Wolfgang Lenzen

Wolfgang Lenzen (born February 4, 1946 in Essen ) is a German philosopher . Until his retirement in 2011 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Osnabrück .

Career

Wolfgang Lenzen attended the Humboldt Gymnasium in Essen until 1965 . Then he studied in 1965/66 at the University of Münster , 1967/68 at the University of Freiburg i. B. and 1968/69 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München mathematics, philosophy and art history for high school teaching. In Munich with Wolfgang Stegmüller and Franz von Kutschera , Lenzen discovered analytical philosophy . In 1969 he went to Regensburg from Kutschera as a student assistant and assistant. In 1972 he received his doctorate with the dissertation "Theories of confirming scientific hypotheses". The logical problems of the confirmation terms (with Karl Raimund Popper and Carl Gustav Hempel ) and the logical incompatibilities of the various requirements for confirmation terms were clarified. In 1979 Lenzen received his habilitation in philosophy ("Faith, Knowledge and Probability") and in 1981 followed the call to a full professorship for philosophy at the young University of Osnabrück . In 2011 Lenzen retired .

Bioethics

Lenzen presented a bioethics that is based above all on two simple principles: 1. the prohibition of third-party harm, “ neminem laedere ”, 2. a quasi- hedonistic value theory , according to which the value of an action for a person is the sum (or the change is the sum of the (expected) value of all subsequent episodes in life. From this he derives a moderate, restricted ban on abortion , a liberal sexual ethic that allows what harms no one else, and liberal positions in the field of genetic engineering . Lenz's reflections were included in over 20 essays on applied ethics and a monograph: “Love, Life, Death - A Study of Moral Philosophy” (1999).

Cognitive science

Lenzen's interest in questions of artificial intelligence led to the establishment of ' Computational Linguistics ' and later ' Cognitive Sciences ' at the University of Osnabrück. Research on the philosophy of mind was added.

Selected Works

• 1990 "The system of Leibniz's logic"
• 2004 "Calculus Universalis - Studies on the Logic by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz "
• 2007 "Magical Goals" (about endurance and extreme sports with considerations on voluntary self-torture in sport)
• The value of life - possibilities and limits of a pragmatic approach (without a year)

literature

• Christoph Lumer; Uwe Meyer (ed.): Spirit and morality. Analytical reflections for Wolfgang Lenzen . Paderborn: mentis 2011, pp. 7-14

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Lenzen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Laudation on Lenzen for retirement (PDF; 56 kB)
• Professor Lenzen wants to go around the world