My strategy is to examine a recent trend in philosophical discussions of responsibility, a trend that tries, but I think ultimately fails, to give an acceptable analysis of the conditions of responsibility. It fails due to what at first appear to be deep and irresolvable metaphysical problems. It is here that I suggest that the condition of sanity comes to the rescue. What at first appears to be an impossible requirement for responsibility---the requirement that the responsible agent have created her- (...) or himself---turns out to be the vastly more mundane and non controversial requirement that the responsible agent must, in a fairly standard sense, be sane. (shrink)

In this article, we develop the concept of Transparency by Design that serves as practical guidance in helping promote the beneficial functions of transparency while mitigating its challenges in automated-decision making environments. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the ability of AI systems to make automated and self-learned decisions, a call for transparency of how such systems reach decisions has echoed within academic and policy circles. The term transparency, however, relates to multiple concepts, fulfills many functions, and holds different (...) promises that struggle to be realized in concrete applications. Indeed, the complexity of transparency for ADM shows tension between transparency as a normative ideal and its translation to practical application. To address this tension, we first conduct a review of transparency, analyzing its challenges and limitations concerning automated decision-making practices. We then look at the lessons learned from the development of Privacy by Design, as a basis for developing the Transparency by Design principles. Finally, we propose a set of nine principles to cover relevant contextual, technical, informational, and stakeholder-sensitive considerations. Transparency by Design is a model that helps organizations design transparent AI systems, by integrating these principles in a step-by-step manner and as an ex-ante value, not as an afterthought. (shrink)

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

Die begriffliche Unterscheidung von Natur und Kultur sowie die Deutung von Kultur als einer zweiten Natur des Menschen sind von systematischer Bedeutung für die Kulturtheorie Georg Simmels. Um den Nebensinn der zweiten Natur als einer bloßen Gewohnheit, die man auch ablegen könnte, nicht zu evozieren, verwendet Simmel selbst den Ausdruck zweite Natur nicht, bewegt sich aber in einer bestimmten Theorietradition, die diesen auf Cicero zurückgehenden Ausdruck programmatisch adaptiert. Von einer Theorie des objektiven Geistes in der Nachfolge von Moritz Lazarus ausgehend, (...) entwickelt Simmel eine Kulturphilosophie, in deren Zentrum die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen dem individuellen Lebensvollzug des Einzelnen und den ihn umgebenden und herausfordernden kulturellen Objektivationen steht. (shrink)

Poetisierende Musikbeschreibungen werden von der Wissenschaft, von Musikern und Konzertbesuchern heute mehr belächelt als ernst genommen. Durch das Ansprechen von Einbildungskraft und Gefühl haben sie aber eine Unmittelbarkeit, die der kompositionstechnischen Analyse in der Regel fehlt. Die Wurzeln einer metaphorischen Musikbeschreibung um die Wende zum 19. Jahrhundert sind dabei gleichermaßen historisch wie systematisch zu fassen. Zahlreiche Zitate aus den Fachzeitschriften bis zur Jahrhundertmitte dokumentieren die Herausbildung eines festumrissenen Bildervorrats, um musikalische Eindrücke zur Sprache zu bringen. Der kreative Umgang mit Beschreibungskonventionen (...) ist für die Musikkritiken von E.T.A. Hoffmann, Adolf Bernhard Marx, Ludwig Rellstab und vor allem Robert Schumann kennzeichnend. (shrink)

What constitutes our number concept? What makes it possible for us to employ numbers the way we do; which mental faculties contribute to our grasp of numbers? What do we share with other species, and what is specific to humans? How does our language faculty come into the picture? This 2003 book addresses these questions and discusses the relationship between numerical thinking and the human language faculty, providing psychological, linguistic and philosophical perspectives on number, its evolution and its development in (...) children. Heike Wiese argues that language as a human faculty plays a crucial role in the emergence of systematic numerical thinking. She characterises number sequences as powerful and highly flexible mental tools that are unique to humans and shows that it is language that enables us to go beyond the perception of numerosity and to develop such mental tools. (shrink)

The article explores the underlying reasons for patients’ self‐perception of being a burden (SPB) in family settings, including its impact on relationships when wishes to die (WTD) are expressed. In a prospective, interview‐based study of WTD in patients with advanced cancer and non‐cancer disease (organ failure, degenerative neurological disease, and frailty) SPB was an important emerging theme. In a sub‐analysis we examined (a) the facets of SPB, (b) correlations between SPB and WTD, and (c) SPB as a relational phenomenon. We (...) analyzed 248 interviews with 62 patients, their family caregivers, and professionals using grounded theory and interpretive phenomenological analysis. SPB appeared as important empathic concern in care situations. Patients expressed many sorts of concerns for others, but also perceived an altered self‐understanding that did not meet mutual expectations within relationships. In SPB associated with WTD three constellations were found: (a) WTD to unburden others; (b) patients decided against hastening death to prevent being a further burden to others (in these cases, the SPB counteracted the wish to die); and (c) both wishes for and against dying were sustained by SPB. These patients often felt paralyzed and suffered deeply. Family caregivers felt emotionally touched by SPB and tried to unburden patients by caring and compassion. We concluded that the impact of SPB on a WTD and the various meanings the facets of SPB have in balancing relationships need to be worked out individually. An early palliative and narrative approach is warranted. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, (...) -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

tRNA nucleotidyltransferase adds the invariant CCA‐terminus to the tRNA 3′‐end, a central step in tRNA maturation. This CCA‐adding enzyme is a specialized RNA polymerase that synthesizes the CCA sequence at high fidelity in all kingdoms of life. Recently, an additional function of this enzyme was identified, where it generates a specific degradation tag on structurally unstable tRNAs. This tag consists of an additional repeat of the CCA triplet, leading to a 3′‐terminal CCACCA sequence. In order to explain how the enzyme (...) catalyzes this extended polymerization reaction, Kuhn et al. solved a series of co‐crystal structures of the CCA‐adding enzyme from Archaeoglobus fulgidus in complex with different tRNA substrates. They show that the enzyme forces a bound unstable tRNA to refold the acceptor stem for a second round of CCA‐addition, while stable transcripts are robust enough to resist this isomerization. In this review, we discuss how the CCA‐adding enzyme uses a simple yet very elegant way to scrutinize its substrates for sufficient structural stability and, consequently, functionality. (shrink)

Drawing on data from a comparative ethnographic study on media usage in transnational families, this paper contributes to a reappraisal of polymedia theory. Two main theoretical assumptions are reconsidered. First, it is demonstrated why the equal availability assumption has to be revised in light of the complex interactions between the corporeal, communicative and social mobilities which together constitute transnational migration. Second, it is argued that the techno-socially accomplished co-presence in transnational families depends more on the creative appropriation and combination of (...) different media channels and communication forms than on the choice between them. In order to empirically investigate the specific needs for, and forms of co-presence in families, the concept of ‘registers of presence’ is proposed. It allows us to understand in detail in what ways and in which constellations transnational families create togetherness with the help of communication technologies. (shrink)

German; one contribution each in English and French.

German; one contribution each in English and French.

Vor mehr als 150 Jahren formulierte Arthur Schopenhauer in seiner Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral Kritikpunkte an Äußerungen Kants zum moralischen Verhältnis des Menschen zu den Tieren, die seither zu den tierethischen Standardvorwürfen an die Adresse der Kantischen Ethik gehören und ihr völlige tierethische Leistungsunfähigkeit attestieren. Schopenhauer sieht jede „ächte Moral“ durch den Satz beleidigt, daß die vernunftlosen Wesen Sachen wären und daher auch bloß als Mittel, die nicht zugleich Zweck sind, behandelt werden dürften. In Uebereinstimmung hiemit wird, in (...) den Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Tugendlehre, § 16, ausdrücklich gesagt: ‚Der Mensch kann keine Pflicht gegen irgend ein Wesen haben, als bloß gegen den Menschen‘; und dann heißt es § 17: ‚Die grausame Behandlung der Thiere ist der Pflicht des Menschen gegen sich selbst entgegen; weil sie das Mitgefühl an ihrem Leiden im Menschen abstumpft, wodurch eine der Moralität im Verhältniß zu anderen Menschen sehr diensame, natürliche Anlage geschwächt wird.‘ Also bloß zur Uebung soll man mit Thieren Mitleid haben, und sie sind gleichsam das pathologische Phantom zur Uebung des Mitleids mit Menschen. (shrink)

The article takes Helmuth Plessner’s Political Anthropology from 1931 as a postfoundationalist theory of society avant la lettre - which is very similar to the later works of Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe. Or, the article takes Plessner’s essay as an ‘ontology’ of the Political. After introducing remarks on the historical debates, in which Plessner aimed to intervene, his theory of the Political is reconstructed, within the three categories of ‘unfathomability’, of the constitutive outside, and of the vulnerability (...) of the human body. In a third and last step, Plessner’s most central and most problematic category for the Political - the ‘popular existence’ - is discussed: The ‘people’ is made visible as being a key notion of postfoundational theories of modern democracy, for it is - beneath the ‘Individual’ - one of the imaginary foundations, one of the foundational outsides of a democratically instituted collective. (shrink)

Despite decades of management and conservation efforts, we have seen only limited success in rebuilding marine life and restoring ocean ecosystems from human-inflicted damage on a global scale. I suggest that we need to harness both our emotional and rational sides to create a more powerful movement to heal the ocean and rebuild its abundance and diversity. Love and compassion fuel our desire and urge for change and provide a compass that can guide our actions. Science and knowledge provide ways (...) for collecting and interpreting data and information that can enhance our understanding and support our decisions and actions. Combining our emotional and rational sides can inspire our thinking and transform our actions in new, creative ways. In order to affect wide-ranging and long-lasting change, love and knowledge need to work together to transform our collective relationship with the ocean. (shrink)

Nachdem der Zusammenhang zwischen Sprache und Emotion in der Linguistik lange Zeit vernachlässigt wurde, erhält diese Frage seit etwa 25 Jahren so hohe Aufmerksamkeit, dass von einem 'emotional turn' gesprochen werden kann. Der vorliegende Band dient als Zusammenfassung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes zu diesem komplexen Thema. Berücksichtigt werden Erkenntnisse aus verschiedenen Teildisziplinen, z.B. Semiotik, Lexikologie, Pragmatik, Kognitive Linguistik und Textlinguistik. Im methodischen Teil wird gezeigt, wie eine emotionslinguistische Analyse emotive Strukturen in Texten offenlegen kann, wobei die vorgeschlagene Methode leicht an verschiedene (...) Fragestellungen angepasst werden kann. Die empirische Überprüfung ergibt einen Vergleich von drei sehr unterschiedlichen Textkorpora: Untersucht werden Briefe von Franz Kafka als Beispiel für einen Individualstil, Nachrichtenartikel von verschiedenen Online-Plattformen als Beispiel für Medientexte und die Kommunikationsform Twitter als Beispiel für Online-Kommunikation. Forschende, Lehrende und Studierende finden hier sowohl einen umfassenden Überblick über theoretische Grundlagen als auch Anregungen für die Anwendung in der eigenen Forschung und Lehre. (shrink)

The respiration of oxygen, while essential to aerobic organisms for the generation of energy, leads to the formation of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROIs) as harmful byproducts. ROIs damage nucleic acids, lipids and proteins. Therefore, protective mechanisms against elevated intracellular ROI levels, referred to as oxidative stress, have evolved. These include the activation of transcription factors which elevate the expression of protective enzymes. Eukaryotic cells have also evolved the ability to specifically generate ROIs are used as second messengers to activate gene (...) expression. Here we will discuss both prokaryotic and eukaryotic transcription factors that respond to ROIs. In addition, transcription factors will be described that are activated by either exposure to antioxidants, which reduce the intracellular ROI concentration, or by hypoxia, the absence of oxygen. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

This article suggests evidence for and reasons why prior acquisition may either facilitate or inhibit acquisition of a new construction. It investigates acquisition of the German passive and future constructions which contain a lexical verb with either the auxiliary sein “to be” or werden “to become”, and are related through these to potential supporting constructions. We predicted that a supported construction should be acquired earlier, faster, and unusually rapidly. An inhibited construction should show an extended depressed usage. We analyzed a (...) dense corpus of a German boy between 2;0 and 5;0. He acquired the sein- before the werden-passive. The former was supported by his prior acquisition of the sein copula, whereas the werden-passive itself supported one werden copula construction. He acquired the werden-future extremely slowly due to the hindrance of a semantically identical construction. These results fit with an emergentist approach in which apparently “sudden” acquisition is still due to gradual learning mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper provides an introduction to ethical issues arising in children's research that takes place in school-settings. It addresses three main areas of ethical concern: the informed consent process, confidentiality, and harm and benefit. Informed consent in school settings is characterized by the involvement of multiple stakeholders, including not just researchers, parents and individual children but also school principals, teachers and the children's peer group. The added complexity of the setting has implications for the management of the informed consent process, (...) including the decision at what point and in which manner each stakeholder group needs to be involved in the process. The presence and divergent roles of these multiple stakeholders in the school setting also have implications for addressing issues of confidentiality, especially due to the group setting in which participants take part in the research and role expectations within school settings. Harm and benefit in school-based research are of a non-physical nature; relevant areas of concern relate primarily to the potential for psychological and social harm, realistic presentation of likely benefits from research and the issue of rewards for research participation. (shrink)

It is consistent that each union of many families in the Baire space which are not finitely dominating is not dominating. In particular, it is consistent that for each nonprincipal ultrafilter , the cofinality of the reduced ultrapower is greater than . The model is constructed by oracle chain condition forcing, to which we give a self-contained introduction.

The volume provides an overview of the origins of early medieval aristocratic literature. Although there are regional, linguistic and formal differences, one can observe a number of similarities. Oral literature disseminates a range of themes that are shared by narratives in most parts of the continent. The authors address these similarities in Roman, Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic literature and use different methodologies to explain them.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

For about five decades the phrase "sanctity-of-life" has been part of the Anglo-American biomedical ethical discussion related to abortion and end-of-life questions. Nevertheless, the concept's origin and meaning are unclear. Much controversy is based on the mistaken assumption that the concept denotes the absolute value of human life and thus dictates a strict prohibition on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In this paper, I offer an analysis of the religious and philosophical history of the idea of "sanctity-of-life." Drawing on biblical texts (...) and interpretation as well as Kant's secularization of the concept, I argue that "sanctity" has been misunderstood as an ontological feature of biological human life, and instead locate the idea within the historical virtue-ethical tradition, which understands sanctification as a personal achievement through one's own actions. (shrink)

For about five decades the phrase “sanctity-of-life“ has been part of the Anglo-American biomedical ethical discussion related to abortion and end-of-life questions. Nevertheless, the concept’s origin and meaning are unclear. Much controversy is based on the mistaken assumption that the concept denotes the absolute value of human life and thus dictates a strict prohibition on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In this paper, I offer an analysis of the religious and philosophical history of the idea of “sanctity-of-life.” Drawing on biblical texts (...) and interpretation as well as Kant’s secularization of the concept, I argue that “sanctity” has been misunderstood as an ontological feature of biological human life, and instead locate the idea within the historical virtue-ethical tradition, which understands sanctification as a personal achievement through one’s own actions. (shrink)