Essays in this volume honor Marcel Senn on the occasion of his retirement from the law department of Universität Zürich. The contributors of the essays are colleagues and friends.

Preface -- The mood elevator -- What drives the mood elevator? -- Up the mood elevator : the big payoffs -- Escaping unhealthy normal -- Braking your mood elevator : the power of curiosity -- Interrupting your pattern -- Feeding the thoughts you favor -- Living in mild preference -- Shifting your set point : the wellness equation -- Quieting your mind -- Cultivating gratitude -- Honoring our separate realities -- Nurturing faith and optimism -- Dealing with your down days (...) -- Relationships and the mood elevator -- Pointers for riding the mood elevator -- Notes -- How this book came to be -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- About the author. (shrink)

1. Bd. Die Kategorie des Seinszusammenhanges und die Einheit des Seins.

DIE REIHE: SCHRIFTENREIHE ZU ORDNUNGSFRAGEN DER WIRTSCHAFT herausgegeben von Thomas Apolte, Martin Leschke, Albrecht F. Michler, Christian Müller, Rahel Schomaker und Dirk Wentzel Die Reihe diskutiert aktuelle ordnungspolitische und institutionenökonomische Fragestellungen. Durch die methodische Vielfalt richtet sie sich an Fachleute, an die Öffentlichkeit und an die Politikberatung.

Many psychologists and neuroscientists still see executive functions as independent, domain-general, supervisory functions that are often dissociated from more “low-level” associative learning. Here, we suggest that executive functions very much build on associative learning, and argue that executive functions might be better understood as culture-sensitive cognitive gadgets, rather than as ready-made cognitive instincts.

Joseph Schumpeter's work has been all too selectively appropriated by public choice theorists. Schumpeter criticized the high level of rationality the classical model of democracy imputes to citizens, and he provided an alternative theory, inspiring rational choice theory and allowing for diverse forms of irrationality. Following in Schumpeter's footsteps I will discuss four problems: the deficient rationality of voters, politicians as ?political entrepreneurs,? leadership in democracy and the rise of the ?political class,? and the affinity between democracy and capitalism.

People everywhere search for answers by using the resources of their traditions. They wish to do so in a legitimate way, and so they consult official institutions, specialists, and skilled individuals for their opinions; regardless of religious or cultural contexts, the common aim of these experts is to produce security, unity, and trust. Therefore, the norm-finding processes in Islamic and Western contexts share fundamental similarities: the problem of finding a final ground for judgment, the strategies of constructing coherence and of (...) organizing consensus, and the difficulties of obtaining legitimacy. What makes one debate "Islamic" and the other one "Western" is the different semantic materials, the different authorities, the different languages, and the different juridical frameworks. In my comparison of Muslim and Western discourses and practices, I conclude that Muslim and non-Muslim scholars tend to overemphasize the uniqueness of Muslim legal and practical responses to bioethical challenges, because they restrict their purview to legal opinions, ignoring larger dynamics of legitimization. (shrink)

Research on human reasoning has both popularized and struggled with the idea that intuitive and deliberate thoughts stem from two different systems, raising the question how people switch between them. Inspired by research on cognitive control and conflict monitoring, we argue that detecting the need for further thought relies on an intuitive, context-sensitive process that is learned in itself.

Deliberative democracy is unrealistic, but so are rational-choice models of democracy. The elements of reality that rationalistic theories of democracy leave out are the very elements that deliberative democrats would need to subtract if their theory were to be applied to reality. The key problem is not, however, the altruistic orientation that deliberative democrats require; opinion researchers know that voters are already sociotropic, not self-interested. Rather, as Schumpeter saw, the problems lie in understanding politics, government, and economics under modern—and postmodern—conditions. (...) Modernity entails levels of complexity that stymie voters' attempts to be well informed about which political promises will actually solve social problems. Postmodernity adds to complexity an overabundance of fragmented information experienced impatiently and fleetingly by citizens who confuse entertainment with knowledge, and whose political demands are as unrealistic as their personal desire for a unique identity. These factors can be added, one by one, to the minimalist rational-choice model of politics, with each step leading us farther away from deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is unrealistic, but so are rational-choice models of democracy. The elements of reality that rationalistic theories of democracy leave out are the very elements that deliberative democrats would need to subtract if their theory were to be applied to reality. The key problem is not, however, the altruistic orientation that deliberative democrats require; opinion researchers know that voters are already sociotropic, not self-interested. Rather, as Schumpeter saw, the problems lie in understanding politics, government, and economics under modern—and postmodern—conditions. (...) Modernity entails levels of complexity that stymie voters' attempts to be well informed about which political promises will actually solve social problems. Postmodernity adds to complexity an overabundance of fragmented information experienced impatiently and fleetingly by citizens who confuse entertainment with knowledge, and whose political demands are as unrealistic as their personal desire for a unique identity. These factors can be added, one by one, to the minimalist rational-choice model of politics, with each step leading us farther away from deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Einzelne Aspekte der Bildung werden in aller Einseitigkeit als Heilslehren angeboten, und in ihrer Borniertheit und Verzerrtheit werden sie zur Bildungsideologien.