Multi-time wave functions are wave functions for multi-particle quantum systems that involve several time variables. In this paper we contrast them with solutions of wave equations on a space–time with multiple timelike dimensions, i.e., on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold whose metric has signature such as \ or \, instead of \. Despite the superficial similarity, the two behave very differently: whereas wave equations in multiple timelike dimensions are typically mathematically ill-posed and presumably unphysical, relevant Schrödinger equations for multi-time wave functions possess (...) for every initial datum a unique solution on the spacelike configurations and form a natural covariant representation of quantum states. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and (...) the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr.. (shrink)

Influencing students’ educational achievements first requires understanding the underlying processes that lead to variation in students’ performance. Researchers are therefore increasingly interested in analyzing the differences in behavior displayed in educational assessments rather than merely assessing their outcomes. Such analyses provide valuable information on the differences between successful and unsuccessful students and help to design appropriate interventions. Complex problem solving (CPS) tasks have proven to provide particularly rich process data as they allow for a multitude of behaviors several of which (...) can lead to a successful performance. So far, this data has often been analyzed on a rather aggregated level looking at an average number of actions or predefined strategies. with only a few articles investigating the specific actions performed. In this paper, we illustrate and discuss a more detailed report the results of an exploratory analysis of CPS process data based on the specific actions performed.log-files that is aimed at distinguishing between students that applied the correct strategy to a problem but failed to solve it and those applying the strategy successfully. In that, the sequence of behavior displayed is reduced to interpretable parts (n-grams) that allow searching for meaningful differences between the two groups of students. This level of analysis allows finding previously undefined or unknown patterns within the data and increases our understanding of the processes underlying successful problem -solving behavior even further. (shrink)

concepts like numbers or time are thought to be represented in the more concrete domain of space and the sensorimotor system. For example, thinking of past or future events has a physical manifestation in backward or forward body sway, respectively. In the present study, we investigated the reverse effect: can passive whole-body motion influence the processing of temporal information? Participants were asked to categorize verbal stimuli to the concepts future or past while they were displaced forward and backward , or (...) upward and downward . The results showed that future related verbal stimuli were categorized faster during forward as compared to backward motion. This finding supports the view that temporal events are represented along a mental time line and that the sensorimotor system is linked to that representation. We showed that body motion is not just an epiphenomenon of temporal thoughts. Passive whole-body motion can influence higher-order temporal cognition. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to a certain way of thinking of the action of another. The posture of mind is characteristically expressed by a specific use of what G. E. M. Anscombe calls stopping modals. On this use, the sentence, “You can’t do that; it is mine,” registers the necessity of justice. My question is: what is the relation between the status of a person, a bearer of rights, the recognition of others as persons, and the practice of addressing the (...) demands of justice to one another? According to a certain strand in the tradition, the answer is: in the sphere of justice, a special union arises among language, mind, and world such that there is a sense in which addressing, recognizing, and being a person are one reality. The paper articulates the relevant sense of ‘one reality’ and offers an argument in support of the formula. In the course of the argument I suggest that this issue is central to understanding the philosophical significance of the second person and appreciating that it marks an irreducible and fundamental form of thought. (shrink)

This article presents results from the national survey conducted in 2018 for the project Research Integrity in Norway. A total of 31,206 questionnaires were sent out to Norwegian researchers by e-mail, and 7291 responses were obtained. In this paper, we analyse the survey data to determine attitudes towards and the prevalence of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism and contrast this with attitudes towards and the prevalence of the more questionable research practices surveyed. Our results show a relatively low percentage of self-reported (...) FFPs, while the number of researchers who report having committed one of the QRPs during the last three years reached a troublesome 40%. The article also presents a ranking of the perceived severity of FFP and QRPs among Norwegian researchers. Overall, there is a widespread normative consensus, where FFP is considered more troublesome than QRPs. (shrink)

In this paper, we trace the conceptual history of the term ?metamathematics? in the nineteenth century. It is well known that Hilbert introduced the term for his proof-theoretic enterprise in about 1922. But he was verifiably inspired by an earlier usage of the phrase in the 1870s. After outlining Hilbert's understanding of the term, we will explore the lines of inducement and elucidate the different meanings of ?metamathematics? in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Finally, we will investigate the (...) earlier occurrences and come to the conclusion that the conceptual prehistory of the Hilbertian notion of metamathematics dates back to 1870, whereas the history of the word starts in 1799 at the latest. What is this: metamathematics? It is something amazing everybody, [?] since it makes the mind dizzy and withdraws thinking its sole fulcrum.1 1 Brunner 1898, p. 832: ?Was ist das: Metamathematik? Es ist etwas, was einen Jeden in das äusserste Staunen versetzt, [?] was das Gehirn schwindlig macht und dem Denken seinen einzigen Stütz- und Angelpunkt zu entziehen droht? (shrink)

Social scientists have traditionally attempted to avoid extending strategies for acquiring experimental knowledge to the sphere of the social. Bruno Latour, however, has introduced a notion of the collective experiment, an experiment conducted by and with us all. In this short paper I seek to explore, by way of elucidating the talk of collective experiments, that Latour's notion has long since existed in the theory and practice of ecological design and restoration. Practitioners in ecological restoration projects find themselves in a (...) situation of double contingency, since neither do they know how nature will respond to their intervention nor is their interpretation of these responses already certain. Experimental practice in society then becomes the proceduralization of this contingency. (shrink)

The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container (...) within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism. (shrink)

Consumerism will be understood as a ‘folk religion’, as a contemporary everyday way to make sense of and deal with transcendence. Contrary to longstanding critiques I will argue that consumerism also carries an ethical potential that comes into conflict with the results of the capitalist order of production.

The generation of route descriptions is a fundamental task of navigation systems. A particular problem in this context is to identify routes that can easily be described and processed by users. In this work, we present a framework for representing route networks with the qualitative information necessary to evaluate and optimize route descriptions with regard to ambiguities in them. We identify different agent models that differ in how agents are assumed to process route descriptions while navigating through route networks and (...) discuss which agent models can be translated into PDL programs. Further, we analyze the computational complexity of matching route descriptions and paths in route networks in dependency of the agent model. Finally, we empirically evaluate the influence of the agent model on the optimization and the processing of route instructions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 4 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 241-264.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 1 Seiten: 305-322.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 1014-1034, September 2022. The plural, impure or discordant nature of time has become an important theme in recent critical social and political theory. Against Althusser’s dismissal of Sartre’s presumedly Hegelian understanding of time and history, this article establishes Jean-Paul Sartre as a key figure in this debate on the plurality of temporalities. Especially in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre understands history and the social in terms of a multiplicity of uneven (...) and non-synchronous temporalisations, rejecting an notion of time as a universal container within which events take place. The originality of Sartre’s approach is that it establishes a link between the notion of the plurality of temporalities and the problem of freedom and domination. His mature social and political theory allows us to understand temporalisation as a strategy for domination, and objective social temporality as key to a form of anonymous or structural domination. A reconstruction of this highly complex and sophisticated approach to thinking domination through time can also shed an original light on the temporal dimension of democracy and totalitarianism. (shrink)

Self-motion through space generates a visual pattern called optic flow. It can be used to determine one’s direction of self-motion (heading). Previous studies have already shown thatthis perceptual ability, which is of critical importance during everyday life, changes with age. In most of these studies subjects were asked to judge whether they appeared to be heading to the left or right of a target. Thresholds were found to increase continuously with age. In our current study, we were interested in absolute (...) rather than relative heading judgements and in the question about a potential neural correlate of an age-related deterioration of heading perception. Two groups, older test subjects and younger controls, were shown optic flow stimuli in a virtual-reality setup. Visual stimuli simulated self-motion through a 3-D cloud of dots and subjects had to indicate their perceived heading direction after each trial. In different subsets of experiments we varied individuallyrelevant stimulus parameters: presentation time, number of dots in the display, stereoscopic vs. non-stereoscopic stimulation, and motion coherence. We found decrements in heading performance with agefor each stimulus parameter. In a final step we aimed to determine a putative neural basis of this behavioural decline. To this end we modified a neural network model which previously has proven to be capable of reproduce and predict certain aspects of heading perception. We show that the observed data can be modeled by implementing an age related neuronal cell loss in this neural network. We conclude that a continuous decline of certain aspects of motion perception, among them heading, might directly be based on anage-related progressive loss of groups of neurons being activated by visual motion. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, (...) despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life. (shrink)

There has been little debate in political philosophy about whether the intentions of governments matter to the legitimacy of their policies. This paper fills this gap. First, I provide a rigorous statement of political anti-intentionalism, the view that intentions do not matter to political legitimacy. I do so by building on analogous debates in moral philosophy. Second, I sketch some strategies to defend political anti-intentionalism, which I argue are promising and available to a wide range of theories of legitimacy. Third, (...) I show that the distinction has implications for debates surrounding neutrality and political liberalism. (shrink)

Argues for a closer connection between memories of injustice and promises of justice as a means to overcome violence.

Volume 22, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 95-97.

This article traces conceptualizations of technology from narrow definitions to a broader understanding that encompasses the larger social and environmental context within which technology operates. In doing so, the associated social and environmental drivers and impacts of technology are identified and conclusions are drawn for the roles of technology and technology change in achieving sustainability.

Meanings are felt and lived by the human organism before they are articulated. Following insights from pragmatism and embodied cognition, this paper suggests that there is an ‘appropriate’ relationship between what is meant and was is expressed in words and actions that can be formulated as a hitherto neglected yet crucial validity claim, namely congruity. Congruity is what connects the meaningfulness implicit in living a life with the articulated meanings of symbolic communication. We distinguish between the intertwined aspects of semiotic (...) congruity, the fusion between sensual patterns and semiotic meanings, performative congruity, the freedom and ability to articulate qualitatively experienced meaningfulness, and hermeneutic congruity, the capability of achieving congruence between situational meanings and one’s entire being-in-the-world. The latter presupposes a synthesis of horizontal and vertical congruity. (shrink)

The novella "The Judge" by Ernst Wiechert gives testimony to the poet’s critical analysis and examination of the immediate National Socialist past and, at the same time, tries to provide some forward-looking re-orientation in terms of a comprehensive humanism based on Christian ideals. Wiechert’s narrative follows a dramatic structure in accordance with the tragedies of Classical Greek Antiquity. Faced with an existential crisis, the title character has to prove his moral integrity and steadfastness. Deluded by the pervasive Nazi ideology, the (...) judge’s son goes astray by killing a former friend but finally, thanks to his father’s cautious, gentle guidance, finds his way back. At the end of the novella the son even atones for his wrongs while his father, an unfaltering representative and unswerving advocate of law and justice, resigns from his office in the face of the lawlessness he has experienced under the Nazi terror regime. Apart from analysing the plot of Wiechert’s novella, this study also examines the clearly outlined characters as well as the complex theme of guilt, repentance and forgiveness. Finally, the article focuses on the author’s intention of taking part in the social and political discourse of post-war Germany by conveying his message of humanity and moral integrity. (shrink)

This article assesses some recurrent criticisms based on respect for traditional culture levelled at artworks that thematise non-heteronormative gender positionalities in South Africa. More specifi...

The force of inertia. A Sartrean perspective on resistance Although Sartre’s philosophy of freedom is often considered as a philosophy of resistance, rooted in the experience of the Second World War, Sartre did not formulate a full-blown theory of resistance. However, his Critique of Dialectical Reason contains a wealth of material that allows a rethinking of the notion of resistance. In much of the literature, this notion is inflated so as to include action, opposition, struggle, exodus and a range of (...) other phenomena. In order to acquire a sharper sense of the specific meaning of resistance, this paper argues, this notion has to be reconnected with its origins in mechanical physics. Sartre’s key concept of inertia provides a starting point for such a theoretical strategy. Although human beings are fundamentally free, they can live their relation to others and to themselves as if they were inert things. From a Sartrean perspective, resistance means making oneself inert in order to be able to persevere and to hold the line in the face of a threat. Resistance occurs at both sides of a struggle, and can take different, asymmetrical forms. The two fundamental modes of sociality Sartre distinguishes, namely the group and the series, offer different types of resistance to opponents. (shrink)