In contrast to the assumptions of standard economic theory, recent experimental evidence shows that the income of peers has a systematic impact on observed degrees of risk aversion. This paper reports the findings of two experiments examining the impact of income inequality on risk preferences and whether the knowledge of inequality mediates the decisions. In Experiment 1, participants who were recruited for a real-effort task were paid either a low wage or a high wage. Half of the participants were aware (...) of the income inequality, while the other half were not. After completing their task, they were invited to invest a part of their salary in a risky asset. In Experiment 2, we replicated the same experiment in the laboratory with windfall endowments to test the consistency of results in the laboratory settings. The results of the first experiment show that high-wage subjects take higher risks than low-wage participants do if they are aware of the inequality in wages. This finding supports the idea that income comparisons shape risky decisions. In Experiment 2, on the other hand, we did not observe any significant differences in decisions. This may suggest that the income comparison is sensitive to house-money effect. (shrink)

In order to accommodate empirically observed violations of the independence axiom of expected utility theory Becker and Sarin (1987) proposed their model of lottery dependent utility in which the utility of an outcome may depend on the lottery being evaluated. Although this dependence is intuitively very appealing and provides a simple functional form of the resulting decision criterion, lottery dependent utility has been nearly completely neglected in the recent literature on decision making under risk. The goal of this paper is (...) to revive the lottery dependent utility model. Therefore, we derive first a sound axiomatic foundation of lottery dependent utility. Secondly, we develop a discontinuous variant of the model which can accommodate boundary effects and may lead to a lexicographic non-expected utility model. Both analyses are accompanied by considering some functional specifications which are in accordance with recent experimental results and may have significant applications in business and management science. (shrink)

In this paper we experimentally investigate the disparity between willingness-to-accept (WTA) and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for risky lotteries. The direction of the income effect is reversed by endowing subjects with the highest price of a lottery when asking the WTP question. Our results show that the income effect is too small to be the only source of the disparity. Since the disparity concentrates on a subsample of subjects, parametric and nonparametric tests of the WTA-WTP ratio may lead to contradictory results. The (...) disparity is significantly reduced when background risk is introduced. That is, putting subjects always into a risky position could improve the contingent valuation method, which is often concerned with the assessment of risky situations such as health risks, automobile safety, etc. (shrink)

This paper presents an experimental study of common consequence effects in binary choice, willingness-to-pay elicitation, and willingness-to-accept elicitation. We find strong evidence in favor of the fanning out hypothesis for both WTP and WTA. In contrast, the choice data do not show a clear pattern of violations in the absence of certainty effects. Our results underline the relevance of differences between pricing and choice tasks, and their implications for models of decision making under risk.

Common ratio effects should be ruled out if subjects’ preferences satisfy compound independence, reduction of compound lotteries, and coalescing. In other words, at least one of these axioms should be violated in order to generate a common ratio effect. Relying on a simple experiment, we investigate which failure of these axioms is concomitant with the empirical observation of common ratio effects. We observe that compound independence and reduction of compound lotteries hold, whereas coalescing is systematically violated. This result provides support (...) for theories which explain the common ratio effect by violations of coalescing instead of violations of compound independence. (shrink)

Recently proposed models of risky choice imply systematic violations of transitivity of preference. This study explored whether people show the predicted intransitivity of the two models proposed to account for the certainty effect in Allais paradoxes. In order to distinguish “true” violations from those produced by “error,” a model was fit in which each choice can have a different error rate and each person can have a different pattern of preferences that need not be transitive. Error rate for a choice (...) is estimated from preference reversals between repeated presentations of the same choice. Results showed that few people repeated intransitive patterns. We can retain the hypothesis that all participants were transitive. (shrink)

The cellular capacity to internalise objects, involving attachment, engulfment and uptake, exists in virtually all organisms. Many uptake reactions are associated with cell signalling. However, the mechanical forces that form endocytotic vesicles are not known. We propose a ‘leverage‐mediated’ uptake mechanism involving lateral cross‐linking processes on the cell surface that can generate the configurational energy to create an inverse curvature of the membrane. BioEssays 26:1344–1350, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In his excellent book Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments, C. Stephen Evans argues that what underlies the classical theistic arguments are theistic natural signs. The awareness of our own contingency underlies the cosmological argument, beneficial order underlies the teleological argument, our experience of feeling moral obligations underlies the moral argument, and the intrinsic value of human beings underlies the axiological argument. Natural signs point to an entity without forcing belief in this entity upon (...) the perceiver. Therefore, natural signs can be interpreted in different ways. Understanding the classical theistic arguments as an expression of underlying theistic natural signs explains why the reactions to the arguments have been so different. (shrink)

A perfect being is a being which possesses all perfections essentially. A perfect being is essentially omniscient, essentially omnipotent, essentially perfectly good, and necessarily existing. In his excellent book “The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings” Michael J. Almeida investigates the following tough questions about perfect beings: What would a perfect being create? Which moral requirements would a perfect being (have to) fulfill when deciding what to create? Is there a minimum or a maximum amount of evil a perfect being would allow (...) to occur? Could a perfect being permit any instance of pointless and undeserved suffering of creatures? Does a perfect being have some freedom to choose what to create? Could a perfect being be just in sending some people eternally to heaven and some people eternally to hell? Almeida applies modern theories about vagueness, infinite values, possible world semantics and many universes to these questions. In this way Almeida investigates these questions in more detail and depth than they have been before and substantially advances the discussion of these issues. (shrink)

Insect endoparasitoids are able to circumvent the defense reactions of their habitual hosts. In a hymenopteran wasp species, virus‐like particles, found on the egg surface are responsible for the protection against the encapsulation reaction of the host caterpillar. Some of the particle proteins are structurally and probably functionally related to host protein(s). Biological properties of some of the host proteins suggest that they might be involved in the insect defense reaction.

The majority consensus in the empirical literature is that probability weighting functions are typically inverse-S shaped, that is, people tend to overweight small and underweight large probabilities. A separate stream of literature has reported event-splitting effects and shown that they can explain violations of expected utility. This leads to the questions whether the observed shape of weighting functions is a mere consequence of the coalesced presentation and, more generally, whether preference elicitation should rely on presenting lotteries in a canonical split (...) form instead of the commonly used coalesced form. We analyze data from a binary choice experiment where all lottery pairs are presented in both split and coalesced forms. Our results show that the presentation in a split form leads to a better fit of expected utility theory and to probability weighting functions that are closer to linear. We thus provide some evidence that the extent of probability weighting is not an ingrained feature, but rather a result of processing difficulties. (shrink)

In einer kühnen Metapher haben einst Hieronymus, Erasmus und Luther die Heilige Schrift als ein Labyrinth bezeichnet, das die Leser bei fortgesetztem Lesen in eine sich sogar steigernde Verwirrung stürze. Beinah im selben Atemzug wird eben dieselbe Heilige Schrift von eben denselben Autoren als der einzige Faden gepriesen, der die Leser aus dem Labyrinth ihres Lebens herausführe. Eines und dasselbe als Labyrinth und als Faden: Diese Figur ist paradigmatisch. Im Labyrinth der Ethik geht es nicht anders zu. Nur wer sich (...) ihm überläßt, findet aus ihm heraus. 24 Beiträge von namhaften Theologen und Theologinnen zur Theologischen Ethik finden sich in den fünf Abschnitten des vorliegenden Buches, das nacheinander "Biblische Grundlagen", "Theologische Systematik", "Ethische Modelle", "Ethische Leitbegriffe" und "Ethik und die Religionen" behandelt: Hans-Dieter Bastian: Zwischen Glauben und Handeln: Bibel-Lesen - Werner H. Schmidt: Glaube und Handeln. Aspekte des Alten Testaments - Wolfgang Schrage: Der 1. Korintherbrief als Paradigma paulinischer Ethik - Michael Wolter: Der Kompromiß bei Paulus - Jörg Haustein: Beobachtungen zum Schriftverständnis ökumenischer Dokumente - Gerhard Sauter: "Schrifttreue" in ethischer Urteilsbildung Günter Bader: Handeln im Namen Gottes - Erich Gräßer: Die ersten und die letzten Dinge. Bemerkungen zur theologischen und ethischen Schöpfungswahrnehmung - Marcin Hintz: Glaube, Tradition, Vernunft: Auf den Spuren theologischer Urteilsbildung im polnischen Protestantismus - Rolf Schäfer: Christliche Glaubens- und Sittenlehre bei Schleiermacher - Karl-Wilhelm Dahm: Herausforderungen für Selbstverständnis und Rolle des protestantischen Pfarrers im Zuge des Modernisierungsprozesses Traugott Jähnichen: Sozialethik auf dem Weg der Ausbildung von Bereichsethiken - Historische Traditionen und perspektivische Herausforderungen - Ulrich Eibach: Christengemeinde und christliches Leben und Handeln in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft - Ludger Honnefelder: Gesundheit unser "höchstes Gut"? Wertentscheidungen im Rahmen der Ressourcenallokation im Gesundheitswesen - Jörg Hübner: Kollektives Handeln im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Perspektiven für eine zukünftige politische Ethik - Gottfried Hütter: Menschenwürde und Menschenrechte für Tiere? - Tobias Schlingensiepen: Adam, wo bist du? Die Entkontextualisierung menschlichen Lebens als Problem u. Herausforderung evangelischer Ethik Edgar Thaidigsmann: "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben". Das Problem der Begründung einer Ethik der Verantwortung für das Lebendige bei Albert Schweitzer und Hans Jonas - Konrad Stock: Laster - der "vielnamige Frevel". Eine theologische Erinnerung an ein vergessenes Problem - Ulrich H. J. Körtner: Bildung und Wertebewußtsein. Anmerkungen zum Wertbegriff in der aktuellen Bildungsdiskussion - Hans G. Ulrich: Güter oder Werte? Zur Aufgabe der Theoriebildung in der evangelischen Sozialethik - Hartmut Kreß: Toleranz als Verpflichtung protestantischer Ethik Hans Waldenfels: Unterwegs zu einer interreligiösen Theologie - Sung-Hee Lee-Linke: Interreligiöse Ethik. Ein Modell für die Zukunft? (shrink)

Gutes und Guter, Leben, Leib, Tugend - in diesem Band werden die Vortrage der ersten vier Symposien der Mainz Moral Meetings aus den Jahren 2009-2011 zu diesen Themen zusammengefasst. Ein interdisziplinarer Zugang durch Bibelwissenschaft, Judaistik, Altphilologie, Philosophie, Patristik, Systematische Theologie und weiteren Disziplinen eroffnet einen Blick auf die ethischen Normen des fruhen Christentums. Die Autoren der Beitrage fragen nach den Moglichkeiten von Norm und Normbegrundung einer fruhchristlichen Ethik in ausgewahlten Bereichen sowohl im Kontext antiker Philosophie als auch in gegenwartiger Verantwortung. (...) Mit Beitragen von: Jochen Althoff, Frederick D. Aquino, Wilhelm Blumer, Maximilian Forschner, Christian Hengstermann, Christoph Horn, Friedrich W. Horn, David Horrell, Manfred Lang, Sebastian Moll, Maren Niehoff, Jorg Roder, Eckart David Schmidt, Nikolaus Schneider, Lorenzo Scornaienchi, Notger Slenczka, Mira Stare, Gerd Theissen, Ulrich Volp, Jan G. van der Watt, Werner Zager, Ruben Zimmermann. (shrink)

Kann ein Werk, das vor allem Handbuch zu den Vorlesungen sein sollte, mit seinen Kurzfassungen von Logik und Phanomenologie die in den entsprechenden Buchern vorgelegten Entwurfe uberhaupt adaquat wiedergeben? Wie sind die Veranderungen bezuglich der Einleitungsfunktion der Phanomenologie zu bewerten? Wie schliesslich sind die auch sonst nur in Vorlesungsmitschriften uberlieferten Systemteile zur Philosophie der Natur und zur Philosophie des Geistes im Gesamtzusammenhang des Systems zu deuten? - Dies sind nur einige der Fragen, die der vorliegende Band aufgreift, um gleichzeitig eine (...) umfassende Einfuhrung in die Probleme des Hegel'schen Systems bzw. seiner einzelnen Teile zu liefern. Mit Beitragen von H.-Ch. Lucas, J. D'Hondt, N. Waszek, O. Poggeler, U. Rameil, G. Baptist, M. Bykova, W. Bonsiepen, R. Wahsner, M. Bienenstock, F. Hespe, B. Tuschling, A. Th. Peperzak, H. Schneider, M. Alvarez-Gomez, K. J. Schmidt, K. Dusing, A. Nuzzo und H. F. Fulda. (shrink)

Many of our attitudes are non-culpable: there was nothing that we should have done to avoid holding them. I argue that we can still be blameworthy for non-culpable attitudes: they can impair our relationships in ways that make our full practice of apology and forgiveness intelligible. My argument poses a new challenge to indirect voluntarists, who attempt to reduce all responsibility for attitudes to responsibility for prior actions and omissions. Rationalists, who instead explain attitudinal responsibility by appeal to reasons-responsiveness, can (...) make sense of blameworthiness for non-culpable attitudes. In response, voluntarists could propose a revision of our actual practices. This would lead us into a quite different debate. (shrink)

Das Buch weist die Fruchtbarkeit einer strukturgenetisch fundierten Rekonstruktionsperspektive für die Analyse der historisch und kulturell differenten Weltbilder nach. Anhand der für die Geschichte der Denksysteme zentralen Vorstellungen über die Natur-Kultur-Differenz und die physikalische Kausalität werden Reichweite und Grenzen der These einer universalen Entwicklungslogik kritische geprüft. Die historischen Studien bieten dabei einen neuartigen Blick auf die Aristotelische Physik und ihre mittelalterlichen Fortentwicklungen. Schließlich werden die materialen Ergebnisse in Richtung einer differenztheoretisch orientierten Theorie der Entstehung des Neuen in der Entwicklung ausgedeutet.

The central importance of Marx's concept of nature in the formulation of historical materialism has been largely neglected in the extensive literature on Marx. Alfred Schmidt, philosophical successor to Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in Frankfurt, seeks to elucidate it in this original study.

This paper defends three theses: that presentism is either trivial or untenable; that the debate between tensed and tenseless theories of time is not about the status of presentism; and that there is no temporal analogue of the modal thesis of actualism.

The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches (...) the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research. (shrink)

By assembling authors with a wide range of different disciplinary backgrounds, from philosophy, literature, political science, sociology to medical anthropology ...

Is freedom a plausible political value for animals? If so, does this imply that animals are owed legal personhood rights or can animals be free but remain human property? Drawing on different conceptions of freedom, I will argue that while positive freedom, libertarian self-ownership, and republican freedom are not plausible political values for animals, liberal ‘option-freedom’ is. However, because such option-freedom is in principle compatible with different legal statuses, animal freedom does not conceptually imply a right to legal self-ownership. Nonetheless, (...) a concern for animal option-freedom means that humans do have a pro tanto duty of non-interference. Arguments familiar from the liberal tradition moreover imply that such a duty speaks for drastic reforms of existing animal law. But it does not imply wholesale abolitionism: it neither rules out positive duties towards animals nor means that we should abandon all interactions with animals. (shrink)

Als eine wesentliche Schwäche des strukturalistischen Theorienkonzepts musste die Vagheit erscheinen, mit der die Unterscheidung zwischen bezüglich einer Theorie theoretischen und nichttheoretischen Funktionen bisher belastet war. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird ein formal präzises, pragmatisch nichtrelativiertes Kriterium für T-Theoretizität vorgestellt. Erste Schritte zur Klärung seiner Bedeutung für die holistische Sichtweise erfahrungswissenschaftlicher Theorien werden unternommen.