Although the brain enables us to perceive the external world and our body, it remains unknown whether brain processes themselves can be perceived. Brain tissue does not have receptors for its own activity. However, the ability of humans to acquire self-control of brain processes indicates that the perception of these processes may also be achieved by learning. In this study patients learned to control low-frequency components of their EEG: the so-called slow cortical potentials (SCPs). In particular ''probe'' sessions, the patients (...) estimated the quality of the SCP shift they had produced in the preceding trial. The correspondence between the recorded SCP amplitudes and the subjective estimates increased with training. The ability to perceive the SCPs was related to the ability to control them; this perception was not mediated by peripheral variables such as changes in muscle tonus and cannot be reduced to simple vigilance monitoring. These data provide evidence that humans can learn to perceive the neural activity of their brain. Alternative interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

Psychopathic individuals are characterized by impaired affective processing, impulsivity, sensation-seeking, poor planning skills and heightened aggressiveness with poor self-regulation. Based on brain self-regulation studies using neurofeedback of Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) in disorders associated with a dysregulation of cortical activity thresholds and evidence of deficient cortical functioning in psychopathy, a neurobiological approach seems to be promising in the treatment of psychopathy. The results of our intensive brain regulation intervention demonstrate, that psychopathic offenders are able to gain control of their brain (...) excitability over fronto-central brain areas. After SCP self-regulation training, we observed reduced aggression, impulsivity and behavioral approach tendencies, as well as improvements in behavioral-inhibition and increased cortical sensitivity for error-processing. This study demonstrates improvements on the neurophysiological, behavioral and subjective level in severe psychopathic offenders after SCP-neurofeedback training and could constitute a novel neurobiologically-based treatment for a seemingly change-resistant group of criminal psychopaths. (shrink)

Ute Gahlings opens up the professional field of philosophical practice with its various forms of activity such as consolation and life orientation, education and personality development as well as political and social commitment. On the basis of concrete situations in philosophical practice, she traces the complex intersubjective processes phenomenologically. She illuminates the importance of intuition, presence and atmosphere as well as the professional framing of the encounter in the field of tension between proximity and distance. In this multidimensionality, the author (...) is always concerned with core questions of an ethically based anthropology. Therefore, she also deals with professional ethical considerations and develops a code of ethics. (shrink)

“I think that the main interest of philosophy in our time should be to rethink our relationship to the world. According to the previous, two-thousand-year-old relationship of man, he saw himself confronted with a reality that he had to subjugate through mental and physical appropriation. Not least the realisation that nature cannot be dominated but threatens to strike back in extreme ways, as well as the experience of world-wide wars and the spreading exploitation of man by man, lead to the (...) insight that our relationship to the Other must be reconsidered. I am not asking what philosophy is, but how philosophising happens - astonishing, critical, speculative, pictorial, finite.”(The author about her book). (shrink)

Raum und Zeit sind Grundprobleme der abendlandischen Philosophietradition. Beide sind vielfach als zusammengehorig betrachtet worden, und beide sind als messbare Dimensionen Teil einer Ordnung, die uns in unserem Wahrnehmen und in unserem Handeln Orientierung und Sicherheit gibt. So verlassen wir uns bei jeder Verabredung darauf, dass der Treffpunkt und der Zeitpunkt der Verabredung eindeutig sind. Doch gibt es neben der linearen Zeit und dem metrischen Raum auch andere Weisen, Raum und Zeit zu erleben. Wenn man die Welt als offenes Zusammenspiel (...) von Dingen und Geschehnissen und Beziehungen versteht, so verlangt dies auch eine andere Auffassung von Raum und Zeit: Wir weilen und verweilen in Raumen, die uns umfangen und beherbergen. Wir empfinden kurze oder lange Weile. Und wir erfahren Weite, etwa in ihrem Gegenspiel zu Enge und Bedrangnis, wir stehen vor einer weiten Landschaft oder am weiten Meer - unser Herz wird weit. Indem wir uns einer Weile anvertrauen oder eine Weite in uns aufnehmen oder uns ihr uberlassen, behandeln wir das uns Begegnende nicht als Objekt unseres Tuns und Erkennens, sondern realisieren, dass wir in die uns umgebende Welt mit ihren je unterschiedlichen Weilen und Weiten je schon eingebettet sind. (shrink)

This essay examines dominant notions of reproductive identity in feminist bioethics from a queer-crip perspective by considering the “reproductive situation” in Germany of people who are classified as disabled and people who are classified as queer. I analyze the ways in which such people are excluded from the understandings of reproductive identity that figure prominently in German feminist bioethics, and argue that feminist bioethics in Germany, which has become a well-established part of important bioethical institutions, reflects many, if not most, (...) of the neo-eugenic developments that characterize more recognizably mainstream bioethics. I also show that feminist bioethics constitutes the reproductive subject as nondisabled, intelligibly gendered, and heterosexual. (shrink)

Suls provides a useful review of research interested in the contribution of chronic negative emotions to coronary heart disease. Despite widespread support for a link between negative emotions and the etiology of disease, it is largely unknown if discrete negative emotions, particularly anger, sadness, and anxiety contribute to the development of physical disease in different ways. In this comment, we argue that answering this question will require a more comprehensive analysis of the unique characteristics of discrete emotions as well as (...) conceptually refined assumptions about how discrete emotions develop and change across the adult lifespan. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study investigated age differences in empathic accuracy, the ability to correctly perceive others’ emotions, in a sample of 151 boys and men from three age groups: adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults. All participants viewed nine newly developed film clips, each depicting a boy or a man reliving one of three emotions, while talking about an autobiographical memory. Adolescents and middle-aged men were less accurate than young men, and these age differences were associated with parallel age differences in fluid-mechanical (...) abilities. In addition, age differences in vocabulary, one indicator of crystallized-pragmatic intelligence, were associated with age differences in empathic accuracy in adolescent and young, but not middle-aged, men. Within the limitations of cross-sectional data, this study provides evidence for the idea that empathic accuracy is an effortful t... (shrink)

This paper discusses the extent to which governmentality provides a critical visibility of the economy beyond its liberal imaginary. It argues that Foucault’s conceptual and historical understanding of liberal governmentality has two traits that encumber a de-centering of the economy from a Foucauldian perspective. The first obstacle results from a persistent asymmetry of the concept of governmentality as it remains solely geared towards replacing the monolithic account of the state. Governmentality is therefore in danger of rendering the economic invisible instead (...) of advancing an analytics of power appropriate to the specificity of this field. The second impediment relates to how Foucault reads the invisibility of the economy asserted in liberal discourse. While Foucault emphasizes how the “invisible hand” imparts a critical limitation towards the sovereign hubris of total sight, the paper unearths a more complex politics of truth tied to the invisible economy. Drawing on selected historical material, the papers shows that the liberal invisibility of the economy rather functions as a prohibitive barrier towards developing novel and critical visibilities of the economy. A Foucauldian perspective on economy, the paper concludes, benefits from piercing through this double invisibility of the economy. (shrink)

Mindfulness has emerged as a potential motivator for sustainable lifestyles, yet few studies provide insight into the relationship between mindfulness practice levels and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. We also lack information about the significance of meditators’ behavioral differences in terms of their measurable environmental impact and the motivational processes underlying these differences in pro-environmental performance. We classified 300 individuals in three groups with varying meditation experience and compared their pro-environmental motivations and levels of animal protein consumption. Exceeding prior attempts (...) to compare high-impact behaviors of mindfulness practitioners and non-practitioners, we created the most detailed classification of practice engagement by assessing frequency, experience and type of meditation practice. This nuanced view on mindfulness practice reveals that advanced meditators, who reported high levels of connectedness with nature, subjective happiness and dispositional mindfulness showed significantly more concern for the environment. They also demonstrated the lowest levels of greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation and water use related to their animal-protein consumption. This study is the first to follow a self-determination theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the motivational differences between meditator groups. We revealed that advanced meditators reported significantly more integrated motivation toward the environment than non-meditators. We also provided preliminary evidence for a new theoretical framework suggesting that experiential strategies such as mindfulness practices could strengthen the relational pathway of pro-environmental behaviors. Using sequential mediation analysis, we confirmed that the negative effect of mindful compassion practice on greenhouse gas emissions from animal-protein consumption is partially mediated by CWN and integrated motivation toward the environment. While our study does not support assumptions of causality, it shows that much can be learned by studying the motivations of advanced meditators for maintaining high levels of pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

This article argues that Foucault’s account of the intersection between population, liberal economy, and biopolitics needs to be reconstructed in light of Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population. Taking Malthus into account brings to the fore how deeply the question of population is tied to a colonial hierarchy that differentiates between dangerous ‘savage’ and economic ‘civilized’ life. ‘Savage life’ is depicted as a catastrophic form of life, which uses resources in a non-economic way due to its forgetfulness of the (...) future. The article shows how this notion of ‘savage life’ broadens the concept of liberal economic governmentality. Most importantly, it highlights the role of passions and futurity for liberal governmentality. As the discussion of Malthus’ texts demonstrates, the passions of hope and fear assume a crucial role for engendering futurity in the economic subject. As will be shown, while the more ‘savage life’ is considered to be made governable through fear, the more civilized life is supposed to be allured by hope. The article points out the implication of this analysis for Foucault’s notion of biopolitics in relation to liberal economy. (shrink)

Ephrem's own writings however frequently betray a familiarity with Greek philosophical ideas. This book first introduces Ephrem's intellectual context and his attitude towards learning.

The Third Reich conceived of life as a struggle (Kampf) between competing forces. This view of life was based on a growing emphasis in German philosophy and culture upon voluntarism, or the power of the will as the ultimate metaphysical reality. For these Germans, God was dead. There was no transcendent or universal standard to provide life with direction, no grand design or rationality to explain the succession of events, only the groundless and endless struggle of forces competing to assert (...) their power and extend their dominion. These Germans found early inspiration for this idea in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, who spoke of life as possessing its own autonomous power in each of its individual members or monads. They saw this concept develop and become the one metaphysical truth in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche with their emphasis upon the “will to live” and the “will to power.” The two philosophers exerted particular influence upon the Nazis, who saw them as early exponents of their ideology. This influence is important in understanding the fundamental mentality of the Nazis, even if the metaphysics of voluntarism contained other possible forms of interpretation beyond what the Nazis represented in word and deed. To understand the relationship between Nazism and voluntarism, the article develops the philosophical background from Leibniz to Nietzsche and relates this development to its Nazi expression in Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, Alfred Bäumler, and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview about the transmission of Greek popular philosophical writings in Ethiopian literature. Information about the historical and religious background in Ethiopia until the 13th century is very scanty, and also the conditions of transmission of Greek philosophy in monastic circles are poorly attested. An analysis of the ambivalent attitude towards Greek philosophy and secular education in Syriac and Coptic monasticism could shed some light on intellectual preconditions in Ethiopian monasteries, because they were significantly influenced by these (...) circles. The manuscript tradition of relevant writings gives us an additional clue which themes and works were preferred among monks in Egypt. Manuscripts containing popular philosophy circulated in the existent network of monasteries in Egypt and Ethiopia, and an increased interest, especially in the 15th/16th centuries, in these writings give rise to their translation from Arabic into Ethiopic. (shrink)

A revised and enlarged version of Biologen unter Hitler, translated by Thomas Dunlap.