Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe term exaptation, describing the phenomenon that an existing trait or tool proves to be of new adaptive value in a new context, is flourishing in recent literature from cultural evolution and cognitive archaeology. Yet there also exists an older literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which studied more or less systematically the phenomenon of "change of function" in culture and tool use. Michel Foucault and Ludwig Noiré, who devoted themselves to the history of social institutions and material tools, respectively, occupy an important place among them. This article offers a brief overview of this literature and attempts to show that it provided ideas that remain relevant to current approaches to cognitive archaeology, in particular regarding attempts to understand the impact of technological evolution on the human mind.

Hanno Pahl: Geld, Kognition, Vergesellschaftung: Soziologische Geldtheorie in kultur-evolutionärer Absicht. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2021. 978-3-658-32683-8

Gegen einige aktuelle Kritiken zeige ich, dass Piketty nicht »Marx auf den Kopf stellt«, zumindest nicht unbedingt. Pikettys Kritik der Ideologie des Eigentums, sein Fokus auf die institutionelle Einbettung der Ökonomie und einige Ansätze zu einer Imperialismustheorie halten Einsichten bereit, die auch für eine kritische Ökonomie relevant sind.

AbstractI am commenting on Moore's book from the perspective of philosophy of science, i. e. I concentrate on his conceptual framework and its formal features. There are two such features which will immediately attract the attention of any philosopher: first, the use of quotation marks, which I take to indicate that the author does not really wish (or dare, perhaps) to say what he actually says and, second, claims of necessity or counterfactual conditionals, which demand especially robust argumentation. These two features are directly related to each other: (1) Moore places the category of unpaid work, at least occasionally, in quotation marks; this concept is fundamental to his approach and he uses it in a much broader sense than is commonly done; and (2) he claims that capitalism depends necessarily on inputs of unpaid work. In my comment, I will discuss a number of conceptual problems linked to Moore's extension of the notion of unpaid work and will analyze the extent to which these problems affect his claim that capitalism is necessarily dependent on unpaid work.

Abstract
In this paper I propose to read the history of systems of units, and in particular the current reform of the International System of Units (SI), understood as a set of measuring norms, in the light of reflective equilibria. The idea is that the model of reflective equilibria actually applies to processes which can be empirically observed or studied. This can help us to understand the nature of normativity and to shed light on its relativity to, and dependence on, practice.

Der Verfasser erläutert Grundlagen der Marx'schen ökonomischen Theorie aus der Perspektive der Messtheorie. Aus dieser Perspektive reiht sich Marx in eine Reihe von Autoren ein, die sich zugleich der Politischen Ökonomie als auch wissenschaftstheoretischen, insbesondere messtheoretischen Problemen widmen. Der Verfasser vollzieht die Marx'sche Argumentation im "Kapital" aus messtheoretischer Sicht nach: den einfachen Wertausdruck einer Ware im Tauschverhältnis, die Wertabstraktion im Tausch und den adäquaten Ausdruck des Werts im Geldausdruck. Er zeigt, dass Marx mit seinem Nachweis der Genese der Geldform zugleich ein wichtiges messtheoretisches Problem löst und das messtheoretische Grundvokabular entwickelt. (ICE2)