Denken

Why does, when someone is thinking, not just a certain process occur in the brain? Why is it odd to follow Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and say »it is thinking« just as we say »it is thundering«? What does it mean when Martin Heidegger says that science does not think? Descartes and Hegel maintained that consciousness and self-consciousness are conceptually necessary conditions of thinking - a competence of humans, not of animals. Moreover, the conceptual stucture of human languages rests on common and joint recollection (Hölderlin's Mnemosyne), not only on individual memory. Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer shows that intentional actions, including intentional thinking, are already mediated by well established forms of human cooperation and practice. Reflective thinking means in this context making the norms of such practices explicit. Theories of cognition and philosophy of mind must show the differences, not just the similarities, of human knowledge and animal cognition in order to fulfil the aims of a much needed differential anthropology.