Studies have reported high rates of childhood maltreatment among individuals with drug addiction problems; however, investigation about the potentially protective factors to mitigate the effects of maltreatment experiences on motivation to engage in addiction treatment has received less attention. This study aims at exploring the mediating effects of forgiveness and self-efficacy on the association between childhood maltreatment and treatment motivation among drug addicts. A total of 360 male drug addicts were recruited from three mandatory inpatient rehabilitation centers in Malaysia. Participants (...) completed a package of self-report questionnaires including measures of childhood maltreatment experiences, forgiveness, self-efficacy, and motivation for treatment. The analysis conducted using the structural equation model revealed that childhood maltreatment significantly predicted lower treatment motivation, while forgiveness and self-efficacy played a fully mediating role regarding the effect of childhood maltreatment on treatment motivation. In conclusion, these findings suggest that combining the element of forgiveness and self-efficacy in treatment programs appears to benefit the drug addicts with childhood maltreatment history. (shrink)

In a paper presented at a symposium on structuralism at the Johns Hopkins University in 1968, the historian Charles Morazé analyzed the issue of invention largely with reference to mathematics and the theory of Henri Poincare.1 Poincare, along with the physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, was the first to put forward a theory of scientific discovery as occurring in discrete phases. In 1926, Joseph Wallas generalized this theory to apply to all creativity, positing phrases which closely resemble those of Morazé. While (...) both Poincare and Wallas use a four-phrase model of invention, Morazé reduces his to three phrases: information, cogitation, and intellection. In information, the inventor becomes familiar with the sign systems and knowledge, the "collective contributions of society," relevant to his field of problems. Cogitation assembles these materials and concentrates them until "a certain moment" when "a light breaks through." This "sudden illumination...forces us to insist upon the neurological character" of the inventive moment. Finally, in intellection, the inventor rationally evaluates the utility of his invention and thus, in a sense, steps outside of himself and rejoins society. The distinction which organizes Morazé 's entire account, as well as most of the discussion that followed his presentation, is between the "collective" support and control of the inventor and his own individual, or "neurological," act of synthesis or creation. · 1. See Charles Morazé 's "Literary Invention," in The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, pp. 22-55. Loy D. Martin is an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He has written The Language of Invention, a study of Robert Browning and the genesis of the dramatic monologue. "A Reply to Carl Pletsch and Richard Schiff" appeared in the Spring 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

The Tao Tê Ching is probably the world's second most translated and annotated book , yet it remains among the most enigmatic. Of its eighty-one chapters, no one denies that the most important is the first, and many scholars go further to claim that it is the key to the whole work: if it is understood fully, all the rest may be seen to be implied. Unfortunately, the first chapter also happens to be the most ambiguous. But even so, after (...) so much attention can there be anything left to say? It seems to me that an important point has been missed or at least obscured, and that the popularity of certain translations has made this obscuration more prevalent recently. To correct this, I shall offer below a line-by-line explication of this crucial passage. The following interpretation first demonstrates the parallel structure of the first eight lines as signifying two different ways of experiencing: lines one, three, five and seven refer to the experience of Tao, and lines two, four, six and eight to our more usual way of experiencing the world. I shall suggest that the difference between these ways is the difference between our familiar dualistic experience and a much less common nondualistic way of experiencing in which there is no bifurcation between subject and object. Second, we shall see that the parallel structure unfolds dialectically: each succeeding pair of lines elaborates upon the issues that naturally arise in response to the preceding pair. In the process of showing this, I shall take sides on the two main controversies over this chapter: first, whether it should be interpreted cosmologically or ontologically/epistemologically , and second, whether lines, five and six should be punctuated to translate yü as ‘desire/intention’. My main thesis is that the traditional understanding of yü as ‘desire’ or ‘intention’ is an essential part of the meaning of the chapter. This is by no means an original claim, but why it is so important does not seem to have been noticed before and provides the reason for this paper. Wing-tsit Chan's criticism of such translations, that ‘intention interrupts the thought of the chapter’, 1 is thus a serious misreading of the text. (shrink)

: This essay takes seriously the many Buddhist admonitions about ‘‘not settling down in things’’ and the importance of wandering freely ‘‘without a place to rest.’’ The basic thesis is that delusion is awareness trapped, and liberation is awareness freed from grasping. The familiar words ‘‘attention’’ and ‘‘awareness’’ are used to emphasize that the distinction being drawn refers not to some abstract metaphysical entity but simply to how our everyday awareness functions. This way of distinguishing between delusion and enlightenment is (...) not only consistent with basic Buddhist teachings but gives us insight into some of the more difficult ones, such as the way karma works and the Mahāyāna claim that ‘‘form is not other than emptiness, emptiness not other than form.’’ Moreover, this perspective illuminates some aspects of our contemporary life-world, including the particular challenges of modern technology and economics. It is important to see the implications for some of the social issues that concern us today. The constriction or liberation of awareness is not only a personal matter. What do societies do to encourage or discourage its emancipation? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and History, Customs and EthicsHui-Chieh Loy (bio)Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom. By Tao Jiang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China is a serious tour de force of a study. In many ways, I am reminded of Angus Graham's Disputers of the Tao and Benjamin Schwartz' The World of Thought in Ancient (...) China—but updated. A signal difference is that it is more constrained in its coverage of figures, texts, and especially in having the topical focus upon moral-political philosophy. At the same time and within the chosen (narrower) confines, it often examines its subject in greater detail and draws on more recent discussions.One neat thing that Jiang does is to deliberately weave in explicit discussions of how each subsequent thinker or text incorporated or criticized ideas associated with earlier thinkers. (I formulated it this way since there isn't enough historical evidence about who-actually-read-what in the ancient world, citation practices being what they were.) In this regard, I am especially heartened to read, for example, the sections on "Traces of Mohist Elements in the Laozi" (3.3.2), and "Mohist Elements in Han Feizi's Thought" (7.3.3).By no means should the desultory remarks below be counted as a full review or assessment (impressionistically, this is the sort of book I will recommend that my grad students read—there, I've said it). Think of them as humble shards of pottery thrown in the hope for some jade in response. To make my task more focused, I will comment on the Sinology versus Philosophy distinction, and Jiang's treatment of the Mohists.I. Philosophy and History of PhilosophyAn important part of Jiang's Introduction is devoted to discussing the situation of Chinese Philosophy as a field in the Western Academy, caught between Sinology on the one hand and academic Philosophy on the other. Due to the different scholarly objectives and norms in the two disciplines, scholars working on Chinese Philosophy often find themselves caught [End Page 420] between two distinct audiences who demand different things. Jiang's aim is to propose an "interpretive model to distinguish two sets of scholarly objects operative in Sinology and philosophy. These objects are related and at times overlap, but they are also often irreducibly distinct, i.e., original text versus inherited text, historical author versus textual author, and authorial intent versus textual intent, with the former in the pairs belonging to Sinologists and the latter to philosophers" (p. 7). In general, I am highly sympathetic to the distinctions Jiang draws. But I do wonder if we need to step back and start from a wider context involving what is potentially a deeper divide.Now, it is entirely a caricature but the joke around the water cooler is that philosophers—especially those of a more "analytic" bent—often exude the attitude that they are not in the business of reading old books. Their project is one focused on issues and problems and puzzles that are ultimately about the natural and human world, rather than about texts and their interpretation, or even the historical thinkers themselves. To give some obvious examples, the intellectual questions they see themselves as answering are the likes of:• Can we know that God exists, if God exists at all?• What is the nature of moral claims? Do they admit of truth and falsity?• How is causation related to possibility?• Is a logic that dispenses with the law of non-contradiction viable?• What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge?• Is abortion morally justifiable?Sometimes the questions they ask even infringe on the results and insights from nearby fields, for instance linguistics and the natural and empirical sciences:• What is time?• Can a presentist conception of time be made consistent with contemporary physics?• What is the nature of consciousness? How is it related to physical neural states or informational computational processes?• Can computers be sentient?• How is morality related to the passions?• In what sense is a political order that does justice to diversity of moral beliefs... (shrink)

The conclusion to be drawn from the preceding observations and theorizing should be that we must be very much aware of what has been called “technological functionalism” (Pieper, 1986:11). While functionalism as such is not bad, the moment it succumbs to mere structural technicality, the functions stop functioning: forced “adaptivity” takes the place of “adaptable” interaction.That this problem is not due to a primordial blame, to be attached to the computer, becomes clear when one compares the computerized environment to other (...) surroundings, such as, for example, the psychiatric treatment. In the psychiatric interview, as Davis (1986, 1988) has shown, the interest of the therapist is often limited to establishing a “contract” for treatment: for the therapist to function properly, there must be a therapy-defined (or therapy-definable) problem for him/her to attack, using the skills and experiences of the profession of which he/she is a representative and for which he/she has been properly trained.This function, however, may not coincide with the patient's needs: it may well be the case that the problem which originally caused the patient to approach the therapist for treatment, in the end turns out not to be the problem that both agree on as the objective of the therapeutic treatment. “Re-formulating” the patients' problem in terms suitable to the available resources and techniques is thus typically a case of adapting the human to the system: again, we're faced with technological functionalism in the shape of what has been called “forced adaptivity” (see Mey, 1986).We need to think seriously about the way we handle our computerized structures and their functions, and in particular about the design of supportive systems such as large databases, computer conferencing, or even simple electronic mail services. While adaptivity always is a case of manipulation, by which humans are tooled to the needs and strictures of the computer, adaptability, by contrast, allows such manipulation only inasmuch as those needs and strictures reflect, and are imposed by, the users' needs. The blind, mechanical force that makes us adapt ourselves to the machine should be replaced by the enlightened, humanizing force of the adaptable computer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 151-154 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others. By Ron Leifer, M.D. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1997.313 pp. This book focuses mostly on Buddhism and psychotherapy, but it ranges widely and (...) includes many reflections on Christianity. Today there are many good books that compare Buddhism with Western psychology, but this one is not to be missed by anyone interested in the topic. Leifer (a former colleague and friend of Ernest Becker, who wrote TheDenial ofDeath) is obviously a very experienced psychiatrist, with deep knowledge of psychoanalytic theory to supplement his many years of practice [End Page 151] as a therapist. This book is many things: a primer on demythologized Buddhism; a superior "self-help" book; a history of psychotherapy, including a critique of its modern medicalization; a speculative account of the evolution of human consciousness; and, not least, the most insightful interpretations of the Job, Oedipus, and Eden myths that I have encountered. The prose style is lucid, and only space limitations keep me from quoting it at length.The title turns out to be ironic, since our Happiness Projects are the main source of our unhappiness. Our selfish strivings for happiness are, paradoxically, the main cause of the suffering we inflict on ourselves and others.What we "fail to see" (avidya)is not some great mysterious wisdom. "The core of the esoteric knowledge we seek consists of secrets we hide from ourselves. We hide from them because they are not what we want them to be. The world is not what we want it to be. Life is not what we want it to be. Others are not what we want them to be. We are not ourselves what we want to be. We hide from these truths because they mystify and terrify us" (12). The basic "secret" of happiness is that the three poisons--greed, ill will, and ignorance--are the source of our pain and suffering, by creating rebounding karmic ripples. The ego is a trickster who is continually the victim of his own trickery. True happiness can only be the product of an inner transformation that changes our habitual patterns of thought and action, enabling us to "relax into existence." Leifer's psychologized Buddhism is a therapeutic path cleansed of the mystical and paranormal; there is no place here for psychic powers or any transcendental salvation (nirvana is not discussed). The focus throughout is on how we are bedeviled by our own desires.The book is organized into four main parts. The first offers Leifer's understanding of the first two Buddhist truths. The second part, "Western Views of Suffering," includes profound interpretations of Job and Oedipus Rex. Job's suffering illustrates the first truth, that life is suffering, and his patience is virtuous, even heroic, in its refusal to demand that life be different than it is--an endurance that allows him to avoid making life worse: "Patience is the willingness to suffer without aggression" (131).The key to the Oedipus story is in his answer to the Sphinx's riddle: humans are the creatures who walk on four legs as infants, on two legs as mature adults, and then on three legs (with a cane) in old age. The riddle is a metaphor for the truths of our impermanence, old age and death. But Oedipus cannot accept it. "From a Buddhist point of view, the story of Oedipus is a metaphor for neurotic mind. Oedipus was the victim of his own grasping ego--of his desires and aggressions. His fate was sealed by his own efforts to escape it. The source of Oedipus' pain and tragedy were his own ignorance, passion, and aggression: the three poisons" (135). His desire for Mom is better understood as a symbol of human desire generally: our refusal to grow up... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding DialogueDavid R. LoyPsychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003, Pp. xvii + 443.In the burgeoning literature on Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue stands out. True to its subtitle, the format is designed to encourage genuine dialogue. Following an excellent introduction by the editor, Jeremy D. Safran, all of its nine chapters (...) are by experienced therapists who are also committed to Buddhist practice; several of them are teachers within their respective traditions. Each chapter is followed by the commentary of an established psychoanalyst (many of them associated with the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues), and after that there is a reply by the original chapter author. The conversations are given plenty of space to develop; several chapters are over fifty pages long. In most cases the commentators rise to the occasion, with sympathetic but trenchant interrogations. The result is a fascinating discussion that raises the interaction between Buddhism and psychology to a higher level of intensity and insight.Safran's introduction looks at the different cultural contexts of psychoanalysis and Buddhism. He focuses on their own internal tensions, especially a shared one between agnosticism and faith. Recent psychoanalysis has shifted from a rationalistic, ego-oriented approach toward a relational and constructivist understanding of [End Page 363] the multiple self, a perspective more open to various narratives. "It has become clear that psychoanalysis is not a science in the same sense that physics or chemistry are, but rather a secular form of spirituality. In some ways it functions to fill the void once filled by religion" (p. 2). This shift to a therapy of faith and commitment highlights a similar tension within Buddhism, for example between the rationalist approach of Nāgārjuna's Karikas and the devotionalism of Pure Land Buddhism. In contrast to the classical Freudian emphasis on the reality principle controlling the pleasure principle and the Mādhyamikas' radical deconstruction of all narratives, letting go of the need to understand and control can lead to awe and reverence in the face of life's mystery. The advantage of a comparison between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is that each can help the other avoid crystallizing into an orthodoxy that tends to lose its liberative power.Several of the contributors refer to Freud's recommendation that the analyst keep an "evenly-suspended attention," and they emphasize how their Buddhist practice helps them to do this. In chapter 4, "An Analyst's Surrender," Sara Weber describes a difficult case study that began to flourish when there was "a shift in the nature of holding." Instead of trying to "fix" the patient, she surrendered herself to deeper, lesser-known areas of her patient's being and her own. She refers to Lacan: although we need others as mirrors, there is always an element of illusion in any organized meaning we frame for ourselves. The solution is to employ models loosely, allowing one's therapeutic techniques as well as one's clients to be in flux. She concludes by emphasizing that the analyst's role as "holder" of the patient "is insufficient unless we see it as a special case of that more profound faith in being that is temporarily embodied in ourselves" (p. 189). In chapter 3, "The Dissolving of Dissolving Itself," Robert Langan offers a personal and phenomenological meditation that plays with multiple perspectives as a way to reflect on the "in-between," the openness that both Buddhism and psychoanalysis at their best encourage: keeping room in the analytic process for paradox and contradiction, for gaps and emptiness.In chapter 6, Barry Magrid eloquently defends the need for analytic work as well as Buddhist practice. "Too often, it seems that both students and teachers have mastered their pain but succumbed to their impulses, experienced a oneness with all beings but remained in conflict with their families, discovered the emptiness of the self but continued to abuse their authority, found peace on their cushions but not in their lives" (p. 257). Yet we should not conclude that Buddhism and analysis are concerned with different aspects of our lives. "Like psychoanalysis, Zen practice is a... (shrink)

Technology, in order to be human, needs to be informed by a reflection on what it is to be a tool in ways appropriate to humans. This involves both an instrumental, appropriating aspect (‘I use this tool’) and a limiting, appropriated one (‘The tool uses me’).

In part because “imagination” is a slippery notion, its exact role in the production of scientific knowledge remains unclear. There is, however, one often explicit and deliberate use of imagination by scientists that can be (and has been) studied intensively by epistemologists and historians of science: thought experiments. The main goal of this article is to document the varieties of thought experimentation, not so much in terms of the different sciences in which they occur but rather in terms of the (...) different functions they fulfil. I argue that thought experimentation (and hence imagination) plays a role not only in theory choice but in singular causal analysis and scientific discovery as well. I pinpoint, moreover, some of the rules governing the use of thought experiments in theory choice and in singular causal analysis, that is, some of the criteria they should meet in order to fulfil those functions successfully. (shrink)

This article uses interview data to examine changes over time in the cultural constructions of executive women's family responsibilities. The author delineates two gendered cultural structures: the family devotion schema and the work devotion schema. Respondents are caught in the conflict between each schema's competing vision of a worthwhile life. Older respondents are more likely to accept the devotion schema's definition of an irreconcilable conflict between work and family, prompting many to avoid marriage or childbearing. In contrast, many members of (...) the youngest cohort, who came of age after the early 1970s women's movement, are refashioning the family devotion schema by subcontracting out domestic responsibilities while maintaining demanding careers. Yet, the family devotion schema continues to haunt all cohorts, enduring in its cognitive, normative, and emotional power. Gender, as expressed in cultural models of family, remains a powerful constraint on the hearts and minds of even professionally successful women. (shrink)

Este artículo expone la emergencia de expresiones de la espiritualidad no vinculadas a la experiencia religiosa y, en particular, aquella manifestación que pretende situar esta dimensión humana como un fenómeno natural, reconocible y, por ello, transformable desde el método de las ciencias de la Naturaleza. Se presenta un amplio marco que sitúa este fenómeno en el desarrollo de las teorías que establecen un continuo entre biología y cultura. Se ofrecen ejemplos de autores que han presentado propuestas de espiritualidad sin Dios (...) y algunas que responden al llamado «problema realmente difícil», de cómo dar cuenta desde la ciencia natural de este fenómeno de la consciencia. Se cierra señalando límites y remitiendo a la presentación de una propuesta de modelo antropológico con fundamentos clínicos y teóricos, que para dar cuenta del fenómeno de la espiritualidad precisa un marco teórico que supera los límites de la ciencia natural y acude, en este caso, al psicoanálisis. Este mismo modelo muestra también que la espiritualidad elaborada sobre la experiencia religiosa del sujeto es una de las vías de maduración humana. (shrink)

Speakers often overspecify by encoding more information than is necessary when referring to an object (e.g., “the blue mug” for the only mug in a group of objects). We investigated the role of a partner's linguistic behavior (whether or not they overspecify) on a speaker's own tendency to overspecify. We used a director–matcher task in which speakers interacted with a partner who either consistently overspecified or minimally specified in the color/size dimension (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), as well as with (...) a partner who switched behaviors midway through interaction (Experiments 4 and 5). We found that speakers aligned with their partner's linguistic behavior to produce overspecific or minimally specific descriptions, and we saw little evidence that the alignment was enhanced by lexical or semantic repetition across prime and target trials. Time‐course analyses showed that alignment increased over the course of the interaction, and speakers appeared to track a change in the partner's linguistic behavior, altering their reference strategy to continue matching that of their partner's. These results demonstrate the persistent influence of a partner's behavior on speakers across the duration of an interaction. (shrink)

We investigate partner effects on spatial perspective taking behavior in listeners, comparing behavior with a human versus a computer partner (Experiments 1 and 2), and with computer partners of different perceived capabilities (Experiment 3). Participants responded to spoken instructions from their partner which could be interpreted egocentrically (from their own perspective) or othercentrically (from their partner's perspective). In contrast to earlier work, we found that participants were more egocentric with a computer than a human partner. Participants were also more egocentric (...) with a computer partner that appeared more modern and capable, compared to one that appeared outdated and limited in ability. Our results show that perspective taking behavior is sensitive to information about one's partner; in particular, listeners consider their partner's potential ability to collaborate, adjusting their egocentric tendencies accordingly. Moreover, we highlight what appears to be a shift in listeners' expectations regarding computers' collaborative capabilities, leading to greater willingness to push the burden of perspective taking onto a computer partner. (shrink)

We analyze investors’ perception and long-term effects of board gender diversity on firms’ stock market performance in an international setting. Our results, controlling for the endogenous nature of board compositions, indicate that female board representation neither improves nor reduces firms’ long-term stock performance. Hence, we argue that it is imperative to go beyond the conventional thinking in terms of the business case for gender diversity and broaden the perspective also to incorporate societal and ethical aspects in the strive to board (...) gender equality. Even more so, as our results show that it does not entail reduced shareholder value, which the literature on mandatory gender quotas commonly seems to suggest. (shrink)

This research explored how (a) information regarding consequences and (b) personal information regarding the potential victim influences perceptions of moral intensity and ethical behavioral intent. An experimental vignette research design was used and 314 professional managers participated. The results of the study indicated that personal information impacted ethical behavioral intent through its influence on perceptions of proximity. In contrast, consequential information''s impact depended on the presence of personal information or prior knowledge. Implications for management and future ethical research are discussed.

En los años ochenta emergió la cuestión de la licitud moral de la mejora por relación a la terapia. Para presentar la problemática actual sobre el tema se ofrece el constructo denominado Práctica de Intervención del Cuerpo caracterizado por cinco parámetros: M o la materia de la transformación, CT o la tecnociencia disponible, A o las concepciones vigentes de lo natural y lo artificial, N o las visiones de la naturaleza humana culturalmente compartidas y V o las valoraciones éticas a (...) las que se apela para legitimar la transformación. Se apunta el nivel ontológico como necesario para comprender y debatir las diferencias existentes en criterio moral. El concepto de naturaleza humana como referente normativo está en crisis, pero su ausencia deja un vacío que hace urgente una deliberación para llegar a una instancia normativa común. (shrink)

In Misconceiving Merit, sociologists Mary Blair-Loy and Erin A. Cech uncover the cultural foundations of a paradox. On one hand, academic science, engineering, and math revere meritocracy, a system that recognizes and rewards those with the greatest talent and dedication. At the same time, women and some racial and sexual minorities remain underrepresented and often feel unwelcome and devalued in STEM. How can academic science, which so highly values meritocracy and objectivity, produce these unequal outcomes? Blair-Loy and Cech studied more (...) than five hundred STEM professors at a top research university to reveal how unequal and unfair outcomes can emerge alongside commitments to objectivity and excellence. The authors find that academic STEM harbors dominant cultural beliefs that not only perpetuate the mistreatment of scientists from underrepresented groups but hinder innovation. Underrepresented groups are often seen as less fully embodying merit compared to equally productive white and Asian heterosexual men, and the negative consequences of this misjudgment persist regardless of professors' actual academic productivity. Misconceiving Merit is filled with insights for higher education administrators working toward greater equity as well as for scientists and engineers striving to change entrenched patterns of inequality in STEM. (shrink)

1 Strategic Sea Power By its very nature as an enabling agent sea power is a strategic force that can make a very positive difference in support of high ...

In this study of the cognitive paradigm, De Mey applies the study of computer models of human perception to the philosophy and sociology of science. "A most stimulating, and intellectually delightful book."--John Goldsmith "[De Mey] has brought together an unusually wide range of material, and suggested some interesting lines of thought, about what should be an important application of cognitive science: The understanding of science itself."-- Cognition and Brain Theory "It ought to be on the shelf of every teacher and (...) researcher in the field and on the reading list of any student or practitioner seriously interested in how those they serve are likely to set about knowing."-- ISIS. (shrink)

Although interest in them is clearly growing, most professional historians do not accept thought experiments as appropriate tools. Advocates of the deliberate use of thought experiments in history argue that without counterfactuals, causal attributions in history do not make sense. Whereas such arguments play upon the meaning of causation in history, this article focuses on the reasoning processes by which historians arrive at causal explanations. First, we discuss the roles thought experiments play in arriving at explanations of both facts and (...) contrasts. Then, we pinpoint the functions thought experiments fulfill in arriving at weighted explanations of contrasts. (shrink)

Since the Public Library of Science launched its first open-access journals and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities has been released in 2003 and found enormous attention, the claim for open access—to make publicly funded journal articles available for the public—started to reach German scientists too. But still no experience has been made with electronic publishing in general and more specifically with open-access publishing. One consequence is that the potential capacity of open access—the (...) (inter) national and (trans) disciplinary visibility and accessibility of scientific output—is not sufficiently used by German researchers. Ways to successfully establish an open-access journal are presented in this article by referring to Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS) as an example: after introducing the current state of FQS traditional and innovative ways of publishing are being discussed which had been employed while developing FQS and which helped FQS to become the most important electronic journal in the field of qualitative research. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a ten‐year search for consensus among scientific findings on the nature of the origin and development of moral sensitivity and morality. Significant agreement on six underlying factors was found. Based on these foundations, a new theory of moral transformation and a scientific “global ethic” relating to the global ethic of Hans Kung and the Parliament of the World's Religions is proposed. Fields surveyed include psychology, sociology, political science, economics, history, and gender and feminist studies (...) in social science; physics and biology in natural science; and brain research, archaeology, and both old and new evolutionary studies and theory, including chaos, self‐organizing, and other nonlinear theories, in systems science. (shrink)

When people speak about “communication barriers”, what they usually think about are such things as the limitations set by human nature itself, or the constraints that are inherent in the tools we use for communicating. As an example of the first, consider the limited range of the naked human voice; for the second, we may think of the limitations imposed by such primitive communicative devices as the bonfire, the heliograph, or an old-fashioned megaphone.Our contribution draws attention to the fact that, (...) despite enormous advances on the technological side of human communication (such as demonstrated by the existence and use of computers as communication devices), there still are some barriers to be removed as far as the human side is concerned. We call these barriers the “stumble-blocks of the mind”. Their existence is demonstrated by the study of two case stories, which show that understanding the communicative implications of computerizing information is more important than increased emphasis on ever fancier and more expensive hardware products.The next question has to do with the reasons for these “stumbling blocks” to occur. Current communicative and linguistic theoretical findings are used in an effort to explain and solve the communicative dilemmas that are encountered in the organization of our communication, among others in the area of human-computer interface. In particular, the notion of “privacy” in speech acting is suggested as an overlooked aspect, and the notion of “information transfer” is replaced by that of “creating mental activity”.Finally, some conclusions are drawn, and a number of practical applications are offered. (shrink)

In part because "imagination" is a slippery notion, its exact role in the production of scientific knowledge remains unclear. There is, however, one often explicit and deliberate use of imagination by scientists that can be (and has been) studied intensively by epistemologists and historians of science: thought experiments. The main goal of this article is to document the varieties of thought experimentation, not so much in terms of the different sciences in which they occur but rather in terms of the (...) different functions they fulfil. I argue that thought experimentation (and hence imagination) plays a role not only in theory choice but in singular causal analysis and scientific discovery as well. I pinpoint, moreover, some of the rules governing the use of thought experiments in theory choice and in singular causal analysis, that is, some of the criteria they should meet in order to fulfil those functions successfully. (shrink)

Many Western philosophers are poorly informed about the issues involved in nonduality, since this topic is usually associated with various kinds of absolute idealism in the West, or mystical traditions in the East. Increasingly, however, this topic is finding its way into Western philosophical debates. In this "scholarly but leisurely and very readable" (Spectrum Review) analysis of the philosophies of nondualism of (Hindu) Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, and Taoism, Loy extracts what he calls "a core doctrine" of nonduality of seer and (...) seen from these three worldviews and then applies the doctrine in various ways, including a critique of Derrida's deconstructionism. (shrink)

1. T. - Die metaphysischen Urgesetze der Melodik.

By going back to the critical moment of the cybernetisation of the museum and of the exhibition, this essay aims to put forward a thesis considering exhibition as medium. It elaborates on the notion of medium by contrasting it with Canguilhem’s notion of milieu, in order to redefine it, in a non-substantialist way, as modulation in light of Simondon’s and Deleuze’s works. It proposes a genealogy of the exhibition as medium and describes a critical historical trajectory shaped by institutional and (...) informational infrastructures. (shrink)

In some of the papers in which she develops and defends the mental modelview of thought experiments in physics, Nersessian expresses the belief that her account has implications for thought experiments in other domains as well. In this paper, I argue, firstly, that counterfactual reasoning has a legitimate place in historical inquiry, and secondly, that the mental model view can account for such "alternative histories". I proceed as follows. Firstly, I review the main accounts of thought experiments in physics and (...) point at some explanatory advantages of the mental model view. Subsequently, I argue that historians cannot dispense with counterfactual reasoning altogether and qualify a number of principled objections against the explicit use of alternative histories for theoretical purposes. Finally, I show that the mental model view can account for such thought experiments in history. (shrink)