Martin Lenz – författare

In this book, Martin Lenz provides the first reconstruction of intersubjective accounts of the mind in early modern philosophy. Some phenomena are easily recognised as social or interactive: certain dances, forms of work and rituals require interaction to come into being or count as valid. But what about mental states, such as thoughts, volitions, or emotions? Do our minds also depend on other minds? The idea that our minds are intersubjective or social seems to be a recent one, developed mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries against the individualism of early modern philosophers. By contrast, this book argues that well-known early modern philosophers often started from the idea that minds are intersubjective. How then does a mind depend on the minds of others? Early modern philosophers are well known to have developed a number of theories designed to explain how we cognize external objects. What is hardly recognized is that early modern philosophers also addressed the problem of how our cognition is influenced by other minds. This book provides a historical and rational reconstruction of three central, but different, early modern accounts of the influence that minds exert on one another: Spinoza's metaphysical model, Locke's linguistic model, and Hume's medical model. Showing for each model of mental interaction (1) why it was developed, (2) how it construes mind-mind relations, and (3) what view of the mind it suggests, this book aims at uncovering a crucial part of the unwritten history of intersubjectivity in the philosophy of mind.

The nature and properties of angels occupied a prominent place in medieval philosophical inquiry. Creatures of two worlds, angels provided ideal ground for exploring the nature of God and his creation, being perceived as 'models' according to which a whole range of questions were defined, from cosmological order, movement and place, to individuation, cognition, volition, and modes of language. This collection of essays is a significant scholarly contribution to angelology, centred on the function and significance of angels in medieval speculation and its history. The unifying theme is that of the role of angels in philosophical inquiry, where each contribution represents a case study in which the angelic model is seen to motivate developments in specific areas and periods of medieval philosophical thought.

The nature and properties of angels occupied a prominent place in medieval philosophical inquiry. Creatures of two worlds, angels provided ideal ground for exploring the nature of God and his creation, being perceived as 'models' according to which a whole range of questions were defined, from cosmological order, movement and place, to individuation, cognition, volition, and modes of language. This collection of essays is a significant scholarly contribution to angelology, centred on the function and significance of angels in medieval speculation and its history. The unifying theme is that of the role of angels in philosophical inquiry, where each contribution represents a case study in which the angelic model is seen to motivate developments in specific areas and periods of medieval philosophical thought.

Was legt die Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke fest? Sind es die mentalen Zustände der Sprachbenutzer oder Faktoren außerhalb der Sprecher? Locke scheint von der simplen These auszugehen, dass Wörter primär die Ideen im Geiste des Sprechers bezeichnen, und sich damit auf einen unhaltbaren Mentalismus zu verpflichten. Der Autor tritt diesem verbreiteten Bild mit einer historisch und systematisch umfassenden Auseinandersetzung entgegen, die Lockes Konzeption als einen sozialen Externalismus ausweist, gemäß dem die Sprachgemeinschaft entscheidender Faktor für die Fixierung sprachlicher Bedeutung ist. Die vorliegende Studie präsentiert diese Konzeption in fünf Schritten: (1) Nach einer Exposition der Problemstellung in Lockes Essay wird (2) eine historische Analyse der inner- und außerscholastischen frühneuzeitlichen Diskussionskontexte unternommen, um zunächst Lockes Wende zur Sprache textnah zu rekonstruieren und (3) die ausführliche Erörterung der umstrittenen Ideen- und Urteilstheorie vorzubereiten. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird (4) Lockes gescholtene „Hauptthese“ systematisch im Rahmen seiner Semantik und Abstraktionstheorie verortet sowie (5) in Konfrontation mit gegenwärtigen Positionen als Ingredienz eines sozialen Externalismus verteidigt.

Normativity has long been conceived as more properly pertaining to the domain of thought than to the domain of nature. This conception goes back to Kant and still figures prominently in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics. By offering a collection of new essays by leading scholars in early modern philosophy and specialists in contemporary philosophy, this volume goes beyond the point where nature and normativity came apart, and challenges the well-established opposition between these all too neatly separated realms. It examines how the mind’s embeddedness in nature can be conceived as a starting point for uncovering the links between naturally and conventionally determined standards governing an agent’s epistemic and moral engagement with the world. The original essays are grouped in two parts. The first part focuses on specific aspects of theories of perception, thought formation and judgment. It gestures towards an account of normativity that regards linguistic conventions and natural constraints as jointly setting the scene for the mind’s ability to conceptualise its experiences. The second part of the book asks what the norms of desirable epistemic and moral practices are. Key to this approach is an examination of human beings as parts of nature, who act as natural causes and are determined by their sensibilities and sentiments. Each part concludes with a chapter that integrates features of the historical debate into the contemporary context.​