Using agent‐based modelling, Harrington, Kleber, Reubold, Schiel & Stevens (2018) develop a unified model of sound change based on cognitive processing of human speech and theories of how social factors constrain the spread of change throughout a community. They conclude that many types of change result from how biases in the phonetic distribution of phonological categories are transmitted via accommodation processes between individuals in interaction.

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 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)

Ethological theory standardly attributes representational content to animal signals. In this article I first assess whether Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic theory accounts for the content of animal signals. I conclude that it does not, because many signals do not exhibit the required sort of cooperation between signal‐producing and signal‐consuming devices. It is then argued that Kim Sterelny’s proposal, while not requiring cooperation, sometimes yields the wrong content. Finally, I outline an alternative view, according to which consumers alone are responsible for conferring (...) representational status and determining content. I suggest that consumer‐based teleosemantics reconstruct the content of both cooperative and noncooperative signals and explain how a given trait can mean different things to different consumers. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.; e‐mail: ulrich[email protected]. (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.

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

In the following article, we propose an analytical framework for the analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Standards based on the paradigmatic nexus of voice and entitlement. We follow the theory of decentration and present the concept of Transnational Norm-Building Networks (TNNs), which — as we argue — comprise a new nexus of voice and entitlement beyond the nation—state level. Furthermore, we apply the analytical framework to the ISO 26000 initiative and the Global Compact. We conclude the article with remarks (...) on the legitimacy and the effectiveness of norms generated by TNNs. Through this, we aim to contribute a new theoretical foundation to the analysis of CSR standards, which enables us to undertake a more differentiated description of TNN structures which have hitherto been ignored in academic literature. Secondly, we will contribute to the practical debate on ISO 26000 and the Global Compact by proposing new perspectives on the conditions of their legitimacy and effectiveness based on the voice-entitlement nexus. (shrink)

Eine tragfähige affektive Beziehung wird als Grundlage für reflexive kooperative Prozesse in der psychoanalytisch orientierten Therapie erachtet. Was ist die Essenz dieser affektiven Bindung (des Attachments)? Es werden zwei bildhafte Konzepte entwickelt: das affektive Feld und die Trajektorie. Letztere ist als ein Weg der affektiven Information zwischen den Protagonisten gezeichnet. Jedes Selbst hat ein affektives Feld. Die Felder zwischen zwei Selbsten werden verknüpft, jedoch nicht im Sinne der Feldtheorie, die eine eigen­ständige Entwicklung eines gemeinsamen Feldes postuliert. In einem wissenschaftstheoretischen Exkurs (...) werden die Ansätze »Feld« und »two singles« als gleichwertige Möglichkeiten diskutiert, Intersubjektivität zu verstehen. Die affektive Beziehung entwickelt sich zunächst zu den beiden Funktionen der resonanten und der responsiven Relation, um dann zunehmend durch die kognitive überlagert zu werden. Affektive Kommunikation ist nicht identisch mit der affektiven Bindung. Es werden Störungen im Bereich der Psychosen und Formen früher Störungen beschrieben. Die Ergebnisse der Bindungsforschung sind bekannt, spielen aber in dieser klinisch ausgerichteten Arbeit nur hintergründig eine Rolle. (shrink)

Ulrich Meyer defends a novel theory about the nature of time, and argues against the consensus view that time and space are fundamentally alike. He presents the first comprehensive defense of a 'modal' account, which emphasizes the similarities between times and possible worlds in modal logic, and is easily reconciled with the theory of relativity.

The goal of this article is to show that the structuralist approachprovides a powerful framework for the analysis of certain holistic phenomena in empirical theories.We focus on two aspects of holism. The first refers to the involvement of comprehensive complexes of hypothesesin the theoretical treatment of systems regarded in isolation. By contrast, the second refers to thecorrelation between the theoretical descriptions of different systems. It is demonstrated how these two aspectscan be analysed by making use of the structuralist notion of (...) theory-nets, and how they are reflected by a refinedversion of the Ramsey sentence. Furthermore, it is argued that there exists a tight correlation between theoccurrence of these two holistic phenomena, a specific form of underdetermination of terms which occur in thefundamental principles of an empirical theory, and the shaping of the theory's protective belt. After having dealtwith these questions in abstracto, the relevance of these considerations for a better understanding of the dynamicsof empirical theories is demonstrated in a concrete case study. It refers to the role holistic phenomenaplayed in the investigation of the anomalous advance of Mercury's perihelion and in the various attempts to eliminate this anomaly. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...

In this paper we present a modern version of the classic theory of “ultimate psychological hedonism” . As does the UPH, our two-dimensional model of metatelic orientations also postulates a fundamentally hedonistic motivation for any human action. However, it makes a distinction between “telic” or content-based goals of actions and “metatelic” or emotional reasons for actions. In our view, only the emotional reasons for action, but not the goals of action, conform to the UPH. After outlining our model, we will (...) elucidate the similarities and differences between our model and classic UPH. In this context we will clarify several basic misconceptions regarding classic UPH. In a next step, two major criticisms of the theory of ultimate psychological hedonism will be discussed, that is the statement that the hedonistic principle has no motivating effect at all and the argument that the hedonistic motivation is only one of many motivations of human actions. We believe that both of these arguments can be refuted. Finally, we will discuss the compatibility of our model with evolutionary theory. (shrink)

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.

At the beginning of the 21st century the conditio humana cannot be understood nationally or locally but only globally. This constitutes a revolution in the social sciences. The `sociological imagination' so far has basically been a nation state imagination. The main problem is how to redefine the sociological frame of reference in the horizon of a cosmopolitan imagination. For the purpose of empirical research I distinguish between three concepts: interconnectedness, liquid modernity and cosmopolitization from within. The latter is a kind (...) of class analysis after class analysis, which takes on board globalization internalized. For the purposes of social analysis, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish systematically between the national manifestation on the one hand and cosmopolitan reality of `global flows', currents of information, symbols, money, risks, people, social inequalities, on the other. This internal involuntary and often unseen cosmopolitanization from below of the national sphere of experience is occurring, however, with the power of economic globalization. So what does inner `cosmopolitanization' mean? The key concepts and questions of a way of life, such as nourishment, production, identity, fear, memory, pleasure, fate, power and politics, can no longer be located and understood nationally, but only globally whether in the shape of globally shared collective futures, capital flows, impending ecological or economic catastrophes, global foodstuff chains, transnational power games, or the `Esperanto' of pop music. In this article I look at transformation in the understanding of space-time, of identity, of the production paradigms, as well as at the resulting consequences for key sociological concepts like class and power and, within this frame, point to certain dilemmas of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Berger, U., Total sets and objects in domain theory, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 60 91-117. Total sets and objects generalizing total functions are introduced into the theory of effective domains of Scott and Ersov. Using these notions Kreisel's Density Theorem and the Theorem of Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield are generalized. As an immediate consequence we obtain the well-known continuity of computable functions on the constructive reals as well as a domain-theoretic characterization of the Heriditarily Effective Operations.

There is another hard problem, in addition to the problem of how anything material can have the subjective, first-person phenomenology of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). It is the problem of how anything material can have freedom. By ‘freedom’ I mean a person’s ability to behave in a purposive, non-random fashion that is not determined by neurophysiological structure and physical law.

Epistemic arguments play a significant role in the foundations of market liberalism as exemplified, in particular, by the work of F. A. Hayek. Competition in free markets is claimed to be the most effective device both to utilize the knowledge dispersed throughout society as well as create new knowledge through innovation competition. The fast pace with which new economic opportunities are discovered and costs are reduced is considered proof of the benefits of free markets to the common good. However, with (...) its inherently unpredictable consequences, innovation competition is actually ambiguous in this respect. This feature raises questions over the stringency of market liberal pleas that oppose quests for redistribution and environmental concerns in an absolute fashion. (shrink)

The German debate on bioethics and medical ethics turns on a change in the meaning of human dignity. Such dignity is increasingly rendered contingent upon a person's empirically assessable quality of life. In contrast to such dignity-endowed human life, a merely biological human life is taken to disqualify its bearer from such dignity, depriving his life of the protection “respect for human dignity” would otherwise guarantee. The idea of a “life not worth living” or “undignified life” evokes categories, which were (...) developed at the beginning of the 20th century, and later informed the crimes of National Socialist medicine in Germany. Against this secular development, this article analyses the theological and church-based discussion of basic bioethical questions in Germany, especially the controversy among Protestants: once Protestant ethicists abandon an explicitly theological basis for their arguments, their conclusions come to closely resemble those of the secular participants in the debate. As a result, such Protestants relativize fundamental ethical norms. They subordinate, along with their secular environment, the protection of life to respect for autonomy. They thus prepare the ground for a revival of the risky concepts of the past. (shrink)