Some claim that when an agent does something, their action should be treated as a particular event. However, a challenge to this has it that if we understand agency through the category particular event, then we must also deploy another, process, because we act in the present but particular events can only exist in the past. In this paper, I show how this argument can be resisted, but suggest that consideration of it should nevertheless lead one to adopt a conception of events which reflects the idea that intentional action involves self-known change. We thus get into focus how understanding agency in terms of events involves attending to the interaction between the nature of events, the metaphysics of tense, and our epistemological situation as agents.

James Conants Buch zu Nietzsche ist keine Monographie im klassischen Sinne, und es ist in keiner Weise aus einem Guss. In vielen englischsprachigen Debatten um die Erbschaft Wittgensteins, um das Werk John McDowells oder Stanley Cavells und immer wieder zu klassischen Themen der deutschen Philosophie ist Conant mit prägnanten Aufsätzen bekannt geworden; in einem Band gesammelt hat er sie nie. Für das deutsche Publikum liegt nun ein Buch vor, das zwei lange ältere Texte, die beide einflussreiche Beiträge zur Nietzsche-Interpretation geworden sind, zugänglich macht und mit einigen Begleittexten ergänzt. Herausgekommen ist ein thematisch fokussiertes Werk zu Nietzsches Perfektionismus und Perspektivismus und ihrem Verhältnis, das zugleich heterogen ist, da die einzelnen Texte unterschiedlichen Kontexten und Debattenlagen entspringen.

In den Dresdner Heften für Philosophie erscheinen Monographien und Sammelbände mit dem Schwerpunkt Praktische Philosophie. Das Profil der Hefte steht in der Tradition von Aufklärung, Kritik und Anleitung zur Mündigkeit.

Aryeh Kosman’s The Activity of Being is the fruit of a lifetime of work on some of the most difficult and challenging texts of ancient philosophy.

The dual nature of emotions as both bodily and cognitive phenomena has posed quite a conundrum for the cognitive sciences, as it does not square well with the long-held conviction that bodily phenomena are not cognitive and that cognitive phenomena do not take place in the body. This stark divide between the bodily and the cognitive has been called into question by so-called situated approaches to cognition that have taken over cognitive science in the last three decades. The framework of situated cognition claims to present a viable alternative to the classical cognitivist position in cognitive science, which regards cognitive processes as disembodied computations over symbolic representations. Instead, proponents of situated cognition aim at showing how cognitive processes crucially depend on an agent’s active engagements with the environment through her body, whereby bodily processes and interactions with the environment become parts of the cognitive process itself, thus lifting the barrier between body and cognition. This Ph.D.-Thesis explores how these recent developments in cognitive science may be applied to emotion theories, so that here too bodily and cognitive aspects of the phenomenon of emotion can be united. In this endeavor a particular focus will be laid on emotions’ intentionality, to explore how an embodied agent’s interactions with the environment impact how they are directed at the world and what emotions are about. After a cursory overview of the history of emotion theories and a brief introduction to situated cognition in section one, the articles in section two provide the necessary terminological and conceptual clarifications and render initial attempts to look into what it means for affective phenomena such as emotions to be situated. Section three draws the focus to the intentionality of emotions and demonstrates how a situated perspective provides a more adequate construal of emotions’ intentionality than the classical cognitivist conceptions. Finally, in section 4, the utility of situated affectivity is exemplified by showing how the embodiment and embeddedness of affective phenomena provides a deeper understanding of the structure of experiences in affective disorders such as depression.

Diese Arbeit verfolgt das Ziel, sowohl unterschiedliche Subjektkonstruktionen aufzuzeigen, als auch ein Subjektdenken im Sinne einer Denkfigur herauszustellen.

Der Hauptschwerpunkt dieser Untersuchung liegt auf dem Versuch, die noch immer nicht geklärte Frage nach der chronologischen Einordnung von Xenophons Kleinschrift <Apologie des Sokrates> in Xenophons Œuvre zu beantworten. Gerade der eingehende Vergleich mit verschiedenen sokratischen Schriften (u.a. <Memorabilien>, Platons <Apologie>, <Kriton> und <Phaidon>) liefert hierbei aufschlussreiche Ergebnisse. Im zweiten Teil folgt ein ausführlicher philologisch-literarischer Kommentar der Kleinschrift, woran sich abschließend zwei kleinere Untersuchungen zu Sokrates’ sprichwörtlicher ‚megalegoria’ und der Tradition der sokratischen Apologienschriftstellerei anschließen. / Main theme of this doctor thesis is to answer the still problematic question of the chronological position of Xenophon’s <Apology of Socrates> in Xenophon’s œuvre. Some interesting results can be found by the comparison of different so called ‚sokratikoi logoi’ (<Memorables>, Plato’s <Apology>, <Crito> and <Phaedo>). The second part of the thesis contents of a philological and literal commentary of the <Apology>, followed by two smaller studies of Socrates’ ‚megalegoria’ and the tradition of Socratic apologies.

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Der amerikanische Philosoph Don Ihde entwickelte in den letzten zwanzig Jahren im Anschluss an die Technikphilosophie Martin Heideggers ein Konzept von Technoscience, das die technische Dimension der Naturkunde und der Naturwissenschaft sowie ihre kulturelle Einbettung hervorhebt. Insbesondere Heidegger und Ihde beschränken Technoscience- Ansätze auf neuzeitliche experimentelle Naturwissenschaft. Technoscience sollte jedoch auch wesentliche Bereiche der Medizin umfassen, allerdings mit deutlich technischer Zielsetzung. Drei Paradigmen haben sich für die Diskussion in der Bioethik herausgeschält: (1) eine Ethik des konservativen Lebensschutzes; (2) eine Ethik des pragmatischen Heilens und Verbesserns einschließlich innovativer Verwendung moderner Biotechnologie im Rahmen einer Handlungsorientierung am menschlichen Leib; (3) die Position der liberalen Eugeniker. / Over the past 20 years, American philosopher Don Ihde has developed a concept of technoscience, based on Heidegger's philosophy of technology, to emphasise the technological dimension of natural history, natural science and their cultural context. Both Heidegger and Ihde limit the technoscience approach to modern experimental natural science. However, technoscience should also embrace essential areas of medicine, albeit with decidedly technical objectives. Three paradigms have evolved for the discussion in bioethics: (1) the ethics of conservative protection of life; (2) the ethics of pragmatic healing and betterment, including innovative applications of modern biotechnology within a framework of action centred on the human body; (3) the position and theses of liberal eugenics.

Beside all the technical challenges concerning sensor quality and control algorithms one of the main issues related to the introduction of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) constitutes the human-machine interaction. This covers not only the physical interface between the driver and the system but also the understanding and cognitive model the driver needs to operate the system. The explorative analysis of a long-term field study of the use of ACC, was aimed at identifying characteristics of the learning process and their potential implications for conceptualising novel displays to increase, particularly in the early phases, usability and safety of the system through the adaptation of information to the drivers. The analysis of the learning aspects derived from drivers’ interaction with the system enabled the identification of learning aims for the usage of an ACC system and an objective classification of observable behaviours from which different levels of skill can be interpreted. It was concluded that by responding to the difficulties met by users in the actual situation and by adapting the information to the drivers’ experience, drivers’ learning progress could be accelerated through better comprehensibility and predictability of the system. To this aim, two innovative help-systems were conceived, implemented and evaluated in terms of drivers driving behaviour and interactions with the ACC system, in the BMW fixed-base driving simulator. A learn-adaptive, multi-modal, on-line tutor system that covered interactions with the system at every level of the driving task (Reichart, 2001) for which learning must be effectuated, was tested with 11 participants. A personalised learning model of the driver was used to relate the drivers’ prior usage of the system and his situational experience, to give the driver additional advice and explanation in order to shorten the learning period. A main effect was found between the experimental groups’ understanding of the system and in participants’ ability to predict when to reclaim control of the system, as measured by the reduction in unnecessary interventions and reduced number of panic reactions. The use of cognitive apprenticeship methods (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1993) on an online adaptation of feedback showed a positive influence on the learning process, increasing the speed of the learning process towards the acquisition of skill. The second experiment’s objective was to develop an interface that most effectively helped drivers learn to predict the need to reclaim control and the appropriate sensitivity of response in take-over situations. Drivers interactions with a didactic, two-step warning display, based on a time algorithm that was personalised to drivers maximum preferred deceleration level, was tested with 24 participants. Display effects were observed in time-to-collision, reaction times, the number of false alarms (unnecessary driver interventions) and misses (collision or near collisions). Significant differences were also found in distance error, adequate deceleration rates, panic braking and reaction times on the peripheral detection task. These results were also largely supported by the subjective measures. The proposed concepts have shown methods of reducing the ADAS learning phase and accelerating drivers behaviour to a skill level. The theoretical and empirical work described in this thesis plays an important role in deriving recommendations for systems that reduce the amount of learning demand on the driver and eliminates learnability issues that can lead to safety-critical traffic situations.