Politics of Nature:Philosophical Perspectives on the Anthropocene

It is obvious that human forms of life have affected the earth system to such an extent that one has to consider the possibility that a new geological age has emerged. More importantly, the severe changes underway in this new age, often called the &#8216;Anthropocene&#8217;, seem to undermine the very conditions of survival on this planet: Climate change, a severe reduction of biodiversity, the increasing exploitation and devastation of the environment, and new diseases based on cross-species virus transmission are only some of the most visible forms in which human activities have seriously undermined the habitability of this planet for human and non-human species. It is the dire irony of the term &#8216;Anthropocene&#8217; that it is named after the very species that is heading for self-extinction in this age. This situation does not just underline the fact that the present capitalist forms of life are unviable, it also poses a challenge to some of the constitutive ideals that have guided the critique of these forms of life – notions of growth and transformation, liberation and invention, freedom and self-determination, care and responsibility, justice and equality. Against this background, the conference seeks to articulate the &#8216;Anthropocene&#8217; as a philosophical problem that requires a deep revision of our self-understanding and a new conception of politics.Politics of Nature: Philosophical Perspectives on the Anthropocene, conference, ICI Berlin, 20–21 October 2022 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e221020

The struggle for recognition and the authority of the second person

In this introductory paper, I discuss the second-personal approach to ethics and the theory of recognition as two accounts of the fundamental sociality of the human form of life. The first section delineates the deep affinities between the two approaches. They both put a reciprocal social constellation front and center from which they derive the fundamental norms of moral and social life and a social conception of freedom. The second section discusses three points of contrast between the two approaches: The accounts differ in that the second-personal approach opts for a narrower conception of recognition focusing on mutual moral accountability, whereas recognition theory suggests a broader conception including relations of love, respect, and esteem. Secondly, the accounts differ as to how they conceive of the interrelation of the I-thou and the I-We relationship. Finally, they differ with regard to the way they think of struggles for recognition. Whereas the second-personal approach suggests that we can understand struggles on the basis of a transcendental infrastructure of second-personal address, the theory of recognition considers norms of recognition as themselves constituted by dialectical social struggles. The paper closes with a reflection on the ways in which both approaches can help us understand the social vulnerability of the human form of life

‘I do not cognize myself through being conscious of myself as thinking’: Self-knowledge and the irreducibility of self-objectification in Kant

The paper argues that Kant’s distinction between pure and empirical apper- ception cannot be interpreted as distinguishing two self-standing types of self- knowledge. For Kant, empirical and pure apperception need to co-operate to yield substantive self-knowledge. What makes Kant’s account interesting is his acknowledgment that there is a deep tension between the way I become conscious of myself as subject through pure apperception and the way I am given to myself as an object of inner sense. This tension remains problematic in the realm of theoretical cognition but can be put to work and made productive in terms of practical self-knowledge

The Nature of Jupiter's Magnetodisk Current System

This chapter gives an overview of the properties of the magnetodisk current in the Jovian system. We describe the global morphology of the current sheet embedded in the plasmadisk / magnetodisk and the observational signatures of currents in this structure. We then consider the role of disk currents in force balance and plasmasheet structure in an axisymmetric, rotating system. We also describe the dependence of current density on spatial location, global size of the magnetosphere, and asymmetries plausibly associated with the influence of solar wind. We conclude with a simplified description of the microscopic nature of the particle motions in the magnetospheric plasma, whose collective action produces the currents themselves

Oncogenic Foxl2 is a chromatin-remodeling pioneer transcription factor in adult-type ovarian granulosa cell tumors

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Optical Conductivity in Mott-Hubbard Systems

We study the transfer of spectral weight in the optical spectra of a strongly correlated electron system as a function of temperature and interaction strength. Within a dynamical mean field theory of the Hubbard model that becomes exact in the limit of large lattice coordination, we predict an anomalous enhancement of spectral weight as a function of temperature in the correlated metallic state and report on experimental measurements which agree with this prediction in $V_2O_3$. We argue that the optical conductivity anomalies in the metal are connected to the proximity to a crossover region in the phase diagram of the model.Comment: 12 pages and 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett., v 75, p 105 (1995

Het gaat weer beter met de natuur in Nederland

In een Volkskrantinterview (22 mei 2009) poneerden de eerste drie auteurs de stelling, dat het weer beter gaat met de Nederlandse natuur. Aanleiding vormde de presentatie van de Monitor Duurzaam Nederland (CBS, 2009) waarbij het Planbureau concludeerde dat de biodiversiteit in ons land nog steeds achteruitholt. Dit artikel onderbouwt de stelling van 22 mei en is in feite een vervolg op een eerdere discussie, waarin de methodiek van het PBL werd gepresenteerd. Dit artikel gaat uit van de vraag hoe het gaat met de biodiversiteit en kijkt van daaruit naar de methode