In groupware tools, the activation of a function may affect other users who might have conflicting interests. We developed technical mechanisms to support users in resolving them. Contrary to current implementations of groupware tools, these mechanisms strengthen the position of the users who are affected by the activation of said functions. Supporting the visibility of a function's activation, and providing a channel for communication or means to intervene against the function's activation are approaches which constitute a framework to implement these (...) mechanisms. We conclude with showing implementation examples of the framework and their evaluation in the POLITeam project. (shrink)

We present here the “e-Portfolio” concept, which aims to provide access to documented design case studies of design researchers’ practices. Our e-Portfolio has its origins in Grounded Design. We examine here how the e-Portfolio concept grew out of Grounded Design, the way it instantiates values, and how it contributes to our understanding of the ways in which shifting values in practice can have an impact beyond the individual.

This VSD nugget considers how the small-scale effects of practice-based design activities can be sustained and scaled up to contribute to global societal change. Examining in particular the character of social networking activity, we discuss how the sustainability of an initiative is related to its ability to: be scaled up and linked with like-minded initiatives; navigate diverse values; establish organizational structures beyond the scientific context; establish a voice in public discourse; and identify and involve relevant policy makers.

This paper investigates the relationship between two outcomes of relationship marketing – affective commitment and behavioral loyalty – and consumers' unethical behavior. The main objective of the study is to assess whether affective commitment and behavioral loyalty to a store translate into more ethical behavior towards that store, controlling for the variables of age, gender, and ethical beliefs. The study does not rely on a single measurement tool, but is based on ten months' panel data and three different mail surveys (...) targeted at 359 Belgian households. The results provide support for our hypothesis that affective commitment is indeed negatively correlated with consumers' unethical behavior. The same conclusion could not be drawn for the relationship between behavioral loyalty and consumers' unethical behavior. No significant relationship was detected, not even in situations where affective commitment was high. The results hold major implications for retailing practice. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article uses four historical case studies to address epistemological issues related to the animal model of human diseases and its use in medical research on human diseases. The knowledge derived from animal models is widely assumed to be highly valid and predictive of reactions by human organisms. In this contribution, I use three significant historical cases of failure (ca. 1890, 1960, 2006), and a closer look at the emergence of the concept around 1860/70, to elucidate core assumptions related to (...) the specific practices of animal-human knowledge transfer, and to analyze the explanations provided by historical actors after each of the failures. Based on these examples, I argue that the epistemological status of the animal model changed from that of a helpful methodological tool for addressing specific questions, but with precarious validity, to an obligatory method for the production of strong knowledge on human diseases. As a result, there now exists a culture of biomedical research in human disease that, for more than a century, has taken the value of this methodological tool as self-evident, and more or less beyond question. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Wiesbadener Internistenkongress 1949 war Bühne für eine heftige Kontroverse zu Fragen der Methodik, Epistemologie und Evidenz in der psychosomatischen Medizin. Paul Martini, Internist und Protagonist methodisch durchgeführter klinischer Studien, kritisierte in diesem Kontext die Methodik psychosomatischer Wissensproduktion und bezweifelte die Validität der postulierten Einsichten. Ausgehend von dieser Kontroverse rekonstruiert der Beitrag die Formierung und Durchführung eines Experimentalsystems zur Entstehung der Hypertonie, in welchem der Internist und Psychosomatiker Thure von Uexküll somatische Variablen, die Subjektivität des Patienten, seine Biografie und seinen (...) sozialen Kontext zu integrieren versuchte. Die Deutungen der Patienten hatten in diesem Experimentalsystem einen privilegierten Status. Empirische Belege, Nachvollziehbarkeit und Reproduzierbarkeit – Forderungen, die Martini 1949 formuliert hatte – waren für Uexküll elementare Kriterien für relevantes und valides Wissen. (shrink)

During the last decades, medical historiography has undergone considerable changes. This review attempts an outline of the developments since 1945. The first section sketches the institutional background of the discipline focusing on the characteristic features which emerged in different national traditions. The following sections—essentially restricted to the German speaking context—describe the development of the fields in research and teaching, ranging from the history of ideas to the social history of medicine, from philogical and editorial work to the philosophy and sociology (...) of medical knowledge. (shrink)

The first part of the article (§§ 1-3) illustrates the critical relation the authors establish with the leading figures of philosophical anthropology in terms of their engagement with “world-openness” (Weltoffenheit). This notion cannot be reduced to the objectivity that confronts man as a spiritual being, as in Max Scheler, but rather makes it possible to grasp the limits of distancing objectification; in Arnold Gehlen, the coercion to action derived from the indeterminacy of man’s relation with the world is not sufficient (...) to comprehend the role of culture for the constitution of the human animal itself; and with the biological means utilized by Helmuth Plessner it is not possible to account entirely for the human capacity to establish relations by means of society. Historical anthropology, as the second part (§§ 4-5) of the article shows, aims to respond to such deficiencies by bringing to light the numerous historical and cultural forms of openness to a plurality of worlds. Freeing itself of any abstract and binding anthropological norm that claims to define the essence of man, historical anthropology investigates human structures and phenomena through a series of transdisciplinary studies centering on themes such as the body, ritual, mimesis and the performative dimension in its entirety, performance and performativity. (shrink)

Demokratische Lebensbedingungen sind nur möglich, wenn Menschen mit Hilfe von Erziehung und Bildung über die Fähigkeit verfügen, ihre gesellschaftlichen, sozialen und kulturellen Verhältnisse so zu gestalten, dass sie sich an den menschlichen Grundrechten orientieren. Erziehung und Bildung dürfen nicht auf die Maximierung von Leistungsfähigkeit, Demokratie und gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben nicht auf die bloße Befolgung von Gesetzen und Regeln reduziert werden. Erziehung und Bildung umfassen wissen lernen, handeln lernen, zusammenleben lernen und sein lernen. Gelingende Demokratie zielt auf Lebens-, Interaktions-, Kommunikationsverhältnisse, die sich (...) an den Werten gesellschaftliche Sicherheit, soziale Gerechtigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit orientieren und zugleich für neue individuelle und soziale Entwicklungen offen sind. Infolge der Globalisierung und des Neoliberalismus sind Demokratien und ihre Bildungssysteme in den europäischen, muslimischen und arabischen Ländern in Gefahr, den Reichtum und die Vielfalt ihrer Werte und Lebensformen auf die Realisierung enger religiöser Vorstellungen, die Durchsetzung politischer und ökonomischer Herrschaft und die Überbetonung zweckrationalen Denkens und Handelns zu reduzieren. Dagegen bestehen die Autoren und Autorinnen dieses Bandes auf der Notwendigkeit partizipatorischer Erziehungs- und Bildungsprozesse, die die Entwicklung von Subjekten und Gemeinschaften fördern und in denen Menschen lernen, ihre individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Lebensbedingungen in kultureller Diversität demokratisch zu gestalten. (shrink)

The essay condenses experiences of my work in Spanish universities in a constellation of five topics: 1. The actual situation of philosophy in Spain, 2. Her historical dimension, 3. The corresponding style of philosophical writing by the example of Ortega y Gasset, 4. Beyond the tension of traditionalism and modernity: the underestimated philosophy of Javier Zubiri, 5. Perspectives.

If we read Hegel′s “phenomenology” not as a historical product of the intention of an author, but as an expression of the process of creative experience, whose autonomous “negativity” changes every intention of objectual cognition, then the fundamental problems of its “systematic” pretention emerges in a new manner. Creative processes possess an unconditional, incalculable dimension of time, which cannot be reduced to the progressive growth of experience theoretically mediated and controlled. Guided by this understanding, the essay develops the problem of (...) the temporality of the “selfmovement” of the “speculative concept” and its unavailable “negativity”, interpreting it as the logic of creative development which removes itself from the calculation by way of presupposed distinctions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 245-274.

This study investigates global properties of three categories of English text: canonical fiction, non-canonical fiction, and non-fictional texts. The central hypothesis of the study is that there are systematic differences with respect to structural design features between canonical and non-canonical fiction, and between fictional and non-fictional texts. To investigate these differences, we compiled a corpus containing texts of the three categories of interest, the Jena Corpus of Expository and Fictional Prose. Two aspects of global structure are investigated, variability and self-similar (...) patterns, which reflect long-range correlations along texts. We use four types of basic observations, the frequency of POS-tags per sentence, sentence length, lexical diversity, and the distribution of topic probabilities in segments of texts. These basic observations are grouped into two more general categories, the lower-level properties and, which are observed at the level of the sentence, and the higher-level properties and, which are observed at the textual level. The observations for each property are transformed into series, which are analyzed in terms of variance and subjected to Multi-Fractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, giving rise to three statistics: the degree of fractality () of the fractal spectrum. The statistics thus obtained are compared individually across text categories and jointly fed into a classification model. Our results show that there are in fact differences between the three text categories of interest. In general, lower-level text properties are better discriminators than higher-level text properties. Canonical fictional texts differ from non-canonical ones primarily in terms of variability in lower-level text properties. Fractality seems to be a universal feature of text, slightly more pronounced in non-fictional than in fictional texts. On the basis of our results obtained on the basis of corpus data we point out some avenues for future research leading toward a more comprehensive analysis of textual aesthetics, e.g., using experimental methodologies. (shrink)

Il nesso più intimo tra l’individuo e la politica si compie nell’atto politico originario. Tale atto viene ravvisato nel fenomeno della rappresentanza, entro cui si realizzano le condizioni essenziali della politica stessa: l’individualità del singolo, l’uguaglianza con i suoi simili, il completo riconoscimento all’interno di un’unica volontà comune e personale. Questa essenza rappresentativa della politica è intimamente connessa alla concezione che l’individuo ha di sé: l’individuo conosce infatti la sostituzione rappresentativa già a partire dal rapporto che ha con se stesso (...) e con il proprio mondo. Per questa ragione è la rappresentanza a rivelare la natura essenzialmente politica dell’individuo stesso.The deepest connection between individual and politics takes place in the fundamental political act, that is in the phenomenon of representation which realizes the basic conditions of politics: individuality, equality and complete identification in a single common and personal will. The representative nature of politics is strictly interlaced with the self-perception of any individual, because anyone gains from the relation with himself and with his own world an experience of the relation of representative substitution, which reveals the intimate political nature of the concrete individual. (shrink)

Am 22. April 2024 jährt sich der Geburtstag von Immanuel Kant zum dreihundertsten Mal. Der Philosoph aus Königsberg, dem heutigen Kaliningrad, hat weit über seine Zeit und auch über Europa hinaus die neuzeitliche Philosophie sowie epistemische, ethische, rechtliche und humane Vorstellungen in vielen Gesellschaften und Kulturen geprägt. Von der großen Wertschätzung Kants zeugt die anhaltende weltweite Auseinandersetzung mit seinem Werk. Dieses Buch behandelt Leben, Werk und Wirkung Kants. Mit einer Fülle an Abbildungen legt der Band zugleich einen Akzent auf den (...) Zusammenklang von Kunst und Philosophie und zeigt, wie sich auch die Bildende Kunst von Kant inspirieren ließ. Mit Blick auf die globalen Herausforderungen, vor denen Europa und die Welt im 21. Jahrhundert stehen, wird zudem deutlich, dass die Gedanken der Aufklärung, vor allem in Gestalt der kritischen Philosophie, noch nie so aktuell waren wie heute. (shrink)

The theses presented here all depart from the assumption that ethics as a philosophical discipline is not contingent upon a theological grounding or justification. What is more: philosophical ethics may not have recourse to religious reasons. But this does not exclude the possibility that philosophically justified ethics may be made richer through reference to the beliefs and faith of those who follow it. Such an ethics elucidated by recourse to faith can strengthen and clarify both personal motives of ethical behavior (...) and its social attractivity. This view is developed in ten theses for a Protestant ethics. (shrink)