Dieter Wandschneider

The center of this investigation is the ‘real hard problem’ of phenomenal perception (Chalmers), i.e. of the qualitative kind of perception presenting the subject with forms, colors, smell, pleasurable or negative feelings etc.; the problem of Human consciousness, however, will explicitly not be treated. The ‘explanatory gap’ (Levine) complained by the philosophy of mind, that is to say the failure of all attempts to supply a neuronal explanation of experiences, is emergence-theoretically treated: Systems own properties and laws different from their components; so the emergence concept shows promise also for the explanatory potential with respect to neuronal systems. Here the phenomenal character of perception is explained from the systemic co-action of perception and behavior, whereby also an interpretation is opened to Davidson’s anomal monism. Qualitative feelings, as is further shown, are not to be understood as needless ‘epiphenomena’, but as a necessary completion of per-ception when, as in the case of higher animals, the behavior is primarily controlled by phenomenal perception.

A Criticism misjudging itself too. On the Deficiency of Reflection in Formal Explications. The criticism formulated by L. B. Puntel concerning the theory of dialectic proposed by the author is rejected. Puntel's attempt at explicating predication by means of (second order) predicate logic fails: It misjudges predication being already presupposed for the possibility of predicate logic, thus belonging to the transcendental conditions of formal predicate logic, so that predication itself cannot be further explicated by means of such logic. What is in fact criticized by Puntel is something like an artefact of formalization. The unreflected application of formal logic here generates problems instead of solving them