When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, (...) but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

Makerspaces and hacklabs are believed to encourage a positive attitude towards gaining computer skills. Within these communities for peer production, citizens can apply cutting-edge technologies in DIY projects. In recent decades, mushrooming makerspaces and hacklabs were embraced by the tech industry and governments alike. Feminist makerspaces and hacklabs, however, as they are centred around a queer feminist agenda, have raised eyebrows. In order to foster diversity in tech development, they create safer spaces for self-expression. Here, feminist laymen*, makers, designers, artists (...) and tinkerers experiment with open-source hardware and software. Art and design projects emerging from feminist hacklabs focus on issues of representation and democratic participation in digital media, as well as on ways of reclaiming one’s own body. This article tries to unpack how, after an exhibition on sexual health norms, a feminist hacklab was attacked by local right-wing and conservative politicians. The attack resulted in the defunding of the feminist hacklab. But it also started a transformation process within the collective, as members became aware of critical interferences of diffracting marginalisations. The crisis triggered a discussion on how each member was threatened to very different degrees; for example, there was more at stake for members depending on their legal status in the country. The right-wing and conservative campaign against the feminist hacklab damaged the initiative, but at the same time it pushed the collective to generate increased vehemence and resilience. (shrink)

How is violence conventionally portrayed and where does violence lie in representation? How does photography mediate the relationships between different forms and ideas, moments and experiences of violence? These were some of the questions addressed in a conversation between artist Harri Pälviranta and philosopher Stefanie Baumann organized by Alexandra Athanasiadou, founder and director of the online platform Philosophy & Photography Lab (PHLSPH), during the international Photography Festival, Imago Lisboa, in Lisbon during October 2022. The discussion presented here is edited (...) from a transcript by Athanasiadou. It took place at Lusófona University in Lisbon on the occasion of Pälviranta’s exhibition at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea (MNAC) (6 October 2021–8 January 2023) and focuses on two series of works in the exhibition, News Portraits and Choreography of Violence. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume’s conception of objects in Book I of the Treatise. What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, I show that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. However, I argue that he struggled with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believed that we always and universally imagine that objects are (...) the causes of our perceptions. On the other hand, he thought that we only imagine such causes when we reach a “philosophical” level of thought. This tension manifests itself in Hume’s account of personal identity; a tension that, I argue, Hume acknowledges in the Appendix to the Treatise. As a result of presenting a detailed account of Hume’s conception of objects, we are forced to accommodate new interpretations of, at least, Hume’s notions of belief, personal identity, justification and causality. (shrink)

In "Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual Content", Robert Hanna argues for a very strong kind of non-conceptualism, and claims that this kind of non-conceptualism originally has been developed by Kant. But according to "Kant's Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects and the Gap in the B Deduction", Kant's non-conceptualism poses a serious problem for his argument for the objective validity of the categories, namely the problem that there is a gap in the B Deduction. This gap is (...) that the B Deduction goes through only if conceptualism is true, but Kant is a non-conceptualist. In this paper I argue, contrary to what Hanna claims, that there is not a gap in the B Deduction. (shrink)

Response to Don Baxter, Don Garrett and Jennifer Marusic regarding my book Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects; initially delivered at the 2016 Hume Conference in Sydney, Australia as part of the Author Meets Critics session.

This article is about impathy (introversive empathy), understood as the ability to share in and understand one’s own feelings, which is considered a critical psychological construct relevant for the recovery and maintenance of mental health. However, while the ability to empathize with oneself has received considerable attention from the clinical community, this has not been paralleled by the same scientific scrutiny, which was subject to the ability to empathize with others. Impathy has not yet been operationally defined and thus has (...) remained relatively unexplored, both conceptually and empirically. This work describes an operational definition of impathy with four dimensions: Perceiving, Meta-Position, Accepting Attitude, and Understanding. Issues of differentiation from related constructs are discussed and avenues of clinical applicability are explored, suggesting that impathy exists as a distinct human capacity, which can be assessed and which has important clinical implications. The paper closes with future directions, including the assessment of impathy and possible research questions. (shrink)

My paper is concerned with the relation between ought-statements and intentions in Wilfrid Sellars’s philosophy. According to an entrenched view in Sellars scholarship, Sellars considers ought-statements as expressions of we-intentions. The aim of my paper is to question this reading and to propose an alternative. According to this alternative reading of Sellars, ought-statements are metalinguistic statements about the implication relations between intentions. I show that the entrenched understanding faces many unacknowledged problems and generates incompatibilities with Sellars’s commitments about intentions. I (...) argue that the alternative account can help to resolve these problems. A second reason in support of the alternative understanding of Sellars is provided by historical considerations. I argue that my alternative account can be discerned in Sellars’s most developed views about intentions and ought-statements. I also discuss problems and questions which the alternative reading itself faces. (shrink)

In this study, Limburgian and Dutch 2.5- to 4-year-olds and adults took part in a word learning experiment. Following the procedure employed by Quam and Swingley (2010) and Singh et al. (2014), participants learned two novel word-object mappings. After training, word recognition was tested in correct pronunciation (CP) trials and mispronunciation (MP) trials featuring a pitch change. Since Limburgian is considered a restricted tone language, we expected that the pitch change would hinder word recognition in Limburgian, but not in non-tonal (...) Dutch listeners. Contrary to our expectations, both Limburgian and Dutch children appeared to be sensitive to pitch changes in newly learned words, indicated by a significant decrease in target fixation in MP trials compared to CP trials. Limburgian and Dutch adults showed very strong naming effects in both trial types. The results are discussed against the background of the influence of the native prosodic system. (shrink)

This paper argues that Husserl’s method is partially motivated by an attempt to avoid certain absurdities inherent in Hume’s epistemology. In this limited respect, we may say that Hume opened the door to phenomenology, but as a sacrificial lamb. However, Hume was well aware of his self-defeating position, and perhaps, in some respects, the need for an alternative. Moreover, Hume’s “mistakes” may have incited Husserl’s discovery of the epoche, and thus, transcendental phenomenology.

_ Source: _Volume 37, Issue 1, pp 61 - 94 Interchanges between political, juridical and theological thought in the early modern period have been studied extensively during the past decades. Less light has been cast on the corresponding interrelations between politico-juridical thought and biblical hermeneutics. However, this issue deserves some attention, too, as the following case study on Hugo Grotius wants to show by pointing to the mutual adjustment of juridical, theological and biblical arguments in the progress of the core (...) semantics of Grotius’s natural law theory from _De iure praedae_ to _De iure belli ac pacis._. (shrink)

In Book I, III §9 of the Treatise, Hume makes the claim that “[all general] belief arises only from causation” (T 107). Following, he makes the even stronger claim that all general beliefs are to be thought of as beliefs in reality, and thus, all belief in reality is dependent on pre-established beliefs in both specific causal relations and the causal relation in general (T 108). In the first part of this paper, I explain Hume’s motivation behind both claims, while (...) in the second part, I argue that to some extent, Hume is correct; our belief in “reality”—a notion to be defined—is fundamentally dependent on a pre-established belief in the general notion of cause and effect and a cache of specific causal relations. Thus, epistemologically speaking, we must conclude that our notion of “reality” is intrinsically causal (note that this reading has been corrected/augmented in Rocknak 2013). (shrink)

The focus of this paper is institutional change and the changing role of business in Germany. Back in the 1980s, the German institutional framework was characterized by implicit mandatory and obligatory regulations that set a clear context for responsible corporate behavior. Today, this framework has eroded and given way to a situation in which corporations explicitly and voluntarily take responsibility for social issues. This shift from implicit to explicit corporate social responsibility is an indication of a major institutional change epitomized (...) by the deconstruction of ‘old’ and the reconstruction of ‘new’ institutions. In the course of this change, corporations, state actors, and civil society organizations compete for their ideas and interests in what we call a fight for myths. The paper traces this fight for myths and the changing understanding of corporate responsibility in Germany. (shrink)

in kant’s account of cognition, Eric Watkins and Marcus Willaschek distinguish between a ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ sense of Kant’s use of the term ‘cognition.’ Every “conscious representation that represents an object” counts as a cognition, taken in the broad sense.1 Every “conscious representation of a given object and of its general features” counts as a cognition in the narrow sense.2 In the case of finite beings, they argue, cognition in the narrow sense must fulfill two conditions: First, the object must (...) be given, since cognition must actually latch onto an object, and intuition satisfies that condition insofar as it immediately relates to the object represented in the intuition.... (shrink)

In the Iambs of Gregory of Nazianzus occur many hiatuses: this might suggest that his verses had been composed with carelessness. In fact, if we examine the various kinds of hiatuses, we notice that some of them should not be considered as such, because they occur after words, or along with iuncturae, that usually admit them. There remains, however, a considerable number of hiatus in caesura. The article strives to demonstrate that these hiatuses are due to the imitation of the (...) well-known hiatus in trocaic caesura in the hexameter, which was allowed since Homer’s age. As a matter of fact, in some cases, the same words that produce a hiatus after a trochaic caesura in Homer show an identical one after a caesura in Gregory’s trimeters. Moreover, hexameter and iambic trimeter were frequently juxtaposed by the late ancient metric-grammatical tradition. The article further analyzes the occurence of the hiatus in caesura in the Byzantine dodecasyllables, which, among other reasons, might be due also to the influence of Gregory in Byzantine poetry. (shrink)

Der Band widmet sich den Spezifika des Verhältnisses zwischen Religion, Ethik und Politik in der modernen Gesellschaft. Die versammelten Beiträge klären insbesondere, welche inhaltlichen Verbindungen und institutionellen Trennlinien der (säkulare) demokratische Rechtsstaat erlaubt bzw. auch verlangt. Ob die Politik dabei ihre eigene "Moral" ausbilden muss, weil die ethische und religiöse Kardinalfrage nach dem "guten" Leben ihren Bereich überfordert, wird anhand von zahlreichen aktuellen religionspolitischen Problemkreisen erörtert."-- Back cover.

Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1725–1782), born Ziegler, is the author of the first metaphysical treatise intended specifically for women. In the preface of this treatise, published in 1751, she justifies her ‘unhabitual’ enterprise, emphasizing that her intention is not to instruct but only to please her female readership. A closer glance, however, reveals a genuine philosophical intention and an active participation in the debate on popular philosophy and aesthetics in Halle. Challenging an all-too narrow and all-too mathematical conception of practical philosophy, (...) Unzer advocates a dynamic model of philosophy as a love of wisdom, and a philosophy of beauty, poetry, and aesthetics. Fundamentally, these are ancient and mostly Platonic ideas, and among her intellectual circle Unzer stands out as a modern Diotima. But on account of their distinctively modern premises, these ideas likewise take a particularly modern shape, and they illustrate a certain Platonic reversal incipient in Wolffianism itself. (shrink)

The new mythology for which the German Romantic period called was not envisioned as antithetical to empiricism or experiential/experimental knowledge, but rather as emerging in dialogue with it to form a cultural foundation for such inquiry. Central to the mytho-scientific project were problematic theories of sexual division and generativity that established cultural baselines. This article examines the mythological investments of two influential thinkers of the period—Goethe and Schelling. It then analyzes Goethe’s unique merger of mythological approaches to sex and generation (...) with empirical observation in The Metamorphosis of Plants. It next traces Schelling’s expansion of Goethe’s theories of nature beyond their empirical justifications to develop a metaphysics of sexual differentiation. Finally, the article illuminates Goethe’s final reply to the sexual dynamics of Naturphilosophie at the end of his life, through the analysis of a single poem, “Finding Again,” in the collection God and World. Ultimately and in spite of its empirical commitments, Goethe’s more flexible view of sexual correlations would lose ground to the powerful metaphysical mythology of sexual opposition as both scientific and cultural bedrock. (shrink)

When companies engage in corporate philanthropy, they can donate to a number of causes supporting a variety of issues, thus establishing cause portfolios. This research examines how the focus of a cause portfolio affects company evaluations. Results from an experiment show that when a company donates a small amount of money, consumers have lower evaluations of a company when the cause portfolio is focused (i.e., supports one issue) versus diverse (i.e., supports many issues). This is because the focused (vs. diverse) (...) portfolio is perceived to have a weaker impact to society. We provide additional evidence of this effect using a data set of Fortune 500 companies’ foundations, showing that cause portfolios are more likely to result in lower stakeholder evaluations when focused (vs. diverse). Again, we find that donation amount alleviates the difference between focused and diverse portfolios. The findings hold important implications for the company’s management of cause portfolios. (shrink)

In this paper we explore quarantining as a more ethical method for delimiting the spread of Hate Speech via online social media platforms. Currently, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google generally respondreactivelyto such material: offensive messages that have already been posted are reviewed by human moderators if complaints from users are received. The offensive posts are onlysubsequentlyremoved if the complaints are upheld; therefore, they still cause the recipients psychological harm. In addition, this approach has frequently been criticised for delimiting freedom (...) of expression, since it requires the service providers to elaborate and implement censorship regimes. In the last few years, an emerging generation of automatic Hate Speech detection systems has started to offer new strategies for dealing with this particular kind of offensive online material. Anticipating the future efficacy of such systems, the present article advocates an approach to online Hate Speech detection that is analogous to the quarantining of malicious computer software. If a given post is automatically classified as being harmful in a reliable manner, then it can be temporarily quarantined, and the direct recipients can receive an alert, which protects them from the harmful content in the first instance. The quarantining framework is an example of more ethical online safety technology that can be extended to the handling of Hate Speech. Crucially, it provides flexible options for obtaining a more justifiable balance between freedom of expression and appropriate censorship. (shrink)

Although Symons' recent book, On Dennett (Wadsworth, 2002), provides scientists with ahelpful, general introduction to Dennett'sthought, it presents a skewed version of the history of the philosophy of mind. In particular, the continental tradition is almost entirely ignored, if not glibly dismissed. As aresult, the unwary reader of this book wouldnever realize that Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl,like Dennett, offer a ``middle ground'' between naturalistic realism and naturalistic eliminativism. However, unlike Dennett, the respective positions of Dilthey, Sartre and Husserl are not (...) ontologically indifferent, but instead, present a non-naturalistic form of realism that does not simultaneously invoke Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

This article shows that in 1.4.2.15-24 of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume presents his own position on objects, which is to be distinguished from both the vulgar and philosophical conception of objects. Here, Hume argues that objects that are effectively imagined to have a “perfect identity” are imagined due to the constancy and coherence of our perceptions (what we may call ‘level 1 constancy and coherence’). In particular, we imagine that objects cause such perceptions, via what I call ‘indirect (...) causation.’ In virtue of imagining ideas of objects that have a perfect identity, our perceptions seem to be even more constant and coherent (what we may call ‘level 2 constancy and coherence’). Thus, in addition to seeing that Hume is presenting his own position on objects in this section of the Treatise, we see that he is working with a previously unrecognized kind of causation, i.e., indirect causation, and that he has two kinds of constancy and coherence in mind: level 1 and level 2. (shrink)

BackgroundEverybody has the right to decide whether to receive specific medical treatment or not and to provide their free, prior and informed consent to do so. As dementia progresses, people with Alzheimer’s dementia (PwAD) can lose their capacity to provide informed consent to complex medical treatment. When the capacity to consent is lost, the autonomy of the affected person can only be guaranteed when an interpretable and valid advance directive exists. Advance directives are not yet common in Germany, and their (...) validity is often questionable. Once the dementia diagnosis has been made, it is assumed to be too late to write an advance directive. One approach used to support the completion of advance directives is ‘Respecting Choices’®—an internationally recognised, evidence-based model of Advance Care Planning (ACP), which, until now, has not been evaluated for the target group of PwAD. This study’s aims include (a) to investigate the proportion of valid advance directives in a memory clinic population of persons with suspected AD, (b) to determine the predictors of valid advance directives, and (c) to examine whether the offer of ACP can increase the proportion of valid advance directives in PwAD.MethodWe intend to recruit at leastN = 250 participants from two memory clinics in 50 consecutive weeks. Of these, the first 25 weeks constitute the baseline phase (no offer of ACP), the following 25 weeks constitute the intervention phase (offer of ACP). The existence and validity of an advance directive will be assessed twice (before and after the memory clinic appointment). Moreover, potential predictors of valid advance directives are assessed.DiscussionThe results of this study will enhance the development of consent procedures for advance directives of PwAD based on the ACP/Respecting Choices (R) approach. Therefore, this project contributes towards increasing the autonomy and inclusion of PwAD and the widespread acceptance of valid advance directives in PwAD.Trial RegistrationDRKS, DRKS00026691, registered 15th of October 2021,https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00026691. (shrink)

Nach einigen Überlegungen zur psychischen Bedeutung materieller Dinge wird die Psychodynamik kompensatorischen Kaufens am Beispiel des »süchtigen« Verlangens nach Kleidung näher erläutert. Im Zentrum steht die Suche nach einem idealen Objekt, das den frühen Mangel an Selbstobjekten, die idealisiert und idealisierend zur Verfügung stehen, ausgleichen soll. Die Wünsche nach dem Glanz im Auge des primären Objekts verschränken sich dabei nach Auffassung der Autorin mit frühen Wünschen nach Berührung, die im Kaufen/Tragen von Kleidung erfüllt werden. Am Beispiel der Behandlung eines Patienten (...) wird gezeigt, wie die Analytikerin einen von ihr als beschämend erlebten Selbstanteil in den Patienten projiziert, dort abwehrt und, als Folge ihrer Abwehr, für die Idealisierungs- und Berührungsbedürfnisse des Patienten lange nicht zur Verfügung stehen kann. Im Verlauf der Behandlung wird deutlich, wie sich die Abwehr in ihr und im Patienten durch die Arbeit in Gegenübertragung und Übertragung allmählich auflöst. (shrink)

This paper argues that Husserl’s method is partially driven by an attempt to avoid certain absurdities inherent in Hume’s epistemology. In this limited respect, we may say that Hume opened the door to phenomenology, but as a sacrificial lamb. However, Hume was well aware of his self-defeating position, and perhaps, in some respects, the need for an alternative. Moreover, Hume’s “mistakes” may have incited Husserl’s discovery of the epoche, and thus, transcendental phenomenology.

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services : global justice between different people of the present generation ; justice between people of different generations. Three hypotheses about their relationship — independency, facilitation and rivalry — are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity and (...) quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions. (shrink)

In "The Subtle Body," Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yoga's transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry.

Recuperating the sibling -- Sibling logic -- Fraternity and revolution -- The shadows of fraternity -- Economizing desire : the sibling (in) law -- Genealogical sciences -- Living languages : comparative philology and evolution -- The east comes home : race and religion.

At the centre of this study is the theoretical and empirical analysis of action-formation mechanisms in norm-relevant, situations. Basically two mechanisms are employed, namely action according to a) moral principles and b) the principle of deterrence. Conflicting assumptions concerning the way these mechanisms work are deduced from two theoretical perspectives, the high-cost/low-cost. hypothesis and Situational Action Theory (SAT). While the high-cost/low-cost. hypothesis leads to the assumption that, criminal action is explained by the principle of deterrence in high-cost, situations and, in (...) low-cost, situations, by moral principles, it. follows from SAT that., in high-cost, situations, the principle of deterrence has an effect, only on those persons with weak moral principles, and influences of moral principles are expected in low-cost, situations. Empirical analysis of these hypotheses is conducted with the help of data that, have been collected as part, of a mail survey (n=2383) of a disproportionately layered random sample of residents of an East. German city. Data analyses are carried out. in order to estimate the influences of the theoretically specified predictors simultaneously for high-cost, and low-cost, situations with multiple group comparisons. The study’s results partially support, both theoretical perspectives. They are finally discussed with respect, to theoretical and methodological aspects. (shrink)

Despite decades of research, morphogenesis along the various body axes remains one of the major mysteries in developmental biology. A milestone in the field was the realisation that a set of closely related regulators, called Hox genes, specifies the identity of body segments along the anterior–posterior (AP) axis in most animals. Hox genes have been highly conserved throughout metazoan evolution and code for homeodomain‐containing transcription factors. Thus, they exert their function mainly through activation or repression of downstream genes. However, while (...) much is known about Hox gene structure and molecular function, only a few target genes have been identified and studied in detail. Our knowledge of Hox downstream genes is therefore far from complete and consequently Hox‐controlled morphogenesis is still poorly understood. Genome‐wide approaches have facilitated the identification of large numbers of Hox downstream genes both in Drosophila and vertebrates, and represent a crucial step towards a comprehensive understanding of how Hox proteins drive morphological diversification. In this review, we focus on the role of Hox genes in shaping segmental morphologies along the AP axis in Drosophila, discuss some of the conclusions drawn from analyses of large target gene sets and highlight methods that could be used to gain a more thorough understanding of Hox molecular function. In addition, the mechanisms of Hox target gene regulation are considered with special emphasis on recent findings and their implications for Hox protein specificity in the context of the whole organism. BioEssays 30:965–979, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)