Environmental Philosophy and East Asia

This book explores the contributions of East Asian traditions, particularly Buddhism and Daoism, to environmental philosophy in dialogue with European philosophy. It critically examines the conceptions of human responsibility toward nature and across time presented within these traditions. The volume rethinks human relationships to the natural world by focusing on three main themes: Daoist and Eurodaoist perspectives on nature, human responsibility toward nature, and Buddhist perspectives on life and nature. By way of discussing East Asian traditions and European thinkers, this collection reveals that the impact of humanity on the environment is shaped not only by distinctive modes of economic production, but also by cultural beliefs and practices. Representing a unique constellation of environmental and intercultural philosophy, the contributions present systematic approaches to the global need for cultivating environmental responsibility across cultures and generations to address the political, ethical, and aesthetic challenges arising from humanity’s transformative impact on the natural world. Presenting a critical re-evaluation of human relationships to the natural world in dialogue with East Asian traditions, this will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Philosophy, Environmental Studies and Asian Studies

Derrida's Democracy To Come

To assess the contribution of recent French thought to democratic theory, this paper discusses Derrida’s ‘democracy to come’ in relation to a quasi-transcendental account of the constitution of meaning and identity in terms of an excess of time named the future to come. This re-conceptualization of democracy cannot escape the affirmation of normative commitments, a commitment to futural openness that stands in need of justification. Derrida’s intent to expose ineluctable aporias and contradictions of democratic decision-making disallows what Habermas calls a transcendental-pragmatic argument to the effect that we ought to be open to the future because the openness of the future is always necessarily presupposed by our symbolic practices. However, Derrida’s insistence on unavoidable contradictions and aporias can provide a weak normativity if this insistence is viewed as aiming at the reduction of violence. I conclude by showing that Derrida tends to overreach the normativity he can justify, in particular in regard to the relatively neglected democratic values of economic and political equality

Antagonism and Democratic Citizenship (Schmitt, Mouffe, Derrida)

In the context of the recent proliferation of nationalisms and enemy figures, this paper agrees with the desirability of retaining some of the explanatory and motivational potential of an agonistic account of politics, but gives reasons not to accept too much of Carl Schmitt's account of citizenship. The claim as to the necessarily antagonistic exclusion of concrete others can be supported neither on its own terms nor on Derridian grounds, as Chantal Mouffe, in particular, attempts to do. I then indicate that différance may nonetheless account for strong (but not necessary) tendencies toward exclusion as well as for the intrinsic contradictions of liberal universalism

Cura et Casus: Heidegger and Augustine on the Care of the Self

In the context of the much-debated 'return of religion', this paper argues that Heidegger’s concept of responsibility for oneself, including the idea of fallenness, owes itself chiefly to Augustine and his discussion of sin and temptation. The crucial difference is that Heidegger conceives the process of an agent’s singularization as taking place in confrontation with one’s dying, the dying that opens up possibilities for an agent, rather than with the personal loving god of Augustine’s Confessions

The gift of nature in Mauss and Derrida

This essay proposes a reinterpretation of Marcel Mauss’s famous The Gift with a focus on the question as to why gifts obligate recipients. Mauss argues that for the archaic cultures he studies, a donor is not separable from the thing given, so that the recipient also receives some of the donor’s ‘spirit’ that wishes to return to its origin. In my reconstruction, I stress that the donor is not separable from her gift because it is understood to come from her tribe, its tradition and ancestors, as well as from its ‘native soil’ and natural elements, which are taken to be inassimilable by the recipient. I then examine Derrida’s reading of Mauss in view of this unpossessable and the role of natural elements in it. In the face of Derrida’s rejection of Mauss’s foundationalist use of a cyclical nature, I conclude that for both authors nature may not only name the desire for the origin, but also a differential and open-ended force that turns and re-turns in all gifts

Towards Tutoring an Interactive Robot

Wrede B, Rohlfing K, Spexard TP, Fritsch J. Towards tutoring an interactive robot. In: Hackel M, ed. Humanoid Robots, Human-like Machines. ARS; 2007: 601-612.Many classical approaches developed so far for learning in a human-robot interaction setting have focussed on rather low level motor learning by imitation. Some doubts, however, have been casted on whether with this approach higher level functioning will be achieved. Higher level processes include, for example, the cognitive capability to assign meaning to actions in order to learn from the tutor. Such capabilities involve that an agent not only needs to be able to mimic the motoric movement of the action performed by the tutor. Rather, it understands the constraints, the means and the goal(s) of an action in the course of its learning process. Further support for this hypothesis comes from parent-infant instructions where it has been observed that parents are very sensitive and adaptive tutors who modify their behavior to the cognitive needs of their infant. Based on these insights, we have started our research agenda on analyzing and modeling learning in a communicative situation by analyzing parent-infant instruction scenarios with automatic methods. Results confirm the well known observation that parents modify their behavior when interacting with their infant. We assume that these modifications do not only serve to keep the infant’s attention but do indeed help the infant to understand the actual goal of an action including relevant information such as constraints and means by enabling it to structure the action into smaller, meaningful chunks. We were able to determine first objective measurements from video as well as audio streams that can serve as cues for this information in order to facilitate learning of actions

Frequency and phenotype of thalamic aphasia

Background: Aphasia is a recognized presenting symptom of thalamic lesions. Little is known regarding its frequency and phenotype. We examined the frequency of thalamic aphasia following Isolated Acute unilateral ischemic Lesions in the Thalamus (IALT) with respect to lesion location. Furthermore, we characterized thalamic aphasia according to affected language domains and severity. Methods: Fifty-two patients with IALT were analyzed [44% female, median age: 73 years (IQR: 60-79)]. Lesion location was determined using 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging and categorized as anterior, posterior, paramedian or inferolateral. Standardized language assessment was performed using the validated Aphasia checklist (ACL) directly after symptom onset. Aphasia was defined as an ACL sum score of < 135 (range: 0-148). Results: Of 52 patients, 23 (44%) fulfilled the ACL diagnostic criteria for aphasia, including nearly all lesion locations and both sides. The average ACL sum score was 132 +/- 11 (range: 98-147). Aphasia was characterized by deficits within domains of complex understanding of speech and verbal fluency. Patients with left anterior IALT were most severely affected, having significantly lower ACL scores than all other patients (117 +/- 13 vs. 135 +/- 8; p < 0.001). In particular, aphasia in patients with left anterior IALT was characterized by significantly worse performance in the rating of verbal communication, verbal fluency, and naming (all p <= 0.001). Conclusion: Aphasia occurs in almost half of patients with focal thalamic lesions. Thalamic aphasia is not confined to one predefined thalamic lesion location, but language deficits are particularly pronounced in patients with left anterior IALT presenting with a distinct pattern