Review of ARNO ROS: Materie und Geist - Eine philosophische Untersuchung (Matter and Mind - A Philosophical Investigation)

Among the many fascinating questions that have driven our kind to perform science and philosophy, the question of the nature of the mind (or in an older terminology: the soul) is certainly the most exciting one. What are the relations between physical and mental events? Do animals have a mind? Do we have a free will or are all our actions just determined by neuro-physiologic mechanisms? Those questions form the background, in front of which Arno Ros has written a profound philosophical investigation. Organized in six parts, his new book Materie und Geist – Eine philosophische Untersuchung [Matter and Mind – A Philosophical Investigation] offers an extensive as well as exciting analysis of the field of issues often called the mind-body problem. He characterizes possible versions of the problem together with the methods of their proper solutions. An extended review of this book is given in the following

Computational Visualistics: Dealing with Pictures in Computer Science

Building blocks from many disciplines have to be integrated into a general science of images. Computational visualistics has been formed as a contributing field embracing all aspects of dealing with images computationally. Two basic concepts of computer science are introduced. Applied to the concept "image", they determine the methodological core of computational visualistics. As the contribution of computer science to the subject of image theory, interactive pictures are examined. Finally, relations to other "image sciences" are sketched. * * * Bausteine vieler Disziplinen müssen in eine allgemeine Bildwissenschaft integriert werden. Als Beitrag aus der Informatik versteht sich die Computervisualistik, die alle Aspekte rechnergestützten Umgangs mit Bildern umfaßt. Zwei Grundbegriffe der Informatik werden vorgestellt und bestimmen, auf den Begriff "Bild" angewendet, den methodologischen Kern der Computervisualistik. Als Beitrag der Informatik zum Gegenstand der Bildtheorie werden interaktive Bilder betrachtet. Schließlich werden die Beziehungen zu anderen "Bildwissenschaften" kurz umrissen

Variations and Application Conditions Of the Data Type »Image« - The Foundation of Computational Visualistics

Few years ago, the department of computer science of the University Magdeburg invented a completely new diploma programme called 'computational visualistics', a curriculum dealing with all aspects of computational pictures. Only isolated aspects had been studied so far in computer science, particularly in the independent domains of computer graphics, image processing, information visualization, and computer vision. So is there indeed a coherent domain of research behind such a curriculum? The answer to that question depends crucially on a data structure that acts as a mediator between general visualistics and computer science: the data structure "image". The present text investigates that data structure, its components, and its application conditions, and thus elaborates the very foundations of computational visualistics as a unique and homogenous field of research. Before concentrating on that data structure, the theory of pictures in general and the definition of pictures as perceptoid signs in particular are closely examined. This includes an act-theoretic consideration about resemblance as the crucial link between image and object, the communicative function of context building as the central concept for comparing pictures and language, and several modes of reflection underlying the relation between image and image user. In the main chapter, the data structure "image" is extendedly analyzed under the perspectives of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. While syntactic aspects mostly concern image processing, semantic questions form the core of computer graphics and computer vision. Pragmatic considerations are particularly involved with interactive pictures but also extend to the field of information visualization and even to computer art. Four case studies provide practical applications of various aspects of the analysis

Virtual Institutes: Between Immersion and Communication

In the two expressions "virtual reality" and "virtual community", the term "virtual" has different meanings. A virtual reality is a depiction or, more generally speaking, a sensuous representation of reality that allows - mainly by means of interactivity - to experience various features of reality without actually being in contact with the reality depicted. Therefore, any interactive depiction that is able to imitate reality to such an extent that a high degree of sensory-motor immersion becomes possible is called a virtual reality (Heim 1998, 6f). Since reality is always much more complex than its depiction and full of unpredictable surprises, hardly ever a user has doubts about the difference between the depiction and the thing depicted. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for preferring the imitation to the reality: at least, the imitation is usually not as dangerous as reality sometimes turns out to be. Accordingly, quite different platforms for virtual institutes may be used emphasizing either the immersion aspect or the communication aspect. The decision for a platform depends on the goals pursued with the institute: text-based chat systems allow virtual communities to flourish, single-user VRML scenes convey a highly immersive 3D impression to its users. This is particularly true for virtual institutes realized as a 3D environment, as well as for corresponding virtual communities since 3D environments are adequate for certain tasks only. As an overall framework for the evaluation it is helpful to distinguish three major application areas: research, presentation, and communicative work. The Virtual Institute for Image Science (VIB), which we would like to describe in the following (3) as a case study, is almost exclusively designed for the third task: communicative working. It intends to provide a working space persons can share for joint projects despite being physically separated. Before describing the VIB in more detail we would like to give an overview of virtual institutes between the poles of realistic immersion and of communication in a community (2). The discussion of the case study leads to some more general considerations about the balance virtual institutes must find along that bi-polar dimension (4). In the concluding remarks we focus on the technical tools for virtual communities in 3D presently available

To Show and To Say: Comparing the Uses of Pictures and Language

There has been a long tradition of characterizing man as the animal that talks. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings, after all we know empirically so far. Are there conceptual reasons for that coincidence? Such a question belongs to the philosophy of language just as well as to philosophical visualistics. Comparing the two abilities to use words or pictures yields several similarities as well as distinctions. A well-known conceptual disparity between pictures and words appears in their relation to perception: the difference can be further determined in an act-theoretic manner by four modes of use of the sign vehicles during the corresponding sign acts. Furthermore, the figure/ground dichotomy means something different for language uses and picture uses. In both cases, however, there is a close relation to the function of context building, by which humans are able to communicate not only with respect to the present situation of behavior but with respect to arbitrary contexts as well. Although the structural comparison does clarify the conceptual relations, it cannot explain that the conceptual structure ought to be like that. Therefore, the paper concludes with the programme of a "concept-genetic" consideration of the two abilities (i.e., to use propositional language or to use pictures) that is able to give us such a foundation