Der umfassende Prozess der weltweiten Digitalisierung prägt alle gesellschaftlichen Systeme in unterschiedlicher Weise. Wie sehr verändert die Digitalisierung die uns bekannte Welt und die Vulnerabilität des Lebens? Sind die damit verbundenen Transformationen gar wünschenswert und/oder notwendig? In Hinblick auf eine Vergewisserung dessen, was als (unsere) Welt anzusehen ist, bietet sich der Begriff der Lebenswelt im Ausgang von Edmund Husserl an. Demnach ist es eine wirklich anschauliche, wirklich erfahrene und erfahrbare Welt, in der sich unser ganzes Leben praktisch abspielt. Technisierung bedeutet (...) eine Veränderung dieses menschlichen Weltverhältnisses. Husserl attestierte seinerzeit eine Lebensweltvergessenheit, die zu einer Krise Europas und des europäischen Menschentums beitragen würde. Daher setzte er sich für eine Rehabilitierung der Lebenswelt als Sinnesfundament ein. Diese berühmte Diagnose und jene Massnahme sind seit Husserls Tagen immer wieder aufgegriffen worden. Wird die Digitalisierung die Welt in eine komplett künstliche Welt transformieren, die den Zusammenhang von persönlicher Erfahrung, Leiblichkeit, gesellschaftlichen Institutionen und Erscheinungen der Natur aufgekündigt hat? Bevor eine solche Befürchtung geglaubt werden kann, gilt es, grundlegende Muster der Digitalisierung im Hinblick auf ihre lebensweltliche Konkretion zu befragen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht Prozesse und deren Querverbindungen aus den Bereichen Politik, Wirtschaft, Verkehr, Wissen, Bildung, Literatur, Gesundheit und Erotik. (shrink)

"Atom," "byte" and "gene" are metonymies for techno-scientific developments of the 20th century: nuclear power, computing and genetic engineering. Resistance continues to challenge these developments in public opinion. This book traces historical debates over atoms, bytes and genes which raised controversy with consequences, and argues that public opinion is a factor of the development of modern techno-science. The level and scope of public controversy is an index of resistance, examined here with a "pain analogy" which shows that just as pain (...) impacts movement, resistance impacts techno-scientific mobilization: it signals that something is wrong, and this requires attention, elaboration and a response to the challenge. This analysis shows how different fields of enquiry deal with the resistance of social-psychological mentalities in the face of industrial, scientific and political activities inspired by projected futures. (shrink)

In the current paper, we re-examine how abstract argumentation can be formulated in terms of labellings, and how the resulting theory can be applied in the field of modal logic. In particular, we are able to express the (complete) extensions of an argumentation framework as models of a set of modal logic formulas that represents the argumentation framework. Using this approach, it becomes possible to define the grounded extension in terms of modal logic entailment.

Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific, technical and industrial innovation and one of the most controversial. As developments have occurred such as genetic test therapies and the breeding of genetically modified food crops, so the public debates have become more heated and grave concerns have been expressed about access to genetic information, labelling of genetically modified foods and human and animal cloning. Across Europe, public opinion has become a crucial factor in the ability of governments and biotech (...) industries to exploit the new technology. This 2002 book presents the results of a unique cross-national and cross-disciplinary study of the relationship between the development of new biotechnology and public perception, media coverage and policy formulation. It outlines a conceptual framework for understanding these issues and contains a number of empirical studies including studies of the international controversies surrounding the cloning of Dolly the sheep and GM Soya. (shrink)

Based on Moscovici’s classical study on the cultivation of psychoanalytic ideas in France in the 1950’s and our own research on modern biotechnology, we propose a paradigm for researching social representations. Following a consideration of the nature of representations and of the ‘iconoclastic suspicion’ that haunts them, we propose a model of the emergence of meaning relating three elements: subjects, objects, and projects. The basic unit of analysis is the elongated triangle of mediation : subject 1, object, project, and subject (...) 2, captured in the image of a ‘Toblerone’. Such social units cultivate, that is produce, circulate and receive representation which may be embodied in four modes–habitual behaviour, individual cognition, informal communication and formal communication–and in three mediums–words, visual images or non-linguistic sounds. We propose an operational definition of a ‘social representation’ as the comparison of four characteristics of communication systems: the content structures , the typified processes , and their functions , within the context of segmented social milieus. Seven implications for research on social representations are outlined: content and process; segmentation by social milieus rather than taxonomies; cultivation studies within social milieus; multi-method analysis; time structures and longitudinal data; the crossover of cultural projects and trajectories; the disinterested research attitude. This ideal type paradigm leads to an operational clarification to identify new research questions, and to guide the design and evaluation of studies on social representations. (shrink)

The study “Psychoanalysis—its image and its public” intimates that common sense is increasingly informed by science. But common sense asserts its autonomy and, in turn, may affect the trajectory of science. This is a process that leads to many differentiations—in common sense, in scientific innovation and in political and regulatory structures. Bauer and Gaskell's toblerone model of triangles of mediation provided a distillation of their reading of “La Psychanalyse.” Here it was argued that representations are multi-modal phenomena necessitating the use (...) of multiple methodologies .In this paper we briefly summarise these arguments and elaborate ways in which social representation theory can be considered a progressive research programme. “Progressive” because as the theory has developed it has extended the range and depth of its conceptual basis; it provides a new synthesis for the social scientific understanding of the phenomena of common sense and of representation; it acts as an antidote to the reductionism of public opinion and, finally, it is a stimulus to depart from disciplinary silos. However, there remain unresolved issues: how to segment the relevant social milieus and how to close the feedback loop from common sense to science? (shrink)

This book offers the first comparative account of the changes and stabilities of public perceptions of science within the US, France, China, Japan, and across Europe over the past few decades. The contributors address the influence of cultural factors; the question of science and religion and its influence on particular developments (e.g. stem cell research); and the demarcation of science from non-science as well as issues including the incommensurability versus cognitive polyphasia and the cognitive (in)tolerance of different systems of knowledge.

A review of the paradigms of social influence – suggestion, imitation, normalization, conformity, compliance, conversion – leads me to diagnose a triple malaise: the shrinkage of paradigms to cognitive dual-processing theories of information; the dominant methodology of laboratory experiments falls short of the reality of (mass) communication; and the focus of social influence on inter-subjectivity is only half of the story. I will suggest two extensions of social influence theory to include mass media communication and the inter-objectivity of artefacts. We (...) need to be able to conceptualize the modalities of why, how and to what effect somebody might put up a wall to influence neighbours instead of contenting themselves with putting up a public note ‘Do not trespass!’. Social influence by fait accompli needs to be within the remit of social psychology, otherwise it loses its relevance in a technological society where artefacts mediate most inter-personal relations. (shrink)

Because the main difference between combinatory weak equality and λβ-equality is that the rule \begin{equation*}\tag{\xi} X = Y \vdash \lambda x.X = \lambda x.Y\end{equation*} is valid for the latter but not the former, it is easy to assume that another way of defining combinatory β-equality is to add rule (ξ) to the postulates for weak equality. However, to make this true, one must choose the definition of combinatory abstraction in (ξ) very carefully. If one tries to use one of the (...) more common abstraction algorithms, the result will be an equality, = ξ , that is either equivalent to βη-equality (and so strictly stronger than β-equality) or else strictly weaker than β-equality. This paper will study the relations = ξ for several commonly used abstraction algorithms, distinguish between them, and axiomatize them. (shrink)

Digitalisierung ist die Transformation der Lebenswelt in quantifizierbare Daten bei gleichzeitiger Automatisierung. Sie ist damit auch ein Angriff auf die Materialität vulnerablen Lebens. Die Triebkräfte dieser Kolonisation finden im Dispositiv aus Politik, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft zusammen. Im Ausgang von der Phänomenologie der Leib beschreibt der Beitrag die Durchführung dieser Imperative, die in eine Halbierung der Humanität münden. Im Anschluss an Bruno Latour wird über eine Politik der Postdigitalisierung nachgedacht.

Nach einer knappen Skizze verschiedener Versuche von der Antike bis in die Moderne, den Überfluss zu fassen, wendet sich der Beitrag seinem eigentlichen Thema zu. Im Sinne eines metaphysischen Begehrens werden Aspekte einer Phänomenologie und Ethik des Überflusses skizziert, die von der Anthropologie bisher vernachlässigt wurden. Dabei wird dreierlei deutlich: Überfluss ist erstens die Sache einer aktiven Passivität: Das, was von mir aktiv herbeigeführt wird in der Auffassung von etwas-als-etwas und in der Begegnung mit den Anderen, sucht mich in meiner (...) Passivität wieder heim. Überfluss ist damit zweitens ein Ereignis der Überschreitung: Es kommt aus uns und zugleich über uns und sucht uns wie eine äußerliche Macht heim. Überfluss ist drittens absolut, d.h. entbunden und abgelöst von Relationen, die aber ihrerseits stets vorausgesetzt bleiben. (shrink)

In his pioneering work of moral phenomenology, K. E. Løgstrup offered a phenomenological articulation of a central moment of ethical life: the experience in which “one finds oneself with the life of another more-or-less in one’s hands”. In such circumstances we encounter what Løgstrup calls simply the ethical demand. Løgstrup’s preferred formulation of the content of that demand is taken from the Bible: Love thy neighbor. This neighborly love is expressed in the form of spontaneous, selfless care for the other. (...) We shall have occasion in what follows to return to the content that Løgstrup associates with the ethical demand, but my primary focus here is not its content but its distinctive modality. Løgstrup specifies that modality in a fourfold analysis: the ethical demand is radical, silent, one-sided, and unfulfillable. My concern in what follows will be with the fourth element in this analysis – or what I shall refer to simply as Løgstrup’s unfulfillability thesis. My discussion addresses three specific questions: Is it coherent to suppose that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? Why does Løgstrup hold that the ethical demand is unfulfillable? What kind of response is appropriate in the face of an unfulfillable ethical demand? (shrink)

It is customary to identify transcendental philosophy as the distinctive and original invention of Immanuel Kant. Certainly this was a view that Kant himself did much to encourage. But this chapter argues that traces of the transcendental strategy can be found already among the ancients. One such ancient precedent is associated with the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis. It is argued that oikeiosis is best understood as a form of normative orientation associated with 'being at home ' in one's body and (...) environment, and that it involves a distinctive form of ontological self-consciousness. This chapter assesses the merits of Stoic claims that oikeiosis figures as a condition on the possibility of desire, pleasure, and even perception, and the chapter considers the case for describing these arguments as examples of transcendental investigation. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate (...) the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

Over the past decade, a group of prolific and innovative evolutionary biologists has sought to reinvent historical linguistics through the use of phylogenetic and phylogeographical analysis, treating cognates like genes and conceptualizing the spread of languages in terms of the diffusion of viruses. Using these techniques, researchers claim to have located the origin of the Indo-European language family in Neolithic Anatolia, challenging the near-consensus view that it emerged in the grasslands north of the Black Sea thousands of years later. But (...) despite its widespread celebration in the global media, this new approach fails to withstand scrutiny. As languages do not evolve like biological species and do not spread like viruses, the model produces incoherent results, contradicted by the empirical record at every turn. This book asserts that the origin and spread of languages must be examined primarily through the time-tested techniques of linguistic analysis, rather than those of evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

Being and Time is a methodologically complex work, combining hermeneutic, transcendental, phenomenological, and ontological strategies in a provocative and not-obviously-stable concoction. In this article, I focus on one strand of the methodological puzzles raised by Heidegger’s undertaking: the problem of warranting the modal claims that occur frequently in the course of Heidegger’s project. In a number of crucial passages, we are told that one or another trait of Dasein is necessary, or that some ontic feature of Dasein would not be (...) possible were it not for some deeper ontological feature. I undertake to determine the logical form of these doctrines, and to consider what kind of evidence might suffice to establish them. I draw on Heidegger’s complex debt to Dilthey in proposing an interpretation of the notion of an existeniale, and I critically assess Taylor Carman’s treatment of Heidegger’s project as an extension of Kantian transcendental strategies. In the end, I argue, much comes to turn on one’s account of the semantics of Heidegger’s central term of art: “Dasein.” I identify shortcomings in two possible approaches to this problem: one takes the extension of the term to be antecedently fixed; the other fixes the meaning of the term by specifying its intension. I then explore an alternative semantics for “Dasein” under which the modalized doctrines of Being and Time can be considered de re necessities. All three of the semantic models that I consider here remain highly schematic – cartoons rather than fully elaborated portraits – and I do not mean to suggest that any of the three would suffice to capture the enormously complex semantic structure of Heidegger’s undertaking. Nonetheless, I argue that the third semantic model enjoys certain demonstrable advantages over the other two, both for mounting a defense of Heidegger’s modal propositions and as a schema for mapping the text of Being and Time. It also allows us to frame a challenge that any fully adequate semantic interpretation of Heidegger’s text would have to meet. (shrink)

This paper undertakes an analysis of the distinctive forms of self-consciousness, self-representation and existential-therapeutic work characteristic of the ex-voto paintings in Mexican folk art, and examines the appropriation thereof in Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair.

This article offers a view on the emerging practice of managing external relations of the modern university, and the role of science communication in this. With a representative sample of research universities in four countries, we seek to broaden our understanding of the _science communication (SC) function_ and its niche within the modern university. We distinguish science communication from corporate communication functions and examine how they distribute across organisational levels. We find that communication functions can be represented along a spectrum (...) of (de)centralisation: public relations and marketing activities are more likely carried out at the central level (central offices), and public affairs and SC activities are more likely carried out at decentral levels (e.g. in specific offices and/or research institutes, departments). This study shows that little attention is paid to science communication at central structures, suggesting that it is not a practice that aligns easily with university corporate communication, yet SC might find its niche increasingly in decentral locations of activity. (shrink)

Das Verhältnis zwischen Kirche und säkularer Kultur steht einmal mehr in Frage. Gehören die Kunstwerke der christlichen Tradition als lebendige Quelle noch in unsere Gegenwart, oder nicht vielmehr einer Vergangenheit an, die höchstens noch von musealem Interesse ist? Ist eine intellektuelle Durchdringung des Glaubens, eine christliche, katholische/protestantische Intellektualität sinnvoll, notwendig, überhaupt möglich?