With this article we introduce a new article category in the journal, as announced in this issue's editorial--Viewpoints & Discussion. Articles under this category are intended to provide authentic and qualified opinions on topics relevant to the journal. These articles and follow-up discussions will pass through an accelerated, mainly editorial, review process. We invite readers to respond to such articles by sharing their personal thoughts and experiences, as well as to initiate new discussions. We hope these contributions will make the (...) journal a site for lively discussions on research practice. For this first "Viewpoint" we have selected a topic that should be of interest to many readers: What key research competencies will researchers and professionals need to have in the future? To introduce the topic, we look into a recent comparative study on this question that compares the situation in eight research-intensive countries. Reports on the study are available for free download, which can serve as a basis for discussion. In keeping with the idea of "Viewpoints & Discussion," no claim to offering a systematic and scholarly account of the topic is intended; the only aim is to throw a spotlight on a theme of current interest and to suggest a few pertinent conjectures and questions for discussion. (shrink)

With this issue of the Journal of Research Practice, we initiate a conceptual framework for thinking and writing about research, defining areas of editorial focus, and indexing work published in the journal. The framework takes the form of a concept hierarchy that offers index terms at three interrelated levels: (1) focus areas for reflection on research practice within which the journal aims to achieve excellence and strengthen its profile and visibility, (2) subject areas relevant to research practice that the journal (...) aims to cover and in terms of which it defines its focus areas, and (3) keywords for capturing the content of research work done in these subject areas or for reflecting and writing about it. Focus areas are characterized by assigned subject areas; subject areas are characterized by assigned keywords. The concept hierarchy is part of a more comprehensive initiative to strengthen the journal's profile and visibility, an initiative that will also include a restructuring of the editorial team and new roles for the journal's dedicated reviewers and active readers. The article introduces an initial version of the concept hierarchy, explains its intended use and further development, and situates it in the larger effort of which it is a part. (shrink)

Durch Zusammenstellung meiner Erfahrungen mochte ich ver­ suchen, an dem Prozef.\ einer erhohten Verantwortung differentiell mitzuwirken. Das Buch erscheint zum 10jiihrigen Jubiliium der Griin­ dung der Gesellschaft flir Verantwortung in der Wissenschaft (GVW) und nimmt die Erfahrungen dieser 10 Jahre mit auf. Der Mensch scheint zu Extremen zu neigen. Neben den im Prolog angedeuteten Gefahren wird unsere Gesellschaft yom Wege sinnge­ miif.\en Handelns heute auch von der entgegengesetzten Gefahr be­ droht: Aus Unkenntnis und Furcht vor der Undurchschaubarkeit der Naturwissenschaft und (...) Technik beide zu verbannen und das Heil wieder im emotionalen Denken zu suchen. Es erscheint mir daher notwendig, die Probleme auf breiterer Basis zu durchleuchten. 1m ersten Kapitel wird versucht, das Selbstverstiindnis der Wissen­ schaft zu diskutieren. Details mogen einige Leser etwas langweilen. Es wird daher am Ende jedes Kapitels eine Zusammenfassung ge­ geben, die erlauben sollte, jedes weitere Kapitel auch nach tiberschla­ gen eines Kapitels volliesen zu konnen. 1m zweiten Kapitel werden Motivierungen fUr das Studium und fUr die wissenschaftliche Arbeit zusammengestellt. Eine Meinungsum­ frage u~ter 8000 amerikanischen Studenten hat ergeben, daf.\ ca. 80% studieren, urn einen Sinn ihres Lebens zu finden. Diese Umfrage zeigt die Dringlichkeit der im zweiten Kapitel versuchten Diskussion. (shrink)

This editorial article reports on the progress that the Journal of Research Practice (JRP) has achieved in its ongoing development since November 2011, when a number of editorial initiatives were announced. Several new initiatives are also proposed. In addition, there are some current announcements, including a number of recent awards, distinctions, and nominations.

Following a detailed review of the accomplishments and aspirations of the Journal of Research Practice, we have undertaken a restructuring of the editorial board, with inputs from people associated with this journal. In designing the new structure, we have taken into account the need for building the journal’s profile in the six focus areas recently clarified: (1) Research Applications, (2) Research Spaces, (3) Research Education, (4) Research Experiences, (5) Research Philosophy, and (6) Research on Research. Focus Editors will ensure that (...) the journal remains well engaged with the developments in these focus areas. The new structure allows us to involve all contributors to the journal in playing a role to enhance the journal’s relevance to researchers and reflective professionals. This restructuring exercise has presented us with an opportunity to build on the strengths of the journal and address areas of concern so as to strengthen the journal’s quality, relevance, and impact. A review of different notions of impact has led us to a set of proposed measures for enhancing the relevance and utilisation of the journal in future. (shrink)

Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking in time (...) leads to the unattractive conclusion that every truth is necessary. I argue that the classic dispositionalist should be troubled by this result and in the second part of the paper I suggest a novel variant of dispositionalism that avoids it. This extended form of dispositionalism allows that some propositions are only indirectly underwritten by dispositions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 268-285.

PURPOSE—A substantial fraction of the observations made by clinicians and entered into patient records are expressed by means of negation or by using terms which contain negative qualifiers (as in “absence of pulse” or “surgical procedure not performed”). This seems at first sight to present problems for ontologies, terminologies and data repositories that adhere to a realist view and thus reject any reference to putative non-existing entities. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Referent Tracking (RT) are examples of such paradigms. The (...) purpose of the research here described was to test a proposal to capture negative findings in electronic health record systems based on BFO and RT. METHODS—We analysed a series of negative findings encountered in 748 sentences taken from 41 patient charts. We classified the phenomena described in terms of the various top-level categories and relations defined in BFO, taking into account the role of negation in the corresponding descriptions. We also studied terms from SNOMED-CT containing one or other form of negation. We then explored ways to represent the described phenomena by means of the types of representational units available to realist ontologies such as BFO. RESULTS—We introduced a new family of ‘lacks’ relations into the OBO Relation Ontology. The relation lacks_part, for example, defined in terms of the positive relation part_of, holds between a particular p and a universal U when p has no instance of U as part. Since p and U both exist, assertions involving ‘lacks_part’ and its cognates meet the requirements of positivity. CONCLUSION—By expanding the OBO Relation Ontology, we were able to accommodate nearly all occurrences of negative findings in the sample studied. (shrink)

Si Ferdinand Gonseth doit sa réputation internationale aux innombrables articles et conférences qu'il a consacrés à la défense et à l'illustration de sa philosophie ouverte, on peut dire sans doute que son influence prépondérante en Suisse a été celle qu'il a exercée sur l'enseignement des mathématiques. Par la publication de quelques manuels d'abord, notamment le remarquable Leitfaden der Planimetrie et son adaptation française Eléments de géométrie , mais plus encore par les cours qu'il professait à l'E. P. F. de Zurich (...) sur l'axiomatique de la géométrie et qui ont été pour des générations de maîtres de remarquables introductions à la philosophie des sciences. (shrink)

Although worship of the relics of the Buddha — and its corollary, st?pa worship — is a widespread feature of Buddhist devotional practice among both lay Buddhists and monks, there is in some quarters a view that, while recommended to lay followers, it is forbidden to monks. This controversy started very early after the Buddha’s parinibb?na and has reverberated throughout the centuries till the present time. Its source is in the Mah?parinibb?na Sutta, and it stems from the ambiguity in the (...) meaning of the compound sar?ra-p?j? in the Buddha’s reply to?nanda’s two questions concerning the actions to be taken after the Master’s death with respect to his body. The resolution of the controversy depends on a correct understanding of the nature of the Buddha’s replies to the two questions. This paper analyses the relevant passages of the sutta and the way they have been translated, correctly or incorrectly, into Western languages and into Chinese, and finally arrives at a solution derived entirely from within the text of the Mah?parinibb?na Sutta itself. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 110 Heft: 1 Seiten: 172-177.

Introduction.--Illustrations of manuscripts and printed books.--Pettas, W. Notes on English translations of Phaedrus.--Lee, P. On the wings of Thymós.--Blaisdell, G. A nobler seduction.--Appendix: The Parmenides fragments.

This paper concerns the question of which properties figure in the contents of perceptual experience. According to conservatives, only low-level properties figure in the contents of perceptual experience. Liberals, on the other hand, claim that high-level properties, such as natural kind properties, artifacts, and even moral properties, can figure in the contents of perceptual experience. I defend a novel argument in favor of liberalism, the Epistemic Argument, which hinges on two crucial claims. The first is that many perceptual experiences of (...) even neurotypical human beings can justify beliefs in high-level properties without providing justification for their low-level constituents. The second claim, roughly, is that any experience that alone provides (defeasible) justification for beliefs about some property p, other things being equal, has p as part of its content. In short, certain perceptual experiences represent high-level but not low-level properties, which entails that liberalism is true. (shrink)

Contents: Foreword. Wolfgang BALZER and C. ULISES MOULINES: Introduction. José A. DÍEZ CALZADA: Structuralist Analysis of Theories of Fundamental Measurement. Adolfo GARCÍA DE LA SIENRA and Pedro REYES: The Theory of Finite Games in Extensive Form. Hans Joachim BURSCHEID und Horst STRUVE: The Theory of Stochastic Fairness - its Historical Development, Formulation and Justification. Wolfgang BALZER and Richard MATTESSICH: Formalizing the Basis of Accounting. Werner DIEDERICH: A Reconstruction of Marxian Economics. Bert HAMMINGA and Wolfgang BALZER: The Basic Structure of (...) Neoclassical General Equilibrium Theory. Klaus MANHART: Balance Theories: Two Reconstructions and the Problem of Intended Applications. Rainer WESTERMANN: Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: A Structuralist Theory-Net. Rainer REISENZEIN: Wundt's Three-Dimensional Theory of Emotion. Pablo LORENZANO: Classical Genetics and the Theory-Net of Genetics. Hinne HETTEMA and Theo A.F. KUIPERS: The Formalisation of the Periodic Table. C. ULISES MOULINES: The Basic Core of Simple Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Thomas BARTELBORTH: An Axiomatization of Classical Electrodynamics. Author's Index. Subject Index. (shrink)

A Thousand Journeys. The Biography of Lama Anagarika Govinda. Ken Winkler. Element Books, Shaftesbury 1990. 182 pp., illustrated. P/back £8.95.

For years now the “Tübingen School”, represented above all by Konrad Gaiser and Hans Krämer, has had an important position, philologically and philosophically speaking, in current research on Plato. Its richly documented and constantly sophisticated “New Image of Plato” has resulted in a “para-digm-change” in Plato-interpretation as well as developing many of its aspects. It revises the basic attitude, which can be traced back to Schleiermacher, that Plato’s published dialogues are the one authentic source for any adequate and complete comprehension (...) of Platonic thought. By contrast it is especially Krämer and Gaiser who in numerous publications have energetically—and to great effect—drawn attention to what have since Aristotle come to be known as the “unwritten doctrines” and—taking up and modifying specific intentions of L. Robin, J. Stenzel, P. Wilpert and others—attempted to present them not only as a necessary supplement to the dialogues of Plato but even more as the systematically conceived centre, the “essential” in Platonic thought. This hermeneutical maxim has made it possible to reconstruct the basic features of a principles-theory for Plato which not only constitutes the systematic fundament of the Platonic dialogues but has become decisive for the basic conceptual and ontological structure of Neoplatonism and the philosophical systems which are connected with it materially and historically speaking. This has not meant suppressing the dialogues or demoting them to a “quarry” for the real-authentic: thanks to the principles-theory and the theorems connected with it, much which used to have to appear as a break, as something enigmatic or giving rise to discrepancy or aporia, can now be understood in a more thorough way, a way which is more intense in terms of argumentation and even more complex in terms of substance, without that which Plato considered it impossible to say being laid bare in a dull abstraction. Thomas Alexander Szlezák’s book testifies to the degree to which taking seriously those doctrines of Plato which he himself was very “serious” about can be productive—precisely for a new interpretation of the dialogues themselves. Amidst the virtually endless deluge of publications on Plato, a deluge which continues to swell to worrying proportions because of superfluous repetition, Szlezák’s book stands out very strikingly through the originality of its perspective, through the consistent realization of a basic idea which is highly instructive for the subject-matter at hand and through the thoroughness of its examination of competing and above all of opposing ideas which are—with greater or lesser reason—sceptical as regards the new Plato paradigm. Plato’s criticism—discussed in great detail by Szlezák—of the written communicating of philosophical thought becomes for him the key to the question as to the relationship of the oral pursuit of philosophy and the written presentation of the living dialogue. In accordance with Platonic writing-critique it is very much intrinsic to the philosophical logos that it can defend itself, can help itself, that it is in a position productively to continue the questions which are placed in it and which it is asked and in so doing refer to “timiotera”, to “all that is more valuable”, i.e. more extensively justified; not only must these “timiotera” not be explicitly stated, but they ought consciously to be held back, to be omitted and reserved for conversations with real friends who are capable of understanding a higher problem-level. Books, thus also dialogues published in written form, are not inherently able to do this: they “are constantly saying the same thing” and remind one at times of “the prolonged din of cymbals”. It follows from this that “he who has knowledge”, he who has knowledge of “timiotera” and has a sensible attitude towards them, “Plato” the author of philosophical book-dialogues, quite consciously and consistently omits the “problems which are especially to do with principle”. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: Key aspects of Werner’s concerns involve overcoming dualisms. This presupposes an implicit spatial preunderstanding that is neglected in Werner and needs amplification. Diametric and concentric spatial-relational frames for cognition and perception offer a supporting framework for Werner’s interrogation of constructivist roots, to go beyond Cartesian metaphysics and to concretise difference that is not mere (...) dualistic separation. (shrink)

Stoltenberg, G. Freies und imperatives Mandat.--Kaltefleiter, W. und Veen, H.-J. Von der Demokratie zur Delegiertenherrschaft.--Bromme, P. Meinungsfreiheit in der parlamentarischen Demokratie.

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: My general concern is that transferring the analysis of perception to a metaphysical and even metametaphysical level is not very helpful when it comes to justifying a certain philosophical conceptualisation of perception. To this end, a phenomenological analysis is needed. Furthermore, I point to an ambiguity within Werner’s correlationist account of the mind-world relation - and (...) to a last resort for radical constructivism. (shrink)