REPORT: RESEARCH VISIT TO GERMANY / CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE, CANADA (24 September to 14 October 2006)

Themes concentrated on during visit:

• Knowledge cultures and social change
  Seminar at the Philosophy Department, JW Goethe University, FrankfurtA lively research group is working on this theme. The main points of the seminar were that different knowledge cultures have different kinds of impact on social dynamics. The role of religious convictions, ideological interventions and cultural traditions on knowledge cultures have decisive influences on societal organisations.
  
• Computer Science (Informatik) and armament
  Informatik Tagung, Von Humboldt University, BerlinKittler, Weizenbaum, Biddler, and others made significant contributions to the special event devoted to this important and politically sensitive theme. Kittler (Media scientist) turns out to be a media materialist in the strong sense of the word with only an insignificant place for humans, while Weizenbaum (Computer Scientist) fights for a significant place for humans in a world populated by computers. Huge ethical problems have been raised and discussed with quite some excitement.
  
• Conference: Following Derrida: Legacy.University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
  

  The amasingly enormous impact of a single thinker on disciplinary discourses has been demonstrated: interferences in and rethinking of disciplinary discourses are demonstrated but also encouraged in about all the diverse presentations.

  Presentation: Archive fever: the deconstructive reading of archives and archiving Derrida’s immensely interesting reading of the archives and archiving received attention in this presentation.Main issues: archives and the challenge to reading; archives, power and violence; archives and virtuality; archives, history and the future; archives and ethics; archives, inventive reading and compositional thinking.
  
• The future of the human being
  The theme of a colloquiem at the famous Frankfurter Schule, Frankfurt Main participants: Jurgen Habermas (Sociologist) and Wolf Singer (Brain specialist) According to Singer, the assumption that we are fully responsible for our actions, because we could have done otherwise as well, is from a neuro-biological point of view not defensible. This perspective (physicalist) offers plenty of food for thought for the ethicist. Habermas emphasised the point that cultural heritages and educational processes which basically unfold in terms of questions and answers leave effectively no room for genetic programmes and that poses different challenges for a new image of the human person.
  
• Knowledge organisation and sharing and Information ethics
  Prof. Dr.Helmut Spinner, Institute of Philosophy, Technical University of Karlsruhe, has made special contributions on the relationship between formal (scientific) and informal (non-scientific) knowledge. Strong arguments are brought forward about the relevance and even necessity of the last – Wissen and Wissenschaft are equally important. His intellectual contributions can be very valuable for committed knowledge workers in general. In addition he has done some significant work on Information Ethics and on what he calls “Knowledge communism”, in the sense that knowledge belongs to all. We had extensive discussions on all these themes and useful material has been collected.
  
• Applied Ethics, Philosophy of technics, Artificial intelligence
  Prof. Dr.Hans Lenk, President of the International Institute of Philosophy, Technical University of Karlsruhe. He is an eminent and very productive scholar on the above and related themes. We had insightful exchanges of views on these issues and I left with piles of extremely useful books and documents for further perusal.