Lukas Nehlsen

Interaktionen von Menschen und Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) gehören mittlerweile zum Alltag. Dass sie sich nicht mehr allein durch Schalter, Knöpfe oder Regler vollziehen, sondern zunehmend via Sprachsteuerung, verändert die Beziehung von Mensch und Apparatur. Die kommunikative Form versetzt das Individuum in eine Art von Begegnung mit der Maschine, welche nun als vermeintlich autonomer Akteur Anerkennung verlangt. Diese Begegnungen vertiefen die digitale Transformation der Lebenswelt, sie produzieren neue Selbstverständlichkeiten und Normalitäten. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen ihre Formen und Inhalte. Was bedeutet es, mit einer Maschine zu musizieren, sich von einem Roboter pflegen zu lassen, mit einer KI ein intelligentes Gespräch zu führen? In welcher Hinsicht werden KIs zu normalen Partnern des Alltags? Gibt es neue Antworten auf die alte Frage nach dem ›Geist‹ in der Maschine? Oder muss diese Frage heute ganz anders gestellt werden? Mit Beiträgen von: Renate Buschmann, Erik N. Dzwiza-Ohlsen, Martin Feißt, Christian Grüny, Jonathan Harth, Alexander Hochmuth, Burkhard Liebsch, Oliver Müller, Lukas Nehlsen und Martin W. Schnell.

This article begins by outlining the so-called “concept horse paradox” that results from Frege’s strict separation between concepts as functions and objects as arguments. It is argued that this paradox is indicative of a wider problem in philosophy, namely the tendency to reify the conceptual. Husserl is then presented as a philosopher who initially shows a keen eye for the danger of succumbing to this tendency but ends up giving in to it on a higher level in his theory of Wesensschau. It is shown that the reason for this lies in his conception of what an object is and how it is signified by a proper name. Cassirer, by contrast, takes Frege’s idea of the functionality of propositions more seriously than Frege himself when he draws the consequence that an object, too, must be thought as a functional unity and that a proper name is merely a proto-concept.

Transcendental Idealism often acts as something of a philosophical boogeyman in our times. The accusation of being a transcendental idealist is one of untenable metaphysical dogmatism. Richard Rorty also saw transcendental idealism as a metaphysical doctrine that needs to be abandoned in the wake of philosophy becoming increasingly anti-authoritarian. In this essay, I first propose that transcendental idealism is best understood, following Henry Allison, as a metaphilosophical standpoint rather than as a metaphysical doctrine. If we understand transcendental idealism in this way, Rorty should, on pain of abandoning his anti-authoritarian ideals, want to be a transcendental idealist. However, I go on to show, in his reading of Donald Davidson’s argument against the possibility of radically alien languages, Rorty stays committed to the undesirable alternative view of transcendental realism. Specifically, in Davidson’s argument and Rorty’s adaptation of it, certain views about the nature of possibility and intelligibility emerge that are, I argue, at the core of what Kant criticizes as transcendental realism. What this modal transcendental realism consists in and how it is opposed to a transcendental idealist view of possibility and intelligibility will be explained in the last part through an analysis of Kant’s “table of nothingness,” a somewhat underanalyzed part of the Critique of Pure Reason.

In this article we attempt a phenomenological analysis of the climate crisis. We start by arguing that the climate crisis cannot appear as a regular phenomenon. Due to its over-temporality and catastrophic character it is a non-phenomenon. However, we contend, this non-phenomenon announces itself in the hyperphenomenon of heat-waves. We analyse heat as a phenomenon and then show how it becomes a hyperphenomenon in the form of heat-waves. Besides the scientific evidence for prolongued and more extreme heat waves being due to the climate crisis there is a question of how they can be experienced in everyday life as connected to climate change. We argue that, if heat-waves reach extreme temperatures, go on for an unusual long time and are combined with uncommonly high temperatures in winter, we experience, bodily and structurally, a falling apart of our normal order of experience. This experience can motivate an experienced understanding of the climate crisis because it resonates with the overtemporality and catastrophic character of the climate crisis. We therefore understand it as an announcement of the crisis despite its withdrawal.