Searle (1990) argues that unconscious intrinsic intentional states must be accessible to consciousness because (1) all intrinsic intentional states have aspectual shape, the of which cannot be explained in a third-person (e.g., neurophysiological) vocabulary, and (2) ontologically, unconscious mental states are neurophysiological processes. This argument confuses three senses of namely, factuality, individuative properties, and phenomenological presence.

What happens when an entire group of human beings is excluded from the definition of humanity? How is the power of language used to distort reality? What happens when a comprehensive economic plan is based on theft, brainwashing, slave labor, and murder? These and other philosophical questions about the Holocaust are contemplated in Contemporary Portraits of Auschwitz. In 1988, a group of philosophers who had survived the Holocaust, or had known people at the Auschwitz death camp, decided to found an (...) organization that would examine the philosophical implications of Shoah: the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. Noting that the history and the personal horror stories had been told and retold, SPSGH's founders Sander Lee, Berel Lang, and Alan Rosenberg argued that too little study had been so far devoted to the philosophy of Hitler's final solution and other genocides. Auschwitz problematized the Enlightenment concept of humanity, and other concepts. The perfection of state-sponsored and -administered mass death issued in new forms of language, moral indifference, and forgetting. Philosophy often even fails to mention the Holocaust in discussions of National Socialism. And the disaster of Auschwitz has been largely neutralized by the normalization of a "ruined" language. This volume includes essays in several areas: Witnesses and Testimonies; Morality and Ethics; Art and Poetry; History and Memory; and The Crisis of Representation. Contributors are Karyn Ball, Eve Bannet, Debra Bergoffen, James Bernauer, Klaus Dorner, Jennifer N. Fink, Roger Fjellstrom, Ruth Liberman, Burkhard Liebsch, Alan Milchman, Raj Sampath, Paul Sars, Hans Seigfried, Thomas W. Simon, Dan Stone, Peter Strasser, Frans van Peperstratten, Erik M. Vogt, Andrew Weinstein, and others. (shrink)

Antirealism about the past is apparently in conflict with our acceptance of a set of systematic linkages between the truth-values of differently tensed sentences made at different times. Arguments based on acceptance of these so-called truth-value links seem to show that fully accounting for our use of the past and future tenses will involve use of a notion of truth which is not epistemically constrained and is thus antirealistically unacceptable. I elaborate these difficulties through an examination of work by Dummett (...) and Wright. I agree with Wright's rejection of Dummett's proposal but go on to argue that Wright's account fares no better. Building on what I take to be the failure of Wright's account, I offer a solution for the antirealist which diagnoses the problem as stemming from an equivocation in the meanings assigned to the tensed truth predicates. I close by raising a different problem for antirealist accounts of the past, one which is, however, related to more general difficulties for antirealist theories of meaning. (shrink)

This paper seeks to introduce cultural techniques to an Anglophone readership. Specifically geared towards an Anglophone readership, the paper relates the re-emergence of cultural techniques to the changing intellectual constellation of postwar Germany. More specifically, it traces how the concept evolved from – and reacted against – so-called German media theory, a decidedly anti-hermeneutic and anti-humanist current of thought frequently associated with the work of Friedrich Kittler. Post-hermeneutic rather than anti-hermeneutic in its outlook, the reconceptualization of cultural techniques aims at (...) presenting them as chains of operations that link humans, things, media and even animals. To investigate cultural techniques is to shift the analytic gaze from ontological distinctions to the ontic operations that gave rise to the former in the first place. As Siegert points out, this shift recalls certain concurrent developments within the North American posthumanities; the paper therefore also includes a discussion of the similarities and differences between German and North American posthumanism. (shrink)

Based on the argument that violence has a parasitic quality rather than an essence of its own, this article seeks to bring to light the conversion processes through which violence crystallises out of, as well as into, various phenomena. Violence is first examined in terms of the relation between perpetrator and victim with, however, an emphasis on the fact that violence cannot be reduced to the intention or the act of the perpetrator. On the contrary, violence is shown to have (...) the character of pathos and to open up a dimension of which the act itself is only a part. Further, the author argues that in being directed towards the other, violence harbours a performative contradiction: by turning the addressee into a thing to be destroyed, the addressing act cancels itself. The paper also sets out to identify the breeding grounds of violence, which, due to its capacity for conversion, can be detected in various phenomena that are not necessarily linked to violence. This means that violence can resort to various mechanisms and can emerge in multiple fields of activity: in bureaucracy, economics, medicine, politics, war, and most importantly, in everyday life, hidden under inconspicuous but sometimes pervasive forms. Finally, the metamorphoses of violence are shown to ultimately rest on the temporal character of violence, which implies that violence has a time of preparation and an aftermath. (shrink)

Anhand der Bearbeitungen zweier Opernstoffe möchte der Aufsatz zu einer Neubewertung der barocken Opernlibretti anregen. Die enge Verbindung zwischen Musik- und Sprechtheater in der Barockzeit sowie die Veränderungen in bezug auf Affektdarstellung, Rollenspiel, komische Figur und Bühnenbild werden im Hinblick auf den Wandel vom höfischen zum bürgerlichen Normensystem interpretiert. The function of baroque opera libretti is illustrated by comparing different versions of two operatic plots. The close links between musical and spoken drama in the baroque period, as well as the (...) differences in the expression of passions, role-playing, comic characters and stage sets are interpreted in the context of the process in which a courtly set of norms was supplanted by a bourgeois one. (shrink)

A comprehensive model for describing various forms of developments in science is defined in precise, set-theoretic terms, and in the spirit of the structuralist approach in the philosophy of science. The model emends previous accounts in centering on single systems in a homogenous way, eliminating notions which essentially refer to sets of systems. This is achieved by eliminating the distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical terms as a primitive, and by introducing the notion of intended links. The force of the model (...) is demonstrated by formally incorporating many of the important, precise meta-theoretic concepts occurring in the literature. (shrink)

English summary: The compound terms formed with 'post-' - from Postmodernity through Postdemocracy to Postcrisis as the New Normal - can be seen as a symptom of theoretical helplessness. These compounds are based on a kind of dialectics which they explicitely refuse: The idea of a New Normal postulates a return to normalcy at the end of the series of crises in the early 21th century, but it states simultaneously that the old normalcy has eventually been lost forever. In order (...) to shed light on this question, theoretical effort is needed: This study proposes the concepts of normalism, interdiscourse, and collective symbolism. Taking seriously Michel Foucault's idea of a theoretical tool box, it introduces a new and operational concept of antagonism alternative to the one which originates from dialectics. Antagonism in an operational definition represents a dynamic of irriversible de-normalization (i.e. loss of normality, failure of normalism). Using these analytical instruments, categories such as Postmodernity and New Normal can be explained in a new and satisfying manner. The study hereby takes into consideration positions denying antagonism in Postmodernity (e.g. Francis Fukuyama) as well as theories which claim new kinds of antagonism (e.g. Negri and Hardt, Laclau and Mouffe, or Ranciere).These theoretical developments go together with topical analyses of the series of crises after 2001 and particularly after 2007: from the financial crisis through the Euro crisis to the refugees and populism crises. The analytical approach proposed here is particularly apt for studying the role of topical media as well as political discourses in normalization and denormalization processes. As a result, the study proposes a processual scheme of the series of crises as well as a new definition of populism based on the approach of normalism. Finally, it also considers the problems of alternative 'transnormalistic' ways out of the crisis ('flightlines').Interspersed with the study are short literary essays on novels dealing with current antagonisms: by Albert Camus, Thomas Bernhard, Sibylle Berg, Stephen King, Jean Marie Gustave Le ClEzio, Jonathan Littell, and Michel Houellebecq. German description: Die Krisenserie zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhundert, von der Finanz- und Eurokrise bis zur Fluchtlings- und Populismuskrise, hat die vorgangigen Normalitaten in vielen Dimensionen beeintrachtigt. Das lasst sich als Denormalisierung begreifen und wirft die Frage auf, wie soziokulturelle Normalitaten produziert und reproduziert werden. Darauf antwortet das hier aktualisierte, diskurstheoretische Konzept des Normalismus. Kann die Krisenserie sogar zu einem 'Ende der Normalitat' (Gabor Steingart) fuhren und was wurde das bedeuten? Das ist die Frage nach einer belastbaren Bedeutung des in den USA entstandenen Konzepts eines New Normal: Wenn es das Ende der Krisenserie meinen sollte - was unterscheidet es dann von einem 'Old Normal'? Und wie verhalt sich ein New Normal zum ebenso schillernden Begriff einer Postmoderne? Die Antwort der Studie auf solche Fragen kombiniert die Kategorien des Normalismus und des Antagonismus. Sie schlagt ein gegenuber seiner dialektischen Herkunft neues, diskurstheoretisch fundiertes und operatives (empirisch belastbares) Konzept von Antagonismus als tendenziell irreversible Denormalisierung vor. Mit diesem Instrumentarium wird zunachst die Postmoderne (einschliealich der anderen 'Postismen') als das Konzept einer vorgeblich historischen Epoche ohne Antagonismen gefasst. Anschlieaend werden die Krisenserien unter diesem Aspekt analysiert und ein vorlaufiges Prozessschema der Krisenverlaufe erstellt. Dabei wird auch die Krise der politischen Normalitat (Populismuskrise) transparent. Daraus ergibt sich ein Ausblick auf die Alternative zwischen der Gefahr eines katastrophischen Kollapses des Normalismus auf der einen und transnormalistischen Auswegen auf der anderen Seite. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo me propongo exponer las relaciones entre racionalidad responsiva y extrañeza en la obra de Bernhard Waldenfels. Expondré esta relación a partir de seis tesis con el propósito de que ellas se complementen mutuamente y logren mostrar, de la manera más apropiada posible, la relación entre responsividad y la experiencia de lo extraño. Estos puntos son: 1. Una breve aclaración terminológica. Diferencia entre lo otro y lo extraño. 2. La relación entre discurso escrito y hablado. 3. (...) La concepción de orden, vinculada con mecanismos de inclusión y exclusión. 4. La relación entre pathos y respuesta, como los puntos focales de la racionalidad responsiva. 5. La relación entre el decir y lo dicho y la temporalidad que los vincula y separa. Y por último, 6. Me ocuparé del problema de cómo hablar sobre lo extraño y el problema del lenguaje indirecto.: The purpose of this paper is to show the relations between responsiveness and strangeness in the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. I will expose this relationship in six theses, so that they complement each other and show, in the most appropriate possible way, the relationship between responsiveness and the experience of the strange. These points are, 1. A brief clarification of terminology. Difference between the other and the strange. 2. The relationship between written and spoken speech. 3. The conception of order, linked to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. 4. The relationship between pathos and response, as focal points of responsive rationality. 5. The relationship between saying and what is said and the temporality that links and separates them. And finally, 6. I will deal with the problem of how to talk about the strange and the problem of indirect language. (shrink)

Gargani's work aims at discovering the link connecting the multifarious aspects of contemporary Austrian culture in the connection between ethics and aesthetics. In Gargani's view this connection is responsible for the strong criticism of contemporary society, based on mechanization and automatic processes, as it is instanced by such authors as F. Kafka, L. Wittgenstein, R. Musil, I. Bachmann and above all Thomas Bernhard. According to Gargani's essay, starting from the rejection of the notion of a correspondence relation of language (...) to the world, T. Bernhard puts forward a sort of literature conceived no more as being a description of reality, but rather as being a critical analysis and a deconstruction of human existence. In substance, the core of Bernhard's literary work consists in revealing the truth content of the lie (der Wahrheitsgehalt der Lüge). If human existence on the whole is doomed to failure on the one hand, Bernhard acknowledges literature itself as the only possibility of safety for man on the other hand. On clarifying the peculiar structure of Bernhard's writing, Gargani shows how the indirect narration of events and thoughts carried out by Bernhard aims at an indirect truth, which is the only available one and which is preciselythe mediated truth of literature. (shrink)

Wiederkehr des Raumes?. Topologisches Paradigmen ; Rückkehr zum gelebten Raum ; Raumkonzepte und Raumpraktiken ; Regionale oder fundamentale Räumlichkeit ; Zweideutigkeiten und Paradoxien der Lebenswelt -- Polarität von Ort und Raum. Phänomenologische Topik ; Wo-Frage im Schatten der Was-Frage ; Ortsbestimmung als Antwort auf eine Wo-Frage ; Fremde und eigene Wo-Frage ; Hier als Standort : Grund und Boden ; Woher und Wohin : Wegstrecken ; Worin : offene und geschlossene Räume ; Ringsum : Umgebung, Umwelt und Welt ; Wie (...) weit : Vermessene Räume -- Leibliches Wohnen im Raum. Vielfalt des Raumes ; Verankerung im Hier ; Raumachsen ; Durchmessung, Dehnung und Schrumpfung des Raumes ; Nähe und Ferne ; Drinnen und Draußen ; Interieur und Exterieur im Blickfield der Malerei ; Raumanlage und Raumbühne ; Raumtechniken und Ortskarten ; Lokale Räume und globaler Raum -- Ortsverschiebungen. Hier und Anderswo ; Aktualität, Habitualität und Virtualität der räumlichen Bewegung ; Spuren der Zeit im Raum ; Zersprengter Raum ; Telepräsenz ; Fremdorte und andere Räume ; Gemeinorte und globaler Raum ; Gastlichkeit ; Coda : Topos : Atopie : Heterotopien -- Zeitverdoppelung und Zeitverschiebung. Zwischen Mythos und Logos ; Frage nach der Zeit ; Zeitverdoppelung in der Rede und Zeitverkörperung ; Zeitverschiebung zwischen Pathos und Respons ; Zeitverschiebung und Reaktionszeit ; Der entrückte Anfang im Roman und auf der Bühne ; Zeit der Sinne ; Jenseits von Erinnerung und Erwartung ; Rhythmen und Tempi ; Zwischen Leere und Erfüllung ; Coda : Anderswo enden -- Die verändernde Kraft der Wiederholung. Wiederholungsexperiment ; Sich wiederholdende Erfahrung ; Widerholung als Rettung aus der Zeit ; Altes und Neues im Widerstreit ; Unwiederholbares in der Zeit -- Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Zukünftigem im Anschluß an Aristoteles. Handlungsperspektive ; Die drohende Seeschlacht ; Wahrscheinlichkeit und Häufigkeit ; Zwischen Gewißheit und Ungewißheit ; Rückzug auf pratische Gewißheit ; Zwischen Entwurf und Erwartung ; Unwahrscheinliche Zukunft -- Kommen und Gehen in der Zeit im Anschluß an Merleau-Ponty. Frühe dialektik der Zeit ; Zeit als bloßes Nacheinander ; Totalität der Zeit : Präsenzfeld ; Riß der Zeit : Selbstaffektion ; Bewegung der Zeit : Vor- und Rückläufigkeit ; Wahrnehmung zwischen Vor- und Rückblick ; Handeln zwischen Vorsatz und Vorschlag ; Kommen und Gehen ; Chiasmus der Zeit -- Epilog : Verquickung von Ort, Raum und Zeit. (shrink)

Few would contest the fact that analytical philosophy has dominated philosophical practice in the English speaking world for about the last century. But dispute continues about both its origins and nature; whilst others question its value. Michael Dummett wholly embraced the analytical approach to philosophy, as he conceived of it. For him analytical philosophy marked itself off from its precursors and its alternatives, embodied in the Continental tradition, by taking the linguistic turn. And Frege was unequivocally the first philosopher to (...) take that auspicious turn, which ushered in a new method in philosophy. Henceforth philosophers were to approach the business of analyzing thought via the enterprise of analyzing language. So Dummett is presenting us with both a history lesson and a recommendation about how we ought to do philosophy. But is his reading of the history accurate? And is his conception of the nature of analytical philosophy viable? In order to reflect on these questions this collection brings together eight scholars who have made a serious business of reading Dummett. (shrink)

Quantum philosophy, a peculiar twentieth-century malady, is responsible for most of the conceptual muddle plaguing the foundations of quantum physics. When this philosophy is eschewed, one naturally arrives at Bohmian mechanics, which is what emerges from Schrodinger's equation for a nonrelativistic system of particles when we merely insist that 'particles' means particles. While distinctly non-Newtonian, Bohmian mechanics is a fully deterministic theory of particles in motion, a motion choreographed by the wave function. The quantum formalism emerges when measurement situations are (...) analyzed according to this theory. When the quantum formalism is regarded as arising in this way, the paradoxes and perplexities so often associated with quantum theory simply evaporate.Bohr's ... approach to atomic problems ... is really remarkable. He is completely convinced that any understanding in the usual sense of the word is impossible. Therefore the conversation is almost immediately driven into philosophical questions, and soon you no longer know whether you really take the position he is attacking, or whether you really must attack the position he is defending. (shrink)

Living corporeity is the intermediate element between nature and culture, which must be thought of as a reciprocal interconnection, since as corporeal beings we always move on a threshold. In the reflection of the bodily self, a doubling between the living body as a functioning subject and as a material object is revealed; after all, even one's own body sometimes takes on the features of a foreign body, as is the case in the experience of illness. In the technical instrument, (...) the body is prolonged and this highlights the connection between the technique of the thing and the technique of the self; however, despite the gradual autonomisation of the technical element from the living corporeity, there remains what escapes calculation and looms large in the subtraction of the alien. (shrink)

An ethical epoché is required to leave the terrain of a self-evident morality and question its origin. In particular, four fundamental motifs of the ethical dimension are identified: pathos, to be thematised as an alternative to the persistent activist unilateralism; response, which always involves body and soul; diastasis with its stumbles and subtractions; and finally coaffection, in which the social dimension of experience is announced. Ethical behaviour feeds on the magma of pathos, which in turn would be blind and directionless (...) without any ethos. (shrink)

Dr. theol. Dr. phil. Detlef Schwartz, Jahrgang 1954, Pfarrer i. R. und langjähriger nebenamtlicher Universitätsdozent, mit Stationen in Deutschland und den USA sowie Lateinamerika, zieht eine vorläufige Bilanz seiner bisherigen Arbeit im Auslandsdienst der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland. Er ordnet diese ein in Erfahrungen in einem Pfarramt der United Church of Christ, USA, und seinen Beobachtungen in der Millionenmetropole Los Angeles. Die Konsequenz eines verstärkten Dialogs der Religionen, besonders mit dem Islam, koppelt er zurück an die Frage nach der (...) Notwendigkeit eines Paradigmenwechsels im Religionsunterricht hin zu einem den Dialog fördernden Kulturunterrichts."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Bernhard Nickel presents a theory of generic sentences and the kind-directed modes of thought they express. The theory closely integrates compositional semantics with metaphysics to solve the problem that generics pose: what do generics mean? Generic sentences are extremely simple, yet if there are patterns to be discerned in terms of which are true and which are false, these patterns are subtle and complex. Ravens are black, and lions have manes: statistical measures cannot do justice to the facts, but (...) what else is there that has a hope of giving us insight into what we are capturing across so many domains? Nickel argues that generics are the top of a fundamentally explanatory iceberg, and that this explanatory framework is deeply intertwined with the semantics of the language we use to express them. In providing an integrated semantic and metaphysical theory of generics, he aims to solve old puzzles and draw attention to new phenomena. (shrink)

It is well known that density matrices can be used in quantum mechanics to represent the information available to an observer about either a system with a random wave function (“statistical mixture”) or a system that is entangled with another system (“reduced density matrix”). We point out another role, previously unnoticed in the literature, that a density matrix can play: it can be the “conditional density matrix,” conditional on the configuration of the environment. A precise definition can be given in (...) the context of Bohmian mechanics, whereas orthodox quantum mechanics is too vague to allow a sharp definition, except perhaps in special cases. In contrast to statistical and reduced density matrices, forming the conditional density matrix involves no averaging. In Bohmian mechanics with spin, the conditional density matrix replaces the notion of conditional wave function, as the object with the same dynamical significance as the wave function of a Bohmian system. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics is a theory about point particles moving along trajectories. It has the property that in a world governed by Bohmian mechanics, observers see the same statistics for experimental results as predicted by quantum mechanics. Bohmian mechanics thus provides an explanation of quantum mechanics. Moreover, the Bohmian trajectories are defined in a non-conspiratorial way by a few simple laws.

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 47 Heft: 1 Seiten: 369-378.

This volume documents for the first time the enormous variety of diverging interpretations and presents a text-oriented analysis of antinomy and its resolution ...

I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go (...) on to sketch an inquiry-based view. (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics is a quantum theory without observers. This means that neither the act of observation nor the notion of observer play any role in defining the theory, the theory is not about observers and observation, and it explains all non relativistic quantum phenomena. The theory is about something primitive', the basic ontology, and the laws for that are given. Bohmian mechanics is a deterministic theory of point particles. Like Newtonian mechanics it is invariant under Galilei transformations, but unlike Newtonian (...) mechanics it is a first-order theory, acceleration is not a concept entering the law of motion. Rather this law directly determines the velocities of the particles as follows. (shrink)