Thomas Grundmann (philosopher)

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Thomas Grundmann (2005)

Thomas Grundmann (born October 7, 1960 in Kiel ) is a German philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Cologne . The focus of his work is epistemology , the philosophy of language , Kant and the philosophy of spirit .

Life

Grundmann was born on October 7, 1960 as the son of the pharmacist Hans-Heinrich Grundmann and his wife Hannelotte Grundmann, née. Heyne born. He attended high school in Flensburg and graduated from high school in 1980. From 1981 to 1988 he studied philosophy , German , history and ancient Greek in Freiburg and Tübingen . In 1988, with a thesis on “Ontology and Subjectivity. Investigations on the transcendental logic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ”with Klaus Hartmann in Tübingen the state examination. In 1992 he also did his doctorate in Tübingen with Manfred Frank on “Analytical Transcendental Philosophy . A criticism ”and then became a lecturer, later a research assistant at the Philosophical Seminar and finally from 1994 to 2001 Manfred Frank's research assistant at the University of Tübingen .

From 1996 to 1997 Grundmann visited the University of California, Berkeley as a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a research stay with Barry Stroud and Donald Davidson . In November 2001 he completed his habilitation with the thesis “The skeptical method. A metaepistemological investigation ”and a colloquium on the topic“ If determinism were true. Reflections on Free Will and Ethics "

After substituting professorships in Essen (2002), Tübingen (2002/03) and Berlin (2003), Grundmann became a C2 professor for analytical philosophy and the history of philosophy at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken in 2003 . From 2004 he took over the C3 professorship for epistemology, philosophy of science and logic at the University of Cologne, first as a substitute and then properly .

Grundmann is married and has two children.

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Starting from his intensive preoccupation with Kant, Grundmann came to his current center of interest, epistemology. The focus of his research and teaching is based on epistemology, skepticism, philosophy of science, logic, the philosophy of mind as well as linguistic and analytical philosophy. Further areas of work are empiricism and rationalism of the modern age, the metaphysics of the person (freedom, death, theories of the person), theories of rationality, normativity and metaethics. In addition, Grundmann has been dealing with questions of didactics of philosophy since he started teaching.

Positions

To the so-called "traditional epistemology"

Grundmann describes nine approaches for the "traditional paradigm" of epistemology:

Epistemological questions are answered without reference to empirical knowledge. So judgments are not justified by experience, but by an analysis of concepts. The criteria for what is to be considered a justified opinion and its scope (the extent to which this opinion should be valid) are formed synthetically and not derived from the encounter with the real world. They therefore apply a priori. This “theory of justification” is generally intended to secure the foundations of empirical knowledge in general. It is considered the foundation of a so-called " first philosophy ".
  • Antipsychologism (e.g .: Rudolf Eisler)
The classic “theory of justification” aims to answer epistemological questions independently of any psychology. Knowledge would therefore be independent of everything that is known today about the (causal) relationships between mental states, knowledge or about the cognitive abilities of humans.
According to the thesis of the “transparency of reasons”, facts justifying opinions should be such that they are directly accessible to the opinion holder through mere reflection.
  • epistemological individualism (e.g .: John Locke )
Accordingly, the justification of any opinion may only be based on information that the opinion holder can justify himself - or at least could. An "epistemological division of labor" is excluded.
  • Anti-reductionism
Knowledge cannot be reduced to experience. I.e. justifying facts cannot be traced back to non-epistemic facts. The classic argument here is the so-called “naturalistic fallacy” (from being to ought).
Accordingly, knowledge should be independent of - z. B. Socio-economic - environment. The justification of reasoned opinions should not be relative to the changeable social, physical and other conditions to which the opinion holder happens to be exposed.
An opinion should only be justified by the fact that it is in certain logical relationships to other mental states, which themselves must have propositional content.
Opinions should only be justified by opinions, that is, nothing but opinions have the power to justify. (Davidson: "that nothing can be considered as a reason for an opinion that is not itself an opinion".)
  • psychosemantic internalism
The mental or its content should be completely autonomous (thesis of the "autonomy of the mental"). Individuals' opinions emerge independently of their environment.

According to Grundmann, what these approaches have in common is the idea of ​​epistemological independence (epistemic autonomy). The individual, the opinion holder, would therefore be completely autonomous as a knowing subject in his cognition in relation to epistemological rules. In view of the fact that the traditional epistemology was decisively shaped by Descartes and Kant, this is not surprising, since both consider a priori knowledge (i.e. opinions before every experience) to be possible. However, according to Grundmann, this can now be viewed as questionable.

“For a number of years now, the pillars of traditional epistemology have been called into question by newer influential currents in philosophy. The advocates of radical naturalism reduce the phenomenon of knowledge to an objective object of scientific research. In the Philosophy of Spirit, the traditional image was permanently shaken by the theses of salary externalism and the discussion about the possibility of a non-conceptual perceptual content. The contextualism that emerged primarily from the late Wittgenstein stresses the relativity of interests of epistemological phenomena and claims the traditionally neglected social dimension of knowledge. "

literature

Monographs

  1. Ontology and subjectivity. Investigations on the transcendental logic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, unpublished state work. 213 pages. Tübingen 1988.
  2. Analytical transcendental philosophy. A review, Schöningh: Paderborn 1994. 376 pages.
  3. On the trail of the truth. A plea for epistemological externalism, mentis: Paderborn 2003. 403 pages (revised version of the habilitation thesis).
  4. Analytical introduction to epistemology, De Gruyter: Berlin / New York 2008, 608 pages, ISBN 978-3-11-017622-3 and 2017 in 2nd edition, 469 pages, ISBN 978-3-11-053025-4 .

Editions

  • Co-editor of Philosophy of Skepticism, Schöningh: Paderborn 1996.
  • Editor of Epistemology. Positions between tradition and the present, mentis: Paderborn 2001 (2nd edition, Paderborn 2003).
  • Co-editor of Anatomy of Subjectivity, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 2005.

Articles and essays

  • "Filosofia trascendentale analitica versus filosofia trascendentale conscienzia". In: Euntes Docete 44 (1990).
  • “Attribution or Proposition? H.-N. Castaneda's Critique of Chisholm and Lewis' theories of self-awareness ”. In: Analytical Theories of Self-Consciousness, ed. by M. Frank, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt / M. 1994.
  • “Is there a subjective foundation of our knowledge?” In: Journal for Philosophical Research 1996, pp. 458–472.
  • "Can Science be alikened to a well-written fairy-tale? A contemporary reply to Schlick's objections to Neurath's coherence theory ”. In: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 4 (1996), pp. 127-133.
  • “Conditions of understanding as conditions of the objects of understanding”. In: Analyomen 2, ed. by G. Meggle / P. Steinacker, Berlin / New York 1997, Vol. 1, pp. 232–245.
  • "Trends in contemporary analytical epistemology". In: Journal for philosophical research 51 (1997), pp. 627-648.
  • "The Two Faces of Skepticism in Aenesidemus-Schulze ". In: The Skeptical Tradition around 1800, ed. by R. Popkin / J. vd Zande, Kluwer: Dordrecht 1998, pp. 133-141.
  • "Burge's antirealistic argument against epiphenomenalism". In: Analyomen 3, ed. by J. Nida-Rümelin, Berlin / New York 1999, pp. 521-528.
  • "BonJour's Self-Defeating Argument for Coherentism". In: Knowledge 50 (1999), pp. 463–479.
  • & Frank Hofmann: "Is radical empiricism epistemically self-contradicting?" In: The future of knowledge, ed. by Jürgen Mittelstraß, Universitätsverlag Konstanz 1999, pp. 684–691.
  • "Traditional epistemology and its challengers". In: Epistemology, ed. by T. Grundmann, Mentis: Paderborn 2001, pp. 9-29.
  • "A Psychological Defense of Epistemological Realism". In: Epistemology, ed. by T. Grundmann, Mentis: Paderborn 2001, pp. 188-209.
  • "The epistemological recourse argument". In: Journal for Philosophical Research 55 (2001), pp. 221–245.
  • "What the epistemological internalist forgets". In: Logos NF 7 (2001/2), pp. 361-385.
  • "Why we should consider knowledge as an important concept in epistemology - an answer to Ansgar Beckermann". In: Journal for philosophical research 56 (2002), pp. 118–124.
  • "The structure of the skeptical trauma argument". In: Grazer Philosophische Studien 64 (2002), pp. 57–81.
  • & Catrin Misselhorn: "Transcendental Arguments and Realism". In: Kant and Strawson, ed. by HJ Glock, Oxford University Press 2003, pp. 205-218.
  • “If determinism were true. On the possibility of free will in the natural world ”. In: Monism. Festschrift for Andreas Graeser, ed. by Andreas Baechli / Klaus Petrus, Frankfurt / London 2003, pp. 293–313.
  • “What is actually a transcendental argument?” In: Why Kant today? Meaning and relevance of his philosophy in the present, ed. by Dietmar Heidemann and Kristina Engelhard, Berlin / New York 2003, pp. 44–75.
  • “The Limits of Epistemological Contextualism”. In: German Journal for Philosophy 51 (2003).
  • "Perceptual Representations as Basic Reasons". In: Perception and Reality. From Descartes to the Present, ed. by Ralph Schumacher, Paderborn 2003, pp. 286–303.
  • "Counterexamples to Epistemic Externalism revisited". In: The Externalist Challenge, ed. by Richard Schantz , Berlin / New York 2004.
  • "Inferential Contextualism, Epistemological Realism and Skepticism. A Reply to Michael Williams ". In: Knowledge 61 (2004), 345 - 352.
  • “Does epistemological externalism contradict our intuitions?” In: Knowledge and Belief. Proceedings of the 26th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. by W. Löffler / P. Weingartner, Vienna 2004.
  • “Descartes' Cogito argument. An attempt at a meaning-critical reconstruction ”, in: T. Grundmann (ed.), Anatomie der Subjectivet, Frankfurt am Main 2005, pp. 255–276.
  • "The limits of understanding"
  • "Why I know that I'm not a zombie"

Reports, reviews and lexicon articles

  • Report of the XVI. German Congress for Philosophy. In: Journal for philosophical research 48 (1994), pp. 292-299.
  • Review of "Geert Lueke-Lueken: Incommensurability as a problem of rational argumentation". In: Philosophische Rundschau 40 (1993), pp. 325–329.
  • Review of “Alex Buri: Hilary Putnam, Frankfurt / M. 1994 ". In: Philosophische Rundschau 1995.
  • Review of “Hilary Putnam: Renewing Philosophy, HUP: Cambridge / MA 1992; Words and Life, HUP: Cambridge 1994 ". In: Philosophische Rundschau 43 (1996), pp. 64–70.
  • Lexicon article on "thing in itself", "brain in the tank" and "reliability". In: Metzler Philosophy Lexicon, ed. by P. Prechtl / ​​FP Burkard, Metzler: Stuttgart 1995.
  • Review of "Thomas Bartelborth: Justification Strategies, Akademie Verlag: Berlin 1996". In: Journal for Philosophical Research 1998.
  • Review of “Robert Stern (Ed.): Transcendental Arguments. Problems and Prospects, Oxford: Clarendon 1999 "and" Robert Stern: Transcendental Arguments and Skepticism. Answering the Question of Justification, Oxford: Clarendon 2000 ". In: Journal for philosophical research 56 (2002), pp. 155–164.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. If determinism were true. Free will and ethics considerations.
  2. ^ "Epistemology. Positions between tradition and the present. Paderborn 2001.