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What is formal ontology?In Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds.), Applied Ontology: An Introduction, Ontos. 2008.
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49Conscientia bei DescartesZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 60 (1): 21-36. 2006.Obwohl ‚conscientia’ ein zentraler Grundbegriff der cartesischen Metaphysik ist, sagt Descartes nirgends explizit, was er damit meint. Auch aus der Art und Weise, in der er das Wort verwendet, lässt sich dessen Bedeutung nicht vollends erschließen. Insbesondere handelt es sich nicht um einen reflexiven Denkakt (cogitatio), nicht um eine Disposition zum Haben solcher cogitationes und nicht um eine Art Aufmerksamkeit. Um die Bedeutung des Begriffes zu klären, schlage ich vor, auf klassische Texte …Read more
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580Substance, Reality, and DistinctnessProlegomena 7 (1): 2008. 2008.Descartes claims that God is a substance, and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible. For Descartes, that something is real means it can exist in separation, and something is a substance if it does not depend on other substances for its existence. Further, separable objects are correlates of distinct ideas, for an idea is distinct (in an objective sense) if its object may be easily and clearly sepa…Read more
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161Naturteleologie, reduktivPhilosophisches Jahrbuch 113 (2): 296--315. 2006.The sciences may be able to describe living beings, but this is not to account for their life. Life is not a describable property of things. There is also no philosophical a priori argument by which one could prove the existence of life – except perhaps our own. In order to understand what life is, we must start with our conception of that life that we know, human life, and reduce the notion of this life to a notion of mere life. We may do this by introducing the following distinctions. Intentio…Read more
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37Ghazali on immaterial substancesIn Christian Kanzian & Muhammad Legenhausen (eds.), Substance and Attribute in Islamic Philosophy. Western and Islamic Tradition in Dialogue, Ontos Verlag. 2007.I will in this paper attempt to extract a positive doctrine on the substantiality of the human soul from Ghazali"s critique of the Aristotelian philosophical tradition. Rather than reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of intercultural dialogue, my aim is to directly engage in such dialogue. Accordingly, I will not suppose that we need to develop and apply external standards according to which one of the two philosophical traditions addressed here, Western and Islamic, may turn out to …Read more
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458The Four CausesJournal of Philosophy 106 (3): 137-160. 2009.I will argue that Aristotle’s fourfold division of four causes naturally arises from a combination of two distinctions (a) between things and changes, and (b) between that which potentially is something and what it potentially is. Within this scheme, what is usually called the “efficient cause” is something that potentially is a certain natural change, and the “final cause” is, at least in a basic sense, what the efficient cause potentially is. I will further argue that the essences of things an…Read more
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50Eine Verteidigung des typologischen ArtbegriffsPhilosophia Naturalis 46 (2): 251-278. 2009.The paper demonstrates that the biological species concept that Mayr con- trasts with the typological one in fact presupposes a version of the typological species concept. For one cannot assess whether two living beings are capable of producing offspring without already knowing what would count as off- spring. Therefore, one must know non-relational features of typical offspring of a kind of living beings in order to be able to apply the biological species concept. The typological species concep…Read more
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Zeitliche entitäten: GeschehnisseIn Ludger Jansen (ed.), Biomedizinische Ontologie, Vdf Hochschulverlag. 2008.
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25"Conscientia" bei DescartesAlber Verlag. 2006.Although Descartes is often said to have coined the modern notion of 'consciousness', he nowhere defines the according Latin term (conscientia), neither explicitly nor implicitly. This may either imply that he used the word in a sense that he did not make sufficiently clear, that he was not the first to use 'conscientia' in its modern psychological sense, or that he still used it in its traditional sense. I argue for the third assumption: Descartes used 'conscientia' according to the traditional…Read more
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8Stephan Schmid. Finalursachen in der frühen Neuzeit: Eine Untersuchung der Transformation teleologischer Erklärungen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. Pp. xii+410. $165.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 179-182. 2013.Book review.
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76Holistic arguments for individualismIn Georg Meggle (ed.), Social Facts and Collective Intentionality. Philosophische Forschung / Philosophical research, Dr. Hänsel-hohenhausen. 2002.In this essay, I will sketch my view of the connections between some methodological assumptions in social philosophy, namely those of individualism, holism, and collectivism. My interest in doing so is to outline a rough conceptual landscape, into which an approach of collective actions and intentions can be placed.
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54Doing and Being. An Interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics ThetaPhilosophical Quarterly 66 (263): 411-414. 2016.Review of Jonathan Beere's book.
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Virtues and intentions-Approach to learn a virtuous concept from AnscombePhilosophisches Jahrbuch 115 (1): 165-183. 2008.Intentions are not events that cause an action, but that in terms of which we describe and action when we describe it as intentionally. Likewise, virtues are not character traits that reliably cause certain behaviour, but that in terms of which we describe certain generic behaviour.
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37Science, conscience, consciousnessHistory of the Human Sciences 23 (3): 15-28. 2010.Descartes’ metaphysics lays the foundation for the special sciences, and the notion of consciousness (conscientia) belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology. I argue that as a metaphysical notion, ‘consciousness’ refers to an epistemic version of moral conscience. As a consequence, the activity on which science is based turns out to be conscientious thought. The consciousness that makes science possible is a double awareness: the awareness of what one is thinking, of what one should be do…Read more
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45Luhmann und die formale mathematikIn Peter-Ulrich Merz-Benz & Gerhard Wagner (eds.), Die Logik Der Systeme, Universitätsverlag Konstanz. 2000.Niklas Luhmann verwendet in seiner soziologischen Systemtheorie offenbar etwas, das er den Büchern des englischen Mathematikers George Spencer Brown entnimmt. Dessen Formenkalkül ist für Luhmann, wie Günther Schulte treffend bemerkt, “Mädchen für alles, mit dem er nicht nur in der Lage ist Teezukochen, sondern auch Auto oder Straßenbahn zu fahren”. Der erste Blick in Spencer Browns Laws of Form vermittelt einen anderen Eindruck: nichts scheinen sie mit soziologischer Systemtheorie zu tun zu habe…Read more
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346Four Causes. 2016.This is partly a book about Aristotle’s four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final cause), partly a systematic discussion of the relation between form and matter, causation, and teleology. Its overall aim is to show that the four causes form a system, so that the form of a natural thing relates to its matter as the final cause of a natural process relates to its efficient cause. It reaches two highly distinctive conclusions. The first is that the formal cause or essence of a thing is no…Read more
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160Cartesian conscientiaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (3): 455-484. 2007.Although Descartes is often said to have coined the modern notion of ‘consciousness’, he defines it neither explicitly nor implicitly. This may imply (1) that he was not the first to use ‘conscientia’ in its modern, psychological sense, or (2) that he still used it in its traditional moral sense. In this paper, I argue for the latter assumption. Descartes used ‘conscientia’ according to the meaning we also find in texts of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus the Cartesian co…Read more
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161The classifications of living beingsIn Peter Heuer & Boris Hennig (eds.), Applied Ontology, . pp. 197--217. 2008.This chapter proceeds in five steps. First, we will describe and justify the structure of the traditional system of species classification. Second, we will discuss three formal principles governing the development of taxonomies in general. It will emerge that, in addition to these formal principles, a division of living beings must meet certain empirical constraints. In the third section, we will show that the traditional division of living beings into species best meets these constraints. Fourt…Read more
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18Supstancija, stvarnost i odjelitostProlegomena 7 (1): 5-20. 2008.Descartes claims that God is a substance and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible.
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27Plato’s Ingredient Principle: Phaedo 105a2-5Ancient Philosophy 35 (2): 303-316. 2015.We can accept Plato's "ingredient principle" when we replace the distinction between things and properties with a slightly different one.
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29“Insofar as” in Descartes’ Definition of ThoughtStudia Leibnitiana 43 (2): 145-159. 2011.In Principia Philosophiae I 9, Descartes defines “thought” as follows: “By the name ‘thought’ I understand all that which happens in us such that we are conscious of it, insofar as there is consciousness of it in us”. I inquire how to read the "insofar as" in this definition.
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15Documents: Fillers of Informational GapsThe Monist 97 (2): 246-255. 2014.Something is a document insofar as its official function is to compensate for the impossibility of immediately acquiring information that has a function (= plays a role in a practice).
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42Was bedeutet ‚Conscientia' bei DescartesDissertation, Universität Leipzig. 2004.Obwohl 'conscientia' ein zentraler Grundbegriff der cartesischen Metaphysik ist, sagt Descartes nirgends explizit, was er damit meint. Auch aus der Art und Weise, in der er das Wort verwendet, lässt sich dessen Bedeutung nicht vollends erschließen. Insbesondere handelt es sich nicht um einen reflexiven Denkakt (cogitatio), nicht um eine Disposition zum Haben solcher cogitationes und nicht um eine Art Aufmerksamkeit. Um die Bedeutung des Begriffes zu klären, schlage ich vor, auf klassische Texte…Read more
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A. Referat über deutschsprachige Neuerscheinungen - Erfahrung und GegenstandPhilosophischer Literaturanzeiger 60 (3): 209. 2007.
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48Social facts explained and presupposedIn Nikos Psarros & Katinka Schulte-Ostermann (eds.), Facets of Sociality, Ontos Verlag. pp. 243-264. 2006.Attempts are often made to explain collective action in terms of the interaction of individuals. A common objection to such attempts is that they are circular: Since every interaction presupposes the existence of common practices and common practices involve collective action, no analysis of collective agency in terms of interaction can reduce collectivity away. In this essay I will argue that this does not constitute a real circularity. It is true that common practices are presupposed in every …Read more
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103Matter in Z3Foundations of Science 13 (3-4): 199-215. 2008.In this paper, I will discuss a certain conception of matter that Aristotle introduces in Metaphysics Z3. It is often assumed that Aristotle came to distinguish between matter and form only in his physical writings, and that this lead to a conflict with the doctrine of primary substances in the Categories that he tries to resolve in Z3. I will argue that there is no such conflict. In Z3, Aristotle seems to suggest that matter is what is left over when we strip a thing of all its properties. I ta…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Self-Knowledge |
Metaphysics |
Plato |
Aristotle |
Areas of Interest
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