Neue Entwicklungen der Medizin haben die Entscheidung über Geburt und Tod wie nie zuvor in die Hände des Menschen gelegt. Damit stellen sich schwerwiegende Fragen: Welcher Embryo darf überleben? Wie lange darf ein Leben über das Erträgliche hinaus verlängert werden? Weltweite soziale Konflikte führen zu der Forderung, in Verantwortung für den Frieden notfalls Waffengewalt einzusetzen. Mit Klimawandel und Staatsverschuldung verbinden sich neue ökologische, soziale und politische Probleme. Wolfgang Huber erklärt, in welcher Weise die aktuellen Herausforderungen uns alle angehen, und (...) formuliert Maßstäbe des Menschlichen für ihre Lösung. Sein Buch ist ein wunderbar klar geschriebenes Vademecum der Ethik, das uns die wirklich wichtigen Fragen unseres Lebens bewusst macht. "Das Buch ist ein weiser Führer durch die ethischen Lebensprobleme der Einzelnen und der Gesellschaften heute." Karl Kardinal Lehmann "Wolfgang Huber und mich verbindet immer das Empfinden eines elementaren Zusammenhanges zwischen christlichem Bekenntnis und politischer Verantwortung." (Quelle: www.buchhandel.de). (shrink)

Religionskritik wird gerade in der jungeren Vergangenheit bevorzugt als Kritik an der vermeintlichen Irrationalitat religiosen Glaubens artikuliert. Die Autoren der im vorliegenden Konferenzband versammelten Beitrage fragen zunachst anhand exemplarischer Studien zu Hamann, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche und Rudolf Otto nach der Bedeutung und Funktion des Irrationalen in rezeptionsgeschichtlich massgeblichen religionsphilosophischen Entwurfen der (Nach-)Aufklarung. Erganzt und zugespitzt wird der historische Abschnitt des Bandes durch Analysen zu Werk und Wirkung Soren Kierkegaards, dem neuzeitlichen Irrationalitatstheoretiker par excellence. Daruber hinaus wird aus systematischer Perspektive nach (...) der kritischen und/oder konstruktiven Funktion des Irrationalitatsthemas fur Religionsphilosophie und Theologie gefragt, wobei nicht nur semantische, sondern auch fundamentaltheologische und ethische Aspekte Berucksichtigung finden. Mit Beitragen von: Daniel Conway, Istvan Czako, Dario Gonzalez, Todd Gooch, Zoltan Gyenge, Gesche Linde, William McDonald, Peter Sajda, Jochen Schmidt, Heiko Schulz, Harald Steffes, Jon Stewart, Curtis Thompson, Knut Wenzel, Oliver Wiertz. (shrink)

Competitive athletes act within cultures of risk in sports and often decide to return to sport despite having acute health problems. The outcomes of such risky return-to-play decisions can not only negatively affect their future health, but also limit their sports performance or even upset their career paths. Following risk-management-decision theory with its focus on active risk defusing, we developed a model for understanding the process of return-to-play decision making from an athlete’s perspective. Based on the method of active information (...) search, a quasi-naturalistic return-to-play decision scenario was created in order to assess amateur team sport athletes’ decision making strategies. The main goals were to identify different information acquisition patterns and to analyze the influence of social pressure to play hurt on decision making. A total of 72 competitive team sport athletes (36 females, 36 males, m= 25.7 years of age, 3rd to 6th league level) out of three disciplines (volleyball, basketball, and handball) participated in the experimental study. Facing the same medical scenario (a partial tear of the supraspinatus tendon), athletes show different approaches to return-to-play decision making. The main focus is on potential sporting consequences of withdrawal from competition due to injury, while only few players favoring well-informed decisions based on thorough risk analysis. The athletes who chose the medically risky alternative to play hurt mostly employed strategies of active risk defusing, which got activated when severe sporting consequences were perceived. Those who chose to withdraw from competition primarily referred to maximin heuristic, particularly when social pressure to play was reduced. The findings can be used to improve rehabilitation. (shrink)

Über das Verstehen von Kunst nachzudenken heißt über die Bedeutsamkeit von Kunst nachzudenken. Jochen Schuff zeichnet nach, wie Ludwig Wittgenstein und Stanley Cavell diesen Gedanken auf komplementäre Weise entfalten. Wittgenstein rückt in seinen verstreuten Bemerkungen zur Ästhetik die unterschiedlichen Spiele von Ausdruck und Verstehen zwischen kultureller Tradition und spontanen Reaktionen in den Fokus. Cavell erläutert die Bedeutsamkeit von Kunst an den Medien und Werken seiner Gegenwart--und daran, wie mit ihnen zentrale Aspekte der menschlichen Lebensform erfahrbar werden. Die vorliegende Studie (...) bietet eine systematische Lektüre der Kunstphilosophien Wittgensteins und Cavells, aber sie bleibt dabei nicht stehen. Sie testet ihre Befunde mithilfe philosophischer Betrachtungen aktueller Filme, Videos und Installationen von Jonathan Glazer, Mark Leckey, Rineke Dijkstra, Omer Fast, Isa Genzken, Douglas Gordon, Christian Marclay und Pharrell Williams. --Page [4] of cover. (shrink)

With this special issue, we would like to promote research on changes in the funding of the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Since funding secures the livelihood of researchers and the means to do research, it is an indispensable condition for almost all research; as funding arrangements are undergoing dramatic changes, we think it timely to renew the science studies community’s efforts to understand the funding of research. Changes in the governance of science have garnered considerable attention from science studies (...) and higher education research; however, the impact of these changes on the conduct and content of research has not received sufficient attention, and theoretical insights into the connections between funding practices and research practices are few and far between. The aim of this special issue is to contribute to our theoretical understanding of the changing nature of research funding and its impact on the production of scientific knowledge. More specifically, we are interested in the interplay between funding and research practices: What is the impact of institutionalised funding arrangements on the production of scientific knowledge? (shrink)

In the present research, we examine the relation between leader mindfulness and employee performance through the lenses of organizational justice and leader-member relations. We hypothesize that employees of more mindful leaders view their relations as being of higher leader-member exchange quality. We further hypothesize two mediating mechanisms of this relation: increased interpersonal justice and reduced employee stress. In other words, we posit that employees of more mindful leaders feel treated with greater respect and experience less stress. Finally, we predict that (...) LMX quality serves as a mediator linking leader mindfulness to employee performance—defined in terms of both in-role and extra-role performance. Across two field studies of triadic leader-employee-peer data and dyadic leader–employee data, we find support for this sequential mediation model. We discuss implications for theorizing on leadership, organizational justice, business ethics, LMX, and mindfulness, as well as practical implications. (shrink)

Was sind naturwissenschaftliche Phanomene und inwiefern kann die Beantwortung dieser Frage zu einer besseren philosophischen Einschatzung der wissenschaftlichen Praxis beitragen? Dieses Buch untersucht die wissenschaftstheoretische Unterscheidung zwischen Daten und Phanomenen, um ihre Bedeutung fur die Debatte um den Wissenschaftlichen Realismus zu klaren. Ausgehend von einer Analyse des Phanomenbegriffs werden sowohl realistische als auch antirealistische Anwendungen der Unterscheidung auf ihre Uberzeugungskraft gepruft. Auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung wird fur ein realistisches Phanomenverstandnis pladiert und erortert, wie exakt Wissenschaftstheoretiker die wissenschaftliche Praxis (...) beschreiben mussen, um zutreffende philosophische Schlussfolgerungen ziehen zu konnen.". (shrink)

An outline topography of musical accessibility. What is musical accessibility? ; Society, atonality, psychology -- Accessibility discourse in rock, and cultural change. Case study 1 : 'Prog' rock/punk rock : sophistication, directness and shock ; Zeitgeist : accessibility in flux -- A valiant failure? : new art music and the people. Case study 2 : Vaughan Williams' national music in context ; Art music, vernacular music and accessibility -- Accessibility, identity and social action. Case study 3a : Accessibility in action (...) : Bahia, Brazil ; 3b : Samba in Wales : how is adopted music accessible? -- Part five. Themes. Some key concepts. (shrink)

Anthony Brueckner argues for a strong connection between the closure and the underdetermination argument for scepticism. Moreover, he claims that both arguments rest on infallibilism: In order to motivate the premises of the arguments, the sceptic has to refer to an infallibility principle. If this were true, fallibilists would be right in not taking the problems posed by these sceptical arguments seriously. As many epistemologists are sympathetic to fallibilism, this would be a very interesting result. However, in this paper I (...) will argue that Brueckner’s claims are wrong: The closure and the underdetermination argument are not as closely related as he assumes and neither rests on infallibilism. Thus even a fallibilist should take these arguments to raise serious problems that must be dealt with somehow. (shrink)

In this paper we show that Audi’s fallibilist foundationalism is beset by three unclarities. First, there is a conceptual unclarity in that Audi leaves open if and how to distinguish clearly between the concepts of fallibility and defeasibility. Second, there is a general unclarity: it is not always clear which fallibility/defeasibility-theses Audi accepts or denies. Finally, there is an unclarity of self-application because Audi does not specify his own claim that fallibilist foundationalism is an inductivist, and therefore itself fallible, thesis. (...) The critical part of our paper is supplemented by a constructive part, in which we present a space of possible distinctions between different fallibility and defeasibility theses. These distinctions can be used by Audi as a toolkit to improve the clarity of fallibilist foundationalism and thus provide means to strengthen his position. (shrink)

Das Werk des vorsokratischen Philosophen Parmenides, das nur fragmentarisch erhalten ist, kann als Lehrgedicht beschrieben werden. In diesem Buch werden zum ersten Mal die pädagogischen Aspekte des Gedichtes aufgrund einer detaillierten Diskussion von ausgewählten Fragmenten systematisch untersucht. Es werden u. a. folgende Fragen behandelt: Wie kommt der Suchende oder Lernende zur philosophischen Erkenntnis? Welche 'Wege' oder Methoden führen dorthin? Was für Lernstufen gibt es? Wie verhält sich der Lernende (der Kuros) zur Belehrenden (der Göttin)? Welcher geistige Zustand soll den Erkennenden (...) kennzeichnen? Parmenides' Ontologie wird hier als Beschreibung des Erkennenden in Betracht gezogen, insofern das erkennende Subjekt seinem Objekt entsprechen soll. Parmenides' philosophische Pädagogik wird im Rahmen der Erziehungstheorie und Praxis der antiken Philosophie dargestellt und mit dem Thema der Philosophie als Lebenskunst verglichen. (shrink)

Wie wird Kunst in sozialen Prozessen wirksam? Welche Rolle spielen Stereotypen in der Begegnung? Wie hängen Wahrnehmen und Handeln zusammen? Dieses Buch ist ein Plädoyer für die Bilder im Zeitalter großer sozio-politischer Wandlungen. Arbeiten von Tania Bruguera, Isaac Julien, Nikki S. Lee, Teresa Margolles, Adrian Piper, Santiago Sierra und Lorna Simpson werden als performative Räume erschlossen. In den Bildern kommen andere Menschen sehr nahe und die am Werk Teilhabenden begegnen sich selbst in ihnen. Begehren und Diskriminieren der Anderen werden als (...) essenzielle Bewusstseinsprozesse reflektierbar. Stereotype Repräsentationen kommen in Bewegung. Die Interaktion der äußeren und inneren Bilder löst dialogische Prozesse aus, die Wahrnehmen und Handeln nachhaltig verändern. Thomas R. Huber unternimmt einen methodisch innovativen Brückenschlag zwischen Identitätspolitik, Ethik und Ästhetik und macht so Kunst als sozio-politisches Agens greifbar. (shrink)

Was ist Wurde? Konnen auch nichtmenschliche Tiere Wurde haben? Bettina Huber geht diesen Fragen nach, indem sie sich mit verschiedenen Auffassungen von Wurde befasst und davon ausgehend genauer auf das Verstandnis von Wurde als einer Haltung eingeht: Uber Wurde als Haltung zu verfugen bedeutet, mit dem eigenen Selbstbild in Ubereinstimmung zu leben. Die Autorin zeigt, inwiefern bestimmte nichtmenschliche Tiere die notwendigen Fahigkeiten besitzen, um ein Selbstbild zu entwickeln und damit ubereinzustimmen. Anschliessend beschaftigt sie sich mit den Bedingungen, die fur (...) ein Leben in Wurde erfullt sein mussen. Am Ende geht es um ein konkretes Beispiel, namlich warum Grossaquarien Delfinen ein Leben in Wurde nicht ermoglichen konnen - und in bestimmten Fallen eine Wurdeverletzung oder gar eine Demutigung vorliegt. (shrink)

Comics are complex multimodal documents that make for intriguing materials to analyze with computer vision and computational linguistics. This review summarizes the growing developments in computational modeling which have been progressing to analyze visual narratives across their various substructures.

Der Versohnung dient Dialektik. Das Konzept der negativen Dialektik lasst sich als das Vorhaben verstehen, Dialektik durch dialektische Mittel zu uberwinden. Doch wie geht die radikale Kritik gesellschaftlicher Verhaltnisse und traditioneller Denkformen, eine Fundamentalkritik des falschen Ganzen, zusammen mit einem emphatischen Begriff von Utopie, mit der Idee einer Versohnung von Menschheit und Natur? In dieser Frage kommt ein Spannungsverhaltnis zum Ausdruck, das das gesamte Werk Adornos pragt und sich in paradoxalen und aporetischen Gedankenfiguren ausdruckt. Diese Untersuchung rekonstruiert das negativ-utopische Denken (...) Adornos, indem es dessen Leitmotive in ideengeschichtlichen Konstellationen transparent macht. (shrink)

This anthology discusses important issues surrounding environmental law and economics and provides an in-depth analysis of its use in legislation, regulation and legal adjudication from a neoclassical and behavioural law and economics perspective. Environmental issues raise a vast range of legal questions: to what extent is it justifiable to rely on markets and continued technological innovation, especially as it relates to present exploitation of scarce resources? Or is it necessary for the state to intervene? Regulatory instruments are available to create (...) and maintain a more sustainable society: command and control regulations, restraints, Pigovian taxes, emission certificates, nudging policies, et cetera If regulation in a certain legal field is necessary, which policies and methods will most effectively spur sustainable consumption and production in order to protect the environment while mitigating any potential negative impact on economic development? Since the related problems are often caused by scarcity of resources, economic analysis of law can offer remarkable insights for their resolution. Part I underlines the foundations of environmental law and economics. Part II analyses the effectiveness of economic instruments and regulations in environmental law. Part III is dedicated to the problems of climate change. Finally, Part IV focuses on tort and criminal law. The twenty-one chapters in this volume deliver insights into the multifaceted debate surrounding the use of economic instruments in environmental regulation in Europe. (shrink)

Two kinds of cosmopolitan vision are typically associated with Kant's practical philosophy: on the one hand, the ideal of a universal moral community of rational agents who constitute a 'kingdom of ends' qua shared humanity. On the other hand, the ideal of a distinctly political community of'world citizens' who share membership in some kind of global polity. Kant's Grounded Cosmopolitanism introduces a novel account of Kant's global thinking, one that has hitherto been largely overlooked: a grounded cosmopolitanism concerned with spelling (...) out the normative implications of the fact thata plurality of corporeal agents concurrently inhabit the earth's spherical surface. It is neither concerned with a community of shared humanity in the abstract, nor of shared citizenship, but with a 'disjunctive' community of earth dwellers, that is, embodied agents in direct physical confrontationwith each other. Kant's grounded cosmopolitanism as laid out in the Doctrine of Right frames the question how individuals relate to one another globally by virtue of concurrent existence and derives from this a specific set of constraints on cross-border interactions. (shrink)

Although the computational properties of the Region Connection Calculus RCC-8 are well studied, reasoning with RCC-8 entails several representational problems. This includes the problem of representing arbitrary spatial regions in a computational framework, leading to the problem of generating a realization of a consistent set of RCC-8 constraints. A further problem is that RCC-8 performs reasoning about topological space, which does not have a particular dimension. Most applications of spatial reasoning, however, deal with two- or three-dimensional space. Therefore, a consistent (...) set of RCC-8 constraints might not be realizable within the desired dimension. In this paper we address these problems and develop a canonical model of RCC-8 which allows a simple representation of regions with respect to a set of RCC-8 constraints, and, further, enables us to generate realizations in any dimension d = 1. For three-and higher-dimensional space this can also be done for internally connected regions. (shrink)

The white coat ceremony is a common practice at many American and European medical schools. Current justification for the ceremony is mainly based on the good will felt by participants and an assumed connection between the ceremony and encouraging humanistic values in medicine. Recent critiques of the ceremony faults its use of oaths, premature alignment of students and faculty, and the selective appropriation of meaning to the white coat itself. This paper responds to recent critiques by addressing their misconceptions and (...) arguing that the white coat ceremony is a contemporary medical ritual with a key role for students and faculty in developing a professional identity.Since its inception in 1993, the white coat ceremony has become a national and international phenomenon. It is now practised at the beginning of the year at more than 100 American medical schools and is supported by foundation grants dedicated to endorsing and encouraging professional development and humanism in medicine.1 While some literature addresses the symbolism and history of the white coat itself, few sources consider the meaning of the ceremony.2–4 A common appeal is to the emotion and good will felt at the event.1,5 Although feelings are important, a deeper justification is called for.Criticism of the WCC is more explicit, charging that the ceremony: uses the Hippocratic Oath inappropriately or, at best, prematurely; fosters improper student faculty relationships, and; interprets the meaning of the white coat selectively.6,7 Critics suggest either that students not be asked to swear an oath together because it might conflict with personally held beliefs, or that students not be allowed to take the oath until they have demonstrated competence as physicians.6 Some also say that the WCC aligns students with faculty and against patients.6 The third …. (shrink)

Today, avatars often represent users in digital worlds such as in video games or workplace applications. Avatars embody the user and perform their actions in these artificial environments. As a result, users sometimes develop the feeling that their self merges with their avatar. The user realizes that they are the avatar, but the avatar is also the user—meaning that avatar’s appearance, character, and actions also affect their self. In the present paper, we first introduce the event-coding approach of the self (...) and then argue based on the reviewed literature on human-avatar interaction that a self-controlled avatar can lead to avatar-self merging: the user sets their own goals in the virtual environment, plans and executes the avatar’s actions, and compares the predicted with the actual motion outcomes of the avatar. This makes the user feel body ownership and agency over the avatar’s action. Following the event-coding account, avatar-self merging should not be seen as an all-or-nothing process, but rather as a continuous process to which various factors contribute, including successfully taking the perspective of the avatar. Against this background, we discuss affective, cognitive, and visuo-spatial perspective taking of the avatar. As evidence for avatar-self merging, we present findings showing that when users take the avatar’s perspective, they can show spontaneous behavioral tendencies that run counter to their own. (shrink)

This paper gives a simple method for providing categorial brands of feature-based unification grammars with a model-theoretic semantics. The key idea is to apply the paradigm of fibred semantics (or layered logics, see Gabbay (1990)) in order to combine the two components of a feature-based grammar logic. We demonstrate the method for the augmentation of Lambek categorial grammar with Kasper/Rounds-style feature logic. These are combined by replacing (or annotating) atomic formulas of the first logic, i.e. the basic syntactic types, by (...) formulas of the second. Modelling such a combined logic is less trivial than one might expect. The direct application of the fibred semantics method where a combined atomic formula like np (num: sg & pers: 3rd) denotes those strings which have the indicated property and the categorial operators denote the usual left- and right-residuals of these string sets, does not match the intuitive, unification-based proof theory. Unification implements a global bookkeeping with respect to a proof whereas the direct fibring method restricts its view to the atoms of the grammar logic. The solution is to interpret the (embedded) feature terms as global feature constraints while maintaining the same kind of fibred structures. For this adjusted semantics, the anticipated proof system is sound and complete. (shrink)