A look at history showed that theology always has to face contemporary demands in terms of its scientific character. At present, processes of pluralisation and secularisation challenge the existence of theology at universities not only against the background of religious studies, which are independent of the churches, but also, for example, in relation to innovative life sciences or cognitive sciences. In this context, an essential point to consider was that theology – like social systems in general and science in particular (...) – is characterised by an increasing differentiation. This differentiation of science implied an increasing specialisation of research, which could also be observed in the field of theology and its sub-disciplines. This article accordingly addressed the question of how, in the face of increasingly specialised research studies, the unity of theology can be justified beyond abstract and sweeping determinations. The present contribution suggested that in this respect a model of research designs developed in religious didactics might prove useful. This model of research design could essentially be understood as consisting of three research dimensions that define a research space, in which the research study on the didactics of religion can be located in the three-dimensional space by the research goal as a formatting factor. The three dimensions of this model, including the research goal, seemed to be broad enough to be tested in other sub-disciplines of theology as well to see whether their research can be more closely defined with them.Contribution: Accordingly, the contribution of this article was to raise the question, in view of an increasing specialisation of theological research, to what extent a model of research designs developed in the didactics of religion could be transferred to other sub-disciplines of theology. Should this succeed a new approach to justifying the unity of theology could become available, which is able to take into account the current differentiation of theology. (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.

Our daily lives unfold continuously, yet our memories are organised into distinct events, situated in a specific context of space and time, and chunked when this context changes (at event boundaries). Previous research showed that this process, termed event segmentation, enhances object-context binding but impairs temporal order memory. Physiologically, peaks in pupil dilation index event segmentation, similar to emotion-induced bursts of autonomic arousal. Emotional arousal also modulates object-context binding and temporal order memory. Yet, these two critical factors have not been (...) systematically studied together. To address this gap, we ran a behavioural experiment using a paradigm validated to study event segmentation and extended it with emotion manipulation. During encoding, we sequentially presented greyscale objects embedded in coloured frames (colour changes defining events), with a neutral or aversive sound. During retrieval, we tested participants’ memory of temporal order memory and object-colour binding. We found opposite effects of emotion and event segmentation on episodic memory. While event segmentation enhanced object-context binding, emotion impaired it. On the contrary, event segmentation impaired temporal order memory, but emotion enhanced it. These findings increase our understanding of episodic memory organisation in laboratory settings, and potentially in real life with perceptual changes and emotion fluctuations constantly interacting. (shrink)

Die politische Ideengeschichte kennt nicht viele Autoren, die derart umstritten sind, wie der Abbé Sieyés: Für manche Interpreten ist er Wegbereiter des Jakobiner-Terrors, für andere dagegen der Vater des parlamentarischen Regierungssystems unserer Zeit. Der vorliegende Band unterzieht diese und ähnliche Klischees einer kritischen Prüfung.

Foundations of Dialectical Psychology is a compilation of the writings of Klaus F. Riegel on dialectical psychology. The book presents chapters discussing such topics as the dialectics of human development; history of dialectical psychology; temporal organization of dialogues; and the analysis of the concept of crisis and its underlying philosophical model and ideology. Psychologists and students will find the book invaluable.

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.

In the first part of this paper I argue that beauty and goodness are at least coextensive for Plato. That means that at least with respect to concrete particulars, everything that is good is beautiful and everything that is beautiful is good. Though the good and the beautiful are coextensive, there is evidence that they are not identical. In the second part of the paper I show significance of this relation. In ethics it implies that the good is the right. (...) It also allows one to see how platonists can believe that goodness exists in mathematics. And it explains the usefulness of mathematics in moral education. (shrink)

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)

Much recent work on natural information has focused on probabilistic theories, which construe natural information as a matter of probabilistic relations between events or states. This paper assesses three variants of probabilistic theories (due to Millikan, Shea, and Scarantino and Piccinini). I distinguish between probabilistic theories as (1) attempts to reveal why probabilistic relations are important for human and non-human animals and as (2) explications of the information concept(s) employed in the sciences. I argue that the strength of probabilistic theories (...) lies in the first project. Probability-raising can enable organisms to draw specific inferences they otherwise could not entertain and I show how exactly they help to explain the behaviour of organisms. In addition, probability-raising warrants inferences by providing incremental inductive support. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to establish a general perspective on approaching the philosophy of philology historically. Part I examines the problem of relating history to philosophy of philology, with a view to stressing the importance of historical intuitions about the discipline. It is asserted that such intuitions do not exist for the whole range of philological activities but only for a certain kind. Part II gives a brief survey on the beginnings of philology in the Hellenistic Age in order (...) to make plausible a distinction between two types of philological research: working within a ‘grammatical’ framework on the one hand, and working within a ‘critical’ framework on the other. Part III includes a list of some strong historical intuitions about progressive developments in philology of the ‘grammatical’ kind, that could function as touchstones for appraising philosophical models. In the sequel, attention is drawn to the most important types of viewing progress in science. None of them is regarded as the philosophy of philology in question, but they all appear more in tune with our historical intuitions than the prevailing relativism. (shrink)

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

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.

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.

In [15], [16] G. Kreisel introduced the no-counterexample interpretation (n.c.i.) of Peano arithmetic. In particular he proved, using a complicated ε-substitution method (due to W. Ackermann), that for every theorem A (A prenex) of first-order Peano arithmetic PA one can find ordinal recursive functionals Φ A of order type 0 which realize the Herbrand normal form A H of A. Subsequently more perspicuous proofs of this fact via functional interpretation (combined with normalization) and cut-elimination were found. These proofs however do (...) not carry out the no-counterexample interpretation as a local proof interpretation and don't respect the modus ponens on the level of the no-counterexample interpretation of formulas A and A → B. Closely related to this phenomenon is the fact that both proofs do not establish the condition (δ) and--at least not constructively-- (γ) which are part of the definition of an 'interpretation of a formal system' as formulated in [15]. In this paper we determine the complexity of the no-counterexample interpretation of the modus ponens rule for (i) PA-provable sentences, (ii) for arbitrary sentences A, B ∈ L(PA) uniformly in functionals satisfying the no-counterexample interpretation of (prenex normal forms of) A and A → B, and (iii) for arbitrary A, B ∈ L(PA) pointwise in given α( 0 ) -recursive functionals satisfying the no-counterexample interpretation of A and A → B. This yields in particular perspicuous proofs of new uniform versions of the conditions (γ), (δ). Finally we discuss a variant of the concept of an interpretation presented in [17] and show that it is incomparable with the concept studied in [15], [16]. In particular we show that the no-counterexample interpretation of PA n by α( n (ω))-recursive functionals (n ≥ 1) is an interpretation in the sense of [17] but not in the sense of [15] since it violates the condition (δ). (shrink)

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)

Fara and Williamson (Mind, 2005) argue that counterpart theory is unable to account for modal claims that use an actuality operator. This paper argues otherwise. Rather than provide a different counterpart translation of the actuality operator itself, the solution presented here starts out with a quantified modal logic in which the actuality operator is redundant, and then translates the sentences of this logic into claims of counterpart theory.

In [15], [16] G. Kreisel introduced the no-counterexample interpretation (n.c.i.) of Peano arithmetic. In particular he proved, using a complicated ε-substitution method (due to W. Ackermann), that for every theoremA(Aprenex) of first-order Peano arithmeticPAone can find ordinal recursive functionalsof order type < ε0which realize the Herbrand normal formAHofA.Subsequently more perspicuous proofs of this fact via functional interpretation (combined with normalization) and cut-elimination were found. These proofs however do not carry out the no-counterexample interpretation as alocalproof interpretation and don't respect the (...) modus ponens on the level of the nocounterexample interpretation of formulasAandA → B. Closely related to this phenomenon is the fact that both proofs do not establish the condition (δ) and—at least not constructively—(γ) which are part of the definition of an ‘interpretation of a formal system’ as formulated in [15]. (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 ...

Using Sneed''s metatheory an attempt is made to reconstruct Hodgkin and Huxley''s theory of excitation of cell membranes. The structure of this theory is uncovered by defining set-theoretical predicates for the partial potential models, potential models, and models of the theory. The function of permeability is said to be the only theoretical function with respect to this theory. The main underlying assumptions of the theory are briefly outlined.