Existential-Ontologie und historischer Materialismus bei Herbert Marcuse, von A. Schmidt.--Das Ganze und das ganz Andere; zur Kritik der reinen revolutionären Transzendenz, von W.F. Haug.--Technik und Eindimensionalität; eine Version der Technokratiethese? Von C. Offe.--Technologische Rationalität und spätkapitalistische ökonomie, von J. Bergmann.--Die geschichtliche Dimension des Realitätsprinzips, von H. Berndt und R. Reiche.--Marcuse and the New Left in America, by P. Breines.--Ausgewählte Bibliographie der Schriften Herbert Marcuses (p. 155-[161]).

Part of the Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy series, this survey of late modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.

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)

While an accurate assessment of risk is always important, it is especially so in pediatric research. Recognizing the pivotal nature of the minimal-risk standard, we set out to determine under what circumstances pediatric magnetic resonance imaging research does or does not meet this standard. We found that while the physical and psychological risks that attend the MRI procedure do not exceed minimal risk, the sedation and contrast enhancement that are sometimes associated with MRI research do, as both exceed the level (...) of risk encountered by typical, healthy children in their everyday experiences. (shrink)

Abstract383 S., € 44,90. ISBN 978-3-506-77935-9.

In einer gesteigerten Form der Memento-mori-Dichtung des Barock wurde die menschliche Sterblichkeit durch den Einsatz performativer Strategien für die Zeitgenoss*innen bereits zu Lebzeiten erfahrbar. So waren mahnende und tröstende Tote, die scheinbar direkt aus dem Jenseits zu den Lebenden sprechen, in Begräbnisgedichten und Grabinschriften allgegenwärtig. Ebenso waren Gedichte und Sterbelieder verbreitet, in denen der Sterbeakt performativ durchlebt werden konnte. In der Gegenwart, die sich nach Norbert Elias durch eine Verdrängung der menschlichen Vergänglichkeit zugunsten von Unsterblichkeitsphantasien, und somit einer Vermeidung von (...) Erfahrungen mit der Vergänglichkeit, auszeichnet, gestalten einige deutschsprachige Lyriker*innen moderne Variationen dieses gesteigerten memento mori. In den untersuchten Gedichten von Özlem Özgül Dündar und Günter Kunert werden durch performative Verfahren Konfrontationen mit der eigenen Endlichkeit inszeniert, welche als moderne, säkulare Vergänglichkeitsmahnungen verstanden werden können. (shrink)

Roland Allen’s emphasis on the ministry in missionary churches opens the door to a number of ways in which the church can work to change society, and he makes some very important connections between the promises of the prophets, Jesus announcement of the coming kingdom, and Paul’s missionary methods. In doing so, he again invites the church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God to the modern world.

: In the early twentieth century, psychoanalysis tries to investigate a specific logic of the appearance and the incident of what is taken to be unintended in everyday communication and human behavior. What before hardly seemed to be worth systematic research, now becomes a privileged field, in which the meaningful signs of a hidden and unwelcome past appear. For representing this new field of research Freud often makes use of archaeological metaphors. But in quoting the knowledge and the techniques of (...) archaeology, he evokes imaginary landscapes of a reappearing human past, which is not depraved and repressed but glorious and precious. This contradiction or gap between the character of analytical objects and their representation gives reason for an 'archaeological' investigation of psychoanalysis itself. To this end one of the heroes of nineteenth century archaeology, Heinrich Schliemann, will be confronted with two little works of Rudolf Virchow, in which he follows up the astonishing idea of an archaeology of refuse. Relating treasure troves and rubbish dumps it can be asked whether 'archaeological' practices in the late nineteenth century constituted a type of historical knowledge which runs counter to contemporary historicism and is crucial not only for Freud but also for today's theoretical reflections on archaeological perspectives in cultural studies. (shrink)

Critics of John Rawls' conception of a reasonable pluralism have raised the question of whether it is justified to demand that religious individuals should 'bracket' their essential, identity-constituting convictions when they enter a political discourse. I will argue that the criterion for religious beliefs of being justified as grounds for political decisions should be their ability of being 'translatable' in secular reasons for the very same decisions. This translation would demand 'epistemic abstinence' from religious believers only on the basis of (...) a rigid distinction between the spheres of private opinions and public reasons. To give a more adequate account of the relation between religious beliefs and political reasons in a pluralistic society it seems to be helpful to make use of Niklas Luhmann's functionalistic theory of religion. Key Words: democracy and religious beliefs • philosophy of religion • pluralism • political liberalism • political theory. (shrink)

Spirituality is a topic of recent interest. Mindfulness, for example, a concept derived from the Buddhist tradition, has captivated the imagination of clinicians who package it in convenient intervention programs for patients. Spirituality and religion have been researched with reference to potential health benefits. Spirituality can be conceptualised as the alignment of the individual with the whole, experientially, motivationally and in action. For spirituality to unfold its true potential it is necessary to align this new movement with the mainstream of (...) science, and vice versa. Hence, both a historical review, and a systematic attempt at integration is called for, which we are trying to give here. It is useful to go back to one of the roots: parapsychology. Parapsychology was founded as a counter movement to the rising materialist paradigm in the 19th century. Adopting the methods of the natural sciences, it tried to prove the direct influence of consciousness on matter. After 125 years this mission must be declared unaccomplished. Surveying the database of parapsychological research it is obvious that it will not convince sceptics: Although there are enough exceptional findings, it has in general not been possible to reproduce them in replication experiments. This is, however, a characteristic signature of a category of effects which we call effects of generalised entanglement, predicted by a theoretical model analogous to quantum theory. Using this perspective, parapsychological effects can be understood, and the original aim of the founding fathers can be recovered, as well as a new, systematic understanding of spirituality be gained. Generalised entanglement is a formal and scientific way of explaining spirituality as alignment of an individual with a whole, which, according to the model, inevitably leads to non-local correlations. (shrink)

Evolutionary explanations of pain expression require modeling social adaptations in a context where the role of health professionals as potential caregivers, conflicts with their status as relative strangers. As signals of help elicitation or of alarm, facial pain displays and responses to displays, particularly in the upper face, are expected to conform to this evolutionarily novel clinical context.

The aim of the paper is to argue that the ontological setting of objects in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is a version of structural realism. According to our plan, one of the opening statements of the Tractatus – The world is the totality of facts, not of things – introduces structuralist perspective: structures are superior to their constituents. However, structuralists use the notion ‘superior’ in various senses, but this paper argues that the Tractatus places its objects within the framework of ontic structural (...) realism in its moderate form. That form puts structures and individuals on the same ontological footing. Such thesis contradicts traditional object-ontology that dominates Tractarian literature. (shrink)

One common set of arguments against universal markets contends that the special status of certain goods (e.g., organs, reproductive services, or native artifacts) makes it inappropriate or wrong to compare their worth to the value of a commodity or to some amount of money. These arguments rest on the fear that market valuations would distort the way we value the goods in question rather than the fear that their sale could exploit or directly harm the people involved in the exchange. (...) In this paper I use behavioral economics to explain why these arguments persuade so many people despite the fact that we already engage in a wide range of economic valuations with respect to those contested domains. I conclude by identifying the implications this has for the broader debate over contested markets. (shrink)

To successfully learn using open Internet resources, students must be able to critically search, evaluate and select online information, and verify sources. Defined as critical online reasoning, this construct is operationalized on two levels in our study: the student level using the newly developed Critical Online Reasoning Assessment, and the online information processing level using event log data, including gaze durations and fixations. The written responses of 32 students for one CORA task were scored by three independent raters. The resulting (...) score was operationalized as “task performance,” whereas the gaze fixations and durations were defined as indicators of “process performance.” Following a person-oriented approach, we conducted a process mining analysis, as well as a latent class analysis to test whether—following the dual-process theory—the undergraduates could be distinguished into two groups based on both their process and task performance. Using PM, the process performance of all 32 students was visualized and compared, indicating two distinct response process patterns. One group of students, defined as “strategic information processers,” processed online information more comprehensively, as well as more efficiently, which was also reflected in their higher task scores. In contrast, the distributions of the process performance variables for the other group, defined as “avoidance information processers,” indicated a poorer process performance, which was also reflected in their lower task scores. In the LCA, where two student groups were empirically distinguished by combining the process performance indicators and the task score as a joint discriminant criterion, we confirmed these two COR profiles, which were reflected in high vs. low process and task performances. The estimated parameters indicated that high-performing students were significantly more efficient at conducting strategic information processing, as reflected in their higher process performance. These findings are so far based on quantitative analyses using event log data. To enable a more differentiated analysis of students’ visual attention dynamics, more in-depth qualitative research of the identified student profiles in terms of COR will be required. (shrink)