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PublicationsBooksThe Four Causes. Habilitationsschrift, Leipzig 2010.
Journal Articles
"Teleonomy." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 14, 2011, 184-201. "Science, Conscience, Consciousness." History of the Human Sciences 23(3), 2010, 15-28.
"The Four Causes." The Journal of Philosophy 106(3), 2009, 137-60. "Matter in Z3." Foundations of Science 13, 2008, 199-215.
"Substance, Reality, and Distinctness." Prolegomena 7(1), 2008, 5-20. "Cartesian Conscientia." British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15(3), 2007, 455-484.
Book Contributions
"Is Causation a Relation?" In Keith Allen and Tom Stoneham, eds., Causation and Modern Philosophy, Routledge 2011, 188-200. "Consciousness as Spontaneous Knowledge." In Petr Glombicek and James Hill, eds., Essays on the Concept of Mind in Early-Modern Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2010, 7-27. "What is Formal Ontology?" and "Occurrents." In Katherine Munn and Barry Smith, eds., Applied Ontology. An Introduction, Ontos Verlag 2008, 39-56 and 255-284.
"Ghazali on Immaterial Substances." In Christian Kanzian and Muhammad Legenhausen, eds., Substance and Attribute in Islamic Philosophy. Western and Islamic Tradition in Dialogue. Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag 2007, 55-66. "Social Facts Explained and Presupposed." In Nikos Psarros and Katinka Schulte-Ostermann, eds., Facets of Sociality. Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag 2006, 243-263. "Holistic Arguments for Individualism." In Georg Meggle, ed., Social Facts & Collective Intentionality. Frankfurt: Hänsel Hohenhausen 2002, 103-123.
Reviews
Dictionary entries
Online versionsBooks
The Four CausesAristotle's distinction of four causes can be derived by combining the distinction between natural things and processes with the distinction between that out of which something comes to be and what it comes to be. It follows that the matter of a thing is something that potentially is this thing and the formal cause of this thing is what it potentially is. Likewise, the efficient cause of a process may be taken to be something that potentially is this process, and the final cause may be taken to be the typical course of the process it comes to be. Submitted as Habilitationsschrift, Leipzig 2009. Preview of table of contents, Introduction, and Conclusion (pdf). 
 Conscientia bei
DescartesDescartes used "conscientia", which is commonly translated as "consciousness," according to the traditional meaning of the Latin term that we also find in the writings of St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas and later scholastics. Thus for Descartes, conscientia is not a kind of speculative self-knowledge, inner observation or reflective awareness. Rather, it is a kind of practical knowledge. Extract from the PhD thesis and abstract available online. The book is published by Alber Verlag, May 2006. 
Gibt es eine Rehabilitation
der Cartesischen Psychologie?According to Descartes, substances are correlates of distinct ideas, that is, of ideas that may be defined without reference to other ideas. The key concepts of psychology cannot be distinct and therefore cannot correspond to substances. Therefore, psychology cannot be an independent discipline. Master thesis, Leipzig 2000. Papers and AbstractsMetaphysics
The Aristotelian doctrine of four causes naturally arises from the
combination of the two distinctions (a) between things and changes,
and (b) between that which potentially is a certain thing or change
and what it potentially is.
The biological species concept rests on the notion of reproduction,
which we can only apply if we know what counts as a result of
successful reproduction. Therefore, it presupposes the typological
species concept and cannot, as Ernst Mayr thinks, replace it.
For something to be a living being is
to engage in activities whose success is determined by criteria that
emerge exclusively from a proper account of the nature of the living
being in question.
Life is not a describable
property of things. In order to understand what life is, we must
start with our conception of the life that we know,
human life, and reduce the notion of this life to a notion of mere
life.
I use Austin's distinction of two directions of fit in order to
explain how a priori knowledge is possible.
Action Theory and Ethics
Outline for a teaching sample.
This is not a translation of "Tugenden und Absichten," but a
presentation with similar content. Among other things, I argue that intentions are
terms in which intentional actions are properly classified and
described; and virtues are for generic
actions what intentions are particular actions.
Intentions are not events that cause an action, but that in terms of
which we describe and action when we describe it as
intentionally. Likewise, virtues are not character traits that
reliably cause certain behaviour, but that in terms of which we
describe certain generic behaviour.
Moral
conscience in early medieval ethics.
Review of Pawlenka, ed., Sportethik.
Social Philosophy
Individualistic
theories of Social Facts are not altogether circular, but they still
start on the wrong foot.
Holism,
in one of its varieties, is not the opposite of individualism. Rather,
individualism is its consequence.
Descartes
Descartes claims that God is a substance and that mind and body are
two different and separable substances. This paper provides some
background that renders these claims intelligible.
When Descartes
calls the soul of a human being an immaterial substance, he does not contradict the
Aristotelian doctrine according to which the soul of a person is the
substantial form of her body.
Descartes defines the mind as something whose activities are subject
to an evaluation according to which they are, in principle, corrigible.
Descartes uses 'conscientia' in
the traditional sense, roughly meaning 'moral conscience'.
Miscellaneous
Something is a document insofar as its official function is to
compensate for the impossibility of immediately acquiring information
that has a function (= plays a role in a practice).
Some details
on the history of the term "person".
Forms and potentials
inhere in a receptacle that exemplifies them, whereas universals and
possibilities may inhere in a substratum that does not exemplify
them, such as the intellect.
The
use of George Spencer Browns Logic of Distinctions by the Sociologist
Niklas Luhmann.
A close paraphrase of
Heidegger's Being and Time §18 on how we make sense of
items in the world in terms of their generic ways of
functioning. Items are related to systems of interrelated ways functioning that are
related to purposes that fit into our lives.
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