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250Transcendental Philosophy and Mind-Body ReductionismContributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 16 390-392. 2008.The notion of “representation” is central to Kant’s transcendental philosophy. But naturalism and mind-body reductionism tend to reduce talk of (first-person) representation to stories of (third-person) causality and evolution. How does Kant fare in this context?
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230Chinese Ways of WordsInstitut International de Philosophie 5 119-126. 2009.According to the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a language influences the mind of its user. This is more or less trivial, but the problems are in the details. It is difficult to make precise what those influences are, be it in general philosophical or in particular empirical-cultural terms. I will give an account of what I take to be basic aesthetic and grammatical features of the Chinese language compared with what we find in Western languages such as Latin or greek. Then I will indicate wha…Read more
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40Stephen Davies: Philosophical Perspectives on Art, OUP 2007 (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (7). 2008.
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2Mathematics and Aesthetics in Kantian PerspectivesIn Cassaza Peter, Krantz Steven G. & Ruden Randi R. (eds.), I, Mathematician II. Further Introspections on the Mathematical Life, The Consortium of Mathematics and Its Applications. pp. 93-106. 2016.This essay will inform the reader about Kant’s views on mathematics and aesthetics. It will also critically discuss these views and offer further suggestions and personal opinions from the author’s side. Kant (1724-1804) was not a mathematician, nor was he an artist. One must even admit that he had little understanding of higher mathematics and that he did not have much of a theory that could be called a “philosophy of mathematics” either. But he formulated a very influential aesthetic theory th…Read more
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93Isolation and involvement: Wilhelm Von humboldt, François Jullien, and morePhilosophy East and West 60 (4): 458-475. 2010.This is an essay about language, thought, and culture in general, and about Ancient Greek and Classical Chinese in particular. It is about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that language influences the mind, and applies this hypothesis to Greek and Chinese. It is also an essay in comparative philosophy as well as a contribution to the history of ideas. From the language side, I rely on the nineteenth-century German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, and from the culture side on the contemporary…Read more
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Robert Greenberg: Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge, Penn State Press 2011 (review)Philosophy in Review 22 (3): 188-190. 2002.
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504Kann aus dem Urteil über das Angenehme ein Geschmacksurteil ähnlich wie aus dem Wahrnehmungsurteil ein Erfahrungsurteil werden? (Can a Judgment About the Agreeable Become a Judgment of Taste, As a Judgment of Perception Can Become a Judgment of Experience?)In Volker Gerhardt, Rolf-Peter Horstmann & Ralph Schumacher (eds.), Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung. Akten des IX. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, vol. 3, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 468-476. 2001.
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87Wittgenstein and Free WillIn Harald A. Wiltsche & Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl (eds.), Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Methods and Perspectives. Proceedings of the 37th International Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 47-62. 2016.In this essay I to do three things. First, I discuss a statement from the Tractatus which says that our free will consists in our ignorance of future actions: “The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future. We could know them only if causality were an inner necessity like that of logical inference.” (5.1362) I think this statement might well be inspired by a claim Moore made in connection with free will in his 1912 book Ethics: “We can har…Read more
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244"Bedeutungserlebnis" and "Lebensgefühl" in Kant and Wittgenstein: Responsibility and the FutureContributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 17 451-453. 2009.This essay is about the inner and the outer in Wittgenstein, in particular his notion of “meaning experience”. Wittgenstein reminds us that we should not think of the inner, psychological the way we think about the outer, physical world. Again and again he keeps returning to certain views about the soul and our mental states. I think that it is not only therapy he has in mind. I will contrast certain aesthetic and ethical aspects of his thoughts with views from Kant.
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51Do Negative Judgments of Taste Have a priori Grounds in Kant?Kant Studien 103 (4): 472-493. 2012.When contrasting something with its opposite, such as positive numbers with negative numbers, repulsion with attraction, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, Kant some-times says the latter are not merely cases of negation or privation of the former, but that they have their own, independent grounds. But do negative judgments of taste really have a priori grounds? There are two kinds of negative judgments of taste: “This is not beautiful” and “This is ugly.” Can they be a priori judgments? Or are…Read more
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307Urteil (Judgment)In Petra Kolmer & Arnim G. Wildfeuer (eds.), Neues Handbuch Philosophischer Grundbegriffe, Verlag Karl Alber. pp. 2284-2296. 2011.
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329Does Thought Happen in the Brain?Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 21 453-455. 2013.What is the nature of thought? Is thought linguistic and some kind of silent speech? Or is it pre-linguistic and some kind of association of ideas and images in the mind? Does it happen in the brain? I will focus on the last question, but also say something about the other two. I will present a simple thought experiment to show that thought must somehow happen in the brain. But then I will soften the impression this might give by pointing out what is needed to read those thoughts. Simply put, on…Read more
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26François Jullien: Review of The Impossible Nude: Chinese Art and Western Aesthetics, University of Chicago Press 2007 (review)Philosophy East and West 59 (2): 240-243. 2009.
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586Art and Imagination in MathematicsIn Michael L. Thompson (ed.), Imagination in Kant's Critical Philosophy, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 49-68. 2013.
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22Leslie Stevenson: Inspirations from Kant. Essays, OUP 2011 (review)Mind 123 (490): 644-649. 2014.
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57Aesthetic Aspects of Persons in Kant, Schiller, and WittgensteinThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 35-39. 2006.The main ideas in this paper can be summarized in the following three points. (1) Openness, indeterminacy, and exemplarity are elements of both Kant's aesthetics and Wittgenstein's notion of language games. (2) These elements are essential to what makes a person. They are necessary in processes of decision-making and in the development of a person. (3) Such aspects were in the center of discussion during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, especially in the tradition of the so-cal…Read more
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526On Wittgenstein on CertaintyContributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 19 320-322. 2011.In the preface to On Certainty Anscombe and von Wright say that in 1949 Malcolm suggested to Wittgenstein to think again about Moore’s “Defense of Common Sense” (1925) and “Proof of an External World” (1939). Malcolm himself had written on the issue in “Defending Common Sense” (1949). In the preface to the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein quotes Nestroy saying that there is usually very little progress in philosophy. But I think some progress has been made from Moore and Malcolm to Witt…Read more
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50Chinese Gestures, Forms of Life, and RelativismContributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 23 331-333. 2015.In this essay I focus on Wittgenstein's discussion of how we understand and feel about people that come from cultures very different from our own. Wittgenstein writes about "guessing thoughts", "regularities", and "common human behaviour" (gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise) in this context. I argue that his idea about given forms of life that we should "accept", will be problematic if we want to find a meaningful way of relating to such people with whom we "cannot find our feet" (in die man …Read more
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126On Wittgenstein's notion of meaning-blindness: Its subjective, objective and aesthetic aspectsPhilosophical Investigations 33 (3): 201-219. 2009.Wittgenstein in his later years thought about experiences of meaning and aspect change. Do such experiences matter? Or would a meaning- or aspect-blind person not lose much? Moreover, is this a matter of aesthetics or epistemology? To get a better perspective on these matters, I will introduce distinctions between certain subjective and objective aspects, namely feelings of our inner psychological states versus fine-tuned objective experiences of the outer world. It seems to me that in his discu…Read more
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20In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbände zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants veröffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhältnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ansätzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Veröffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrückliche Desiderate der Forschung erfüllen. Die Publikationen repräsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.
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409Where after all are the Meanings? A Defense of Internalism. Searle versus PutnamExperience and Analysis. Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium 12 408-409. 2004.There has been recent dispute between Putnam and Searle over whether meanings are “in the head”. Putnam makes use of Twin-Earth thought experiments to show that our mental states alone cannot determine what we refer to (and thus “mean”) and that we rely also on external factors, which are not “in the head”. This suggests to me that we in some way mean more than we actually know. Searle on the other hand makes use of what he calls “Intentional contents”, “conditions of satisfaction”, and “self-re…Read more
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621Ethics and Relativism in WittgensteinContributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 20 348-350. 2012.This essay is about Wittgenstein, first about his views on ethics, second about his conception of language games. Third, it combines the two and shows how problems arise from this. Wittgenstein rejects theories of ethics and emphasises the variety of language games. Such language games are marked by what I call “inner relativity”. Wittgenstein himself was not a relativist, but it seems to me his views easily lead to what I call “outer relativism”. In matters of ethics this is particularly proble…Read more
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93Ob die Kategorien schon bei der Wahrnehmung eine Rolle spielen, wird von Kant-Interpreten unterschiedlich gesehen. Peter Rohs etwa argumentiert für eine Unabhängigkeit und Selbständigkeit der Wahrnehmung gegenüber dem Verstand. Die intuitive Synthesis der Einbildungskraft müsse auf eigenen Füßen stehen können und Bilder und „singuläre Sinne“ der Anwendung der Begriffe vorausgehen. McDowell hingegen spricht sich gegen eine solche Selbständigkeit der Wahrnehmung aus. Setzte man sie voraus, käme de…Read more
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772Aesthetics and Morality in Kant and Confucius. A Second StepIn Stephen R. Palmquist (ed.), Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 321-332. 2010.In the framework of his transcendental philosophy, Kant strictly separates morality from aesthetics. The pleasure in the good and the pleasure in the beautiful are two different kinds of pleasure (Arten des Wohlgefallens). As a consequence, a moral act as such cannot be beautiful. It is only in a second step that Kant indicates possible connections, in his comments on aesthetic ideas, symbolism, the sensus communis, and education in general. In Confucius on the other hand we do not find such a r…Read more
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264Kant's aesthetics: Overview and recent literaturePhilosophy Compass 4 (3): 380-406. 2009.In 1764, Kant published his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and in 1790 his influential third Critique , the Critique of the Power of Judgment . The latter contains two parts, the 'Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment' and the 'Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment'. They reveal a new principle, namely the a priori principle of purposiveness ( Zweckmäßigkeit ) of our power of judgment, and thereby offer new a priori grounds for beauty and biology with…Read more
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55Beauty, Genius, and Mathematics: Why Did Kant Change His Mind?History of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (4). 2001.
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394Perry Link: An Anatomy of Chinese; Rhythm, Metaphor. Harvard University Press 2013 (review)Etudes Chinoises 33 (1): 174-181. 2014.
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6Chinese Perspectives on Free WillIn Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith & Neil Levy (eds.), Routledge Companion to Free Will., Routledge. pp. 374-388. 2017.The problem of free will as it is know in Western philosophical traditions is hardly known in China. Considering how central the problem is in the West, this is a remarkable fact. We try to explain this, and we offer insights into discussions within Chinese traditions that we think are related, not historically but regarding the issues discussed. Thus we introduce four central Chinese concepts, namely: (1) xīn 心 (heart, heart-mind), (2) xìng 性 (human nature, characteristic tendencies, inborn cap…Read more
Areas of Specialization
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Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Asian Philosophy |
Free Will |
Immanuel Kant |
Ludwig Wittgenstein |