100 Philosophie und Psychologie
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Twentieth-century scholars have thought little about the attractions of Descartes’ thinking. Especially in feminist theory, he has a bad press as the ‘instigator’ of the body-mind-split – seen as one of the theoretical bases for the subordination of women in Western culture. Seen from within seventeenth-century discourse it is the dictum that can be inferred from his writings that ‘the mind has no sex’ and which can be seen as an appeal to think about rational capacities in the utopian perspective of a gender neutral discourse. My work analyses this “face” of Cartesianism as it was adapted in favour of English seventeenth-century women. How were the specific tenets of Descartes’ philosophy employed on behalf of English women in the second half of the seventeenth century in England? My focus is on Descartes as a thinker, who – whatever his real or imagined intention might have been – provided women in seventeenth-century England with tools with which to change their status, in other words: with instruments of empowerment. So why were Descartes’ arguments so attractive for women? Descartes had argued for equal rational abilities among individuals in a gender neutral way. He had further critiqued generally accepted truth with his universal doubt. I believe this specific combination of ideas, affirming their rational capabilities, was seen by a number of women as an invitation to become involved in spheres of activity from which they were previously excluded. Moreover, a specific set of Descartes’ arguments provided a number of English women with a strategy to extend female agency. Not only did Descartes’ views legitimate female rationality, they also allowed an acknowledgement that this female intellect was equally connected to “truth” as that of their male contemporaries. As a consequence, women developed an increased self-esteem and inspiration to pursue their own independent study (and in some cases publishing). These ideas eventually helped to bring forward a demand for female education, as girls and women were still excluded from formal education in seventeenth-century England. My general thesis is that Cartesianism, as one of the earliest universalist theories on the nature of human reason, introduced new possibilities into the English debate over the nature and, hence, social position of women. It brought a radical twist to the already existing discussion on women by offering new critical tools which were taken up to argue on behalf of English women. In my work I examine the specific historical conditions of the reception of Descartes’ thought in England, the philosophical appeal of his ideas for women and analyse the writings of two English ‘disciples’ of Descartes: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle and Mary Astell.
Explaining humans as rational creatures—capable of deductive reasoning—remains challenging for evolutionary naturalism. Schechter (Philosophical Perspectives, 24(1)437–464, 2011, 2013) proposes to link the evolution of this kind of reasoning with the ability to plan. His proposal, however, does neither include any elaborated theory on how logical abilities came into being within the hominin lineage nor is it sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. I present such a theory in broad outline and substantiate it with archeological findings. It is argued that the cognitive makeup of any animal is constituted by being embedded in a certain way of life. Changing ways of life thus foster appearances of new cognitive abilities. Finally, a new way of life of coordinated group behavior emerged within the hominins: anticipatory group planning involved in activities like making sophisticated spears for hunting. This gave rise to human logical cognition. It turned hominins into domain-general reasoner and adherents of intersubjective norms for reasoning. However, as I argue, it did not—and most likely could not—give rise to reason by deductive logic. More likely, deductive reasoning entered our world only a few thousand years ago: exclusively as a cultural artifact.
A remark on the bank cases
(2021)
Since their formulation by Keith DeRose (1992), the so-called bank cases have played a major role in the discussion about whether knowledge depends on practical factors. According to the proponents of pragmatic encroachment, the proper conclusion to be drawn from the bank cases and similar examples is that knowledge of a proposition p does not supervene on one’s evidence for or against p. In my view, this conclusion is ill-founded. The reason is that the bank cases and similar examples suffer from an ambiguity concerning the known proposition — an ambiguity that has so far been overlooked. When this ambiguity is made explicit, it becomes clear that the conclusion does not follow.
‘Being with oneself in the other’ is a well-known formula that Hegel uses to characterize the basic relation of subjective freedom. This phrase points to the fact that subjects can only come to themselves if they remain capable of going beyond themselves. This motif also plays a significant role in Hegel’s philosophy of art. The article further develops this motif by exploring the extent to which this polarity of selfhood and otherhood is also characteristic of states of aesthetic freedom. It does not offer an exegesis of Hegel’s writings, but attempts to remain as close as possible to the spirit of Hegel’s philosophy – with some help from Kant and Adorno. The argument begins with some key terms on the general state of subjective freedom in order to distinguish it from the particular role of aesthetic freedom and then, finally, drawing again on Hegel, works out the sense in which aesthetic freedom represents an important variant of freedom.
Stanley Cavell is one of very few philosophers who systematically reflect on the impact and influence of autobiographical detail, experience, and preferences on their philosophical work. The aim of this essay is to show how Cavell’s use of autobiographical exploration is rooted in his early aesthetic theory, in particular his view of the similarities between philosophy and aesthetic criticism. Cavell argues that criticism starts by exploiting and incorporating a subjective vantage point, eventually bringing the reader to test the significance of a work on herself. In his ‘Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy’, Cavell states exactly this form of appeal to the ‘We’ of author and reader as the basic move of his own version of ‘ordinary language philosophy’. It is because of the connections Cavell sees between criticism and philosophy that his aesthetic diagnosis harks back on his overall critical style of thinking.
While liberal, redistributive views seek to correct and compensate for past injustices, by resorting to compensatory, procedural arguments for corrective justice, the recognition-based, communitarian arguments tend to promote by means of social movements and struggles for recognition a society free from prejudice and disrespect. In developing democratic societies such as Brazil, Axel Honneth’s contribution to the ongoing debates on Affirmative Action has been evoked, confirming that the dialectics of recognition does not merely seek a theoretical solution to the structural and economic inequalities that constitute some of their worst social pathologies, but allows for practices of self-respect and subjectivation that defy all technologies of social control, as pointed out in Foucault’s critique of power. The phenomenological deficit of critical theory consists thus in recasting the critique of power with a view to unveiling lifeworldly practices that resist systemic domination.
The aim of the following paper is to examine the complementarities (and divergences) between the paleoliberal Adam Smith and the ordoliberal Walter Eucken. Following the hypothesis that Smith is among the forerunners and predecessors of Ordoliberalism and Social Market Economy, we try to provide the reader with an insight into the socio-political philosophy of Smith and Eucken pointing at similarities and differences alike. Therefore, we base our examination on a systematic primary source text analysis comparing the books and essays written by Eucken and Smith. The paper tackles these questions in two main steps: The first part highlights Smith's and Eucken's complex and interdependent system of natural liberty. The second section reviews Smith's and Eucken's philosophy of the state.
Anomalous monism and mental causality : on the debate of Donald Davidson’s philosophy of the mental
(2004)
The English version of the first chapter of Erwin Rogler and Gerhard Preyer: Materialismus, anomaler Monismus und mentale Kausalität. Zur gegenwärtigen Philosophie des Mentalen bei Donald Davidson und David Lewis (2001) "Anomaler Monismus und Mentale Kausalität. Ein Beitrag zur Debatte über Donald Davidsons Philosophie des Mentalen" is a contribution to the current debates on the philosophy of the mental and mental causality initiated from Donald Davidson's philosophy with his article "Mental Events" (1970). It is the intent of the English version to give a response to the controversy among American, British and Australian philosophers in the context of a global exchange of ideas on problems understanding the mental. Contents 1. Preliminary Remarks 2. The Critique of Property-Epiphenomenalism and Counterarguments (a) The Enlargement of Nomological Reasoning (b) The Counterfactual Analysis (c) Supervenient Causality 3. Are Mental Properties real or unreal (fictive)? Abstract Things and events are fundamental entities in Davidson's ontology. Less distinct is the ontological status of properties, especially of mental types. Despite of some eliminative allusions there are weighty reasons to understand Davidson's philosophy of mind as including intentional realism. With it, the question of mental causality arises. There are two striking solutions to this problem: the epiphenomenalism of mental properties and the downward causation of mental events. Davidson cannot accept either. He claims to justify the mental as supervenient causality in order to thus integrate it into physicalism (his version of monism). But his argument at best proves the explanatory, not the causal relevance of mental properties. For this and for other reasons, Davidson fails the aspired synthesis of a sufficiently strong physicalism and the autonomy of the mental; a project whose realization is anyhow hard to achieve.
This article is an inquiry into the concept of metaphysical experience through a joint discussion of two authors and philosophers with different approaches that nevertheless converge in the reclamation of the concept and rely both on the experience of death as an example. In both cases, the authors are guided by the central problem of how not to relinquish metaphysical experience to unscrutinized immediacy or a powerful conversion which enjoins subjection, putting it in contact with aesthetics and ethics at once. Theodor Adorno situates metaphysical experience as a problem of philosophy of history and devotes attention to the contemporary possibility of experiences that evoke transcendence. The transformations he identifies in the concept also lead him to propose art as a domain where metaphysical experience is alive. The implicit personal investment Adorno makes is much more clear in Lacoue-Labarthe who, in a dialogue with Maurice Blanchot, shows the experience as deeply bound up with literature and its links to subjectivity. The article argues that the main difference between the two approaches is modal and temporal from the side of the object, aside from the different modes of interrogation recognized with the labels deconstruction and critical theory.
Rational agency is of central interest to philosophy, with evolutionary accounts of the cognitive underpinnings of rational agency being much debated. Yet one building block—our ability to argue—is less studied, except Mercier and Sperber’s argumentative theory (Mercier and Sperber in Behav Brain Sci 34(02):57–74, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x10000968 [Titel anhand dieser DOI in Citavi-Projekt übernehmen] , 2011, in The enigma of reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2017). I discuss their account and argue that it faces a lacuna: It cannot explain the origin of argumentation as a series of small steps that reveal how hominins with baseline abilities of the trait in question could turn into full-blown owners of it. This paper then provides a first sketch of the desired evolutionary trajectory. I argue that reasoning coevolves with the ability to coordinate behavior. After that, I establish a model based on niche construction theory. This model yields a story with following claims. First, argumentation came into being during the Oldowan period as a tool for justifying information ‘out of sight’. Second, argumentation enabled hominins to solve collective action problems with collaborators out of sight, which stabilized argumentative practices eventually. Archeological findings are discussed to substantiate both claims. I conclude with outlining changes resultant from my model for the concept of rational agency.
With the significant disconnect between the collective aim of limiting warming to well below 2°C and the current means proposed to achieve such an aim, the goal of this paper is to offer a moral assessment of prominent alternatives to current international climate policy. To do so, we’ll outline five different policy routes that could potentially bring the means and goal in line. Those five policy routes are: (1) exceed 2°C; (2) limit warming to less than 2°C by economic de-growth; (3) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation only; (4) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation and widespread deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs); and (5) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation, NETs, and Solar Radiation Management as a fallback. In assessing these five policy routes, we rely primarily upon two moral considerations: the avoidance of catastrophic climate change and the right to sustainable development. We’ll conclude that we should continue to aim at the two-degree target, and that to get there we should use aggressive mitigation, pursue the deployment of NETs, and continue to research SRM.
This paper reconstructs the argument of Axel Honneth's recent book Das Recht der Freiheit as a theory of the institutionalization of freedom in modern society. In particular, it looks at Honneth's argument for the realization of freedom in law and morality that is proposed as a contemporary re-interpretation of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Then I discuss Honneth's argument for the reality of freedom in the ethical spheres of civil society, in particular in the family, the market and in democracy. Finally, the paper proposes some critical remarks to Honneth's theory.
According to the theory of language of the young Benjamin, the primary task of language isn't the communication of contents, but to express itself as a "spiritual essence" in which also men take part. That conception according to which language would be a medium to signification of something outside it leads to a necessary decrease of its original strength and is thus denominated by Benjamin bürgerlich. The names of human language are remainders of an archaic state, in which things weren't yet mute and had their own language. Benjamin suggests also that all the arts remind the original language of things, as they make objects "speak" in form of sounds, colors, shapes etc. That relationship between arts as reminders of the "language of things" and the possible reconciliation of mankind with itself and with nature has been developed by Theodor Adorno in several of his writings, specially in the Aesthetic Theory, where the artwork is ultimately conceived as a construct pervaded by "language" in the widest meaning - not in the "bourgeois" sense.
Walter Benjamin's best-known comment regarding nihilism - "to strive for such a passing away [for nature is messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away] [...] is the task of world politics, whose method must be called nihilism" (SW III, 306) - occurs at the conclusion of his "Theological-Political Fragment" (1920–1921). In this pithy fragment Benjamin challenged the distinction between the political and the theological by pointing out the necessary relation - even codependence - of historical time and messianic time, the secular and the redemptive. The focus is the temporal dimension that dictates one’s "rhythm of life," on the one hand, and politics - its formative power - on the other. Benjamin’s translation of such abstract principles into different systems - the secular and the religious, the abstract and the particular, the collective and the individual - have confused scholars for many years. The result was often a misreading of Benjamin’s last sentence, connecting politics to nihilism and identifying the maker with his method. In order to reverse such readings, this chapter moves in four consecutive stages. I begin with the "temporal-rhythmic" principle, relating it to Benjamin's notion of Nihilism as a method. Second, I consider the specific meanings of "Nihilism" during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which I identify with the idea of a temporal 'stasis'. Third, I track down Benjamin’s uses of Nihilism and demonstrate that they reflect a certain methodological approach rather than a solution to a problem. Finally, commenting directly on contemporary interpreters of Benjamin who see him as a "nihilist" or an "anarchist," I show that Benjamin focused on the temporal and critical dimensions in order to 'overcome' nihilism and stasis.
The article critically engages Menachem Fisch’s account of normative frameworks, in particular of (rational) transitions between them. I argue, first, that exposure to the normative criticism leveled at us by other human beings is indeed “capable of destabilizing normative commitment” to one’s own underlying framework beliefs and standards, as Fisch holds; however, closer scrutiny reveals that such exposure is neither sufficient nor necessary but rather accidental in this respect. Second, I will try to show that Søren Kierkegaard’s account of how people fundamentally change their mind provides resources for both a substantial critique of Fisch and a more adequate understanding of the transitions in question. The article argues, third, that Fisch’s framework model – though meaningful, in fact heuristically indispensable in and as of itself – has robust transcendental implications which as such are being ignored, if not directly denied by Fisch and, precisely by being ignored or denied, unnecessarily weaken the overall plausibility of his account. Finally, and ex post, I will address an important objection raised by some commentators.
I first encountered the work of Miriam Hansen as a graduate student in the mid-1990s when her book Babel and Babylon was the talk of the (at that time still fairly modest) film studies town – even though it was sitting somewhat uneasily on the fence. In fact, it was this position beyond the canonical that made the book so attractive in the first place. It did not fit into the raging debate of that time between psychosemiotics and neo-formalism, nor did it offer the (often too schematic and naive) way out within the cultural studies paradigm of empowering the individual or sub-culturally constituted groups.