Jos de Mul. The syntax, pragmatics and semantics of life. Reading Dilthey in the light of contemporary biosemiotics, in: Christian Damböck, Hans Ulrich Lessing (Hrsg.): Dilthey als Wissenschaftsphilosoph. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2016, 156-175.

Seitdem ich aber in der Struktur des Lebens die Grundlage der Psychologie erkannte, mußte ich den psychologischen Standpunkt zu dem biologischen erweitern und vertiefen.  
  Wilhelm Dilthey (1995/9)

Introduction[1] 

Does Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life (Lebensphilosophie) have any relevance for contemporary discussions in the philosophy of biology?  In this contribution, I will argue that it does. In order to substantiate this claim, I will relate Dilthey’s hermeneutic philosophy of life to contemporary developments in biosemiotics.  In this context, I will focus in particular on the specific space the life sciences (Lebenswissenschaften) occupy in-between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). 

Unlike most other contributions to this volume, I will approach my subject from a systematic rather than a historical perspective. In connecting Dilthey’s philosophy to contemporary developments in the life sciences and biosemiotics my approach resembles the one Christian Damböck takes in his recent analysis of Dilthey’s empirical philosophy in relation to recent methodological and ontological disputes in analytical philosophy on the role of philosophy vis-à-vis the natural sciences.[2] The debates in the contemporary life sciences and biosemiotics which I will address are connected with methodological and ontological issues and the relationship between philosophy and the natural sciences too.

Mainstream  Neo-Darwinian biology is characterized by a “greedy reductionism”[3] and a mechanistic naturalism, but in the past few decades Neo-Darwinist orthodoxy has been criticized increasingly from various sides.[4] Partly, this critique was formulated within the prevailing reductionist and mechanistic paradigm. In those cases, it primarily aims at a broadening of this paradigm. We may think, for example, of the debates on top-down causation in systems biology.[5] However, oftentimes the critique is more radical, aiming at nothing less than a paradigm shift in the life sciences, which would lead these sciences beyond orthodox Neo-Darwinism. Examples of this critique can be found, for example, in (the recent re-emergence of) emergentism in the so-called sciences of complexity, such as chaos theory, network theory, nonlinear systems, self-organizing and –constructing systems theory[6] and also in the fast expanding field of epigenetics, which studies non-genetic systems and processes of inheritance, which has given rise to a remarkable rehabilitation of Lamarck in the life sciences.[7] Finally, orthodox Neo-Darwinism has been criticized by biosemiotics, which analyzes the role codes, signals, signs and their interpretation play in living matter.[8] Although these approaches point to various differences, they all share the fundamental claim that the mechanistic principles that govern the micro-level are inadequate in their ability to take account of the behavior and activity of living matter.

Although these different critiques are connected in several ways, in the following I will focus in particular on biosemiotics, because this field presents striking similarities with Dilthey’s empirical philosophy. Let me begin with a short overview of my paper. In the first part I will elucidate the similarities between recent biosemiotics and Dilthey’s philosophy of life, as expressed in the Berliner Entwurf for the second Volume of the Critique of Historical Reason (1893), especially in the fragment entitled Leben und Erkennen. Within this context I will also discuss some recent contributions to Dilthey Studies. Besides  the aforementioned article of Christian Damböck’s on the empirical character of Dilthey’s philosophy, I will refer to Matthias Jung’s  interpretation of Dilthey’s philosophy of life in his article ‘“Das Leben artikuliert sich”. Diltheys performativer Begriff der Bedeutung Artikulation als Fokus hermeneutischen Denkens‘[9] and his book Der bewusste Ausdruck. Anthropologie der Artikulation.[10] I will defend the thesis that both Dilthey and biosemiotics defend an emergent evolutionary theory proclaiming that life develops itself through a series of qualitatively different stages characterized by increasingly complex forms of semiosis.

In the second and final part I will analyze these stages in more detail, with the help of the semiotic distinction between syntax, pragmatics and semantics. Furthermore, I will elucidate Dilthey’s developmental model of life by referring to Marcello Barbieri, one of the leading biosemioticians. The resulting layered biohermeneutics functions as a “ladder of understanding”, which helps us to better fathom the subsequent stages in the process in which life understands life, “Leben erfaßt hier Leben”.[11]

Jos de Mul, Comprendere la natura. Dilthey, Plessner e la bioermeneutica. Lo Sguardo - rivista di filosofia. Vol. 14, no.1 (2014), 117-134.

Abstract: In recent years, authors like Chebanov, Markŏs, and Ginev have attempted to implement hermeneutic categories in the domain of biology. Against this background, the author takes Dilthey’s scattered remarks on the notion of the organic and Plessner’s biophilosophy as his starting point for the development of a biohermeneutical theory of biological purposiveness, which aims at bridging the gulf between the natural and the human sciences. Whereas the natural and human sciences are closely connected with a third-person and a first-person perspective respectively, the author argues that the second-person perspective plays a crucial role in the life sciences. In opposition to the natural sciences, in which causality is the key notion, and the human sciences, which rest on the notion of meaning, the author argues that the central concepts that characterize the second-person perspective of the life sciences are functionality and intentionality.

Nella Lebensphilosophie di Dilthey, l’antropologia e la storia sono strettamente connesse. Come lo stesso Dilthey afferma in una sentenza spesso citata, «Was der Mensch sei, sagt ihm nur seine Geschichte»^[2]. Tuttavia, per Dilthey storia significa solamente storia culturale. Per sviluppare una comprensione adeguata della condizione storica dell’uomo, dovremmo prendere in considerazione però anche la storia naturale. Dopo tutto, in quanto unità psico-fisica, l’Homo sapiens sapiens è il prodotto storico di un’iterazione complessa tra sviluppi sia naturali che culturali. Inoltre, all’epoca delle scienze della vita, la storia naturale e quella culturale sembrano sempre di più sconfinare l’una nell’altra. Le biotecnologie quali l’ingegneria genetica, l’ingegneria metabolica e il trapianto di genoma trasformano gli organismi in artefatti culturali e nel tentativo di creare la vita artificiale (probabilmente il Santo Graal della biologia di sintesi), gli artifatti culturali manifestano via via maggiori qualità prima riservate alla vita organica.

In quanto segue argomenterò la tesi secondo cui l’ermeneutica di Dilthey, specialmente la sua analisi della triade Erleben, Ausdruck e Verstehen, offre ancora un proficuo punto di partenza per lo sviluppo di una bioermeneutica che non ha a che fare solamente con la comprensione umana e con l’interpretazione degli esseri, delle (inter)azioni e degli artifatti umani, ma che include anche la comprensione e l’interpretazione di e da parte di agenti non-umani. Il fatto che Dilthey nei suoi ultimi scritti ermeneutici distingua in maniera piuttosto dogmatica tra natura e cultura pare senza dubbio di primo acchito un ostacolo per lo sviluppo di una bioermeneutica ispirata al suo pensiero. Per esempio, Dilthey rifiuta esplicitamente la possibilità di una comprensione umana della vita delle piante: «Bedeutung oder Wert kann etwas nicht haben, von dem es kein Verstehen gibt. Ein Baum kann niemals Bedeutung haben» (GS VII, p. 259). La possibilità di una comprensione o di un’interpretazione da parte di agenti non umani non è poi nemmeno considerata da Dilthey. Eppure, sosterrò che gli scritti tardivi di Dilthey sull’ermeneutica contengono qualche traccia per lo sviluppo di una bioermeneutica. Svilupperò oltre queste tracce con l’aiuto della biofilosofia di Plessner e grazie a qualche riferimento ad alcuni recenti sviluppi negli ambiti della biologia dei sistemi e della neuropsicologia^[3].

Innanzitutto, riprendendo il dibattito sulla demarcazione delle Naturwissenschaften e delle Geisteswissenschaften che ebbe luogo in Germania attorno al 1900, avanzerò la tesi secondo cui in quel dibattito erano in gioco varie dicotomie ontologiche, epistemologiche, fenomenologiche e normative che non combaciano. Dirò poi che queste dicotomie precludono una comprensione adeguata del carattere peculiare delle scienze della vita, a metà strada tra le scienze della natura e quelle umane (§ 1). Mostrerò in secondo luogo che Dilthey, nonostante il suo approccio per lo più dicotomico nel dibattito su tale demarcazione, a sua volta fondato sulla distinzione tra esperienza esteriore (prospettiva alla terza persona) e interiore (prospettiva alla prima persona), in qualche occasione ha riconosciuto lo statuto speciale delle scienze della vita, connesso con la «conformità di scopo (Zweckmäßigkeit)» immanente delle entità viventi (§ 2). In terzo luogo, dirò che la comprensione del finalismo immanente richiede l’esperienza da una prospettiva alla seconda persona, incarnata e interattiva (§ 3). Al fine di sostenere tale ipotesi, farò riferimento all’analisi di Plessner della triplice dimensione corporale della vita umana in Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (§ 4). Nell’ultima parte, fornirò una breve visione d’insieme dei differenti tipi di interpretazione intraspecie, interspecie e intraorganica e traccerò i compiti che attendono la bioermeneutica (§ 5).

Jos de Mul. Diltheyan epigenetics. Reading Dilthey in the light of contemporary biohermeneutics and biosemiotics. Invited lecture workshop Dilthey als Wissenschaftsphilosoph. Universität Wien, June 3-4, 2013.

Der Workshop „Dilthey als Wissenschaftsphilosoph“ findet am 3. und 4. Juni 2013 am Campus der Universität Wien (Kapelle des alten AKH) statt. Veranstalter des Workshops ist das Institut Wiener Kreis, Universität Wien, Organisatoren sind Hans-Ulrich Lessing (Bochum) und Christian Damböck (Wien). Der Workshop wird finanziert vom Dekanat für Philosophie und Bildungswissenschaften der Universität Wien.

Themen des Workshops sind die Beziehungen Diltheys zu kontemporären philosophischen Strömungen wie dem Neukantianismus und Empirismus sowie zu neueren Entwicklungen in der Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie.

Teilnehmer des Workshops sind: Christian Damböck (Wien), Uljana Feest (Berlin), Gottfried Gabriel (Konstanz), Helmut Johach (Nürnberg), Gudrun-Kühne-Bertram (Bochum), Hans-Ulrich Lessing (Bochum), Sebastian Luft (Marquette University), Rudolf Makkreel (Emory University), Jos de Mul (Rotterdam), Ernst Wolfgang Orth (Trier), Helmut Pulte (Bochum), Frithjof Rodi (Bochum), Kurt Walter Zeidler (Wien).

约斯·德·穆尔  著《阐释学视界——全球化世界的文化间性阐释学》麦永雄 方頠玮  译 《外国美学》第20辑 [Jos de Mul, Hermeneutic perspective: Intercultural hermeneutics in a globalized world. International Aesthetics, no. 20 (2012), 312-336]

阐释学视
界——全球化世界的文化间性阐释学[1]

约斯·德·穆尔  著 麦永雄 方頠玮   译

摘要：本文从 “经验视界”的常用隐喻出发，探讨文化间性阐释学（intercultural hermeneutics）的三种不同类型，它分别把阐释学的诠释构想成视界拓展，视界融合和视界播撒。可以认为，阐释学史上这些赓续的阶段分别源于——但并非是严格地限于——全球化的前现代、现代和后现代阶段。以中西语言和哲学相遇合的一些令人瞩目的契机为例，对文化间性阐释学这三种类型的优长和不足展开讨论。要论辩的是，尽管从理论的视野来看，这三种阐释学类型是互相排斥的，但是作为当代阐释的存在方式，我们有赖于这三种不同的阐释学实践，并且无法避免地与它们共生。

关键词：文化间性阐释学；全球化；阐释学视界；汉语；前现代主义；现代主义；后现代主义；狄尔泰；海德格尔；伽达默尔；德里达；柏拉图；孔子；徐冰

Jos de Mul, eLife. From biology to technology and back again, in P. Bruno and S.Campbell (Eds.), The Science, Politics and Ontology of Life-Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 93-107.

One of the most striking developments in the history of the sciences over the past fifty years has been the gradual moving towards each other of biology and computer science and their increasing tendency to overlap. Two things may be held responsible for that. The first is the tempestuous development of molecular biology which followed the first adequate description, in 1953, of the structure of the double helix of the DNA, the carrier of hereditary information. Biologists therefore became increasingly interested in computer science, the science which focuses, among other things, on the question what information really is and how it is encoded and transferred. No less important was that it would have been impossible to sequence and decipher the human genome without the use of ever stronger computers. This resulted in a fundamental digitalization of biology. This phenomenon is particularly visible in molecular biology, where DNA-research increasingly moves from the analogical world of biology to the digital world of the computer.[1]

In their turn, computer scientists have become increasingly interested in biology. One of the highly promising branches of computer science which has developed since the 1950s was the research into artificial intelligence and artificial life. Although the expectations were high – it was predicted that within some decades computers and robots would exist whose intelligence would exceed by far that of man – success remained limited to some specific areas, in spite of the spectacular development of information technologies in the past decades. It is true that, more than fifty years later, we have computers which can defeat the chess world champion, but in many areas toddlers and beetles still perform better than the most advanced computers. Top down programming of artificial intelligence and artificial life turned out to be much less simple than expected. This not only resulted in the fact that computer scientists started to study in depth the fundamental biological question what life basically is, but it also inspired them to use a bottom up approach, which consists of having computers and robots develop ‘themselves’ in accordance with biological principles.

Jos de Mul, Understanding nature. Dilthey, Plessner and biohermeneutics. In:G. D’Anna, H. Johach, E. S. Nelson, Dilthey, Anthropologie, und Geschichte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013, 459-478. 

Wilhelm Dilthey, der Begründer der Philosophie der Geisteswissenschaften, starb am 1. Oktober 1911 in Seis am Schlern (Südtirol). Zum Gedenken an seinen 100. Todestag trafen sich Hauptvertreter der internationalen Dilthey-Forschung zu einem Symposion „Anthropologie und Geschichte“ in Meran vom 26. September bis zum 1. Oktober 2011. Mit der Titelgebung verband sich die Idee zu überprüfen, wie weit Diltheys Denken für heutige anthropologische Fragestellungen und die aus der gesellschaftlichen Globalisierung resultierenden Probleme von Diversität und Universalität fruchtbar zu machen ist. 
Die Herausgeber Giuseppe D´Anna ist Professor für Philosophie an der Università degli Studi di Foggia/Italien. Helmut Johach, Dr. phil., ist Mitherausgeber von Diltheys Gesammelten Schriften, Bd. XVIII und XIX. Eric S. Nelson ist Associate Professor am Departement of Philosophy der University of Massachusetts in Lowell/USA.

In Dilthey’s Lebensphilosopie, anthropology and history are closely connected. As Dilthey himself states in an often quoted remark: »Was der Mensch sei, sagt nur die Geschichte«.^[1] However, for Dilthey history exclusively means cultural history. In order to develop a proper understanding of the historical condition of man, we should take natural history into account as well. After all, as a psycho-physical unity, Homo sapiens sapiens is the historical product of a complex interplay between both natural and cultural developments. Moreover, in the age of the life sciences, natural and cultural history seem to breach into one each other with an ever increasing tendency. Biotechnologies such as genetic modification, pathway engineering and genome transplantation transform organisms into cultural artifacts; and in the attempts to create artificial life (arguably the holy grail of synthetic biology), cultural artifacts increasingly display qualities that used to be restricted to organic life.

In the following, I will argue that Dilthey’s hermeneutics, especially his analysis of the triad Erlebnis, Ausdruck, and Verstehen, still offers a fruitful starting point for the development of a biohermeneutics that not only deals with human understanding and interpretation of human beings, (inter)actions and artefacts, but which also includes the understanding and interpretation of and by non-human agents. However, the fact that Dilthey, in his later hermeneutical writings often makes a rather dogmatic distinction between nature and culture, at first sight seems to be a serious obstacle for the development of a Dilthey-inspired biohermeneutics. For example, Dilthey explicitly denies the possibility of a human understanding of plant life: »Bedeutung oder Wert kann etwas nicht haben, von dem es kein Verstehen gibt. Ein Baum kann niemals Bedeutung haben« (GS VII, 259). The possibility of understanding or interpretation by non-human agents is not even considered by Dilthey. Despite that, I will argue that Dilthey’s later hermeneutic writings do contain some clues for the development of a biohermeneutics. I will further develop these clues with the help of the biophilosophy of Plessner and with reference to some recent developments in systems biology and neuropsychology.^[2]

"In an era of heightened existential vulnerability and awareness of finitude there is a correspondingly heightened need for new contexts of human understanding. Here we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to de Mul for providing us with a superb explication of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, whose precocious insights into the finitude and historical contingency of human understanding promise to contribute immeasurably to the widening of its horizons."

Robert D. Stolorow, Human Studies. A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences (2012) Read entire review

Also see The Tragedy of Finitude

Jos de Mul. Das Schauspiel des Lebens. Dilthey and the historical biography. In: Revue Internationale de Philosophie, (2003), no.2, 99-116.

Das Schauspiel des Lebens. Wilhelm Dilthey and historical biography
 

"Uber den wissenschaftlichen Charakter der Biographie sind die Ansichten der Historiker geteilt." [1]

These words, written by Wilhelm Dilthey about a hundred years ago, are just as true today as they were then. As in Dilthey's time, many historians still deny that the historical biography is scientific in nature, because of its narrative and literary character. It isn't without irony that authors of literary fiction, conversely, often doubt the literary character of historical biographies because they are not entirely a work of imagination. One might say that historical biography is situated in a no-man's land between art and science.

In order to understand the discussion concerning the status of the historical biography, we have to view it within the broader context of the debate on the status of historiography. This debate has accompanied modern historiography from its birth in the early nineteenth century. Before then the question concerning the relationship between the artistic and scientific dimension of historiography virtually played no role. The reason for this was that before the nineteenth century these two dimensions could barely be distinguished. The word 'novel' not only referred to Active stories, but also to the kind of stories we nowadays call historical narratives. However, under the influence of rationalism and empiricism, literature and historiography gradually became different autonomous genres. The emergence of the modern discipline of historiography was at least partly motivated by the presupposition that knowledge only deserves this title when it is rationally and empirically tested and attains a certain level of certainty.[2] These requirements were inspired by the impressive success the natural sciences and the new technologies connected with them had had since Newton. Based on the discovery of causal relationships in nature, these sciences were not only able to explain natural phenomena, but to predict and to control them, as well. As a result, the objectivity of the natural sciences increasingly began to function as an ideal for all sciences. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the ideal of a 'unified science' became an integral part of the repertoire of (neo)positivist scientists and philosophers.

Jos de Mul. The Tragedy of Finitude. Dilthey's Hermeneutics of Life. Analecta Hermeneutica, Vol. 1, no. 1 (2009), 248-251.

The publication of substantial parts of Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophical legacy in volumes 17 (1977), 19 (1982), 20 (1990), 21 (1997), and 23 (2000) of his Gesammelte Schriften necessitates a thorough reinterpretation of his entire philosophy. The Tragedy of Finitude. Dilthey''s Hermeneutics of Life aims to contribute to such a reinterpretation by reconstructing the ontological foundation of Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life.

Jos de Mul. Horizons of Hermeneutics: Intercultural Hermeneutics in a Globalizing World.  Frontiers of Philosophy in China. Vol. 6, No. 4 (2011), 628-655.

DOI: 10.1007/s11466-011-0159-x (DOI) 10.1007/s11466-011-0159-x

Abstract  Starting from the often-used metaphor of the “horizon of experience” this article discusses three different types of intercultural hermeneutics, which respectively conceive hermeneutic interpretation as a widening of horizons, a fusion of horizons, and a dissemination of horizons. It is argued that these subsequent stages in the history of hermeneutics have their origin in—but are not fully restricted to—respectively premodern, modern and postmodern stages of globalization. Taking some striking moments of the encounter between Western and Chinese language and philosophy as example, the particular merits and flaws of these three types of hermeneutics are being discussed. The claim defended is that although these different types of hermeneutics are mutually exclusive from a theoretical point of view, as interpreting beings in the current era we depend on each of these distinct hermeneutic practices and cannot avoid living on them simultaneously.

Keywords intercultural hermeneutics, globalization, horizon of interpretation, premodernism, modernism, postmodernism