a series of reflections on the nature of the I and of reality as such. It argues that Advaita Vedānta can be viewed as a version of cosmopsychism in its idealist version which does not view consciousness as one of the features of the cosmos as a whole, but as its exclusive intrinsic nature, i.e., as the very essence of being as such. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ;dignity, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for (...) a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity for this would violate autonomy but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant s moral philosophy. (shrink)

For Advaita Vedānta, consciousness is to be distinguished from all contents of consciousness that might be introspectively detectable: It is precisely consciousness of whatever contents it is conscious of and not itself one of these contents. Its only nature is, Advaita holds, prakāśa ; in itself it is devoid of any content or structure and can never become an object. This paper elaborates on this kind of understanding of consciousness in order to next explain why it might be fruitful for (...) developing a clear understanding of the nature of the so-called problem of consciousness. Today’s philosophy of mind tends to conceive of consciousness in terms of qualia, thereby taking it as a special kind of object. This renders the antimaterialist claim of the distinctness of consciousness from all physical features vulnerable to the materialist reply that the difference in question might be a merely epistemological matter, i.e., a matter of different modes of givenness without difference in what is thus given. This move, however – this paper argues –, is impossible without resulting in circularity or infinite regress with regard to consciousness in the sense of givenness itself. (shrink)

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytic approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken captive by 'continental' approaches, and that the effects on the discipline have been largely deleterious. (...) The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. The present volume represents an attempt to begin a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the essays herein are sympathetic toward the enterprise the editors are calling analytic theology; but, with an eye toward balance, the volume also includes essays and an introduction that try to offer more critical perspectives on analytic theology. (shrink)

Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, others who have compatible preferences and the shared background knowledge needed to solve interpersonal coordination problems. The present study investigates the nature of such similarity within social networks, asking: What do friends have in common? And what is the relationship between similarity and altruism? The results show that similarity declines with frequency of contact; similarity in general is a significant predictor of altruism and emotional closeness; and, specifically, sharing (...) a sense of humor, hobbies and interests, moral beliefs, and being from the same area are the best predictors. These results shed light on the structure of relationships within networks and provide a possible checklist for predicting attitudes toward strangers, and in-group identification. (shrink)

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise. From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies (...) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In _Women as Weapons of War_, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to _bare_ arms is a sign of freedom and progress. Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence. (shrink)

Generative AI has gained a lot of attention in society, business, and science. This trend has increased since 2018, and the big breakthrough came in 2022. In particular, AI-based text and image generators are now widely used. This raises a variety of ethical issues. The present paper first gives an introduction to generative AI and then to applied ethics in this context. Three specific image generators are presented: DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. The author goes into technical details and (...) basic principles, and compares their similarities and differences. This is followed by an ethical discussion. The paper addresses not only risks, but opportunities for generative AI. A summary with an outlook rounds off the article. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the nature of the “I” (or “self”) and whether it is presupposed by the very existence of conscious experiences (as that which “has” them) or whether it is, instead, in some way constituted by them. I argue for the former view and try to show that the very nature of experience implies a non-constituted synchronic and diachronic transcendence of the experiencing “I” with regard to its experiences, an “I” which defies any objective characterization. Finally I (...) suggest that the self, though irreducible to inter-experiential relations, is not a “separately existing entity”, but should be conceived of as a dimension , namely the dimension of first-personal manifestation of the experiences. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Sense and Non-Sense of (...) Revolt_, _Intimate Revolt_, and _Hannah Arendt_. Editor Kelly Oliver has also added new material to the introduction, summarizing Kristeva's latest intellectual endeavors and updating the bibliography. (shrink)

Despite its importance in the history of philosophy, the work of the Spanish thinker Averro"es (1126-1198) has been left largely unexplored in this century. This book is the only general account of Averro"es' philosophy in English. Leaman analyzes his thought and influence, particularly his metaphysics and theory of meaning, arguing that while his work belongs within the cultural and political context of medieval Islam, it remains of considerable philosophical and historical significance.

Is the objective passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? There are two easy routes to an affirmative answer: (1) provide a deflationary analysis of passage compatible with the block universe, or (2) argue that a privileged global present is compatible with relativity. (1) does not take passage seriously. (2) does not take relativity seriously. This paper is concerned with the viability of views that seek to take both passage and relativity seriously. The investigation proceeds by considering how traditional A-theoretic (...) conceptions of passage might be generalized to relativistic space-times without incorporating a privileged global present. I argue that the most promising position marries the idea that open possibilities for the future are settled as time passes with a ‘non-standard’ interpretation of the relevant formal models. (shrink)

John Earman's recent proposal that a substantive version of general covariance consists in the requirement that diffeomorphism invariance be a gauge symmetry is critically assessed. I argue that such a principle does not serve to differentiate general relativity from pre-relativistic theories. A model-theoretic characterization of two formulations of specially-relativistic theories is suggested. Diffeomorphisms are symmetries of only one such style of formulation and, I argue, Earman's proposal does not provide a reason to deny diffeomorphisms the status of gauge transformations relative (...) to this formulation. Carlo Rovelli's distinction between "passive" and "active" diffeomorphism invariance is also clarified. (shrink)

In his paper ``What is Structural Realism?'' James Ladyman drew a distinction between epistemological structural realism and metaphysical (or ontic) structural realism. He also drew a suggestive analogy between the perennial debate between substantivalist and relationalist interpretations of spacetime on the one hand, and the debate about whether quantum mechanics treats identical particles as individuals or as `non-individuals' on the other. In both cases, Ladyman's suggestion is that an ontic structural realist interpretation of the physics might be just what is (...) needed to overcome the stalemate. The main thesis of this paper is that, whatever the interpretative difficulties of generally covariant spacetime physics are, they do not support or suggest structural realism. In particular, I hope to show that there is in fact no analogy that supports a similar interpretation of the metaphysics of spacetime points and of quantum particles. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to add one further value to the previously articulated “universal values” and to describe the constituent components of three universal values.Design/methodology/approachThis interpretive/constructivist study of Australia's largest online community of seniors involved a 30‐month ethnographic investigation. After an initial period of 11 months of observing social interaction on the entire site, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 participants, selected according to criterion sampling, a form of purposive sampling.FindingsFour key moral values were identified: equality, freedom, (...) respect and trust. All of them had been found in other studies, with equality and respect (as human dignity) identified as universal values. The findings from this study suggest that freedom is another universal value.Originality/valueThis study extends the understanding of universal values to include freedom. Further, it demonstrates the constituent components for freedom, and those of two other universal values previously identified in the literature, equality and human dignity, as well as revealing linkages between these three values. (shrink)

A systematic treatment of Hume's conception of imagination in all the main topics of his philosophy.

This paper uses a schema for infinite regress arguments to provide a solution to the problem of the infinite regress of justification. The solution turns on the falsity of two claims: that a belief is justified only if some belief is a reason for it, and that the reason relation is transitive.

Diffeomorphism invariance is sometimes taken to be a criterion of background independence. This claim is commonly accompanied by a second, that the genuine physical magnitudes (the ``observables'') of background-independent theories and those of background-dependent (non-diffeomorphism-invariant) theories are essentially different in nature. I argue against both claims. Background-dependent theories can be formulated in a diffeomorphism-invariant manner. This suggests that the nature of the physical magnitudes of relevantly analogous theories (one background free, the other background dependent) is essentially the same. The temptation (...) to think otherwise stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of spacetime coordinates in background-dependent theories. (shrink)

We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that correct usage of the mathematics of general relativity `blocks' the argument.

The synthetization of voices, or speech synthesis, has been an object of interest for centuries. It is mostly realized with a text-to-speech system, an automaton that interprets and reads aloud. This system refers to text available for instance on a website or in a book, or entered via popup menu on the website. Today, just a few minutes of samples are enough to be able to imitate a speaker convincingly in all kinds of statements. This article abstracts from actual products (...) and actual technological realization. Rather, after a short historical outline of the synthetization of voices, exemplary applications of this kind of technology are gathered for promoting the development, and potential applications are discussed critically to be able to limit them if necessary. The ethical and legal challenges should not be underestimated, in particular with regard to informational and personal autonomy and the trustworthiness of media. (shrink)

This book is a critical introduction to contemporary French philosopher Jacques Rancière. It is the first introduction in any language to cover all of his major work and offers an accessible presentation and searching evaluation of his significant contributions to the fields of politics, pedagogy, history, literature, film theory and aesthetics. This book traces the emergence of Rancière’s thought over the last forty-five years and situates it in the diverse intellectual contexts in which it intervenes. Beginning with his egalitarian critique (...) of his former teacher Louis Althusser, the book tracks the subsequent elaboration of Rancière’s highly original conception of equality. This approach reveals that a grasp of his early archival and historiographical work is vital for a full understanding both of his later politics and his ongoing investigation of art and aesthetics. Along the way, this book explains and analyses key terms in Rancière’s very distinctive philosophical lexicon, including the ‘police’ order, ‘disagreement’, ‘political subjectivation’, ‘literarity’, the ‘part which has no part’, the ‘regimes of art’ and ‘the distribution of the sensory’. This book argues that Rancière’s work sets a new standard in contestatory critique and concludes by reflecting on the philosophical and policy implications of his singular project. (shrink)

The problems of evil and suffering have been extensively discussed in Jewish philosophy, and much of the discussion has centred on the Book of Job. In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, (...) Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers, and suggests that a discussion of evil and suffering is really a discussion about our relationship with God. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as mainly of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophy. This volume challenges this belief, and provides an indispensable reference tool. It includes: * Detailed discussions of the most important figures from earliest times to the present day * Chapters on key concepts in Islamic philosophy, and on relevant traditions in Greek and western philosophy * Contributions by 50 leading experts in the field, from over 16 countries * Analysis (...) of a vast geographical area with discussions of Arabic, Persian, Indian, Jewish, Turkish and South East Asian philosophy * Comprehensive bibliographical information and an extensive index Seyyed Hossein Nasr is Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. He has held academic positions across the United States, as well as in Beirut and Tehran. He has written extensively on many aspects of Islamic philosophy; his work has been translated into over 20 languages. Oliver Leaman is a Reader in Philosophy at Liverpool's John Moores University and has published widely on Islamic philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

I have a clear idea of what it means that I have experiences in the past or future, and it does not seem to mean that experiences take place that possess certain content-characteristics, but simply and irreducibly thatIexperience them – i.e. that they are, at the time of their occurrence, experientially presentto me–, whatever their contents may be. So the central question regarding personal identity is: What is this “I”to whomthe experiences are present, and what is the nature of its (...) identity across changing experiences? Following Zahavi, I suggest that the subject is not to be conceived as a merely postulated trans-experiential entity but has its very being in experiential presence itself. Yet the question is how to conceive of this presence. When we understand it as a property or quality of the experiences (as Zahavi seems to do), the problem is that every experience that has ever been experienced possesses this property, and so it cannot account for what it means that some experiences are experiencedby meand not some other subject. In contrast, I suggest (following Klawonn’s “I-dimension” theory) understanding experiential presence not as a property of the experiences but as a dimension which is able to comprise many experiences and to abide as identical through their change – an idea that can also be found in some formulations of Zahavi’s, but which he does not distinguish with the necessary clarity from the quality account. (shrink)

In his contribution to this special issue, Almaas is keen to distinguish the individual streams of consciousness from 'pure awareness'. Since the existence of the former is presumably quite uncontroversial in present-day philosophy, I wish to concentrate on the latter, in particular on Almaas's claim that pure awareness is non-individual and ultimately it is 'the true owner of all experiences of all streams'. In my contribution, I wish to make plausible, by a philosophical reflection on the puzzling nature of the (...) I, that the ultimate subject of experience is indeed not the individual but 'the pure ego of the universe'. (shrink)

Nach Euklid: Raumgeschichten in Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur der Moderne. Dieser Band rekonstruiert Raumentwürfe aus der Philosophie Husserls und Cassirers, der Gestaltpsychologie, der Kunstgeschichte Riegls und Einsteins, schließlich Rilkes und Musils literarische Räume. Um 1900 verliert die Geometrie ihre Anschaulichkeit: Mehrdimensionale und nicht-euklidische Räume lassen sich nicht mehr vor Augen führen. Welchen Effekt hat dieser epistemologische Bruch auf jene Disziplinen, für die bis dahin Euklids Geometrie als Modell eines exakten und zugleich anschaulichen Wissens galt? Wie verändern sich die Raumkonzepte in (...) Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur, wenn sich ihre Weltbilder nicht mehr in einem dreidimensionalen, kartesischen Gehäuse unterbringen lassen? (shrink)