Met als hoofdgedachte dat begrip voor het gevoel en het lijden van de mens centraal moet staan, geeft een psychiater zijn inzichten over de wetenschappelijke basis van de psycho-analyse en over de bestaande psychoanalytische theorieën.

The present volume contains the proceedings of an international conference that was held at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Leuven, October 28 to 31, 2008. Poetics' and religion' take an important place in Ricoeur's oeuvre; yet they still require further investigation. The common link between these two concepts may well be found in the creative dimension of language. Poetics reflect upon it; religion turns to it for help in expressing the experience of the transcendent. Ricoeur has (...) explored and offered ways for reflecting precisely upon this junction. Contributors have studied the many ways these concepts function in the earlier and in the later work, and how they have been used and received in various in various fields and disciplines, including theology. Scholars have been working with Ricoeur in anthropology, ethics, Biblical studies, systematic and practical theology, intercultural philosophy, spirituality, and other disciplines, which together makes for a wide palette of interpretations. Ricoeur's audacious explorations on the intersection of creative language, religion, and philosophical reflection continue to open new ways for reflection in many different fields. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DESIRE, TECHNOLOGY, AND POLITICS Pieter Tijmes University ofTwente This essay examines the relationship between desire, technology, and politics in three stages. First, I discuss modernity as a deviation from the general human way of life. By that I mean the general life pattern of human beings since "the foundation of the world," since the emergence of human culture. The expression designates the traditional pattern of subsistence economy. This (...) general pattern is contrasted with modern life as of the sixteenth-century in the West, from which time capitalism governs habits of accumulation and spending that we take to be "natural." But it is in fact exceptional when seen from a larger historical perspective. In the wake of René Girard and in particular Paul Dumouchel, modernity is to be interpreted as the realm of scarcity which is the result of a new way of dealing with mimetic desire. Second, this theory of scarcity is connected with Albert Borgmann's device paradigm of technology which is shown to fit the paradigm of scarcity perfectly. According to Borgmann technology is a matter of devices that procure commodities. In modern ideology technology turns out to be the ally against scarcity. Third, this pattern of the device paradigm is recognized in all our societal and political processes. In this context political problems are solved along the lines of the device paradigm. The consequence is that political ideas and ideals have been eroded. I. Traditional and Modern Society The human way of life that has emerged in the West since the Middle Ages is a new phenomenon in history. One could even argue that modernity as the new life pattern is a deviation from the general human way of life. Nearly everybody agrees on the difference, but there is no unanimity about the nature of the difference between traditional and specific modern 86Pieter Tijimes patterns. A host of interpreters, Karl Marx, Georg Tönnies, Max Weber, Norbert Elias—to mention only a few Germans—have commented on the transition from what I am calling the general way of life to modernity as a kind of deviation. In the wake of René Girard and Paul Dumouchel I would characterize modernity as a different way of dealing with the problem of mimetic desire as the basic form of human behavior. By mimetic desire I mean that people do not cherish authentic desires, but take their desires from others. They imitate others in their desiring. It is the other who tells them what is desirable. This theory of mimetic desire is at bottom a theory of conflict, because conflicts arise from the situation where one desires what another also desires, with the result that the two desires clash with each other over the same object. The norm in traditional cultures is to restrict mimetic desire by various taboos, rites, etc. It is specifically modern to set it loose, with consequences I shall examine herein. Let me formulate this theory in another way: we are not born with fixed ideas, wishes, desires, but we learn them from the social and cultural environment we were dependent upon. Our parents were the first significant others. We learned to look at the world through their eyes. To us reality looked as they saw it. They provided us with their frame of reference to interpret it. This social and cultural learning process is of eminent importance for how and what we think, want or feel. What we found after our birth became our point of departure and was considered as "normal." In this sense, children are the most adapted beings. They will only speak the language they hear, although they have an innate ability for every possible language. Thus we desire in terms of the desires we meet in our environment. We do not start life with a fixed identity, but identity is the result of a learning process that goes on through our whole life. On the one hand, mimesis opens up our possibility of relationships with our fellow men and the world, and on the other hand, mimesis can also be an invasion route for all sorts of entanglements, conflicts and rivalries. How to deal with mimetic desire is a cultural problem. In... (shrink)

Het verhaal van de natuurkunde is ook een persoonlijk verhaal, want achter de feiten gaan altijd mensen schuil. Van Einstein, die Beethoven op zijn viool probeert te spelen, tot Van Swinden, die jarenlang in het planetarium in Franeker werkt. Cees Andriesse, die 'Titan kan niet slapen' schreef, een biografie over Christiaan Huygens, heeft veel gevoel voor deze verhalen. In deze nieuwe geschiedenis van de natuurkunde wordt dan ook ruim aandacht besteed aan de zoektocht en wederwaardigheden van grote figuren, maar ook (...) van collega's uit de tijd dat Andriesse in Groningen werkte. De wetenschap draait om onmiskenbare relaties tussen harde feiten; die gaan spreken onder de pen van Andriesse, die oog heeft voor de ontdekkers en zichtbaar maakt hoe zijn eigen begrip is ontstaan. Het is hem niet te doen om de mechanisering van de natuurkunde, maar om de historisering daarvan. Dit boek biedt een nieuw perspectief op grote ontdekkingen, waarbij zowel God, als literatuur als psychologie een rol spelen. (shrink)

This book discusses the Aristotelian setting of Thomas Hobbes' main work on natural philosophy, "De Corpore (1655).

We argue that an understanding of livestock farming as normative practice clarifies how sustainability is to be understood in livestock farming. The sustainability of livestock farming is first approached by investigating its identity. We argue that the economic aspect qualifies and the formative aspect founds the livestock farming practice. Observing the normativity related to these aspects will be the first task for the livestock farmer. In addition, we can distinguish conditioning norms applicable to the livestock farming practice which should be (...) observed for competent performance of the practice. Failing to do justice to this normativity might affect the practice’s sustainability only in the long term—this is especially the case with conditioning norms. Motives to observe normativity have, therefore, the character of an ultimate conviction regarding the flourishing of the practice. Finally, the sustainability of the livestock farming practice crucially depends on the broader food system of which it is part. (shrink)

Flanders will complete the migration from analog to digital terrestrial television by the end of 2008. Despite the cable dominated television landscape, the Flemish government is aiming at a smooth transition from analog to digital terrestrial television. Therefore, a multi-methodical study has been set up by order of the Flemish government to understand the specific features and needs of analog antenna viewers and their expectations for the analog switch-off. The study shows that there are three distinctive types of analog antenna (...) viewers. The results demonstrate that the antenna viewers are rather badly informed about the upcoming analog switch-off, which may lead to a negative attitude and may impede a smooth transition. Finally, antenna viewers seem to be rather conservative viewers: they wish to keep on watching the same television programs from the same channels. Moreover, digital terrestrial television is their preferred alternative. (shrink)

"Philosophy for Children" has preponderantly started from the assumption that there is no fundamental difference between the thinking of adults and the thinking of children: both make use of the same mental operations. Moreover, children seem to be interested in the same basic questions about life and its meaning as adults. So children and adults apparently perform the same activities when they join in philosophical discussions. It is also easily assumed that children are particularly apt to philosophical thinking, because they (...) are inquisitive, unconventional and - contrary to traditional educational opinion - rational, often even more so than adults. (shrink)

This book is about how to understand quantum mechanics by means of a modal interpretation. Modal interpretations provide a general framework within which quantum mechanics can be considered as a theory that describes reality in terms of physical systems possessing definite properties. Quantum mechanics is standardly understood to be a theory about probabilities with which measurements have outcomes. Modal interpretations are relatively new attempts to present quantum mechanics as a theory which, like other physical theories, describes an observer-independent reality. In (...) this book, Pieter Vermaas summarises the results of this work. The book will be of great value to undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in philosophy of science, and physics departments with an interest in learning about modal interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Indigenous-Australian fiction offers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices the opportunity to carve out an Indigenous space within as well as without Australian identity after more than two...

Chapter The Triumph of Reason; Anticipating the Bio- Technetronic Civilization I believe information technology is at the basis of a new age of civilization ...

This paper describes a belief understanding system which, taking an interview-text as its input, builds a conceptual representation of a respondent's belief system concerning a given object. Central to the understanding process is the identification of the connections between the object and the believer's goals. A general scheme governing the inference-processes with respect to these object-goal relationships is presented. It is suggested that the implementation of BUS could proceed from Schank's et al Integrated Partial Parsing program. The system's behavior is (...) illustrated by examining the processing of a fragment of an interview-text. Some implications for the study of belief systems are discussed. (shrink)

This article has two general aims. It first of all critically reconsiders the empirical turn’s dismissal of transcendentalism in the philosophy of technology, in particular through the work of Ihde and Verbeek, and defends the continuing relevance of the notion of the transcencental in thinking about technology today, illustrating this mainly through a reading of Stiegler’s understanding of the human condition as a technical condition and his view of human (noetic) evolution as proceeding from a process of technical exteriorization. The (...) crucial issue that is missed by postphenomenology and the empirical turn is that technology itself in its empiricity occupies the (periodically changing) place of the transcendental. It thus fails to consider the transcendental operativity of technical artifacts within its own empiricist stance. Secondly, it argues for the continuing importance and usefulness of the idea of Technology with a capital T, equally discarded by the representatives of the empirical turn, in particular against the emerging backdrop of the Anthropocene as the age of decisive anthropogenic forcing of the planet and the growing dominance of what has recently been called the technosphere in Earth system science. With Stiegler I show that a proper, inherent dynamic of technology must be acknowledged historically, anthropologically, techno-evolutionarily as well as (techno)phenomenologically. I conclude by demonstrating that our time of planetary crisis summons us to redirect our attention to technology from the empirical to the transcendental, and from the micro-level to the macro-level again. (shrink)

The role of faith and religion in international development cooperation is hotly debated today. The legitimacy of this role remains, however, often confided to instrumental reasons. Yet, thinking about faith and religion only in instrumental terms leaves unquestioned the possibility of a religious background of development cooperation as a practice itself and the potential role of faith through individual practitioners that operate within secular NGOs, and research and policy institutes. The aim of the present paper is therefore to consider the (...) structural role of faith and worldview in relation to agricultural development, moving beyond the discourse of instrumentality. We do this by focusing on Giller and Andersson’s political agronomy analysis of the promotion of Conservation Agriculture in Zimbabwe by the faith-based organisation ‘Foundations for Farming’. We argue that a distinction should be made between religion as a practice of believers and faith functioning as a worldview in every practice. In addition, we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between different kinds of practices involved in agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa, namely farming practice, agronomic scientific practice, and faith practice. The value of this philosophical analysis is that it challenges a dichotomous model of ‘science-based versus faith-based’ approaches to agricultural development. Furthermore, specific kinds of normativity are identified as always already functioning inside practices, rather than practices being neutral spaces that are infused with normativity by applying external ethical standards. (shrink)

The debate on the conventionality of simultaneity and the debate on the dimensionality of the world have been central in the philosophy of special relativity. The link between both debates however has rarely been explored. The purpose of this paper is to gauge what implications the former debate has for the latter. I show the situation to be much more subtle than was previously argued, and explain how the ontic versus epistemic distinction in the former debate impacts the latter. Despite (...) claims to the contrary, I conclude that special relativity leaves the debate on the dimensionality of the world underdetermined. (shrink)

In coarse-grained environments specialists are generally predicted to dominate. Empirically, however, coexistence with generalists is often observed. We present a simple, but previously unrecognized, mechanism for coexistence of a habitat generalist and a number of habitat specialist species. In our model all species have a metapopulation structure in a landscape consisting of patches of different habitat types, governed by local extinction and colonization. Each specialist is limited to its specific type of habitat. The generalist can use more types of habitat, (...) has a lower local competitive ability but can exploit patches left open by the specialists. Our modeling shows that coexistence is easily possible. The mechanism amounts to a colonization/competition trade-off at the landscape level, where the colonization advantage of the inferior competitor does not arise from a higher colonization rate but from its ability to use more types of habitat. Habitat availability has to be intermediate: when there are few patches of each habitat, only the generalist is able to maintain itself and when there are many patches, high propagule pressure of the specialists excludes the generalist. Habitat selection or temporal variations in relative habitat quality are not necessary for coexistence. Increased niche-width, colonization rate or local competitive ability of the generalist enhances its performance compared to the specialists. Various types of habitat degradation favour generalism. When able to use a broad range of habitats, generalists can generate so much propagule pressure that only a low level of local competitive ability is needed to globally exclude the specialists. Hence, in a reversal of the original problem, the question is why there are so many specialist metapopulations? (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the development of the concept of a ‘law’ (of nature) in the work of the Dutch natural philosopher and experimenter Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692–1761). Since Van Musschenbroek is commonly described as one of the first ‘Newtonians’ on the Continent in the secondary literature, we focus more specifically on its relation to Newton’s views on this issue. Although he was certainly indebted to Newton for his thinking on laws (of nature), Van Musschenbroek’s views can be seen (...) to diverge from Newton’s on crucial points. We show, moreover, how his thinking on laws of nature was shaped by both international and local factors. We start with a brief discussion of Newton’s concept of ‘laws of nature’ in order to set the stage for Van Musschenbroek’s. We then document the development of Van Musschenbroek’s views on laws of nature in chronological order. We demonstrate how his thinking on laws of nature was tied to institutional, theological and scientific factors. We conclude by pointing to the broader significance of this case study for our understanding of the development of the concept ‘law of nature’ during the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Er is de laatste decennia nogal wat te doen over de metafoor en haar functie. En vaak wordt daarbij verwezen naar een belangrijke tekst van de Griekse filosoof Aristoteles. Ik wil in het hierna volgende nagaan wat Aristoteles over de metafoor zegt. Ik begin met de hierboven bedoelde passage in haar verband zo letterlijk mogelijk te vertalen. Dan bezie ik verder wat Aristoteles met de metafoor die hij als voorbeeld gebruikt, doet en vervolgens bezien we wat Aristoteles verder over de (...) ‘overdracht’ zegt, en wat enkele geleerden zeggen over Aristoteles-en-de-metafoor. Tenslotte stel ik de vraag of, afgezien van Aristoteles, er reden is om te denken dat de metafoor een ‘cognitief extra’ heeft boven een mededeling in normale bewoordingen, en speciaal de wat soms genoemd wordt ‘levende’ metafoor. Ik zelf kan daar niet van overtuigd raken. (shrink)

In this dialogue with Yuk Hui, Pieter Lemmens explains the discipline called philosophy of technology and gives a concise overview of the most important contemporary approaches within this field. He also offers a critical evaluation of what are probably the two most salient characteristics of contemporary philosophy of technology, the so-called “empirical turn” and the “ethical turn,” which are deeply related and partly reflect the discipline’s on-going alignment with the global neoliberal agenda of exclusively profit-driven technological innovation. He also (...) critically reflects on recent developments in the molecular and informational life sciences such as genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and synthetic biology. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1. The settling of a language -- 2. The Whorf hypothesis -- 3. Relativism or a universal theory? -- 4. What does language have to do with logic and mathematics? -- 5. A test bed for grammatical theories -- 6. The Chomsky hierarchy in perpsective -- 7. Reflexivity and identity in language and cognition -- 8. The generalized logic hierarchy and its cognitive implications -- 9. The intensionalization of extensions.

We generalize the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics so that it may be applied to composite systems represented by arbitrary density operators. We discuss the interpretation these density operators receive and relate this to the discussion about the interpretation of proper and improper mixtures in the standard interpretation.

‘The art of living with ICTs ’ today not only means finding new ways to cope, interact and create new lifestyles on the basis of the new digital technologies individually, as ‘consumer-citizens’. It also means inventing new modes of living, producing and, not in the least place, struggling collectively, as workers and producers. As the so-called digital revolution unfolds in the context of a neoliberal cognitive and consumerist capitalism, its ‘innovations’ are predominantly employed to modulate and control both production processes (...) and consumer behavior in view of the overall goal of extracting surplus value. Today, the digital networks overwhelmingly destroy social autonomy, instead engendering increasing social heteronomy and proletarianization. Yet it is these very networks themselves, as technical pharmaka in the sense of French ‘technophilosopher’ Bernard Stiegler, that can be employed as no other to struggle against this tendency. This paper briefly explores this possibility by reflecting upon current diagnoses of our ‘technological situation’ by some exemplary post-operaist Marxists from a Stieglerian, pharmacological perspective. (shrink)

People can learn to perform new tasks very quickly by making use of lower‐level skills they have developed when learning previous tasks. Hoekstra, Martens, and Taatgen model this process, showing how a system trained on simple tasks (visual search and two working memory tasks) can then quickly learn to perform the attentional blink task, and it ends up making the same sorts of errors as people do.

This book explores the dynamics of the commentary and textbook traditions in Aristotelian natural philosophy under the headings of doctrine, method, and scientific and social status. It enquires what the evolution of the Aristotelian commentary tradition can tell us about the character of natural philosophy as a pedagogical tool, as a scientific enterprise, and as a background to modern scientific thought. In a unique attempt to cut old-fashioned historiographic divisions, it brings together scholars of ancient, medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth-century philosophy. (...) The book covers a remarkably broad range of topics: it starts with the first Greek commentators and ends with Leibniz. (shrink)

In 2010, the Dutch Scientific Council for Governmental Policy called for an explicit and adequate intervention ethics for policy on international development cooperation. Yet, as appears from a careful reading of their report, the council’s own overall commitment to a modernist worldview hinders the fruitful development of such an intervention ethics. There is, however, a strand in their thinking that draws attention to the importance of practical knowledge. We argue specifically that an intervention ethics for development cooperation in agriculture should (...) start from this practical knowledge, which points to the inherent normativity of agricultural development cooperation. That is, agricultural development cooperation is a normative practice of which the inherent normativity consists in facilitating other practices in the agricultural domain. As such, agricultural development cooperation should respect the normativity inherent in those other practices. (shrink)

In this reply I try to show that, contrary to Milberry’s apparent assertion, the general intellect of the multitude does not have the explanatory robustness she accredits to it. Digital network technologies are currently overwhelmingly effective in proletarianizing and disempowering the cognitariat and only an active technopolitics of deproletarianization could reverse this hegemonic situation. In my response to Verbeek, I attempt to correct his misinterpretation of the Stieglerian approach as being dialectical in nature and show that, far from reinstating the (...) humanist dichotomy between human beings and technologies, my analysis assumes their original, albeit fundamentally ambiguous and even ‘uncanny’ [unheimlich] interconnection. I conclude with pointing out some implications of this view for a ‘really realistic’ political theory of technology. (shrink)

Vladimir Putin’s legitimation of Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine raises questions about traditional understandings of nation and empire. Should we contrast the two in terms of values and practices? In this case, Putin uses both nationalist and Imperialist rhetoric to justify his actions. My essay questions how we understand nation and empire using the example of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. How did this empire develop laws, institutions and administrative practices to manage conflicts and claims around language use and nationalism? (...) How did Austria’s governments rule a multi-lingual, multi-confessional society effectively, without resorting to brutal policies of nationalization? When nationalist conflicts arose in different settings, how and why did they originate? I conclude that in European terms, Imperial Austria and even nationalist Hungary apparently managed daily-life issues around diverse language use and religious practice far more humanely and effectively than did the successor nation states after 1918. (shrink)

Since Aristotle and the Stoa, there has been a clash, worsened by modern predicate logic, between logically defined operator meanings and natural intuitions. Pragmatics has tried to neutralize the clash by an appeal to the Gricean conversational maxims. The present study argues that the pragmatic attempt has been unsuccessful. The “softness” of the Gricean explanation fails to do justice to the robustness of the intuitions concerned, leaving the relation between the principles evoked and the observed facts opaque. Moreover, there are (...) cases where the Gricean maxims fail to apply. A more adequate solution consists in the devising of a sound natural logic, part of the innate cognitive equipment of mankind. This account has proved successful in conjunction with a postulated cognitive mechanism in virtue of which the universe of discourse is stepwise and recursively restricted, so that the negation selects different complements according to the degree of restrictedness of Un. This mechanism explains not only the discrepancies between natural logical intuitions and known logical systems; it also accounts for certain systematic lexicalization gaps in the languages of the world. Finally, it is shown how stepwise restriction of Un produces the ontogenesis of natural predicate logic, while at the same time resolving the intuitive clashes with established logical systems that the Gricean maxims sought to explain. (shrink)

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.