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Martin Lenz
  • University of Groningen
    Department of the History of Philosophy
    Oude Boteringestraat 52
    9712 GL Groningen
    The Netherlands
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... more
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.​
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"Was legt die Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke fest? Sind es die mentalen Zustände der Sprachbenutzer oder Faktoren außerhalb der Sprecher? Locke scheint von der simplen internalistischen These auszugehen, daß Wörter primär die Ideen im... more
"Was legt die Bedeutung sprachlicher Ausdrücke fest? Sind es die mentalen Zustände der Sprachbenutzer oder Faktoren außerhalb der Sprecher? Locke scheint von der simplen internalistischen These auszugehen, daß Wörter primär die Ideen im Geiste des Sprechers bezeichnen, und sich damit auf einen unhaltbaren Mentalismus zu verpflichten. Die vorliegende Studie möchte diesem verbreiteten Bild mit einer historisch und systematisch umfassenden Auseinandersetzung entgegentreten, die Lockes Konzeption letztlich als einen sozialen Externalismus ausweist, gemäß dem die Sprachgemeinschaft entscheidender Faktor für die Fixierung
sprachlicher Bedeutung ist. Dieser Ansatz wird in fünf Schritten
präsentiert: (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."
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Introductions & Reply to Comments
The Condemnation of 1277 is one of the most salient events in arguing about the nature and boundaries of philosophy. My aim is not to add another estimation of the Condemnation as a clash of faith and reason, but rather to consider the... more
The Condemnation of 1277 is one of the most salient events in arguing about the nature and boundaries of philosophy. My aim is not to add another estimation of the Condemnation as a clash of faith and reason, but rather to consider the concept of philosophy at work. To sidestep deciding on a particular notion of philosophy in advance, I will focus on the kind of disagreement displayed in the document of the Condemnation. With a side-glance to contemporary argumentation theory, I shall argue that the disagreement we encounter fulfils crucial criteria of what is known today as deep disagreement. We will see that we are in fact dealing not with one concept of philosophy but two different kinds of philosophy. At the same time, it will turn out that the reception has mainly focused on one kind of philosophy only, namely the rationalist approach attacked in the Condemnation.
Читал ли Декарт Витгенштейна? Диалогический подход к чтению Мартин Ленц (Гронинген) Перевод Марии Весте Читал ли Декарт Витгенштейна? Вам будет приятно услышать, что историки, как и философы, отрицают это.
[To appear in the Cambridge Lexicon to Spinoza, ed. by Karolina Hübner and Justin Steinberg]
Перевод с английского
Автор Мартин Ленц Университет Гронинген, Нидерланды
To appear in the Cambridge Lexicon to Spinoza, ed. by Karolina Hübner and Justin Steinberg
To appear in the Cambridge Lexicon to Spinoza, ed. by Karolina Hübner and Justin Steinberg
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The practice and the history of philosophy crucially involve understanding others and ourselves. Understanding can be seen as a threefold relation between a (1) subject and an (2) object that is (3) interpreted as something. When... more
The practice and the history of philosophy crucially involve understanding others and ourselves. Understanding can be seen as a threefold relation between a (1) subject and an (2) object that is (3) interpreted as something. When historians of philosophy chide others for being anachronistic, they mostly do so because they think that the objects of historical inquiry get distorted by projecting current concepts onto these objects. If I assume, for instance, that Descartes was responding to Wittgenstein's concerns, this will be called out accordingly. However, in focusing on the purity of the object, historians tend to overlook the anachronisms in the subject, that is: in themselves. They commonly try to bracket their own position or to treat it as an idealised consensual " current understanding " of the object. This bracketing or idealisation of one's own position is what is usually taken as a means to prevent anachronism. If I don't bring in my preconceptions or our current understanding, I can be true to the text at hand, or so it is argued. But this idealised present tense is an illusion, and trying to bracket it creates even more illusions. In this paper, I will zoom in on the role of subject and discuss how interaction with other subjects dominates our interpretations. In focusing on interacting subjects, I shall argue that we are bound to be both synchronically and diachronically anachronistic. Being shaped by different backgrounds and working for diverse imagined futures, we are often not only out of touch with the present, but also with one another. Compared to your colleagues, you might have a different take on what the mind is. Likewise, your Descartes might be different from mine, and perhaps your Des-cartes already had an argument with Wittgenstein. Maybe you don't even have an opinion about the current view on your topic of study. But although you simply wish to defer to the canon, you only find disagreement. In the light of such anachronisms, the attempt to bracket one's own views obscures the process of understanding, and it takes the philosophy out of history. Rather than shunning our views, we should make them explicit and embrace anachronism as an unavoidable aspect of understanding.
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Spinoza's notion of freedom confronts us with a paradoxical idea: on the one hand, freedom requires us to act with rational insight into the causally determined order of the natural world. On the other hand, grasping this order seems to... more
Spinoza's notion of freedom confronts us with a paradoxical idea: on the one hand, freedom requires us to act with rational insight into the causally determined order of the natural world. On the other hand, grasping this order seems to leave us with the insight that there is nothing that could be justly termed a human person. As I see it, the key to resolving this tension is to be sought within a special reading of Spinoza's theory of the striving for self-preservation (conatus): I shall argue that Spinoza's conatus doctrine entails an appropriation thesis: according to Spinoza's account, we ought to re-describe our personal histories in terms of a gradual appropriation of the natural order and take supposedly external causes as our own reasons for action. The present paper tries to set out this solution and its difficulties against the background of the contemporary debate on freedom.
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Although we commonly take our thoughts to be about external things that exist independently of ourselves, Spinoza’s notion of intentionality suggests that our ideas are primarily about our own bodies. What are we to make of this somewhat... more
Although we commonly take our thoughts to be about external things that exist independently of ourselves, Spinoza’s notion of intentionality suggests that our ideas are primarily about our own bodies. What are we to make of this somewhat revisionary tenet? Do our thoughts never reach out to the things themselves? This paper attempts to reconstruct Spinoza’s notion of intentionality in two steps. Firstly, I will place his position in the larger context of his metaphysical tenets and discuss how his theory of ideas provides an explanation of inten-tional content. Secondly, I will address the question of how Spinoza accounts for what we customarily take to be thoughts about external things as such. I shall argue that, for Spinoza, intentional content always involves propositional attitudes which are ultimately governed by our striving for self-preservation (conatus). In accentuating the links between his theory of propositional attitudes and his conatus principle, I hope to show how he challenges the traditional view of intentionality as grasping objects in a mind-independent world in favour of the thesis that we represent things as they are beneficial to us.
What determines the meaning of linguistic expressions: the mental states of language users or external factors? John Locke is still taken to hold the simple thesis that words primarily signify the ideas in the mind of the speaker and thus... more
What determines the meaning of linguistic expressions: the mental states of language users or external factors? John Locke is still taken to hold the simple thesis that words primarily signify the ideas in the mind of the speaker and thus to commit himself to an untenable mentalism. The present paper challenges this widespread view and sketches an argument to the effect that Locke should be seen as defending a kind of social externalism, since, for Locke, it is primarily the speech community that plays the essential role in determining meaning.
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"This interview deals with the major themes in the work of Ruth Millikan. Her most fundamental idea is that the intentionality of inner and outer representations can be understood in analogy to biological functions. Another innovative... more
"This interview deals with the major themes in the work of Ruth Millikan. Her most fundamental idea is that the intentionality of inner and outer representations can be understood in analogy to biological functions. Another innovative feature is the view that thought and language stand parallel to each other. Thirdly, the basic ideas concerning the ontology and the epistemology of concepts are explained. Millikan aims at clarifying her position by contrasting it with Dretske, Fodor, Sellars, and Brandom. Finally, the interview addresses topics that pose problems for her account (e. g. swampman, externalism) as well as questions she does not treat in her work (e. g. fictional discourse and consciousness).

Read More: http://www.oldenbourg-link.com/doi/abs/10.1524/dzph.2010.0074"
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Zur Preisfrage 2021 der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie: “Was haben Platon, Kant oder Arendt besser verstanden als die gegenwärtige analytische Philosophie?” Die diesjährige Preisfrage der GAP scheint auf das Verhältnis der... more
Zur Preisfrage 2021 der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie: “Was haben Platon, Kant oder Arendt besser verstanden als die gegenwärtige analytische Philosophie?”

Die diesjährige Preisfrage der GAP scheint auf das Verhältnis der gegenwärtigen analyti-schen Philosophie zur Geschichte zu zielen. Die Frage ist wichtig, hat in der gegebenen Form jedoch zumindest in den sozialen Medien ein gewisses Erstaunen ausgelöst. Da wir an einem Dialog über diese Frage interessiert sind und rasch feststellten, dass unsere Bedenken konvergieren, haben wir uns entschlossen, zwei Dinge zu tun: Erstens möchten wir die Vor-annahmen der Frage näher betrachten; zweitens möchten wir Kriterien möglicher Antworten ausloten.

--- Inzwischen auch auf dem Philosophieblog "Praefaktisch" erschienen: https://www.praefaktisch.de/002e/mind-the-gap-teil-i/
This podcast is the sixth installment of my series Philosophical Chats. In this episode, I have a conversation with Emma Young who is a research master student in philosophy at Groningen University. We focus on the issue of (political)... more
This podcast is the sixth installment of my series Philosophical Chats. In this episode, I have a conversation with Emma Young who is a research master student in philosophy at Groningen University. We focus on the issue of (political) polarisation. While it seems common to portray public discourse as being polarised, we rarely find the assumption itself questioned or investigated as such. Here is the LINK: https://handlingideas.blog/2021/06/07/are-we-really-polarised-a-conversation-with-emma-young-podcast/

Here is a rough outline of topics:

    Introduction 0:00
    Is polarisation empirically discovered or an assumption structuring our perception? 5:58
    Does the assumption of polarisation create a self-fulfilling prophecy? 9:30
    First summary. And does polarisation obscure problems? 12:10
    Division over corona policies as an example 15:50
    How polarisation promotes the illusion of a (neutral) centre 23:00
    How this illusion figures in history (of philosophy) 33:03
    Interests in or beneficiaries of polarisation 45:02
    Is polarisation irrational? 48:26
    Does philosophy fail in overcoming polarisation? 52:28
    How do we build solidarity? 1:07:04
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Organisation: Evelina Miteva (Cluj) and Martin Lenz (Groningen) Why do we think, feel or interact the way we do? Historians of philosophy often study such questions in relation to metaphysical, physical or psychological theories.... more
Organisation: Evelina Miteva (Cluj) and Martin Lenz (Groningen) Why do we think, feel or interact the way we do? Historians of philosophy often study such questions in relation to metaphysical, physical or psychological theories. Accordingly, human behaviour is taken to have been conceptualised mainly in reference to talk about essential or general physical and psychological dispositions. However, in recent years this picture has undergone crucial changes: lurking in the background of explanatory models are medical assumptions whose exposition often sheds new light on ancient, medieval and modern debates. To what extent, for example, are theories of imagination driven by medical considerations? Did Albert the Great's account of melancholy shape the Renaissance debates of creative geni-us? Should Hume's account of scepticism be understood in the light of humoral theory? The scholastic controversies inter medicos et philosophos should not just be seen as a debate between two separate camps, but rather as a point of mutual influence. It is precisely the interaction between the two disciplines that we wish to shed light on. Focusing on humoral theory in philosophical explanations, this workshop aims at stimulating exchange between historians of philosophy and experts in natural philosophy whose work often speaks more to one another than meets the eye. Please send an abstract to Martin Lenz (m.lenz@rug.nl) by December 15, 2018. The abstract must be no longer than 300 words, prepared for blind reviewing and sent as a .docx file (please do not use pdf format). The subject of the mail should be " MediPhil ". The author's name and contact information (name, affiliation, email and professional status – graduate student , postdoc, lecturer etc.) should also be specified in your message. There are no registration fees. Attendance is free but limited. For speakers, the organisers will try to cover the costs of accommodation and meals. No financial help, however, can be provided for travel expenses.
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Blog post in my new blog "Handling Ideas" on (writing) philosophy
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Introduction and laudatio start at 9:30.
Lecture starts at 20:50.
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Early modern thought is commonly portrayed as individualistic and solipsistic. Des-cartes turned inside to gaze at his clear and distinct ideas; Locke argued that words stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of the individual... more
Early modern thought is commonly portrayed as individualistic and solipsistic. Des-cartes turned inside to gaze at his clear and distinct ideas; Locke argued that words stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of the individual speaker. The power of words was often treated with suspicion; ideally, we should do without words and "think upon things". The social aspect of knowledge, culture, and language was not entirely ignored but the focus was on the individual mind and rules of correct thinking. Accordingly, our mental lives and modes of interaction would be explained as building on what is introspectively available. In recent years, however, this picture has been challenged in various respects. This workshop is aimed at stimulating exchange between scholars, early career researchers and graduate students whose work concerns social dimension of these issues. Please send an abstract to Martin Lenz (m.lenz@rug.nl) by 15 September 2017. The abstract must be no longer than 300 words, prepared for blind reviewing and sent as a .docx file (please do not use pdf format). The subject of the mail should be " Socialis-ing Minds ". The author's name and contact information (name, affiliation, email and professional status – graduate student, postdoc, lecturer etc.) should also be specified in your message. The abstracts will be peer-reviewed and you will be notified of the outcome of the review by November 20. If your paper is accepted for presentation, we will ask you to provide a draft or extended abstract for circulation two weeks in advance of the workshop. There are no registration fees. Attendance is free but limited. For speakers, the organ-isers will cover the costs of accommodation and meals. No financial help, however, can be provided for travel expenses.
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Video recording of my talk, given at the CELFIS, University of Bucharest, 13 April 2016
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blog post for "Medieval Logic & Semantics "
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First draft of part I of the introduction to my book "Socialising Minds". Please do not quote without permission.
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Most of us probably don't doubt that much of our (mental) lives are determined by education, biases and ideologies; much of our knowledge relies on the testimony of others; our beliefs can be strengthened by the authority of others; our... more
Most of us probably don't doubt that much of our (mental) lives are determined by education, biases and ideologies; much of our knowledge relies on the testimony of others; our beliefs can be strengthened by the authority of others; our emotions might change in the presence of friends; our inclination to act can be triggered by the courage of others; our thoughts might be completed by the perspective of others. But what precisely explains how others affect our mental states? Historians of philosophy often study such questions in relation to psychological, linguistic and moral theories. However, lurking in the background of philosophical models are medical assumptions whose exposition often sheds new light on ancient, medieval and modern debates. In the third instalment of the workshop "Medicine and Philosophy" we want to focus our attention on contagion and fascination. Are ideas seen as transmitted from mind to mind like diseases from body to body? "Contagion" and "fascination" are central terms that figure at the intersection of many philosophical and physiological discussions in Middle Ages, Renaissance and Early Modern times. What is the common ground between those two concepts? The idea that a person could influence the body, the emotions or the mental states of another person from a distance was not always connected to contagion. Fascination was the medieval term for transmitting an influence from one person to another at a distance, without direct physical contact. This was seen as a natural phenomenon, part of natural magie, which became an even more influential idea in the Renaissance. With the development of natural sciences, Early modern authors developed the idea of contagion as a way of transmitting bodily and mental states at a distance. Giving rise to debates about human mentality, physiology and politics, these notions impacted doctrines about the transmission of thoughts, images and emotions between people as well as well as the contagious nature of certain diseases. Focusing on the history of these and related notions, this workshop aims at stimulating exchange between historians of philosophy and experts in natural philosophy whose work often speaks more to one another than meets the eye. Please send an abstract to Martin Lenz (m.lenz@rug.nl) by June 1, 2021. The abstract must be no longer than 300 words, prepared for blind reviewing and sent as a .docx file (please do not use pdf format). The subject of the mail should be "MediPhil". The author's name and contact information (name, affiliation, email and professional status-graduate student, postdoc, lecturer etc.) should also be specified in your message. https://cetefil.wordpress.com/medicine-and-philosophy-iii-contagion-and-fascination/
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What makes us appear the way we are? Which factors determine our moral, our cognitive, and physiological features? Lurking in the background of philosophical models are medical or physiological assumptions whose exposition often sheds new... more
What makes us appear the way we are? Which factors determine our moral, our cognitive, and physiological features? Lurking in the background of philosophical models are medical or physiological assumptions whose exposition often sheds new light on ancient, medieval and modern debates. "Climate" is a central term that figures at the intersection of many philosophical and medical discussions. This notion impacted not only doctrines about the earth, but also about its inhabitants. This way, long-lasting ideas about human and non-human life were often connected with racist and sexist implications. Focusing on the historical notion of climate, this workshop aims at apporaching these debates.
*Illustration: The four seasons, element. In: Thübinger Hausbuch (Md2), 23r, Württemberg, 15th c.
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What is the intersection of medical and philosophical ideas? How common believes influence philosophical theories and vice versa? Which are the continuities and discontinuities between Middle Ages and New Modern Times?
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Medicine and Natural Philosophy: the longue durée of Humoral Theory - Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, May 11-12th, 2019. Organizers: Evelina Miteva, Martin Lenz.
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