Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely (...) throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characteristics detailed below, are the main drivers of the ecological crisis and exacerbated trends already underway. Further, the planetary boundaries framework can support interpretations that do not solely emphasize technocratic operational approaches and costs, (...) but also assume that these alone can be the solution. (shrink)

The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial process – based on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political struggles – it has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation.

The present study examines whether deictic time and valence are mentally associated, with a link between future and positive valence and a link between past and negative valence. We employed a novel paradigm, the two-choice-sentence-completion paradigm, to address this issue. Participants were presented with an initial sentence fragment that referred to an event that was either located in time or of different valence. Participants chose between two completion phrases. When the given dimension in the initial fragment was time, the two (...) completion phrase alternatives differed in valence. However, when the given dimension in the initial fragment was valence, the two completion phrase alternatives differed in time. As expected, participants chose completion phrases consistent with the proposed association between time and valence. Additional analyses involving individual differences concerning optimism/pessimism revealed that this association is particularly pronounced for people with an optimistic attitude. (shrink)

Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack of such an assessment tool addressing the specific context of (...) translational biomedical research. To close this gap, we have developed a new survey for assessing the organizational climate for translational research. This self-assessment tool measures employees’ perceptions of translational research climate and underlying research practices in organizational environments and builds on the established Survey of Organizational Research Climate, assessing research integrity. Using this tool, we show that scientists at a large university hospital perceive translation as a central and important component of their work. Importantly, local resources and direct support are main contributing factors for the practical implementation of translation into their own research practice. We identify and discuss potential leverage points for an improvement of research climate to foster successful translational research. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This is the third part of a „controversy“, in which I respond to comments from Vera Hoffmann-Kolss, Johannes Hübner, Boris Kment, Kathrin Koslicki, Annina Loets, and Ulrich Metschl concerning my earlier paper „Möglichkeit ohne mögliche Welten“ („possibility without possible worlds“).

This paper argues that the problem of how to act in the face of radical contingency is of central importance in Musil’s novel and intimately connected to what Musil calls the sense of possibility. There is a variety of different strategies by which individuals, and the state of Kakania as a whole, deal with contingency, and they all involve a claim to a kind of grounding or necessity; for example, the Parallel Campaign is one big attempt to ground Kakania in (...) what can be perceived as a form of metaphysical necessity. With the figure of Ulrich, Musil radicalizes the problem by showing the consequences of viewing even the relationship one has to one’s own self as contingent – the ultimate outcome of which is self-alienation. (shrink)

In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries—such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna—challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results (...) and interpretations of those results based on the orthodox view of genetic determinism, a growing number of scientists urge a rethinking of what a gene is and how it works. In this collection, a group of internationally renowned scientists present some prominent alternative approaches to understanding the role of dna in the construction and function of biological organisms. Contributors discuss alternatives to the programmatic view of dna, including the developmental systems approach, methodical culturalism, the molecular process concept of the gene, the hermeneutic theory of description, and process structuralist biology. None of the approaches cast doubt on the notion that dna is tremendously important to biological life on earth; rather, contributors examine different ideas of how dna should be represented, evaluated, and explained. Just as ideas about genetic codes have reached far beyond the realm of science, the reconceptualizations of genetic theory in this volume have broad implications for ethics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Contributors. Thomas Bürglin, Brian C. Goodwin, James Griesemer, Paul Griffiths, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Evelyn Fox Keller, Gerd B. Müller, Eva M. Neumann-Held, Stuart A. Newman, Susan Oyama, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Sahotra Sarkar, Jackie Leach Scully, Gerry Webster, Ulrich Wolf. (shrink)

Some of the series' finest lectures have been lost for many years, unavailable to the public in any form -- until now.

Das Buch weist die Fruchtbarkeit einer strukturgenetisch fundierten Rekonstruktionsperspektive für die Analyse der historisch und kulturell differenten Weltbilder nach. Anhand der für die Geschichte der Denksysteme zentralen Vorstellungen über die Natur-Kultur-Differenz und die physikalische Kausalität werden Reichweite und Grenzen der These einer universalen Entwicklungslogik kritische geprüft. Die historischen Studien bieten dabei einen neuartigen Blick auf die Aristotelische Physik und ihre mittelalterlichen Fortentwicklungen. Schließlich werden die materialen Ergebnisse in Richtung einer differenztheoretisch orientierten Theorie der Entstehung des Neuen in der Entwicklung ausgedeutet.

The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches (...) the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research. (shrink)

Is Plato’s philosophy still relevant for current issues in politics and political science? In order to answer this question, the contributions to this volume endeavour to re-read the Platonic dialogues and to interpret them in terms of textual hermeneutics on the one hand. On the other hand, they refer to Plato from a systematic point of view and apply his philosophy, in particular the method of Socratic dialogue, to discussions on contemporary political issues. The volume is dedicated to Barbara (...) Zehnpfennig, whose works aim at making Socratic–Platonic philosophy fruitful for the present on the basis of a new interpretation of Plato’s philosophy. With contributions by Anke Adamik, Sarah Al-Taher, Viktoria Bachmann, Philip Breuer, Johanna Falk-Seifert, Bettina Fröhlich, Benjamin A. Hahn, Hendrik Hansen, Thomas Haslböck, Raul Heimann, Johannes Frank Hoerlin, Vanessa Jansche, Peter Kainz, Christina Kast, Eva-Maria Kaufmann, Ulrich Kühn, Laura Martena, Julian Obenauer, Victor Peneff und Thomas Wimmer. (shrink)

Ethological theory standardly attributes representational content to animal signals. In this article I first assess whether Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic theory accounts for the content of animal signals. I conclude that it does not, because many signals do not exhibit the required sort of cooperation between signal‐producing and signal‐consuming devices. It is then argued that Kim Sterelny’s proposal, while not requiring cooperation, sometimes yields the wrong content. Finally, I outline an alternative view, according to which consumers alone are responsible for conferring (...) representational status and determining content. I suggest that consumer‐based teleosemantics reconstruct the content of both cooperative and noncooperative signals and explain how a given trait can mean different things to different consumers. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.; e‐mail: ulrich[email protected]. (shrink)

Als eine wesentliche Schwäche des strukturalistischen Theorienkonzepts musste die Vagheit erscheinen, mit der die Unterscheidung zwischen bezüglich einer Theorie theoretischen und nichttheoretischen Funktionen bisher belastet war. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wird ein formal präzises, pragmatisch nichtrelativiertes Kriterium für T-Theoretizität vorgestellt. Erste Schritte zur Klärung seiner Bedeutung für die holistische Sichtweise erfahrungswissenschaftlicher Theorien werden unternommen.

By assembling authors with a wide range of different disciplinary backgrounds, from philosophy, literature, political science, sociology to medical anthropology ...

In the following article, we propose an analytical framework for the analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Standards based on the paradigmatic nexus of voice and entitlement. We follow the theory of decentration and present the concept of Transnational Norm-Building Networks (TNNs), which — as we argue — comprise a new nexus of voice and entitlement beyond the nation—state level. Furthermore, we apply the analytical framework to the ISO 26000 initiative and the Global Compact. We conclude the article with remarks (...) on the legitimacy and the effectiveness of norms generated by TNNs. Through this, we aim to contribute a new theoretical foundation to the analysis of CSR standards, which enables us to undertake a more differentiated description of TNN structures which have hitherto been ignored in academic literature. Secondly, we will contribute to the practical debate on ISO 26000 and the Global Compact by proposing new perspectives on the conditions of their legitimacy and effectiveness based on the voice-entitlement nexus. (shrink)

This book presents the most important problems of reference and considers their solution. It presupposes no technical knowledge, presents analyses from first principles, illustrates every stage with examples, and is written with verve and clarity. This is the ideal introduction to reference for students of linguistics and philosophy of language.

Eine tragfähige affektive Beziehung wird als Grundlage für reflexive kooperative Prozesse in der psychoanalytisch orientierten Therapie erachtet. Was ist die Essenz dieser affektiven Bindung (des Attachments)? Es werden zwei bildhafte Konzepte entwickelt: das affektive Feld und die Trajektorie. Letztere ist als ein Weg der affektiven Information zwischen den Protagonisten gezeichnet. Jedes Selbst hat ein affektives Feld. Die Felder zwischen zwei Selbsten werden verknüpft, jedoch nicht im Sinne der Feldtheorie, die eine eigen­ständige Entwicklung eines gemeinsamen Feldes postuliert. In einem wissenschaftstheoretischen Exkurs (...) werden die Ansätze »Feld« und »two singles« als gleichwertige Möglichkeiten diskutiert, Intersubjektivität zu verstehen. Die affektive Beziehung entwickelt sich zunächst zu den beiden Funktionen der resonanten und der responsiven Relation, um dann zunehmend durch die kognitive überlagert zu werden. Affektive Kommunikation ist nicht identisch mit der affektiven Bindung. Es werden Störungen im Bereich der Psychosen und Formen früher Störungen beschrieben. Die Ergebnisse der Bindungsforschung sind bekannt, spielen aber in dieser klinisch ausgerichteten Arbeit nur hintergründig eine Rolle. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to show that the structuralist approachprovides a powerful framework for the analysis of certain holistic phenomena in empirical theories.We focus on two aspects of holism. The first refers to the involvement of comprehensive complexes of hypothesesin the theoretical treatment of systems regarded in isolation. By contrast, the second refers to thecorrelation between the theoretical descriptions of different systems. It is demonstrated how these two aspectscan be analysed by making use of the structuralist notion of (...) theory-nets, and how they are reflected by a refinedversion of the Ramsey sentence. Furthermore, it is argued that there exists a tight correlation between theoccurrence of these two holistic phenomena, a specific form of underdetermination of terms which occur in thefundamental principles of an empirical theory, and the shaping of the theory's protective belt. After having dealtwith these questions in abstracto, the relevance of these considerations for a better understanding of the dynamicsof empirical theories is demonstrated in a concrete case study. It refers to the role holistic phenomenaplayed in the investigation of the anomalous advance of Mercury's perihelion and in the various attempts to eliminate this anomaly. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a framework for environmental philosophy on the ground of what I call a radical relationalism based on Whitehead’s thought. Accordingly, relations are ontologically prior to and constitutive of entities rather than being conceived as external link(ing) between them. On this ground an alternative, relational axiology can be developed that challenges the current environmental ethics debate and its dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumental values. In the last section, I show how such an axiology can become an (...) important ally for global environmental justice struggles and help support what the anthropologist Arturo Escobar calls a “decolonial view of nature.”. (shrink)

One main issue within environmental ethics is the so-called Demarcation Problem, i.e. the question of which entities are members of the moral community and hold intrinsic value. I argue that the demarcation problem relies mainly on Kantian moral philosophy. While the Kantian framework offers a strong and immediately deontological argument for moral agents holding inherent moral values, it presents problems when stretched beyond its original scope and lacks an adequate ground for addressing relational complexity and the moral significance of collectives. (...) In this paper I outline an alternative axiological framework ('map of moral significance') that relies on a relational ontology and encompasses intrinsic and relational values as the two equipollent axes of a matrix in which to embed the question posited by the Demarcation Problem. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...